9
The
Laws of Attracting Profit
9
The
Laws of Attracting Profit Si i m o n R eynolds B r i a n S her
The authors may be contacted at
[email protected] Copyright © The Fortune Institute 2013 National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data: Sher, Brian. Siimon Reynolds 1. Success in business - Australia. 2. Entrepreneurship. 3. Wealth. I. Title. Printed in Australia 2013 Designed by Katie Jenkins @KatieDesigns +61 401 358 895 |
[email protected] ISBN 987-0-958728-12-6 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Contents About the Authors: Brian Sher Siimon Reynolds
9 13
Introduction
17
Law 1 Law 2 Law 3 Law 4 Law 5 Law 6 Law 7 Law 8 Law 9
23 27 33 37 61 69 73 77 79
THE LAW OF SPEED THE LAW OF TIME THE LAW OF VALUE THE LAW OF OPPOSITE THE LAW OF ENERGY THE LAW OF FOCUS THE LAW OF NO THE LAW OF THE FEW THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
Bonus Law 10 THE LAW OF KNOW
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About the Authors
B r ia n S her O
ver 25 years, Brian Sher has established himself as a respected author, leader, pioneer and business growth specialist. He has successfully founded and grown many of his own businesses from startup to turning over tens of millions of dollars in record time both in Australia and the USA. He has not only started over 15 businesses but established whole industries and business categories. He has an outstanding reputation in the business world and is a successful best selling author on the topic of business and marketing. He has been involved in helping many businesses grow and expand through his various companies and is currently Director of The Fortune Institute and Co Founder of StartUp Australia. Brian’s best-selling books include What Rich People Know and Desperately Want to Keep a Secret, How to Make Money Out of Thin Air, now sold in over 22 countries translated into 18 languages, as well as The Anti-Aging Diet and You’re Not Crazy it’s Your Hormones.
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“I’ve known Brian since he began his career in marketing. He is one of those rare people who will give unselfishly so you can be the best in your field. He has a great big heart and business acumen to match. Brian is a master at management, leadership, marketing, advertising, direct marketing and general business growth. He will definitely get you to where you want to be — and fast.” William de Ora — Business Consultant, Co-Author, The Invisible Partnership
“Before I had the opportunity to work with Brian (almost a year ago), I heard stories about his work and learning ethic from various colleagues, along with his great accomplishments to date. So to say I was intimidated the first time I met him would be an understatement. But when we actually met, he surprised me. There was no ego or anything, but instead an individual that genuinely wants to connect with you and help you achieve your goals. He has since helped me grow as an individual, along with my business. I enjoy working with Brian and I look forward to many more years of working together.” Irene Lee — Entrepreneur, Founder, Furniture Escape
“Sage advice... That is what you will receive if Brian decides to be your mentor. Time and again consistently Brian has drawn upon his knowledge and experience to deliver calm, cool and collected insights that just make perfect sense. Direction that when implemented delivers immediate and dramatic results Brian has been part of a journey that has seen E-Web Marketing become one of Australia’s most highly coveted companies to work for, with repeated top rankings on BRW’s Best Places to Work list and unrelenting year-on-year growth.
If you are action-oriented and want to accelerate your success, this is the man to help.” Joshua Hay — COO, E-Web Marketing
“Brian’s knowledge of marketing strategies and techniques are second to none. He readily targets areas that will deliver immediate and sustainable results which is augmented by his dedication and willingness to understand my business and the specific challenges it faces. He matches effective solutions to problems and I have seen first hand evidence that he is not simply reaching into a well-worn bag of tricks. Brian is able to simplify complex marketing information and encourage buy-in and commitment. My investment in Brian has been repaid and my expectations have been exceeded. I unreservedly recommend him.” John Wood — Owner, PPM PTY LTD
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“Whilst working with Brian as the Director of the Fortune Institute, I have found him to be visionary, professional, with high integrity and honesty. He looks at concepts from different angles and if one way doesn’t work, he is quick to approach it from another. He’s personable and great to work with. I highly recommend Brian as well as the work of The Fortune Institute.” Elizabeth Lions — Senior Project Manager, Priority Projects, NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet
“I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the seminar stage with Brian Sher and considered it a privilege to do so. His thinking is outside the box and very strategic which I love. Brian is a man of high integrity and he’s a coach and entrepreneur who truly walks his talk. I consider it a pleasure to know him and look forward to future projects.” Dale Mercer — Co-Founder and President, iSystemize International Pty Ltd
S i i m o n R eynolds S
iimon Reynolds is one of Australia’s most respected marketing experts, entrepreneurs and authors.
He has won numerous business awards and was co-founder of The Photon Group, which grew in 9 years from two people to the 15th largest marketing group in the world, with over 50 companies employing 6000 full and part time staff, valued on the Australian Stock Exchange at over $500 million. Siimon has won the NSW Young Achiever of the Year Award and the International Advertising Association Scholarship. He writes and speaks internationally on high performance and ultra-achievement and his last book, Why People Fail, was a global bestseller as well as winning a Silver Medal at the 2012 Axiom Business Book Awards. Siimon knows how to succeed in business, and personally coaches a handful of entrepreneurs and CEOs on ultra-performance at one of the world’s fastest growing business schools, The Fortune Institute.
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“Siimon’s incisive thinking and brilliant business mind has driven him to the top of our fiercely competitive industry. His ability to communicate what he knows in simple yet powerful ways clearly makes him a leader amongst our profession.” John Singleton — MD, BRW Rich 200 Member
“Siimon Reynolds has done all of us an extraordinary service. He’s read and listened to everything there is on self-improvement, tested it in his own life, discovered what works, and then pulled it all together for us to use. Thank you, Siimon. Why People Fail is a wonderful gem of a book. It is a stunning collection of practical tips, proven techniques, and useful advice on how to make your life more meaningful and fulfilling. I guarantee you that you’ll find something you can use on every page. And I mean every page.” Jim Kouzes — Author of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge and Credibility, and The Dean’s Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University
“Siimon is endlessly upbeat, detail oriented and keen to help people grow themselves as well as their businesses. Always full of ideas and committed to seeing effective excecution. A great combination of energy and wisdom.” Brett Kelly— Owner Kelly Partners and author of Business Owner’s Wisdom
“For anyone who’s ever struggled to be successful - whether the battle was shortlived or long-term - Reynolds’ book is for you! In Why People Fail, he deftly outlines his 16 strategies for turning failure into success, shortcomings into achievement.” Marshall Goldsmith — Million-selling author of the New York Times bestsellers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
Introduction — The African 1% Profit Principle
Africa is a fascinating place especially if you’ve travelled there! Some years ago traveling through the African continent I came across a remote village and decided to stop for refreshment. On the main through road of this village, there was a seemingly well dressed, happy, but determined man selling handcrafted furniture out of what could loosely be described as a market stall. I was keen to stretch my legs from the long car journey, so I wandered across the dusty road and greeted him. Chatting, I asked how long he had been in business and was business buoyant or tough in this part of the world? I should have known from his demeanour and relative wealth that his business was long standing and successful. He confirmed my assumption by telling me he had been in the same business for 21 years. His business was good and that made him happy. While talking, I spotted a beautiful footstool for sale for just $29 which back home, would cost 10 times that amount. I thought for a moment about buying it until it
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quickly occurred to me this mostly wooden item would be a challenge to transport home, not to mention the customs and quarantine issues. But what fascinated me most was the low price for such a beautifully crafted item. My curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to know how such an item could be produced and sold so cheaply; what level of profit was being made by this merchant? So I asked this businessman how he managed to price his products so low and if he made a solid profit? His answer was surprising but not totally unexpected for Africa. He said he makes a profit of just 1 percent! “A 1 percent profit!” …I realised his overhead was relatively very low but even in Africa businesses cannot survive on just 1 percent. Or could they? I needed to know more. As a student of business models I was curious how a business, even if they were in in the middle of Africa, could operate successfully on 1 percent.
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So I dug deeper, and asked him the obvious question, “How is this possible?” His answer was stunning, “If I buy something for 1c, then I sell it for 2c… and that is how I make my 1 per cent profit.” This is the ‘African 1 per cent profit principle!’ The truth is, he knew nothing about reading financial statements, nor likely had ever seen one. Most certainly he had never heard words such as mark up, gross margin, or EBITDA, yet he still knew the most important business law of all - No Profit, No Business! No matter what terminology is used, in the end, making a profit is at the heart of your success. The more profit you make, the more successful you will be. It is without question the goal of every business to focus on profit; for without profits your business will sooner or later cease to exist! This is the basic truth of business success and why we chose to focus on this as the subject of this book. Why Laws? Laws are created to help guide us through life. They are established to provide a set of rules about right and wrong. We learn rules and laws from a very early age, in some cases they control us, but in many cases they can guide and provide a road map of how to safely navigate the world. We get rewarded for following laws and punished for breaking them. This is how society works and how human nature works. Without laws there would be chaos and anarchy. Without laws we could never have achieved what we have achieved today. Laws can be restrictive and kill creativity and freedom. However look at children as an example; the happiest healthiest children are those with boundaries. Working and living in a vacuum creates confusion and doubt in humans and can be more destructive rather than productive. Freedom and creativity are assets in business as in life, but need to be focused in order to be productive There are many types of laws imposed by both Church and State. These are important to help create societal boundaries and give people some order and meaning to their lives. But there are also other laws not so easily seen, such as the universal laws of nature. These laws outline for us the harmony that occurs naturally in our world. These laws are not ‘imposed’ upon us in any formal way, however serve us very much in the same way, by providing rewards/benefits for ‘going with their natural flow’ or punishment for going against them.
