Even if you’re not a fan of the UFC, you’ve probably seen your Facebook feed blowing up with stories about Ronda Rousey this weekend.

In case you didn’t see it, after a bunch of trash talk from her opponent Bethe Correia leading up to fight, Rousey delivered a resounding knock out in just 34 seconds.

Aside from a brief but intense event, there were two valuable marketing lessons to be learned.

1. Don’t trash competitors

Within the MMA community, it’s well known that Rousey’s father took his own life. Correia tried to use this to throw Rousey off her game by mocking her about it.

Bad move.

It was a tasteless tactic in the first place, but it backfired. While something like that might cause your typical person to fold up and cry, it will just enrage the type of people who compete in mixed martial arts. Having done my share of training, I can tell you it takes a certain mindset to for two people to pummel each other for no apparent reason. When someone offends us, we rarely sit in the corner and pout.

You see this approach in business quite often. Instead of talking about what makes their company better, many people resort to trashing their competitors. Don’t do that because you lose the opportunity to present your company in in a positive light, you set a negative tone with potential customers, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t trash talk all of your competitors. Besides, if you can’t think of something good to say about your own company, you shouldn’t be in business in the first place.

2. Don’t over promise

It’s easy to buy into the “fake it till you you make it” mantra preached by so many entrepreneurs, but it’s bullshit. As Correia learned in under a minute, running your mouth only takes you so far because at some point, you need to deliver on your promises.

You know exactly what you’re really capable of, so don’t make promises you know you can’t keep. You’ll create unhappy customers who in addition to complaining to you will likely also complain about you, which will impact your ability to land new customers. And time spent trying to put out fires from unhappy customers means time you can’t spend running your business.

Be very clear about your capabilities. You can take on new challenges as long as you’re upfront with your customers and let them know you’re venturing into new territory. It seems counter intuitive, but most customers will find this kind of honesty refreshing, and if you run into any stumbling blocks along the way, they will be more understanding than if you over promised.

Unless you’ve just emerged from a week-long sabbatical in the woods with no internet access, you’ve heard about the recent controversy surrounding the Confederate flag. In case you haven’t, I’ll get you up to speed:

1. Kid takes pictures with a Confederate flag.
2. Kid commits a heinous crime.
3. Some people are outraged that said flag is allowed to exist while others are outraged that some want it gone.
4. The controversy provokes knee-jerk reactions from both sides.

Personally, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I was born in Illinois, and aside from my time traveling the world while in the Marine Corps, I’ve spent most of my life in Florida. Despite being America’s southernmost state, Florida is basically just the north with beaches and nicer weather.

As far as I’m concerned, although it’s not my cup of tea, you’re free to fly that flag. You know, First Amendment and all.

But a lot of people are talking about “banning” it (never mind the fact that the government has zero authority or ability to do so) which has predictably resulted in surge in sales of the Confederate flag.

In the last couple of days, people have begun shelling out money as fast as they can to obtain their very own Confederate flag before their ability to do so is gone forever. Oh, the horror.

But wait, how exactly would someone (even the massive U.S. government) take away the ability to make this flag? Or any flag, for that matter? Will they also outlaw sewing, and make red, white, and blue cloth a tightly controlled substance under strict government control? Look, they can’t even keep drugs out of prisons, so they certainly can’t stop someone from sewing a flag.

Companies are free to stop selling it, but the government cannot legally stop anyone from making or selling it.

And that is where this event teaches you a valuable lesson about marketing…

Scarcity, even when completely made-up and irrational, motivates people to take action immediately.

Have you ever noticed that the top internet marketers offer their webinars or training programs for a limited time? You can’t just buy it whenever you want even though it’s a digital product that you simply download. They can sell these products an infinite number of times, 24/7 with zero impact on their overhead, so why introduce artificial scarcity? It’s not an accident or a mistake.

Scarcity increases demand. Scarcity creates the perception of exclusivity. And scarcity will increase your profit margins.

Running your own business is a lot less like the romanticized portrayal we see in movies and television and a lot more like herding kittens through a burning diesel plant.

