Matt Clark | Official Site

Learn how to put your business on complete auto-pilot by hiring highly capable, hard-working overseas staff members using popular and safe sites – just published on EvanCarmichael.com.

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“PUT YOUR BUSINESS ON AUTOPILOT FOR $2 AN HOUR”
- Matt Clark, EvanCarmichael.com, 5/8/2013

Outsourcing has become a sore spot with a lot of business owners. Some equate it with bad customer service, and the media never tires of blaming outsourcing for “sending jobs overseas.”

For startups, outsourcing is the No. 1 way to increase productivity without extreme cost. New companies don’t have the resources to build teams to cover all aspects of business, from customer service to data entry. Startups have to run lean and efficiently, and outsourcing makes that happen.

For example, let’s say you have a U.S.-based employee who earns $18 per hour. If that person spends even two hours a day on a menial task like order processing, you are wasting at least $36 a day; this doesn’t include the lost opportunity of maximizing that person’s actual skills.

Send that job to the Philippines, where you can pay someone about $450 per month to take care of those tasks. Even if you pay for a full day’s work and this outsourced person only does the same two hours’ worth of work as your American employee, you’re still saving money. Then, you’ll be able to fully utilize the awesome team you’ve assembled.

Tools for Hiring Outsourcers

Look around your business. If a local employee — even a freelancer — is doing a routine task that doesn’t require creativity, outsource it. There are some great websites and tools out there to recruit outsourcers.

Odesk.com and Elance.com: Both of these sites are great for hiring part-time or full-time overseas help. Create jobs, and then filter through applicants’ portfolios and past jobs. Don’t take anyone with less than a 4.7 rating.

Onlinejobs.ph: This is the best place to hire workers from the Philippines. It requires a paid membership, but during the hiring process, it’s well worth it. To get the best response, offer to pay 20 percent more than what potential employees ask. This will help you stand out without costing you much.

Fiverr.com: This site isn’t specifically for hiring overseas, but it can be a great tool. You can get all kinds of useful stuff done — videos, articles, basic logos — for just $5 a task.
Tools for Managing

Of course, outsourcing can cause problems because the new staff members are not in the office — or even the same country. There are also tools for managing outsourced labor.

Basecamp: This is an inexpensive project management tool that works perfectly with overseas employees. After hiring, you’ll need to tell your new employees what to do, but firing off emails can be confusing and time-consuming. A simple to-do list on Basecamp will keep everyone in the loop about what’s supposed to be happening.

Google Sites: The best thing I’ve done for my outsourcers is create training intranets for them. Rather than send long emails with detailed instructions every time I hire someone, I just grant him access to the private Google Site and instruct him to ask other employees if he needs help. This cuts training time down to about three minutes.

Camtasia or Jing: To take the Google Sites training to a higher level, use one of these sites to record video of yourself (or someone overseas) doing the task you’ve hired for. Embed the YouTube video on your Google Site.

It’s easy to transition your business to overseas work. Start small with one employee, and grow as needed. Then, sit back and enjoy the efficiency most businesses wish they had.

You do NOT need funding to start a new business. I’ve proven this multiple times over and so have many of the wildly successful entrepreneurs I know. You just need to learn how to bootstrap smartly. Learn more in this article recently published on YFS Magazine by me

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“Entrepreneur, Matt Clark Shares 5 Ways to Bootstrap Your Way to Entrepreneurial Success”
- by Matt Clark, YFS Magazine, 5/2/2013

By nature, entrepreneurs are quick, creative thinkers. Ideas seem to come out of the walls, the sky is the limit, and innovating is everything. But part of being a successful entrepreneur is knowing when to go big — and when to bootstrap.

The truth is, bootstrapping makes you a better businessperson. When your business is bootstrapped — or self-sustaining — you have to actually make money from your business, rather than simply find creative ways to spend someone else’s money. This forces you to hone certain business skills other entrepreneurs with well-funded businesses don’t get to build:

Resourcefulness. If you’re going to turn a profit fast, you can’t afford to have a fancy office, large staff, or ineffective marketing campaign. Going virtual isn’t just a trend; it’s a necessity for bootstrapped startups.

Marketing Accountability. You don’t have money to waste on marketing campaigns that can’t be measured, no matter what “branding” benefits they promise. Instead, you quickly learn that every marketing dollar that goes out must come back with a new customer or profit (or, ideally, both).

Focus. When you’re building a bootstrapped business, you can’t pursue a plethora of business ideas, regardless of how many or how quickly your entrepreneurial-minded brain is churning them out.

Clearly, bootstrapping builds skills invaluable to any business owner. But it’s not an easy journey. Here are a few tips to help you pull yourself up by your bootstraps when the road to success gets rough.

1. Sell high-margin products and services.

Small business or not, there’s no reason to waste time with small margins. Large profit margins allow a small business to thrive and do what small businesses do best — out-service the competition. You get the opportunity to serve a customer and truly do whatever it takes to make him happy. Larger profit margins also allow you to spend more on advertising than your competition and pay more for each customer, while still making a profit. Then, you can quickly scale your small business through marketing.

