(no holds barred, kick butt, take no prisoners guides to business success)
Business Success
Dan Kennedy
Dan Kennedy has been called the "Professor of Harsh Reality" because he's provocative, irreverent, sarcastic and tells it like it is in a humorous, but chillingly serious fashion that cuts to the core of the issues in a way no other business author does. You want sugar-coated clichés that go down easy? Seek them elsewhere - this book isn't for the faint of heart. Kennedy steers you along the bumpy road to growing a business, showing you potholes all along the way.
Expose yourself to Dan's "25 Eternal Business Truths," and prepare for a lot of chin-rubbing insight. Get his take on your sales, cash flow, payroll, productivity, and on getting out of trouble wherever it arises. It's the kind of street-wise wisdom his readers (and high-paying consulting clients) swear by - all the way to the bank.
Sample Chapter chapter 1
The Decision and Determination to Succeed
Men are anxious to improve their circumstances,
but are unwilling to improve themselves.
They therefore remain bound.
-James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
Contrary to a great many textbook assertions, having the best product, the better mousetrap, a whiz-bang new idea, the top location, the best market, the smartest accountant, the neatest bookkeeping system, a ton of capital-or all of them together-does not ensure success. On the other hand, having the worst product, a mediocre mousetrap, a silly idea, a bad location, a weak market, an accountant who can't count, a shoe box and paper bag bookkeeping system, or no money-or all of these things together-does not ensure failure.
I have seen people succeed under the most improbable conditions. I've also seen people who have everything going for them still manage to screw it up. In all of these cases, it's the person making the difference. That's why there really are no business successes or failures; there are people successes and people failures.
Entrepreneurial Success Is Mostly a Matter of Decision
A partnership, friendship, intimate relationship, or marriage that succeeds or fails, a book that gets written or remains a jumble of notes in a drawer, the garage that gets cleaned out Saturday or put off until next week-these are all the result of decision and determination to make the decision right. Making the right decisions is often a lot less important than determining to make your decisions right. Only by making a decision and acting on it can you get into action and move forward. By waiting to make only the perfect decisions, you remain inert and cannot move forward at all. To quote my friend, legendary ad man Gary Halbert, "Motion beats meditation."
Dan Kennedy's Eternal Truth #1
Every successful achievement begins with decision. Most unsuccessful lives are conspicuously absent
of decision.
Most people go through life making decisions by default, choosing only from narrow options dictated by others or by evolving circumstances. One millionaire friend of mine grew up in a very small town where, as he put it, there were two career options: working at the factory or raising pigs and chickens. With only a few exceptions, everybody he went to school and graduated with chose one of those two options.
I am often amused when I'm traveling and get asked what I do; when I describe my job as best I can, I often get the envious sigh, the gee-I-wish-I-could-do-that, and then the laundry list of complaints and dissatisfactions from my fellow traveler about present career or business or life. I'm amused because he apparently does not know he can change those circumstances by decision. Similarly, when I told fellow travelers that I lived in "sunny Phoenix" (where I lived for more than ten years), I'd often hear the envious sigh, the gee-I-wish-I-lived-there-instead-of-in-X, then the litany of unpleasant things about their home city. This amuses me because apparently they haven't noticed the highway signs in their town pointing the way out.
Successful entrepreneurs learn to be much more assertive, proactive, and creative in making decisions to change things as they prefer, to make things happen. If you are to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to break free of your old reacting and responding mode and switch to the assertive, proactive mode. You have to reject the entire idea of limited choices.
As an entrepreneur, you need to reject every single piece of programming you've ever received about limited options or prerequisites for exercising certain options.
[sidebar]
It's amazing how people spend their lives in prisons entirely of their own making, the key dangling right there in the lock, no jailer in sight.
I find it very hard to work up much sympathy for most of these "sad sacks." I remember listening to a 40-or-so-year-old guy working behind the counter at a neighborhood convenience store where I sometimes stop for coffee complaining loudly-even poetically-about his miserable job, low income, and lousy lot in life. I asked where he lived and which way he drove to work. After he answered, I asked if he'd noticed that every day, twice a day, he drove past the public library, a gigantic repository of free help for changing your career, your finances, your life. As you might guess, I might as well have been speaking Martian. If pressed, I assure you, he'd tell you he was too busy or too tired to read, or didn't like to read, or had bad eyesight when he was in school, or some other pitiful excuse. Pfui.
[end]
Just for example, you probably believe that certain options exist only for people with particular educations, licenses, or certifications. Sure, you can't just up and declare yourself a heart surgeon or airplane pilot. But you can certainly be a CEO, and you can certainly make as much money as you choose.
