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When spending money on marketing one of the following three things will occur:

1. Your marketing fails (i.e., you make less in profit than you spent on your marketing expenses).
2. You have no idea if your marketing was a success or failure because you don’t measure the results.
3. Your marketing succeeds (i.e., you make more in profit than you spent on your marketing).

For each of these scenarios there’s a simple course of action:

1. If your marketing consistently fails and loses you money, then STOP and change what you’re doing.
2. If you don’t measure your marketing results, that’s just plain stupid. With the technology we have readily and cheaply available, it’s easier than ever to track your marketing results and return on investment (ROI).
3. If your marketing is working and consistently giving you a positive ROI, then you should crank it up and throw as much money as you can at it.

Why Your Marketing Budget Should be unlimited

One of the craziest things I see small business owners doing is setting a “marketing budget.”

By setting a marketing budget you are implying that either your marketing isn’t working and hence it’s a pure expense (i.e., a waste of money). Or you have no idea if it’s working because you don’t measure the results and so you throw money at it in the hope that it’s giving you some sort of positive result.

If it’s the former then of course you need to set a budget because you can’t have expenses running wild in your business. But a good question might be – why are you wasting money on marketing that isn’t working?

If it’s the latter then you need to change things pronto. You wouldn’t hire an employee and not measure their productivity, so why on earth would you consistently pay for marketing and not know what result it’s generating?

If you’re marketing is working (i.e., giving you a positive return on investment), why on earth would you limit it with a budget? It’s like having a legal money printing press.

This scenario is called money at a discount. If I was selling $100 bills for $80, wouldn’t you buy as many as you could possibly get your hot little hands on? Or would you say, “Sorry my budget for discounted $100 bills this month is only $800. I’ll just take ten, please?”

That’s why I always say, I have an unlimited budget for marketing that works. And you should too. One argument I hear against this is concern about being able to handle the demand. Firstly, that’s a great problem to have.

Secondly, if you’re truly receiving more demand than you can fill, this is the perfect opportunity to raise your prices. This will instantly boost your margins and bring you a better quality of client.

The Right Time to Set A Marketing Budget

The only time to set a marketing budget is when you’re in the testing phase. In the testing phase, I advocate that you fail often and fail cheap until you have a winner. Test your headline, your offer, your ad positioning and other variables. Then cut the losers and optimize the winners until you finally have a combination that gives you the best possible return on investment.

Remember the post office charges you the same amount to post a crappy direct mail piece that bombs as they do a high converting direct mail piece that pulls in millions. Once you have a winner that pulls in more than it costs you, crank up the marketing spend and hence the speed of your legal money printing press!

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on What is Direct Response Marketing? As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to market your business.

Want to know what the absolute biggest mistake made by small business owners when it comes to marketing?

I can’t overemphasize how widespread this problem is and it’s at the heart of why most small business marketing fails.

‍If you’re a small business owner, you’ve no doubt given some thought to marketing and advertising. You might be thinking about putting together a plan. What approach are you going to take? What are you going to say in your advertising?

The most common way most small business owners decide on this is by looking at large, successful competitors in their industry and mimicking what they’re doing. This seems logical – do what other successful businesses are doing and you will also become successful. Right?

In reality, this is the fastest way to fail and I’m certain it’s responsible for the bulk of small business failures. There are two major reasons why. Let's unpack them.‍

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‍

Reason 1: Big Companies have a Different Agenda

Large companies have a very different agenda when it comes to marketing than small businesses do. Their strategies and priorities differ from yours significantly.

The marketing priorities of a large company looks something like this:

• Pleasing The Board Of Directors
• Appeasing Shareholders
• Satisfying Superiors’ Biases
• Satisfying Existing Clients’ Preconceptions
• Winning Advertising And Creative Awards
• Getting “Buy-In” From Various Committees And Stakeholders
• Making A Profit

The marketing priorities of a small business owner look something like this:

• Making A Profit

As you can see, there is a world of difference in the marketing priorities of small and large companies. So naturally, there is a world of difference in strategy and execution.

Reason 2: Big Companies Have A Very Different Budget

Strategy changes with scale. This is very important to understand.

