Michael Neely's Blog

Entrepreneurship • Freedom • Success

Business

Betting it all on “the economy?”

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“The Economy” Won’t Save You

First, it is because it’s not about “the economy,” it’s about “your economy.” If you are waiting for something to pick you up and whisk you away to your dream life, you will be waiting a long time. Taking personal responsibility for how your life and your finances turn out is the only way that you will come close to living the life you want. As Seth Godin put it  “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”

What If “The Economy” Isn’t As Strong As You Think It Is?

Have you heard the news about the economy? According to the mainstream media, total economic activity is going off the rails and demand is so high that the Fed may raise interest rates in December. So, retail is raging, home sales are off the charts, and auto sales are going through the roof. Here’s the problem. They aren’t. This thing that you could be relying on to make your financial dreams come true that the media calls “the economy” is limping along to the same pace it has for over eight years now.

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Massive Action- The Change Agent

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Massive action in action.
Massive action

Maybe massive action doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it means to me. Maybe you’re not closing more business than you’d like to. Maybe you’d like to double or triple your current income. Massive action is how you create massive change in your life. Massive action is the up early/work late, work/life-balance-be-damned, going-all-out activity that it takes to get a new business off the ground, and leaves friends, family, and co-workers confused.

I heard about this activity called massive action several years ago when I got involved in a sales organization in December 2006. I met some of their sales stars from California at a convention in my new home city of Atlanta, GA. I noticed that they were ALWAYS on the phone. The had chargers and a spare cell phone battery charging. Every chance they got they were promoting their businesses. They were kicking ass and making a lot of money! I was witnessing what some call “freakish” behavior they later identified as “massive action.”

I am a student of sales and several sales trainers. Two of my favorite sales trainers are Jordan Belfort and Grant Cardone. They are both big fans of massive action.

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. ” ― William James

Jordan Belfort Likes Massive Action

Massive ActionJordan Belfort (love him or hate him) is the controversial Wolf of Wall Street. Maybe you’ve read his book or seen the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. All judgments aside, he built his investment firm Stratton Oakmont into a multi-million dollar penny stock firm. His company took a couple of companies public, and he claims to have raised around $2 billion dollars for several different ventures. He grew his company by training his sales team on his sales techniques called Straight Line Persuasion. I bought Jordan’s course and it has helped me immensely. Not only does he demand that his students use the material ethically, his course also helped me better define the structure of the sales process in my mind. Using these techniques didn’t improve my sales results overnight, but this training did open my eyes to new opportunities and reveal how other business people took advantage of me in the past.

In his Straight Line Persuasion training, he speaks about what he did after his firm closed. He rebounded by using massive action, knocking on doors until his knuckles bled. Knocking on doors may not be your favorite marketing tool, but you get the idea. He rebuilt a multi-million dollar income by using massive action.

Grant Cardone Loves Massive Action

Enough people referred me to Grant Cardone that I finally listened and bought his books and audiobooks. Grant Cardone also loves massive action. When he was 25, he was broke and without purpose in life. At 57, he has an estimated net worth of $100 Million. Massive action is how he accomplished this. If you doubt me, check out his Twitter feed for yourself. He writes about it in Chapter 13 of his book Sell or Be Sold. He writes about it again in Chapter 4 of his book The 10x Rule. If you want to find out what he thinks, buy the audios for these two books. My favorite of his works is Chapter 4 in The 10x Rule. He states that the only way to build an exceptional life is to commit to massive action in the direction in which you want to go. Would you take the advice of someone who went from broke to $100 million?

“When it comes to action, go big, go bold, and then go more!” -Grant Cardone

I Like Massive Action

Some would say that I fell on hard times or had a spot of bad luck a few years ago.  I would have called it the same thing. The truth of the matter is that I wasn’t working hard enough towards creating the life I wanted. I wasted a lot of time and money in bars, listening to people who didn’t have a clue and thinking that waiting tables would provide me the income that I needed to achieve my goals. I was thinking like a victim, that everyone was out to hurt me, and that I deserved better without having to work my ass off for it. I was wrong and the reality of the marketplace was letting me know without mistake that I wasn’t working hard enough.

