It Can’t Just Be For Money
August 31, 2007
Do you want to make a lot of money in business? Do you want to make a lot of money fast - maybe become a millionaire overnight? Do your goals include fast cars, mansions and luxury yachts?
If so you need to stop right now and listen.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to make a lot of money, but you have a slim chance of getting there if making money is your only goal.
Think back to 10 years ago. Do you earn more money now? Do you have a better car, and a bigger house?
Are you happier?
If you’re like most people, the novelty of the newer car will have worn off within a couple of months, you’ll have spent your extra earnings on stuff, and your big house will feel smaller because you’ll have filled it with all that stuff. But did all that stuff really make you happy?
Chances are it didn’t, or you wouldn’t be thinking of starting a business and making a lot of money now.
If you don’t change your goals, the probability is high that one of two things will happen. You’ll increase your earnings to a point where you feel comfortable and you won’t bother trying any harder. Or you’ll continue your endless quest to earn more money, only to discover that it hasn’t made you happy.
You need bigger goals. And make sure they’re not all financial.
Do you want to change something in the world? Is there an injustice you would like to see an end to? Is there a cause you would like to help? Would you get a lot of satisfaction through helping to improve other peoples lives?
No matter how big and impossible that change, or improvement seems - make it your biggest goal and work towards it.
Oprah Winfrey has had a great deal of success, but one thing has given her more satisfaction than anything else she has achieved. She has spent the last five years, and more than $50 million building an academy for young girls in Africa.
Bill and Melinda Gates have put billions into a charitable trust which benefits global health and education.
Annie Wignall founded Care Bags For Kids at the age of 11. The bags are filled with useful and fun things for kids and distributed to 100 children in need around the world each month. The charity is ran completely by volunteers, so every single penny raised goes to children in need. You can learn more about Care Bags For Kids here.
These might seem huge achievements, but if you’re capable of building a successful business you can do anything.
So are you still dreaming about making lots of money, or are you planning how you’re going to change the world?
The Worst Marketing Mistake You Could Make
August 30, 2007
Marketing is the lifeblood of your business. And no matter how busy you are, you need to be constantly marketing to new customers, and existing customers.
This may seem pretty obvious, whatever type of business you’re in. But no matter how well you’re doing and how many sales you’re making, you don’t want to make the massive mistake that I made this summer.
We launched a plumbing business at the beginning of March this year, and we were busy from day one. I’d done it before, and we did lots of marketing so it wasn’t really a surprise. But, it’s always the one thing you’re not expecting to happen that will trip you up, and that’s exactly what happened to us.
Here’s what I did wrong: I didn’t anticipate what might happen if all our plumbers went off sick at the same time. After all, it just doesn’t happen does it? Well, that’s what I thought anyway, but it does and it did, right at a time when we were in the middle of more jobs than we could handle. And the worst thing was we had no backup plan.
We upset a couple of people of customers because of the delay, and we even lost one big job, as the customer couldn’t wait. That was bearable. But, what we did next was totally foolish and it was all my fault. I decided we should stop marketing, until the plumbers returned to work and we caught up on the work we were behind with.
This was a huge mistake, and I should have known better. When you’re using various different marketing methods and bringing in heaps of sales, suddenly stopping for a whole month can have a catastrophic effect for a long time afterwards. And it did. Our sales dropped dramatically - we just weren’t getting enough work.
Now, I already knew this would happen, so why on earth did I do it? Well, to be honest, it was the worry of having to turn people down. I thought it would harm our reputation. But, looking back, turning people down would have been a far better option than bringing our marketing campaign to a halt.
This is what I should have done: I know you’re maybe thinking it’s a bit late now, but you will never become so experienced in business that you don’t make mistakes. I can learn from this one - and hopefully I can help you to avoid making the same mistake too.
I should have done two things. 1) First I should have had a back up plan in place for staff illness. If we’d had a documented plan, we’d have been able to cope with the problem immediately.