Here's a little jolt: one of the highest-paid marketing consultants and coaches working with Realtors, a man who is paid millions of dollars a year from real estate agents for his advice, has never been in real estate and does not have a real estate license. His name is Craig Forte, and he is a longtime client of mine. For four years, I had the largest business training company serving dentists and chiropractors, working with more than 10,000 doctors, but I am neither a DC nor DDS. I give you this one example as food for thought.
Warning: Your Entry Point to Entrepreneurship May Be a Handicap to Overcome
For many people, the decision to pursue the entrepreneurial lifestyle is the byproduct of an evolving dislike for their jobs, frustration with their bosses, or a sudden loss of employment. They may be downsized, Enroned, forced into early retirement, or just fed up enough one day to tell the boss to "take this job and shove it." The employees-turned-entrepreneurs out of default or disgust lug a lot of mental and emotional baggage with them. The habits, attitudes, and behaviors that work fine for the employee in the corporate bureaucratic environment do not work well at all in the entrepreneurial environment and must be left behind. The reason why so many new businesses fail is that the owners are unable to leave their old attitudes behind.
Personally, I've only held one job in my entire life, for one year, immediately out of high school. I secured a territory sales position with a national book publishing company, a job that was supposed to be for a college graduate with sales experience. I got it through a combination of bluster, white lies, and agreeing to work on "free trial" for three months-no pay, no company car. Although I excelled at the work itself, by year's end, I and my sales manager both agreed I was fundamentally unemployable. Thus, I became entrepreneurial.
However, I'd always intended to be my own boss, and I was very fortunate to have some preparation for it in youth as my parents had been self-employed my entire life. Like other kids, I read comic books and filched my father's Playboys, but I was also reading Think and Grow Rich, listening to Earl Nightingale tapes, working in the business, riding with my grandmother on job deliveries to clients, and writing up my list of life goals. This is not a mandatory prerequisite to later success. I know plenty of wildly successful entrepreneurs who came from much less helpful backgrounds. But I did have the edge of clear intent from the start of my adult life and little time to acquire the bad habits of thought and behavior that most longtime employees of other people have to shed when switching to entrepreneurship.
I think that to succeed you must not only make a firm and committed decision to do just that but you must also decide to quickly, even eagerly, give up long-held attitudes and behaviors that fit fine in your previous environment but do not work well in entrepreneurial life. Although I don't swim, I imagine it'd be tough to swim across a good-sized lake while clinging to a boat anchor. Letting go of anchors from your former life as you dive into entrepreneurial waters is essential.
Why Trying Doesn't Work
Some people think and talk in terms of "trying" a business or "trying" out the entrepreneurial experience. Before achieving major success in business myself, I went through considerable agony, corporate and personal bankruptcy, stress, embarrassment, humiliation, and near-starvation. If I'd been just "trying," just taking a test-drive, I'd have quit. And make no mistake about it; my experience is the norm among ultimately successful entrepreneurs.
Rich DeVos plunked down millions to buy the rights to an NBA franchise, the Orlando Magic, apparently to indulge himself. Every year for as long as I can recall, Rich and his lifelong partner Jay VanAndel have appeared on the annual Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest men in America. Certainly many envy DeVos as the wealthy, powerful co-founder of Amway Corporation, who is able to buy a basketball team!
But I wonder how many envied Rich and Jay when they were barely surviving in business, bottling a liquid cleanser in a decrepit gas station, delivering drums of the gunk cross-country to their few distributors in their own pickup truck, being laughed at by friends and family.
My student, client, and friend Jeff Paul most certainly thought about quitting and giving up on his vision of a successful mail-order business when he was awash in credit card debt, living with his family in his sister-in-law's basement. But he wasn't trying out the idea. He was committed and determined. He is wealthy today not because he tried, but because he did.
Another client of mine, who asked not to be named in this story, started in business immediately after going through a bankruptcy and was struggling. His wife even got their minister to try convincing him to "stop the foolishness, stop punishing his family and get a job." His business today makes millions of dollars a year. Fortunately for everybody concerned, including the doubting wife and skeptical minister, my client wasn't just trying out an idea.
My occasional client and one of my best friends, Lee Milteer, is universally respected and sometimes envied by her colleagues. Her career as a professional speaker and coach is thriving. As a speaker, she routinely commands $5,000.00 to $7,000.00 per speech. But when I met Lee, her speaking career was floundering, she was over $35,000.00 in the hole, pawning jewelry to print brochures, and taking more calls from bill collectors than from clients. In the asset column of her balance sheet, she had little more than a burning desire and determination to succeed in this unusual business.
