Business tips that work (Part II)

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

Let’s pick up from where we left off with Brian Tracy’s talk at genuisnetwork.com on his ideas for a successful business whether you are just starting or have been in business for many years.

Worst Possible Outcome

This is a kind of thinking that not only prepares you for the worst but also releases you from fear of failure.  In every action you are to undertake, ask yourself, “What is the worst possible outcome?”  You then ask a follow up question if you could survive that worst outcome.  If not, then what can you do to weather it or better still what could you do for that outcome not to happen.  If you are ready to accept the worst outcome of a business decision then it removes your fear of failure then you become pro-active.  Remember that fear stifles creativity while courage and calmness bring out the right solution and action.

Principle of Constraints

To double your income or your profitability you need to ask yourself what is that constraint or obstacle that makes our business not achieve it?  Brian Tracy says usually what’s causing you not to double your income is not outside of your business such as your competitor, taxes, or regulations, but it’s still within your business.  It could just be a skill that you lack such as knowing how to cost cut. And all skills in business are learnable whether knowing how to read a financial statement or crafting a marketing plan.

Leadership

Leadership is the ability to get results.  It is backed up by the ability to allocate resources and the ability to make tough decisions.  If decisions in business can be easily done then everybody would be a leader and everybody would be rich.  The first job of a leader according to Peter Drucker is to ask, “What results are expected of me?”  Brian Tracy would add to that by asking yourself, “Among the results expected of me which one should I prioritize?”  In principle, if you are the boss of your business, you should not complain about anything that is a product of your decisions.  You are the one in-charge or has approved a proposal such as hiring a person, running an operation, or approving a marketing plan and it’s a waste of time blaming others for them.

A sign of a good leader is that they are solutions-oriented.  Mediocre leaders would usually go on witch-hunting, asking who is responsible for a problem instead of finding a solution.  If it’s a problem in delivery, product, cash flow, good leaders find a solution instead of complaining and blaming.  Leadership is the ability to solve problems according to Colin Powell.  Focus on the solutions rather than on the problem because it will just frustrate you and follow Helen Keller’s advice, “If you face towards the sunshine, the shadows fall behind you.”  When you think of solutions your mind goes calm, your creativity goes up higher, and puts you back in charge.

Great Product or Service

Ninety percent of your success hinges on how good is your product and service.  Very successful companies are obsessed with the quality of their product and how to make their customers happy.  Their leaders always think like a customer and go out of their way to ask customers about their products and how it can be improved.  The best additional investment you can make in your company is to make the quality of your product or service even better.  Mediocre companies that have mediocre products put more money on advertising hoping that they could fool the customers about their product.  Your product need not be advertised if it’s good because users of it would spread it to others.  The same thing with service.  You have to be obsessed with making your customers happy with your service.  The late Zappos founder Tony Shieh would say, “We are not in a shoe business, we are in a happiness business.  If we were not selling shoes, we would still be in the same (happiness) business.”

What is Your Number?

Brian Tracy would ask this question first and foremost when he becomes a consultant for a certain company.  That number is the indicator that you are doing well in your business.  The common mistake of businesspeople is to focus on their sales as their number but not on how much profit they make for every product which includes the overall cost in making that product.  You can be doing well in sales but not knowing the cost you are incurring can make you get surprised why you are not making any profit.  These companies usually leave out labor, utilities, rent, packaging and even theft in the cost of making the product.