| The Secret that Makes Millionaires Pardon me for being blunt, but do you have or have you made a million dollars yet? According to the World Wealth Report, it's not that difficult a goal: there are 8.7 million households world wide who have financial assets of more than $1,000,000 and that's not including the value of their primary residences. Can you guess the key to acquiring all that money? Consider this: 37 percent of these millionaire households, own part or all of a privately held business, 33 percent have inherited their money. What this says to me is that if you weren't born into money, then running a business gives you a pretty good shot at becoming a millionaire. The problem is that I see far too many entrepreneurs struggling to make ends meet. They feel overworked and underpaid. If you feel you aren't making what you would like, ask yourself how many other businesses are there similar to yours? I'll bet it's probably more likely to be thousands rather than hundreds. Now ask yourself, how many of these are getting better sales and profits than you are. Again, the answer is likely to be hundreds or even thousands. Fortunately, this is actually great news. If you look at most of these businesses they probably aren't doing anything revolutionary to make their sales and profits better. There's usually no silver bullet that they have found. They are probably just doing one or two things better than you.
This means that all you have to do is look for one or two things that can make you better in your business and then apply them. If you do, your sales and profits will improve just like theirs. This simple secret is the key to growing an ever improving sales and profit picture. If it's that simple, why is it that most people don't do these simple things? I believe there are three reasons:
If you are stuck in a certain way of thinking, one of the best ways to get out is to begin to learn how other successful people do things. There are several easy ways of doing this:
The problem is most people don't know or won't admit that they are stuck in a certain way of thinking. If you don't know how to do things differently, the solutions are pretty much the same as outlined here. The danger is that many people who don't know how to do things, think they do know because many things look decidedly easy to the casual observer. But the challenge for the casual observer is to know what to look for or to understand the underlying principles of what is going on. These things have to be pointed out and explained. Let me give you an example. If you are standing on the beach watching surfers. You may be able to watch every move they make. What you may not see is the wax on the surf board. If you try to copy them without waxing your surf board, you may find it very difficult to produce the same result that the experienced surfers do. It's the same with most of what you do in business. There are many very simple little things that remain hidden to the casual observer. So where are you getting your guidance from? Many of us get it from friends, parents, etc. But unless they have been there and done it, you may not get the best advice. My Dad was a great father, but in retrospect most of the business advice he gave me was not good. I didn't know it at the time and had to find out the hard way. My Dad was a working stiff who never ran a business. How could he have known the things I needed to know, none the less he felt he needed to help. He was a great guide in life, but I needed to learn about business from other people with different experience. If you are not doing as well as some of your competitors, could it be for the reasons I have mentioned? If it is, don't delay, sit down right away and develop a plan of how you are going to get the knowledge you need to succeed. You can have anything you want, if you take the time to learn how to get it! The choice is yours. The only mistake you can make is in doing nothing. | |
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