“A better option than discounting is to increase the value of your offering. Bundling in bonuses, increasing quantities or adding peripheral services can be of genuine value to your customer but cost you very little to do.”

“This is one of THE major mistakes made by most small business owners. They go from working for an idiot boss to becoming an idiot boss! Here is the key point—just because you’re good at the technical thing you do doesn’t mean that you are good at the business of what you do.”

“To live through an impossible situation, you don’t need to have the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.”

“If you didn’t go into business to make money then you’re either lying or you have a hobby, not a business. And yes I know all about delivering value, changing the world, etc. but how much of that are you going to do if you’re broke? How many people can you help?”

“Look at any profession where the stakes are high and you’ll see a well-thought-out plan being followed. Professionals never just wing it. Doctors follow a treatment plan. Airline pilots follow a flight plan. Soldiers follow a military operation plan. How would you feel about engaging the services of any of the above professions where the practitioner says to you “screw the plan, I’ll just wing it.” Yet this is exactly what most business owners do.”

“The pet store salesperson assures you that you can take the puppy home with you and if you don’t like it, just bring it back—no questions asked.”

“Rather than trying to sell directly from your ad, simply invite prospects to put their hand up and indicate interest.”

“However, the 1-Page Marketing Plan is an implementation breakthrough. It’s designed to dramatically simplify the understanding of direct response marketing and speed up its implementation in your business. Remember, it’s all about implementation.”

“I’ll reiterate—knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing. You need to make the mistakes, risk looking foolish and invest in yourself and your business.”

“You’ll never get everything perfect the first time. You only truly learn by doing. Don’t let perfectionism become a source of procrastination to you. Remember 80% out the door is better than 100% in the drawer.”

“Creating systems is one thing that took me from struggling and broke in business to doing well and successfully exiting multiple startups.”

“Money loves speed.”

“The owner of the business may have excellent technical skills but it’s his lack of business skills that causes his business to fail.”

“So essentially you can cut out 80% of the stuff you’re doing, sit on the couch eating nachos instead and you’ll still get most of the result you’re getting. If you don’t want to sit on the couch chowing down on nachos 80% of the time, then doing more of the 20% stuff is your fast track to success. And in this context success = more money with less work.” 

“It should also be noted that most people don’t know what they want until they’ve actually been presented with it. Also, when people are doing surveys or responding to market research, they do so with logic; however, purchasing is done with emotions and justified with logic” 

“Put another way—the majority of your success comes from the top 4% of your actions. Or put yet another way 96% of the stuff you do is waste of time (comparatively).” 

“I love it when a plan comes together.” 

“Here is the key point—just because you’re good at the technical thing you do doesn’t mean that you are good at the business of what you do.” 

“Make marketing a daily process. Create your own 1-Page Marketing Plan and most importantly implement the plan. Spend time daily doing business and building value.” 

“What business do I need to be in? What technologies are coming that are going to disrupt my industry? How can I take advantage of the coming changes in technology rather than fight them?” 

“different enough to be remarkable.” 

“You know [problem]? Well, what we do is [solution]. In fact, [proof].” 

“You’ve got to think winter in the summer. It’s just too easy to get faked out when the sky is blue, and the clouds are fleecy. You’ve got to prepare for winter because it’s coming, it always does.” 

“Struggling business owners will spend time to save money, whereas successful business owners will spend money to save time. Why is that an important distinction? Because you can always get more money, but you can never get more time. So you need to ensure the stuff you spend your time on makes the biggest impact.” 

“Business is a team sport, one in which you’re never going to win on your own.” 

“As entrepreneurs we have a “can do” mindset. This often means that when something needs to be done, we are tempted to just roll up our sleeves and just do it. However, spending a lot of time doing things that aren’t your area of expertise or aren’t a good use of your time can quickly become a very expensive exercise. Remember, money is a renewable resource—you can always get more money but you can never get more time.” 

“The marketing priorities of a large company looks something like this: Pleasing The Board Of Directors Appeasing Shareholders Satisfying Superiors’ Biases Satisfying Existing Clients’ Preconceptions Winning Advertising And Creative Awards Getting “Buy In” From Various Committees And Stakeholders Making A Profit” 

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” 

“Once you’ve reached a level of competence, the real profit comes from the way you market yourself .” 

“To be a successful small business marketer you need laser-like focus on a narrow target market, sometimes called a niche.” 

“Don’t spend most of your time on the voices that don’t count. Tune out the shallow voices so that you will have more time to tune in the valuable ones.” 

“Money isn’t everything... but it ranks right up there with oxygen.” 

“One of the easiest methods of finding out what your prospects want is simply by asking them. You can do so through a survey or through more formal market research.” 

“Yup, it’s as simple as that—marketing is the strategy you use for getting your ideal target market to know you, like you and trust you enough to become a customer. All the stuff you usually associate with marketing are tactics. We’ll talk more about strategy vs. tactics in a moment.” 

“the majority of your success comes from the top 4% of your actions. Or put yet another way 96% of the stuff you do is waste of time (comparatively).” 

“By far the biggest leverage point in any business is marketing. If you get 10% better at marketing, this can have an exponential or multiplying effect on your bottom line.” 

“So going back to our example, a good plumber is not necessarily the best person to run a plumbing business. This is a vitally important distinction to note and is a key reason that most small businesses fail. The owner of the business may have excellent technical skills but it’s his lack of business skills that causes his business to fail. This” 

“Because you can always get more money, but you can never get more time. So you need to ensure the stuff you spend your time on makes the biggest impact. This” 

“The marketing plan ended up being the 20% part of the business planning process that produced 80% of the result.” 

“Helping your customers all the way through to achieving results will have a big payoff for both yourself and them.” 

“That’s why I tell small business owners the best form of brand building is selling. If a brand is the personality of a business, what better way is there for someone to understand that personality than by buying from you.” 

“Struggling business owners will spend time to save money, whereas successful business owners will spend money to save time.” 

“One of the things you can be almost sure of is that your customers know other people who are similar to themselves. It’s human nature to be attracted to people with the same likes, interests and situations as us.” 

“tell your audience about all the effort that goes into delivering your product or service” 

“As a small business your best hope for emulating this is focusing on sales and then turning your customers into a tribe of raving fans. This is the advice I give to any small to medium business wanting to work on branding.” 

“Bad marketing is highly product-focused and self-focused. Good marketing, especially direct response marketing, is always customer and problem/solution focused, and that’s exactly how we want our elevator pitch to be. We want to be remembered for what problem we solve rather than for some impressive but incomprehensible title or line of business” 

“Understanding the difference between strategy and tactics is absolutely key to marketing success.” 

“The same thing is true of referrals. You have to be very specific in your requests for referrals; this significantly increases the odds that they’ll happen.” 

“Increasing revenue and, more importantly, profit from existing and past customers is far easier than getting new ones.” 

“The entire goal of your USP is to answer this question: Why should I buy from you rather than from your nearest competitor?”