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Would you like some advice from an entrepreneur who built a $2 billion real estate investment firm? As entrepreneurs, it is easy to become consumed in our work and schedules. Sometimes we get so focused on meeting a deadline or reaching a certain goal that we forget to focus on nurturing our important relationships. 

In the last episode with Jeff Burningham, we discussed why entrepreneurs should never stop learning. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can maintain healthy business and personal relationships.

Make Time

If we want to maintain our relationships, whether personal or professional, we need to make time for that person. A study published by the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that it takes about 50 hours of time together for two people to move from acquaintances to friends, 90 hours to become more than simple friends, and over 200 hours before we will consider someone a close friend (Source: The University of Kansas). 

When we make time for our customers, business partners, friends, and family, we strengthen our relationships. Spending time with someone shows that we care about them and what is going on in their lives. 

When I asked Jeff what his biggest home run was in his career, he told me it was finding his partners at Peak Capital. 

“It's all about the team; the best teams almost always win,” Jeff said. “I think the longevity of the partnership was the biggest home run in my career because not only has it certainly paid off financially over time but more importantly, it's paid off interpersonally and personally, as we have fun together and grow businesses together.” 

Jeff built very strong relationships with his business partners, and because he was able to do this, his company became very successful. However, if Jeff hadn’t put the time into building those relationships, his company could have potentially had a very different outcome. 

When I asked Jeff what his biggest failure was, he said it is being too focused on the end prize, and not spending enough time developing relationships. 

“I'm very type A, driven by results, driven by outcomes. And that's what my mistake has been. I'm too often driven by outcomes when, really, I think the outcome we really want [to focus on] is our close, intimate relationships,” Jeff said. 

Jeff explained that there have been times when he may have neglected his close relationships or he wasn’t as empathetic as he could have been, something which can really hurt relationships. This can be caused when we are too focused on the grand prize such as profit. Instead, we need to remember that without relationships, we wouldn’t get anywhere. We need relationships with our customers if we are going to sell, we need relationships with our partners if we’re going to stay organized and energized, and we need relationships with our friends and family if we’re going to stay positive and happy. 

“Sometimes I lose perspective,” Jeff said. “What really matters in the end [is] the relationships that we have.” In order to build these strong relationships that are the backbone of our businesses, we need to take the time to develop them. This can mean prioritizing a coffee date with a partner over finishing a business report or taking the night off to spend it with family, even when we have a list of 100 things to get done by the end of the week.

Be Patient and Understanding

We have to remember to be patient with everyone in our lives. Often stress and pressure can build up until the thing that breaks the camel’s back is a small and insignificant thing someone close to us says. They end up getting the worst of it as we let everything affecting us, come out on them. We need to be patient with the weaknesses of others and be patient during disagreements. 

“What I wish we had more of is the wisdom, the patience, [and] the foresight to understand we're all flawed characters,” Jeff said. “We're all extraordinary in some ways. We're all very ordinary in other ways. . . . There's a lot more that binds us together, and that makes us similar in our human experience than what makes us different.”

In our professional relationships, patience is essential. An employee may repeat the same mistake while they’re learning or a partner may take more time to complete their part of a project than we take. If we aren’t patient and lose our temper, it can permanently damage a relationship. Sometimes we may be unable to recover. When we are lacking patience with those we work with, Jeff urges us to remember that we are all flawed. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and if we expect others to be patient with us as we work on our weaknesses, we should be patient with others as they work on theirs. 

Our strengths and weaknesses often go hand in hand. It’s like picking up a stick, you have to pick up both sides. The two sides of the stick are a superpower and a weakness. God gives us strengths so we can change the world, but with every strength, there is an associated weakness which gives us humility and the chance to focus on improving and overcoming it. Our weaknesses not only test our patience with others but also our patience with ourselves. 

Even if we vote for different people and have opposing political views, we still have a lot more in common than we do in differences. “Let's support each other . . . and endlessly give each other grace and mercy in places where we don't see eye to eye,” Jeff said. 

Two people can never agree 100% of the time. We may disagree with our business partner on the best marketing strategy or argue about parenting methods. However, even if we have disagreements, if we can be patient and understanding, there are ways to communicate and work through conflicts without damaging a relationship. 

