Brian Tracy Business: URGENT: Do Not Launch Your Startup Without This Knowledge!
Summary
TLDRThe speaker emphasizes that the primary reason for business success is focusing on high-impact activities and the primary reason for failure is focusing on low-impact ones. They discuss the importance of thinking, especially slow thinking for major decisions, and the need for focus. The speech covers key elements of business success, including great leadership, a high-quality product or service, a solid business and marketing plan, and excellent customer service. The importance of learning from failure and continuously improving is also highlighted.
Takeaways
- 😀 People are the number one reason for both success and failure. Focusing on things with high potential consequences leads to success, while focusing on things with low or no potential consequences leads to failure.
- 😀 Most of what is taught in entrepreneurship faculties is considered nonsense, as many successful businesses start without a business plan.
- 😀 Focus is the most important requirement for success, as highlighted by successful individuals like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.
- 😀 The ability to focus can lead to doubling income and time off within 12 months, as demonstrated by the speaker's Focal Point Program.
- 😀 Slow thinking is crucial for making important decisions, as it allows for thorough consideration of potential consequences.
- 😀 Zero-based thinking involves evaluating current actions and deciding whether they would be started again knowing what is known now. This can help eliminate stress and unproductive activities.
- 😀 The principle of constraints suggests that identifying and addressing limiting factors within oneself and one's business can lead to significant improvements.
- 😀 Having a great product or service is key to business success. Investing in improving product quality can lead to increased customer satisfaction and business growth.
- 😀 Effective marketing and sales plans are essential for attracting and converting customers. A professional sales process can significantly increase sales and profitability.
- 😀 Providing excellent customer service ensures repeat business and positive word-of-mouth, which are crucial for sustained business success.
Q & A
What is the number one reason for success according to the transcript?
-The number one reason for success is focusing on things that have high potential consequences.
What does the transcript suggest is the primary cause of failure?
-The primary cause of failure is focusing on things that have low or no potential consequences.
What does the transcript imply about the effectiveness of business plans in entrepreneurship?
-The transcript implies that business plans are often overemphasized in entrepreneurship education, with 49 out of 50 businesses starting without a business plan, including some of the most successful ones.
What is the importance of 'focus' in achieving success as mentioned in the transcript?
-Focus is considered the most important requirement for success, as emphasized by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Bill Gates Senior in the transcript.
Outlines
🧐 The Importance of Focus and Consequences in Entrepreneurship
The speaker emphasizes the critical role of focus on high-consequence activities as a determinant of success in entrepreneurship. They discuss the common misconceptions taught in universities about business planning and highlight the importance of learning from empirical studies on successful businesses. The speaker also underscores the value of understanding the right actions to build successful businesses, mentioning Carl Schramm's critique of entrepreneurship education and the importance of learning from practical experience rather than just theoretical knowledge.
🎯 The Power of Focus and the Concept of 'Thinking'
This paragraph delves into the concept of focus as a key to success, supported by a story involving Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. It stresses the importance of thinking as the most valuable work one can do, and how high-consequence thinking leads to success, while low-consequence activities often result in failure. The speaker shares insights on the impact of technology addiction on focus and decision-making, advocating for calmness in the face of crises to enable clear thinking.
🤔 The Distinction Between Fast and Slow Thinking
The speaker introduces Daniel Kahneman's concepts from 'Thinking Fast and Slow,' explaining the difference between fast, intuitive thinking and slow, deliberate thinking. They argue that entrepreneurs often mistakenly use fast thinking for important decisions that should require slow thinking. The importance of taking time to make high-stakes decisions is emphasized, as is the value of hiring slowly and thoughtfully to avoid costly mistakes.
💡 Zero-Based Thinking and Courageous Decision Making
The concept of zero-based thinking is presented as a method for evaluating life and business activities by asking if one would start a particular endeavor knowing what they know now. The speaker encourages having the courage to exit situations or relationships that are causing chronic stress or are not beneficial. This approach is positioned as a way to eliminate non-productive elements and move towards more effective actions.
🛠 Business Model Innovation and Embracing Change
The necessity for business model innovation is discussed, with the acknowledgment that current models may become obsolete. The speaker advises being open to new methods of generating profitability and to regularly evaluate business practices to ensure they remain effective. This includes considering whether current products, services, or team members would be re-initiated if one had to start over.
⚖️ The Principle of Constraints and Identifying Limiting Factors
The principle of constraints is introduced, which posits that there is always a limiting factor between a person and their goals. The speaker encourages identifying and addressing these constraints, especially those within oneself or one's business, to accelerate progress towards financial and personal success. The importance of self-discipline and learning key business skills is also highlighted.
🤝 The Seven 'Greats' of Business Success
The speaker outlines seven key components for business success: great leadership, a great product or service, a great business plan, a great marketing plan, a great sales plan, an obsession with numbers, and a great customer service plan. Each component is essential, and neglecting any one of them could lead to business failure. The focus is on learnability and the ability to improve in these areas to achieve high-profitability and sustainability.
📈 The Critical Role of Numbers in Business
The importance of understanding and focusing on key numbers in business is emphasized. The speaker discusses the need to identify the most important number that predicts business success and to track it diligently. They share a story of a company that turned around its financial situation by focusing on the net contribution margin, underscoring the transformative impact of understanding and acting on the right metrics.
🛑 The Pivotal Importance of Customer Service
The final paragraph underscores the importance of a great customer service experience as a bookend to the initial provision of a great product or service. The speaker argues that customer happiness should be the central focus of any business, as it leads to repeat business, rapid growth, and long-term success. They share examples of companies that have achieved significant success by prioritizing customer satisfaction.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Entrepreneurship
💡Focus
💡Empirical Studies
💡Business Plan
💡Learning Curve
💡Consequences
💡Thinking
💡Zero-Based Thinking
💡Constraints
💡WPO (Worst Possible Outcome)
💡Customer Service
Highlights
The number one reason for success is focusing on things with high potential consequences, while the opposite is true for failure.
