I received a great e-mail from John Reese the other day, and I thought my readers would find some of the advice useful:

I want to share 12 valuable mini-lessons that I’ve learned so far as an entrepreneur…

These range from mistakes to avoid, to making strategic decisions, of how to get cash flow to come in the fastest, etc.

They are in no particular order…

1. ALWAYS DO MORE THAN IS EXPECTED OF YOU

I learned this at an early age from my Dad. He had a very successful career as a business executive and engineer, and this the core principle that created his success.

You can apply this to your business in many ways… over-delivering to your customers, giving unexpected bonuses to your employees or outsourced workers, and more.

Most people do just the bare minimum. Do more than is expected of you and it will do amazing things for your business.

2. STOP DREAMING AND START DOING

Too many entrepreneurs get caught up in the big dreams of how they will one day be rich and how their life will be amazing…

…but they never end up doing anything.

They buy courses, read all they can, jot down little notes and ideas in a notebook, but nothing ever actually gets created.

A web site doesn’t get made. Advertising isn’t run. Markets aren’t tested. Nothing.

If you want to make a lot of money the only way that happens is getting stuff done. Period.

3. DON’T LET LEARNING DELAY ACTIVITY

Most people that have studied Internet Marketing much already have the basic skills that are needed to build a million-dollar business.

That’s worth REPEATING…

Most people that have studied IM much ALREADY HAVE the basic skills that are needed to build a million-dollar business.

You can get stuck learning new stuff FOREVER.
There will always be new methods and techniques that get discovered. The Internet changes on a DAILY BASIS. This is a given.

Don’t get caught in the trap of “I’m going to start building my business right after I go through this next course…”

You can start building your business TODAY while you are studying and learning new things that you can easily apply TOMORROW.

Things will NEVER perfectly align for you and your business. There’s no such thing. So don’t wait. Get started NOW and take action. Get some stuff going and go from there.

4. MULTIPLE IDEAS CAN BE THE KISS OF DEATH

It’s okay to work on multiple projects and ideas.
It’s almost impossible to stop entrepreneurs from having tons of new ideas at the same time.

BUT…

No new money comes in the door until you get ONE project launched and making money.

Something has to be launched FIRST.

5. MAKE JUST ONE DOLLAR FIRST

No one has ever made a million dollars in sales without generating $1 first.

ALL successful businesses start with that first sale and then grow from there.

It doesn’t matter what your income goals are.
The faster you make your first dollar, the faster you will reach your goals. PERIOD.

6. DO THE IMMEDIATE CASH PROJECT FIRST

What should you work on next? Whatever will bring in cash the fastest for your business — and of course, I mean that in a moral/legal/ethical way.

If you analyze all the great ideas you are probably sitting on, I bet you can realistically prioritize them in the order of which ones would actually make money come in the fastest (if it succeeds.)

THAT is the project you need to focus on.

Cash is the lifeblood of your business (and your life.)

Save some of those “big” ideas for the future. Focus on the ones that stand the best chance of getting new money to come in right away. Once you have some stable ongoing cash flow in your business, then you can take a chance on that project that may take longer to pay off.

7. EMAIL MARKETING KICKS THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYTHING ELSE

When it comes to growing a business online, nothing generates long-term cash flow like an email list of engaged subscribers & customers.

Email marketing is the best way to generate traffic.
It’s the best way to ‘recycle’ the same visitors again and again to any of your projects. It’s also the best way to convert prospects into buyers.

RSS, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, BLAH BLAH BLAH

Yes, those methods can generate leads. Yes, those methods can generate some sales. But time and time again little old email marketing kicks their butts — by a long shot.

So make building a list, and a solid relationship with it, a top priority in your business.

8. RUN A LEAN OVERHEAD MACHINE

I can’t stress this one enough.

When you start growing a successful business it’s really easy for your overhead to get out of hand.
It’s easy to start hiring a bunch of people and committing to a bunch of expenses.

Take it from me, when you have months where your fixed expenses (doesn’t include advertising, etc.) are well over $100,000/MONTH (and growing) it can put you in a tough position to make healthy profits.

I used to have fixed overhead that high but never again.
I realized there were smarter ways to do things.

What you need to realize is that REVENUE doesn’t mean jack squat. It’s your profit (income) that matters.

So while running a $10,000,000/year business (sales) is impressive, I know people running a $1,000,000/year business that nets MORE than the person that owns the $10MM/year business.

