How Do I Do What I Love To Do Without Quitting My High Paying Corporate Job

This peice is published here with the approval of Rizwan Azzeem it was initially published on Quora.http://www.quora.com/Should-one-quit-the-job-to-follow-what-he-wants-or-stick-to-the-job

When I was 19 years old I made the devastating decision of pursuing a good paying corporate job that would eventually lead me to thinking about suicide. 

At that time I was just starting out, I hadn't picked a college major, and I hadn't even thought about what my life would really be like 6 years in the future. 

Becoming A Slave To "Paying Bills Every Month"

The only thing on my mind was how to make money so I could pay bills. 

My family was going through tough times and I thought the best thing for me to do was to do what would make me the most money, fastest. 

6 years later - though I had a high paying job, I could now take care of my family, buy expensive gifts for them.

I could go out with my friends and spend money on dining in expensive places. I could hang out with girls taking them out on expensive dates, and buying them presents. 

I could wear expensive suits and my colleagues and my boss would look up to me for having impeccable taste. Heck my boss would ask me for fashion advice.

My family was proud of me for turning out SOO well. They would boast to their friends that I was so successful. I was the trophy that was missing in their cabinet. 

And now everything would be okay. 

...but on the inside I was dying. 

It was a suffocating feeling.... 

I felt like I was in some one's clutches and I could not get out. 

The worst thing was that I hadn't even been able to do my hobby... which made me feel worse. 

The only reason i did not pursue my hobby because it didn't pay well at that time... because I couldn't see that I would be able to make it pay. 

The Fallacy Of  A Career Path 

The career path with a good paying job is defined. 

You do your degree. 

You pass with great marks. 

You apply for interviews. 

And pretty soon you will get hired and start your career. 

The career path for your hobby isn't defined. 

If you do your degree, you still have to figure out what to do after. 

Then you have to find people who will be willing to pay for your hobby. 

Then you have to understand the business side of things. 

But on top of that you have to explain to everyone why you're doing what you're doing. 

How it will pay for your bills, and how you will still take care of everyone. 

It isn't the easiest thing in the world. And because it is hard - most people don't follow their hobby. 

I thought it would be hard, and that's why I didn't follow my passion. 

The Fallacy of Talent

Here's the funny thing though... when I started working in the corporate job I didn't know anything. 

Sure I'd done a degree, and gotten the right marks to get in... but from the work perspective... I didn't know anything. 

That's true whether you joined a multinational, a local conglomerate or just a small 10 person office. 

When you just start out in your line of work... you don't know jack. The multinational company knows this. 

So what do they do... they pay you to show up... at least for the first 2 years. 

In those 2 years they will train you to do the things that they needed you to do. 

You start working and you start learning. The more you work, the faster you learn, and the faster you learn the faster your progress in your job. 

To get you to a point where you can actually provide more value to the company than it cost to train you, and that it costs to pay you now. 

That's the fallacy of talent. You aren't talented at the corporate job that they are paying you - but because you show up and DO the work is why they are paying you. 

Let's say you love to paint... just to make this example simpler... but you can replace painting with whatever you truly love to do. 

What would happen if some one paid you to paint for 8 hours every day for the next 2 years?

But that's not all... what would happen if along the way that same person corrected your mistakes, taught you to hold the brush better, improve your strokes, and how to better mix paint. 

But then as your skill improved taught you to paint using Canvas, Oil and then all the other tricks and techniques for you to use. 

Do you think you would get better at it?

Chances are you would get significantly better at. You would probably get better at it faster than you would get better at doing your corporate job. 

So in two years of focusing 8 hours on your passion you would be where it would take 10 years to get in your corporate job. 

The lesson here is that you need to DO it to really LEARN it. You aren't talented to do your corporate job, but trained to do it. 

Similarly you won't be talented to DO your passion, you will need to TRAIN yourself to do it. 

Which brings me to the real question in the question... 

