Entrepreneurs come in all sizes and shapes. They approach their business with a goal, something that works for them and while some manage to work to a strict schedule, others explore and learn along the way. The frugal entrepreneur however has one thing in mind.

His main objection is to run his business frugally to ensure faster success. But what exactly does this mean?

Wikipedia says frugality in philosophy can have several meanings. For starters, it could be considered a virtue, or a spiritual discipline by some cultures or even environmentalists, while others see frugal living as a result of mistrust.

In business, frugality equals the usage of available resources and making them last longer. Entrepreneurs, especially young ones need all help they can get in the beginning stages of their business. What better way to become pro-active and choose the do-it-yourself approach.

While I was thinking about this concept, I wondered whether business frugality can indeed help us attain success faster or not? Join me on my mind trip to see what conclusions I have reached.

Being an entrepreneur myself I can only look at this from my own perspective. While this might be similar to some of you, others might not agree with my views, which is fine. I think we have to do what is right for us, regardless of ideas, options or desire.

My journey to business frugality

When I first started out online I was a total greenhorn. I think it’s safe to say this. Since I was born in the flowering 60s, I never learned how to use a computer at school, let alone did I realize there was an Internet available to me in the 90s. To say I’m a late starter is quite accurate.

So in some ways I can be forgiven to be blinded by this massive online world and all the opportunities that lie at my finger tips when I finally saw the bigger picture.

To be honest, while everything seemed rather exciting it soon became massive overload. And after soaking up everything I learned, saw and heard on the net I soon found myself burnt out, close to financial melt down and disheartened with my lack of advancement.

Spending myself out of pocket

The major problem for me was my desire to know everything. I soon realized that it is impossible. On my quest to find online riches I bought every dozens of eBooks, courses, plus memberships. Every time I did I felt a little closer to my goal which of course I so wasn’t.

In reality I was kidding myself while spending my hard earned money on a lot of useless stuff. Then when I failed my MLM business I had no other options than to either go back to a job I hated (which I did for about 7 months) or get really serious and make it happen.

The dawn of frugality

That moment was the beginning of my business frugality. I stopped buying into every new product launch. I also stopped buying into all the hype I saw online.

I started to knuckle down, look very hard at what I REALLY wanted from a home business and went about doing it, step by step.

My frugal mind helped me since I went from spending between $2000- $3000/month to spending about $150 for my business costs. Mind you, the massive difference was mainly due to me quitting my MLM business. Company tools, events, lead management systems and phone bills kept those expenses astronomically high.

When I look back now I’m still shocked at having spend so much of our savings. Despite this shock, I also know that if it wasn’t for my MLM business I wouldn’t be doing what I do now. You could say I made peace with myself and learned from my mistakes along the way. Was it costly? Hell yes it was as you can see quite easily. But I’m thankful I made the switch when I did, otherwise I might be living in a rented house rather than my own today.

On being frugal

In short, my decision to become business frugal has meant the difference between my business success and my earlier failure. Maybe I needed to be learning this very hard lesson in order to become 100% dedicated and serious. In retrospect, I probably did.

From where I stand, it certainly does help to have a frugal mind as an entrepreneur. There is no room for wastage and much error as every single one will cost us dearly.

Does this make sense to you too? Do you employ a frugal mind set in your business or couldn’t you care less about this? Let us know please.

Despite the fact that I am way behind on email, haven’t been posting on this blog, haven’t been sending out newsletters, haven’t been keeping up with my friends… to quote Mark Twain:

Rumors Of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

I have been very busy with our new baby (now 4 weeks old) and like I said on Twitter:

Finally sinking in… new baby = no free time… you would think I would know that by the sixth child…

Anyway, I do intend on getting back to a normal blogging life by the start of August (I am aiming for next week, but the first week in August is more realistic). In the meantime, continue to enjoy the great writing by Ryan and Monika (I certainly have been).

If you have any questions you would like me to answer, feel free to leave me a comment.

I mentioned this before, but I’ll remind you of it again. I don’t link trade to get backlinks. Yes, every so often, someone asks to link trade with me, and I put them in my blogroll. But as a matter of course, I don’t actively pursue it. It’s too much work for a type of link search engines don’t respect all that much anymore.

However, I still have to have a linking theory, and it’s not magic or wishful thinking. It’s just that I trade something besides a reciprocal link to get a link pointed at my site. This sort of arrangement holds the potential of giving me more high-quality or targeted backlinks with less work.

So then, what links can you point at your web site that doesn’t require a link trade to get? Here’s a list of the common, and not quite so obvious, things you could do.

• Articles: Put a resource box at the bottom of a good article, then let anyone use it. This is a long-standing ‘trade content for backlinks’ tactic.