Love One Another 

My wife and I have a core philosophy, and that core philosophy is “just love”. As we come into conflict in a relationship or a challenge with an employer or co-worker, 99% of the time when I don't know what to do, the answer to that problem or that challenge is just to “just love” them. Choose kindness. Choose love. Choose compassion. Choose the benefit of the doubt.

Billy Cox, an American bassist, said, “Leadership today is based on relationships built with trust, hope, love, and encouragement.” In order to be a successful leader in our businesses, we need to lead with love. We should treat each employee with respect and value their opinions like we would our own. 

If we don’t show love in our relationships, they will likely dwindle and burn out. Despite all the work we have to do in such a little amount of time, relationships should be our top priority. When our employee has an idea, we should listen. When our family eats dinner, we should sit with them whenever possible. When our partner disagrees with us, we should do our best to understand them and love them. 

As we spend quality time with those around us and show patience, understanding, and love, we will be able to maintain and grow our professional and personal relationships better even with the workload of an entrepreneur.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeff for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. If we want to maintain and grow our relationships, whether personal or professional, we need to make time for that person.
2. We need to be patient with the weaknesses of others and be patient during disagreements. A moment of lost patience can have permanently damaging effects on our relationships.
3. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and if we expect others to be patient with us as we work on our weaknesses, we should be patient with others as they work on theirs. 
4. As we come into conflict in a relationship, 99% of the time the answer to that problem or that challenge is just to love them. 

Connect with Jeff

If you want to learn more about Jeff or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or Twitter, or visit his company’s website at PeakCapitalPartners.com. 

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Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-maintain-healthy-relationships-as-an-entrepreneur/ 

One of the most essential parts of our entrepreneurial journey is the ability to continually learn. We should never stop learning. If we stop learning, we stop growing. 

Sir Richard Branson, a business magnate, investor, and author, said, “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” If we can learn from great books and courses, our mistakes and successes, our mentors, our critics, and our customers, we will have the ability to continually find success. The worst thing we can do as entrepreneurs is to think we know everything and stop learning.

Jeff Burningham is a serial entrepreneur who has founded some very successful businesses in his career and has been on over 10 start-up boards. He is also the founder and chairman of Peak Capital Partners, a $2 billion real estate investment firm, which was named the second fastest-growing company in Utah and one of the 500 fastest privately held companies in the United States by Inc. Magazine. 

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Jeff’s career and how his passion for learning helped him get to where he is today. 

A Passion for Learning 

Brian Herbert, an American author, said, “The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.”

We should always be growing and progressing, and the only way we can do this is by learning. From a young age, Jeff developed a passion for learning and created a growth mindset. Each life experience he went through, he found a lesson to learn. However, this is often easier said than done.

Learning is a choice. We should actively search for new opportunities for growth if we want to constantly progress. There are so many different ways and things to learn we could easily miss if we aren’t paying attention. We can learn skills, history, spiritual lessons, or life habits. We can learn by reading books, listening to stories, or watching the examples of mentors. We can even learn from the massive glaciers in Alaska. 

Jeff went heli-skiing in Alaska and learned a new skill. While he stood on the massive mountain, watching the northern lights flicker over the horizon, he learned perspective. 

We can learn from everything around us if we are looking. Some of the best and hardest ways to learn are through trial and error. Making mistakes is hard and unfortunately, guaranteed. What determines our success is not the intensity of the mistake, but the way we react to it. If we can look at our challenges and failures as opportunities to learn, we will have much more success in our businesses and in our lives. 

Here are a few examples of experiences Jeff took as an opportunity for new insights, knowledge, and growth. 

Relationships

Over the course of his career, Jeff learned that relationships matter most. 

“It's about relationships,” Jeff said. “We often focus on results or things we want to get done and sometimes those are important, but really, at the end of the day, the result we really want are the relationships, and whether that's an MBA program, or a business, or a family, or a community, those relationships are what matter most.”

When Jeff was about 12 or 13 years old, he started a carpet-cleaning business. His parents bought him a carpet cleaner so he could start cleaning the carpets at school, the dentist’s office, and churches. He eventually handed on his business to his little brother, but he said this first step on his entrepreneurial journey taught him some of the greatest lessons. 

