Success Doesn’t Just Happen. You Plan It.

Are you a business owner, who is looking for business magic? Wanting to get that big order? Imagining what it is when you go viral and everyone knows your company name and product? Dreaming of celebrities using your product? If you are serious, take the Big Rich Money e-course to plan your Success Roadmap.

My question for you: are you really ready for success? Or are you just daydreaming?

You’d be surprised how many companies just wish for the “big thing”, but then when it happens, they actually weren’t ready, and the moment is lost, and sometimes it can even take the whole company down. You have to specifically plan for actual literal success. Have you ever put into words, on paper, what the most “successful” version of your business would be? And we mean in very concrete terms, what, specifically would success look like in the daily operation of your company? One major mistake many entrepreneurs make is not planning for success, but just hoping it will happen – and when it happens, realizing that they were not ready at all.

Story from the book Big Rich Money: How To Turn Your Business Intentions Into A Profitable Company

Katja’s Big Rich Money Tip: Plan Your Success

When I launched my Skimbaco online store my goal was to sell as much as possible. I just wanted to get going, sell, sell, sell. Makes sense, right? But I didn’t define how much the “as much as possible” was, or how much I could actually sell if things went well. That was the biggest mistake to even think “IF things went well” – you have to plan and be prepared that things WILL go well. I had incredible social media marketing success. It all unfolded after I sent a gift basket to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. When Oprah went to interview Tom Cruise in his Colorado mountain cabin, Tom Cruise said, on camera, to Oprah (!!!) a product from the gift basket was “Suri’s favorite.” I seized that moment to create my first viral social media campaign and my business EXPLODED with orders. Business was SO good that my most popular items sold out too fast, and then I didn’t have the star products in the inventory anymore. Things got overwhelmingly busy, and it was just too many hours for just one person to fill orders, pack boxes, prepare items for shipment, do the marketing and answer all of the customer service emails in a timely manner. Packages started leaving a day or two late, and I just could not deliver a proper customer experience. My swift and sudden success and the resulting high sales numbers became my biggest problem! When my store started gaining visibility, I should have invested more money to buy more inventory and expand my team! Anyone could have helped me to pack boxes or answer basic customer service questions, but only I could create viral marketing campaigns! I was not prepared to delegate work and grow my team. I was not prepared to make a financial investment in my shop, so instead of trying to grow and sell more physical products, I slowly pivoted my business into online publishing and marketing consulting. By the time I closed down the store only six months after my big viral hit, I was so relieved to be off of that exhausting treadmill!”

Now granted, I closed down the Skimbaco online store, but this blog turned into an online magazine, and the Tom Cruise & Oprah story has been something that still helps me in business meetings, selling my consulting services, and it’s a fun story to tell at conferences, and magazine and podcast interviews. And it happened 15 years ago.

Business growth requires planning.

You might think you will figure things out once you become successful, but believe us: success and business growth require proper planning. Viral marketing campaigns, items selling like crazy, and the phone ringing from excited customers calling can all seem like positive problems to have, but overwhelming success can run a business down the same way as anything else. You need to be prepared for success, and oftentimes the business growth needs an investment of some sort – time or (wo)manpower.

Your biggest problem can be a huge, unexpected, unplanned success. Probably not what you expected us to say.

Bernie’s Magic Mittens Could Have Been…

At the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders was a comical spectator, dressed in a dull puffer coat and fabulous wool mittens amid celebrities and the First Family in full red carpet-level glamour. The internet became very excited about the multicolored mittens and in a short time sourced them to a maker named Jen Ellis. A Vermont resident, she had sent Bernie Sanders the mittens as a gift 5 years earlier, not even meeting him in person, and he had worn them ever since. Within a matter of hours, Jen Ellis was flooded with more than 6,000 orders for her “swittens” (mittens made of recycled sweaters). The only problem? Jen Ellis, a 2nd grade teacher and a mom, never wanted to be in the mitten business and is no longer taking orders.

“Sadly, I have no more mittens for sale. I hate to disappoint people, but the mittens, they’re one-of-a-kind and they’re unique. And sometimes in this world, you just can’t get everything you want.”