It all comes down to your expenses.

Sometimes it certainly DOES take heavy expenses in order to make a lot of money. But that’s not my point…

My point is, your overhead can really get away from you. If your sales experience some dips, and it’s almost guaranteed they will at some point, then you can LOSE YOUR BUTT very quickly.

So add to your overhead as a last resort.

9. MAKE ACCOUNTING A PRIORITY

This is a big mistake that most entrepreneurs make — and I’ve been guilty of it as well.

Keeping the books and doing accounting work is the LAST thing that most entrepreneurs want to mess with. We have more fun by coming up with new ideas and trying to make them grow — not spending hours of our time inputting receipts and figures into QuickBooks.

If you don’t like accounting, immediately pay someone a few bucks to handle it for you. Just make sure your accounting is always up to date.
It’s very important.

As an extension of this, make paying your taxes a priority — even if you pay them in advance.

I have paid a small fortune in tax penalties because of being lazy and filing late. And it’s too easy to let one delay turn into another and for the problem to get worse. So make it a priority.

Don’t “rob Peter to pay Paul.” This is a trap most entrepreneurs fall into — again, I’ve been guilty of it in the past myself.

It’s easy to start making a bunch of money and think “I’ll just use this money to make more money instead of paying my taxes on it now and I’ll just pay the taxes later after I’ve made even more money.”

Or the same thinking is applied towards
delaying payments to a vendor, or some other expense that needs to get paid.

This is probably the #1 mistake entrepreneurs make that can create problems and a lot of wasted money in paying penalties and interest.
So make sure your accounting is taken care of and your taxes get paid on-time for you.

10. DON’T LEASE OFFICE SPACE

(If possible.)

As tempting as this might become if your business starts to grow, avoid it at all costs.

If you’re like me, what will happen is that you will eventually stop going to the office and just work from home where you always were more comfortable anyway. And/or you will end up realizing you really didn’t need it.

Having an “office” is not required to have a successful business. We live in a Digital World now and it’s just not important anymore.

Even if your business grows and you need employees, you still don’t necessarily need an office. There are people out there running $20MM+/year businesses with no office; the employees all just work virtually. This is becoming more and more common.

* There certainly are exceptions to this. My team in the Philippines works out of an office I leased. But they are collaborating on software projects and NEED to work in the same location.
And, of course, it’s also very inexpensive.

Most office leases are thousands of dollars per month and usually don’t turn out to be a good use of cash.

11. ALMOST EVERYTHING TAKES LONGER

When creating new projects, or having some software made for you, or having an ebook ghostwritten, or anything else, know that things almost always take more time than originally expected.

This is the #1 reason why you need to act TODAY to start putting things in motion to grow your business. The longer you wait, the more into the future you push your potential of getting money to come in the door.

12. THE MONEY IS IN THE MARKETING

Don’t get caught up in trying to make Web pages and learn HTML, or studying how to create javascript, or learning to master Linux so you can administer your own server, or how to use Photoshop to create little logos, etc.

You can certainly do that stuff if you want, but know that it will most likely just be a HOBBY.

It’s no surprise that some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know are also some of the LEAST TECHNICAL people I know.
The main thing they do right is to simply pay others to do all the “nuts & bolts” stuff that makes online business work.

It allows them to spend all their time on the marketing — which is where the money comes from.

*** BONUS LESSON ***

* See how I’m over-delivering as mentioned in the first lesson?

SPENDING TIME ONLINE ISN’T NECESSARILY WORKING ON YOUR BUSINESS

Just because you spend hours a day online doesn’t mean you’re working on your business.

You can do ‘research’ forever and never make a cent.

You need to be spending most of your time on:

- Generating Traffic
- Communicating With Your Customers (i.e. blog, list, etc.)
- Creating Content

Don’t fall into the trap of reading blogs & forums, chatting on Facebook or Twitter, checking stats, reading news, etc. for hours upon hours.

Just know that almost all of that stuff (with rare exception) is LOSING YOU MONEY more than making you money.

Say that title 5 times fast!

So it’s been about 6 weeks since demo started on the house, and we’re finally FINISHED! We had planned on wrapping up the project in about 3 weeks, but a series of setbacks kept pushing the schedule back. As it is, there are still a few minor issues that need to be dealt with (like getting a shower door, since the first 3 that were delivered were all damaged!), but with luck, the house should be on the market in the next 3-4 weeks.

