Have you ever wondered how those like Elon Musk and Warren Buffet became so successful? Part of their secret sauce is genius intelligence developed from voracious learning habits and impeccable work ethic. There is one other interesting trait which helps them produce great results. That is the ability to be patient and delay gratification.
Many people want to be successful with their businesses. However, not everyone is willing to work very hard, sometimes for years without generating any income. The smart investors know delayed gratification is key asset to success. Almost everybody starts out with very little or no capital. So it takes substantial effort and time commitment building skills to produce products and build projects which generate substantial income. I have seen it myself. The work I did years back have laid the foundation to bigger opportunities. Success is like a marathon. It takes time and effort. Don’t fall prey for get rich quick schemes. Instead, build a long term vision and figure out a set of goals so you can achieve what you want.
You see, while the greater majority of businesses that fail focus purely on generating profits. The smart investors are willing to lose money or break even, sometimes for a number of years so they can build an asset they can sell for big sums of cash. Losing money to make money. How counterintuitive right? Warren Buffet has clearly stated “Never lose money” as his core rule. Yet to dominate big industries of today requires founders and investors to risk resources. Let me explain.
Something I do a lot of is reading. I read about how some people became wealthy and successful. The strategies they used. The pains they suffered. The failures they had to overcome. Often times I reach out to people I admire and they drop a golden nugget here and there in the form of advice.
A key advice which repeats over and over again, from the most successful people I follow is not to focus on the money. Instead, many of them understand the value of building brands and other digital assets like progressive web apps. They know the best brands hire the best people. They also know the best brands have the best customer support, rigorous standards and procedures which reduce overhead.
FUN FACT: The power of progressive web apps has to do with the fact all the code necessary to make a website work can be downloaded within the browser. As a result is possible to set your phone to airplane mode, or even completely lose internet connectivity while still being able to use the web application as it was intended. This is really powerful and has many use cases. Among them, network security!
The best brands are ecofriendly and show positive impact for society and the environment which the current generations value so much. In fact, businesses which are toxic to health and pollute the environment are losing ground. For example, the “Uber” of carpooling services blablacar helps save money and reduce CO2 emissions, which led to exponential growth. Mother nature needs more technology to clean it and make it thrive.
So the strategy of the smart investor is to familiarize with the industry they want to compete in as much as they can and allocate resources towards a project sometimes for a number of years without making anything in return. This is the same strategy Elon Musk used to fund PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla. SpaceX in particular, he risked $100 million USD in order to get a successful rocket launch after various failed attempts. Today SpaceX is valued at $33.3 billion and may be the one entity to take us to Mars and beyond into the stars and far away galaxies.
FUN FACT: Recently the Navy of the United States released patent US10144532B2. This vehicle uses Electromagnetic (EM) propulsion system. Some sources indicate the reason why this patent was put in place is because China is experimenting with similar technology for interstellar travel and military purposes. By releasing this patent the US Government could charge royalties to the government of China for using this technology.
If you are interested in this sort of technology I found a video for you which explains how EmDrive works. For myself I just really like to see we already have the technology to travel to other galaxies which means we can use the same technology to power and clean this planet. We need to get some of the powerful investors to produce more applications of this wonderful technology for the better of humankind. Video below:
For some entrepreneurs like Elon, the goal is to be able to hire the best people by producing more competitive packages. They bring on board the best consultants to set up the systems and workflows as efficiently and optimal as possible based on the best technology. This is done for all important aspects of the business which need professionals or specialist execute or set up that part based on budget availability.
The key is big business expenses like this on employees and consultants are all tax deductible so what comes at a lost in one project helps lower tax costs on another which is successfully generating profits. With the best people, producing the best work with optimized systems. Taking into account the goal is to produce the best product possible which is beneficial to society and the environment and giving the customer what they want… the brand will start to grow exponentially and become the industry leader. This doesn’t just apply to space rockets but to virtually any product.
Eventually this business model will produce more profit than loses the investor had to take on at the beginning. By that point, instead they have an asset which can be sold for millions and sometimes even billions depending on the industry and service which was produced. This is in essence how some of the wealthy self-made individuals in recent times have done it. The hardest part of the process is to build the first business which generates sufficient income to take on the risk of building another starting at a loss to gain a competitive advantage. Entrepreneurship is risky.
The smart investor will try to put himself in a position where it can continue to do business at a loss for a number of years so the project grows and becomes successful. In time, their competitors are forced to leave the industry or take a smaller segment of the market if they don’t go out of business. The reason it works this way, is because business today has become EXTREMELY COMPETITIVE. Most businesses focus on customer lifetime value, starting the relationship with customer at break even point or at a lost.
