16 July 2010

“Burn The Ships”

This phrase “Burn The Ships” comes from a historic conquest of history when, in 1519, Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in Mexico on the shores of the Yucatan, ( Though this is only one version of this urban legend it is going to serve our purpose for our blog.) with only one objective…seize the great treasures known to be there, hoarded by the Aztecs. Cortez was committed to his mission and his quest for riches is legendary. Cortez was an excellent motivator, he convinced more than 500 soldiers and 100 sailors to set sail from Spain to Mexico, commanding 11 ships, to take the world’s riches treasure. The historic question is “how a small band of Spanish soldiers arrived in a strange country and swiftly brought about the overthrow of a large and powerful empire that was in power for over six centuries?”

For Cortez, the answer was easy. It was all or nothing! A Complete and Total Commitment. Here’s how Cortez got the “buy in” from the rest of his men. He took away the option of failure. It was conquer and be hero’s and enjoy the spoils of victory…or DIE! When Cortez and his men arrived on the shores of the Yucatan he rallied the men for one final pep talk before leading his men into battle, and utters these three words that changed the course of history. “Burn the Ships”.

He met with resistance from his men. “Burn the ships,” he repeated. He then uttered these words “if we are going home, we are going home in their ships”. With that, Cortez and his men burned their own ships, and by burning their own ships, the commitment level of the men was raised to a whole new level. A level much higher than any of the men, including Cortez, could have ever imagined.

If we know that our ships are still out there, when things get tough we instinctively head for our ships so we can escape. It’s just human nature. The path of least resistance. This level of thinking and commitment sees sacrifice as a positive thing, not something weird or impossible (blog writing), but something to be cherished and fought for. Cortez didn’t allow himself or his men to have the option of going back to Spain. By removing this option, Cortez and his men were forced to focus on how they could make the mission successful. And so it is with your company. How can you make the missions in your SEO successful? At Nexonta Technologies while we do not advocate burning anything we do believe that SEO is a full commitment like in life there is only room for a few on the first page of Google in any given industry and so if your company really sees the value of first page advertising on Google then you might want to consider burning the proverbial Ships meaning drop all other forms of advertising and focus your resources on search marketing and SEO.

When it comes to SEO you get out what you put in in terms of time, effort and blog writing and key word research but trust me the results are worth it and like anything else you will actually get better at it as you do it more. Keep in mind most successful businesses started purely by accident or a mistake that someone stumbled on to a great idea and ran with it. It is also worth mentioning that if your original model is not working you can always adjust it to accommodate changes in the current as life changes rapidly today so sometimes you need to adjust your sail but definitely stay the course towards success since there is no winning in stopping the race all together.

Nexonta Technologies Inc