Today we have a guest article by Clay Clark who is former United States Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, an award-winning speaker & founder of the Thrive15.com online business education platform designed to help people to start a business, grow a business or advance in their careers.
Note – I in the article refers to Clay. Some of his views might be only applicable for US based startups.
He shares sixteen Business laws every Entrepreneur should know. So let’s get started with his guest article.
Action is the real measure of intelligence : Napoleon Hill
After consulting countless entrepreneurs in nearly every industry imaginable, I have found the following universal business laws that successful entrepreneurs follow and you should too –
Dream big and then focus on turning those big ideas into small action steps
You have to begin with the end goal in mind, knowing that a goal is a dream with a deadline. You must believe and understand that if you do not impose a deadline for your dreams on yourself, your dreams will never become reality because they will never get done. You must learn to break down your big ideas into the small actionable items needed to get things done. This is skill that you can learn and a skill that is taught in the book Scale by Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel.
Learn to sell or your business will go to hell
If you can’t sell your product, it goes from being an asset to a liability. Learn to sell, partner with someone who can sell, or learn to be poor. And when I say “learn to sell” I realize that most people (not you) immediately formulate a mental picture a man similar to the sales hack below. My friend, the man featured below is not selling, he demonstrating high-pressure “jackassery” in combination with a lack of tact, knowledge and skill.
If you are serious about learning to sell make sure to read Soft Selling In A Hard World by Jerry Vass, Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes, The New Conceptual Selling by Robert Miller and Relationship Selling by Jim Cathcart. There are as many highly-skilled natural sales people as there are natural cricket players or American-style football players. Learn to sell or you will come across like the man below.
Over deliver and you will soon be over paid
Over deliver on promises and deadlines. Show up early, deliver your product early, and deliver more than you promised. Over deliver now and in the future, and you will be overpaid. My friend this concept of over-delivery and forming the “Habit of Doing More Than Paid For” is described in great detail by Napoleon Hill in his bestselling book, Think and Grow Rich. The habit of doing less than paid for and always doing everything a day late or just in time and slightly wrong is taught by everyone else. Don’t do what everyone else is doing if you want to get paid like the top 5%.
Always deliver on your promises
Even when it’s not fun, easy, or conveniently affordable, you must deliver on your promises. Build a foundation for success around a solid reputation so that you can exponentially grow your level of compensation. Most entrepreneurs really struggle with this and it’s usually a result of poor organization habits. If you are choosing to be disorganized you are going to start dropping the ball and forgetting to complete tasks.
To be a successful entrepreneur you must have a maniacal focus on details. Most struggling entrepreneurs are visionary generalists who lack the discipline needed to sit down, shut up and write down all of the actionable details needed to move from point A to point B. However, ALL SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS IN THE HISTORY OF THIS GREAT PLANET are either phenomenal when it comes writing out the specific details or they have hired someone on their team who is phenomenal with the details. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple was correct when he once said – This is what customers pay us for – to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers.
Standardize everything
Common sense is not common; thus, you must create duplicable processes for every facet of your business. Think like GE, Southwest, and QuikTrip; not like some ridiculous and perpetually-just-barely-surviving-bait-shop-or-taco-truck. My friend mentally marinate on this for a moment.
Warren Buffet, who is one of the world’s wealthiest people and arguable the most successful investor of all time said, “I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.” What does this mean? It means that you must build your business based around standardized systems that work and not around the minds of people who will go and go.
Pursue practical learning with a passion
Reading all of the Lord of the Rings books cover-to-cover does not count. Becoming successful is not complicated. In order to experience success you must passionately study successful people. Then, you must relentlessly and diligently do what the successful people did to become successful starting today. The bestselling author and renowned business speaker Brian Tracy was correct when he once wrote, “No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.”
Develop sustainable and mutually beneficial relationships
Only engage in mutually beneficial relationships with everyone. If you take advantage of somebody today, then you are really hurting yourself in the long run. If you develop sincere, mutually beneficial relationships with your customers based on habit of doing more than paid for with both your products and services, then you will exponentially grow your customer base. You must assume that your customers, partners, investors and every person that you and your business comes in contact with is thinking like the late great self-made millionaire Andrew Carnegie when he once said, “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”
Differentiate your team members
Get the right people on the bus and then get the bus moving toward your goal. As you progress forward, reward your top people and remove negative or bottom performing people systematically. If you don’t fire cultural destroyers and your worst employees then your best employees won’t want to work with you and your customers will simply spend their money somewhere else once they discover the subpar levels of quality that you provide to them.
The founder of Wal-Mart was correct when he said – There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Be candid with your staff [unless someone asks you how they look]
You must tell your people where they stand if you ever expect them to progress and move forward. As the leader of a company you must be candid with your people at all times. They must know where they stand, how they can improve and what they are doing well. If you hire people that can’t handle truth, then punt them and kick them out of your organization.
We all make mistakes and we all deserve to know that we are doing well and what we can do better. Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE whom many consider to be one of the most productive CEOs of all-time describes top leaders as, “Underneath, you would surely see that the best care passionately about their people—about their growth and success. And you would see that they themselves are comfortable in their own skins. They’re real, filled with candor and integrity, optimism and humanity.”
