Blog posts covering Knowledge, Motivation and Productivity | Get Lasting Results with Mike

Self Improvement is the Secret to Success

Self improvement or self development as its also known, is key to improving the quality of your life. Jim Rohn said it best when he said “You can have more than you’ve got, because you can become more than you are. The other side of this coin is unless you change what you are, you’ll always have what you got.”

#1 Emotional Intelligence

One way to improve yourself and your results is improving your Emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is seen as a predictor of highly successful people. Individuals that are high in Emotional Intelligence tend to be emotionally balanced, in tune with their gut instinct. They have an innate ability to listen, empathise, creatively problem-solve, and understand the why behind the actions of others. Gary Vaynerchuk is a strong advocate of Emotional Intelligence, he believes it to be one of his greatest strengths, and key to his success.

Gratitude

One way of tapping into your Emotional Intelligence is to give gratitude for what you already have. Lets call it an appreciation perspective. If you live a life of striving, it’s really easy to get lost in that striving. You are always looking to the future to find happiness, and as a result you are internally torn between where you are now and where you want to be.

This can lead to negative emotions, even chronic negative emotions such as anger, frustration, despair. Such emotions can adversely impact the quality of your life, even ruin it. While motivation is indeed key to driving action, you shouldn’t allow it to get out of control.

I recommend using gratitude to help you gain perspective. We can all benefit from remembering we are here by the grace of god. Our lives can be cut short at any moment, that alone is worth a great deal of gratitude. If you are healthy, mentally and physically, again you have a great deal to feel blessed about. If you find it hard to internalise such gratitude simply by thinking about it, do a few weeks volunteering at a local kids cancer unit, hospice, or care home to gain some much needed perspective.

Manage Stress

Another way of managing Emotional Intelligence is by managing Stress. Stress is caused by a fear of “a future potential devaluation in your sense of self”. You might fear there is a gap in your ability and the requirements of a future event, in other words you might fear you aren’t going to be strong enough, smart enough, wealthy enough, or good enough to cope with something that might (or might not) happen sometime in the future. Often the worry is greater than the actual event. Stop telling yourself stories and embellishing the downsides and worst case scenarios, instead be aware of the risk and try to mitigate it as much as possible, there are always ways around obstacles. Worry and fear are thoughts and only exist in your mind. When the event comes round you will either find you can deal with it much better than you anticipated, or that it doesn’t turn out to be half as bad as you thought it would be. This happens ninety nine times out of a hundred.

Become Self Aware

Another way of improving Emotional intelligence is by being Self aware. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what you like to do and don’t like to do. Instead of burying your head in the sand and trying to ignore these things, be honest and open with yourself. Confront them head on and work out the best way to either overcome them or find a work-around solution.

Self Reflection

Something that is closely related to self awareness is self reflection. Honestly auditing yourself, your thoughts, your actions, your performance, your results good and bad. Stand up to them. There is no failure in life, failure is a chance to learn something, make yourself better and move on.

Work on self first then observe others

To improve emotional intelligence you need to work first on yourself. Once you open yourself up to honest analysis, you will see with greater clarity what shapes the actions of other people around you. You will understand their motives better. You will pick up on the subtle signals and be able to read between the lines. You should as a result be more empathetic, more open to communication, by listening better you learn much more. Empathy is one of the greatest skills you can develop in your personal and business life.

Develop a Feedback Loop

As part of your growth, you should be open to, even encourage constructive criticism from people you trust. Encourage a feedback loop that helps you improve your game. Now this part comes with a caveat. You should have a strong sense of what you are about, who you are, what you want. Otherwise you can easily be manipulated into following other peoples agendas, or take on their insecurities and fears.

Its also important to understand that you are not going to get on, or be liked by everyone you meet, there will always be haters. “Haters gotta hate” as the saying goes, and it’s important to not let these people chip away at your self-esteem simply because they don’t want you to get on in life, or want to bring you do a peg or two. Ignore the views of these people, they don’t understand you and their opinion isn’t relevant, they probably have their own internal issues shaping their view.

Encourage honest, constructive feedback from people you genuinely trust and respect. Close family are not usually good for this because often they project their own fear and insecurities onto you and what you are trying to do, they don’t want you to get hurt so tell you not to do it. Instead of turning to family, try to find mentors or role models that have done what you want to do and encourage them to share their experience, and advice with you.

Assume the Best in Others’

Assuming the best in others is another way of improving your emotional intelligence. The human condition is driven by the need to avoid pain and desire to be more. This condition makes people irrational, isolated, and selfish. Most people operate in this mode almost unconsciously. It is their self preservation instincts that are ruling their behaviour, and we shouldn’t mistake this to be who they are. People are good at heart, they are possessed by their Ego’s, for more about this check out my wellbeing guide.

Become a Giver

One last point about emotional intelligence is one of becoming a Giver. Give back, or just give. The world would be so much better if people were more giving. Giving of their time, their attention, their love, their patience, their understanding. Looking at each of your relationships from a “what can I give to this person” will open up a vastly more expansive life than you currently live.

#2 Having a Strong work Ethic

Having a strong work ethic is also vital when it comes to self improvement. If you’re not willing to invest the time and effort in working on yourself, than you’ll just have to be content with where you are and what you have now. Gary Vaynerchuk advocates “working your ass off” to get what you want in life. “Hustling” your way towards you goal, instead of watching every episode of House of Cards. If you’re not where you want to be, the only way to get there is, to take action, massive action. The maths is simple, there are 24 hours in a day, if you sleep for 8, that leaves 16 hours. If you work 9 of those hours, you still have 7 hours to work on developing yourself.

