Sell the bucket then fill its holes, then scale the sales again. Try to sell scrapes instead of throwing it away. There is value added but you don't directly see to it. Arm your sales people, they are the cash flow of the business, stay close to them. Your content can help selling, give them the list. The person with the highest standard should be in charge. Promote the most demanding/exigent person, that's the only criteria. Focus on ads until you're at $100k per month/$1M per year, after that focus on the product, then focus back on sales. Growth, stagnation, and decline are stressful meaning business is stressful. Stress is a fact of life, the only escape is death. Your stress tolerance growths along your problems. Until $1M per month, be 1 channel (mail, video, ads) with 1 avatar (customer type) with 1 product. Add channels if you want only after that threshold so it can run without you as you'll be working on the second one. The 5 main reasons someone isn't doing what you want them to are miscommunication (tell them), skills (train them), time (deadline), motivation (incite them with freedom and investment), block (bring the thing that's missing). Attack the reason rather than the person. Proof over promise. 10 testimonials will sell more than 100 statements. Proofs must be recent, visual, numerous. Content that begins with pain instead of the end result converts more because the buyer can relate. Sell at time of pain, ask for testimonial at time of satisfaction. Have something very very expensive to sell (10x more even though you don't plan to actually sell it but will deliver if it does) to anchor everything else and nudge people to buying your lower cost real core offer. Don't fear raising prices, 10% of customers are whales who just want to buy the most expensive things. Ensure new hires raise the average bar. Even if the person if very good, he must also be better than half of the team to be hired. Hire better or dilute competence. Your best talent is yet to be recruited, forever. No one know you exist so advertise more. You get bored of your marketing before most prospects even see it. You won't harass your audience, we need to be reminded more than to be taught. Say your things on repeat. By doing so, people will come to you when they're ready. Produce 100 hours of content, reach out 100x, pay $100 ads. The lookback window: you're judged only on your last thing (ad, video, product, etc.). The less frequently you bill, the longer customer stay: annual billing means annual churn. Long time window means more time to provide value. Having cash upfront is better for your business, give 1 month free for those who buy the whole year. The CLOSER framework for phone sale: Clarify their presence (why they here: "retire wife" is more impactful than "increase revenue"), Label the problem, Overview past experiences (increase importance), Sell the vacation (feelings not features), Explain away concerns (specifics, time, money, decision, avoidance), Reinforce the decision (act in the first 24h). Unify sales and ads/marketing under the acquisition department with a CRO (Chief Revenue Officer). Sales fill the holes that advertising failed to answer. Ads and sales solve the same problem differently, 1-to-many versus 1-to-1. You don't need salespeople with the perfect ads. Eliminate the cross-department bullshit, we're all here to serve customers. A good CRO is headed for CEO. Every business has 3 key functional leaders: acquisition (sales, marketing), delivery (product, UX, engineering), operations (IT, legal, HR, recruiting). Ops is at the service of the other two. If people you're interviewing for these positions don't teach you things during the interview, skip them and hire better. You don't need passion for one thing, love the game of running a business with the right people. The hardest work is the one you don't know how to do, which sometimes is the most important and frightening one. Confront the unknown until you succeed, don't fall back to easier activities. Entrepreneurship is turning the unknown into know through trial and error. Hard to do means hard to copy, and is often very profitable. Develop your own thesis of how things works by trying instead of asking. Before considering doing something new, do 10 times more of what works already. Focus on the one known things that can grow the business, skip the rest. New things looks good because you don't know enough about them. You must know where the bodies are buried in your department, despite the managers telling you it's good, to avoid blind optimism. Don't add unknowns to the the many existing unknown of entrepreneurship. Always start for free. The most expensive thing for the customer isn't even the price to pay you but the external inconveniences (changing, moving, trying, etc.). Starting for free gives you results for confidence and proof, but also lower stakes to begin with. When you start, you're paid with feedback. Free customers can leave testimonials, refer you to other customers, and be turned in paying customers once you make it paid. Grow the demand to grow the price. Talk to customers to solve all your problems, they have all the information you need. Take 100s of calls, they say the things in their own words that you didn't have in mind. Talk to the people who give you money and ask them why, same for those who didn't if you have time. Why ask yourself "will they like it?" all year long when you get ask them? Bonus point is that, instead of cancelling if something is bad, they call you. Be more angry at the reason of their anger than they are. Raising prices makes you more money despite getting you more "No". Some prices are very flexible depending on the product (food vs life-changing medicine). 2x price with 35% less sales means more money and more profit. It's easier to have few big customers than many small ones. Adjust prices yearly (at least 5%) or get eating up by inflation. For one time payments it's easy, for subscriptions sell them the risk of you not staying profitable (give them delay as a reward for their loyalty). Some "No" you get after raising prices, you would have gotten them even with a lower price, don't overthink it.
Alex Hormozi