LIVE LIFE UP HIGH

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Here are 22 more things you can do if you want to fail as an entrepreneur. If you want to fail as an entrepreneur, go ahead and implement these items  and you will fail miserably.

1. Don’t give back to the community and to charities around you. This is your money anyway and you worked hard for it. You deserve all the spoils from your hard work.

2. Don’t bother hiring talented people. Hire your friends or hire people because you feel sorry for them. Hiring talented people is expensive. Yes, you may be better off in the long run with talented people but it costs too much right?

3. If you do hire talented people don’t pay them well. Try to get them for the cheapest rate you can and don’t give them any bonuses. If they go somewhere else then they just didn’t belong with you anyway.

4.Don’t provide incentives for your customers or your employees to bring you good ideas. You have all of the good ideas anyway.

5. Work yourself into the ground. Don’t live a balanced life. It is all about the business and the money anyway. What else matters?

6. Think short term in your decisions. Only care about the here and now. Don’t even think about how your short term decisions affect you in the long-term.

7.Don’t bother trying to understand economics and how it can affect your business. Your business is not even affected by what happens in the general economy right?

8. Don’t spend anytime learning the emerging trends in your business and in your industry. You will always have this business and it will always bring in income.

9. Don’t go to conferences in your industry so you can learn something new. You already determined that you know what you need to know. Besides, conferences cost money and they take time.

10. Neglect your family and friends. Who needs the hassle? They should understand that you are building a business. It is all about the business.

11. Don’t be flexible. Be as rigid as possible.

12. Don’t work on your communication skills. What’s that all about anyway. You talk and others listen. Problem solved.

13. Don’t create a business strategy. Just run your business by the seat of your pants.

14. Create a strategy and then take forever to implement it. Analyze the heck out of it but never really act on it.

15. Don’t create a unique selling proposition. Just be like everyone else. Don’t be original.

16. Let fear stop you right in your tracks. Fear is good. Even unhealthy fear that is not based in reality.

17. Constantly talk yourself out of good ideas. Keep doing the same thing.

18. Give up easily. As soon as an obstacle comes throw up your hands and quit. You knew it wouldn’t work anyway right? I mean that is what you constantly said.

19. Don’t learn from your mistakes. Keep repeating them over and over again. At least this is familiar.

20. Criticize your customers and your employees. They deserve it. Really give it to them. And do it often.

21. Neglect social media marketing. Who needs these new fangled strategies? Stick with the old way of doing things.

22. Procastinate when it comes to addressing issues. Put is off until it becomes an urgent matter that will take up a great portion of your time and resources. Who wants to deal with issues when they first present themselves?

Again, as I said in Monday’s post, I don’t want you to fail. Please focus on doing the opposite of what is presented here and you will be moving in the right direction. As always I look forward to your comments.

photo credit: markwgallagher

Do you want to fail miserable as an entrepreneur? Well in this post I will share with you 22 things you can do if you want to fail miserable as an entrepreneur. Follow these steps I can almost guarantee you will be a big failure.

1.Neglect cash flow and cashflow management. Don’t even create an Excel spreadsheet to show your daily, weekly and monthy expected cash inflows and outflows. Who cares about cash and the timing of those flows anyway as long you have profits right?

2. Forget about marketing and personal selling. Don’t even bother to create a marketing plan. Who needs to do all of this work. If you build it they will just come right?

3.Don’t bother to setup and document systems for your business. Run it by the seat of your pants. Who needs all of these structures?

4. Listen to no one. Don’t seek advice from those who have gone before you. Just go it on your own. You are smarter than everyone else anyway. Or even better, pretend you are listening to them and then do your own thing.

5. Don’t build your financal intelligence. Don’t learn about financial ratios that affect your business. All that matters is that you are making some money.

6. Spend no time talking to your customers. Or if you do talk to them don’t ask them questions about the business. Just shoot the breeze all of the time.

7. For goodness sake don’t spend time analyzing the metrics of your business. Who needs to know how many new customers are coming in and where they are coming from anyway? You don’t need to know why they chose you instead of your competitor. Stuff like that is useless.

8. Don’t write the vision plan for your business. Just work it everyday like a job. A business is just a glorified job right?

9. Don’t focus on a particular niche. Try to do it all even if you don’t have the budget for it. Be all things to all people.

