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  #1  
Old November 26, 2020, 02:41 PM
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GordonJ GordonJ is offline
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Default GJA business primer, coming throughout the day. Part one.

Since my Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I'll take some time today to mouth off here. About business, and/or making money. You don't need the first to make the latter, as CHATTELING shows. That, in case you are unaware, is the buying and selling of personal and corporate, or gov't property.

Buy a bike here, sell it over there for a profit. Simple as it gets.

Business? Not as simple, but not as complicated as many make it out to be.

I ask people WHY they do what they do in business, and I'm always astounded at how clueless many are, they just don't know, other than to make money, and all too often, they fall into their business.

I wish it were true that many businesses are PLANNED and well thought out, especially these Internet Businesses, but, alas, it just isn't that way.

In the real world, the fast dying, rapidly fading business of RETAIL, there usually is a plan, some thought put into it at least at the beginning. Too bad all the best plans have gotten derailed by Covid Crisis.

Anyhoo, old timey stuff here, nothing new, albeit a good reminder of it all...

The TRANSACTION is the foundation of all business, it is an exchange of VALUE, an ageement between parties to make the exchange.

Simple one, pay 20 bux to a guy at a garage sale for his used bike.

Complicated one: buy 1,000 bikes and place them around a city and rent them out.

Simple one- ice cream truck with a freezer in it.
Complicated one- an orchard where they make their own ice cream or a dairy farm, with a lot of moving parts.

Simple one online, The AUTOMATIC PRODUCT VENDING site, put money in, get product out.

Complicated online-Affiliate Funnel, with a dime sale, intro, upsell, cross sell, last chance, update, upgrade, new algorithm etc. etc.

In retail, there is a lot of overhead; rent/mortage, utilities, upkeep and maybe fixed costs too.

eCom does eliminate that slop and mess, and maybe that is the reason for its astounding growth, with more to come.

So if the TRANSACTION is the foundation and the EXCHANGE OF VALUE is it's core...it implies TWO entities. A buyer and a seller.

Many people start with a PRODUCT or SERVICE and then try to find the buyer, and this is OK, many if not most businesses do this.

The easier and faster way is to find a BUYER first, then offer something in the family of products/services they just bought.

There is no right or wrong, but there are differences and it depends on what suits you as to the choice you make.

Probably the biggest consideration for the vast majority of online or would be marketers is the cost of entry, and that means, MOST of them don't have the money to invest in an existing business or to build it from scratch.

They then turn to the low cost of entry types, AFFLIATE marketing and MLM or Network marketing, or the middle-man approach of eCom, to stand between the buyer and seller and be like a traffic cop directing the buyers toward the best bargains, or to what they are searching for.

Other low cost entrances are; the Joint Venture, mostly if you own or control a product and someone has a list of buyers who would be interested in it. You can arrange to do a one off joint venture to the list.

The takeover. You can buy a business using the profits of the business and do this over a given period of time. These are often done by those older businesses, people who want to or are looking at retirement, and don't want or need a big cash asset problem, but will take on payments over a period of time.

There are speculative businesses, as in stock investments, or Forex trading or any of the trading, the buying and selling of assets, or of perceived value and these often have low cost to get into...with very HIGH RISKS, which make them lucrative to those who know how to get in and get out at the right time.

There are TIME constraint businesses, as in FREELANCERS and consultants. They trade their time for dollars. They are limited by the hours in a day, unless they leverage their knowledge, skills or assets and "clone" themselves via partners, distributors or affiliates.

Then we have the businesses which require employees, as do most retail businesses, and they bring with them their own challenges and headaches, or cost of doing the business.

Any choice made has built in considerations. Freelancers must find their next client. That is really a business about LEAD GENERATION as much as it is about fulfilling on the service. There are tens of thousands of new copywriters now, and so many of them don't know how to find a client, the first one or the next one.

LEAD GENERATION is a big business itself, and there are many ways of gaining the leads too.

So, there are a lot of choices. And preferences. The how and what, but at the beginning, it should be the WHY?

What do you want? And Why do you want it? The answers form the building blocks of your business or money making activity.

How about MY model? What I have chosen to do and I'll stick with the online and SowPub related stuff, I've never really gotten into my off line activities (other than chatteling) and don't have a need today to do it either. I will say Harvey Brody, about 15 years ago, turned my head around on gaining control and building toll gates on my highway of life.

But for online, I chose to sell INFORMATION products. Some of this due to coming on board the www already having created some. I was selling Golf tapes, and one of my first online money makers was a product I created (at the behest of SCI) and wrote a promotion for...THE PROFESSIONAL REMOTE DIRECT MARKETERS COURSE. I wrote the ad, they fufilled, I got a commission. Nice big fat check for that.

In the early days, 93-99 I was still doing a lot of OFF LINE ads and selling.