2. Build partnerships.

Starting now, begin building partnerships for your business. You’ll be able to grow your business much faster if you’re not reinventing the wheel when it comes to resources.

Joint Venture partnerships: Cross-promote with similar businesses to acquire customers faster — and for free.

Performance-based partnerships: Pay people — or other businesses — when they send you referrals. Once again, you’re gaining more customers for a low acquisition cost.

Content-marketing publishers: Partner with targeted magazines, blog owners, and other experts to provide free advice or training to their audience. You’ll build your business’ brand with just a little work.

3. Build recurring revenue into your business.

As entrepreneurs, we fight incredibly hard to get customers in the door with the initial sale. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs stop there. It’s imperative that you build a recurring revenue component into your business from the very beginning. As you bring in more customers, that base will continue building and provide financial stability and flexibility.

Recurring revenue doesn’t mean you literally need to have your customers’ credit cards on auto-bill each month (though that might be ideal). It just means your customers should have something to come back and buy from you on a regular basis.

For example, if you own a dog grooming business, offer an unlimited membership that allows a customer to bring his dog in whenever he wants throughout the month for an automatically charged monthly fee. You’ll always need to watch your numbers, but most people will use the service far less than what you’ll be collecting from them. Think about it: How many people do you know who still pay for gym memberships they don’t use?

You can also go the Keurig route. This multimillion-dollar home-brewing coffee machine company has a brilliant business model that makes its money from the same customers month after month — without an automatic bill. When a customer buys the $200 machine, he literally cannot use it without buying “K-Cups” filled with coffee grounds. The machine works amazingly, but requires a new, disposable K-Cup with each use. Not only has the company made money off the initial sale, but it keeps making money for as long as a customer wants to use the machine.

4. Measure your marketing.

Smart direct marketing can grow a small business into a big business very quickly, and unmeasured direct marketing can make a small business into a non-business just as quickly. The key to marketing is to measure it. You need to know exactly how much profit each campaign generates; that way, you’ll know how to scale, adjust, or eliminate it.

5. Hop on the scale.

When I started out, I made the mistake of going from one e-commerce store to 30 in about six months because I realized new stores were a quick way to bring in revenue. But the headache and additional staff ate up all the profits. To realize the biggest gains in profit as a bootstrapped entrepreneur, it’s important to focus on scaling within a limited number of products or services.

Bootstrapping your startup can be intimidating, and it’s not an easy road. But it is extremely rewarding — especially when you own 100 percent of your company, and therefore 100 percent of the profits. Plus, those profits may allow the serial entrepreneur in you to pursue your next idea … and the next … and the next. After all, the sky is the limit, right?

Your business CAN’T survive without customers coming back for more. No matter what business you’re in, you need to implement some form of recurring revenue right now. Learn more in this recent Business.com publication written by Matt Clark.

It’s common business knowledge that it’s cheaper to retain a current customer than it is to attract a new one.

Acquiring new customers costs 5 to 10 times more than selling to a current customer – and current customers spend 67% more on average than those who are new to your business (Inc). (Tweet this stat!)

That’s why companies focus on great customer service — to keep their current customers happy and satisfied. While great customer service is mandatory, there’s also another way to retain customer loyalty: the recurring revenue model.

What is Recurring Revenue?

Recurring revenue is what occurs when companies find a way to turn a one-time sale into a recurring one. Say you have a dog grooming business. You could offer a one-time dog grooming session for $50 — or you could ask the customer to join a monthly club that offers unlimited dog grooming for $130 a month.

You might think you could lose money on that — what if the customer comes in every day? Realistically, that won’t happen; they will probably only come in a few times a month. But, if you don’t offer that deal, they will have no loyalty to you and could just find the dog groomer offering the best discount the next time the pooch needs a trim.
The Benefits of Recurring Revenue

You might think that giving customers a deal on more frequent use of a product or service will only benefit their pocketbooks. Instead, you business will actually thrive because of the benefits of implementing this model.

Stabilization: You won’t have to guess how much business you can drive in the door each month. As long as you do a good job of keeping your recurring customers, you can count on that revenue, plus any new business that might drop in.

Customer Service: Since you’ll frequently interact with the same people, your relationships will slowly build. This will lead to better customer service. If a customer tries your service once and leaves, you will have fewer opportunities to increase his loyalty.

Marketing: Once you know the percentage of customers that will take the recurring option, how many of those stick, and how much profit you’ll gain through them, you’ll be able to outspend your competitors in advertising. For example, you have a product you sell for $10 upfront or $20 monthly. At least 30 percent of your customers take the recurring offer, and the average lifespan of membership is four months. Your average lifetime value per customer is $34. However, you competitor offers the same product without a recurring model, making only $10 per sale. You know you can outspend him in advertising by 3.4 percent per customer, which is enough to dominate any market.

Applying Recurring Revenue to Your Business

Don’t think your company has a product conducive to the recurring revenue model? You might be surprised. With a little creativity, any company can do this.

