I got an email that led me to this article and I said to myself, my readers need to see this.
So I thank Alex Wayo and his blog for giving it to me. It’s long but worth the read.
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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.
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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
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