Earlier this year I had one of the proudest moments of my career: I flew my entire team (100% remote) for an in-person meeting in Austin, Texas. Because Texas A post shared by Ramit Sethi (@ramit) on Mar 3, 2017 at 11:30am PSTon Mar 3, 2017 at 11:30am PST Besides all the sweet wildlife we saw, it was the latest step in the growth of IWT, which I started in my dorm room at Stanford. And now, look at this! It's insane!There are plenty of articles written for the guy on the left. Let's call him Dorm Room Ramit. Dorm Room Ramit was a one-man 'business' who didn't sell anything. He also was severely calorically undernourished. But what about after that' How did I get to the guy on the right, CEO Ramit' (I'm in the back.)So what changes between oneemployee and dozens' What happens when 'beginner' advice isn't enough' What happens when you have more tasks than hours in the day and you have to prioritize'You have to rethink everything.As I built IWT over the course of a decade, I found myself having to reinvent my core principles, and it's something no one ever talks about.After 13 years running IWT, here are fivesubtle but important things I changed my mind about as we grew.SEE ALSO:People lie to you about success all the time ' and once you realize it, you can never go backDorm Room Ramit: Everything needs to be perfectCEO Ramit: Live to fight another dayAt the start of your business (0 to $100K revenue/year), every day youre fighting to live another day. You have to be scrappy. Its a game of survival, not perfection.When I first started blogging, my site design was horrible. Everyone and their mother had an opinion on the color scheme, the headshot, and the font size. In the market, we were starting to see these beautiful Web 2.0 websites, and I remember thinking, I want that and feeling like I was missing out because my site wasnt PERFECT. And to be honest, it kept me down and unmotivated at times.What I didnt realize at the time was that my lack of money was a blessing. Any wrong choice was at least an INEXPENSIVE wrong choice. And that let me fight another day.I also wanted sophisticated tools so I could properly segment my list, and elegantly drop readers into the perfect email funnel for them. But I didnt know how, and I couldnt afford new software, either.Instead, I bought a very basic newsletter tool, mostly used by bloggers. It wasnt prettyin fact, we set it up in this hack-y way because thats all I knew how to do. We stuck with it for years, until we were practically bursting at the seams.Years later, it would cost us lots of money to fix that in our next software upgrade. We incurred a ton of technical debt. But at least by that point, we had the money and the people to fix it.If we had tried to be perfect to begin with, we would have been dead.When you cling to the idea of these things you want (but cant have yet), the tension gets to you. You become myopic about the work youre doing:Oh, I cant start writing anything until I have a beautifully designed website.I cant invite people to join my email list until Ive written out a 15 email auto-responder.I shouldnt do any guest posting until I have the perfectly optimized catchers mitt.Instead, we have to get comfortable with the idea of creating something imperfect. In the beginning, you cant spend time A/B testing your email headlines. You need to find out if people will buy in the first place.Too many entrepreneurs worry about stuff they dont need to. They think they need to read books by Warren Buffett, master Evergreen launches and build an affiliate program before theyve successfully sold their first product.Not that the advanced stuff doesnt matter. It does. But firstlive to fight another day, and trust that your future self will be able to solve problems later on.Dorm Room Ramit: A popular blog is a businessCEO Ramit: A profitable blog is a businessThis one I wish I framed and put above my desk when I first started the blog.For the first year, I was so afraid of what people would say if I tried to make ANY money, I didnt try ANYTHING. I didnt even create an email list. It was enough to have the appearance of a business at first. But eventually, I had to come to terms with the fact that I wasnt running a charity.And neither are you.But when I finally decided it was time to sell, I basically apologized profusely for charging the astronomical price of $4.95 for my first ebook.Too many business owners track every vanity metric under the sunvisits, time on page, followersbecause it feels nice to watch those numbers go up. Thats for beginners looking for any motivation to stay at it. I get it.Meanwhile, they completely ignore the ONE metric that actually matters: Profit.Time-on-site wont pay your rent.Money is the marker that youre doing the right thing because money is the ultimate value to people. When someone is willing to open their wallet and give you their credit cardthey value you enough to actually paythen you know youre doing something to change their lives.And when the money starts coming in, you can use it to solve most of your other beginner problems.Too many customer emails' Now you can hire the worlds best customer service manager.Ugly headshots' Go buy new ones.Having issues with serving private video' Now you can pay $15,000 a year hosting your videos on the worlds best platform.Of course, were not saying you have to charge on Day 1 of your business or that interaction with your customers needs to be transactional. Sometimes, you just want to do it for the likes.But you have to be honest with yourself. If this is your business, then treat it like a business. And successful businesses need to be profitable.Dorm Room Ramit: Be good at everythingCEO Ramit: Be world class at a few thingsWhen you start your company everything falls to you. You must know a little bit of everything to get the ball rolling. But eventually its time to focus.The world does not reward jacks of all trades. Were better off becoming really good at a few things.For example, early on I was writing blog posts, answering 100+ customer service emails, working directly with my friend (who was lending me his engineering skills), thinking about the logo design, and on and on.Im not good at most of that stuff!I had a hard lesson to learn: Instead of becoming world class at customer service, and design, and engineering, and optimization (and on and on).I really needed to become world class at building a team. The rest would fall into place.Heres what I chose to become really good at: Writing Cracking the code on why people do what they do Understanding how to create products that people wantand products that get real resultsFor anyone starting out today, here are the three things I recommend you become world class at: Learning how to sell Writing amazing emails or blog posts that people open and read Learning how to build a team (even a small one)Beware of choosing the wrong goals. If you choose the wrong things, even when you win, you lose. Case in point: Becoming someone whos excellent at reaching inbox zero. Who cares' Focusing solely on a technical skill like Excel analysis, but never learning to build relationships and work with others. Getting the coolest design on your blog. So what'See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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