The famous Drucker quote emphasizes that the worst use of time is working on something that doesn't need to be done at all.
Carl Schramm criticizes the focus on business plans in entrepreneurship education, stating that most successful businesses start without one.
The importance of understanding what actually makes a business successful is highlighted, as traditional teachings may not reflect real-world practices.
The concept of 'jumping the learning curve' to quickly reach a certain level of income is introduced.
Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Bill Gates Sr. all agree that focus is the most important quality for success.
The Focal Point Program's effectiveness in doubling income and time off by teaching focus is mentioned.
The story of a New Zealand entrepreneur turning his life around by learning to focus and identifying a profitable business niche.
The advice to 'focus and fail fast' as a strategy for quick learning and success is shared.
Thinking is identified as the most valuable and highest paid work that one can do.
The concept of consequences in time management is discussed, with a focus on high-consequence activities for success.
The dangers of technology obsession and its impact on the ability to focus are highlighted.
The importance of calmness in high-stress situations to enable clear thinking is emphasized.
Daniel Kahneman's 'Thinking Fast and Slow' is summarized, stressing the need for slow thinking in important decisions.
The principle of constraints is introduced, stating that there's always a limiting factor between you and your goals.
Zero-based thinking is presented as a tool for evaluating and eliminating activities that are no longer valuable.
The importance of business model innovation and the potential obsolescence of current models is discussed.
The concept of worst possible outcome (WPO) thinking as a strategy for worry reduction and proactive decision-making is introduced.
The seven 'greats' of business success are outlined: leadership, product, marketing, sales, numbers, business plan, and customer service.
The emphasis on customer happiness as the ultimate goal of business, leading to repeat business and referrals.
Transcripts
number one reason for success is people
focus on things that have high
potential consequences number one reason
for failure
is people focus on things that have low
or
no potential consequences exactly what
joe was saying earlier the
famous drucker quote very worst use of
time is to
work entangling on something that need
not be done at all i've dedicated my
life
to being a small and medium-sized
entrepreneur
and i've devoted the second half of my
life to helping other people to be
successful
small and medium-sized business owners
and carl schramm
of the marion and ewing coffin
foundation the preeminent foundation on
entrepreneurship
wrote an article in the wall street
journal two days ago and what he said
was that
there have been very few empirical
studies into
what actually makes an is a successful
business that most of what is taught in
the entrepreneurship
faculties of the universities is
nonsense in fact if you he said that
there's
something at 1 687 professors of
entrepreneurship
and their primary focus is drinking
their own bath water
and telling that entrepreneurs have to
have a business plan
and if you have a business plan you'll
be successful and they spent two years
in their
faculties teaching people how to set
business plans and 49 out of 50
businesses are started without a
business plan
including some of the most successful
businesses in the world today
so we are now just starting to learn
what we really
need to do to build successful
businesses and what joe is doing here is
absolutely marvelous because
it can save you years of hard work and
hundreds even thousands of hours
of hard work to understand how to do it
much much faster
to shortcut we say there's always a
learning curve in anything and what we
want to do is we're going to jump the
learning curve
we don't want to spend years and years
learning what we need to learn to reach
a certain level of income and so i've
majored now in the last few years
on doing seminars and talking and books
and articles and programs
for owners and would-be owners of small
and medium-sized businesses
now i've got 45 minutes so i'm going to
have to condense what sometimes i share
in seminars
for days but i understand you're some of
the smartest people
in the world so that you can take a lot
of information in a short period of time
is that true did anybody not understand
the question
so i'm going to try to bottom line
several of the concepts
one of the first concepts which i
thought was interesting was
a little story that was in the papers uh
recently
warren buffett who is one of the richest
men in the world and bill gates who is
the richest man in the world
and bill gates senior were at a dinner
party and the three of them are good
friends and they were talking
and uh a gentleman came up to him and
said you know i was
looking at you and you gentlemen are
very successful what would you say
is the most important quality of success
and all three
according to a bystander all three broke
off their conversation and turned and
simultaneously said
focus focus is the most important
requirement for success in our fast
moving world today if you can
focus you can succeed and if you cannot
you cannot
it's almost a black and white thing well
i thought that was interesting because
the way joe and i met is i put together
a program some years ago called
the focal point program which basically
brought in
business owners like yourselves and
taught them to focus and we
spent three years going through every
single aspect of life get 82 exercises
that dealt with family and business and
marketing and product and service and
competition and
positioning and it was focus focus focus
and my
offer which is not as good as joe's but
my offer was that you will double your
income
and double your time off within 12
months or there'll be no charge for this
program
and i never had to give a refund in fact
many people doubled and tripled their
income
within 30 days just by learning to focus
and just by thinking in terms of focus
so it's really really important i read
an article
about myself it was a very successful
entrepreneur in
new zealand and the article was sent to
me last week i'm reading this article
he said the turning point in his life
was when he went to a brian tracy
seminar
and learned how to focus he was broke he
was unemployed he had no money
and he walked out of the seminar a
completely different person and he had
written goals
he then looked around and as it happens
he saw an article on coffee shops and
starbucks success in the united states
and it said coffee shops are good
business to be in because more and more
people like the idea of a specialty
coffee shop and if it has a wi-fi then
they go there it becomes a social
center and so on he knew nothing about
coffee
and before the dust had settled he owned
80 coffee shops
in australia and new zealand and then he
says he got into a divorce and
i had to sell it for 50 million dollars
to
share the proceeds with his wife but he
didn't sh did not share
he did not sell off the worldwide rights
to it so he's rebuilding
anyway his point was at the end of the
article they said well what would you
say to
aspiring entrepreneurs who want to be
successful
and he said just two things he said
focus and fail fast
focus and fail fast learn quickly try
something new
and i thought i'd just pass that on