Unlike every business commercial I’ve ever seen on TV, most entrepreneurs don’t wake up refreshed at the crack of dawn, stroll into a glamorous office with a steaming latte in hand, and proceed to shake hands on a life-changing deal—all before lunch.

In the real world, we are juggling cash-flow, client expectations, and our time—usually at a frenzied pace. We’re trying to find the time to plan for the future while still making time to perform the work that keeps our clients happy and pays the bills. We’re trying to figure out how to offer exactly what prospects want while eliminating what they don’t want. And through all of this, we’re trying to make all the right decisions the first time around.

The bad news is that none of us will make all the right decisions the first time around. There will be a lot of trial and error. Even though I’ve made my share of mistakes, I’ve avoided even more because of what I learned in the most demanding organization ever—the United States Marine Corps.

I’m going to share what I’ve learned with so you can avoid more mistakes and reach your goals more quickly.

I’m sure some people may think there is no correlation between the Marine Corps and business. If that includes you, take a look of what is expected of the typical Marine—often fresh out of high school:

• We are held to an extreme level of discipline that is unheard of in the civilian world.
• We learn to overcome more challenges, both physical and mental, than most people will ever experience in a lifetime.
• We must study and retain extensive knowledge on weapon systems, communication and encryption equipment, global positioning systems, history, geography, foreign language, strategy and tactics, and more.
• We take on leadership roles in life or death situations at a very young age.
• We plan all aspects of our missions, including strategy and tactics, communication, supply, and extraction, and execute them in the real-world, under a stress level that would crush most people. While doing so, we must take into account how our actions will affect our fire team or squad, but also how they will affect the platoon, company, battalion, and regiment. (See Commander’s Intent.)
• We must master diplomacy for dealing with higher-ranking service members and government officials, both American and foreign.
• We must master leadership skills to motivate junior service members. (Contrary to popular belief, junior service members don’t just jump in and do the best job they are capable of just because you outrank them.)

It doesn’t take long to see how these experiences can give someone a tremendous advantage in a business environment.

Here’s the really good news—you don’t have to go to boot camp to benefit. I’m going to share what the Marine Corps taught me about running a business.

1. You need a plan

The difference between being proactive and reactive in the Marine Corps is often life or death; in business it’s the difference between success or failure.

Without a plan, it’s easy to waste time, energy, and resources dabbling in every opportunity that comes your way.

If you try to react on the fly, you’ll generally make less effective choices, so we planned for damn near everything: what to do in an ambush, what to do if separated from the unit while on patrol, what to do if communications went down, etc.

Business application: Develop a set of plans, starting with the most likely scenarios working your way down to the least likely. It a lot more exciting to plan for an angle investor to swoop in and fund your path to becoming a leader in your niche, but it’s far more likely that you’ll work your ass off to incrementally increase your income month by month.

2. Your plan will fail

No matter how well-trained you are and no matter how thoroughly you plan, something will always go wrong.

Despite extensive planning for a movement to contact drill in the mountains of Korea, my unit managed to get lost en-route to the objective, arriving about six hours late around 0200 (2am). Now, I could say something about a 2nd lieutenant and a compass, but that’s largely irrelevant because anything can go wrong. You could get lost, a vehicle could break down, you could suffer an injury…the list goes on.

While the consequences are less severe, your business plans will fail too. Perhaps you developed the perfect internet marketing plan and a few months in, Google changes their ranking algorithm and you lose all your website traffic. It wouldn’t be the first time. A fire or flood could force your business to close, a business partner could die, a large company could start selling a similar product or service. There are so many things outside your control that could cause your plans to fail. You can do everything right and your plans will still fail.

Business application: Be mentally prepared for your plans to fail and look at it as an opportunity to learn instead of becoming judgmental of yourself.

3. So you better have a backup plan

The solution is to have a backup plan, and if possible, a backup plan to your backup plan. For example, prior to stepping off for a patrol, we would plan for what to do if separated from our unit. Depending on the circumstances, you might establish radio communication, rendezvous at a previous rally point, rendezvous at a new location, utilize a signal flare, etc.

In business, you’ll want to think about what it would look like if a plan failed so you can create a backup plan.

