Rob Toth Rant:
A Look At $570,000 In Sales ... Revenue Sources, Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned
This is a story of five-hundred seventy-thousand...
More specifically, it's a TRUE-story of MY first $570,000 in online sales.
The figure doesn't matter.
To some, it's impressive.
To many others, it's merely a milestone.
The figure truly is irrelevant.
The process, observations and lessons learned though... I feel are worth taking a look at.
And that brings me to this brain dump.
In fact, lesson #1 (if we want to call these "lessons") is precisely what I'm doing now... track you data, observe and interpret that data and then correct and adjust your course as needed.
It's somewhere in line with what history teachers always gave me as an answer when I asked them "why do I really need to know any of this history stuff"?
If you don't know where you came from, you can't know where you're going.
Or if you prefer... if we don't learn from our past mistakes, we're bound to repeat them.
Pick one.
The point is the same.
Now here's a pretty picture ...
Just to make sure we're on the same page, I'll quickly walk through each wedge of my sales pie seeing as there's a good chance that your business would look NOTHING like this.
-- Affiliate Offers
Affiliate marketing is not a big part of my income for 3 primary reasons:
- I like being in control. As an affiliate, I can't effect sales funnel changes, conversions, tracking, upsells. I can't even control whether that offer will be live tomorrow or not. And I certainly don't control my paycheque. It has to get sent to me.
- I find something fulfilling in either creating a product (ie: information products) or being involved in the bringing-to-the-market of a product.
- I'm a natural born networker. Not because I say so (though I just did). But many others would say it about me as well. In fact, they're probably the ones to blame for why I'm now convinced of this fact.
Reality is though, I can get a hold of, make a connection with, build rapport with and talk on a regular human-touch level with just about anyone (within reason). It's not a special skill though. Not like I'm shooting lasers out of my fingers. THAT would be impressive. But the point is, I can meet and greet very comfortably with anyone.
As the affiliate... that would serve me little value. As the merchant though, it means I can land affiliates and other creative joint venture partnerships without much hassle.
For those 3 reasons, affiliate marketing and affiliate recommendations even to my own audience (ie: my "list") are few and far in between.
Good news if you're a subscriber of mine, I guess.
That's why affiliate offers takes just 17% on the chart.
-- Clients (via RobToth.com)
The client work is time restrictive and I've never really charged enough for it.
Thinking back, I can not-so-modestly tell you that I've indirectly effected hundreds of thousands dollars worth of sales in client projects and companies. Yet often charged very introductory (read: illogically and pathetically low) rates. I'll have to stop doing that. :-)
Add on the fact that client work is something I explore for fun and to fill down-time, and it's why only 6% of the sales come from client fees.
To me, personally, that's re-assuring.
Because if I were to look at someone's chart and saw that 50% or more of their own sales comes from client fees, it tells me they are more active in preaching concepts than working as an entrepreneur in the trenches.
Call me old fashioned... but I prefer to take flying lessons only from qualified pilots. Not from someone who "read a book and a blog about it".
I'd never want to see my client fees reach anything past 20% of my total sales. At least 80% of my business should always be me "doing", where my own time and money is on the line.
-- Asset Sales
This is my favorite kind of money.
A private product License deal, a small website for sale, market research data, domain names etc ... any of these can be little asset sales and, often, they come out of the blue.
Someone approaches you, interested in something you have. You two negotiate. Strike a deal. They walk away happy and you get paid for pretty much having done nothing.
Anyways, the part that matters about "asset sales" for my own chart is it's not a core focus of mine.
I'm not in the domain flipping or website flipping or facebook account flipping or data selling or any of that business.
So on my end, when an asset sale occurs, it's not something I actively pursued.
Which is why it also shows up as only 7% on the chart.
-- Digital Info Products and Physical Info Products
What seems like a lifetime ago, though it's only 7 or so years ago, I ended up in the world of information products before I even knew that "information" could be a product and that it is, in fact, an upward trending and ridiculously big business.
I didn't pick it.
I wasn't sitting in high school doodling on a binder thinking "when I grow up, I want to be an information marketer".
Career prediction psychology tests didn't say "you're best suited to sell information"... it just happened.
Maybe YOU sell notepads and yellow rubber duckies. (What!? Click here.).
... But for me, PDF ebooks, audio programs, video courses, DVD and "big box" courses... all this stuff is what I learned the various aspects of an online sales funnels with.
