Because you do. I’m, this is recorded in England. I am about to head, well very soon, head off to Canada. And I’ll be doing them over there soon. And how can you do that Jon? Well let me explain.
My businesses are based in England. I have one based in Canada as well. When I am in Canada, I’m not on holiday, and I am there kind of every other month for 3 or 4 weeks, or 5 weeks or whatever. I’m working but here’s the difference.
Over the years I built a business originally. And I, it was quite successful. It was in fire safety and had staff and all the trappings, we owned our building, we made 6 figure profits, pretty cool.
However it wasn’t fun. Because I was stressed, I don’t suffer from stress. Grey hairs’ due to age. But I just didn’t like it. I didn’t enjoy it. When you don’t enjoy something, you don’t look forward to the week. Nowadays I look forward to Mondays.
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So I sold that business, swore I’d never do it again. When I built a new one, and did it again, yeah I know. Soon forgot that. But by the way, that is another story, I’ll tell it one day.
When I did it the next time, I decided to learn how to do it better. I didn’t want all the hassle I’d had before. So I invested. I actually invested in the Emyth.
If you’ve read the Emyth book, the Emyth revisited, you’ll hear me talk over and over about it. It’s my favorite business book of all time.
It is, the second one by the way, Second favorite is ‘Built to sell’ and the author of that is on Friday. But that is something I read and I thought yes, that’s what I want. So I decided to pay for the training.
Now at the time, I have looked this up before. It was something ridiculous. It’s, it’s like 5, is it like 3, 4, or 5 thousand dollars a month. Something ridiculous like that. And we’re in it for years.
And my business grew massively. But the main thing is that I, it’s not dependent on me. I can choose when I work, what I do and where I do it from. Now that is wonderful. And that is all down to me, investing in learning.
Now you do not need to invest that kind of money, seriously. But just reading the book, and thinking, ‘Wow let me apply some of that.’
And in fact, I am just going to give another plug for the Owners Club, which is my, our product here at MarketingForOwners.com. You can go to www.MarketingForOwners.com and you will find it.
But there is the free one, the free version. But to be honest it’s the paid one, isn’t it always? Its 29 pounds a month before you get all shouty and saying, ‘hmm hmm hmm.’ So 29 quid a month.
If you can’t afford that in your business, I recommend you sell your business or close it down, and go get yourself a job. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry if that’s too much but seriously. Yeah this is business guys.
But in the Owners Club, I show you how to do what I did in my business. My business has a warehouse, we ship stuff out, we stock stuff, I have staff, we employee stuff, people come, they go, they leave, they get pregnant, they leave, they come, they go, we train, we ship stuff out next day.
All that kind of stuff and I am not there. I don’t sign checks. I don’t hire people, I don’t fire people. I’m very guilty in that I don’t know the last name of some of my staff, and there’s only 10. Yeah. So this can be done, alright. This can be done, and honestly, it’s a beautiful thing.
You Have to Spend the Money
But not if you don’t spend money. Do you expect to get it all for free? Now I’m giving this for free. but you can read books, remember I recommend a book every single Monday, yesterday I was recommending David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Fantastic book.
Have you ever read any of the books that I have recommended? Just buy it or get it from the library. But the effort to go to the library, park your car, and go there and then go home, you might as well just order it from Amazon, or Book Depository or whatever or Barnes and Noble.
But that’s is learning. And that’s a tiny investment. But what they’ll do, so like the Emyth. They’ll plant the seed, and then you think I want more. And they might have a training course. Would you pay, but did the book resonate with you? Was it that good? Would you do it? Would you build your business?
Now my business does over a couple of million quid a year. Which is like 3 million, over 3 million dollars. And that is down to that, and I am not even there. So, yes I would invest over and over and over again. I’ve got numerous examples. But it doesn’t have to be that.
And by the way I am not talking about investing in my 29 pounds a month thing. But 100% money back guarantee by the way. What have you got to lose? But I mean everything.
