Another summary of things you should know about Hyper Sales Growth according to Jack Daly: Introduction In this episode well-known sales expert Jack Daly joins us for a second timeRead More
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]]>In this episode well-known sales expert Jack Daly joins us for a second time to reveal more insights behind his career and book, Hyper Sales Growth. Jack brings 20 plus years of field proven experience from a starting base with the CPA firm Arthur Andersen to the CEO level of several national companies. Jack has participated at the senior executive level on six de novo businesses, two of which he has subsequently sold to the Wall Street firms of Solomon Brothers and First Boston. As the head of sales, Jack has led sales forces numbering in the thousands, operating out of hundreds of offices nationwide. The goal of this interview is to provide you with more insights into the lessons Jack teaches from his book, speeches, and experience.
A: I am a serial entrepreneur, started selling at the age of seven, built my first company when I was 12 years old, and by 13 I had five employees and kept 70% of the money. This is when I realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I grew up. I went to school and got formally educated in understanding how the numbers worked because one of the failings that entrepreneurs make is they are good at bringing business in and developing business but they are not as good with the number side. I then went on a journey that included taking a blank sheet of paper, six different times and sketching out a business and built six companies into national firms. About 20 years ago I was tired of doing what I was doing and was financially capable of early retirement. After retirement I got into a speaking business and fell in love with helping sales people, sales managers, business owners, and entrepreneurs scale their business and their income.
A: My first business was a newspaper route and I took it over from a kid that lived in the neighborhood. After a few days of running the business I began to realize that if only 32 people were getting the service, the rest of the neighborhood probably wasn’t, and I knew I could do something about it. I ended up in a single year taking those 32 customers to 275. I quickly realized that delivering the paper in the freezing cold was not were the fun was and I enjoyed the selling process a lot more. So I convinced five kids that were 11 years old to do on the job training and told them at the end of the year I’d give them a letter of recommendation so that they could get their own route. That year I was named newspaper boy of the year, making $25 an hour and making 70% of the money on 275 papers that I never had to deliver myself.
A: I probably didn’t even know what the word culture meant back then when I was 12 and 13. But I will tell you that I did know something and that was that if I could find a way for these kids to have fun while they were doing the job, to learn while they were doing it, and to have contests amongst the five of them, they would actually look forward to going to work. I believe that we leaders should strive to make it fun to work for our company.
A: It depends on the client. Some of my clients will hire me specifically to just teach their sales team how to sell. Other companies engage me to teach their sales managers how to recruit, train, coach, and build a sales force because if you want to grow your sales, in most businesses, the way to do that is to grow your sales force in quantity and quality. So it really just depends on what the client is looking for.
A: There are four legs to a strong culture. The first leg to a strong culture is Recognition Systems – what systems do you have in place to ensure regular ongoing recognition? Second leg is Communication Systems – what are the systems that you have for regular ongoing communication in your company? The third leg is Personal and Professional Development Processes – Why should I come to work for your company and once there why should I stay? And the fourth leg is Empowerment Processes – Creating an environment where the people who work in our business actually take action as if they were the owner.
A: I’ll start with one question that is always asked of me by business owners and sales managers. They all want to know what the single most important characteristic of top performing sales people are. The answer to that question is four letters and it’s GRIT. They get up earlier, they work later, they take on obstacles as if they are a personal challenge, they view the whole thing as a game to be won, there isn’t enough no’s in the world to stop them, and they will do whatever they need to do to be the victor.
Sales people should be asking me what the systems and processes are that will enable them to be a top performing sales person. The reason that that question is not asked is because the majority of people that come into the sales role think that the position is one of personal magnetism and that it is something that they are born with and they each have their own style. The reality is that there aren’t twenty-six hundred best ways to sell this product or service. So you need to figure out the best way and have systems and processes that you follow consistently across the board in your organization. One of the thing that we found in studying top 10% sales people is that they say the same thing the same way each time they encounter a certain situation and the beauty of it is they sound like it’s the first time they’ve ever said it.
