Is your path of success a nice paved multi-lane highway, Freeway, Potholed Freeway, street, dirt path, or pile of garbage no one can get around? Here is the opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade and pave clear paths of growth for a future that can transform your life and one you would not have expected.
Sometimes it’s best to hear directly from business owners on what it means to own a “sellable” business. I think you will find some of what my friend has to say inspiring.
Managing employees is a challenge, especially as businesses grow. It’s important to maintain good communication, productivity, and collaboration within the team. Thankfully, there are simple solutions that can help small business owners manage their employees with greater efficiency and success.
We have been talking about the purpose of business being creating customers who create customers. Here we show the math and the proof. What will it mean to your bottom line? What investment can you make that beats the return on providing an exceptional customer experience.
The exceptional experience gives you the growing and predictable revenue that makes scaling your business easier and better positions you to sell at your price and terms one day.
In part 2 are the answers to some common objections to investing in the Customer Experience.
I stress customer experience because it directly leads to driving up your Customer Lifetime Value, your profits, and the enjoyment of owning your business.
Continuing with the Purpose of Business is to create customers who create customers.
An important aspect of that is investing your time, focus, and yes money to provide a superior customer experience.
For many business owners, they see customer service as an expense to be limited.. not as an investment like advertising or sales.
Some of the common objections are in this post… the answers in the next one ..
The purpose of business is to create customers who create customers.
To do so, you have to provide a superior experience. Are your customers making more customers for you?
“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”
– Peter Drucker
Taking Peter’s quote I found an expansion of that in one of Dan Kennedy’s BS books. It’s the theme of this short story and my following 3-4 posts.
“The Purpose of Business is to Create Customers Who Create Customers.”
Growing a business doesn’t always require more hours or resources; sometimes it just requires smarter strategies like automation, outsourcing, and delegation.
Automating to help make things more efficient at work. Outsourcing to free up your time to invest in more important activities, and delegating to utilise your staff better and take the stress off your back.
Ever feel like you are a trapped in the trenches of a price war.
You don’t have to be.
Ron Holt shows the power of standing out, scaling up and ultimately selling at a premium.
By standing out he could charge what he wanted. That funded his growth which then made him attractive for a high premium offer.
Trolls beware! Don’t mess with my wife’s 20 years of experience as a teacher and senior leader in the British Curriculum.
When it comes to phonics, she has literally transformed hundreds of children from struggling readers to confident ones.
A reminder that when you’re choosing mentors or resources for your business, don’t be fooled by ideologues who preach without getting results.
Go for the real thing – those who take the time to get to know your unique situation and help you reach your goals
Working hard is great, but don’t forget to rest and rejuvenate too! Maintaining a good work/life balance can be a key to success.
Taking regular breaks to relax and unwind can help you mentally, physically and you’re your creativity – all of which are essential for growing your business.
So take some time off, let your mind and body recover – you’ll be glad you did.
People do business with those whom they like and trust. Do the following to help people feel comfortable trusting you and doing business with you.
When they trust you and you exceed their expectations, you gain repeat customers. The ones who will keep buying from you, referring you, and funding you to help your business grow.
The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most famous and influential speeches in history. And if you look at it from a “business perspective”, it’s a masterpiece in showing the power of communicating benefit and transformation. In short, how to stand out from your competition and communicate it effectively.
Every try to assemble something when the instructions are pure ****. Best is EU purchases where the only instructions are in 15 different languages and they are warranty cards.
If instructions are included, often it’s written by engineers for other engineers and as useful as just telling us to ask the Cat how to put it together.
But here’s the thing.. purchases that do not get consumed get returned. So why deal with refunds because instructions are not clear. Start there and see what happens…
Knowing your audience can be a force for good or evil.
For good so you can provide the solution that can change people’s lives into their hands.
For evil, like poor Mr Ed….
Regardless, knowing your audience makes it possible to scale your business because they are more likely to listen and buy from you.. that is if you know how and when to speak to them…
Five principles of direct marketing can help lift your business out of a rut by helping stand out and stand up and scale to the next level.
Sometimes Schools can give us the best lessons on how to grow a business outside their classroom. Just look at how they are run…
Being successful in business is about understanding the core desires that drive your customers and providing solutions to fulfill them. We can learn a lot from two very different restaurants – one aimed at impressing clients for business deals, and another for throwing a 3 year old’s birthday – on how to create the right atmosphere, understand customer desires and price accordingly.
By doing this, you can outsmart your competitors and attract the customers you want and charge the prices you want. At the end of the day, it’s not about prices – it’s also about understanding and fulfilling customer desires.
This headline is ridiculous because pairing blue fin tuna sushi with sliders doesn’t have anything wrong with it logically, but rather awkward from an emotional aesthetic point of view.
it’s about atmosphere and how it reflects some of our deepest core desires.
