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Lessons To Learn From The EU Referendum

A few lessons to learn from the recent EU referendum…..

This morning Britain voted to leave the EU and the reaction of the stock markets was as could be expected, resulting in a lot of turmoil and rush to safety. Much of the political reaction was also based on fear and the prospect of an uncertain future for the country.

Always winners and losers (in every situation)

In reality there will always be winners and losers in any given situation. If we had remained in the EU there were no guarantees about what the future held. Hoping to protect the status quo is a nonsense, there is no such things as a status quo, things are always changing and evolving, whether we like to admit it or not.

When the price of sterling dropped like a stone this morning when the markets opened, had you bought a currency trade and sold it just after the bank of England speech a few hours later, you could have made yourself a lot of money. And so it is with every situation, there will always be winners and losers. It’s not really about what happens to you, It’s about how you deal with it. Change brings opportunities as well as risks. You can either position yourself in such a way as to take advantage of those opportunities or play the role of victim, and lose.

Get Results:predator of chance rather than a victim of circumstance

Change includes risk and opportunity

Emotion makes decision making much more subjective and fearful, if you can separate emotion, and emotive language from the facts, you give yourself a chance of making a rational decision. When we hold a strong emotional position, we may refuse to shift our opinion or back down to any opposing views and counter arguments. In truth, it’s not about being right or being wronged it’s about moving forward and making the best use of the opportunities that are inevitably available because of the very thing we fear…change.

We’re different: embrace the fact

Holding a strong opinion doesn’t make you right or wrong. Some people like to feel they have some control over their destiny, others like the sense of comfort and security. There are leaders and followers, risk takers and play safer’s and all have a valid place in society. They value different things and have different perspectives, and make decisions based on what they feel is right for them and their families. Accept this as part of life’s rich tapestry, don’t judge or ridcule others, respect their views, sure give them your opinion by all means, but know they are entitled to hold theirs.

Anger grows out of fear

When things apparently move against us and our perception is that the outcome is going to be bad for us, we may feel threatened and fearful. In an attempt at self protection, anger may result and be directed at whatever is deemed responsible for causing that fear. “Remain” campaigners saying “leave” campaigners are ignorant of the facts, have been brainwashed, are responsible for this mess, and have low IQ’s etc are attempts to make themselves feel better and increase their self worth. Discrediting others, is a defence mechanism, that inflates their sense of self. However a question we should all be asking is why do people feel such fear in the first place?

Follow your own agenda

During the EU referendum a lot of emotive language and stories of doom and gloom have been used by politicians and media on both sides of the debate, often designed to manipulate the audience into responding in a way that serves agendas of the politicians and media. It creates division and builds strong emotion, clouding the facts and making rational decision making more difficult. It builds on our fears and when we are fearful, we have a tendency to resist change even more than we would otherwise. Try to separate the emotion, and make rational decisions based on facts, don’t be a pawn in somebody else’s game, play for yourself. And even if you feel you are acting in your own best interests, ask yourself, based on what facts, not opinion or prediction, but facts.

The EU referendum has been one of those monumental moments in history. The future is uncertain, and either exciting or scary depending on your perspective. It is unprecedented in history so we will have to wait and see how it pans out.

I guess we will make it work, we always do. It’s in everyone’s interest for it to be a success. When there’s no alternative we can focus on making the one option we have work for the good of all us all as stakeholders.

Taking Action is key to Getting Results

Taking Action is the single most important aspect of getting results. Without this part of the equation nothing is realistically possible. It’s true that you need a goal, a sense of direction to work towards, but you can plan your path to your hearts content, but if you don’t then take action, all that planning isn’t going to materialise into your reality.

We have all been guilty of procrastinating, this often manifests as over-planning. keeping busy devising a goal, and perfecting a plan of action, then tweaking and re-tweaking.

Get Results: Doing is the greatest teacher

Ultimately it’s prudent to have a goal, fashion a plan that can best be described as a “minimum viable outline plan”. Something that gives you a sense of direction, so that you’re not floating around aimlessly but allows you to retain some level of flexibility going forward.

You should progress with a open mind and open heart, and learn from your experience moving forward.

Successful software developers have long since understood the value of producing a minimum viable product, getting it out in the market, and enhancing it via feedback from customers. That way the market helps in the development process in a real world environment for which it was intended. This approach prevents wasted time developing and realising later it has been overdeveloped or developed in the wrong aspects. Letting the end user decide what they want makes sense commercially. Think of it as a collaboration between developer and customer.

And so it should be as you move forwards towards your goal, let the real world give you feedback as you progress. You take action and the world around you reacts in all sorts of unforeseen ways. Whether it be serendipitous encounters with influential individuals, or insights you could never of expected had you not taken action.

Purposeful right action is an even better way to describe it, because you are working towards something, you measure your progress or lack of, tweak and test as you go. Think of it as if you were learning a skill, lets take driving for instance, your instructor watches what you do, informs you when doing something wrong, watches you do it again, corrects if necessary or lets you know you’ve completed the manoeuvre correctly.

It’s true to say that some people are more naturally talented then others, they have physical attributes that might make it easier for them to be successful, but natural talent is just a head start, whether or not you are naturally talented there is no doubt that taking action or practice has it’s also known improves performance.