I put forth massive action when I needed to, like when I was homeless and little storm called Katrina was turning into a hurricane over my head in North Palm Beach, FL. I worked like there was no tomorrow to get out of that bind. Someone let me ride the storm out in their van. I would have survived without sleeping in the van, but it reminds me that I wasn’t working hard enough in the direction I wanted to go.

“An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.” – Lao Tzu

What Massive Action Means to Me Now

Over the last few years, I have had some great ideas and made money with those ideas. Lately, I discovered what was wrong with a few of those ideas and changed directions. I didn’t apply massive action to my ideas, build action plans and commit to the massive action necessary to turn them into viable businesses. Massive action allows me to stay nimble and change directions with marketing or the direction my business is going. Massive action keeps me focused on the goal, achieve higher levels of success, and build my businesses.

Massive Action Will Work For You Too

Massive action isn’t reserved for the successful, but only the successful commit to these levels of action. Why? Massive action is what makes people and businesses successful. Massive Action is how you defeat obscurity. The truth of the secrets of success is that there are no secrets. After being ethical and bringing your product or service to the market, acting in a massive action level is the only way to get a new business off the ground and into profitability. The true difference between the successful and the unsuccessful is the areas of life into which they are putting forward extraordinary effort. Get into massive action, or you will not meet your goals and achieve your dreams.

Desire Is Where Success Starts

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Desire is where success beginsDesire is where business success starts. Success will not come to you just because you are awesome. There are people who say they desire success, but they don’t want success badly enough to work hard towards their vision of success. They think that their friends will not approve, and these people are probably right. Their friends probably wouldn’t approve. They can say they want success all they want. The truth is that if you aren’t working towards your success every minute that you have available, you will never create the momentum necessary to break through the seemingly insurmountable resistance it takes to create the life you want.

“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.” –Robert Kiyosaki

Your Vision Can Create Desire

Let’s say that I see a bright red beautiful sports car driving down the road one day. I decide that I want a sports car just like the one I saw. Wanting a new car isn’t being covetous of my “neighbor’s” sports car. I want the sense of accomplishment and pride in ownership of this beautiful car like the one I saw, but not that exact car. I cut out pictures of this sports car and place them all around my house and my office. I write out how I am going to buy this car, how I will earn the money and fulfill this desire. Maybe I see someone who has a lifestyle based on freedom. He works when he wants to, with whom he wants to work, makes more money than he can spend, and works from home. Maybe that is something I want to create in my life. I start finding pictures of things that remind me of this lifestyle, write out a plan and begin taking steps to fulfill this destiny. Your vision can create your desire to create positive change.

Immersion In the Outcome Increases Desire

When I was a little boy, I got into car design for a little while. My favorite car in the ninth grade was a 1969 Corvette convertible. I also liked looking at pictures of the flying cars that we would certainly have by the year 2000. I enjoyed designing cars based on what the future would resemble. I would lie in the floor and draw what cars would look like when I got older. This activity was a lot of fun for me. Fast forward 40 years. Now, I get excited when I think about my vision for my future. I develop goals as stepping-stones to my vision, and it creates desire. I see myself enjoying living on the 30th floor (or higher) in my condominium, enjoying my coffee before I get started with my business day, and I get excited. When I see myself driving down the road in my favorite car for that day, I get excited. You get the point. No one gets excited about goals because meeting goals is the work that fulfills the vision for your future. Your vision gets you excited, keeps you working late at night and getting up early, and working on creating your future. Your vision creates your desire to achieve what you want.

Desire and Vision Inspire Goals and Action

Desire by itself is not enough. If you desire to change your life, but don’t put action behind it, then you are fantasizing about the results you could have and settling for less that you can be. First, you must want something different or want something to change. Then you imagine the outcome of what you want and how it can benefit you and all others involved in the outcome. Then, you set the goals or the action steps to get from where you are now to the desired outcome. It all begins with a desire to improve one aspect of your life. Without a desire to change or improve, no one can help you.

