The 5 Mistakes That Guarantee Your Business Never Gets Off The Ground
I see ‘$27 gurus’ giving terrible advice all time, while new entrepreneurs follow them straight off a cliff…It just breaks my heart.
Part 1 of 2
Time.
Waste too much time following the advice of someone who doesn’t really have a sustainable or successful entrepreneurial experience, and you’re not only at zero again, but you may even be further behind.
This is real world stuff in real time.
We root out the really bad advice that stinks up the Internet, and try to be a guiding light for the new marketer to get on the right path, right away. Now, I’m not against low-cost items that help you build a system using strategies and tactics that fundamentally work. Just make sure it’s not a ‘hack‘ or ‘hidden loophole‘… there’s no future there. That’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make, taking really bad advice from people who care only about their wallet, not yours. But it’s not the only bad advice you’ll see. In this two-part blog series, I’ve decided to reveal the 5 worst pieces of advice you can get and how to avoid it. Here it is:- Create your product first
- Get more traffic
- Focus on your passion
- Get the money and get out
- Get your Infrastructure in place first
Bad Advice #1: Create Your Product First…
This is just awful. This piece of advice is the one thing that strips new marketers of all hope because they are guaranteed to fail! And it’s a really a costly failure. The bad advice is often couched in these well-intentioned platitudes:“You’ve got something to say and people need to hear it,” or
“You’re an expert. Just claim it and get your product out there for people because they’re waiting on you…”

Here’s what happens to a lot of new entrepreneurs:
- you spend all your time building your product
- throw up some last-minute sales page because a guru said you must have one of those
- hook up a PayPal account to the buy button
- wait for people to send you money ‘while you sleep’
- And then, you wait for people to beat a path to your door
Crickets. Nothing. No nibbles. No sales.
This confirms your worst nightmare. Your husband or wife was right! Your mom said, “I told you so!” Everyone was right. There’s no way to make money with an online business! It’s time to give up. What’s missing? EVERYTHING is missing! Especially sales and marketing strategies and techniques. You’ve made the classic mistake of spending your hard-earned cash building a product without a market, that doesn’t solve a desperate problem, or that people haven’t said they want or need. The only one with a desperate problem now is YOU! Next step? Clinical depression.Man, this seems harsh as I’m rereading it, but I really wish someone had smacked me up side the head with this TRUTH when I first started.
I’ve done it. Been there. Got the t-shirt. My XXL says, “I’m with stupid!” and the arrow’s pointing up at my face. You’re not alone.That’s why I teach that product creation is the LAST step!
We break the business down into two simple layers: Marketing and Delivery.- Marketing equals sales, traffic, conversions – all the skills and techniques required to make money. If you live in this layer and master it, you’ll be rich for ever!
- Delivery equals the plumbing of your business, the infrastructure, the products – all the technology you need to build an empire. And frankly, you never need to know how any of this works…
But don’t spend any time in the delivery layer first…
In fact, you shouldn’t step foot in there until you are making beaucoup money. It’s not necessary to your success. When you’re making a lot of money selling other people’s products using THEIR delivery layer, you may be ready to build your own – including your own products – if you decide you want the headache of a complex infrastructure. (We’ll talk more about this in #5.) But not until then. Here’s another harsh truth: Your product is not so special that it will sell itself. Everyone I know who is successful in business spends 80 to 95 percent of their time SELLING.
- You didn’t have to spend the time building it yourself.
- You don’t have to invest cash in the solution.
- You test the market to determine if the consumer market wants it while being completely detached from the outcome.
- You can drop it like a hot potato if it doesn’t sell – and not lose a wink of sleep over it.
- You can serve your community by offering solutions to problems which makes you a vital service provider.
- You get paid for your performance. The more you sell, the more money you earn.
- You learn to sell and market immediately without waiting until everything is ready (when you’re creating your own products).
- You build relationships that will reciprocate for you when you’re ready to sell your own products down the road (if you decide to do that).
- You discover how to generate cash fast.
- You get paid by other people to build your list with quality buyers.
Bad Advice #2: Get More Traffic…
Oy vey! What if every click on any link to your website costs you $1. Imagine a little meter in the upper right corner of your site that counted the clicks, dinging every time a new person visits, and withdraws a $1 from your bank account instantly.
Traffic is a double-edged sword!
Sending lots of traffic to a bad offer that doesn’t convert and continuing to do so over time will bankrupt you FAST! What’s the solution? First, get new friends. Tom’s an idiot. Immediately, stop paying for traffic until you figure out why it’s costing you so much. In other words, why isn’t it converting? Annie is doing something right. What is it? Study Annie’s site, her offer and the marketing system that she’s using. Why is her site converting so well? Talk to her. She’s living the successful online business life.What’s she doing that you’re not?
Then, look at other people’s offers and conversions. What’s working for them? Why is yours not? You’ll discover that successful marketers are split testing sales pages, messages, offers and prices to build the best conversion rates.
If you’re making money because your traffic conversions are really good, then you know exactly how much money you can spend on getting more traffic and it becomes a self-perpetuating system.
But not until.What we’ll cover in Part 2…Click here to read it.
One of my favorite, and more controversial efforts this year was to focus on creating our own products or selling other people’s products that solve real problems with real solutions. We backed that up with our favorite hashtag:#SellNoCrap
The final 3 pieces of bad advice really support an attitude of quality and service above all by focusing on your passion AND money, building value in your offers, and creating systems that work for you all the time. Stay tuned. I think you’ll love the next part in this series.Tell us what bad advice you gotten in building your business in the comments below.
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What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever received from someone who should have known better? No need to name names. Just report the situation.