A: There are three types of calls that a sales manager should be making in the field with their sales people. There’s a join call where they equally participate in the call. There’s a training call where the sales manager actually demonstrates and handles the call 100% on their own and then debrief about what went right and wrong. And there is a coaching call which is where the sales person does the call and the sales manager is silent. If you were to take these three calls I would tell you that the minimum criteria where a sales manager should be is a minimum of four hours per sales person each month.
The second thing I would tell the sales manager to do to help the sales people are something that I call Role Practices. Role Practice is where we take three sales people and we have them wear three different hats, they wear a prospect hat, a sales person hat, and they wear an observer hat. We let them wear each hat individually and then we have another debrief after each call. These three cycles typically take about 45 minutes to an hour and at the end of that hour the common thing we see is that the sales person was way better the third time than they were the first.
The third thing we tell the sales manager to do to help the sales people is building what we call a Success Guide. In the book we go through great detail but the essence of the success guide is there is hardly anything that goes on in a sales call that you couldn’t anticipate before you arrive and as a result there is no reason to not be better prepared. So a sales manager should work with their team and identify if they can find ten objections and then come up with the best ten responses to those ten objections. This will prepare your sales team with confidence without having to go and make things up on spot while on a call.
A: If you grabbed my Kindle you’d find hundreds of books in there and half of them on sales, sales management, and entrepreneurial topics. I have been one for 50 years and I am still sucking down that knowledge and learning along the way. Lifelong learning is one of the messages I would give the readers and the book Scaling Up is the number one book I’d recommend to everyone that is in business. Another thing I would tell you is that I have been involved with mentoring peer groups most of my life and they have a significant impact in my life. I would tell any entrepreneur that if they don’t have a coach they should find one who will show them the way, helping them with resources, and hold them accountable. There are resources all around us and I don’t understand why so few people are making use of them.
Preview Hyper Sales Growth with Jack Daly himself
Buy Hyper Sales Growth by Jack Daly
Visit JackDaly.net to learn more about Jack, his book, newsletter, and coaching
Follow Jack Daly on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail
High Profit Selling by Mark Hunter
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Relevant advice and tips:
7 Reasons Why Your Sales Skills Suck
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>Who is Mike Michalowicz and what you can learn from him: Mike Michalowicz launched his first company when he was 24 years old. After selling it in 2002, he foundedRead More
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]]>Mike Michalowicz launched his first company when he was 24 years old. After selling it in 2002, he founded PG Lewis & Associates, which he sold in 2006. He now works as a writer, speaker, and consultant through Provendous Group. He helped found the company, which is a profit sharing venture group, and currently serves as the CEO.
Mike is more than happy to share his success with other aspiring entrepreneurs. His books are full of advice, and his blog is loaded with helpful articles. Here are his top 5 pieces of advice for new business owners.
Get rich quick schemes are a fool’s dream. You can build a large and successful business. But it will probably take 10 to 15 years. If you go into a new project expecting instant wealth, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. When you don’t reach your goals, you’ll likely become discouraged and may give up on your dreams too soon. Setting realistic goals is the most important thing you can do for your new company.
If it was common place to become a billionaire by opening your own business, everybody would be doing it. It isn’t uncommon for people to open a new business planning on astronomically large financial returns. Realistically, just managing a business that keeps its doors open is a huge success. Don’t expect to make millions by doing it.
You also need to step back and watch for long term results. Any new venture is going to have setbacks. Keep reminding yourself that big success takes time and perseverance. It also takes a little luck much of the time. As long as you see forward progress towards your goals, be content with the pace at which things are moving. The only really bad sign is if your company remains stagnant for a long period of time.
Just because nobody else has the exact same idea as you doesn’t mean that you won’t face competition. Any available alternative to using your product or service is competition for your business. This includes the possibility that people choose to do nothing.