While having a good work ethic is important, it’s not just about putting the time in but rather it’s about working smart. It’s about being effective rather than busy. Jim Rohn says “Don’t spend major time on minor things”, and this is so true. Success won’t come from hustling 16 hours a day unless you’re doing the right things during that time.

In his book “The One Thing”, Gary Keller offers up a great focusing question that you can ask yourself and keep asking yourself to make sure you’re not wasting your time on unimportant activities. “What’s the one thing you can do now, such by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary”. I’m not going to go into detail about this question here. If you want a detailed explanation, check out the book for yourself below
The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

get results: what's the one thing you can do now such by doing it, everything else will be easier or unneccessary — get results: what’s the one thing

#3 Work on your strengths

Focus on developing your strengths rather than wasting time on bringing your weaknesses up to speed. Gary Vaynerchuk advocates “doubling down on your strengths and punting your weaknesses”. It’s good advice, even though it goes against the conventional advice of working on your weaknesses. Why is it good advice? Well because generally your strengths will be the activities you are naturally inclined towards. They are likely to be things you enjoy doing, and as a result will be more willing to do going forward. There is generally a reason why you do what you do and don’t do what you don’t do. It comes back to self awareness and knowing yourself better.

So it’s vitally important to know what you’re good at and not so good at. for instance, not everyone is cut out for business and being an entrepreneur, just because it’s the sexy thing to do at the moment, doesn’t mean you should do it. Be honest with yourself.

Stay in your lane, make your knowledge deep and narrow, rather than wide and shallow. To stand out you should aim to be exceptional at one thing rather than average at a lot of different things.

Summary

So there you have it, work hard to improve yourself. Consider it a lifelong project, one that you will never actually finish, but which keeps you pushing yourself to be a better person throughout your entire life. Be a master of what you know and a student of what you don’t know. Never take the view that you know all that you need to know, never. Be open to new ideas, open to new ways of doing things. Don’t be content with doing things the best you can do them, but aim to do them the best way they can be done. Most of all enjoy your personal journey of self improvement.

Check out our Ultimate guides for some self help information.

100 Business Principles You Must Know

Here is a list of ‘Business principles’ that I have found useful to know over the years so I thought I would share them with you, hope you find them useful…

