Lesson 1: Are You Stuck In Your Big Picture Vision?

Book Rapper Lessons

I’m often asked about the things I’ve learnt from writing 27 Book Rapper issues and having over 21,000 issues downloaded over the past three and a bit years.

In response to your requests I’m starting a new blog series ‘Book Rapper Lessons’.

You can follow it with the category tag ‘Book Rapper Lessons’.

1 ARE YOU STUCK IN YOUR BIG PICTURE VISION?

The starting point for Book Rapper was to realise that I was stuck in my vision for the future.
This realisation began when I did a course run by Matt Church, the founder of ThoughtLeaders.com.au. The program was the Million Dollar Expert. To attend I travelled over to the majestic Queenstown on the south island of New Zealand.
It ran for four days and it’s an immersion program. Which basically means it’s pretty intense and you’re showered with a whole bunch of ideas, models and concepts.
The one idea that struck me like a dagger to my stomach was the Money Tree.
It’s a fairly simple concept, it distilled in an instant what I’d been struggling with throughout my career.
My strength and weakness is big picture thinking. I can’t see dead people and I can see patterns and trends. I’m great at filtering out the detail and honing in on the underlying  key concepts.
I’m really clear that my ultimate career goal is to run a course called ‘Inventing Creation’. I plan to run this as a residential workshop over 10-14 days. And, the goal of this program is to invent things. That’s right, invent things – not create or design them, but to invent them. Now that’s a big picture goal!
Anyway, I was stuck. I really didn’t know how to build it because it was so far out into the future. I was stuck in my big picture vision.

And, then the lights came on when I saw the Money Tree.

It goes like this…
At the top of the tree you have high-hanging fruit. This is your premium offering. It’s usually high dollar, high value and high satisfaction for you. If we were talking motor cars then this is your Ferrari or Rolls Royce offer.
On the lower levels of the tree we have low-hanging fruit. This is the money for jam, the things you do effortlessly that people will buy with ease. In motor cars this might be a Suzuki or a Hyundai. Or, if you’re really starting out it might be a bus or train ticket.
And, in between the high and the low you can have multiple other levels of offers that vary in price, value, duration, effort, etc.

A key strategy for building your business is to offer a range of fruit. When you’re starting out, go for the easy to grasp low-hanging fruit. As you build your business, add higher levels. And, when you have sufficient resources of time, expertise and audience implement your high-hanging fruit offers.

The lesson is that you’re not likely to be able to buy a Ferrari as your first car.
In my case, wanting to run a 10-14 day residential program to invent things is most definitely high hanging fruit.
And this is the mistake I was making of being stuck in my vision.

Book Rapper wasn’t born in that moment, and it did come out of a search for some low-hanging fruit. It was a chunking down of everything I do into a lower value, lower priced item, easily produced offer that people would be interested in.

Lesson: What are you focussing on? Are you focussing on the high-hanging fruit? Or, are you plucking the low-hanging fruit as you build your vision?