Do you think a big property investor who buys or builds skyscrapers has a different property investment strategy to the average small property investor? Of course.

A big property investment strategy simply won’t work on a small scale. You can’t just build one floor of skyscraper and have a success. You need all 100 stories.

If you have an advertising budget of $10 million and 3 years to get a profitable result, then that is going to be a very different strategy to needing to make a profit immediately with a $10,000 budget.

Using a large company marketing strategy, your $10,000 is going to be a drop in the ocean. It will be totally wasted and ineffective because you’re using the wrong strategy for the scale that you’re operating at.

Branding and ego-based marketing is the domain of large companies. To achieve any kind of cut through requires an enormous budget and the use of expensive mass media.

Direct response marketing gives small businesses cut through on a small budget. It’s designed to be accountable and ensure you get a return on investment that is measurable.

Mimicking Large Business Marketing Is A Mistake

Following the path of other successful businesses is smart, but it’s vital that you understand the full strategy you’re following and that you’re able to execute it.

Strategy from an outside observer’s perspective can be very different from the reality. If you’re following a strategy that has different priorities to you or has a vastly different budget then it’s highly unlikely it will generate the kind of result you’re hoping for.  

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on How to Create a Lead Magnet that Converts in 6 Steps. As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to acquire leads for your business and build your authority.

I recently watched a movie (can’t remember the name) where the snooty head chef after reading one of the order tickets starts shouting at the waiting staff “NO MODIFICATIONS, NO SUBSTITUTIONS!”

Chef felt indignant that the unwashed masses were ruining his dishes which he considered perfect works of art.

A famous chef may indeed have the luxury of deciding how his work should be consumed by the masses and force them to like it or lump it.

I see the exact same attitude from some business owners in regard to their marketing.

While this kind of head strong attitude is charming when it’s our hot-tempered French chef, as a business owner it’s one of the fastest ways to throw a huge pile of money down the drain on marketing that doesn’t work.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my Lean Strategy Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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I Would Never Respond To That!

When presented with an out-of-the-box marketing idea or strategy, it’s common to hear business owners say something like, “That won’t work; I wouldn’t respond to an ad like that!"

The obvious answer is that it’s not designed to elicit a response from YOU. It’s designed to elicit a response from your customer, and you are not your customer.

The typical objection given is, “That would never work for me; my business is different, or my clients are different.” This is especially so when presenting some of the concepts in direct response marketing mistake. One I see commonly repeated.

Assuming anything about your marketing and basing your marketing on your own opinions or the opinion of friends, family or colleagues is a major mistake. One I see commonly repeated.

Prove Yourself Right Or Wrong

You have a much deeper and more technical understanding of the products and services that you sell than your customer does, so of course you wouldn’t respond to the same types of advertisements as they do. You also have a built-in bias which skews how you view your products and services in the marketplace.

I’ve personally experienced this many times. Things I thought would never work, have worked brilliantly and things I thought would be sure winners were flops. Why? Because my point of view and biases were different to those of my customers. What I thought they wanted and what they really did want were misaligned.

Would you feel comfortable flying in a plane whose design was based on opinion? Wouldn’t you want to be sure that the design had been rigorously tested, passed aviation safety standards and had successfully flown in real-world conditions?

Similarly, to avoid wasting time, money, and resources on marketing that doesn’t work, I urge business owners to apply the scientific method to their marketing rather than basing it on their opinions or the opinions of others.

Here’s how you might apply the scientific method to your marketing:

• Ask a Question e.g., Will people who need plumbing services respond to this advertisement?
• Construct a Hypothesis e.g., I think this ad will deliver a positive return on investment
• Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment e.g., You run the ad in a publication that is read by your audience
• Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion e.g., The ad had a 7% response rate and delivered a 300% return on investment. Conclusion – this type of ad works.

Using this method, we don’t need to guess or base anything in our marketing on our own biased opinions or the opinions of anyone else.

We test small and analyze the results. We continue testing and discarding the losing ads. When we have a winner, we increase the marketing spend and widen the exposure to magnify the winning result.

This test and measure approach is accountable and relies on results, not opinions.

A wise man once said, “Don’t let your bias and opinions keep you away from a pile of money.”