“We don't get there alone; we almost always need help, whether it's through investors or mentors or partners or employees,” Jeff said. “Without my mom and dad . . . I wouldn't have been able to make it.”

While we may have the skills necessary to start a business by ourselves, we will have a much greater capacity for success when we get the help of others. Jeff learned this lesson from his parents and re-learned it again with his mentors, partners, and investors. When we focus on relationships, whether it be with our customers or partners, success and profit will come naturally. 

Exit Transactions 

Jeff learned a lot from his first scalable business. He started Mind Wire, a technology company, as an undergrad at BYU, and he won the BYU Business Plan Competition in 2001. He later sold his business to a publicly-traded company, learning a few lessons in the process. 

Jeff and his partner had scaled their business up to about 20 employees and created a great team of people. When he sold the company and made that transaction, he learned that watching his small company get absorbed by a bigger company was harder than he thought. He also stayed with the publicly-traded company for about two years until he left to open his own office. 

“I learned a lot about transactions [in] that early sale,” Jeff said. “I also learned that it was hard for me to work for someone else. It wasn't motivating to me to follow someone else's vision. I always like to set the vision, set the plan, set the course within my team.” 

By selling his company, Jeff learned new ways to negotiate with others, and also learned something about himself. He learned that he doesn’t work great under someone else. He learned he works better when he can implement his own ideas and visions with a team. 

Partnerships 

After Jeff left the publicly traded company, he teamed up with two of his friends to create Peak Capital Partners. There were times when they weren’t sure if they would make it as they had about two to three years of no revenue. However, as they continued to work hard and pursue their vision, they turned it around. Since then, they have been one of the fastest-growing businesses in Utah for the last 5-10 years and have scaled their business to about 800 employees.

During his time with Peak Capital Partners, Jeff continually looked for new opportunities to learn. He first learned to never give up. It took Jeff two to three years to earn a profit, but because he put in the hard work and effort, he was able to turn our business around and become extremely successful.  

We also need to be very intentional about who we choose to partner with. “I've learned the value of good partners,” Jeff said. “Don't ever get a partner that doesn't have your same baseline ethics or morals, and I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about honesty, integrity, work ethic, etc. Find partners that see the same way you do in that regard. Also, get partners . . . that complement your weaknesses. Be self-aware. Know where you're strong, know where you're weaker, and get partners that can complement your weaknesses.” 

As we constantly seek new ways to learn and implement what we learn, we will find that our chances of success will increase. Because Jeff was able to learn from his experience and the experience of others, he found strategies that work in a business and others that don’t, and that helped him in his future ventures.

“I really love the early stages [of a business],” Jeff said. “There's a lot of risks. It's really hard, but I find it to be . . .  such a rich time of learning. And so I love those first five years. I love the startup.” 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Jeff for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We should never stop learning. If we stop learning, we stop growing. 
2. Learning is a choice. We should actively search for new opportunities for growth if we want to constantly progress. 
3. Our businesses should be about relationships. While we may have the skills necessary to start a business by ourselves, we will have a much greater capacity for success when we get the help of others. 
4. It might take two to three years to earn a profit, but if we put in the work and effort, we can turn our business around and become extremely successful.  
5. We should be intentional about who we choose to partner with. Our partners should have similar values as us and should complement our strengths and weaknesses. 

Connect with Jeff

If you want to learn more about Jeff or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or Twitter, or visit his company’s website at PeakCapitalPartners.com. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

What are the most important lessons have you learned during your career? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/158-why-entrepreneurs-should-never-stop-learning/ 

This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how to live a life with no regrets.

If your life flashed before your eyes, would you have any regrets? 

In a 2012 sermon, “Of Regrets and Resolutions,” Dieter Uchtdorf, a German aviator, airline executive, and religious leader, explained that a nurse who cares for the terminally ill often asks her patients a simple question as they prepare to leave this life: “Do you have any regrets?” 

“Being so close to that final day of mortality often gives clarity to thought and provides insight and perspective,” Uchtdorf said. “So when these people were asked about their regrets, they opened their hearts. They reflected about what they would change if only they could turn back the clock.”

If we could turn back the clock, what would we change? How would we be different? As entrepreneurs, we have to make constant decisions. Sometimes, we may make choices we regret. For example, this week I thought of some team members that I let go of over the years, and a business partnership that didn’t end well, and what I could have done better in those situations. 