At the end of the day though, WHAT you sell doesn't change too much in HOW you sell it.
Some entrepreneurs like to tell themselves that their particular product or service is "different" and what works for selling information products wouldn't work for selling their Fancy Widget.
I won't be ignorant here and claim that every industry and every business model fits one perfect template and method of operation.
It doesn't.
But ladies and gentlemen, whether you sell stripper poles (as fitness poles), luxury vacation rentals, nutritional supplements, organic skin care, real estate leads, DJ equipment, video production services, teen bootcamp admissions, commercial cleaning services, image consulting services, men's dating workshops, art ... and on and on the list goes... the process of building a lead capture funnel, addressing followup, building a back-end, maximizing monetization, positioning/branding the product, expanding a product line, locking in creative promotion partners, setting up affiliate teams (if applicable), fulfilling product, purchasing advertising and the 1001 other pieces of effectively getting a product to market, IT'S MORE OR LESS THE SAME.
By the way... each of those markets and offers I just listed above (and more), I've worked with clients on. So I'm not talking out of my ass here. Via clients, I've sold in 31+ different markets and all sorts of different product types and business models. The initial marketing attack-plan is mostly the same.
Much of the steps that I would take to bring to market a specialized knowledge info-course for $797 is extremely similar as to what you'd need to do to sell a $20 million luxury yacht (which I've been in talks for) or a 5-year well established web-business (which I've sold).
Let me go a little further off tangent for a minute...
One observation about information products vs mass consumer merchandise.
Typical consumer products require no "acceptance curve". Such as a Barbeque or a new piece of fitness equipment. You'll still need to sell them on why they should buy YOURS but the idea and concept of paying for fitness equipment is something the customer already expects.
Therefore closing sales of merchandise is typically much easier.
This results in much higher "revenues" for the same amount of effort.
Whereas, with an information product, you do have to overcome the natural objection of "why should I pay for information" and "why should I pay GOOD MONEY for this information" and "why should I pay **YOU** GOOD MONEY for this information".
There are a lot of objections to deal with.
There are, of course, many who buy info-products all the time. But in the grand scheme of things, they're a very small minority.
The general consumer doesn't know how to value information.
Their immediate reaction is to place the value on the "packaging" instead.
They can value a physical book. Because it's printed. So there is ink and paper involved therefore $15-$20 is a reasonable price to them.
But a digital book?
More over, a series of videos that sells for $1997??
The majority of consumers would still look at that and say "well those videos would fit on 4 DVDs, so I should be charged maybe $40 at most."
In info-land, it's a tougher sale.
But, margins are a lot sexier.
A $100 merchandise item may bring in $15 of profit. A $100 ebook is $100 in profit. (Minus operations costs of course, but one has production cost, the other is ZERO cost to product).
A PDF ebook or downloadable video course costs $0 to fulfill. Once it's created, every other copy is digital and free.
So other than research, development, graphics, layout and anything else that went into creation and setup... the only other "cost" that pulls from your profits is the advertising cost. (If you're dealing with physical info-products, obviously there IS a cost there... but the margins are still very high).
:-)
-- Seminars (CanadaMarketingSummit.ca)
Back in my employee days, the most hours and hardest I ever worked was when I was saving up to buy a Toyota 4Runner *and* move out for the first time from my parents'. This goes back to when I was 20.
Those were 2 big goals at the time...
Paying $8000 for a SUV truck (or that was the initial budget... I ended up splurging and buying one for $14,500)... and also paying for moving out.
Back then, I worked 90 hours a week. 2 full time jobs and 1 part time job.
I was putting in a LOT of work and a lot of hours to accomplish my goals...
Yet, even with all that, the hardest I've EVER worked was in putting on the 2009 and 2010 Canada Marketing Summit.
Putting on a live event is a mental fitness bootcamp like none other.
I remember the morning of day 1 for Canada Marketing Summit 2010.
I had been sleeping 1-3 hours per night for well over a week leading up to that "day 1".
I was also eating less and drinking lots of coffee. That will do wonders for your health.
Top all this off with constantly thinking about, planning for, dealing with and running around for last minute nonsense.
On the morning of day 1, since I hadn't thought ahead and didn't hire a MC (I just figured I could do it), I had to welcome everyone and introduce the first speaker... no word of a lie, my voice was fading, knees were buckling and hands were shaking.
I certainly wasn't nervous. I was just about to crumble right there.
I don't remember how or even if I opened the event.
