Email Marketing Internet Marketing

12 Of My Most Valuable Mini-Lessons For Your Business

Post a Comment

In light of my upcoming 40th birthday, I want

to share 12 valuable mini-lessons that I’ve

learned so far as an entrepreneur…

These range from mistakes to avoid, to

making strategic decisions, of how to get

cash flow to come in the fastest, etc.

They are in no particular order…

1. ALWAYS DO MORE THAN IS EXPECTED OF YOU

I learned this at an early age from my Dad.

He had a very successful career as a business

executive and engineer, and this the core

principle that created his success.

You can apply this to your business in many

ways… over-delivering to your customers,

giving unexpected bonuses to your employees

or outsourced workers, and more.

Most people do just the bare minimum.  Do

more than is expected of you and it will do

amazing things for your business.

2.  STOP DREAMING AND START DOING

Too many entrepreneurs get caught up in the

big dreams of how they will one day be rich

and how their life will be amazing…

…but they never end up doing anything.

They buy courses, read all they can, jot

down little notes and ideas in a notebook,

but nothing ever actually gets created.

A web site doesn’t get made.  Advertising

isn’t run.  Markets aren’t tested.  Nothing.

If you want to make a lot of money the only

way that happens is getting stuff done.  Period.

3.  DON’T LET LEARNING DELAY ACTIVITY

Most people that have studied Internet Marketing

much already have the basic skills that are

needed to build a million-dollar business.

That’s worth REPEATING…

Most people that have studied IM much ALREADY

HAVE the basic skills that are needed to build

a million-dollar business.

You can get stuck learning new stuff FOREVER.

There will always be new methods and techniques

that get discovered.  The Internet changes on

a DAILY BASIS.  This is a given.

Don’t get caught in the trap of “I’m going to start

building my business right after I go through this

next course…”

You can start building your business TODAY while

you are studying and learning new things that you

can easily apply TOMORROW.

Things will NEVER perfectly align for you and

your business.

There’s no such thing.  So don’t

wait.  Get started NOW and take action.  Get some

stuff going and go from there.

4.  MULTIPLE IDEAS CAN BE THE KISS OF DEATH

It’s okay to work on multiple projects and ideas.

It’s almost impossible to stop entrepreneurs

from having tons of new ideas at the same time.

BUT…

No new money comes in the door until you get

ONE project launched and making money.

Something has to be launched FIRST.

5.  MAKE JUST ONE DOLLAR FIRST

No one has ever made a million dollars in sales

without generating $1 first.

ALL successful businesses start with that first

sale and then grow from there.

It doesn’t matter what your income goals are.

The faster you make your first dollar, the faster

you will reach your goals.  PERIOD.

6.  DO THE IMMEDIATE CASH PROJECT FIRST

What should you work on next?  Whatever will

bring in cash the fastest for your business — and

of course, I mean that in a moral/legal/ethical way.

If you analyze all the great ideas you are probably

sitting on, I bet you can realistically prioritize them

in the order of which ones would actually make

money come in the fastest (if it succeeds.)

THAT is the project you need to focus on.

Cash is the lifeblood of your business (and your life.)

Save some of those “big” ideas for the future.  Focus

on the ones that stand the best chance of getting

new money to come in right away.  Once you have

some stable ongoing cash flow in your business, then

you can take a chance on that project that may take

longer to pay off.

7.  EMAIL MARKETING KICKS THE CRAP OUT OF

EVERYTHING ELSE

When it comes to growing a business online, nothing

generates long-term cash flow like an email list of

engaged subscribers & customers.

Email marketing is the best way to generate traffic.

It’s the best way to ‘recycle’ the same visitors again

and again to any of your projects.  It’s also the best

way to convert prospects into buyers.

RSS, Twitter,
Facebook,
YouTube, BLAH BLAH BLAH

Yes, those methods can generate leads.  Yes, those

methods can generate some sales.  But time and time

again little old email marketing kicks their butts — by

a long shot.

So make building a list, and a solid relationship with

it, a top priority in your business.

8.  RUN A LEAN OVERHEAD MACHINE

I can’t stress this one enough.

When you start growing a successful business

it’s really easy for your overhead to get out of hand.

It’s easy to start hiring a bunch of people and

committing to a bunch of expenses.

Take it from me, when you have months where

your fixed expenses (doesn’t include advertising, etc.)

are well over $100,000/MONTH (and growing) it can put

you in a tough position to make healthy profits.

I used to have fixed overhead that high but never again.

I realized there were smarter ways to do things.

What you need to realize is that REVENUE doesn’t

mean jack squat.  It’s your profit (income) that

matters.

