Sometimes, entrepreneurs need some good ol’ spanking on the behind…
At age two, most of us (if not all of us) never understood what it meant to “get something later”.
When daddy says, “don’t worry sweetie, once I get back from work, I’ll give it to you”, all hell lets loose…
The first thing to change would be our faces. Somehow, like an awesome wonder of nature, it starts to cringe.
Our lips start to curl up, our eyes start to get watery, and our eyebrows fold.
Then the next freak of nature was the thumping on the ground. It’ll start with the right foot, then would slowly move to the left.
Before you know it, our hands would start thrashing in the air and then everything starts to happen all at once.
And all this time, daddy just stands, looking at us wondering why we’re so stubborn.
The only words that would come out of our mouths are, “I want it now…I want it now”.
That’s the science of the tantrum and it’s one of the most annoying things in life. Don’t blame me, I don’t have kids yet.
But a good spanking on the behind would always shut us up…at least for a short period.
Unfortunately, tantrums continue into adulthood. Many entrepreneurs are like two year olds…
They want all the clients now, they want all the money now.
They want the successful business now.
Unfortunately sweetie, you won’t get it until you put in the work for some time.
As humans, we’re built to want things and have them instantly. Once it gets delayed, it loses our fancy. But when building a business, you’re definitely going to experience delay.
Some things just have to be delayed so that they can yield results. That brings us to the next subject…
What Really Is Delayed Gratification?
With respect to content marketing, delayed gratification is a given, but not in everything. For example, when you write and publish a guest post, it’s only normal that you get leads once it is published.
If the freelancer you hired tells you that you’ll have to wait a little while for it to start bringing results (in the name of delayed gratification), then something is wrong with your strategy.
This is because in the first place, to ensure that your guest blogging strategy works for you, you need to publish on sites that have the kind of audience you’re looking for. Except all you want to do is link building.
However, delayed gratification applies once you get those leads. Some leads become clients instantly. Some others take a few months.
While others won’t give you their money until after 3 years of being on your list.
Delayed gratification applies when that high paying client you were expecting doesn’t come from that guest blog post you made on an authority blog until after 6 months.
You can’t blame the guy, he just saw your guest post.
Delayed gratification applies when you can’t build that course yet because you don’t know your audience well enough. This is especially where a lot of us miss it. We create something we think will sell, only for it to backfire in our faces because we didn’t ask the audience first.
Delayed gratification applies when you can’t take on as many clients as you want because you’re still a one man business. Yes we want more money, but there’s only so much we can do on our own.
Delayed gratification applies when it takes you two years to master the art of creating quality content. And you know when you’ve mastered the art when authority bloggers start to share your content.
It also applies when your audience still remains below 1000 subscribers because you’re yet to do more guest posting. You were probably hoping they would have come in droves from the few guest posts you did 4 months ago. Well, sorry but content marketing is not a campaign. It’s an ongoing process of business development.
Delayed gratification applies when you can’t do that joint venture with that authority blogger because you’re even still yet to master guest blogging as a strategy to get an audience.
Content marketing is in stages. At the initial stage, guest blogging is a very viable strategy. But when you attain a level of authority it’s also important to scale up your content marketing strategy to things like joint ventures or product co-creation. Well, you’ll have to wait for your time.
This delayed gratification also apples when, after 5 months of consistent blogging, you still don’t get a single comment on your blog posts. And then the share count on your posts is below 3. It’s disheartening, but worth it.
And finally, delayed gratification applies when you don’t get that girl of your dreams because you’re still yet to master how to use content marketing to feed yourself. This is just as important as the previous ones I mentioned.
If content marketing doesn’t bring instant results, then why start it anyway?
I have three simple answers to that:
- It helps you master your craft over time. Creating content over and over again on what you know how to do best only refines you.
- It helps you gradually build relationships with people you may not have met physically.
- It gives you the best thing any business can have — a thriving audience. With this, you can take your business to any height.
Content marketing is a viable method for helping you achieve business results. It’s not a one-size-fits-all method. There are rules, but the results you get are dependent on how you implement the strategy and also on the forces of nature.
Really, some people just seem to get massive results from little efforts. Don’t you think that’s divine?
It’s not enough to be creative. You also need to have patience. In fact, patience is one virtue I think every entrepreneur should have.
Some of us just want to make the money now. But sometimes, such quick money making methods aren’t sustainable.
You want to see those who last in business? Ask them how they started and how patient they had to be before seeing their first pay check. Then you’ll understand.