... And if you're playing couch critic right now and suggesting "well Rob, you should have done X and hired Y and setup ABC" ... yes, yes, these are all nice and fuzzy things that I count as lessons learned, but to get this insight, you sometimes have to have the hands on experience. Which I now do. The same mistakes will not be repeated. But I'm sure I'll find some new mistakes to wear myself out with before we fully get this CMS series branded and established.
If I didn't have my end game in mind and a pretty slick overall strategy for the Canada Marketing Summit... I'd rather have you smack me around with a rusty pipe than to ever put on another seminar.
These are pain in the ass, money sucking, annoying monsters.
To plan and produce, that is.
Once it's going, it can be incredibly rewarding and fun.
And once the brand is built and the whole shindig is systemized, it can be extremely lucrative.
And if you're even more cunning and have cooked up what I've cooked up, than the workload and pain is well worth it.
That's where the live events / Canada Marketing Summit comes into play in my business.
Hang On A Minute... Before We Move Ahead...
Before I go into the Moving Forward: Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned section, I want to talk of foundation building, compounding effects and exponential growth.
A lot of the start-up period uses up the time, money and other resources in building a foundation.
Once that's built though, every action you take has a compounding effect ... if done right this builds into exponential growth curves (or at least for a short while).
But the money and time and effort you poured in to produce your first X (first $5000, first $50,000, first $500,000 etc depending on your business model and scale) is going to be the toughest part.
Think about why that is...
* Education - While you're building that foundation, you're in a heavy education curve. Reading books, watching videos, attending seminars to soak in all the "book knowledge" you can.
2-5 years down the road, you'll already have this knowledge. You won't need to invest any time in the core knowledge. You, of course, continually want to learn but not at such a heavy duty pace as when you got started.
When you're getting started, you could be investing days and even weeks JUST on education. Yet no revenue-generating action steps have been taken yet.
* Hands On Experience - When getting started, you don't have any. So you also don't have as much confidence. You might doubt your decisions. You might be using "best guesses". All of which slows down your pace and produces low results for your efforts.
Once you've successfully built up that experience, you can move on new ideas and projects much quicker and with greater confidence.
* Setup - Initially you're eating up a lot of time and spending a lot of money on your setup.
Everything from the basics such as your domain name, hosting, autoresponder and more.
In fact, what often happens is as you "mature" you realize the domain name(s) you picked is terrible and you need to now setup and start branding a more logical one... you realize the hosting provider you picked is inadequate so now you have to spend even more time and more finding a new one and moving all your files... you realize either your mailing list provider wasn't a smart choice or how you setup your lists is going to lose you a LOT of selling potential, so you scramble to undo work and spend time and money to re-do all this again.
But similarly your graphics, your "brand" concepts, your webpages, your sales copy and sales pitches (even if that's a video or however you're selling).
And the software and services you buy thinking you might need them.
It literally isn't even just the cost of getting all this bought and setup. It's also the cost of later, as you become wiser in the process, dumping some of the pointless services, picking up new software, changing direction, changing branding, changing the whole sales funnel strategy and more.
This setup phase is what kills a lot of would-be online entrepreneurs. They are constantly trying to figure out which tools to use, where to invest, how to set it up.
And the rookie errors can be enormous.
Expensive and irrelevant $2000 course purchases. Pricey $499 software packages that your business doesn't even need. Or paying for other resources that your business won't need for months or even years into your business. On a boot-strapped tight budget, wasting dollars like this will drain your bank account.
Premium priced domains. Example: one colleague was about invest $1400 into a terrible domain name choice... I helped him pick a smart $10 domain. This decision alone not only saved him $1390 up front, but more importantly, eventually he would have realized his errors and he would have needed to undo all his graphics, branding and strategy because his original pick would have LOST him tens of thousands of dollars.
Over-priced graphic designers and web-designers. The reality is, this is one of those skill sets that is now a global market.
Unlike a lawyer (who I'd want locally) or an accountant. A graphic artist could be from anywhere in the world and work with me just as easily and produce just as great results as anyone else.
So why would I pay the big-brand North American rates of $1500 for a logo when I can get it done for $99 by top talent?
Why would I pay $8000 for a website, when a truly professional designer overseas can get it done for $400.
As a beginner... you don't know these pitfalls. And, again, it's a great way to chew up your dollars and slow down your growth.
The setup process and, as I mentioned, often the RE-setup process can very easily eat up a lot of time and money yet your business' sales haven't even been kick-started yet.