Business application: Create a backup plan for what you’ll do if your primary plan fails completely.

4. You can achieve any goal by consistently putting one foot in front of the other

For me, there was nothing quite as miserable as a hump. That’s when you load all of your gear including a 50-100 pound ruck sack, and walk from point A to point B.

I was a relatively small guy at around 150 pounds or so, but since I was responsible for calling in fire missions and air support, I had to carry communications gear which often added up to an extra 50 pounds to my standard pack. After a few miles, your feet become raw and sore, every part of your body aches, and jolts of pain crash through your body with each thunderous step.

How does one complete such an ordeal? It’s simple, but not easy…take one step at a time. Don’t think about how far you have left to go, instead, focus on the next step. That’s all. Each step is one closer to your goal.

Business application: Accomplish the most intimidating tasks by breaking them into manageable chunks.

5. Be early for everything

Have you ever arrived at an LZ (Landing Zone) after the helos have already left? I have, and it sucks because it means that you have to either extract on foot, which means walking an obscene distance with 50-100 pounds of gear, or posting security and waiting hours or even days for the next extraction window.

As a result, Marines are early for everything.

Business application: Arrive 15 minutes early for every thing. Clients will notice, and it will make up for most travel delays. This applies to deadlines too. Instead of waiting until the last-minute to finish a project, schedule it to be completed 15-20% earlier than your client agreed to.

6. You can’t do everything yourself

I don’t care how bad-ass you are, you can’t win the battle alone. Whether covering overlapping fields of fire, hauling a wounded Marine up the side of a mountain, or splitting watch shifts, being a Marine is a team effort.

Someone might be a weapons expert, have extensive medical training, or decades of leadership experience, but I’ve never met anyone who can do everything at the highest level.

I was very effective with an M16, but my first aid skills were average. I could do amazing things with a radio, but I had no clue how to fly a helicopter. The point is that while you should continually work on improving all of your skills, you should also collaborate with people who complement your weaker areas.

Business application: Delegate early and often for maximum growth. If you don’t trust your employees, or they aren’t capable of performing the tasks, one of two things have happened; either you failed to hire the appropriate employees or you’re have control issues. If you find yourself in this situation, seek the guidance of a business coach or a physiologist to determine which one it is.

7. Discipline matters

If I had a dollar for every time I heard some deadbeat say “I could have been a Marine,” I would have a nice cabin in the mountains by now.

No the fuck they couldn’t. If someone wanted to be a Marine and they were capable, they would have done it. (Unless they chose to do something equally demanding like become an Army Ranger, Navy SEAL, or Air Force Para Rescue.)

Look, being a Marine take a lot of discipline. It’s cute to think you’re “operator as fuck” when you play airsoft in the woods and then drive to Taco Bell to cram a chalupa into your pie hole before firing up the Xbox, but it takes a very different person to trudge through the swamp in the middle of the night, then lay motionless in the mud for hours being devoured by mosquitoes the size of pigeons while awaiting the opportunity to ambush the bad guys.

Discipline allows you to put your personal wants aside to focus on the mission at hand.

Business application: Follow through on your commitments no matter what, and always deliver the best work you are capable of. If you say you’ll have a project complete by a certain day, you deliver that project even if it means camping out at the office for the next three days, and never sacrifice quality. 

8. Deal with the situation you have, not the one you want

When you’re trudging through a waist-deep river at 0300 (3am), it’s easy to think about how great things would be if you were warm and dry with a full belly, but that thinking doesn’t change anything. The only thing it does is make you focus on the negative aspects of your situation.

It doesn’t matter what things might be like if certain circumstances were different. The only thing that matters is dealing with the situation you have right now—otherwise it will never change.

Business application: Instead of thinking about how you want things to be, accept how they are and think about how to continue moving toward your goal from your current situation. Sure, it sucks that your biggest client fired you, but instead of being upset about it, figure out where to make up the revenue and start working towards it immediately.

9. You learn the most when you’re at your worst

When everything is going to shit, you have more opportunities to learn something about yourself and others.