How Do I Do What I Love To Do Without Quitting My High Paying Corporate Job

So let's look at the burning question,

How do I do what I love to do and make money from it… but first how do you do what you love to do since

Before you can learn to run you need to learn to walk. The ‘learn to walk’ part in this analogy is you learning to DO what you're passionate about. 

The ‘learn to run’ part is you making money from your passion. We’ll talk about that in a minute but first let’s look at why you can’t quit your job. 

You can't quit your job because of two reasons 

1. You have bills to pay - and if you quit your job you will probably end up on the street evicted, because you didn't pay your bills.

2. Your skills in your passion aren't really sharp enough to support you. You still have to practice to get these up to speed. 

So before you quit your job and go all ‘Fight Club’ on your passion, let’s figure out how you can actually start doing your hobby at a higher level. 

So here’s what you do to start DOING what you love to do. 

1. Figure out what you love to do

Don't just say it - write it down. Often when we just say things, we'll sway from one to the other. You're different. You will write this down. 

2. Take one hour right after you've figured it out to actually DO it

If you love painting - stop reading, go paint for an hour, then come back and finish reading. 

This step is very necessary. It forces your mind to realize that you can actually do the things that you love to do. SO DO IT NOW. 

3. Figure out what your problem areas were

Chances are there were some things that you did today that you weren't very good at. You had a few hiccups. You didn't have the right kind of canvas, or the paints were dry, or you didn't have any place to actually paint. 

Write down all the problems that you encountered in doing your PASSION. Take 5 minutes to write all this down.

4. Setup your environment

Now that you know what keeps you from doing the things that you love to do – go out there and fix those things. Not to make them perfect, but good enough that you can start doing what you love to do. 

Get new paints if you have to. Dedicate a space in your house where you can do what you love to do. Find a space for this hobby, even if it is the corner of your room. 

Then dedicate this space to your hobby. Nothing else gets on top of this space, anything else around it gets throw away, or put in another corner. 

5. Schedule yourself in

Right now you’re in a place where you probably spend very little time on your hobby. We have to change that. 

Remember the corporate analogy we used above. That your employers pays you for the first two year just to show up and learn something… think of this as being the same thing.  

You’re employing yourself for the next two years just to learn your hobby. But since this is a hobby you can’t do this full time, and you won’t be paid in cash. You’re getting paid in your ‘skill growth’. 

However, since you are getting paid – you must show up on time every day and do the work. Or your pay will be exponentially deducted. 

What is exponential deduction?

Your skill will become worse with each day that you’re absent. Until you get to a point where you will lose this skill, and the passion for this hobby. 

Additionally, you will also lose other skills associated with doing this hobby. The longer you stay away the worse it gets. 

The upside is that this is also exponential growth. So the more you work on your hobby the better you will become… until over time you will become a master without even knowing this. 

That’s where you want to get to. You want to become a master at your hobby. 

And just like in the corporate job the biggest battle is showing up in the morning, dressed and ready to go – the same is the case with your hobby. You need to show up every day to paint and ready to go. 

So schedule yourself in – tell your friends to f*&k off when it’s time for your hobby, and then put your head down and work on it. 

But you’re still not getting paid for your hobby… 

That’s right. You won’t be paid for your hobby at least not in the beginning. Until you become better. But if this is something that you want to do then you must keep doing this. 

Once you’ve been doing this for 6 months you will become good enough – not great, but good enough to help other people. 

This is where you will start to make money. Before I tell you how to make money, let’s look at the true nature of work and money. 
What's the true nature of work?

The true nature of work is this; work is anything that you do for which someone else will pay you money. But it isn’t something that you do on your spare time. 

Work isn’t something that you do when you’re watching TV. Or when you’re hanging out at the beach. 

Sure there are people out there who will suggest that you ‘can’ do that… and show you pictures of them doing this… don’t get fooled by this. Those are just pictures of their one-off vacations where they did ‘some’ work. 