Obscurity Is Your Enemy

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Obscurity
The face of obscurity

Do you want business success? The biggest thing holding you back is obscurity. If you want to drive the nice cars and take vacations whenever you and your family want, people have to know who you are. This post is another Grant Cardone inspired blog. His works have played a major role in my awakening as an entrepreneur and business owner. A great article he wrote for Entrepreneur magazine is titled “Businesses Die in Obscurity.” I own four of his audio books, and he mentions that “Obscurity is Your Enemy” frequently. Grant was on a recent Blab I attended, and he went on to clear this up. “No one can do business with you if they don’t know who you are.” When Grant said that, it cleared up any debate for me.

The Basis of All Sales Activity

Fighting obscurity is the basis for all sales and marketing activities. Marketing is about attracting attention through a variety of different channels, such as social media, press releases, banner ads, or television commercials. All of marketing is to fight not being known. Let’s say that we have built the greatest product in the world. It solves hunger, creates world peace, provides prosperity for everyone, allows real-time communication with distant galactic civilizations, and comes in three attractive colors. But you decide to let “word-of-mouth advertising” handle it for you. You tell a few people, wait for word to spread like wildfire, and then wait for everyone to beat a path to your door. And you wait. Nothing happens, and you and your product die in obscurity. Even if you have the best product or service (or app) since sliced bread, if no one else knows about you and your business, you can fail. You must market to fight not being known.

Even an Annoying Ad Can Be Positive

Back in the late 1990’s, there was an extremely successful television show called Seinfeld starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld. I was working as a waiter in Birmingham, AL at a place called The Mill Eatery, Bakery, and Brewery, which was also very successful. I began working there in 1996, and their ad agency put together a radio ad that played on the success of Seinfeld and danced on the edges of copyright infringement. The ad was annoying, but it had some great hooks in it. Everyone hated that ad. But everyone knew The Mill and where it was. It was one of the most successful restaurants in the Southside area of Birmingham, and that ad played a major role in the success of the restaurant. When Seinfeld ended its run in 1998, the ad stopped. The restaurant rode on its popularity for a few more years until the market shifted geographically. The Mill went out of business in the early 2000’s, but it was one of those legendary businesses that people still talk about to this day. It was that annoying ad that kept The Mill on everyone’s mind for years and drove a lot of The Mill’s popularity for years.

Obscurity is Failure

I have built some great businesses, but I have always let my fears hold me back from going forward with any great marketing. I always had a fear that the people with college degrees were better than I was. All my friends told me over and over again that you had to have a degree to succeed, and I finally bought into their story. Without a degree, I did not know the limits that they face and prove to be a tough adversary in business. Instead, I caved into my fear that my friends were right, and that I would never be good enough to be successful in business. This fear kept me from marketing some great businesses that I had built. Since no one knew about them, no one did business with me. Therefore, I failed. Since I remained in obscurity, I did no business, I made no money, and I failed in business.

Fight Obscurity

Don’t let this happen to you. Succeed in business by making sure that other people know who you are and how you can help your customers and clients. Make fighting obscurity the chief task you work on every day. Make it the primary reason that you are in business to meet new prospects, find new opportunities, make sure that someone new knows what you do every day and build your business. Don’t do it a little. Fight obscurity every chance you get!

Invest in Your Success

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Investment in financial markets as concept
Investment

Why invest in your success? Do you invest more time and money in continuing to be average, or are you working towards becoming the best possible person you can be? If you are not happy with the direction your life is going in, and you are willing to change your life, I would recommend watching how you invest your time and money. Two of the most meaningful resources we have in life are time and money. If you want to improve your life, you are going to have to change your actions, and invest time and money in the direction in which you want to go.

Results Are Feedback

Results are the feedback we get from whether we are living the life we want, or whether life is living us. Have you made promises that you can’t or aren’t keeping? Are you over-promising and under-delivering?  Are your goals realistic? Are you putting enough effort into achieving your goals or does more effort go into making excuses of why you aren’t where you want to be? If you are not happy with the results you are getting, it is time to start making some changes. The first task is to see where you are now. The second step is to begin defining a new direction for your life. The third is to take action in that direction.

