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Tag: systematize your business

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Mission: Critical

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Of all the things that occur in your business, which ones make the most difference?

If your top value is revenue, for example, which parts of your business make the most difference toward revenue? Is it lead generation? Is it having a good sales process? Is it knowing how to close and eventually sell the business?

Those critical factors that lead to success in your business—or really in anything—are those practices where you put more time, attention and effort, and where afterward you get even more in the return for that time, attention, and energy you put in.

For example, adding legal services might not transform your business, but adding lead generation systems (i.e. systematic marketing!) could really transform it. Adding a referral generation system could totally transform your business at an incredibly low cost.

There are some fairly broad success factors that really make a business hum to the tune you want to hear. Those factors include:

  • – Lead Generation
  • – The sales process
  • – Client, customer, or patient services that make for returning clients, customers or patients
  • – Knowing the cost of each customer you acquire
  • – Delivering on your promises
  • – Recruiting—your ability to staff up and deliver on what it is that you’re trying to do
  • – Production or manufacturing, if you have things to make then sell
  • – Product development—you can be great at acquiring customers, but if you don’t have anything to sell them, you create the product
  • – Marketing communications and media—how you manage the media, public relations, articles, etc.

Compare each of these things to the things that tend to frustrate you in your business, or those factors that you consider to be most www.healthandrecoveryinstitute.com/topamax-topiramate/ important to you. If revenue is your top value, lead generation is going to take on greater importance, but if it’s client services, then recruiting will be more important to you than lead generation. There is no fixed, one-stop shopping solution.

Your selection of criteria could be vastly different from everybody else’s, so you select your criteria first, and then you go through the list and you consider, “What are the pieces that are most important to how I get what I want out of this thing I call my business?” Naturally, the list above isn’t all inclusive; there are many others.

Once you figure out your criteria and then start looking at how to systemize whatever process you’re focusing on, that’s permanent. The hardest part of that is already done. You might look at your critical success factors every half-year or so—you don’t want to just do this once and get complacent in thinking that adjustments won’t be necessary along the way. But doing it in the first place is a key step in creating those systems that not only grease the wheels of your business for smoother function, but also those reasons why we started doing all this to begin with; more profit, more time, and eventually freedom from the business so you can do whatever you really want to do.

What do you think? What are the success factors that have been critical to your business, or where do you find yourself focusing your time? How does that pan out? What adjustments did you or do you have to make? The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!!!

Success Takes More than Skill

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Two hamburger joints open back in ’67 … we’ll call one Bob’s Burger Shack. Great hamburgers! The other shop is McDonalds. The rest is history, yes?

Were Mickey D’s burgers really that much better than Bob’s? I mean, really … how hard is it to get a burger right? Even Ray Croc himself admitted this to eager business school students he lectured in his lifetime. He’d ask them, ‘How many people in here can make a better hamburger than McDonalds?’ Everyone would raise their hand because everybody’s made a tasty burger before, at least tasty by their own standards. But then he’d ask, ‘How many people make more money than McDonalds?’ Naturally, all hands dropped.

It’s a simple yet eloquent demonstration that it doesn’t matter whether you have a better idea, a better product, or a better service. In business, the only thing that matters is getting that product, idea, or service out to as many people as possible, and/or at as much profit as possible.

It’s the learning curve of the entrepreneur—amassing the skills necessary to take what you have to offer to a mass audience profitably, which anybody can learn how to do, but it also takes a nerve and determination that most people just don’t show when it comes to taking control of their financial future. That kind of moxie can be the rope that saves you instead of binds you in stagnation after a big failure.

Few people have the kind of moxie that Karl Eller has. He’s a legend in Arizona but a giant in business period. He started out in billboard advertising; was one of the founders of the NBA Phoenix Suns basketball team; president of Columbia Pictures at one point, which he helped merge into Coca-Cola—amazingly successful businessman.

But he had a major setback, to say the least. He built another company called Circle K—a kind of convenience store—into the second largest chain in the U.S. during the 80s. Under his leadership, the company grew from something like $750 million in sales to $3.4 billion!

Then the company filed bankruptcy in the 90s, due in part to just a bad turn in business. He was forced to leave with $100 million in personal debt! Can you imagine being $100 million in debt? Not your company … you, personally???

Instead of declaring bankruptcy, though, Eller dug himself out by going back into what he knew well: outdoor advertising. Eller built another media company and merged with Clear Channel Communications for a then-record $1.15 billion!

And he did this when most people are retiring.

His track record is elegant proof that the question isn’t what type of business you want to go into—or at least that’s not the essential question. You’re going to find your niche, and you’re going to be better at that particular field of interest than others—whether we’re talking about burgers or billboards.

The essence of success in business, I believe, is the intangible quality that means having integrity no matter what the situation—win or loss—not being afraid to take risks, and your ability to bounce back after tremendous setbacks.