• Viral Reports: I’ve written, and put up for distribution, three viral reports as of this posting with links pointing at all sorts of things that are useful to me. Others can take those reports, rebrand them with their affiliate links, then use them as bonuses for their own purposes. In the process, they use their distribution power to put my links in front of people I might not otherwise reach. This is the larger-scale version of the article marketing theory, and another thing that’s been in use for some time.
  


• Videos: Ever heard of YouTube? Know what happens if you produce a video and it goes viral? Any link you happen to display in that video could be seen by millions. Video marketing is becoming a trend in Internet marketing lately, and if you know how to make videos, it’s time to looked into making one that can work for you.
  


• WordPress Templates: Ever programmed one of these from scratch? You could make one for anyone’s use, and include your link in the footer.
  


• Put them in your products: If you sell something to someone, why stop there? If that product is related to some other site you have, why not mention it? Information products are especially useful in this regard, and can include links pointed at affiliate programs or your other sites.
  


• Offline methods: Put your site names on business cards, letterhead, and other offline products if you have offline businesses. If you’re printing them anyway, put that expense to more use by promoting your sites too.
  

Do you have your own favorite backlinking method? Feel free to comment.

Yesterday I had a really worrying conversation with a friend of mine. He voiced a concern about another mutual friend who he feels has been avoiding him for quite some time. The trouble is, this second friend is actually quite successful in her business ventures. Naturally the question arose whether she was actually putting her success before her friends needs to keep the friendship going.

While I don’t know their history and it isn’t my business to worry about them, I certainly started to ponder the question in general terms.

How do we as a business person value friendship, once success has taken hold in our business?

I could bet most people would answer this saying they certainly value their friends, regardless of their business success. However, while this is certainly true for myself, I wonder what really happens to some people once their reach the pinnacle of their respective business.

For starters, people might become so involved in their business affairs they simply forget to make time for their friends. They could also be so bombarded from other not so successful people asking for help which of course takes a huge chunk of time out of their working day.

So many possible scenarios come to mind which all negatively affect our friendships.

My friend also mentioned some people’s need for even more money once they are on top of their business, regardless of their friends.

This leads me to believe that most “common” people actually believe the following to be true – that once we become wealthy, we don’t really care about our old friends anymore and simply concentrate on earning even more money.

I suppose this belief of mine has further been fueled by many conversations I had in the past with a wide range of people. Most of us grow up thinking being equals nastiness. You know, we feel rich people have no character, they simply don’t care about “us” the “common” people anymore, since they have so much money to burn they hardly have time to foster their old relationships.

While I personally think this to be utter rubbish, I actually know many people who belief just that. Most of these people are children of middle class families, having grown up with this common “hate” for rich and successful people.

I’m also a middle class child and I know this to be true because my parents instilled this belief into me when I was younger. I know they didn’t mean it out of spite, they simply believed this to be true without trying to understand while some people might react like this but most never would, because a lot of people feel the same way, hence a common belief is born. When I started to involve myself with a lot of personal development I learned to understand that this wasn’t true.

But, regardless of my own belief in this matter I still wonder how people actually react once they become financially rich and how do others who previously knew them perceive them to be in their new found wealth.

See, it could also be the “common” people’s jealousy kicking in. They are upset, jealous, angry, etc. because they are still stuck in their 9-5s while the rich person has created a new reality.

I suppose I could offer a lot more thought on this scenario, but I really wanted to hear your thoughts on this matter. How do you feel about the business success vs friendship situation?

More importantly, where are you right now in this regard? What is your reaction, your experience with this. 

Are you thinking about selling your own product online?

Doing that is a bit on the high-maintenance side, but you can get a lot out of it. Selling your own products lets you make money, make back-end sales, and build a larger list all at the same time. The trick then is to find out what kind of a product you should sell, and I personally recommend an info product (short for information product) like an ebook or my personal favorite, the short e-report.

You may have noticed that there are a lot of these around. Electronically published ‘How-to’ guides are everywhere, and it’s something you could sell too.

Why should you give this real consideration?

• With the state of software and technology today, making a well-formatted PDF ebook or short report is well within the budget and technical know-how of a home entrepreneur. I make small reports with some regularity myself, and it only takes me a few days from start to finish.


• Ebooks allow you to turn knowledge you already have into a sellable product. You just take something you know, write it up, add pictures if you need to do so, then arrange and edit it into a polished ebook. It won’t make much of a difference what type of knowledge you have, because the Internet is so big, it’s more than likely you’ll find an audience for it.


• Ebooks and reports can be filled with affiliate links, which means they have the potential to keep generating income after they’ve generated income with their sale.