A Near-Death Experience

Marshall Goldsmith, an American executive leadership coach, and author, shared his near-death experience on his website, MarshallGoldsmith.com. He had been on a flight to Santa Barbara when the plane suddenly took an “enormous” dip. 

“We have a minor problem,” Goldsmith recalled the pilot announces. “The landing gear isn’t working. We are going to circle the airport until we run out of fuel so we can land safely with the wheels up.”

Goldsmith explained he was terrified for his life. The moment seemed to last forever, giving him a chance to reflect. He asked himself, “What do I regret?”

“The only answer I could come up with was that I had never adequately thanked the many people who had been good to me in my life. I told myself, ‘If I ever get back down on the ground safely, I will thank these people,’” Goldsmith wrote. 

After the plane landed safely, Goldsmith traveled to his hotel and started writing thank-you notes to the people he was grateful for in his life. After he had reflected on his regrets, he immediately took action and made a change. Now, he makes a conscious effort to be grateful for everyone around him, especially in his business. 

“That was the moment I became a connoisseur of gratitude, a virtuoso at thanking. I’m always thanking people now in my emails, letters, seminars, and life. The last thing I say on most phone calls is not ‘goodbye’ but ‘thank you,’” Goldsmith wrote. 

If we were to have a similar experience, what would we regret? What lesson could we learn? What would we want to do better? What changes would we make? Not only does this lesson apply to our lives, but also to our businesses. Goldsmith was able to reflect on his regrets in his business, and then make a change by constantly being grateful for his customers, clients, and employees. 

5 Ways to Overcome Regrets

As entrepreneurs who are humans, we will make a lot of mistakes and wrong choices. It is inevitable. We may lose a client, launch a marketing campaign that fails, or release a product no one likes. However, we don’t have to live in regret. How do we get to the point where, when someone asks us if we have any regrets, we can confidently say no?

Here are five steps we can take to overcome our regrets. 

• Reflect

Sometimes we may not know what we will regret in the future as we live our present lives. In order to make changes, we first need to recognize what changes we want to make. We can do this by setting aside time to reflect. 

Goldsmith didn’t realize he had regrets until he had a near-death experience. He didn’t realize he lacked gratitude for the people he worked with until he was forced to assess his life. Even though a near-death experience can provide meaningful insights about ourselves, we don’t need to have one to determine what changes we should make in our lives now. We simply need to take the time to reflect on what we wish we were doing better.

Margaret J. Wheatley, an American writer, teacher, speaker, and management consultant, said, “Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” 

We should reflect on our leadership abilities. Are we kind? Do we appreciate our employees? We should reflect on our business processes. Is there a step we can take out? Are we missing something? When we set aside time to reflect, we can stop bad habits and prevent regrets in the future. 

• Accept

When we make a wrong choice, we need to accept it. We shouldn’t continue to feel guilty over a mistake we made years ago. We need to accept the fact that everyone makes mistakes. Uchtdorf said a common regret many people have is, “I wish I had let myself be happier.” We shouldn’t let our shortcomings, mistakes, or failures ruin our chance to be happy or successful.

Steve Maraboli, a speaker, best-selling author, and behavioral science academic, said, “We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.” 

Once we accept that we will make wrong choices and mistakes in our lives, it will be easier to forgive ourselves and move on, continuing on the path to success. 

• Apologize 

If we have hurt someone else, we need to apologize. In our businesses, this could mean acknowledging poor leadership skills and making a promise to do better for our employees or partners. 

As entrepreneurs, we often fall into leadership positions and have to spend most of our time working with others. As we run a business, we need to make sure we aren’t leaving our relationships at the bottom of our priority list. One common thing we need to apologize for in the workplace is neglecting our relationships. If we don’t take the time to really build our relationships and apologize for our past mistakes, our workplace won’t run as efficiently or be as successful. 

Uchtdorf explained that a common mistake we make is ignoring the people around us because we are too consumed with our projects. He said, “Isn’t it true that we often get so busy?” Uchtdorf said. “And, sad to say, we even wear our business as a badge of honor, as though being busy, by itself, was an accomplishment or sign of a superior life. Is it? I think of our Lord and Exemplar, Jesus Christ, and His short life among the people of Galilee and Jerusalem. I have tried to imagine Him bustling between meetings or multitasking to get a list of urgent things accomplished. I can’t see it.”