because it's sort of what i have
discovered over the years
is the faster you fail and learn the
faster you succeed you actually learn to
succeed by failing
you know thomas j watson's famous line
if you want to
increase your rate of success you must
double your rate of failure
because success lies on the far side of
failure
well over the years i've done a good
deal of reading and i came across a
concept that i want to share with you
and
we were talking about this a little bit
earlier and the concept is
the question is what is the most
valuable and highest paid work that you
do
it's a really interesting question
because when i heard the question i
didn't know what the answer was what do
you think the highest
paid and most valuable work is that you
do
and the answer is thinking thinking is
the most valuable work
now i am the best selling author in the
world in time management
also on goals also on some other
subjects but
but i began studying time management
about 30 years ago and i came across a
word
in my studies and the word was
consequences and
what it basically said is that something
is important if it has big potential
consequences and something is
unimportant if it has low or no
potential consequences number one reason
for success is people focus on things
that have high
potential consequences number one reason
for failure
is people focus on things that have low
or
no potential consequences exactly what
joe was saying earlier the
the famous drucker quote very worst use
of time is to
work intently on something that need not
be done at all and one of the things
that
is holding back entrepreneurs business
owners is killing them by the way and
it's
wiping out an entire generation it's
this obsession with technology
i see people that are walking with their
phone it's almost like drug addicts that
are mainline they cannot
stop staring at their screen they cannot
stop pushing their buttons
i hate to say there are people in this
room that had that problem but
uh the fact is that this obsession with
looking at the screen and staying
connected
is killing people because it stops them
from focusing
you cannot focus if you are distracted
like an attention
deficit disorder dog so you're
constantly ringing and
responding to bells almost like a crazy
person in a
in a toy factory
and so so just as a quick aside if
thinking is the most important thing you
do
because of the consequences of thinking
determine the entire quality of your
life
then the quality of your thinking
determines the quality of your life and
so the more time that you spend thinking
and thinking well and thinking clearly
the more successful you are over the
years i've worked with some very
powerful people billionaires and
multi-billionaires
people who are on the forbes 400 list
repeatedly
over and over and i've had a chance to
be with them during crises
and what times where something was
happening that was serious it was a
it was a major problem and i noticed
that they all had one
quality in common is they all went calm
it's just they went people around them
were angry and upset
and worried about what happened and who
did it and so on
and they would just go calm almost like
like like a pond would go gone
and they knew and i learned later i
didn't know why this was i admired it
but i didn't know why it was
is that when your mind is calm your your
entire
cerebellum the thinking and deciding
brain functions at the highest level
like turning up all the lights on a
dimmer switch it's functioning like a
christmas tree but when you get upset
and angry what happens is your thinking
reverts to your limbic or emotional
system and your ability to think clearly
diminishes dramatically and you make a
lot of mistakes
that's why when you are facing a
difficult situation
you have to use every skill trick game
whatever it is
stay calm and that's why they teach you
to meditate
and they find that meditators in
business are far more successful
because they they can automatically
trigger their mind into the calm
of meditation when they're facing a
crisis it enables them to think
with greater clarity now a couple of
years ago a man named daniel kahneman
a very fine man from from reading him
uh who won a nobel prize in psychology
and neuroscience
uh wrote a book called thinking fast and
slow and this book it was a very
esoteric book and i don't recommend
that you read it it's 500 pages of hard
slogging i will give you the essence of
i will give you the essence i do the
reading pass it on
i will give you the essence of the book
he said that there are two types of
thinking there's fast thinking and slow
thinking
fast thinking is intuitive it's
instinctive it's automatic it's
reactionary
it's i think of it very much as how you
would drive through busy traffic
you're not giving a lot of thought
you're just interacting he said the
other type of thinking is slow thinking
and slow thinking is where you just slow
down the thinking
and take time to think through
issues now if an issue has little or no
consequences
then you can think quickly you know what
do you have for lunch what do you
pick up on your plate from the buffet uh
where do you park your car
these are the the the consequences of
these decisions are
almost non-existent but if it's a major
issue then you say wait a minute
this requires slow thinking here is his
contention that made the book a
bestseller
is that the biggest problem that people
have is that where they should use
slow thinking they use fast thinking and
entrepreneurs are extremely
guilty of that as we make important
decisions that
have long potential consequences in
turning including
affecting the lives of people and
costing money and even leading to the
bankruptcy of a business
we make those decisions with fast
thinking when in reality we should be
making them with slow thinking
now i'm a great drucker fan as many
people are
and mike was saying something about
hiring the right people
and hiring the right people to work with
you is very important and the biggest
mistakes you make is hiring fast
you hire people quickly the best the
best decisions you make are we really
take your time
to hire slowly and peter drucker said
that fast people decisions are
invariably wrong people decisions hiring
an important person for an important job
has tremendous
potential consequences so therefore you
need to take a long
time one of the things i teach which is
in my book how to hire and keep the best
people
is a simple rule that will increase your
hiring accuracy to 90
and i've taught it to fortune 500
companies and they make it a rule within
their companies
to use brian's rule is to this is the
you cannot hire
except by doing this and i didn't invent
it i just studied
the hiring practices of the companies
that hire the best people
and keep them the longest and they all
at the beginning
have a certain process that they follow
and they follow it religiously
no exceptions and so their accuracy in
hiring
goes up to 90 or or better um because
they think more
then the interesting professor at the
university of san diego last year wrote
a book on
sort of not sort of thinking fast and
slow but it was on decision making
what he said is the longer that you take
to make an important decision the better
the decision will be
the higher quality decision and lord
acton once said
when it is necessary when it is not
necessary to decide it is necessary
not to decide in other words he the
professor said
buy as much time as you can for a
decision put it off if you can put it
off for a day
