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Category Archives: Millionaire Mind

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Target Surfing

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businessman using tablet in ocean

To know the importance of having a website for your business is one thing. Knowing the purpose behind having a Web presence is a whole other thing.

If your business is already up and running, you’ll have to cater your strategies to what you already have in place, particularly in terms of your pre-existing customer base. That means getting them to fill out cards in your physical business, or otherwise enticing them to your website with special offers. Then follow-up emails. We’re still talking basic marketing and backend selling–making money on those who are the easiest to sell to–those you’ve sold to before.

But if you’re still unsure of what kind of business you’d like to create, take a good, long look at creating an online business.

What works in your favor is that the easiest way to make money online is to focus on a specific market, find a product that they want, and give it to them. Searching for your best prospects online isn’t that much different than offline.

How do you do this? The same way you look for anything else online: surf. Just type it in–for example, maybe you have a passion for scuba diving that you’d like to turn into a business. You find all the news groups, forums, and websites regarding scuba diving. Is there anything that they’re talking about a lot? Any patterns where something is wanted but not easy to find?

That’s how you find your target market. It may take you a day, a week, a month, maybe longer. It depends on what your market is and what you’re trying to find, but whatever the niche, there’s a large enough market that’s relatively easy to get to. You know where they are, and after some research you’ll know that they want something specifically. All the gamers are hanging out in one market. All the sports nuts are hanging out in one market. All the people that are interested in holistic medicine are hanging out in one market. All the doctors are hanging out in one market. It’s easier to get people than you might think.

Try getting those people through the local newspaper. If 20,000 people view your ad (theoretically), you’d be doing great to get 10 of them to show interest. Online, you can go right to where all of your target market hangs out. Your target market is sitting right in front of you.

There are tons of people who know enough about the money-making potential of the Web and ask, "So what do I sell online? What’s going to be a hot seller?" It’s the most common and most fatal mistake.

You never decide on the product. You find an easy, targetable market, find out what they want, and you give it to them. It’s the easiest method in the world. You have an instantaneously successful business. It is a no-brainer. It doesn’t take any smarts to figure that out.

Anybody out there discovered the power of doing business online recently (I know you’re there)? What did you find frustrating, or powerful, or even profound? Did you incorporate a Web presence into an existing business? What have been your greatest learnings? We want to hear from you!!!

https://bit.ly/UltimateInternetBootcamp

https://bit.ly/ClickAndBeFree

Cruise Control Over Your Business

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stocks above busnessman

It’s a virtual road-trip toward business success, the final destination–whatever your next venture will be, because you’re done with that last one. It’s running on its own, without you.

Until then, cruise control helps. Without cruise control, long road trips would be more tiring for the driver and for those of us with lead-foot, a lot more speeding tickets.

All you need is a dashboard that has the exact read-outs you need to control your business. You pick your top 5 – 10 critical success factors and come up with a system on how you’re going to measure them. If you can’t think of five, pick that top factor.

If you’re measuring lead generation, for example, how many leads are coming in? You gauge leads per week and per month, at least. Now dig deeper. How many leads from each lead source? How much does each lead cost per source? Is one source cheaper and bringing more return than another? When you have benchmarks–like how much you’re willing to pay for each lead–you’ve got numbers right in front of you that tell you how many leads come in and what you pay for them. What do you have?

You have control over your business.

Consistency, predictability, tracking–systems that can be operated and understood by practically anyone. When you can duplicate that, you’re on cruise control.

Now take 15 of the most important things you want to track. It might be lead generation. It might be customer satisfaction. It might be cash flow management. If you have a business with labor, labor productivity is a good thing to measure. And then the question you want to ask is what’s going to enable you to measure whether or not you are being successful at that?

All you do is establish a handful of gauges, tools, or metrics–whatever you want to call them– for whether or not you’re executing that critical factor properly.

We test to make sure it works. We test it backward and forward. You want to make sure you can get to the benchmarks you set from the steps in your system. The good news about systems is they don’t require that much training. A good system is where you put that system in someone’s hands and they know how to use it.

