The Smart Start Up

Fundamental Strategies for Beating the Odds When Starting a Business

Tom Hopkins, Omar Periu

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781683509370
• eBook ISBN: 9781683509387
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

"Start and build a high-profit business, choose exactly the right product for you, outsell your competition, and put yourself onto the road to riches" (Brian Tracy, New York Times –bestselling author). The Smart Start Up helps readers start strong and stay strong in the early phases of growing their businesses, providing fundamental strategies for beating the odds. With this information, entrepreneurs will be able to reach the success level of their dreams—whether that's to create a legacy for generations or to follow the build-and-sell-it road to success. Within these pages, Tom Hopkins and Omar Periu delve deeply into the nuances of business ownership both on the practical and emotional side of things. They will help readers avoid some of the most common pitfalls entrepreneurs face. Readers will learn how to establish a compass they and the rest of their teams can rely on to guide business decisions going forward. Topics covered include: self-analysis as an entrepreneur; how to evaluate a business idea; how to choose the best structure for a business, including working with legal and accounting professionals; business communication skills; hiring and managing team members; prioritization; selling skills; marketing strategies; negotiation skills; and how to keep clients happy long term. "Own this book and you'll have the opportunity to be guided to your own success by two of the best and proven teachers in the business." —Bob Burg, bestselling coauthor of The Go-Giver and The Go-Giver Influencer "Inside the pages of this masterpiece, you'll get the formula for success that gives you the winning edge in the hyper-competitive marketplace." —Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy and author of Fanatical Prospecting

Chapter 1

Do You Have What It Takes to Succeed?

“Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

– STEVE JOBS

There’s a common attitude among most of today’s successful entrepreneurs. In French, it would be called, “joie de vivre.” Translated into English, it’s an exuberant enjoyment of life. This outlook does not necessarily spring from their successes. For most, it was there first—before they became successful. Many are the kind of people who see the well-known glass half full.

They have strong “whys” behind their desires to step out on their own and do so joyfully. In this chapter, we’ll help you determine if you have what it takes to fulfill the entrepreneurial dreams you’re most excited about.

Begin by understanding that every aspect of business requires selling skills and a drive to succeed. In fact, most successful entrepreneurs are or have been successful in some type of sales situation—even if it was selling magazine subscriptions in school. They are comfortable meeting new people, enjoy competition (with themselves or with others) and have strong drives for achievement.

Are You Driven to Succeed?

How hard are you willing to work to achieve success with your idea, product, or service? This is an important question to ask yourself. Is building and succeeding in this business something that drives you? Or is it something that sounds fun to try? Growing a business requires a high level of commitment. It also requires other personal attributes.

We’ve analyzed the traits and characteristics of many of the founders of today’s most successful startup companies. There are many. In our findings, top performers in business today are:

• •Well-versed in the latest industry news and in the industry’s history
• •Always open to exploring new ideas and strategies
• •Problem solvers
• •Seekers of new knowledge that will help them grow their businesses
• •Not afraid to ask for help when in need
• •Self-directed
• •Positive
• •Rarely bored with their work
• •Independent
• •Unafraid to take action
• •Accountable for their actions
• •Willing to sacrifice today for tomorrow’s success

The motivation for success as an entrepreneur is more complex than just the drive for money, achievement, power, control, or status, although each plays a role. Because of the complexity of success, it’s important to identify your personal motivations for wanting to win the game of entrepreneurship. You’ll want to create the vision and emotions that will keep you going on those less-than-perfect days.

What is your “why?” What will keep you going on days when you work 16 hours or longer? What will get you out of bed every morning with a desire to make things happen? Are you moving away from something you dislike? Or, are you moving toward a new and better future? Maybe it’s a little of each. Invest the time to write down or take a photo of exactly what it is that will keep you going no matter what. Keep it where you’ll see it many times each day.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was living on state benefits, raising her daughter as a single parent when she began writing about Harry and his wizarding world. She had always wanted to be a successful writer and her status in life at the time motivated her to move toward a new and better future. She was very motivated to move away from her current standing in life. The thought of leaving that life behind kept her going, writing and re-writing for hours on end. That thought also kept her going when the first manuscript was rejected by 12 publishers. She was driven to succeed. Are you?

Self-Analysis for Entrepreneurs

Don’t be like the entrepreneurs whose businesses failed in the first two years. Do some deep analysis before you begin. If you’ve already launched a business, it’s not too late to analyze your motivations. Just be prepared for the possibility of making a major course correction if your motives don’t match where you’re currently headed.

The following three questions are key:

1. 1.Where am I?
2. 2.Where do I want to go?
3. 3.How do I best get there?

Let’s look at some possible answers for each.

Where am I now? Make an honest and unemotional evaluation of your current position. This is where you look at your situation in black and white—no gray areas allowed. It’s sort of the spreadsheet of your life—something another person could look at and evaluate without all the usual human emotions tied to it.