When we focus on all of the tasks we need to accomplish, it can be easy to forget about being a human and working with others. When this happens, we need to take the time to apologize. As we start apologizing for our mistakes, we will build better relationships with our employees, partners, and customers. Once we have apologized we can begin to make amends. 

Uchtdorf continued, “I see the compassionate and caring Son of God purposefully living each day. When He interacted with those around Him, they felt important and loved. He knew the infinite value of the people He met. He blessed them, ministered to them. He lifted them up, healed them. He gave them the precious gift of His time.” When we admit mistakes and apologize to those around us for things even as small as being too busy, we will begin to have fewer regrets in our lives. 

• Learn & Improve

The more we see our mistakes as learning opportunities and chances for improvement, the less regret we will have. After Goldsmith reflected on his regrets, he decided to learn from them and find a way to improve. As we do this in our businesses, our mistakes will no longer be failures, but a sign we are moving forward to reaching our full potential. 

A common regret many people have is, “I wish I had lived up to my potential.” During our life on earth, we are meant to grow and learn. If we can do this, we will have less to regret. 

“Our Heavenly Father sees our real potential,” Uchtdorf said. “He knows things about us that we do not know ourselves. He prompts us during our lifetime to fulfill the measure of our creation, to live a good life, and to return to His presence.” He continued, “Let us resolve to follow the Savior and work with diligence to become the person we were designed to become. Let us listen to and obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit. As we do so, Heavenly Father will reveal to us things we never knew about ourselves. He will illuminate the path ahead and open our eyes to see our unknown and perhaps unimagined talents.”

As we open our minds and hearts to learn new things and understand what God wants of us, we will become better people. In our businesses, we should constantly have the mindset of growth. We want to learn from our mistakes and regrets so we can improve.

• Change

After we have recognized the regrets we have or could have in the future, we need to make changes. We need to take what we have learned and begin to apply it in our lives. We can do this by making resolutions and goals to improve. 

Uchtdorf explained, “The more we devote ourselves to the pursuit of holiness and happiness, the less likely we will be on a path to regrets. The more we rely on the Savior’s grace, the more we will feel that we are on the track our Father in Heaven has intended for us.”

As we strive to do better in our businesses, as we reflect, accept, apologize, learn, and make changes, we will begin to live a life free of regret. We will get to the point where we can say “no” when we are asked, “Do you have any regrets?”

“[W]e should not be like the boy who dipped his toe in the water and then claimed he went swimming. As sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, we are capable of so much more. For that, good intentions are not enough. We must do. Even more important, we must become what Heavenly Father wants us to be.”

Key Takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Sometimes we may not know what we will regret in the future as we live our present lives. When we set aside time to reflect, we can stop bad habits and prevent future regrets we will have with our businesses. 
2. Everyone makes mistakes. Once we accept that we will make wrong choices, it will be easier to forgive ourselves and move on, continuing on the path to success. 
3. When we focus on all of the tasks we need to accomplish, it can be easy to forget about being a human and working with others. If we realize this is something we are doing, we need to take the time to apologize. 
4. The more we see our mistakes as learning opportunities and chances for improvement, the less regret we will have.
5. After we have recognized the regrets we have or could have in the future, we need to make a change so we can live a life without regrets.

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

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Share Your Story 

What regrets do you have and how have you learned from them? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/157-how-to-live-a-life-with-no-regrets/ 

Welcome back to another episode with Matt Bailey. In the last episode, we discussed strategies to chase real profits and not just vanity numbers. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss some of the concepts Matt teaches us how to teach new dogs old tricks, including knowing emotional needs, applying the “mom test”, not muddying the water, removing friction, and acquiring the best customers.

The Need Behind the Need

One day, Matt went to take his daughter shopping for shoes. They got to the store and there were 200 different kinds of Converse, which Matt wasn’t expecting. He told his daughter to go look around, meanwhile, he started checking his email, thinking she would just be a few minutes. 