Track Your Money

If you want to see if you are leading your priorities or if your priorities are leading you, track where you invest your money. Are you investing too much in weekends with friends and not enough in your career? A few years ago, I was guilty of neglecting my career and wishing I was doing something else with my life. I was always able to justify the beer I was drinking and the cigarettes I was smoking back then, but when it came time to advance a little money towards improving my life, there was none left. I started tracking my money to discover what my true financial priorities were and still track my money to this day.

Track Your Time

The best lesson I ever learned about time is that time is more important than money. You can always make the money back if you lose it, but you can never make more time. Once it is lost, it is gone forever. Several years ago, I started tracking my time to see what I was doing with my day. I was working hard, but I was working hard to make someone else’s dreams come true instead of my own. I found myself watching more TV than reading books and developing new skills. After I realized how much time I was wasting, I immediately changed my habits and changed my course in life.

 Invest Your Time in Developing New Skills

There are vital skills that you need to succeed in business. One of those skills is to communicate effectively. There are many ways to develop better communication skills, like learning to write and speak better. If we speak more influentially, then we can start influencing people in a positive way. If we start influencing people in a more positive way, we can sell people on ideas that are mutually beneficial. These ideas could be a raise if you work for someone else, or closing a sale and earning a commission on that sale.

Invest Money in New Education

These were once big excuses for me. I knew I could do better. My friends were all puzzled about why I didn’t get a “good job” (whatever that means).

  • “I can’t go back to college.”
  • “I don’t have a college degree.”
  • “I can’t get a good job.”

Maybe you have some real limits placed on you by your environment. Maybe you do not have thousands of dollars to invest in your traditional education. That actually gives you an advantage. A traditional education prepares you to work for someone else. One day, I thought of a book I wanted that could change my life after I read it. I had heard of this site called Amazon.com and that they sold books, but I never tried purchasing books from them. I found that book and discovered that I could invest less than $20 and have it delivered to my door. I bought that book and read it. Which lead to another book. And then another. Now I have three bookshelves in my personal library and my life has improved markedly.

A Different Result

When you begin this process of change, it will seem awkward at first. If you keep tracking your time and your money, you can then decide where your current priorities are and if you want to change them. Then you will create a life by your own design and not that circumstances created for you.

What If Your Critics Are Wrong?

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Handling critics
Handling critics

We all have critics. The world is full of critics. Some of them are well-meaning critics like your mother helping you choose a direction in life. She wants you to avoid some of the trials and troubles that she experienced in her life. Other critics are not well-meaning, like the co-worker who shoots down everything you do or say at work because he feels threatened by your ideas. Some critics are malicious by design. This critic is the boss who belittles you constantly to make sure you don’t do something better with you life like quit working for him and start working for yourself.

No matter what the situation, what if they are wrong? What if their well-meaning words are to justify their position and not in your best interests? If people always listened to their critics, we would likely not have airplanes, radio, or computers today, just to name a few accomplishments that faced enormous criticism.

In my experience, well-meaning advice and constructive criticism typically come from friends and family. These are people who may seem to be trying to help, but in many ways don’t. Just like you, they have fears too. Since we all view the world through the colored lens of our experiences, they think that you have the same fears that they do, or else you would not be friends. Since they think you have the same fears, they offer the same solutions that they do. Perhaps they watch the jobless picture that some news channels paint and suggest you hold on to a dead-end job when you should be evaluating your options.

Another critic may happen at the workplace. The co-worker who is competing with you for additional work, a raise, or some other special consideration at work criticizes you misleadingly. Or trying to hide their inadequacies by making sure that you don’t get noticed. We’ve all experienced this form of criticism and sometimes we’ve listened to it. This example is some of the most limiting criticism out there. Not only is it false, but it is limiting you from your true potential by design. If you take this bad advice into consideration, think about what the other person has to gain by sharing this criticism with you. Sometimes, it’s a need to be right. Sometimes, it is competitive in nature.