It isn’t enough to convince people that there isn’t anything like your product on the market. A truly superior product almost always costs more- you need to convince your customer base that the extra features of your product are worth the extra money it costs. People might recognize that you have the best product on the market, but they don’t need anything that does what your product does. You need to convince them that they do.
Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of putting their entire lives on hold as they focus on getting their business off the ground. If you don’t take care of yourself, however, your business will suffer. Everybody needs time off to relax, de-stress, and remember why they do what they do. A little time away from your company can serve to remind you how much you love it and send you back to work with a renewed enthusiasm.
Nobody can fire on all cylinders 100% of the time. As you get more stressed, you will become harder to work with and for, affecting your employees. As you get more tired, you will start to miss little details that just slip right past you in the rush. If you run yourself too hard, your health will start to suffer. In order to take care of your business, you need to take care of yourself.
Startup companies succeed in attracting employees away from established corporations by having a worthy goal for people to rally around. A dedicated team of people focused on the same outcome is a very powerful force. But if you attract different people with different messages, you aren’t going to have a unified objective. It’s okay to tailor your pitch to each party a little, but the core message has to remain the same.
This is also true in marketing. There are countless outlets for you to use to raise brand awareness. Different outlets lend themselves to different messages and you’re going to want to refine your message to reach your target audience with each marketing campaign. Newspaper ads, for instance, as far more likely to be seen by an older audience, so you’ll want to present yourself slightly differently than you would on a social media site with a young following. But you company image has to be consistent across all these platforms. If people don’t know who you actually are and what you do, they aren’t going to become customers.
The Internet is not known as the Information Highway for nothing. One tiny leak can spread across the globe in seconds. For this reason, it is very important that you are always upfront about everything. It is almost certain that anything you try to cover up will become public knowledge. People will forgive and forget a mistake that you own up to relatively quickly. But a cover up that gets exposed in a juicy scandal will hang over your company for years. Your reputation may never recover from such a blow.
Preview The Pumpkin Plan with Mike Michalowicz himself
Buy The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz on Amazon today
Preview The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur with Mike Michalowicz himself
Buy The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz on Amazon today
Preview Profit First with Mike Michalowicz himself
Buy Profit First by Mike Michalowicz on Amazon today
Visit MikeMichalowicz.com to learn more about Mike and his books
Follow Mike Michalowicz on Facebook and Twitter
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Conquering The Seven Summits of Sales according to Sue Ershler: Introduction In this episode Sue Ershler takes a deep dive into herRead More
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]]>In this episode Sue Ershler takes a deep dive into her book, Conquering The Seven Summits of Sales, where she examines what it takes to achieve sales success based on the techniques used to climb the highest mountains in the world.
In her book, Ershler shares her grueling journey climbing up the seven summits of Mount Everest and draws on her experiences to inspire sales professionals to achieve the highest performance. The goal of the book is to help you clearly define goals, build the right team, commit to a vision, manage your time effectively, and track your progress properly.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who possess a high amount of determination and are looking for a uniquely, inspirational guide to achieving the highest achievement in sales.
There are a couple other books out there but they are based on research and a lot of times on theory. This book is based on real life experiences and the strategies and skill sets that we learned from actually working in the corporate fortune 500 world.
I would start at the beginning and read all the way through. However at the end of each chapter I have a summary so you can quickly look at that if you need to.
We need to break down these big objectives (dreams) into manageable bit size pieces.
The three phased in the book are project phase, the prepare phase and the persevere phase. Within these three phases there are the seven summits that we need to conquer to achieve peak performance.
The project phase is about projecting our future and having a very clear vision of where we are going. The second phase is prepare and we know that no big mountain is scaled in a single climb. And no big business objectives are achieved in a single day either. The third phase is to persevere and probably the most difficult phase. All great achievements are realized by committing to the goal and working relentlessly to retain it.
