Are you serious about building a great business? Really?

Most entrepreneurs think they are dedicated to building their business.
But I question that.
I think the majority of entrepreneurs are just dabbling. Sure they’d like to have a successful business, but they don’t really crave it.
The problem is that business today is really, really tough.
Unless you absolutely, madly desire to create an awesome business it probably won’t happen.
Competitors that are keener, more fired up, will eclipse you. Customers will sense your lack of fire and choose another supplier. You may get some growth, but you won’t get the hypergrowth that defines a highly successful enterprise.
You need to be really serious to make it in today’s business world.
Here’s a quick test you can do to ascertain how committed you are to creating an extraordinary business:
You need to be able to say Yes to at least 8 out of 10 of these points:

• You think about your business night and day.
• You know all the best companies in your field.
• You are clear on the flaws and weaknesses of your business, and your main competitors.
• You arrive at work early.
• You know your business’s key numbers intimately.
• You are always studying ways to better market your products.
• You are constantly making tiny improvements to how you run your operations.
• You have turned your business into a system. Ideally summarised in a manual .
• You have white hot desire to create a great company.
• When you talk about your business to friends, staff or clients it is with genuine enthusiasm.

So, looking at these, how do you measure up?
Which of these points do you need to work on?
The rewards for building a great business are extraordinary: massive wealth, high self esteem, exemplary lifestyle, kudos from society, significant contribution to mankind.
But you’ll get none of these until you get really, really serious about building your company

What All Entrepreneurs can learn from Subway - Siimon Reynolds

A friend of mine pointed out an interesting move by Subway lately.

They’ve quietly been setting up stores inside Walmarts.

Over 1400 of them in fact.

It got me thinking.

Surely one of the best opportunities to increase your revenues is to sell your products in unusual places, just like Subway are doing.

While you’re competitors slog it out in the same old marketplaces, you could be growing your business in places they haven’t even thought about.

What unusual place could you start selling your services?

It’s worth brainstorming ideas for half an hour.

A health food company might open up stores inside universities .

A caterer might approach an electrician’s association offering discount lunches for all their members.

A lawyer might do a joint venture with an insurance company to offer legal services to their clients.

A book publisher might seek to sell their cooking books in food supermarkets across the country.

A meditation teacher might open a branch inside the Los Angeles Police Department.

When you start thinking about it, it’s easy to think of unusual places to sell your goods and services.

And there’s plenty of reasons why you should:

You’ll have very little competition (Usually none).

You won’t have to discount your products.

It will be easier to expand than via traditional avenues.

So next time you’re thinking about how to grow your company, think outside the square.

Be lateral. Even a little crazy.

It’s that kind of thinking that has made Subway the number one food franchise in the world.

And can make you number one in your field too.

After beginning my journey of learning how to read...

After beginning my journey of learning how to read, I was introduced by my parents to a special collection of books about the power of positive thinking. After finally devouring this set of books, I attempted to become only positive. There was a part of me that didn't want to admit that I also had what appeared to be a negative side. Guess, what happened? The more I tried to put on a positive façade in my public life, the more negative my private life was becoming. The people who weren't so important to me were getting most or all my positive pole, while my closest loved ones and I would catch all the negativity. Clearly, this wasn't working for me. It seemed that the more I tried to become only one sided, the more I punished myself and those close to me.

I wondered what was wrong with me, and why I couldn't be positive all the time. Then I thought, maybe someone else figured it out. So, I went and interacted with various positive thinking teachers. I went to their seminars, met them, spoke to them, and found out, one by one, that all of them had both polarities. Not one of them was all positive all the time. I concluded, I can't be one-sided, even though I am diligently focused on it, studying it, learning it, going to seminars, reading books, buying CDs, doing everything that a human being can do to succeed at it. If I can't do it, then, the people I'm teaching probably aren't going to do so either. I can't teach a one-sided state. I have not obtained it. It must be an incomplete concept. It's a lie.

I believe we live in a world addicted to fantasies. The fantasy of always being nice and never mean, of having the career we love and never experiencing stress, of having relationships that are never ending honeymoons or having bodies that resemble the air brushed models we see in magazines. It is these fantasies that are the very source of our mental suffering and as a result depression.

Have you ever thought: When I get this car, life will be better; When I get this new house and land, my life will be better; When I get this new job and more money, life will be better; When I get this new relationship, life will be better.

Most people think that when they get something else life will get better, but all it does is transform the positives and negatives into new forms. I'm not saying you shouldn't seek, but if you seek something you think will give you more positives than negatives, you're living with an illusion. When you get what you imagine you want you will find out that it has a new catch or twist to it that you didn't anticipate. If you live in the illusion that it's going to give you a lot of happiness, you may be let down, for it won't, at least for long. It only gives you a new set of pains and pleasures.

Instead of trying to run from pain and seek pleasure, why not embrace both in the pursuing fulfillment of your purpose? Look back over every aspect in your life, from the smallest thing that you think you were challenged by: criticisms, illnesses, disappointments or whatever, and ask, 'How did that help me?' Don't stop until you can give thanks for all the different parts of your life, because if they are there, they are serving you. I've personally taken the opportunity to do this, and every once in while I get a new memory, a sudden flash of some little event that I'd completely forgotten. Then I ask, 'How did that help me become what I am today? How did that specific moment, as remote and distracting as it looked, help me?'

After you have completed this exercise you will see that at any given moment in your life you are and were perfectly balanced. You will never get one side without the other, and any time you think you've got one-sidedness you're living in illusion and about to get a lesson to wake you up to the truth of duality. It is not about thinking positively, it is recognizing that the good and the bad occur simultaneously.

An Unusual Way to Increase Your Profits

We all want more customers.

It makes us feel good to see more people buying from us.

But believe it or not, getting more new customers is not the best way to grow your business.

There’s another way to make money that’s far easier and more efficient.

Yet hardly any businesses pay enough attention to it. In fact many don’t even address it.

So what is this rarely utilised way to make loads more money in your business?

It’s simple. Just ask your current customers to buy more.

Think about it.

Getting a new customer can be expensive and time consuming. You have to advertise, make sales calls, give presentations or attend events and meetings.

For many businesses, acquiring a new customer can take weeks or even months, and cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Yet to get your current customer to spend more with you is super easy.

After all, having just bought from you they are already won over.

You don’t have to run expensive ads or do elaborate presentations. All you have to do is the following four things:

◦At the moment they want to buy, offer them another product or service, ideally at a special discount.
◦Show them a product that many people who bought their product also found useful.
◦Upsell them to a more expensive, better version of the product they want to buy.
◦Suggest they buy several of your product at once, rather than come back later.

It’s that simple.

Make any of those offers and ten to twenty percent of your customers will say yes .

Bingo, you’ve just lifted your annual profits by at least ten percent.

And that’s net profits- it cost you nothing to get these extra sales.

There really is no easier or quicker way to make more money in your business.