There are three myths that do more, in my mind, to damage the entrepreneur’s understanding about business, what their business is, what it is capable of, and what compels and ethically influences customers, than anything else I can put my finger on.
Let me dispel them for you.
Myth Number One: Growing a business is hard, will take years before you can expect to reap worthwhile rewards, and is laden with risk.
You’ve heard everyone say this - including probably your accountant, your bank manager, investors, and even most of your business owner peers, so it must be correct, right?
WRONG.
You can create significant sales and profit breakthroughs in weeks or sometimes days - just the time it takes a sales letter to be mailed and responded to, or an advert to be published responded to, or a telephone campaign to go out and be responded to, or your sales people to go out in the field and to generate orders, or your web site to be promoted and responded to.
You can engineer large cash windfalls quicker than your bank manager can say “boo” - and certainly quicker than he or she can approve a loan, or turn it down. You can create up to tenfold business growth, or more, in only 12 to 18 months.
It’s on record. I’ve proven time and again that business doesn’t have to be hard — it is fun, easy and fulfilling, if you approach your customers or clients in a way they are internally screaming to be approached, not in a way we, as ‘all-knowing’ business owners think they should be approached.
What a concept! It’s very important you understand this.
I’ve proven that success and wealth doesn’t take years. Even a fledgling enterprise can generate a significant profit in it’s first year, and impressive wealth. You only need to understand and apply the strategies on this site, and there is not a reason on earth why you can’t grow and make profits in your first few months if you’re a fledgling enterprise, and no reason any even slightly established business can’t create significant and exponential profits each and every year.
I started one business - after I discovered these techniques - that made a £14,000 profit the very first month. My bank manager at the time advised me it would take three years before I’d see a penny. He was well intentioned but failed to understand the tremendous inherent profit power a business has when it’s recognised and tapped in the right way.
All the sales, profits and cash you want are there to be had today, this week, this month. Don’t be disillusioned by well intentioned but uninformed ‘experts.’ You only need to know what I am showing you here, and you’ll be able to set-off large streams of income, profit and cash-richness, very rapidly.
I’ve also helped thousands of business owners through my books, newsletters and seminars, as well as privately, substantially reduce or eliminate their risk. Understand this, business only harbours risk if you don’t know how to make every pound or dollar you invest generate a profit - return 150%, 200%, 500%, 1000% - or many thousands of percent.
The highest return I’ve managed so far is 63 times growth; each £1 we invested in marketing this particular product generated £63 profit margin. Not bad.
When you know how to make every pound or dollar perform like that, business is no longer a risk, it’s a powerful, compound interest vehicle that not only drives your enterprise way ahead of and above competitors, makes you an revered innovator and leader in your field, and makes you a wealthy individual. I’ll show you exactly how to achieve this.
Myth Number Two: It takes “luck” or “being-in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time” or “having access to continually higher overdrafts, loans or investments” to succeed in business.
Wrong again!
When you apply the specific marketing methods, strategies and techniques to any business - and you consistently apply them and follow them through - then your success in whatever business you’re in is predictable.
It doesn’t take luck. I don’t believe in luck. The luckiest people always seem to be those who are willing to embrace possibilities, and drive passionately and consistently to achieve their goals.
It doesn’t take “being in the right place at the right time”. If that was the case, how does a lowly little start-up business ever succeed?
How does a tiny back street shop in Brighton grow into one of the world’s greatest retail success stories, with over a thousand stores? Anita Roddick wasn’t in the right place at the right time when she started the Body Shop. She created the right place and the right time.
You are in the right place, right now. This is the right time, right now, wherever you are. All around you is opportunity, whether you recognise it at the moment, or you don’t. You will, I guarantee it. As you gain an understanding of the concepts and principles of wealth creation in business, you’ll look at every new day through new eyes. You’ll see opportunities open at every corner that other people walk right by.
It also doesn’t take borrowed money. In fact, having money behind you can be your biggest downfall.
Sure, you sometimes need capital investment. But if and as soon as you have your product or service in place, it doesn’t, in most cases, take monetary capital to grow and prosper - it takes marketing capital: the understanding and ability to put out compelling marketing approaches that evoke a direct response from the right ready-to-buy customers.
When you understand the ‘how’ of this, you can make any business self-fund. I’ll be showing you how to identify and tap into profit opportunities that exist in your business, how to engineer large cash windfalls to fund larger marketing campaigns, overhead, staff, equipment.
These opportunities exist in your business - virtually every business - every day.
Myth Number Three: It’s difficult, or it takes a long time, to become wealthy in business.
Who taught us that it’s difficult to make money in business? The truth is, when you own a business, or you’re performance-paid within a business, you are one of the small 5 percent of people who are 100 times more likely to get rich and create a personal fortune.
How? Because you CONTROL your results. You literally control your wealth by the actions you take daily in enterprise, and in personal life.
