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When should you diversify your business? Find out on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by thrive themes, blazingly fast WordPress templates and plug ins built to get more traffic, more subscribers, more clients and more customers to you To find out how thrive themes concern your blogger Web site into a money making work of art, go to serve no master dot com Backslash Drive Themes Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host tried diversified too soon, and you get accused of shiny objects syndrome. Make the move too soon, and you can spread your focus too thin and be unable to finish all the things you promised. Unable to get your tasks done in a timely fashion. Wait too long and you might end up leaving money on the table or going out of business when you're single. Point of Failure Collapses. It's hard to find the correct balance between these two things, and there's a bit of a window where you'll find the best time to make these decisions. When you're working on a project, you have to stick with it until it becomes profitable. So the moment of diversification is definitely after that. If you're starting a podcast or riding your first book until you make it back, your investment until you go profit positive. You need to focus on that. This is the perfect measurement for any system. So if you bought a training course for $1000 or $2000 or $5000 you have to make back that much money until you can consider profit. If you spend $2000 on the course, make $10 caught profitable. That's wrong. You're not doing your math correctly. The money spent on the course counts are back. Your investment first. Then you could begin to think about how to expand correctly when I begin to succeed on Amazon. About two or three years ago, I diversified into multiple pen names Now. At the time, things were going really well, and each of those individual pen names were successful. But they require a lot of attention, requires a great deal of my time to run each individual name on Kindle on Amazon. And right now my focus is on my own brand the serve, no master stuff, and that takes all my bandwidth. Every month I buy ads I by traffic I by email traffic I by Amazon ads. I buy Facebook ads all within this brand. When I want to sell books under one of my other pet names, I have to begin that same process again. Each pen name has its own. Blawg has its own series of books, has some process. It takes a great deal of time to manage all of these things. And so I actually diversified too soon and won. The ways I've dealt with that is moving all my focus into a single name for right now, when you diversify or when you expand, its better to expand in ways that multiply each other. Now what I look a diversification for this business rather than moving into another pen name instead of moving into other Amazon products that I can cross sell to my audience. Only about 10 to 20% of the people who read my books join my mailing list pretty standard for E books, other people at 1%. So I'm happy with my 10 to 20% range. But that means they're 80% of people who read my books, but never take one of my free gifts or join the mailing list. And some of them listens, podcast or visit the block. But they're not heavily into my messaging, and they're people who would never buy something through direct response. I would never buy something dripping on my website. So to service its larger part of my audience, I can expand what I offer an Amazon. And that means I'm developing other products. But I'll sell directly through Amazon other ways of consumer content. What I'd love to do is develop a board game, but of course, that requires a lot of math and strategy and drawing board things like that. But I think we'll be really exciting serving a master the game, something I thought about a little bit lately, but to be another way to offer something on Amazon and, of course, ambulance loads of different types of things you can d'oh! And I don't want to go down the path where it's just like serving master pencils and serving master shorts. That's too silly, but it's okay to think about how people consume. And so right now what I'm doing is expanding and putting out as many books as quickly as I can onto Amazon. Instead of diversifying through different pen names, I'm expanding this 11 of my friends had a very large business to about a $1,000,000 a year, used to have a list of 100,000 ravenous followers who loved him. He was buying traffic every week for nine or $10,000 making back massive profits on all the traffic used buying. And then one day the source dried up. No more access to that audience. The business he was buying from no longer had the loves of traffic. They needed to support selling it to him. So I ran into this wall and now he's making about 10% of what he used to because he didn't diversify his tropic source. So when you're thinking about diversifying. Really, What you want to do first is diversify your offerings and then diversify your traffic. Diversify the source of customers. In addition, Thio moving beyond my core two or three books that I've been working with the last year, I'm also moving beyond and into other traffic areas I mentioned earlier. I'm doing more more Facebook ads. I'm still trying to break through. I do have a team. I'm working with Facebook ads, experts for authors. And we're trying to find the perfect way to make everything work because I want to have more sources of traffic than just Emma's on the absolute love. Working with him is on. The large business in the world will probably never failed. Probably be good to me for 100 years, but I still want to have other sources of traffic. Other ways of finding new audience, always of expanding that air again Maur within my wheelhouse more within my area of control diversification of aspects of your business. It's far easier than entering absolutely new markets if you're really successful book business, jumping into print on demand T shirts while similar, and the idea that it's no overhead It's a totally different business model and it'd be hard to jump there now. Yes, I have played around with fashion myself a little bit this last year, and that's why I know and I pulled back from doing that. Originally, I was gonna try and enter some other niches, but requires a great deal of bandwidth, a great deal of time. And I want to really focus on my core business. So