INTRO

Welcome to The Durable Business (TDB). We’re glad you’re here.

We have three goals for this program.

First, we’ll share our time-tested, four-part framework for building an online business from $0 to $100,000 in revenue.

Second, we’ll go through that framework ourselves to build a new business, where we don’t have any advantages you don’t have, from $0 to $100,000+.

You’ll see the reality of what it takes every step of the way, not a polished final version that makes everything look easy.

Third, you’ll learn, practice, and internalize the skills required to build and scale your own business. (We’ll teach you how to fish instead of giving you a fish.)

Your active participation is required. We cannot do the push-ups for you, and we expect that you’ll be actively engaged in the content, exercises, comments, and accountability community.

The Durable Business foundation is a set of principles we have described earlier this year in our Emergent Marketing Series. We’re including those again here because they’re critically important (which has been lightly edited for TDB).

We’ve added another principle as well — go slow to go fast — which is described below.

TDB Principle #1: Adopt an Infinite Mindset

Mindset is the frame through which you see the world.

Your beliefs, values, fears, and desires combine to determine your overall mindset, limiting or expanding the possibilities available to you.

Game theory tells us that we can adopt two broad types of mindsets: finite and infinite. The choice you make is critically important because it affects everything that follows downstream.

Everything.

To this end, there’s good news and bad news …

The good news is that the better mindset choice is obvious, and it’s available to you the moment you decide to make it. Re-read that and let it really sink in.

The bad news is we’re constantly encouraged to make the wrong choice. Let’s start by looking at the two mindsets side by side …

A finite mindset applies to games with known players, fixed rules, and an agreed-upon objective. These games have a beginning and an end, and there are winners and losers.

Finite mindsets emphasize competition and comparison to others.

Individual and team sports, competitive games like chess, and other time-bound competition benefit from a finite mindset. When you go out on the baseball field, your goal is to win by scoring more runs than the other team.

An infinite mindset applies to games with known and unknown players, where rules are interchangeable, and the goal is to perpetuate the game.

Infinite games emphasize cooperation vs. competition. Infinite players focus on improving themselves, not beating other players around them …

Many of the ‘games’ we play in life, like marriage, friendships, and business, are infinite games. Players come and go, rules change in context and over time, and the goal of these games is to keep playing (remain happily married, with life-long friends, and in a business you love).

Explaining why he wrote The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek identified several areas of life that are undermined by a finite, win/lose mindset. We don’t ‘win’ relationships, like marriage, for example, and “there’s definitely no such thing as winning business,” he said.

Finite games are based on a win/lose model.

Infinite games create the possibility for everyone involved to win by continuing to play.

The problem is that business has adopted the finite mindset language — ‘beating the competition’, ‘capturing market share’, ‘win at all costs’ — but business is not a finite game.

When we apply the wrong mindset to the game we’re playing, we undermine our hard work.

Let’s apply this distinction between finite and infinite mindsets to our little corner of the world. How do we adopt and apply an infinite mindset to marketing?

First, we only compete with ourselves.

Getting better day after day relative to where we are is the most important metric.


  • Improving our skills …
  • Delivering better experiences for our customers …
  • Creating better products …
  • Continuously solving tougher problems that matter to the people we seek to serve …
  • Spending more of our time at our best, etc.

An infinite mindset gives us more control because we’re focusing on what we can do right here, right now.

Second, whenever possible, choose cooperation instead of competition.

Business is not a zero-sum game.

It’s easy to be demoralized when we have an idea and realize that dozens of others have had the same idea (and are selling it successfully).

However, lots of sellers mean lots of buyers!

Don’t be scared when you see lots of people in a market that interests you. Get excited. Competition is validation of a thriving market; that money is changing hands to deliver and capture value.

Bring your unique personality and your particular way of seizing opportunities and solving problems to the market and carve out a specific pocket of people you can be a hero to.

Cooperation applies to our customers too.

Get them involved:

  • What do they want/need/desire?
  • What could you create for a pocket of people that would make their lives demonstrably better?
  • What is the problem they don’t even know they have (or solution to a problem they have never considered)?
  • How could you enlist their help?
  • What could you “co-create” together that creates value for everyone involved?

Third, optimize for long-term value, not short-term gain.

When developing your business strategy and designing your business systems, emphasize decisions that produce long-term, happy, repeat customers.

When you’re playing an infinite game with an infinite mindset, you realize you have all the time you need to get it right. That doesn’t mean it’ll be perfect today. But it can be better today than it was yesterday.

How will your business be better next week?

Next month?

Next year?

What decisions can you make today that will contribute to those improvements? What decisions can you avoid that might undermine those improvements?