The first chapter in the book is about committing to the summit. It is so critical that we have a vision and that we are committed to the vision. It’s important to have your vision written down because when we have our vision then it drives the right activity.
The second chapter is to travel light. This is so critical in business and in climbing. Today in this world we are all overloaded so this chapter is how to make sure that we keep our vision in front of us.
The third chapter is plan the route and this is about putting a plan together which is the who, what, when, where and how.
Chapter four is about guiding your customers to success and by doing that you will be successful.
In chapter five we talk about building your team. In this chapter we have two sections; one is building our internal team and the other is building the outside network. The top leaders and entrepreneurs are not experts in everything but they build an outside network where when they need to do something that they don’t know how to do they go in to their network and find the expert.
The sixth chapter is about executing the route. In this chapter we have a lot of graphs and information that we can use to execute our route. We need to study the route at all times because we have got to educate our customers.
The last chapter is about the persevere phase and its titled Stand on Top. We stress this a lot because we are only going to get one opportunity. We need to dream big and take our corporation to the next level.
“Surround yourself with people who won’t let you quit.” – Phil Ershler
I was a business corporate executive for over two decades and also a mountain climber for over two decades. I am an author, public speaker and most recently an entrepreneur.
While I was advancing my career and climbing the corporate ladder we were climbing the seven summits, the highest mountain on each one of the seven continents. It is amazing the skill sets that are parallel between climbing the sales ladder and also climbing the seven summits. The reason I wrote the book was because I wanted to help others. We achieved these objectives and now I like to help others reach success in their business and their personal life.
Seven Summits by Dick Bass
Buy Conquering The Seven Summits of Sales by Sue Ershler on Amazon today
Visit ReachingNewHeights.com to learn more about the book
Follow Susan Ershler on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: High Profit Selling by Mark Hunter | Hyper Sales Growth by Jack Daly | Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Reasons Why Your Sales Skills Suck
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Hyper Sales Growth according to Jack Daly: Introduction In this episode Jack Daly gives a deep dive of his book, Hyper SalesRead More
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]]>In this episode Jack Daly gives a deep dive of his book, Hyper Sales Growth where he shares his street-proven secrets to achieving rapid sales growth and profitability.
In his book, Daly walks you through his step-by-step process showing you how to build a winning culture in your business, effectively manage salespeople, and maximize the speed of sales growth. The goal of this book is to create the best sales organizations in the industry with unprecedented growth and a lot of very happy customers.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who need help taking a sales organization to the next level by helping employees sell more effectively and profitably.
What makes this book unique is it covers how to create a winning culture, how to build and grow a sales force, and how to sell. If you want to grow your business Hyper Sales Growth is the book for you.
If you are a sales person you can jump to the 3rd section in the book which is all about sales. If you are a business owner or an entrepreneur you should start from the very beginning. If you are a sales manager you should read the 2nd and 3rd part of the book.
If you are a CEO, Entrepreneur or owner I would tell you that the biggest takeaway is to understand you have the job of getting the vision right, putting key people in key spots, and then spending the lion share of their time in building a winning culture.
The big takeaway from a sales manager’s standpoint is to spend a whole heck of a lot less time in selling and rather spend your time in building your sales force in quantity and quality.
The biggest takeaway for sales is the playbook I present in the book. There isn’t a sports team out there that would have any shot at winning their game without a playbook and without being prepared and yet the majority of sales people are without a system and a process.
The first section of the book is about culture. I tell every business owners and entrepreneur that if you get the culture right everything else that goes on in your company will be a lot easier but if you don’t get the culture right than everything is hard. Culture for me is creating an environment were people who work in the company don’t get up begrudgingly about going to work but rather get up excited about work. As a business owner and entrepreneur, if you can create this environment, you will have a competitive and sustainable advantage. The majority of companies out there have a culture by default rather than a culture by design. The four key ingredients to building a culture are recognition systems, communication systems, personal and professional development processes, and empowerment processes.
