How You Can Make More Money with the Least Amount of Work
Key Takeaways from the Most Downloaded Internet Marketing Report in History
When the foreword of a marketing e-book ends with “To higher profits and beyond,” you’re definitely in for something life-changing. Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto is nothing short of that.
Touted as the most downloaded internet marketing report of all time, Rich Schefren calls his brainchild a “legendary document,” not as a form of self-glorification, but based on hard facts and empirical numbers. Rich and his team stopped keeping track of the number of downloads when is surpassed the 1,000,000 downloads mark which happened a few years ago. Since it was first released, the report has launched numerous success stories among entrepreneurs who put Rich’s recommendations to practice.
Who is Rich Schefren?
Since we’re going to be listing down the key takeaways from this holy grail of all marketing reports, it’s just appropriate to get to know the genius behind it.
Rich Schefren is undeniably one of the most preeminent and trusted authorities when it comes to small business marketing. He’s a “guru to the gurus” and his works has been featured in major publications nationwide which includes the Wall Street Journal and he has appeared in every major television network such as CBS, ABC and NBC.
As a marketing maven, Rich Schefren has collaborated with several other business geniuses including marketing wizard Jay Abraham and copywriter extraordinaire John Carlton. He himself is a multi-millionaire, raking in more than $35 million (as of press time).
Do You Have the Right Mindset to Succeed in Business?
In his manifesto, Rich exposes the several reasons or obstacles why majority of entrepreneurs fail miserably and the biggest hurdle is primarily the lack of business fundamentals and a huge part of this is not having the right mindset.
A primary symptom of this problem is purchasing anything that you think will give you money, but at the end of the day, you’re not getting the profits that you envisioned you would get. This, according to Rich, is a sign of opportunistic thinking brought about by a lack of strategy.
The Opportunist versus The Strategic Entrepreneur
From the point of view of Rich, there are two opposing mindsets when it comes to building a business and getting rich online. These two polarizing mindsets are strategic thinking and opportunistic thinking.
Opportunity seekers can be considered as faux entrepreneurs in the business world — they pretend to walk among businessmen but they’re really not. For opportunists, there’s only one goal — to earn the most money right here, right now. They are always on the lookout for the next big thing, the trends, the current hits. They move in the now. They proclaim themselves as entrepreneurs but they are really shortcut-takers who are devoid of passion and vision.
On the other end of the spectrum, strategic entrepreneurs are indefatigable individuals who make tons of money from doing what they are passionate about. According to Rich, strategic businessmen have a clear vision of what they want their business to become. Because of this clear grasp of what they want their business to become and more importantly, what their business can bring to the lives of their market, they have a strong awareness of their strengths and weaknesses as well as their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Rich made it clear that a real entrepreneur knows that the best opportunity resides within their businesses.
Assess yourself. If someone comes to you right now and offer you a new “it venture” and gives you revenue projections, are you readily going to take it? Are you a shark that goes around scouting for what people are clamoring for right now? Or do you have a picture of what you want to achieve and it’s so vivid that it’s real?
The first obstacle that is standing on your way to success is your mindset. Are you an opportunist pretending to be a businessman or a true blooded entrepreneur?
Overworked and Broke — A Problem of Many Opportunists
According to Rich’s manifesto, there are 12 critical areas involved in running a traditional business. Under these, there are other sub-activities involved. It’s easy for things to pile up and before you know it, you’re stuck in the middle of a business model that Rich describes as “quite ridiculous.”
It is a pretty common complaint among businessmen about how their endeavors suck the life out of them, how they’ve been working 80 hours or more per week, how time seems so scarce.
With this amount of work going in, one would naturally expect that the financial rewards would be staggering.
Wrong.
Many of those who put in the hours reap very little in terms of profits. At the same time, it is shocking to know that some entrepreneurs who are living out the so-called 4-hour workweek are banking thousands even millions of dollars.