Propose solutions, not general criticisms
This law was actually borrowed from Bill O’Reilly, a political commentator, author, and reporter. If you are running a successful enterprise, you do not have time to just sit around and complain about things that you cannot control. This is what most of us humans are prone to do. To get things done and to accomplish your goals, you are going to have to be efficient. One of the best ways to drastically improve efficiency is to adhere to the simple rule that you and your office staff will simply not tolerate general criticisms unless they are followed up with a proposal for specific, problem-solving solutions. Be a part of solving problems, not just talking about them.
Celebrate your team’s successes and learn quickly from your failures
When you fail, don’t cry about it. Look for the seed of an equivalent benefit hidden beneath the disappointment of the temporary setback. Then pick yourself up off the ground and get back to work today. You are playing the game to win, but occasionally we all have to lose. You must be able to celebrate and emphasize your wins and minimize the emotional impact of your losses.
I think that Lee Iacocca the legendary former CEO of Chrysler described this best when he explained how he handles disappointment – In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.
Save 20 percent of your income
Money is required to transform your dreams into a reality. The only way that you can create life momentum and fund your passions is to save your money. Be like John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, and Sam Walton. Save now so that you can afford to invest in yourself and your dreams tomorrow.
As the bestselling author and international business success story W. Clement Stone once said – If you cannot save money, the seeds of greatness are not in you.
Be greedy when the market is fearful, and be fearful when the market is greedy
When the U.S. population sees the sky falling and wants to liquidate that is when Warren Buffet wants to buy. He purchased massive quantities of Bank of America stocks as the company’s shares hit an all-time low market value. Berkshire Hathaway purchased countless real estate investments when the bubble burst and the U.S. economy began to implode.
On a very small scale I have personally purchased a house valued at well over $130,000 for less than $70,000 from a panicked seller. I have personally purchased countless amounts of equipment and assets from people who are going through a divorce or selling for other emotional reasons. My friends, each dollar you earn is a gift, and you cannot afford to give up these gifts by buying things at full price.
Read the books listed below
Apply the principles found within them. They will change your life.
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – John C. Maxwell
- Born Standing Up – Steve Martin
- Built to Last – Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras
- In the Words of Great Business Leaders – Julief M. Fenster
- Eight Habits of the Heart – Clifton L. Taulbert
- Good to Great – Jim Collins
- Guerrilla Marketing – Jay Conrad Levinson
- How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
- Sam Walton: Made in America – Sam Walton with John Huey
- More Than a Hobby: How a $600 Startup Became America’s Home and Craft Superstore – David Green & David Merrill
- Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time – Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang
- The $100,000 Club: How to Make a Six-Figure Income – D. A. Benton
- Cashflow Quadrant – Robert T. Kiyosaki
- The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve – G. Edward Griffin
- The Education of an Accidental CEO – David Novak with John Boswell
- The Laws of Success in Sixteen Lessons – Napoleon Hill
- The Millionaire Next Door – Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. and William D. Danko, Ph.D.
- The New Imperialists – Mark Leibovich
- The Service Profit Chain – James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Jr., and Leonard A. Schlesinger
- The Slight Edge: Secret to a Successful Life – Jeff Olson
- Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
- Radical Marketing – Sam Hill and Glenn Rifkin
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert T. Kiyosaki • Titan – Ron Chernow
- The Value Profit Chain – James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Jr., and Leonard A. Schlesinger
- Winning – Jack Welch with Suzy Welch
Vision without execution is hallucination
Who said this? Thomas Edison. Who was Thomas Edison? Thomas was the man who invented recorded audio, video and the light bulb. This is a man who spent his days turning his dreams into reality. At Thrive15.com, we say this phrase all of the time because we know that it is true. There is nothing wrong with dreaming, but eventually you have to get started and begin the process of turning your dreams into reality.
Thus, you don’t want to waste your time learning about things that cannot help you improve your quality of life or the quality of life of others. If I were you, I would save myself endless amounts of time and the $60,000 you would traditionally spend on formal academic business training and I would look for practical training. At Thrive15.com for instance we provide a business school experience that is 10 times more effective than the traditional business school at less than 1% of the cost.
Find a powerful coach or a team of virtual mentors
Bill Gates, the legendary co-founder of Microsoft has often said – Everybody needs a coach. Every entrepreneur must learn either from their mistakes or their mentors. You will save yourself a lot of time, energy, and money if you choose to learn from mentors.
The whole reason we created Thrive15.com is so that people like you and I could have access to practical and powerful business training provided by millionaires, mentors and everyday entrepreneurial success stories. When you find a great mentor or coach, make sure that you meet with them weekly, or if you become a member of Thrive15.com, commit to investing 15 minutes per day to learning from the gurus and people who have achieved more success than you have up to this point. Listen to their recommendations, proven strategies, and focus on looking for actionable items that you can immediately begin apply as soon as possible
About the author
Clay Clark is the former United States Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, an award-winning speaker, and the founder of the Thrive15.com online business education platform designed to help people to start a business, grow a business or advance in their careers. Thrive15.com offers business skill training in 15-minute videos taught by world-class mentors, millionaires, and everyday entrepreneurial success stories.