The second part of the book covers sales management. I believe that a sales manager’s job is not to grow sales; it’s to grow sales people in quantity and quality. If you grow sales people in quantity and quality they in turn will grow your sales. This section is the playbook that a successful sales manager should use in scaling their sales force in quantity and quality. It’s about minimum standards, tracking performance, getting rid of the non-performers and recruiting the best sales people that are out in the marketing place.
The third section of the book is sales and that is winning new customers, growing the ones you have, and differentiating yourself from the competition. We need to figure out the system in process that will give you the greatest competitive edge. In this section we discuss backward thinking which is all about putting goals in writing, having a system of measurement, a system of accountability and identifying the key activities that you need to do each day before you go home in order to be affective. I also discuss the importance of having your head on right because 50% or more of success at sales is a head case. And lastly I talk about proactive pipeline management which is all about taking prospects and converting them in to customers and then converting them from customers in to clients. And we do this by virtue of a touch system.
The next section of the book we discuss building an affective touch system. It takes nine touches before the prospect even knows you exist as a sales person. Most people quit at five or less and if your touches are all about you, your computer, product or service, you will blow it because people do not want to be sold. So we need to design our touch system with a variety of different ways we touch someone. Once we have decided the mechanisms with which we are going to touch our prospects, customers and clients, then we need to decide the frequency with which we are going to do that. From there we teach how to create perceived value. In the book we discuss not only the need to create perceived value but also how to go about creating that perceived value.
“If you get the culture right everything else that goes on in your firm will be easy.” – Jack Daly
I am a serial entrepreneur. I started selling at the age of seven, owned my market and charged twice the price of everyone I competed with. At age 12 I built my first company, age 13 I had five employees and that’s when it came to me that I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up which was be an entrepreneur. I built six companies in to national firms, sold two to wall street and all were fast growing and highly profitable. For the last 20 years I have been teaching companies and people in sales how to higher grow their business.
For years I have been asked when I was going to write a book and I just never got around to it due to time. I finally decided to sit down and write it with the great help of my publisher.
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Buy Hyper Sales Growth by Jack Daly
Visit JackDaly.net to learn more about Jack, his book, newsletter, and coaching
Follow Jack Daly on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail | High Profit Selling by Mark Hunter | Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Reasons Why Your Sales Skills Suck
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Profit First according to Mike Michalowicz: Introduction In this episode Mike Michalowicz joins us for a third time to share his latestRead More
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]]>In this episode Mike Michalowicz joins us for a third time to share his latest book, Profit First. Michalowicz challenged the formula for business when it comes to profitability.
In his book, Michalowicz shows you the correct formula for success as opposed to the original from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles of GAAP. He proposes a new formula about selling as much as you can, extract your profit from your business first and then pay your expenses with the remainder. His approach changes the entire paradigm.
This book is perfect for all entrepreneurs who have based their businesses profitability on the formula of sales minus expenses equals profit. By taking the advice from this book, there will be less money for expenses, your behavior will change and you will find ways to get the same things done with less money.
Every book I have read to this point has talked about Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) which is the formula that businesses base their profitability on. I challenge this formula and say it is totally flawed because profit is the leftover or after thought and it’s the worst formula for the way our minds work. I propose a new formula about selling as much as you can, extract your profit from your business first and then pay your expenses with the remainder. This changes the entire paradigm.
This is a beginning to end book. You start at the beginning and there are action steps at the end of each chapter.
Hands down it is flipping the formula of sales minus expenses equals profit or sales – expenses = profit. This formula does not work and hurts your business. I want people to take home the new formula of sales minus profit equals expenses or sales – profit = expenses. By taking your profit first there will be less money for expenses, your behavior will change and you will find ways to get the same things done with less money.
In the book I go over the four principles of Profit First. I found that in the fitness, health or diet industry there are four core principles and these four principles translate into a healthy business as well.