You are not your customers, never assume what will work and what won’t – test and measure and decide based on results.

Around the year 1900, there were 100,000 horses in New York.

London in 1900 had 11,000 cabs, all horse-powered. There were also several thousand buses, each of which required 12 horses per day, for a total of more than 50,000 horses.

In addition, there were countless carts, drays, and wains, all working constantly to deliver the goods needed by the rapidly growing population of these cities.

All transport, whether of goods or people, was drawn by horses.

If you had a horse related business, then business was booming. Everything from clearing away the huge amounts of horse manure to grooming, feeding and housing the ever-growing population of horses.

Fast forward a few short years to the advent of electrification and the development of the internal-combustion engine there came new ways to move people and goods around.

By 1912, autos in New York outnumbered horses, and in 1917 the city’s last horse-drawn streetcar made its final run.

So in 12 years your business went from being on top of the world to losing more than half its revenue. Five years after that you were bust and all your knowledge, industry connections and skills were totally obsolete.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my Lean Strategy Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Don't Be A Turkey

Failing to anticipate changes, especially changes in technology, is what kills most businesses. Just ask these guys:

Kodak invented digital photography, yet despite this could not or did not use this early lead to its advantage. It let other competitors eat it’s lunch.

Borders finally got into e-books but it was too little, too late and consequently it also paid the ultimate price.

When the guy running his booming horse business in the early 1900’s started to see these new-fangled electric streetcars appearing, he might have chuckled to himself and thought that this form of transport was just a passing fad. After all horses had been used as means of transport for thousands of years.

Then a few years on, when more and more of his revenue was being eroded by the new technology, he might have started pining for the “good old days” when things were going well. He might have even become angry about what was happening and expected the government to intervene.

See anything similar happening today?

Various industries including manufacturing and brick and mortar retail are either in crisis or on the verge of crisis.

Globalization, the Internet and new technology is hurting them – big time.

They are whining and crying about the state of things, lobbying for government intervention and hoping the good old days will soon return.

But the good old days aren’t coming back – at least not for them.

Why don’t they just embrace the new technology and get onboard with it? Some of them will but most won’t.

The reason most won’t is because they have the same mindset as a turkey does.

Nassim Taleb, best-selling author of The Black Swan, tells the story of a turkey who is fed by a farmer every morning for 1,000 days. Eventually the turkey comes to expect that every visit from the farmer means more good food.

That’s all that has ever happened, so the turkey figures that’s all that can and will ever happen. In fact on day 1000 it's at the peak of its confidence. After all it now has 1000 days worth of track record on which to base it’s confidence.

With a track record like that what can possibly go wrong?

But then day 1,001 arrives. It’s two days before Thanksgiving and when the farmer shows up this time he hasn’t got food in his hand, instead he has a recently sharpened axe.

The turkey learns very quickly that its expectations were catastrophically off the mark – that the good old days weren’t going to last forever. So now Mr. Turkey is dead.

The moral of the story is don’t be a turkey and don’t run your business like the turkey would have.

How To Ensure Your Business Survives And Thrives For The Long Haul

Your ultimate competitive advantage is anticipation and taking action based on this anticipation.

It’s going to take guts, you’ll have to take risks and you’ll have to invest in research and new technology.

You need to constantly be pondering questions such as:

• What business do I need to be in?
• What technologies are coming that are going to disrupt my industry?
• How can I take advantage of the coming changes in technology rather than fight them?

You need constant strategic innovation – innovation that your customer cares about.

Skunkworks projects are one of the best ways to stay abreast of emerging technology while still continuing to run your current operation.

A famous example of a skunkworks project is the first Apple Macintosh computer.

Google have even made it part of their company’s culture by allocating 20% of employee time on side projects that interest them. Hugely successful Google products such as Gmail, Adsense and Google News have come from these skunkworks projects.

What resources are you investing in emerging technologies and trends in your industry?

Day 1,001 is coming for your business and your industry and if you aren’t ready with a new plan, your business could well suffer the fate of the turkey.

Having a culture of innovation, anticipating what is coming in your industry and running some skunkworks projects in your business will give your business a massive competitive advantage.