Most of the work is done in a work environment. It can be a studio if you’re love to paint, or a race track if you love to race cars. But work is done where it is most productive. 

Work is also long-term. It is not something that you decide to do for 3 months, then do something new. 

What that means is that you will keep working on your ‘hobby’ for the next 30, 40 or even 60 years… so if you skipped figuring out what you really love to do, now would be the time to do so. 

Work is also a lifelong pursuit. What this means is that you can’t think about your hobby, as I’ll work for 2 years and make tons of money and then go retire at the beach. This doesn’t work. This is the definition of ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes which rob you of true happiness and riches. 

If you want to retire at the beach, think about becoming a life guard instead, or a scuba diver. That way you can enjoy the beach all day. 

But the second part of work is getting paid. Which brings us to the next question

What’s the true nature of money?

Money is not a ‘thing’ that exists on it’s own. Money is just some paper printed with a bunch of number and a signature on it. It does not have any intrinsic value. 

Gold, and silver have intrinsic value. You can melt gold and use it in other forms. You can make jewelry out of it, or you can use it in microchips. 

But not money, money doesn’t have intrinsic value.  

Money is ONLY a convenient medium of exchange between two people. 

So what are the two people exchanging – their work products. 

You do some work and get paid for it. The other person does some work that you pay for. What have you exchanged? You’ve exchanged your work for his work… and if you go one step further… 

You’re exchanging your life to be able to do work. So effectively you’re trading your life every time you buy something. 

This is important because every time you ask someone to ‘pay’ for your hobby; you’re asking them to trade their life. If you understand this you will be able to make money a lot faster. 

But let’s look at  

How To Make Money From Your Hobby / Doing What You Love To Do

Here’s how you make money from your hobby doing what you love to do… but you can only do this if you’ve been doing your hobby for at least 6 months. 

Chances are if it is your hobby, you already have been doing this for 6 months, but if you’re just picking up a hobby – go practice it for 6 months first. 

The reason; so you will have gone through the tough times that most newbies go through. You will realize for yourself what works, and what doesn’t. You will know how to overcome obstacles and be able to speak to them. 

But let’s assume that you’ve been practicing your hobby for the last 6 months… this puts you in the 5% of people who actually have taken the time out to learn something. 

What this means is that 95% of people who want to do the things that you love to do, don’t know anything about how to do this. 

They don’t even know that they need to schedule their time, prepare a space, get ready to do it every day… 

Most people just think about ‘winging it’ when the pick up a new hobby. And without a detailed plan for them to learn this new hobby, get nowhere. Your job now is to help these people learn what you’ve learnt in the last 6 months. 

1.     Start by starting a YouTube, a blog, a Meetup group, or a podcast. Don’t worry; you’re not trying to the best out there, but the beginner helping other beginners. 

2.     Start creating one video, blog, event, or podcast each week. Don’t overthink this step. Your information and knowledge matters. Not the way it look, or sounds, or the way you look or sound. All those things you can fix later – for now you need to get going. 

3.     Keep doing your hobby, and teaching other people every new thing that you learn for the next 3 months. Don’t ask for money. Just help other people. If they ask you a question, answer it with sincerity. If they need help, help them. If they want to talk to you, talk to them. Be super, super helpful. 

4.     Ask them what their biggest frustration, problem; obstacle is to learning what you’re teaching them. Then solve this frustration. You might know how to solve this, or you might have to learn. Either way, figure it out and solve this problem. Now you’ve got their trust, you’ve demonstrated that you can help; you’re a friend, an ally. 

5.     Create a simple two page website and start collecting email addresses. This website is a landing page that tells them that you can solve their biggest problem in step 4, and then gives them the solution for free as a download for exchange for the email address. 

6.     This email list is your most important asset. You will use this to build a relationship with your prospects, and find out how you can help them out in the future. Additionally, now when you upload a new video etc, sent the list an email that you’ve put it up and send them a link to this video. Keep doing this until you get to 100 subscribers. 