Look for huge expanding markets – a contracting market means you have to work harder each year to maintain previous revenues and margins. Get your timing right – ahead of trends not behind them for the same reasons.
Provide unique and consumable products . if not unique then you must have a retention strategy, if not consumable then you are redundant until next sale
Pay attention to timing
- Make sure you business/ product is ahead of trends not behind it.
- Study what creates trends. i.e. Follow the Baby boomers (1946-1964 18 years, 1 billion worldwide control 65% of all money)as they age, products that fend off aging, retirement issues, wills and estate planning, security and money, efficiencies (making life easier), identity theft detection, now 41-59, concentrate on the 60 year olds not the 42 otherwise you are behind the trend.
Stop resisting progress and technological advancement. Instead be on the front foot and be hungry to find out what’s coming next. Disrupt your own business, look how you can put your existing model out of business. It’s better you do it to yourself than someone else does it to you.
Where are prospective customer’s spending their attention. If you’re business isn’t there, you’re competitors will be cleaning up in your absence.
Have a strong work ethic. Work harder than the competition
Work smarter than your competition. Productivity is about focusing on the activities that have the biggest impact on your business.
Employ others – leverage their time and effort
Identify your market segment and focus on them
Where are the gaps in your market?
Where is the growth and profit?
Look for needs and translate the benefits.
Always answer the prospective customer’s question ‘what’s in it for me?’
Look after the customer – go the extra mile.
Be professional at all times, but it’s okay to be human. People do business with people they like, respect and trust.
Plan your objective.
Ask, listen, sell.
And make your business fun – life is not a rehearsal.
Decide what you do (and what you don’t do).
Decide who you serve (and focus on them intensely)
Decide what makes you different (and do it)
Manage cash flow (very closely)
Manage employees (incentivise them for success)
Set goals (and go for them)
Expose yourself (tell the market what you do)
Persevere (though the tough times)
Always maintain your integrity (in everything you do)
Systemise your business.
Deliver full range of values – which means anything that satisfies needs, including money.
The 80/20 rule – leverage yourself and your resources
Apply principles not formulas
Think with your whole mind – logical and gut instinct
Define success. What is success to you?
Focus on results – effective better than efficient.
Use your “double vision” (long term and short term view)
Keep a healthy perspective – big picture view.
Don’t Compete, Create a Competitive Advantage – How will you compete? What will be your business edge? How can you create a winning business model with an advantage? Like the Grateful Dead, the secret is to find a niche where you can be not necessarily the best but the only. Find out what everyone else is doing and then do something different. Your competitive advantage can be based on a unique skill, intellectual advantage, or by selling at an unusual time or location. The alternative to uniqueness is to be ordinary, and sell the same product at the same price as everyone else, making minimal profits if any at all.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the purpose of a business is to make money. But the real purpose of a business is to create value for others.
Trying to sell to everyone is selling to no one. Focus. Don’t waste time trying to sell to the wrong people.
Use financial control to aid your business decisions.
If you’re not already the most expensive in your field, there is room to charge more.
Adaptability. The species that survives, adapts to changing circumstances.
Smell what sells and sell more of it.
Branding and good spelling matters.
Sometimes less is more.
The importance of listening – Listen to what your market research tells you.
Teamwork, creativity, innovation, humility and salesmanship are critical to much of the success in the marketplace. Ego, self centeredness, looking out for one’s self, pride, lack of individual responsibility, and an unwillingness to take risks are reasons for much of the failure in the marketplace.
Perseverance, tenacity, commitment to learning and growing, knowing your market, having a real passion to succeed and understanding your costs.
Plan a retirement date and work on plan of action required to get there.
Its not about who you know but who knows you.
Do what you love – follow your bliss.
Buy items that appreciate in value; rent those that depreciate.
If it sounds too good to be true, don’t jump.
A pressured decision will always rupture.
Fast, cheap, perfect…you can only pick two.
Define your objective(s). find a clear story of cause and effect. Keeping the end in mind increases your chances of success. When planning, work backwards to help identify what you will need to have in place at each stage of progression.
Avoid insanity. Poor processes produce poor results, if something isn’t working, don’t keep doing it again and again.
In business, when things are good they’re not really that good, when they are bad they are not really that bad. Keep a level head, don’t let emotion get the better of you.
Promote your success stories, as story’s.
Stop thinking and start doing. Actions speak louder than words.
Get a business name that explains what you do.
More than simply selling, relationships matter.
The law of supply and demand – Find the demand first then find a way to supply it, at a profit
Find your niche, find your unique selling proposition (USP). Learn how to differentiate your product or service.
Use leverage other peoples, skill, knowledge, money, resources, ideas, time
Look for scalability. If it won’t scale, how can you re-engineer so that it will?
Use lateral thinking to approach a situation from a different angle
Work on your business (system), not in it
Reap what you sew. You’ll get out what you put in.
You have to spend money to make money – speculate to accumulate
Learn to manage cash flow – it is the lifeblood of your business
Understand human nature/ behaviour – the need to seek more/increase and avoid loss/ decrease
Innovate, always be looking to innovate.
Take action, make things happen. You can plan all you like but without “doing the work” you won’t achieve s**t.
Add value to people’s lives by “Uniqueness” – unique value can be charged more for, “Impact” – the degree you improve peoples lives, “Scope” – the number of people you reach, “Perception” – people’s perception of the value you are adding
Say it in 30 seconds or don’t say it at all.
If you can’t explain it simply, you probably don’t understand it well enough.
Know what you know, what you don’t know and who knows what you don’t know.
Look for service/product differentiation – don’t commoditise. If you’re not a brand you’re a commodity.
No one will give you money. Find a starting point instead of an end point, downsize big plans. Find ways to prove your business model on a shoestring budget
Make your expertise narrow and deep rather than wide and shallow.
Don’t fall victim to your own BS. Don’t talk the talk unless you can walk the walk.
Look for win-win situations in all interactions.
Build your weaknesses into your strengths.
Make sure people know about you and your service.
Be lucky. Be open to opportunities related and unrelated, don’t be too focused on one thing. Serendipity and chance come from a higher order, so be open to it.
Focus, focus, focus. Don’t have too many balls in the air at once. Do one thing well rather than lots of things poorly.
Spend 10% of your day thinking about new ways to make money.
Spend 10% of your day networking.
Analysis risk and rewards, take fewer risks as you get older, because you have less time to pull it back.
Spend your money wisely, think Return on Investment, but don’t ignore opportunities to build your brand.
Have fun at work. If it’s not fun, do something else.
Know when to call it quits, but don’t give up too easily.
Know what you do, do what you know. Make use of your skill-set to give yourself a better chance of success.
Act like a startup. Be frugal. Operate within your means.
Sell more by adding variety. People sell more jellybeans when there is an assortment of colours.
Get it in writing, don’t trust anyone. Verbal agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
Offering something of value to others strengthens your worth. Adding value by providing more value than you take in return.
Know where you stand legally with customers and suppliers, know your rights and ensure your business abides by the rules
Adaptability – survival of the fittest. Status quo doesn’t exist. The Risk from NOT doing something. Often feels safe, hard to visualise missed opportunities. Ask “what will happen if we don’t do it”. Because it has worked before doesn’t mean it will always work.
Trust can take years to build and seconds to demolish.
Don’t fight the tide, enjoy the ride.
Live the Golden Rule (treat others with courtesy and respect)
Be a leader – let others follow your example.
Be self-aware. Understand what you’re good at and bad at. Why you do what you do and don’t do what you don’t do. What you like and don’t like.
Employ people that add value and that are better than you at what they do.
Participate and contribute and give 100%.
Pursue excellence. Always be looking for the best way things can be done, rather than settling for the best way you can do them.
Work as a team, there is no “I” in “team”.
Share knowledge, results grow exponentially.
Keep it simple (make it easy for customers to do business with you).
Listen and communicate to employees and customers alike – Over communicate
Never burn bridges.
Always be building relationships in business and personally.
Put the customer first.
Manage customer expectations. Don’t give them cause for complaint.
Be resourceful, use your resources to find creative ways to move beyond obstacles.
Exceed customer expectations always, customer service comes first. Under promise and over deliver – there are more than 100 principles in this article

What you Need to Achieve Your Goals

I use this model of analysis to help me achieve my goals by formulating a clear actionable plan

#1- Goal Setting

What do I want to do/achieve?
Do I know clearly enough what my goal is?

If I don’t know clearly, it will be hard to work out a plan. You must have a defined goal so that a plan can lead to its attainment. It’s ok if that goal moves along the journey, but have a goal before you make a start.

#2- Current Cause and Effect

What am I doing currently?
What is happening/not happening?
Why is it happening/not happening?

There should be a clear cause and effect to follow. Do this and this will happen. If not then clarify the plan further if possible.

#3- Remedial action

What can I do to correct?
What am I missing/not knowing which is important?
What am I not doing that I need to do?

Now that I’ve laid out the structure of the model, let’s have a closer look at this model of analysis in more detail:

Goal

What do you want to do/achieve?
Do you know clearly enough?

knowing what you want to achieve (having a goal) is crucial to developing an actionable plan to make it happen, but think about it in enough detail so that a plan to achieve it is crystal clear. Check out the example below for more clarity about what I mean.

