It’s funny how long it takes to learn simply lessons sometimes. This applies to many different things in life. For some guys it’s dating the BPD chick that’s great in bed but ends throwing a brick through his window…for the third time. For others it’s dropping their left after a jab and getting cracked in the jaw about 100 times before finally getting it up. And so on and so forth. Business is no different. There are a handful of business mistakes that I was told were mistakes but for whatever reason ignored and kept going down the path that I was on.
Until finally I realized “Hey I was wrong” and adjust (I can be pretty stubborn at times). One of these mistakes was focusing on quantity of customer over quality of customer with business. We hear all the time about guys or girls bragging about having 100,000 Instagram followers (that they can’t monetize), 20,000 Twitter followers (that they make 10$ a month off of), and so on and so forth. We see these numbers that are supposed to look impressive but really aren’t. The only number we should be impressed by is revenue (and even that can be faked online).
It’s About Quality
But anyways let’s talk about why this is and why unless you’re Wal-Mart (aka a global corporation which you are not) the name of the game is quality and niche not quantity and mass appeal. Quantity and mass appeal is death for the small business owner (small doesn’t mean you can’t be profitable there are plenty of seven figure small businesses). First off most people would make horrible customers for you. Most people are annoying, dumb, petty, cheap, more trouble than they’re worth, and not a good fit for your business.
I know when you first start business you’re desperate for customers of any kind and I understand this completely as I’ve been there multiple times with multiple different businesses. But this is the wrong way to go about it. One of the most important things that you can do before you start doing much of anything with your business is get the best idea you can of your ideal customer. Now this can change over time and not be who you originally thought but you have to understand who you want to attract and who you don’t mind repelling.
For example there it is pretty much never not in your advantage to screen out freeloaders and cheapskates. They’re always the biggest pain in the asses and always give you the bare minimum. They are the worst customers to have, you’re literally better off not having customers than having cheapskates and freeloaders. But this is usually the first kinds of people many businesses attract, to their detriment.
Examples From My Businesses
Let’s look at this site. For the longest time I explained that this site was not a good example of a way to make money. Tons of free content, free email coaching, a handful of cheap e-books, and some Amazon books. A horrible business model. However I wanted to change this so changed the site to the membership site. This caused a couple of things. First off I lost a whole lot of viewers, which most would say is bad…right?
Well not really. What I lost was freeloaders, from a business perspective I lost parasites. Hardly a huge loss Look at it like this I lost a bunch of freeloaders who never gave me a dime (I set my business up like this so I’m not complaining just illustrating a point), how on God’s green earth is that a bad thing? Yeah I can’t brag about having X amount of traffic but you know what having a bigger bank account is a much more fulfilling feeling to be honest.
So while yes I lost overall readership my revenue from this site went up. Sort of like crying over losing fat but keeping muscle. Not only that but now those that are with me are the cream of the crop, those that value what I write and get the most value from it. And I can focus on you more now. That’s a win for me and a win for you. You get more help, focus, and quality and I make more money.
Closed Groups
This goes beyond business. Closed groups are always higher quality and more productive than open groups. Open democracy is not only the worst way to run a country (but the best way to destroy it) it’s also the worst way to run any other kind of group. Open democracy meaning everyone’s contributions, opinions, etc are held as equal as opposed to closed democracy where only the vetted’s contributions, opinions, etc matter.
So if you’re running a business make sure that you’re focusing on quality over quantity. The best way to do this is by focusing on affluent customers (affluent = old in pretty much every case). But you’re business may be different. Just keep in mind that you never want the masses…for pretty much anything. Screen harshly but smartly and find the gold nuggets in the piles of dung out there. Maybe that sounds harsh but welcome to the world of business and I hope you never thought you’d be able to get rich without being harsh.
If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it.
-Charles Sledge