It’s important to realise there is no shortage of money. Money will rush to you when you know how to attract customers or clients. It’s very much simpler than we are taught it is.
Yet, it’s a poverty consciousness that most entrepreneurs go into business laden with. It’s a burden.
It’s relatively easy to make a lot of money in business. It is not astrophysics. It’s simply following a logical series of core, powerful marketing approaches that attract customers to you, and make what you sell and the service you provide behind it appealing and favourably superior.
Let me repeat: When you apply the specific marketing strategies I’m going to show you, and you adapt them to your individual and particular business situation - again, I show you how on this site - you cannot fail to build an exciting, high-performing, high-profit business.
Some years ago I helped a client in the satellite TV installation business. He runs full page ads in three local papers. But the ads were making a terrible loss although when I looked at his operation, I realised his service was superior to most competing installers.
But he was struggling to make his ads pull sufficient response to pay for themselves.
It was interesting. He was convinced it was difficult to make money in the satellite business because everyone in the business was telling him it was too competitive.
But I showed him that all he had to do was approach his market differently. I created a one-page ad for him, using three techniques you’ll discover in the sessions on advertising.
The new ad increased his response by over eight hundred percent. Bear in mind, my advert was the same size: one page. It cost him not a penny more than his previous ad. But it generated eight times more business, which he was able to fulfil and bank within three weeks of the ad appearing each week.
A client in the computer and I.T. maintenance business asked me to help him win local school and government authority maintenance contracts. The PC industry is swamped with competition. Everyone was telling my client - including his bank manager and accountant - that it wasn’t easy to make money in the computer business anymore.
But, interestingly, I found almost everybody in the IT industry approaches prospective clients the same way. I took a different approach. I wrote a simple, 3-page sales letter which explained the tangible benefits and advantages you would receive if you took on this company to maintain your PC’s, printers and faxes.
I wrote it, not from a self-aggrandising, institutional perspective as most companies do - how long they’ve been established, how many clients they service, a non-benefit oriented list of services - no one cares or responds to that, but from the prospective customer’s position - what clear advantages the customer will gain, what benefits in speedy call-outs and repairs, the reason-why the engineers you get can be trusted to do a high quality job on your repair, how much time the customer will gain because of less machine down time because the repair is done so thoroughly, and so on.
We sent that letter to 2000 prospective schools and local authorities and it generated £301,000 pounds of new business inside 8 weeks. Last time I spoke to this client, this same letter has been the keystone approach that’s so far earned his company over a million pounds of additional business per year.
Is it difficult to make money in the IT business? No!! It’s also not difficult to make money in any business, including your business!
At my business-building seminars, I used to tell people to expect up to a tenfold growth over 12-18 months when they apply the strategies and principles I took them through.
These are the strategies I have now made freely available for you to profit from on LeaveThemInTheDust.com
Your success in business is just down to consistently applying a set of proven, tested, non-traditional strategies that have a high chance of producing the response you want, rather than institutional strategies that have a high chance of producing what you don’t want.
It sounds simplistic, but that’s the essence of what it takes to generate all the growth, and all the wealth, you can ever wish for.
Now, you might say, “If this is the case, why doesn’t every business owner do it?” Well, first, traditional business education doesn’t teach it. Second, I think that from the day we’re born, we’re taught as a race how to fail, not how to succeed.
Unless you had a very unusual upbringing, your world taught you that money is scarce, that it’s difficult to succeed, that it is luck or ruthlessness or chicanery that makes an individual rich.
We are taught to hold back from experimenting with life in case we fail. Our education system - although it is certainly responsible for some monumental achievements - it also teaches us to think within a set range of opinions and methods, instead of teaching us to be imaginative, lateral thinkers.
Most people think literally, not laterally. We are taught that it’s bad to fail. In fact, we are often punished for trying and failing as children and young adults!
Be Careful What Advice You Take
I tried to turn my business ability around by reading dozens of supposedly great books on how to achieve success. I observed how other businesses operated, I looked at how they advertise, how they treat customers, how they follow-up inquiries, what they promise, how they deliver.
It’s fascinating. I even once read in a Sunday paper that a famous retailer - I won’t mention their name but they are on every high street at the time - had instructed their sales staff to treat customers in a stand-offish manner. Apparently the younger generation that was the majority of their customers felt more comfortable with an unfriendly approach!
In desperation, I even tried that.
Guess what? It doesn’t work! Of course it doesn’t.
But this is just one example of the way 95 percent of businesses operate. The strategies they use - at the least - slam the breaks on their growth, and at worst, heads them towards the bankruptcy courts.
Following their lead certainly didn’t help my business in the early 1980’s. The point is, these three Myths - well meaning as people intend them to be - are just that: MYTHS. They have no grounding in fact.
Joe Karbo wrote in the classic ad for his book, The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches, “What I’m saying is probably contrary to what you’ve heard from your friends, your family, your teachers and maybe everyone else you know. I can only ask you one question? How many of them are millionaires?”
