Peter Hanley

The single most important thing to do in business is a mystery to many. If you don’t do this you are heading to disaster.

Every business is many-sided and contains those issues you must consider.

Sales

Sales are very important because without sales where would you be?

You can, however, have all the sales you want and still be in a lot of trouble.

People

People are important, they do the sales and the other designated tasks but are easily
changed out.

These days out-sourcing people has become less important and more of an expense.

Premises

Premises and branding are great but one major shift of recent times is working in the cloud.
This means that your premises maybe not all that important.

I will give you a couple of examples. Amazon does not have a store on every corner, does not even have a physical customer presence, just a few big warehouses spread across countries and it the biggest sales outlet in the world.
When merging home supply companies run out of home-based businesses, think of Meals being delivered to your home, or groceries or meat and fruit. No shop front needed.

Millions of businesses are now run from home, not just internet businesses but all sorts of occupations.

Shared offices have become common where you rent a desk and a phone to pedal your wares.

Traditional Advertising

Over 100 years of written, hard copy advertising has been mainstream. Business category Yellow pages, for example, carried a paid advert for every business, thousands of dollars were invested for the top spot. Where are they now? Newspaper advertising carrying pages of local adverts for small trades is now all but gone.

Facebook did not exist and web pages were full of spiders, oh how we have changed.

Dress sense has taken a big hit. Can you imagine the boys and girls arriving somewhere like Facebook in a Suit and tie carrying a leather briefcase and shiny shoes? It is not done. A Tee shirt and sneakers on formal days are great attire.

A notorious traveling salesman who would set out on a week-long journey crossing boundaries and plying his wares. Staying in shabby motels and having affairs with the locals have now changed.

Business plans have changed and are changing as we bend to meet the demands of a new market environment. Nothing is permanent, everything is malleable because we must adapt quickly to what goes on around us. You may have a nice local store, a great capture area and a steady flow of customers and out of the blue, a competitor opens the doors next door. What to do.

Online marketing is an absolute must, Web pages, SEO, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc are now all tools of the trade and the only problem is how well you use them.

So what is that single most important thing to do in business?

I don’t care if you are a home business, an online business or a corporation you all have this one responsibility.

Cash flow.

The answer is control of your cash, knowing every day where it will come from and what you will do with it. This one simple task can make or break you and remain as important today as it was 100 years ago.

Spreadsheet it forward and adjust as you go. Factor in seasonal changes, quiet days and public holidays.

Prepare for payroll, tax payments, rent, telephone, and regular billing among the ongoing expenses.

When and how you will buy and pay for the stock. You should remember that it won’t all be sold by the time payment comes.

It’s always a great idea to have a separate tax account where funds are banked as they come in. The Taxman is not generally forgiving.

Even when you buy stock, even if you get 30/60 day term some will be left on the shelf.

Get rid of slow-moving stocks by discounting or promoting to clear that dead money back into cash

Use a professional product or just an excel spreadsheet.

The past is a good presenter for the future so look for those peaks and troughs and be prepared.

Money in the bank is not a sign of wealth, it could be an adjustment in stock levels, unpaid bills or other similar events that are all part of cash flow forecasting

Cash, including credit cards, etc in your daily takings are often seen as your wealth as they flow into your bank account. You only get a little bit at the end, welcome to business.

The old saying was look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.

This is as appropriate today as it was one hundred years ago.

Cash management is your hero. So make it work for you.

The single most important thing to do in business by Peter Hanley

Online income for seniors is the desire of most yet so many fail because it all seems too hard. Here an old gentleman takes you by the hand and leads the way.

Making an income late in life

Let me get straight to the facts: I am a 75-year-old male who still operates a full-time business and writes blogs for fun and money.
The internet is a fun place, it is now pretty simple to do just about anything because the ways have been made so that it is easy to learn.
Anyone can do it, you just need to start at the right place, take a bit of learning and you are on the way.

I know that things get a bit harder with age so I don’t go around recommending anything associated with labor, we are over it, leaving that work to the young people.

Can you remember everything that you have to learn?
Yes, with notes and repetition it all falls into place.

The internet does not have hours

You can do things on the net that are seen worldwide. Eight am in New York is eight pm in Australia so there is always someone active.
I am an early riser so I am at the keyboard most days at about 5 AM but an afternoon nap and an early close are my rituals. Time for work, family, and fun.

The net is full of time-wasting activities.

I am not fond of video games, crosswords or any activities taken just to fill in time. life is too important for wasting days when you can do something constructive with the time left.

Keeping the mind active is as important as keeping the body going but it is proven that doing crosswords, as an example, is just learning a new skill and not increasing memory.

Income is not the only joy in life, although, a pretty good one.