a weekend a week a month put it off
some of the best decisions that you make
will be decisions that you will allow to
steep for a while like water and tea
so thinking is the most important thing
you do we call it thinking fast and slow
so remember anything that is important
that has long-term consequences
is a candidate for slow thinking
discussing it with other people
sitting quietly going for a walk letting
it ruminate in your mind
sleeping on it you know they say if it's
a big deal sleep on it
so there's three thinking tools i want
to give you and then seven ideas so the
three ways of thinking which i start off
the first way i start off every seminar
is what i call zero-based thinking and
everybody who knows me for any period of
time
knows that i harp on this zero-based
thinking
is comes from zero-based accounting
where you instead of increasing an
expense
in the next accounting period you ask
should we be
engaging in this expense at all now with
zero-based thinking you look at your
entire world and you ask this question
knowing what i now know is there
anything that i am doing that i would
not start up again today
if i had to do it over this is one of
the greatest thinking tools i've ever
learned
because in a time of turbulence you
always have an answer for this question
each person has an answer some people
have multiple answers
there's lots of things that they're
doing today that knowing what they now
know
they wouldn't get into today they
wouldn't start them up products they
wouldn't offer
people they wouldn't hire investments
they wouldn't make
and these are the greatest drags in life
these are sort of like a sea anchor you
know that you drop it and it drags it
slows down
the boat well how do you tell if you
have a zero-based thinking situation
and many of you were asked to write your
problems challenged as opportunities
the answer is stress is whenever you
experience chronic
stress it's something that buzzes around
when joe's talking or
somebody else is talking you're busy
thinking about that you drive around and
you think about it
keeps you awake at night it's something
that pisses you off
it's something that irritates you and
angers you and frustrates you
whenever you have chronic which means
ongoing continuous
this is a candidate for zero-based
thinking so you ask yourself the
question
if i was not now in this situation
knowing what i now know
would i get into it again today if the
answer is no the next question is how do
i get out and how fast
how do i get out and how fast if ever
the answer comes back that i would not
get into this again today
it's too late to resolve it it's over
the only question now is how long do you
suffer
how much how much emotional suffering
how much financial suffering do you make
before you walk and so the most
important requirement for practicing
zero-based thinking
which a lot of people don't like to
practice is courage i call it the c
word you need the c word you need to
have the courage to look at every part
of your life and say
is there anything that i'm doing that
knowing what i now know i wouldn't get
into
now the starting point of zero-based
thinking is always with your
relationships
and those are both personal and business
whenever i give in this talk by the way
within a short period of time divorces
take place all over that city
people go home and say geez if i hadn't
married this person i would never marry
them again today
and that's what's making me miserable
and many people are working their heads
off on the outside
to achieve success but inside they're
frustrated and unhappy because they're
in a situation
that knowing what they now know they
would never get into so i call this a
quick analysis and i'm going to ask you
to do this for the rest of your life
and to help other people do it k-w-i-n-k
knowing
what i now know do a quick analysis on
everything
do a quick analysis in my company what
they we say is
we look at every single person and on a
regular basis and we say
if we had not hired this person and they
walked in today to apply for their
current job
knowing what we now know would we hire
them if the answer is no they're gone
that day there's a little rule by the
way that
in one of my books it says the first the
best time
to fire a person is the first time it
crosses your mind
and because after that it's only pain
and suffering and if
the longer you keep them in place the
more likely they are to sue you
and the longer they sue you the more
it's going to cost so therefore if you
if you find that you've made a mistake
belly up to the bar have the courage to
admit i made a mistake
and cut your losses there was a great
book by um
an author called the zurich axioms some
years ago and it was principles of
success
and anybody who's in finance has
probably read the book because a very
successful new york financier
and he was talking about the gnomes of
zurich zurich and whoever they are
and the rules that they go by and he
said the number one rule for success
in in business personal lives cut your
losses
when you realize you made a mistake bad
investment
bad hire bad relationship cut your
losses quickly and
what do they say in las vegas you know
cut your losses let your winnings ride
so in life that's what we do and the
faster you cut your losses fail fast
the faster you can start doing things
that are much more productive
the other the second area has to do with
every part of your business
joel and i were talking about what i
think is a revolutionary new field
though it's not revolutionary
and it's not new but it's business model
innovation
and it's based on the concept that
whatever business model you're using
today is probably obsolete
uh if you're in any kind of a business
that
uses technology to market especially an
information based business
knowledge based business consulting
services training anything else
chances are your business is obsolete uh
the way that you and
and visit and the business model is your
method your step-by-step
process of generating profitability now
there are some companies that struggle
along struggle along struggle on then
find a new business model
and the next year their business is up
five or ten times profits are just
overwhelming
they're living in big houses on the hill
driving cadillacs and flying private
jets and you say
what on earth did they do they changed
their business model and if you don't
change your business model if it's the
wrong business model
two things are going to happen your
competitors are going to come up with a
new business model
and eat your lunch and or you're going
to go broke
so it doesn't mean that your business
model is wrong
it just means that you must be open to
the possibility
that your business model is obsolete and
that just means that there is a
better business model there's a superior
business model and your job is to find
it
and uh again there's no fixed answer to
it
but i think that this is a great area of
thought
i think this is a great area and it's
sort of like a tool for you to have
i wonder if i need to change my business
model which is your way of generating
sales producing and delivering products
and services getting
payments and achieving profitability
well so coming back to the second
is look at anything in your business
look at your products look at your
services look at your people
look at the way that you advertise
market and ask is there anything that
you're doing today that knowing what you
now know you wouldn't
start up again today and the only
question that you ever ask is does it
work