It can be a simple narrative to describe–for people who like words–how this system works. You do flow charts for people who are the linear and visual thinkers in your business. It’s as simple as a check-sheet. Someone else could operate it because all they need to do is go down the list: I did this, check; I did this; check. If you do every step on this check sheet, at the end, you’ve got a system. That simple!

Note, though, that it’s not that easy. There’s work required to put systems into practice. Not torturous work; it can be a lot of fun as you refine them. Intuition and creativity can play into this thing, from the artist to the architect. You are the person qualified because you know it inside out. You know all the parts of it. You know what’s involved. Your business is you, and you are in control!

What do you think Millionaire Mind community? We want to hear from you!

Staying On Track

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people standing on puzzle pieces

Your business is you. It’s you creating something that wasn’t there before; with material results from your intentions, your energy, your essence, whatever it may happen to be at that time. The science of growing it simply means having prepared leadership, development, producers, and administration. As the process evolves, so do your systems for solving frustrations and focusing on those critical factors that matter most.

This is your rich-making vehicle. Like any car, you’ve got a gas gauge, a speedometer, oil gauge–all the key things you need to know quickly and conveniently if this thing is running properly. You need the same things in your business.

You need the ability to track what’s important. There’s what is quantifiable and easy to count–like sales–but there are also subjective things where opinions are measured, when the ‘qualifiable’ becomes quantifiable.

One issue that’s gained tons of traction over the last couple of years is going green–especially in businesses–from "cloud" computing to energy consumption’s impact on the bottom line.

Some people couldn’t care less about the plight of the pelicans in an endangered eco-system (a shame, for sure), but when you can quantify how switching over to energy-efficient equipment can save thousands of dollars, politics goes out the window. Saving the planet is on the same track as the bottom-line.

Also consider, though, the marketing appeal of being able to sincerely tell your market you support green initiatives. Again, the subjective can become countable in response rates.

Put a scale in and it. Customer satisfaction; employee satisfaction–you measure benchmarks, time frames, the ranges you’d like to be in, or what high/low thresholds would signify danger-zones. They sound complicated, but they’re really not.

How many sales calls and closes per hour would you like to see? You look at what your sales are per month and compare. Too low? Too high (maybe there’s something else not being considered if it’s too good to be true)?

You want the salesperson that follows a script, makes the calls and closes the ratio that they should be closing. That can be copied, duplicated, and most importantly, tracked. If the oil pressure in your vehicle is too high, you’ve got a problem. If it’s too low, you’ve also got a problem. You want to be in between, yes? What are your operating ranges for your critical success factors?

It might be that you’re willing to spend a certain amount of money per employee depending on their role in your business’ structure. If you’re paying your marketing guy $30,000 more than you really intended, there isn’t going to be much speculation on why your profits aren’t where you want them to be. Like getting a speeding ticket, you had this gauge that you weren’t paying attention to and you exceeded the operating range.

There are things you can count on and physically look at; things you can measure; and real accurate data that you can track–not guess. They’re documented. It could be in a manual you pass out to all employees, or one that you’ve got linked up online.

It takes consistency, predictability, and tracking–systems that can be operated by someone with a base-line level of skill. When you can duplicate that, you’re on track to financial freedom.

Putting a Face on Frustration

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When we get frustrated by our conditions, we inevitably end up becoming frustrated with ourselves. It can take us over and we tend to run with it. It can creep into every aspect of our lives, from how we relate to the people around us, to how it will impact our business.

If the frustration builds for too long, pretty soon we might forget altogether what the hell we were frustrated at in the first place, yes?

This happens in business all the time, especially when, in the early stages of the business, cash flow can fluctuate maddeningly, which then leads to all other kinds of frustrations from payroll to profits.

There’s an energy attached to frustration that sucks the life out of your business, and if you’re not dealing with this as a business owner, it’s only going to go downhill from there.

Moving back away from whatever the problem is, step one toward a solution is simply being able to classify your frustrations. Is it with your team? Your results? A process that doesn’t seem to flow efficiently?

