Logistics: The Other Side Of The Business Coin
There are two keys to starting any business. A lot of people don’t know about either.
Some people know about one or another. Those people tend to very well financially, and you could happily spend a career (or several) mastering one of the two keys to starting a business.
However, if you can master both, you’ll be able to start a business in any field.
The First Key To Business
The first key to business is all the flashy stuff.
It’s copywriting.
It’s sales.
It’s marketing.
It’s advertising.
A lot of successful people have said that if you master sales, then you’ll never go broke. It makes sense: If you can sell products, then at the very least you can sell them and pocket the difference between cost and profit.
This key extends to a lot more though; what do customers want? How do they want it? When do they want it?
Mastery of sales, marketing and other associated keys are about mastering psychology.
So, in essence, if you can master psychology – or, at least consumer psychology – you’ll never go broke.
That’s the first key to business.
I talk a lot about all those various things on this site. Check out the archive.
Now, obviously, I believe that copywriting is the best way to learn how all of these things work. If you’re good at copywriting, then you’ll have to learn about psychology and sales and all those aspects which I’ve just talked about.
However, there’s a separate side to business which I’m learning about now – a second key to business success which is exactly the opposite of the subjective, psychology-based approach that copywriting teaches you.
The Second Key to Business: Logistics
There are a lot of aspects to business, whether you’re a massive importer or a simple freelancer, where you have to take psychology out of the equation entirely.
A lot of writers fail to do this. They don’t understand deadlines. They can’t follow a client’s request because it interferes with their art. They can’t think of themselves as a cog in a wider business machine.
Those things are essential to being a freelance writer. There’s a lot of character in any given written passage, but ultimately that isn’t what sells the piece of writing to a client. What sells the piece of writing is a good pitch, completing the work to a high standard and sending it out on time.
I’ve talked a lot about things that can be automated. As a writer, you want to do as much on autopilot as you can, so that you can concentrate on your writing.
Let’s leave the writing example though.
Let’s say you’re a master salesman. You’re a copywriter.
What separates you from anybody else who wants to start up a business selling widgets?
Not a lot.
Sure, another person might know more about widgets than you. That doesn’t guarantee their success.
Another person might have more start-up capital than you do. That doesn’t guarantee their success either.
Really, business (outside of sales) comes down to logistics.
- How do you create a product?
- How do you get a product from A to B?
- How much does creating the product and getting it from A to B cost?
- What other costs are there?
One of the things that has surprised me so far with learning about affiliate marketing is that it’s completely divorced from the psychological elements that I thought would dominate it.
Affiliate marketing essentially boils down to sending a ton of traffic to an offer and working out how to make that a profitable enterprise.
Essentially, that’s how any business should approach selling its product. How much does it cost to get your product in front of customers and how much do you need to charge to make that profitable?
Logistics essentially boils down to creating a process or answering a set of questions that take your business from an idea into a fully working machine that provides products or services to the customers – without worrying about the human aspect at all.
Not So Final Thoughts
I’ve been pressed for time today, so this article is a bit of a rough draft/collection of thoughts.
It’s also going to be a platform for future topics and discussing future business ideas.
Suffice to say though, if you can sell things to people, then you’re in a great place.
If you can visualise and realise a business idea from a logistics perspective, then you can probably achieve a huge amount.
If you can do both, then you can print money.