Kids, it’s not as easy as they make it look on “Flip This House”. This is far from my first flip, but this one really had me hating life. Hopefully it’ll all be worth it in the end..

Before and after pictures will be posted in the future.. So stay tuned!

Chargebacks.

Sooner or later, all e-commerce sites have to deal with them. I know I have.

I’m not saying mistakes don’t happen.. But at the end of the day 99% of our stores’ chargebacks are unfounded. And the reasons people resort to them are as varied as snowflakes. Some claim they forgot they ordered, some decide they don’t like the return policy, but most just seem to make up whatever story they feel justifies them going to their credit card company (instead of us) to resolve the dispute.

I’m not bashing my customers, as I said mistakes happen, and there are a lot of people out there who are not trying to be malicious. But malicious or not, chargebacks are a hassle for a busy storeowner. Especially if that storeowner doesn’t know the proper way to handle them.

Do you?

Properly handling chargebacks are part customer service and part lawyer, and it’s hard not to get frustrated when you open that big fat envelope from your processor, only to see a name you thought you’d dealt with through the normal return process.

Well, my motto is “don’t get mad, get your money back!” Here is what you should do to totally prepare your chargeback defense.

o Keep all customer and vendor correspondence for at least 90 days. I know people who like to purge old emails at the end of every month. Even though each of my stores has a thirty-day return policy I keep everything relating to a sale for six months. Credit card companies are much more inclined to side with the buyer than the seller- that’s part of their customer service. Even if the customer initiates it after the return policy stated on your site the credit card company will make you prove the sale was legitimate. Keep everything!?

o Answer the chargeback with everything you’ve got. Don’t get indignant and send just the sales receipt – that will only mean a second notice with a request for more documentation. Send the sales receipt, order confirmation, shipping receipts including the tracking number, and any and all correspondence with the customer – literally your entire history for the sale. You can send documents from your store, your vendor, your shipper, from where ever and whoever as long as they are related to the sale. Provided you are in the right this will return as a judgment in your favor on the first try.

Now here are a couple things you shouldn’t do:

o Don’t call the customer. Even if you were dealing with the problem personally before, they have elevated it. Calling to try to get them to close the dispute rarely works because they either did it on purpose because they’re not happy with how you’re dealing with them or they don’t realize it is a bad thing for you. Either way it’s usually easier to turn in your evidence and let the credit card company make the judgment in your favor.?

o Don’t miss the deadline to turn in your rebuttal. You have a finite amount of time to get your case together (about 7-10 days) and presented. Don’t drag your feet. Wait until the last minute and I guarantee you’ll find you need a copy of something from your shipper that they won’t be able to get to you for a day or so. There is nothing worse than losing money that rightfully belongs to you.

Below are the three most common scenarios associated with ecommerce and ways to deal with them.

1. Merchandise was never received:
Look up the original order and check your records to see if it was indeed shipped. If it has been, input the tracking number into the shipping carriers website to pull up all of the transit/delivery information. Include this with your rebuttal, along with a written statement informing the credit card company that the order was shipped in a timely fashion and supply them with the tracking details.

If the order was not shipped, but is still pending or on backorder (this happens with us because we charge upfront for custom work), check your archive folders for any communication with the customer. Make sure to include all of the emails with your rebuttal, stating that the customer was aware of the delay and willingly opted to wait.

2. Item was returned and credit was not received:
This is by far my least favorite because even if you did refund the money, the credit card company will not check before removing the funds from your account. They assume the customer is correct and you have to prove that the refund was issued before the chargeback went through.

Check to see if the item was received back. If it was, check to see if you refunded the customer. If your company has a restocking fee, make sure to also include this information with your rebuttal. Sometimes the customer thinks the restocking fee is not warranted, and they try to get that money back. So, just send along the proof that you refunded the customer, along with a reason for the semi-credit due to the restocking fee. Sending a copy of your return policy is a good idea as well, just so you have all your bases covered.

3. Couldn’t contact the company to do a return properly:
This is the easiest to handle. I have never lost a fight for this reason. All you need is one email where you give them an RMA and return instructions that include an address. You don’t need to use RMAs but many companies do. If you don’t, then just make sure you send the instructions and an address. If your customer requests this information over the phone – give it to them and then send a follow up email with the same instructions. That way you have some written proof that you communicated with them.

