TheBusinessCommandos.com

Time your most priceless asset!

It amazes me the amount of people who get blinded by the value of money and don’t think twice about wasting their precious time. The thing is once you spend your money it is quite easy to get back when you know how, but when you use a portion of your time it is gone forever.

Particularly in the field of entrepreneurial education that I have personally invested thousands of dollars in myself to fast track my learning curve. I still see countless people avoiding investing in an education package that will shave 10 years off their learning curve because of the financial investment, which is very cheap in most cases.

And the crazy thing is by the time they spend 10 years learning the slow expensive way, things will have changed and they will need to move on to something else.

The smart entrepreneurs don’t think twice about investing in themselves and one of the biggest benefits is if something happens and the money gets lost, those who’ve invested in their own knowledge will soon have the money back again because they know how to acquire it.

A great example about time management comes from a college professor; He sat a bowl on the desk in front of the class and filled it till it was piled up and overflowing with big rocks. He asked his class is the bowl full? (more…)

Retaining team members in the 21st century is a large problem for a lot of businesses. Business owners are required to be more entrepreneurial in this area and embrace out of the square creative thinking to retaining team members and maintain an entrepreneurial culture.

In this segment we will cover some keys to retaining and attracting quality team members. It really comes down to marketing, but on an internal basis, rather than an external basis as the case with clients.

Start with the basics:

• What are your target markets (teams) needs and wants?
• How do they currently feel about the organisation?
• What can the organisation offer them?
• How can the organisation translate what they have to offer into benefits for team members?
  And finally the big one…
• What is your team marketing USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? – Why are team members going to want to work for you rather than someone else?

Richard Branson’s Virgin Blue are a great example of what we are talking about (at the time of writing). Generally Qantas staff get paid substantially more than Virgin staff, however Virgin have created a fun and happy environment to work in, that people want to be a part of and are happy to be paid less to be a part of that culture.

The truly great Entrepreneurial organisations satisfy the 3 key attributes to attract and maintain team members, which is summarised as GEL;

GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES – Growth is one of the 6 human needs, hence their must be growth opportunities for team members within your organisation to keep them happy. Everyone wants to grow in one way or another.

ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE – Team members want to work in a fun, happy and healthy work environment with good conditions and be a part of an entrepreneurial culture.

LEADERS CHARISMA – Team members want to work for charismatic leaders. If team members respect and like who they are working for, they are more productive. The days of the army sergeant major type of leadership are long gone.
Make some notes on how you can improve in making your business the work place of choice for team members.

Yours in success,

Aaron Parsons
http:/www.BusinessGrowthGuru.com

In business having a database of clients that you’ve built a good relationship with is one of the most valuable assets any business can have. As a lot of online marketers say, “The money is in the list!”

If you want proof of the value that’s in a database, I’m sure you can remember just a few years back when Google purchased Youtube for $1.6 Billion, and Youtube hadn’t made a profit at that stage.

Building your database is an ongoing task, remember it’s all about building the relationship and staying in contact with your prospects so that you are their when they are ready to buy. A good point to keep in mind when building your database is that each time you get a new addition to your database it is future profits, now I’m not saying that you will sell to everyone that enters your database, how ever you will obviously sell to a percentage of your database. So if you’re struggling to see the value in focusing on your database, just think of it as future revenue.

There are many different strategies you can use to build your database and let’s start with some traditional offline business examples;
The most popular for a traditional bricks and mortar business is to run an in-store competition where people enter their details into the draw to win a prize that can be something you’ve packaged up in house or you may even offer a holiday to more attention. This allows you to capture peoples details so you can stay in contact with them and send out special offers to generate more business.

Here’s an example from a café business I worked with; (more…)

It’s all in your head.

Every person on the planet has a part of their brain that acts as a centre of arousal and motivation.

This powerful part of your brain is called your reticular activating system (RAS) and it works by filtering the barrage of information supplied by all your senses and passing on only what is believed to be the important stuff.

The great news for you and all of us is that it can be trained…

In just the same way that you can hear your name spoken in a crowded, noisy room, you can train your RAS to be receptive to whatever you choose. Good or bad, failure or success. (more…)