If someone told you, right before you got out of the gate, “Sixty-three percent of all businesses fail within the first six years,” would you still want to start a business?
That’s the figure according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means most people stand a little bit better than a 50/50 chance of, at minimum, staying above water; we’re not even talking about profitability.
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!!!
Watch the news and observe the so-called “experts” on the economy or the latest tabloid trial. When you’re the expert, people pay attention to you more and take you up on your words. But what makes them more authoritative on a topic than anyone else?
Experience helps and knowledge helps, but the real difference is a keen eye for details. And if you happen to be passionate about the topic, it’s a lock.
It’s no different in business. What does an expert get in a sales situation? You get credibility before you even get started selling anything. People come to you and you can charge more money. And your ability to position yourself as an expert is far less complicated than you might think.
You start off with information that’s of interest. ‘Did you know that today, you’re spending three times more money in advertising to try and get the same result that you would have gotten ten years ago?’
I might be selling marketing programs to make you more effective, but I gave you factual information. That’s real data, and it’s power like you can’t believe. What business owner wouldn’t want to stick around and hear free information about that (You are giving that info away for free!)? And you’re positioning yourself as an expert on how you can help them fix common marketing problems.
Before you sell anything, you set up criteria on what would be important to your audience, something that they couldn’t logically say no to. It should be full of interesting and good data that is of value to your prospects, things that would make them say, ‘Holy Crap!’ or, ‘I didn’t know that.’ ‘Hmm that’s interesting!’
Of course, you can’t just say you’re an expert; you actually have to know what you’re talking about, so it requires research. You can outsource it or have an assistant gather it, but you still have to take the time to read it, understand it, and know it. If you can articulate it thoroughly, understandably, and passionately, guess what? As far as anybody knows, you’re an expert in that! Time and experience strengthens that.
If done properly and with integrity, it can be powerful, but in general so called “experts” are also overrated. In his book “Expert Political Judgment—How Good is It?” Philip Tetlock collected over 80,000 forecasts over a 20-year study of almost 300 political experts whom he asked a range of questions: would there be a non-violent end to apartheid in South Africa? Would the U.S. go to war in the Persian Gulf? The experts were bad at predicting, nor did specializing in a field improve their answers. Journalists and average people did about as well as the experts when it came to predicting the future.
That doesn’t negate the impact of positioning yourself as an expert. It just means you can be as much of an expert as anybody else. It’s about presenting facts passionately and undeniably. In business, market data or market trends are just as, if not more important, than knowledge in a particular area.
Any success we’ve found in business or in a career was because for whatever level we are at, we present ourselves as a specialist of sorts. How have you been able to position yourself as an expert or higher-quality professional? What impact did that have on your trajectory? The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!!!
When businesses go down these days, you hear the same thing over and over again: “It’s the economy. Times are tough. It’s hard to get people to spend money or take risks.”
Yeah, everyone is going to be more cautious about how they invest or spend their money in a tough economic downswing. But what’s the main function of any kind of business at any time? Getting people to buy your product or service. Simple, yes or yes? But if a business today isn’t good at attracting people to buy what they’re offering, it will lose profitability and go down, but the economy gets blamed.
Here’s the truth: being a successful businessperson has nothing to do with the economy. If you know what you’re doing, you’re going to be successful in any economy. And one of the keys to the success of a business is Effective Marketing.
This is one of the most crucial functions of business, but quite frankly most people suck at it! That’s why statistically, most businesses fail, especially when exposed to an economy like the one we’re in.
As a business owner, the main function of generating leads and getting as many of those people to buy your product as possible doesn’t ever change no matter what’s going on out there. An effective system of marketing will make or break if people will buy your product, and whether or not your business will be profitable.
Successful businesses have these four marketing techniques, no matter what the industry:
These four steps are necessary for any business at any time, and you also have to have strategies in place for each of the steps individually, like how to build your database (engine search, joint ventures, etc.), psychological leveraging (the potential pain by not going with your product), attractive packaging, and alleviating fears and hesitation.
It doesn’t matter what type of marketing you do—paper or electronic, people to people— you’ve got to have a system that works; a checklist of things you’d do whether the economy is good or bad.
You need something that makes it easier for you to get people to buy your product, and easier for the customer to want to buy it. With effective systems in place, it’s a win-win, and you’re giving yourself a greater chance that people spend their otherwise reluctant money on you. Of course, don’t forget to deliver on the promise.
Effective marketing makes the difference between a good business that prospers only when times are good, and a great business that endures in any economy.
Use your imagination to picture the truth of what it really means to sell yourself, to sell what you have to offer to as many people as possible.
You’re the “weirdo” on the street with the megaphone. That’s right, the one that people are aware of but usually pass by. Some can hear you from blocks away, but the message only gets clearer the closer they get to you. And the point is of course to get them closer to get them to do something.
Depending on the content (product) and the presentation (emotional impact), some people will stop and listen, especially if what you’re saying is interesting to them or has imminent, relevant meaning. Of those very few people who stop and listen, even fewer will actually engage you, give you a chance to address objections, or otherwise convince them to take some kind of action.
But everybody’s got somewhere to be, right? Who has time to stop and listen and engage? Plus, you’re kind of weird for putting yourself out there talking all passionately and excitedly into a megaphone anyway. Who does that?
Every business person does, and we have to. The key is to understand that at any given time, you have about 3% of people who are ready to buy something right now, whether it’s a car, a cell phone, furniture, you name it. That’s what drives all commerce.
About the same percentage of people are willing to listen because they’ve been thinking about buying something but aren’t necessarily committed to it. It’s not an immediate concern. If they did by, it would have to be because you gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
What does that mean for the vast majority of others passing you by? It means they’re indifferent, not thinking about it, or flat out uninterested.
But what if we could say something that would get 75% of people passing by to stop and listen, or more? What would make them stay? It always points back to adding information that is above and beyond a particular product or service you’re offering. You generalize, then specify.
If you’re a business coach pitching CEOs and managers to become your clients, who you are as a company should be last in your presentation. Yawn! But starting off with something like, “The 5 Most Dangerous Trends Facing Small Businesses Today” and no business owner can logically or emotionally say they wouldn’t be interested in that subject. It matters to all of them! They’re all business owners or involved in some way, and none of them want anything to do with danger in that business.
In reality, it’s actually much easier to keep prospects near because by the time they’ve reached you, you’ve already narrowed the audience anyway because you’ve got your identity and unique selling proposition nailed down, yes? It’s much easier to pitch to qualified leads than people who thought they were getting one thing but get something else because you weren’t clear on who you’re really trying to reach. So now it’s a simple matter of turning 3% of those who were ready to do something anyway into a much a deeper pool by giving away information that they’d all be interested in.
How do you champion your product or service? What’s your proverbial “megaphone” speech to your prospects? Share your ideas or even experiment. The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!!!