10. Make sure you think of the glass as half-empty all the time. Don’t be tricked by those who think optimistically and implement realistic plans. You want to be as negative as possible so if something positive does happen in your business then great. At least if you don’t expect great things you won’t be disappointed.

11. Neglect your customers and focus only on the mechanics of your business.  Your customers are a nuisance anyway. They are always asking for something different. Can’t be just be satisfied with what you give them?

12. Work in the business but don’t spend time working on the business. It is the day to day that matters anyway, forget building the business for the long-term.

13. Do not waste your money on educating yourself and learning more about your industry and your business in general. Who needs the extra expenses? You already know everything you need to know about your business. What worked in the past will continue to work. All this talk about change is just that, talk.

14. Don’t bother to work on your leadership skill and your sales skills. Who needs the headache? You are good just like you are. Anyway, who wants to a bunch of people following you.

15. Don’t change with the times and please don’t anticipate change and try to get ahead of it. This takes too much time.

16.Don’t spend time growing your employees. If they want to grow they have to do it on their own. That is not your problem.

17.Don’t delegate. Try to do everything yourself. You are a one-person show anyway. Who needs other people?

18.Don’t take the 80/20 rule seriously in terms of your work. Don’t even spend time determining what the 20% activitives are in your business that brings you 80% of the results. What’s the use of that anyway?

19. Don’t take the 80/20 rule seriously in terms of your customers. Treat them all exactly the same even though about 20% of them provide about 80% of your profits. Don’t even identify these people.

20. Isolate yourself. Who needs to network with others who are in the same line of business or others who can provide critical services.

21. Don’t read. Spend all of your time working on your business and don’t bother learning new material. If you do read, only read about your industry, don’t bother expanding yourself to see if something in other industry can help you.

22. Forget being creative. That is for the artsy types. Don’t even learn anything about creative problem solving.

Ok. I know you know that I am being sarcastic. I don’t want you to think about failing as an entrepreneur but I do want you to take these things seriously. Obviously you want to do the opposite of what is suggested here. Take a good look at this list. If you are an entrepreneur, you may be doing some of these things. If you are, you may want to make a change. If you have not started on your entrepreneurial journey yet, please look at these items and avoid them like the plague. On Wednesday I will give you another batch of these items. Happy entrepreneuring.

Suggested Additional Resources

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

For as a man thinketh in is heart so is he. Proverbs 23:7

We know who you are.
Do you know how?

By how you constantly think. It shows.

Constantly think you will fail, you will…
Constantly think you will succeed, you will…

Dwell on the negative, it’ll show in your walk, talk, and actions…
Focus on the positive, it’ll show in your walk, talk and actions…

Think on problems all the time, you will attract more…
Meditate on solutions and opportunities, you’ll be awash with them…

Eventually you become what you think about all the time.
I will show.
This is a timeless truth.
Why not use this truth to your advantage.
Meditate on things that move you towards success and life.

Here is some “food for thought”.

How can I get this business started?
How can I add more value to my customers?
How can I help my employees grow?
How can I innovate my business model?
How can I grow as a leader?
How can I grow my business?

Constantly think about how you can make everything around you better.
You will be glad you did.

photo credit: Betsssssy

Do you want to grow your business quickly and have a ready base of customers? My fellow entrepreneurs and business owners, take the time to ask your customers these two questions and you may be surprised at the positive results that accrue to your business.

Is there something you want that we don’t carry?

No matter what kind of business you are in there are probably products and services that your customer wants that you don’t carry. Most customers won’t volunteer this information they will just go somewhere else to get it. Many times, the only way you will secure this information is to ask the customer directly.

Keep an open mind.
You may be surprised at what your customers say. They may suggest a simple extension of your current product or service, or they may suggest an entirely new product or service. Whatever is suggested,  keep an open mind. Take the ideas and do some research to determine if you can profitably supply this product or service.

Is there something that your friends or family would want that we don’t carry?

This is an extension of the first question, but it may give you additional information.  Sometimes the products and services you offer are just right for your customers but you may be missing products and services that their friends and families desire. Imagine being able to easily gain additional customers by having a whole family or group of friends shop together for your products and services.  This could make buying  your products and services a social experience.

Final note

These questions seem simple and the fact that a business owner should ask them is obvious right? I agree that the questions are simple but you would be surprised at the nubmer of business owners that don’t ask these questions. Just think back to your own experience in a small retail shop. How often are you asked these questions by a salesperson or by the owner? Almost never.  I believe a lot of potential business is missed because these questions aren’t asked.