Lets assume your goal is to make more money. There are a number of ways to look at this, what most people mean when they say they want more money is have more money in their pocket after they have paid the bills.

Now this can be achieved two ways, by making more money (increase in income) or saving money they pay out for bills etc.

Saving money is often easier to do then earning more, so we’ll cover this first. Now there are those essential things we have to pay, like rent / mortgage and utilities, which you can’t avoid but which you could look to reduce the cost of, by shopping around for cheaper suppliers, lower tariffs etc. It’s not exciting but it can really put extra money in your pocket if you take the time out to shop around.

For other costs/expenses, try to cut out the ones that are none essential, and that don’t add some enjoyment or value to your life. That’s the criteria I use for expenses.

Is it essential?
Is it adding value to my life?

If the answer is no to both of these questions, get rid of it. If you have debts like loans etc, pay these off as a matter of priority, don’t fail to pay them back, because this is both morally wrong and can affect your credit rating in the future. If you’ve done the crime do the time, so to speak. Just don’t be in a hurry replacing this debt with more debt in the future.

Imagine if you had no bills to pay and every pay cheque that came through the door was yours to keep and enjoy. When people earn more money they tend to take on more debt, they buy a bigger house and nicer car etc. All this does is keep you having to grind away to pay these things off. Once you have the nice car or nice house do you really feel happier? Really? If they do make you happier, then while they are none essentials they are adding value/enjoyment to your life, which is fine.

Earning more money on the other hand is dependent on the skills and knowledge you possess. Learning new higher-paying-skills, working more hours, and /or earning extra income on the side will help you earn more. There is no magic bullet here. Have a plan and work the plan based on your preferences, skill base and motivation levels.

So having the goal of simply “earning more money” isn’t going to be clear enough. By digging deeper into what this involves, will help you work out what options are open to you.

If you don’t know clearly enough, you will have difficulty working out a plan to attain it. Clearly defined goals make the plan easier to formulate and follow through to conclusion.

Current cause and effect

What are you doing currently?
What is happening/not happening?
Why is it happening/not happening?

There should be a clear cause and effect to follow. If I do this… this will happen. If not then clarify the plan further. There are never any guarantees, there is an element of risk to whatever you do, but progress on a best guess basis.

Look at what you’re doing now to achieve your plan. We are looking for a clear cause and effect. You do X and Y happens. Working backwards can sometimes help with each stage. So for instance, if you want to save money, but you’re not currently doing so, then, look to see if you are taking the necessary actions that will lead to this goal being realised, because it’s not going to happen otherwise.

You have to make it happen. Have you looked at what you’re paying for bills? Have you shopped around for cheaper alternatives? Action is key here. Doing what needs to be done to achieve the goal.

Remedial action

What should you do to correct?
What are you missing/not knowing which is important?
What are you not doing that you need to do?

Use something like the decision matrix to determine amongst alternative options, problem solving techniques to work out a way are around obstacles. Use role models to see if you are missing something, look at the models, systems, habits and relationships they use to achieve what you want to achieve.

Summary

This article is designed to make you think with more clarity about your goals and plan of action so that you can formulate and take actionable steps to make it happen. Empowering yourself to find the solutions you are looking for, rather than feeling you have no control about how things turn out.

It’s true that sometimes things don’t work out how you wanted them to, but I have found that having a goal, and a clear actionable plan to achieve it will move you in the right direction. Being flexible in your journey is fine, as long as you know the end destination.. A crystal clear goal makes the plan easier to formulate.

Having a goal of “Making more money” can involve earning extra income or having more money in your pocket at the end of the month by saving. If what you mean is actually having more money in your pocket at the end of the month, then this suddenly opens up extra options including saving on expenses. Be clear what you mean and by do so you find the options open up to you more clearly.

Hope you find this article informative and thought provoking. Please share if you did, thanks.

Master the Fear of Change and Open the Door to Possibilities

The Fear of Change is really the fear of a possible future devaluation in our “sense of self” otherwise known as the “Ego”. It’s the fear of the unknown and sense of uncertainty about the future and what dangers that future might hold for us.

The only way to make things better than they are at present, is to make a change – change the way we think and how we do certain things. Failing to change, often results in stagnation and a sense of getting left behind, because everything around us is constantly changing whether we like it or not.

We falsely think that keeping the status quo is the safest thing to do because it’s familiar and we know we can cope with things as they are “Better the devil you know” as the saying goes. This is an illusion. Change is the only reality, so embrace it and be excited by all the possibilities that exist because of it.

The negative things we fear aren’t real, they are only imagined. We can’t deal with future threats, because they are mind projections, which we play, rather like a movie, over and over. We simulate these experiences as if they were real. We feel the sense of danger, our bodies feel the stress as if the experience was actually happening to us. It’s important to know the difference between the bear in your mind that is going to eat you and the actual bear in real life that is going to eat you. Our mind will always gravitate to the “worst case scenario”, because it’s designed to keep us alive. But many modern day situations are not life or death.

Ask yourself “What is really the worst that could happen if things don’t work out, will you die?” How many times have you dreaded a future event, only to find the reality was far less scary than you thought it would be?

I embrace change, I find it exciting. It is the only way to live in our modern world. Doors will open for you, while others may close but the journey is what life is about, not the destination. So enjoy the ride. Open your heart, open your mind. Jim Carey said it best. “Open the door in your mind and when the door opens in real life just walk through it”.

For more information regarding motivation, check out our motivational guide.

Thought of the Day Quotes (more thoughts here)

“If you insist on holding onto EXPECTATIONS, then expect the future to bring CHANGE, and you won’t be disappointed.”

