Trying to determine what I've learned about business is easy. I've been in business most of my 
adult life, and business has changed dramatically from those early days. I've owned three companies over the past four decades. There is no way they would have succeeded like they have in today's economy with the original marketing tools we used.
The business process is kind of like the human body. The human body has basic parts that most everyone comes equipped with and they all work pretty much the same. Business has basic parts. You much keep track of your cash-flow, pay your bills, recruit talent if you're open to employees, find the best deals on products you use and solicit business through targeted marketing.
The last part is where I've made the most change. The marketing that I did through the 80s, 90s and 2000s would not be successful today. Our marketing in those days consisted of three primary avenues.
- Yellow pages was 33% of our business.
- Newspaper ads were 33% of our business.
- Sphere of influence and past customers were 33% of our business.
If I depended on those three today, I would be out of business. The sphere of influence and past customers still make up a nice portion of our business, but 80+% of all new business comes directly from the Internet. I don't do any yellow pages or newspaper advertising any longer. Our contracting company just stopped advertising in the newspaper in July 2013, but I dropped the yellow pages in 2009.
I realized in early 2010 that we needed a web-presence if we were going to remain viable as a business. Over the years since then, I've jettisoned the unprofitable sources of advertising, and I have increased the profitable ones. I don't give new sources of advertising more than 6 months to prove themselves before I either continue with them, increase them or drop them. It is a system that has worked well for our companies.
Our real estate company gets a lot of calls through the web. I was able to give one of my agents 11 client leads in two days this week. That's a good return on my investment. Our company receives an average of 30 new client leads a week. Some pan out, and some don't, but it is a steady flow of new potential clients, and they come directly through Internet sources.
We do have the traditional sphere of influence, past clients and referral calls, but the lion's share of our new business comes through the Internet. The one most profitable thing I've learned in business is to be open to change. If you're not, you may get run over by those who are.
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