Listen to Warren Buffet

Money doesn’t grow on trees, true? Possibly

It costs money to make money, true? Probably

It’s easy to make money, true? Definitely

The trick isn’t in making money, it’s in holding onto it. According to Warren Buffet (a guy who has accumulated a fortune of $89 Billion – $1 Billion for every year of life – and who started with nothing), according to him, RULE #1 is DON’T LOSE MONEY. And RULE #2 is SEE RULE #1

I have 2 more rules for you. RULE #3 is SPEND LESS THAN YOU EARN and RULE #4 is DELAY GRATIFICATION.

There are many, many more rules but keeping these 4 will guarantee your success in any business.

Have you ever wondered why 90% of new businesses fail within 12 months of starting? Business statistics will tell you that it’s only 80%, but when you factor in the people who started and failed without even getting as far as registering as a business, it’s over 90%.

Online, it’s closer to 95%. Now, why is that? And more importantly, how do you avoid becoming one of the 95 who fails? Having to shut up shop, lick your wounds and spend the next few years trying to pay down the credit card debt you ran up at 30% interest so now you can hardly pay your weekly bills and your credit rating is shot?

In any business, it’s essential to know what the key metrics are. The prime metric is the excess of money in over money out. If it’s the other way around, you’re losing money and breaking Rule #1. And you wouldn’t believe the number of people in business who have no idea from day to day whether they’re making or losing money. And at the end of the day, week, month, or year when the accountant tots it all up and gives them the result, most have no idea where they actually made or lost money or which products, services, customers or employees contributed the most profit.

Now you’d imagine that it’s all easier to keep track of online. I mean, everything is online and at your fingertips, yeah? But just because it’s there doesn’t mean anyone is looking at it, or understands what it means, or knows how to turn it into actionable knowledge. We’re told knowledge is power and then we drown in data. We’re all suffering from information overload, being bombarded with tsunamis of detail day after day. But data isn’t knowledge. And knowledge isn’t power. Actionable information is useful knowledge and gives us power. Everything else is at best a distraction.

For a business, the most important knowledge to have is Sales. Sales are what turn your activity into a business. No sales = No business. Healthy sales and cash flow are more important than efficiency. A horrendously inefficient business with healthy sales and cashflow can survive indefinitely. An efficient business with poor sales and cash flow is doomed to fail.

Next, after-sales comes to the cost of sales. It’s astounding the number of people in business who do not know how to calculate their cost of sales. In online marketing, selling digital products, it’s tempting to think there is no cost. Sure, it’s easier to “see” the costs in selling physical products but there are costs attached to digital products as well. Costs like advertising, payment gateways, web hosting and platform charges, autoresponders, commissions payable, license fees, etc. Not to mention time.

Most people starting out online have very limited resources, few if any business assets, and are impatient to get going. This can lead to very poor decision making, and we’ve all been there. Paying $’00’s or $’000’s for invisible traffic that left no impression on our subscriber lists, recruiting new subscribers for the vendor whose product we’re promoting without capturing them for ourselves first. Falling for the lure of the latest “winner” only to end up sadder, poorer, and a little wiser.

Russel Brunson says there are 3 types of traffic. The traffic you control, the traffic you don’t control and traffic you own. And your only goal is to make all the traffic that comes your way your own.

Dan Kennedy says that the one who can pay the most to acquire the customer wins. That’s very bad news for new and aspiring internet marketers on tight budgets who can hardly afford to pay anything to acquire a customer. This is how and why most break Rule #1, and all the other rules.

But there’s hope….

If you’re ambitious and want to succeed, want to start and grow your own successful, profitable online business…

If you’re able to delay gratification and work with and within a budget that maximizes your chances of success and minimizes your risk of financial loss and failure…

If you’re willing to be guided and be taught, to learn the right way to go about it…

Then I recommend the Partnership to Success program. I joined in April 2019. At that stage, I had my domain name but no website, no strategy, no idea of where I wanted to go or how to get there. Now, I have a very clear idea of where I’m going, and how my online presence fits into that overall picture. I’m way behind the others who started around the same time as me.

But then, I’ve had other stuff going on (I’m working full time and doing a Ph.D. part-time) and I’ve been happy to work at my own pace. I’m so happy with the program that I’ve signed on for 5 more years and I know, if the past 12 months is anything to go by, they’re going to be fantastic.

Thanks for reading.