The 5 Daily Essentials for Building a Successful Online Business by Kimanzi Constable

When you look at the statistics of how many people log onto the Internet or social media, you get excited. Never has there been a time with so much opportunity concentrated in one place. Today, you don’t have to send your direct mail flyers or pay for ads in newspapers.

Today, you can pay for a Facebook ad and reach more people than any of your previous efforts combined. For those entrepreneurs who are just starting out, you don’t have to spend a dime, yet you can still grow an audience that will lead to new business.

Reaching the potential billions of people online is easier said than done, however. More than a few entrepreneurs have quit in frustration of the time and effort is takes to build a foundation online. Here are five tactics successful online entrepreneurs use to build a foundation and their business.

1. They create engagement.

These days, you can buy a following if you want to. Twitter followers, Instagram followers and Facebook likes are all for sale. You can even buy email lists but buying an audience is pointless because there’s no engagement. A lot of times, these are people who won’t interact or care about what you’re doing. 

Successful online entrepreneurs create a conversation that gets people talking and sharing. When they post content on their website or social media their goal is for their community to interact. That interaction leads to new people checking out what they’re doing and what they have to offer.

You can have a huge following but it’s meaningless if there’s no engagement.

2. They continue to build their audience.

When you look at why entrepreneurs failed, it was because they were focused on the systems and not building an audience. They were always tweaking their website, releasing another e-book and creating custom graphics on Canva. They did all of the surface things, but they had no audience to see any of these efforts.

There are countless things you can do to help build your business, but they are pointless if you don’t have an audience. Successful online entrepreneurs spend most of their time building their audience through:

• Guest posting.
• Writing for large authority sites like this one.
• Get interviewed on podcasts.

These are just a few strategies you can use build your following online. In its simplest form, if you don’t have an audience, go where your audience is and show them why they should follow you.

3. They don’t get sidetracked by envy. 

In our day and age, we’re exposed to the success of other entrepreneurs in a public way. It can be a Facebook friend or a podcast you’re listening to, but someone doing what you’re also doing had a victory where you didn’t. Envy starts to creep in and sidetracks you.

When you’re focused on someone or something else, you’ve lost focus on your mission and goals. If someone else is successful, congratulate them and get back to the hustle of building your business. You don’t have time to let envy distract.

4. They add undeniable value. 

No matter what content they put out, it’s quality. You can get exposure in other places, but when people come back to your website, they should see value. Your best efforts should be spent on the content on your website, email list and social channels. It should be so good people want to tell others about what you’re up to.

5. They are constantly learning. 

Information overload is a danger, but successful online entrepreneurs are always learning ways to hone their craft. They focus on learning what will help their next steps, not chasing shiny objects that are the fad of the week.

With focused effort and the right tactics, you can build an online business that gives you the benefit of location independence. You can operate a business you love from anywhere in the world. The goal of any business is freedom. Use these tactics to make that freedom a reality in your life.

The stats on an online business surviving and thriving are pretty grim. Beating the odds and creating a successful business takes time and hustle. When in doubt, focus on building your audience. When you have an audience, you can create products and services based on audience feedback, which is what they will buy the most. It doesn't happen the other way around.

This Tricky Thing Will Help You Get More Things Done from inc.com

This Tricky Thing Will Help You Get More Things Done

A secret known to exceptional achievers like Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs. And now you.

BY BOB GOWER

@bobgower

There's an old joke where two men encounter a lion in their safari camp. One immediately starts putting on running shoes. The other comments that he can't possibly outrun a lion. "I know," says the man, "but I only need to outrun you."

This joke, it turns out, contains a secret tosuccess known to people like Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and anyone else who has learned to achieve exceptional focus in their careers and for their businesses.

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he cut their product line by 70% and declared that they would focus on only four products -- a desktop and a portable both for consumers and professionals each.

It wasn't that the products he cut were bad products or had no market interest. Rather, he knew that his company needed to have laser-focus in order to delight users and return the brand to its mythic place.

Warren Buffett also advocates for cutting distractions in order to achieve extreme focus. He starts by creating a list of all the things he could be working on and then picks the top five.

The top list becomes his to-do list of course -- but it's what he does with the the other items that creates the magic.

The projects not chosen to be in the top five he puts on an "avoid at all costs" list. Why? Because, like Jobs, Buffett knows that if you keep something semi-active, it will suck energy, attention, and focus from the things you really want to get done. Your back-burner list becomes your procrastination activities list.

Many Is the Enemy of Great

Prioritization and planning exercises aren't there to help you eliminate bad ideas -- those are easy to spot and get rid of. For Jobs and Buffett (and now you), smart planning exercises are there to get rid of the good ideas that will distract from getting things done.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but focusing intently on a single idea -- even if it's mediocre -- will help you achieve greatness faster than trying to focus on several great ideas at the same time.

The magic is in the execution, not in the idea generation.

Focus, and the difficulty of achieving it, isn't exactly news to most of us, but there's a secret lurking in Jobs' and Buffett's methods that is easy to miss. In fact, most businesses and individuals I work with miss it altogether.

The difference is in viewing projects through a relative vs absolute lens.

It's All Relative

When we talk about value and cost -- the things we need to know to assess whether a project is worth doing -- we almost always default to absolute measures.