If the merchandise was returned but you haven’t refunded the customer yet, don’t. The credit card company will take the money from your account for the customer plus the chargeback fee – you have no recourse. If you then issue a refund you’ll be out double the money.

If you receive a chargeback for any other reason, make sure you supply the credit card company with adequate information, so you’re not stuck holding the bill. Always send a copy of the original order, payment receipt, any email correspondence you’ve had with the customer, and a typed note explaining why you are disagreeing with the chargeback allegations.

Avoid That Chargeback!??

Now let’s talk a bit about how to avoid chargebacks so you don’t have to go through all this trouble. There are simple steps you can take on your website and through customer service correspondence to lower your rate of complaints.

First, include a detailed shipping FAQ that preemptively answers common questions like ‘How long before my order ships?’ and ‘What is your return policy?’. The more information you put in front of the customer, the less likely they will try to challenge you. And if they do go ahead and put through a wrongful chargeback you have that informational page on your site , which shows the credit card company that your customer knew your policies.

Second, having a “Contact Us” page that contains links to important informational pages like your return policy and shipping FAQ page (as well as having a contact form) makes it easier for customers to get in touch with you. A customer is much more likely to go for a chargeback if they have a hard time finding your contact info. And again, this is yet another page that you can forward to the credit card company to prove you were available to the customer.

You can also stem the reversals by providing each and every customer with as much information about their order as possible. Email is your friend. Sending a few simple emails or using functions in the backend of your store to keep your customers abreast of their order status saves time and effort in all areas of customer service.

Set your store up so it automatically sends out an email when a customer places an order. This email should include links to your contact page, shipping FAQ, and return policy. If for whatever reason there is a delay in shipping, especially after it has been shipped, contact the customer right away to let them know. The more goodwill you build the more your customer will trust you and go to you first if there is a problem.

Once the order ships…send them the tracking number with instructions on where to go to track it. Depending on your shipper and your store platform, a customer might need to click on a link or go to a website to track the shipment. Don’t leave it to them to figure out, ,make sure you provide clear instructions for every step they need to take.

These simple steps will lower your rate of chargebacks and make any that do come in that much easier to fight.

Chargeback Checklist:
o Save all customer correspondence for at least ninety days.
o Post contact, shipping, and return information clearly on your website.
o Respond to customer issues and shipping delays immediately.
o Send tracking numbers to every one of your customers.
o Don’t get mad…get your money back!

Facebook. If you’re not using it to drive traffic to your blog, you’re REALLY missing out. Back in January, I made a post outlining how to import your blog into a Facebook Fan Page. Unfortunately, the Notes import function is beyond buggy, and it doesn’t always import your posts. In fact, there have been a few weeks where it just stopped working completely!

So I set out to find a more stable solution. After scouring the web for solutions, I came across RSS Graffiti, a Facebook application that gives you a TON of options when it comes to importing your blog feeds. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I’m THRILLED at how well it’s been working!

Want to get started? Here’s what you need to do.

1. Create a Facebook Fan Page for your blog. (http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php)

2. Upload a picture for your profile, fill out the Info tab completely, and personalize your Fan Page.

3. Add the Like Box to your blog so readers can become fans. (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box)

4. Install the RSS Graffiti application, and set it up to start importing your blog posts.

5. Invite friends that are interested in your blog, and encourage them to suggest the page to others.

6. Watch the viral power of social networking drive traffic to your posts!

If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll be happy to help you get started..

So I met with my GI doctor last week, and he ordered a TON of blood work. Along with *7* stool samples.. UGH, that might have been the most disgusting experience of my life.

Now I’m waiting to get the results back now.. If everything comes back clean, then we move on to a colonoscopy. I’m hoping they pick up some infection from my blood work, and are able to give me the meds to rid my body of it. This illness has consumed 2 MONTHS of my life, and countless dollars (co-pays, medicine, and lost revenue from my lack of work).

I’ve now lost 20lbs since this first started. I haven’t been this low since 2005, when I left my full-time job. I guess it’s true, you become a fat slob when you sit in front of a computer all day and don’t exercise.

If you’ve got an iPhone 4, and you’re having reception problems because of the new antennae placement, Apple is now offering a free bumper (or a case). All you need to do is download the “iPhone 4 Case Program” from the App Store.

I wasn’t really feeling any of the cases, so I just went with the simple bumper. I was hoping to get a white one (nice contrast to the black phone), but they’re only offering ‘em in black.

Free is free, so I’ll take what I can get!