Work Smarter Not Harder and Fast Track Your Business

  In this business tip, I am going to focus on marketing and how to market an investment and not an expense. Lots of people look at marketing as an expense in their business. They're skeptical about marketing. They're afraid to put money into marketing because they think it really doesn't work, and all they do is they spend money and they see no results. And that's because their marketing focus is all wrong. When you do marketing right, it needs to be looked at as an investment. So what do I mean by that? Some people might not like to hear this, but when it comes down to it, Marketing is Math. It's all about understanding how much does it cost you to buy a customer? In other words, if you spent a $1000 on advertising and get 10 new customers, you spent $100 to buy each customers. Spend a $5000 and you get to 10 customers, you're gonna spend $500 to get each new customer. The next thing we need to look at in marketing is how do we buy customers at an effective pr

In today's business tip, I want to discuss and actually distinguish the difference between a leader and a manager because leadership is not just a job title. Being a good manager takes a mind shift that takes you from being a producer to a more productive manager. Anyone at any level of an organization can be a leader. I'm specifically referring to people that report to you, or that you're in charge of guiding them to grow and succeed, and then how you get more out of that whether you are up and coming manager or even the owner of the organization. Being a manager takes a mind shift. A mind shift that can be very difficult for some. Once someone becomes a manager, their success is no longer determined by their individual contribution. Their success is now measured by the results of their team. I've seen this a lot when I've seen the top producers get promoted to a manager. Just think about this for the most part. These are people who are promoted internally in

  Do you ever get frustrated with constant interruptions from your team? How many times a day does someone on your team come and interrupt you with a question like "Hey, do you got a minute?" Probably happens a lot more than you like, right? Let's face it - it's never a minute. It's always four or five plus or however long it takes you to get back to the task once you remember what you were doing in the first place before you got interrupted, right? These little interruptions can end up absorbing our entire day and keeping us from getting done what's most important for you to be focusing on in your business. I'm going to share with you a strategy that will help you eliminate it or at least reduce the amount of time these interruptions are taking, and eventually eliminate these interruptions all together. Take a step back and ask for something when our team comes and interrupt us. They know we're busy. We'll probably ask them not to interrupt us at

  Just as a farmer knows that their business is affected by the change of seasons, so are our businesses. Unlike a normal season that typically lasts about three months, each business season can last many years or on average about 10 years. If you don't understand how this business season will really affect your business you could be caught off guard and this can have a very negative effect on the health and the survival of your business. Let's start talking about Spring. This is the time when the farmer starts to sow the seeds. We are starting to plant ideas and they start to grow. You've survived the Winter and now you're beginning a totally new economic cycle planting the seeds and maybe even looking for other revenue sources. We may even possibly recruit new talent to help us grow. Generally, at this point, we plan and map out our focus for the succeeding years. Business Spring usually lasts many years. You need to give these ideas time to develop. Then after Sprin

  My definition of success that I got from Tom Hopkins many years ago is that success is a journey towards the achievement of predetermined worthwhile goals. When you take a deeper look at this statement, it is expressing that success is different for everyone. Each of us is on our own journey towards our own success and so we must focus on our own journey and not someone else's success or someone else's journey. If we're looking at someone else's success, we are taking the eye off the ball. We're taking our eyes off of our journey and that could quickly lead us to get off the tracks. Have you ever looked at a co-worker or another entrepreneur and think, "How did they become so successful so quickly?" It's easy to focus on what we see , that being successful seems to be little time or requires very little effort. The problem is that we're just seeing the results and not the effort that it took for them to get there. When we do this, we are losing

  How do you create an automatic business that runs without you? This is not just theory. It comes from guidance, a system, and a commitment from the business owner that they want to work on it. Let's get started with the definition of a Business according to ActionCOACH.  It is a commercial profitable enterprise that works without you - the business owner. You see, when I work with my clients, I get them to just work on one of these areas. Is it a commercial enterprise? Or is it a profitable enterprise that works without you? See, I meet lots of entrepreneurs that want to start, maybe, one, two, or three businesses, and guess what? They all have the same problems. Because the fundamentals are not set up correctly. Commercial means that you're selling something that people value or something that they want to buy. Profitable means that you understand enough about your business finances that you could possibly increase your profits without even increasing your revenue or even l