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Have you ever made a mistake in business that you wish didn’t happen? The truth is that every business owner must face failure at some point, but problems don’t have to be pointless.
In fact, some mistakes lead to incredible success! Take the Post-it, for example. In the process of trying to create a super-strong bonding agent, Dr. Spencer Silver at 3M produced the opposite — a super weak adhesive that could easily separate from anything. Silver dedicated himself to discovering a use for this, and it led to incredible wealth and success.
What if you took your mistake and turned it into gold, too? That’s exactly what I did last year.
My mistake in 2024 went under my radar. I didn’t even notice it until I started doing some digging.
You see, I have always had a strict internal rule that our postcard promotion has to go out every single week without fail. Even my team in manufacturing knows this! When I started PostcardMania, the number was 1000 postcards a week — then 2,500. It was working, but in order to increase it to 5,000 pieces, I had to cut my own pay … so I did!
It really paid off, so over time, we continued to increase that number up to 205,000 in 2023. Then, in October of last year, I saw our top-line revenue from new clients wasn’t growing as fast as it had in previous years. I talked to my Vice President of Sales, and she stated the obvious: “How about we mail more postcards?”
We pulled a report and found that, at some point, our weekly cards dropped from 205,000 a week to 195,000. We immediately pushed it back up, and within a month, our growth was back on track.
We just increased it to 260,000 postcards per week, and I’m excited to see what happens in 2025. This year, we are over $1 million over last year in revenue from brand-new clients.
Here are three takeaways I learned from my 2024 mistake.
Related: 3 Marketing Blind Spots That Are Holding You Back (and How to Fix Them)
Never forget the tried-and-true marketing tactics that worked in the past
I’ve built my business on the concept that direct mail works, and thousands of small business owners I’ve helped know this truth, too. But I still lost sight of my best marketing tactic. Even though the error was a 5% cut in postcard quantity, it was enough to cost my business revenue.
This moment was huge for me — I needed to practice what I preach! If we increase our postcard mailings, we increase our top line without fail.
It’s easy to get swept up in the trendiest marketing platforms or tactics today, but never forget your own marketing truths.
What worked for you in the past? It could even be something as simple as referrals and launching a marketing plan that rewards your customers or clients if they refer your business to a friend.
Take a deep dive into your history and see what you find.
Look at your top line to figure out where your new customers are coming from
Yes, you need to look into your past to remember where your customers came from back then, but you also need to know where your new customers are coming from now.
While there is value in looking at your bottom line, I actually look at the top line first to see what is bringing the most revenue into my business.
New customers show you exactly where the new money is coming from, and then you can expand on your biggest growth drivers to bring in more revenue.
Once we have our top-line growth moving in the right direction, I add in efficiencies to maximize profitability from that growth. If you do the same, the sky is the limit with your future success.
Related: The End-of-the-Year Marketing Checklist That Helped Triple Our Annual Revenue Growth
Be willing to invest more in your marketing to grow your business
This is my second-greatest marketing mantra of all time: You need to market like crazy to grow.
This is because when you want to grow, you have to be willing to spend more. How and where you spend that extra money isn’t an exact science. You have to test different tactics and track results to figure that part out for yourself. But this part is an exact science because cutting back will always cripple your gains. Instead, market as much as you can.
Coming into the final stretch of the year, I decided to take my own advice and increase our marketing spend because I saw that our revenue numbers were not on track to hit their targets.
We added about $100,000 to the last six weeks of the year with the goal of achieving another million. It’s mostly going to direct mail, but we’re also increasing other areas as well.
It’s an expensive decision. Will it get us that extra million? I feel confident it will — even if I don’t see that extra million until January. Increasing my marketing spend has always worked in the past, so I expect it to pay off again.
So, do yourself a favor and learn from your mistakes like me. Heck, write them down on a Post-it to remind yourself! Turn those “failures” into gold.
Related: I Made These 3 Big Mistakes When Starting a Business — Here’s What I Learned From Them
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
