One of my business mentors, Porter Stansberry, had this to say about my ‘Rolling With the Punches’ post. And I think he couldn’t be more right… 

“Will,

“Had to reply to this comment: “From our limited experience, being successful in business is as much about rolling with the punches as it is anything else…”

“Not true.

“Success in business is driven by a knowledge of what to sell, how to sell it and how to produce it cheaply. The guys who are geniuses at business are all marketers at heart — they know what people want. How they come to know this doesn’t matter. Maybe they guessed. Maybe they just got lucky. From experience I’ve found that really great marketers are all in denial about what they do…they’ll tell you, “No…I never got in to this business to get rich. I just knew if I wanted this (product/service) I guessed others would want it too…”

“They’ll tell you that after their 12th product has sold a million units.

“Now…if you’ve got a head for marketing, there’s only one more hard part:  Finding a way to efficiently sell your idea. The key here is to figure out how to be capital efficient. Let’s say, for example, you’ve got a great new idea for a restaurant - like hey, why not deliver pizza to people’s homes? I’m sure lots of folks who owned pizza restaurants thought about this, but only one guy (Dominoes) figured out how to franchise the idea and how to market it nationally (through the movie, E.T.). No matter what your idea is, if you can’t get 1,000 people to pay you at one time for your product, you’ll never get rich doing it. That’s why seminar businesses are so tough - it’s hard to get more than 1,000 folks to a meeting.

“Last — producing stuff cheaply. Here’s where your quote comes into the story.

“Producing anything is all about rolling with the punches and being persistent. Just like getting an education. You’ve kinda have to let it happen to you. Fortunately 99% of people in the world think producing something is succeeding in business. That’s why all you’ve got to do is roll with the punches to get this part done — an army of people are happy to follow your lead.

“That’s my daily unrequested advice column. Hope you enjoyed it –”

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Porter is one of the most successful people I know. And of course he’s right… I was taking the most important part of the equation for granted, that I’d figure out exactly what and how to sell here in Argentina… (I don’t want to lead you astray dear reader, which is why I’m publishing this follow-up post…)

In my case, this means financial publications that Latin American investors would be willing to pay for. I have to understand what their wants and needs are specifically. What keeps them up at night… This research is being done. But, it is the most important thing we’re doing right now because if we get that wrong all the other production work will be for nothing…