The New Business

Wow, so much has changed for the better since I read "The 4-Day Workweek" and "Think and Grow Rich". Really great stuff.

"The 4-Day Workweek" got me to outsource the backend of my company to India saving me an incredible amount of time. Since then, I have been working on all kinds of other projects, like dealing with a UPS mess, and the old tenants who want to sue me (good luck with that). It has also given me much more free time with my wife, who not surprisingly, is taking full advantage of the situation.

The other goal of this book is to focus on 20% of the work that generates 80% of the revenue. So, I made a business decision to actually stop selling to the various local stores because the profit margin is smaller, and I then need to stand around waiting for the owner to turn his attention to me. There is also the constant driving to and from, repairs, blah blah,blah.... When I laid it all out on a table, it was an obvious waste of my time for what little revenue it generated. Instead, I made an offer to me best store customer. More on that another day. I am going to focus on Craigslist and rebuild the website. Both of these topics are falling under the India heading.

It has also freed up my time to focus on the advice of "Think and Grow Rich". The book itself was published in 1937 after the great depression. Don't let that stop you though, quite an amazing work of literature. The aim of this book is saying to visualize your specific goal, and focus by taking advantage of any situation that meets your criteria.

In my case, I said I wanted to have $20,000 in the bank, one year from now. I would achieve it by selling phones. I then remind myself of it several times a day. While it sounds like bullshit, I have already seen an improvement in my business personality. I am calling back more possible customers who leave messages. I am following up with old contacts that have fallen by the side of the road. It has also gotten me to call up older "salesmen" I was working with, and trying to get them back involved.

Basically, since my time isn't being dominated by back-end nonsense anymore, I am looking into more sales avenues, that involve the least amount of work for me. For example, I had met a guy who is a "street hussler" about 2 weeks ago. Since then, he sold 2 phones, and has 2 more pending. I met him tonight and gave him one of the phones. Same night, I met another guy, same situation. He called me tonight about 2 possible sales. These types of situations are great, because they make money, I make money, and I don't even need to do anything but hand off inventory to people I already know. This is a much better situation than the one that involves meeting strange people in random parking lots. Let them do that, I'll be watching TV or something.