Talking about a competitive advantage. Are you in the process of building or starting a coaching business? Forget the guesswork and follow my proven methodology for scaling your coaching business. Just click the link.

My wife was recently subtly pointing out little things around the house that needed doing, as wives often do on Saturday afternoons when they sense you’re about to reach for a cool drink and a bit of downtime.

“Maybe you should get someone to come out and fix the silicon that’s coming off around the shower”, came the helpful suggestion.

Indignant that she implied I wasn’t capable of performing such a simple repair, I set out to prove her wrong and reclaim my manhood.

“I’ll fix this”, I said in my most macho voice as she rolled her eyes and left me to it.

Several visits to the local hardware store and a few hours later, I was proudly exhibiting the fruits of my labor.

Fast forward a few weeks and mold started showing up behind the silicon repair I’d made.

I finally gave in and called a professional.

“Did ya use bathroom grade anti-bacterial silicon mate?”, the gentleman condescendingly asked while inspecting my botched repair. The blank stare I gave in response ensured his bill was going to include a stupidity tax in addition to his normal charges for time and materials.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my Lean Strategy Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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The Value Of Experts

The above is an example when I clearly didn’t follow my own advice. I’m a firm believer in using outsourcing as a strategic leverage tool.

Outsourcing to experts can help you leverage your time so that you can concentrate on the highest value tasks possible. Everything other than your highest value tasks should be delegated or outsourced.

In my sad tale above, I paid for the materials to do the job myself, then I spent hours of my time doing the job (incorrectly), then I had to hire someone to undo the mistakes I’d made and finally pay them to do the actual job properly.

Clearly not the best use of my time or resources.

As entrepreneurs we have a “can do” mindset. This often means when something needs to be done, we are tempted to just roll up our sleeves and just do it.

However, spending a lot of time doing things that aren’t your area of expertise can quickly become a very expensive exercise. Remember money is a renewable resource – you can always get more money but you can never get more time.

Outsourcing Operational Tasks

Then there are other tasks which are necessary for the proper functioning of a business but don’t necessarily require any specialized expertise. These are often time consuming and repetitive.

Examples of this might include data entry, administration, follow up, shipping, etc.

The common concern with outsourcing these tasks is quality. Will they get done as well as if I was doing them myself? The answer is probably not, but a rule of thumb I use is 80% as good by someone else is better than 100% done by me.

Letting go can be difficult, especially if you’re a control freak and perfectionist like most entrepreneurial types are. But it’s necessary if you’re going to get scalability and leverage in your business.

Otherwise you end up effectively paying yourself minimum wage for menial tasks while sacrificing high-value tasks such as marketing and business systems which take your business to the next level.

I’ll leave you with some timeless wisdom from the late great, Jim Rohn:

Learn how to separate the majors and the minors. A lot of people don’t do well simply because they major in minor things.

Don’t mistake movement for achievement. It’s easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: Busy doing what?

Days are expensive. When you spend a day you have one less day to spend. So make sure you spend each one wisely.

We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.                    

Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.

Time is the best-kept secret of the rich.

Neil Armstrong once said, “You only have to solve two problems when going to the moon: first, how to get there; and second, how to get back. The key is don’t leave until you have solved both problems."

In the excitement of starting a business, it’s common to spend a lot of time thinking about “how to get there” – that is become successful. Often what’s given less thought is “how to get back” – i.e., the business exit strategy.

In this article, I'm going to explain how to set your business up for success. It'll take planning, and this takes time. You might want to check out these time-saving strategies.

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my Lean Strategy Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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Planning Your Exit Strategy

When starting a business it’s important to think clearly about why your business exists and plan for how you will exit. This sounds obvious but is something many business owners don’t think about until it’s too late.

• How’s it going to end?
• Who will your buyer be?
• Why will they buy your business?
• Will they buy you out for your customer base, for the revenue, for the intellectual property?
• How will they get a return for their investment?

Answering some of these questions will help you visualize exactly who your buyer is and why they would buy you.

It’s crucial to think about these things at the beginning because they will help you shape exactly how you engineer your business and what you focus on.