A gas station can offer a few pennies of gas to any customer who signs up for a $5 to $10 monthly membership. The big money will come because of loyalty. A non-member will go to any station, but a gas club member will make sure to fill up at your gas station. Grocery stores, partnering with gas stations, are doing this all over the country.

Most small businesses don’t want to pay the expensive fees of a lawyer’s retainer, but they have constant questions that come up. The law firm could offer four 30-minute sessions with a junior attorney for $150. Customers get their questions answered and are more likely to use that firm for the big things, and the firms have steady income.

People are inundated with choices and worn out with being faced with too many options. A recurring revenue model makes the customer’s life easier by simplifying and limiting choice. Oh, yeah, and you’ll make a little money, too

Conventional business wisdom may lead you to believe you need to offer the best financial deal (=lowest profit/sale) to your customers to win. This isn’t true. Learn more in the recent article I wrote published on KillerStartups.

High Margins Create Loyal Startup Customers
by Matt Clark

New companies often don’t know their own worth. They don’t have a real idea of how much money it takes to run a business, and they’re afraid of overpricing and scaring away potential customers. So, instead, they set prices too low.

Any company can price low, but a low-price product does not build a loyal startup fan base. Worse, it usually attracts the worst kind of customers — ones that eat up hours and resources fighting over every penny.

As a startup you don’t have the luxury of pricing according to economies of scale. You have to depend on something other than price to compete. The only way to make sure you have plenty of profit left for that “something else” is to price your product high and make sure there’s plenty of margin per sale.

When I first started my business, I sold other people’s products at a 40 to 50 percent profit margin. I quickly realized I needed more profit to really make my business grow. My current venture nets me 400 to 500 percent profit per unit. Maybe that seems like a lot, but those margins allow me to grow a business around loyal customers that aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

How, you ask? Two words: service and marketing.

The best reason to build high margins into your business is that you can then offer stellar customer service. When your price is premium, you don’t have to worry about losing money with every customer interaction. A staff member can spend 30 minutes on the phone or live chat helping a customer. Even if the sales person ends up shipping another unit of product, you don’t have to worry about how much money it cost you. With the right margins, you’ll still be profitable. Customers given this great service will almost always sing your praises to everyone they know.

If you’re able to financially go above and beyond and give your customers a great experience, you will build the loyal fan base your startup needs to profitably grow.

Marketing also improves when you build in high margins. When it comes to direct marketing — particularly online — it’s the rare company that hits the first one out of the park. It takes time, testing, and tweaking to get the particular formula just right. Time, by the way, that you won’t have if you are operating on razor-thin margins. If you have substantial margins per sale, you can test more, test faster, and scale your marketing more quickly. Your company will grow larger in a shorter amount of time, and you’ll actually have the profit to handle the growth and overhead.

A loyal fan base helps a company — especially in its initial phases — grow exponentially. With premium prices, you can do more marketing, make more money, and bring in more of those customers. Once they’re in the door, the high margins make it possible to provide outstanding customer service. You can also use these loyal initial customers to continue to test, refine, and refocus your product, making it more valuable, increasing its marketability, and ultimately showing customers that their opinions and concerns are of top priority. These customers will not only be satisfied, they will also become repeat buyers and refer others to you.

This method of consistently bringing in new customers through good marketing and those customers continually buying and referring will catapult startup companies into much bigger companies.

But it can only happen if you build in high margins from day one.

I recently wrote an article published by Under30CEO about the #1 secret I’ve learned for entrepreneurial success: sell high margin products and services. Read the full article below:

The No-Brainer Secret to Success: High Margins

It seems like such an obvious thing to say that I’m a little embarrassed to be writing about it. But young entrepreneurs — including myself at one point — settle for razor-thin profit margins all the time. “If it works for Amazon” is a terrible business plan.

As a new entrepreneur, you put a lot of pride in your business and want it to grow quickly. This typically means revenue. But because you don’t really know what works yet, you throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Before long, the cost of running your business adds up, and you think, “Wait a minute. Shouldn’t I be making money with this?”

The best thing a young entrepreneur can do is start his business focused on creating high profit margins.

Why High Margins are Key

High profit margins allow you to build a business that actually has cash flow. When you have high margins, you can offer stellar customer service. Need to accept a few returns? That’s not a problem when your margins are high enough to handle it.

Most importantly, though, high profit margins allow entrepreneurs to expand quickly. Growing with low margins is impossible because you won’t do everything right. (Trust me, I know.) Marketing strategies will flop, customers will have issues, and service will be terrible. Razor-thin profit margins can’t support these messes when it all hits the fan.

When you try to expand with a low profit margin, you have to beg anyone who will talk to you — friends, family, professional financiers — to spot you some cash. In return, because quick growth is risky, they will want 50 percent or more of your business.

In contrast, when you’ve already built in high profit margins, you can handle the ups and downs that go with expansion — independent of any expensive cash influx.

How to Start with High Margins

The best way to develop high margins is to build them in from the beginning. When setting up your product or service, never be the low-range or even mid-range option. Always shoot to provide the premium because that’s where the most profit comes in.

