James Schramko here, and I’m going to be making some very simple, unedited videos (there’s no ads). I want to make a few points. Hopefully, it’s helpful for you, so thanks for watching!
Today’s topic is: who owns your business?
This is particularly aimed at you if you’re building too much of your business on someone else’s platform. You’ve heard me talk about Own The Racecourse. It’s free training you can get from SuperFastBusiness. I’ve been talking about this for over a decade now, and it’s how I run my business.
The simple concept is: build your own asset.
Build your own asset that you control and you could sell if you want, or get people to work on with you. The thing that inspired this video is some marketer complaining about Facebook’s big changes. We’ve seen this all before: Facebook, Youtube, Adwords, etc. Here’s the big surprise: if you’re on someone else’s platform, expect it to change. You’re essentially partaking in their zone, they control it, not you, you have no rights, so let’s lose this sense of entitlement.
Let’s not reveal publicly, how ridiculously naive you are, and complain to Facebook about what they’re doing. They can do whatever they want. The public is outraged at how much privacy and control they’ve got access to, but is there really any surprise in this? If you think for a second that Facebook, Google, Apple… don’t know pretty much everything about you, then you’re living under some kind of a rock.
If you really want privacy, you’d have to disconnect from all of these services, and not carry a phone around with you.
If you want to use their platform to partake in business, then just know that it’s going to change. That is the thing: it WILL change. There’s no question about it. If you want to protect yourself, then get a domain name or a website that you own. Build an email list. Get people on multiple subscriptions. Build your YouTube channel, build your Facebook page, build your Twitter following, build your Instagram followers and build your email list. That way, when you push out an episode over iTunes, or a video, or you put your content on someone else’s platform, then that’s bringing people back to where you can control it.
You can put your remarketing cookie on your website. You can run ads to people. I like the idea that I could send an email to all of my customers right now and communicate with them, whether Facebook is there or not. If you have some kind of an app that relies on Facebook, or even a chatbot, a lot of these don’t work right now. Facebook has just turned it off. Will it affect my business? Not at all. Should it affect yours? No, it shouldn’t. It should be a minor inconvenience, if anything.
There will be change! Just BANK on change. That’s really my message. If you don’t own Facebook and unless you’re Mark Zuckerberg or a shareholder, you don’t. You can’t complain if they change the game. That’s what they do, they’re surviving, and you are such a small player in their game. You’re the product.
So, Own the Racecourse! If you want to brush up on the technique, check out my Own The Racecourse training, absolutely free. I did a new update in 2017, and from now on, don’t put yourself out of control. Take back control and you will not be at the whims and at the mercy of the big players out there. You’ll just be participating.
Get your book on Amazon, get your podcast on Apple, get your fanpage cranking, get your Instagram happening. It’s all good, but don’t make that ALL you do. I’m James Schramko. By the way, if you like this video and you’re interested in more, I’ve got some more to share with you. I can make ones on everything from “How to do pay reviews with your team” through to “How to not feel guilty when you go into a movie during the day” or “Good questions to ask on a podcast”. I’ve got all these things I could cover and I want to share some of this, raw, unedited, nice and simple.
I look forward to your comments below this video.
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