“I worry that I should be doing something bigger with my life.”
I have this friend. Many years ago, he came to America on a work-and-travel visa. He stayed and he built a little business. Through this little business, he made the 4-hour-workweek a reality in his life.
Ever since, he’s been making good money each month by sending a few emails and making a few phone calls. The rest of the time, he travels the world, has fun, and chases women.
“But I worry I might be wasting my time,” he told me when we spoke. “Maybe I should be working to save the children or make the world a better place.”
My answer to him was that there’s value in thinking small, and that leading a life of modest impact is a virtue. And vice versa. I believe that thinking big is flat-out dangerous.
Maybe you find that thinking perverse or even repugnant. So let me give you a few examples to back up my case:
1. The Soviet Union. From everything I’ve read, the people who laid the groundwork for Bolshevism were the best and brightest and most humane of their generation. They thought they were building a better world. And yet the result was a monstrous machine that took decades to dismantle.
2. Google. Just today I read how the Federal Court in Australia ruled that Google has been willingly misleading consumers. Google continued to track consumers’ locations, even after they had turned location tracking off.
Of course, Google didn’t start out being a power-hungry, inhuman monolith. Not long ago, it was just two PhD students, whose motto was “Do no evil.” They were looking to improve access to information, and make the world a better place — on a big scale.
But maybe you don’t care anything about Bolsheviks or Google’s surveillance. Maybe you just want your own big business that makes big money. So let me tell you why smaller might still be a safer bet.
It’s something I heard Pete Coyne say a few weeks ago.
As you might know, Pete started out as copywriter at Agora. He then became a publisher there, which means he ran an entire division. He built up this division from scratch to over $100m.
In short, Pete is a smart guy, and somebody who knows more about building big businesses than most of us ever will.
And yet Pete said the following:
“A lot of people chase scale. They want to scale their business. And I feel there’s a lot of gross number porn out there. 7 figures… 100 million… 500 million. That’s not really a great thing a lot of times. Usually, your headaches explode with your revenue… your exposure to lawsuits and regulations goes up.”
Instead, Pete said there is a magic number for yearly revenue. Once you get to it, you’re better off spinning up a new business than trying to grow what you’ve got.
Not only will this save you headaches and lawsuits, says Pete, but you might actually net more money in the end.
And this is not only thing I heard Pete share.
He also talked about three “monetization events.” He calls these “gray labeling,” “demographic jumping,” and “USP flipping.”
Each of them is a quick, low-risk way to create revenue bumps in your business. And none of them requires doing anything very different from what you’re already doing. Just make sure you don’t shoot past the magic number.
Maybe you’re getting tired of the teasing. So let me get to the point:
I heard Pete say all these things in this month’s Steal Our Winners.
Once each month, I push you to check out Steal Our Winners. Because in my opinion, it’s the best value out there if you are interested in direct marketing or have a business that uses direct marketing.
In a nutshell:
Each month, Rich Schefren interviews a bunch of high-profile marketers like Pete Coyne. Rich gets these marketers to spill valuable ideas and information. There’s no fluff or self-promotion. Just valuable ideas, most of which you can apply immediately.
And it’s all available for an unthinkable monthly price. Plus you can even get a low-risk trial month, for a $1 entry fee.
So in case you’re curious, you can find the $1 Steal Our Winners offer at the link below. And if you act fast, you can probably still get the Pete Coyne segment. Here’s the link: