You the Entrepreneur

The life of an entrepreneur, is the tale of many triumphs and long hard work. Knowing how to push past the negativity and find your hidden reserve of strength is a valuable tool in your struggles for success.

We as entrepreneurs are a unique breed. We thrive in challenging situations and we seek out the difficult. This can often put us in a place seemingly impossible to succeed. Pushing past your own limits to find greater heights is often the only way out, well that or giving up, but you wouldn’t be a true entrepreneur if you seriously considered that.

In this podcast I talk with serial entrepreneur Murray Smith. This is Part 2 of the Podcasts series with Murray Smith co-author of “the Answer”. Which you can win a copy of my joining Success U for free:

The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life

Here are some of the direct links that Murray had referenced during the many podcasts we recorded with him;  The free PDF’s downloads (see below), links to the business growth makeover contest with millions in prizes, and Get the Answer site that references more about Murray and the business growth system he built called Attract more Clients. This system is the summation of 30 years of his life’s work and everything he learned about growing business put together in a simple, user friendly format.

-       http://gettheanswer.com

-       http://www.businessgrowthmakeover.com

-       http://accessmainstreet.com

-       The Test your EQ button on the Mainstreet website will have the following Free PDF Downloads for your listeners:

• Unique Selling Proposition Examples from many industries
• Client Profile – Match what you want with what your clients want
• 3 Ways to make money in business
• Map the Gap – Helping business owners map the distance from where they are to where they want to be
• How to think like a Business Millionaire – Vision, Focus and Action

More Resources for you the entrepreneur

Small Business For Dummies

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

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Entrepreneur.com Podcast Directory

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• How to Relocate your Wordpress Blog to a New Domain Name Making the decision to move my blog from http://www.courseladder.com to http://www.golfballdriver.com was a big one, and a good one, and it taught me a lot about learning how to relocate your Wordpress blog to a new domain name under the same hosting provider. Course Ladder suited me for a while,......
• 10 Best Motivational Podcasts for Entrepreneurs Both seasoned and aspiring entrepreneurs have a wealth of online motivational material available to them. Podcasts are quickly becoming a popular medium with which to get inspired when it comes to running one's own business. Leaving the traditional world of employment in order to start a business can seem overwhelming......
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• Free Success Ebook: “Creative Mind and Success” by Ernest S. Holmes – Free Download! The Law of Activity must be complied with; we must be willing to take the way of outer activity. Now to create this activity something more than thought is essential.  Not that it does not come first, but the one who has this thought of activity will naturally manifest......

How to Build Trust as an Entrepreneur

As an Entrepreneur it is imperative that we build trust. We need team members, clients, investors and colleagues to believe in us. Trust is more than a soft, unknown, feel good, fuzzy thing. It is a measurable and quantifiable asset that is one of the most important to you the Entrepreneur regarding the speed of your business and the overall success of your enterprise. In this Success U Podcast we discuss how taking the time to build trust actually saves time and in the end increases profit.

We started discussing this topic thanks to Steven Covey’s Book “The Speed of Trust”. This is a must read book for an Entrepreneur. It is not a topic I would normally have sought out, but it came recommended highly from those I trust… So I read it, and now I think every entrepreneur, manager, marketer or sales professional should also read it.

If You are an Entrepreneur You Should Read These Books:

The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything

Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

Related Entrepreneur articles you should read:

• Building Trust in Today’s Online World (socialmediatoday.com)
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• FranklinCovey’s New, Online Learning Suite Launches at Training 2010: World Renowned Content Now Available in a Unique, Online Format (eon.businesswire.com)
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Tell us your story as an Entrepreneur in the comments and maybe we will have you on a future podcast!

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The most difficult aspect of running a blog or podcast is generating great, unique content on a regular basis. This issue is the primary reason most bloggers eventually fail. In this podcast I give you several ways to create more ideas than you can handle.

You’d be surprised by the sheer amount of great concepts you have during the day if you just keep tabs on them, and the simplest way to do that is to keep a notebook. In mine I jot down any random thought that seems interesting at the time. I write down magazine articles that I came across, or radio interviews or conversations I have. Just quick notes that remind me later.No need to keep a detailed account of every moment in your life.

Interviews and questions from your audience are also very helpful. In fact this topic is a direct result of a question from one of our listeners. Of course you have to have an audience, already, to get questions from them, but interviews on the other hand, are simply a matter of asking questions of others. It helps to have an existing relationship, but you’d be amazed at how open most people are to being interviewed. Especially when it is on a topic they are selling themselves as an expert on.

Freemind – This is the open source software I mention, that will help you generating and organizing your great content ideas.

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We started the conversation discussing how to determine the best price point for your product and then went into a wide variety of tools you can use to drive sales online in the first part of this podcast. In this podcast we continue the conversation by looking at one particular company that has done it right… Apple.

There are many ways to look at driving your sales and a plethora of tools to use in doing so. Apple is the prime example of a company who has used many of these tools to develop a unique and profitable brand identity with an almost cult like following. How have they done this? We talk about some of the techniques they use, and we found this great post “What Would Apple Do?”.

Here are several more resources for developing your brand:

First Steps to Developing a Brand Identity

Personal Branding 101

Creating a Brand

Creating the Brand: Halo Effect

Creating a Brand on a Budget

In our next podcast we will put the pieces together for you and walk through the process of developing a unique Brand ID and how to drive sales using this new brand.

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Part one in a two part series on generating sales by using several simple and effective tactics. In this podcast Ben and Christian debate how pricing will effect your online sales and how several other factors such as affiliate marketers can radically increase your sales.

Creating exclusivity for your product is a major driver for sales. By creating the sense of urgency you help a prospect come to a decision rather than delaying. Your goal is not to force them into action but to give them an incentive to do so. Exclusivity can be created in several ways, higher price point, limited availability, limited duration, limited quantity.

Here are a few other resources:

Tips for Maximizing Sales

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When starting a new business keeping the costs down is the key to your survival. To help with your quest for success we have compiled a short list of software and services that, even though not all are free, they all will help you save money.

Zoho has a huge list of software and services available, including reporting, a CRM and Invoicing.

Dropbox is a virtual hard drive service.

Mozy we use to save important documents. It is a safe secure online backup service.

Google Docs is another great resource, as are all of the google tools.

Portable Apps allows you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.

Mail Chimp makes it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. It is a free online email marketing solution.

Fulfillment by Amazon is an innovative service, you send inventory directly to Amazon where it is stored and managed in a secure, climate-controlled facility. When orders are received, Amazon will professionally pick, pack and ship the product directly to your customer.

Skype you should already know about, but if you don’t it a free online phone service and chat application. There is a pay service as well. But primarily we use it to track and record conversations for free.

Business Nation has a library of free and fee based legal forms such as lease and sales agreements. It also has directories of services, opportinities and a business library.

Open Office is the Free and open productivity suite. It has software that mimics all of the Microsoft Office applications.

GIMP according to their website

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, if you know of a valuable free tool for business users please share it by leaving a comment

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Take the time to create value with your content. Optimizing your content to provide the maximum value will have many positive long term effects, and is well worth the effort put forth. Keep readers coming back by giving them a reason to. Post quality over quantity.

It still amazes me how often I find a site, that obviously had some money and time spent on the design. They also took the time to SEO the site and chose relevant keywords. And then they did nothing with it… They wasted all the effort by providing no value in the actual content.

A major mistake many bloggers make is thinking that quality is less important than quantity. It gets compounded by the fact that the search engines see quantity as valuable. it might even increase your traffic to post constantly. However it dos you no good if the traffic you gain simply comes once, never to return. Instead make your site important to the viewer by adding real value.

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• Most Important Seo Tips web optimization or seo is probably an important facet of any on-line business. Without search engine optimisation you will not obtain natural search engine traffic. On-web page website positioning could be very important. If you'd like your web site to rank for a keyword you have to first optimize your......
• Top Five Reasons Corporate Blogs Are Vital As more companies get into the world of corporate blogging, the word is spreading that this is a great way to reach out to the public. There are five specific benefits that any company can reap as a result of setting up a corporate blog. 1. Cheap means of marketing.......

Letting the negative things in your life interfere with your potential will stop you from reaching your potential. In other words, stay positive. Let nothing bring you down. It is imperative that you look for the good in all situations.

Easier said than done, right? Well in truth whatever you think is true. If you believe you can accomplish something, then you can, if you believe you will fail then you will. Saying “I can’t” and believing “I will fail” makes it a certainty.