The Solution to Having Too Much Is Not to Go Get More
Being stuck in the middle of a frenetic business model with hundreds of things to do every day has been the pitfall of many opportunists. It baffles Rich and for sure it will baffle you as well that many entrepreneurs who are frustrated and tired of working insane hours keep on adding more and more to their plate even though their to-do lists are bursting on the seams.
For many opportunists, the solution is to hire more people or to outsource everything and anything that can be outsourced. Even if you do this, you will still find it difficult to manage and stay on top of everything that is happening.
The problem is deeper than the lack of workforce. As per Rich Schefren, this is a clear indication of a lack of strategy.
Being a Carbon Copy of Everyone Else is Not a Strategy
Here’s an opportunist motto that Rich wants you to avoid: Do the same as everybody else, but just try to do it a little bit better.
At first, this can be quite difficult to grasp because marketers believe that you don’t have to always reinvent the wheel. In another manifesto that Rich wrote with Jay Abraham, they pointed out how many businesses become invisible and fall of their market’s radar because they were merely copying what others have already done.
Rich said it very cleverly: “Playing ‘Simon Says” is not a business strategy.” He added: “The predominant internet and small business strategy is just doing the same thing as everyone else, only doing it longer, faster and smarter than everyone else.”
This is why the activities pile up. News spread quickly that Company X or Company Y earned so and so dollars using this tactic via this channel. Other companies are quick to jump in on the bandwagon.
This is an opportunist behavior. If you’re a real entrepreneur and you have your vision, your plan of attack would be more strategic and methodological rather than falling into the easy route of sameness.
Monetizing Your Time
If you were to put a dollar value on your time, how much would it be? How much would you put for every second, every minute, every hour? A dollar per minute? A hundred dollars per hour?
Why are you being asked this question? Because according to Rich Schefren, if you think of it, time is all you have. Rich also points out that there’s no such thing as a free time for the simple reason that you cannot really save or bank time and use it later. You can use your time leisurely, but it’s definitely never free.
Rich tells the somewhat quirky story of a fellow marketing genius, Dan Kennedy. Rich reveals that Dan actually has a clock in his home office that goes in reverse so that he’s constantly reminded of the limited time he has on this planet.
You might be asking: What the hell does this have to do with me being successful in business?
Rich Schefren’s answer — EVERYTHING!
Rich believes that the reason why many businessmen don’t bring in the millions of dollars they envisioned for themselves and why they continue to put in insane hours toward their business is that they are not able to boost the value of their time. Rich further states: “All time has value; and the way you think about time and think about yourself will affect everything that happens to you inside and outside your business for the rest of your life. In short, you have to value your time before anyone else will.”
In order to rake in the big bucks without drowning yourself with work, you have to know what your time is worth and to identify what your time needs to be worth in order for you to reach your target income. Without this information, you won’t be able to make wise decisions on what activities you should be putting your time on and the tasks that you should delegate or farm out to others.
Distinguishing between Productive Time and Wasted Time
Rich grasped the real meaning and value of productive time from another internet marketing powerhouse and information marketing maven named Alex Mandossian. Rich recounts that during one of his conversations with his good friend, he can’t help it but to express how impressed and jealous he was of Alex’s professional achievements, to which Alex responded: “Rich, what you need to do is go out and get a kitchen timer and set it for 60 minutes and then just work on building profit during those 60 minutes — nothing else.”
The definition of productive time is pretty simple — it’s the amount of time you as an entrepreneur spend and was directly converted to income or profit. According to a survey, CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies have 28 minutes of productive time on average every day. 38 minutes tops. This sounds unimpressive but you have to take into consideration that a CEO plays different roles and puts on different hats on a day to day basis.
But you! You have more time on your hand that you can wisely spend on generating profit for your business. But as Rich emphasizes, having productive time is not magic and entails a great deal of focus and discipline. Hence, the 60-minute kitchen timer exercise that Alex recommended.
That being said, it is important that as an entrepreneur, you should distinguish between earning and learning. Many opportunists fail to convert a learning opportunity to an earning opportunity. Learning is unproductive time while earning is productive time.
