The secret is….they have no power unless you give it to them.

Most of the “boogeymen” that bedevil us in our businesses….in our lives….are powerless except for the power we hand them. We agree to be governed by them. We drop to our knees on our own.

Consider the “indispensable” employee holding employer, co-workers, office hostage. Time and time and time again, I hear of the existence of such a mythical, powerful creature from my coaching group members and clients. Time and time again, after extended periods of suffering, when finally emboldened to slay this demon, or the demon abruptly exits on its own, the myth is exposed.

The employee was far from indispensable. In fact, the removal of the creature instantly improved every measurable aspect of the business. It could have been sooner rather than later if only the entrepreneur had seen the creature for what it really was. Consider the troublesome, unreasonable, impossible to satisfy client holding the vendor hostage…..the “rules” of an industry, the way things “must” be done, the prices that “can’t” be raised, the business that is “different”.

Look more courageously at whatever fire-breathing, seemingly all-powerful creature stands between you and the way you want things to be. Its power exists only so long as you acknowledge it as powerful.

One of the objects I have, as a psychological trigger, is a rock with sword in it, symbol from the King Arthur legend, which I got via the Disney book and movie ‘The Sword And The Stone.’ If you are unfamiliar, go to bookstore or amazon, buy the kids’ book or Disney movie and read or watch. It is a lesson in truth about power.

On a more adult, directly instructional level, re-read ‘The New Psycho-Cybernetics’, then in succession, ‘Thick Face, Black Heart’ and ‘Power’ (the old book by Michael Korda).

In the interim, think about what creatures are bedeviling you, that you are infusing with power. . Spit in the eye of the thing bullying you. It’ll shrink instantly. Cower and slink away.

If we were serious about independence from foreign oil, we would immediately shut down NASA entirely – we have no need to go to Mars – and divert some of that talent and all that money into accelerated research and production of alternative fuels. (Brazil is fueling cars right now with homemade ethanol from sugar cane. A lot of their gas stations have ethanol pumps.)

If we were serious about solving illegal immigration, we’d immediately bring all the troops home from Germany and station them along the Mexican border, bring in the Army Corps of Engineers and build the wall. (Then, and only then, we’d set up a system for earned amnesty for the illegals already here.)

If we were serious about tax reform, we’d already have junked the income tax and switched to a national sales tax. Nothing else makes any sense. Only the income tax protects all criminals and the underground economy from taxation, facilitates lobbyists’ shenanigans and politicians’ theft.

If we were serious about health care reform, we’d get the employer out of the equation, and we would require individuals to buy it and prove they have it, just like we do with automobile insurance and mortgage loan insurance.

We are not serious about any of these things. The politicians merely give them lip service.

The public merely foams at the mouth. But the public re-elects more than 70% of all incumbents instead of throwing them all out until somebody does treat these things seriously. By this simple act, the public reveals itself.

Well, political rant aside, here are provocative questions: what are you just foaming at the mouth about, in your business or your life, but really not doing anything about?

And, what are your employees or others around you only giving lip service to, believing (correctly) that you are only foaming at the mouth?

I often wind up with things creeping into my life that I realize I’m not happy about. As soon as I realize this, I go to work doing something about them.

I often get myself into situations in my business that seemed like good ideas at the time but prove otherwise. As soon as I recognize their truth, I go to work extricating myself.

In short, I step square into shit a lot. But I never just sit there smelling it and howling at the moon.

The insane pleasures…

Of being profoundly superior to all the morons and mere mortals surrounding you. Yes, it is immensely satisfying to know so much that they do not know. To watch the highly educated MBA’s and lawyers on ‘The Apprentice’ who couldn’t run a lemonade stand in the real world. To look at big, dumb corporations and revel in their self-destruction.

Of firing a client or customer. As hard as they are to get, you might think there’d be no pleasure in this. And usually, there isn’t. But being able to, there’s enormous pleasure in that.

Of taking a Wednesday or a week off. Or enjoying coffee on your backyard deck while all your neighbors are climbing into cars and crawling into a bumper to bumper commute. Or having neighbors wonder about you – what is he anyway?

Of alchemy. Making money materialize out of thin air. Conceiving some offer or promotion or ad or mailing from scratch, bringing it to life, and watching money pour in. I wonder, what is more satisfying than that? I know for fact that Gene Simmons gets more satisfaction from filling the arena, the ticket sales, the merchandise sales than he does from performing, just as I did from speaking. Hell, anybody can play rock music. Few can make millions. The making of anything from scratch is uniquely satisfying.

I used to try and imagine what Rich DeVos thought as he drove over to the giant, sprawling, multi-million dollar Amway complex linked to millions of distributors, just down the road from the abandoned, leased gas station he’d started bottling soap in. When I see 500, 600, 700 people at a SuperConference, when you see customers streaming into your store’s event, or your book or gadget or bottle of goop on a store shelf, your commercial on TV, your ad in a magazine – you’ve got to FEEL something special, because you’re doing something comparatively few have the guts to do. Most everybody wants to. Few do. Haven’t got the guts.

Of resiliency. Oddly, successful entrepreneurs relish their war stories of disaster and recovery even more than their outright successes. Maybe not so oddly. Unlike anyone else, the entrepreneur is totally in control of his own redemption. There’s pleasure in that.

Of wealth. Well, of course. To quote, I’ve been poor, I’ve been rich, rich is better. It isn’t perfect. You don’t have $500 problems anymore; you have $50,000 and $500,000 problems. Still. It’s better.

That moment of abject panic. Like looking up at a clock reading 1:20, and suddenly thinking: was that teleseminar at 2:00 or omigod, 1:00? (It was 2)

The hour of crisis. Like having all four of your websites crash, actually moved to somebody else’s sites, all your traffic re-routed – with $50,000.00 of print ads out there. The resolution – it was accident, fixed in under 3 hours.

The disappointment. Like the loss of a client, account, customer for whom you bent over backwards, made huge gobs of money for, have glowing testimonials from. Or the long trusted employee caught sabotaging your sales or outright stealing. Or the ad you labored endlessly over, that you think is brilliant, that tanks.

The loneliness. Of having no one who can understand either your stresses or your successes. Or that very, very difficult decision to which there is only one sane answer albeit one certain to be unpopular and misunderstood. (Nobody really gets what this is all about unless they live it. In an issue of INC., there’s an article by a woman who worked for INC. for years, wrote about entrepreneurs, has a business degree, etc. who admits discovering – when her husband launched a business – that everything she thought she knew was wrong; that the real entrepreneurial experience was completely different from what she’d perceived as an observer and reporter. Yep.)

The hardest task. Managing yourself. The temptation to procrastinate, to goof off, to sleep in, to avoid whatever unpleasant work is staring at you from the corner of the room. The need for self-discipline and self-motivation.

The work. The typical entrepreneur does the work of ten salaried employees. If he doesn’t, he’s going to be in trouble. (It is why you damned well do deserve high pay and wealth and perks and luxuries far greater than those of 9-5 employees.)

The secret no one can ever know – that you’re just guessing.

Most of last week, I covered jealousy, envy, the cures for both and most importantly the quick and easy ways to fame and fortune. But now it is time to back up a minute and discover where you are right now and see if you are even heading in the right direction.

How are you doing? Are you on pace, ahead or behind schedule with your every goal and objective?

Do you know?

A lot of people do NOT know, and that’s too bad. There’s a line in the Kenny Rogers song, advice from a lifelong gambler: “you never count your money when you’re sitting at the table.” The advice came from a guy who died broke in a boxcar, riding the rails.

By all means, count. Every day. Every hour. Every week. In every way that you can.

I am ASTOUNDED at the otherwise smart entrepreneurs I have sat with in consulting days who aren’t counting. I recall one with two men running a company with an in-house sales force. They knew the macro numbers: sales up 40%. All salespeople beating quota. But they knew none of the micro numbers – and when they go home and investigate them, they are going to discover the increase is largely deception; recurring monthly billings being converted to discounted prepays.

The cross-selling of other products isn’t occurring because it’s not being measured. Another past VIP Member in the manufacturing business wasn’t job costing. Immediately after discussing that at a meeting, she uncovered a severe flaw in the way customers were being charged.

Look, frankly, I never found this any fun, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen not to build, own and run a business. But if you are going to do it, it is incumbent to do it right. By knowing what the hell’s going on.

I am also ASTOUNDED at otherwise smart entrepreneurs playing blind archery everyday; not measuring their gains toward targets, on timetables.

This isn’t Amtrak here, subsidized by the government. This is your life. You can’t get somewhere on time unless you know where you’re going and have a timetable for getting there.

I have a client who says he wants to sell his business for 10-million dollars in the next few years . I asked: what does it have to look like – in detail – by then in order to achieve that goal?

He couldn’t tell me. And odds are, he won’t sell that business in that time frame for 10-mill either.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

In my last post, I discussed the Disney Effect and your business culture. Let’s continue on this topic and why it is so important to your success.

Why was this topic so important?

Because ‘customer loyalty’ is long ago dead. As it was known. Brand loyalty for example. If your Dad was a Ford man, by gum, he stayed a Ford man. Local restaurant patronage. I remember going to the same restaurant with my parents every week for years. Missed, they’d call to see if you were ill. Well, those days are gone.

But there are companies who do form a real bond with their customers. Disney is one. One to admire, envy, study.

The strongest bond is behavioral and attitudinal transformation. If your business and your relationship with and influence on your customers leads to them feeling differently (better) about themselves, thinking differently (more optimistically or creatively) about themselves and their world, behaving differently (more successfully), something greater than old-fashioned loyalty or allegiance forms. I don’t know that anybody has defined it well or assigned a useful terminology to it. But it occurs.

Can some ‘ordinary’ business — a clothing store, a dental practice, a bookstore, a home cleaning service – have such an influence? No. An ordinary business cannot.

But, as I discuss in my NO B.S. BUSINESS SUCCESS IN THE NEW ECONOMY book, it is the job of the entrepreneur to turn the ordinary business into the extraordinary business.

The next strongest bond is relationship. Where the customer genuinely feels – power word: feels – a real, non-superficial, personal connection, friendship, relationship. That something more than transactions is involved.

The next strongest bond is common culture. The proprietary language, the secret handshake, the school colors, the shared understanding, agreed upon ideas and philosophy. Being part of something, accepted by a group, being an ‘insider’. Think about how Hefner launched and developed Playboy around a philosophy, a viewpoint.

Maybe ironically, Disney and Playboy have much in common — evidenced by the fact that their customers eagerly wear and display their logos, collect their symbols. I think this may be the toughest marketing strategy or collection of strategies to wrap the mind around, to figure out, to find ways to apply. But what a breakthrough it can provide! What wealth it can create!

Successful people have become, by necessity, great students of money and finance. There used to be a time where you didn’t have to be a great student of money management, unless you were way up there in the income brackets, because there weren’t a lot of money options available to you in the first place.

Pretty much everybody used a savings account if they used anything and that is about it. Well today you walk into your local savings and loan and they’ve got a menu that is more complex than the airline fair schedules to get from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ You got all sorts of options of what to do with your money don’t you? Just in selection of checking accounts you’ve got more options than you can possibly deal with.

Making money is such an important part of our total approach to success we have to become great students of finance. Not only do we have to become great students of money but of money management and investment strategies. And I believe that it’s important to be more advanced as a student of that than you are even prepared to use at this moment.

I think that’s another way to apply the principle of creating a vacuum. I began to study the stock market and penny stocks and mutual funds and all that several years before I was prepared to spend any money on it. I got the knowledge even before I needed it and I think that’s important. I think you need to be creating the ability and the money to use it will follow.

A marvelous book I strongly recommend teaches you the philosophy, the philosophical importance of getting involved in all of this is called, “The Richest Man in Babylon.” If you haven’t read it you certainly should.

There is also a book called, “The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need.” It is a pompous braggadocio title that is not true but it is still an excellent book. It is written by a guy by the name of Andrew Tobias and he is an investment writer has written for Esquire Magazine, for Playboy magazine, and occasionally for Fortune Magazine. He’s a very good investment writer and his book, “The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need,” literally does a good job of simplifying every type of investment alternative that is available to you.

You should also be reading Money Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. That does not necessarily mean you need to read them like someone who is a heavy investor. For example, I’ll tell you how I read the Wall Street Journal. They stack up in my office for as long as three weeks at a time. I don’t look at them everyday because I’m not that active in the type of investments that require daily monitoring. I don’t get it for that purpose.

I read it for exactly what we’re talking about today – the stories and the articles about companies and CEO’s and leaders and new young companies that are on the way up and what are the commonalities behind their success stories. What marketing method is this company using in this industry that we can use over here in our business? And so for that purpose it’s well worth reading.

You’ll also begin to learn a lot about what to do with the millions when you get them. So you don’t have to read it everyday like somebody who’s active in the stock market but you should subscribe to it and you should read it.

The Shortcut to Generating Millions from Your Business

The constant struggle to produce marketing campaigns and run your business makes it difficult to get everything done. Planning is the only true shortcut to running a business which will generate millions of dollars for you.

Once you have completed your planning, you’ll be better able to stay on task, monitor your results, and implement new ideas  during the upcoming year. Without a planning calendar, it’s easy to get distracted by a great new idea and forget about the ideas you had already planned to implement.

Planning does not have to be a long, ugly process. Instead, here is a four-hour planning success template. Use a wall calendar, so it’s easy to see the entire year at a glance. In one afternoon, you can create your operations plan for a year. Set aside just four hours to work through this easy, step-by-step process, and you’ll have the shortcut to success.

