There has NEVER been a better time to start and build your own enterprise… and never have you been able to get started with so little money.

We’ve helped hundreds of budding business owners  to successfully launch their new business the right way… and we will show you how to do it as well. Do you know what Apple, Amazon, Google, Disney, Virgin Records and Harley Davidson all have in common? They were all started in a garage! You’re about to learn their secrets to success… as well as the mistakes they made… and how they overcame them.

The three biggest mistkes that startups make are :

Mistake #1      they fail to get professional help.

Mistake #2      they don’t know the fundamentals required to successfully market their business and attract as many new clients as their business can handle.

Mistake #3    they have no idea how to use their marketing to generate immediate cash flow

With these mistales it is estimated that as many as 96% of all small business start-ups fail within their first 5 years. The main reason for this tremendously high failure rate has to do with the lack of expertise when it comes to generating leads and making your phone ring. Most small business start-ups do not know anything about these three  critical  things that marketing is supposed to do.

Its purpose is three-fold:

1. Capture the attention of your target market.
2. Give them enough information to make the best decision possible when buying from you.
3. Lower the risk of them taking the next step in your buying process

Marketing that accomplishes these three objectives will result in your prospects and customers coming to one single conclusion… that they would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you, regardless of price.

To find out more about how to avoid critical mistakes in your market and how to adopt the right marketing approach to get the best results and more customers download our free Ebook now you can get your Ebook by clicking the link below.

Hiring the right people is arguably one of the most important things you can do to support the long-term success of your enterprise. And yet so many business owners approach hiring as an afterthought. They put a half-hearted ad in the local newspaper and hope to high heaven they get lucky and don’t invest into management training. 

This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make if you want your business to succeed. 

The solution to this problem is called an Employee Acquisition Plan–and you simply must implement one to your management training if you want to reduce staff-related headaches, shrink, and waste…not to mention find real, high-quality candidates to take over your business once you decide it’s time to move on. I always like to say that hiring is a lot like fishing: the more fish on deck, the choosier you can be! Here are four simple steps to making it happen… 

1.Write a Brilliant Job Description.  

The best way to catch a lot of fish (especially the right kind of fish!) is by using the best bait possible. Most job descriptions are anemic and weak. Make yours stand out! Write your job descriptions in “what’s in it for the applicant” language; be specific about the personality characteristics and qualifications needed; include the hours and earnings potential. Here are a couple of samples I’ve used with great results –feel free to borrow it the next time you have an opening:  

Superstars only! You can earn as much as £60K if you’re a star. Don’t even call unless you’re an overachiever and can prove it. Call between 12:00 and 2:00. NUMBER.  

If you’re the personal assistant we’re looking for, you’ll be…Driven, successful, and great at selling over the phone. Persuasive, independent when needed, sociable, assertive, and convincing. Pushed, asked to achieve great results, taught about business marketing and ultimately trained to manage a team. Responsible for following up leads and selling to business owners over the phone. Answering calls from clients and prospects, getting marketing letters in the mail, keeping communication flowing in the office. Ready to sell to dozens of business owners every week. Someone who only accepts the best performance from self and others, and fired up about taking on a long-term challenge to create success in your life and business. Full-time hours, earnings potential up to £100k per annum. If you believe this is you, be ready to show us why when you call before 5 p.m. this Thursday…..on NUMBER. 

2. Generate Leads.

• When hiring, you’ve got to be proactive, which is the foundation of management training! It’s not JUST about writing a great job description. It’s about getting that description in the hands of the right people. Here are seven great ways to find quality candidates… 
• Look within your ORGANISATION first; who can be promoted? 
• Call past high-quality team members and ask them, “Is there anything I can do to get you back?” 
• Post a sign on your door/window. 
• Post an ad in local newspapers. 
• Advertise in trade magazines and publications –this is a wonderful way to get highly targeted applications. 
• Create a recruiting incentive program and announce it to their team. Give staff members a bonus if they bring in a high-quality candidate. 
• Go to networking events and remember that every conversation is a potential interview.  

The point is to recognise how important hiring is to your ORGANISATION, and to be completely engaged in the process of finding the right fit.  

3. Implement a Pre-Interview Screening Process.

Too many business owners waste unnecessary time interviewing candidates who are not truly qualified. Fortunately, you can eliminate a lot of “dead weight” quickly, just by implementing a simple screening process. There are two strategies I recommend before you get to actual, in-person interviews… 

Voice Mail Screening. 

Set up a special voice mail box for screening purposes. In your job description ad, have candidates call the number and leave a message BEFORE they even submit a CV. Listen to the responses. Ask the applicants whose messages impress you most to send a CV and to complete a psychometric profile.  