For example, maybe that ‘persuasion hack’ you read about yesterday will boost leads or sales this week. Or that fill-in-the-blank, story-based email template will convert a few more leads to customers …

But, at what cost?

What are the long-term consequences to you and your business when you’re relying on hacks and templates?

Play the long game — learn skills, principles, frameworks — and leave the hacks and templates to the finite players. There is no finish line in the game we’re playing.

TDB Principle #2: Your Business Is a System

Conventional wisdom in our little corner of the universe has popularized linear thinking. Many ‘gurus’ believe (and teach) that the path to success is a ‘funnel’ that can be optimized one piece at a time.

Examples include:

  • Traffic > Sales Page > Upsell(s)
  • Traffic > Opt In > Sales Page > Upsell(s)
  • Traffic > Webinar > Sales Page
  • Traffic > Strategy Session > Offer > Sales Page

When the ‘magic funnel’ doesn’t perform, you’re encouraged to focus on and fix (or ‘funnel hack’) the parts. Maybe paid traffic targeting isn’t quite right …

Or the lead magnet isn’t compelling enough (or gives away too much) …

Or there’s not enough urgency on the sales page …

Before you know it, you’re buying more traffic on more platforms, A/B testing lead magnets, hiring copywriters, and adding countdown timers to your sales page as you clutch for straws …

… with no guarantee anything you’ve done will make a meaningful difference.

The problem isn’t the tactics.

The problem is linear thinking. Where A leads to B which leads to C. That’s just not how the world works.

When we change our thinking upstream, we improve everything that follows downstream.

Your business is not a collection of parts that can be tweaked one at a time. Instead, your business is a system from which results emerge from the interactions of the parts.

Let that really sink in.

Yes, we can optimize the parts, but that optimization only matters when it interacts with the other parts to enhance the system’s emergent properties.

Let’s look at business …

You need three non-negotiable ingredients to create and sustain a durable business system. They are:

  1. Awareness (traffic).
  2. Engagement (leads/prospects).
  3. Conversion (sales).

Awareness comes in many forms:

  • Word of mouth,
  • personal referrals,
  • paid traffic,
  • organic traffic,
  • guest blog posts,
  • books,
  • interviews,
  • podcast sponsorships,
  • radio,
  • TV,
  • etc.

Anytime someone sees or hears something about you or your product, you’re generating awareness.

Engagement is an exchange of attention:

  • Someone reads your articles,
  • opts-in for a lead magnet,
  • watches a video,
  • reads your emails,
  • listens to your point of view,
  • or interacts with your ‘world’,
  • Etc.

Think about engagement as activities where prospects take steps closer to you. Sometimes those are baby steps (e.g., reading a short Facebook post); other times, they’re significant (e.g., opting in to an email newsletter, then reading every email that’s sent).

Conversion is the exchange of monetary value:

  • Someone buys your stuff (which could be a $7 ebook or a $25,000 membership program),
  • digital products,
  • physical products,
  • virtual or brick and mortar,
  • one-time or recurring,
  • Etc.

Every business needs awareness, engagement, and conversion. Each is necessary, but none of them, on their own, is sufficient.

Now that we understand the three non-negotiable ingredients of a durable business, that interact in ways from which meaningful results emerge, we need to decide what we want those results to be.

Systems theory tells us that, to optimize a system, we must know what we’re optimizing for.

Fortunately, there’s an easy answer to this question …

Optimize your business to produce happy customers (which is meaningfully different than just customers).

We know that ‘happy’ is a subjective term with many variables. Some happy customers become superfans and tell all their friends, others buy every product, some send raving unsolicited testimonials, etc.

To help unpack what a ‘happy customer’ means, it can be easier to start by looking at what a happy customer is not. Broadly speaking:

  • a customer who refunds (especially, quickly),
  • a customer who never uses the product,
  • who doesn’t remember what they purchased sometime later,
  • does not get a result from using the product (they’re not left better off),
  • who hated the customer experience,
  • who tells their friends to never buy from (insert name of product or brand),
  • Etc.

We all know this feeling.

In fact: feeling is where to focus your attention when thinking about what represents a happy customer in the real world vs. a spreadsheet.

No doubt you’re a happy customer of some product or brand, right?

  • Example: Apple (brand)
  • Example: Your iPad or AirPods Pro (products)

Ultimately it’s not the product itself that makes a happy customer; it’s the feeling we get from using, interacting with, producing something from, a product or service.

(How the product improves the context that matters to us.)

Having Netflix does nothing on its own. Enjoying good movies with friends and family (and buttery popcorn) is meaningful.