Are you where you want to be, or at least on the right course? The answer may be “probably not” or even “heck, no.” The fact that you’re reading this book tells us that you want more, that you’re perhaps one of those driven individuals who feel that you must achieve success. Good for you! However, before you can chart your course, it’s important to know your starting point.

Think of it as taking a road trip. You choose your destination but need to consider where you are starting from in order to make the necessary travel plans to get there.

Where do I want to go? J.K. Rowling could have stayed where she was in life and gotten by on state benefits but that wasn’t her dream. She wasn’t comfortable there. Her choice of destination was greater success through writing even though she never dreamed that Harry Potter would prove to be an unparalleled success and make her one of the richest women in the world.

Other notable people could have stayed where they were as well.

• •Orville and Wilbur Wright ran a successful bicycle shop, but they had dreams of powered flight. Those dreams were fueled by a burning desire to win the race toward manned flight.
• •Sam Walton could have been satisfied with his Ben Franklin “five-and-dime” store franchise, but he had the idea for Wal-Mart – a much broader retail store that would be able to serve the masses with both products and job opportunities.
• •Bill Gates could have been satisfied with a degree from Harvard, but he dropped out to follow an even bigger dream that became Microsoft.

All those successful people had visions of where they wanted to be in the future.

What are your dreams for the future? Where do you want to be? What do you want to have? What do you plan to be able to say when asked what you’ve accomplished in your life? Think about it. Get clarity about exactly what you want to be, do, have, and achieve. Write it down so descriptively that someone else could read it and see your vision, too. Then start believing that by taking the right steps on the path to that dream you’ll develop the skills and mindset it takes to achieve all of it.

How do I get there? This is your map. Entrepreneurs follow different pathways to success and you’ll have to chart your own. Start thinking in terms of the steps required to get where you want to be rather than focusing solely on the big picture. Some people begin with the end in mind, then work backwards, breaking down the big picture into smaller, manageable bits and pieces that are actionable items for each day. Others begin where they are and figure out what next steps they need to take going forward to achieve small goals along the way to their larger ones. Which method feels right to you?

As an example, before inventing the airplane the Wright brothers had to design and test gliders, develop control mechanisms, learn aerodynamics, develop engines and so on. They took it one step at a time and eventually achieved their goal of powered flight. Determine the steps you need to take to achieve your goals for your business and then take them on one at a time.

Selling: The Foundation of Every Successful Business

Since we both began our careers in sales, we understand the impact selling skills have had on the amount of success we have achieved in life. We believe that knowledge of selling skills is an excellent foundation for building a successful business because you’re always going to be selling something…your product, yourself, selling employees on doing their jobs well and so on. Everybody is selling or being sold to every minute of the day. That’s why selling skills are so critical to overall success in life, and specific to success in business. We’ll cover specific product sales strategies in great detail in chapter 7.

Some refer to selling skills as business communication skills. We like to call them “people skills” because selling really comes down to agreements being made between two or more people. How effectively you communicate with other people can make or break your business and your personal relationships as well.

You see, as you develop your plans for your business, you’ll be selling more than your product or service. You’ll be selling others on working with or for you. You may sell other people on investing in your business. You’ll be selling vendors on providing their services economically to keep your overhead down. Every communication between two or more people involves selling—effectively communicating with others.

So, how good are you now at communicating with others? Do you:

• •Have to repeat yourself often?
• •Need to express your point in more than one way for others to understand?
• •Bear the repercussions of miscommunication more often than you care to?
• •Get asked to clarify what you mean?
• •Find yourself getting answers from others, but not the answers to the questions you’ve asked?

Be honest with yourself when answering each of those questions. If you say yes to any of them, there’s room for improvement in your ability to communicate.

Here’s a scenario to demonstrate what can happen when you don’t use effective people skills all the time.

Alice has been involved in business for many years. In fact, she has been a key communicator within her company for decades. People rely on her to keep them informed about happenings within the company that impact them. And, she’s often complimented on how well she does this. However, in her personal life, Alice experiences frustration when family members do not fulfill their promises as she expected; forget to do something altogether; or when they go off on side tangents when she asks very specific questions.

What’s the difference? It might be easy to blame the people on the other end of the communication channel....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Do You Have What It Takes to Succeed?
• Chapter 2: Choosing the Right Vehicle for Your Business
• Chapter 3: The Perils of Going It Alone
• Chapter 4: Putting Everybody on the Sales Team
• Chapter 5: Maximizing Your Marketing Efforts
• Chapter 6: Communication Strategies
• Chapter 7: The Sales Process
• Chapter 8: Negotiation Skills
• Chapter 9: Building Long Term Relationships with Clients
• Chapter 10: When Things Don’t Go as Planned
• About the Authors