7.     At 100, send out a survey asking them what are their top 3 frustration, and what the top 3 best results they are looking. Then create a coaching program for them that helps them achieve the result they want while avoiding the top 3 frustrations, ask them to pay $197 to be in this coaching program. 

8.     Most people won’t take the coaching program – maybe 1 or two will. Coach them, and then ask them for a testimonial. Use this testimonial the next time you launch the program. Repeat steps 6 - 8 every quarter for the next 12 months. Keep doing this. 

9.     The more you do this the better you will get, and the bigger you will become. But you have to do this. It will take you some time to get to 100 subscribers, but from there it will take you less time to get to 1,000 – then to 10,000. And before you know it you will be making more money from your hobby then you do from your job. 

10. Now it’s time to quit. But only after you’re making twice as much money from your hobby as you did from your job. Because your job is paying for the office you use, the electricity at work, the facilities, and still paying you. When you go out on your own you need to think about these things. 

So here’s what you do next. 

Pick up a piece of paper and write down the 3 things you’re most passionate about, your favorite hobbies. These are typically the things that you’re currently paying for.

Then figure out which one hobby excites you the most. This is the one that you’re going to focus on for now. Create a space for this hobby where you will work on it, and schedule it in your calendar.

Once you’ve done this click on the comment below and let me know what you decided to do, and what obstacles you currently face in doing this.

Common mistakes made by first time entrepreneurs

1. Failing to realize the importance of cash flow not just profit. You need to maintain a moving 10-13 weekly cash flow forecast to survive. Stay liquid with your cash and beware of tying it up because "cash flow is more important than your mother"
2. Failing to realize that the world was not starving waiting for you to open. i.e. "You still have to acquire your customer base, one way or another". Discounts, free trials, promotions are all needed to get a repeating and referring customer base.
3. Failing to realize that it is likely to take 18 months to 3 years to break-even on your brilliant idea, let alone make profit. i.e. So you need more capital than just enough to cover infrastructure costs. You also need working capital to fund the losses during this period until your idea is financially sustainable.
4. Failing to realize that successful corporate approaches are inappropriate for small business start-ups. i.e. You are in a fight for survival not just playing your part in a management committee decision making activities. A start-up is not just a small version of a corporate enterprise, it requires a completely different approach in development like business modelling not business plans, customer development not product development and entrepreneurial lean management not strategic/corporate management.
5. Failing to realize that real margins are not just buy for 1 and sell for 2 (100% mark-up on cost) but rather buy for 1 and sell for 10. i.e. You need greater profit margins than you originally think to cover all the costs required to fund a sustainable business.
6. Failing to realize that you need to be very good at everything not just be an expert in one field. i.e. You need to be the generalist rather than the specialist.
7. Failing to realize that you need to build a secure 'beachhead' in the market before striking out for the main prize. i.e. do everything (compromise) to get traction in the market first - however small.
8. Failing to realize that you are more likely to succeed creating an adequate product with brilliant marketing and distribution ... rather than the other way round.
9. Failing to promote benefits over features. i.e. customers buy what's beneficial to them and are blind to the exotic, outstanding and competitor-beating features that may have become your obsession.
10. .... and finally, failing to be lucky when it counted most.

Beach Head Strategy

As last year closed it's curtains so was my inspiration to write, had to catch myself by the arm. What i learnt in the past six months? that it is not enough to want to do something, as you will get tired along the way it is how and why you wish to do it that counts. Why are you starting a business, why are you changing your career. If you can't answer this objectively and break it down then it will be difficult to see it to the end, enough about me. The beach head approach is an essential tool in our every day life, it is applied in all our decisions unknowingly no doubt it can be equally applied in business to generate success as an entrepreneur.