The first principle is about the intake of fewer calories. The diets and extreme workouts don’t work because they aren’t sustainable. The one way dietitians found very successful is simply by changing the size of the plates at your house. By getting smaller plates you now get to leverage your habits and that little change has a huge impact. In our business we have to realize that we have one massive plate called the checking account. All of our money goes in there and all our bills get paid out of this one account. The strategic step we need to make is to have multiple small plates which will reduce the size of that account for expenses, spread the money out into small plates and by doing this you see that less is available and you consume less for expenses.
The second step I leaned was to eat your vegetables first. In the health industry they found that most people eat their food simultaneously and most of the time that means the vegetables get pushed aside and never eaten. If we simple eat your vegetables first you’ll get the nutrients and vitamins from it and take in fewer calories. In business we do the same thing. When money comes in our account the very first thing we should do is spread it out to different plates and then the leftover should be used to pay expenses. By doing this you’ll have less money for expenses and you will be more likely to spend less on expenses.
The third step is to remove temptation. In the health industry they say that if you like soda, the best thing to do is not have any in your house. In business when we have our profit reserved the first step is to take that profit, transfer it to a second bank and now with the profit removed you are less likely to borrow or steal from yourself. By doing this you will feel more pressure to cut your expenses and make sure they fit in with the amount of money that is left over.
The final step that is taught in the health industry is our eating frequency. Most people eat too infrequently and the optimal amount is five small meals a day instead of three big ones. In business we need to establish a rhythm of going through the process of paying bills about twice a month. If you do this you see money come in piling up as income and then you allocate and pay your bills.
“Take your profit first always.” – Mike Michalowcz
I am an author targeted toward small business books and how to grow them to be successful and competitive in market. I challenge all the beliefs that are out there about growing a business and study other businesses to find the current formula for success.
After selling my second company I thought I knew the formula to success and became full of myself. I decided to become an angel investor, took my own money and started 10 companies and threw money at these businesses believing that the only thing that mattered was my involvement. This ended up being a train wreck and caused me to lose basically every penny I put in it. The day I lost my last penny became a defining moment for me and the realization that what I thought was the formula to success was in fact wrong. I thought that profit was an event and I became to realize that profit is not an event, it’s a habit.
The Starfish and The Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom
Buy Profit First by Mike Michalowicz on Amazon today
Visit MikeMichalowicz.com to learn more about Mike and his books
Follow Mike Michalowicz on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Show Me The Money by Alan Barrell | High Profit Selling by Mark Hunter | Hyper Sales Growth by Jack Daly
Relevant advice and tips: Top Financial Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Creating A New Business
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Pumpkin Plan according to Mike Michalowicz: Introduction In this episode Mike Michalowicz takes a deep dive into his bestselling book, TheRead More
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]]>In this episode Mike Michalowicz takes a deep dive into his bestselling book, The Pumpkin Plan where he helps you implement a unique strategy for growing your business.
In his book, Michalowicz utilizes the techniques that farmers use to grow colossal pumpkins. His theory is that pumpkin farming provides some similarities in growing a successful business and he provides you all of the steps to do so.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs and business owners who are struggling to grow their business and have too many tasks on their plate. Michalowicz gives you the steps to focus on that one thing you do well and becoming a master at it so you can experience colossal growth.
I am a big believer in the stories, at the end of the day to remember 200 to 300 pages worth of stuff is impossible. In my books I wanted to paint pictures in the readers mind so instead of that one sentence, they can walk away with that one vision.
You will need to read from beginning to end.
Less is more. If you want to grow your business stop trying to do more things, the natural tendency. If you want to grow your business find that one thing to focus on and become a master at it.
The essence of The Pumpkin Plan is five significant steps.
The first step is called Seed Selection. In the pumpkin industry there are two types of pumpkin farmers, the ordinary farmer and the colossal famers. Ordinary farmers pick ordinary and cheap seeds while colossal farmers are focused on quality seeds. Colossal farmers become highly selective of their seeds and spend hours investigating individual seeds looking for indications of strength.