Although Lee has developed into a great speaker, I frankly know a number of others, more naturally gifted, more professionally talented, and more skilled than she is who failed in their attempts at the business. They "tried" it, couldn't make it work, and went back to work in other jobs. Lee's good-humored determination made all the difference in the world.
Making and Keeping Faith with Your Commitments
Succeeding as an entrepreneur requires decision and determination-total, unwavering commitment. To keep faith with this commitment, you have to develop and embrace attitudes, habits, and behaviors that are markedly different from most of the people you've known. You have to cut down on time spent with people who are not supportive of your entrepreneurial ambitions. Time spent hanging around fearful people, doubtful people, skeptical people can impair your ability to succeed.
You mean I have to change my friends?
Probably. And the books you read. And the television programs you watch. And a whole lot more. We cannot help being and becoming a product of the ideas we associate with most-of the books and magazines we read, the tapes we listen to, the TV we watch, and the people we spend time with.
As thick-skinned as I believe I am and as much of an independent thinker as I pride myself in being, I admit that my performance and determination vary in relationship to what I'm reading, what I'm listening to, and who I'm hanging around with. Earl Nightingale brilliantly summarized all this, "We become what we think about most." If you are going to become an exceptionally successful entrepreneur, that is what you must think about most.
Another way to look at this is in terms of passion. The most successful entrepreneurs I know are passionately involved with entrepreneurship in general and their businesses in particular. They're in love with being entrepreneurs, excited about their products or services, "on fire" with enthusiasm-and that passion gives them superhuman powers.
This is one very good argument for belonging to entrepreneur groups, coaching programs, and peer advisory groups: you need regular contact and chances to share ideas and information with like-minded entrepreneurs who validate, support, and encourage you. My friend Joe Mancuso, a top expert in family business issues, presides over the national network of CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Clubs, which meet in dozens of cities and bring owners and presidents of midsized companies together. There's also YPO, Young Presidents Organization; YEO, Young Entrepreneurs Organization; Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach groups; and, in many industries, specialized peer advisory groups, such as the one run by my client and friend Joe Polish in the carpet cleaning industry or Ron Ipach's group for auto repair shop owners. My own Kennedy Inner Circle Gold/VIP mastermind groups, limited to 18 members per group, meet three times a year and have tele-coaching sessions other months. In these groups, entrepreneurs from diverse businesses-dentists, lawyers, painting company owners, manufacturers, genealogists, pest control company owners and so on-come together to coach each other, and the results are amazing. I encourage every entrepreneur to seek out a coaching program or a mastermind group to participate in. Or, if you can't find one, start one.
You can greatly accelerate your entrepreneurial success and decrease your isolation-related stress by associating with other progressive entrepreneurs.
You cannot immunize yourself against the influences of the ideas of the people you associate with. There is no vaccination to protect you from negative, antibusiness thinking. For this reason, you must immerse yourself in associations that are in harmony with your goals and aspirations.
This doesn't mean you must socialize only with other entrepreneurs. I have friends who are college professors, corporate executives, actors, athletes, office workers, and so on, but I choose them carefully. They do not have negative attitudes about businesspeople; they do have interesting ambitions within their careers or are tied to other outside interests that are stimulating.
Unfortunately, you are going to discover that the majority of people, nonentrepreneurs, have a number of set-in-cement biases and frustrations with you, the entrepreneur. Let's talk about some of the big ones you'll run up against.
Accusation: You're a Workaholic
Most entrepreneurs I know experience great conflicts between their commitment to business and other aspects of their lives: marriage, family, civic activities, and so on. Having two failed marriages in my background, I'm hypersensitive to this conflict, and I'm always working on ways to handle it more effectively. The fact-and it is fact-that the line between "work" and "play" is thoroughly blurred for the true entrepreneur and the corollary fact that the entrepreneur's business life is often, frankly, bluntly, more important to him than his personal and social life are a huge source of befuddlement, annoyance, and tension for those around him.
It's convenient and easy for others to label the determined, passionate entrepreneur as a workaholic-a diseased, neurotic addict guilty of neglecting nonwork responsibilities, of not loving his or her spouse or family, of being a self-absorbed ass. It's convenient and easy, but overly simplistic and certainly not very helpful.
In reality, the constantly working entrepreneur may be saner and happier than the critics. Most people detest their jobs, yet they continue going to them day after day, month after month, year after year. They spend the lion's share of their lives doing things they find boring and unfulfilling, but lack the guts to do anything about it. They live for the weekend. By contrast, entrepreneurs manage to stay involved in work so enjoyable and fulfilling that they no longer think of it as work.