Need to justify the higher expense? Simply offer more value.

For example, let’s say you want to sell simple yoga mats that aren’t much different than what is currently on the market; however, you also want to become a premium provider without adding a lot of cost to your own business.

All you would need to do is find a yogi and pay him or her $50 to record a series of yoga classes. With each yoga mat you sell, include a card that invites customers to “unlock” a bonus “online yoga membership.”

You’ve now added $20 to $40 in value per order, but only spent $50 in doing so.

Think about what your customers want, and deliver it to them in a way that provides tons of value. You create high margins and turn your customers into raving fans because they get so much value from your product.

Increase Your Margins Right Now

So, what if you’re already in business but didn’t have the benefit of this awesome advice when you started? There are still plenty of ways to increase your profit margins within your existing business.

Complementary product or service: Adding something complementary, but inexpensive for you, increases the value of your product or service. You will set yourself apart from competitors and be able to charge a premium price.

Better design or packaging: Whether it’s your website or product packaging, better design communicates better quality. Have you noticed how store brands are slowly looking more and more like name brands? Investing in great design will communicate that you are a luxury product worth the premium price — even if you’re smaller than all your competitors.

Better marketing: Better marketing beats a better product every time. When you have great marketing, you get in front of more customers and make more sales. Then you can pay attention to your new customers and tweak your product to become exactly what they want. Gaining a basic understanding of copywriting and advertising will put you way ahead of most other entrepreneurs.

The idea of high profit margins seems like a no-brainer in business. Aren’t you in this to make money in the first place? Still, entrepreneurs tend to get excited and chase after high revenue instead, which doesn’t always translate into profit. The best thing an entrepreneur can do for his or her business is focus first on high profit margins. They simply make things more fun — which is always a sign of success.

Recently, IdeaMensch published an article about me and my adventures and lesson about entrepreneurship on their well-known entrepreneur blog, read the full article below:

Matt Clark is a serial entrepreneur, author, speaker, and health and fitness enthusiast. He is an entrepreneurial thought leader, and founded a multimillion-dollar product distribution business enterprise. He welcomes anyone to reach out to him on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+.

What are you working on right now?

I’m launching an online eight-week training program with a three-day live event, teaching people how to build businesses by leveraging the power of Amazon. This eight-week program focuses on why Amazon offers such a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs right now, how to find the right products to sell, how to find suppliers, how to build your own product brand, and how to market your products so they sell well on Amazon. After the eight-week online program that starts March 21st and finishes May 15th, we’re holding a live, members-only three-day workshop event in Austin, Tex., at the end of May.

Where did the idea for your current business come from?

I started selling physical products online about four years ago with my own ecommerce store. Regardless of how much I knew about SEO or online marketing, Amazon was dominating me in Google searches for keywords and products I’d spent hours — and thousands of dollars — trying to rank for. So, I figured, “Why not join them?”

I started on Amazon about three years ago, selling a few products from other suppliers. I ramped up that business, but soon decided I’d make more money and have less competition if I sold my own products, rather than someone else’s. I started selling private label products under my own brand name on Amazon; I saw my business skyrocket, especially once I optimized my product listings and outranked my competitors on Amazon.

In 2012, I was invited to speak at the 9th Underground Online Seminar in Washington, D.C. That ended up putting me in touch with my current business partner, and we created a course teaching people how to sell products on Amazon. After the huge success of that course, we launched a more hands-on version, which is the one I’m working on now.

What does your typical day look like?

In December 2012, my wife and I moved to France from Austin for a temporary relocation (basically an extended vacation). We’ve been here almost three months; we will be heading back to Austin, our hometown, for good on March 20th.

Right now, my day starts at 7 or 8 a.m., when I jump on the computer, check business stats, follow up on emails, and review my to-do list. Then, I work for a few hours and go for a run (or a swim in the chilly Mediterranean) in the middle of the day. After that, we usually head to lunch at a local Irish pub (we’re not huge fans of French food).

I start working again and, unless we have travel plans for the day, usually will keep working (especially now that we’re in the middle of launching our new course) until about 10 p.m. Before I shut down for the day, I always check my list of priorities for the week and plan my priorities for the following day.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I’m a big believer in not trying to reinvent the wheel. A lot of people in business, especially just-starting entrepreneurs, think you have to do something that’s “never been done” to be successful. With seven billion people on this planet, no idea you have is new.

I think the best way to come up with winning ideas is to find out what’s already working and make it better. By doing this, you cut down on a lot of the implementation and testing to figure out whether your new idea is going to stick or flop.

What was the worst job you ever had and what did you learn from it?

The worst was working at my parents’ accountant’s office. Or, really, just about any job. I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m a horrible employee. I was the one finding any excuse not to work; I’d read news online or socialize with co-workers. Something about working for someone else just doesn’t motivate me.

On the other hand, when working for my own businesses and for partnerships, I’m the hardest-working 26-year-old you’ll find. Right now, for example, I’m working 17-hour days to make our product launch the best it can be. But it doesn’t feel like work. I love it!