Ever wonder why you go to the restaurants you do?
Do you only go because you are hungry?
If that’s the case why go out and not just deliver?
What restaurant would you take a client to win a critical project?
How about 20 3-year-old children to a birthday party?
Pick the same place? If not.. why?
Ever get a call from a company that only cares about price? it’s like a robber calling you to offer a discount on buying back what he just stole from your house.
“A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man”
– Vito Corleone
Tips to be a real man or woman and build a business by freeing your time.
As a busiess owner what does it mean to “maximise” your time? There is lots of hype and cliches around.. but here are some practical steps the hero in our story took to maximise his time.
Four quick strategies for business owners to grow and build the value of their business and set it up to sell one day on their price and terms.
Budgets are necessary to control spending, but mindlessly following them is insane when it comes to scaling and growing your business beyond what the budget “allows”. You can be flexible and still grow smart as long as you look at key metrics for growth and allow them to supersede what some arbitratry budget measure says.
When and how do you balance growth while making sure you don’t go nuts on spend?
Your Business can be like a winning horse if you train it well and feed it with steady and growing profits.
On the big race day (the day you exit) it can give you a huge payout.
Have you ever felt really intimidated by an upcoming challenge? Like time I stepped onto a wrestling mat to face “Mr T.”* in the 1980s.
But then something amazing happened: when we got into the middle of the match, I realized he wasn’t so scary after all! In fact, if it hadn’t been for me being pysched out in the beginning and gave up points for nothing, I would have won.
This experience taught me an important lesson: don’t judge a situation by its cover. You never know what lies underneath. So be confident in yourself and take that leap of faith—you may surprise yourself!
*(P.S. It wasn’t the real Mr. T just in case you were wondering…)
As I posted this article on my Linkedin profile, I saw the date 26 January. It’s a coincidence, but it’s extremely relevant (and I’ll explain shortly).
Growing up in Chicago in the 1980s we witnessed one of the best NFL defenses to ever be on a field. It caputed a whole city and people went crazy.. even waiting in hundreds of thousands in 20 below zero to welcome them back after a championships.
Why do I bring them up? Because it’s a cautionary tale. How a system that brings you to the heights can also fail you when it outlives its time.
Like in business, and the system you used to launch can now destroy the value you built ..
As for the date? 26 January 1986 was the date they won the Super Bowl..
As a founder, especially if you were a solopreoneur, you had to do a bunch of things at once.
You had to hustle and find your customers, you had to onboard them, you had to service them, you had to bill them, and you had to collect from them all the while still trying to find new customers and working on the quality of your products and services.
And pay the bills, and deal with the government agencies, etc etc.
But when you are ready to scale and grow your business it’s best to keep in mind the Triangle of Success and the importance of being able to execute all areas simultaneously.
I haven’t trimmed my beard in two weeks.
Not because I’m lazy.
Because the only guy I trust is out of town — and I’d rather look like a werewolf than let the wrong hands touch my face.
That’s loyalty.
And if your business doesn’t have customers who feel that way about you — you’re leaving a goldmine untapped.
Let me tell you why the best clients are the “wolfmen”…
(And why you never, ever let them go.)
I saw a restaurant commit business suicide.
I watched a project lose its sponsor and still gain value.
And I spent 7 weeks away — not because I’m rich.
But because I built for control.
Most entrepreneurs build themselves a cage.
Q4 is about unlocking the door — and stepping into open roads and open skies.
If you want real control over your time, money, and relationships…
Stay tuned.
What if the client you’re afraid to lose… is actually the one suffocating your business?
I’ve fired clients before.
Some readers hated me for saying that.
Some unsubscribed.
But what happened next was a lesson in revenue, sanity, and scaling.
Blindly believing that the “client is always right” can be a recipe for killing your business margins and your family life.
The Boss You Should’ve Fired 6 Months Ago
Your client doesn’t pay your salary — so why are they treating you like an employee?
Here’s how one midnight meltdown showed me exactly who needed to go — and what happened when I pulled the trigger
The Boss You Should’ve Fired 6 Months Ago
What do you do when your CEO storms out, ghosts the board, and then casually shows back up expecting his job back?
Let me tell you what one founder did — and how it cost him everything
They cut $150K in “non-essentials”…
Then lost $5.2M in company value.
When margin obsession becomes value destruction — here’s the mistake they made, and how to avoid it.
Save $0.30. Lose $5.00.
That’s what one founder did — and it cost him millions.
The “smart” tax deduction that killed his valuation — and how to avoid the same trap
People paid this business to work for free.
And they loved every minute of it.
I didn’t meet the owners.
Because they didn’t need to be there.
Let me tell you what I saw — and why this seasonal farm is far more valuable than it looks
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