I have friends that do activities for noncommercial reasons. It may be charitable, provide family support, sponsorship or a host of activities, however, all involve some skills that need to be learned.

Online groups supply a family experience

Some of us are by nature loaners that don’t mix a lot but still have a need in our life for contact with others. To be accepted as ourselves without social pressure being applied.
There are many groups that are support bases for all sorts of activities that will help you through the problems of the day. You will discover more about Wealthy Affiliate by the end of this story but their family blog is remarkable. You will mix with eighty-year-old bloggers and young as well, some rich, some poor but all with the same ambitions. The need to achieve.

The web is also a scammer’s paradise

By learning some basics you will be able to see the blatant scams from a mile away with or without your BiFocals.
When starting on the internet many try and buy a quick entry to instant wealth. This is not the most practical way, it is fraught with wasting your money for little return.
I know I have had lessons the hard way and have taken a lot of time to learn common sense and to not throw money at the laughing clowns.
I have written about 300 blog posts on this subject and rarely recommend spending money before you try it out and want to proceed.
Not everything suits everyone, it is like life, so we take the options that will best suit you to move forward.

What are your options to make money?

Now the bad list that I would stay away from.

• Surveys
• Stock trading
• Cryptocurrency
• Gambling of all kinds
• Shonky health products
  
  These can make money but mostly they take money so you really need to know what you are doing. A job for high-risk takers and a place to avoid.
  

I do all of this baring eBay where my wife is the expert.

So what are my favorite things?
First of all, you are reading a blog that I have written, one of the hundreds along the way.
The blog will contain affiliate links that will pay me money if you buy a product, now or later on.

I have several websites to do different things and I sell products on Amazon.
A Facebook page on Rescue Cats is a fun option that I post everyday.
I send emails to a list and produce Newsletters on a regular basis. Many of these will point back to my blog posts.
Video production has become easy and is an ideal way to show others how to do it.
Most of the don’t-do lists have been on my list as well providing the opportunity to stay away and not be burnt.

Where to start an online journey?

I could spend all day explaining how to make money online. Over time I will take you to all these places but first of all, you need a bit of help.
Everything starts with two very important decisions.

• The first is to decide what you want to do. Go to the above list and think about what motivates you the most. Don’t think about money. They will all get you there. Think motivation because this may be a long journey and one in which you need to have a keen interest.
• Next is learning about websites. Everything revolves around some kind of web presence.
  Don’t panic!
  Not yet anyway, the olden times of coding and compiling heaps of unnecessary work are long gone. In fact, you can have a website up and going in half an hour. Well, a bit more if you are new but it is easy now.
• Start the journey and see if it fits your personality.
  I don’t really like online shops or doing product reviews but they are easy and make money.
  Find your thing and start to build a journey.

It all starts with a plan

A plan that will take you into the long term that should see results along the way, small celebrations for meeting the targets you want to achieve and knowing that the process is working.
This is not a short term game, it may take a year or two to see real results depending on what you choose. However, once you reach a level the results will astound you and you may have a business that will carry you forward for years.
A business you can pass down to family or sell on the market at a great return.

Have a vision of the end result before you start.

Let me tell you I have had many false starts and wasted an extreme number of hours trying to find my way. This is all because I failed to plan properly and changed my mind mid-career.
Then I tried to do too much in too many directions which resulted in too little too often.
I now focus my attention on just one product until I achieve my anticipated result.

However, I still use some of the ways in my traditional business. Emails, SMS, Newsletters, and Videos.

My daughter returned to work after the kids reached school age but she still wanted to limit her hours.
She focussed on learning everything about Facebook and marketing for business. She then joined a couple of women’s clubs to gather some business. This resulted in a few contacts and some occasional work. One contact kept asking for more and she is now head of marketing for a growing corporation. A great achievement.

Another has a dress shop for women’s apparel. She bought the business and wanted to expand it. The ultimate way was an online shop. It took many months of learning and integration but it now works really well.
I have a friend who is over 80 and lives in Northern Canada on a small island.
She started blogging because her writing skills are still great and it suits her lifestyle.

There are opportunities everywhere but you must start somewhere. Until you take that first step you remain in the dream world

Where do you start your journey on the internet?

It has taken me many years to find the answer to this question. There are so many false starts you can make that just waste time and money.

I would like you to try the first training module at Wealthy Affiliate, this is both written and video and takes you through an introductory period of training. Nothing to buy.
Everything starts around an understanding of the internet and this training series is based around building your confidence in this area.


I have done the training twice because the first time I ignored many of the lessons I skipped through far too
quickly and only later realized all that I had missed.

I am not the only one to relate this story as it is a common comment. Plus I was fooling around the net for a few years before finding the Wealthy affiliate site and going back to training 101.

