Category: Entrepreneurship

YoungEntrepreneur: She never wanted to run her own business; she just wanted to be the best mom she knew how to be. But today, what began as a single children’s educational video that she filmed in her basement with a friend’s camera and her cat as a prop, has morphed into a billion dollar company that continues to be an industry leader.
According to Aigner-Clark:
“About a year into my daughter’s life, I started thinking about the whole idea of making a video for babies. Something stimulating and positive. I wondered, ‘Why isn’t there a way to expose her to the arts and sciences?’ I found the marketplace completely lacked what I was looking for.
I started this company because my children are at the age when you start to worry that they know about stranger safety, especially when they are on the Internet. I wanted a video that would be fun for them to watch as well as teach them. I am passionate about this and I am optimistic in its success.
I knew my baby. I knew what she liked to look at. I assumed that what my baby liked to look at, most other babies would, too.
The first Baby Einstein video took off because it was a completely new concept. It was an entirely new idea. No one else had videos for babies.
There was nothing on the market that I felt was any good, so I decided to make something myself.”
To be successful as an entrepreneur you need to sell a unique product or service. If you are selling the same product as everyone else you are unlikely to break through and create a successful company.
Is your product or service really something that is unique and valuable?
Find Something Nobody Else Is Selling [YoungEntrepreneur]

YoungEntrepreneur: Delegation has become increasingly important for my business. As we take on more projects and continue to grow the company, I am frequently becoming the bottleneck. Decisions don’t happen without me and people can’t move forward because they don’t have the training or responsibilities to do so.
Here is what I have done to try and lighten the load. So far it has worked well and has freed up my time to focus on the bigger projects!
1) Give up some control – I liked having everything come through me. Unfortunately this can only work for so long. They can make decisions without me and have the power to implement it themselves on our website. At some point you have to have the confidence that you have the right people on board and give them the ability to run with their ideas. They are happier, I’m happier, and we’re getting more work done.
2) Give them an incentive – The two people I gave significant responsibilities to also share in the profits that are made from their work. They do not have an equity stake in my business but they do have a profit share for their divisions.They know that the more they work, the more money they will make. It has helped get them up and running as well as drive more profitability for my business as a whole.
3) Stretch their responsibilities – I have mentioned a few times about the importance of bringing on student interns as a way to cheaply expand your business. We currently have high school interns working alongside our staff. They are online savvy, energetic, and don’t cost us a dime!
Any entrepreneur who wants to avoid buying herself a job needs to look at delegation. Even if it’s outsourcing a small task that lets you focus on building your business in a more strategic fashion, until you start delegating responsibilities you will not enjoy the freedom that can come with being a business owner.

Delegation at Work [YoungEntrepreneur]