does it work does it work if it's not
working
and you and you can tweak it then that's
fine if it's not working have the
courage to admit this isn't working
and abandon it now the third area has to
do with investments
in zero based thinking investments of
time which people hate to lose someone
said earlier
that people hate to lose it's one of the
greatest emotions we hate to lose time
if we've invested a lot of time
in a course of action a project a
business a relationship
the second is is emotion if we put a lot
of emotion into a course of action
a product course of study a relationship
or money
we hate to admit that we made a mistake
and that what seemed like a good idea
at the time has turned out not to be a
good idea and knowing what i now know i
wouldn't get into it
and have the courage to cut your losses
and run now the reason i teach this
first
is because you can't make any progress
unless you clear the decks unless you
get this
800 pound gorilla that's holding you
back out of your life
and then many companies that i've worked
with literally transformed became
multi-million dollar companies
when everybody said all right we're
going to go through and do a quick
analysis on this whole company
and realize that half the things we're
doing and half the people working here
are not the right people for us at this
time and half the products that we're
offering aren't selling
and never will they've been replaced by
better cheaper faster products in the
marketplace
so cut your losses what happens when a
big big company gets into trouble
they bring in a quick analysis man and
he comes in with a chainsaw
and he shuts down all the factories and
all the stores that are not profitable
and the company goes from profits to
losses in one year
anyway the second thinking tool that i
teach people
is a wpo thinking which is worst
possible outcome
in everything that you're doing always
ask yourself what is the worst possible
outcome
of this course of action and what and
can i survive it if it were to occur
and uh if not what could i do to make
sure it doesn't happen
one of the number one reasons that we
worry about anything in life
is because of fear and when you ask
yourself what is the worst thing that
could happen in this particular
situation
and then if you could say all right if
that happens i'll live with it
then your worry goes away and your mind
goes clear and calm
and now you say now what can i make do
to make sure that the worst does not
happen
and then you become proactive and you
take charge of your life
the third thinking tool i hope i'm not
going too fast for it
the third thinking tool is called the
principle of constraints and it's one of
the most important thinking tools ever
discovered
it says between you and anything that
you want to accomplish
there is always a constraint a limiting
factor or a choke point that sets the
speed
at which you accomplish your goal so and
i was just talking
doing a teleconference and a few minutes
ago so the question i said is let's
always set the goal of doubling our
income
i'm going to double your income okay
want to double your income
then why isn't your income already twice
as high
now in business we don't think of
doubling our income we think of doubling
our profitability
what we're concerned with is net cash
flow we're going to concern with the
amount that we take home
to our family at the end of the day not
the gross
but the triple net so we say if i want
to earn twice as much and everybody in
here
can and can and will earn two three four
five times as much
sometime in the future if i wonder twice
as much why aren't i already earning
twice as much
and the number one reason for for most
people is distraction
so uh they're so distracted they're
doing things of low or no consequences
but we found the 80 20 rule applies to
constraints 80 of the constraints that
are holding you back
from achieving your financial goals are
within yourself and within your business
they are not on the outside they are not
the competition they are not the market
they are not the people in washington or
the taxes or regulation
80 are within yourself so the mark of
the
superior person is whenever they have a
problem they say what is it
in me that's causing this problem mike
and i know
this very very clearly what is it in me
that's causing this problem
uh in in illness by the way 85 percent
of illness is psychosomatic
as dennis waitley said it's not what
you're eating it's what's eating you
it's causing the problem uh and so the
starting point and the
first thing a doctor will tell you or a
psychologist is what is it that you're
not dealing with
and you go back to zero-based thinking
what is it that you have in your life
that
that you if you that if you had to do
over you wouldn't do it
so ask yourself what's holding you back
and usually it's the quality of
self-discipline or it's a skill
now one of the things that changed my
life forever was when i learned that all
business skills are learnable
you don't have to be a genius to learn
any business skill
you can learn any form of technologies
mike has proven that with
with his products you can take a person
who's basically shoveling shoe polish in
chibokan
and teach them how to be technologically
sufficient superior enough to earn a
living from it
every business skill is learnable and so
i say what
one skill if you are absolutely
excellent at it in your business would
help you the
most to double your income what one
business skill
if you could wave a magic wand and wake
up tomorrow morning superb
in this area what skill would it be and
you know when you ask that question
everybody knows the answer
they know what it is but here's the
challenge you don't like the skill
because it involves it rejection
embarrassment ego potential failure
loss you've tried it in the past you
haven't been good at it
but nobody asked you what would be an
easy skill to learn
they just asked you what skill would
help you the most to double your income
and here's what we have found is that
most of us are only one skill away from
doubling our income
and all business skills are learnable
and if you study the people who go from
the top to the bottom
in the fortune 500 or fortune 1000 they
found in 25 years of research
these people learn one skill at a time
like climbing the ladder of success on
the ladder of income
like sniper one shot one kill they don't
try to learn 50 skills they learn the
one skill
focus the most important skill and they
get their company focusing on the one
skill
that can help you the most to generate
sales and profitability hey i hope
you're enjoying this video and i want to
let you know that i have a new book
that's come out and if you'd like to get
it
absolutely free there's a link below
in the description or you can wait till
the end of this video or you can simply
go to joesfreebook.com
and you can get a copy there i talk
about what i call the greats the seven
greats in business
the the their and actually my three-day
seminar has the ten grades
but the seven the seven greats in
business i'll give you briefly first of
all
successful companies have great
leadership and
leadership is the ability to get results
but it's also the ability to allocate
resources
which means it's the ability to make
decisions and to make hard decisions
because if it were easy decisions
everybody be a leader and everybody to
be rich
so making decisions using thinking slow
thinking
using long-term thinking is the
critical job of the leader drucker says
the first job of the leader is to ask