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An obvious example of this is ‘nutrition’. There are few restrictions and limitations on what, how, when and where we can eat and drink. Once we reach adulthood, we are free to make our own decisions about nourishment and exactly what we put into our bodies. Eat too much of the wrong foods, drink too much alcohol or take drugs (prescribed and non prescribed) for an extended period and you are likely to damage your finite health. Follow the natural laws of good nutrition by eating the right foods, and chances are you will live a long and healthy life. And so it is with ‘Attracting Profits’ in business. There are some well-established natural laws and ways of thinking, which, if followed, will without a doubt reward you and create a happy, healthy business environment. Disregard or break these laws, and over time you will see your business suffer along with those lives around you (family and employees who rely on you). So ask yourself at this very moment... Is your business strong, healthy, and profitable? If your answer is yes, we congratulate you. However, if your answer is no, then chances are you have some work and adjusting to do. The philosophies in this book profile The 9 Laws of Attracting Profit and clearly illustrate the immediate changes needed to easily attract more.
Just 9 Laws of Attracting Profit? There are many millions of businesses around the world, all employing thousands of strategies and tactics designed around increasing profit. Over the years, many other distinguished business authors have written and dissected what works and what doesn’t. In fact, if there is a way to make a profit, someone out there has probably already thought of it and written about it. But, all of these multiple methods are simple variations of a few core ‘Laws’ that we have distilled into - The 9 Laws of Attracting Profit.
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The other distinction we make about profit in our book title is that making profit in business is about ‘Attracting Profit’ - as opposed to chasing profit. Sustainable profit needs to be attracted for long-term success, and not chased. Much like a sustainable emotional relationship starts with attracting the right partner in life, it works best and will last longer if they are attracted to you and not chased or ‘stalked’. So many businesses have the wrong profit mindset, believing that it is hard or elusive to achieve. They still think that to earn it you’ve got to go out and work harder and chase it. This book is set to dispel that outdated concept. Profits can and must be attracted to you and your businesses, and with the right mindset they should come relatively effortlessly if you follow the advice in this book. Substantial profits can be made abundantly, and quickly when business is conducted with this mindset. It can be like flipping a light switch on, it can happen so fast and easily. Alternatively creating profit can be a long and arduous experience; illusive, fleeting and very scarce when these 9 Laws are not well understood and practiced.
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This is called the “The Paradox of Profit.” There are times when you will be doing everything possible to produce a desired outcome, and profit eludes you. Yet you can see business contemporaries seemingly doing very little while attracting profits in abundance. Why? The difference usually is their mindset and flow. You might be working against these natural laws while others are in their flow working with them to make the attraction of profits so much easier. The other point of distinction in dealing with these natural Laws of Attracting Profit is, that while we can name and categorise these separately into The 9 Laws, many of these laws work together in pairs or groups as will become apparent throughout this book. They are interconnected like millions of other amazing things found in nature.
Law 1: THE LAW OF SPEED If you achieve a reputation for speed and urgency, you’ll be amazed at how it will repay you by Attracting Profits easily. Moving fast allows you to take opportunities you might otherwise miss, it minimizes the costs of ongoing problems, and it instills passion and urgency in your staff. But it is more than a nice extra. It is essential, because if you don’t act quickly on things that matter, your customers will go somewhere else and your business will stagnate. If you have to do something, do it now. If it needs doing tomorrow, do it today. And then get on with the next important task. In business you have to decide fast as well as act fast. Making decisions for some people is worse than having a tooth pulled. But from our experience, you’re better off making a decision - taking the risk of making the wrong one - than procrastinating, or not making a decision at all. People who Attract Profit make lightning-fast decisions involving millions of dollars. To an observer they may seem irresponsible, because it doesn’t appear to be a ‘considered’ decision. These successful people realise, however, that nothing in life is perfect, and that you may have to make a decision based on limited or imperfect information. Dithering will only make things more risky, not less.
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Your decision may turn out to be the wrong one with the benefit of hindsight. Many decisions are. But most decisions help you move forward to a new vantage point. Even if your decision was wrong, chances are that you’ll be in a better position than if you had done nothing. We have a saying at The Fortune Institute that is our mantra internally as well as with all our clients, ‘Fail Fast’.
Speed — your greatest friend If we fail and the outcome is a lesson on how not to do something, then failure is there to make us better, wiser, smarter, more cautious, or even more adventurous. Be realistic about failure and you’ll see that it is a tremendous opportunity. You can even become excited about it! Failing gives you the information you need to do better. Most acts of genius come after years of trying to solve a problem, and failing. The great minds and scientists of history often spent most of their lives failing. Yet their ability to learn from their failures has literally created the world we live in today. So if failure is just a way to learn, it makes sense to Fail Fast.
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Science is full of these stories. Friedrich Kekulè discovered benzene, one of the building blocks of modern chemistry, after seven years of failing. He persisted and ultimately saw in a dream what it looked like - a snake eating its tail. With that dream he realised that benzene was actually a ring. For Kekulè, and for many other geniuses, it was his failure that allowed him to make the step toward success. So how do you make failure your greatest friend? If your back is to the wall, you have no choice but to fight your way out. When you’re confronted by failure, you have to act fast. It’s usually at these times you will find breakthrough solutions you would never have considered otherwise for fear of making the wrong decision. So always act as if you have your back to the wall and nothing to lose, this will help you get off the mark. Failure is a wonderful catalyst for change. Few of us love change for change’s sake; usually we have to be prodded to accept it. The discomfort of failure and desperate times, the dry mouth, the anxiety, the knot in the stomach - is our motivation to accept and embrace change. Stepping out of our comfort zone to deal with a problem is an important step to Attracting Profits.
Stage Fright At some stage however in business you may find you freeze, are unable to make a decision, and feel afraid of where you’re going. This is what we call stage fright, and it’s very common. It usually appears at the time when success is just around the corner, or when changes are coming. When you operate out of fear, you can’t operate at the right vibration. Fear changes how you operate, and how your business operates. The normal reaction is to ‘batten down the hatches’ - both for the business and for the individual. This is an attitude of no-risk, no-change and no future. People lose their optimism and positive attitude, and lose sight of the dream that is driving them. This is when a business begins to become toxic as this fear flows right through the organization and talented people begin to leave. Although this is a natural reaction, it isn’t one that will lead you to attracting greater profits. You must now act fast to move forward. But if you’re not competent in business, the action you choose may well be the wrong one. This could trap you, and contribute even more to your stage fright.
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The only reason you’re trapped is because you don’t know what the right action is. This means that first you must find the knowledge you need to act. And then learn it quickly. It might mean learning under pressure, but learning under pressure is better than doing nothing. It forces you to set learning and business goals with an uncompromising time limit. Taking positive action and making better decisions is what it’s all about. If that means you’ve got to learn something fast, so be it. Once you commence you will find it most liberating and a path you will want to stay on forever.
Law 2: THE LAW OF TIME — Parkinson’s Law
‘Work expands to fill the time available for its completion’ A proverb coined by the twentieth-century British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson, known as Parkinson’s Law. It points out that people usually take all the time allotted (and frequently more) to accomplish any task. One of the biggest complaints of business owners is that they simply don’t have enough time. Many are already working 60+ hours a week just handling the business that they’ve already got - finding the time to work on the business rather than just in it seems well near impossible. While it’s true that business owners are amongst the busiest people on the planet, the fact remains that many of them are just not using their time productively. They are busy certainly, but too often busy doing the wrong things, at the wrong time, in the wrong way. At The Fortune Institute we have developed a radically different and strikingly effective way to improve a business owners’ time management - indeed many of our
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clients have said the system has completely revolutionized their productivity. But in this book we would like to put forward just three simple but profoundly useful ways to change how you use your time. Make these three techniques part of each workday and you are sure to attract profits and see your working hours diminish. Let’s look at these techniques, then talk about how they work together as The Law of Time to create extraordinary results for any business owner.
Technique 1: Identify the Crucial Tasks The real reasons that business owners can work horrendously long hours and still not Attract the Profits they deserve is because they are spending too much time on the wrong tasks. They are in love with being busy, but not really focused on being effective. The technique to reverse that is a simple one. Before you start each week, just sit with a pad and pen and spend 15 minutes thinking about the following question:
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“What are the 3 things I could do this week that would most increase the profits of my business?” Not the ten things or the 20 things, just the three most crucial tasks that could really move the business forward. Not what’s urgent, just what’s important. Not what’s fun or easy, just what is valuable to help make the enterprise more money. Now we know that this is a simple question to ask, but be honest now, how often do you ask it? In our experience (and we have coached thousands of business people) the truth is that very few business owners spend one minute each week asking themselves this question, let alone 15 scheduled minutes every week. But if you get into the habit of asking yourself this each and every week you’ll find it totally changes the speed at which your company grows. You’ll be clearer, more focused. You’ll gain in confidence as you realise that there may, in fact, be less to do than you thought. You’ll separate the urgent from the truly important, a distinction which previously may have been unclear to you. In short, your To Do List will become much shorter, yet you’ll get results much quicker. Clarity creates power. The trick to this technique is to be consistent - you must put a note in your diary every week to remind you to get this done. Ideally do it at the same time each week. Once it becomes embedded in your routine everything will change for the better.
