We are all aware of the old proverb that “Success Leaves Clues”.

This is great news! It’s great because this means that we do not have to figure it all out on our own. Successful people have come before us and have shared timeless principles that still work today.

In this article, I will highlight 4 timeless business principles that will grow any business. As the founder of Leave Normal Behind, I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to travel around the world and meet with hundreds of people. I’ve heard countless stories on life and business.

The mission of LNB is to inspire others to become the best version of themselves and create things that matter. Time and time again, it is the same principles of life and business that yield success. Additionally, many of these principles are tucked away in the pages of old books. If we take the time to learn old principles of success, then we can use them today.

Sean Kelly, founder of Jersey Champs, an online retailer for customized Jerseys, has used these principles to grow his business passed the 7-figure mark.

Do not breeze over each principle below. Do not mistake their shortness for shallowness. Oftentimes, the most simple principles have the most depth and require the most diligent contemplation.

Take the time to digest and let these principles sink in. They have worked for many people, and they will work for you as well.




1. Learn From Experts

Having a mentor is super important in life and business. Mentors have been there before. They know the quickest and most efficient route possible. They have also made mistakes, and if you build a relationship with them, you won’t make the same mistakes they did.

The most important thing when choosing a mentor is making sure that they have all the things you aspire to be and have – not just financially, but in their personal life, relationship life, and lifestyle. Once you find this person, then begin consuming their material and reverse engineer the steps they took to get where they are today.

Next, you need to begin to USE and IMPLEMENT their teachings in your daily life. The best way to make a great impression on a mentor is to succeed using their teachings. Once you do this and increase your value, you can provide value to this mentor on a deeper level and hopefully build a stronger connection with them.

Do not expect a mentor to give you anything. If you want a mentor to make you a king or queen, then you need to provide value to them first. There is not enough time in the day for them to help everyone and they can only focus their time on select individuals.

Who would you rather spend your time with: the person that has used your teachings and can now provide you value or a person that is expecting a lucky handout?

Do something that stands out and give them an offering, pay them, work for them, and/0r provide value to them in another way. Success does not happen overnight and having a mentor accelerates the process so you do not have to make the same mistakes they did.   

For example, Sean hated social media in High School, but he acknowledged that the online jersey market was 80% millennials, and therefore he would have to become more effective on social media, and he knew that he could not do that all on his own. He took courses on Instagram growth, watched hours of video content, and even paid money to large IG account owners in order to learn their ways. Over time, he adopted their techniques and developed his own. Now, he is an experienced Instagram Marketer who has used Instagram as the backbone of his business.

2. Commit To One Thing

The old proverb goes, “the man who chases two rabbits does not catch one”.

Stay focused on your top sellers. 80% of Jersey Champs sales come from just 5 jerseys, although thousands of variants are offered on the website. Focus your marketing budget and attention on your top sellers and don’t waste it on anything else.

Luck will be involved, but persistence will always surpass luck when you work hard enough. Luck is when timing meets preparation.

Once you start climbing the ladder, it only gets easier and that has certainly been the case for Jersey Champs which currently has the likes of Mark Cuban, 2 Chainz, and 21 Savage wearing their jerseys now.

3. Leverage Influencer Marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing has been the most powerful marketing tool for centuries. Secondly, influencers have always been used to endorse products.

How often do you see your favorite athlete or artist promoting a product? This tactic has been used for centuries.

The transition into digital has obviously changed, but do you really think there wasn’t an influencer in ancient Greece, Rome, or Egypt that was used to add credibility to products and even entire countries? For whatever reason, we believe that their endorsement adds instant credibility because we associate the product with the influencer. It’s because we naturally believe that if the people we like like a product, then we will like the product too.

Using influencer marketing on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook has been essential for the growth of Jersey Champs. A great strategy is to hire a full-time employee to reach out to influencers and celebrities via Instagram DM, email, and phone calls.

Pay them per client landed and not hourly. This will give them more incentive to land influencers to represent your brand.

If you do not have money to hire someone or are just starting out, then do it yourself and find the time to send direct messages to connect with these people at all costs. Even if just one or two of these celebrities answer back, it will pay 10x what you have paid your employee to connect with them or their management.

Once you are large enough, you won’t have to pay influencers to showcase your products as they will gladly do it to be featured on your page.

Invest in your Instagram page heavily and grow it until you get to that point. Jersey Champs has spent roughly $30,000 on influencers in order to grow the Jersey Champs IG page to over 1 million followers.

4. Assemble A Team

Outsource tedious tasks such as order fulfillment, customer service, graphic design, product research, social media posting, scheduling ASAP. If you are good at these tasks, then outsource the ones you are bad at!! This will free up HOURS of time for you every day so you can focus on marketing and getting your company out there.

In the early days, Sean often found himself manually trying to market and it was simply not efficient. These days, almost all of the marketing is done with as little manual labor as possible to save time for him to focus on other areas of the business, such as developing new jerseys, handling wholesale orders and forming strategic partnerships.

Automation and delegation are so important in order to focus on other areas of the business!!

Also, a quick tip when it comes to building a team: never offer equity to someone not fully invested in the company. To date, Sean still owns 100% of Jersey Champs, which is worth over 2.5 million dollars as of June 2018. In the beginning, an investor wanted 40% of the company for $25,000 and they would not have been vested in the company in any other way. In hindsight, this would have been a very bad decision because someone else would own 40% of a company and not have to do anything else to keep it.


I hope you take advantage of these principles. They have been exemplified here through Sean and his business, but if you keep an open eye you will find these principles at play around you at all times. All you have to do is look for them.

How can you implement these 4 timeless business principles more than you are doing right now?

If you implemented them, what would change?


Feel free to reach out to Sean on his personal website or his Instagram page.

I’ve attached the links below.


Contact rob@leavenormalbehind.com if you are leaving normal behind, becoming the best version of yourself, and creating things that matter.

Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to keep up with my latest content.Opinions expressed here are the opinions of the author. Influencive does not endorse or review brands mentioned; does not and can not investigate relationships with brands, products, and people mentioned and is up to the author to disclose. VIP Contributors and Contributors, amongst other accounts and articles, are professional fee-based.

Rob Fajardo


His Strengths Include:

Content Creation
Team Building
Growth Hacking