“CHANGE brings with it OPPORTUNITIES, stop focusing on the RISKS and look for the CHANCES.”

“Why we resist change – CHANGE = UNCERTAINTY = RISK = LOSS. In reality it also provides OPPORTUNITY. But we fear LOSS more than we value gain. So we focus on that.”

Change Quotes

“There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.” – Dr Wayne Dyer

“Nothing changes if nothing changes”.

Get Results: nothing changes if nothing changes

“When you reach a fork in the road, TAKE IT.” – Yogi Berra

Get Results: when you come to a fork in the road, take it

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” – Dr Wayne Dyer

Get Results: change the way you look at things

“The only way to make sense out of CHANGE is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.” – Alan Watts

“We can have more than we’ve got, because we can become more than we are.” – Jim Rohn

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading”. – Lao Tzu

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance”. – Alan Watts

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”- John F. Kennedy

“The key to change, is to let go of fear.” – Rosanne Cash

“Strive for progress not perfection.”

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” –George Bernard Shaw

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” –Frederick Douglass

“Goals seem impossible only when you are not heading toward them.” – Mike Hawkins

“Everyday is a second chance.”

“If you don’t take risks, you will always work for someone who does.”

“Your life does not get better by chance it gets better by change.”

“I already know what giving up feels like. I want to see what happens if I don’t.”

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

“Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must, just never give up.”

“You create your own reality.”

“The distance between dreams and reality is action.”

“You create your own reality.”

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” – Tim Notke.

“Dont make excuses, make improvements.” – tyra banks

“Are your excuses more important than your dreams?”

“Make things happen.” – getresults.org.uk

“Decide – commit – succeed.”

“If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.”

“Let’s not regret what we did not do, rather everyday is an opportunity to do the things we will never regret.”

Understanding Business Models

Get Results: business model graphic — Get Results: Business model

A business model is an abstract view of a company’s commercial activities: how it generates revenue by providing value to its customers, how it converts that revenue into profit and handles its costs.

MIT Business Model Archetype

When I first started to think about business models I came across this model developed by MIT which provides a good foundation for a systematic study of business models, by defining business models and distinguishing their different types. Their model consisting of two elements:

(a) what the business does, and

(b) how the business makes money doing these things.

It uses two fundamental dimensions of what a business does. The first dimension—what types of rights are being sold—giving rise to four basic business models: Creator, Distributor, Landlord, and Broker. The second dimension—what type of assets are involved—distinguishes among four important asset types: physical, financial, intangible, and human.

Get more information (takes you to mit pdf) it is a great basis to start from ….

Another Approach

Another business model, which takes a different approach, by looking inside a business, at the relationship it has with its customers, in terms of transaction frequency (either once only or recurring), or revenue contribution (being small or large)

There are four types of business models here.

Customer group A – once-only transaction, small contribution purchasers.
Customer group B – are large contribution, but once-only purchasers.
Customer group C – provide small contribution, via frequent transactions
Customer group D – provide large contribution, via frequent transaction.

It doesn’t matter if the business is traditional (brick and mortar) or Internet-based. It makes no difference if the business sells a product or service. The size of the business doesn’t matter, either. The only difference between a small business and a large one is the number of business models contained within the enterprises.

Transaction Frequency: Some customers /customer groups provide “recurring” revenues. Their business repeats from period-to-period. Other customers may be, in contrast, one time purchasers.
Contribution to Total Revenues: Some customers contribute only a tiny portion of the total annual revenue. In contrast, others contribute a substantial slice. You might find that other customers are a mix of the two. providing small individual contributions but, over the year, they might account for a significant portion of total annual revenue.

To illustrate this, in my photography business, we provide products that require return visits, such as our baby packages, were newborns are brought back 3 times throughout their first year, to complete their package. Some of these customers may not spend as much per visit, but overall our average sales per customer (not transaction) are higher than most of our one-off sessions. These customers fall into either group C or D.

Otherwise most other photography customers come in maybe once every couple of years, if at all again (group A or B).

In contrast our nurseries and school clients use us twice a year every year, but average sales per transaction tend to be much less than our studio customers (falling into group C) but if you group these individual customers collectively per school (as they are taken on mass in one day) then they move into group D .

This business model offers a different dimension of analysis than the first (MIT model) but both are equally as valid, depending on your requirements.

Business Model Generation

I love the book “Business Model Generation” which is a great resource for anyone looking to further understand the construction of business models. The slideshare presentation below outlines the main points, you can purchase the book below. Please note this is an affiliate link and if you click through and purchase I will earn a commission, but this is not why I am providing a link here, I am doing so because I genuinely believe it is a good source of information on the subject of business models. If you do click through, I would like to thank you for your support of the site via its affiliates, it helps us provide free information on the site.

The book goes into depth on how to analyse you business into segments,

key Partners
key Activities
key Resources
Cost Stucture
Offer
Customer Relationships
Customer Segments
Channels
Revenue Streams

Each of these help to make up the “business model canvas”, which is a great framework for formulating a comprehensive model. I would highly recommend it.

What Is A Business Model from Alexander Osterwalder

The Secret To Success They Don’t Want You To Know

When we are small children, we learn by copying others. And if you have children of your own, or are ever around them, you know they tend to copy whatever you do.

Sometimes it’s cute, sometimes it can be embarrassing.

Throughout mankind’s history, most “learning” has come from copying.

For instance, if you want to learn a trade, you need to work with a skilled and qualified trades-person and be their apprentice, slowly learning the ins and outs under their close supervision.

NLP modeling works on the same principle of finding someone that is expert in what you want to do, and then copying them. You have to copy everything they do, not just their actions but their thought processes, and reasoning.

