Building an online business - You need to invest - Part 4

Building an online business - You need to invest - Part 4

Investing in your own online business is the only way you'll be able to catapult yourself into making money.  You will never get an investment from an angel or someone who is looking to give you money for something that will profit, until you're actually making money.  It's sad, but true, that a lot of amazing ideas get over looked because they aren't yet making money or they aren't even up and running yet.  I myself have had to pass up some potentially great investments because the company just didn't have enough business data for me to weigh in on.  I didn't know what their growth rate was, what it could be or if the business had potential simply because the business didn't do any of the research on themselves prior to coming to me. 

So why do you need to invest in you own business?  Because you'll push yourself to make more money over time!  Not investing in your business' growth is like purchasing a car and not putting gas in it.  It will look nice, but it won't go anywhere lol

Many people ask me "What should I invest in?  I'm confused" and I simply ask them what they're doing and how they're doing it.  A lot of the will start out with "Well I'm advertising here, here and here" and that's not what I'm asking usually.  I ask them what they're doing and how they're doing it to see how they respond, usually I get a response on how they're trying to make money.  What I'm looking for is someone that will say "I've optimized my website for conversions and I've purchased (this item), (this service) and (this piece of software) in order to streamline everything and make it easier for me and my people to get the work done".

If you're not working on your own systems and you're constantly just trying to make a sale, you'll lose a lot more often than you'll win.  So many people are worried about how many sales they're getting and they never think to look at their own setup, which could be killing their profits since it's what needs to be worked on FIRST.


Your Design:
When someone gets to your website they will immediately judge you based on your websites design.  It's sad, but true, and I still do it even though I know that the design doesn't make the service. 

What you'll need to do is hire a designer or go over to themeforest and purchase a premium theme so you can customize it with your own images and text in order to have a well designed and responsive website.  If you are using free HTML templates for your design, you're going to be leaving a lot of sales on the table.  You could definitely make some money with a bad design, but imagine how many more sales you can make on top of what you're currently making if you just investing in your own design and didn't use a free one


Automation:
When you automate some things on the back end of your website it will free up you, or your employees, to do other things in order to make the business more successful.  When I started out I was too successful and I was working 16 hours a day just fulfilling orders, and it was starting to get to me.  I couldn't take a day off and the amount of money I was making didn't matter because I was starting to get grumpy from the lack of sleep lol.  I brought on my business partner and he developed something that would set up our orders and then automatically send out the reports when they were finished.  Of course it took some time to turn this into a well oiled machine, but after a few months of testing, we had it set up in a way that reduced my 16 hour work load to just 30 minutes a day lmao

We invested $100 into some software and 3rd party systems each month and it gave me an extra 15 and 1/2 hours a day to work on other things in order to make the company more successful   If we hadn't invested in the systems to help automate everything, we both would have burnt out fairly quick from working 8+ hours a day, every day, and not getting a break.


Your Team!
Investing in your team is going to help you be more successful in the shortest amount of time.  If you have employees that come into your office, you can take them out to lunch or just have a fun event planned that everyone can attend.  I remember a few years ago I was doing work for a company and they invited me out for one of their team building excersices.  Now I wasn't even part of this company, they were just paying my company for SEO and marketing work, but wanted us to come out since we built such a good relationship with them.  What we did was play something called whirley ball, it's basically basketball in bumper cars while throwing a wiffle ball at the target (the hoop).  It was pretty fun and I didn't see anyone complaining about work, which is why the CEO did the event in the first place

Another way to invest in your team is by upgrading their equipment such as chairs, desks, computers, phones, etc.  If they see that you're investing in their equipment so they can have a more comfortable work environment, they will work better for you.

Building trust and making the work environment fun for your employees will take time and money, but it is one of the main investments I always tell business owners to target.  I say this because if you have an angry team, nothing will get done.  If you have a happy team, work will get done even if it's strenuous



In Conclusion:
There are many things you can invest in when it comes to your business.  What you'll need to prioritize are the things I touched base on above, because those are the main ones.  If you master the 3 above you'll have a great design for your business, you'll have everything automated that possibly can be and your team will be happy to do the work for you!



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Thanks!

Razzy