Just have a big old laugh

There was Spiderman sitting on the LittlePeople bus, looking totally like a fish out of water. Completely out of place.

Then it got me thinking, you see for a long time I was Spiderman. I was the odd man on the bus.

Certainly no-one told me I was the odd one out – and I don’t even know if anyone else knew it, but I felt that way. You see I was looking to go somewhere different with my business, I wanted to have an amazing business, and the people around me didn’t seem to want that. And I was desperate to find people who did.

You see I believe you make things easier for yourself by hanging out with people who want the same thing as you. People you can bounce ideas off, people who can inspire you, challenge you, push you. People you can turn to when you’re stuck, and people who support you in going for what you want.

I don’t know if you’ve had the same experience as me, but being a business owner who’s going for it, who wants to go out there and help a lot of people and yes make a lot of money can seem like a very lonely road.

But here’s the funny thing, the more clear I am on what I want, the more it seems to turn up. So the more clarity I gained on the people I wanted around me, the more they started showing up in my life.

And hey if this sounds a little bit weird or woo woo, then I’m going to say whatever. I care about results, I care about what works, and I’ve seen this work time and time again. So today I am blessed to still be Spiderman, but now on my bus I have Professor X, Ms. Marvel & The Silver Surfer.

Who do you have on your bus? Is it who you want or not? If not, define exactly who they are, and keep your eyes peeled – they’ll turn up.

I started the month with the release of the last videos in our Business Profits series and spending three days at a Wealth Mastermind at Couran Cove Island Resort.

This island resort is amazing and I’m looking forward to going back there with the family, it’s located on South Stradbroke Island and the only way in is by boat.  Once you’re on the island you have free bike hire to get around; from the surf beach to just to cruising through the bush.

While there I got to spend time with a ton of business owners working on their businesses to make more while working less, some of these guys have been in the mastermind group for 4 years and have got great results.  From selling their businesses and taking time off to increasing their profits by a factor of 8 times.  Exciting stuff!

I got back to my business fired up with ideas for what we’re going to do next year – and happy with the big things we’ve done this year.  And it got me thinking how I could help you sooner in your business, so if you’re interested in cashing in your business, or increasing your profit next year – then this is the blog post for you.

I’m about to give you a simple 4 step process to Mastermind In Your Business (MIYB) – and I want you to actually walk through this now.  Just quickly jot down two or three ideas for each section, this gets your brain thinking and gets you in action to moving your business to where you want it to be.

A Four Step Process to Mastermind In Your Business

Step 1: What do you Want?

Work out precisely where you want to go in your business, how many hours do you work?  How much money do you make?  Who do you help in your business, who do you want to work with?  What is different from how your business is now?  It’s okay if you don’t know HOW you’re going to do it, first work out WHAT you want.

The more precise you can be here the better – and make sure it’s achievable for you.  You don’t want to set yourself up to fail – but don’t think too small either, you want your outcome to excite you.  Maybe you want to make an additional 50% profit and work 10 hours less a week by July 2011.  Work out what it is YOU want.

Step 2: Create Space for It

In order to get what you want you need two types of Space:

- Strategy

- Action

Strategy Space is where you work out HOW you’re going to achieve what you want.  This is looking at the big picture and the details and working out what needs to change to get there.  Do you sell different products?  Do you have different systems in place?  What is it that you will change to achieve the desired result.

And you need to work out specifics of what Action you will take to make these changes.  Now if this gets you thinking  ”I don’t know how to change it, or even what to change?” then don’t worry we’ll cover that in Step 3.  Write down exactly, step by step, what needs to be done to move your business to where you want it to be.

Action Space is time you set aside to put your strategy into action, to make the changes to shift your business to where you want it to be.  You should have a list prepared from your strategy time of exactly what needs to be done and you simply focus and complete the list.  If you hit any roadblocks in putting the strategy into action you’ll see how we handle those in Step 3 and 4.

The fact that you need space to change your business may seem obvious but it’s easy to get caught up in the busyness of our business so you need to specifically set it aside and schedule it in.  I know it’s one of the things I struggled with in my business, and I can also tell you doing it makes a massive difference to your business.