Like beachhead strategies. The term comes from military strategy, meaning that as you invade enemy territory, you need to focus your strength and concentrate on winning a small border area (the beachhead) that becomes the stronghold from which you’ll advance into the rest of the territory.
And it’s good business. In business, particularly startups, the beachhead strategy is about focusing your resources on one key area, usually a smaller market segment or product category, and winning that market first, even dominating that market, before moving into larger markets.
Beachhead strategies are often critical for bootstrapping new businesses. And franchisor businesses should think of the beachhead strategy as making sure the initial locations are strong and successful and good models for future locations.
Sadly, people don’t always communicate beachhead strategies well. I often see what should be beachhead strategies looking instead like they are focusing too narrowly and missing the larger markets that the beachhead will lead to.
It’s ironic. In business pitches, for startups, the beachhead strategies tend to generate criticism from judges, experts, and other assorted experts for being too narrow, too focused. They want the big picture. But, on the other hand, the big picture, do-everything strategies will often be criticized for being unrealistically ambitious, and unrealistic.
The answer If you are doing a beachhead strategy, make sure that you include the follow-up idea of broadening your approach later on, after establishing yourself in that first core market.
— Late addition
Innovation is easy once you identify your beach head. It lets u create the product that not just meets your customers’ needs but also provides an extra feature and benefit, in the world today with lots of competition your business needs to stand out. It is not necessarily creating something new but augmenting and existing product or service making it better and more efficient, therefore it is more easy and to innovate than invent. For example whatsapp and viber came at a time when facebook and twitter already existed and had acquired a great market share but their services where customized and tailored to meet customer needs in a different ways viber had free calls and a host of other customized services.

Retaining your first ten customers

It is the Christmas season, and i plan to leave you with a little gift of mine. By showing you the reason why you are loosing clients and what to do to retain them and make a come back, whether you use and MVP or MDP this still applies because you need to sell the products, ok and MVP is Minimum Viable Product is a key lean start up concept popularized by Eric Ries. The idea is to validate learning with the least amount of effort. After all, why waste time building a product without first testing its worth. Minimum Desirable Product MDP,it is a subtle difference with big implications. An MDP will focus primarily on whether or not you are providing an insanely great product, experience and creating value for the end user.

No matter which product category you offer your intention is to pass a value to the customer while creating profit. Customers need to be acquired and some companies spend a ton of money on paid adverts, Samsung, LG etc. spend millions of dollars annually on paid adverts which in turn this helps increase sales, Small businesses can not afford thousands of dollars in adverts regularly or in large advertising campaigns, and when you do make that sacrifice you want to ensure you not just acquire new customers but retain them as well over a life time period. So here are two reasons why you probably are loosing clients lack of  follow up and ignoring the value of a customer.

Follow Up

This probably the most important way to get things done generally and it is no doubt when it applies to your business in particular, for those who have worked in the corporate world you understand after sending that email for the meeting you have to follow up with another email hours to the meeting and sometimes contact people to ensure maximum attendance.

The truth is people get caught up with other activities and  might forget about your engagement as in this current time 24 hours is proven to be small for firms, same applies with customers after acquiring your customer you will have to follow up with regular updates and advice about your products and other services so when and if there is a new product or service that you offer you have an already existing customer base, who can among many things spread the word nad act as source of advertisement.

Therefore following up regularly by applying various techniques to keep in contact with your customers and creating that communication line is very important, this build trust and can help analyse the life time value of your customer base, which will help you know what marketing techniques to apply which will create customer loyalty

Customer Value

 I can not stress to you how important every single customer is, both those that buy for a $1 and those that buy for a $1000 of course you might run a premium on the high end buyers but with the right, constructive and positive follow up the $1 buyer can become a premium buyer or offer referrals that could rake in revenue of thousand of dollars.

Derek Co founder and CEO of Next Step China in his interview with Andrew of Mixergy validates this point, letting his employees know the importance of taking care of both the first small client and the first big client in the same way. This is a practical technique easily applicable with guaranteed results.