sometimes you'll have these ideas that you want to go down the path and it's okay to do a little bit of research. Okay, to release him. This idea is not working for me and pull back. I do plan on trying more things with closing. I talk about some stuff. I have some stuff for sale on the gear page, but what I want to do it's find a better printer, actually need to find a better place to make the clothes. I tried two or three different places and I'm not in love with what they dio. It's really interesting that all these people approach me to want to be my print on demand source, and they give me terrible customer experiences before even start selling to customers. I place an order myself to see what it's like, and so far the products have been okay. I won't sell stuff that's okay. It's gonna be amazing when you feel like you're hitting the moment of diminishing returns on your business. That's when you want to start looking in other areas. If you've broken through the 80 20 and you feel like you're being very little result for extra time, that's the moment when you want to diversify. That's the moment when you want to look at other projects. Always think about the future. I know when you're first starting out doing your first book. You're thinking about making that first dollar. But you also want to think about how can I make my $1000 in my 10,000 my $1,000,000? How can I get to that next level part for me right now? My focus this year is heavily on increasing My presence on Amazon have a good center products. I sell directly to my website and I want to have a much larger presence on Amazon. I want to sell a lot more books and that means quantity. You notice that I have a lot of books and development that I'm putting up books as quickly as I can right now. Actually, the editing phase the rewriting phase is the biggest limitation on how fast I can put up. Books have covers done. I have rough drafts done dictating my books. I'm very, very quick Now. Switch Invitation means that I finish books in a couple of days within the rewrite still takes longer. Finding that balance and finding the right projects to work on and thinking about profitability mean I'm constantly adapting. I'm constantly pivoting. I've been working on control your fate for a couple of weeks. Now the rough draft is done. The rewrite is about 30% done, and it's quite a long book. So I realized that I should pivot and actually finish editing influence of persuasion, which is much shorter book and could be done much quicker. So even as you're getting higher up the mountain, you'll see moments where you need to pivot moments when you diversify moments when you change the direction in which you're taking your projects and that's OK. Once you've made money from First project and you understand how to make money online, you'll have a better understanding. Everything works, and sometimes you'll start to work on a project, and you realize that it's a dead end. Most training courses online from reputable people work. There are Facebook ads, courses that work. There are local market courses that work. There are book business courses, mine and there are some competitors. Horses who really work well, there's nothing wrong with any of those things, but there are some courses out there that don't work or have missing pieces. I'm actually about to release some really cool new products, and hopefully in the next week, two weeks that I thought of. I saw course online. I saw this idea and of course I said, I wonder if that really works and I bought the course and the idea was sound. But the actual course itself, I knew who followed it would never make it work. It would actually never succeed because there were critical components missing only because I already understand the print on demand world only because they already have a very strong relation. Amazon. Do I see the problem in this system and I have found a way to take this broken training and make it work. But anyone else who bought the train will never succeed. It will never work for them. I could tell by going through the course that this is a person who finds a good idea online, talks about what other people are doing and kind of creates a course around it. I notice, as those got there go. None of these examples are actually by this person. You just tell sometime from someone using Animals aren't their own products, and I found it interesting. And it's unfortunate that that's out there so you can run it products that don't work or that have missing pieces. And so sometimes when you're going through a course, you'll hit a wall and you won't know what's missing. If it's your first rodeo, if it's your first time online. This we get stuck with shiny objects. Shindo, because there are some product specially at the one of the market. The product I'm talking about, I think with seven or $20 what's expensive. That's where you're more likely to run into stuff that is just an idea or doesn't work, or it's just a concept. But it requires experience to know if a concept of sound or if the concept of the whole idea is a bad idea. Maura um, or the ability to make things quickly Building put up courses quickly leads to a saturated market. I would say the information space information to knowledge online. How to make money, online spaces, the inner marketing spaces. They're very crowded with noise and not nearly enough. Signal is not nearly enough information. So for someone starting out, it's very easy. Get overwhelmed. You see how this course is? It's hard to separate the one work for the ones that don't most of the time. Cost makes a big difference, but we could buy courses based on hyper by it. Massive promises and those courses that promise you make a $1,000,000 in the first year, $100,000 in the first month, and those big promises get really, really exciting. Sometimes people look at the promises I make in. The numbers aren't that huge. I try to stick with realistic numbers. It doesn't mean I don't sell many people, but it also means I don't have to do with any refunds with people that got caught in the hype and then disappointed. But as you begin to build your online business and you'll start off being on the consumer side and then you become the product crater side, the business side and you begin to sell products, courses, training books to other people, and you'll start to notice what some of the competitors are doing. You want to find a path that