Fifteen minutes later, Matt started looking for his daughter. He found her taking pictures of about six different pairs of shoes and sending the pictures to her friends. Suddenly Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs popped into Matt’s brain. He realized she was looking for social validation. The immediate physical need was the shoes, but the need behind it was social validation. 

Many times we position our product or our service as, “Hey, this will help you.” But our customers may think, “Help me do what?” We need to think about what emotional satisfaction we're providing.

When Matt had his agency, he didn’t just tell clients that he would get them rankings or increase their sales. Instead, he would ask, “If I improve your sales by 30%, what does that enable you to do?” By asking this, Matt is shifting from selling something like rankings to selling the ability to take a vacation or hire someone new to help with the workload. It becomes a deeper need, and we begin to persuade our customers at an emotional level. Matt said, “Everyone's selling [higher rankings]. What I'm selling you is more time, more money, and what are you going to do with it. That changes everything.”

When Matt was working for a printing software company, they were trying to sell to the New York Times. The decision-maker told him, “The software that you guys have checked all the boxes. Logically, you are the best choice, and you'll hear from me in the next couple of days.”

Matt went home excited, already thinking about how he would spend the commission. A week went by and he didn't hear anything. The whole company was waiting in anticipation. Eventually, Matt gave the decision-maker a call, and he told Matt, “I'm so sorry. I hate to tell you this, but no one ever got fired staying with the legacy provider.” He was afraid of going with Matt’s startup company, so he was going with the safe option, a company that was already established in the industry.

Again, Matt realized that this was about a deeper need. While his startup was good, they were only selling on organizational benefits, but their competitor was selling job security.

We need to know our customers well enough to know the need behind the need. What is it that they really want? What is our product or service going to do for them on an emotional level? This is what we should be focusing on. When we sell to the emotional need, it creates an emotional connection with our customers that our competitors won’t have.

Keyword Research

Many companies do keyword research about their company, their brand name, or their product. The problem with that is people don’t always search with a product in mind; they search with a need. So we should be asking, “What need does our product or service fill,” and “What are the needs that people have?”

Keyword research helps us understand the needs people have and how they describe those needs. What are the trigger words? What are the emotional words? What are the words that signify not only intent but also the intent to purchase to make a decision? Are they comparing products right now? Are they in the early stage where they're using general keywords, or are they mid-stage where they're now defining what type of solution they want?

To research keywords, we need to be asking questions like this in order to see things from the customer’s point of view and better position our products and services so they can find them on their journey.

Once we know the answers to these kinds of questions, it should be guiding our content and the customer’s experience on our website. Doing this can help us build rapport and trust because we’ll be answering the right questions for our audience.

Don’t Muddy the Water

When we’ve got someone lined up to sign or someone who’s ready to buy, it can be hard to stop selling. We want to throw more services or products their way that we think they’ll want. When Matt was working for a software company, they would often work in groups of two salespeople. They had a code phrase to let the other person know when they were doing this: “Stop muddying the water.”

Matt said we need to stop muddying the water digitally. “I equate that to what we do on our websites. When someone's . . . looking for information and they're ready to fill out that lead form, what's the worst thing we could do? Send them a pop-up, ask them for more information, make 20 required fields, [etc.]. We do the same thing on our website when we make it difficult for our audience to engage or take action. We put obstacles, we put friction in their path, which prevents them from doing what they want to do.”

How to Remove Friction: The Mom Test

How do we remove this unwanted friction? Matt suggested what he calls the Mom Test. When he had his agency, he would pay his mom, who wasn’t very tech-savvy, to test their websites. 

Matt said, “I want someone who doesn't know what to expect. I want someone who's not familiar, who's not going to try and hammer away at this because that's not reality. I want someone who, when I give them a task . . . is going to be completely honest about what they think, who's going to run into obstacles and not be sure what to do.”

Matt said his mom identified so many friction points, making his clients millions of dollars. She would identify something, they would change it, and then they’d seen a dramatic change in conversion rates. “That's the easiest and most inexpensive way to remove friction on a website,” he said.

Because of this kind of testing, Matt got very good at identifying those friction points. He had a well-known brand come to him because they were having trouble. Their conversion rate was only 0.01%. Matt looked at their checkout page and right away identified five things they needed to change. After working with Matt and his team, the company’s conversion rate went from 0.01% to 3.5%, an increase of 30 times and $30 million a quarter. An important thing to remember with this is the company was already paying for those visitors to come to the site. 

