I was at a workshop last weekend - Passion, Power and Purpose. It was a three day bootcamp that Trish had won a ticket to, and kindly offered it to me. It was run by an organisation called Beyond Success. The workshop had a ticket price of about $3k, although most of the 80 people in the room had paid $25k for a one year program.

I was fairly disappointed in the workshop. I didn't leave with any great increase in my passion, power or purpose. I think it was partly because I've done a lot of personal development over the years, and so a lot of it wasn't new to me. However I also thought that a lot more work had gone into marketing the workshop than designing the workshop itself.

The workshop was adequate. Most of the people I spoke to were happy to be there, and felt they were getting value for their $25k over the year. The organisers had done the work to make the product good enough, and then stopped.

Where they had really gone to work was on the marketing - on filling the room. And that was the main lesson I got from the weekend.

I think many of us make the mistake of continuing to work on and improve our product or service long past the point we need to - and do this at the expense of putting the work into the marketing and sales. We spend too much time, energy and money on our product or service (which is, after all, our passion, what we want to bring to the world), and not nearly enough on our marketing and sales. We think if the product or service is good enough it will sell itself.

In my opinion Beyond Success has swung a bit too far in the other direction... However, their business is much more successful than mine.

So do the work to love your product or service until it's good enough so that you can sell it and sleep at night, so you know that it will make a difference to your clients. Then stop and go to work with the same intensity, passion, vigour and persistence on your marketing - on telling your story. There will be many more people who will benefit from the passion that you put into your product or service. And you will love your business more, I can guarantee it!