One of the best things in life is finding something you are good at and that you absolutely believe in as part of your identity, and getting to do that every single day.

If you were to start again, what would you do differently?

If I were to start again in business, I’d focus on this one principle and use it as a filter to evaluate business opportunities: sell high-margin products. I don’t care how many success stories you hear of billion-dollar businesses operating on razor-thin margins (e.g., Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc.); having high profit margins makes business a lot more fun.

When you have high profit margins, you’re not calculating the profit loss from that customer return or the dollar value of that employee’s extended lunch. You also can scale your business a lot faster because you can test and ramp up marketing more quickly.

I sold others’ products with about a 40 to 50 percent profit margin; I wish I had started out selling my own products with the 400 to 500 percent profit margin I enjoy now.

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

Plan your week, and plan each day. As an entrepreneur, nobody is telling you what to do. But what you do each and every day contributes directly to your future and the future of your business.

I read every self-improvement and time management book on the planet, from David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” to Tony Robbins’ “Rapid Planning Method,” and it took a while to figure out a system that really made sense. Here it is: Pick ONE goal. I’ve tried setting long-term goals and breaking them down, and I’ve tried setting goals for every area of my personal and business life — and everything in between.

The problem with all of this is that, like Will Smith says, “There is no reason to have a Plan B because it distracts from Plan A.” I believe ONE goal at a time is the best way to plan your life.

I pick one goal that I want. Then, if I know I’m getting close to achieving it, I get ready with the following goal that builds on that one. Once you have your one goal, list all the projects that contribute to that goal’s achievement.

Once you have those down, you’re ready to plan each week on purpose. Each Sunday, I create a list of action items for the week that contribute to the progress of those projects. Before each day starts, I take a chunk of action items and add them to that day’s to-do list. I cross each item off for that day and repeat the process the next day.

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

I was talking with friends about this the other day, and will probably never do it myself because I have too many other things going on, but for long-tail (less competitive) keywords, it’s extremely easy to get YouTube videos ranked by just publishing a press release linking to the video using an online service, such as WebWire.com.

I know, from looking for offices in Austin, that commercial real estate owners are horrible at online marketing, but they need a continual influx of leads. Start creating YouTube videos targeted at commercial real estate locations in your local city, create a few press releases linking to those videos, and then sell the leads from those videos to the people with office space in the area.

For example, in Austin, a major road with prime office space is Loop 360. I’d create a two-minute video talking about the location titled “Loop 360 Office Space” and add a link with a sign-up form in the description. I’d call some local office buildings and ask, “Do you need more renters?” I’d offer to sell them those leads or work out a performance-based compensation. If they said no because they don’t understand marketing, I’d go to one of their competitors and let that first person know I was doing so. The fear of loss is a very strong motivator.

What are your three favorite online tools and what do you love about them?

Asana: This is a great to-do list tool that I use to record items for all of my major projects. It’s easy to use, visually appealing, and has an iPhone/iPad app.

Evernote: I love Evernote for taking notes online (forget multiple Word documents!); it has an iPhone/iPad app that I use for taking/reading notes/ideas while in the gym or out and about.

Dropbox: I used to literally carry around an external hard drive for fear of losing all my files after dropping an entire protein shake on my laptop in college. I use Dropbox to store all my files (including tons of training/marketing videos) for about $19.99 a month.

What is the one book that you recommend our community read and why?

I’d recommend “How to Be a Billionaire.” The title sounds like a product from a ‘90s infomercial, but it’s an awesome book. It breaks down the business models and wealth-building principles of billionaires from the past 100 years.

What’s on your playlist?

Right now, it’s just Tony Robbins’ “Get the Edge” program I listen to while I’m running.

If you weren’t working on your current business, what would you be doing?

If I wasn’t working on any business, I’d be in the military, trying my hand at joining a Special Forces unit. There were three years in which I debated holding off on business and giving the military a try. I started doing triathlons and running marathons to get myself ready.

In the end, though I’m sure I could have made it through hard work and determination, I decided that entrepreneurship was really my calling. I’ve been reading business books since I was 15 years old, and I’ve found that simply sticking with something over a long period of time is the real “secret” to success — and it’s the secret to finding something you love.

I think people tend to forget, or not realize, that one reason you “love” something is that you’re good at it — better than your peers. That doesn’t happen by constantly changing your mind or trying new things. It comes from digging in and not giving up until you make it.

Three people we should follow on Twitter and why?

Twitter, and especially following people on it, is a waste of time. Instead, try creating something of your own.

When was the last time you laughed out loud? What caused it?

I laugh out loud every day. Life’s too short to not laugh often. Though we’re all busting our butts to get this new product training course off the ground, there are moments each day when we’re cracking up.

Who is your hero?

My dad — he’s the kind of guy who isn’t affected by what other people think, is the first person to help an old lady put on her coat, and never quits anything. I strive to be more like him.

What’s contributed the most to your business success?