what results are expected of me
and then i add to that of all the
results that are expected of you as a
leader what is the most important result
that you need to get to achieve the
sales and profitability for which you
are responsible
one of the rules what we learn in
business we never complain about
anybody or anything in our business
because we're the boss
we're the ones who decided this we don't
complain about your staff because you
hire the person
if you don't like the person get rid of
them don't complain about them you just
sound like an idiot
you know it's it's it's like or it's
like
picking up food from the buffet down
there and saying i don't like this food
well i never have liked this food i've
always hated this food well why did you
pick it up
well i don't know the fact is you never
complain about something in your
business if you're in charge of it
if you don't like it change it if you
don't want to change it shut up
[Laughter]
now which which allows me to jump
actually forward
is is one of the marks of superior
entrepreneurs is that they're intensely
solution oriented
is whenever something goes wrong they
immediately go calm and they say all
right what's the solution
what's our next action what mediocre
people do is they say who did it and
who's to blame
how did this happen they're going to
witch hunt and of course that makes them
become angry and frustrated but superior
executives when something goes wrong
problem with a customer problem with
money problem with bills problem with
product delivery or defects they say
okay all right how do we solve this
what's the solution now here's a
wonderful thing is your success in life
will be determined by your ability to
solve problems
my friend colin powell said leadership
is the ability to solve problems
success is the ability to solve problems
and how do you become really excellent
at problem solving i just finished a
book by the way called creativity and
problem solving
that amicom is publishing in new york at
the end of this year
it's because i did years of research on
the subject here's the point is the way
that you solve problems is
simply to think about solutions what are
all the possible solutions
be intensely solution oriented don't go
allow yourself to get bogged down
negative upset unhappy about the problem
and who did it
focus on the solution and the actions
that you can take and when you start to
think about the solutions
remember helen keller's wonderful line
when you turn toward the sunshine the
shadows fall behind you
when you start thinking about solutions
we could do this look at that and you
could do this and i could do that we
could do
when you start thinking about solutions
your mind goes calm your creativity
turns on
uh like lights you start to have more
energy
you start to feel more confident and so
on are you with me so far
thinking about problems makes you
negative and shuts down your brain
thinking about who's to blame is even
worse but thinking about what you can do
and the actions you can take
put you back in charge well the second
principle and i talked about
the second the second grade is having a
great product or service
and this to me was wasn't is a
revelation
and it's so simple it stares you in the
face but 90
of your success will be in business will
be to have a great product in the first
place
and this is something that many people
miss they think if i have a good product
and i when i pay thousands of dollars
and go to uh
really clever seminars they'll teach me
some marketing gimmicks and tricks
so i can con people into buying it and
they and they spend enormous amounts of
time and money
trying to advertise or market what is a
mediocre product
and i had a good friend mitch
and mitch owned three first-class
restaurants
and he did no advertising for the
restaurants and the restaurants were
always full
and when people said where do you want
to go for dinner let's see if we can get
into one of those restaurants
and so i asked him i knew him very well
because we worked in the same
organization
dr allard my mentor owned the three
restaurants and and mitch was a part
owner and he ran them
and he could just start an excellent
restaurant i said what is your
secret to promotion how come these
restaurants are always full and he said
we always put it on the plate i said how
do you mean he said we put
superb food at good prices on the plate
and just stand back
and the restaurants are full all seven
days a week
and i always thought that's the key to
success in business put it on the plate
put it on the plate put the quality put
everything into the product or service
now the ink magazine does a story on the
inc 500 the 500
fastest growing companies in america
taken over a three-year period and every
year they update it
the last uh edition which came out a
couple of months ago
was showed that the number one fastest
growing company
was it grew forty two thousand five
hundred percent
forty two thousand five hundred percent
unbelievable it grew so fast uh others
grew
5 10 15 20 30 50 times
in two or three years all new companies
are reasonably new companies all
companies started by people
like the people in this room and they
grew 5 10 50 20 100 times
wow what was the key so they went back
and they did had outside researchers
analyze it
and you know what they found is all the
companies
put it on the plate is every one of them
was obsessed
with quality and obsessed with quality
as
their customers defined it and they were
close to the customer they were
they were they're locked tight to the
customer as i i was sharing
um uh uh
his um idea about um
what was it called what was your wtc
what did you say about customers well
joel yeah
think like a customer sharing that on my
conference today think like a customer
the very best companies think like a
customer what do customers want what
customers need
and you know the key to success is make
your customers happy and then make them
happier than your competitors
and then every single day wake up and
think how can i make my customers
happier
and they went and they interviewed the
ceos of the four of the 500 fastest
growing companies and every one of them
was obsessed with customers
they thought about customers they talked
about they visited customers they called
customers
they went and saw customers they
personally responded to customer
complaints
they were just obsessed with it which
again repeats
that 90 of your success will be
the quality of your product or service
now how can you tell if you have a great
product or service well it's a very
simple test and this is the test that
predicts your future more than any other
test
for the rest of your business career how
often how many people
after they have used your product or
service turn to another person and say
geez that's a great product jesus a
great service
geez that's a great company jesus are
great people
and how many people say this is a great
product what percentage
50 percent 40 percent average in america
is about 30 percent 35 percent
top companies that companies like apple
that come out with an ipod and iphone
and an ipad
people consume the product the next time
they come out with an iphone
they sleep on the sidewalks in rows of
hundreds to be the first purchasers they
come out with an
ipad they sleep hundreds are sleeping on
the
sidewalks to buy it and pay outrageous
amounts and then they start showing
everybody else
isn't this a great product and then they
have apps look at this ah look what you
could do with this app
how many people have an ipod 5 an iphone
5.
