What I Learned About Business From Plants Vs Zombies

On a recent long-haul flight, I played a computer game called “Plants vs. Zombies” and learned a valuable business lesson.

The game created a mini economy around my battle to protect my home from zombies with the tactical usage of garden plants.

The most critical plant, it turns out, was the sunflower, a plant that would issue a small ray of sunshine every 30 seconds or so, which would help me accrue 25 points at a time.

When I accrued 50 points [or each 60-second interval], I could buy another sunflower, or I could start to buy various weapons to defeat the zombies coming to my house.

What I discovered quickly was that if I focused on investing early in weapons and arsenal for my zombie defense, I moved slowly, waiting for each minute for more rays of sunshine to give me currency in my bank account to buy more weapons.

The zombies came in ever more forceful waves, and some had the power to eat my weapons and move past them, eating my sunflowers and getting closer and closer to my house [and to sure death].

However, if I focused my investment strategy on buying more and more sunflowers, I found the opposite was true.

I quickly found I had a bank of sunflowers, each producing rays of sunshine such that almost every few seconds, more sunrays filled up my currency coffer.

My currency coffer was overfull, and I could buy and replace every weapon I needed and have money to spare.

I would finish each round with thousands in the bank and all zombies defeated before they even had a chance to break through my defense or eat my sunflowers.

My business lesson was hard-hitting.

Invest in income-producing assets that work for you and fill your coffers so you can repel the waves of zombies that devour business time and money.

Zombies such as annual software licenses, tax bills, client refunds, hiring costs, ads bills, and the list goes on.

If you invest in things that destroy zombies one by one or focus on paying each bill as it comes in, the wave of zombies becomes so great that your defenses are broken, and the zombies take over.

Scaling a business means that zombies only increase and rarely decrease.

However, by investing in income-producing assets, the coffers are always replenished, defenses can always be paid for, Zombies are always defeated before they can come close, and there are always reserves for the future.

For me, income-producing assets are clients on retainers who produce income each month without more new work required to solicit and onboard them.

Another is my course materials that can serve clients in a year-long paid-in-full mastermind, a program that creates great results without much new investment or effort on my behalf.

Sunflowers for you could be rental properties that create recurring income after all expenses have been paid or investments/ shares in companies that grow and grant you dividends.

Income-producing assets are sometimes different from passive income producers. However, the principle is the same.

Invest early in the source of income that, once in place, will equip you with all the energy and resources required to achieve the goals of life and business that you need

More plants, fewer zombies.

What I Learned About Business From Plants Vs Zombies

There Is A Fortune In The Follow Up

So many people have a network that they need to be using.

You might have hundreds or even thousands of LinkedIn connections you have yet to message since first adding them.

You might have a database of old leads, calls you have conducted, ex-clients, and people who said yes and then pulled out for one reason or another.

Even people who once said no - are contacts you can follow up with.

Have you messaged everyone in your LinkedIn network recently, asking how they are doing?

Have you personally connected with your email list recently, or do you send a blast newsletter weekly or monthly?

Lead generation is about building your network, but it’s also about following up with leads and connections in your CURRENT network.

Can you offer them new and updated value?

Do they have a new and pressing problem?

Since you last spoke, do you have a new, innovative solution or offer?

Have you asked every ex-client for a referral or a recommendation?

Follow up follow up follow up.

There Is A Fortune In The Follow Up

A Clear Predictable System For Getting Clients

If you do NOT have a predictable system in place to bring in new clients every month, then it is likely to be one or several of the following reasons.

First, it could be that you do not have a clear ideal client, whom you can help and how exactly.

This means you are likely pursuing all kinds of conversations with business owners of all types and picking up bits and pieces of business here and there.

The way you help people is different every time, you have different solutions and vastly different outcomes for clients.

It might seem easier to be a generalist who can help a range of clients with a range of problems and provide a range of solutions but in fact, this slows you down.

You end up taking on anyone who will pay you rather than clients who need your expertise solutions and are willing to pay a premium price for it.

Second, because of not being specific about who you help you do not have a clear message about how you help businesses and the results you create.

This means that when you reach out to new prospects it can take them a while to figure out how you can help them or whether they should refer you to someone else.

Most damaging, when doing cold outreach and networking, you do not have an offer of immediate value that you can put into people’s hands to attract their interest in you.

Third, your problem could be that you don’t have a clear channel to get your ideal client and so you are trying a bit of email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more.

Maybe work comes to you by referrals and word of mouth, but you don’t have any control over the lead flow of this type of business.

When business arrives you don’t have a clear sense of how or why or what lever to pull to bring in more business.

Ultimately, you do not have a sense of how much energy to put into prospecting.

You do not know how to get the number of conversations to create the number of clients you need to generate the level of income you need.

You do not have an engine you can rev or an accelerator pedal you can press to get more clients.

You can’t systemize or streamline this because it’s so ad hoc.

You can’t delegate it or outsource it to teammates or VAs to free up your time to do other things and this chains you to the task of prospecting daily.

For B2B consultants, finding other business decision-makers via LinkedIn and email is the best and most predictable channel [Facebook is great too but for very specific types of businesses such as agency owners, Saas, blue-collar trades, brick and mortar companies, e-comm, and digital entrepreneurs].

If you’re looking for department heads, owners and founders, managing directors, c-suite, and other company lead then LinkedIn and email is by far the best channel for you.

Once you have isolated the specific type of business you can help and the specific challenge that they face and who the key decision-maker is, then you know who to speak to and what offer of value you can give them.

From here it’s simply a matter of building a machine to engage as many of these leads systematically as possible and with as much value as possible.

If you would like to be generating this predictable amount of lead flow and income for your business then send me an email to jen@jenbishopconsulting.com or comment below and we can set up a conversation to discuss a strategy for you.

A Clear Predictable System For Getting Clients