Listen, welcome to our electronic course,
our e-course on how to get geometric growth in your business,
really how to be able to thrive, not just survive,
no matter what the times are, including really turbulent economic times.
So, what do we wanna start out this session?
Well, we might start out with seeing what causes most businesses to fail
because even though we wanna succeed, you gotta know what to avoid,
as well as then, what would you have to do to make your business grow geometric.
And the biggest reasons businesses fail...
And by the way, the number is 96% of businesses fail over a 10-year period of time;
4% make it.
Now, I say make it, that doesn't even mean, they're profitable,
it means they're still in business.
And after 10 years, by the way, does that mean it's free sailing?
[chuckle] Well, the world we're in today with changing economies, changing technology, changing competition.
There are companies like Lehman Brothers, combined revenues will be a trillion dollars over a decade or so
but gone as we all know.
So, what is the biggest mistake we make?
Well, there are many.
But if you look first to see what business is, you'd say,
"What really makes someone succeed in business?"
You go to somebody like Peter Drucker,
probably one of the most brilliant business minds of the last century.
And everybody agrees the two things
that business is really know about that Peter said way back when is,
it's all about innovation and marketing.
What do those words mean?
Innovation means finding a better way to meet your clients' needs than anybody else does.
That's the only way to become wealthy and sustain it.
Anybody can make money
but if you're gonna be successful in business
and sustain that success over years and over decades and really build a brand,
something you're proud of,
something that will give you the rewards you deserve,
then you have to find a way to add more value to other people's lives than anybody else is doing.
That comes from constantly innovating,
finding a better way to deliver.
But you can have the most innovative product and service
and, I'm sure you've seen this in your own business life at times,
maybe, you've seen somebody else and you know you have a better product
or you have a better service and yet somebody else is kicking your butt.
Why is that?
Because they're doing better on the marketing side.
Because unfortunately, the best product doesn't always win.
Is McDonald's the best hamburger in the world?
I doubt it.
I hope I'm not going to go hurt anybody's feelings on that one.
But what happens is, people think if I have just the best product, that's enough.
We really have to be the best marketers today, as well.
And the problem with that is...
If you look at a business.
Let's say, you go out to a business and you see a business getting started...
It's a restaurant, Hamburger stand.
And you come back to that same restaurant, 15 years later
and two guys were starting at the same time.
You saw both their chains.
15 years later, you come back
and one guy's still got that one hamburger store,
one restaurant, he serves a great burger,
and the other one's got 35 chains,
35 different venues and he sold the business for X millions of dollars
or tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
What was the difference?
Was it the quality of the burger?
I would say to you the difference, as an entrepreneur,
where your business grows is controlled by two things.
Number one is your psychology
and number two is your skills.
Because the psychology of someone who's just trying to make the best burger
and, trust me, I've got that artist in me.
I wanna make the best of anything,
but I also have to know how to market it
or I know my ideas will just die on my lips.
Does that make sense?
The greatest products don't just win by themselves.
And so, the guy that built 15, he really developed a different psychology.
He didn't just say, "I wanna build what I enjoy",
he kept saying, "What does the marketplace need?
Who is my customer?
Who is really my customer?
What's the best offer?
What would make this irresistible?
What business am I really in?
Am I in the hamburger business, on the fast food business?
Am I in the convenience business?
Am I experience business?"
In different fast food chains, where people have grown
and picked different elements of that through time to succeed,
they didn't just sell burgers.
So, the point of the matter is, you and I don't wanna make the mistake.
And here's the biggest mistake people make.
We fall in love with our product or our service
and not with our client or not with an ideal client.
See, when you fall in love with your product or service,
it worked for centuries [chuckle]
Literally, you could have a product and sell it forever.
Heck, 20, 25, 30 years ago...
Or 20 years ago, even when Sony was around,
Sony was the dominant focus, not Apple.
And Sony owned the tech business, didn't they?
They were always coming out with their new camera, their new iPhone and so forth...
IPhone, what am I suggesting?
Their new Walkman.
It's hard to even say that it so old.
I'm not ancient enough to remember that, I hope, but I am.
I remember the Walkman.
But they came out with a product and it was an innovation.
Nobody wanted small speakers,
nobody wanted small things.
Everything was bigger speakers, bigger sound,
and Morita of Sony comes up with this idea of a Walkman,
portable music you take anywhere.
Some of us are old enough to remember
that you didn't used to carry around with you
a hundred thousand songs in your pocket,
if you were gonna go for a run
you had to take this big, junky thing
and have these giant ear mucks on your head
and you had to really like that one album you took,
you better like that guy's music
'cause those eight songs were all you had to do run with.
And oh, by the way, you had to rewind it to hear what you wanted to hear next.
It's a different world today.
My point is, Sony was able to do that Walkman over 20 years.
Today, do you know what the product cycle is,
the life cycle on an average product, today?
Well, in the technology business it's about six months.
Some places, like the app business, it's a month.
Some people expect it to be a few weeks
before something is innovated
and the product is improving
or they leave and go somewhere else.
So, it's not the same world you and I lived in.
Today, we can't fall in love with our products and services,
we gotta fall in love with our clients
and figure out every way we could possibly figure out to meet their needs.
To anticipate what do they want,
what do they need,
what do they not even know they need,
that if I could deliver that,
I'd turn them, not in just a satisfied customer
but into a raving fan,
somebody who would tell everybody
about my product or service or tell everybody about my company.
When you create that kind of an impact
you'll start to build a brand.
And what's beautiful about that,
is during turbulent economic times,
big companies become small and small companies become big very quickly.
And the failure to adapt to this, to say,
"Our products and services have to be changing constantly",
instead of, "Here's my product and I love it
and you should too and I'm gonna keep marketing it to you".
Those that fail to adapt,
don't anticipate what's coming
and here's what you and I have to anticipate
if you're gonna be successful,
if you're gonna be in the 4% that succeed
or maybe that one-half of one-tenth of 1% that really succeed,
meaning, they're very profitable
and they succeed long term.
If you're gonna be in that success category,
then you and I have to say,
"What can we anticipate is coming
and let's deal with the problem before it gets here, so, we win".
Are you with me?