Personal motivation is fundamental to your personal success both in sales and in life in general. Given its obvious importance you’d think that people would be experts at motivating themselves wouldn’t you? Unfortunately this is often not the case. I believe that the reason for this is the general belief that people are either motivated or they’re not.
Most directors and business owners that I work with believe (before we’ve worked together) that you can’t teach motivation. Well, if there’s nothing you can do about it, why bother right?
Wrong!
Some people may be naturally more motivated than others. Some people have learned to be more motivated than others. Some people have been brought up in environments where self-motivation is encouraged and fostered. Some people will be able to self-motivate far easier than others…
But remember, although changing your current habits might be difficult it is possible.
Think what it would mean to you if you were more motivated to succeed, more hungry for success and more driven on a day to day basis. What could you achieve if you had more energy, more vitality and more drive.
Using these 10 strategies you can…
1. Know why its important to you
One of the biggest challenges with motivation is that people try and motivate themselves to do things that they are frankly just not interested in. Have a look at the things you struggle to get motivated to do. How many of them do you actually care about?
Many salespeople adopt the targets, goals and aspirations of their managers but are these genuinely what they want? Quite possibly not. When I work with salespeople and business owners one of the questions I always ask is, “Why is this important to you?” As we go through life most of us forget why we are doing things. We get stuck on the 9-5 treadmill going to work because we think we should rather than because we actually want to achieve anything.
Many people think they ought to increase their activity levels but they consistently fail to do so. Ask yourself, “Why is this important to me? What will I get when I achieve this? What will happen if I don’t achieve this?”
If you’re starting to get some great answers, build on them. If you’re struggling a bit, get persistent. If you have utterly no idea then consider whether this goal is actually important to you!
2. Have written and specific goals
Motivated people set goals. Motivated people have goals. Take time out right now and write yourself 10 year, 5 year, 3 year, 1 year, 6 month and 3 month goals. Read a book on goal setting. Check out SMART goal setting and Well Formed Outcomes from the field of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
Buy yourself a log book or a diary and start recording your goals. Capture them, study them, refine them. Take the time to visualise them and take them for a “test drive” in your head. The more time you put into them, the more real they will become for you. The more real they are for you, the more your unconscious mind will seek to attain them for you.
3. Set mini-targets and stepping stones
Work out what the milestones are on your way to achieving your goals. Write them down and plan them into your route to success. In today’s society most of us seek early gratification. Few people are prepared to sweat away with the rewards nowhere in sight. Make things easy for yourself as a newbie goal setter and check your progress early.
When I set out to write my first book I broke it down into tiny bitesize segments. Each of this was allocated a start and a finish time. Only by setting mini-targets and stepping stones can you see where you are in relation to your goal.
4. Treat yourself for a job well done
What would you do when your dog behaves well? What would you do when your child behaves well under difficult circumstances? How did your parents and teachers do when you behaved in the way they wanted you to?
Rewards!
People thrive on recognition and reward whether it’s from others or from ourselves. We know this! Why then is it that, as grown ups, we think that we can stop rewarding ourselves and stay motivated. Doh!
Few people work well in a vacuum and few can work well without rewards. Rewards do not have to be financial and they do not have to be big to work.
Action point: Create a list of 100 cheap and easy rewards that you can use to acknowledge to yourself that you have done a good job?
5. Reward activity not just results
Most sales managers, directors and owner reward results. Whilst I applaud this practise, it should not be the only way. As sales professionals we should reward ourselves for activity not just reward.
Imagine you have two sales people on your team. A works incredibly hard, has the right attitude and has consistent activity. B however is a bit of a slacker, has the wrong attitude and inconsistent activity. A unfortunately, through a piece of bad luck misses target but B, through a contact of a mate, swings in a lucky deal.
Clearly B has to get his commission but shouldn’t A get something too?
If you don’t reward A you have just rewarded B for all of the behaviours you don’t want and given nothing to the perfect employee. Hmmmm.
Task: Think about ways that you can reward activity as well as results in your team.
6. Make it easier to feel good than to feel bad
In my role I meet thousands of individuals every year and I am always amazed how difficult people make it for themselves to feel happy. Ask yourself what has to happen for you to feel good? What has to happen for you to feel successful? Most people have a list as long as their arm (and then some)!
Now ask yourself what has to happen for you to feel bad? Most lists have tiny little things like … one client being rude to us or one lost deal. That set up is never going to work is it!
You need to make it easier to feel good than to feel bad. That way you know that you’re going to be able to stay on top form and focused. Long ago I decided that my criteria for feeling good was to wake up in the morning! Now, I know it’s not guaranteed but so far I’m doing pretty well.
Have a think about what rules you have for feeling good and feeling bad and manipulate them to help you feel good every day.
7. Make a list of everything that you are tolerating and get rid of it
What do you tolerate in your life? The dictionary defines toleration as the process or practise of enduring or permitting. In other words, putting up with stuff that we don’t like!
What stuff do you tolerate in your life? Make a list of stuff that you’re tolerating – you’ll be amazed quite how much stuff there is. The first time I did this exercise there were literally hundreds of things on my list. Letting go of them was exhilarating.
Remember: Whilst a portion of you is tolerating stuff you are not totally focused on what you want to achieve.
8. Think of a time when you were motivated. Work out why and replicate it
Take a few moments and think of three times in your life that you were totally motivated. Not slightly motivated or half- motivated but really, truly 100% motivated.
What motivated you? Why were you motivated? How did you get motivated? How did it feel to be motivated? What could you do if you felt like this all of the time?
When you have worked out how you got motivated practise replicating it. This ability to get motivated an “up for it” will help you to achieve more in your life than you ever thought possible.
9. Take control of your emotions
Most people pretend that what goes on inside themselves has little to do with their behaviour and the results that they are getting. Most people are wrong.
Think about a day when everything went well… were you in control of your emotions? You bet you were. Emotional control is fundamental to sales and business success. If you cannot control your own emotions you will always struggle to motivate and inspire others – whether that’s motivating them to work, to buy, to build a team or to reach for more.
Now think about a day when everything went wrong… how did your emotional control differ? How does your emotional state affect you on a day when everything is going wrong? Doesn’t help at all, does it?
Start now to pay more attention to your emotions. Start to control them more effectively and you will start to get better results.
10. Surround yourself with motivational people, books and audios
Someone once said that you become most like the people that you spend the most time with. I believe they were right. If you hang around with negative, “mood-hoovers”, “wanabees”, “whingers”, “whiners” and “moaners” guess what you’re most likely to become?
Spend your time with motivated, successful achievers however and you will take a major step to catapulting yourself to sales success.
But Gavin, what if I don’t know any motivated, successful people?
Great questions! When I first uncovered this concept and I decided to use it to lift my game I had a bit of a problem because I didn’t know anyone who had the values, beliefs and attitudes that I was looking for so I created my own “virtual” support team. I read, listened to and watched the motivational superstars in books, audios and DVD programmes.
Action: What can you do to create your own real and virtual success team right now?
Gavin Ingham is a speaker & author. Get free tips, articles and strategies and join his newsletter now at www.gaviningham.com now.

