The only 2 rules you need to know to succeed in business

Dan Waldschmidt, Edgy Conversations

There are many rules to business. There are many things you’re told you “need to be doing” if you want to be successful.

But despite all the complexity about getting business right, there are really only two rules — two philosophies really — that dictate success.

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling.

It doesn’t matter what you’re planning to do. It doesn’t matter where you’re at or the industry you are in.

Massive success is rooted in these two rules.

1. Be incredibly easy to do business with.
Ubiquity is the new exclusivity. Helpfulness is the best strategy for driving awareness.

In today’s app-driven sales economy it’s easy to force prospective customers into a funnel where they have to fill out a form, download a white paper, or make a dozen frantic visits to your website before your technology scores them high enough for you to want to care to get to know them.

No wonder you’re not successful driving new revenue. You’re not flexible enough to meet people where they are.

No one wants to feel like an idiot to have to do business with you. More importantly — no one wants to have to do work to give you their money.

They want you there to help them and support them and give them guidance. And when you’re not easy to do business with it just adds to the frustration and chaos they already feel.

So abandon the strategies where you hide your contact information on your website. Make it incredibly easy for people to cancel your service or product if they’re not happy. Ditch all the complex contracts.

Be everywhere your prospective clients will be looking. Be there with a smile and a helpful hand instead of a gimmicky sales pitch and awkward marketing process.

2. Be so good they come back for more.
Obsess about ways to provide surprise and delight to your customers.

Think about all the frustrating things in your industry that you could remedy, even in small ways.

Deliver service with a smile, even when you’re stressed out and anxious. Put a plan in place to follow up on the promises you make.

A simple productivity platform or to-do app can help you stay scheduled and focused on delivering on your best intentions.

There is nothing particularly genius about doing what you say. But it makes all the difference in the world to your customer.

And it has a massive impact on your growth. Your customers want to believe in you. They want to give you a second chance when you screw up.

All you have to do is be willing to try. Apologize when you get it wrong. And keep trying to get it right.

These are the rules that make business awesome
Be impossibly easy to do business with.
Be so awesome that they ask for more.

No amount of sales automation or witty marketing satire can trump the impact you create when you execute these two rules.

Being awesome isn’t an accident. Changing the world doesn’t happen by chance.

It takes focusing on the details. It requires you playing the game by a different set of rules.

These are those rules.


http://www.businessinsider.com/the-only-2-rules-you-need-to-know-to-succeed-in-business-2016-4?IR=T&utm_content=buffer2f3ed&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer?r=UK&IR=T

Importance of being Financially Educated. How To Be Wealthy And Why 95% Never Will Be

"You will never be wealthy working for someone else at a job - EVER!"

Once you have knowledge, you can seized opportunities when they come along, because you can recognize them.

Become an Entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, you gain time freedom and financial freedom.

The broker buy stuff
The middle class buy liabilities
The rich buy assets that create passive cash flows which can then be reinvested to increase these passive cash flows further.  This is the wealth creation formula.
You cannot find these passive cash generating opportunities unless you are open to hearing about them.  Once you find them, you have to see which fits you and then act.







Published on 27 Aug 2013
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‘Go big or go home’ – how to make it in business

Alastair Mitchell, CEO and co-founder of Huddle, a collaboration platform in the Cloud, offers his top 10 tips for would-be entrepreneurs.

10 of the best: Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell offers sound business advice 

5:54PM GMT 09 Nov 2012

^{Find out how RBS is helping young entrepreneurs at Inspiring youth Enterprise}

Life as an entrepreneur is like being on a roller coaster that just won’t stop. There are breathless, stomach-churning twists and turns, and you can go from feeling like Richard Branson to Del Boy in the same day. Much of the time it can be hard to feel like you are in control, certainly when your business starts to get noticed and momentum gathers.

Since I founded Huddle, the leader in enterprise cloud collaboration and content management, back in 2006 with Andy McLoughlin, I’ve felt like that on numerous occasions. In just over four years, Huddle has grown from a bedroom start-up with a team of just two – and, yes, that was Andy and me – to a 100-strong business with offices in London and San Francisco that competes (and wins) head-to-head with Microsoft.