Step 3: Ask for Help

In the mastermind process you will come up against problems that you’re not sure how to solve, this is where you need to ask for help.  And no this is not a subtly designed sales pitch to get you to call me – I’m simply telling you it’s okay to ask others for help AND you should do this.

In the mastermind that I attended in Couran Cove they get together multiple times during the year, either in person or on the phone to help each other.  To listen to each other’s problems and offer potential solutions, or to critique their sales copy or marketing campaigns.

In my business I have the following people that I ask for help or advice:

- Expert Accountants (I have a number that I use, not just one)

- Accountant

- Mentor

- Business Coach

- Mastermind Group (3 high achievers in business I asked to Mastermind with me)

- My Network

I’m not calling these guys every 5 minutes because I can’t make a decision or I need a crutch to lean on – I call these guys when I’m stuck and I need help.  In Australia/New Zealand we have a great “I can do it” mentality, and this works for and against us.  It’s great that we believe we can do things (it helps us do them ) – but we shouldn’t let it stop us from asking for help.

Step 4: Measure and Refine

At regular points during putting this into practice in your Action Space you’ll need to review what you want, where you are, what has changed and are you on track?  Is it working?

It’s okay if it’s not, taking action (as long as it’s not a fatal action for your business) is better than trying to come up with the perfect plan for your business.  You want some strategy and some action.

There’s a great story in Red Dwarf about one of the characters studying for an exam.  He spends all this time drawing up the perfect study plan, but once he’s finished drawing up the plan, he’s used up a lot of time in the plan (drawing up the plan) so he has to draw a new one.  This continues until he only has a few hours left to study for the exam and he continually fails! The point is – have a balance between strategy and action.

You measure and refine where you’re at, but don’t change directions all the time. Often in business you need time to build mass and momentum – but try and be certain you’re not flogging a dead horse and headed in completely the wrong direction.

If you’ve built a mastermind group around you (as I have) then you could get together with them to discuss how you’re tracking.  Often an external viewpoint will be much clearer than your own – put together the best group you can, and getting advice is not about removing responsibility, it’s about opening your mind to new, different possibilities.  About getting the best action to take – not the best one you know.  About solving problems in the best way possible.

And that’s the four step process.

I hope you’ve made some quick notes on what you’d like to change in your business and some ideas on how you could do it, and people you can ask for help.  If you’ve scheduled time for strategy and action (or you already have this in your business) then congratulations you’re well on your way to shifting what is possible for you and your business.

I really hope you follow through with this process and use it to improve your business – let me know if you do as I love to hear about people winning in business.  Finally keep an eye out on the blog because we’ll have another free training for you in December.  And this is going to be something special, something out of the box – so keep your eyes peeled!

Andrew.

Here’s the thing – I know business coaches work.  I’ve seen it work in my business (yes I have a coach, in fact sometimes I have coaches for different parts of my business) and I’ve seen it work for others.  But why should you care?

Here’s why you should take notice of this – a good business coach will help you make more money while working less.

Sound like a pipe dream?  When I first started working with a coach he helped me take my profits to more than double what they were – without having to work more.  Earlier this year I helped one of my coaching clients create a new income stream (with only a few hours work) that has made her thousands of dollars every month since then.  Sounds pretty exciting doesn’t it!

What do coaches do to make this change?  Well every coach is different, but some of the ways they do this are:

- Improved Marketing & Sales – most money in business comes from sales and marketing so improving this has a big effect

- Show you how you can structure your business so that it is providing massive value to your customers, while increasing your profits and allowing you to work less in your business

- Strategic Business Planning – which sounds really boring but helped me increase my profit by 50% while working less with just one strategy

- Easy Tactics to make more while working less – these are powerful tactics that most business owners don’t know about that help you bring in extra cash easily

How do they do this?  Again the ways differ from coach to coach – and coaches will use different ways for different clients.  Usually however it’s face to face or phone meetings to discuss the clients business and work out “where to from here”.

