The Importance of Having a Game Plan

I want to talk today about how important it is to have a game plan.

What do I mean?  Well having a game plan for one aspect of your business might run something like this:-

#1 – You create a new product.
#2 – You release it with 100% instant commissions using the 7 Dollar Script.
#3 – You send an email out to your subscribers letting them know it’s on sale.
#4 – You tell your buyers that you’re offering instant 100% commissions directly into their PayPal account and that here are some tools they can use to promote it – banners and the like – with their aff link built in.  All they have to do is copy and paste the code.
#5 – You contact a few people who are likely Joint Venture partners and tell them it’s 100% commission.  Some promote and get all the cash, and you get another pile of buyers join your mailing list.
#6 – You tell these new buyers about your affiliate scheme etc. and they start promoting for you too.  Some of these people will be succesful marketers and will have their own mailing lists.
#7 – Go to #1.

Okay?  I’ll testify that you can run a very successful business that way, that naturally grows over time.

Having a game plan allows you to make and take low-risk decisions.  Low risk because you pretty much know what the outcome will be – long term you’ll make a profit on your efforts and increase the size of your business.

I believe this is where most people fall over.

Most people try a little bit of this and a little bit of that – which is fine – I like to try different things out too – but they don’t concentrate on their core business.  The stuff that really works.

And that might be because they’ve never really found anything that works.

Or not given it enough of a chance to make it work.

I’ve found that you need to set yourself a few rules that you work with.  I call them my #1 Rules, and I have plenty of them for all sorts of different situations.

I’ve found that as long as you concentrate on the #1 rules, any other lesser rules you might set yourself don’t really matter that much or don’t have a big enough impact on your business.

(This is a rule in itself, called the 80-20 rule.  I do almost everything by the 80-20 rule and I think most successful business owners do too without realising it.  I ask myself – “Do I need to do something about this, or just let it go?” – 80 times out of 100 it can just be let go.)

My #1 rule related to having a game plan is:-

“Every project must pay for itself as soon as possible.”

So if I take new staff on, I want to see results in 2 weeks that at least pay for their keep for the month.  There are no free rides, and nobody in my business is an expense.

You could probably adopt this yourself.  Think about it.

You may believe that you can’t afford to take anyone on full time.  But if what they do for you brings in enough income to pay for their keep, and you end up with new products and a new long term income stream, then it was well worth hiring them wasn’t it?

But let’s say that you’re not ready to make that commitment yet and you want to see how things go.

You still need a unique new product.  The emphasis here is new and unique.  I’m not saying you can’t do what someone else has already done, I’m saying that PLR probably isn’t going to cut it if you’re looking for JV partners.  (There’s at least one exception to this and I’ll talk about it another time.)

I’ve had many people approach me to promote products that I’ve quickly realised were PLR, and I take that as an insult because I’m quite capable of using PLR to create products myself thank you.  I don’t like being suckered into promoting products that may be quite widespread as it does my reputation no good whatsoever – that’s my logic and I’m certain most other marketers feel exactly the same.

PLR is great.  But it’s of no use when dealing with JV partners unless you’ve taken the time to make extensive changes to it and it really is your product.  (Most people can’t be bothered and that’s where they get it wrong.)

You need something that you know no-one else has.

And you need to be able to make genuine claims like “I created this myself” or “I paid $xxx to have this created for me.”

(Believe me when I say this will make you feel a whole lot better when you come to promoting it.)

Tomorrow is your chance to have a totally unique WordPress theme created for you from scratch and to your specifications by one of my designers.  They are all extremely talented, and I want to point out that it does take a (relatively) long time to put together a theme because there’s a lot of work involved in doing it.

First there’s the design itself (2-3 days), then converting to a WP theme (4-5 days), and finally the coding tweaks such as extra sidebars and additional page templates (2-3 days).

It’s a big job.  If you were able to do it for someone else, ask yourself how much would be a fair price for you to charge for the service.

If like most people you wanted someone else to do it and could then find the right person with the right level of design and PHP coding skills (it’s very hard), then the designer would probably charge you a couple of thousand dollars at least, apply restrictions on what you can do with the finished product, and likely not supply the PSDs for you to edit.

My designers are brilliant graphically and their level of PHP coding ability is high (you’ve probably already seen their work), but charge a lot less than you might expect.

With a fair bit of legwork (it’s not easy finding good people), I have an opportunity to take on a couple more designers, but as I said above, one of my rules is I need to make sure I have work for them and that they pay for their keep.

As long as I can pay their fees and get your job done as well as my own, then I consider myself to have made a profit from it.

From your perspective, as long as you have a game plan and can immediately make your money back on the work, it’s well worth doing.

If you don’t have a game plan or you don’t have a clue on what to do then this isn’t for you.  Wait until you’re truly ready.

Here’s two game plans that I know work well from personal experience.

#1 – Get a theme made.  Sell it to your mailing list.  Immediately make 3 or 4 times your investment followed by ongoing sales through your affiliate scheme.
#2 – Get a theme made for a client.  Charge your client 3 or 4 times your investment.

And if you don’t have a mailing list or a client, then here’s your chance to get a product made for you and get your business off the ground, just like I talked about above:-

#3 – Get a theme made that will appeal to pro-bloggers and the IM niche.  Sell it for $10 with 100% commission using the 7 Dollar Script, find a few JV partners to kick start it and build a mailing list of buyers.  Promote some other related product to your new list and make your money that way.

And that’s how business is done.  🙂

You make an investment, you follow your game plan and you make back your money and then some.

Watch out for more news tomorrow.

If you want to know more right now about having a game plan and how to approach your business, go watch the presentation on 30 Day Projects.

Update:  A slight temperature and an overwhelming need to sleep scuppered my plans to launch this week.  I’ll get back to you with this shortly.

-Frank Haywood