Getting to this point has been exciting, exhilarating and exhausting at times, but all the more rewarding for it. Setting up your own company comes with its fair share of trials and tribulations and can be massively daunting here in the United Kingdom. The UK is an incredible country in many ways, but I’m not always convinced that it is as supportive of entrepreneurs as it could be, particularly when compared to the US. That’s not a criticism of government, but more a general observation about the culture surrounding start-ups and entrepreneurs.

In the US, and in San Francisco especially, people are encouraged to become entrepreneurs; there is a support network for people to tap into, ask questions of and get advice from. Even the biggest and most successful entrepreneurs take the time out to pass on their experiences and act as a mentors.

So, in the spirit of sharing the entrepreneurial wisdom, here are the 10 most useful tips I’d like to impart to all the aspiring young entrepreneurs out there.

1. Spend as much time as possible researching your idea

You need to look at what is out there already, what might be in the pipeline and see if there really is a market for your idea. Your friends and family might not necessarily be the best people to bounce an idea off either – unless you come from a family of entrepreneurs, of course. Try and find a mentor in a non-competing business that can give you a steer in the right direction and some objective advice.

2. Concentrate on building the best product that you can – be uncompromising in your vision

There are too many bad products in the world, so do your utmost to make sure yours isn’t one of them. Take feedback on board from as many trusted advisers as you wish, but don’t dilute your vision too much. Andy and I set out with the clear goal of helping people work better together, and that remains the foundation of what we do to this day.

3. Get customers involved early

They can provide good feedback, the comfort factor for prospects and proof that there is something tangible to your business for potential investors. Whether it’s an in-depth case study, press release to send to the media or just a quick one-line testimonial for the website, having a customer willing to say “we use this and we love it” is as powerful a marketing message as one could wish for.

4. Be ruthless from the off

It’s not a problem to give away a chunk of your business as you get started – but be mindful of how much it is worth and be ruthless from the very first day. Even at the beginning, you need to be firm and strong when negotiating and doing deals. If you let people walk all over you, you’ll set a precedent from that point onwards for people to take advantage of you and get the upper hand in any negotiations.

5. Go big or go home

I’m a massive believer in reaching for the skies, both in life and in business – who on Earth wants to set up the sixth most successful company? So you need to be convinced that your business is going to be successful, otherwise convincing other people of that fact will be an uphill struggle.

6. First impressions can only be made once

You can’t underestimate the importance of a successful launch. If people perceive you to be a successful, on-the-up and a business with a buzz about it, then more often than not that will become a reality. Use PR, social media, analyst relations (for techie businesses), DM, email and Google AdWords; copy elements of other successful launches you may have seen; and do not be afraid of spending money to get the desired results – it will be money very well spent.

7. Take advantage of all your connections and network, network, network

Your network of contacts is extremely important and will prove invaluable when you’re looking to expand your team and gain feedback on your product or service. Take advantage of every single connection, as help can come from the most unlikely places. My first boss was Huddle’s original angel investor, and this initial funding helped us get started. Online networking has never been easier, with Twitter, LinkedIn and others, but that should be in addition to, not instead of, face-to-face networking. There is no substitute for meeting people in the flesh.

8. Surround yourself with the very best people

I know about marketing, have some experience in marketing and have very strong ideas about marketing my business. But I am not a marketer. I soon realised that as Huddle grew I needed to get the very best people in their respective disciplines to help maintain that growth. So whether it is PR, marketing, HR, accounting or other, don’t try and wing it yourself and only hire the best.

9. Raising money is a job in itself

When you are out and about, pressing investor flesh and running through your “show me the money” presentation for the umpteenth time, who is running your business? Raising cash from investors can be a full-time job, and you can’t afford to take your eye off the ball when it comes to the day job. So don’t – use external resources where you need to.

10. Keep the faith

It’s an oft-quoted fact that most companies that go out of business do so in the first year of trading. Once you’ve survived that, you’ll be in a position to build and grow. But don’t worry if things are taking twice as long as they should be and you think cash is running out. It probably is. But that’s normal - ride it through, don’t get distracted from your vision and everything will turn out ok. And even if it doesn’t you’ll be in for a hell of a ride.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/business/youth-business-enterprise/9667101/business-start-up-tips.html

Calling all entrepreneurs. What must we learn from the spirit of the States?

After a week in Silicon Valley meeting some of the most fascinating entrepreneurs imaginable, isn't it time we started drawing some lessons from our friends on the West coast?

