If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got ...

Yesterday was my birthday and also celebration of being in business for myself for 2 years.

In good old fashioned Warrior tradition I offer you these lessons that I've learned over the last year in the hopes that you can learn from my mistakes.

1. You get paid at 100%

For far too long I hopped from one project to another. I saw money all over the place and I wanted to do it all.

I'm a smart, committed guy. It's not like I'd spend 2 hours on something and never come back to it. But I'd often get 80% of the way there then let myself get distracted.

In a way, that's worse.

Instead of just wasting a few hours per project, I'd waste several weeks and not push it over the edge.

Now, I come up with a complete plan and then execute. This includes product creation, marketing etc etc. Not just a single part of the business, but the whole business.

I'm not saying the plan doesn't change as I learn. But I don't hop from one thing to another and the results are massively improved.


2. Good product doesn't mean good marketing

I'm a software guy. For years I just focused on great software and ended up confused as to why other people with far worse software sold far more than me.

Well, simply put, they had better marketing.

If you sell widgets and each widget costs you $10 to produce. Far too many people try to sell it for $11. They figure charging less makes them great marketers because their widget costs less than the next guy who charges $50.

But the guy charging $50 has $40 a widget to spend on marketing. That translates into hefty affiliate commissions, banner ads, PPC etc etc.

So by charging more he sells more.

The lesson here isn't to just up your prices arbitrarily. The lesson is to figure out what it costs to reach your market and factor it into your prices.


3. You don't have to be good at everything

For a long time I tried to get good at everything. I figured I needed to know everything about everything to run a business. But the reality couldn't be further from the truth.

So here, is my complete business model -

Solve a problem
Create high conversion sales material
Recruit affiliates
Repeat

I don't do any SEO, PPC, webinars, adswaps, freeline content ... etc etc

I have plans to incorporate new things now this core is up and running. But I don't need to. I have a complete end to end system. I (or most importantly, someone else) can turn the handle on this system and money comes out.

It's called a business ...


And the final lesson ...

I see far too many posts on this forum basically asking, "Please tell me how I can keep doing what I'm doing now and get a different result."

The magic super secret ninja pill answer ... "You can't"

If you want different results, you need to do something different.


Here's to an even more successful 3rd year in business,

Andy