Start A Business Backwards

Last week, I posted a video that talked about finding the business in your business and today I wanted to give a perfect example of finding the business in your business.

Last weekend a friend of mine wanted to give her son a “life memory” for her son’s 13th birthday and her son is a budding pianist so the idea was to give him a recording session at a recording studio with some of his friends.

Discover how the record studio owner may lose $52k if he doesn’t atch this Drive By University Video.

This is another tip from my speech at the Wilmington Investors Network, last Wednesday once again thanks to Lou Anzalone & Jim Davies for inviting me. In this tip I talk about finding the business in your business. Now the important thing to remember is you have to have your business doing ok now but this is a growth strategy. Every business has a business that can be created in it, doesn’t matter what type. If you own a store selling baby clothes, you can add furniture (if your smart you will JV with a baby furniture store). Every business has a listed of customers that trust it and those customers can be leveraged. So here is my tip 3 Find the business in your business

I recently spoke to a group of real estate investors and business owners in WIlmington, DE. The group is a mastermind group called Wilmington Investors Network, headed by Lou Anzalone and Jim Davies.

Lou and Jim asked me to come and talk about how to survive and thrive in a recession and I gave 9 TIps for Surviving and Thriving in a Recession. My business partner and friend Victor Milbourne taped the entire speech. The entire speech is to long to post in one video, so we’ve cut it into pieces and will post them periodically. The important thing to remember is that you can survive and thrive in this recession by being clear about your goals and this 1st video is about goals and clarity. In a recession ceing clear having clarity alwasy trumps or beats persuasion. So enjoy this video, tip 1 entitles Clarity Trumps Persuasion

Today more than ever people like you are thinking about starting a business. Record layoffs, have forced very talented people to lose their only source of incomeand in many ways the loss of a job leaves them emotionally devastated. If you’ve been laid off all of the sudden not only have you lost your income but if you’ve worked for a number of years in your profession you may have lost your self worth. You may have taken the layoff personally.

Well if that is the case, remember a few things. You have skills, talents, interests and hobbies that may be easily converted into a business that can either tide you over until you find a new job or perhaps prevent you from ever having to find another job.

So,the question is how to you leverage your talents, skills and interests and create a business that can bring in some money and more importantly how do you minimize the startup risk. How do you know your business idea will work, resonate in the market and find customers that are willing to PAY for your new business. The answer is to Start a Business Backwards, with the end (of the startup in mind), the end being customers that are paying for your service. or products. Thats what starting backwards means. It means you find your market and customers first and (in some cases) get them to pay before you launch.

Next post. How to Start a Business Backwards

Dedicated to your success

Dwight

In the next couple of weeks, I will be talking about starting backwards, how to find customers, how to test to success and more. Register for this very limited FREE seminar today Start A Business Backwards

One of my biggest lesson is that business is a team sport and the successful entreprenuers primary role is to recruit and movitvation a great team. In this video I talk about the importance of having a team as a real estate investor to a group of business owners and investors.

I recently talked to Bill Parlaman of Radical marketing Solutions about starting a business, tracking your numbers and how to build a successful business. Checkout the interview at http://www.radicalmarketingsolutions.com/bill-parlaman-and-radical-marketing-solutions-interviews-dwight-miller-super-guy-and-super-entrepreneur/

• Quantum Builders LLC – The Power of having a great team in Investing http://aweber.com/b/1t.f7 #
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• If you need a team for philly real estate investing checkout this video http://tinyurl.com/am9abe #
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• Reviewing a powerful interview with Monique Caradine, coming on Monday 2/23. http://www.blackgeniusnetwork.com #
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In todays world nobody trusts anything, right now banks don’t trust other banks and they damned sure don’t trust you.Democrats don’t trust Conservatives, Muslims don’t trust the US, basically distrust is running rampant in the world today making the peace process difficult and economic developement impossible.

