You can start learning immediately after you start reading a book, but if you don’t take notes and start with implementation of what you already learned very often you can forget it.

That’s the case with everything. You can read a blog post from which you learn something, but if you don’t take immediately actions, you can simply forget the post or find it in the collection of hundreds or thousands blog post for future review. And time goes on. You don’t make anything from learned, or simply the learning is not there in your brain.

You continue to learn new things, and again, what you’ve learned also ends in garbage with all different staff that you learned, and simply forgotten.

Here are 5 simple steps that you can use if you want your learning skills and what you’ve already learned to be one of your’s biggest competitive weapons.

#1 Let’s Your Learning Be Part of Your Goals

This not means that you don’t need some other skills or some other knowledge than what your personal and business goals want. But, this means that you always need to try starting with something that is most important for you. That’s your goals.

What you learned will be something that will help you in better or quicker accomplishment of your business goals.

#2 Have a Notebook and Take Notes While You Learning

Is it simple? Yes, you need a notebook or simply use Evernote and make a certain notebook where you will take notes about everything that you’ve learned today.

If you learn something from your favorite newspaper, or blog that you read everyday, or reading the book, or watching the TV or everything else from your everyday life, you need to take a note about that if you think that it is worth something.

#3 Translate Each Note Into Action Steps

Why you need notes, or why you learned something if you don’t make something with that knowledge?

On a daily basis, translate each notes that you take into the action steps that you need to take.

#4 Implement Action Steps

When you have action steps it will be the easiest part to implement them. Simply follow your action steps from the previous step, and you are on the right way to improve your business on the everyday level.

#5 Is There Something More That You Can Learn?

Each of your’s action steps can lead to something new that you can learn.

Always ask this question, and answer in your notebook, then repeat the cycle. This is a never-ending process.

1. Research

You as an entrepreneur will always research something. You’l be collecting some type of informations about everything inside or outside your business.

The research can be about your internal processes, market, competition, products and services, customers… Each of these researches will give you valuable information for the decision-making process in your business.

2. Analyze

The collected data from previous step will not be valuable if they are not analyzed. That mean to be stored, sorted and evaluated in terms of relevance and significance for your business.

Business success in 7 steps

3. Conclude

Any research should automatically lead to some kind of conclusion. What is something that can be extracted as a conclusion from analyzed data? Everything else will be based on that conclusions. The decision, strategy or plan that you’l be made, will be largely based on those conclusions.

4. Plan

The conclusion you must transform in the form of a strategy and plan that will support the implementation of the strategy.

5. Apply

The plan is made to be implemented, rather than standing on the shelves. Once you finish your plan, don’t procrastinate, start with the implementation.

6. Measure

It is not good to start something and not to know whether it is right or wrong. Because of that here is the step about measurement, which will tell you whether everything is as you planned.

7. Improve

Measurement and the research will give you some conclusions about what is right and what is wrong. Everything that is wrong you must improve it, to be right. Everything that is right you’l need to keep it as right or improve it to be even better.Of course, the process doesn’t end here, but continues from the beginning – the first step.

This is the cycle, not the process that has a starting and ending point. That’s the essence of successful businesses and the entrepreneurs who manage that businesses.

I do not believe in that. Commitment to achieving goals is an important factor in the success of an entrepreneur. However, I do not think that the goal will be achieved if I set a goal to sell one billion dollars as a small startup business in one year, and I commit to that goal to achieve.

For example, the goal to earn 100,000 $ is more achievable than one billion in the same year.

On What Depend Goals?

There are many factors and elements in the business world which have influence and regulate entrepreneurial goals. However, in this section I will try briefly to present few of them.

1. Entrepreneur

Business Goals – Low, But Achievable, Rather Than High Unachievable

Since goals  are set by an entrepreneur, it is normal that it will affect them. On the other hand, an entrepreneur as a small business owner is the central point around which everything else is going, and it is normal to start with wishes  of the entrepreneur and after that to continue adapting with other factors to have really achievable goals that will ensure business growth.

2. Industry

Except entrepreneur here is an industry in which the business operates. The goals cannot  be significantly higher than the industry average.

3. Market

Every business operates in a certain market. The market has some quantity limits. The growth of the market is defined by its growth factors. We cannot expect to meet goals that are on a high rate above market capacity.

4. Quality

The quality of the product and/or service that we offer will affect the goals that we set. We may want to achieve something, but if our quality is without potential of achievement of our dreams, the story ends here.