* Support / Staff / Virtual Assistants / Team - There's a good chance that on day 1, you're wearing all the hats.
That means a lot of work and frustration.
It also means doing work that you're not proficient in or even hate doing.
It means some of that work (which is a weak area for you) is producing low quality results. Examples of this are the many beginners who attempt to make their own videos, write their own salesletters and advertising copy, tweak the CSS of their own blogs and more.
This is a very important piece of the puzzle.
You HAVE TO bring in "aces" as quickly as you can.
But as you find that talent, train them, get used to working with them ... and possibly fire that talent and find new ones...
This entire process of first doing all the work yourself, producing lower quality work overall, then slowly starting to build your team, then possibly re-build your team (especially if you didn't know what to look for during the hiring or contracting phase), this means even more time and energy being eaten up, yet your business is just crawling at this point because there's no real focus yet on the sales and marketing gear which is the ONLY gear that drives revenues!
* Systems / Techniques - When getting started, you don't have systems. You don't have proven, effective methods of operation. Figuring this out and putting it together is very time consuming... but once in place, theoretically, a complete dummy could follow the steps of your systems.
You also don't have a lead base, a client base, affiliate partners, web traffic, proven advertising sources, possibly even a full product line...
You're working extremely hard at the beginning, investing the most amount of money and getting the least amount of profits back for all this.
But that's just the nature of the beast.
You HAVE to build the foundation.
You have to "sow" before you "reap".
When you were just a baby, you were a pathetic little thing. :-) Constantly drooling on yourself, peeing on yourself, falling all over when you tried to walk and crying about everything and nothing.
Now look at how you've developed.
(Alright well maybe you still cry about everything and nothing and drool on yourself but hopefully you've stopped peeing on yourself at least).
And just like with that baby, your parents put in a lot of time and energy (a LOT of time time and energy) to properly train you and raise you.
It's the same thing for your business.
And if you can't enjoy the process and know the end-game then the first year or 2 or 3 or even 4 or 5 ... whatever it takes YOU to build that foundation... it will just frustrate and destroy you.
Compounding Kicks In
But let me give you some happy thoughts.
Suppose you have team members now and you've built a system, over time, for much of your operations.
You're about to launch a new product.
With your systems and team already in place, all of you can quickly get to work to making sure the concept, pricing, branding, graphics, packaging, fulfillment and whatever other piece is involved in your own launch gets done quick.
In addition, you have your in house leads (your "list") and a client base.
So generating initial sales for this new product is going to be very easy.
These easy sales put more of a cash influx into your bank account.
Which, you can then use to even better tweak the whole funnel, expand to new demographics, buy more advertising, bring on a sales team, launch even more products...
The snowballing or compounding kicks in.
Even if it took 3 years to generate your first $100,000 in sales. Maybe it now takes you just 6 months to generate the next $100,000. And on and on it grows.
As this unfolds... you get to enjoy a bit of exponential growth and that's where the fun really takes off, sales quickly pick-up and your own profits and net income easily increase.
Of course, if you did a piss poor job in building that foundation ... then you'll have to go back and re-do it. This is where sucking it up and paying for the "financial pain" once by bringing in a business development and marketing strategist (or "coach" if you like) makes sense.
Hint hint, nudge nudge.
The Butterfly Effect of A Poor Setup
Novice business owners ("beginners") often consider money lost as only the money they spend up front.
Not sure if you'll follow this example below but consider this...
Suppose you end up spending $10,000 on your initial setup and decisions. Everything we talked about above including software and resources that are actually not necessary and a waste for you and including pre-mature or poorly selected advertising mediums.
When you do things wrong, it can be VERY easy (and all too common) to spend $10,000 in the process.
A beginner would only see this $10,000 as the loss.
In reality though, your poor decisions and weak setup also means your company is not able to capitalize on many selling opportunities.
You won't be able to reach your target market easily or cost-effectively.
You won't be charging them enough because your sales funnel converts so poorly that all you can think of is to drop the price. Etc.
I'll pick a hypothetical number but if your setup mistakes were $10,000 (as often happens), your opportunity-lost cost is at least double that. So $20,000 that you won't ever see because of the "leaks" in your setup.
Eventually though you mature and realize the mistakes.
So now there's a RE-setup cost in changing direction.
If your initial setup was $10k, we can say you'll have to spend about half that much again to re-setup and correct the mistakes. So that's $5000 loss there.