We can all find someone in our lives who isn’t particularly tech-savvy to help us with things like this. All we need to do is have them sit down in front of a computer and record them trying to get through the process. Once we fix those things, we should do this, again and again, to eliminate as many of those friction points as possible.

The “Best” Customers

Who are our best customers? Matt said it depends on how we define “best”. A stakeholder and a marketing director might look at it differently. If we’re looking at it from a financial standpoint, our best customers are the ones that spend the most money with us. 

Matt said his best customers are the ones who might not spend the most, but they have been with him the longest, refer new business to him, and he loves working with them. “If they were to call and ask me to do anything beyond the scope of our agreement, I would do it because I love them; we have a great relationship,” Matt said.

Typically, customers will follow the 80/20 rule. 20% of our customers are our best customers, and they're responsible for 80% of our business. Matt said, “Find out who your best customers are and define what you mean by “best”, because when you focus on the best, then what you're logically going to do is produce more of that kind of customer.”

When we treat these customers well, it will automatically lead to more business. They will want to tell their friends and associates about us and recommend our services to them. 

These customers will also be more likely to work with us in tough spots. During the crash in 2008, this was one of the things that helped Matt’s business survive. When his best customers called, telling him they had to cut somewhere, Matt was able to sit down with them, look at the numbers, and discuss how this would really affect their business. Many hadn’t thought of that and realized they couldn’t afford to lose him.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Matt for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We can identify what our customers need emotionally and communicate how we can help them with that need.
2. We can research keywords from our customers' point of view, so we can help them find our products or services easier.
3. We must know when to stop selling and muddying the waters with our potential customers.  
4. We would apply the “mom test” to remove the friction from our business. Friction can be removed on our website by having someone who isn’t involved in the business test it.
5. We should analyze and identify our best customers. When we find who our best customers are, we can focus on them and it will lead to finding more of those kinds of customers.

Connect with Matt

If you want to learn more about Matt or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or check out SiteLogicMarketing.com to learn more. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

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1. Get a free Passion Marketing ebook and learn how to be a top priority of your ideal customers.
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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What old tricks have you taught to new dogs? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-entrepreneurs-can-teach-new-dogs-old-tricks/ 

Matt Bailey is a best-selling author. He's written several books such as Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day, Wired to be Wowed, and Teach New Dogs Old Tricks. He's also the host of the Endless Coffee Cup podcast. 

Matt is a marketing expert, trainer, and speaker on digital marketing strategy. Matt is a digital marketing instructor for the Direct Marketing Association and an instructor for LinkedIn Learning. His training content and curriculum can also be found at Rutgers University, Duke University, Purdue, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and many other places. ‘

In today’s episode, Matt Bailey will share some of his strategies for chasing real profit and not meaningless vanity numbers. He will share strategies about asking the right questions and listening.  We’ll also discuss diversifying our revenue streams, learning from our failures, and the tectonic shift that’s happening with Google and third-party cookies.

Asking the Right Questions

Matt is very passionate about digital and media literacy, or the ability to understand the tools we're using and to understand bias in information. This was something Matt learned during his journey.

Matt started off studying journalism, but he knew that wasn’t what he wanted to do, so he went into real estate. He realized there was a way to promote large commercial properties, websites. Two years later, his websites were getting about 200 leads a month.

He learned coding, SEO, link building, and PR doing all these things for himself. He started learning analytics, which led him to ask why his leads from searches weren’t turning into sales. “That changed my whole perspective about what I was doing, how I was doing it, and following the profit rather than following the big numbers because if I had to just ask what's generating the most leads, I would have answered that question, but it was the wrong question,” Matt said. 

Matt was getting more than 80% of his leads through search rankings, but none of them turned into sales. He poured through his data spreadsheets, trying to figure out where his leads were going wrong and where his sales were coming from. He found that his sales were coming from articles he had published on real estate sites where there were links back to his site. People were reading those articles, clicking the links, and registering on his website. Those people accounted for only 4% of his traffic but 80% of his sales.