There are all sorts of technologies like Stripe, Paypal, PayTrace among others, built to easily take payment. Equally abundant are the technologies you can use to create online stores within a few hours like Shopify, Clickfunnels and WordPress + Woocommerce. Abundant are the factories overseas which would work with smaller entrepreneurs who are just starting out trying to import or create physical products so they can sell them for a profit. Something which was not very accessible to regular people just a few years back.
There is also plenty of tutorials to get up an running with paid advertising. Maybe the techniques and approaches are not the very latest and don’t produce the best results. But still with the right products and landing pages is possible to generate some income even as a beginner.
The much lowered barrier to entry causes a sea of competition. It’s those people who are willing to lose at the start who get to build the biggest and better brands. The reason for this, is they can put all that money to growing the business and recruiting the best and most skilled people to grow the business.
FUN FACT: I have talked about social media platforms but I did not say much about Tik Tok. What I have learned is that more than 300 million dollars were put behind the platform to make it what it is today. Over 1 Billion active users worldwide use Tik Tok since June 2019, and it may become bigger than Facebook and Instagram. Without the funding to get influencers and celebrities to promote Tik Tok, this would not have happened. The problem with this platform is it mines a lot of user data, so all US federal employees are being banned from using it.
What Elon Musk and the Tik Tok examples has taught me is that “It Takes Money to Make Money” is very real in order to get results faster. I see far too many people who work extremely hard to produce blogs and ecommerce websites. Yet they spend very little on hosting and tools which yield great Returns On Investment (ROI). So they never succeed. Recently, a lot of authority sites were wiped off Google. Most of them were hosted on cheap servers alongside other projects which were used for spam. Had they used better hosting like Siteground those authority sites would still rank.
The moral of the story is that trying to build a business without funds or without investing resources to grow the business is recipe for failure. Anyone in that situation would produce results way faster by working a part time or full time job while building something on the side. Most business development today requires some exchange of monetary value or skill bartering. That’s just how it is. Influencers and backlinks cost money. Writing captivating and engaging content requires monetary value unless you can do it yourself. Social skills are extremely valuable to get others to help you.
So if you are trying to build an online business keep this in the back of your mind all the time. A bigger businessman out there with more funds will have the competitive advantage over you if they choose to go after your industry. This is why you see so much advice to focus on small business niches which has a lower audience and income potential but which is not attractive to investors like the ones I’m describing.
A more solid game plan (in my opinion) may be to become a key player in helping these investors build their brands and digital assets. If you do a good job they will keep you on the roster for a few years until the company is sold. Even when they release you of your duties, all that experience and business knowledge will help you repeat the process. Eventually you may have enough knowledge, funding and social capital to become the investor and build a business for yourself. The more experience you have the more likely you will become successful.
So if you feel like a failure now, remember businesses take time to grow. Keep working hard and keep learning. Build your skills. Take jobs that teach you everything you need to know. It will save you so much money and frustration in the long run. I talk to so many successful bloggers and all of them told me it took them 10+ years to hit their stride. Many of their businesses failed until something worked. The more you learn about business, the more you may even find value in becoming a high ranking executive in a company because business has become super competitive. Resource heavy…
On a good side, the booming in technology devices which will be used to power the Internet of Things (IoT) will produce so much opportunity to sell online and build Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. There will be so much data to work with. I know for sure Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and 3d Printing will produce great technology and products that will give rise to entire new niches. So is a good idea to follow trends closely and to build all the skills required to sell online to be able to capitalize on the opportunity!
Hope this helps!
-Rey
PS:
For a long time SEO’s have taken advantage of Private Blog Networks (PBN’s). These are packs of tens, hundreds or thousands of authority websites that link to a “money site”. In this way, with this linking strategy is possible to rank the main website (or clients site) to the first page of Google which can then be monetized with various business models. Since June of 2019, many websites and the PBN’s these used, are now being removed from the Google Index. This means now is an excellent time to build new niche sites and authority blogs because there is bigger potential to succeed. The fastest way to success is to have some funds to invest to grow the project. So working a job and building projects on the side is still the best strategy. Most projects will fail, think 10 years experimenting to hit it big.
MONEY SITE: Refers to the website which sole purpose is to generate income through one or multiple business models on the internet. Some common ways money sites are monetized include placing Adsense Ads, or Amazon Affiliate Banner Ads/Text Links. Other alternatives include creating product reviews for digital products like those found on Clickbank or Physical Products sold on other affiliate networks found in OfferVault. Money sites often use unbounce to create high converting landing pages to promote CPA offers and also digital and physical products.