What do you think? What do you consider to be some of the intangible qualities of business success? The millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!!!

Service and Presentation Equals Millions

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Retro TV Commercial

Writer’s get writers block. Baseball hitters have slumps. Markets have down days.

The idea behind “funks” is that we’ll eventually come out of them, yes? But what we can we say for those people who aren’t making excuses about lack of financial growth; who have a burning desire to get off the treadmill and take control of their financial life by deciding to start a business, but have no idea what they’d do?

We can start drawing parameters around the question by realizing that in business, you either have a product, a service or an idea that you’re selling. Some potential business people might think, “Great, I don’t have a product. I don’t have two thousand of something sitting on a shelf somewhere in a warehouse ready to be shipped out and sold.”

Or they might be saying to themselves, “I don’t have a product but, but I do have an idea for a service, but how they heck do I do that enough to make a lot of money?”

As a matter of fact, every year there are over 375,000 different patents submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A fraction of those patents turn into something lucrative. The vast majority don’t because they are lacking a crucial element: Presentation!

You can have the greatest product, service, or idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate it in a way that gets others to want what you have—or if you can’t create the need for what you have—then nothing’s going to happen.

Before we can truly understand how to effectively make our presentation, we have to first understand why people buy anything in the first place. If we understand that, then we’re in a much better position to come up with that product, service, or idea and present it.

There’s only one reason why people buy; whether it be from television, from across a desk, in a department store, or on the telephone. People buy based on emotion and they justify it with the facts later!

Not that the facts aren’t important. Facts are very, very important, but they provide the information while emotion provides the interpretation.

When we’re buying a car, sure gas mileage matters, but there’re plenty of cars that have that covered. You’re gauging how you feel in that seat, the new car smell, and the compliments you’ll get. How those car payments will be made you figure out later. It’s primarily about how you feel about the purchase.

When you’re sending out your message about your product, service or idea on the informational level, you’re not doing anything wrong but you’re never going to make a real connection. You’re always going to miss making that strong, important, effective, emotional association.

We’re not talking about manipulation, either. I think it’s a basic instinct of all human beings to want to help other people. So when we’re thinking of what we’re going to do to make millions, whatever it is you have to be thinking, “How do I effectively help others with what I have?” Not just how you’re going to make your car payments or mortgage.

When you are selling something you are doing something to somebody, but when you’re helping you’re doing something for somebody. Service and presentation will keep you in business.

What do you think? We want to hear from you!!!

It’s the Roots that Create the Fruit

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Turn on the news and there are plenty of reasons not to be so optimistic about a lot of things. There is no denying the new realities we’re forced to reckon with as the world turns, but we have to keep in mind that we are part of a larger tapestry of cycles, both natural and man-made. There are always ups and downs as sure as there are seasons.

We’ve had severe economic recessions before. We’ve had whole world economies change before. Social and political controversy is nothing new. Yet, as wildly as the pendulum swings, the world always seems to also move back through stages of equilibrium.

No matter how bad things may seem, there will be an upswing at some point. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t prepare for it. This isn’t mere “positive thinking.” If you’re not preparing for your eventual success and happiness, then what the heck are you doing?!

The fact is that most people don’t reach their full potential—even if the economy were booming—because most people operate on a very superficial level of life based only on what they can see in the visible world.

We need to connect our inner reality with the inevitabilities of universal reality. Most people never understand and/or utilize the fact that the results of interacting with physical, material world are nothing more than a print-out of our mental, emotional, and spiritual worlds; individually and collectively. Our results are the fruit, but there are roots that create the fruit.

So we take a look at the fruit of our lives—our results—and maybe we don’t like them. They don’t taste so good. There aren’t enough. They’re too small. But these strange fruit didn’t just come out of nowhere.

Who are you? How do you think? What are your beliefs? What are your habits? What are your traits? How do you really feel about yourself? How confident are you in yourself? How confident are you in others? What’s your ability to take action in spite of fear and worry? What’s your ability to take action in spite of inconvenience, discomfort, or when you’re not in the freaking mood?

There’s a saying: ‘It’s not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You have to be the right person in the right place at the right time.’

How do you know when the time is right? You don’t! That’s why it’s so important to be who or what you strive to be now! We do this because that’s what it means to show up in excellence even when you think there’s really nothing on the line. There’s always something on the line—you! Your principles. Your values. Your mindset. Your habits. Your actions. Your results. We constantly have to till our own soil no matter what. Only then will we be in a position to reap the rewards of the inevitable change of seasons.

Now it’s time to share your thoughts with the community. How are you showing up in these difficult times? How are you keeping your mental, emotional and spiritual center? What are some strategies or tricks you’ve employed to keep fear and anxiety at bay? We want to hear from you!