Then there is the worst type of criticism. A great example was when I was working in a corporate (but well-paying, as restaurants go) restaurant in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. The managers there were some of the most malicious managers I have ever encountered. The scheduling manager knew I had some other projects like writing, web design, and what you see here on this site. My projects were taking away from time I should be devoting to the restaurant, but not go into overtime, in his eyes. He was constantly changing my schedule and placing new demands on my time to keep me “in my place.” I decided to move to Atlanta to meet my new mentor in business. He came up to me one day and said that we needed to talk about my schedule in a slight fury. I said I that I was moving to Atlanta that week. He said “Damn!” and stormed off as he realized that another employee was slipping from his grasp. This type of critics is all around us. These can also be friends who see your achievements as a psychological threat to their inadequacies. They can also be people who want to control you to make sure that you are “manageable.” Do yourself a favor. Get away and stay away from these critics.

What if these critics are wrong? What if you keep listening to them? You don’t grow. You don’t change for the better. You don’t improve. Question your critics. Find out if they know something that you don’t or have some experience that you should be learning. Ask your critics questions and then decide for yourself if what they prescribe is best for you.

There Is No Try

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No_Try_2

Someone asked me yesterday “Are you going to try to get some work done today?”

“No, I AM going to get some work done today,” I answered back. I almost took this careless question as an insult. Then, I considered the source of the question as someone who does not pay close attention to their language as I like to think I do.

Some people might think it was a “smart ass” thing to say, but it wasn’t. I did my best to eliminate the word “try” from my vocabulary a few years ago. Why? “Try” is a bullshit word. “Try” is defeatist in the definition. Saying that you will “try” to do something, is like saying “I’ll start something, but I’ve given myself a method not to complete it.” The word “try” has a built-in failure mechanism when you tell yourself that you will “try” to complete a task.

Yoda had it right in The Empire Strikes Back. Granted, Yoda was not a real person, but he was a real character in a real movie with a real idea. In the movie, Luke Skywalker ‘s X-wing fighter was stuck in a swamp on a planet with different terrain than X-wing fighters were intended to land. They had to get the fighter out of the swamp if Luke is to continue his journey. Yoda suggested using The Force to get the X-wing fighter out of the swamp. Before Yoda said his famous quote, he said something else first. He said to Luke “Always with you, what cannot be done. You must unlearn what you have learned.” Then Luke said, “Alright I’ll give it a try.” Then came Yoda’s famously scripted “No! ‘Try’ not. Do or do not. There is no ‘try!'”

Webster defines try as a verb as “to make an attempt to do something.” “In vain” seems to be implied when I hear someone saying that they are going to try to accomplish some task or objective. “I will try, but I know I won’t succeed” seems to be the total message. The reason we should take very careful thought about our language is clear. Every time you say something, you hear that statement, and it reinforces that thought. It’s like a never-ending spiral. That’s why you have to watch your language carefully. If you say a limiting or erroneous statement, your ears hear it and takes that message back to the brain, reinforcing it is correct. If you start something but give yourself a way out to finish it repeatedly, you form a pattern. Then since you have subconsciously trained yourself in that pattern, your brain will look for and find the way out instead of completing the project. I experienced this for years until I broke the cycle, or at least became aware of it.

Do yourself a favor and delete the “T-word” from your vocabulary. In reality, no one “tries” anything that they complete.

No Problem- Two Words Your Customers Should Never Hear From You

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No_Problem_2There are two words that your customers should never hear from you if you want to keep their business. Those words are “No” and “Problem.” Want to irritate your current customers faster? Use them right beside each other. Every time I hear “no problem” from someone on the phone, I automatically hang up and look for other places to spend my money to meet my needs. I didn’t get my clients by treating them badly, and I won’t keep my clients by telling them that they don’t matter.

The first reason is that is rude. It is impolite. It is disrespectful. The last people you want to disrespect are your customers unless you are a government employee. You can be rude to everyone you want if you choose to, and no one will care, and you will not be reprimanded.

I’ve written about this topic before. As long as I keep hearing it, it probably will not be the last time I write about it either. I have a great story about why this is careless on another blog site of mine.