5. Resources

Resources are another factor affecting the achievement of our goals. Whether it is financial, material, human or informational resources they will affect on our goals and their achievement.

Objectivity

Therefore, the first step in ensuring proper development of our business is to be objective and that objectiveness to be involved in setting up our business goals. All above mentioned factors should be taken into account (and not only they, but all that in a given situation may affect our business).

I have seen goals for implementation of a new software that are unrealistic and now almost a year late in implementation. The major factors about that situation are the intellectual capacity of an organizational system, the influence of bureaucracy, inadequate management of projects and inadequate planning and forecasting the future. So, you should not restrict to only the above five factors because a different situation requires consideration of different factors.

5 Secrets That Customers Will Not Tell You

I think that there are not entrepreneurs who will not like to know what the customers for their business think about them. However, that thinking in most of the cases is their own secret that will be shared with persons with which they want to share. If that thoughts are negative that secret can spread like a virus between their friends, then their friends of friends…

There will be always some secrets that they will try to keep for themselves. Your job as an entrepreneur is always to try to find ways how to get those secrets from them and use it in your everyday improvement activities.

You can use different techniques for acquisition of knowledge about that secrets, but most commonly used and the most practical way is simply asking them about their opinions. On the other hand, there is your sales team, which is in daily touch with your buyers and simply can ask a question or observe their nonverbal behaviors, which can tell us much about their secrets.

There is some basic rule: If you don’t ask they will not tell you.

Here are some of the basic five secrets that customers will not tell you on their own will:

1. What they didn’t like in your business?

If you don’t ask them they will not tell you what they didn’t like in your business. Different buyers have different things that like or not like (Read more in Business Optimization for Customers).

Train your sales staff to use their nonverbal behavior to find signs of dissatisfaction and simply to ask them about what they didn’t like in your company.

Use that information for properly improvements to make that type of customers more satisfied from doing business with you.

2. Why they enjoy to make business with you?

If they enjoy doing business with you, they will come back and repeat the buying from you. However, as time will go on, their needs will change and your company must be adjusted to newly created needs.

On the other side, if in your company is something very enjoyable for them you can emphasize that in all your marketing campaigns. Another thing is that when you know in what they enjoy you can improve that elements to deliver even more enjoyment.

Because of that ask them about what create the biggest enjoyment for them in business with you. Use that information to make even more business with the current buyers and in the same time to obtain more customers.

3. Why they leave you?

Some buyers can be dissatisfied about some aspects and continue to make business with you. However, some will leave you, and go to the competition.

You must take efforts to stop that trend of leaving you. However, to start reacting to that trend, you must know why they leave you. You can find information about this on several ways:

• Social media platforms
• Forums
• Places where they can leave complaints (blog, website, stores, sales team, meetings…)
• …

Use that information to improve your company. Wherever you can answer on that complaints, answer with a promise that you will fix in exact period of time.

4. What else they wish from your business?

There will always be something extra that they will want from your company. This information is one of the most important information that every entrepreneur wants to have and use it.

Simply ask your most important buyers what else they want from your company, or you can use surveys to make more analysis in this field.

5. How much they are willing to pay?

Pricing is one important element for every entrepreneur. You, as an entrepreneur must calculate with prices in such a way that it will satisfy both sides – business and buyers.

It is a small probability that they will tell you how much they are willing to pay. Because of that you must ask and follow their behavior to collect data about this type of their secrets.

With this information on your hand, you can adjust your pricing strategies that can bring more sales for your company.

Business Optimization

Is there unique one type of customers for a business? It is impossible. Every business has different customers or buyers. There are no businesses in which all will be the same, each behavior, need and desires will be the same…

It is normal for entrepreneurs to try to satisfy all different customers for their business. Is it possible? Big businesses have big resources to make this as a possible? But what about small businesses? Do they have the resources for such ventures? They may not have resources, but they have flexibility and shifty entrepreneurs who are so far away from the spiral of large bureaucratic companies!

In the following part of this post are given some ideas on how to combat this phenomenon and how we can be able to satisfy many different persons with different needs. I call this as an optimization for consumers.

1. Segment Constantly

Good customer segmentation which is constantly monitored and updated will give you an excellent picture of the existing differences in your customers. These differences will require different, specific and personalized offers. Optimize your offer to respond to their needs.

2. RFM Formula

RFM formula is an acronym from the initial letters:

• Recency – Time frame between orders?
• Frequency – How many orders they make?
• Monetary Value – What is the value of their orders expressed in money?