The 10 thousand hour rule is routinely quoted as being the time it takes to become an expert in most endeavours, a 20 hour rule is also quoted as being the time it take to become proficient at something. The fact is the more you purposely practice or “do” something the better you will get at it.

Ask the focus question as a compass

A good way of focusing your actions so that you don’t waste time doing none important tasks and as a result make sure you’re taking “right” action at all times is to ask this question…

“What’s the one thing you can do now such by doing it, everything else will easier or unnecessary?”

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

It’s a great question for bringing some perspective to each situation you find yourself in, using like you would a compass, when you feel lost or confused about what needs doing next.

Mini-goals

Another way of ensuring the action you take today is moving you towards your goal is setting up mini-goals, that line up with one another like a pathway to your end goal. for instance have weekly goals that that leads towards achieving a monthly goal, that leads to a 6 monthly goal, that leads to a yearly goal that leads towards a 3 year goal and so on. Line each mini-goal up like you would when domino toppling, knock your weekly goals down and that automatically knocks the monthly goal down and so on.

Summary

So TAKING ACTION is an essential step in achieving any goal, it is probably the most important step, but taking action without direction and purpose is rather like floating at sea without a rudder. Have a goal and take action towards that goal. Have an outline plan but know that you should allow some flexibility as you go. Keep focus by asking the focus question, and use mini goals to keep you heading in the right direction. oh yes and enjoy the journey. Life is a journey, it isn’t a destination after all.

For more articles about TAKING ACTION, click here.

The Basics of Selling

We as humans are constantly driven to avoid pain and as part of that drive we strive to “be” more. Western society has conditioned us to believe the more we “have”, the more we will be. So to that end, we constantly operate in accumulation mode. We love to buy stuff and businesses love to sell us stuff. At the heart of our desire to buy is this simple statement.

“If you believe there’s a BENEFIT in a SOLUTION, and you VALUE that benefit enough, and TRUST the SELLER you’re going to buy it.”

Think about the statement from your perspective, is it right for you, well it’s certainly right for me. So from a selling point of view, if we reverse engineer this and align it from a selling perspective we find the following:

Sellers should provide a SOLUTION that addresses customer problems or wants
Sellers should ensure they communicate a VALUED BENEFIT taken from the customers perspective, with regards to a SOLUTION
Demonstrate you are a TRUSTWORTHY SELLER and able to deliver on your promise

So let’s look at each in a little more detail.

1.Sellers should provide a SOLUTION that addresses customer problems or wants

“SOLUTION” refers to the product or service you are wanting to sell. It should provide a solution to a problem or want that your prospective customer has, if it doesn’t do this than it serves no use.

You can either create a SOLUTION to a problem or want that you personally have, or that you know other people have. Do some further research to establish how wide spread the problem or want is before investing lots of time in developing your SOLUTION.

Alternatively you can create a product or service and see if it provides a SOLUTION to a problem or want afterwards, although this does happen, I wouldn’t recommend it.

2.Sellers should ensure they communicate a VALUED BENEFIT taken from the customers perspective, with regards to a SOLUTION

So when you have a SOLUTION to a known problem or want, the next thing you need to do is market the VALUED BENEFITS of that SOLUTION to prospective customers. Write down all the reasons you think your customer would benefit from using the SOLUTION in order of importance starting with the most important aspects to least important. Now it’s important to be empathetic with your customers situation and point of view, otherwise you won’t get this right. It’s not what you think your customers “should” want or what you “think” is a problem, it’s what “is” a problem, it’s what “is” a want.

I would also list the objections your customers are likely to have and try to put a positive spin on these, because you will inevitably have to address them at some point in the buying process. You might have to work from a best “guess basis” to start but do as much research as possible going forward. The more you know your customers’ the better you can address their actual situations.

3.Demonstrate you are a TRUSTWORTHY SELLER and able to deliver on your promise

If you can’t provide some way of proving you are a TRUSTWORTHY SELLER you are going to have an uphill struggle on your hands, particularly if you’re selling remotely as with a website store.

Genuine reviews and testimonials are a good way of establishing trust, social media presence and positive interaction is another. Having a physical location helps people to know you are a genuine business, rather than a rogue scammer. If you’re new to business, give a sample of your product to people in exchange for some honest reviews and testimonials, just to get you started. Without trust people aren’t going to risk their cash with you.

This is a short post and covers the very basics of selling, but I believe all businesses should be working from a solid base, so it’s an article that needs to be written, because I see so many websites not paying attention to these basic principles.

Top 17 Gary Vaynerchuk Principles to Improve your Business Performance

Get Results: Gary Vaynerchuk quotes love customers first

Gary Vaynerchuk is described as a “thought leader” and “social media guru”, neither of which he particularly likes. He sees himself as a business builder first and foremost having built a $60 million wine business using the internet and subsequently a $100 million social media company. A lot of what Gary says isn’t new but he frames it in a no nonsense, high energy way, that engages business leaders and entrepreneurs alike. His messages cut to the bone, are frank, honest and on point. He builds his personal brand around giving value, so I thought we should include some of his messages for you to take insight from….