Business Advice Pro: Failures are good. Mistakes you have made, bad decisions, failures are there to teach you something, teach you what does not work, what you should not do in the future. And if you really do learn from your mistakes, then how the hell can they be bad, they gave you a lesson and you learned from them. And learning is always good.
While at first, after making a mistake, depending on what it was, you might feel pretty down, but think of it this way – how does that help you? Yes, you might have done something very wrong, but usually you can’t change what you have already done, you can, however, change the way you do things in the future.
Failures are good as long as… [Business Advice Pro]

Entrepreneur: I was living out my dream of running a scuba diving business in Tonga when I realized that many of the lessons I’d learned about diving also applied to entrepreneurship. In previous parts of this series, I’ve talked about packing up my life in a 20×20 container, narrowly escaping jail and finding my boat partially submerged in the harbor. Before starting to build my actual shop, I’d already learned quite a bit about being a business owner.
Even if you’ve never been diving, as an entrepreneur, you’ll be able to relate to these lessons. After all, we’re all fish in the same ocean.
1. Never stop breathing.
This is key in scuba diving. I was well versed in the concept and was very comfortable underwater. What I didn’t realize is just how important the concept is out of the water when it comes to running a business. When many of us become stressed, we stop breathing correctly, which can interfere with how we handle stress and how we run our business.
2. Swim with the current.
In scuba diving, if you swim with the current, the entire dive is easy, relaxing and totally enjoyable. So many times as an entrepreneur, I felt like a salmon swimming upstream. I was so focused on running my business my way that I wasn’t open to going with the flow. Sometimes going with the flow would have made things much easier.
3. Prepare your exit strategy.
The term “drift diving” refers to when the boat drops you off at one end of the reef and you scuba dive to the other end – where the boat is waiting for you – by going with the current. In order for this to be a successful and relaxing dive for the dive master, he or she must coordinate with the boat captain ahead of time to be waiting at the end.
When you started, did you take the end into consideration? If you didn’t, the good news is that it’s not too late to start planning. What your boat looks like will depend on your industry, the market, supply and demand, your partners and a number of other factors. Maybe you know you want to end or sell your business in one, three or five years. Along the course, there will be navigational points that will help you better determine if your boat is on schedule.
Beneath the Surface [Entrepreneur]