No one who ever achieved success, believed they would fail. In fact, often the team or individual is the only one that has faith in their future success. How many times have you read the story of someone who has overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve greatness? All their family and friends said they could not do it. But they pressed on regardless to all of the negativity from their associates.

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Every great invention or idea has run up against the same first roadblock… fear. The would be entrepreneur fears the unknown, fears to possibility of failure and fears the innate risks involved with a new venture.

So, what separates the entrepreneur from just some person with a good idea? The successful professional knows the steps to define the unknown and by doing so they eliminate fear.

Fear is the Mind Killer

It is the fear of the unknown that stops most people from attaining their dreams. The fear keeps them in their comfortable job. The fear stops them from taking the risks necessary to succeed.

Here are the 5 steps to help you get over your fears, and get the ball rolling on your new venture.

1) Do Your Research

Find out everything there is to know about your idea.  Who will be your competitors? Even if no one has the exact same product or service, there will always be competition, so get to know them. Google is your best friend. Use it to your advantage. Find the keywords your would be competition uses, search blogs, directories and every resource and media outlet.

This is a great time to define what or how you will be better than the competition. Find the answers to these questions: How will you take market share? Who is your target customer? Where are they? How do you get them? What is the MVP (Minimum Viable Product)?

2) Define the Opportunity

Now that you know everything there is to know about the market and competition it is time to define your opportunity. There are a series of questions that are vital to answer: What are acceptable price points? How many customers are there? Is the market local, regional, national or international? What is the exact niche? You will want to know who you are targeting, why you are going after them, where they are at, when you will launch and how you will reach them (Who, What, When, Where, Why and How).

3) Entrepreneur Know thy-self

If you have done the first two steps, it is time to decide if you are the right person for this opportunity. What relationships do you have that could open doors in this market? Do you have the skill set to  fit the concept?  Do you have the tools, software and money to go full out? What essential skills, experience, knowledge or money are you missing?

By understanding how you fit the opportunity you can define the gaps in your own abilities, knowledge and finances. These gaps help you Define a team.

4) Build Your Team

So you have determined the skills, experience, knowledge or money you are missing to make your idea a success. Look around you at your friends, family and colleagues. Do you know people who can fill your gaps? Are they willing to work with you, especially  on speculative work. What are your financing options, do you have the money or do you know potential investors (Friends and family) that might be interested? You will need to be able to sell them on this idea. Often the first person I look for is a great salesperson, because they can help me sell the next person in the idea. The people involved can be contractors or freelance, you don’t have to look for the long term team at this time, in fact it is often best to keep the final team small early on. Find the people and fill the gaps.

5) Build the Prototype

There are a great many cliches to remember at this time, and all are valid. Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t get overly complex, just make it work. If it is a service this is a great time to do the work cheap or free. What you want is to get a couple of clients that will give you an endorsement and that you can use as a reference. If you properly defined the opportunity then you know what the M.V.P. for your prototype should be, build that.

Always remember that perfection is the enemy of profit. Build the MVP, get it into the hands of a few customers, let them define what more is needed, or how it should change. Your customer will know better than you what they really want, so let them tell you.

Incremental Perfection

Now that the customer has the product in hand and has told you what they really want. Now is the time to incorporate some of these changes. Add a feature, test again. The steps we have outlined here are actually a cycle that you should re-iterate through over and over until you have the final product. Often what you will find is that the initial idea and the final one are radically different.

Don’t be afraid to change direction .

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Staying physically fit has more benefits than just helping you look better. By exercising at-least half an hour a day you will dramatically increase your mental acuity, lower stress and increase your productivity. Companies that provide a gym and allow time for work outs see a significant rise in employee satisfaction and productivity.

It is obvious then that to keep your business fit you need to exercise your body and encourage your employees to do the same.

It might seem that you are too busy to take a half hour for yourself. You are running from meeting to appointment and just barely keeping your head above water. In fat the best thing you can do, to thrive in a high demand high stress environment is take the half hour to get the blood pumping.

It is common to find that by taking the time to work out a person gets far more done during the day. The time allows

them to clear their mind, an often lets them solve a problem that seemed insurmountable. It lowers their stress level and increases focus. Human beings were not made to sit behind a desk, and as a consequence of that we are at our best and brightest after we’ve had the heart do a little pumping and the muscles do a little straining.

So to keep your business fit it is imperative that you do the same for your mind and body.

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