As you work with your business in this Festive season when the demand from your customers are high, always put in mind that every single customer deserves the same care and follow up to bring in the next dollar and bolster customer loyalty, no business can survive solely on new customers every time,

Bootstrapping!! recipe for entrepreneur success

Just finished listening to Charles Plant Co -Founder and CEO of  Synamics, and wanted to share with you his formula and benefits of bootstrapping. This is a system that works and can work for you and your business, when applied properly.







I never loved the idea of been funded by a VC or Angel investor now there are tons of reasons i could give for that but that will be for another post. According to Charles research and from his personal experience has shown companies that bootstrap have more chances of success and often do well than companies that are backed with venture capital. This is clearly visible as most successful companies today succeeded through bootstrapping, from Microsoft, Dell, HP, Black Berry and even up to Google all great companies and all bootstrapped.

Below is the formula that works for you as you bootstrap


Line up credit ahead of time: Get your available credit card limits up before you start, so while you make a few mistakes you have a cushion in case things go side ways and you do not call it in after your initial capital is spent.

Find a mentor: Someone with experience, do not use your mother or your uncle who is a banker as a mentor, they have a tendency of saying everything is fine and being unrealistically optimistic. Do not find somebody who has a big business degree. Find some one in your industry who has been there done that, and knows the tricks and strategy that works

Pick the right business: Look for a business that is not capital intensive, find one that can pay you immediately, one that sells easily and is not capital intensive. Capital intensive businesses will certainly require some sort of funding so if you intend to bootstrap successfully you might want to avoid such businesses

You have decided you will do it, and found your business idea. Now it is time to find the pain, ask questions about what hurts, you do not want to have what you think is a solution but does not solve the exact critical problems of your market. While carrying out this research you can tell client you are finding a value preposition, it gives a chance to do it on your own dime rather than waste your own money.

Simple business plan nothing fancy: Straight forward business plan that guides your perspective. I discussed elaborately on this in one of my articles i posted recently "why conventional marketing strategies fail". Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Earn some consulting revenue: Having money while you are working on your business system can help you through the early process, especially if you are a family man. It must not be necessarily consulting but having a side income is important. To help you pay the bills.

Start building the product or a prototype: While you are finding the pain and what exactly your customers need it is essential that you have a prototype at this point, this can help with the research, if people can see a working product they will be more prone to helping you with the right information during the research phase.

Leverage relationships: All the little moments pile up, through recommendations and set you up for actual success while you grow. Bill Gates mum served at a board of a volunteer group along with with an IBM employee who told her IBM needed and operating system for their computers, Bill and co-founder Allen bought the first desktop operating system(DOS) for $50000 and sold it to IBM that is how Microsoft started, as a leverage of a relationship. Do not underestimate the need for networking and small connections.

Find the fox: Find  someone that will champion you and give you advise on running your business and help drive your business, a client that will demand efficient and innovative systems

Look for service opportunities: where ever there is a product, there is the chance that people will need a service. It will be easy to customize your service to the needs of an organisation during the early days, this will act both as a source of revenue and reference for future sales.

Find the priority of a problem and solve it, solving a problem that is prioritized improves the value of your service and gives you credibility as you forge ahead in your business.

Go for the low hanging fruit: Easy things you can get with minimum cost, one of the benefits of bootstrapping is smart thinking, breaking away form the conventional system of doing things.

Do not care about REVENUE: in your first sale do not care about revenue, i know it goes against all convention but your first sale is a referral to your second sale and gives credibility that your system actually works. It will improve your revenue and profit with future sales

Competition: the last but not the least is competition, this is what you and every other company has to deal with, by keeping cost and sales low during the bootstrapping phase helps to weather the un challenging competitors and they eventually fall off.

Other Aspects

keep cost variable and low fixed cost
Leverage Suppliers
Predictability, a successful business model is the secret source
Product
Reference Account
Right people
Exponential growth.