Obviously, the more complicated the skills required, the more difficult it is to copy them.

One crucial aspect of learning is the need to make mistakes, and to learn from them going forward, because no matter who you are modeling, they can’t have achieved any level of success without a significant amount of trial and error. Or as they say in NLP, “Trial and Feedback.”

Unfortunately, many people like to be told exactly what to do in the hope it will relieve them from making any mistakes.

“I’m ready for success! I’m ready to take action! Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it!”

But they discover the “secret” is to simply keep trying until they get it right, unfortunately most people don’t like this idea so much.

Sure, modeling can help. It can speed-up the process. But being willing to accept any “result” no matter how “good” or “bad” is required for any kind of real success to take place.

This may be the reason why most people are always looking for the next “big secret.”

They would rather wait their entire lives for somebody to tell them what to do, and guide them step-by-step, rather than simply taking action and seeing what happens.

Sure, it can be terrifying taking action. But it is also incredibly liberating. As you’ve likely realized from time to time, most of our deepest fears never actually materialise.

So when you do “wing it” just to “see what happens,” it’s rarely even close to what you feared could happen, and each time you try something, and accept whatever happens as valuable feedback, you will learn something.

Sure, often times you’ll learn what not to do, but this creates a foundation to build on and allows you to learn from your experience and at a much deeper psychological level.

Equally important is the deep knowledge that trying and “failing” isn’t so bad.

It can actually be kind of fun, as long as you have a clear idea of where you’d like to be eventually, and the persistence to keep going no matter what, you’ll not only get there, but have a lot of fun in the meantime.

Make a start today…

Do Your Purchases Align With Your Goal?

Get Results: experiences rather than possessions

Whilst developing a model for getting results in selling and sales, I found myself wondering about what people currently tend to spend their hard earned money on. I wanted to know if we tended to spend money on particular types of things over others and if they aligned with their long term goals. It led me to thinking about what similarities and differences existed in our spending habits. I came to the following conclusions.

As human beings we find ourselves trading our most valuable resource, time, in the pursuit of money, so that we can trade it for things we need or want. There seems to me to be only three broad types of spending that we undertake, they are…

Spending to “Consume“
Spending to (exclusively) “Use“
Spending to “Accumulate” (gain more money or wealth)

Spending to “Consume”

Spending to consume covers things we buy that are consumed in the process of using them. They are only used once, and then they are gone. Consumable purchases are frequently experiential in nature, but not always, and include things like food, and drink, and holidaying. Once they are consumed, they are gone.

We may spend our money in a fancy restaurant, buy a take-away or prepare a meal ourselves at home, and for slightly differing reasons. In a restaurant, our priority may be to enjoy the food, but additionally we want to take-in the ambience and enjoy the company we share it with. It becomes more of an experience than just eating in, and as a result we pay more for it, and are usually happy to do so.

Holiday’s also fall under this category along with everyday things like paying for petrol, electricity, gas, ink or toner for a printer, phone call minutes, insurance, and fares, such as flight or bus and train charges. Gifts also falls under this category, we buy it once and after the enjoyment of giving it to the recipient, the value to us, has been used up, we can’t give it to them twice.

Spending to (exclusively) “Use”

We spend to exclusively use many things, these are things we pay for and then use over and over until they are damaged, wear out or are superseded. Things in this category include the clothes we wear, the furniture we furnish our homes with, even the house we live in, and the car that sits on the driveway. There is generally more longevity to these purchases and on the surface probably offer more value for money. I earlier stated that holidays fall under the “purchase to consume” category, but buying a holiday home, would come under the “spending to use” category, because once purchased it can be used again and again.

You can buy things that appreciate in value like a home, or jewellery or art, or that depreciate in value such as clothes and vehicles.

If we lack the finances to purchase the item outright we can choose to rent or lease many big ticket items, such as cars or houses.

Spending to “Accumulate”

Spending to accumulate covers things like investment purchases which are aimed to make more money. Stocks and shares, property you flip or rent out are included in this category. If you run a business than marketing falls under this category as well as asset purchases. Other things may include websites, businesses, land, property, art, jewellery, precious metals, limited editions, and antiques that are bought to make money from.

Some of these items may also come under other categories. For instance jewellery can be purchased to use yourself and as an investment to sell on at a profit when you have finished with it. Your home also can be used in this way. So some purchases are not mutually exclusive to just one category.

If I look at many of the things I spend my money on I see this….

Mortgage – accumulate
Utilities – consume
Digital TV -consume
Phone – consume
Car use – consume
Insurance- consume
Food and drink include – consume
Holidays – consume
Clothes – use
Furniture – use
Home improvements – use
Studio Rent – comes under all categories, use (rental cost) consume (use the facilities over and over) accumulate (for business)
Cinema concerts – consume
Gifts – consume
Interest payments on loan’s allow you to enjoy the use of something or consume something or accumulate a return, so comes attached to the thing you buy with the money you borrow. If I was to put the actual interest payment under one of the above categories I would opt to put in under consume category, because you can only use it once, and then you pay again.

Having formulated these categories, I wondered which type of purchase offered the best value for money, which led me to ask the following question…

Are experiences better than having possessions?

Experiential purchases largely fall under the first category “Spending to “Consume”, where possessions tend to fall under the “spending to use” category.

Research seems to suggest that experiences are better than possessions for our well-being. although this runs against popular advice. We are taught that buying appreciating assets will make us wealthier because they will be worth more in the future than we paid for them (purchase to accumulate category). Whereas we will have nothing to show from spending to consume. But if we look at it in a different way, at the end of our lives will we look back and value the experiences we enjoyed or the possessions we used?

Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University who has been studying the question of money and happiness for over two decades says…

“Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods. You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nonetheless they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences.”

“We consume experiences directly with other people,” says Gilovich. “And after they’re gone, they’re part of the stories that we tell to one another.”

A few popular quotes on the subject are…

“Fill your life with experiences, not things, Have stories to tell, not stuff to show.”

“collect memories, not things.”

“The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the riches life experiences.”

I couldn’t find any quotes that made the claim that having possession was better than having experiences, but I guess it is a subjective judgement for individuals to make.

So what’s the point in using these categories?

Well, I think it’s useful to use these categorise so that we can see the underlying value we derive from our spending habits and see if they align with our wider, longer term goals. We spend a good portion of our lives trying to earn money, so that we can buy the things we want to buy. but do we take any time out to really think about what we are actually buying and why? If you find you’re spending more of your money on consumable purchases, whilst trying to accumulate wealth, are your spending habits helping in the attainment of your wealth seeking goal? not really. In this example you would be much more successful adopting a “spending to accumulate” strategy. Okay, you still have to buy food and drink to survive, but instead of buying those concert tickets, maybe you should move that money into the “accumulation” category of spending.

If your long term goal is to enjoy the great experiences of life, as the research suggests, things like going on holiday or experiencing new things, and new people then some form of experiential purchase may be the way to go, and just something to think about here, many experiences, like enjoying the beauty of nature, don’t have to cost you anything, they are freely available for all, you just have to take the time out and be present and appreciative enough to enjoy them.

I hope using these categories will give you a different perspective to view your purchasing habits from, and allow you to take a more critical view of them.

Remember the most precious resource we have is time, you should ensure it is utilised well, and for a worthy enough purpose. Trading time for money is a must for most of us, so make sure you don’t fritter away your dosh on things that are not really worth the time you invested in earning it.

Using keyword Research within your Online Marketing Strategy

What is Keyword Research

Keyword research can be used in a couple of different contexts, the first would be by a business owner or niche website owner, looking to improve visibility on the internet, so that they appear higher up in search results of popular search engines such as Google and Bing.

If you are such as business owner, this would involve finding out what your target market is typing into the major search engines to find the products, services or information that you provide.

Once you have these keywords you can use them to optimise your website so that you show up in those very same search results. When I say “optimise your website” I’m talking about writing articles that are centred around those keywords, as well as adding the keywords to your page title, and description tags.

The second context in which you can use keyword research is when you’re looking to start a website from scratch and want to monetise it with adverts such as Google Adwords (where you are paid if someone clicks on an advert on your website). This can be compared to ‘panning for gold’ where you sieve out all the dirt and soil (poor quality keywords) until you are left with little gold nuggets (money keywords).

The golden rules for gold nugget keywords are:

#1 Relevance – keywords relating to niche to attract ‘targeted traffic’

#2 Traffic – high traffic volume is best to ensure there is sufficient potential custom.

#3 Competition – low competition is best but not too low as this might be evidence of there not being much of a market.

#4 Commerciality – is the measure of high value keywords.

Keyword research can be done in Google Adwords for free, by simply signing up for an account, alternatively there are a number of software solutions available that will do more in-depth analysis of potential keywords such as Market Samurai which I have also used myself in the past.

#1 Relevance

Relevance is important if you’re a business owner and have particular products to sell or already have a website in a particular niche. It is about finding keywords that will attract ‘targeted traffic’ This is traffic that is going to be interested in your offering, and who are likely to buy from you or click on the ads on your site.

If you’re using Pay Per Click (PPC) such as Google Adwords, where you’re paying to drive traffic to your site then Keyword research is vital to make sure you’re not spending money on unnecessary clicks. For example If your selling ‘dog collars’ then you will want to remove keywords such as ‘training’ for instance, because these searchers are not looking to buy dog collars at this time. You can set such keywords as negative keywords in Google Adwords so that when someone types in this negative keyword your advert will not show, and you won’t be charged for an inappropriate click.

You will definitely want to include the word ‘dog’ as a keyword rather than something like “pet”, otherwise you might find “cat” searches are included in the results. Using long tail keywords can help qualify searches. for instance ‘buy dog collars’ is likely to qualify potential purchasers rather more than ‘dog collars’ would.

tip – Go to amazon.com and type in your keyword, look at books section (relating to your niche), and look at the table of contents, and check some of key terms and add the interesting ones, and do further searches of these ‘semantic’ keywords. This tactic can be used for writing articles and also to find what subjects would be popular to include on your website.

If you fall under the second context of keyword researcher (described above) than relevance doesn’t matter as much because you don’t have a particular product offering. Whatever you make the website about, Google Adwords will match the advert content to your content. In this circumstance you want to make sure you are targeting niches and keywords that have a higher value, see #4 commerciality below for more information about this.

#2 Traffic

It is important to know the difference between “total searches” which are cited in most of the keyword research platforms and the volume of traffic you are likely to actually get on your website should you rank on the first page of the Google SERP results. Below is a table showing the typical breakdown for traffic that is likely in each of the 10 listings on the first page of Google

95-98% of traffic come from 1^st page of Google
Even if you are #1 you won’t get all the traffic

Google position	% clicks	Traffic per 1000	Incremental Improvement in clicks %
1	42%	420	254%
2	12%	120	40%
3	8%	80	39%
4	6%	60	24%
5	5%	50	20%
6	4%	40
7	3%	30

#3 Competition

There are two important measures when looking at the competition for a particular keyword phrase the first is the amount of competition. Ideally look for a lower amount of Google searches ideally less than 30,000 search results for any particular keyword phrase, you can check this by going to www.Google.com and typing in your keyword to see the amount of searches found.