Technique 2: The 90-Minute Rule Once you know what your three key tasks are for the week you must move to time technique two - The 90 Minute Rule. Once again, the technique is simple but its results are profound. You will often get more achieved by Tuesday lunchtime than you need to achieve by Friday evening. Here’s how the technique works: When you arrive into work each morning, give yourself only ten minutes to get settled - grab a cup of tea, look at the overnight
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emails and glance over the online news sites. Then set your phone’s alarm at 90 minutes. For the next 90 minutes you will work solely on the most important of those top three tasks, completely uninterrupted by any calls, people or emails. Let absolutely nothing and no one disturb you. This is the complete opposite of how most people work. When the average business owner comes into work they spend the first 30 minutes looking at emails. They then chat with a staff member about last night or how their weekend went. When they finally start work they usually begin on easy tasks or urgent jobs that may in fact not be that crucial to growing their business. As high performance expert Denis Waitley put it, “They work on tension relieving, not goal achieving.” This is, of course, a more pleasant way to start the day, but usually a highly ineffective one. Because the simple fact is that if you don’t immediately start working on your most important tasks as soon as you begin work, you may not get around to doing them the whole day. As any business owner knows, within an hour or two of starting work so many people are after a bit of your time that pretty soon the day is over before you get around to doing the jobs on your To Do List that really matter. This technique stops that happening. If you can discipline yourself to reserving the first 90 minutes in the morning for a highly valuable job, then by 11am you will have moved your business forward. Then if meetings, emails and requests, do snow you under the day has still been productive. The key to making this technique bear fruit is to be firm with your staff about not interrupting you. If they try popping their head in for ‘Just one quick question’ you must refuse them. If you are consistently strong with them they’ll get to see that you’re serious about your morning time and leave you alone. If you make regular minor exceptions the technique won’t work. Both identifying The Crucial Tasks and The 90 Minute Rule are incredibly powerful individually, but used together they are even more potent. Unlike the vast majority of business owners, anyone who uses these two techniques will work both faster and smarter. They’ll know what their most important tasks are (most business owners are not at all clear on those) and they’ll do them with much greater speed (at the beginning of the day, in an uninterrupted 90 minute block).
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Follow these two techniques for three weeks and you will be stunned at how much important work you get done. But add the third and you’re productivity will absolutely skyrocket.
Technique 3: Have a Leaving Time Everybody has a time that they start work, but only a few business owners have a firm time that they leave work each day. Because there is no set leaving time two things happen. 1. They usually work until the early to mid evening. Over time these long hours leave them tired, irritated and unmotivated. 2. Knowing that they can stay back at work, they often work at half pace throughout the day. Think about it. Isn’t it true that when you know you have a long time to get something done you take more time to do it? This is so common, as discussed above it’s called, “Parkinson’s Law” - Work expands to fill the time allotted for it. By having a leaving time you not only get to leave work earlier, you usually work much faster during the day, because you know you have to leave your office at a certain time. Results? You’re more enthusiastic about each day’s work, because you’re more rested. And you work quickly and efficiently because you know you don’t have all night to work on things.
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Think of it this way. When do you work fastest? Just before you go on holidays! Why? Because you know you have to get everything important done before you go away. Now imagine you have that kind of efficiency each and every day - you can if you force yourself to leave work at the same time each day. So there you have it. Three very simple time techniques, but each one of them exceedingly powerful in their own right. Use all three and you’ll be more productive than you’ve ever been in your life. Remember, success in humans comes down to (a) doing the right things and (b) doing them a lot. The Law of Time will help you achieve both more often. Pretty soon you’ll gain an unstoppable momentum and you’ll see rapid progress in many areas of your business. This increase in achievement will dramatically increase your confidence, which will in turn encourage you to take more action. You’ll become an incredibly dynamic, highly effective person. Try these three techniques just for the next seven days and see how much you get done. We have instilled these techniques in some of Australia’s most successful business owners and they find them absolutely life changing. Give them a go and see just how productive you can become.
Law 3: THE LAW OF VALUE To make more profits one of the most common and obvious ways that everyone initially thinks to do this, is to attract new customers. But to attract new customers you must deeply understand one very important principle that seems to escape most business owners: Customers don’t care about you or your business! What they do care about is what you can do for them! Think about this for a moment. There is a very big difference! This is – The Law of Value. What enhanced values do your products or services bring to your customers’ lives? And not just any value, but value that is greater than they can get elsewhere or by not having your product at all?
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What this law means is that each time a customer buys something from you or from anyone else, they need to feel they have received value for whatever it is they are buying, that is equal to or greater than the value of their currency or money they are offering in exchange. Now remember value is subjective from your customers perspective (not yours) and always in flux due to competitive and market forces, so learning and understanding this law today, is to recognise that part of your challenge is going to be always having your finger on the pulse of this change in perspective. Best selling author Denis Waitley famously said in the Psychology of Winning, “Yesterday’s world records are today’s qualifying times.” This absolutely holds true with value. What may seem like great value yesterday may be eclipsed by a competitors offer and therefore no longer makes the value standard. It sounds so obvious but there is a 95% chance you are not adhering to this Law of Attracting Profit, as most business don’t to the level they should. So until you truly understand this, and build this Law of Value into the very core of your business, your profits will be far less than they potentially could to be.
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Why you might ask? Well, you are without question wasting much of your effort and diminishing your ability to attract greater profits without it. Being in business without understanding this law is highly inefficient and contrary to one of the main Laws of Attracting Profit. So how do you begin addressing this question and implement The Law of Value? A great question to ask is, “What can we do to offer greater value to our customers (or potential customers)?” This is a starting point. You must not only ask this question but a similar question that digs a little deeper… not only what you can do for them… but what can you do for them that is different to everyone else especially your competition?
Law 4: THE LAW OF OPPOSITE Now this powerful question above interestingly encompasses the second law at the very same time - called The Law of Opposite or Constanza ‘s Law.
This law states that 99% of people/businesses get it wrong, or they ‘do the same as everyone else’. Why is this the case? It’s simply the blind leading the blind in most instances. Businesses try to match their competition rather than take the leadership position. This is a mistake. Sure it’s easier to watch what your competition is doing and think you should do this too or a little better. In business being substantially the ‘same’ as your competitors is a mistake that so many people make. Being the same commoditises your business offering, product or service. So don’t do that, do the opposite, be different. Be contrarian. You will struggle to make a profit in business if you are the same as everyone else. This applies to just about everyone in business. There is almost no one that is immune from this in a free market economy.
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Now most businesses we work with at The Fortune Institute cannot adequately answer this question, “What can you do for your customers that is different to everyone else (especially your competition)?” If they can answer it initially the most common answer is, “Our quality is better, or our service is better!” Here’s the bad news. It’s usually not better, or if it is this is highly indistinguishable by your potential customers. This is definitely not the correct response and also contravenes both The Law of Value and The Law of Opposite. It’s a strategic failure and will not help you Attract Profits. Here’s the reasons why… if we asked your competitor the same question they would say the same thing most likely, and this answer of offering better quality or better service is therefore meaningless to your customers in terms of them being able to distinguish greater value. This is yesterday’s world record, even if your service or quality happens to be good or very good. It’s no longer good enough.
You must offer something unique, different or opposite to your competition or something that no other company in the world offers.
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This means that to apply these two laws you need to begin looking at your business from your customers perspective and not your own! Ask yourself (and your team) this question to begin the process, “What can we do for them that no one else will do or is prepared to do?” So let’s look at a simple example of this: Let’s say you are a lawyer or a doctor or an accountant and you want to grow your business and make more profit. What makes you different to any other lawyer, doctor or accountant out there - from a customer’s perspective, from the outside looking in? Probably very little, or nothing that they can determine easily. So how could you be different? What could you offer that others don’t or won’t? Now start a brainstorming exercise with your team. Here are some tips about how to come up with the correct answer. Ask yourself. (Or do your research on this by surveying your customers or potential customers). What are your customer’s possible: • Fears • Frustrations • Desires • Concerns …that your customers have about you (in this case the lawyer, doctor or accountant), or dealing with businesses in your industry? By doing this simple exercise you will be in a position to begin to identify how you can address your customers’ most important value issues, that others in your industry are not adequately addressing, thereby giving you the edge and enabling you or your business to offer something different, and something of greater value than those in your industry. So if you are the lawyer for example, one of the fears and frustrations that you might discover many customers have with lawyers is that - they never know what the final cost will be for the issue they are having you address. So wouldn’t it be attractive and highly valuable to your customers if you were the only law firm to be able to offer your customers a price structure which upfront addresses these fears and seems different and therefore of greater value to them?
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When you work with XYZ Law firm there are no hidden costs or surprises. We are the only Law firm that will give you a fixed price for your work, so you know exactly how much it will cost, no matter how long it takes us to finish your work. This may not make sense to you as a lawyer but I bet if you asked 100 new customers, 99 would say they would like to work with a firm that did this! This approach is what makes you different! This thinking gives you something to offer that no other firm does. This gives customers a reason to come to your firm rather than someone else’s. This will bring you customers you ordinarily would not have attracted at a lower cost, plus a greater number of them, giving you higher profits immediately. Why? This offer complies with our first two very important Laws: The Law of Value and The Law of Opposite. Let’s take another example to further demonstrate how this works. If you are a real estate agent, one of the fears and frustrations many potential sellers have when selecting an agent is, they don’t know if you will sell their house after spending all their money on advertising, or if you did get an offer would you get them the best price for their home possible? So if you were a real estate agent and you wanted to offer something unique to make you stand out and give customers a reason to buy from you and increase your sales and profits, (as opposed to the thousands of other agents out there offering the same thing, claiming to be the best or better) wouldn’t it be attractive, powerful and profitable to be able to say:
If you use ABC agent, we will guarantee to get the best price for your home or we will refund every cent of your advertising money. Now I know what you’re thinking if you’re an agent, ”We can’t do that!”