Using this tool you will be able to know which customers are more important and which need more attention. This will enable you to optimize your business.

3. Portfolio Approach

Portfolio approach to manage customers simply divide them into four quadrants based on the potential (future) and current (present) value of a customer. With this tool, you will know very which quadrant is most important and how to react and to optimize your business for all quadrants. In some of the next post I will explain more this approach.

4. Understanding Real Needs

Nobody is your customer only because it wants to be. Everyone has some problem that they try to solve through your business. One of the reasons why businesses fail is inadequate understanding of their needs.

If you have enough understanding of your customers’ needs, you can be able to optimize your business.

More details on how to understand the needs you can find in the 10 Steps to Better Understand Customers Needs.

5. Simply Ask What They Want!

Sometimes the simplest way to optimization is to ask your customers about:

• Are they satisfied?
• What make them more satisfied?
• How can you improve your offer according to their needs?

Questions may be in the form of a survey, or simply ask them after each sale. You can use your business blog or website to ask this type of questions.

6. Social Networks

Many, if not all of your potential and current customers are on one, two or more social networks where they share different experiences, problems and needs inside their networks. Be there, and follow what’s happening and where you can give advice or help give it to them. Here you can find their needs, their different experiences, desires… All of that is valuable for your optimization.

These are some tools you can use to optimize your business. However, it is not the final list. You can use everything that can make your business better optimized. Know everything is up to your creativity.

Business goals must be achieved, and they are not a subject that can be set it and forget it. But, how can be increased efficiency in achieving personal and business goals of an entrepreneur? The answer is a commitment to achieve those goals.

What are the Goals?

The goals are simply something that should be achieved within a certain period of time in the future. They are composed from:

• Something that should be achieved. For example, the goal is increasing sales.
• Period of time in which it must be achieved. For example, the goal is increasing sales in the next year.
• Measurable indicator that can tell us whether or not it is achieved. For example, the goal is 20% increasing in sales in the next year.

Business Growth if we Achieve the Goals

Entrepreneurial Commitment for Achieving the Business Goals

The most important thing about achievement is an entrepreneurial commitment. Imagine a goal of an entrepreneur where he/she is not obligated to achieve. Does this have a logic?

If an entrepreneur is not obligated to achieve the goals then will their employees will be obligated to achieve it? I do not believe that employees will commit themselves to achievement in such a situation.

Therefore, here I want to present the five steps that you as an entrepreneur will need to perform if you want to commitment towards achieving:

1. Make sure that they are achievable.

The biggest enemy of achieving the goals is setting up unrealistic business goals. For example, if you set the goal to increase sales by 500%, although growth of the industry is lower than 10% it is sure that 500% would be unrealistic.

If you notice that some goal cannot be achieved, simply adjust it in the line of reality. For example, use 15% increasing in sales instead of 500%. The goal with 15% would be much more realistic, and certainly it will be as an imperative for you and your business to achieve it because it is above-average in the industry.

2. Use specific sentences in the goals.

Imagine the goal from our example above: increasing sales in the future. For how much we will need to increase the sales? In which period of time we will need to increase the sales? This is a really confusing and undetermined goal. If you do not know what to achieve and when to achieve probably you will not even try to achieve it.

3. Write the goals on the paper.

There are different scientific researches that has proven that if you put something on paper commitment to that something is much greater. In his book Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini gives an example from Korean war in which the Chinese soldiers in the camps where he held prisoners (soldiers) were looking for written statements that communism is better than the US system to write on the paper. Thus a long time they were committed to his own statement in which basically they did not believe it.

If the goals are written on paper they will be in a category with a more commitment than the goals that remain only in our  head.

4. Determine the activities that must be accomplished.

Knowing the activities that must be implemented to achieve the goals in advance will increase the level of commitment to the goal. Therefore, once you have the goal on paper, list the activities.

5. Assign responsible for each activity.

At the end of each activity assign responsibility for implementations. In such a way, the commitment will be transferred on the employees, and in the same time will assure achievement.

If you follow these steps in setting and achieving your business goals, the likelihood of achieving the goal will be much higher. I wish you a good luck!

I am now in the cosmetic store of my wife, and together we are looking in the street full of water and peoples that try to hide from the excessive rain. In the same time, my wife said terrible day, and I said romantic day. It is the same day, looked from the same position and presented from two different persons on two different ways.