1:00 – 1:30 p.m.

A Candid Review of the Year

One of the most important parts of planning for the future is to reflect on the year just passed. Open your calendar and review your activities for the year.

Take a look at each month for two minutes or so. Write down a couple of successful activities from each month  you want to repeat in the next 12 months. Also, consider the activities that generated disappointing results and write those down, so you can remember to avoid them. It’s also good to make a note of the seminars and events which were productive for you, in order to attend them again.

1:30 – 2:00 p.m.

Create Your Business Targets

Before you can plot out your year, you have to give careful consideration to where you want to be when the year ends. Determine your revenue and customer acquisition goals for the year.

Do you have a customer list you communicate with on a regular basis? How many names do you want on your list one year from now to allow you to accomplish your goals? From this number, subtract your current customers less expected drop-outs, and it will tell you how many names you will need to add during the year to meet your goals.

How many customers do you need to have to accomplish your profit goals? If you have more than one product, list them out and write down your goal numbers. Now, deduct the number of existing customers you already have less your expected attrition. This will give you the number of new customers you need to generate during the year to meet your goals.

If you are worried all of these numbers are inaccurate guesses, that’s O.K. You can add a task for the coming year to create a better business statistic tracking system. These are all difficult questions to answer; just do the best you can and feel free to revise the numbers as you go.

You’ve worked for an hour, and your calendar is still blank. Twenty-five percent of your time is up, and you have “nothing” to show for your effort. While it may look as if you haven’t accomplished anything, setting your goals now will make the next 12 months a lot more successful. Although you haven’t yet planned a single event or activity, you’ll be better for the time you have spent reviewing the past year and creating your business targets.

2:00 – 2:30 p.m.

Customer Acquisition

When you get embroiled in running your business on a daily basis, it’s easy to become focused on operational deadlines. Handling customer paperwork, monthly reports, employee meetings, and vendor telephone calls can dominate your time. It’s easier to have success and to generate profits by selling products to your existing customers, and a lot of business owners focus the majority of their marketing efforts there because they enjoy those activities. However, customer acquisition is critical to the long-term success of your business.

No matter how loyal your customers are today, eventually they won’t be your customers. It is critical to add new customers every month, to increase your business and also maintain it.

In the last planning step, you listed your customer acquisition goals for each of your programs. Now, you need to outline the marketing work for the year to generate those customers. For each month, map out customer acquisition offers, events, and marketing campaigns.

Consider if there are new marketing lists you can use for direct mail campaigns, joint venture partners, or new offers to try. The key is to make sure you continue your customer acquisition efforts throughout the entire year.

2:30 – 3:00 p.m.

Sales to Existing Customers

As your business grows, you’ll discover customer acquisition increases in cost. Perhaps this year, if you spent $3,800.00 on a marketing campaign, you could get 42 new customers. In the coming year, you may discover the same $3,800.00 delivers only 33 new customers. These increasing costs require you to focus a lot of attention on selling additional products and services to your existing members.

Plan activities that will generate additional revenue from your existing customers in two ways: 1) maximize the average amount your customers purchase; and 2) increase the frequency with which your customers purchase from you.

How can you increase the amount customers spend with you during each transaction? Are there little items you can add to give customers small options? What “premium” versions of your product and services can you create for those customers who want more expensive options?

What promotions, new product launches, and communications will you do each month to encourage your current customers to purchase more frequently? Is it smart for you to implement a points program that rewards your best customers and encourages all of your customers to buy from you more often?

3:00 – 3:20 p.m.

Fulfillment/Customer Relationships

Once you acquire a customer, the most important thing you can do is to keep your promises. If your marketing told the customer you would deliver a product to solve a particular problem, you better deliver that product. Providing high-quality products helps you retain customers longer, makes them want to buy more, and encourages them to upgrade to higher level coaching programs.

Map out the activities you need to do to prepare your customer fulfillment. What are you going to do to make sure customers receive what they purchase? Also include time for product enhancements. What are you going to do to increase the value of your products to your customers?

3:20 – 3:40 p.m.

Administrative Improvements

Take a few minutes to note any administrative improvements you want to make during the year. It’s easy to leave administrative priorities off of planning calendars and then take care of them as they become important to you. However, planning for them makes it easier to execute your marketing because your momentum isn’t getting interrupted by emergencies that could have been avoided.

Do you need to add people to your team? Are your employment policies up-to-date? Do you need to create some educational materials for your team, so they have a better understanding of your goals and activities to help them do their jobs? Do you have scripts to handle in-bound customer calls? Are there problem vendors that need to be replaced? Do you need to set up an investment program to maximize cash you receive from your business?