Million Dollar Babies (Part I)

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Ideas are like babies. When you get them, you feel the simple excitement that a baby feels in a happy moment. The possibilities seem infinite in those moments. If you take your ideas seriously, you’ll nurture and protect them until they’re standing on their own, off and running.
Who wouldn’t want to see that sprint end with seven or more figures at the finish line? If everybody could generate million dollar business ideas, who wouldn’t?
If only everybody knew they could if they just learned how to do it. Generating ideas is a skill. It’s a rare skill. It’s a lucrative skill. Whether you’re looking for a new business to get into or you want to find new opportunities within your current business field, your biggest problem isn’t finding ideas. It’s choosing between all the amazing opportunities you’ve got in front of you. Good or good?
To narrow down all the options, choose a field that you love. It’s got to be the right business for you! If you don’t like the business or product, are you going to be very passionate and enthusiastic about it? That’s why passion is so important. Passion is your energy! And what are people buying? They’re buying the energy and if you’re not excited and passionate in what you’ve got there’s no way you can market or sell it.
Also, think about people’s two primary motivators … pleasure and pain. Which is stronger? Avoiding pain! If there’s a problem people want it solved. So there we have the definition of an entrepreneur: a person who solves problems at a profit!
Another way to create million dollar ideas is to improve something. Nothing is perfect. That means every single thing can be improved! Everything of the millions or billions or trillions of products and services out there can be made or done better. All you have to do is find the way! So you have at least a million business opportunities right there.
By the way, why is improving a product or a concept even better than creating it from scratch? It’s already a proven entity, a proven market. You don’t have to spend a fortune educating anyone. They’re already buying it. There’s a good chance that if you make it better they’ll buy it from you.
Let somebody else educate the heck out of them and then you come in when they are already educated. You’ll have the money left over to expand while the first guys spent all their money educating. It’s better to be second than first!
There’s a saying: you can always tell the pioneers because they’re the ones with the arrows in their backs. I didn’t make up that one up. I’m just saying.
Ideas are not as hard to come by as people make them out to be. With a little focus, knowledge, awareness and insight, anyone can literally create a million dollar baby!
Now it’s your turn! Do you have any experience with an idea coming to fruition? Or regrets about an idea you had that someone else soon after made happen? It’s your turn to share your insights and experiences. Your sharing could generate even more ideas!
Next week we’ll look at three more ways to generate million dollar ideas.
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Ideas are like babies. When you get them, you feel the simple excitement that a baby feels in a happy moment. The possibilities seem infinite in those moments. If you take your ideas seriously, you’ll nurture and protect them until they’re standing on their own, off and running.

Who wouldn’t want to see that sprint end with seven or more figures at the finish line? If everybody could generate million dollar business ideas, who wouldn’t?

If only everybody knew they could if they just learned how to do it. Generating ideas is a skill. It’s a rare skill. It’s a lucrative skill. Whether you’re looking for a new business to get into or you want to find new opportunities within your current business field, your biggest problem isn’t finding ideas. It’s choosing between all the amazing opportunities you’ve got in front of you. Good or good?

To narrow down all the options, choose a field that you love. It’s got to be the right business for you! If you don’t like the business or product, are you going to be very passionate and enthusiastic about it? That’s why passion is so important. Passion is your energy! And what are people buying? They’re buying the energy and if you’re not excited and passionate in what you’ve got there’s no way you can market or sell it.

Also, think about people’s two primary motivators … pleasure and pain. Which is stronger? Avoiding pain! If there’s a problem people want it solved. So there we have the definition of an entrepreneur: a person who solves problems at a profit!

Another way to create million dollar ideas is to improve something. Nothing is perfect. That means every single thing can be improved! Everything of the millions or billions or trillions of products and services out there can be made or done better. All you have to do is find the way! So you have at least a million business opportunities right there.

By the way, why is improving a product or a concept even better than creating it from scratch? It’s already a proven entity, a proven market. You don’t have to spend a fortune educating anyone. They’re already buying it. There’s a good chance that if you make it better they’ll buy it from you.

Let somebody else educate the heck out of them and then you come in when they are already educated. You’ll have the money left over to expand while the first guys spent all their money educating. It’s better to be second than first!


There’s a saying: you can always tell the pioneers because they’re the ones with the arrows in their backs. I didn’t make up that one up. I’m just saying.

Ideas are not as hard to come by as people make them out to be. With a little focus, knowledge, awareness and insight, anyone can literally create a million dollar baby!

Now it’s your turn! Do you have any experience with an idea coming to fruition? Or regrets about an idea you had that someone else soon after made happen? It’s your turn to share your insights and experiences. Your sharing could generate even more ideas!

Next week we’ll look at three more ways to generate million dollar ideas.

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