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My response would be why not? If you can’t offer something so unique and attractive to address the fears, frustrations or concerns of your potential customers, then you will just be running around chasing profits, competing on market share, and on price discounting. This never puts you in a strong position to attract profit and forces you to spend or waste your time chasing it. But ignoring these Laws is the single biggest reason why you will have a tough time attracting new profits and getting ahead in business. Here’s some advertising copy you might find on any page of your Yellow Pages directory or local magazine:
Joe’s Plumbing Emergency 24 hours -7 days a week Call 1 800 555 1212 Does this business give you a compelling reason to seek out Joe’s Plumbing Services? The obvious answer is ‘No!’ This will be the same or similar to many other plumbing adverts on the same page. Unfortunately, as you can see, this gentleman has no understanding of the Law of Opposite. Perhaps he actually does do something unique in delivering his service, but from his advert he is certainly keeping it a secret. If Joe was to get to understand his customers - their real fears, frustrations, desires and concerns - he would quickly realise that people who have dealt with plumbers, or tradesmen in general, are mostly concerned and frustrated about their punctuality. So the question is: why is Joe’s advertisement not addressing this frustration? Here’s a better headline to Attract Profits:
We Guarantee To Arrive On Time Or Your Service Call Is On Us! This advertisement is from a plumber who has been through the exercise of talking with his customers. He now offers his services on the basis that, ‘If we’re not there on time your service call is on us.’ This is a value proposition that the majority of
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other plumbers are not offering. This is what makes him unique, and helps him stand out from all his other ‘me too’ competitors. He has made no secret of it by putting his unique offer in the headline of his advertisements and on his shop window. You be the judge. If you needed a plumber today, which one would you call? Obviously, most people would select the second plumber, because he has given us a compelling and valuable reason to use him. He has made us a meaningful promise that appeals to our underlying frustrations and concerns. By reading this advert, we would want to test him on his promise. If he lived up to our expectations and removed our frustrations and concerns, we would probably become happy long-term customers. (If not, he would be in a lot of trouble, doing a lot of free work and eventually, inevitably, going broke). Now this is a very important point: if you can’t live up to your Law of Value and Opposite, don’t offer it! Another good point to make here is that the second plumber - before he developed his unique offer - prided himself on being punctual. He had very happy clients, already, just not enough of them. He simply didn’t realise that this punctuality was something everybody wanted and that nobody else was offering in the way he now advertises it. His business has trebled in size since he started addressing people’s frustrations and concerns in this way and he is enjoying newly found Profits.
Federal Express Absolutely Positively Overnight Most people are aware of this enormously successful statement of uniqueness used at one time by Federal Express. I say at one time as they no longer use this due to the increased value offering made by their competitors over the years which has made this no longer as powerful as it once was. It did however put FedEx on the map. But what most people don’t know is where FedEx began. Originally their expression of uniqueness was, ‘We use our own planes’. They mistakenly and subjectively thought this was meaningful and valuable, and that it gave their customers a compelling reason to use their service. But an increase in business did not eventuate and so FedEx was forced to take another look at their proposition. What they discovered was that customers wanted
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a reliable overnight service. They didn’t care how it got there, or who owned the planes. Customers would be happy as long as it got there on time. FedEx promptly changed their unique offering to their now world famous promise, Absolutely Positively Overnight. This simple change helped FedEx become one of the biggest courier companies in the world.
Domino’s Pizza There in 30 minutes or it’s free This made Domino’s Pizza famous. Their research discovered that the prime concern of people wanting home-delivered pizza was the time it took to get there. So Domino’s directly addressed that concern and employed The Law of Value and The Law of Opposite. Business took off instantly to make Domino’s one of the biggest home-delivery pizza companies in the world.
John McGrath and Siimon Reynolds on stage at the Strategic Entrepreneur Summit
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Woolworths Food Stores What do people want most when they buy their food? Woolworths pinpointed that it was freshness, and then came up with their Law of Value:
Woolworths the Fresh Food People Now, let me ask you this: do you think Woolworth’s produce is any fresher than any other large supermarket’s? Who knows? But I doubt it. Still, Woolworths grabbed this positioning to give them a distinct ‘uniqueness’. When you make this type of statement you get what Jay Abraham calls a ‘pre-emptive advantage’. You own that position in the market’s perception, because you came out and said it first. Even if your competitors come out later and claim the same thing, they will be seen as simply copycats and will lose credibility. No doubt Woolworths food is fresh, but their promise makes it all the more believable!
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Creating a value proposition such as this can be a long process or a short one, and by its very nature, it is not something you can copy. It needs to be unique to you and your company or brand. Here are a few techniques that will help you create your own value proposition:
Technique 1: Look at your Competitors’ Propostion There’s no point saying the exact same thing as your competitors, you’ll never stand out that way. But in order for you to make sure you do, you must first get very clear on how they’re positioning themselves in the market. Only once you’ve got a solid idea of what your competition is saying do you have a chance of positioning yourself differently. So take a few hours to check out your competitors on the Internet. Or call them and hear how they talk about themselves. Go into their store and shop them. Once you’ve got an idea of what your local competitors are like, jump on the Internet and start searching for similar companies in other countries as well. You’d be amazed what you’ll learn about brand positioning when you start studying what companies in your sector or niche are doing overseas. Allow a couple of hours for this exercise and be sure to write down what you discover for reference.
Technique 2: Survey your Customers The best starting point is to find out from your customers why they would buy from you as opposed to anyone else is by asking them about their emotional triggers. Asking specific questions relating to their fears, frustrations, desires or concerns will always discover these triggers. If you ask enough customers, you will find a pattern as to what you should be offering and how you should be offering it. This is a fabulously effective strategy yet very few business owners take advantage of it. Creating a survey you can email customers is very simple. Just pop on the net and look for online survey companies - a good one is called Survey Monkey. Keep the survey short and simple. Just give customers 3-5 questions to answer and you’ll ensure you get a high response rate. Begin your survey email by saying that
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you care about what they think and want to give them the best product or service possible and you have created this brief survey to help deliver what they most desire from a product like yours. In addition to emailing them a survey you can also call them directly and ask the same 3-5 questions via phone. But be sure to record their answers so you can evaluate these metrics accurately later. What’s cool about surveying your customers is you can finish it in under a week. Your email answers will come back within a few days and if you’re calling your customers 10 to 20 responses will be enough for you to begin to understand their fears, frustrations, desires or concerns. Don’t just run this survey once either. If the first one is useful then why not make it an annual or biannual event - that way you’ll always be up to speed on what motivates your customers to buy? Now let’s look at the next method to work out your company’s positioning. This one is all about you.
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Technique 3: Ask yourself, why should someone do business with me? This is such an important question; we will cover this in great depth in this chapter. For now, put yourself on the spot. If you were a customer, would you buy from your company? Why? What do you offer that’s different? Why is your company better than all the other companies offering similar products? In other words, attempt to quickly answer this to see how you work with The Law of Opposite and The Law of Value. Sell your company to yourself as best you can. When you’ve built up a case, write down what your top reasons are. Many business owners find this incredibly hard to do which is why we strongly suggest you ask your customers issues around their fears, frustrations desires or concerns. It’s crucial you get clarity on this. You have little chance of Attracting Profits without distinct and compelling reasons why your product or service is superior to your competition. Yes, it can be done, but it’s arduous and difficult to achieve. Take a few minutes now to sit with a pad and pen and brainstorm some reasons. If you’re finding it difficult to create this list then our next technique should help you a lot.
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Technique 4: Look into the key branding areas Hopefully you’ve come up with a totally unique value proposition, but that is not the norm. It’s more likely that you will need to start off with some of the more common propositions, and then later tailor them to fit your business perfectly. Take a look at the possible proposition angles below - see if one or two of these are areas that adequately describe your company’s point of difference.
Are you? Faster Cheaper Better quality Money back guarantee Biggest seller Better service More knowledgeable staff Long history Award winning Preferred by experts Higher quality Specialists in one area Dedicated to one type of customer Backed by research/proven Widest range Tailored
That should get some ideas flowing! Put a tick next to any positioning statement that you believe you could uniquely offer. Then focus on your top three positions and think about which one is the very best. Narrow it down and you may have just found the perfect one?
Technique 5: Choose the best or most unique Value Proposition
Once you’ve worked out your best positioning by using the above methods, it’s time to test the one statement that will become the main thrust of your product or service. Must it be just one? Usually yes, because when you focus on a single unique proposition your company or product will immediately stand out. If you have too many reasons why your product is the best, then customers will remember none of them. If you have just one big reason then people will always remember you for that alone.
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This can be difficult for a lot of business owners to accept, because it’s their company they often believe every aspect of their offering is phenomenal - but that’s rarely the actual case. You’ve got to be hard on yourself. You need to be objective. You need to keep it simple. If you could only put forward one reason why your product or service is uniquely the best what would it be? Then make that your product or service’s positioning. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t mention other reasons why your products are amazing, it only means that you lead with this single big unique reason. The other reasons are secondary. They can get mentioned in brochures, or in presentations, but your main selling strategy should be built around a single enticing unique selling proposition. That way potential customers will always remember you. Say too much and they’ll usually remember very little of it.