Some typical early-stage business frustrations include time (there never seems to be enough of it), feeling like you’re too bogged down with menial detail-work instead of bigger-picture tasks, or relying on people to get things done that don’t follow through. Just to name a few.

This is where the importance of systemizing your business processes plays a huge role. First you name your frustration, and then you develop the system to address it.

So if you’re having problems with freeing up your time yet ensuring that essential tasks still get done, then the real problem is the absence of a system that will hire the right people rather than you doing it all yourself. That way, not only is your time freed up, but the right people will also help micro-manage the way processes continue to develop and flow.

The good news is that frustrations within your business are fairly easy to identify and deal with, though they may take time. Inner frustrations, on the other hand, not only take more time and energy to deal with, but may also be harder to identify in the first place. You could be mad at yourself because you’ve done something poorly for so long, and you get frustrated about not seeming able to turn the corner. Or worse, you externalize that frustration toward everybody else—the customers, the suppliers, the vendors, the client; everybody but yourself.

We know the power of blueprints, so we won’t address that here.

When it comes to outer frustrations that we can identify, though, the questions are much simpler. What’s my frustration? What’s the gap in the system? What system is missing altogether?
If your frustrations begin with ‘I’, it’s about you. It’s inner directed. If it’s about ‘them’ or ‘those people’ or ‘those lousy clients’ or ‘those suppliers’ or ‘that lousy machinery’ or ‘that way’ of doing something, it can then be addressed systematically and objectively.

What do you think? Have you experienced similar or even different kinds of frustrations, and how did you address them? Did systemizing play a role? The Millionaire Mind Community wants to hear from you!

Register for a Millionaire Mind Intensive near you HERE

How to Be Good and Rich At the Same Time

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moneykeysmallWhat’s the root of all evil? Money, right? Wrong!

 

You’d be amazed how many people think being rich will make their lives worse, like they won’t be judged for who they are but for their money. So even though they want to be rich, they shirk it at the same time.

 

This subtle yet profound fear keeps people from the truth: it’s good to be rich! Not just for the lifestyle, but because in the end, being rich makes us into better people.

 

I can hear someone screaming, “What about the rich jerk who doesn’t tip even though the service was great? How’s money made him a better person?” Here’s a clue: whoever you are, money will make you more of that. If you are a kind, generous person who attracted like-minded people before being rich, you’ll continue to do so after because now you’ll be able to be even more generous on a larger scale.

 

It’s our duty to become rich if we can. We have an obligation to grow to our greatest potential, developing the character that can achieve and care about other people at the same time. This is the growth that will ultimately make us into better people.

 

So what is the root of all evil? It’s not stacks of paper. Fear is at the root of our thoughts that tell us becoming rich will make things worse and take us away from being loved, accepted, and well-thought of.

 

If we don’t accept that being rich can be a good thing for ourselves and for others, fear and doubt creates envy. Envy says, “I can’t have that, and I resent those that do.” Acceptance of what you really want says, “I can have that, and I will be a better person because of it.”

 

So instead of secretly despising rich people, we should affirm them, even if they’re frickin jerks. We’re not affirming who they are as people—we’re affirming the idea that it’s okay to be rich. You can make a choice not to be selfish, arrogant, and thoughtless. Fear and envy negate thoughts of wealth and result in feelings and actions that take you away from it, even when you’re not aware of it.

 

Here’s a simple exercise in overcoming fear. Think of something that you’ve always wanted to do but never got around to, and just do it (Don’t break any laws, though!). Even if you end up not wanting to do it again, at least you know instead of just holding back for whatever reason. You’ve broken through something, and other breakthroughs become easier. It’s the only way we’ll ever grow.

 

This is not just about being rich, although that is one of the goals. This is about growing ourselves to become bigger than the obstacles we’ll face in life. The more wonder we experience and challenges we face, the more we expand to be able to take in more; the good and the bad; the money and the problems that come with it. In the end, striving toward becoming rich can only serve you, and if you choose it, serve others as well. How’s that a bad thing?

 

 

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