The lesson? Take the advice only of people who have achieved success themselves. Model them, not all the well-intention but grossly misinformed general array of people don’t know what they’re talking about.
That’s what I did. And I found out I had been approaching my business almost totally from the wrong perspective.
I discovered there are TEN overriding attributes every highly successful, self-made business owner has.
Here they are.
Number One, you must have tenacity. You must NEVER give up under any circumstances, no matter what anyone says. Keep your mind and your actions laser-focused on the result you want to achieve, and you’ll achieve it. Tenacity is very powerful.
After the war, Winston Churchill made what became a famous speech to a University graduation assembly. After he was introduced, the entire audience of several hundred students was very still, waiting for the great man to speak. He stood up, walked to the microphone, spoke nine words, and sat down again. That was his speech.
At first, everyone was completely silent. Then, when they realised what great wisdom had just been imparted to them, they started applauding rapturously and didn’t stop for a full 10 minutes. And I bet not one person there has ever forgotten Mr Churchill’s nine great words.
He said, “Never, never, never, never, never, never, never give up.” And he sat down again.
The trait of never giving up is one of the major factors in every successful person’s make up.
Number Two, realise that approaching customers and persuading them to buy is not complicated or high tech.
The biggest problem with what I do is that people think I am going to introduce them to dozens of profound, hi tech, sophisticated solutions to growing a business.
But when you test different approaches, and you track and analyse what makes a customer respond to a sales offer - or not respond - you discover people are attracted to your product, service or cure in greatest numbers when you use a direct, informative, educational, advisory, and newsworthy approach.
Also, people like buying from people, people they can trust, people who advise them and guide them towards making a wise buying decision.
People dislike like buying from faceless ‘companies,’ or high-tech approaches, or glitz.
Customers all over the globe are silently desiring to be informed of the benefits, advantages, and reasons-why your product or service is their best choice. Self-aggrandising, institutional selling messages - the type you see filling the pages in every publication, and the airwaves of every commercial radio and TV station, and the web do very little or nothing to compel, motivate and persuade a customer to buy or respond in some way.
Treat people intelligently, apply direct response selling approaches and strategies, and you attract customers to your business or practice in droves.
I’m not going to give you high tech or grand, expensive marketing approaches. I would do if they worked, but they don’t. It is the fundamental, core approaches of customer influence and response that produce reliable, large results.
Think about it. When a pilot flies a plane, he or she has learned the strategies of safe flying. He’s learned how to taxi, accelerate down the runway, and take off. He’s learned how to reach a predetermined altitude, how to gain or lose altitude as necessary during the flight, how to navigate to a predetermined destination, how to descend, find the runway, land, and come safely to a stop.
Any pilot will tell you that if you adopt those same strategies, and you practice them, and keep practicing them until they become second nature, you’ll fly a plane successfully.
Building your business is no different. Adopt fundamental growth strategies, and your business will fly. If you want to do acrobatics for your own amusement and pleasure, that’s fine. But you’ll spend a lot of money doing it, and discover not many passengers will fly with you!
The message is this: focus your time, effort AND budget on the core, direct-response strategies, and concentrate on implementing and exploiting each one to its greatest height, before moving onto the next.
That’s how the greatest successes are achieved and the great riches are amassed.
Number Three, realise that your business - the very first day you launched it - and as it is today - is inherently capable of achieving outstanding success, the highest level of success you want for it.
Your business or professional practice inherently possesses the faculty - whether you know it or not - to attract not only as many customers or clients as you can handle, and attract them rapidly, constantly, and profitably, but also to attract the type of customer or client you ideally want, and the type of transaction you ideally want.
Your business is always pregnant with unlimited opportunities, potential and result. What you allow it to achieve is the component that determines what it does achieve.
Your business itself is an un-tethered money-making machine.
It’s like your ability to eat. You have the ability to take-in, chew, swallow, and digest food. You also have the choice to eat nutritiously beneficial food, or junk.
If you choose to eat junk, or you choose to stop eating completely and starve to death, that’s up to you. It doesn’t change your body’s ability to ingest and digest nutritious foods. If you feed your body the nutrients it needs, and if you give it exercise, it will perform at peak state.
Same with your business. The day it was born, your business had - and still does have, and always will - the inherent ability to generate a high level of profits and wealth. Feed it junk marketing, and it will struggle, and eventually die. Feed it nutritious marketing - which is direct-response marketing - and there is no limit amass from it.
A man in the property investment business approached me. He’d identified an opportunity in the housing and mortgage market which almost anybody with five to 10 thousand pounds or more could invest in, and fairly rapidly and safely build substantial capital growth.
As long as investors were willing to remain in the market long term, this investment was impressively secure and growth-effective.
But he was struggling to sell enough investors into his programme. One of the problems, he thought, was competing against larger institutions with greater marketing muscle, plus, he though, the investor perception that larger institutions are a safer place to put investment.