Now also factor in that through all this, you're losing a lot of time before you finally hit that compounding and exponential growth curve.
And, as another hypothetical though fair guess, we can say that any year in exponential growth means 3X the sales of the previous.
I don't have a number for you here, but based on the above scenario, at least $60,000 is a fair estimate. That, again, is money you won't get.
So your $10,000 of wasted dollars and poor decisions is actually a loss of $95,000.
The numbers above are made up since there are a lot of variables in the mix and I don't know anything about your business.
But focus on the logic because it's very real.
The numbers I used are very common among beginner affiliate marketers and beginner info product marketers.
Even if they initially only think their setup costs are a couple of thousand... it's easy to find they've wasted a lot more on uninformed purchases.
So $10,000 out the window is typical for a newbie info-product marketer.
And the rest of the math then definitely follows.
That's why many of them drain their bank accounts trying to figure out "what happened" especially when they consider how hard they worked for 2, 3 or 4 years and yet it's still not producing results.
They gave up before the foundation was built.
I hope that serves as some food for thought.
Let me move into my own personal mistakes made and lessons learned...
Moving Forward: Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned
Not to get into my background as I'd have a tough time spinning it into something interesting enough to actually keep you hooked.
But this first part may help others relate.
So here's the thing...
My education curve was long.
I never had formal education. About business. About internet. About marketing. Never took schooling for any of that.
Programming, yes. And some sharp-as-a-marble types will quickly say "okay so that's pretty much the same thing, you're still working with computers". Those are the people who need to be walking around with a permanent "Please Avoid Me, I'm Stupid" sign around their necks.
I use computers cause that's how this inter-web clickity-clickity thing works. But I'm obviously not programming anything.
So for all intensive purposes... ZERO of my formal education related to anything I do now.
I also didn't walk in with an entrepreneur mindset or a personal passion for reading up on business.
I didn't have a mentor.
Or credibility.
Or money.
Or support.
Or a clue.
So basically what I have is another one of those same old song-and-dances where I started from the $8 per hour cook, with no education, no money, $20,000 in debt ...
The reason THAT matters, is my first years in business were (1) sink or swim and (2) I didn't even know I was in business... I was just trying to make some money for myself.
I never actively set out to find a business model, find a target market, lay out a business plan or any of that.
THAT is the intelligent and traditional route.
That's important for me (and maybe you) because my "schooling" was in real time, hands on.
That's good because you learn a lot very quickly.
It's bad because it's a seriously frustrating pain in the ass to keep stumbling and having to get back up again and again and again.
It also means though that your revenues won't be too impressive during the from-dummy-to-expert education phase.
I made plenty of mistakes along the way.
And I'll happily invite you to laugh at my nonsense ... and, even better, LEARN from it.
So here were some definite flaws:
** WHAT I DID WRONG:
1) Not a "business". I wasn't building a business for quite some time... I was just making money and setting up money making ideas and promotions. THAT isn't REALLY a business. And I see a lot of others make similar mistakes.
Attempting to jump at any way they hear of "making money" and then working hard to just "make money" instead of looking out for what will build a true business.
2) No brand! Now I'm not talking about building the next HP, Microsoft, Coca-Cola or any other world-recognized brand. But always just having random products and offers and never associated with one long term brand means I worked twice as hard as I should have.
Established brand means easier sales. And I didn't get to enjoy any of those easy sales for much too long.
3) No real focus on list building. I prefer to call the in-house database an "audience" seeing as that helps set the reminder that you have to provide value but also engagement and entertainment. And these days, an email list is just one part of the communication channels you have for building rapport and closing sales.
Blog readers, blog RSS subscribers, Youtube channel subscribers, facebook fans, facebook friends, Twitter followers ... and of course, direct mail list, SMS broadcast list, phone list. That's your full "audience".
I didn't put nearly enough focus on audience building. And if you don't capture leads and add them to your communication channels, you lose the ability to followup and to sell them on future products. This, I'm sure, cost me at least 6-figures. Likely multiple 6-figures.
4) No central hub. Every new product, every new promotion sat on its own new domain new with a new website. I never had a central hub... an obvious example of that would be a blog or similar community. I never had a home-base where all the different offers were cross promoted and where all my audience could be funneled to. This again means I worked harder than I needed to for every single new offer's launch. Very silly mistake.
