The Entrepreneur Battle Against Information Overload….

You come across new information and you find it extremely exciting to know that it’s going to change your business completely. You start reading, the world starts to spin around you and you come up with ways you can potentially take over your competition. No, you’ll take over the world. You keep reading and what you read five minutes ago is nothing compared to what you are learning now. Then all of the sudden, bam… nothing happens, reality kicks in and you’re sitting alone with information that is going nowhere. What happened? You learned so much information, you don’t know where to start or perhaps you realize that what you need to do is more than you thought and you don’t take action. I call this information overload…..

I’m in the process of doing marketing research and I’ve had some light shed on me. Going from industry to industry, I’ve noticed more similarities than differences and you’ll probably know what I’m referring to even if I’ve never heard of your industry. In the home based business industry you have the want-to-get-rich-quick clients. These are the people who focus on “techniques” and think that one technique will turn them into a millionaire. They think that all they need to do is learn how to generate leads, or build a list. Maybe they think that they are not successful because they haven’t mastered twitter. They are so focused on techniques that they are lost and not seeing the big picture. In the dating world, this is akin to the nice guy wanting to learn pick up lines, thinking that is the only thing keeping him from dating a girl. In the real estate world, you have the investor who thinks all they need to do is find distressed sellers or know how to buy a home with no money down.

All these people are missing fundamental information that only comes through experience and self development. What do I mean? You’ll notice that people who are masters at their endeavor know little details that to the beginner seems like a waste of time or non-essential. The beginner copywriter focuses on his choice of words and sales pitches. They’ll focus on the structure of their copy to convince their prospects to buy what they are selling. The experienced copywriter focuses on getting to know their customer and finding out what they want. Out of that they focus on the benefits they can use to appeal to their customers and then put everything aside. The actual story is written in a matter of minutes. But wait, they also spend time learning about human psychology, story telling, etc.

What I’ve seen happen many times is that most people (including myself) don’t want to go through the painful beginners stage. We don’t want to sit by the piano and learn what the E note looks like on sheet music and where it corresponds on the keyboard. No we want to play “fur elise” right out of the get go. But we are excited at the beginning. Only, the more we learn, the more we realize there’s more to learn and information overload kicks in leaving us in a state of inaction.

Here’s what I found works for me to battle against this. I leave for a couple of days and go visit my uncle who lives about 3 hours south of where I live. I leave the book and laptop at home and when I get there I simply forget about work and do nothing. That’s it, you do nothing. If you truly are an entrepreneur, you know that you can’t be anywhere doing nothing! By the time I get home, my mind is craving the information all over and now I’m ready to take action

I know you get information overload at times, so tell me about it and what you do about it?

Tags: avoid get rich quick, get rich quick mentality, information overload, starting a home based business