When I hear “no problem” coming from a customer service or sales employee, the first thing I hear is “You didn’t bother or irritate me from what I was doing.” If I am your customer, spending money with your organization, and you are saying “Thank you for not bothering me,” you are telling me “You, my customer, don’t matter to me. I am enjoying your money, but I am not here to be bothered by you, my customer.” It also tells me that your priorities are not to take care of my concerns. Then what problem of mine are you solving, and can someone else handle my concerns and treat me politely?

The second thing I hear as a customer when someone says “No Problem” to me is that they can’t wait for me to leave. If I am a “problem” customer, I could see why they would say that. But if I just have a question that needs to be answered and I ask it politely, I would like to be treated politely too.

So do yourself a favor. Make sure that you aren’t saying “No problem” to your customers. Personally speaking, I will avoid business people who use this phrase. The worst thing you can do is find that you are losing customers because of these two careless words. Saying ‘no problem’ to your customers will create more problems for you. If you DO like using the phrase “no problem” to your customers, keep it up. Another more worthy business will love taking care of your customers.

Instead of “no problem,” try “my pleasure” instead. The purpose of a business is to create a customer. The purpose of a businessperson is to serve a customer need. To communicate that you are cheerfully serving your customers needs will keep their business and improve your relationship with your customer.

Business is a People Thing

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People
Source: iStockPhoto.com

People are everywhere, right?  Considering that my first small business successes came as buying and selling stocks, doing business face-to-face with people was something that took a while for me.  Now that technology is everywhere, you are still doing business with people on the other end of the Internet connection.

In October  1989, I was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy, and my life changed completely.  My entire business experience until then was investing in the stock market and a few other instruments profitably.  I had never done any interpersonal business yet.  It was technically, the first day of my business career.  I took a chunk of my savings ($3000)  and mailed it to a company that had published an ad in the Tuscaloosa News, and I was suddenly in business for myself, without any clue what I was doing.  The ad had specified that there was no selling involved and that I would make $100K per year!  I thought that this was perfect for me.  I had just gotten out of the military, I had limited “people” skills and apparently I didn’t need any!  Then, the 100K per year didn’t come. What did come in were many customer inquiries.  I now know them as leads, but back then, they were people who ALMOST bought my product.  The distributor support person on the phone said “You have plenty of leads now.  All you have to do is close them.”  Thus, became my first realization that business is a “people thing.”

My First Business Job

After I ended my first business learning experience in January 1990, I got a job as a manager-in-training for a (now-defunct) jewelry store chain.  It was here I learned that businesses need real customers and potential customers to walk through the door BEFORE I could make any money.  I was reasonably good and had a great teacher and mentor.  I managed a store in Meridian, Mississippi and a recession and mounting personal problems washed away my small successes.  I did retain the knowledge I had gained from managing someone else’s business before going off on my next adventure.   Sure, I knew what to do if someone came to town and wanted to buy a $3000 diamond solitaire (and it did happen a few times).  I didn’t know how to find these people and get them inside the store.  My hands were also tied by a strict marketing budget from our home office.  It’s no surprise that the company doesn’t exist today.

Technology Changed, But People Haven’t

Since then, the Internet has come along, and everything is different.  What used to cost thousands and thousands of dollars (as far as marketing and market research is concerned) now costs very little compared to the early 1990’s.  There are a lot of great technology tools to market with these days like social media and search engines, but people haven’t changed that much.  The Internet has given us tools with which to communicate more, but have you ever gotten in an argument with someone after “texting” because you couldn’t see the expression on their face or hear the tone of their voice?  Words alone on a screen are OK for communication, but it’s not the whole picture.  Technology is great for getting in front of the people you want to sell to, but closing that sale over the internet isn’t as great.  In order to sell effectively, you have to communicate that you care about their needs.  Technology can sometimes get in the way of communicating that you care about your prospect’s needs.

Although the way we communicate has changed, but we as organisms haven’t.  We still need to see the expressions on their face and the tone of their voice of our conversational counterpart to communicate effectively.