Here’s the exact scripting I recommend you use: 

Hi and thanks for calling [your company], located in [your city, town]. My name is [your name] and I’m the founder of the company.[Your company] is…Right now we’re looking for a [name of position]. The responsibilities of this position include [responsibilities]. [Your company] will provide [training, development]…The compensation package includes health insurance, life insurance, and a retirement plan.[your company] is [describe the company and what a wonderful opportunity it will be to work for you and why]. [Your name] is a highly talented, proven winner in the field of [your field]. He/she has [name some of your accomplishments] and will personally mentor the person chosen for this position.Now, please take just a couple minutes to answer the following three questions. If you want to write these questions down and call back with your answer, you can feel free to do that. What actual experience have you had…?What actual experience have you had…?What actual experience have you had…? After you’ve answered these questions, please leave your name, phone number, and address. If you fail to answer these questions, your application will not be considered. Thanks for calling [your company]! 

e-Screening.  

Instead of a phone message, in our proposed management training, ask candidates to reply via email and include some specific questions that they should answer, in addition to submitting their CVs. You’ll find that a surprising percentage of applicants won’t even follow this simple instruction –which is a fast way to weed them out. Make a shortlist of promising applicants and ask them to complete a psychometric profile. Depending on the number of applicants and the nature of the job, you might even add another layer of screening: a live phone interview before you get to the final step, an in-person interview. 

Bring Them in for a Test Drive.  

Now that you’ve narrowed the field of applicants down substantially, you’re ready to invest some quality time in them. Bring them in for a 4-8 hour on-site interview. Get a feel for their personalities. Have them complete an on-the-job task or two. Introduce them to the rest of your staff. Compare their completed psychometric profiles to the characteristics needed for the job. Create a series of interview questions that you use uniformly for all the applicants who reach this stage, and have them focus on actual past experience as opposed to theoretical future possibilities. Then make an offer to the candidate who impressed you most.

Business transformation starts at setting the goals you want to achieve. And you want them to be smart. Whether you are setting goals for your personal life, your business, or with your employees, goals that have been developed with the SMART principle have a higher probability of being achieved.  

The SMART Principle 

1. Specific

Specific goals are clearer and easier to achieve than nonspecific goals. When writing down your goal, ask yourself the five “W” questions to narrow in on what exactly you are aiming for: 

Who? Where? What? When? Why?  

For example, instead of a nonspecific goal like, “get in shape for the summer,” a specific goal would be, “go to the gym three times a week and eat twice as many vegetables.” It will help you build a very precise road map and all the bits you need to take into consideration to carry out a perfect business transformation. 

2. Measurable

If you can’t measure your goal, how will you know when you’ve achieved it? Measurable goals help you clearly see where you are, and where you want to be. You can see change happen as it happens. Measurable goals can also be broken down and managed in smaller pieces. They make it easier to create an action plan or identify the steps required to achieve your goal, and business transformation strongly depends on ticking all the boxes. You can track your progress, revise your plan and celebrate each small achievement. For example, instead of aiming to increase revenue in 2009, you can set out to increase revenue by 30% in the next 12 months, and celebrate each 10% along the way.  

3. Achievable

Goals that are achievable have a higher chance of being realised. While it is important to think big, and dream big, too often people set goals that are simply beyond their capabilities and wind up disappointed. Goals can stretch you, but they should always be feasible to maintain your motivation and commitment. For example, if you want to complete your first triathlon but you’ve never run a mile in your life, you would be setting a goal that was beyond your current capabilities. If you decided instead to train for a five mile race in six months, you would be setting an achievable goal. 8 

4. Relevant

Relevant – or realistic – goals are goals that have a logical place in your life or your overall business strategy. The goal’s action plan can be reasonably integrated into your life, with a realistic amount of effort. For example, if your goal is to train to climb to base camp at Mount Everest within one year and you’re about to launch a start-up business, you may need to question the relevance of your goal in the context of your current commitments.  

5. Timely

It is essential for every goal to be attached to a time-frame –otherwise it is merely a dream. Check in to make sure that your time-frame is realistic – not too short, or too long. This will keep you motivated and committed to your action plan, and allow you to track your progress. 

If you find yourself in a position where your customers always insist on speaking with you directly instead of your employees, then you might want to consider shifting your structure so you can improve the value of your business.

Here’s why: a business that can thrive without the owner at the center of all its operations is more valuable because processes can run smoothly with or without you. If you’re too stuck in the weeds, you’ll have a difficult time improving or evolving – and your employees won’t have the opportunity to grow and become advocates for your brand.