As a mentor once told me, “Partnerships make the good times better and the bad times less bad.” Being able to leverage another successful person’s resources has contributed to the greatest leaps in my businesses’ successes. We all spend so much time trying to build our own skills and resources, but when you combine everything you’ve done with someone else, you stop growing incrementally and start growing exponentially.

What are the top three business principles entrepreneurs should focus on to build financially successful businesses?

1. High profit margins
2. Recurring revenues
3. Business partnerships and joint ventures

Connect:

http://www.mclarkinc.com/

Matt Clark on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewalexanderclark
Matt Clark on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mclarkinc
Matt Clark on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MattClarkMarketing
Matt Clark on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/mattclark1/

I recently had the privilege of speaking at the alumni event for the top-ranked entrepreneurship program at the University of Houston, where I graduated from in 2008. I chose to present the 3 biggest business lessons I learned since graduating.

As an avid reader and student of entrepreneurship, I was full of knowledge when I graduated from the program. But, I was lacking in experience and it was a bumpy road to success as a full-time entrepreneur.

Business Lesson #1: The Fundamentals that Will Make You Rich

Starting out in business, there are a million things that you try to balance and devote focus to. Customer service, brand-building, operations, finance, accounting, marketing, etc. These things are all covered in exhausting detail in the plethora of business books touting the “one way” to business success. Books that I had began absorbing like a sponge at 16 years old.

But, after building and starting two multi-million dollar companies and talking with lots of very successful entrepreneurs along the way, there are 3 fundamentals that, if any entrepreneur implements into his or her business, will increase the likelihood of creating a fun, profitable business immeasurably:

1. High Margins
2. Recurring Revenue
3. Measurement

For a FUN business, not one in which you’re scraping by, you should shoot for a 5X-10X markup on the products or services you sell. I struggled for many, many months operating a business with only 30-40% profit margin (vs. the 500-1000% just recommended). It wasn’t until I started selling my own brand of private-labeled products with a 600% margin (6X markup), that I really began to experience the level of profitability a small business needs to survive.

The second fundamental, recurring revenue, becomes more and more powerful with time. If you implement a recurring revenue component right now into your business, you’re only going to get those same people re-billing next month – nice, but that’s not the big payoff. But, if you keep it up, continually adding more and more recurring customers each and every month, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years down the road, you’ll have more than your company is making now on AUTO-PAY. For the purposes of this article, “recurring revenue” doesn’t mean you have to literally be charging your customer’s credit cards automatically – it could simply mean you’re selling an add-on product that your customers need (example: think the Keurig coffee brewer and the little K-cups you HAVE to buy each and every time you want to use the machine…).

Lastly, measurement is a MUST for any business of any size. For an online business, this may mean you need to pay a programmer from a site such as Elance.com to setup conversion tracking for you (with multiple traffic sources, multiple websites, and shopping carts, it can get a little tricky). For any business, online or offline, if you’re spending money on advertising, your business will never experience the gigantic leaps in growth a profitable advertising campaign can produce. (How do you create a $200 million business from a gimmicky workout product like the Thigh Master? Measurement of advertising.)

Business Lesson #2: Your Time is Everything as an Entrepreneur

As an entrepreneur, how do you decide what to do each day?

You don’t have someone breathing down your neck telling you what to do; but, WHAT you do directly impacts the profitability and viability of your business.

The 3 Words that Give You More Time:

1. Eliminate
2. Automate
3. Delegate

Whenever you’re getting ready to hunker down with a business-related task in-front of you and “just get it done”, STOP.

First, think: Can this task be eliminated? (Is it really important?)

Second, if it cannot be eliminated (it is vital to your business), think: Can it be automated? (Are you doing something manually that can be automated via technology?)

Third, if the task cannot be automated, think: Can it be delegated? (Am I the person who HAS to do this?)

Ask yourself these three questions every single day. As entrepreneurs, we often waste hours of time just doing STUFF so that it will get done, since we know the weight is on our shoulders. But, there are only so many hours in the day and you cannot continually stack on the WRONG activities…

WHAT is productive time as an entrepreneur?

Now that you’ve cleared some time to work on productive activities in your business, WHAT are you going to do?

As an entrepreneur, your job is to create a profitable business. Everything else is secondary and cannot be accomplished without that one goal.

So, your time should be devoted to the 4 things that drive profitability in a business:

1. Creating products
2. Marketing products
3. Managing big money-making projects
4. Creating scale in your business

But, now that you know WHAT to focus on in your business, who’s going to do all the non-productive time stuff that needs to be done such as:

• Customer service
• Data entry
• Processing orders
• Managing your website
• Etc.

One of my businesses that sells health supplements online, is exclusively managed by a team of overseas staff in the Phillipines and Kenya from the outsourcing site Odesk.com. If you aren’t familiar with outsourcing, start NOW. It’s extremely easy and can be done with little to zero risk (the outsourcing sites will hold your payment in escrow, so you don’t have to worry about someone running off with your money).

The average cost for mobile app development is $27,000. So, how did I get my top-5 iTunes app, Ab Workouts Express, created for only $1,100? Outsourcing. I hired a team of developers from India using Elance.com – total programming cost = $550. I also used my excellent graphic designer from Elance.com, also from India, to design the app – total design cost = $500.