Ideas are s**t, execution is the game – we can all come up with ideas, but ideas mean nothing without taking effective action that delivers results. Execution comes down to talent. Not everyone is talented enough to execute effectively. This feeds directly into the next point
Improve Self Awareness -know what you’re good at and not good at. Face the truth and make progress from that perspective. Get help doing the things you can’t do and concentrate on what you are good at.
Bet on your strengths -Double down on them and punt your weaknesses. To be extraordinary, you have to be an anomaly. You ain’t gonna do that if you spend time bringing your weaknesses up-to-speed. You lean towards doing some things over others for a reason. When you’re good at something, it’s usually because you like doing it, and have tended to do it a lot, so it makes sense to keep doing it even more. The opposite is true of the things you don’t like to do. Make your expertise narrow and deep, rather than wide and shallow, stay in your lane, and delegate everything else if you can.
Bring perspective to your business -When the going gets hard, instead of fixating on the negatives, be grateful for what you have and realise things could be much worse. Gary imagines getting a call saying his mother has passed away, he says that although this is a dark thought, it grounds his reality and adds much needed perspective to the situation.
Work your ass off – If you’re in a job but want to be an entrepreneur, grind 5pm-2am to build something for yourself in your off time and, “Stop watching episodes of Breaking Bad” says Gary. If you work 9 hours a day, sleep 6 hours that leave you 9 hours a day to grind and hustle.
Get Results: hustle and execution
Stick to your DNA – Be true to yourself, be authentic, it’s what makes you, you and separates you from everyone else. It’s okay to admire others, but don’t try to copy who they are, be the best version of yourself.
Do what matters – Don’t get hung up on unimportant tasks. Micro manage or delegate, you decide. Most things don’t matter. Focus on what matters. Take right action.
Stop making excuses – Lack of time or capital are just two obstacles amongst many others that you will inevitably have to overcome but don’t use them as excuses not to do something. Lack of optimism is the major problem. Overcome the inevitable obstacles. “Lack of ……” are just excuses. There are a million reasons “why not” but just one reason “why” which is you gotta persevere and get on with it. Take responsibility.
Care for your Customers – run your business with your heart as well as your head. introduce “random acts of kindness” for loyal customers not just when they are leaving you. Find a way to go “the extra mile” at scale
Learn what motivates your customers – Understand what makes people tick and reverse engineering that so you can add value to them. Be empathetic, and really give a s**t. The customer is not always right but they are always the customer. If you want to take their money, you have to get out of the way, and do what’s necessary to close the deal, put pride to one side. It’s how you make them FEEL that they’ll remember you for. Technology lubricates word of mouth, and customer service is key to creating an experience that will be talked about.
Find where your customers attention is focused – Understand where your customers can be found. Attention is much more focused on mobile phones and particularly on social media through mobile. If you want to get your brand in front of those customers you’ve got to meet them were their attention is. Stop holding onto what worked yesterday, and realign to what is happening in the world today. Get out of your own way, stop resisting and move with the times. Two questions to ask yourself, “Where are your prospects focusing their attention?” “Are you engaging or telling stories to them there?”
Be open to change – Roll with the punches. Don’t try to hold ground. Don’t resist what is. Don’t fear change, embrace uncertainty, evolve, and go with the flow. When you try to resist the way things are, you hurt your business. Market in the present day not yesterday. Things are moving fast, keep up, or get left in the dust.
Be a student of behaviour – This point builds on the previous three. Study behaviour and react to it. Today people are spending huge amounts of time on social media, via their phones, however this is very likely to change in the future as a result of technology advancements, so you need to keep observing and reacting to how the market evolves as a result of these future changes. You don’t have to have a defined plan of attack other than “observing and reacting to what’s happening in the market.”
You must have TALENT – Do you have the talent to be successful, either by being funny, clever, creative, good at DOING something of value, KNOWING something of value, CONNECTING people. It’s the variable that either makes you and your content interesting or not. For instance, you can get away with a drab setting for your videos, if the content is valuable enough to the audience. Deliver something of value using your talent.
Use storytelling in your Marketing – if you understand what the consumer wants, you can then back track to get them emotionally there using story. When done properly it is an invisible influencer. We’re wired to tell and listen to stories. Stories lower our emotional barriers and allow ideas to enter our subconscious.
Embrace your uniqueness – Technology will inevitably take out the B, C, D players in many industries and niches, because they have commoditised themselves, but the “A” players will grow and take B, C, D’s market share. So concentrate on growing your brand. Be authentic, be genuine and don’t try to fit in, or blend into the background, or copy what others are doing, otherwise you will become a commodity (same as everyone else). Ask what makes you different? What makes you, you? Dare be noticed, and stand out.
Get Results: Branding
Nothing happens overnight – It takes lots of work, talent, luck, and serendipity. to be “an overnight success”. Put yourself in the best position to succeed and take a long term view if you can, rather than looking for quick wins. Think Branding over “transaction marketing” for instance.

Hope you enjoyed this article, please check out my Ultimate Guides relating to Health, Wealth and Wellness.

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

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…

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.

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