He was frustrated. What he didn’t realise is that his business - as long as he had a beneficial product, which he did - had the inherent ability to succeed. He just needed to feed it a more effective mind set and marketing approach.
I suggested he adopt three simple marketing approaches that would, first, more effectively grab the attention of his target investors; second, give him a powerful and distinct advantage over the approaches his competitors were employing, and third, make a proposal potential investors couldn’t resist.
Then I showed him how to target and focus on the most ready-to-commit investors, people predisposed to his type and level of investment.
Imagine if you could attract a majority of customers who are favourably predisposed to what you sell? Would it make your life easier? Would your sales increase in days? You bet! You absolutely can and should always market your product or service to people who are ready to buy what you sell. Again, it’s simple, but not one in a hundred businesses understand it.
Just two years after this client adopted my strategies his company had grown three fold, and then went on to become one of the largest, leading companies in this niche.
His business was - and is - inherently capable of achieving this result, and more. You only have to trigger that latent power in your business to also generate an avalanche of high-profit response.
Another client, a fairly well-known software company, asked if I could improve advertising response. This company was spending about half a million pounds a year on national newspaper and magazine advertising.
But is was unprofitable. They were acquiring new customers at an up-front loss, then clawing in profit over a 4 to 12 month period by selling additional software to those customers.
He said to me, “We’ve never been able to make money on our advertising. Is it possible?”
I wrote five new ads for him. Three were profitable but only marginally. One was better. The fifth made an upfront profit of over £21,000 pounds the very first time it ran.
Realise, it wasn’t the business or the product that caused his ads to be unprofitable. The potential to make money always was and always will be inherently there. It simply needed to be recognised and released.
Are you beginning to see the inherent potential in any business - in your business?
Another client, a chain of carpet cleaning businesses, attracted customers by distributing around a quarter of a million leaflets every week throughout the year.
Response to leaflets was profitable but the cost per sale was high. The leaflets generated ONE inquiry in 400, and my client managed a one in two conversion rate from inquiry to sale. Not bad. In other words, he had to distribute 800 leaflets to gain every ONE new client.
I rewrote and re-purposed his leaflet into a two-page letter explaining the benefits and advantages of having your carpets cleaned by this company. I call it a letter/flyer. That letter/flyer increased my client’s response by 600 percent.
Literally overnight, the same 800 pieces of paper - which were now letters, not glossy flyers - produced SIX new customers. As you can imagine, this made a profound difference to the size and growth rate of his business, and his profits.
Keep in mind, his cost of printing and delivering my letter in place of his flyer was almost identical. But response increased six times.
It doesn’t matter what business, service, or industry you’re in. It doesn’t matter whether your enterprise is a fledgling start-up or an established corporation.
Every business - just by the mere fact that it exists - has unlimited potential to grow and prosper and become a roaring success, or leader in its field.
Number Four, you must believe in yourself. Believe that you CAN. No matter what anyone says, no matter what the world around you demonstrates, you must know - deep down in the very core of your being - that you are worthy, that you deserve to succeed, and that you can create the highest levels of success you truly desire to create.
There’s no one out there that deserves it more - or less - than you.
Are successful people born? I don’t believe it. Must you ‘have it’ in order to succeed?
You already ‘have it’ if you desire it with a passion and are willing to take the action required to achieve it. It’s not a mystery.
Every self-made, highly successful, rich individual I know created his or her success. No one’s born with more ability to succeed than another. I believe, and have seen, that everyone is born with unlimited potential to succeed.
The seed of greatness is in you. And it is in you in your own way, your uniqueness. All you need to do is recognise that that is true. Conceive your business to be a success, believe you can create that success, and you’ll achieve it.
If you can conceive a thing, and you can believe it, then you can achieve it.
I have a wonderful, very charming, very humble client who is one of the most determined people I know. She’s going to be very successful, and she’s on her way now.
But when she first came to us she had virtually nothing other than a rapidly sinking business. She told me she was struggling against a belief she didn’t have what it takes to break-through the barrier of failure and become successful.
Why was this her belief system?
One, she believed that because she had no formal education she was at a disadvantage. Two, she’d been brought up in a culture that viewed a woman’s role to be secondary. She was vilified for wanting to step out on her own, to try to better herself, to try to succeed.
In case you have any doubt, let me assure you it doesn’t matter whether you’re ‘formerly educated’, or you left school at 16 with nothing to your name. In fact, the majority of self-made millionaires have NO formal education. Formal education has nothing to do with self-made success.
What matters is your passion, your commitment to succeed, and an absolute, single-minded focus to persevere, to never give up on your dream, no matter what.
The world itself can’t stop you succeeding when every move you make is imbued with passion, commitment, and perseverance.
Nor does it matter whether you’ve been successful in the past, or you’ve experienced what society calls ‘failure’.