There will often be other parts that go along with the coaching, there may be monthly tele-conferences, or group mastermind meetings, additional training programs, or exercises or actions to be done by the client.

Can you do this yourself?  Or with mates?

Sometimes you can coach yourself, if you have the right level of business experience and know how then you can be “your own coach”.  Only you can decide if that’s the case for you – and you’ll find out through your results if you are right.

Think about this for a minute though – professional athletes all have coaches, because they know it gives them an edge.  If you want more of an edge for your business to give you an advantage then a coach may be right for you.

Another way that is similar to coaching is to set up a mastermind group, where you get together with other business owners and mastermind together to improve each other’s businesses.  Usually you’ll work on one persons business at a meeting – or take turns to discuss each business.

Just make sure you get a good group together – when I first started in business I knew almost no-one in business and those that I did know didn’t make very much.  And this is important to get right – you want people who know what they are doing, you don’t want to head your business in the wrong direction from poor advice from people who aren’t very successful in business.

What could this mean for you?

Take a minute now to ask yourself these questions and really think about the answers seriously.  What could change for me and my business if I had some coaching?  What would an additional 50% profit in my business look like?  If you are just starting out what would money in the door faster mean for your business?

If you could change one thing in your business right now, what would it be?

I would love to hear your comments below about what you would change and what it would mean for you.

A real quick post today to comment on the beauty that is the one click upsell.

For those of you who haven’t come across it before it’s a great way to make more money when someone is purchasing off you.

Rather than trying to upsell them before the sale goes through – i.e. they add item A into their basket and you go “Would you also like item B?” – which can sometimes cause shopping cart / purchase exit (and a non purchase). You instead wait until after they have placed their order and then offer the additional item for sale.

I’ve created a real quick video of an upsell in action from one of my favorite online retailers who have just added the upsell to their shopping cart. It’s just over a minute long so watch and enjoy,

Andrew.

I’ve just created a new video showing you Easy Hidden Profits in your business. If you’d like to check it out – while it’s still available – go right now to:

Unlock Easy Hidden Profits in Your Business

Enjoy!

They were in a food court – admittedly in an up market area – but you’re still competing with other businesses that can serve food faster and at much lower prices. It was a restaurant experience through and through but in the wrong location.

Make sure you serve the right market – give them what they want and keep your tills ringing!

Now I have never been to that Thai restaurant, I don’t know if it has good food, I don’t know if it has the same owners it had over 10 years ago. But what I do know is that they got one marketing aspect of their business dead right – get people to notice you. Ironically it was exactly the thing that my work colleague disliked about the business that I suspect is one of the keys in that business and the building still being in existence and identical today.

Having features of your business that are Unique, Memorable and Eye-Catching is key in getting your customers to Notice and Remember you. Of course there are other ways of doing this than a pink building – but it’s a great example that just because people don’t like something doesn’t mean it doesn’t work as a promotional tool.

What do you do in your business to make it Unique, Memorable and Eye-Catching?

We spent ours at Oreti which is a blissfully quiet resort beside Lake Taupo.  I had discussed with my Coach what we would do at the end of the year to know that we had made it and achieved so much during the year.   I got a clear mental picture of relaxing on a deck with both the kids asleep and us looking out over Taupo – fortunately Kim was able to find the resort that fitted my mental picture.

We intentionally set it up so that we did relax and renew ourselves – no TV, no games, just books and quality time together as a family.  I read Andre Agassi’s new book “Open: An Autobiography” – which is an amazing read and I know I’ll read it again – plus I’ll probably do a post on what I got out of the book.

We also spent some time working more on the Vision for Amazing Business and this has really helped us hit the ground running this year – and to know what to focus on and what to delete.  I realised last year that Vision was the big thing that was missing and holding us back, and given how inspired I have felt for the start of this year I know it’s building powerfully on the work on Vision we did last year.

So far it has also confirmed for me a theory that one of our clients (who has taken a new business from $0 to worth over a million dollars in less than a year) has – he believes that the way you start your year sets the tone and the energy for the year ahead.  Here’s to more of this energy because I’m loving it – how did you spend your New Years?