Technique 6: Reflect this in everything you do Got your big single reason? Good. Now your job is to build your whole marketing effort around it. Summarise it in a simple line/statement as we have shown you in the Federal Express or Woolworths examples. Now place it under your logo, on your business card, and on your brochures. Get your receptionist to say it when she answers the phone. Urge your sales team to re-enforce it in every presentation. Put it in your ads. On T-Shirts. On staff badges. Basically put it everywhere you can. All the best companies do this. Take a look at the marketing of McDonalds, Nike or Starbucks. Their brand message is consistent and ubiquitous. You must do the same. Remember, your brand or positioning is not just what you say in your ads. It must be evident in every interaction people have with your company. For example, when you call FedEx they pick up the phone after just one ring as company policy, because that action says so much more about their efficiency and reliability than any fancy ad you produce. Examine every aspect of your business. Does it reflect the unique positioning you want for your company? If not, make the changes you need to make until it does.
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That way you will have a congruent, consistent and highly effective position in your target audience’s mind. So let’s review the key essentials to creating a unique value proposition.
1. Know what your competitors are doing and saying. Research your space/niche. It’s not until you know how the opposition is talking about themselves that you can establish a unique positioning of your own. 2. Ask your own clients, or potential clients, what they value in a supplier. Most will only be too happy to tell you. Only then will you be able to choose a position that is meaningful to them. Less than ten percent of business owners ever do customer surveys but they can change your business forever. 3. Ask yourself the simple question, “Why should someone do business with me?” Then get clear about the answers. Remember, if it’s not clear to you it can never be clear to your customers. 4. Now it’s time to choose one main angle to be your positioning. You can have support points, but great products are usually just known for one thing. Pick yours. 5. Then once you’ve done all that, make sure you bring that positioning alive throughout your company, and all your corporate communications. Do all five and you will have built something truly precious for your company that will endlessly attract profits.
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When are the Law of Value and Law of Opposite absolutely critical? The more competition you have (and therefore the more of a commodity you are) the more important your Value Proposition becomes, because the need to distinguish yourself from the others increases. Even if you discover a great Value Proposition, and shortly afterwards your competitors begin to follow you and offer the same thing, then you need to be one step ahead again and offer your customers something new or some additional (added value); a new distinct reason to buy from you again. When you offer something truly unique, and are the best at what you do, it becomes difficult for your competitors to match you. So you need to keep lifting your game, constantly making it hard for your competition to follow. This is the key to sustainable Profits. Following these two Laws is not something you should do, or a nice thing to get around to using; these are the keys to your immediate success in Attracting Profits. We cannot stress this strongly enough - you must offer solutions (or perceived answers) that no one else is offering. Most companies just go out to market and do what everybody else is doing, especially from a customer’s perspective. This gets you nowhere. If you’re not unique, you’re like a tomato seller at the markets - you offer the same goods as everyone else, and all you can do to get more customers is - drop your price. This is no way to attract consistent profit, it’s only a race to see who can sell the cheapest and this will quickly reduce, eliminate or wipe out all your profits.
A Question of Value We promised earlier we would cover the value proposition in more detail. And since this is the holy grail of attracting profits here is a further explanation to help your marketing strategy.
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Ask yourself this question: why are some things expensive and others cheap? It’s because those that are expensive are unique, rare, or just hard to get. On the other hand, those that are cheap are usually easily obtainable. If your aim is to Attract Profits, you should work to make yourself unique at all costs, not just another commonly available ‘commodity’. When you produce something that’s a commodity, there is nothing to differentiate you from anyone else, except price. That’s exactly where you don’t want to be, because inevitably you will have to drop your price and cut your margins to keep your customers. This will quickly send you broke.
Your goal in everything you do from now on, in setting up, running, maintaining and developing your business, must be aimed at achieving this value and uniqueness and adhering to The Law of Opposite.
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It starts and needs to be built into every aspect of your business - from designing and developing or manufacturing your product or service to its promotion and delivery – everything must have a unique angle. And this is where the 99.9% of businesses fail. They might have a good product, or even a great product, but if it’s not unique and immediately demonstrated to solve your customers most pressing problems, or at a minimum to highlight its uniqueness in a way that is meaningful to your potential customer, you are on a downward trajectory. Let us repeat that key point - solve your customers most pressing problem in a way that is meaningful to your potential customer and in a way no other competitor does, can or is willing to do. This is where the real game of business is won or lost. No one person is immune. Neither is any company, no matter how big. If your product is not good to great (it does not even have to be the best), but also not articulated or demonstrated to be unique in some way that is meaningful to the market, your outcome at best will be an average business. Over time, average will become poor, and business failure is on the horizon. Your only immunity is to pay serious attention to this one aspect of your business and to begin asking yourself some of the qualifying questions above. Through this analysis you will discover unique answers to who and what your business really represents. These answers may not make you the next Facebook or Google, but it will certainly positively change your current fortune or fate. So in, summary, answering this one very important ‘Profit Question’ is paramount. The ultimate usefulness your customer derives from your product or service plus how you package or deliver/demonstrate that product or service’s uniqueness, in a way that is immediately obvious to your customer - that is your starting and end point.
A Billion Dollar Lesson From Apple Look at Apple’s iPod, iPhone and iPad as examples and compare their sales over a 2-year period. This shows how to Attract Profits using the Laws of Value and Opposite very clearly.
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In the quarter ended December 26, 2009, Apples revenues were $15.68 billion and net quarterly profits were $3.38 billion. (These results compare to revenue of $11.88 billion and net quarterly profit of $2.26 billion in previous year comparison quarter - roughly a 50% growth year on year).
In this 2009 quarter Apple: • Sold 3.36 million Macintosh computers during the quarter • Sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter • Sold 21 million iPods during the quarter (representing an 8% unit decline from the year-ago quarter) • Sold zero iPads (not launched yet) Less than 2 years later - Apple’s revenues had grown to $28.27 billion and quarterly net profit of $6.62 billion - almost doubled!
In this 2011 quarter Apple: • Sold 4.89 million Macs during the quarter • Sold 17.07 million iPhones in the quarter • Sold 6.62 million iPods, (a 27% decline from the year-ago quarter) • Sold 11.12 million iPads during the quarter, (a 166% unit increase over the year-ago quarter) These sales figures highlight Apple’s amazing understanding of the concept of The Law of Value and The Law of Opposite. In 2009 and 2010, Apple in anyone’s view was hugely successful with their 3 major products, the Mac series, iPhone and iPod.
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Each of these products offered uniqueness and value. There was nothing quite like them on the market and they were offered and packaged in a way that got people to camp outside the stores for days before each product launch - just to be the first to get one. However this never lasts long without constant evolution. Steve Jobs knew this amazing advantage would not last as major competitors were on the way copying and trying their best to offer equal if not better value for lower prices, thereby eroding Apple’s one and only major advantage. So how did Apple double its sales and profits during the following two year period? In this same timeframe, hundreds of other smart phones appeared and sales of two of their four products grew relatively modestly, while iPod sales were actually in decline?
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You see… Steve Jobs understood the reasons intimately and answered the question that 99.9% of other companies rarely think about completely, but the best companies in the world obsess about it:
“Why consumers buy from you as opposed to someone else?” Customers have choices, and don’t just buy because it’s an Apple. They buy because Apple products make their lives better, simpler, easier, and more enjoyable than everyone else. (Or whatever meaningful reason or uniqueness you need to come up with for your products). Apple is a billion dollar company that continues to innovate and offer product value and uniqueness (opposite). Even with their success they will face immediate sales decline and fortune reversal if they ignore this single fact for even one minute. So they set out every day to make their Macs even better, more unique and more valuable. They launched new and improved iPhones (3, 3s, 4, 4S & 5). They all contained even more product value and uniqueness that their competitors could not or did not dare to include in their handsets until perhaps only recently. They launched innovative new products quickly (the iPad, iPad mini) and they do things
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within their products that keep offering extreme value and uniqueness which the majority of their competitors don’t see coming or simply cannot match due to speed and innovation (laws we will cover in other chapters). Apple and other leading companies like them become obsessed with understanding this Law. It’s not about the capital you have, it’s not about the systems, it’s not about the management, all of this can be average and the company will still hugely succeed.
It’s all about the product uniqueness and value. This cannot be average! If you get this right and understand that you Attract Profits only when enough customers see, understand, want and buy your product rather than a competitors. The bottom line always comes down to your product providing them the value they need and want, in fair exchange for parting with their hard earned money. What’s more it must not only be unique, its uniqueness must be understood communicated and appreciated by a large enough group of customers (its market) to make its manufacture worthwhile. It’s a huge mistake to start, or run, a business thinking you’re unique when you’re not, or for some reason to keep your uniqueness a secret. In the 1980s IBM thought their PCs were unique - until they lost an entire market to clone PCs that did the same thing, but cheaper. In the 1970s, Xerox thought they were unique because they developed the commercial photocopier - until Canon started selling them at half the price and shifted The Law of Value.
Why should I buy from you rather than someone else? This is probably the most important question you can ask yourself in Attracting Profit! To quote Anthony Robbins, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the quality of questions you ask yourself and others!” Heeding this good advice, you should continually ask yourself this question: Why should someone buy from me as opposed to my competition? In other words... what value do you offer greater than your competitors and is it unique and meaningful to your group of potential customers?