These activities need to be planned out for the year to make sure you allocate time to complete them. There is no sense worrying about them or feeling guilty because you don’t get them all done. Plan some time each month during the year to get a few of these items completed. By the end of the year, you’ll be a lot better off than if you had tried to fit them in as you went along.

3:40 – 4:00 p.m.

Add Date Commitments

In the first step, you noted some conferences and programs you would like to attend in the next year. Go ahead and make a note of any of those dates available.

Note any dates for mastermind groups or coaching programs you participate in. Look for conferences within your niche you should attend. Plus, this is a good time to note events you’ve wanted to attend, but haven’t found time for in the past.

4:00 – 4:30 p.m.

Big Picture Planning

Take a quick look at the list of successes and disappointments you created in the first phase of your planning. Are there any successes you need to  include in your calendar for next year? Are there any disappointments from last year on your calendar you need to be remove?

Also, look at the work distribution. Did you load up too much work in any given month? Are travel commitments reasonable to maintain your workload? Are there ways to redistribute activities to make projects easier?

Look at the year. Are there ways to move activities around for efficiencies and to make sure you don’t create impossible deadlines for yourself?

4:30 – 5:00 p.m.

Update Your Personal Calendar

Open your personal calendar and put all of the dates and work you mapped out on the wall into your personal calendar. If you are running your business in addition to a job or another business you operate, plan around the work you have to do for that company.

Go through and set aside appointments with yourself to make sure you have the appropriate time to execute your business needs. Save some time for other activities that may pop up as you go along. Something always comes up unexpectedly, so give yourself several hours of flexibility per week at this stage of your planning.

Shortcut to Success

While it’s good to have your planning calendar up where you can see it, you may not want it on your wall all year long. If not, set aside an hour or two each month to pull out your calendar and see if you are on track with the shortcut you laid out at the beginning of the year.

If you discover you are behind on a couple of activities, it’s a lot easier to get caught up if only a month or two has gone by. If you remember four months later you were supposed to do something to generate an activity or revenue, chances are you’ve lost that opportunity for the year.

Use this planning time as a year-round tool for success.

The one factor which separates millionaire business owners from the rest is their willingness to promote themselves. Too many entrepreneurs hide behind a corporate façade, trying to make it look as if they have big corporations. However, people want to buy from people, and the business owner­­s who put themselves and their personalities into their marketing attract more customers than those who don’t.

Does the idea of self-promotion create a sickening feeling in your stomach? A lot of business owners are shy because they do­­n’t feel worthy of promotion. If you’re starting out in business and you are working out of your garage or at the kitchen table, it’s easy to assume no one wants to do business with you. It’s easy to undervalue your own skills. In response your first impulse is to create a big, fancy corporate name and to put up a website with an eye-catching logo. This is the opposite of what you should do.

Put your personality into your marketing and make your business look small. Customers love doing business with the owner, not some faceless corporation. Many of the most successful (and smart!) companies use a personality, or  individual, as the front person in order to build a relationship with customers.

Take for instance, the Wendy’s restaurant chain. Years ago, Wendy’s had a famous commercial campaign where a woman said, “Where’s the beef?” Funny as those commercials were in the 1980’s, and as well-known as they became, they did not generate sales for Wendy’s restaurants. The campaigns that outperformed those entertaining commercials were those featuring Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s. Each time Wendy’s introduced a special sandwich, Dave would go to the studio and shoot a commercial. Now, this was painful for Dave and everybody else involved. He had never performed in front of a camera. It took him dozens of takes just to say his name right. But Dave stuck with it because these commercials generated more customers than any other advertising approach.

Even for a large business, having an individual become the “face” of the company is better than trying to look like a big, fancy corporation. In fact, one of the huge shortcuts to making your business more popular and generating new customers and trust in the services you offer is to incorporate your personality into the marketing and to make yourself part of what people are buying.

One of the most famous examples of this is Lee Iacocca and the Chrysler Motor Company. Chrysler was in turmoil; it was about to go bankrupt and had to borrow from the federal government to stay in business. The most important thing Iacocca did to revive his ailing company was to appear in the company’s television commercials. Rather than doing a voiceover or using a professional celebrity, Iacocca became the celebrity for the corporation. The commercials featured Lee speaking to the viewer, saying things like “Everything you have heard is true; however, our corporation is battling back, and we are delivering high-quality products at fair prices to our customers. If you trust in me, you will receive a high-quality product.” Well, Americans identify with an underdog. Iacocca’s sincerity and the fact he and his company were battling back endeared him to his potential customers, and Chrysler’s sales soared because of it.