One of the principles of business is that if you can get your products and services, of equal quality, created for less than your competition, you’ll own the market. Try outsourcing NOW.

Tips for Successful Outsourcing:

1. Start NOW
2. Be extremely detailed in your directions (like writing an instruction manual for a nuclear weapon
3. Communicate frequently (at first)
4. Create a staff training intranet with all instructions (I like the Google Sites Intranet template)

Business Lesson #3: Leveling-Up

How did I partner on a product that sold over $1,000,000 in 7 days?

It wasn’t because I attended a top-ranked entrepreneurship program…

Or, that I attended a $10,000 Business Mastery course by Tony Robbins…

Or, that I joined a high-level business networking group…

It was the PEOPLE that I met through each of those.

It’s not what you do or what you get involved in, it’s WHO you connect with through what you do. At every chance you get, you should be reaching out to successful people, finding out ways to help them, and constantly thinking of how you can be of value to them.

A few ways to get around successful people:

• Attend paid conferences
• Join networking groups
• Get a mentor and ask who he/she knows that you can interact with

Even if you’re just starting out as an entrepreneur, there ARE ways you can be of value to people that have already achieved success in business. Focus on the needs of those you want to interact with and you’ll figure out a way to provide them value. In return, you’ll be able to benefit from their experience and resources.

To close, I’ll share a quote our entrepreneurship program’s founder, Harvard alumni, former Federal Reserve Board Member, serial entrepreneur, and my friend, Bill Sherrill mentioned in almost every class he taught: “Your one responsibility in life is to do the absolute best at everything you do.”

Are you doing the absolute best you can possibly do?

Want to become a top 100 author on Amazon 10 years ago? Well, you better be ready to get your book published by a big name publishing company AND get lucky/spend a lot of money pushing your book.

Want to become a top 100 author on Amazon NOW? All you need is the right market, two hours behind a computer, and a few key marketing tactics.

Amazon has completely turned the publishing world on its head. Big name publishing companies used to hold all the power when it came to turning a little-known author into a big name celebrity. Now, you can control the entire process using Amazon.

First, for physical books, CreateSpace allows you to create and print books on-demand – no more ordering large quantities of books, lugging them around in your car, and hoping that you’re able to sell a few. Amazon will print your books as you need them and, of course, have them ready for sale on Amazon.com.

Second, Kindle Direct Publishing, lets you completely skip any book printing and publish books for sale in digital form on Kindle devices and just about every other electronic device (you can even read Kindle books on any web-connected PC now with the Kindle Cloud Reader – no Kindle needed!).

This now means you’re in complete control.

“But, what about marketing? How do I get people to buy my book?”

Well, publishing companies are horrible at this part anyway. But, there are a few key marketing tactics you can use to get your book to the top of Amazon’s rankings in no time at all.

Before I tell you what those are, here’s a screenshot of one of my Kindle books that reached in the top 100 of PAID books on Amazon 48 hours after publishing:

Here is the ranking screenshot:

And, lastly, here is about half way through the second day the book was live on Amazon:

One thing to notice if you look at that last screenshot is the far right column, “Free Units-Promo**”. That’s tactic #1 when it comes to crushing it on Amazon Kindle.

Those 7,779 downloads all came in one 24-hour period when I was running a KDP Select promotion. KDP Select is a special program Amazon now offers that allows you to give your book away for free for up to 5 days in a 90-day period.

One of the benefits of doing this is what happens to your book when the KDP Select promotion ends and your book is now for sale and is no longer offered for free. Your book sky-rockets up in the rankings after coming off a KDP Select promotion unlike any other form of marketing you can do yourself.

As you can see in that screenshot, the very next day people PAID for that simple cookbook from an unknown author (I used a pen name) to the tune of 635 copies plus another 28 “borrows” (Amazon Prime members are allotted a limited number of borrows – as an author, you get paid about $2/borrow).

In all, that book that I completed outsourced for about $50, made over $300 in royalties (money in my pocket) that day. Not bad for a marketing test.

So, what are the other 2 marketing tactics to crush big name authors and publishing companies on Amazon?

#2 is to choose the right book topic. You can go ahead and write about worm farming if you want, but you’re not going to hit the top 100 on Amazon. You need to pick a book topic from one of these incredibly hot topics (in this order): fiction, romance, cooking, relationships, weight loss, or self-help. Try to venture out into just about any other category and you’ve got your work cut out for you.

The third and final tactic to help you on Amazon is to make sure you have social proof for your book BEFORE your KDP Select promotion period starts. What counts as social proof on Amazon?

1. Reviews
2. Likes
3. Reviews in your book description

First, you need a minimum of 3 reviews, preferably 4-6. The Amazon detail pages show 3 reviews at the bottom of the page and the rest on the right sidebar. For adequate social proof, you want 3 real 5-star reviews posted to Amazon. To get these, give a digital copy of your book to your friends, family members, colleagues, teachers, spouse, or whoever you can and ask them to write a review for you. (*Note: It’s even better if they BUY your book from Amazon so there’s the “Amazon Verified Purchase” line on their review which makes it look more legitimate.)