Why conventional marketing strategy fails

Most businesses in the 21st century all have one thing in common, way too much formality it is time to go ''ghetto''. While I am not saying you should disregard appropriate presentation of your business across different platforms, it is important that you communicate your content in a fun way that relates with your customers in a manner that builds trust and creates a relationship.

There are various ways through which you can achieve this, and there should be a balance between the two. You should however not be way to ghetto and too formal, it is more complex and difficult to use this non-conventional method to connect with your customers because this is not the standard method, and if done correctly it eases the tense communication lines between you and your clients. There are varied reasons why companies are going ghetto

Cost

start ups and small business have  lean capital and as such are required to adopt smart and simple ways to execute marketing strategy without actually breaking the bank, App sumo is a company started by former Facebook employee Noah Kaegan, their services among many include assisting small businesses with improving  growth and testing to validate if ideas have the potential to be commercialized. App sumo has developed a marketing system that is simple yet effective, no fancy newsletters and expensive adverts.After investing so much on fancy marketing approach in 2013 without success, App sumo evaluated its marketing strategy and reduced the emails sent out from 1000,000 in 2013 to 30,000 emails in 2014 while recording more success than the previous year, proving that smart and simple is the new complex. What most start-up must learn from this is that in a relaxed environment engagement between employees, management and customers is easy as there is no fear of making mistakes.

Complex

Leonardo Da Vinci always fostered the idea of simplicity in his famous quote :simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" asserting that creativity is not an arduous process from scratch but a smart combination of simple systems. most  start-ups and other small businesses spend an enormous time on complicated and complex business plans and marketing analyses before finally realizing it would be too difficult to implement everything if it is to be followed by the books, complex structures arise when we try to get everything right, every detail in place, one thing i noticed as an entrepreneur is that most theory has little applications in the actual environment, therefore it is not enough to use the most sophisticated marketing plan and getting it right but applying a simple strategy and adjusting to your actual results.

Trust

I know you might be thinking how can one build trust with fun, well that is exactly what trust is built on, you are more likely to discuss your problems to that your friend that makes you laugh than the robot guy who takes everything like news of the second world war just broke out, OK maybe you do not have such friends, my point exactly is customers are likely to recommend your product to others based not just on the quality but how they relate with your company and product, Do they feel at ease when relating with your product? Do they trust that you have an open accessible system they can get to? or are you another closed system that does not respond to feedback and leaves the customers in doubt, a simple and creative marketing approach breaks all these barriers and creates trust while putting a smile on your customer face,

Now you know not everyone actually wants to be too serious and uptight, try it out!! it is simple, smart and affordable above all you will have fun while doing what you love. Let me know of other ways you think organisations can implement simple processes.+

PS: Peace, One Love

How to Increase Business Growth

                                 How to Increase Business Growth

Increasing the growth of your business is vital for every start up and small business, since you want your business to be established, successful and satisfy your customers needs. Just as with growing everything including business there should be inputs into the process to fuel the growth, and growing your business does not require rocket science i am going to show some of the techniques i have used while working with small businesses. as a certified accountant, i mostly work for small organizations and growth is the one thing they all strive to achieve. "What you feed grows, and what you starve dies" Victoria Osteen, you have to know that for your business to grow you need to feed it with the appropriate resources, from personnel, to the quality of your products and the quality of your customer service, business growth requires

• Smart Timing
• Satisfying customers and other stakeholders
• Targeted Market
• Diversify

Smart Timing

   Every business needs to plan its timing for activities right. Smart timing is carrying out the businesses activities such as hiring personnel, marketing strategies, expanding the business in an efficient and effective manner, knowing when and how to execute derived objectives. This is one of the main methods to enhance and augment productivity, thereby improving growth. Hiring employees when there is an actual need to fill a gap an already stretched team is right timing rather than hiring staff for future needs and expectations, without much to be done the staff gets discouraged with lack of challenges in the job reducing performance of the overall team. carrying marketing strategies requires perfect timing, since the success of this will mean growth in sales and customer base, now and ill calculated strategy would do the opposite. someone in the hotel business would offer attractive prices and other marketing techniques  during the off peak seasons when the holidays are over rather than during the holidays. Whether you choose to expand your business by ploughing back profit, or financing from bank loans, you should be able to know when, where and how you will go about the process from financing to setting up. Smart timing is therefore a necessary strategy for growing your business, which takes into consideration the execution of sub objectives.