you can enjoy doing for a long time. Yesterday I was speaking to someone who's a very good copywriter, message me out of the blue and said, Hey, do you know I had to write a good block post? And I said, Here's the two best places to find that information Here's to blog's took loads and loads but how to write great block posts. And then he told me, I'm thinking of going into this industry is like, I'm not excited about it, But I'm gonna go into this niche, this industry and start working. There s if you're excited about why you're doing it, we're gonna go down a path you don't like. He's like I'm tired of this industry, but it's what I know. I've been doing it for a long time, and he's tipping but not pivoting enough. And I said, Man, why don't you pivot into something you like? You're very successful, is a cock writer. You could use that to fund building any type of business or moving any direction in your business. We had a good conversation and I send him some of the things that I do and said, Here's the direction you go in. You don't have to be stuck by anyone idea, you could begin to build the Amazon business. You could begin to build a business using your expertise. And of course, part of my mindset was maybe I could get him to do a book on Copyrighting With Me is a great copywriter. I'm even better than me. Great. Their experience kind of much more of a focus as a pure copywriter than I have, and so, perhaps, will do something cool together. But as you know, every time you talk to a copywriter always gets weird. So I don't know if you work out or not. Was an okay conversation kind of the beginning of an idea. At any point in your business, you reach moments where you get tired of what you're doing you won't change what you're doing and you want to move in another direction. Many people start to follow me when they're tired of their primary careers. Finding the right moment to pivot can be hard, but it's kind of that window you're looking for between I'm making money from this business, and they haven't risked it with a single point of failure. So before you diversify our pivot into multiple businesses or multiple separate businesses, you first need to turn your primary business into something that's future. Proof means diversification of product, the recitation of service is and diversification of traffic. Once you have those things, once you have your traffic from five or six sources once you have, ah, whole series of products so that one of them stops working, people still enjoy the other ones. Then you can look at something else, and you have to look at how much time have available. Remember, now you're running one business. You don't have that full time schedule available. Start other things. This happens to me. I've started. I got excited about so many things in the past year that I don't have time to build on. Unfortunately, and I'm learning the same lessons. And that's why it's on my mind today. Tightened up and pulled back into really focusing on serving a master and that tight focus is paying off in the form of better products. Better profitability, Better customer experience. When you want Thio move on a project it excited. You have to find someone to manage the old thing. And in fact, I went through a period of time where I try to find people to manage my pen name authors at humming business books that are making money, and I didn't want to spend so much time on them. And I tried several different ways to find people to manage that part of the business. I try to find it mentor that I would take through and teach the Amazon business, and they would run one of my pen names have pre written books. I have coverage done book descriptions. All they would really have to do is kind of manage the day to day, manage the reviews and track everything. Keep the business humming along. Doesn't take a huge man a band with, but I don't have enough to do it. I tried that with finding a mentee. I tried that with finding staff. I tried to hire someone to write block post for all three of the other pen names and manage that. And then minutes of social media for those pet names and the person was a disappointment. In the end, it was someone I had to let go. After a couple of months, their goal was to write 12 to 15 block post a week, and they never wrote more than half That can't your basic goal. You can't write 15 block posts of 40 hours. I gotta let you go. Sorry. I realized that I had to 80 20 where my business is going. After multiple efforts to find someone to manage that part of the business, I read, I should really focus on what's driving primary growth this year. 2017. My main area of growth is all the stuff within the serve, the master brand of certain Mr Website. That's interesting stuff on Amazon, so that's really my focus this year, and in fact, this year, starting now, my primary focus is stuck with an Amazon. I'm not focusing on the back end nearly as much as I was last year, I built a good website. I built a good blogger podcast, have good products, are proud of Amazon, is where I want focus now, which is the front. And again I'm diversifying within Amazon. So different types of people confined me were grass donations, my first book in the shorter book series that have success Siri's and I've discovered that it's quite a successful book. It's not as this will serve no master, but it's getting a different type of audience, and it's doing well, and I'm excited about that. Find the right ways to grow your business, make decisions based on logic, not emotion. Take a few moments if you're tired of what you're working on, sit down and think about how you want to put that to the side. Do you want to bring in a manager to run the project? Can you get to a point where it's completely autopilot? What does it require, too? Keep that business going and funding your next level of diversification. These air the decisions you have to make, and I wish I could give you a perfect formula for the exact right moment to do it. But every business is a little different. Every project is a little different, so they do require you to make custom decisions. But having the right ideas in your mind and knowing the right ways to diversify first will help you find that perfect moment to diversify. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's best seller, serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. 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