It is a big difference in meaning of this two description – terrible and romantic. In this rainy day, I see romance between couples that love each other, but my wife saw a terrible day from his business perspective, because there are not customers in the store.

We can change how we see the things around us!

It’s because our brain makes a picture about everything that we can see around us. That picture is only our unique picture. We really see the same things but the picture in our brains was different.

When I explain her my picture in my brain it immediately creates a smile of her face. Sometimes we tend to see things only from one viewpoint and because of that we feel a suffer. But, if we have positive people around us, we can change our pictures and chase the suffering from our face. Here are several things that come to my mind about this:

1. We tend to see things in negative manner.

As an entrepreneur you will probably manage more or less employees. There will be negativity in them about some proposals. Your job will be to explain and make that same thing to look same for each employee.

2. Different peoples has a different picture in their mind about the same thing.

You must know that different employees will see same things differently. Here is not about negativity but more about differentiation in the ideas that can be useful. As I talk about different pictures in our brains, there are different ideas in each of that pictures. Because of that it is useful for entrepreneurs to look at each of that brilliant ideas and incorporate them in the subject of matter.

3. We need to be more positive.

If we are more positive, we will feel much better, and that will energize us to perform more and more. It is not only about us, our energy and positive thoughts will energize also the people around us and our working environment. In such a place we can expect more collaboration, more productivity and more quality of work done.

4. We need to share our positive pictures with the people around us.

If you have  a better picture in your mind than it is better to share it with your colleagues. Why is your positivity if you didn’t share and improve your working environment? As I succeed to create a smile on the face of my wife in the environment that is not a perfect, why not to try to help our friends, colleagues and employees to feel much better in the situation when they are feeling terrible.

It is more about how we can see things around us. Sometimes we can see better picture, and sometimes our environment can see better pictures. However, if we share that better picture with each other, we can see a very beautiful world around us, world that we create.

More work doesn't mean more done

As a 13th rule in the 50 Business Productivity Rules is that more working hours doesn’t mean more productivity. Is this rule true and why, if it is true?

I’ve seen different persons working in the same working places with different results and different time needed to complete the same job. It is normal. But, why is this the case?

Before some period of time, I have talked with an entrepreneur that told me how his employees after 8 hour working time hurry to go home. I asked him can he make a difference in the speed and quality of work done between different employees. His answer was that difference exist and different employees give a different performance in their working behavior. This is normal. He cannot expect that each employee will need the same accomplishment time. Instead of that, he must find what are the reasons for this difference, and to try to fix it.

After some analysis about this issue, I come to the following possible answer about business productivity. The answer depends on 4 most important factors that have influence on the business productivity.

1. Different Capacity

Different persons, different teams and different organization have a different performing capacity. This capacity will make some persons quickly to finish their job with the more quality compared with others. We cannot expect every person to have the same capacity for doing right things in a right way.

2. Different Passion

Persons can be passionate about something if they are exciting, have enthusiastic and compelling emotions and positive affinity about that something. If a person has a passion about his job, the work will be done quickly and with more quality. The passion is the beginning about everything around a person and their working habits. Because of that entrepreneurs before decide about selecting people as an employee must try to recognize about what that persons are passionate.

3. Enjoyment

If I enjoy in the tasks that I must to do, I will do that tasks in my best. Some persons will enjoy in the work, but others will work without enjoyment and only because of salary. The productivity will be based on the level of enjoyment, and because of that persons without enjoyment will need more working hours to finish the job.

4. Inspiration

Different inspiration has a different impact on accomplishment. If I’m not inspired to give the best from myself in performing my daily job tasks, I cannot expect that quality of the results will be at a desired level. Some peoples will be inspired from money, some from ideals, but something that is important for entrepreneurs is that they must to try to recognize employees different sources of inspiration.

Why This Concern?

First, any business problem that can be seen as a simple, it is not. This means that problems are complex, and we should consider their solution in many different aspects.

For example, let’s take a few business problems:

• Sales decline.
• Collection system defect.
• Delaying in performing duties.

When we look at these problems we can tell that they are problems that for an average business can be a normal everyday case. They seem simple, but the simplest problem is a collection system defect because we need only a technical person to solve it.

Business Problems - Three Aspects

Delaying in duties performing by employees as a problem can look also simple, because we can punish the employees that are not responsible for their job. However, the problem is not only the employee, the source of the problem can be also:

• Selection system
• Management system
• Training system.