The past does not equal the future. What happened 10 years ago, or last year, or yesterday has no bearing on what you can achieve today, onwards. You can control your destiny from this moment on.
Nothing and no one can stop you succeeding, apart from you yourself.
Number Five: be a “possibility-thinker,” not an “impossibility-thinker”.
You must keep your mind open to possibilities. Most people don’t. Most business owners are myopic. They fail to see the myriad of possibilities all around them.
If a person is wedded to tradition and their first thoughts when they are introduced to a new strategy or approach is, “That might work for some businesses but I can’t see how it will work in my business”… well, frankly, they are going to struggle no matter what knowledge they have available to them.
See possibilities. When at first it might seem that a strategy or technique or method I am revealing doesn’t fit your particular business, think, “How can I take this concept, and adapt it to my particular situation?”
Realise, every technique I’m giving you is universal. What I’m teaching you is not wedded to any particular industry or business type. These strategies work because they influence human response. Human nature is human nature whether you’re in England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, America, Germany, Italy, France or Fiji. I’ve found geography makes very little if any difference when you understand core human nature, and you ethically pamper to it.
So, don’t shut the door on possibilities. Be a continual possibility-thinker. Look for the possible in everything. Keep your eyes and your mind peeled for opportunities, they are everywhere you look.
Number Six: be committed to succeed. Not determined, but a solid, no-questions, cast iron commitment to start from wherever you are at this moment, and step-by-step build your businesses or practice day by day, week by week, and the rest of your life!
What’s the difference between determination and commitment?
Determination doesn’t work! Commitment never fails. It’s sad, there are literally thousands of hard working, determined business-owners headed for the bankruptcy courts as we speak. The courts have to work overtime to keep up with it.
No, determination isn’t a guarantee of achievement. I was as determined as hell. I was the most determined person you’ve ever met. I got up early, worked harder than everyone else, and went to bed later than everyone else. Yet my early businesses failed!
Why? Because being determined gives you an escape route. For instance, if you’re only determined to go jogging every day, then one day it’s cold and wet outside, you look out of the window and say, “I’m determined to keep fit but … I’ll go tomorrow when the weather’s better. It won’t make that much difference.”
Yes, it will make a difference! Daily exercise is a critical health strategy. Simply, if you miss days you are not building and maintaining optimum health.
If you commit to jogging every day then nothing will stop you other than a major catastrophe. Absolute, total commitment means you will go jogging no matter what the weather is like, no matter what else you’re committed to that day, you’ll do it.
It’s a small shift in attitude, but a giant leap in results.
Make an absolute commitment - right now - to succeed in your chosen business or profession, no matter what.
Number Seven, be passionate! Passion for your product or service and your business will result in attracting more customers than any manufactured, glitzy, expensive advertising campaign.
In 1977, Robert Shnayerson, who was former editor of three of the world’s best magazines –Time, Harper’s, and Life - was offered editorship of a new magazine called “QUEST/77.”
The idea behind the magazine was to create upbeat editorial content for a change. It was to be an elegantly produced publication that dealt with excellence, achievement, aspiration, but not in a “sappy” way.
After 20 years of downbeat, BAD news reporting, Robert Shnayerson was ready for a change. So QUEST/77 was launched. To acquire subscribers, several supposedly world-class copywriters were brought in. In Shnayerson’s eyes, though, their efforts failed to capture what QUEST/77 was all about.
So he took a shot at writing his own subscription sales letter. He sat down at his old Remington typewriter and started to write from the heart.
The result was a six-page letter that pulled in more than six hundred thousand subscribers over four years, and continually beat the best efforts by professional copywriters.
What was his secret? Yes, PASSION!
When he was asked about it, he said something which contains the seed of greatness for every business owner, every director, every manager, and every team leader, and for that matter, every employee.
He said, “I believe if you’re going to be the editor of a new magazine, you, the editor, must try to write your own direct-mail letter, even if you’re a terrible writer.”
He went on, “You have to think through what this magazine is, what the benefits are to the subscriber, and then write a 4- or 6-page letter with all the passion and intensity of your last will and testament, as though it were going to be carved in stone and signed with your blood.”
That is powerful, don’t you think? I suggest what Robert says is true of any business endeavour, not just the magazine business. I’m sure he’d agree.
Have passion for what you do. It’s infectious.
And if you don’t feel passionate about what you do, my advice is to get into a different business. You must have passion for what you do, whatever that is. Your love of it will evoke your interest, your best innovative thinking, your greatest attentive care for your customers.
Passion is a major success force.
Number Eight, you have to have marketing strategy. You can possess all the understanding of what your business is inherently capable of, all the possibility-thinking, commitment, and passion, but alone, they’re still not enough to guarantee you’ll succeed. You need marketing strategy. Marketing is what drives your business.
The reason I struggled in the early days was because I lacked marketing ability. I had everything else. But I made the fatal mistake of thinking marketing was a luxury big companies afford. Wrong!
