This is a short and really fun read of a business book. Extremely honest and to the point, it has a lot of anecdotes of his business experiences. For some of us, it’ll be a reminder of good business practices, for others it’ll be an eye-opener. If you like the way the man thinks check out his blog https://blogmaverick.com/.
Personally, I hope he runs for president one day. He'd be great.
The Best Edge In Business - Knowledge Advantage
- You never quite know in business if what you are doing is the right or wrong thing. Unfortunately, by the time you know the answer, someone has beaten you to it and you are out of business. I used to tell myself that it was okay to make little mistakes as long as I didn’t make the big ones. I would continually search for new ideas. I read every book and magazine I could. Heck, three bucks for a magazine, twenty bucks for a book. One good idea would lead to a customer or a solution, and those magazines and books paid for themselves many times over. Some of the ideas I read were good, some not. In doing all the reading I learned a valuable lesson.
- “Most people won’t put in the time to get a knowledge advantage. Sure, there were folks that worked hard at picking up every bit of information that they could, but we were few and far between. To this day, I feel like if I put in enough time consuming all the information available, particularly with the Internet making it so readily accessible, I can get an advantage in any technology business. Of course, my wife hates that I read more than three hours almost every day, but it gives me a level of comfort and confidence in my businesses. At MicroSolutions it gave me a huge advantage. A guy with minimal computer background could compete with far more experienced guys just because he put in the time to learn all he could.”
- That’s what success is all about. It’s about the edge
- The edge is recognizing when you are wrong and working harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
- You said and I’m paraphrasing “Everyone has got the will to win; it’s only those with the will to prepare that do win.
The Power Of Focus
- Win the battles you are in before you take on new battles.
- Every one of my businesses has a make-or-break battle going on, and so does yours. There is one battle in your business that you are not winning, or are battling to stay in front.
- “Entrepreneurs have to be brutally honest with themselves and recognize where they have added value and where they have gone along for the ride. There is nothing wrong with going along for the ride and making money at it, but it will catch up with you if you lie to yourself and give yourself credit for the ride.\
- “Sure, I deal with operational issues, but I have learned to delegate—that’s not easy for an entrepreneur to do. In the past, I would have taken on anything and everything that I thought I could add value to. I had to be in the middle of everything. No longer. I’ve learned to hire people in whom I can build trust, and let them take the ball and run with it.
- “Far too often when an entrepreneur hits a rough patch or competitive challenge, the temptation is to “turn on the thinking cap” and find something new for the company to do.”
- The worst evaluator of talent is a player trying to evaluate himself
- “I wrote overviews of what I was selling, why I thought the business made sense, an overview of my competition, why my product and/or service would be important to my customers and why they should buy or use it. All of it went down on a piece of yellow paper or in a word processing file, and none of it cost me more than the diet soda I was drinking while I was writing it up.
Making Your Customers Happy
- “There used to be a saying that happy customers might tell one person, but unhappy customers tell 20. In the Internet age, one happy customer might make a note in their blog or forward an email. An unhappy customer starts a blog, writes about how unhappy he is, takes out an ad on search engines to let people who are looking for the product know how mad he is, starts an email forwarding chain asking people to boycott the product, does a YouTube video about it and games YouTube to make it one of the Top 10 most-viewed videos … ”
Making Your Product Easy To Use & Find
- “In business, one of the challenges is making sure that your product is the easiest to experience and to sell.”
- “Moral of the story: Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.”
- “It’s also why websites do anything they can to game the system on search engines to get top ranking. ”
Sales Advice
- “Always remember what I tell myself: “Every no gets me closer to a yes.”
- “The more you push someone who has said no, the more likely you are to appear desperate, and that desperation impacts your brand as a salesperson and the brand of the product. ”
- “It’s a sign of fear and laziness. It takes work to find qualified prospects. It also takes courage to overcome the fear of not knowing what will happen next. It is very, very easy to send someone an email every day or even hour. That is what a lazy person is going to do: spend all of two seconds hitting the resend button. A smart, focused and successful salesperson will gear up and do the homework necessary to find their next customer. That is a sign of confidence.”
PR Firm
- “NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications you already read, on the shows you already watch and at the websites you already surf. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them a message introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communication with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.”
The Value Of Time
- Time is more valuable than money
- You have to learn how to use time wisely and be productive. How wisely you use your time will have far more impact on your life and success than any amount of money.”
Fighting Thru Feeling Unmotivated
- Everyone gets down; the key is how soon you get back up
- I can’t count how many times I have gotten up in the morning dreading the day. I wasn’t motivated. I was tired. I just wanted to crawl back in bed. Other times, I had lost a deal, we had lost a game, something wasn’t working. I just wanted to crawl under a rock and disappear.
- EVERYONE goes through those moments. The key is how you fight through them.
- The people who will be truly successful are those that fight through the quickest and come back stronger and smarter.
Destiny
- The key in business and success at any endeavor is doing your best to control your destiny. You can’t always do it, but you have to take every opportunity you can to be as prepared as—and ahead of—the competition as you possibly can be. Take the lead, and you can control your own destiny.”
The Power Of Win-Win
- “Every good deal has a win-win solution. There is nothing I hate more than someone who tries to squeeze every last penny out of the deal. Who often raises the aggravation level to the point where it’s not worth doing the deal. Which also raises the dislike level to the point where even if a deal gets done, you look for ways to never do business with that person or company again.”