2) I shouldn’t have stopped marketing. If we’d continued marketing, we wouldn’t have upset people too much if. We could simply have referred them to another reputable plumbing company. And we’d still have had work flowing in when we needed it later.
Now it may seem like a bit of a waste to spend money on marketing when you’re not able to do the work, but believe me - it’s far better than watching your cashflow dry up.
You may be thinking this could never happen to you - especially if you’re in a different type of business, but it could. And if you don’t remember the complete story, just remember these two important points:
1) You should make plans to deal with the worst imaginable emergencies that could happen in your business. And you should document them, so that everyone knows what to do when something goes wrong.
2) You should never ever stop marketing - no matter how busy you are.
Sometimes You Shouldn’t Think Too Hard
August 29, 2007
If you’re looking for a solution to a business problem, don’t push yourself too hard to find the answers. The best solutions don’t usually come straight away.
My friend Ron recently moved to a new company. They are keen to expand nationwide. Ron has the expertise to take them where they want to be, but he is used to working for a nationwide company with more resources.
Anyway, he wanted to place a full page ad, like tomorrow but his new business did not have one. He also wanted a strapline for the business, so he could put it in the ad.
Naturally, he brainstormed with his colleagues to try to come up with something. But, the problem is, sometimes when you’re brainstorming the answers you want don’t come straight away.
It’s a bit like marinading meat for a nice meal - the longer you leave it, the better the result.
So, I promised to think about the strapline for them at the weekend, then while i was cleaning the house, I came up with some ideas and I wrote them down (note - sometimes when you’re doing mind numbing things, it shocks your brain into working a little harder).
The straplines I came up with may not be perfect, but they’re good enough for the ad, and they’ll be able to improve on them in the future.
Have you struggled to come up with ideas in the past? Well, here’s some rules to follow.
1) Tell yourself the problem you need to solve, and also stipulate how quickly you want to come up with those ideas.
2) Don’t think about the problem at all. You’ve already told your brain you need the answers so let it do the work.
3) Keep a notebook with you at all times, and when answers to your problem pop into your mind, write them down - no matter how bad the answers seem.
Remember, one good answer out of 100 bad ones will make the writing worthwhile.
Six Top Sites That Sucked
August 28, 2007
Are you building your first website? Worried that the design might not be quite up to scratch? I hate designing too, and to cheer myself up when it’s not going well, I look to the Wayback Machine.
The Wayback Machine will show you what some of the top Internet sites looked like a few years ago. Here are six of my favourite sites. They’re all really cool sites now, and each pulls heaps of traffic and make their owners a ton of cash. But, they haven’t always looked so great. In fact, I’m sure the owners would agree that at one time, their sites were plain ugly.
Joel Comm - Joel obviously had less cash to spend on site design back then. Click here to visit Joel’s site over 4 years ago.
Shoemoney - I love Shoemoney’s blog. But, it must have looked awful in the beginning because he won’t let anybody see it. Click here to see how Shoemoney has blocked us from viewing his site on Wayback.
Problogger - My favourite blogging tips blog. It’s just had a cool makeover. But, it didn’t always look so cool. Click here to check out Problogger in February 2005.
John Chow - The evil blogger has also recently revamped his site. I bet he’s glad it doesn’t look like this now. There wasn’t a car in site back in 2000 but you could click to listen to the music! To be fair to John - he didn’t update the site until Dec 05, and you can see the revamped version here. If you read John’s blog now, the first post might seem a bit deja vu.
Moneysupermarket recently floated on the stockmarket. Check out how the site looked in 2003. You’d never have guessed that the owners would become multi-millionaires with a design like that.
Craigslist is probably the most profitable of ugly sites on the Internet. It’s making millions for it’s owners. And believe it or not - it actually looked better way back in 2000 than it does now.
I hope this post has given you a bit of encouragement. At least now you know that the sites that are cool today were far from cool yesterday. So there’s definitely plenty of hope for you too. You can work on improving it as you go, like those great sites did. And if you’re looking for an easy to use design tool that you can use to build a website in 90 minutes, I highly recommend XSitePro. Click here for more information on XSitePro