So while running a $10,000,000/year business (sales)

is impressive, I know people running a $1,000,000/year

business that nets MORE than the person that owns

the $10MM/year business.

It all comes down to your expenses.

Sometimes it certainly DOES take heavy expenses

in order to make a lot of money.  But that’s not my point…

My point is, your overhead can really get away

from you.  If your sales experience some dips,

and it’s almost guaranteed they will at some point,

then you can LOSE YOUR BUTT very quickly.

So add to your overhead as a last resort.

9.  MAKE ACCOUNTING A PRIORITY

This is a big mistake that most entrepreneurs

make — and I’ve been guilty of it as well.

Keeping the books and doing accounting work

is the LAST thing that most entrepreneurs want

to mess with.  We have more fun by coming up

with new ideas and trying to make them grow —

not spending hours of our time inputting receipts

and figures into

QuickBooks.

If you don’t like accounting, immediately pay

someone a few bucks to handle it for you.  Just

make sure your accounting is always up to date.

It’s very important.

As an extension of this, make paying your taxes

a priority — even if you pay them in advance.

I have paid a small fortune in

tax penalties because

of being lazy and filing late.  And it’s too easy to

let one delay turn into another and for the problem

to get worse.  So make it a priority.

Don’t “rob Peter to pay Paul.”  This is a trap

most entrepreneurs fall into — again,

I’ve been guilty of it in the past myself.

It’s easy to start making a bunch of money

and think “I’ll just use this money to make

more money instead of paying my taxes

on it now and I’ll just pay the taxes later

after I’ve made even more money.”

Or the same thinking is applied towards

delaying payments to a vendor, or some other

expense that needs to get paid.

This is probably the #1 mistake entrepreneurs

make that can create problems and a lot of

wasted money in paying penalties and interest.

So make sure your accounting is taken care

of and your taxes get paid on-time for you.

10.  DON’T LEASE OFFICE SPACE

(If possible.)

As tempting as this might become if your

business starts to grow, avoid it at all costs.

If you’re like me, what will happen is that you

will eventually stop going to the office and just

work from home where you always were

more comfortable anyway.  And/or you will

end up realizing you really didn’t need it.

Having an “office” is not required to have

a successful business.  We live in a

Digital World now and it’s just not important

anymore.

Even if your business grows and you need

employees, you still don’t necessarily need

an office.  There are people out there running

$20MM+/year businesses with no office; the

employees all just work virtually.  This is

becoming more and more common.

* There certainly are exceptions to this.  My

team in the Philippines works out of an office

I leased.  But they are collaborating on
software

projects and NEED to work in the same location.

And, of course, it’s also very inexpensive.

Most office leases are thousands of dollars

per month and usually don’t turn out to be

a good use of cash.

11.  ALMOST EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER

When creating new projects,
or having some software

made for you, or having an ebook ghostwritten, or

anything else, know that things almost always

take more time than originally expected.

This is the #1 reason why you need to act TODAY

to start putting things in motion to grow your

business.  The longer you wait, the more into

the future you push your potential of getting

money to come in the door.

12.  THE MONEY IS IN THE MARKETING

Don’t get caught up in trying to make Web pages and learn

HTML, or studying how to create javascript, or learning to

master Linux so you can administer your own server, or

how to use Photoshop to create little logos, etc.

You can certainly do that stuff if you want, but know that

it will most likely just be a HOBBY.

It’s no surprise that some of the most
successful entrepreneurs

I know are also some of the LEAST TECHNICAL people I know.

The main thing they do right is to simply pay others to do all

the “nuts & bolts” stuff that makes online business work.

It allows them to spend all their time on the marketing — which

is where the money comes from.

*** BONUS LESSON ***

* See how I’m over-delivering as mentioned in the first lesson? 🙂

SPENDING TIME ONLINE
ISN’T NECESSARILY WORKING

ON YOUR BUSINESS

Just because you spend hours a day online doesn’t mean

you’re working on your business.

You can do ‘research’ forever and never make a cent.

You need to be spending most of your time on:

– Generating Traffic

– Communicating With Your Customers (i.e. blog, list, etc.)

– Creating Content

Don’t fall into the trap of reading blogs & forums, chatting

on Facebook or Twitter, checking stats, reading news,

etc. for hours upon hours.

Just know that almost all of that stuff (with rare exception)

is LOSING YOU MONEY more than making you money.

—

I hope you enjoyed these mini-lessons.  Hopefully, you

can apply them to your business and be a lot more

successful! 🙂

Yours For Online Profits,


John Reese

12 Of My Most Valuable Mini-Lessons For
Your Business

Related Blogs

admin

Leave A Comment

Recommended Posts