The 3 Greatest Lessons I’ve Learned After 25 Years in Business

In June, I reached a milestone with my business, PostcardMania: 25 years in business. It got me thinking about all the lessons I’ve learned as a business owner and entrepreneur.

Starting out, I was greener than green. There have been hard times when I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’ve made it from nothing to $97 million in annual revenue, over 350 staff, and we’re still growing — averaging 20% revenue growth over the last three years after a year of growing at a much slower rate of 5% in the decade previous.

Through those experiences, I grew as an entrepreneur and gained valuable business insights, but I sure wish I had someone to confide in at the time.

I want you to avoid some of the missteps I made on my journey, so I’ve taken some time to nail down the three greatest lessons I’ve learned over 25 years of business ups and downs — thankfully many, many more ups than downs.

Related: 10 Lessons I Learned as Someone Who Has Spent 10 Years Running a Business

Lesson #1: Your marketing budget and revenue growth are tied together

There have been times in my career that I’ve had the choice to either pay myself or pay for marketing. In 1998, I was a graphic designer with a dream and a computer — and that’s about it!

When I started PostcardMania, I put as much of my money as possible into marketing. I barely paid myself a living wage for years because I was so determined to grow my business.

I drove an old Nissan Pathfinder to save on a car payment. I used credit cards to help pay for things at times (although you should definitely avoid getting into debt if you can) and even took money out of my own home to purchase a building for PostcardMania (this was a hugely smart move for me and worked out great).

Those sacrifices paid off when my business took off. The more I marketed, the more leads came in, and the more my revenue skyrocketed. As PostcardMania achieved steady growth, I increased my marketing budget too. I noticed that my revenue increases mirrored the amount I invested in marketing. The more money I put into marketing, the more money we made.

Think of it like the classic board game Monopoly. At first, you feel hesitant to spend the $1,500 you start out with in the game (I didn’t even have that to start with in real life!). But you quickly find out there are two types of players: the ones who hoard their money to try to play it safe and the ones who spend all of it on properties — and now I have enough money to actually invest in real estate, and I have a lot of that now too.

Eventually, everyone realizes that the players with the most properties win because every time someone lands on that space, they get cash.

It’s the same in the real world. If you don’t spend as much money as you can on marketing, someone else will — and your business will pay for it in the long run. But if you’re the one marketing, over time, you’ll get that money back and then some.

So, buy Park Place … and New York Avenue. Then, once you get some more cash from those, put houses on them. You get the picture: The biggest winners don’t play it safe. They make moves all over the board.

Maybe you aren’t currently spending any money on marketing and need to set a budget. Take the time to sit down and create a marketing budget ASAP, because it’s your first step to success.

Related: 7 Business Takeaways You Can Learn From Monopoly

Lesson #2: You need a unique selling proposition to beat your competition

A unique selling proposition or USP is a one-of-a-kind aspect of your business that none of your competitors have. Take Zappos, for example. Tony Hsieh started one of the first online-based shoe retailers, but even back then, he had competition.

What set him apart? Free shipping on all returns and exchanges. He realized that what prevented people from purchasing shoes online instead of inside a store was not being able to try them on before a purchase. By eliminating the issue of spending money on returns, people could buy as many shoes as they liked without worry and just return the pairs that didn’t work without financial penalty. Zappos sold to Amazon for just shy of a billion dollars in 2009.

When I started PostcardMania, we set ourselves apart from the competition by being first at a lot of things — the first to sell direct mail postcards directly to businesses for really low prices, for example, rather than paying $1200 for 5,000, we sold them for $329 for 5,000; the first to offer free marketing advice without charging a retainer, including having a blog before the word was coined; and the first to offer every service needed, from order placement to postcard delivery, under one roof. We didn’t have just one USP, we had several!

Those first years in business were a rocket ride to eight figures. In just four years, we rode an industry disruptor’s wave to over $10 million in annual revenue. We were growing close to 100% year…