A third example is Donald Trump. A lot of people do not like the Donald and are turned off by the amount of self-promotion he does. Donald is shameless; in every interview, he mentions how the next building is going to be the best building ever created, or a particular golf course is going to be the most popular golf course ever, the most beautiful, the most fun to play. Every building he has is going to sell out, and everybody involved is going to make more money working with him than they could with anyone else. Well, by saying these things over and over, even though he irritates many, he makes all of his boasts come true.

What holds true for Dave Thomas, Lee Iacocca and Donald Trump is also true for you. You may be shy, feel you aren’t worthy, or have been trained to be humble. All of that is fine—but not in business. In business, you will get paid to the extent you are willing to promote yourself.

You earn new customers by telling the world your products and services are the best and doing business with you is the most pleasurable and worthwhile experience the customer can have. You will make a profit to the extent you raise prices and encourage customers to compete with each other in order to have the privilege of doing business with you. All of this will come to you only if you are unabashed, only if you suppress fear and promote yourself. Now, what are some of the ways you can promote yourself within your business?

In the Name of Your Business

In the early 1990’s, Harley Davidson Motor Company encouraged its dealers to name their dealerships based on their locations, for example, Atlanta Harley Davidson or Las Vegas Harley Davidson. What Harley Davidson discovered changed its philosophy. Now the company encourages Harley dealers to incorporate the name of the dealer principle, the owner of the dealership, into the name of the business, and to make the dealer principle into a local celebrity. For instance, Bruce Rossmeyer owns the Harley Davidson dealership in Daytona Beach. It used to be called the Daytona Beach Harley Davidson; now it’s Rossmeyer’s Daytona Beach Harley Davidson. And for years in South Florida and Miami Florida, there was Peterson’s Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson knows how to sell motorcycles; you should borrow a page from its playbook. Use your name within your business to encourage folks to say, “You know, I trust him; I’m going to buy from him.”

In Your Marketing

Rather than include your logo all over your business marketing, it’s more important to include your image. Use your photograph, so people can see you and say, “Oh, yeah, I want to do business with him,” or “I want to call him.” Some business owners are concerned if they use their photos on all of their marketing, they are going to have a terrible time trying to sell their businesses later. Well, the fact is, people want to buy businesses that have lots of revenue, not businesses with pretty logos. If putting your photo in your marketing and characterizing yourself as a celebrity is going to generate more revenue for your business, then that is the fastest ticket to a high sales price for your business. You should do everything you can to include yourself in your marketing. Tell your story about how you got into business in as many of your marketing pieces as you can. This way, when your potential clients are researching which vendor they want to do business with, they can look at your story, consider who you are, and get to know you a little bit.

In a Monthly Printed Newsletter

Marketers who publish a monthly newsletter to keep in contact with their current customers and referral resources generate more revenue, better customer loyalty, a higher average purchase price, and a higher average purchase frequency than businesses that do not. A printed monthly newsletter is one of the most important tools any business owner can use to grow a business. Use this monthly newsletter as a tool to tell customers about yourself. If you have an opinion about something going on in business, in your community, or in your industry, tell customers how it relates to them and share your opinions on the subject. There may be some customers who get frustrated or upset with you, but in greater proportion you will attract ones who agree with you. These customers will be good customers for you and will be more loyal to you because they will feel they know you better. You can promote yourself and build a relationship with dozens or hundreds of customers all at one time through your monthly newsletter.

In Your Email List

In addition to the monthly newsletter, many business owners communicate with their customers through email list. This is a great way to send out bi-weekly, weekly, or daily updates about new products or new information about your products and yourself. It can be as simple as the business owner’s calendar (where are you traveling this month?), the types of customers you are dealing with, or success stories. All of these ideas are great materials to send to an email list.

In Your Blog

Blogging is new in the world of marketing, but it has become very popular for young people. Since more and more young people are making buying decisions, blogging is going to become more important in a company’s marketing mix. Blogs are easy to create. Go to www.Blogger.com and create a one for free. If all you do for now is make a monthly posting on your blog with content from your newsletter, it’s a good start. If you like, you can take your monthly newsletter content, break it up into four pieces, and post it each week. That way, you are able to recycle the same information you are sending to your customers. Post the information on your blog, and put a link to your blog on your website. Customers considering doing business with you or researching your company will be able to get to know who some of your customers are, they’ll see some of the things you are talking about with your customers, and they’ll be able to identify with you and say, “You know, this one’s for me. I can see this person is going to deal with me fairly and is able to do a good job since he has all these other customers.” Providing ongoing communication via a blog can be a great way to promote yourself.

