Perhaps the greatest point marketing expert Dan Kennedy (who, believe it or not, a few years back was said to have passed because a certain online marketing guru decided to spread such a rumor… alas, the rumor was not true and therein lies your first lesson), ever made was this:
“The most dangerous number in business is one.”
Dan’s point being, that relying too heavily on one single customer, income source, marketing channel, product, or strategy is a highly risky endeavor for any company because it creates a single point of failure. And a single point of failure is extra vulnerable to market shifts and other changes in the market.
This lesson is as true today as it was when Dan first coined it.
Take, for example, this example that I’m sure Dan could’ve never even imagined when he first uttered the phrase: YouTubers.
A YouTuber, no matter how popular or prolific, is always one cold away from losing the livelihood on his business. This happened recently to a niche YouTuber I watch. He recently had his first child—and children are breeding grounds for disease.
Well, his kid got him sick, and he tried to make a video:
It was barely listenable because he sounded so coarse and sick. It completely ruined the listening experience—and it also ruined his ability to make videos, and thus, make scratch.
Something similar also happened to Scott Adams, as he explains in his book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Scott had some kind of mental health problem that robbed him of his ability to speak completely—at a time where one of his main sources of income was speaking at seminars and conferences.
And similar stories play out kinda like these two in the day-to-day happenings of businesses across the world.
Relying too much on email to run your business without going deep on deliverability gives your business an oversized risk of collapse at a moment’s notice.
Relying too much on SEO best practices killed many a blogger’s business when Google updated their algorithm. Same story has also happened countless times for those who rely too heavily on social media.
Moral of the story?
As I’ve hit my 30s and have become more wiser for it, I’ve started to realize that life and business is more about avoiding massive mistakes and pitfalls than it is about having massive wins. Both matter. But the wins become more likely the more you avoid the pitfalls.
And this is mayhap the biggest mistake you could make:
Relying on a single marketing channel, a single customer, a single strategy, a single product, a single source of income, yada yada yada.
Where are you disobeying “The Business Law of One” in your business?
Figuring that out, then implementing a plan to diversify your business is marketing may do more for the long-term success of your business than anything else.
And if you’ve slacked on your email marketing strategy, then, well, that’s where I can help.
Hit reply if you’re ready to talk shop about your emails, strategy, and results. Methinks I can help you add another wildly profitable “asset” to your marketing stack.
John
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