Why SALES is the foundation of every business

Before we jump in:

Over the last 12 months I’ve used AdRhino to run my pay-per-click Google ads at several of my companies.

At one of our businesses AdRhino helped us reduce our cost-per-click by 44% while reducing our cost per lead by 56%.

Our year-over-year ad performance is VERY GOOD.

If you run a business spending more that $10K/month on marketing and you want to learn how paid ads can help you scale, I highly recommend setting up a call with the AdRhino team.

If you’d like an intro to AdRhino, reply to this email and I’ll make one for you.

Note: alongside being a happy customer, I am also an investor in the business.

Why you have to learn to SELL:

When people think of sales they think of convincing customers to pay them money for services their company delivers. This is indeed sales, and it is the exact place you should start.

But the entrepreneurship classes and the business literature will tell you to go talk to your customers. Survey your customers. Ask them questions and learn all about them before trying to make an offer and complete a sale.

I’m here to tell you that that is all bullshit.

Your job isn’t to ask your Grandma or your neighbor if they would be willing to give you money for your product or service. Because the people who are closest to you aren’t your real customers.

They will tell you that you’ve come up with a great business idea. They would buy what you’re selling. The problem is that when it comes down to actually handing over their money, a lot of times they will balk and ghost you. That’s why your job is to go collect the money, today!

The cold hard truth is that people vote with their wallets.

They don’t do charity. Money is hard to make and valuable and people will do whatever they can not to waste it.

If you are launching a business, ask for money.

If people refuse to give it to you, your idea sucks, and people don’t actually need what you’re offering or they don’t trust you to deliver it.

So step one of starting a business is simple: Collect a deposit. Sell a service. Get somebody to hand you cash or send money to your bank account.

You’re thinking of starting a lawn care company?

Some might think you should start by incorporating a business, building a website, buying a mower, practicing your mowing skills, getting insurance, thinking about your pricing strategy, and setting up the company.

Wrong.

Your first step is to knock on doors and find somebody willing to pay you to mow their lawn.

Once you have five customers who have paid you cash deposits in exchange for your work, get your mower, do the work, and collect the remaining sum. Then do it all over again.

If you aren’t willing to do this, you are simply wasting your time.

I repeat: If people actually need what you are offering, they will pay you cash money to solve their problem today.

There are literally zero exceptions to this rule.

If you can’t get the money, you aren’t solving a real problem and you need to go back to the drawing board asap!

A few tweets from this week:

Lastly, if you buy real estate, I highly recommend doing some cost segregation studies to defer taxes.

I use RE Cost Seg and they do studies much cheaper than the competition and provide super high-quality engineered reports.

Get a free proposal here.

Onward and upward,

Nick Huber

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About Me

I started the Sweaty Startup in December of 2018 because I believe the Shark Tank and Tech Crunch culture is ruining the real spirit of low-risk entrepreneurship.