Self-promotion is a great way to keep your marketing up-to-date. We all know how easy it is to create a website and allow the content to grow stale. It takes so much work to get a website set up, that when you put it online, the first inclination is to just leave it alone and go on to other things. However, through blogging and posting newsletters, you will be able to keep your site’s content fresh and changing. This way when somebody comes to your website a year from now, there will be 12 months’ worth of new information, even if it’s just monthly posts on your blog. If you keep your customers informed of what’s going on, of new products, of new things, visitors to your site will see a vibrant, successful business with lots of activity and lots of customers.

As much as I don’t like to do it, self-promotion is one of the most important things I can do as a business owner. And the same goes for you. I understand self-promotion doesn’t feel comfortable. I would rather speak through my actions than through my words. However, no one will know about my actions if I don’t tell them about it.

The extent to which you are willing to promote yourself will determine the number of customers you get and their willingness to pay you premium prices for the products and services you sell. Although you’ve been trained self-promotion is bad, self-promotion is one of the most important skills you can have as a business owner. Self-promotion equals new customers in your business.

Anyone can create a business, but few create businesses which generate millions of dollars. I’m not talking about a business that generates $1 million in annual revenue; I’m talking about creating a business that generates $1 million—cash—to you, each year.

It takes four things to build a business to provide you with $1 million a year in spendable, personal income. It just so happens, it also takes four things to drive a car. It will help me teach you by explaining these four things in the context of driving a car.

THE GAS PEDAL

The speed in your business is determined by the number of new customers you are adding every day, every week, every month, and every year. Your new customer acquisition is the “gas pedal” that determines the speed with which your business accelerates its growth. How adept you are at putting new customers into your business will determine your growth rate. Similar to driving a car: the accelerator pedal determines how fast your car goes. While there are a lot of other factors determining whether or not you get to your destination, the gas pedal provides the speed for getting there. You must have a system for identifying potential clients and converting them into customers. Otherwise, it’s like going down the highway at 10 mph. You’re going to get there, but not very quickly. If you invest in building a customer acquisition system for your business, you will have the opportunity to quickly build a million-dollar business.

THE STEERING WHEEL

The steering wheel is what helps you take your speed and direct it to your destination. The steering wheel in your business is your ability to maximize your customer value by increasing: 1) the average sale you make and 2) the frequency with which your customers come back to your business.

A lot of business owners equate marketing with simply generating new customer traffic into their businesses. Its true that new customer acquisition is your gas pedal, and it determines the speed at which your business propels itself to its destination. However, you can’t safely steer around a corner if you’re flying down the road at 70 or 80 mph, and if you aren’t steering your business, you are not going to arrive to your destination. You must also maximize the value of the customers you have by increasing the average purchase your customers make, and by increasing the frequency with which they buy from you.

McDonald’s is famous for increasing a customers average purchase with its Value Meal. Instead of somebody walking in and just getting a hamburger and a drink, if they order a Value Meal, McDonald’s increases the average purchase by forcing customers to buy fries. Now, people walk in and it doesn’t even occur to them not to buy the fries. After that innovation, McDonald’s introduced Super Sized, adding another $.79 to the purchase price. This may not sound like a lot, but it added a 20-percent increase to each sale. If you can increase the revenue of each sale by 20 percent, you create a significant increase in profit for your business.

How can you sell more to the customers you already have coming in? What other products and services can you offer them? Are there up-sales in your business? Are there impulse items, small items you can easily add to an existing purchase? Are there also big-ticket items some of your customers can buy? A certain percentage of your customers will buy very expensive, high-end products. Are you offering those to your customers as part of your mix of products and services?

Next, is increasing the frequency with which your customers are buying from you. Are you communicating regularly with your customers? Do you have a list of customers whom have bought from you in the past? Are you sending your customers information and following up with them to make sure you stay on their minds?

One of the best tools for communicating with customers is a monthly newsletter. It doesn’t have to be long, it can be four pages—or even fewer. I know some business owners who use one piece of paper, front and back, for their newsletters. These publications include some information from the owner as well as tips, recipes, and other fun items customers like to read. Sending a simple newsletter will keep your business in front of your customers on a monthly basis, so when a customer needs something in your business category, they’ll think of you. Certainly feel free to put in special offers or opportunities available only for newsletter customers. You can call your newsletter recipients a special club and give them new offers and opportunities to buy from you which aren’t available to the general public. If you need to increase your prices to the public in order to give your returning customers a discount, so be it. If you handle your recurring customers correctly, you’ll be able to steer your business in the right direction. Then the new customers you sell will accelerate you to your destination.

