Surround Yourself With Success Models

            In this post, I'd like to talk to you about the concept of surrounding yourself with success models to increase your sales and customer retention by 20% or more. A figure most people hardly see as a ROI on their stock investments. Addressing this topic is extremely important, especially in the world of business. The majority of us are not conciously aware of how much of we are slowing down the growth of our business because we don't understand this one simple concept. There are alot of places in our life to have success models, but for this post I am going to focus on the area of business. Lets get started. So what is a success model and why should you surround yourself with them. Well I think of a success model as someone who has already achieved the level of success and results you are currently looking for. A mentor so to speak. That way it eliminates all the trail and error of getting a certain result. You can rely on first hand knowledge from that person. You are learning what took that person half their life to learn in a fraction of that time.
             If you do not find success models and surround yourself with them, you are setting yourself up for failure and alot of headaches in this game of business. You will be wasting your most precious asset, your time, on trying to figure it out for yourself while your knowledgable competitors reap the benefits of your lack of knowledge. You will ultimately be the reason for your lack of success in your business.
             In his book "Think and Grow Rich" Napoleon Hill talks about the mastermind principle. This consists of 2 more more people coming together to work on achieving a cetain agreed upon outcome. Information, concepts and even capital are shared among each other for a common purpose. when this group is formed and everyone is working in unison, great things happen in the shortest time possible.
I was fortunate to have some great mentors who guided me on the way to starting my first business. This advice didn't come cheap, but the price I paid was a baragin. My team and myself  were able to avoid most of the headaches that came with owning your own business by simply learning from some of the great thinkers who have gone before us. Heres my story and how I used this concept to my benefit.
              I stumbled onto this concept accidentally. I decided to start an online business a year ago with the focus of teaching others how to be successful in their own startup businesses. I wanted to do everything myself. Create the website, handle the finances, write the marketing adds, create the products and the other thousand things that comes with starting your own business. I wasted the first 6 months of my business career trying to figure out how to do every thing myself. I got fustrated and was ready to quit until a friend recommend a couple of books that I should read. "Think and Grow Rich" was one of them. It was there I was introduced to the Mastermind Principle. Desperate for advice to keep my business afloat, I instantly applied what I learned about the mastermind principle.  I immediately began getting leverage in my business by developing relationships with the people who already had the skills in what i wanted done. Thats when I started putting my team together. Now I have a team that whenever I needed help, they were just an email or phone call away.  I look back now and its amazing how much time and fustration this one technique saved me. I was able to accomplish twice as much in half the the time.
                I want to leave you with a simple exercise that you can apply immediately to drastically improve the results you are getting in your current business. Get out a piece of paper and write down all the people you know who have one skill that you need in your business. Call or email that person immediately and focus on developing a long term win-win relationship with them.  If that person is a public figure like the majority of my sucess models, consider investing in their audio programs, books or DVD's. You'll be amazed at how much you along with your business will benefit from this. Next I want you to consider being a success model for someone who is struggling in an area that you have mastered. There's no better feeling than giving back to others.
                It all started for me when I was introduced to a few books to read by a friend. That one thing had the greatest impact on my life and  my business and it is well worth all the money i made in my business over the past year.

I have been getting alot of questions about what books I read so here. Hope they help you as much as they did for me. These are just a few. For the full list, subscribe to my newsletter.

-Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
-Anthony Robbins, Personal Power, Creating Lasting Change, Time of Your Life
-Eben Pagan, Get Altitude
-Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman In The World
-Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup For The Soul
-Jack Welch, Straight from the Gut
-John C. Maxwell, Developing The Leader Within
-Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad
-Zig Ziglar, How to Be a Winner

Talk to you soon

-Extus

Quick Tip #1

            My goal with today’s blog post is to teach you how picking the most important area of your business and adding constant and never ending improvement to it can increase your profitability by 50-100 %. By learning, immediately applying and mastering this one simple technique, you will be taking the first step in doubling or tripling the income already being generated by your business. However, if you do not put this simple technique to use, your business will fail and you will most likely lose everything that you’ve worked so hard to build. Your friends will see you as a failure, spouse might leave you and you are probably wasting the time that you are putting into you business right now because it will eventually fail.

            One of my first big business successes happened to me about a year ago. Let me tell you the story of how it happened and how you can use one of the secrets that I learned to really increase the profitability of your business. I was working with a client back then that had been in business for about two years. His business was doing ok but got to the point where it felt like Groundhog Day. His business simply wasn’t growing any more and he was quite frankly getting frustrated.  I remembered reading the book “Out Of The Crisis”, by W. Edward Deming a few years before. That was when I was first introduced to the concept of Constant Never Ending Improvement. I had never applied that concept to a business before. After doing some more research into that concept, I called up my client and walked him through some simple exercises. Within 90 days, my client saw Significant increases in sales, customer retention, and productivity in his business. You can get this same result if you apply what I am about to teach you below.

            The concept of Constant Never Ending Improvement has been around for some time it. It was made famous by W. Edward Deming who taught the Japanese how to constantly improve their system of production. During his time In Tokyo, Deming taught this theory to General Managers of different businesses. The Japanese businesses adopted Deming’s teaching and immediately started applying it. Within a short period of time, Japanese products started flooding to America. Customers all were going crazy for the Japanese products because they were cheaper and the quality was way better than the products being produced in America. We all know what happens when customers go crazy for our products. The goal is the get your business to where is it constantly improving in little ways. Never be satisfied with the final product. Get with you team on a daily basis and brainstorm ways of making what you already have better. This is just a brief introduction to Deming’s concept. To find out more I recommend that you get his book “Out of the Crisis”. It’s a must read for all business owners.

            Now I am going to give you the same action steps I gave my friend above. Get out a piece of paper and write down the one most important area of your business. Now sit down and write 5 ways that you could refine that system and make it better in some way. If you work with a team, it would be best to bring them together and brainstorm as a group. Remember quality and enhancement is what we are after. This should take you about 20 minutes. Next commit to incorporating the improvements into your business or products immediately. There is a lot of power in implementing something that you have learned immediately. The last step is to track the difference in your business. A difference can be seen by increase in profits, more loyal customers or more productivity from employees. Hope this tip helps you as much as it did for me and my friends.

-Extus

My Mission

This blog is dedicated to helping small businesses DOUBLE THEIR PROFIT AND PRODUCTIVITY in as little time as possible. My goal with this blog is to help you get through the hurdle's of making your small business a success without all the headaches. The information I am going to share with you  has taken me years to accumulate and alot of trail and error, not to mention the tens of thousands I've spent on seminars and cd/dvd programs. This blog is meant to change the way you think about your small business and double your profit and productivity. As Einstein once said, "Problems cannot be solved at the level of thinking that created them." Best of luck to you and I hope you get ALOT of value out of this blog.

I will be posting ALL of my best material every Wednesday so stay tuned. You don't want to miss out on some of the best FREE TRAINING that is available. Your business deserves it.