Marketing is your life-blood, no matter how tiny, medium or huge your enterprise. Without marketing, your business will die.
One warning though. 95 percent of all marketing you see is an ineffectual, blatant waste of a businesses resources. Direct-response is the only truly accountable and effective form of marketing. Its merits are judged only by result, not razmataz.
I read over 400 books by successful entrepreneurs, marketing experts, and business leaders. I searched for the precise strategies and approaches that made them successful.
I scoured every book shop I passed both in the UK and in the States, for books by the founding fathers of marketing in the early 1900’s, the master marketers like Claude Hopkins, Maxwell Sackheim, Robert Collier, John Caples, Clyde Bedell, Lester Wunderman and others who helped their clients build, and built themselves, multi-million pound and dollar enterprises, often from scratch.
I read motivational and success classics like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Al Koran’s The Magic in Your Mind, Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People, Frank Bettger’s, How I Raised Myself From Failure To Success In Selling.
I learned the strategies of creating wealth and a personal fortune from timeless works like The Richest Man In Babylon by George Clason, and Prosperity by Charles Fillmore.
I listened to self-made millionaire business owners of today, most of whom started with virtually nothing and went on to build massive companies and substantial personal fortunes, business owners generous enough to share their philosophies of success, people like John Paul DeJoria, who started with $700 dollars and co-built Paul Mitchell Salon Haircare into a $750 million dollar-a-year company.
People like Bombaywala, who arrived in America as an immigrant with $30 dollars in his pocket — can you imagine arriving in a foreign country with just $30 dollars, and not knowing a sole? But Bombaywala turned his $30 into $121 MILLION DOLLARS per year restaurant chain.
People like Anita Roddick who opened a tiny back street shop in Brighton in 1976 and built her idea into over 1,000 Body Shops in 38 countries by the end of 1999.
I studied everything I could lay my hands on, listened to every successful person I could reach, about how to grow a substantial business.
What I discovered amazed me. It revolutionised my whole business thinking. My whole mindset shifted 180 degrees.
I realised that every one of these people were saying the same thing. They were saying that very little traditional marketing advice actually produces results. Interesting. I found that out the hard way!
When you get down to the real grit of conducting one-to-one business with a live customer, and knowing how to persuade a person to buy, most of the business information AND traditional education we receive is worth diddly-squat.
As I began to apply the strategies I learned, I started getting positive results almost overnight. My new business took off quickly and, as I told you, made £17,000 profit the first four weeks of trading. I found these approaches really worked, and when you look at them, they make sense, they are logical, they are scientific.
I was beginning to make so much money that a friend asked me to help run a promotions company she owned. Within weeks we increased sales four-fold, and won a hugely profitable promotional deal with a national tabloid newspaper against other promotion company’s that had years more experience.
Then I helped a business owner make a small fortune from his office supplies company. It wasn’t complicated. I created a series of new ads that I changed from typical, institutional type ads, into direct-response, informative ads, plus we created database marketing strategies and communicated with his customer base regularly. It grew his fledgling store into a million pound company inside 12 months.
Meanwhile, I was still expanding my own business. Life was busy and now, financially secure.
What fuelled all this new success, and what jettisoned me from struggle and being unsure of how to build a successful business - to making more money per month than I ever made in a year before - was not the particular product or service so much, although whatever you sell does have to offer a definite value of some sort, it was not the category of business or industry or profession, it was not whether the business was established or a tiny start-up - that doesn’t make any difference - it was not whether there was bank or venture funding. In fact, some of the businesses I worked with had very little money to start, in some cases just a few hundred or thousand pounds, no more.
My business turnaround and the wealth I have today is ALL due to learning that marketing your business with powerful direct-response strategies is the single greatest business-building and wealth-producing activity you can be involved in.
Let me say that again because it can change your fortune:
Marketing your business with powerful direct-response strategies is the single greatest business-building and wealth-producing activity you can be involved in.
Which brings us to Number Nine: You always have been, and you always will be, in total control of your business results.
Most business owners don’t realise they control their results. In fact, most ardently argue with me about this. But it’s a fact.
They assume outside circumstances control results. It’s not true. YOU control how your business performs, how many customers or clients you attract, how much money you make, how your market responds to you.
When I was in the newspaper business, I spent at least five days a month on the road, selling advertising space to retailers. It was the best way to keep in touch with what our customers wanted, the best way to help improve response to their ads, and the best way of finding out what consumers were responding to on the street.
But the most fascinating lesson I learned led me to realise that we all have total control of our results in business.
One day I was talking to the owner of a furniture store. He had a reasonably large store and he’d been there for years. He told me how difficult business was, how hardly any customers were buying, how trade wasn’t the same today as it had been five years ago. It was sad.
Nothing I could do convinced him he should advertise to attract more customers.
