Making a difference in your business/important points for a start up’s.
In the last couple of years I have faced a little uncertainty and a good number of problems that have forced me to look at exactly what I do to earn money and to increase my leverage using the tools that are widely available.
Some of you also know that my background is within Financial Services and before that the Motor Trade and before that the building industry, I have been around for a little bit.
One of the big issues facing all business owners in this day and age is leverage, look we all have the same time as each other, only 40 hours in a day.
This leads to the fact that you will never ever get rich or have a lifestyle of your dreams by doing £5 per hour work, you will never build a multi-million pound (or dollar) business whilst your focus is on opening the post or as I watched this week, someone unloading stationary, after breaking off from a call.
For those of you that are thinking about starting a business or improving an existing one take a look around you before you read on.
Most of your peers, friends and work colleagues are in the same sorry state: Not enough income for the month, not enough in pensions to retire and in the main miserable.
If you are running a business have a look at your competitors, the people you meet at events, most are miserable or worse (pissed off) and are looking to blame everyone else in Financial Services it’s the Retail Distribution Review, in the Legal profession it’s the Law Society, in the Motor Trade it’s the lack of finance, in the BBC it’s the move to Manchester.
Wherever you look there is bad stuff going down, at least that makes you all equal, let’s not even talk about the news.
So what are your options?
You can of course pop out to some networking meetings, or use social media to improve your lot.
On a personal basis that means Facebook (in the main most of your friends will have a similar life to you and probably will be pissed off, not exactly a wise choice of ‘go to guys’), if you are in business you can pop over to Linkedin, and read the same old sales pitches from the next expert, and guess what most of these are not doing any business. Just sitting at home in their underpants hoping business is going to come in from the next post on a forum.
Look, there is not going to be any change whilst you continue to focus on the same old thing.
So let me tell you what you need, you need to be selling products the people want to buy, if you are thinking about starting a business, you should also be selling something that is sufficiently high priced to get rid of the timewasters and to make it pay, I mean really pay. Little lesson in maths below.
Sale price of product or service £10.00 profit £5.00 x 200 sales = £1000 less marketing costs £200 = £800 profit
Sale price of product or service £1500.00 profit £1000.00 x 200 sales = £200k less marketing costs £40k = £160k profit
What product would you rather be selling?
This is the difference between having a successful business and being an also ran. You need to charge more or only sell products that produce the right level of income.
If you are thinking about a Franchise there are other issues, your sales costs could be even higher, if you are regulated firm like Accountancy or Financial Advice you will also have other costs which could take even more of your income.
I will shout this very loudly M O S T S M A l l F I R M S D O N ‘T C H A R G E E N O U G H O R S E L L E N O U G H .
Here is another point, you need to get good at M A R K E T I N G or die.
One of the things that always amazes me is that far to many business owners want to sit back and drink coffee, whereas me I want to get results, my clients pay me for results, no results no income.
Have I made myself clear, rant over.
So here is an approach that works, the next time you are asked to go and do some food shopping, do it online and spend the time saved to call some clients, to work out a strategy for changing or starting a business, making some changes, doing some exercise, you will spend £6 on delivery and gain thousands potentially.
Don’t clean your Car on Sunday, spend some time working through some online training or self-development. Pay a student or one of the kids to do it, better still let someone else’s kids clean your car, pick some known under achievers it won’t make any difference to their lives, your kids can spend a hour reading something inspirational, or learning a new skill, and pay them for it.
Other options: Get a little creative, find or create products that are priced for profit and then go and find some hungry mouths to sell them to, if you have not started your business yet, think about all of this before you move forward, or you will end up with the same as the vast majority or business owners and paid staff, close to broke.
One thing that happened to me a couple of weeks ago was this, I spent an entire Saturday at training meeting which was delivered by someone with whom I have worked with before. Certainly he earns more than me (never ever take investment or business advice from someone who is not richer or wiser than you), the day’s training was not cheap, and having had some 30 years sales and marketing experience I thought I would not learn a lot.
Wow I could not have been more wrong, in that it was one of the best educational days I have had and was surprised to see that this entire day has now been released as an online training course.
Now I paid a good deal more than you are being asked to pay and the online and offline marketing strategies that are being offered here are second to none, delivered by someone who is making a lot of money.
Below is the testimonial I done for the day.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l12ZNd3_zdU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The cost of this training to you is only $23 (£14.37) and could well change your life, but you do need to watch the videos, make a few notes and take some action.
The training covers, marketing your business/new business online and off, outlines the structure and process you need to follow, and don’t care what business you are in this will work for you, importantly if really think it is worth a couple of pints then there is a full refund.
I know full well that most of you won’t even visit the page, and that’s fine the level of income to me from the sale of this product is tiny, and is only given you as I want to add some value, to prove that I can and will help you, but you do need to get of your arse. Importantly if you are not prepared to spend £14 on something that may well alter the course of your life there is no helping you, really.
Until next time.