Hmmmm, wait on…this doesn’t seem right.

In my hurry to get it back in I had stuck it in the wrong hole – okay no worries I can just grab that out like…

No, it seems I can’t.  It’s stuck.

After drinking the shake I came back and had another go with chopsticks – no dice.  Ahh ha, pocket knife I’m thinking and I get it out and whip out the tweezers.  I’m certain I’m going to get it out now.  Much poking and grabbing and holding the blender over my head and…

Hmmm I seem to have wedged it further in.

At this point I seriously consider giving up, it’s stuck in the narrowing pipe (why would that be on the bottom of the blender anyway???) but I go back to the pocket knife and think “Can I use this some other way?”  Well there’s a toothpick but – wait a minute what about the corkscrew.  Put it in gently and out it pops.

First time, no effort at all – the exact right tool for the job.

And how often is it like this in life and in Business where we try and solve a problem and NOTHING works.  And we start to go – well this problem just can’t be solved, this job just can’t be done – when actually we’re just not approaching it right – we’re not using The Right Tools for The Job.

And this is a critical distinction for us to make – and very important too – I know a lot of times in my business I’ve started down a path and met with failure and it’s very easy to go “well it can’t be done”.  Rather than asking “How can it be done?” and “Did I approach this in the right way?”  Let’s look at a specific example.

One year we did a promotion for an Event using a new website domain and a series of videos to engage an audience and help them understand what to look for in such an event.  Then we went on to recommend the event once they went through the course.  Now the strategy was not flawed and we also ended up with a new website asset at the end of the promotion.

However it was not the Right Tool for The job – and how did we end up in this situation?  Well I jumped in to the first big idea I had with my Entrepreneurial feet – rather than reflecting on the different tools I could use for promoting the Event.  It doesn’t mean that the promotion was a failure – but it was harder than it needed to be (and most likely we didn’t get as big a result as we could have).

Remember that whilst action is incredibly important to grow your business (and as a general rule better than in-action having a plan and consciously reviewing and refining something before putting it into action is also important.  Often we sit on one side of the spectrum or the other – and it’s important to have a balance.  If you love to plan – make sure you put those plans into action AND if you love to take action make sure you have some kind of plan that you are taking action on.

So next time you find yourself struggling to get something to work ask yourself – am I approaching this in the right way and with the right tools?  Let me know if you’ve come across this in your business and how you handled it.

This post is for entrepreneurs who expect success to come packaged exactly as they expect with no need to join the dots.  No need to think outside the box – or work to make things fit.  In my experience this is a big What Not to Do that people often fail to see.

I needed to catch a cab in the city the other day and I didn’t have any cash on me – so I was intending on paying using EFTPOS (a debit card).  Open the first cab door “Do you have EFTPOS?”, “No…”  Shut the first cab door.

Open the second cab door “Do you have EFTPOS?”, “No, but there’s a cash machine just across the road – I’ll drive you there.”  Well sure I’ll jump right in.  Now this is smart on a number of levels – number one he’s thinking on his feet.  When I ask him a question and he gives me a different answer to the one I want he’s ready with a quick solution.

Secondly it’s making him more money – twice!  First he got the sale (versus the first guy who let it walk off) and secondly he’s driving me across the road (like 10 metres away) and turning on his meter earlier and making more money, fantastic!

Now maybe the first guy didn’t know that there was a cash machine across the road – but there were other ways he could have solved the problem.  Fact is he didn’t really want to be making money – the second guy did.  He used his ingenuity to come up with a quick solution to his customers problem to doing business with him.

So now it’s time to ask yourself the question – where is a lack of ingenuity costing you money?  Where are you not solving problems for your customers that allows you to provide them more value and put more money in your wallet.

Andrew.

P.S. If you fall in the same camp as the first guy and you’re going “Ouch – I don’t really want to be making money???”  Don’t beat yourself up about this – learn the lesson and get focused on what you need to do to make the money.  The point of this post is to help you come on over to the money side if that’s where you want to be.