The lovers, friends, parents, and others who throw around the workaholic label secretly resent their own "stuckedness" and try to make themselves feel better by attacking you, by making you feel guilty.
We could dismiss the critics as jealous, resentful, and unreasonable just as easily as they label us as workaholics. However, no one wants to go through life married only to a business. We need mates, family, and close friends. And they won't all be involved in our businesses or even in business. We don't get to choose our families and, besides, diversity in social life is healthy and necessary. So, better understanding of ourselves and others, recognition of the special problem we present to others, and creative efforts at preserving balances are all very important.
The problem also, ironically, reveals the greatest of all secrets to entrepreneurial success.
One study done some years back by Venture magazine and Control Data surveyed and analyzed more than 700 entrepreneurs, all of whom had operated their own businesses for at least four years and had annual incomes of at least $90,000.00. The researchers found that "the lines between work and play are obscured for most successful entrepreneurs." Not a surprising result. No survey needed. If you observe any successful entrepreneur, you'll find, for them, work is play.
One of the ultimate object lessons in this is Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Airlines and all the other Virgin companies and brands. He told Fortune magazine: "I don't think of work as work and play as play. It's all living."
No BS Business Success
Dan Kennedy
Contents
Foreword by Brian Tracy, xv
Preface, xvii
chapter 1
The Decision and Determination to Succeed 1
Warning: Your Entry Point to Entrepreneurship
May Be a Handicap to Overcome, 5
Why Trying Doesn't Work, 6
Making and Keeping Faith with Your Commitments, 8
Accusation: You're a Workaholic, 10
Perception: You're a Wild-Eyed Risk Taker,
a Riverboat Gambler. Have You Lost Your Mind?, 14
Big Lie: The Price of Entrepreneurial Success
Is Just Too Much to Pay, 17
The Decision of Autonomy, 19
Mental Toughness Required, 26
Hey, That's Not Fair!, 27
chapter 2
The Real Entrepreneurial Experience:
A No B.S. Report from the Front Lines 31
Pride Is Sometimes the Only Pay, 33
Take a Trip Down Lonely Street, 35
I'm an Overnight Success-After 20 Years, 36
Even with Success, There Is Failure, 38
What Ultimately Separates Entrepreneurial
Winners from Losers?, 42
The Good News, 44
chapter 3
How Do You Know If You Have A Really Good Idea? 49
Ask Your Customers, 51
Ask Your Counterparts and Competitors, 51
Smart Direct-Mail Testing, 52
"Steal" Already-Tested Direct Marketing Strategies, 53
Moving Ideas from One Business to Another, 55
How to Be More "Creative," 57
What If Everybody Hates Your Idea?, 62
chapter 4
Positioning Yourself and Your
Business for Maximum Success 67
Positioning Strategy #1: How to Name
What You Do to Attract the Customers You Want, 68
Positioning Strategy #2: How to Price, 71
Positioning Strategy #3: How to Make
Your Image Work for You, 76
Positioning Strategy #4: Self-Appointments, 79
A Story of Positioning Success, 82
Who Do You Think You Are?, 83
chapter 5
How Entrepreneurs Really
Make Money-Big Money! 84
What Are You Going to Do When You Grow Up?, 86
The Fortune-Building Secret of Total Customer Value, 88
Looking for Value in All the Wrong Places, 91
Networking and Joint Ventures, 93
The Remarkable Value of a Duplicative Model, 94
Mastering the Six Entrepreneurial Competencies, 97
Live Outside the Lines, 97
chapter 6
How to Create Exciting Sales and
Marketing Breakthroughs 100
At Least Avoid the Ultimate Marketing Sin, 102
Breakthrough Strategy #1: Find a
Niche Market and Exploit It, 104
Breakthrough Strategy #2: Find a New
Sales Medium and Let It Make You Rich, 106
Breakthrough Strategy #3: Create a New Type
of Guarantee and Confound Your Competition, 109
Breakthrough Strategy #4: Deliver Exceptional
Service and Earn Word-of-Mouth Advertising, 111
Breakthrough Strategy #5: Seek Strategic
Marketing Alliances, 112
Breakthrough Strategy #6: Get Professional
Prowess on a Percentage, 115
chapter 7
Why and How to Sell Your Way Through Life 121
Changing Your Attitudes about Selling, 122
But When Can I Stop Selling?, 123
The Two Most Important Sales You'll Ever Make, 125
How to Bridge the Confidence Chasm, 125