Second, you need some likes. There’s a like button at the top of every Amazon page like the one pictured below. Any Amazon customer can click this button and the counter goes up. You do NOT want people going to your Amazon page and seeing a “Like (0)” because that sets off a red-flag that your book is not getting any love.

Lastly, you want reviews written into your description. When you publish your book through Kindle Direct Publishing, you’re able to enter in a sizable amount of text for your book’s description. Don’t waste time blabbering about stuff they’ll find out when they read the book. Start off with some hard-hitting testimonial-type reviews from people you know (or, experts in the subject if possible) at the BEGINNING of your description. Plug 2-3 of these in there. This provides another solid layer of social proof for your book.

Once you do these three items, you’re ready to schedule your KDP Select promotion and are well on your way to becoming a best-selling author. Just make sure you screenshot your bestselling ranking on Amazon when it hits for lifetime credibility and bragging rights

Do you know how you spend your time?

One of the reasons people get overweight is that they really have no idea how much or what they eat. They simply go through their day, consuming whatever comes their way, without too much thought to their balance of calories in (foods & liquids consumed) vs. calories out (exercise, daily activity, & Basal Metabolic Rate, etc.). Most people are completely clueless about this, so they keep eating and keep getting fatter.

The solution for this age-old weight loss problem? Keep a food log. An example of one I’ve used to track my food (in my case, for weight gain, not weight loss) is FitDay.com. Keeping a food log makes the dieter release exactly what is going in and out of her body. The result? A clear picture of what needs to be done to lose weight (a pound of weight loss a week means eating about 500 calories less per day than burned through daily activity & exercise).

But, this isn’t an article about weight loss. So, how does this relate to time management?

Well, one of the most productive weeks I’ve ever had was when I decided to keep a time log. Instead of tracking my food and exercise, I tracked every activity I did during the day on a minute-by-minute basis.

Whenever I would start an activity such as working on a business project, I would write down the time I started the activity and time I finished the activity.

The reason this was so productive is that it forced me to completely avoid doing big time-wasters such as compulsively checking email, logging into Facebook, and browsing around on the internet. I knew that if I wanted to do one of those activities I would have to write it down on my time log – a big enough deterrent to prevent me from breaking my schedule to waste some time.

I recommend you try this for 7 days straight. Write down every activity you do on a sheet of paper or using an online tool such as http://www.evernote.com. Write down your start and stop time for the activities. You can even set a specific time BEFORE you start the activity using an online timer such as http://e.ggtimer.com.

At the end of the 7 days, take a look at your time log. Group the time waster activities and compare how much time you spend doing those vs. your most productive activities.

While now I don’t use this time log trick every day, I DO rely on whenever I feel I’m slipping into an unproductive slump and need a quick reality check to get me back on track.

Change NEEDS to be easy – otherwise it simply won’t happen. Will power isn’t a sustainable solution for long-term success.

In the Happiness Advantage written by Harvard psychologist Shawn Achor, he states that to form a new habit you must put the desired action on the path of least resistance -  or, to break an old habit, you must put the desired action on  the path of greatest resistance.

One of the examples he provides in his book is when he decided he wanted to acquire the positive habit of playing guitar on a daily basis. He created a 30-day calendar using Excel and placed a printed copy near his couch with the expectation that he would have all (or at least most) of the 30 days checked of with daily guitar practice sessions.

Unfortunately, at the end of the 30 days, he had a disappointingly low number of checked off days, he only played the guitar 4 of the 30 days.

But, using what he learned in his studies as a positive psychologist, he decided that he needed to put his guitar in the path of least resistance, making it as easy as possible for himself to complete the desired action (playing the guitar each day). So, he went out and bought a cheap guitar stand and placed the guitar on the stand in the middle of his living room, thereby saving the 20 seconds it used to take him to retrieve the guitar from his closet for practicing.

What was the result? He marked off almost all of the next 30 days on his new calendar, missing only a few daily practice sessions.

This simple example provides evidence that often the only thing you need to do to become “more disciplined” is to not rely on discipline at all – simply make the desired action you want as easy as possible to do.

For example, if you want to avoid eating a whole bag of potato chips everytime you open the bag, simply take a handful of them out and put them on a plate. Then, close up the bag, put it away, and eat your small plateful. The additional activation energy required to go back to the pantry, open the bag, and start eating again will often be enough to keep you from eating the other hundreds of calories (not to mention extra unhealthy fat) you would normally consume.

As another example, if you want to start exercising regularly, then go out and buy some nice workout clothes and set them out each night before going to bed ready to use the next morning (or put them in a gym bag, all ready to go, if you want to exercise at the end of the day). This decreases the effort required to workout and thus makes it more likely you will actually do the desired action to improve your health.

If you want lasting results, you need to make it as easy as possible to achieve your outcome – put what you want on the “path of least resistance”.