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It starts with your product service! Do you Attract Profits by simply having the best product or service? The answer is both yes and no. Can you make yourself or your product unique when it’s not or there is no demand for it? It’s difficult. So it is all about your product or service first and this is something that needs to be closely looked at immediately if you are not Attracting the Profits you want, and if this is the case then you need to reengineer products or seek new product ranges. We also need to recognize markets and the different segments within every market. Not every business can have the best product or service. Not everyone gets to sell Rolls-Royces or Cartier watches. But you don’t need this to Attract great Profits. What you must realise is that you need the best product or service suited for your market. Not all customers can afford a Rolls Royce, but there are plenty of people looking for a good, reasonably priced Nissan or Daihatsu. When you choose a product for your business, you need to be sure there is a big enough market for it. If only you and your friends are going to buy it, you’re not going to Attract Profits selling it. Be careful about what you choose, look at the market, do your research and watch consumer trends. If this is difficult to manage then test the product concept before you commit to big production investments, or you could be stuck with a lot of stock and no customers. Be careful not to select or develop products or services that are ahead of their time or their market, unless you have very
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deep pockets. This is also a sure-fire way to go broke - waiting for your product or service to catch on. On the other hand, the same danger waits when you try to get in when the market is on the decline. You may be caught with too much stock and too few customers. This is a real danger today, as customer choices and markets change so rapidly. As obvious as this sounds, it is not always the best product or service that is the winner. What sells best is the product or service that appeals best and is sold in a unique and highly valuable way to the most buyers in any one market. And success after developing the right product depends a lot on your marketing skill in creating your offer around The Law of Value and The Law of Opposite, not your product.
But it starts with choosing your product very carefully Even if you believe your timing is perfect for launching a product or service, you must be aware of the possible high cost of educating the market about it. Launching a new or improved version of an existing product requires far less customer education than if you are offering a new product concept. With new concept launches, it sometimes takes years and millions of dollars to educate the market. Your payback period will not be quick, and you may run out of resources to eventually cash in. Even if you do make it through this treacherous and costly period you will find, as soon as the market starts to respond positively, your returns will be eroded by competition stepping in to take advantage of the prime market opportunity. Everyday items we now take for granted often took years to be accepted by the market. For example, it was 13 years before people began to understand and become comfortable with microwave ovens. Many companies went broke in this period. Note that inventors are not usually the ones who end up Attracting Profits. It is almost always the entrepreneur who picks up the concept when the timing is right and makes the product successful. Take McDonald’s as another example. If it weren’t
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for Ray Kroc’s entrepreneurial zeal, there would be no McDonald’s, as we know it today. The original McDonald brothers were happy with one store. Does this mean that, if the timing is right, market education is not necessary? Certainly not! In order to be successful, you need to constantly educate your market. However, there is a big cost difference between educating your market about a new concept and educating your customers about what is unique about you, and why they should buy from you as opposed to someone else. If you are offering a product or service that is already understood, or not difficult to understand, then your goal must be to educate your customers about why they should buy from you through highlighting your uniqueness and value versus your competitors. This means giving them solid and plausible reasons why they should select you or your company to do business with. The message for now is to realise simply that customer education is part of running a successful business. However, the education cost can’t be too high, because if it is, something must be wrong with your product or service, your message, or your market timing. In marketing new products you need to select carefully. Although a product may be new and exciting to you, this does not automatically make it a winner. The risks are high. It is usually better to market a product that is well known to consumers yet is new and improved by you. This is a safer route, especially if you do not have an unlimited budget for marketing and promotion.
Law 5: THE LAW OF ENERGY The scientific explanation of the law of energy is:
Energy is neither made nor lost; it’s just transformed from one type to another. In other words there is a finite amount of energy in the universe and we only have the ability to transform it from one form to another, but not create more of it. The Law of Energy as it is applied to The 9 Laws of Attracting Profit is important. It will explain why some people, businesses and companies make little or no profit while others thrive. Putting your energy into something means you are taking an idea or thought, which is pure potential energy and transforming it into its physical reality. The creation of an idea or thought by an individual has historically been the beginning of just about every major idea, invention, breakthrough, and innovation ever seen on earth. Everything around you other than nature has come from the germination and then manifestation of an idea. Remember creative ideas if not acted upon return to where they came from and are usually lost forever.
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Q
: Given that we have thousands of thoughts and ideas each day, which ideas are then worth acting upon?
A: For the purpose of the goal of Attracting more
Profit, those ideas that solve someone’s collective problem with greater efficiency, effectiveness, faster, safer and at potentially a lower cost than is currently available. Those ideas that provide more value, as outlined in The Law of Value are most important and warrant action.
Siimon interviewing John Symond at the Strategic Entrepreneur Summit
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Why is this filter important? You have only a limited amount of energy to utilise in your earning-capacity years. Simply put, if you are going to work for 50 years (or whatever period necessary) there is a finite amount of time and energy available to generate Profit from the value you are providing. So once you realise that like any sporting professional, you have a limited career (or in term of The Law of Energy - have limited energy) at your disposal, your goal should be to value this as a scarce resource and be discerning about how you allocate this energy to your endeavours in business. This is a complex way of saying don’t waste time.
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But this is exactly what most business people do. Not intentionally, but consistently. Once we are in business there are thousands of distractions and choices necessary around doing what is urgent versus doing what is important. Books by authors such as Stephen Covey and Seth Godin have been written about this very topic, yet this is precisely why most businesses under perform or fail to maximise profit. The business owners do not appreciate that their energy is the most important resource. Guarding and using this wisely by making choices to eliminate as many of the time wasting and energy sapping distractions and only focusing on what is going to produce the greatest profit is key.
All images from The Biannual Strategic Entrepreneur Summit
Law 6: THE LAW OF FOCUS As mentioned The 9 Laws of Profit tend to work in pairs or groups. This is true because they are interconnected in their effect and their final outcome. The Law of Energy and The Law of Focus are two such pairs. Distractions in whatever form, are the archenemy of focus and are the greatest detractor of profits in just about every business on earth. Billions and billions of dollars are wasted due to loss of focus, or by putting energy into the wrong areas of your business. This happens quite quickly and naturally to most people. Life has many, many temptations and distractions and its hard to keep focused on the right priorities all of the time. Every businessperson at one point or another feels this failing. All you need to appreciate and get excited about is, that in most cases to attract more profits, you don’t need to be 100% focused all of the time. You just need to be more focused than you are now. So assuming you are 20-25% focused on the right things, whatever they are for you, then massive gains can and will be achieved, by increasing that by just 15-10%.
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So whatever level you are currently operating at currently there are usually handsome opportunities waiting for you after only slight improvements in your level of focus. Few business owners seem to have a problem with accepting, understanding and agreeing that the level of focus is a negative issue for them. The biggest problem they face however is knowing how to change it, to act or behave differently to eliminate many of the time wasting distractions, and ultimately knowing how best to get focused, and of course on what tasks warrant the most attention? You’ve probably heard of Michael Jordan, whether or not you have any interest in basketball. He’s recognized as one of the most talented athletes of all time, and broke all sorts of records in his sport, and earned an income most of us will only ever dream of. Did you know that when he was interviewed some years ago, and asked what was the most significant moment of his life, he answered that it was the time he was cut from his high school team!
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It wasn’t all the fame, power and amazing achievements of his life, but the fact he was dropped at high school. This, he said, gave him time to focus and to practice and gave him more determination than ever to become great. Even with all this greatness, and being known as one of the greatest athletes of all time, his switch to professional baseball was at best average and at worst forgettable. Even he discovered: you cannot be good at everything. Great rewards come from clear focus. When you focus all your effort, energy and attention in one direction, you will become truly outstanding and in business it is the key to how to Attract more Profits. One of Australia’s richest men once said, “I have never seen anyone do two things well.” What he meant by this is - get focused and this is brilliant advice in your pursuit of Attracting Profit.
Law 7: THE LAW OF NO The Law of Focus links in perfectly with The Law of No. In The 9 Laws of Attracting Profits we have already covered the requirement for ‘eliminating distractions’. Now we look at using No and also its powerful clarifying effect on decision making. This chapter is all about becoming really great at saying, ‘No’. Knowing how to say No is initially one of the things we have found business people have the greatest difficulty using. It’s obvious there are so many things to do and so many requests and demands for your time, energy and focus. But learning how to say No, even if this disappoints you and others, is counter intuitive but remains one of the most powerful Laws of Attracting Profit. When you are running and growing a business and employing people, there are thousands of things large and small going on around you all the time. There are people who want to see you, confer with you, get your approval and have you sign off on decisions. There are people who want to present you with their ideas and opportunities; there are transactions to monitor and activity to manage.
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The question you need to start to ask yourself from today forward is:
”Which of these time and energy consuming activities should you say yes to and which should you say no to?” And the answer is this: Given that time, energy and focus is your most valuable and scarce resource a mantra you should now have playing over and over in your head is - say no to everything unless it conforms to the following litmus test. 1.
Will saying ‘yes’ to focusing on ‘this’ clearly enhance in the short or medium term your ability to generate more profit, and/ or
2.
Will saying ‘yes’ and focusing on ‘this’ improve your business systems (so it can be fully delegated away from you and any management of it in the near term).