If your goal is to exit a business for $50 million, then everything you do in your business can be framed with the question: Will this help me get $50 million?

Who is Your Ultimate Customer?

You’ll rarely make as much money running a business as you will selling one.

The person or company who puts you out of business is your ultimate customer and satisfying them will result in the biggest pay day you’ll ever receive.

Countless fortunes have been made this way. However sadly a very large number of businesses are worthless and eventually just get wound down because the owner wants to, or has to, move on and has not been able to secure a buyer.

This is why it’s so crucial to structure things in a way that ensures you’re on the receiving end of a big pay day rather than faced with the realization that your years of hard work have come to naught as far as the value of the business is concerned.

What your business Investor Looks For

Over the years I’ve sold multiple businesses and now as an angel investor I’m on the other side of the table – evaluating businesses I feel would be worth buying into.

I can tell you the number one thing a purchaser looks for and that you need to satisfy is whether you HAVE a business or whether you ARE the business.

There’s an enormous difference. If your business can’t be operated without you, then it’s not a saleable asset and you’re stuck – regardless of how good or profitable it is. That’s why business systems are so crucial.

Having good business systems is what enables the business to run without you. See the following articles for more detailed coverage on the topic of business systems:

• Why A Lack Of Systems Is Stunting Your Business Growth And Costing You A Fortune
• Eliminating The Bottleneck In Your Business – YOU
• Products Make You Money, Systems Make You A Fortune

Next, you need to consider who will buy your business and why. Will it be a competitor? Someone new to the industry? Someone in your industry but in a different niche?

Structuring the business with a logical acquirer in mind is smart and it’s something that is attractive to investors. It shows them a clear path to exit and return of their invested capital. Even if you don’t plan to take on investors, as the owner of the business, you should think of yourself as an investor.

You wear the entrepreneur hat by day but at night the investor hat should come on and you should be questioning when that return on invested capital is going to occur and how.

But I don't want to Sell my Business

This is one of the most common objections I hear from owner-operators. Very often they say, “I love what I’m doing and I don’t intend to sell.” That’s great if what you love doing is making you a good income – relatively few people enjoy such a lifestyle.

But whether you like it or not, one day your circumstances will change. You may get bored, get sick, want to retire, see a better opportunity, etc. When, not if, that time comes and you do decide it’s time to sell, you want to be able to walk away with a cheque that has a lot of zeros on it rather than have to wind it all down and possibly end up in debt or sell for a pittance.

If you start thinking about structuring for exit at the time you need to exit you’re toast. It’s way too late and you’re very unlikely to achieve a favorable result. You need to start with the end in mind. Start thinking about your ultimate customer and what would motivate them to write you that cheque which becomes your biggest pay day.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on What is Direct Response Marketing & Why It Works? As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to market your business.

I’ve always thought of Google as the all-knowing, omnipresent computer onboard the starship USS Enterprise from Star Trek.

Ask it any question and it instantly returns you the correct answer. Ask it to elaborate and it gives you all the relevant information.

Except instead of asking it the coordinates of a Romulan vessel, we ask it more mundane things like the phone number of the nearest pizza joint.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of trying to game search engine results so that you appear higher up in the results for a given keyword or phrase.

It’s so that when someone types in “best hotel in New York,” your hotel comes up preferably as the highest result or at the very least on the first page.

It’s the equivalent of rigging the Yellow Pages so that your hotel shows up at the top of every page in the “Hotels” section.

If that seems to you like corrupting the objectivity of the all-knowing, omnipresent computer then you’re absolutely right.

It’s been happening for years and many people have made a lot of money in the process – both those benefiting from search results skewed in their favor as well as those offering services to help customers game search engine results.‍

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

Then you need to market it. But not just any marketing will do. In my Lean Strategy Course, I show you the exact techniques I've used to start, grow, and exit several multi-million dollar businesses, so you can too.

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A Costly SEO Misconception

Part of the popularity of SEO is that it is widely believed to be a free marketing strategy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s only free if your time is worth nothing. Enormous amounts of time producing content and generating back-links are required to have the desired effect on search engine results.

This has to be done either yourself or be outsourced to an agency specializing in SEO.

