Insight # 1: 3 Myths about Business

3 Myths About Growing A Business

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.

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 certain strategies, 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.

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 many business owners substantially reduce or eliminate their risk. Understand this, business only harbours risk if you don’t know how to make every rupee, pound or dollar you invest generate a profit – return 150%, 200%, 500%, 1000% – or many thousands of percent.

When you know how to make every rupee, 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 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.

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 Rs. 21,00,000 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 millions in 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!

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.

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 real estate business approached me. He’d identified an opportunity in the housing market which almost anybody with five to 10 lakh rupees 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 homes. 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 he received an award for being the best real estate agent in his area..

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.

Realise, it isn’t the business or the product that causes ads to be unprofitable. The potential to make money always was and always will be inherently there. It simply needs to be recognised and released.

Are you beginning to see the inherent potential in any business – in your business?

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 gian