The amazing photos taken from your new phone camera, which you share with your family on WhatsApp and social friends on FB or IG, contribute to this feeling of BEING a happy customer.

Feelings — the essence of being a happy customer — can’t be easily measured and represented in a spreadsheet, which is why marketers focus on less meaningful KPIs like # of clicks on a paid ad campaign, # of new subscribers, total customers from a product launch, etc.

But these KPIs never tell the whole picture. More often than not, the picture revealed in a spreadsheet is incomplete.

So a good question to ask is:

If I were to become a customer of my own product, would this change/tactic/addition move me closer or further away from becoming a happy customer?

Insert YOURSELF into your prospect’s perspective; does the urgency countdown, exit pop, and more aggressive webinar script make you a happy customer, or do these devices move you away (or downright piss you off)?

Use this as your guiding star.

We also want to pay close attention to the nuances over time. Capture customer feedback (emails, comments, etc.). Look for patterns. If you offer more than one product, identify repeat customers.

This data will tell your business performance story and you can take action accordingly.

For our purposes, systems theory reveals four powerful insights:

  • Insight #1 — businesses are systems from which results emerge from the relationships among the essential parts.
  • Insight #2 — awareness, engagement, and conversion are all necessary, but none of them individually is sufficient to produce the results we want on their own. All three must be present for our business system to be successful.
  • Insight #3 — success is measured subjectively by the number of happy customers our business system creates. A happy customer is someone who is left significantly better off from using your product or service.
  • Insight #4 — the rate at which your business produces happy customers — called throughput in systems theory — is the most important metric for you to measure. It will tell you — unerringly — if you’re making real improvements.

Simple. Easy. Effective.

TDB Principle #3: Focus on Probabilities, Not Absolutes

Most offers in our corner of the marketing universe suggest there’s a ‘right way’ (or ‘best way’) to get results. For example:

  • ‘Perfect’ webinar funnels …
  • Low-cost ‘tripwires’ followed by an upsell to a ‘core’ offer …
  • An endless variety of ‘launch’ models …
  • Quiz funnels …
  • And the list goes on and on …

The sales pitch is always the same.

Just follow the blueprint or copy the template, and you’ll get the same results (or better) than the ‘guru’ selling the course.

But here’s the problem with this type of thinking …

In our combined four-decades of digital marketing experience, we’ve never seen a causal relationship between any specific methodology and success.

Read that sentence again.

We’re not suggesting that webinars, tripwires, launches, and quiz funnels don’t work. What we’re saying is they’re not the reason an offer succeeds.

What about all the glowing testimonials? …

The raving fans? …

The various masterminds with seven, eight, and nine-figure business owners who swear-blind that they are successful because of the model they used or the guru they followed? …

Are those fake?

Absolutely not (as far as we know).

But they’re examples of something called ‘survivorship bias’ …

This phenomenon happens when we only look at people who have succeeded (i.e., ‘survived’) to determine if something works, instead of the entire population.

For example, if Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Cuban, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos each meditate every morning, can we safely assume that meditation will increase your odds of becoming a billionaire?

Sadly, no, because the overwhelming majority of meditators aren’t also billionaires. (We can’t draw broad conclusions without looking at the entire group of meditators, not just those who have become billionaires.)

So how do we overcome these problems?

We have to stop thinking in absolutes, and instead, start thinking in probabilities.

Instead of looking for a perfect method, exactly the right software, or the latest-and-greatest tactics (or tools), we can choose principles that are more likely to create the results we want vs. other potential options.

For example, we like to give value first before asking for anything in return. That’s why our free courses don’t require opt-ins.

Is that responsible for our success?

Of course not. But we believe it contributes to our success.

In this example, we have two choices — allow access to free courses without an opt-in or require an opt-in. We think that giving value in advance, for free, without asking anything in return increases the probability of our success.

The power in thinking probabilistically is that it compounds one decision at a time.

Every aspect of your business — awareness, engagement, and conversion — has opportunities to stack the deck in your favor with decisions large and small.

Here are some examples from our business to get you thinking:

  • The two-part Audience & Offer Masterclass was created initially for the first cohort of The Traffic Engine in April 2020. We later made that available to every TLB customer for free. Why? Because we believe making it available to everyone increased the likelihood we’ll create more happy customers (which is what we’re optimizing for).
  • We have actively discouraged purchases on the final days of our enrollments. Instead, we have created in-depth free resources for anyone excited about the offers but who weren’t in a position to buy. On the surface, that seems counter-productive, and we have no doubt it depresses conversion rates in the short term. However, we’re optimizing for the long term (and playing the infinite game), and we believe that treating prospects and customers like dear friends, and looking out for their best interests, dramatically increases the probability we’ll create happy customers when the time is right for them.

