3 Old School Rules That Can Ruin Your Plans To Remain Poor And Miserable.

Monday, 3:33pm
Rancho Cucamonga, CA
“One way or another, I’ll gitcha, I’ll gitcha, I’ll gitcha gitcha gitcha…” (Blondie)

Howdy.

Okay, quick post today… aimed at ruining your life by prying open the profit floodgates with a few simple rules even grizzled old veterans seldom learn.

We’ll discuss later how to deal with all the extra moolah (so you can salvage an excellent life once the realities of being richer sink in).

(Tee hee.)

First, let’s make sure you understand these 3 basic (and mostly ignored or botched) rules from our Operation MoneySuck manual.

Ready? Okay, release the life-changing stuff:

Op$uck Rule #1: Get an assistant.

Hey, I totally understand the “go it alone” mindset of the average entrepreneur. I was a one-man-band for the first 5 years of my career — if you got a letter or phone call from my office (in my collapsing beach house in Hermosa), it was from me.

However, once I decided to start teaching and offering courses and coaching, I took to heart the Prime Operation MoneySuck Directive: “If you’re the dude responsible for bringing in the big bucks, then that’s your #1 job. And your #2 job, and #3 job, etc. Hire out or delegate everything else.”

I brought on a part-time assistant for 10 hours a week, who worked out of her house (so we communicated mostly by email, phone and only occasional visits). She was smart, had biz experience, and was thrilled to have a part-time gig with totally flexible hours, with a generous and savvy boss (me) so she could work from home and raise her kid.

When I realized those 10 hours were INSTANTLY gobbled up by random stuff like scheduling consultations, dealing with refunds and printers and non-essential client requests…

… it became obvious that I’d been STEALING 10 hours of energy/time/thinking/effort from my biz. Which I could have been force-feeding back into the money-making part of that same biz.

Total WTF moment.

I immediately doubled Diane’s hours, and the ROI shot up again. 

There are OODLES of folks out there who are qualified for full-time work (cuz they’re awesome) but prefer flexible part-time work (especially if it involves some problem solving challenges and opportunities to engage their brain and experience). Not hard to find, either. Craig’s List, referrals from friends, local job boards.

The point is: Stop being stubbornly independent. One part-time assistant will change your life, immediately and for the better.

Op$uck Rule#2: Aim for a refund rate between 7%-15%.

This seems counter-intuitive. Most rookie biz owners want a zero percent refund rate, and will even brag about having one. (And it’s so embarrassing when they brag around their more experienced colleagues.)

For veteran (usually wealthy) entrepreneurs, though, getting less than a healthy 10% or so in refunds just means you’re not marketing hard enough.

Look — in any given population (including the folks in your niche) up to 20% will be batshit crazy, unclear on how capitalism works, or sociopaths. That’s just a given.

So if you’re carefully navigating around this chunk of whacko’s in your niche, then guess what?

You’re actually working BACKWARDS. You’re wasting time chasing the wrong goal.

What the Big Boys usually do is to market aggressively enough to get that sweet spot of 7-15% refunds. That means they’re hitting the ENTIRE market…

… and for every nutball refund junkie they net, they’re going to find MULTIPLE new good customers who may become lifelong fans. 

In other words, the savvier marketers play for the long haul. More action means more good AND more bad initial customers coming through the front door…

… and you have your assistant deal with the dead weight, while you concentrate on doing biz with the legitimate new customers.

Which leads us to…

Op$uck Rule #3: Give your assistant a clear, written protocol of how to handle mad, bad and sad customers.

So she can confidently deal with the usual suspects without involving you.

Yes, you will occasionally still have to get involved when a customer goes off the rails. You may have to give a lawyer a call, and spend some precious time dealing with the shit sandwich just served to your biz.

But the other 99% of complaints, refunds, problems and crazy talk never gets past your assistant’s desk. Give her total freedom to come to you with anything she’s not totally confident about dealing with, of course…

… but I’ll tell you, after a very short time she’ll be an expert on the personalities of your market. And she’ll get better than you at giving every problem a happy ending. (Side note: After a few months, ask her to write out her SOP — standard operating procedure — for most tasks. This will become a valuable document, especially if you need to replace your assistant without notice.)

Diane has been with me for 12 years. Part time the entire time. She’s the most amazing, efficient and effective customer service “face” of the biz possible. Clients adore her, and she takes care of them.

She’s still the most precious resource I have in the biz, freeing me up to do the dirty work of making moolah.

Hiring her was the best decision I’ve ever made in my entire career. Seriously.

Bonus Rule: If you can, NEVER see any complaints or refund rants that come by mail, email, voice mail, or whatever. Have your assistant intercept these, and unless it’s absolutely necessary for you to see what’s going on, HIDE them from you.

It’s human nature to ignore the thousand raving fans giving you thumbs up on a project, and devote days to writing your reply to the troll who insults you, or tries to con the system to get a refund he doesn’t deserve, or is just an awful person.

The operative phrase to remember is: “Never wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

Operation MoneySuck is all about you spending the best hours of your day on bringing home the bacon…

… not wrestling with it.

Enjoy the last of your summer.

Stay frosty,

John

P.S.  Just lettin’ you know…

The very elite mastermind group I’ve been hosting the past few years has a couple of open slots.

It’s clearly the most unique mastermind around, run Hot Seat-style and focused on solving specific problems for each member (not just ruminating about the philosophies of biz). Results oriented, hard-core, more fun than entrepreneurs should be allowed to have.

Small hint about the quality of the meetings: Past guest experts I had join us include Joe Sugarman, Jay Abraham, Rich Schefren, Dean Jackson, Joe Polish, the Halbert boys, and most of the best copywriters on the planet.

Anyway, there’s a very strict vetting process (though we’ve accepted semi-rookies as well as grizzled veterans as members because we look for smarts, worldly experience and overall mojo as the key to a good member) which you should look into regardless of where you’re at right now.

If you have a career or run a biz, and you’re ready to get some expert help watching your back while you climb to the next level… then check this out now:

Carlton’s awesome mastermind.