Secondly consider the strength of competition. It’s best to avoid competing with professional websites, that have been around a long time, and that are highly optimised for the particular keyword phrase you are targeting. Also avoid competitor websites that have lots of webpages and a lot of backlinks pointing to them. If the first page on Google or Bing is mainly made up of these kinds of sites you are unlikely to be able to outrank them, so it is better to avoid these competitive keywords phrases altogether. Of course you have little option if you have a particular product offering and these keywords are the ones used by your target market, in this circumstance, where you are unlikely to get a first page listing you may consider PPC (pay per click) advertising to get a first page presence.

#4 Commerciality

The commerciality of a keyword is how much a particular keyword is worth. Google Adwords is a bidding system for keywords and is based on supply and demand. The more demand for a particular keyword the higher the cost per click (CPC) for that keyword. This is a good indicator of how much money is being made on a particular keyword. If an advertiser is paying $10 per click for a keyword it is likely that they are making more than that from their website sales, otherwise they wouldn’t be willing to pay that to Google to drive traffic to their site.

So when your conducting any keyword research keep in mind these golden rules and your more likely to find those golden nuggets.

Check out market Samurai’s explanations below of each of the golden rules. Useful information even if you aren’t considering using their software.

Relevance

Traffic

Competition

Commericality

Promotion

Track your Ranking

Market Samurai is a great tool which saves you valuable time and helps give you a greater insight into your keyword selection.

Alternative you can use a free service provided by Google called Google Keyword Planner. You need to sign up for an account to access this online tool, but it’s a great resource. However, it’s not as good as Market Samarai in terms of depth and insight. In fact, MS uses your Google Keyword planner account to access much of the data needed but is much better at organising it for analysis.

…. hope you found this article useful.

While you’re here, check out my marketing guide.

Interesting Content From Across The Internet

Featured

This video from Uplift talks about dealing with your inner world to improve your outer world, after all your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. Self awareness is a very powerful skill to develop.

Understand The Cycle of Behaviour

The model above illustrates how improving the quality of our lives, starts with our thoughts.

THOUGHTS shape our ACTIONS

ACTIONS shape our EXPERIENCES

EXPERIENCES shape our THOUGHTS

Don’t take my word for it, think about your own experiences. What are the thoughts you have, the beliefs and values you hold? Where do they come from? They come from your experiences of life, through what you see and hear, how people and life treats you. Your upbringing, your relationships etc.

These experiences depend on your actions. The things you say, and do. Your impact on the people and world around you. What shapes your actions?

Your thoughts, the things you think about. The things that matter to you. Your beliefs values, opinions…. and so the cycle continues.

Let’s look at a couple of examples to illustrate the process.

If someone is extremely rude to you (experience), you may feel angry and this will influence your feelings and emotions (thoughts), you may keep playing the event over and over in your mind, fuelling the feeling of anger (thoughts). If this anger is intense you may display it in your behaviour (actions). You may snap at your nearest and dearest, who snaps back causing an argument (experience), further fuelling anger (thoughts), and so the cycle continues, unless something breaks it.

Let’s look at another example. Let’s imagine you have been cheated on by your ex-lover (experience), who you really cared about. You are still upset and distrustful of the opposite sex as a result (thoughts) even though a few months have passed since it happened, you are then asked out by someone else, but you turn them down, because you are not yet ready and still somewhat distrustful of the opposite sex (action), the person doesn’t approach you again, in fact avoids you like the plague in future (experience), yet they may have been the love of your life for all you know. You are failing to move on because of what’s going on in your head (thoughts), thoughts that relate to someone else, and nothing to do with the person that asked you out. Now it might be a good idea not to jump from one relationship straight into another, it is probably sensible, for a while at least, but on the other hand you might be craving a relationship (thoughts), but are fearful of committing again (actions) to someone in case you get hurt again. This means you stay single (experience) and miserable (thoughts). This cycle then becomes problematic, and unless you make the necessary changes to your thoughts, you are going to impact your experience of relationships going forward.

Think about the areas of your life you are struggling with. Go through the thoughts you have about them, the actions that result from your thoughts, and the experiences that are a consequence of your actions.

How do you break the cycle? You either move out of thought, out of your Ego, your mind, whatever you want to call it and rise into the spiritual plane. If you don’t buy into spirituality, then concentrate on addressing your thoughts, examine why you think what you do. Where your values, beliefs, thoughts, opinions and the like, come from and if they really make sense for you and your goal(s). Make positive changes to your thoughts and the rest will follow.

If your EXPERIENCES aren’t what you want, look at your ACTIONS and try to identify what you need to be doing to create the EXPERIENCES you’re wishing for. Then once you’ve identified these, go back and check that your THOUGHTS (beliefs and values etc) are aligned in such a way as to motivate those necessary ACTIONS.

If you found this article useful, please share it with friends and family.

#1 Emotional Intelligence

Gratitude

Manage Stress

Become Self Aware

Self Reflection

Work on self first then observe others

Develop a Feedback Loop

Assume the Best in Others’

Become a Giver

#2 Having a Strong work Ethic

#3 Work on your strengths

Summary

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#1- Goal Setting

#2- Current Cause and Effect

#3- Remedial action

Goal

Current cause and effect

Remedial action

Summary

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Thought of the Day Quotes (more thoughts here)

Change Quotes

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MIT Business Model Archetype

Another Approach

Business Model Generation

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Spending to “Consume”

Spending to (exclusively) “Use”

Spending to “Accumulate”

Are experiences better than having possessions?

So what’s the point in using these categories?

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What is Keyword Research

#1 Relevance

#2 Traffic

#3 Competition

#4 Commerciality

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