If You Build It, They Will Come

One of my favorite movies is Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones.  The famous quote, "If you build it, they will come", has become a catch phrase that has influenced all of my businees decisions for many years.

My first business was a complete and utter flop that cost me thousands of dollars that took me almost 15 years to pay off.  I truly thought that if I built it, they would come.  My business partner and I made some critical and unfortunate decisions that cost us dearly.  Our business was never able to get out from under the debt and we never figured out how to market the business successfully.

Future endeavors were more successful because of everything I learned from that disaster.  Why is it we always learn more from the mistakes than the successes?  I'm grateful for the initial failure that led to my later successes. 

I love the creative side of creating a new business - logos, websites, letterhead, etc.  It's the marketing that scares me.  I'm always afraid that they won't come.  That I didn't build it correctly.  That it won't be what I dreamed it would be. 

I am looking forward to working on the marketing side next week and to learn to make this new venture a success. 

I Could Have Had a V8!

The joys of learning things the hard way in business is that you don't usually forget the lesson.  I have had a few of those painful journeys that I can still feel the pain of 15 years later.  But I learned from them and that is what matters.

My most recent hard-knock-life lesson was that I forgot to go back to basics, simply because I use WooCommerce on my site as a payment portal.  I had it in my mind that I needed to find a WooCommerce plugin to allow for installment payments.  Even though PayPal is my credit card processor, I forgot they have valuable tools that I could still use.  It didn't even to occur to me to see what has changed over the years from the simply "buy now" button they used to offer.

I just spent $189 on a WooCommerce plugin, that I could have created for FREE on PayPal with a simple button.  My head, and checkbook, hurt right now.  I will now be checking with PayPal, before WooCommerce, for any options I want to add to my site in the future.

Show me the Money!

This week's exercise of coming up with ideas and doing the quantify and compare exercise was eye opening to me.  I honestly didn't think the one that came out on top would be the number one choice.  I expected two or three others.  I'm glad that the one I wanted to do, actually did.  It was great validation. 

The most eye opening for me was working with the keyword planner on the words I thought would work.  Boy was I wrong!  I'm going to have to spend a lot of time working through that to drive traffic to the site.  But, I've chosen a company that will be almost 100% automated, so the only time do expect to spend on it, once it is live is driving traffic.  This will be a fun learning curve for me that I have not experienced before.

To Affliate or Drop Ship, That is the Question

Once again, I learned so many new things.  Even though I preferred drop shipping at the beginning of this weeks, lesson, I did change my mind to at least start with affilate marketing.  Once they get their feet wet and master driving traffic to their site, drop shipping would be a natural transition and addition to their site.  

The key for both models is to really do their homework, compare pricing and requirements, and then choose the right products for their site.  Doing both gives them the best of both worlds, but will take time to master.  

For first time entrepreneurs, I believe in starting with one thing, deep diving and mastering, then setting up the processes that it can keep going on its own.  Once that is done, then move on to the next level, dive deep, master, set up processes and get it going on its own.  My first business, I wanted to be everything for everyone, never mastered, never was anything to anyone.  I spent a lot of time spinning my wheels and never getting traction.  

Learning is a Never Ending Adventure

I've started several businesses over the years.  Each one on my own, doing web research, and making decisions based on my own experiences and what I am passionate about.  This week, I learned a new way of deciding on starting a business - that of doing marketing research, analyzing profitability and then making a decision based on that information. 

I personally can't imagine starting a business that way.  I am a dreamer.  I am always passionate at the beginning and love the processes of creation.  But as we all know, after the fun of creation comes the real, day-to-day grind of running that business, dealing with customers and employees, dealing with financial strain, and even the stress business can add to your spouse and family.  I can't imagine having the fortitude to stick with something that I wasn't completely passionate about from the beginning.  For me, it would be too easy to say this is too hard and not worth it.  Having a dream, passion, and mission is what keeps me going through the hard times. 

It doesn't make the new way I learned about wrong.  It just showed me once again, that there are many ways to start a business and what works for some, may not work for others.