Google’s Crackdown

In recent times, Google and other search engines have been fighting back. Google was founded on the back of being able to offer much better search results than any of the search engines before it.

The gaming of search engines through various SEO methods has reduced the overall quality of search results. If users search Google for something and continually get spammy, gamed results they’ll start to look elsewhere for answers to their queries.

That will be the death knell for Google.

So Google has started fighting back. It is now actively looking for sites that are “over-optimized” or that are using shady tactics to game search engine results. It’s punishing these sites by either lowering their rank or in some cases completely removing them from its index.

When someone searches for “best hotels in New York” it wants to actually show you the real, most relevant and objective results just like the computer aboard the USS Enterprise would have.

Google’s quest is for objectivity. Its goal is to become almost a collective consciousness. If you were to ask everyone in New York what the best hotels were and then tabulate the results in order of the best to worst, that’s exactly the result that Google wants to put in front of you when you search for “best hotels in New York.”

Historically, Google has done that through the use of back-links. It treated a link from another website as a vote and hence sites with the most “votes” for a particular keyword or phrase got pushed up higher in the search engine rankings.

However, back-links are easy to manufacture and those whose business it is to game search engine rankings have been busy generating back-links like crazy over the past few years.

So Google is now looking for new ways to give relevant and objective results and is lowering its reliance on back-links.

It’s the end of SEO as we know it.

One of the new methods it’s using to judge a site’s relevance is by looking at “social” signals.

When you “like” something on Facebook or tweet about it, Google wants to know. Other than hooking everyone up to a brain wave sensor, this is one of the best ways for Google to tap into the global consciousness.

Social media posts such as “XYZ hotel had terrible service” or “had a great time at ABC hotel” are valuable to Google. They are much harder to artificially manufacture on a large scale than back-links. These social signals are starting to play a much bigger role in search results served up by Google and most other search engines.

This is also the reason Google has plowed huge resources into Google+ which is their answer to Facebook and Twitter.

The Best Form Of SEO

One thing you can be sure of is that Google is going to get better and better at producing relevant and objective results – it’s business depends on it and it has thousands of Ph.D.’s and propeller heads working day and night to achieve this objective.

Many businesses have been plowing huge resources into gaming search engine results. The results are dubious and often short-lived. In some cases it can cause negative results if Google catches on to what you’re doing – and sooner or later they will.

So what’s a business to do? After all search engines are a vital source of leads.

My advice is that you build an extraordinary business.

That’s not as airy-fairy as it sounds.

Build the type of business that gets “liked,” talked about, and mentioned. Take the resources you would have put into gaming search engines and put them into building a business with raving fans.

Doing that is the best SEO strategy I know of, and it’s sustainable long term. As Google gets better and better, you’ll only continue to benefit.

If you run the best hotel in New York, as Google’s algorithm continues to improve, so will your rankings. Finally, the person searching for “best hotel in New York” will be shown your website as the top result.

But unlike a gamed result, you need not fear being wiped off the search index. And in the process, you’ve built an extraordinary business.

How do you charge high prices for your products and services while having your customers thank you for it?

In short by being remarkable.

When given this answer, the first thing many business owners do is mutter under their breath something like, “easier said than done.”

Perhaps it’s because being remarkable evokes visions of being unattainably unique or creative. Something that others far more talented do.

The cafe owner says, “Dude I just sell coffee, how am I supposed to be remarkable?”

That raises a common question, how can you be remarkable when you sell a commodity?

Do You Want to Grow Your Business Rapidly?

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How To Be Remarkable When You're Selling A Commodity

When I talk about being remarkable, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the product or service you sell is unique. Far from it.

In fact being unique is a dangerous, difficult and expensive place to be. However, you must be different.

How can our cafe owner be different? Check this out:

How much extra did it cost the cafe to serve art with its coffee? Pretty close to zero I would expect. Maybe some extra training for the barista and a few extra seconds of time per cup.

But how many people will each customer tell or better still bring in to show? Could this cafe owner charge 50c more per cup than the cafe down the road? For sure. That’s 50c of pure profit multiplied by hundreds of thousands of cups per year straight to the bottom line.

Yet is the product unique? Not by a long shot – just slightly different. Different enough to be remarkable.