By 2004, I found too much time was being spent on the few who didn't buy much and asked a lot of questions, in other words, the support of selling information was becoming a headache, even though there were several thousand buyers on my lists.

I made a conscious decision NOT to follow the guru lead, at the time, it was the PRODUCT LAUNCH way, and chose, instead, to go a small cost product, with limited sales per year, although, very high % of repeat buyers.

By whittling my buyers down, and catering to low cost REPEAT buyers, I found that a 4 time a year offer (quarterly) at below 25 bux as an auto buy for vast, vast majority on the list and once or twice a year, usually at holidays to offer a higher priced item.

This was the general plan, with the once in awhile specials of high cost consulting or one of our private membership things worked out for me.

So, the measly ten dollar product, sold four times a year, with almost ALL on my list buying...and at least half buying the bigger 25 to 49 HOLIDAY offers, seemed to deliver what I wanted.

As an example, if I had 1000 on my list of buyers, and most of them bought all my offers, roughly about 40 + 50 a year, or 90 bux a year...and they did so year after year (as some of you reading this have done{thank you very much})...then it added up. It was a much less stressful way to hit my money goals for online activity, not working that hard, and provided nice sums to work with offline.

Just a different way of thinking. Gurus in the syndicate and groups chose to offer pricey offers, oft $2,000.00 with a 1k split with their buddies, and to then offer private membership groups or inner circles for hundreds of dollars...and their formula worked for them too. It is the de facto IM method taught, bought and sold for IM riches.

That didn't suit me because it ate up too much of my TIME. I wanted to, and remained a very part time Internet Marketer while making a full time wage, if I were to trade my time for dollars as an employee or consultant.

I'm sure many remember the couple of years I spent traveling around the country, having adventures while maintaining my creative schedule.

In my case, I traded the bigger money for more time TODAY, or now, as opposed to those who liked to grind it out, make a lot more money, so they could take time off later (although most really don't, cause they like working). Again, no right or wrong, but whatever works for YOU is cool beans, eh?

Let me call this part one of my Thanksgiving 2020 rant and rave on business or making money, shall we?

Gordon

PS Feel free to ask questions.

Last edited by GordonJ : November 26, 2020 at 03:27 PM.
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  #2  
Old November 26, 2020, 07:52 PM
MikePT MikePT is offline
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Default Re: GJA business primer, coming throughout the day.

Any tips and advice to find new back-end products to sell to already customers?

I sell fashion bracelets to men, and the way I present to Clients new different products is focusing on another possible WANTS and NEEDS my Clients can have.

Example: I present a new "sober low profile" bracelet instead a "shiny" one; or a slim and tiny bracelet to use near the watch; or a bracelet to use when the man uses suit; or a sporty model.

Any tips?

Thanks.
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  #3  
Old November 27, 2020, 11:07 AM
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GordonJ GordonJ is offline
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Default No tips just general ideas.

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Originally Posted by MikePT View Post
Any tips and advice to find new back-end products to sell to already customers?

I sell fashion bracelets to men, and the way I present to Clients new different products is focusing on another possible WANTS and NEEDS my Clients can have.

Example: I present a new "sober low profile" bracelet instead a "shiny" one; or a slim and tiny bracelet to use near the watch; or a bracelet to use when the man uses suit; or a sporty model.

Any tips?

Thanks.

Well I don't know enough about your transaction model, so this is only general ideas.

The thing is, you KNOW what they bought. If you know why (gift or personal use), then you could test an email with a binary option.

That is, give them a choice of two COMPLEMENTARY items, items that go with the original buy. If you mention it and ask for their feedback, or give them a discount or incentive to buy it, that might be one way.

Of course, this assumes you have their email addresses.

If what you are doing is working, then you tweak the follow up to try to increase %, but you may not have enough data to do this, I have NO idea.

I don't think I would change the idea, in selling women's fashion jewelry, we stuck with the "people will compliment, notice you and be dazzled" idea.

If someone bought shiny from me, I'd be inclined to offer them shiny again, or a shine which brings out the first one. I'm not one to guess on their wants and needs, the old saw; "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"... is good advice to follow.

I have zero idea of what a "low sober profile" is, and how it would look next to the other piece. I would tend to stay away from jargon, but again, these are general ideas, not knowing your business, but old saying I heard over and over again, from the Executive Director of a 10 million dollar jewelry division was:

"go to the well that gives you the water" ... it beats wandering the desert looking for an oasis.

Gordon
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Old November 27, 2020, 11:44 AM
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GordonJ GordonJ is offline
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Default Part 2 GJA business primer, con't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by GordonJ View Post
I will say Harvey Brody, about 15 years ago, turned my head around on gaining control and building toll gates on my highway of life.


There is no doubt that Harvey Brody is a money making genius, and many of his students went on to BIG time fame and fortune...Halbert, Suarez, Abraham and a host of others.

