Online entrepreneurs who are international travelers: Avoid these mistakes

If you are starting an online business while being an international traveler, perhaps you are busy building your website, creating content for your social media pages, and learning Internet business strategies. These are all important and necessary, but today I’d like to point out a few things that you should avoid doing as a start-up.

international traveler

  • Spending too many resources on building fancy websites & sales funnels/buying ads & followers.

If you have an established and mature business, yes, you should totally invest in building the most beautiful website in the world, hiring a social media manager, etc. Nonetheless, if your business is a start-up, those things probably don’t directly influence your revenue. Let me explain.

Of course, you need a website / a sales funnel; you probably also need some ads and some followers on social media. But the most important thing in a start-up is to implement the 80/20 rule (80% of your results are generated by 20% of the activities that you do: 20% = high-leverage activities).

Identify your 20% and focus on those!

For example, in Catherine’s online business, her high-leverage activities are writing blog articles and making YouTube videos because these two activities generate the majority of her business revenue. Thus, she doesn’t even run social media ads.

By the way, sometimes the 80/20 rule is the 75/25 rule. You get the gist – you would be well-advised to focus on high-leverage activities that move the needle forward and minimize the number of resources that you spend on low-leverage activities.

international traveler

  • Underestimating the power of personal mentorship

You can buy many business books & online business coaching programs and read every business development article on the Internet. Nonetheless, none of those can work better than personal mentorship because business books, online business coaching programs, and business development articles don’t know you and don’t understand your circumstances.

Here is an analogy: 

You can go to the drug store or the supermarket to buy vitamins and other supplements, but none of those can work better than seeing a qualified health professional who truly understands what you actually need.

In actuality, most online business coaching programs are expensive. Although hiring a mentor is more expensive, statistically, the Return on Investment (ROI) from hiring a business mentor is significantly higher, because a business mentor can point out your blind spots, thereby saving you a lot of time, money, and energy in the long term.

Every successful business owner that I know has at least one mentor.

  • Undervaluing your services

Joshua is a dating coach who teaches men how to meet and date high-value women. Previously, he was charging US$100 per session. When he has more and more clients, his business mentor said to him, “Now you have more clients than you can handle, so it’s time to increase your price. Nobody will value you more than you value yourself. Double your price!” Joshua was a bit concerned because he thought a higher price might put off his clients, but interestingly, his clients are still very happy to pay him – they are paying a higher price now.

Currently, Joshua charges US$200 per session. His income has doubled as a result. He should have done that a long time ago.

As a matter of fact, a higher price is an organic filter because clients who are willing to pay a higher price are usually high-quality clients who cause minimal problems and get better results. By contrast, those who only want to pay a low price tend to cause most problems in Joshua’s business (and they generally don’t get the ideal results anyway because they are low-quality clients).

“If you run an online business, chances are you are able to be an international traveler at the same time.”

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