You learn very quickly about being a true team player during boot camp when your entire platoon is punished for your mistakes. Your first hump in full gear will teach you more about your own willpower than you could ever imagine. And retention from formal classroom learning is dwarfed by those conducted during a field operations when you’re cold, wet, and tired.

We learn more from our adversities and failures than we ever could from our successes, so don’t shy away from them.

Business application: Look at failure as an opportunity to learn instead of casting blame. Sure, maybe your business partner screwed you, but there were probably signs you overlooked that you can be more aware of in the future. Take some time to cool off, then evaluate the situation with the intent to learn what you can do better next time.

10. You can’t achieve perfection, but you should always strive for it

We used to spend days, sometimes weeks preparing for inspections. Buttons would be polished, uniforms would be starched and pressed, and ribbons would be carefully positioned, but it didn’t matter. They always found something wrong. Perhaps a small thread handing from a pocket, a fingerprint on a belt buckle, or a ribbon that was 1/16th of an inch off.

We still poured time into each subsequent inspection anyway because even though we would never achieve perfection, that attention to detail brought us closer than most people ever would, and it spilled over into all aspects of our lives.

Business application: Ask each client what you can do to improve your work and use that information to improve the next time around. You can also look at what your competitors are doing to see how you could improve your work.

11. Aggressive action can make up for a tactical disadvantage

The outcome of a firefight is often determined in the first few seconds, based on which side achieves fire superiority first. The term for this is “violence of action” which means that you overwhelm the enemy with speed, surprise, and volume of fire, often enabling a smaller force to dominate a larger force.

This concept is most often used when conducting or attempting to break out of an ambush. In either case, weapons are fired at the maximum rate, and explosives, such as hand grenades, satchel charges, and claymore mines are used to overwhelm the enemy and achieve fire superiority. Once a few enemy are killed or forced to seek cover, the balance of power shifts quickly and exponentially almost immediately.

Business application: Pick a marketing channel and dominate it. If your competitor is blogging once a week, blog three times a week, guest post on other websites, and run a Facebook ad campaign driving traffic back to your own blog. 

12. Standard operating procedures exist for a reason

Do you know why we all carried our first aid kit in the same place? So that in the heat of battle or the darkness of night, we could render aid to an injured fellow Marine without having to search for a pressure bandage.

We had standard operating procedures (SOPs) for everything from combat to admin so that anyone could step in and fill a role in the event that someone was unavailable, injured, or even killed.

Just like planning, which I discussed earlier, you should invest the time to develop effective standard operating procedures. It will simplify and streamline daily operations, as well as enable new members to hit the ground running.

Business application: Develop systems and procedures for your most common tasks, such as handling leads, preparing proposals, or documenting client requests. Standardized procedures improve efficiency, simplify staff training, and enable you to accurately track performance.

13. Sometimes you have to change things on the fly

While SOPs can be very effective, they can also become a crutch. I’ve seen far too many 2nd lieutenants make things twice as difficult or time-consuming because “that’s the way we do it here.”

Does it really make sense to spend a ten minutes trying to establish radio communication with a unit when you’re close enough to use hand and arm signals? In most cases, no, but I saw lieutenants fresh out of OCS do it over and over.

Use your head and feel free to go outside of your SOPs when it makes sense.

Business application: Don’t be afraid of unconventional thinking. You don’t have to do things the way you’ve always done them, and you sure as hell don’t have to do them the way anyone else does. 

14. Titles do not equal competence

I had a Company Commander who showed up hours late to field operations, went home at night while the rest of us slept in the swamps, and disappeared when it was time to go on humps. His grasp of tactics was all but guaranteed to get a lot of Marines killed and he lacked any leadership traits.

In short, he was a shit bag who was just there to check a box before transferring back out of the infantry. (All officers must command an infantry company before being promoted from Captain to Major.)

He was the highest ranking person in our unit, but easily the least qualified.

Business application: Don’t let your role as the CEO go to your head. You are the boss, but you still need to hold yourself to the same standards you hold your employees to or you will lose their trust and respect. Also, be prepared to deal with the fact that some employees may be more knowledgeable on some aspects of your business than you are. In fact, if you’ve hired properly, that is exactly what will happen.

