WTR Interview: Kerry Lutz; Your Success, His Business Wisdom
Play • 43 min

The trouble with entrepreneurship is staying in business. And it’s a great career path. There are many opportunities in life you will have that you would of never had otherwise. But you do have to have success. With experience, will come the wisdom to run your business well, but that takes time. Or, you can learn from someone else’s acquired wisdom. Enter Kerry Lutz, author of “Viral Podcasting: How To Earn A 6 Figure Income From Your Podcast” and founder of Financial Survival Network, who is a 4th generation, serial entrepreneur with lots of business wisdom. In this episode you will hear how Kerry acquired his wisdom, why being an entrepreneur may be a good career fit, what’s great about podcasting, how to make a business succeed where so many fail, a great way to start a new business, the 5 common problem areas in businesses, how to keep your business going long term, and a fantastic Value Bomb at the end with a Bonus Bomb.

Why wait for wisdom when you can acquire so much here with WTR and Kerry Lutz.

 

Ingenious tactics to accumulate wealth, for people who see things differently.


Kerry Lutz

kerry@viralpodcasting.com

kl@kerrylutz.com

Twitter

LinkedIn

Facebook

Viral Podcasting

Financial Survival Network

Resources:

Viral Podcasting: How To Earn A 6 Figure Income From Your Podcast

The Power of Broke: How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage

Fiverr

 

Notes:

  • Kerry Lutz, “I’ve always been a square peg in a round hole.”
  • Serial, 4th gen entrepreneurIt’s about building know knowledge
  • Learning from mistakesStill failure because most likely lost money, but the gained knowledge is most likely more valuable than the money lost
  • “Any time you get into a business that you don’t know anything about, you pay for lessons.”
  • Luckily had more successes than failures
  • Family business started by father and uncle in 1963 – messenger serviceFamily business “around the dinner table”
  • Successful for many years
  • At one point business was bad because they had made some mistakes and had 1.5 months to go before having to close
  • Cut $250k in expenses, made several good hires, moved to new officebusiness turned around in less than 1 month
  • In 1997 sold business to largest competitor
  • Had several business ventures, some not too successful
  • Went to law school in the meantime as a fall backStarted to practice law after a few years, but disliked it
  • Good at locating assets, so ended up buying off charged off assets and credit card debt and did well with thatAt financial crisis, felt like what he was doing was part of the problem, so sold business to get out of it
  • Did a few other businesses, eventually wound up doing podcasting. “It’s the best career I’ve ever had.”
  • What’s great is you and I would have never met had we not been in podcasting. I have friends all over the world; dozen friends in Vancouver; also in Australia, South Africa, Europe
  • I can now go to just about any county in the world and meet people I would have never had a chance to meet before
  • I didn’t make anything in first 4 years
  • Wrote book “Viral Podcasting: How To Earn A 6 Figure Income From Your Podcast”
  • Not “cut out” for 9-5 office work
  • Go along on life and try to find our path, entrepreneurship enables you to do that
  • Has Financial Survival NetworkHas consulted with companies on how to fix them
  • A lot people don’t want to hear what’s wrong
  • To make it now, you have to be a “brand”You have to do everything you can to forward your brand
  • Must have clearly defined brand
  • Current President (Donald Trump) is “master brander”Obama, Bill Clinton are “brands”
  • Marketing is the most important part of any company, more than sales
  • The best investment on the planet is investing on yourselfWithout first substantially investing on self, it’s hard to make other investments pay off.
  • In order to make business succeed where so many are failing:First must know/admit the problem, take responsibility, own your failureStart with self-honesty
  • Don’t blame, market, Trump, Obama, etc., it all doesn’t mean anything
  • It’s not a failure, it’s a lack of success
  • Entrepreneurs tend to be very optimistic about any new businessYou must temper optimism with realism
  • Not having enough money when you start, makes you a smarter, more clever business person; makes you look for opportunity and makes you much more likely to act rather than have paralysis from analysisResource: The Power of Broke: How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage, but Daymond John
  • I’m all for fake it until you make it, but fake it cheaplyFor instance, lawyers that spend lots of money renovating an office but still have old, slow computers. Invest in the computers because that will make you the money
  • Good way to start a new businessThe companies that have succeeded the most for me, didn’t have a real business planYou need a plan to an extent, know how much break-even will be, costs will be and how money you need to put into the business.
  • Business plan will not make you money
  • Marketing plans make you money.
  • Staying up with technology made me money, it’s crucialWas doing a primitive CRM in 1992 before it existed, helped make me a fortune
  • Used to update every 6 months, today technology is incremental so as frequent of an invest is not as necessary
  • Killer apps that are game changers come by about every 10 years
  • Invest smartly in technology
  • “solo-trepreneur” should definitely have QuickBooks

  1. Problems with businesses tend to fall in 1 of 5 areasMarketing
  2. Accounting/Book keeping
  3. Management, lack of leadership
  4. Employee productivity
  5. Failure of vision

  • I would rather take an existing business, rather than starting from ground upIf no business exists, than start up
  • If I was going to start a business, let’s say an online dating site, I wouldn’t start my own, I’d find a failing one and buy it.There’s nothing worse than being in a money losing business. You’ll do anything to get out.
  • Find a loser, but find a marginal loser
  • Do top to bottom review and find the category the failure is in and fix it
  • Refine systems and replace the ones that are deficient
  • How do you keep business going long termIn the course of time your business will have ups and downs, sometimes it’s out of your control
  • It’s a roller coaster and you have to try to anticipate this
  • Diversification, broaden your product lineGrowth is the cure
  • Revenue maximizationSuch as easier to business with customer you’ve done business with in the past rather than a new one
  • Keeping up with what works for marketing as times change, such as social media
  • Keep honest with how good your product really is
  • If your sales are going down, but the market is increasing or static, then you are doing something wrong. You are doing something wrong. It might be that you are not marketing properly.
  • If you are succeeding, you can’t rest on your laurels, you have to ask how can I succeed better than I am doing now
  • Sometimes you need a fresh set of eyes to take a look at everything, you can bring in outside consultantReason, example is when asked “why are we doing it this way.” “Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it.” That’s a mindset because people love predictability.

  1. There are 2 types of people in businessAdministrators; people that work “9-5” and make sure everything gets done
  2. Visionaries; people who tell administrators what to do

  • Many businesses start with a visionary, but end up with an administratorVisionary needs administrator, administrator needs a visionary
  • You can’t do everything, creating a team is essential
  • We have resources out there better than ever beforeSuch as Fivr for graphics
  • Value bomb: something to look to avoidSimple matter, don’t spend anticipating the success of a product or service until you’ve proven itYou will be sitting on inventory that will become worthless
  • You will have invested money in service
  • Do intros and test them out, don’t do broad scale introductions
  • Always look for the downside first. If the downside is acceptable, then I know the upside will take care of itself

The post WTR Interview: Kerry Lutz; Your Success, His Business Wisdom appeared first on WTR Podcast Website.

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