5) No master affiliate program. This follows the common theme. I lost hundreds of thousands because everything was a "one-off" product... not part of a brand, not promoted from a central hub. And I even, often, had multiple affiliate programs instead of one master affiliate program that an affiliate partner could promote any and all of my offers from. In fact, I believe with this alone in place... I would be near the $1 million in sales mark by now.
6) No membership / no recurring / no consistency. Consistent and predictable cashflow is a must. Of course, on day 1, it might be tough for you to build such irresistible value that you'd be able to command monthly recurring billing. Depends on your business and your product of course. Always keep looking for a solution to this though... how can you put together an offer and an opportunity so that you have predictable monthly cashflow. This will do WONDERS for your ability to scale and grow.
7) No tracking. I used to track the basics (web traffic, email open rates, affiliate click rates) and had a general sense of monthly sales revenue. But you really want as much data as possible. My recommendation is set a monthly to do item (let's say on the 1st of every month) to grab the previous month's data for all things including: total unique web visitors (did it increase from the previous month), total email subscribers, total gross sales, total net sales, and more. Data is vital! Doesn't make too much sense to care about it in your first couple of months, but start watching it closer the more your business grows.
8) Not consistent marketing or advertising budget. For too long, I operated with a "run some advertising every now and then, here and there" mentality... It was random. I'd buy advertising from time to time but never with a set monthly budget. Never as part of a consistent method of operation. QUESTION: How do you expect to quickly grow your business if you aren't continually and consistently advertising it? Exactly. I operated like that far too long and it meant plateaud sales figures.
9) Unrealistic schedules for cashflow, for projects going live and more. For whatever reason, I used to figure a new info product being developed and full sales funnel put together should take just a week. Sure, for low ticket junk products and moderately effective sales funnels OR with a full trained team on board, maybe you can pull that off. And I used to not respect the initial feast or famine nature of the cashflow... I figured if we did $18,000 this week, then I'm sure we'll do another $18,000 later this month. This is also where DATA helps to paint a more realistic picture.
Let's be clear... I'm not talking about goals. If you want to shoot for ridiculous high goals, go for it. Your life, your business, you set the pace. BUT do yourself a favor and couple that with actual data so you can better be prepared for financial short-comings or for projects delays (and more project delays, oh, and MORE project delays).
10) No real work-life balance. And some of this is still true today. (I'm working on it!). Constantly being in "work mode". Always thinking of new ideas, new products, new tactics. Or always tweaking something in your funnel. Or whatever else is on your never ending entrepreneurial to do list.
The example is often used of how some people tell themselves "if I just make X dollars, then I'll be happy". Well mine was (and maybe still is?) along the lines of "if I just get A, B, C crossed off the to do list and I get the business up to X, Y, Z level... THEN I'll be happy". Now, I'm happy regardless. I'm a pretty cheery guy. But I'm rarely at ease. I'm rarely in the moment in life these days. I could be and I certainly SHOULD be (like I said, I'm working on it)... but a work-life balance is a must.
To me business building is a game. A fun game. And one that I want to excel in. But it's not LIFE. Life is the experiences and moments and adventures and relationships you create. At least that's a bit of my definition. And too much time has already been devoted to months with 90% work and 10% "living".
In the hype and nonsense filled "make money online" world that I think everyone reading this has at least SOME exposure to, it's often preached that, by being online, you can make money while you sleep. The joke among internet marketer geeks like me, who have yet to properly establish that work-life balance is "yeah but it's work 18 hours during the day so you can make money while you sleep". :-)
11) Giving my time away. Being a very generous and social guy... when fun projects from friends came across my desk, I often gave a lot of time in 1-on-1 pow-wows for free. I'd help out and do hands on work to make sure their project took off strong.
I've given too much of my time away for free like this. I think being generous with your money, as generous as you can afford to be is fantastic. I applaud it! I really do. But I also think that being too generous with your TIME (which is a very very finite and precious commodity) is plain dumb. And I was plain dumb too many times. It caused me to lose focus, lose momentum (everytime you change direction, you hurt momentum) and flat out set my business behind.
I respect my time more these days and I know that if I give my time away, I should AT LEAST be compensated monetarily so that it helps me towards the big goals I have for me and my family. Giving time away for free though may seem noble or may seem like a social obligation. It's not. It's just dumb. And anyone who isn't willing to respect the value of YOUR time, doesn't deserve any of your time to begin with.
12) Drained float capital. I was (and still am) a believer in consistently re-investing into the business. You should pay yourself, yes, but keep pumping money back into the business as well to help fuel it.