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In other words, look at what you are doing minute to minute much more closely and critically and do only those things that are important to growing your business, and not those things that are required to maintain it, (unless it is the development of systems to do so independent of you and of the hiring of people to run those systems). The way you can get a clear and immediate perspective of how well you are using No presently, is to keep notes almost hour by hour of everything you do in a typical week at work. And at the end of the week go back and review each hour and you will find that there are many, (and I will say if this is the first time you have done this), probably over 50% of the tasks you have done, spent time, energy and focus on, were either unnecessary, unproductive, or something you could have either not done yourself or not done at all. If this is true for you - then this is a huge opportunity! What this means is that while you think you have been working hard, 50% or more of your time each week has progressed you no further in your quest to improve your business profits. This is great news and has a silver lining – it means if you use The Law of No more regularly, you will gain up to 50% more time each week to focus your energy into dollar productive activities and this will attract more profit by its very nature.
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When we look at the many hundreds of clients’ businesses we see each year at The Fortune Institute, we are both amazed by the amount of non-productive distractions the owners allow. For example in profit generating terms, there is very little that is more important for owners to do than focus on their marketing and sales systems. When we ask them what percentage of their week is spent engaging in these activities, in many cases it turns out to be less than 10% of their entire week’s focus. Yet sales and marketing is the engine that drive business and one that is entirely responsible for attracting profit, and less than 10% of their energy and focus is spent doing this! Why? It’s simply because they don’t know how to say No to distractions. Saying No is just as important if not more important than saying Yes to many things and it’s the degree to which you have the ability to say No to the wrong things, thus focusing and putting your energy into the right things, which will determine your ability to conform with these closely related Laws of Attracting Profit.
Law 8: THE LAW OF THE FEW We mentioned at the very beginning that there are thousands of ways to make profits! And we were not kidding. We’ve seen just about every strategy come through our office. If there is one piece of advice we have given to our clients more than any other, it’s encompassed by the next two pair of Laws of Attracting Profit. So let’s start with The Law of the Few. It is 100% certain that to Attract significantly more Profit you should not focus on every possible strategy or idea you come across to boost your sales and profit. In the first instance there are too many and secondly you don’t have the time, money or resources to implement even half of these ideas. So focus on just a few! Starting today select just 2 or 3 strategies or ideas you have learned and implement these - fast. This is The Law of the Few combined with The Law of Speed.
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We host content rich educational seminars for thousands of business people each year, and at the end of these events, the attendees are re energised, vibrant, and excited about all the new strategy they have learned. They are pumped up to go back and grow their business and profits exponentially. But, sadly few do. They take copious amounts of notes at these events, to remind them of what they ‘should’ do, and then go back to their business they either try to do too much or become overwhelmed and do nothing for lack of not knowing where to actually start or how to truly implement our content. Nike, the shoe company, profoundly said it all in just a few words - Just Do It - these words are meant to inspire people to live The Law of the Few in every aspect of their lives not just in business. You don’t have to do a lot to massively Attract new Profits. Just one thing will do it for you. Just work out what that is by testing just a few strategies at a time and eliminating those that do not achieve results.
Law 9: THE LAW OF ATTRACTION You have likely seen the famous statistic that says that four out of five business fail. Whether that is actually true is open to some conjecture but in any case we all know that most businesses are not successful. The big question is why. Businesses fail for multiple reasons - ignorance of the industry, a poor quality or undifferentiated product, low margins, weak leadership, the list goes on and on. But there’s one reason that businesses fail that stands head and shoulders above the rest: no clear marketing funnel. What is a marketing funnel? It is a clear and concise pathway from attracting a potential customer, to getting a new sale that you can make over again and again. And amazingly most businesses don’t have one or it happens by luck rather than design.
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Oh sure, they have a vague idea how they get their customers (for example from print ads or by referral) but ask them about the details and you usually get a blank look in return. But here’s a vital point. Unless you get really clear about where your customers are coming from and how you can efficiently and systematically bring more in each month, your business is in danger. But get your marketing funnel right and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank. You’ll have a virtually endless supply of customers coming in, ensuring continual business growth and profitability for years to come. You’ll also have absolute confidence that whatever the business climate, your company will survive. Several years ago Dunn and Bradstreet did a deep research study on what caused businesses to fail. After months of study their conclusion came down to just two words, “Low sales”. Yes, that’s it. They realised that when all was said and done that not getting enough clients in the door was at the heart of most businesses going under and certainly not attracting profit. Having an excellent marketing funnel fixes that problem once and for all. So if marketing funnels are so important how do you create one? Well it’s not hard, but it might take a little time. Basically you have to make sure you get these three areas right.
Area 1: Know exactly where your customers come from You’ll be amazed at how many business owners don’t actually know clearly who and where their customers come from. People ring up and show interest in their product, or walk through their door, but the owner never actually gets clear on what caused them to connect with the business in the first place! Was it their Yellow Pages ad? Was it a recent article in the local newspaper about your company? Did they contact you after finding your website? Or was it an old customer of yours that suggested they give you a call? Most business owners aren’t sure. But once you do know who your customer is and exactly where your customer’s enquiries are coming from, you can use that data to bring in a lot more leads.
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So how do you find out how they found out about your product, service or company? Track everything you do, and if all else fails ask them! That’s right, track the results of your marketing efforts with codes, unique phone numbers, unique URLs on your landing pages, when you answer the phone or your staff speaks with them face to face, just ask them, “And how did you hear about us?” They’d usually be happy to tell you. Just be sure to track their answers, or the sources down so you can keep a record of it. One of the best ways to do that is to create a simple Lead Sheet – a spread sheet or even a simple piece of paper that you keep by your phone or in your store where you can just tick one of several boxes indicating how your potential customers found out about you. Then every week collect the results into a weekly report. This may all seem an incredibly simple theory to execute but it’s extraordinary how few business owners get their staff to do it and as a result they are never sure where their leads are coming from. Don’t make this mistake. Insist that your marketing is tracked and staff ask every customer, then record every single response. That way you can monitor what advertising mediums are working well, which are working slightly and which are just a waste of time and money. This cuts costs, eliminates massive waste, and boosts profits fast.
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Area 2: Test different marketing/customer attracting methods Okay, so now that you know where your customers are coming from, it’s now time to get more of them. There’s a very simple way to achieve this. In fact follow this method and it’s highly likely to double or even triple the number of customers you bring in. What is that method? Just test lots of types of marketing channels and vary your methods and see what else works. Test, test and test some more. This is the only way to find out what method achieves the most impact and return. For example, if you do one step marketing, try two-step and see if it works better or not? This seems obvious, but in 30 years of experience in business we’ve found that not even 5% of businesses do this. Instead, most businesses just keep using the same one or two tired methods of marketing that they always have used. Well as Einstein famously said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result.” To massively increase your profits you must test different strategies, channels and methodologies. And the quickest way to boost the amount of customers coming in the door is to split test them and see what works for you.
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The good news is there are loads of options. Below is a list of some suggestions of the more popular marketing mediums you can consider testing:
Print ads Magazine Ads Online Display ads Online videos Search engine marketing Promotional books Email marketing Telemarketing Customers referral rewards Seminars TV Ads Trade journal ads Google ads Brochures Public relations
Direct mail Promotional DVDs Trade Shows Online affiliate marketing Webinars Radio Ads Yellow pages ads. Blogs Mail Box leaflets Advertorials Promotional gifts Joint ventures Social media Mobile phone marketing Multiple websites
Now not every one of these might be suitable or applicable to your business but take a look at that list and put a tick next to the methods you are currently using. If you’re like most people you’ll only have a couple of ticks. But that’s exciting news because it shows you the immense potential your business has if you begin to test some new marketing channels. Here’s what we would like you to do. Pick two of these channels and do a small test of them this month. Then each month try another two. Other than TV advertising none of these mediums are expensive - most can be tried for under a thousand dollars many for just a few hundred. And remember The Law of Speed. Fail Fast. Try them and if they don’t work, try something else. Sounds basic but this is what the best marketers and companies do, and they keep doing it even when they find a winner, they split test to see if they can beat that with a different slant, twist or technique.
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My bet is that after three or four months of fast, low cost testing you’ll find another one or two methods that successfully bring in clients. These new additions to your marketing arsenal could easily lead to a doubling of your revenue. When you think about it, it’s absolutely incredible that millions of business owners spend decades struggling to make money, yet try no new marketing methods. In many cases all they had to do to Attract more Profits is try a few more ways of attracting customers. But most don’t bother. Isn’t that crazy? Don’t be one of them. Commit today to a monthly trial and we can assure you that you’ll be delighted you made the effort.
Area 3: Refine your sales process Once you’ve brought buyers in, the next area of your funnel is the sales process itself. If you can refine what you say or do while you are trying to get the sale, you may be able to increase your success rate dramatically.
Areas to look at here include the following: • What you say or how you do it • The manner in which you say it or do it • The order in which you say it or do it • The social proof you offer • Your sales presentation length, could it be shorter or is longer better • The issues, hot buttons, and known objections covered in your sales presentation • The emphasis or amount of time you give to those issues • The questions you ask during your sales presentation • How you end your sales presentation • The system for following up a lead
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If you have an online sales process, web-based business, then these same questions apply: • How credible does your website look and feel • Is it easy to read and understand • Is it uncluttered • Can someone tell what you are offering in under 5 seconds • Are the colours compelling for what you are selling • Is it easy for someone to find your product and buy it • Can they easily find your contact details to speak with you if necessary • Do you capture their details immediately • Do you have a jump ship page • Are you A/B split testing every aspect of your site
If you’re a retail store look at: • How clean and well presented is your store • Are your products well displayed and attractive • Are your staff well trained in sales and product knowledge • Do you know your best selling items and worst selling items • Are your window displays clearly visible and well constructed • Are these displays refreshed consistently • Are you capturing your visitors data for your regular newsletters • Are you maximising signage for passing traffic • How many potential customers enter your store
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Do you see, there are a lot of ways you can potentially improve your Profits. But once again, most business owners do the same presentation/offer in the same way for years, when with just a few tweaks here and there and they could almost certainly Attract a lot more Profit. At The Fortune Institute, we’ve devised some very quick ways to change what you say to potential customers that ensures a much higher level of success. You’d be amazed at how the tiniest change can make all the difference.