Many entrepreneurs are after the cheap and easy seed but the colossal entrepreneurs pick colossal seeds. There are three major components in a colossal business, firstly it has to exploit the uniqueness of the entrepreneur, secondly there has to be demand for it, and lastly is the component of systemization.
The second step I talk about is the sprout. If you are an ordinary farmer you look for any sprout. Colossal pumpkin farmers focus on strong sprouts. If you want to grow a colossal business you have to focus on the strong elements of it. The one thing I really emphasis on is being selective of your clients.
The third step I talk about is the watering process. Ordinary pumpkin farmers use a saturation strategy while a colossal farmer uses a quenching strategy. It’s at this stage that the colossal pumpkin can grow ten times faster than the ordinary pumpkin. For a Colossal Business using the pumpkin plan I recommend the strategy of quenching. Once you identify your best customers that you want to clone, your next step is to find out where they congregate and start contributing to those environments. Now you become a contributor as opposed to someone just trying to take and this will change the relationship to a much more positive one.
The fourth significant step is what’s called Rude Analysis. Ordinary farmers don’t even look at the root system but colossal farmers get tools and devices to look at the roots because it feeds the entire plant. The root system for a colossal business is the vendor network. After you find out who your best customers are you need to find out who else they work with, what other vendors they use and build relationships with them. The whole goal is to circulate with the vendor network that is serving your best clients.
The final step is the pruning process. Colossal farmers don’t prune so much as they do what is called killing and as little pumpkins come up on the vine they will kill them immediately. Every time a little pumpkin is allowed to grow on a vine it is stealing nutrients from the colossal pumpkin. As applied to business colossal entrepreneurs will focus on their best clients and turn away all the other opportunities. You grow by saying no and colossal entrepreneurs get this. They have to focus on what’s best and the only way to do that is to say no to everything else.
“He’s a very handsome young man.” – Mikes Mom
I am an author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, The Pumpkin Plan and Profit First. I write books to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses. I challenge all the beliefs that are around because I believe most of our beliefs are hurting our businesses and propose new ways to do it.
I started studying colossal pumpkin farmers and I realized that they basically follow the same process as ordinary pumpkin farmers do but change a few elements. Just by changing 5% or 10% of the growing process the pumpkin responds with explosive growth. I figured that if you can do this natural, why not do it with businesses and I put it to the test.
Influence by Robert Cialdini
Buy The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz on Amazon today
Visit MikeMichalowicz.com to learn more about Mike and his books
Follow Mike Michalowicz on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: How To Get Unstuck: 25 Ways to Get Your Business Growing Again by Barry Moltz | Zero To One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters | Vision To Reality by Honoree Corder
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Important Things That Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know About Starting a New Business | 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Business Failure
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of The Pumpkin Plan with Mike Michalowicz appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur according to Mike Michalowicz: Introduction In this episode Mike Michalowicz shares his book, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur whereRead More
The post A Preview of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur with Mike Michalowicz appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>In this episode Mike Michalowicz shares his book, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur where he gives you the business tools to get ready for building a business and the kick in the behind to get started.
In his book, Michalowicz provides his perception on what entrepreneurship is and how you can navigate starting and building a business when you have no resources. The difference between this book and others like it is Michalowicz connects entrepreneurship to the bathroom experience when we find a way to survive on a very small amount of toilet paper.
This book is perfect for the aspiring entrepreneur who needs the tools to startup when they don’t have money and for the established entrepreneur in need of realigning their business.
I think it’s the analogy I use. I have to argue that the content that I talk about has been addressed by others in different ways so for a book to be fresh it just has to be a new spin. In Toilet Paper Entrepreneur I connected entrepreneurship to the bathroom experience. If you are every stuck in the bathroom with three sheets of toilet paper we find a way to survive it on just three sheets. It’s all about leveraging the fact that what you have is enough.