The internet is a place of constant change

I’m not saying this to scare you into thinking you won’t cope however it is an evolving and ever-changing playground. Being part of a network of like-minded people really gives you an edge and an advantage that can not be compared.
There are over a million members at Wealthy Affiliate and I am rated around150th for my contribution to the group

Conclusion

I started to write this with the objective of finding a Niche that would suit the majority. It is not possible because we are all so different in what we want out of the Internet.

I love writing so I am a constant blogger sharing what I know to those who will listen. Warning of scams and for you spending money on bad products. It is not necessary.

I hope you get something out of the post and I wish you all the best in your evolving growth as a senior warrior.

Online income for seniors by Peter Hanley

A Free Email Marketing List is a desire for every business. Here we take out all the complications and show you a way forward to income generation.

Are emails important anymore?

For any business, the answer is a very loud yes!
In fact, it is even more important than the past as they become a more common form of communication.

The use of voice contact is diminishing, as an old bloke I have some problems with this but it is a fact.
How often in a day are the words “message me” used?

Email and SMS have become the primary forms of contact so you need to gather as many new addresses as you can.
This is your legal database, a product that will grow in value with the names you add to it. A name may be worth at least a dollar but maybe five dollars or more.

Someone invented the term Spam and made it illegal to harvest email addresses for your own use. This has made marketing a bit more of an art form to comply with the law and build an asset.

There are, however, legal ways to collect a bundle of names and use them in your sales activities.

Collecting contact details is important

It is generally prudent to remind you of antispam law.
You cannot randomly send emails or SMS messages without their consent. That means they have approached you in some way about business or given you the contact details for you to approach them.

This may seem like a big hurdle but it is one that we must all jump over so let’s look at some ways.

Traditionally we manually grabbed every contact we could. A meeting, a customer, referral. trade shows, family, friends.

If you have a business this can be considerable if done properly.
My Daughter runs a busy Ladies dress shop. She inquired with one of the staff recently if she had gotten contact details from a customer that had just made a purchase? The staff member said it was not necessary as it was a Cash sale.
She only did it once because she now knows the value of future contact. Every customer’s inquiry and walk-in is a potential future buyer.

Do leads really work?

Just yesterday morning, it was 7 am, I ran into an old client as we went to different meetings, I had just come from an early morning swim and he was in collar and tie.
We exchanged pleasantries and he commented on how much he liked my Newsletters. We shook hands and went our own way. This morning he rang and said I need your service can I come back? Of course, the answer was yes, however my point is that consistent contact over a couple of years netted a client worth about $1000 a year. Thanks for the business, Chris.
We can all get a bit slack with this and it really needs driving at all times.

The internet way to find leads

Let’s move forward into 2020 years with new excitement.

The latest and best is a chatbot or a popup on your website. Both need to be done properly, but with a bit of trial and error, these can really capture the audience and the emails of every visitor to your site.

At the top of this page will be a small presentation. “Can I help you?” or “hey, what’s up?” maybe even “Chat with me now.”
I am trying a few out to test what works best, give it a go and see what the experience is for you.
I use chat Bots and you can learn more here.

Getting leads with social media

This sounds easy but in truth, Facebook is now very protective of detailed security and it is getting harder to extract it in bulk.

Your challenge is to get them across to your webpage or sales funnel and collect names from there. The idea of all social media is just that it is a window to your business. Just a small sneak peek into the inner workings.
Entertain them and give them enough enthusiasm to go to a selling site where you can gather contact details.

Another way is a raffle or prize associated idea on Facebook where they must enter to be eligible.

Use social media that is relevant to your business and keep it current and fun. Don’t try and be everything to everyone it is too time-consuming. I wrote more on this at a recent blog that may be worth a quick read.

Finally, the Authority figure

This is the Google 2020 blockbuster coming to a business near you.
Google wants to divert traffic to authority figures. Let me give an example.
If I am a Senior Doctor or Medical expert I will receive questions on health, However, if I am Joe Blow flogging treatment I shall be hugely ignored by Google linking.

The answer to you my friend is to make yourself an expert in all things in your business.
The widget on your page, the about you page, the video featuring you as a brand everywhere you can become the AUTHORITY FIGURE.
When someone does a search, authority is the likely endpoint.

This will send a stream of new contacts to your webpage that will play with your Chatbot and deliver to your new business.

Plus you don’t have to outlay a single dollar to increase your traffic.

Conclusion

Getting your list together has never been an easy task. Combining some old fashion ideas along with internet activity will build you an asset that you can be proud of.

What’s more, you can write the asset into your balance sheet and make the banks happier when you want to borrow money. (not legal or accounting advice).

You have to be smarter in this market because the market has got smarter so unless you ride the wave you will be left behind.

Free Email Marketing List by Peter Hanley

My Youtube best three ideas

https://youtu.be/7IP4l0KhP08