“If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail”.

This is a big mantra that I was taught in school. It’s actually one of the only things that I learnt from school and use regularly… because I’ve found it to be an extremely effective saying for business.

The problem many people have is that they dive into projects (especially big ones) and wind up failing because they did not plan out exactly what they need to do and what they need to set up in order to get the business working.

I am working on building a new service which will launch soon, but it’s going to be one of the biggest things I’ve done in my career so far. And in order to ensure its success, I’m planning out exactly how its going to work and what it’s going to have to do to work.

My advice to you is that if you want to do anything in life or business, make sure that you take the time to prepare for it. This means you need to plan out exactly what you need to do to get it operational, and the marketing steps you will have to take to get your new project running.

Here’s some timeless advice if you want to get somewhere but don’t know how:

1) Start from your results & work backwards -  If you want to make a new game copy product, then picture the project in your mind. Make sure you note down exactly what you need in order to get it selling and then work through making each one of those things. This will give you a more definite path of what you want to achieve

2) Don’t let anyone influence you – This is your creation and in order to get the best results, you should concentrate on making as “you” as possible. I’ve been stuck in the ways of just copying other people before today, and it’s painful because you end up causing so much friction between your other webmasters that it’s just not worth doing it. Try and make what ever you do as personalized to you as possible

3) Be creative and don’t be afraid to keep trying – So you spend 2 weeks making a site. So you spend $300 getting it ready to sell, you designate a day to open it up and no one buys. Bummer – many people will call this a ‘dead horse’. I call it under-preparation and lack of persistence. You can sell anything you want, but for how much and in how many quantities is all down to several factors. In order to make something a success, you need to be sure that you have the partnerships in place and the systems in place to generate the traffic and the demand for your product. Just do what you can to continually get it out there.

Just a post to show you that preparation is 80% of making money. The other 20% is down to action. But without preparation, you’ll have no sort of action… so preparing what you are going to do is essential.