One of the biggest mistakes I made starting out in business was chasing money. The focus, the driver and the motivator was money and thats wasnt the best thing to do it alienated a lot of opportunity. The opportunity to grow and expand this one because the numbers werent solid.
Because the direction my business partner and I were considering taking didnt have a proven track record and didnt make financial sense we missed the opportunity to pounce on the emerging gap in the market.
Money as a key metric in business isnt a good stat to be building a business around. Revenue and monthly reoccurring revenue and annual reoccurring revenue are great metrics to use to make data driven decisions for your business. Having the numbers visible is a great motivator when you track the right things.
“I don’t ever recommend just chasing the growth of the bank balance.”
When you make money as your primary metric you may develop tunnel vision on a number a very specific number. If you hit that number or dont come close you become fixated on that number and dont take in other variables that might be more profitable than pursing the magic number.
I am not a bean counter of the finance guy in any of my businesses. Ive been in more finance and accounting meetings than I have wanted in my time. While extremely boring and hard to focus during these meeting they were really beneficial for me to upskill my finance intelligence.
My experience with money is that outside of the business we dont talk about it with competitors, partners, affiliates and keep our cards to our chest. This helped me keep focus on our goals and not worry about competitor ABC who was chasing $500K MRR or what ever dick measuring number that they had fixed as their success metric.
I honestly can not stand loud mouth marketers or business owners who boast and brag about who much their business makes in revenue. This places a big fat red target on your chest. I also just as a human with good manners be bragging about myself. Be humble and know you are doing well without shouting it across the room.
If you do attend conferences you can look around and see these same people in deep financial substance abuse and trying every which way to find happiness outside their business. They focus on money because they dont have anything else to contribute.
Your business should be your dream hobby that you can not wait to get started on each day. The people you do it with should be your favourite people. Ive built many businesses with this in mind, who do I want to work with and does this fulfil me.
My success indicator is knowing we have a steady flow of money coming in, the number monthly and yearly is increasing gradually. Then when we are stable or growing I dont have money as a motivator because our system to grow that is working. This is where I have time to look for an emerging business or brand and speak with them about how they can do more and pass on some of our tips and strategies that helped push our business into the green.
Thats my success metric, being free enough to share my knowledge with others who are just starting out.
I did’nt come from money and Ive never had big capital injections to buy and start businesses. I would grind and hustle my skills to build momentum and steadily grow a seed money allocation for new ideas or acquisitions. It takes a bit longer but I dont owe anyone anything and I am free to make what ever decisions I need to to grow that business without reporting into a board or a JV partner. This is not the method for everyone it takes commitment and dedication to the goal.
Ever since I built my first company Ive wanted to take an opportunity where I would have a job that provided fulfilment and made me feel satisfied. Ive got this thing where I need to be doing something all the time. I move fast and I am easily bored if theres no movement or anything for me to do. I often found myself after the growth period of a business and things had started to plateau a bit, I would start buying crap that I didn’t need or hiring people I didn’t really need just to keep busy.
I wasnt looking for new opportunities, I got a little com-placement. In one of my physical service businesses I was extremely passionate about building it and we actually grew it to 5,000 employees and one day I just lost all attachment to that business. I felt it had done its dash and I couldn’t give it anything else. I was bored and I was not enjoying the business that last week I was so excited to get to work.
My recap is we were so busy building relationships that we had taken our eye off the ball of business growth and just the day to day operations had worn me down. It was so sad losing all that organic energy where I could do everything everyday sucked down to the bare minimums and I struggled even filling the weekly roster.
The good news was I found a new opportunity and I pounced on it like a leopard catching its prey. I got to help businesses with a specific problem they had online.
[/et_pb_text]Moving from a that physical services business and into online marketing was such a huge shift of ways of working It did take me a good 6 months to adjust. The sale of the services business was relatively smooth and I was out within a month. The opportunity of the next move wasnt on a countdown timer so I had time to manuvere and get my ducks in a row.
In month 8 I grew that new marketing business 600%+ from $10k monthly reoccurring revenue to over 600% and all it took was focus. I needed a good 6 months to get familiar with how online marketing agencies worked and freelancing and tools metrics, the money verse expenses was so different from physical businesses.
But know this, the more I focused on the business opportunities the more my new business grew. I built a business that I wanted to work in and I hired people I wanted to work with. That was simple backend systems, and for revenue I targeted people I wanted to work with and that was automotive clients and ecommerce stores.
It was that simple!
I targeted people who were doing things I had an interest in and I could talk their language and know their industry. The immediate shift in business from taking that opportunity changed the business. It literally changed the way we worked fulfiling those services for these new clients. Such a breathe of fresh air for me to get that energy back and have that drive and focus to really sink my teeth into business.
The marketing agency was much easier to grow when I was the one calling the shots, making the plays at new opportunities and ultimately the one who was responsible for growth and failure. The business was not new to me but online was, I had a great finance and accounting system in place and then for me it was learning online marketing.
Now to this day I love this stuff. There is no day Ive not wanted to get up and get online to help my team and my clients or assets grow.
IF you are an entrepreneur you are going to get your fulfillment and satisfaction from these. You will also slowly die inside without them.
- Build a team of talented marketers
- Build a service or product that you are proud of
- Build a solution to other peoples problems
- Solve the problem for your ideal customer
I know a lot of marketing techniques, tactics and ways of working but I often consult with my sopecialists on super advanced tactics for specific things I want to deliver or we require as a deliverable in business. I hire inelligent superstars at the one thing that they do, this gives me a great database of very targeted specialists.
One thing we do regulary is to look at our competitors and any competitors in emerging spaces and see how they treat their customers and audiences. Do they truly love their audience or are they just applying tricks and hacks to get by. The intelligence we get back from this allows us to exloit these opportunities because we have a system for customer journey and experience. Building for customers and not for money.
“I always build for the customer and towards the problem and solution. This is just how I learned marketing. Sell the solution to people who have a problem and do this with the ciustomer in mind and not the money they give you for that solution.”
I find it really interesting the number of marketers who are still trying to use tricks and indirect methods at trying to hide information around the policies on chargebacks and refunds. Focus more on making amazing things and move away from making crap products and you wont have to worry about your reputation or the payment processors and chargebacks.
This was an early morning post just after a workout so if its a bit shaky to follow along I am sorry for your eyes struggling to keep on track haha. I had a lot on my mind and wanted to press the point of taking opportunity. If I didnt take the opportunity to change careers from physical services to online marketing I think that during cornova virus I would of bene wiped out. I am also so thankful I can do what I do on computers to help people. I never work for cash or chase a pay rise, I am my own boss and I make my own hours.
If you are stuck I want you to start looking around at the next step or a new avenue for you to apply your passion powers to and forge a business around. This is the best time ever to do this. Look at the opportunity in everything that you do and you will never need money.
Thats my thoughts for today. As always if you enjoyed this share it and enjoy yourself. Peace!
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