This post is a longer answer to a text I received from Dave Hyner today.

It sounded innocent enough: “What would your top tip advice be to a micro business owner?”

But, as ever with Dave, there’s a lot buried just under the surface – that’s why he’s good at what he does.

I sent a short-ish text back:

• Fail fast
• Realise that change is the only constant
• Learn from the best you can afford but don’t let that stop you from starting
• Ready, fire, aim!

Here’s a longer explanation of that answer:

Fail fast

That sounds a bit weird.

After all, you’re not setting out to fail.

But, truth be told, lots of things fail. Figures vary by market but one survey I read indicated that maybe 3 in every hundred new retail products went on to make a decent amount of sales.

And it’s safe to assume that most of the companies had a much bigger budget than the average micro business owner.

Truth be told, near enough every venture I’ve been involved in that didn’t succeed, I knew long before I pulled the plug on it.

So I don’t necessarily follow my own advice on this as much as I should.

In fact, I’m still renewing domain names that “seemed a good idea at the time”, just in case I decide to use them in the future. That’s after a clear out a while back, so the number is less but it’s still a long way above zero.

Failing fast isn’t really a failure. It’s a learning experience and it’s a very rare failure that doesn’t produce something constructive.

Focus your energy at the start – to give your project the highest possible chance of success – but unless you fall into the mad scientist category, don’t pursue it forever if it seems as though no-one else in the world has any interest in the project.

Listen to your gut instinct on this.

And maybe confide in a trusted friend who’ll tell you the truth, no matter how unpalatable it may seem at the time.

Realise that change is the only constant

Change has always happened. But nowadays it seems to happen faster.

A nice joke I read the other day said that they’d just re-watched the movie Back to the Future and that no-one was using smart phones in their vision of the future.

I run a Scout troop so I’m used to reference points changing, often in a very short space of time. That often confuses young instructors we hire in to run activities – they’re maybe 5 years older than the Scouts they’re looking after yet some of the references they use (that “everyone” knows”) fly straight over the head of the Scouts.

I’m old enough to remember when televisions here in the UK displayed black & white images with 405 lines, had two channels and the advent of colour television (with a gigantic 625 lines!) and a third channel was massive news. Of course, phones were wired to the wall and lines were often shared with neighbours (party lines). I bought one of the first domestic answering machines back in the 1980’s. And lots of other changes.

Play a game with yourself – what things we take for granted will a child born today never know existed? Light bulbs that need changing? Landlines? The list goes on…

So embrace change. Because it’s going to happen with or without your consent.

Sometimes it will be change for the better.

Sometimes it will be change for change sake (Windows 8 anyone?)

Sometimes it will be change for the worse. That happens but is usually driven out by market forces.

Embrace change and you’ll be slightly better prepared for business.

Learn from the best you can afford but don’t let that stop you from starting

Learning from the best doesn’t have to be expensive.

Felix Dennis is one of the richest men in the world and you can learn a lot from his books. He’s also a poet – he trained himself for 6 months and runs sell-out tours where he reads his poems, shares his wine cellar and regularly sells more poetry books in an evening than the average poet sells all year. Yes, he treats his hobby seriously. Almost as seriously as his businesses.

He’s not the only one to write books about getting rich or running a business. So if your budget is limited, choose a few such authors and follow them.

Do that even if your budget isn’t particularly restricted.

Pick someone who you resonate with.

Donald Trump and Richard Branson are excellent self publicists.

Felix Dennis less so (unless it’s poetry). But that doesn’t stop him being exceptionally rich and having three secretaries to deal with almost all the phone calls.

Then seek out someone to model.

That’s what NLP (neuro linguistic programming) does.

Because it’s stupid re-inventing the wheel.

Find people who have successfully done whatever it is you want to do. Unless that includes landing a human on Mars, chances are it’s been done. More than once.

If you can find a coach or mentor, so much the better.

Find one in your field. And make sure they’re up to date in their knowledge and happy to share it.

Here in the internet marketing world, I’m following Sean Mize. In the internet marketing world, he’s a bit like Felix Dennis – a quiet hero who’s making money (albeit not as much as Felix Dennis but not many people are).

There will be someone you can model in your chosen field. I can near enough guarantee that.

And I’m not so modest that I won’t suggest myself if you’re after business and internet marketing help.

Ready, fire, aim!

Nowadays, that’s the title of a book but I first came across it when John Audette was running an internet discussion group (this was before there was any reliable internet software for forums to replace the older style bulletin boards) and it’s been with me ever since.

The essence of it is that you need to do something – even if it’s not totally ideal – rather than mess around and procrastinate and eventually do what would have been the right thing if you’d had the knowledge and conviction to do it months ago,

But, actually, because you’ve waited near enough forever it’s just as inaccurate as if you hadn’t aimed anyway.

If you’re a believer in things like the law of attraction (and whether you are or not, it’s real!) then you’ll know that the universe likes speed. The Earth is spinning at something like 1,000 miles an hour and it’s also moving around the Sun at something like 67,000 miles an hour.

That’s a lot faster than we’ve managed!

Speed works in almost any industry and people notice it.

So throw away the idea of having to be totally precise.

Put something out there, even if it’s not perfect initially.

Or even by version 8 (or whatever Windows has reached by the time you read this).

Because if you don’t, your competition will pass you.

Coming back to the micro business side of things, we have the ability to act a lot faster than bigger competitors.

There’s no-one else to answer to. Which can be an upside or a downside but let’s go with it being an advantage most of the time.

We can launch a micro business a day if we want to. More if you sell other people’s products.

Within a week, you can tell if it’s worth spending more time and money on it or if you need to adjust something.

And go for the idea of continuous improvement.

It’s a lot, lot, lot easier to make a 100 improvements of 1% each (even easier to do what Dave Hyner teaches which is 300 improvements of a third of a percent) than it is to make one improvement that represents 100%.

And, yes, they all add up to near enough the same figure.

All in all, that’s a lot longer answer than I could have given by text.

But it explains things a lot more (I hope!)

And if you’re in the business or internet marketing field, I’d be happy to help you. This post explains that option in more detail.

And if you’ve got any comments, feel free to leave them below!