Seven Simple Steps to Small Business Success

Many businesspeople achieve their greatest successes in unexpected areas. They begin a business and then they find that it isn't as profitable as they had anticipated, so they change direction, using their experience and their momentum, and strike paydirt in something else. The most important thing is to begin. To take action. To move forward one step at a time, learning and growing as you go. There is enough information available in virtually every field for you to become knowledgeable enough to achieve success. But action is necessary.

The Two Parts of Success

Success author Orison Swett Marden once wrote, the first part of success is get-to-it-ivness. The second part is stick-to-it-iveness. Every business beginning requires an act of faith and courage, a bold leap into the unknown. Only one in ten people who want to start their own businesses ever develop enough courage to begin and enough persistence to continue. Get-to-it-iveness. And stick-to-it-iveness. The fear of failure, more than anything else, holds people back. It paralyzes action. And it makes failure inevitable.

Begin With a Dream

Fortunately, even if you know nothing about business, you can begin with a dream, a castle in the air, and then build a foundation under it.

Seven Simple Steps

The starting point of many great fortunes has been these seven simple steps. Number one, set a goal and back it with a burning desire. Number two, begin accumulating capital with a regular savings program. Nothing else is possible without this. You cannot move forward until you start a savings program.

Use Your Current Job As A Springboard

Number three, use your current job as a springboard to later success. Learn while you earn. Take the long view. Number four, experiment in business on a limited scale so you can learn the key abilities necessary for success. Number five, search for problems, needs unmet, products or services you can supply of good quality at reasonable prices.

Read Everything You Can Find

Number six, read everything you can find on your chosen field. Remain flexible. Be willing to change your mind if you get different information. And number seven, implement your plans with courage and persistence. Have complete faith in your ability to succeed and never, never give up.

Action Exercises

Now, here are two actions you can take immediately to start moving toward entrepreneurial success:

First, set a goal, make a plan and then launch your plan. Get started. Do something. Begin on a small scale with limited risk and investment but get going!

Second, resolve that, no matter what happens, you will never, never give up until you are successful. Before you accomplish anything worthwhile, you will have to pass the persistence test. And the test will come far sooner than you imagine.

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Four Ways to Test Your Idea

How to be sure that you have a great business idea before you put time and money into it.

There are four great ways for you to test any product or service idea before you start a business built upon it.

The Best Source of Advice

Number one, seek out people who are already in the same business and ask their opinions of the product or service. Many people have saved themselves an enormous amount of time and money by finding that people who are already in the business wish they weren't in the business and who wish they hadn't invested the time or money to get in the business in the first place. So go and talk to them. Ask them what they think about the business. Ask them if they would recommend that someone else get into the business. Don't be shy or secretive.

Ask for Feedback On Your Idea

Every so often I have people come up to me and ask me if I would give them some advice on their business, and I say, "Well, what is your idea?" And they won't tell me what their idea is because they're afraid somebody will steal their idea. The fact is that ideas are a dime a dozen. So be perfectly open. Tell people what you're thinking of doing. And get feedback from people who are already in the business. That alone has saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars. It may even have saved my financial life on a couple of occasions.

Ask Your Bank Manager for Advice

Number two is to ask your bank manager for his opinion or advice. A bank manager, who deals with commercial accounts, very often has a tremendously accurate sense for what kind of businesses will succeed and what kind won't. One 5-minute interview with my bank manager a few years ago saved me Rs. 200,000 in an investment. He pointed out to me the weaknesses in the particular business I was looking at getting into, and I had no answer for him. So I didn't go into the business and the people who did lost everything that they put into it. Ask your bank manager. Your bank manager can be one of the very best sources of business advice.

Check With Family and Friends

Number three, ask your friends, ask your family, ask your acquaintances for information. Family members are very good targets for market research. Ask your family and friends if they would buy the product or service that you're thinking of offering. How much would they pay for it? Listen to their questions. Listen to their criticisms. Listen to their concerns. Because if you can't answer their questions and concerns in a logical and believable way, it could be that there's something wrong with your idea.

Talk to a Potential Customer

The fourth way to do market research is to visit prospective customers for the product or service and ask if they would buy it. If you're thinking of selling something to a company, go to the type of company that you would sell it to and ask if they would buy it if you produced it. If you're thinking of selling something through retail, go to the retailer and ask them if they would buy it or sell it. Ask the customer. Customers are very open and very candid and sometimes they'll give you insights that will be worth their weight in gold. If you're going to sell through a retailer, ask the retailer if he or she could sell the product if they were carrying it. Why or why not?

Action Exercises

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to test your ideas more thoroughly before you invest in them:

First, visit people who are in the same business and ask for their opinions. Call them on the telephone. A person already doing the business is the best source of advice in that business.

Second, ask your bank manager for advice. Lay out your business plan or idea to him or her and ask for his or her candid feedback. This could save you an enormous amount of time and money.

Excellence Combined With Integrity

How to set standards for excellence and back them with total integrity.

A Commitment to Excellence

Leaders have specific responsibilities and must fulfill certain requirements. One requirement of leadership is the ability to choose an area of excellence. Just as a good general chooses the terrain on which to do battle, an excellent leader chooses the area in which he and others are going to do an outstanding job. The commitment to excellence is one of the most powerful of all motivators. All leaders who change people and organizations are enthusiastic about achieving excellence in a particular area.

Be the Best!

The most motivational vision you can have for yourself and others is to "Be the best!" Many people don't yet realize that excellent performance in serving other people is an absolute, basic essential for survival in the economy of the future. Many individuals and companies still adhere to the idea that as long as they are no worse than anyone else, they can remain in business. That is just plain silly! It is prehistoric thinking. We are now in the age of excellence. Customers assume that they will get excellent quality, and if they don't, they will go to your competitors so fast, people's heads will spin.

Have A Vision of High Standards

As a leader, your job is to be excellent at what you do, to be the best in your chosen field of endeavor. Your job is to have a vision of high standards in serving people. You not only exemplify excellence in your own behavior, but you also translate it to others so that they, too, become committed to this vision.
This is the key to servant leadership. It is the commitment to doing work of the highest quality in the service of other people, both inside and outside the organization. Leadership today requires an equal focus on the people who must do the job, on the one hand, and the people who are expected to benefit from the job, on the other.

The Most Respected Quality

The second quality, which is perhaps the single most respected quality of leaders, is integrity. Integrity is complete, unflinching honesty with regard to everything that you say and do. Integrity underlies all the other qualities. Your measure of integrity is determined by how honest you are in the critical areas of your life.
Integrity means this: When someone asks you at the end of the day, "Did you do your very best?" you can look him in the eye and say, "Yes!" Integrity means this: When someone asks you if you could have done it better, you can honestly say, "No, I did everything I possibly could."

Integrity means that you, as a leader, admit your shortcomings. It means that you work to develop your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. Integrity means that you tell the truth, and that you live the truth in everything that you do and in all your relationships. Integrity means that you deal straightforwardly with people and situations and that you do not compromise what you believe to be true.

Action Exercises

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, identify the area of your work where excellent performance can contribute the very most to productivity and profits. Focus all your efforts in this area.

Second, do your very best on every task. Imagine that everyone is watching even when no one is watching. Imagine that everyone in your company was going to do their work exactly the way you do yours.

Never compromise your standards!