Pinpointing, Then Exploiting Leverage Points In Your Business

Most of the time you actually spend in your business (excluding web doing “research”, Facebook, forums, twitter, checking email, and other stuff like that that have ZERO direct financial return)… is spent on operations. Stuff like customer service, keyword research, writing content, creating products, writing copy, writing AR emails, checking stats, setting up adwords campaigns, setting up split tests, etc. Those activities make you money… but if you think about it, it is insignificant considering the amount of time you spend on it. From me experience, the really big bucks comes from doing deals, setting upJV partnerships, strategic planning, etc. My friend sends me an email and says “Hey Mate, do you want to promote this…” and then we do a promo and make money. Normally a large amount of money in a small amount of time. Way more than any normal person could get from an AdWords campaign for example. The merchant of course has a few dozen people like us promoting his stuff, so he’s making an absolute killing. That’s leverage. The 80/20 principle dictates that you should be doing more deals and more joint ventures, and looking for leverage that you exploit in your favor. The problem is that if you’re like most online people, you’re probably notdoing this, let alone spending 20% of your time doing it. So if you think about it logically, if you really want to grow your business then it makes total sense to remove yourself completely from operations andget other people to handle those tasks for $10 an hour or whatever. You need to replace yourself with systems and procedures and get dedicated people to perform those tasks. You need to replace yourself with systems and procedures and get dedicated people to perform those tasks. Please read my article over here on how to do this. You should not be writing blog posts or tweeting. You should also not be reading blogs or tweets or forums… or reading tactical eBooks and courses. You must nail down a strategy and then plug in people and systems that can test and implement new tactics in your business. You should remove yourself from that world altogether and focus on business development… and you should get people to do the manual stuff (like writing) for you. How are you going to do this… and how are you going to afford this? By bootstrapping. Start with an org chart. When you’re just starting out you will fill all the positions yourself… however,you must get dedicated people to fill these roles and gradually remove yourself as you make more and more money. It’s possible to get a full time Virtual Assistant or Personal Assistant for ~$350 per month if you look in the right places. So once you are making $350 profit a month, you should immediately allocate that to a PA. This person will take care of your email, do online research for you… you can teach this person to do keyword research, operate WordPress, etc. You can even give this person writing tasks. Make notes or send mind maps and get them to flesh it out for you. That will free you to do more of the high leverage stuff that brings in direct income. Write sales copy, setup adwords campaigns, create products, network and setup JV deals. At this point you will be the copywriter (technical and sales) and you’ll probably also handle tech tasks. And your VA will take care of VA and customer service tasks. When your income goes up to $700 a month, you should get a full-time writer on board and show that person how you want your stuff done… showthem how to write search engine friendly content. Now your writing will be limited to salesletters exclusively, and your writer will take over blogging, content for SEO, articles for distribution, email autoresponder copy, etc. And just keep going until all the positions in the org chart are occupied. Each person must pay for themselves. If you get someone for $300 per month, then that person must (and probably will) bring in more than $300 per month in revenue. One benefit of writing content for the net is that good content has a long term value. Once it’s indexed and ranked, you’ll get traffic and sales from that for a long time. This is real leverage that pays off. I’m sure you get it. It’s really that simple. Your needs and your org chart will be different to mine. Get a copy of “E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber at the library or at a bookshop and read it. That is the most important book for entrepreneurs because it teaches you to focus on the business and the business systems, instead of the products or solutions you think your business is about. It also teaches the concept of the franchise prototype which will get you thinkingabout how you have been operating online in the past. And yep. Also, Work The System by Sam Carpenter.]]>

One comment

  1. Hey,

    I really enjoyed this article. I think you are a bit off base with outsourcing dirt cheap labour. I’ve used a bunch of these types of VA’s and they suck to be honest. But the point is valid, you need to leverage other peoples efforts. I have a university graduate writing me perfect 400-700 word articles for roughly £8 each. My users actually like them because they are written excellent, are well researched and provide value.

    That being said, in my own business, the biggest leverage points are basically conversion, lifetime value (email marketing/relationship building) and SEO. Food for thought, anyway, i enjoyed this post. Keep it up!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *