Posts Tagged ‘lessons learned’

Foregoing pleasure today can bring you HUGE benefits later

The Story

This week, I’m going to change the style up a little bit to teach an important lesson.  I’m tired of the dry how to do this, how to do that, don’t do this instructional posts on how in succeed in your online book-selling business.  Let’s immerse ourselves in the life of an ordinary American consumer for a few minutes and see how the decisions that are made in this fictious story can be a strong lesson for building a successful book-selling business or any successful business for that matter.

Tickets082307 Foregoing pleasure today can bring you HUGE benefits laterMeet Alice.  Alice represents your run-of-the-mill, ordinary working a 9-5 job Monday through Friday kind of girl.  She’s an administrative assistant in a successful lawyer firm, single, 28, living in a one bedroom apartment and, for the most part, is happy with her life and her dog Sparky.  She’s content with her ordinary life, but always has a nagging feeling that she wants something more, something bigger, something sustaining that will allow her to have fulfillment in life, work hard (on her own terms), take modest vacations and to build a life that will sustain her until she decides to “retire”.

On her lunch hour, she’s always dreaming up new business ideas that may allow her the freedom to work her own hours, envision new products that will help others and ultimately build a highly successful business all on her own.  Alice is an aspiring entrepreneur and dreamer and hopes one day she can get the courage to fulfill her dreams of owning her own business and running the show.

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How a book business can die in an instant

…no, not mine!  I’m still going to be chugging along for some time.  I think I scared a few people from my last post. icon smile How a book business can die in an instant

I wanted to take the time this week to talk about an email I just received today from a loyal reader and successful online book-selling business owner.  Let’s call her Sue.  Sue had occasionally emailed me in the past to get some tips on how to get started, some of her successes and just general comments about how she was growing her business.  I always enjoyed our email conversations until she dropped a huge bomb on me today…Amazon had killed her.

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Shutting down the business?

What is your idea of success?  Is it just getting a business started on a shoestring with super cheap inventory, making a few hundred bucks a month with virtually no risk to you?  Online book selling is a sure win.  Is it evolving your passion for books into a used bookstore helping other book lovers find that special tome?  Perhaps it is seeing those mega sellers on Amazon with tens of thousands of feedback numbers and thinking to yourself a huge warehouse, a dozen employees and $1,000,000 in annual sales is where you need to be.  For me, it’s none of these and lately I’ve been contemplating closing down my business.  Let me tell you why…

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