Starting a business comes with a long list of obstacles. Sometimes they are unavoidable and the best we can do is navigate around them. Other times, we create our own obstacles. That’s what we are talking about this week on 5 Minute Marketing.
After returning from the Traffic and Conversion Summit, I was reflecting on some common mistakes new business owners make. The big one- the one that I think keeps the most businesses from growing at their full potential- is a lack of focus.
When I was first starting my career, I was juggling three full time jobs. I had the time and I had the energy, but despite being able to make it work, I was unintentionally shooting myself in the foot. This is the situation a lot of business owners find themselves in; juggling too many things in an effort to “get it all done”.
The reality is, most successful people are really only good at one thing. They find their niche and spend their career becoming masters of that one thing. When we are able to find our one thing, it gives us room to build upon that simple foundation and see huge growth.
This week I want to encourage you to get rid of all the excess, throw out all the distractions and find your one thing. As always, I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you out. Download it here or click on the image below.
Make sure to listen to this week’s podcast to hear more about the importance of simplicity and why it is the only way you’re going to 10x your growth this year.
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Businesses of all sizes need it. You cannot get your business off the ground until you decide. You simplify. You decide to go after one niche with one product and then you can build on top of that.
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Uh, happy Wednesday. Um, I just got back, uh, a couple days ago. Was in San Diego last week at, um, Traffic & Conversion Summit, so hopefully, uh, I know I met up with a couple of you listening. Um, met up with a bunch of SamCart customers, uh, some partners of ours. It was an awesome event. Um, and one thing now, I was kind of going back over my, my notes. Um, thinking of, you know, what are things I can share with, uh, all of you that are in, um, you’re, you’re building your one page website or your one page funnel, or you’re SamCart customers, or you’ve just been following me for a while and you’re still either trying to get your business off the ground. Um, and you know, make your, you could be making your first dollar, your first thousand bucks. Or you’re, you know, i- making good money. You’re maybe the five, six figure mark and trying to get to six or seven figures or eight figures. Um, you know, what is, what’s the biggest takeaway, the biggest common denominator that I see that holds people back? Both that held me back in the beginning, that c-, you know, continues to, you know, even hold us back now? What are, what is that one, one big thing that usually gets in the way?
Um, and I was looking back over all my notes. A bunch of conversations I had with people that are just starting out and people, you know, friends of mine that are, you know, have legitimate established business that are doing millions of dollars a year. And the, the single biggest thing that I think holds people back, um, especially in the beginning, is their ability to simplify. Their ability to, to decide to attack one thing. Not to attack a hundred things at once. Um, i- a- and, again, like, like always, you know, last couple episodes were, we’ve made cheat sheets so, uh, I’ll show you how to get, uh, and we, I made a little cheat sheet for you guys that helps you kind of take everything I’m about to explain to you and put it all on one piece of paper so that you can take your business and 10x it this year.
Um, but look, the, the bottom line is, a- amateurs focus on nothing. They have a hundred different ideas for businesses, for products, for marketing channels, for affiliate partners they could go after, um, niches they can go after. Um, the, you know, the, the ideas are endless. And look, you know, part of that is why we all do this. Like a lot of us are creators. We’re visionaries. That’s w-, it’s what comes naturally to us, is having ideas. But not being able to then select that one idea s-, to decide on that one product, to decide on that one traffic channel, that one marketing idea, that one pitch, that one page. Whatever that one thing is that’s going to take you to the next level, to be able to put your, you know, tunnel vision on and say, look, this is the only thing I’m going to worry about. Or this is the only thing I’m going to ask my team to worry about. That is where you will find more growth than you’ve ever found before.
Um, I remember when I first got started. You know, I would, I just graduated college, I landed a big, you know, a, a great desk job here, uh, in the D.C. area. I had a full time job, and I got this idea of starting my own thing. And I, y-, I didn’t have the money to start it, so I decided, you know, hey, I was just going to start building websites for people on the side. I was learning how to build WordPress sites and, and design them with themes and, you know, run Facebook ads to them. I know all everything I needed to, to know to do it for other people, I just didn’t know how to sell stuff on my own. So I started, on top of my full time job, started building websites for people. Um, making a couple grand a month on the side. And then I was starting, uh, my first website, my first business, which was trainbaseball.com, where I was creating e-books and hitting programs and video courses and trying to sell those.
Um, so I was doing three basically full time jobs at the same time. And I had no kids and wasn’t married yet. Um, so I had all the time in the world, and I still, what was holding me back, one, I still had my full time job, so I couldn’t dedicate, you know, as much time as I wanted to to my business, and I was running a, a service business where I was building websites on the s-, at the same time on the side. Um, i- and i- it killed my business. It wasn’t until I said, “Look, I’m not going to build websites for anyone else anymore,” that I then got, you know, 33% more of my time back to put into Train Baseball. And that’s when it really started to take off.
And then when I quit my job, in really started to take off. Um, and it was just because I simplified. Uh, I think one of the things that, that hurts us all and makes us think we have to do it all, is we see other people that seem like they’re doing it all. Y- you guys might, you know, be watching me and say, “He’s i- got hi- his podcast and he does these calls and he has SamCart and he’s got, you know, business where he’s creating products.” But what you don’t realize is, one, we have a big team that helps me do all of that. It might look like I’m doing it all. I’m not doing it all. I can promise you that. Um, you know, we have 20 people here that, that help me do these things around the clock. And most of it, we get to repurpose. A- again, if you guys are watching this video on Facebook, I’m recording one piece of content that goes on Facebook and becomes our podcast over at 5 Minute Marketing. Um, if you guys are listening on Facebook, you might not even know we have a podcast. You can go to iTunes right now, search 5 Minute Marketing, and see the same exact content in audio form there.