Satisfying Customers and other stake holders

"Customer is King" motto for every business, without a paying customer you are out of business, it is therefore vital that you consider the satisfaction of your customers when making plans on growing your business. Customer satisfaction ranges from how your product meets the customers needs and solves their problem accurately to having a good customer service, maintaining a good relationship with your customers is vital, as this builds trust. Customers still remain one of the most important marketing mechanisms that can promote your business by word of mouth, those who become your customers as a result from a referal of another customer are more likely to stay than customers acquired from other sources because they trust someone who has already experienced your product, before you start going for money first build trust. Growing your customer base of satisfied paying customers that will come back is so simple by checking the cost of customer acquisition(COCA) and comparing that with the life time value(LTV) of your customer, if the LTV exceeds the COCA then it is not worth while pursuing that customer you can also use marketing techniques that limits the COCA if you realise the need to acquire that particular market or customer. But customers are not the only stake holders that requires satisfaction. employees, investors, suppliers and even the community you are engaged with needs to be satisfied if growth is required, satisfied shareholders can mean more investment while satisfied employees will work efficiently to achieve the objectives at the required. So if you want to grow your business you need to ask yourself how can you satisfy your customers and other stake holders? the answer BUILD TRUST

image credit mediabistro.com

Target Market

whether you intend to apply the smart timing strategy or satisfy your customers and other stake holders, you must consider your target market, you do not want to spend thousand of dollars in advertising only to find out that you did not reach your targeted customers. Target Market is that market which has your paying customers and allows you grow into other markets easily. it is therefore imperative that you segment your market and know your beach head market. whether you are launching a new product or expanding your existing one. (you can read my article Entrepreneur ship can be thought). identifying your target market will guarantee growth as you will serve your specific customers directly by knowing where they are and how to reach them. The best step of growth is starting small and then expanding, as a tree comes about through planting a little seed so you can grow your business by identifying a particular segment and occupying it before moving to other markets "try to catch three rabitts and  you will not catch any, focusing on one and you will get it".

image credit targetcomponents.co.uk

Diversify. 

Small-business consultant McGuckin offers several ideas for diversifying your product or service line:

• Sell complementary products or services
• Teach adult education or other types of classes
• Import or export yours or others' products
• Become a paid speaker or columnist

"Diversifying is an excellent growth strategy, as it allows you to have multiple streams of income that can often fill seasonal voids and, of course, increase sales and profit margins," says McGuckin, who diversified from an accounting, tax and consulting business to speaking, writing and publishing.

Diversifying was always in the works for Darien, Connecticut, entrepreneurs Rebecca Cutler and Jennifer Krane, creators of the"raising a racquet" line of maternity tenniswear , launched in 2002. "We had always planned to expand into other 'thematic' kits, consistent with our philosophies of versatility, style, health and fun," says Cutler. "Once we'd begun to establish a loyal wholesale customer base and achieve some retail brand recognition, we then broadened our product base with two line extensions, 'raising a racquet golf' and 'raising a racquet yoga.'"

Rolling out the new lines last year allowed the partners' current retail outlets to carry more of their inventory. "It also broadened our target audience and increased our presence in the marketplace, giving us the credibility to approach much larger retailers," notes Cutler, who expects to double their 2003 sales this year and further diversify the company's product lines. "As proof, we've recently been selected by Bloomingdale's, A Pea in the Pod and Mimi Maternity." credit entrepreneur.com

As always your comments are most appreciated.