Technology Doesn’t Buy Things; People Buy Things

When you are tweaking the SEO on your web site, there is a tendency to think in numbers.  How much traffic? What’s the bounce rate and how can we improve it?  What is out search engine ranking on Google?  These are great questions to answer, but the object is still to have your web site noticed by someone who will buy from you.  A Google “spider” will not buy from you, but someone who visits your web site and says “Hey, that makes sense” will.  No one gets a job by posting a LinkedIn profile, but a job seeker can find someone with whom to have lunch, who can direct them to a better job.

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” -Peter F. Drucker

Since the overall purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, the use of technology in business should keep the end-user in mind.  The purpose of SEO (and other tech solutions) is to find and connect with a human on the other computer who can and will buy from your business.  Even with all the technology that we have today, business is still and always be a “people” thing.

 

Define “Your Business”

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Source: iStockPhoto.com
Source: iStockPhoto.com

I read a lot of business books compared to my co-workers and colleagues.  I recently read How to Make Millions With Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur’s Guide (1997) by Dan Kennedy.  The business examples were a little outdated, and there might be an edition that has more “information age” relevance, but the concepts behind the book are very sound.  I found one sentence that gave me a lot of “food for thought” about my business career as an entrepreneur.

“If someone else has control over your destiny, if someone else can change the economics of your business, alter our marketing rights, impede your creativity, sell the parent company, or otherwise unexpectedly interfere in your business, you don’t really have your own business.”

I don’t have any astounding successes, but I do have a lot of little successes that keep me going.  I had to think back to the days when I used to bet the farm and lose.  I had no idea of what an entrepreneur is and no idea of how to manage risk.

In my first “business”, I was a credit card distributor for a company out of St. Louis, Missouri. I followed their distributor marketing plan, never made a sale and went broke.

In my second “business,” I was a distributor for a personal care products company with a network marketing framework.  I was constantly reminded not to make any outrageous claims and then proof of income.  This was very easy because I didn’t have any income about which to boast (which should have been a red flag).

I got involved in becoming a professional waiter/bartender and someone at one of the first restaurants I worked in told me that I was in business for myself there.  Then I worked in a few restaurants in which the owner failed to execute or to market well.  I went broke because the restaurant owner didn’t know what he was doing.

In my third “business,” I finally built a “real business,” or so I thought.  My business partner thought he was my boss, and I thought he was my business partner.  There’s no need to wonder how this arrangement turned out.  I did not have control over my marketing or my financing of projects, which cost me dearly.

The last time I “bought into” a business, I started to learn this lesson’s importance.  I was following their marketing plan and wasn’t making any money.  I wasn’t going broke, but I wasn’t making any money.  I was becoming frustrated by the lack of results I had and by the rules of marketing that were more restrictions than guidelines.  I heard about social media, and how it was changing the face of marketing and I was trying a new lead generation technique with a web site I built.  Then I had to get the web site approved by their marketing department.  After a long list of changes and improvements, I got their permission to market the site for six months.

Then it came time to renew the company’s permission for my web site.  I didn’t make a single change to the web site.  Then, there came a long list of changes that I had to make to continue operating my web site.  I complied, made the changes and then resubmitted the site for review.  There came another long list of changes.  I complied and resubmitted the site for review.  Then another reviewing person wanted me to change the web site back to the way it was.  I sent an email to confirm the requests, and the answer was a vague “Do what we tell you to do or you can’t have the web site” type answer.  I quickly concluded that they didn’t want me to have the web site or control of my marketing.  I quickly got out of that business.

The moral of this story:  If your object is to create wealth, then “the best equity is exclusivity.”  You can get rich with distributorships, dealerships and franchises (buying into someone else’s business concept), but it is extremely difficult.  If they are financing your business, you are not the owner anymore; they are.  You are a manager.  If someone else controls the marketing rules for your business, you’re not the owner; you’re a sales rep.  It certainly is not be the worst place to be in the world, but at least you’ll know you aren’t the business owner anymore.  It also can impede your creativity and can limit your opportunities for growth as an entrepreneur to work someone else’s game plan.