If Matt hadn’t asked the right questions, he never would have discovered the right group of people to focus on. He would have wasted time and money trying to turn the other 96% of his traffic into sales instead of growing that 4% that already made up 80% of his sales. Questions that drive us to understand our data can help us understand our business and how to make it more profitable.

Ask, Listen, Understand

Matt said some of the best people he has worked with have been able to do this: asking greeting questions and then connecting them to business acumen. Asking the right questions leads to understanding how a business makes money, what the expenses are, what takes away from profitability, what’s the business model, how does it functions, etc.

A key part of this process is listening. I feel like the more listening I do, the smarter I am. Listening is one of the most powerful ways to monetize because we can then position our product to sell, we can understand what the needs are, we can customize and personalize based upon it, and we can address true concerns.

Matt shared a survey he had heard about that was run during COVID-19 about virtual selling and B2B sellers. When interviewed, salespeople were saying, “I have a hard time connecting with customers. They're not as attentive, and it's a more difficult sell because of COVID-19.” However, when they interviewed buyers or people in the lead sales funnel, their response was, “I'm not being listened to. They don't really understand what I need.”

In Matt’s early days of sales, they used to play a game when they went to sales meetings: whoever talked the most lost. “If you talk the most, that means you dominated the meeting, and the customer did not talk and express what they needed. You were trying to sell the whole time and you didn't listen,” Matt said. 

We should be listening to what our customers need. We should also be listening to our partners, those on our team, and our employees because they often have great ideas that we may not have thought of.

Diversifying and Creating Multiple Income Streams

Matt also learned the value of making money in different ways. When he was in real estate, other agents started contacting him, asking him to put their properties on his site because it was getting a lot of traffic. 

“That taught me very early [that] I can make money through many other ways,” Matt said. “Putting up a website and [having] other people pay you to put their stuff on it, that takes very little work at all. . . . One of those things I learned is that with the internet, with all these things, there are many different ways to develop multiple income streams.”

Are there different ways we could be diversifying our revenue streams? Sometimes we put ourselves in boxes, saying, “This is the way it’s always been done, so that’s the way I have to do it.” But that’s not true. Experimenting and thinking outside that box may lead us to more success.

We can ask our customers what other needs they have or what other products or services they would be interested in. For example, a business that sells food may find out from their customers that they’re interested in recipes they can use to cook their food. 

We can also ask ourselves what our competitors have done to expand their revenue streams, and we can look to businesses outside our industry as well to see how they have brought in revenue in different ways, and then apply those lessons to our industry and business.

Learning from Failures

Whenever we fail or make mistakes, it can damage us and our confidence, but Matt likes to look at his past failures as learning experiences.

He was let go three times from three different jobs because of financial cutbacks. It was hard because those organizations were telling him they didn’t need him. “It's funny because I look back on that now as the best thing that ever could have happened,” Matt said. 

From that experience, he realized he is more secure now working for himself on something he built and has control over than working for a Fortune 500 company. He said, “It's really a lot of things that you learn from that just really turn you into who you are.”

When we’re looking back at our past mistakes, instead of being ashamed we can ask questions like, “What did I do wrong?” and “What can I do differently next time?” to help us learn from our mistakes. 

Tectonic Shift: Google and Third-Party Cookies

When I asked Matt what the biggest tectonic shift he’s seeing is, he said it is the shift Google is making with third-party cookies. Google is eliminating third-party cookies, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because these third-party cookies have been responsible for billions of dollars of ad fraud.

Google is consolidating the total ad revenue being spent online. Matt said, “If you want to reach a certain audience, you've got to go through Google. And the way Google's doing it is they're making themselves the owner of all first-party data of anyone who has a Google account.” It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Matt for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We should be asking great questions that will give us actionable answers to grow our business. 
2. By asking, listening, and understanding our customers we will understand our business better, know what our customers truly need, and be able to make much better, informed decisions. 
3. There are many ways to create diversified revenue streams. Being open to new ideas and thinking outside the box can help us grow our revenue, and give our business more stability.
4. We should see our failures as opportunities to learn and grow. They are necessary steps along our path to success. 

Connect with Matt

If you want to learn more about Matt or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or check out SiteLogicMarketing.com to learn more. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How are you chasing numbers instead of profits, and what can you do differently to more successfully chase profits? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/chasing-profits-instead-of-vanity-numbers/