The Answer to Your Business Problems

It's a big world out there.

Just 15 years ago before the internet had really taken off, our world, our opportunities for wealth creation were vastly different.

But today, we truly are a global economy.

I have a friend that is from Switzerland but he does most of his business in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

I have a family friend from London, UK that is a major stakeholder in a packaging company based in Azerbaijan.

I have a Brazilian friend that imports electronics from China and sells them in Brazil -- most of this would not have been possible just 15 years ago -- had it not been for the advent of the internet and access to the internet.

The reason I bring this up is to point out that opportunities to create and grow a business today are 100x more prevalent than just a few years ago. They literally are limitless.

So if you haven't found that "right opportunity" -- why not?

I think I have the answer for you and it may surprise you.

If you have started a business and it's not at the level you want it to be, it's probably not because the "right opportunity" hasn't come by, because they are everywhere, it's most likely because you haven't learned the fundamentals of business to know a good opportunity from a bad one and to make smarter decisions.

Ultimately the business that rises to the top in any industry is the one that makes the best decisions. What products to offer? Where to market them? What systems to put in place? Who to hire? Who to partner with? When to cut your loses and change directions? All of these types of decisions effect the direction of your business longterm. The decisions that you are making today are going to decide where your business is headdd 5 to 10 years from now.

For example, one of my mentors Chet Holmes (who last time I checked had 12 businesses) taught me a principle that I guarantee most people don't abide by and that is, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." So if there isn't a way to measure performance, he doesn't spend a penny on that activity. It seems obvious, but so many clients are spending money on advertising that they have no idea if it is working or not. They are paying for customer service training but they have not metrics in place to see if it being effective.

Another example of a fundamental, is one that I learned from Rockefeller. Rockefeller believed that your company should have a 15 - 20 year vision and then you should set up 90 day goals that move you towards that vision and forget about the rest of the time in the middle. It's a fundamental that I have used with great success, not only in our business, but also in my health and fitness goals as well.

One more fundamental or business principle I subscribe to is that without the sale there is no business. So the sales process should be the nervous system of the business. Before you work on customer service, before you hire more employees, you have to figure out how to "best" sell your product or service. I would prove my sales process even before I made business cards. (To this day, I still don't use business cards).

Here's one last example: right now video marketing is all the rage, we sell a lot of video marketing content. A lot of people see this as the next hot opportunity, which it is, but there is a right way and a wrong way to use it. If you don't understand the fundamentals of marketing, you may be one the people that create videos that shout, "look at me", or "me too" messages, but if you understand the fundamentals about marketing you know that viewers want to know "what's in it for me?". Your videos should be focusing on how you can enrich their lives, not on the 15 features your product has to offer. It may seem like a small distinction, but it is the culmination of these small distinctions that lead you and your business to a whole new destiny.

Here's the good news: All the principles or fundamentals of business (Management, Marketing, customer service, trends, cycles,) have been written in books. People like Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett and the like, have written everything that has made them successful in business in books.

If you don't feel you are creating a real, salable business, invest your time learning the principles that will help you make better decisions and ultimately a better business.

Loving, Living, Giving Large,

Jeff

Jeff Paro is a proud contributing author and writes articles on several subjects including public speaking and presentation skills training. You can read more of Jeff's articles located at http://www.InfluenceOlogy.com.