So I walked along the street to another furniture store, expecting the same gloom. But this man’s business was doing well. There were sales people on the floor busy with customers, there were customers paying for furniture, the store was alive. He welcomed the idea of advertising and booked a series of double page spreads there and then.
What was the difference between these two furniture store owners, just a matter of 50 metres apart in the same street?
The difference was the successful store owner knew that he was in charge of his results. He continually searched for ways to increase sales, make his showroom more attractive, get compelling offers out to prospective customers.
He was pro-active. I remember him saying to me, “Customers aren’t just going to come in on their own volition, I’ve got to tempt them in, and then treat them as if they’re the most special customer in the world.”
What a powerful concept!
The unsuccessful retailer, instead of being pro-active, was in-active. Circumstances, he thought, controlled him, rather than him controlling circumstances. It’s sad. I remember him to this day, just sitting there bemoaning the fact that his business was dead.
Really? In the same economy, same town, just 50 metres away, the successful store owner took pro-active measures to attract customers, and therefore controlled his circumstances. It fascinated me. If he didn’t receive the response he was looking for from any activity, he’d change his approach, and change it again, and change it again if he had to, until he did get the response he wanted.
He knew that HE - and nothing or no one else - controlled his business.
You have control over every marketing piece, over every sale, over the effectiveness of every field- or tele-sales approach, over the response from every ad, over the conversion from every sales lead, over the effectiveness of every lead-generating programme, over the results from every follow-up campaign,
AND, you have control over the highest performance and return from every staff member you employ, every hour you invest, every square foot of your premises, every item of equipment or machinery. YOU control it.
Number Ten: Engineer MORE out of every penny you invest, every effort you put in, and every hour you devote to your business.
How? Each element, and each person in your business - including your customers or clients - can either produce a poor return on your investment and time, a reasonable return, a fairly profitable return, a high return, or a VERY high return for the same investment, same effort, and same time.
By simply adopting a more effective strategy, or a more powerful technique, or a more compelling approach, you influence the results you receive from any activity, any person, or any overhead.
It’s like playing the piano. You can own the world’s most beautiful sounding, expensive piano. But if you don’t play it proficiently, it isn’t going to produce the most beautiful harmony.
If you’re a maestro, you’ll simply touch the keys and the piano will sing.
Same piano. Very different results.
I teach business owners to get geometrically greater results from what they’re already doing, often without investing a penny more.
Why settle for slow, incremental or sluggish growth, when you can optimize what you’re doing and accelerate your growth for the same investment of effort, the same investment of time, the same investment of staff, the same or less investment of cash, the same investment of overhead, machinery, equipment?
In my mind, settling for anything less than what you’re personally capable of achieving, and what your business or practice is capable of achieving - and both you and your business are unlimited if you’ll accept that - is a shameful waste.
My wife, Joanie, and I often say, “This is the LAST day like this one, ever. We’ll never have another Monday, or another Wednesday, or another Sunday like this again. We’ll never have this opportunity, right now, today, available ever again to enjoy and to make the most of.
Whatever day it is, it’s a unique day in your life, bursting with opportunity. So make the most of it. We had better squeeze the highest, the most fruitful, the most enjoyable experience from every day and every hour because when the sun goes down tonight, that’s it! IT’S TOO LATE by then to wish we’d achieved more, or wished we’d enjoyed it in a deeper way.
You’ve got to do it NOW. Now is the only time that is. Optimize your life, optimize your business performance, optimize your opportunities to impact people and improve their lives in some way through the particular items or service you sell. Get the most out of everything you do, and your life and your business will be a joyous adventure.
And I promise, if you practice the art of optimization, you’ll be richly rewarded with all the money, all the freedom of choice, and all the achievement I know you want from your life.
Here are the four values and purposes you need operational within your business in order to now start you on the road to quantum growth:
One, you must have the intention to provide your customers or clients with the greatest value you can possibly provide. I know yours is not, but if a business owner’s attitude is to rip customers off, or to be self-focused rather than customer-focused, and really only care about getting people’s money, then that business is going to die, I guarantee it. Always provide value.
A business owner asked me at one of my seminars, “What is the surest way of getting rich in business?” I told him, “The surest way I’ve ever found of becoming a millionaire is to give greater value.”
An experience Joanie and I had demonstrates what happens if a business doesn’t give value. Our TV developed a purple haze across the top of the screen, so I looked in the Yellow Pages and called a local shop advertising free home call-outs. We booked an engineer to come to the house at 2:15pm on a Tuesday.
2:15 arrived, then 2:30, then 3:00, and no one turned up. We wondered if he left a phone message. Sure enough, there was a message we’d missed. It said, “Mr and Mrs Gorman, this is the TV repair man, you’re obviously not at home, I can’t wait around, so I’m afraid I’m heading back to the shop. Please call to re-book your appointment.”