However, I was doing this to the point where money came in and I put it right back out towards some sort of growth activity. The part of that equation that I forgot (besides paying myself) was to keep at least a modest float in my account. Don't drain it. That's just being stupid with your money! I missed out on all sorts of terrific opportunities that required just a few hundred dollars or a couple of thousand. Even though I had thousands around the corner... since I had just spent the rest of the profits back into the business, I was sitting there with piddly change and it slowed me down too many times.
13) I didn't charge enough. Whether that's for products or services (client work).
There are offers out there from individuals who are really dancing the fine line of "legally retarded" in my opinion, charging some seriously premium prices for what they can "teach". But their packaging is so sharp and marketing is effective that they pull in the sales at very nice margins. All the power to them. Great marketing goes a long way. It even lets you sell scrap-junk, apparently.
Looking back, and even now, I haven't entered the premium pricing space. I should have. I still should. And I will. The goal is simply to charge healthy dollars but balance that with an offer that still over-delivers in true value. But if you really feel your product/service delivers, think about it... shouldn't you be jacking up your prices to find out what the market will bear? I mean if it REALLY does provide the value, then why are you short-changing yourself. (And I won't even get into talk of "perceived value" and how that can actually improve your conversions and brand).
** WHAT I DID RIGHT:
I'm very sure both lists of "what I did wrong" and "what I did right" can be made a LOT longer than the points I wrote here (with "what I did wrong" undoubtedly being an embarrassingly long list) ... but here are some of the steps, decisions and I guess mindsets that I'd have to say have attributed to sales growth.
1) Filter. I'm a brute about this! I don't answer every email. I rarely answer my phone or a skype call unless something was scheduled. I ignore new launches. I do skim recent news and discussions to be in the loop... but it's quick and I don't explore every offer. I've been called an arrogant ass because of this but look, if your focus is on productivity and growth, you can't cater to everyone else's needs and schedules.
Some of you will say "nah, that's just not nice and I want to be a nice person" and so you'll write emails to everyone who sends you one. And since that person is bored and lonely on their end, they'll send one back to you. And since you want to be nice, you'll send one back to them. OR, when they call and interrupt your creative flow or a productive time, you'll answer the phone to make sure you cater to THEIR needs and THEIR schedules. This will, of course, cost you energy and the loss of focus will be hard to re-capture. So every interruption you answer takes a good chunk out of a productive day...
It's your decision. But if you'd like a tip on how to better cater to YOU, YOUR NEEDS and YOUR SCHEDULES, here are some rough tips...
- Write in short sentences. Long winded chatty emails, facebook messages, letters and instant messages basically say "I'm bored, I want to get into a long winded conversation". Short. Punchy. To the point sentences have a rushed tone about them which immediately suggests I'm busy.
- Remove interruptions from your day by closing down email notifiers, twitter notifiers, silencing Skype conversation notifiers, forwarding your phone to a voice mail system. Also unsubscribe from as many email lists as you can. Except for mine, of course. Remaining subscribed to my list is scientifically proven to extend a healthy life by at least 15 years. And you don't mess with science. But dump as many lists as you can OR at least subscribe to them with a secondary "low priority" email address so they don't interrupt your inbox.
- When calls do come in (on phone or skype, as I get most of my incoming calls via Skype), if it wasn't scheduled ignore it or Decline the call and write them an instant message instead to ask them "hi! am in the middle of a couple of things? anything urgent?" and you'll often find that it was a very low priority basic question that this person would have interrupted your flow for. Personally, I rarely even send that message. As for actual phone calls, I ignore 99% of incoming calls. My business isn't based on sales being made from incoming client calls though. If it was, I'd promptly put someone else on phone duty either way though.
- When you are talking to someone on the phone, on skype or even at networking events and seminars.. have a rushed tone about you. I learned this from one of the first men I'd call a mentor. I used to be (1) terrible on the phone and (2) used to let some calls run an hour+ long because the person really wanted to chat and I didn't know how to close them down. That just does NOT happen anymore.
2) I Fired Perfection! The goal here is to push sales forward. Not to impress everyone who hits your site or sees your product (or whatever your case may be). I've sold roughly $42,000 from a seriously ugly site. Plain text. Black and white. No layout. Didn't stop me from quickly making $42,000 worth of sales. Ugly, incomplete, non-perfected products and marketing promotions are everywhere... making sales daily. While the "let me wait until it's perfect" guy is still frustrated and broke.
