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At the beginning of the month I ran a four-part series on tips for getting started in this industry and the very first tip I gave out was to go hard or go home. Now that it's the end of the month I want to stress that point again.

In fact it's a tip that could perhaps be the most important one of all the tips I gave you in that series because if you only play around the edges and put minimal effort into whatever it is you decide to do then you can be sure you'll only get minimal returns.

That was really emphasized for me just yesterday when I was talking to a friend of ours. Several years ago he was in the position where he had developed a great business that had two somewhat different and possibly even slightly competing products.

He was in the position where he could have even decided to promote both products. Both were going to make him lots of money ... and if he wanted to focus his attention on just one he could have done that too and still made bucket loads of cash.

All he had to do was decide whether to focus on one or both and then push hard. At that point he had little or no competition ... he had the market place for both products to himself and with no competition he was set to make a fortune.

But he had one slight problem. He couldn't make up his mind ... he couldn't decide whether he wanted to go on promoting both products or focus on just one. If he was going to focus on just one product he was going to have to decide which one to focus on ... and he couldn't even do that.

He could do one or the other ... or he could even do both ... but in the end he did nothing. Instead he just let things motor along at their own pace ... he made no effort to do any extra promotion and for a little while it looked as though maybe things would work out for him ... but then the competition caught up with him.

The competition was focused ... the competition was hungry ... the competition could make up their minds ... the competition spent money on marketing ... the competition went hard. And within a very short time the competition had swamped him and the marketplace made up our friend's mind for him and the decision was not the one he wanted.

While our friend couldn't decide the marketplace decided for him and the decision of the marketplace was that it was now too late to make a decision. While there was a time when he could have decided to focus on one product or the other the marketplace has now decided that it doesn't want to buy either from our friend and his business is in a terrible ... probably terminal ... state.

He's laying off staff ... he's looking at the bank moving in to take control of the assets he offered as security on business loans ... the value of what he did have has now faded away to almost nothing.

While he dithered around trying to make up his mind and thinking that there would never be any competition for the products he sold others saw a real opportunity to jump in and sell the same products.

They may not be of quite the same quality as those products that our friend was selling but the buying public doesn't care. The buying public has been swamped by advertising ... by TV news stories and a whole bunch of other marketing tricks ... that tells them again and again that the products offered by our friend's competitors are better and more economical and they believe what they're being told.

While our friend is struggling to survive his competitors are making huge profits.

And that's a true story and the moral of the story is that if you're going to do anything in this industry ... or over in mainstream where our friend is ... then you've got to go hard or you will end up going home.

Instead of dithering about what product to sell ... as our friend did ... you need to make an informed decision and then go hard to achieve your goals. The moment you stop going hard is the moment you're in danger of letting your competition climb all over you and take control of the market.

So go hard and succeed or go home with your tail between your legs and try to find the energy to start all over again.