Think tools such as Lynda.com. If you don’t know how to do something at work, instead of complaining and whining and letting it slow you down, just join Lynda.com.
It’s owned by LinkedIn now. And it’s, is that like $29 a month or something like that. It is something like, and they’ve got a training course on everything.
And when I say training course, a quick how to. Exactly how to do everything you could ever imagine. How to do stuff on your website, how to edit photos, how to upload a photo, how to do something on your computer, how to setup your iPhone, how to use Dropbox. All these things.
Learn, and not just you, invest in your staff, in your team. You’ve employed them, you are paying them. Their job is to help grow your business. Their job isn’t to do stuff for you.
Their job is to join you in the growth of your business. They are your team, right. They are not them down there, and you are up here. No, so why wouldn’t you invest in them?
You think they come along already trained? Oh yeah. How does that work out? No, they need more training, they need ongoing training.
If your doctor or GP didn’t, you know they get qualified at Meds School and then they don’t train again, how is that going to work out? Do you think they get new training all the time? Do you think the NHS in the UK, National Health Service, sorry if you’re in America and everywhere else. But do you think they are investing in them for a reason? Yes. Of course they need them to be up to date.
But because, the reason they need them to be up to date is because it’s what they do. They get people well. They fix people, they make, they diagnose illness, they make people well.
So they need to be trained, they need the tools. It’s expensive and they get paid a lot. And the NHS is crippling the country. But we are all getting ill. So we need it.
And it’s the same in your work. People need to know how to use the latest things. You are here listening to this. It’s free. Is that the only reason you’re doing it because it’s free? Or are you ever actually taking any of the advice and doing it?
Alright, what I plan to do each time, every time I release one of these, I want to make you think. I want you to take action.
I want you to think of all the things that you need to know in your business, the things that either you or someone who works for you could benefit from knowing. And then, spend some money on training them.
If you are not doing social media in your business, because you don’t like it, find out who amongst your staff loves social media.
Then don’t assume because of course they may be posting a, they may be great, they may be posting drunk pictures and all sorts. That’s what they like. However they still maybe good. So why not pay for them to go on a training course?
I am sure you can find someone locally. Check out your chamber of commerce. Someone locally, probably does a course for 50 quid. Or are you going to say, oh that’s expensive. Then if you are, get off this show. Go on, go on, off with you. Go on, out, out. Yeah, exactly. Invest. Don’t…
Yesterday I talked about, have you let complacency set root in your business. If you’re not investing then you are complacent. And you will not have systems, you will not have processes. You will not be able to compete. You will gradually gradually become insignificant to your customers. And it’s about your customers, it’s not about you.
You think you can’t afford to invest because you are losing money perhaps. That’s why you are losing money. Because you are not as good as others. Oops sorry.
Is there anyone in your business, in your entire industry that is super rich? Mega rich? Yeah? Ok. That means there is nothing wrong with the industry then is there? Who? Where’s the problem lying? Ok. So I, I am not picking on you.
No, no, alright hang on, hang on, come back, come back. No I am just trying to make you think. Go on, invest, grow, be great. Be as good as you have the potential to be. And continuously improve.
Tuesday Toolbox Tip
It’s Tuesday, so time for a Tuesday Toolbox Tip. And today’s one is going to help you with your writing.
Because one of the new things you are going to do is going to communicate with your clients by email, by blog, by whatever. So try Hemmingway app. Just google it.
It helps your writing. You simply, you can go on the online version, it’s completely free. Just delete the example text, paste in or write your text there, and it will tell you if it’s any good.
It will point out all the mistakes, but I mean the grammatical ones and whether it’s easy to read. Honestly you got to try it. Just, if you’ve ever used a marketing company, go and paste a load of stuff into it, and then send them back the report. See what they say. Click here to instantly download our FREE Book “The 71 Ultimate Marketing Tools”
Tomorrow we have Stephen Thomas. He is the King of Networking in the UK. Brilliant advice on networking. You got to be there. I’ll be back soon.