Last week, I flew across the country to attend Peak Potentials’ Guerrilla Business School. It was an amazing 4-1/2 days. I met people from all over the world. And the one thing we all shared in common was a desire to learn, grow our business and serve our customers in the best way possible.
We received training in sales, negotiations, social media marketing, online marketing and more from a host of speakers including best selling authors like Robert Kiyosaki, Today’s Growth Consultant Founder Ken Courtright, product development strategist Pamela Hendrickson, and Venture Capital funding expert & success coach Bill Walsh, and podcasting expert Sam Crowley.
Watch the video review I recorded on the last day:
Here are just a few of the key points I learned from this event:
Top Tips to Grow a Successful Business
1. The Purpose of Business is to Serve! Create a product or service that helps others and you’ll have an excellent opportunity to succeed.
2. Solve Problems. If you don’t know what product or service to sell, look for problems and solve them.They don’t have to be huge problems either. It’s terrific to be an innovator. But not everyone is a Steve Jobs, Henry Ford or Thomas Edison. Everything can be improved. Look for an existing product or service and improve it in some way. You’ll have an easier time selling since there’s already a proven market for it.
3. Focus on Sales & Marketing. Most companies spend 50% of their time on administrative duties, 30 percent on product development and 20 percent on sales. But here’s the kicker: Successful companies spend 20% of their time on production, 20% on admin and 60% on marketing/sales. If you want your business to grow and thrive, you need to focus more of your time on sales!
4. Rich business owners are focused. They create teams and implement systems. A business system operates without direct input from owner. It’s a repeatable process that produces a profit. If you’re the sole employee in your company, it is imperative that you start putting together a system so you can hire someone – even a Virtual Assistant – to help you do the work. You should be focused on marketing and sales, and doing the jobs that you enjoy. Delegate the things you’re not good at to someone else.
5. Your net worth is your network. Who are the people you associate with? Are they people who are committed to success? If not, find people who are. That may mean having to let go of some friends. But you’ll reach your goals a lot faster if you associate with like-minded people.
6. Top Negotiating Tactic: Ask for it! No Ask = Automatic No. This is also a lesson my mother taught me. If you want something in life, you have to ask for it. The worst thing they can say is no. That just opens up an opportunity to negotiate. Besides, they might surprise you and say, “Yes.” Wouldn’t that be awesome?
If you have the right knowledge for today, the right vehicles for today, the right strategies for today and most of all the right character and mindset for today, you can win … and you can win big!