Here’s another example. Most e-commerce sites send the same boring confirmation email when you buy from them. Something along the lines of, “Your order has been shipped. Please let us know if it doesn’t arrive. Thank you for your business.”

Instead, have a look at how CD Baby creates a remarkable experience for the customer and a viral marketing opportunity for themselves instead of a normal boring confirmation email:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year”. We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

This order confirmation email has been forwarded thousands of times and posted on countless blogs and websites. Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby credits this remarkable order confirmation message for creating thousands of new customers.

Again nothing unique about the product, but the transformation of something ordinary and boring gives the customer a smile and creates free viral marketing for the business.

One more example from another highly competitive, commodity industry – consumer electronics:

Yes the iPad is an amazing product but let’s face it – it has a lot of competition and from a hardware perspective most of the competing products are almost identical.

Yet look at this commercial – it’s an ad about the remarkable cover that you can get for your iPad. Not one word or mention about the device’s features, benefits or specifications.

Notice in all three of the examples the actual product being sold is a commodity and what makes it remarkable is something totally peripheral to what you are buying.

Yet the seller can and does, command premium pricing because they are selling a remarkable experience. Not only is the customer happy to pay the premium but in fact rewards the seller by spreading the message about their product or service. Why? Because we all want to share things and experiences that are remarkable.

What can you do in your business that’s remarkable?

Mama raised me to be helpful and obliging. As a kid that served me well. The pat on the head and warm praise of the words, “good boy” was its own reward.

However in adult relationships this is known as being a doormat. In business, it’s naivety and the road to failure and misery.

Learning to say no is a liberating experience. More than that it’s a vital time management practice the helps you master the art of focus.

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Having A Not-To-Do List

Much of the various systems for productivity focus on new and ever more efficient ways to handle tasks and to-do lists.

To-do lists are indeed valuable time management tools (I personally use and recommend GTD). However before prioritizing you need to start with elimination. Decide on the things that you will not do, projects you will not take on and the type of people you won’t work with.

Having the same few items lingering at the bottom of your list forever is demoralizing and stressful.

However, guilt or a false sense of responsibility can cause us to fool ourselves into believing we’ll one day get around to it.

Have an honest think – what would be the worst case scenario if I eliminate this task or project from my list? If there is no or little real consequence, chances are it can be safely deleted.

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Peter F. Drucker

It may well be that it is an important but perhaps not urgent task. These can often be sources of procrastination.

One of the best ways to handle these is to delegate or outsource these if possible. Yes, it may not be done as well as you would do it, but a good rule of thumb is 80% as good by someone else is better than 100% done by me.

The Customer Is Not Always Right

You need to be vigilant with time thieves. In fact, given the choice I’d much prefer to be robbed by a garden variety thief than a time thief. For one I can prosecute the ordinary thief, secondly, money is a renewable resource – time is not.

One of the most common types of time thieves are problem customers. In a previous article we’ve discussed why you should fire problem customers.

Let’s correct an old adage – the customer is NOT always right. Being a good doormat and putting on a plastic smile despite the unreasonableness and rudeness of a small population of customers is not my cup of tea.

These types of customers are a very small percentage of the population but they can rob you of all the joy of running your own business, especially if you subscribe to the philosophy that “the customer is always right”.

This old saying while cute, was likely devised by someone with an inferiority complex and has since been parroted by “experts” of some description or another ad nauseum.

My response to this type of time thief is usually to refund their money, politely show them the door and direct them towards one of my competitors.

Like many business owners, the kind of business I’m interested in is about lifestyle design. Our businesses are vehicles to enable us to live an extraordinary life. Selfish? Too transparent? I don’t think so – just honest and open.

Business should be and has always been about an exchange of value.

So of course we do take exceptional care of the customer and we understand to earn a million dollars we have to deliver at least a million dollars or more in value. Everyone loves a bargain so if we deliver more value than we charge for, we’ll always be in demand.

Zig said it well:

You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

It turns out that choosing what you won’t do is just as, or even more, important than managing the things that you will do.

Be ok with the things on your not-to-do list. It will relieve stress, help you focus and increase the quality of your output.