I think every project I had a certain time-frame for success, IMMEDIATE, or 1-WEEK.

Then when it did not meet certain success criteria I would give-up, stop working on the project, or withdraw the project from the world, then repeat the same process with a new project.

What I realized this morning when I woke up was that every successful business that I read about that happens over-night, actually started in some shape or form 18 months before. That’s a year and a half of refinement, tweaking, testing, modifying, adjusting to the market.

So the product that’s there 18 months plus, is rarely the same product that was there at the beginning, more-over it was the constant tuning that got it there.

Advice:

1. Do something you’re passionate about because 18 months will be very long if you don’t like what you’re doing.
2. Try to sell it before you build it, use adwords, blog post, other landing pages to qualify your market.
3. Create your business model, i.e. how you will make money, how many sales you need per month, per day, what your estimated conversions will be, etc.
4. Start off with a MVP (minimum viable product) to get it out there.
5. Start measuring, start tweaking, increase visits, increase conversion.
6. Wait 18-24 months, doing number 5.
7. Retire Rich.

I think I’m going to create a book, called 18 months to Retirement.

If that business has un-informed or reactive management then the employee on the receiving end of that unhappy person might get counseled about how to be a better employee or how to improve their people skills when probably the exact opposite is true.

I think the same is true with online and customer reviews. If you happen to be a business just starting out and you happen upon these kinds of “customers” at the beginning of your business you might in trouble because you’re never going to sell to the silent majority of people that might actually enjoy what product or service you’re offering.

Not really sure how to handle these kinds of people in general, just hope you are doing things to attract people on the other end of the curve to cancel them out.

You see the Mexican Restaurant that Seth talks about does a buch of tiny things that are NOT readily apparent 80/20 efficient. For example the 14 different kinds of salsa, scream 80-20 optimization. I bet that most people only get 3-4 salsas, yet as soon as you take-away 10 varieties, you lessen the experience.

So if you’re out there and are looking for a recipe for a successful business I’m thinking that there’s not so much a perfect equation but rather there’s a million little details you’ll need to work on that you’ll need to rigorously refine until you get to the vital few that make you a success.

I think that it’s a really keen observation when looking at most products that succeed in the end. Word was not the first word processor; Google was not the first search engine; Facebook was not the first social network.

As a pioneer most of my business life I relate to this A LOT. I created new products, new products that had never been created and business problems that have not been solved.

I think the lesson here is unless you have a Trust Fund, develop something slightly different to be new, but learn from the mistakes of others and become a settler right after the pioneer spends his time and money paving the way solving the stuff requiring lots of time and money… Something which you might not have…

Book after book, or VC after VC will give that same advice without providing a logical underpinning, or reason for the advise. It’s akin to the teacher that says because I said so, rather than actually giving a real reason. I think it’s also because in business people think anecdotally, or are unable to give the real reason, they just know because they’ve been told that or that’s what they’ve seen. But for some reason they don’t explain or know why. Well I’m here to tell you why!

It took a physics analogy in a post by my virtual mentor (Seth Godin) for me to understand what it meant by having a winning team, and it all has to do with the stable size of a business and it’s ability to scale.

Now the stable size of a business depends on the business you are in. That size could be 1 person or 5 people or 10 people. But if a 1 person company tries to start a business that works best for 5 people, it will most likely fail.

Also, VCs are trying to build companies that can scale fast to turn a little bit of money into a large amount of money, companies without a foundation to move from one level of business to another are most likely not going to get funded.

When you start to add up how many impressions you would get from such a low PPC you would need keywords totally in the hundreds of thousands per month to get hundreds of clicks per month.  Then with a conversion rate of a generous 2%, you might get 4-5 sales per month.

To really make anything meaningful you need to have a PPC between $0.75 and $1.00, but at these cost you only really get profitable at over $100 profit per sale, this is because your advertising cost per sale are between $75~$100.

So while I loved the book, I wish I would have read this PPC assumption before I had to figure it out by spending a few hundred dollars…

You have two sales man come to you to sell a widget.

• Sales Person A – Tells you about 20 different things and how they can be customized and tweaked to get exactly what you want.
• Sales Person B – Tells you you’ve got 3 choices, where one of those options will give you just about everything you need.

Which sales pitch is simpler? Which sales pitch will work if the person you are selling to only understands about 5 of the 20 things you just mentioned.

Less is more when it comes to selling.

Basically as entrepreneurs we are always coming up with ideas for new businesses. There is always though a big leap from that initial idea to a successful business. Some of the ideas include:

• Using Amazon PageRank to narrow your business idea.
• Using Google Keyword tools to refine and ultimately pick your niche
• Using Google Adwords to test your product and demographics

If you are interested in such a book, please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear more about your thoughts on the subject.

I remember back when my father was teaching me how to hit, I wanted to really really impress him and every time I tried to hit a home run. I did not hit the ball, it was strike, strike, strike and I was on the verge of quitting when he sat down and said “Scott, you’re trying too hard, do this for me, just try to touch the ball with your bat, but don’t swing.”

Sure enough as long as I was just trying to touch the ball, and not trying to hit a home run, I could do it every time. Then next thing he had me do was just take a swing at the ball, and of course, I was encouraged and I tried once again to hit a home run, and of course, swing and a miss. He said to me, “you’re still trying too hard , don’t try to knock it out of the park, just slow down your swing.” So this time he told me he wanted me to just use one hand to hold the bat and hit the ball. Success.

The next thing he said to me changed my game forever, he said, I want you to go about 80% in your hits. So before you were giving it 100% and with one hand it was about 40%, so I want you to go about 80% on everything and never go above it. Success.

Later that year I was selected to go to the all-star game for 2nd base, I was a lock to get on base, though I didn’t hit many home runs, I could always get on base.

Starting A Business is not about hitting home runs, which is what I’ve been trying to do, it’s about taking it down a notch, getting some success, taking it up a notch or two getting more success, and so on.

— Update —

I still like the quote: “Think big because it takes the same energy as thinking small.” But to become the home-run king, you first need to connect with a bat.

If you are starting a business there are a few ways to decide what business to go into:

• Solve the same problem the same way as someone else by going into the same business and executing better.
• Look for new problems to solve.

The easiest way to look for new problems is to look at what you do every day that annoys you. For me this is a problem, because I’m pretty happy on a day-to-day basis and I get annoyed by things that don’t usually annoy many people.