Think Like an Investor!

byRodriguez

111 followers

11 years ago

In my 13 years of commercial banking, I've learned plenty of valuable lessons from entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners. There are some basic fundamentals that investors, debt holders and banks look for when assessing you (the business owner) and your competency in running your business. We as online marketers and business owners are no different than the Mark Zuckerbergs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffets of the world. What follows are minimal standards that each one of us should strive to meet in order to successfully grow an sustain an online business.

1. Education. While you don't necessarily need an MBA from Harvard Business School to build and operate a successful online business, you do need to strive for continuous and advanced forms of learning. You must be willing to learn new skills when your industry changes. The internet is extremely unique. The technology that drives and maintains it remains new and is constantly changing. What you learn today, might no longer apply one year from now. And that's a good thing. Education keeps you on the front-lines of what's new and effective. Without updating your knowledge on a constant basis, you can expect the competition to crush you.
2. The Willingness to Execute. Notice I didn't call this the "ability" to execute because WE ARE ALL ABLE to put our heads down and get to working on the things that really drive our businesses forward. Every great business first has to execute on building a great product, service, platform or website. Next, they had to execute on building a great business. Finally, they had to execute on scaling, sustaining and evolving a great business. Are you willing? If so, you're 99% of the way there. Don't put as much value on your idea as on the execution of that idea.
3. The Ability to adapt to change and weather adverse circumstances. We all need to build experience in responding effectively to a variety of economic conditions. Evidence of effective, ethical behavior in times of crisis or adverse circumstances is a success factor. Is your business (website) strong enough to fight the Google zoo? Can you adapt and respond from being ranked on page 1 to being ranked on page 10!
4. Strong track record of developing new products and services. How diversified are your websites? If one begins to lose revenue, will that impact your overall income? Or can you take a hit on 1 or 2 sites and not have to worry about taking in 5 roommates?
5. Have you engaged in outside coaches, mentors and consultants? We have to come to the realization that we don't know it all. There are plenty of people out there who have knowledge and advice that can make a huge difference in our business. You must know how to use internal and external resources to fill in the gaps in our own knowlege and skills. That's why we are all at Wealthy Affiliate!

Thank you,

Nelson Rodriguez