THE DASHBOARD

If you’re speeding down the road and don’t know where you are going, how likely is it you’re going to get to your destination? Consider this scary scenario: Nothing looks familiar, you make a turn, you don’t know how fast you’re going, you don’t know how many miles you’ve gone, you don’t know if you’re any closer to your destination, , it’s getting dark, and you don’t have any way of telling where you are. You’re propelling your car down the road, you’re able to steer it well, but you have no idea where you are going or how fast you’re going. Without a dashboard with its different gauges providing you information on miles driven or the amount of gas you have left, there’s little chance you’re going to end up where you want to be.

This is why business statistics are so important. They make up the dashboard of your business. You have to capture information about your business, so you are able to track how well you are getting to your destination.

I am a CPA, and I was trained in college how to create an income statement and a balance sheet to tell us how much cash is in the bank and whether or not we made a profit last month. At best, those financial statements are looking at the past, by several weeks or even months. This is like driving your car and only looking in the rearview mirror. You can’t get to your destination if all you are doing is looking behind you. You need forward statistics telling you in real time how your business is doing. Here are some statistics business owners building businesses generating $1 million in profit use to track their progress:

New Customers Acquired: This is your speedometer. Business owners need to track their new customer acquisition all the time. How many customers did you get today, this week, and this month? Compare this to your new customer acquisition goals, so you will know how fast you are traveling down the road. This tells you exactly how quickly you’re reaching your goals.

Average Purchase Size: This gives you information about one of your important steering mechanisms. Tracking average customer size for today, for this week, for this month helps you know whether or not your team is doing the up-sales they are supposed to be doing, and whether customers are buying the more expensive products.

Customer Purchase Frequency: This is another important gauge of how well you are steering your business. How often are your customers coming in and buying from you? Tracking this information is like having a “service engine” light on your dashboard. It gives you a warning if a customer hasn’t come back to you in a while, so you can follow up with your customer and find out why. It is important to your business to know if a customer has found a new company to buy from, if he has had a bad experience, or if he has simply lost track of you. If you have a significant number of customers who haven’t purchased in a while, that’s an important warning sign you are steering off the road. If you heed this warning, you can steer around service issues you need to fix within your business.

CREATURE COMFORTS

All of us have driven in a car with no air conditioning, not because we wanted to, but because we had to. Wasn’t it miserable, with the back of your legs sticking to the seat, your back all sweaty?

Driving a car in the heat of summer with no air conditioning is one of the most miserable experiences you can have. Sure, you can open up the windows and create a hot air breeze, but it doesn’t make it any more pleasant.

The thing which makes running a business pleasant, similar to airconditioning in your car, is a set of business systems to operate your business without your daily and direct supervision. Business systems which empower employees to run the business without direct and immediate daily supervision allow business owners to enjoy a pleasant lifestyle, without being tethered to their business.

Running a business without systems is stressful. Customers keep calling , you are dealing with vendor problems, and employees are frustrated all while you are trying to run a productive business. This is the same as driving a car without air conditioning, hot and miserable.

Running a business is much like driving a car. Once you learn how to do it, it’s a skill you will have forever. It’s something you can do without thinking about it. Experienced drivers can be driving for 30 minutes and then all of a sudden realize they haven’t been thinking anything about driving. They’ve been stopping at lights, they’ve been changing lanes, and at no time have they been thinking about what they’ve been doing. They are experienced at regulating the speed of the car, they know how to safely steer around other cars on the road, they are watching the gauges and monitoring their speed, and they’ve got the AC on to make sure they are comfortable. They can adjust all of those things at any time without giving it a second thought, all the while their minds can be on other things.

Experienced business owners who know how to create million-dollar businesses are the same as experienced drivers. They understand how to use the gas pedal of their businesses: the marketing is necessary to generate new customers. They can increase the new customer flow if they need to accelerate a little bit; they can back off when they are going too fast.Tthey keep the flow going because they understand how it works, and they understand what is necessary to achieve their goals.

Next, experienced business owners deftly handle the steering wheels of their businesses. They know watching the average sale and the frequency of sales are critical factors of running a business. When the average customer sale gets off track, they know they need to make some changes. If customers aren’t coming back frequently enough, they know they need to correct their steering.

These business owners keep an eye on their dashboards. They have the statistics they need, and they’re managing those numbers.

Finally, business owners have systems in place so they can run their businesses comfortably. They don’t have to be in the middle of daily operations. Instead, they can be somewhere else, a thousand miles away, and having their businesses run themselves. Because they know how to put new customers in, maximize customer value, and have the statistics they need and the business systems in place to operate their businesses from anywhere. You might say they’re on the trip of their lives, enjoying the scenery (and the AC)!