There are no ‘magic bullet’ methods that guarantee success, which means we need to do the work every day, in every decision we make, to tilt the odds of success more in our favor.

Over time, the impact of those seemingly small decisions is overwhelming, and success becomes inevitable.

TDB Principle #4: Go Slow to Go Fast

This is the easiest of the principles to ignore — please don’t.

You will be tempted to skip parts of the TDB framework — particularly Discover and Validate. This will be especially true if you already have an idea in mind and want to make it real as quickly as possible.

Go through the course step by step the way we have created it. That’s exactly what we will be doing because that is the best way to ensure a positive result.

Discover and Validate are designed to reduce the risk of wasting time and money chasing unproven ideas, or building a business around an opportunity that doesn’t excite you long-term.

We know from experience that most ideas will fail and taking steps to reduce that risk early will lead to better overall results.

Another way to think about this is the parable of two brothers building a pyramid.

A popular version of the story describes an Egyptian Pharaoh with two sons. Each is asked to build a pyramid in ten years.

The first son gets to work immediately. Relying on thousands of laborers, enormous, heavy stones are cut, transported, and arranged to form the base of the pyramid.

Meanwhile, the second son has made no visible progress. He has spent his time developing and sketching ideas for a pyramid-building machine.

Several years pass and the first son has made even more progress. Two rows of stones have been stacked slowly (each stone requires substantial human labor, and the higher the stones are stacked the more labor that’s required).

The second son has not moved a single stone. However, he has designed and built a crane that moves stones without requiring thousands of laborers.

While the first son continues dragging stones up ever-longer ramps, the second son uses his crane to build his entire pyramid with far less time and effort.

The parable ends with Pharaoh giving his lands and power to his second, wise son.

There will be times during TDB when you want to be like the first son in this parable. You’ll want the satisfaction that comes from seeing the metaphorical stack of stones begin to pile up.

We encourage you, instead, to focus your energy and attention on creating the machine that will build your business faster and more effectively later.

Go slowly, at first, to go much faster later.

That is exactly what we’re going to do.

TBD Principle #5: Engineer Momentum

To create true momentum in your business, where one step leads invariably to the next, where effort decreases and results increase over time, you need to build your own unique flywheel.

What’s a flywheel?

In this video, you can see a person starting the engine of a WWII German tank by turning a flywheel. Notice how difficult and slow the work is at first and how quickly momentum builds until the crank turns effortlessly and starts the tank’s engine.

Business author Jim Collins uses the flywheel as a metaphor and framework for understanding and explaining business success.

(If you’re not familiar with the name, Jim’s books have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, and he was named one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds by Forbes in 2017. Jim taught this same framework to Jeff Bezos in 2001, and its effects have transformed Amazon. Bezos considered Amazon’s application of the flywheel concept “the secret sauce.”)

The key takeaway from Jim’s work, captured in Turning the Flywheel, is that “each component in the flywheel sets you up for the next component, almost throwing you around the loop.”

A critical insight is that each step leads invariably to the next. When you do one step, you can’t help but do the next.

An easy mistake is to draw your business ‘funnel’ as a circle, step back, and say voilà!, it’s a flywheel.

Create ads > get leads > show webinar > generate sales is NOT a flywheel!

In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Collins explained his personal flywheel. He begins with his own curiosity — “It all starts with what am I curious about?” When he’s really curious about something, he can’t help but want to research it. When he researches something he’s curious about, creative ideas and insights are inevitable.

When he has those ideas and insights, he is compelled to write, teach, and share them. When he does that, the impact he has on the world leads to more interactions with others, more funding, and more opportunities — all of which feed his curiosity.

Each part of that process leads inevitably to the next step until he returns back to the beginning, setting the entire process in motion again. Each time Jim’s flywheel turns, it requires a little less effort yet creates more output.

Jim describes the effect this momentum creates as “strategic compounding”. The critical ingredient we’re looking for is inevitability from one step to the next.

The TDB framework was designed as a flywheel. Each of the four elements leads invariably to the next. Ever-increasing momentum is built into the method.

(That’s another reason why it’s so important to complete each step, in order.)

Prerequisites

We don’t know the exact path you’ll take as you go through The Durable Business. However, there are several tools that will make your experience better and your efforts more effective.

You don’t need all of these in place immediately. However, here’s a list to get you started.

The Discover phase will require research on Twitter and Facebook, so get those accounts setup first if you don’t have them already.

Questions or feedback — please use the comments below. Use the private accountability community to have discussions with your peers and share your insights.