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Area 4: Stay in touch with prospects and customers Okay, so let’s take a look at what we’ve done so far. We’ve worked out what marketing we do works, we’ve added a whole stack of new marketing methods and we’ve refined what we do and say during the sales presentation. Next up is to make sure that all the effort we’ve put into attracting a customer doesn’t go to waste. We need to stay in touch with our prospects and customers. This is something most business owners very rarely do and that’s a huge problem, because often all you have to do to eventually get a customer is stay in touch with them after you’ve met them. Just because they don’t buy from you immediately doesn’t mean they won’t buy from you eventually. If you just keep in touch with them they’ll often end up purchasing something from you. How do you do this? The best way is to get them on your email list. That way you can send them interesting articles, inform them of changes in your company, let them know important news, announce discounts or special offers or just say hello once in a while. How long do you stay in touch with them? Well as marketing whiz Dan Kennedy likes to put it, “Until they buy or die”. So those are the four main areas that create a strong marketing funnel. Get one of them right and you can expect a significant increase in your income. Get all four working congruently and you will revolutionise the profitability of your business. Pick one or more to work on this week and get started on improving them immediately. Creating a powerful systemised marketing funnel to attract and keep customers is one of the smartest things you can work on in your business. It really can bring you extraordinary Profits. If you find this difficult to start or implement, do get some help as not doing it is costing you a fortune.
US N O B Law 10: THE LAW OF KNOW There’s a saying – It’s not what you know, its who you know and many times it’s a cynical throw away line, but it’s one of the best ways of growing your business and attracting profits you might otherwise miss. There are two ways to make it in business. By yourself or with other people’s help. Do it the first way and you’ll find the road slow and tough. Follow the second path and you’ll find it far quicker and easier. Many business owners totally underestimate the value of building up business connections. They spend all their time grinding it out alone when they could be utilising the knowledge and connections of other people along the way. We’ve all been taught that leverage is crucial in business - the leverage of money, the leverage of technology, the leverage of distribution systems, etc. But rarely do we think about the leverage of other people. Let’s look at your past business success. Look back and think of three of your biggest successes to date. Is it not true that other people played a crucial role in making them happen? Perhaps someone told you about a big business opportunity. Or someone asked you to be his or her partner in a company or joint
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venture. Maybe someone encouraged you to choose a particular career or warned you not to travel a particular path. Maybe somebody lent you money. The more you examine the significant success in your life the more you will see that other people always played a crucial role in helping you get where you are today. People matter. Connections matter. Business relationships matter. These can be the difference between slow business growth and rapid ascension. So it’s vital you devote time every week to establishing and nurturing such relationships. The big question is how do you do that? How can you build up and deepen your personal connections without it taking hours each week? Well here are three powerful ways to do exactly that. Practice all three and within 12 weeks you will find your business significantly enhanced. And it will take you less than fifteen minutes a day.
Step 1: Create your two circles of influence Get a piece of paper and draw two large circles on it. Inside the first circle write the names of all the people you know who you think could potentially help you build your business. These could be past or present clients, people of importance in your field, industry association heads, marketing experts, journalists, anyone you think could help you make more money if you developed a strong relationship with them. In the second circle write down the names of some people that you don’t yet know, but feel that if you did you could move your business forward faster. Take a couple of minutes right now to create these two circles. Okay welcome back. These two circles are your two Circles of Influence; your job now is an easy one. Just spend a few minutes every day reaching out to one of those people. You might send them an interesting article. Invite them for a beer. You might send a quick email asking how they’re doing, or give them a quick call with an idea to build their business or to ask for some advice.
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You could ask them to lunch or to come with you to an industry trade show. Or maybe you just ask if they’d like to get your monthly online newsletter or blog. The main thing is to reach out to them in an interesting or useful way, at least every few months or so. When you do this, the relationship will usually develop and deepen naturally. A few people from your two circles will respond enthusiastically and those are the ones you work on more often. But even if people don’t immediately respond to you, keep on connecting with them - but only occasionally. This is such a simple technique, but within 6 months it will greatly increase your network of business connections. The next technique is all about rubbing shoulders with people you’ve never even heard of in your industry.
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Step 2: Connect with industry groups and associations The more people you know in your industry the more you’ll learn about how to make money. Why is this? Simply because other people involved in your sector have knowledge and contacts that you don’t. Gain their trust and you’ll often gain their contacts. That’s why the next step is to join whatever associations your industry has and to make sure you attend as many trade shows and conferences in your industry as you can.
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Your aim is to go to each one of these events and connect with at least three important players in your field. If you follow this strategy you will soon be one of the most well connected people in your industry - and you’ll hear about all manner of interesting secrets, trends and opportunities that can make you money. Even better, if you feel comfortable push to speak at these events, that will position you as a leader in your field and loads of people will reach out to you in the same way you are seeking to reach out to them. This human capital is at its best - you’ll be developing a priceless collection of experts and leaders who you can call upon any time you need them to assist you in building your business.
Step 3: Get good at relating to the people you already know The last piece of the relationship puzzle is to maximise the relationships that you already have. The truth is the people you closely work with (and socialise with) play a huge part in your future work success. If you can learn to relate to them in a way that makes them raving fans, all kinds of benefits will come your way; your staff will stay with your company longer, work harder and commit to you more deeply. Your suppliers will cut you some slack when you need it, offer you more favourable trading terms and refer business opportunities to you. And those already in your social circles are more likely to help you with your business when the opportunity arises. You’ve probably experienced the benefits of having strong relationships with the people immediately around you already. Now it’s time to build these relationships more deliberately and expertly so you can maximise the benefits. As you can imagine, this is a pretty big topic, and in this short book we can only touch upon this area, but at The Fortune Institute we have created amazingly powerful systems for building such relationships. Here are a few excellent strategies you can use immediately to make sure the people around you both like you and want to assist you, throughout your career.
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Make deposits in the emotional bank account It’s useful to see each person you know as having an emotional bank account (EBA). If you’ve made regular deposits into their account (by being nice, helping them, being supportive) then the relationship will be strong and they’ll be there for you when you need them. However if you don’t make regular deposits in their emotional bank account then when you need help or a favour there’s a good chance they’ll be reticent to help you any more than they have to. Here is a great exercise: Have a think about the people you work with. Rank the deposits of your EBA with each of them out of 10. Anyone who scores under 7 out of 10 needs more investment from you. The more people around you that score highly the more productive and successful your business will be.
Sincerely compliment people Sound simple? Try this for a few days and see what occurs! Most people are starved for recognition. Many go months at work without a simple compliment from their bosses about what a good job they’re doing. Yet according to Gallup, the eminent research company, the number one reason people resign from their jobs is not money - it’s lack of appreciation! That’s why we advocate sincerely complimenting all the people you work with - peers, suppliers and clients. A compliment costs nothing and takes less than a minute, yet many people remember them for years. They are an immediate and potent tool for both building work relationships and getting the most out of everyone you work with. Please note that we have emphasized that the compliments must be sincere. It’s pointless to try to praise people in a way that comes across as disingenuous. It’s ineffective at best and then harmful to the relationship. Nobody likes a suck up.
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Seek first to understand, then to be understood This is a classic technique from the great leadership expert Stephen Covey. Many of our relationship problems stem from our desire to get our point across rather than fully appreciating the other person’s point of view. Turn that attitude around and start putting yourself in other people’s shoes. How do they feel? What do they hope for or expect? When you look at social interactions through this lens, the depth of the relationships you have with those around you is immediately enhanced. Smart people can sense when you’re there to solve their issues and not just your own. Interacting with this attitude strengthens the bonds of trust and lays the foundation for sturdy, long-term relationships.
Let’s look at what we’ve explored in this section. By identifying key people of influence and proactively deepening your relationships with them, you will build up an array of people who will open doors and support you. By joining associations and attending industry events you will build your network even further. And by winning over those you already work with, your company’s morale and productivity will skyrocket and so will your Profits.
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Like it or not, success in business is intimately connected with success with people. Use these techniques and you will achieve both.
The Beginning We are coming to the end of this book, but this is just the beginning for you. These 9 Laws of Attracting Profits work, but only if you work and use them. It will come down to how well you understand each Law and the power they have to transform your business Profits forever. Like anything else the more effort you put in the greater you will get out, and by putting these Laws into practice we guarantee you will attract greater profits to your business. How can we make such a bold guarantee? It’s simple. Thousands of business owners have worked with us at The Fortune Institute and this is our laboratory. We see these Laws, ideas and techniques at work every day, week and month of the year. When business is not working or attracting profit you can be sure to go back to these Laws and question what you are doing and ask yourself are you working with the flow or against it, with the natural Laws or against them? It’s not hard to find this out - just look at your bottom line profit. If your bottom line is strong and healthy there is a very good chance you have truly implemented The 9 Laws of Attracting Profit. If not it might be time to turn to page one and start reviewing and implementing each one methodically. There is no short cut to growing your business exponentially but following and modeling these 9 Laws will ensure that you are consistently moving in a positive direction. Remember it’s all about the flow and its up to you to go with it or not.