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life. (Ask my wife—she will eagerly agree!)

One of them was relying one one revenue stream. Well, not entirely on one revenue stream, but one revenue stream for one small part of my business.

Aside from client work, we also run some niche websites that generate revenue primarily from Amazon’s Associate Program. The model I developed was dead simple and produced reliable income, month after month with little ongoing effort.

Until it stopped.

You see, I had unknowingly violated Amazon’s terms of service, and without any sort of warning, they closed my account. No phone call, email, or even a “Dear John” letter. All I got was this little gem when I logged in:

Thanks, Amazon. I love you too. I guess the fact that I’ve been promoting your products for over a decade means nothing. OK, lesson learned. I’ll just pour a nice glass of scotch and reminisce about all the good times we’ve had together.

You’re probably thinking “What did this evil bastard do to get Amazon to close his account?”

Not much, really. I hadn’t done anything nefarious like cookie stuffing; all I did “wrong” was redirect an old domain to my affiliate link.

Evidently, that’s comparable to harboring terrorists, kicking puppies, and eating live babies or something, according to Amazon.

Unfortunately, this is technically my fault for not knowing it was against Amazon’s terms of service, so there isn’t much I can do about it now. Not that it takes the sting out, but I’m not alone on this. Amazon has been closing associates accounts with no notice or warning over stupid things for years.

Oh, and they keep all of the commissions you’ve earned.

One of the more notable cases was when they closed Joel Comm’s account a few years back for something equally ridiculous. He was promoting his own book through an Amazon affiliate link. So far, no problem, but Amazon took issue with the fact that he was offering some of his own products as bonuses to visitors who purchased his book from Amazon.

The result? His account was closed for giving away his own products to encourage people to buy his book, Twitter Power. End of story.

I know that most sane people see how stupid this was on Amazon’s part; there was nothing fraudulent going on and it was driving legitimate sales, in fact, Amazon offers the same type of incentives, but I also know that it only matters what Amazon thinks, so that’s a moot point.

It’s also important to point out that you could have been in 100% compliance yesterday, but in violation today because of an updated terms of service agreement. Some affiliate programs rarely update their terms of service, but a few that we work with update theirs several times a year. A small change that you didn’t know about could put you at risk of losing a solid revenue stream.

And sometimes it may be no fault of your own, like when Amazon canned tens of thousands of affiliates in several states due to new sales tax legislation, when an advertiser decides to end their affiliate program, or an an entire affiliate network decides to shut down.

Any of these things can happen with any revenue stream, such as Google AdSense, Commission Junction, Click Bank, etc.

That’s why it’s so stupid to rely on any single source of revenue. Losing a revenue stream for our niche sites is only a minor hassle because it’s not our main source of income, but if you rely on revenue from your website and it disappears, that can put you in a really tough spot unless you don’t mind selling a kidney to pay your rent. But that will only buy you a few months.

No matter how much ass you’re kicking today, you need to diversify your revenue sources because of what may happen tomorrow. Affiliate programs are fine, especially when you’re just getting started, but there are loads of other options available as well. (And despite Amazon’s epic douchebaggery, I still recommend their affiliate program.)

I recommend using a few different types of revenue streams, and having backups for each ready in case you get canned by one, they go under, change their business model, or new legislation prevents you from utilizing them.

Here are some options to get you started.

Affiliate Programs

• Amazon Associates
• CJ Affiliate
• LinkShare
• Ebay Enterprise Affiliate Network
• ClickBank
• ShareASale
• LinkConnector
• PeerFly
• MaxBounty
• Neverblue
• Clickbooth

Contextual Advertising

• Google AdSense
• Chitika
• Yahoo! Bing Network
• Cliksor
• IndustryBrains
• Infolinks

Display Advertising

• AdBlade
• AdEngage
• Advertising.com
• BuySellAds

In House Products/Services

It’s hard to go wrong selling your own products and services. It helps retain the strength of your brand, keeps visitors on your website, and fosters a fierce loyalty, as long as your products or services don’t suck. Plus, you get to keep 100% of the profits rather than the meager 2-12% offered by most affiliate programs.