A little-known basketball coach would write down his predictions for the upcoming season in terms of how many games the team would win or lose. He’d put that piece of paper in an envelope, seal it, place it in his desk, then not look at it again until the season ended.
John Wooden became one of the most successful coaches in history. He won 10 national championships in 12 years, including 7 in a row. Wooden’s team won a record 88 games in a row. He coached four seasons without a single loss.
“Refresh syndrome”
The “refresh syndrome” is real.
Amazon stats. Shopify orders. Meta ads results. Social media likes. YouTube views.
Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.
We know what we really need to do: get back to work.
The Zen proverb advises us to “chop wood, carry water”.
We need to spend 99% of our time on the process to produce the results, and only 1% of our time on checking the outcome of that work.
Getting back to work
What are the 2-3 things you know lead to the outcome you’re after?
I’m working with 7- and 8-figure ecom owners on growing their direct-to-consumer (DTC) business. Most are new to Meta advertising. Here’s the process that’s required to produce huge scale with Meta ads:
- Create a good funnel
- Create good ads
- Let the ads run
- Improve based on what you learn (cut losing ads, create new ads, improve the funnel)
Yet what do most people do:
- Create a funnel
- Create ads
- Let ads run for 30 seconds, freak out when there are no sales, question all our decisions in business and life, think “I’ll never be good at this”, pause ads with $6 and spend and no sales, create a new ad we saw a 17 year old talk about on TikTok
I’m not immune to this myself. I started testing some ads for a digital book. The day-to-day volatility on a low amount of spend (<$1,000/day) is unnerving. One day, profitable; next day, zero sales. WTF?!
A better process is to think about how long is appropriate to let something play out. Then, let that time pass without checking results (easier said than done, I know).
In the meantime, get back to work doing the 2-3 things that produce good results (such as creating better ads or a better funnel in the case of DTC growth).
Keep chopping,
Matt Clark
P.S. Quick note for those who own $1M-$10M+ ecom businesses, especially ones with the majority of sales on Amazon: Soon I’m going to open up a highly limited cohort for my private small group coaching program. There are already 34 people on the waitlist. Go here to get more details >>