I decided to do a little thought experiment here. Let’s assume I won the lottery, and I decided that one of the ways I wanted to spend my time was to keep running the business, and to use that money to help it grow.
How would I go about it?
I figure that I might come out of this exercise thinking, “well… I could do many of those things now!”
So what would I do?
Money would be no object, so I’d probably focus on things that are expensive but might ultimately pay off greatly, even if it meant losing money in the short-term.
Hiring would probably make sense. I’d probably hire a team of people to grow the business quickly. That would likely include a marketing director, sales people, an operations person, and several web developers and designers. I would focus on sales and marketing first, and then once I had enough new clients coming in, I would hire the rest.
I would focus on putting systems in place to make sure everything is consistent across the organization. I would probably hire someone for that, too.
But what if I wanted to remain inconspicuous and instead focus on more organic growth that doesn’t require investing in a huge team?
I would probably just start spending a ton on advertising. I’d sink huge sums into Adwords and Facebook ads, possibly Linkedin. Those would be easy ways to turn large amounts of cash into clients.
Because I wouldn’t really care about the ROI, I wouldn’t need to put much effort into them. I could just create ads of minimal quality and spend so much on them that they work no matter what.
So what’s stopping me now?
Obviously I can’t afford to just throw unlimited money at ads and remain indifferent to the outcome. I would need to put much more thought into them and be more careful.
But still: I can certainly try them!
Again, I know that if my acquisition cost is under something like $250 per client, I should generally be profitable in the first year. And with that in mind, I should put large amounts of money into anything that ends up being more cost-effective than that.
At the very least, I feel like this exercise makes it clear to me that I need to go out and try some things. Maybe most of them don’t work at all, but it’s still worth it to try. If I find something that does work, I can focus heavily on that.