An absolute measure is something like dollars, hours, or clicks, and they are terrible things to use when you're trying to pick your top priority projects.

The reason absolute measures are so bad for planning is because we're talking about the future, and therefore everything is speculation. Absolute measures give the illusion of precision at a time when precision is impossible.

Plans are fantasies, sometimes well-grounded, reasoned, and researched of course but still flights of fancy. This is why leaders assessing human hours on technical projects frequently double their estimate just to be on the safe side.

What you need to do instead is to prioritize items relative to each other. Like Buffett you need to gather all possible projects together into a single list and compare them to each other. This is relative prioritization and while doing this may involve some absolute measures we should be careful never to mistake estimates for the reality.

Don't Try to Outrun a Lion

Considering all possible items together allows you to spend less time choosing because you are answering the question "is this more valuable than that?" This is the essence of relative estimation.

You don't need to know what the absolute value of a product, feature, or service is before you do it -- and you don't need to waste money answering that question in a lot of detail.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Put all of your possible projects together on a single list.
2. Place the most valuable project at the top and the least at the bottom -- do whatever research you need to do to create this list but no more (this is called stack ranking).
3. Pick the top 3-5 projects, features, etc and do those first and, like Buffett, studiously ignore anything not on this list -- this is called enforcing a Work in Process (WIP) Limit.

The last item is the most important. Even if you get the prioritization wrong, you'll still be miles ahead if you pick a few items, focus, and actually get them done.

Success, as I said before, is more about execution than ideation.

Further Reading

For an academic -- and at times frustratingly mathematical -- look at these principles, check out Don Reinertsen's work on cost of delay in The Principles of Product Development Flow.

For more on Buffett's prioritization strategy, check out this article by the awesome James Clear: "Warren Buffett's '2 List' Strategy: How to Maximize Your Focus and Master Your Priorities."

Finally, here's more on the story of "How Steve Jobs Saved Apple."

How a 17-Year Old With a Paperboy Story Impressed a Harvard Business School Professor

Deep Patel, while still a teenager, provides some great business insights and principles in his first book that can help every aspiring entrepreneur improve their 

Creating a new business is not rocket science. Whether you are starting a paper route, or commercializing a complex technology, the same basic principles of success apply.

I found this illustrated well in a new book I just finished, "A Paperboy's Fable," by a young entrepreneur and writer Deep Patel. It doesn't take a superior intellect or big credentials to succeed in business.

Although just seventeen years old, Patel has some great insights that I can extrapolate for every aspiring entrepreneur to answer the most common question I get as an advisor and mentor--"Where do I start?"

I'm convinced that anyone who really practices the principles outlined in his book not only will have no trouble starting, but also will have a higher probability of success:

1. Search for big opportunities.

Most founders know exactly what they want to sell, and they are personally convinced that everyone will buy one. Yet you should realize that your view is likely biased, so outside industry expert data is needed for validation.

Selling something that only a few people need, even newspapers, is not conducive to success.

2. Invest in your own future success.

It takes time, effort, and other resources to start a business. Be prepared to learn some new skills, assemble the right team, and make some sacrifices to get things going.

Aspiring entrepreneurs who expect outside funding, reduced work hours, and friends to volunteer, will likely find a hard road ahead.

3. Harness ingenuity and innovation.

Nothing worth doing hasn't been tried before, so winning requires bringing something new to the table. Newspapers can be delivered sooner or more accurately, or technology can be innovatively packaged or personalized.

4. Don't forget the marketing.

"If we build it, they will come" is not a winning business strategy. You need to find the customers, rather than waiting for them to find you. With social media and conventional selling, the people with the best message get the order.

5. Add value and reduce cost for universal appeal.

Addressing a worthy cause, such as helping the environment, has a good secondary appeal, but near-term value delivery is usually necessary for business sustainability. Goodness alone doesn't make a business.

6. Create customer advocates.

Every business needs multipliers to succeed, and one of the best is customers who are so excited and satisfied that they drag in friends. Paper routes succeed best when customers recommend you to neighbors and associates.

7. Choose a business that you can scale.

Services businesses are hard to grow, as you need to clone people to expand. Product businesses are easier to scale, through manufacturing and automation. Don't be too slow to expand your territory and partners.

8. Utilize the power of diversification.

The author didn't forget that newspaper customers make good candidates for lawn services and cleaning products. Even huge businesses, like Facebook, have expanded into dating, through Tinder, and games, with Angry Birds.

ADVERTISEMENT

9. Hire more expertise and delegate authority.

No matter how dedicated, one person can only do so much, while making every decision. Smart entrepreneurs learn quickly to hire people who can operate independently, utilizing the existing brand, and make 1+1=3.

10. Don't box yourself in with your brand.

Brand for the future. It's hard to expand "Ty's Newspaper Business" into landscaping and home products. It's always expensive to change and rebuild a brand image. Give yourself the maximum flexibility in brand building and naming.

Following these principles, and practicing incremental and continuous learning, are the best ways to prepare for the life you want as an entrepreneur or business professional. Also, before you can decide where to start, you need to define what success means to you.

Success to you probably includes financial gain, but don't forget that money doesn't buy lasting satisfaction and happiness. The happiest business people don't work for money, and don't even think of what they do as work.