There is little reason for your customers to’t trust you and frankly many business owners  haven’t done a great job of creating any reason for them to trust. After all, many of us treat customers like transactions, we take their money and let them leave with barely a thank you. No wonder they don’t trust us. (it’s like a one night stand, wham bam, ok I went to far)

In this post, I’m revealing some of the things I will be doing in my business to build “a reason to believe“. Now I’m under no illusions, I know it is going to take some work to create the “reason to believe” but in this tough times I need an edge and building trust is an additional edge. Here is what I plan to do.

1. Get testimonials and tell the whole story. This is an easy one to understand but more difficult to execute, I am going to literally ask every client to tell me honestly what they think about my services and as afraid as I am, I’m going to post the good, bad and ugly and here is why. We don’t do everything perfectly, so showing only the good doesn’t tell the whole story. I want my prospect to know the  the whole story,  good and bad and I hope that helps build “a reason to trust“. I am also going to fix the bad and see if I can get the same customer tl tell that story as well. You should too.
2. Guarantee – scares business owners. One of my clients is afraid to guarantee their services and thats a mistake. It’s a tough economy and my clients want to know that I stand behind what I do, so I am going to be working on an results based ironclad guarantee, no results no pay.
3. Show the Data and Demonstrate the Service. I’ve got the great numbers, I can prove my results, so I’m gonna show them. I;m going to demonstrate that I know what I’m doing and provide proff of the results.

Thats my start at showing proof and building trust. In my real estate business, we show proof of great rehabs on Youtube (as far as I know nobody does this) in my marketing consulting business we show results of conversions (actual leads generated) not click thru. Thats how I hope to create a “reason to believe“. What are you going to do in your business.

In todays world ALL of your customers are mystery shoppers. Here’s what I mean. I recently went to a new steak restaurant in my neightborhood. To set the stage, where I lve is not known for fine dining. Up until recently,great restaurants where typically family owned affairs but recently we’ve seen an influx of larger restaurants and some chains.

On Sunday, I decided to try a new restaurant named Flemings Steak House. I sat at the bar ( I was alone) and  ordered a shrimp appetizer, a filet and a salad as well as a single malt and a lager. As I was waiting  I was using my Iphone to write a review on http://www.Yelp.com and once the appetizer arrived I was well into the review.

The appetizer tasted good but it was slightly cold and kind of gooey but I ate it (it was spicy and I like spicy food) anyway. When I finished the bartender Jason, asked how I liked the dish and I mentioned that it was cold. I was getting ready to write my review when the restaurant manager came over and asked me how I liked the dish. Again I hemmed and hawed but told him the dish was cold. He immediately took the dish of the bill and offered a sincere apology. They went above and beyond normal service to ensure I was happy and turned a OK review into a great review (see my Yelp.com review of Flemings SteakHouse).

The point is in today’s world all of your customers MAY be mystery shoppers. They all can (and more often will) review your business online and expose your warts to the world. If you’ve got shitty products, the world could know, if you have great service the world will know. The question for you is “CAN YOU CONTROL THE PROCESS”. The answer is a resounding MAYBE, but doing something is better than doing nothing.

Discover what to do NOW, Discover HOW you can influence your customer reviews.

What a bunch of bull. I was watching a show about a very famous entrepreneur and the show made it seem as if this entrepreneur built the business himself. Complete bulls%$t, building a successful business requires many skills and nobody is good at everything.

When I read books about successful entrepreneurs, the one thing that strikes me is how successful they have been at building a team. Here’s an example from my own business life. I have built or helped build and sold 4 businesses. Now mind you many entrepreneurs have never built one business, I’ve built or helped build three. I also have been able to do something that many small business owners haven’t been able to do and that is selling my business.

My greatest success, the one that was the most financially lucrative came as a result of building a great company and a great team. On the other hand, my biggest failure and my most financially disastrous failure came when I didn’t build a team and tried to do everything myself.

So, Start A Business Backwards Strategy 15 is simple, find great people, sell them on your vision, make sure they are financially rewarded based on their effort and create a great team.

Dedicated to your Success