Say you found Rich Schefren’s manifesto online and started reading it. This is unproductive time because it does not directly impact your bottom line. Once you’ve implemented your learning, then it becomes productive time. However, this does not mean that you have to stop doing these activities altogether. As Rich said: “You have to do it, that’s part of life.”
Examples of Productive and Super Productive Time
Productive time includes spending time on activities such as creating scalability in your business, setting up joint venture deals, managing money making projects, enhancing your marketing process, marketing your products and services and developing new products and services.
A notch higher than productive time is super productive. Rich defines super productive time as time spent in creating systems around money making activities. Super productive time is more profitable and strategic. Developing systems that create products and putting together that market products are examples of super productive time.
The advantage of setting up such income-producing systems according to Rich is the fact that your business continues to grow whether you (as the proprietor or founder) work or not. You are automating your business growth so profits will come in even with little intervention from you. Your bottom line expands and new products and services are created while you’re spending weeks in a Caribbean cruise or spending more time with your friends and family.
You earn more. You work less. Who doesn’t want that?
The Simplest Way to Boost the Value of Your Time
Now, the million dollar question — both literally and figuratively — is: How can you achieve the hourly rate you need to reach your target profit? According to Rich, the answer can’t be found in any eBook or home study module.
The answer to this question is to create a scalable business model that will give you the highest level of leverage as possible.
This is why you need to know what your time should be worth. First, it brings to your attention that your business is not set up in a way that will help you achieve and then exceed your hourly rate goal. Second, your hourly rate should serve as the barometer on what business activities you should be personally handling (hopefully productive and super productive activities) and those that you should be outsourcing or delegating.
How Leverage Can Make You Significantly Richer
Rich discovered the benefits of leverage during his junior year in college wherein two of the classes he took are philosophy and comparative literature. For both classes, the biggest chunk of his final grade would be based on a final paper. Rich was quick and clever enough to realize that there are overlaps between the two classes, so, instead of writing two papers, Rich just wrote one. This allowed him to dedicate more time on a single paper instead of splitting his time for two papers.
Rich got a perfect 4.0 on both papers.
Increasing your leverage means making your present business activities more profitable with less work. You can achieve this by dedicating your time to one niche, creating a full funnel or portfolio of noteworthy products and putting up systems for cross-sell, upsell and back-ends.
Rich explains that by consistently and continuously working on one niche, every product that you release after your first product becomes more and more profitable. It’s a snowball effect. For example, if you were able to acquire 1,000 customers and 100 affiliates for your initial offering, when you launch your second product, you already have a database of clients you can offer your new product to plus the 100 affiliates you can build on. Further, the new set of customers you acquire for your first product may be impressed enough that they would scout for your other offerings and when they see your first product, they would buy that as well.
The avalanche of profit goes on and on and on. Before you know it, your business has exploded into a multi-million dollar empire and you, well, you’re working less and less.
It would difficult for opportunists to wrap their heads around the concept of focusing on just one niche at a time simply because they want to have jump on every hot business concept during a given time. But as stated previously, real businessmen are strategic, have a clear vision of what they want their businesses to become and they recognize that the biggest business opportunities reside in their current endeavors.
Because Time is Indeed, Gold!
The issue of using your time wisely first starts with having the right mindset and according to Rich, if there’s one key takeaway that he wants everyone to take from his Internet Business Manifesto, it’s this:
Strategic entrepreneurs succeed. Opportunity seekers fail!
If you choose the path of an opportunity seeker, you will find yourself working crazy hours, not getting the results you want and getting frustrated in the end. Jaded and not rich — this is almost always how opportunists end up.
However, if you really think that your time is gold, you love and passionate about what you do and have a clear vision of what you want your business to become a few years down the road, then you’re choosing the route many successful strategic entrepreneurs before you took. If you’re a small business now, just do the right things. Spend your time on productive activities and you can be the multi-millionaire that you envisioned yourself to be.
As Rich put it, a big business was just a small business that did the right things.
Go get wealthy. The clock is ticking.
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