 To maximize the value of your business, you should set a goal to quietly slip into the background and let your staff take center stage. Here are five ways to make customers less inclined to call you:

If you display the bio of key staff members on your website, re-order the list so that it is alphabetical rather than hierarchical.

If your surname is in your company name, consider a re-brand. There’s nothing that makes a customer want to deal with the owner more than having the owner’s surname featured in the company name.

Giving someone the title of president conveys the message that they have real authority to solve customer problems.

Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4 Hour Work Week among other books, made the email auto-responder famous, and it can serve you well. Set up an automatic response to anyone sending you an email explaining that you are travelling or attending to a strategic project and unable to answer their questions immediately. Instead, train customers to direct questions to the person best suited to answer them quickly.

A word of caution using this strategy: if you continue to answer customer emails after setting up an auto-responder, it’s going to become transparent that you’re just trying to hide behind your autoresponder, which could diminish your credibility. If you set one up, you need to be ready to let others step in.

If you have the kind of business that customers visit in person, set up a home office so you can spend more time away from your location.

For a hard-charging A-type entrepreneur, the steps above can be complicated and feel counterintuitive. They may even have a short-term negative impact on your company’s sales, but once you get your customers trained to go to your team, you’ll be able to scale up further and ultimately maximize the value of your business.

Find out how you score on the eight factors that drive your company’s value by completing the Value Builder questionnaire:

Get Your Value Builder Score Now

One of the biggest mistake owners make in selling their company is being lured into a proprietary deal.

Acquirers land a proprietary deal (or “prop deal”) when they convince owners to sell their businesses without creating a competitive marketplace. Acquirers running a proprietary deal know they don’t have any competition and tend to make weaker offers with more punitive terms because they know nobody else is bidding.

Many founders become the target of a proprietary deal without even knowing they have been duped. First, someone senior from the acquiring company approaches the founder, complimenting them on their business. The acquirer suggests lunch, and then high-level financials are exchanged. Soon, the owner starts going down a path that is difficult to come back from.

As the parties in a proprietary deal get to know one another, founders often share information with the acquirer that puts them in a compromised negotiation position. The interactions are set up as friendly exchanges between two industry leaders, but many founders reveal key facts in these discussions that end up being used against them when negotiations turn serious. Business owners also become more emotionally committed to selling the more resources they invest in the process and the more time they spend thinking—perhaps dreaming—of what it would mean to sell their business.

Savvy sellers avoid the proprietary deal by creating a competitive process for their company. Take for example Dan Martell, the founder of Clarity.fm, among other companies. When Martell decided to sell Clarity, he knew the likely buyer was one of five New York-based companies. Instead of negotiating with one, he invited all five to an event he hosted in New York. The five CEOs—all of whom knew one another—saw a room full of their competitors and realized that if Clarity went on the market, they would have to out-bid the other buyers in that room.

Hosting the event was Martell’s way of communicating to all the potential buyers that a proprietary deal was off the table and that if they wanted to buy Clarity, they would have to compete for it.

It’s flattering to receive a call from an executive at a company you respect. Just know that if you accept their invitation of lunch, you run the risk of becoming the latest casualty of the proprietary deal.

Find out how you score on the eight factors that drive your company’s value by completing the Value Builder questionnaire:

If you display the bio of key staff members on your website, re-order the list so that it is alphabetical rather than hierarchical.

If your surname is in your company name, consider a re-brand. There’s nothing that makes a customer want to deal with the owner more than having the owner’s surname featured in the company name.

Giving someone the title of president conveys the message that they have real authority to solve customer problems.

Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4 Hour Work Week among other books, made the email auto-responder famous, and it can serve you well. Set up an automatic response to anyone sending you an email explaining that you are travelling or attending to a strategic project and unable to answer their questions immediately. Instead, train customers to direct questions to the person best suited to answer them quickly.

A word of caution using this strategy: if you continue to answer customer emails after setting up an auto-responder, it’s going to become transparent that you’re just trying to hide behind your autoresponder, which could diminish your credibility. If you set one up, you need to be ready to let others step in.

If you have the kind of business that customers visit in person, set up a home office so you can spend more time away from your location.

For a hard-charging A-type entrepreneur, the steps above can be complicated and feel counterintuitive. They may even have a short-term negative impact on your company’s sales, but once you get your customers trained to go to your team, you’ll be able to scale up further and ultimately maximize the value of your business.

Find out how you score on the eight factors that drive your company’s value by completing the Value Builder questionnaire:

Get Your Value Builder Score Now