I am a huge fan of keeping things simple when it comes to mastering the big things in life.
Building your own online business is no different. Helping people through InfoMarketer’sZone a pretty interesting pattern emerges…
People tend to largely defeat themselves by making one of these very common, yet extremely destructive errors:
- They psyche themselves out with complexity or confusion. To succeed in business you need (above all else) focus, clarity and effective execution all of which are threatened by making the process too complicated
- Missing the forest for the trees…worrying about what product to promote before you understand the overall target and purpose of your business is a common mistake that leads to severe under performance
- Start and top syndrome…when things are too complicated that means there are too many options in front of you. Human nature is such that we want to try as many options as we can and we are impatient. That means we end up starting and stopping many times never really achieving anything of great value
- Lose track of what really matters.  The two most important things that matter in business (in my opinion) are a) Are you happy with what your business purpose and results are and b) Are your customers happy with the value you are bringing to the market? If you are thinking more about other aspects of your online business then you have lost focus on what really matters…a fatal impact of complexity
THE SOLUTION – YOUR 10-SECOND ONLINE BUSINESS ROAD MAP
What many of the successful entrepreneurs inside Infomarketer’sZone have found tremendously valuable is to print out the following 10-second business plan and review it each day in relation to your own online business — I highly recommend you do the same.
Here it is…
1. Know The Business You Are In
Decide the business you want to be in…including your market, target customer, role you want to play, short-term and longer term and the method through which you will monetize your contribution to your market. If you are selling an ebook about Panic Attacks as an affiliate you want to take a step back and develop a solid plan about what market you are serving today and how this will evolve in the longer term. Your business is not any one marketing tactic or product, it is an evolving vehicle through which you will continue to serve your market in return for profit.
2. What Value Are You Delivering?
Understand the value you will initially and then eventually bring to that market. Everything from the types of products, marketing approach, positioning and your role will highly depend on what value you intend to bring to your marketplace. You are not truly building a real business until you understand your key value proposition. You can be operating, building a list, attracting visitors and even selling some initial products, but your goal must be to eventually carve out a unique value position for you within your target market.
3. Establishing Your Presence
Begin building a platform…blogging, videos, articles, publicity, etc… you want to begin building an audience of loyal followers who will eventually champion your cause and help spread the word about the products and services you bring to the market. The best advice we have here is to not try to be everything to everyone…instead focus on addressing a specific subset of the market that sees the value in what you bring to the market…don’t worry about upsetting others.
4. What Is Your Product Strategy?
Determine the product release plan (affiliate products such as CB and Amazon are both fine, you will make more commission from most CB products than Amazon, but that should be one of many considerations including the quality and usefulness of the product, relevance, etc…). Similarly, what is your plan for creating your own products or licensing access to products to take even more market share?
5. Focused, Consistent and Determined Execution
Execute, take action and work toward automation once you have a successful process. Make sure your priority is taking focused action each day, set everything else aside. Measure your results and make refinements as you go to improve this process. Don’t worry about perfection…that doesn’t exist. Get started, iterate and dominate, then seek to obliterate your competition.
There you have it…print this out and read it over to yourself and to your partners each day. Make sure this simple 10-second business plan is the basis upon which you organize your activity each day and measure your success each evening.
YOUR FEEDBACK…?
What’s your take, did you find this useful and how many of these principles do you incorporate into your business each day?