Another Important Sale, 129
Now I'll Make a Sale, 130
chapter 8
Key People for Your Company 132
Take Off Your Rose Colored Glasses, 135
If It's Not Meant to Be . . ., 136
How to Choose Your Key People, 137
The Worst Number in Any
Business-and What to Do about It, 139
chapter 9
Working with Lawyers and Accountants 141
How to Be Litigious without
Buying Your Lawyer a Yacht, 142
What to Do if You Are in a Fight, 142
Your Turn Can Come, 145
When You Must Really Use a Lawyer, 146
Putting a Wall around Your Castle
and Alligators in the Moat, 146
Strange Creatures, Accountants, 147
Rearview Mirrors, Magnifying
Glasses, and Binoculars, 148
Who Can You Count On?, 150
chapter 10
Why Entrepreneurs Aren't Managers-and
What You Can Do about It 153
You Can't Teach a Pig to Sing, 155
Hire Slow, Fire Fast, 156
Forget the Idea of Ownership Mentality, 156
How Your Employees Sabotage Your Marketing, 158
You Can Only Expect What You Inspect, 159
Identify, Keep, Reward, and Motivate, 160
Recent Discoveries about All Employees, 161
Good People Can Make a Huge Difference, 162
What Works for You Is What's Right, 163
chapter 11
How to Manage Your Cash Flow 164
The Five Keys to Multiplied Cash Flow, 165
Two Commonly Underutilized Means
of Boosting Sales, Profits, and Cash Flow, 172
The Ultimate MCF Tactic: "Prepay," 174
chapter 12
How to Achieve Peak Productivity 176
Why Is Time Such a Problem?, 178
Why "Do It Now" May Not Be the Best Advice, 179
The Yes or No Test, 181
What Now?, 181
Refuse to Let Them Steal Your Time, 183
Put a Stake Through the Heart of Every
"Time Vampire" Who Comes Your Way, 184
The Secrets of Secrets of Getting Rich, 184
chapter 13
How Entrepreneurs Attract Good Luck 186
Using Your Subconscious Mind, 187
How to Be in the Right Place at the Right Time, 189
Luck Is a Product of Universal Law, 191
Some Practical Advice on Attracting Good Luck, 193
chapter 14
Staying Sane in an Insane World 194
Danger Ahead, 195
How to Be a Business Success
and Have It Not Matter, 195
Integrity Is Strategy, 201
How to Develop and Profit from the Power of Faith, 203
Entrepreneurs Need Extraordinary
Faith in This Crazy World, 205
chapter 15
Why and How to Build Your
Own Mini Conglomerate 207
Strengthen Your Conglomerate with Strategic Alliances, 209
How to Get Rich by Accident, 210
The Secret of Giving Them More of
What They Want (and Less of What They Don't), 213
The Antidote to Advertising, 214
chapter 16
Using Your Business as a
Path to Financial Independence 215
Don't Let Your Business Own You, 217
Getting Out of Your Own Way, 219
How to Help Your Business Mature, 220
How Does a System Work?, 223
chapter 17
How to Get a Business Out of Trouble 225
As Long as There's a Pulse, There's Hope, 226
Forget "Kinder" and "Gentler," 226
Pull Together a Plan, 228
Don't Hide, 229
Don't Take It Personally, 230
Direct Your Energy to Business Renovation, 230
chapter 18
A No B.S. Report on the
Internet and Other Technology 232
Knock, Knock, Who's There?, 233
What Are Internet Users Really Buying?, 234
Be There or Be Square, 235
But the Gold Rush Is On and
You Don't Want to Be Last, Do You?, 236
Is There a Free Lunch on the Internet?, 237
In Spite of All That, Should You Be Devoting
Serious Attention to Marketing
Your Business via the Internet?, 238
The Future May Be Permission-Only
Marketing On and Off the Internet, 239
The Fax as a Marketing Machine, 240
Voice Mail as a Marketing Tool:
The Magic of the Free Recorded Message, 242
A Complex Matrix of Communication
and Marketing Technologies, 243
The Amazing Power of Audio and Video Brochures, 244
Final Thoughts on Technology, 244
Afterword, 246
A Look at the Author's Business Activities, 247
Resource Directory, 252
Eternal Truths, 262
Preface to No B.S. Sales Success, 266
Preface to No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, 270
Index, 273
Special Free Gift #1 from the Author, 285
Special Free Gift #2 from the Author, 286
Dan Kennedy has been called the "Professor of Harsh Reality" because he's provocative, irreverent, sarcastic and tells it like it is in a humorous, but chillingly serious fashion that cuts to the core of the issues in a way no other business author does. You want sugar-coated clichés that go down easy? Seek them elsewhere - this book isn't for the faint of heart. Kennedy steers you along the bumpy road to growing a business, showing you potholes all along the way.