Hi, my name is Jon Butt, the founder of Marketing For Owners, The 5 QuestionsTM, and The Owners Club and if you can agree with any of these:
- My business needs more customers
- I don’t like selling
- My business can’t afford to use a marketing agency
- Our web site is not helping
- Marketing is not something I’ve done much and I’m not sure how or where to start
Or if you’ve ever just needed some advice or ideas or just someone to talk to in the lonely world of running your own business…
Our Vision Statement – to remove the stress of increasing sales income from the daily grind of business owners.
…you’ve just landed in the right place.
We All Have To Start Somewhere
Back in the day, I hit the streets as a naive young man selling fire extinguishers door-to-door to businesses on commission only.
It was fun… for a while. But then winters happened and it snowed and it rained and it got cold.
Plus, if I wanted to take a vacation, not only did it cost me money, I was unpaid during the time I was away. Ugh!
That got me realizing that I was living hand to mouth every day. If I was sick or took days off, there was no income. And, with all the customers I was finding, there was no repeat business. No building a client base.
Sales were good as I was young and keen but how would my income ever grow?
There Had to Be a Better Way…
So, I took a look at how the big companies did things and noticed that they had marketing and sales methods. These methods were used to build up that customer base and to build repeat business. It was time to rethink my Triangle Fire Protection business and start over.
This time, I copied learned from what the successful companies were doing. But, rather than just do the same, I tweaked and tested these ideas and came up with better, more efficient ways to apply them.
Also, being the owner-manager of a small business (I had staff by now), I found I could move faster and had more control than some of these huge, sprawling conglomerates.
It worked pretty well. So well, in fact, in 2003, Kidde plc, a billion dollar worldwide fire protection business, dipped into their pocket and wrote me a cheque for a dollar sum with seven wonderful numbers in it. Yay!
I Love Marketing
Having spent a few well-paid months (they were very generous) passing Triangle Fire over to Kidde, I retired in early 2004.
Then, boredom set in and my brain needed something to do. At that time, internet broadband was coming of age and, combining my (unusual) love of marketing with the Wild West of the internet, I was hooked.
It was time for learning, lots of learning. And, I had time in spades.
My first venture was an online coffee guide. Then there were contact lenses, treadmills, PDAs (remember them?), acne treatments, and various others.
Eventually, I connected my knowledge of online and “offline” marketing with my knowledge of fire extinguishers and fire safety.
Lo and behold, Fire Protection Online was born as an ecommerce store… and generated one million dollars in sales in its first year (it was something like one million, two thousand bucks). Yay, again!
From that point on, I visited conference after conference in the USA, making friends with leading internet marketers and learning the cutting edge marketing methods that would grow my company while I wasn’t actually there.
How cool is that?
….while I wasn’t even there.
Oh, I forgot to mention that Fire Protection Online doesn’t have any sales staff or anyone with the word “sales” in their job title. Or anyone with any official marketing training or qualifications.
It’s all from simple marketing systems that we create ourselves. And it works.
Fast forward a few years and I now spend much of my time traveling back and forth between the UK, Vancouver, Canada and the USA at my companies, at conferences and showing fellow business owners what I’ve learned.
Do You Want To Learn What I Learned?
During my journey, I developed the concept of The 5 QuestionsTM that every business owner must answer to be truly successful. And I can help you answer those questions, too.
Marketing For Owners is a growing community of owners, managers and executives of small (and bigger, btw) businesses who want to be in control of their destiny without relying on others to bring in the bacon.
And, it’s not just me. You can rely on our dedicated team to keep you informed, productive, effective and keep you darned pleased with yourself!
There are three main features of Marketing For Owners and here’s what each one is all about.
Marketing For Owners Blog
This is where you’ll find the basis of your future ideas for growing your business. Our aim is to educate, not preach. We guide you through The Perpetual Sales Cycle that consists of the 7 Ps of modern marketing.
Marketing For Owners Podcast
Daily nuggets in bite size chunks of 10 minutes by video podcast (or you can just listen to the audio). Subscribe through iTunes and Stitcher and, every weekday you will get tips and tricks to keep you inspired along with the latest books to read, people to follow, tools to use.
Wednesdays are reserved for the Expert Interview Series where I get to grill the world’s most successful marketers to find out their tips and tricks.
The Owners Club
Our Members Only club is where you learn how to do it all. New how-to’s and reports and checklists and cheat sheets are being added constantly and are not visible to anyone else. Here you get the real juice along with the easy marketing systems we are using to find perfect customers and grow.
We will cover all aspects of The 5 QuestionsTM It’s members only because it’s the best stuff.