All the books I write build on the prior concept so this isn’t a jump in jump out, it’s a read through and at the end of every chapter I give specific actionable steps.
Resources are perhaps your biggest asset. When we have resources then the path we want to take becomes the doable path, conversely when you have no resources the obvious may not be doable and therefore it forces you to think of alternatives. And that’s where innovation comes from, when you can’t follow the obvious you have to break that rules.
I broke Toilet Paper Entrepreneur down into three different segments which are belief, focus and action.
The first part of the book is about the mental game of entrepreneurship, a big part that is not normally talked about. A lot of different resources talk about the strategies of entrepreneurship and they definitely apply but the big question first is to make sure your mind is behind it. The first chapter is titled Natures Calling and what I mean by this title is simply what you feel naturally compelled to do. A lot of people know there passion but I am taking one step further in this chapter and talking about what your purpose is. Passion is something you love to do and purpose is the reason behind why you are doing what you are doing.
The second chapter I call A Little Piece and Quiet in your mind and what I talk about in this chapter is the power of beliefs. Beliefs can either be a wall or channel. We are all wired in our minds to prove ourselves right. If you say you can’t get something done, it’s in your best mental interest to not get it done. And if you say to yourself that you will get it done, you will find a way to get it done. Our beliefs can be channeling where they can move us towards an accomplishment or they can be a wall. When it comes to entrepreneurship we have to investigate what the internal conversation is going on in our heads and then convert it into a channel. A channel will get us to our vision; a wall will prevent us from getting there.
The third chapter I talk about the fire in your belly which is the Why. When you know what your purpose is in your business and how it connects with you, you will know why you are doing it and that keeps driving you forward. I totally believe that the foundational component of entrepreneurship that so many people miss is the mental game.
In the next couple of chapters I talk about getting down to the actual execution of your ideas. One strategy that I talk about and strongly suggest is a strategy called tacking. Tacking comes from an analogy/strategy used by sailors. Tacking is where you identify the place you’re going but how you get there might not be straight on. It is about avoiding the obstacles’, leveraging yourself and redirecting your steps but ultimately you will get to your destination.
The final section of Toilet Paper Entrepreneur is the Action section. One of the biggest actions that entrepreneurs can take is to have the discipline of saying no. There are numerous stories and strategies that I share in this section pertaining to this issue. I talk about how to burn the boats in your business so that there is no plan B, it’s all about plan A, and you execute it until it works.
I wrap up with talking about money and equity which is an extremely important component. I talk about how to grow a business when you don’t have money and those resources. I show you how to extract some money when you don’t have traditional financing in place.
I believe The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur gives an aspiring entrepreneur all the tools to get ready and the big kick in the ass to get started. And I think for established entrepreneurs it realigns them with where they are and with their relationship of their business.
“Successful businesses don’t get richer quick, they get rich right.” – Mike Michalowcz
I am an author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, The Pumpkin Plan and Profit First. Prior to becoming an author I was a fulltime entrepreneur growing a couple companies and today the forefront of my activities is writing books and talking about them.
I wanted to challenge all the academic reads that were out there. I believe there are a lot of great content books but most of the books I was reading about business you have to bore your way through it. And so I decided to write my perception of what entrepreneurship is and how you can navigate starting and building a business when you have no resources.
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Buy The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz on Amazon today
Visit ToiletPaperEntrepreneur.com to learn about the book and download the first chapters
Visit MikeMichalowicz.com to learn more about Mike and all of his books
Follow Mike Michalowicz on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by Mike Michalowicz | Profit First: A Simple System to Transform Any Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz | The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs by Kevin D. Johnson
Relevant advice and tips: 7 Unique Styles Of Entrepreneurs | 5 Personal Qualities That Make Up a Lifestyle Entrepreneur
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur with Mike Michalowicz appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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