Interesting!!! We were at home all the time!!! So I called the shop and asked to speak to the owner. It turned out the guy who left the message WAS the owner. So I asked him what happened? Why didn’t he come to the house as we’d arranged?
You know what he said? “It’s my policy to call before I come, to make sure people are home. You didn’t answer the phone so you obviously weren’t home.”
Really? Hadn’t he considered we might be on the phone and that’s why he got the answer machine? He didn’t even bother to try calling again a few minutes later. And we had assured the shop we were going to be home at that time, and that it was our only available day for awhile.
In the end, he was arguing with me and told me that if I didn’t like it, I could forget it.
Well, I don’t have to tell you that shop didn’t get our business, never WILL get our business, will never, obviously, be recommend to our neighbours and friends, and the man with the no-care attitude is the only loser. There are plenty of other TV repair shops who are keen for the business.
You MUST have an intention to give your customer or client the greatest possible value. How do you know what ‘value’ is? One way is just to ask yourself, “How would you like to be treated in this situation? What type of service would you appreciate receiving? What level of attention and promise would you value?”
In 99 times out of a hundred what you would value is also what your customers or clients will value.
Is it really worth the time, effort and sometimes expense to provide the highest level of value possible? It is. It’ll repay you 10 times more than you put in.
Two, you must understand, and market with, direct-response strategies. You must inform, educate and provide news relating to the benefit, advantage, and result your product or service provides.
Most business owners think they’ve got to be a slick sales organisation. But people dislike being sold to. Think about it. You prefer to be informed, to be educated, to be given news that’ll help you make a wise buying decision, don’t you. Most businesses don’t understand that. Therefore, they fail to attract the highest numbers of buyers. For every pound they invest in their business, they get only £1.05p, or £1.10p or £1.15p maximum in return. It’s incremental, very ineffectual growth.
You should do the opposite. You’ll discover very powerful ways of doing that throughout this programme.
Three, You must have the desire to grow, the burning desire succeed, and be the best you possibly can be. Realise, you are your business. The only person who can cause your business to succeed, or fail, is YOU!
If you don’t care much, if you’re happy to plod along, if your comfort zone is earning enough to just get by, well, guess what? You’re not going to make it! No amount of reading, listening to audio cassettes, attending seminars, even receiving private consulting help is going to do it.
You must have the desire, the passion, the fire inside to drive yourself forward. You must continually reach for higher results, higher goals.
I know YOU do have these qualities. But if you happen to know anyone very close to you(!) who could do with a motivational push occasionally, a little firing up and pushing forward, I urge you to help that person receive it! It’s worth the effort. You just need to break-through a barrier that’s nearer than you can ever realise, and you’ll achieve every dream of achievement you invested in your business.
Okay, there you have them, the ten attributes you need to create as much success and as much wealth as you desire from business.
The most important thing for you to realise now is that your business is fertile land, anxious to be planted, nurtured and harvested. Not ‘might’ be, or ‘can’ be, or ‘lucky’ to be. It IS.
Keep in mind, Any worthwhile product or service is limited only by the restrictions in the mind of the owner. Like the two furniture store owners, one couldn’t see a way out of his dilemma; the other couldn’t see a way he could fail to attract a continual stream of profitable customers.
Here’s A Quick Review
One, Never give up on your dream, under any circumstances. Develop the tenacity to keep driving through, no matter what.
Two, Market your business with proven, fundamental approaches, not look for high tech or complicated methods. They don’t work. The fundamentals generate far higher results.
Three, Realise your business is inherently capable of achieving the highest level results. Nothing can stop it - only you. And I know you are ready for outstanding growth.
Four, Believe in yourself. Believe you have the ability to succeed to the highest level.
You know, the most fascinating thing about highly successful business owners, is that they are just like you and me. 99 times in a hundred you’d never tell the millionaire from the ordinary person, outside of his or her trappings of wealth. Why? Because they are ordinary people. All they’ve done is believe they can achieve, then focus all their efforts on reaching their goal.
You can absolutely do the same.
Five, Be a possibility-thinker. Change your paradigm from “this is impossible” or “this can’t be done in my business” - to “How can I apply this strategy I learned today or this approach or twist I learned today, to my business.”
Six, Don’t be determined to succeed, COMMIT to achieving the growth you want, commit to every step in this programme, commit to taking daily action towards building your business and creating the quantum growth the strategies I’m explaining result in.
Seven, Put passion into everything you do. Remember what Robert Shnayerson said, “Put into your business all the passion and intensity of your last will and testament, as though it were going to be carved in stone and signed with your blood.”
Eight, Understand that marketing your business is the lifeblood of your success. Become a master marketer.
Nine, Realise you always have been, and you always will be, in total control of your business results.
Ten, Aim to optimize every penny you invest, every effort you put in, every hour you devote. Optimize the result you garner from every staff member, every square foot of your premises, every piece of equipment you use. Any waste, under-use, or misuse of any element in your business is costing you money or opportunity.