So, we cut corners. We simplify. I create one piece of content that I make work for us. Um, you know, i- i- the other mistake that we, businesses that are doing a hundred things at once, most likely, i- if you’re looking at your competition or whoever and they’re doing a hundred things at once, they’ve probably been around quite a while. They probably have big teams. They probably have, you know, a ton of money in the bank that they can invest in these other projects. And just because you don’t have those things, doesn’t mean you have to find a way to do those things. It doesn’t mean you have to have a podcast and Instagram following and a YouTube following and a Facebook following. And a big email list and a Facebook Messenger list and a ton of affiliates and speak at events and have 15 different products. Like, y- look, we all know how complicated this business can be if we let it. Um, the truth is, i- most of the most successful people I know in this world, they really are only good at one thing. They dial in one thing. They decide, look, I’m going to master this one marketing channel, or I’m going to perfect this one, you know, product.
Um, i- and then they build onto those things. But they can’t build onto them until they perfect that one channel, that one product, that one business, that one niche. Um, people that spread themselves too thin end up shooting themselves in the foot, and I did it with SamCart in the beginning. We had this, um, this vision for, you know, a bunch of different software products that we could create. Both SamCart, which is, started off as a shopping cart, now it’s kind of a sales platform, um, that helps you sell whatever you’re trying to sell. We had an idea for, uh, a webinar tool and a m-, a membership tool, and, uh, a website building tool and all, I mean, all kinds of stuff. And those things sound so great. I mean, even now, thinking about ’em, it’s like, uh, you can feel that side of your innovator’s brain, the visionary brain, saying, “Look, I, I want to go do those things. They could be so great.” But you know what would suffer? SamCart would suffer. And it did in the beginning. Um, you know, I had our team trying to do a hundred things at once and because of that, our support suffered. Our product suffered. Our marketing suffered.
And it wasn’t until, really we struggled with that for a while. It wasn’t ’til a year and a half ago, right around there, where we decided to throw all those other projects away and stop working on them, and focus on the one product that people love and that was helping the most people, and that really is what the, the bread and butter of the business is, which is SamCart. And that’s why now, SamCart is hands down the most powerful and easiest tool for selling your products online. It’s why our customers make five times more than the competition. I’m not going to name names. You guys know what other products are out there, you know, tools that you can use to sell your stuff. And, i- the bottom line is, our customers make five times more on average than every other tool out there. Uh, four to five times more. Um, and I know that because I know what our customers make and all the people that we’re competing with, uh, some of them are publicly traded companies and we know what their customers make. Um, and that’s because we are staying focused.
I gave our support team one job to do, which is help our customers sell. And that’s why our c-, our support has turned completely around in two years from a liability to probably one of the biggest assets that we have. It’s something people rave about. Um, you know, i- it’s, this, that’s the best part I, my favorite part about this advice is, I need it as much as you need it. That businesses of all sizes need it. You cannot get your business off the ground until you decide, you simplify, you decide to go after one niche with one product, and then you can build on top of that.
Um, I couldn’t get my business from seven to eight figures, which we’re about to hit, until we decided to simplify and go after one thing. Um, and, and I’m not going to be able to get my business from eight figures to nine figures until we simplify even again, and we decide to go after one thing. Um, w- a, as soon as we lose that, that path, and we start getting, you know, spread too thin, we’re not going to be able to pick up the pieces. Um, so, anyway. That is, I think, the biggest take away that I got from, uh, the event. Uh, there’s a couple other ones I’ll do over the next couple weeks. But for you guys, whether you’re building your, your one page, um, whether you are just, you know, a SamCart customer, whether you’re just a follower of mine, whether you’re selling physical products or digital products, the biggest thing I would stress to you, uh, whether you’re just starting out or you’re trying to scale your business, is what is that one thing? What, if you’re just getting started, which niche are you most passionate about? Go after that. Which product do you think you’ll have the most fun doing? Go after that.
Um, if you’re trying to scale your business, what channel is the one that’s going to help you scale? If you had to cut everything else out. Or which product could you create next that you think has the biggest upside? And then, delete everything else. Take all the notes, all the ideas, all the stickies, all the Dropbox files, all the Evernote notes, and put them away out of sight until you are done that one idea. And you’ll be happy you did. I promise you. So, uh, anyway, take that to heart. Um, like always, I made a little cheat sheet I was working on with my team. How can I, you know, it’s really something I need for myself just to remind me. And I think you guys will really, really like it. Um, you can grab it, uh, if you’re watching on Facebook, either comment down below, just let me know in the comments and I’ll message it over to you. Uh, if you’re listening on the podcast, just, uh, open up, uh, Chrome or Safari on your phone and t- go to brianmaran.com/103. One hundred and three. One zero three. It’s episode 103 on the podcast. Um, so just go to brianmaran.com/103 and I’ll send it over to you.
Um, and this will help you just kind of take all the ideas that are in your head and decide on one. And then use that to 10x your business, uh, this year. And look, when you’re done this one thing, you can go back to this piece of paper and go after the second idea. Um, so, hopefully that helps. Um, anyway. Hope you guys enjoyed, uh, this one. Let me know in the comments what you think, uh, and go grab that cheat sheet and I’ll see you guys next week.
If you are looking for an easy way to launch your business online and start making sales, or a simple way to get fast cash out of your already established business, then check out how I’m making $1729 per day with a simple one page website. I break it all down over at onepagefunnel.com. That’s the number one, page funnel, dot com. [/expand]
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