 

By Kamal Ahmed
Published: 7:29AM BST 01 Apr 2010

Recently, George Osborne asked why it was that, as yet, no Facebook or Google or Apple or YouTube had been launched on this side of the Atlantic.

He argued that there was something in our business investing culture that made it difficult to back innovative winners in the digital world and that the Government had failed to create the right culture of risk taking in business.

Although I'm not sure it's the Government's job to develop innovative cultures (the whiff of ill-fated "picking winners" always springs to mind), there is certainly something in the argument that we have much to learn from what happens in that area south of San Francisco that is known as Silicon Valley.

It is no co-incidence that Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple and Cisco are all headquartered in the area south of San Francisco.

Two major tap roots appear to be essential to allow an innovative tree to flourish.

The first is an entrepreneurial spirit in academia and the second is venture capital funding that is willing to take - and therefore understands - risk. In Silicon Valley, Stanford University has had such a catalytic role it is difficult to over-estimate its importance.

Since the 1890s (yes, that's the 1890s) the University has seen its job as enabling the area to be a centre for economic development and industry - firstly engineering, and then the building of silicon chips and finally the support of a whole technology sector. Many professors have their own capital stakes in young entrepreneurs who were their own students.

The other is the role of funding. One venture capitalist I spoke to said a single fund in Silicon Valley matched the whole VC funding of technology in the UK. He said this was equivalent to about £800m, a figure that I have not had time to verify.

He also argued that traditional VC funding was always "on the back" of the companies it had invested in whereas he "didn't bother the people he invested in more than once a month". "I trust them to get on with it," he said.

One 30 minute meeting was enough for him to make a decision, not 50 meetings with 50 different sets of protocols to sign before releasing a few tens of thousands of pounds.

Now, I'm sure his view is skewed and there is lots of exciting venture capital and angel investing work in the UK, particularly supporting the technology industry. But I also know that if even the Government is saying "we must do more" there is clearly a significant problem.

How, then, do we create the correct culture here in the UK to invent the next Apple or the next YouTube?
I heard from two internet firms already huge in the US that they are planning big launches here because we have so many gaps in the market we are not filling ourselves.

What about traffic in the other direction?

What are the good things going on in the technology sector in the UK which we can showcase to the US and say, well, you might be good, but we are getting better?

Or is the picture here as bleak as some in California would have us believe?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/kamal-ahmed/7543198/Calling-all-entrepreneurs.-What-must-we-learn-from-the-spirit-of-the-States.html

The dreams of turning small money into a vast financial empire - Entrepreneurs Are Perfect For The Stock Market

Entrepreneurs definitely dont have a monopoly on how to earn cash fast. The dreams of turning small money into a vast financial empire have always existed in one form or another. The global economy and the Internet have created a new genre of entrepreneurs. However, the stock market has always had its own entrepreneurs. The stock market is also full of individuals wanting to experience large returns from a great idea or investment.

Entrepreneurs definitely know how to dream up an idea and act on it, at least the ones who are willing to do the work anyway. These are people who are not content working for a large corporation but instead want to become that large corporation themselves. Entrepreneurs are people who are willing to take sometimes great risks to make more money and see their idea become profitable.

If this describes you or someone you know then you know someone who would probably love investing in the stock market. Investing consists of a good amount of research but also a great amount of guesswork and speculation. It involves taking risks that many times others are too timid to take. These are the people who really make the money in the stock market. Yes they also lose money but they learn from this and move forward making calculated adjustments in their strategy.

Investors are aware of the risks depending on the investment and so are entrepreneurs. However, this does not stop them from taking the necessary steps to riches. Investors sometimes trust their hunches invest in a stock even though everyone else is saying sell. This applies to entrepreneurs as well.

You see, there are so many similarities in investors and entrepreneurs. Of course entrepreneurs can be more associated with higher risk investments such as penny stocks but this is certainly not the only stock they would be involved in. They take on only the risk that is required of them to position themselves for profit. This does not mean that investors or entrepreneurs are crazy. In fact they are just as sensitive about the risks as anyone else. It all comes down to a willingness to do what others are simply too scared to do.

So if you are an entrepreneur then guess what, you have exactly what it takes to make quite the living in the stock market. You have the guts and tenacity to make bold moves at the right time.

Author: Elton John
Source: articledashboard.com

http://stockoption.tahomafoodsystem.org/entrepreneurs-are-perfect-for-the-stock-market/