okay how many of you showed other people
the panoramic thing
how you can take panoramic pictures
isn't that a great concept
you know it used to cost thousands of
dollars to have panoramic cameras
that could take a panorama and now
you've got it in your iphone as one of a
100 or a thousand different things you
can do so people who buy their products
become their preeminent sales people
they're running around
grabbing people and bothering them and
showing them the product
or bragging about the product in a movie
by the way the movies
companies only have enough advertising
for the one weekend they could take
big ads for one weekend to get people
into the theater quickly
after that the movie will either grow or
die by word of mouth
and your movies that are successful by
word of mouth everybody's talking have
you seen that movie if you said you got
to see that movie
honey i just heard about this movie at
work let's go tonight you weren't even
planning to go to a movie and you go
there on tuesday night the theater is
full
have you had this experience you say and
everybody's talking about it
the most important key to our success so
go back to the ink study and i'm looking
for
corroborations in the ink study they
did had researchers say what is the very
best place for a company to
invest if they want to increase their
sales and profitability
and the answer came back after looking
at everything else is
invest in improving the quality of your
product
invest in improving the quality of your
product make the product
better and better and better make your
customers happier and
happier make your customers so happy i
say that the key to success is to
get your customers to buy from you first
rather than from your
competitor to buy again because they are
so happy and to bring their friends
and if that becomes your operating theme
we could talk about this all day
is get them to buy from you buy again
and tell their friends then you're going
to be
successful you're going to be wealthy
you're going to be respected
and more than anything else you're going
to be just as happy as you can be
as nothing gives us greater joy than to
make our customers happy
number one is is become a great leader
which means set clear goals be decisive
take responsibility for results
number two is offer a great product and
never be satisfied with the quality of
the product
it's constantly strive to make it better
in the eyes of your customers
and here's one of the great revolutions
in marketing which i think is so
important
is the very best companies the four
stages of the epiphany
the lean startup are going to their
customers and saying
how do you define a great product would
you buy this would you pay for it do
what you want more of what would you
want less of
what can we do to improve it they're
even doing this with what they call the
minimum viable product
idea is they take a product idea to a
customer before they even make the
product
and they work with the customer shoulder
to shoulder to develop the product so
the customer says this is a great
product
then they produce and market the product
so number three
is you want to have a great business
plan but a great business plan
simply requires that you think through
on paper
the critical aspects of your business
and especially you analyze what it's
going to cost
what you can sell it for what kind of
profits you can make
who are the people that you will need uh
there's a
there's a great story of napoleon's
generals all around this
large table with maps of europe spread
out and this is when his the french
armies were conquering everywhere
and they were talking about what cities
are what what uh
municipalities what duchies that they
were going to attack with the army
uh next time and napoleon would come in
from his office which was nearby
and he'd say what are you doing he said
we're talking about we're going to move
the army from here we're going to move
it to there
and so on and he'd say well gentlemen he
said i'm afraid that we can't do it
we don't have the horses and you've
heard the expression
we don't have the horses it comes from
napoleon and what he was saying was that
the entire army was driven by horses
cavalry
and horses to pull the wagons with the
supplies and everything else
and they could get more men by
recruiting on the march as they did they
recruited as they went through a village
they recruited people
join the army see the world that sort of
thing during the arm you see the cannons
but the horses those were scarce and so
the whole
success of the army was was determined
could they get the horses that's why
when
when mike talks about getting the right
people is where do we get the horses we
got the ideas
we've we know what needs to be done but
where do we get the horses so
these are the things that you think
through in a business plan what kind of
technology will you require
and what will it cost to set it up and
who's going to run it and operate it
what kind of advertising publicity
promotion will you require
how much will it cost what kind of
returns will you get so a business plan
and there's
many people i'm sure you have lots of
business plan models that are quite
common
is a business plan forces you to think
long term and to think slowly
and you'll always make better business
decisions if you think long term and you
think slowly
the fourth area has to do with having a
great marketing plan
and a great marketing plan is what you
talk about all the time
but there's a rule in advertising i used
to work for a large advertising agency
and the rule is the fastest way to kill
a product a bad product is to advertise
it
or to market it is to find because if
you market it what happens
more people use it more people use it
and are angry
about it then they tell more people and
the product dies so the fastest way to
kill
a bad product is to promote it and many
people think oh no the way i can get my
money back
is i can sell it to people before they
enough people
know how bad it is no do we have confu
we have the internet today
everybody in the world can know how many
troops appeared on the streets of
the crimean with the balaclava mass on
their face and they know that in three
seconds
i was just in russia where in russia
they control all the media
and they tell people that they that they
were attacking
the ukrainians backed by the cia
are behind all the problems in the
ukraine and the russian
poor russian people just are are being
sacrificed so i'm just sending in some
of my troops to help protect our i said
to my friend sergey i said sergey
it's nonsense not a word of what you're
saying is true
it's totally false the only people in
the world who believe what you're saying
are people within russia who have no
access to news on the outside
anyway so i'm getting off track
my point is that marketing means how do
you attract people
uh to your product or service there's a
difference between marketing and sales
you know what it is imagine that i were
to say to you
at midday this group i say is is anybody
here hungry
raise your hand all right that's
marketing i'm interested in your product
or service i'm interested in the product
or service
generally but anybody here like to save
money make money lose weight be happy
pick up girls you know whatever it
happens to be then the second part is
now i have a restaurant let me tell you
why you should come to my restaurant
to satisfy your hunger rather than to go
to the competitors
so those are the two it's the marketing
is to attract people
who raise their hand who are interested
in the benefit that your product or
service offers
and selling the conversion is to get
them to buy from you rather than from
your competitors
so they are very different functions you
can't sell if you can't attract
interested prospects so marketing is a
very complex process and you guys talk
about it all the time
so you need a great marketing plan how
can you tell if you have a great
marketing plan
the answer is you have a steady stream
of interested prospects
who are calling you emailing you coming
in your door sleeping on the street
in front of your business each night to
get to be the first ones to come in
in the data number five
is you need a great sales plan
and a great sales plan of course is a
sale that consistently and predictably
converts customers or converts
interested people into customers
now here's the rule if you have a
professional sales process and all
100 of all successful companies have a
professional sales
process if you speak to the salesperson
