Category: Business Ideas

A few weeks ago I decided to go to the movies with a girlfriend. We chose Prince of Persia.

As it happened, it was opening weekend so I hadn’t seen the reviews. However, I was a little worried about seeing it. The previews made it look sort of muddled and I was a bit puzzled by the choice of Jake Gyllenhaal as the lead. (He never struck me as the action adventure type hero.) Worse yet, it was based on a game.

Yee gads. Why did I agree to see this movie again?

Needless to say I walked into that theater with VERY low expectations.

So imagine how happy I was when the movie DIDN’T suck. Yes I know, it got some bad reviews. But truly, if you’re looking for a light, mindless, action-packed summer flick, Prince of Persia delivers. (And I was also pleasantly surprised at Jake Gyllenhaal — talk about some nice eye candy.)

The interesting part about all of this is I think my impression of that movie is higher than it should be. Why? Because my expectations were so low and the movie beat them so significantly — thus my overall impression is that it’s a good movie.

Now, let’s take another movie where I went in with HIGH expectations and the movie DIDN’T deliver. Like The English Patient. Won an Academy Award. Everyone was buzzing about it. I found it slow and terribly depressing. I also didn’t quite get why the Kristin Scott Thomas’s character would have an affair with the terribly depressing Ralph Fiennes’s character when her husband seemed like such a charming fellow. (This was before I saw the Seinfeld episode where Elaine fell asleep during the movie and was ostracized about it. Happy to know Elaine and I have something in common.)

So my overall impression of The English Patient is that it wasn’t a very good movie at all. Despite winning an Oscar. Because it came in so much lower than my expectations.

(And if you take this one step further, it certainly seems like I’m saying The Prince of Persia is better than The English Patient. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t go there.)

So what does all of this have to do with you and your business? Well, let’s take a look at your client and customer expectations.

If your customers and clients are hiring you or investing in your products and service with high expectations, and you aren’t meeting them, their overall impression is going to be they had an unpleasant experience with you. Even if your offerings are better than your competition, they’re still going to be disappointed.

But if your customers and clients come in with slightly lower expectations, and your products and services blow those expectations away, they’re going to be thrilled to death with you, tell all their friends and associates about you and maybe even write a newsletter article about you.

This is why it’s so important to underpromise and overdeliver. Especially now. Because people are becoming more careful with their money so the last thing you want to do is leave them with a sour taste in their mouth after doing business with you.

If you want to grow your business, there are 2 ways you can go about it.

Slow and fast.

Most people end up growing their business slowly. Now there’s nothing wrong with slow. It’s not easy to grow your business period, so even growing your business slowly is better than what a lot of entrepreneurs do.

So let’s talk about fast. Another way to view growing your business quickly is by taking a quantum leap, which basically means you leap frog ahead versus taking your growth one step at a time.

Taking a quantum leap means transforming your business quickly. It means going from $200,000 to a million in a year. It means seeing opportunities fly to you effortlessly.

So if you want a quantum leap, how do you get one? Here are 3 steps to get you started:

1. Think big. Taking a quantum leap isn’t going to work if you’re thinking small. So the first thing you need to do is make sure you’re thinking big. And, maybe even more than that, make sure you’re READY for your business to BECOME big. If you’re not comfortable or if there’s some blocks or obstacles around you growing your business to its fullest potential, you’ll never have a quantum leap.

2. Invest in yourself. There are different ways to invest in yourself. Do you need to build a team? Hire a consultant? Maybe you need to take time to go through a program or information product. Or you need to hire a coach or get into a coaching or mentorship program to move yourself ahead.

Money is a form of energy. And when you invest in a program or hiring a team, that could be the catalyst you need to move you forward in a big way. Because now you’ve put your money where your mouth is (so to speak). You’re taking yourself and your business seriously by investing in yourself.

So how do you know what you need to invest in? You know. You know right now what you need to invest in to grow your business. Whether or not you do it is another story.

3. Failures means you’re moving in the right direction. What?? I can hear you all saying. Here’s the thing. If you design your life and/or your business around never making a mistake, do you REALLY think you’re stepping outside your comfort zone? If you’re trying to never make mistakes, then there’s no possible way you can ever have a quantum leap. Quantum leaps require you to think differently than you have before, to try something you never have. And when you do that, you may end up having a failure or two (or ten) along the way.

Successful people don’t like failure anymore than you do. But they know if they don’t get out there in big way and try new things, they won’t be as successful overall, even though that means risking failure as well. It’s a choice they make because they know the payoff is worth it.

One way to deal with failure is to look beyond it. Focus on the end goal, where you want to end up. Then, when the failures happen, you’re not as concerned with them because you’re looking past them to the where you want to be.

But the biggest part of taking a quantum leap is just to do it. Take a deep breath and jump. And believe the net will appear.

Succeeding online is easy, right? Just throw up a sales page, drop in some “buy now” links and sit back and watch your bank account grow.

Well, if you’ve been in business any length of time, you already know it doesn’t work like that. (No matter what “promises” or “hype” you might have seen.) It’s never that easy. But there’s no question it IS possible. (My client list is proof of that.)

So how DO you succeed online? Well let me share 3 secrets to get you started.

1. Know what you’re highest payoff activities are. The successful entrepreneurs I’ve worked with know exactly what they should be focusing on each day. They know what they’re strengths are and what’s going to bring in the most money. That’s what I mean by highest pay-off activities. They know what’s going to bring them the biggest bang for the least amount of time.

So how do you figure out what your highest pay-off activities are? Start by making a list of your strengths and weaknesses.

Now look at your strengths. Out of those skills, what brings you the most money in the shortest amount of time possible? What you might want to do is make a list of activities and evaluate how much money you make versus time spent, then you’ll have a better idea what bring you the biggest bang for the least amount of time.

2. They DO their highest pay-off activities. Ah, yes. It’s not enough to actually know them, you need to actually DO them. And, better yet, you should organize your day around your highest-payoff activities. That way, you know you’re spending as much time as possible on your highest pay-off activities.

3. They delegate out or delete their weaknesses. Without a doubt, the successful entrepreneurs I know spend little to no time trying to “strengthen weaknesses.” What they typically spend their time doing is strengthening their strengths and outsourcing (or just plain dumping) their weaknesses.

Why do they do that? Because they make more money when they spend most of their time doing their highest pay-off activities. And they can’t spend their time doing their highest pay-off activities if they’re busy strengthening their weakness or doing low pay-off activities. We all only have 24 hours a day, so you need to know how best to use that time so you can become the biggest success possible.

Now, you may have noticed these aren’t specific for the Internet, these are general success strategies. I did that on purpose — if you master success habits that work online, you’ll master success habits that will work in pretty much any other situation. Next time I’ll share specific tips you can use online to be successful.