I was struck by the number of customers he had, about 150 or so, and a lot less today I'm sure. But when those customers buy pallets full of product, you don't need that many.

Of all the many hours I have recorded with Harvey, I delve into a handful of them on regular occasion to refresh and retain his teachings. See, most of it isn't about the How to do, but most of it is about HOW TO THINK.

And his metaphors may take some time to wrap your head around, when all you want is the step by step WHAT do I do?

Over the years here, and you will see this name mentioned frequently in the forum, I've followed the business of Sherman Hunter, who worked with Harvey Brody for many years.

I've learned much from both men, and to be honest, I don't see much of their methods in the mainstream of Internet Marketing. That may be because of the Guru worship online, and what I consider to be ignorance of the past successes.

Some of the worldly concepts of yesteryear are timeless, they work just as well today as ever. Like the "takeover".

You can find a ton of videos on YouTube about how to buy a business with no money down, or use one of the standard ways:

Assets of the business (the seller).
Lease/ OPTION.
Co-op or Joint Venture.
Employee stock options.

Angel or venture capital, but we hate borrowing. I think it best to bootstrap a new business venture, and maybe use the OPTION or rent to buy over time to acquire assets.

Harvey Brody gave me the "VIEW FROM THE ROOFTOP" and I found it matched my own Square One Workshps PictoGrigm of the POA, PYRAMID OF ACCOMPLISHMENT.

Where Harvey had rungs of steps up the side of the building, mine was a small triangle on the lifeline, where most of the activity was hidden from view.

Both of these have TIME elements in them, and one thing I see day in and day out here and all around the Net is...

NOT ENOUGH DEADLINES.

People in general, apparently HATE deadlines. And procrastination and distraction set in and delay after delay take place. Some argue it is a "fear of success", but I don't buy into that.

I think procrastination comes from sloppy habits, and allowing yourself the luxury of distraction. If more people had hard deadlines and a reward/punishment for hitting or missing it, we'd see a lot more productivity.

If a project takes a year to do, then it is going to take that year no matter when you begin, every day delayed pushes it down the road even further.

Another reason for delay and procrastination is, BIG ideas, big projects, and complicated ones too. Initial energy wears down, interest wanes and more and more delays occur.

I like short and sweet, 'Get er done' type projects which can built on. Almost all of my reports get revised AFTER they have hit the market, full of errors, grammar, spelling, maybe even broken links or dead ones.

I am of the old school, throw it against the wall and see what sticks.

Perfectionists struggle with this concept, and they also tend to underachieve too.

Also, many would be success, want to do too many things at the same time, and maybe they are wired that way, like me, with my 'OFFICIAL' diagnosis of ADD/ADHD as the psychologist and psychiatrist both saw in my stack of report cards from the first grade on (all of them) and the recurring idea of me staring out the window, or not doing assignments on time.

I had to overcome this habit of distraction by setting vigorous time schedules, even for very short periods of time, but done routinely until they became unbreakable habits.

But back to Harvey and Sherman... If you want to get to NYC from Ohio, you don't need a map to Calif, eh?
Back in the day, AAA (auto association) would give members detailed maps of their journey replete with areas under construction. Today, most young people just set their GPS, and I would wager, many couldn't read a map if you gave them one.

But in business or making money, you want to know where you are going. The map metaphor comes in handy.

http://www.sowpub.com/story-crossroads.shtml In this story called the Crossroads of Life, written a long time ago, I use the map idea.

An aside about GPS, here in Cuyahoga Falls, we've had two people turn onto the railroad tracks instead of the freeway because they were blindly following the voice of their GPS, true stuff, can't make this up. Never did that with a map, HA!

In business or money making activities, I have in the past asked people to set a goal of a dollar amount at the end of a given period of time. Like 5k a month at the end of a year of activity. Very doable, as many of you do.

Some people don't like that way, they would have you focus on delivering your service or product and not worry about how much money you are makign...and there are some businesses where this can be a good thing.

Goals, if they are well thought out and if the reason WHY has been a part of the WHAT is wanted...they serve as a scorecard or a map.



I like to use this pic of a bridge (U of North Dakota at Valley City) and as a metaphor, many are walking around in circles on this side, when their goals, dreams, hopes and aspirations are on the other side, but maybe it is covered by a fog, and they can't find it.

For over 30 years, in the GJASQ1, I have asked, what do you want and why?

Tough questions for most to answer, but once it is, the fog lifts, the bridge is seen and a plan or action, one step at a time can be followed to the greener pastures.

Last edited by GordonJ : November 27, 2020 at 12:29 PM.
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Old November 28, 2020, 11:19 AM
MikePT MikePT is offline
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Default Re: GJA business primer, coming throughout the day.

Thanks Gordon.
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