and working with an international
company that has a branch
in warsaw and if you speak to the sales
person in warsaw or the salesperson
in los angeles or the sales person in
johannesburg
100 of them use exactly the same sales
process
the first contact will be a telephone
contact to offer you a benefit
and to try to set up an appointment and
the words will be word for word
the reason this company did this is
almost went broke because everybody was
selling their own damn way
they would say whatever fell out of
their mouths whenever they ran across a
prospect
and they realize that without a sales
process we have a great product which
they do
that's killing them so they systematize
the sales process their sales went up
thousand percent
if it's been proven that if you go from
random selling
to a proven sales process and of course
you have to debug it
you increase your sales 500 with the
same number of prospects
i've seen people get their closing rates
from 1 out of 10 to 9 out of 10
by simply improving the sales process
and so selling is really important
it's one of the things we focus on now
there's two more points that i want to
talk about in terms of grace
one is generate great numbers and this
is one of the most important parts of
business
all business activities and results can
be expressed in numerical form
everything right down to the number of
telephone rings or number of seconds it
takes for a person phony
to make connection with a person who can
help them
jeff bezos who as you see got best
entrepreneur businessman of the year
both forbes and fortune
they're obsessed with measuring every
single activity
and they look at the seconds the number
of seconds that it takes when we first
bought from
amazon they would advertise five to
seven days ups
today they offer one to two days max in
cities like san diego where they have
warehouses you can order in the morning
it's delivered in the afternoon
books tapes courses clothes it's
zappos overnight they can deliver
overnight because why is because they're
obsessed
with shortening the amount of time it
takes to make customers happy
and the short of the time customers
really value speed
and they'll pay top dollar for someone
who'll make them happy faster
it's just a they've they've determined
that so look at the numbers what are the
and
the question is what are the most
important numbers in your business what
we teach in our longer courses about 35
numbers
in any business some of them are
unimportant some of them are
extremely important and there's five to
seven of those 35 numbers that are
the a numbers and then there's one
number that's the most important number
of all
and we call this or jim collins who
wrote good to great calls it
the economic denominator and when i
started doing my
coaching programs with entrepreneurs one
of the first things we taught was to
identify your number
what is the most important number in
your business the number that
most accurately predicts your success
and your future
and most people get that get it wrong
the first three to five times
what is your number what is your most
important number the number that you
just basically obsess with
all the time and uh one one
uh company went from for whatever
struggle
written up in in in entrepreneur
magazine
went from struggling to bankruptcy and
then a friend of his asked him
what was your number what was the number
you were focused on well we weren't
focused on any number in particular we
didn't even hardly keep track
so they were just selling by gosh and by
golly and at the end of the day they
were bust
he had to go home and live with his
mother the age of 26.
so he said no you have to pick a number
so he sat down and he said hmm and he
picked a number and it's called net
contribution margin in other words
exactly how many net dollars and cents
do we make from each sale
and then we compare those sales that's
after 100 of every expense of cost of
customer acquisition and lead generation
and and delivery and everything else
and then they compare those against the
others and they re-emphasize in other
words
net contribution margin at this year
they'll hit 100 million dollars in
business
and he's laughing he said changed our
whole life
to finally figure out what our number
was
so question i always ask people what is
your number do you know
do you know the most important number do
you know what most entrepreneurs say
sales sales everybody knows that just
sales really
what if you're losing money on every
sale then the more sales you make the
faster you go bust
and you know that many companies are
losing money on every sale because they
don't
they don't add in all the costs of the
sale
they leave out their own labor they
leave out rent they leave out utilities
they leave on
delivery costs they leave out defects
they think about packaging
theft and so there's boy are we selling
a lot yeah well how come you're
losing more money every month did you
see these companies by the way
um that's announced they had 11 billion
in sales last year they lost 3 billion
and you see them all the time it's how
could you how could you
lose 3 billion if you sold 11 billion do
you know why
it's because they don't know the numbers
and what they're doing is they're
probably working harder and harder to
sell more and more products at which
they're losing more and more money
and nobody sat down and done the
attributable cost
okay the last of the seven and this is
the one i love and this is the future by
the way
the front end of business the first
bookend is having a great product or
service to start with
the last is to have a great customer
service experience
and i cannot tell you how important this
is this is what joel and i have worked
on
all of our lives make our customers so
happy at the beginning and so happy with
the product
and happy afterwards it's the key to
repeat business it's the key to rapid
growth
every successful company without
exception is obsessed
with taking good care of their customers
once they get them and if they have a
customer complaint the head of the
company doesn't sleep at night
they are so so upset about customer
complaints
they'll go out and personally visit them
because the company president will phone
an unhappy customer and talk to them
because they consider
customer happiness like tony shea to be
the most important thing in the world
what tony says is that we're not in the
shoe business we're in the customer
happiness business we just happen to
sell shoes
and if we were selling something else
we'd still be in the customer happiness
business
what was that worth to tony sold it for
his idea
translated into zappos sold it for 1.2
billion dollars and took home 350
million
not a bad idea make your customers happy
does it work
yes how often does it work 100 of the
time so you'll find that the very best
companies the ones that you really like
and want to go back to
are the companies that make you feel
happy they make you feel good as a
result of having done business with them
they take good care of you and as a
result you go back over and over again
and you bring your friends so those are
the seven greats that we talk about here
great leadership great product or
service great marketing plan great sales
plan
great numbers great business plan and a
great customer service plan
and if you have those here's the
interesting thing is if you're missing
one of them
it's like dialing a seven-digit number
if you
miss one of them your company go broke
miss any one of them you get or get them
wrong
get the wrong answer or miss it
completely then your company goes broke
so now we know scientifically basically
more and more
of exactly what you have to do to build
a high profit business
and the wonderful thing is it's all
learnable you can learn
any one of these skills anything i just
explained to you
is as simple as ditch water all you have
to do is just say ah
and what is it you think like yeah i
could do that i could do more of that i
could improve that we could do that
okay i hope you found that video awesome
and useful so if you want to get a free
copy of my book i want you to click here
and if you want to watch some more
videos that will be useful and awesome
click here go ahead they're over here do
it now
come on thank you watch
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Role of MNC's , Globalization Meaning, | International Business Management Unit 1 Part 2
How to Build a $2,167/Day SaaS with No Code (for Free)
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