Try asking your customers these questions and let me know the results. As always I look forward to your comments.

There are a lot of great business books out there for aspiring entrepreneurs. To me, the best business books are the ones that provide structure to your thinking and that explain the systems behind great businesses. The books that I recommend in this post do just that. To get your business right, you have to think right. These books help you think right about business.

This is a very important book for aspiring entrepreneurs. One trap that many entrepreneurs get caught in is the trap of spending all of their time working in the business and not enough time working on the business.  This has caused many businesses to fail. Michael Gerber effectively addresses this issue in his book.

Most entrepreneurs know about the Rich Dad series of books. While this whole book is great the reason I recommend this one for entrepreneurs is because chapters 30-36 provide structure to business ideas. In these chapters Robert Kiyosaki talks about the B-I Triangle and describes it as the key to great wealth. I agree.

This is a wonderful book for those who want to make innovation a part of their daily business lives. Yes it is a textbook but any person who is really serious about being a successful and innovative entrepreneur should read this book. If you can’t read the whole book at least read chapter 3 which helps you think beyond new products and new services to entirely new business concepts. With these tools you can go nonlinear in your thinking about business models. You must check this one out.

Do you have other great business books that you would recommend to other entrepreneurs? Please let me know in the comments.

photo credit: pfala

Life is full of ups and downs, successes and failures.  The landscape of business is no different.  The longer you stay in the business world, the more likely you are to see that bear out.  But, don’t hold back your entrepreneurial dreams because of potential failure.

Determine how you will respond to failure and setbacks in advance. When you do this, you take away the power of failures and setbacks. Decide now that you will treat any setback as a learning experience.

The basis of scientific research is trial and error.  You try one experiment and it fails.  The next time, you vary one chemical or condition and try the experiment again.  Each time that you do this, the end results are recorded regardless of whether they are the results you wanted or not. 

The entire scientific process is about evaluating the outcomes of your experiments.  The failed experiments are as important as the ones that succeeded.  Here, we are speaking of failure as an outcome that was unexpected and unplanned. 

Failure is one reason that many individuals won’t realize their entrepreneurial potential.  One mistake or error makes them gun-shy.  It prevents them from taking another step forward. 

Anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit knows that nothing is certain in life or business.  The only way to find success is to take a leap forward and risk failure.  At the least, you will learn something about yourself in the attempt:

1.  You weren’t afraid to try.
2.  Failure is not fatal.
3.  Now you know what not to do.

One way to avoid some mistakes it to solicit the advice of a mentor or coach. There are those that have gone before you. Don’t neglect their wisdom. You will still make mistakes but you can avoid some of the most deadly ones.

For an entrepreneur, even a failure is a great opportunity.  There are at least 3 categories of failure.  Entrepreneurs can make rookie mistakes, trust mistakes, and poor business decisions.  No one is immune to any of the three. 

Rookie mistakes could be choosing a poor domain name, not performing enough market testing, or issues with business start-up.  A good way to avoid these rookie mistakes is to get an advisor who understands this area. If you do make a rookie mistake the best thing to do is begin again with new knowledge that you didn’t have the first time in these areas.

Further down the line, maybe you formed a partnership and they got the better end of the deal.  Once again, you dust yourself off and start over. 

No one said it wouldn’t be painful to deal with these setbacks, but the challenge is to profit in these areas as well.  If you scan the business information on the Internet, you’ll see that there are as many courses and eBooks on what not to do as there are on what to do.  How do you think the entrepreneur got the information for the former?  They experienced it.

People new to entrepreneurship want to know what they should and should not do.  The ones who have experienced failure are more than happy to share their knowledge so someone else can avoid hard knocks.  That, in itself, is a marketable business opportunity.

Embrace all aspects of business including the possibility of failure.  Once you dig yourself out and dust yourself off, you could be standing in a goldmine.

One of the professors I had while at the Wharton School of Business (Professor Eric Clemons) recently wrote an article where he argues that the Internet will destroy all forms of advertising.  Apparently this article has invoked some strong feelings and has drawn some sharp criticisms. I have presented a link to this article for you, my readers, to get your feedback. I am looking forward to reading your comments.

Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet

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Gratitude is a powerful tool for attracting great things into your life and your business. When you practice being grateful your life and your business improves.