• Info products have no delivery costs. In fact, you could create a mini-site that will sell them, process payments, and then deliver your ebook to the customer without any input from you whatsoever.


• Info products, and particularly short e-reports, have more uses than to simply be sold. If you can learn to make short reports quickly, you can use them to drive traffic, make them incentives, or build lists with them.


• ‘How to’ guides are in demand, especially if it’s about doing something better, faster, or more easily.

If you’re thinking of selling your first product, I highly recommend you make it an info product. They’re comparatively easy and inexpensive to produce, and can be used for all sorts of things.

When we talk about budgets we usually mean monetary ones. While budgets are great to keep on track with finances, there is an alternative way to budget. This is to budget for time. Admittedly,this being an unusual term, it does make a lot more sense when we put some thought to it.

As a business owner time management is a major part of my business. It ties in closely with staying organized, focused and committed. For if I was to eliminate this from my day to day runnings I would seriously struggle to keep up with my deadlines.

Therefore I budget my time. If you are are anything like me then I’m sure you prefer to run your business with optimum performance opposed to lack of. I’m exactly the same and time budgets help me to stick to that performance track.

While some business owners prefer to use large junks of time to get things accomplished I prefer smaller, more manageable tasks instead. Believe me, I trialled with various ways to budget my time. Mainly:

• DMO’s
• Online time tracking applications
• Watching the clock
• Using a traditional diary
• Using nothing
• Writing various lists

Despite giving each a fair go, none of them worked for me. The process of budgeting my time for optimum performance was one of many failures, misgivings and utter frustration in the early stages of my business. In the end I said “to hell with them all” and did my own thing.

Do you want to know what it was?

—> I started to budget my time with a simple Moleskine hack and it worked.

Ever since that day I have budgeted my time slots for (near) optimum performance. I’m tweaking a few things here and there, but overall I’m very pleased with the huge steps forward.

Budgeting my time has had another benefit to me and my life. It has allowed me to enjoy a more balanced life between my business and my social life.

As we all know, running a home based business can be very lonely at times. Therefore it is imperative to spend some time away from the office on regular occasions.

It is so easy to get totally absorbed in our business without ever stopping to smell the flowers. I know, because I have done exactly the same. Doing this long term will only burn us out.

So instead of working myself into an early grave I have learned to manage and budget my time. I make it my priority to spend some time every day with tasks other than my business. Whether I read, go for a walk or hit the gym, I found this daily balance is a necessity to keep me grounded.

If you struggle with your time budget you might want to find ways to gradually switch from busy to relaxed in the body rhythm best suited to you. While some people get up easy bright and early, others struggle and we won’t see them awake until midday.

The best advice I can give you is to go with your biorhythm instead of trying to follow somebody else’s. If you are particularly strong in rising early then do exactly this and get as much accomplished as possible before lunch time. You will feel better for it too since you can enjoy the rest of your working day with a lot less pressure.

Alternatively you might be a bit of a sleeping addict needing copious amounts of coffee first thing in the morning to get you going. Instead of stressing about getting up with your neighbor’s rooster enjoy your sleep in. There is plenty of time at night to get accomplished too.

In the end, when it comes to budgeting your time for optimum business performance you need to go with your own groove to get the most out of it.

I wanted to let you know about this FANTASTIC deal I recently learned about.

WordTracker is now offering a free 7 day trial. That is really cool!

I occasionally use WordTracker for keyword research, because it can give you a lot of excellent information quickly. I will definitely take advantage of the free trial to find some good keywords to target on my next site.

If you have ever considered using WordTracker, then I recommend that you click here to try it out for free.

PS. Mom and baby are doing well and I expect to get back to a regular blogging schedule in July.

Writing viral reports is a good idea, and it works like this:

• People need freebies to give away with products or in exchange for an opt-in


• You provide it with a short report.

In exchange for content and some rebrandable links, you could get a lot of traffic to your desired web site.

Nowadays, rebrandability is a must. Everyone else is making theirs rebrandable, and the people you want distributing yours won’t accept anything less. They can be made with software called rebranders, which will let you make your own rebrander packages without much trouble.

Once you get that far, you have to find some way to get your report found, and there are any number of ways you can put it in front of interested prospects. You can put rebrandable reports in your affiliate areas, and that’s a good idea. You could advertise them on free ebook sites, which is also a good idea. You can announce them in the free ebook areas in places like The Warrior Forum. And you can put them in the Butterfly Reports viral report marketplace.

I don’t talk about specific sites much, but I’m starting to see some promise in the Butterfly Reports site. As of this article, it’s still in beta and shaking out bugs, but I’m still liking it so far. A free account there will let you both submit one rebrandable viral report to the web site, and take one for your use each month. There are additional paid levels, but you don’t need to worry about them right now.