For example, we as entrepreneurs select the wrong employees for our business. Management system doesn’t give us quality performance results. Training of new employees don’t bring quality results for our business. As you can see we can view the problem from different aspects.

Notice that in the business world there is no simple problem, because we can see only the surface of the real problems, and not deep roots of our business model or overall business system.

Concerns regarding this issue appears to me because we always strive to see the problems with technical eyes, or simply as a technical person, which means that in such a way we are blind to see deep root of the problem. Therefore, as a possible solution can be to consider them through three different aspects.

Three Aspects of Business Problems

Three most important aspects for an approach to problem solving are:

• Technical aspect
• Human aspect and
• Conceptual aspect..

These aspects are similar to the three types of managerial skills.

Technical aspect

Technical aspects of the approach to solving business problems is only a defect or currently short-term removing the existence of the defect.

This aspect is fine, but we cannot  stop with finding real solution. We must continue with the next aspect.

Human aspect

Businesses are complex dynamic systems, which are composed of biological and technical subsystems. We cannot consider the business problems without considering the problems through a human aspect. Is the source of the problem human factor? If it is, how can be solved?

Conceptual aspect

This aspect together with the human is the basis for a good solution, a solution that will lead to a situation where there will not appear again such a problem. Conceptual point of view sees the whole, or looks in different affecting of the business as a whole system.

These three elements are all important but at the same time one of them is more or less important. I mean, that without each of these three elements, the success of the business or entrepreneur will not be as great as if all three elements are implemented and integrated.

Three Elements to Success

The main task of an entrepreneur is to build and implement all three elements if he/she want to become superstar on the market.

Attention

I put it as a beginning in this cycle because it is easiest to achieve, and it is a starting point for each entrepreneur that wants to build other two elements.

The goal of attention is to attract potential customers. It can be achieved for free with some type of viral marketing campaign or with paying for it by using different marketing tools.

When we talk about free attention it is more difficult to achieve it without other two elements. This is because without other two elements, we cannot expect that the people – potential customers will spread the word to their friends. If they don’t trust us, they will not recommend us to others. Because of that I think that this is the cycle composed with three elements that can bring success to the businesses.

Reputation

The second element is more difficult to acquire and in the same time more important element than the first one.

It is a simple mix of several things:

• Public Opinion. What is public opinion about us?
• Social Evaluation. How the community evaluates us?
• Identity Defined by Other People. What kind of identity we receive from other people?

According to this, it is some thinking of other persons. Because it is thinking of other persons, entrepreneurs didn’t have power of big influence in this sphere. But, also we cannot say that it is not impossible.

It is not impossible, because there are various media that have power of influence on the public opinion. So, if you design a campaign for that can quickly build a reputation, you can pay to that influential media to build good public opinion about you and your business that will increase your reputation.

Trust

The last element, but most important element in this cycle is trust. It is the only thing that could not be bought with money, but simply can be acquired. On this element, you cannot influence through different intermediaries as influential media.

It is that element which provides repetition of buying and long-term stability of the business. Therefore, the goal of an entrepreneur is to build trust among prospects and current customers.

It is something, which will increase the reputation of any business and will attract the attention of new potential customers. Everything will be much easier when an entrepreneur succeeds in building trust. So this is something that should be a strategic  goal for an entrepreneur.

Interesting correlation of this element with economy or as an economy driver give us Stephen M.R. Covey in his bestselling book The Speed of Trust:

When trust goes down, speed will also go down and cost will go up. When trust goes up, speed will also go up and costs will go down.

It is simple, when we don’t have it, we cannot  expect quickly to attract attention and to build a reputation.
In the same time, the costs will be bigger because we will invest big amounts of money in attention and building reputation.

This is the cycle, if people trusted us, we will quickly attract more customers that will spread the word about our business. This word will help us to attract more attention and reputation that will be supported by strong trust.

Let’s consider one example.

With the help of a marketing, we can attracts attention, this is a short-term goal. The potential buyer which was attracted in a best case will become a buyer. If we succeed from the first time to build trust in their eyes, they will return and buy something again from our business and in best case will spread a word about our business. If we fail to incorporate that trust in their eye, we will need again to attract them with something different in the future. In the worst cases, he will simply go to another business that would attract them.

Lets continue with a same example but different scenario:

The potential buyer which attention was attracted will attempt to validate our business through our reputation. If he finds that we don’t have good business reputation, the story will end here and money that we spent to attract their attention is for nothing.