If it's a question of waiting days and days and days to get everything nice and proper and pretty vs going live, selling and then tweaking and improving... I'll take going live now. Otherwise I'm draining my patience, losing interest, losing momentum and not seeing cashflow. Get this tattooed onto your spouse's forehead so you see it every morning: "Imperfect today is OH SO BETTER than perfect tomorrow." (If your spouse won't agree to a tattoo, at least write that on a yellow sticky and gently place it on their forehead after they fall asleep.)
3) Network-Up. That's what I call it. I'm sure I'm not the only one. It means keep connecting with individuals "higher up" than you. That doesn't mean they as a person are "better than you". This isn't a self-esteem thing. I'm looking at maturity of their business and overall experience level. Someone more experienced in a certain area than me, someone with more brand recognition and clout, someone with a much more matured business, who also has high integrity ... I'm very likely to do what I can to connect with them and build a relationship.
As long as you keep just networking with your peers, or (even worse), beginners, it will hold you down. You throwing around ideas and talking shop with someone "at your level" won't help you grow. Again, it's not an arrogance thing... but if we're looking out for growth and revenues, you'll learn very little from someone who is further back than your business is.
Another very valid reason you should go ahead and pony-up to get access to me for 90-days. Humble of me, right? It's precisely what I'm doing too ... it's time for my business to grow to 8-figures. I've selected 3 mastermind groups (you know the $25,000 - $100,000 per year types) each run by internet business owners much further ahead than my own business. I'll be signing up so I can talk to them directly and figure out what they have setup on their end that allows them operate at the 8-figure level. Mingling and shooting-the-shit with others who are no further ahead than you are can be fun, but it won't move you forward. If your focus is on growth and a continually increasing income, you have to network-up.
That's a bit of the observations and reflections from $570k in online sales. I hope you found some value in it.
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This will be VERY egotistical of me, but it's probably very fair to say that I already know everything you're trying to figure out when it comes to online business and income growth. I already know everything that you aren't even aware you should know. And therefore, I'm a much better option to have guiding you, answering every question, giving you the full effective strategy, tactics and resources you need... instead of you spending tens of thousands in wasted dollars, missed opportunity and years of frustration.
Worst case scenario? Maybe I'm wrong and I turn out to be a waste of your time. I'm just all rah-rah and hype and no actionable knowledge. Maybe I'm just someone who can sell himself well on a web-site but can't for the life of him help you move ahead with your business and income goals... Maybe I'm just "another consultant"...
7+ years experience, 84 clients, 31+ markets, 13 pages of testimonials and some seriously high profile friends and endorsements should probably have you realize that the above paragraph is completely unlikely. But as a worst-case scenario, let's assume it just doesn't work out. I apologetically refund your money, wish you best of success and leave you with any tactics, resources, connections and some other "sorry for having been a useless tit" apology gifts. You still come out good.
Best case scenario? What if I'm not full of it? What if I'm not a "consultant" who HAS to sell you and 20 other clients this month on hiring him so that he can pay his bills? What if I can actually talk to you, hear you out, consider your market, your product, your own situation (experience, time budget, financial budget), your goals ... and I come in as your advisor and direct the full strategy for your online business development and online marketing. And I provide the next-steps instructions that are actually priority, relevant and will produce results (ie: more leads, more visitors, more sales)?
Think about it... and when you decide losing months or years making dumb rookie mistakes, throwing out thousands on amateur purchases, and operating with only a fraction of the "big picture" in mind is a really poor way to approach your goals, then do get in touch or simply click here for the full details of the retainer opportunity. You WILL walk away smiling once our time together is up. That's a promise.
It's your decision. And if you have questions first or would like to figure out something custom (instead of the standard 90-day program)... I'm a real person. And I'm all ears. Connect with me and let's hear what you feel works best for you.
What matters most is getting off! You cannot make progress without making decisions." - Jim Rohn
P.S. Excerpts from just some of the testimonials that have been sent my way... "He Is A Pure Jedi, He Is A Master Networker" ... "GENIUS!" ... "Rob Toth Is No Genie - He's A Marketing Magician!" ... "A Professional Ethical Marketer" ... "Total Uniqueness And Abilities To Think Outside Of The Box" ... "Always Full Of Fresh And Creative Ideas" ... "The 'Millennium Napoleon Hill'" ... "A Class Player" ... "The One Marketing Person I Know That's Not Full Of Crap" ...
