The Real Reason You Are Not Making Money (And It Has Nothing To Do With Marketing)
More wisdom from Warren Buffet.
If you want to make a lot of money, you need to delight your customers.
That sounds trite and trivial, but it is always shocking to me how many upstart entrepreneurs have their priorities mixed up. Most of you are totally focused on the wrong outcome.
In this week’s issue, I will tell you how to avoid the trap.
Warren Buffett Has No Social Media Following
My business hero is Warren Buffett.
Seth Godin taught me permission marketing and Brian Clark taught me the technical skills of content marketing. I am grateful to them.
But as far as shaping my philosophy in business, family, and life, I basically copied all of my ideas from Warren Buffett.
One of Buffett’s most impactful lessons was the importance of delighting your customers.
Sometimes I go and visit it just to remind myself of what’s really important.
Do not just satisfy your customers, delight them.
He uses the example of Jeff Bezos, and it is the perfect example because Bezos was the one entrepreneur who obsessed most over customer satisfaction and focusing all his attention on delighting the customer.
Bezos created a world where it was unreasonable to shop anywhere else except for Amazon, because Amazon created the most delightful experience.
The $0 First Year: In the first year of Amazon, Jeff Bezos spent exactly $0 on advertising, relying entirely on a flawless customer experience to drive word of mouth. It worked so well that within 30 days, they had orders from all 50 states and 45 countries.
The 2003 Ad Blackout: In 2003, Bezos abruptly canceled the entire television advertising budget for Amazon. He took those millions and reinvested them directly into the customer by funding free shipping and systematically lowering prices.
The 30/70 Rule: Bezos operated on a principle that flipped traditional marketing on its head. He believed that while legacy companies spent 30 percent of their time building a service and 70 percent shouting about it, modern businesses need to invert that ratio.
We all know how this ended up. Amazon, for better or worse, recently surpassed Walmart in annual revenue to be the largest company in the world by revenue.
This is an obvious and classic example of what happens when you focus on the customer.
You Are Worrying About All The Wrong Things
The message has become blurred.
In 2026, we confuse marketing with business. Marketing is not business. Marketing is one aspect of business, and it is a very misunderstood aspect of business.
(For a fun experiment, I want you to leave a comment and tell me what marketing is. I bet you do not know the answer.)
You obsess over your follower count, your brand, your messaging, and how many views you have gotten. You think more about spreading your message than about delighting your customers.
That is a great way to get Instagram followers, but it is not a great way to make money.
Let me tell you an observation I have made over the last 15 years. I have met a lot of successful people in my career. There is a handful of men and women who I really admire from a business standpoint that I know personally. One thing I have observed about all of them is that they do not care one bit about how many LinkedIn followers they have. Most of them do not even know how to use LinkedIn. These are multimillionaires and in some cases billionaires. And they focus all their attention on what really matters, which is creating a product or service that delights customers.
It is hard, because the entire world is telling you that if you do not have a personal brand then you do not amount to anything.
Status is largely connected to followers, and that is sad. You must decide what you want.
If you want followers, then focus on attention. If you want money, then focus on delighting your customers.
I Have Hired A Customer Success Manager
Quantum Leads is starting to hit that pinnacle point.
I am getting new leads every day and the business is growing month over month.
When I was running Stodzy, one of the mistakes I made was that I was so focused on doing work. I always wanted to be working for my customers because I did not ever want to come across as if I was not a good partner.
My heart was in the right place, but my objective was a few degrees off.
This time around, I know that the results need to come first.
Everything is centered around generating the specific outcome that our customers are looking for.
It is not about the hours or even the effort, it is about the tangible results. So I am overinvesting in delighting our customers.
Starting today, I have hired a customer success manager. This person’s entire job is to always be scraping data, and auditing how well our work is generating the result that the customer is paying for.
This means …
living in the CRM to see how many sales we have generated
living in Call Tracking Metrics to see how many calls we have generated
living in the dynamic tracking, to see what work has specifically generated the results
weekly strategizing to optimize our work so we can do more of what is working and less of what is not working
obsessing over customer delight
This person’s primary focus is the delight meter of our customers. (I just made that up lol)
What is best about this approach is that it will ultimately be the best form of marketing imaginable.
The more our customers tell people about how delighted they are with our services and lead generation products, the more our brand will grow and the closer I will get to my goal of being the most prolific healthcare marketing experts in the world.
Subsequently, my cash will grow and my ability to make investments into my personal holdings company will increase.
In Conclusion: Keeping Your Eye On The Prize
My north star is to have a personal holding company that generates $10M a year in passive revenue.
If I want to achieve my ultimate outcome, I am better off focusing my attention on delighting my customers than I am focusing my attention on growing my brand.
Ironically, by focusing on my customers it will lead to me growing a bigger personal brand anyway.
Please, do not fall for the trap.
Do not let these tech giants trick you into thinking you need them. You do not need a following.
Yes, a personal brand is a helpful tool, and I will be the first to tell you that my personal brand and my social media following has generates massive results for my business and my personal finances.
With that said, it is third or fourth on the list in terms of importance for generating revenue and growing a profitable business.
Focus on the customer.
Focus on delighting them.
The rest will fall into place.
I promise.
Love you guys.
Talk to you next week.
Tim
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