Gratitude is defined as ” the state of being grateful; thankfulness”. Let’s dig a little deeper. To be grateful is to be “warmly or deeply appreciative of the kindness or benefits received”. So we can define gratitude as the state of being warmly and deeply appreciative of the kindness or benefits received. This may sound hokey but it is true, when you live a life of deep appreciation everything in your life improved.  Here are 3 great quotes about gratitude:

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

Johannes A. Gaertner

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

John F. Kennedy

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Melodie Beattie

So how can we practice gratitude as entrepreneurs. Of course, there are a lot of ways to do this but below are three ideas that you can implement right away. Try these and let me know what you think.

• Express gratitude to your clients. Send out a letter or an email to all you clients letting them know how grateful you are for their business. You can take it a step further by offering them a free gift.
• Keep a gratitude journal. At the end of each day write at least 10 things for which you are grateful. Do this every day for the next 30 days and see what a difference it makes in both your business life and personal life.
• Send handwritten notes. When an employee or a business associate goes out of their way to help you or a customer write them a special note expressing your appreciation.

If an employee or business associate does anything for you send them a handwritten thank you note and express your gratefulness.

Begin practicing gratefulness until it becomes a way of life. You will be amazed at how your whole life improves.

photo credit: timsamoff

As an entrepreneur in today’s highly connected and collabrative world it is extremely important to have a social media marketing strategy. In this post I point you to two important resources to help you understand what social media marketing is and how to use it effectively in your business. Enjoy.

Online Marketing Blog - since December 2003, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has provided insights, resources and commentary on a range of digital marketing and public relations topics including:

• Search engine marketing and optimization
• Social media marketing
• Business blogging and marketing
• Online public relations

This blog has many contributors and has tons on information on both social and search engine marketing. Check it out.

Web Digest for Marketers -another great resources to stay on top of trends in Social media marketing is Larry Chase’s Web Digest for Marketers. This is a weekly email newsletter that delivers short reviews of marketing-oriented Web sites right to your In box. When you subscribe to this newsletter you get the opportunity to subscribe to other great resources dealing with online marketing.

No matter what business you are building having an effective online strategy is critical. Please check out these resources and let me know what you think.

photo credit: *PaysImaginaire*

Why do it today if you can do it tomorrow?  Thinking like that is the beginning of the end when it comes to getting anything done — work or home chores.  The key to being more productive at work is to stop procrastinating before it gets a foothold in your thinking process.

Why do you procrastinate?  There are several reasons and some might surprise you.  Fear of failure is one reason.  No one wants to be make mistakes but they are a part of life and they do happen to everyone. 

Fear of success is also a reason why you might procrastinate.  Here is the rationale:  If you succeed you will be expected to do so all the time.  The pressure alone can stop your work.

Stress causes procrastination, too.  It is easier to deal with a problem by hiding and pretending it will go away than meeting it head on.  The problem is that the day you are ready to deal with it never comes.

Use the following tips to stop procrastination from hindering your work.

1.  Make a list.  Use dashes instead of numbers so the items on the list aren’t ranked in any particular order.  Add deadlines so that you can prioritize the list.  As you finish a task on the list, cross it off with a colorful pen.  Every time you look at the list you will get a sense of accomplishment.

2.  Set aside time for other tasks.  All work and no play, as they say.  Sometimes when you work, you’ll notice your mind thinking about taking a break and doing something else.  We’ve all done it.  Avoid those breaks in productivity by scheduling time to get away and take a break.  Knowing that you will get a break makes you want to stay focused on your work until that time.

3.  Don’t overload your schedule.  If you have too much to do in a small span of time, procrastination will surely creep in.  No one wants to slack off at work, but biting off only as much as you can chew is not the same thing.  You are more productive when you can manage your tasks instead of drowning in them and missing all of your deadlines.

4.  Find coping mechanisms.  Stress can lead to procrastination.  Deal with the stress before it affects your work.  Learn breathing techniques; take an exercise class; chant a mantra.  Whatever will relax you can also keep you working. 

5.  Stay organized.  A desk piled with papers, folders, and sticky notes is not what you want to see every morning you walk into the office.  Keep your desk neat and everything where you can find it when you need it.  Organization stops you from abandoning the task at hand because of a misplaced file.
Procrastination is hard to beat because it comes from within us.  Use the above tips to regain your level of productivity in the workplace.