The presentation you’re about to see was made especially for our clients at the Importing Empire Jumpstart Group. Porter Erisman, the former VP of Alibaba and author of Alibaba’s World, gave an insider’s look at how Alibaba was started, how it’s grown, and where it’s going.

The video was never meant for a wider audience but we had to share it with you. The content is just too important.

Alibaba’s IPO in 2014 was the biggest in history. The company is worth $217.66 billion and probably the most important company in e-commerce today.

You may not have heard of it unless you’re starting or running an importing company, but you’ve almost definitely used a product sourced on Alibaba today.

If Porter’s presentation interests you, you’ll love his book, Alibaba’s World, where he covers the story in even more depth and gives a lot of valuable strategic advice for entrepreneurs doing business today.

I enjoyed digging through his book over the last week and put together highlights for you here:

Click Here to Get Your Free “Alibiba’s World” Notes!   

Oh yeah, we’re also giving away 20 copies of Alibaba’s World! All you have to do is enter here:   Alibaba’s World Below the video you’ll find:

• Timestamps to help navigate to the most relevant pieces of the video.
• Porter’s top 10 tips for entrepreneurs.
• Jack Ma’s first speech to the team at Alibaba.
• A short excerpt from Jack Ma’s speech after their first IPO in 2008

Without further ado, Porter Erisman, former Alibaba VP:

• 06:50 Alibaba: The Inside Story
• 16:35 How it All Started
• 27:50 War on eBay
• 34:30 The Alibaba Ecosystem
• 38:25 Porter’s Lessons for Entrepreneurs
• 45:35 Q&A Begins
• 49:30 Hurdles with Government Corruption
• 52:30 When Headed to the Canton Fair…
• 54:40 Lemons to Lemonade
• 60:00 Porter’s Reading Recommendations
• 64:00 Hiring Hungry Talent
• 66:15 Key Character Traits that Built Alibaba
• 71:45 Tips for Chinese Negotiations
• 82:30 Porter’s Closing Advice

Porter Erisman’s Top 40 Tips for Entrepreneurs:

1. Never underestimate yourself.
2. Never overestimate the competition.
3. Build a team, not a collection of all-stars.
4. Be fast as a rabbit, patient as a turtle.
5. The bigger the problem, the greater the opportunity.
6. It’s more important to be best than first.
7. Entrepreneurs don’t complain about problems, they solve them.
8. Find opportunity in crisis.
9. Don’t judge a company by a snapshot, look at the overall trend.
10. Dream big, really big.

Porter expands on each of these at 38:25 in the video above. If you want the other 30 tips, get the book or grab the free notes I put together for you here:

Click Here to Get Your Free “Alibiba’s World” Notes!

Jack Ma’s First Speech at Alibaba: 

Jack Ma’s Speech to Alibaba After the 2008 IPO:

Notice that Jack is thinking HUGE on one hand (“bigger than Walmart”) while remaining realistic (winter is coming!) on the other.

We need to be looking out ten years. In ten years people won’t be talking about “the Internet” or “e-commerce.” It will be a part of our daily lives. We have only ten years to make Alibaba great, because in ten years the infrastructure for e-commerce will already be built. After that it will be too late. …

We need to be bigger than Walmart someday. Some of you think that is crazy. But one thing is for sure: if you don’t imagine it, it will never happen. …

Why did we go public last year? Because we sense that a winter is coming and we have to prepare. In 2008 Alibaba is going to lie low and prepare for a new winter. And during this winter we have to remember our goals from long ago—to be the last man standing. No matter what, we must be the last man standing.

You’re going to want to read the whole book, and we’ve got 20 copies to give you for FREE! Enter here (it takes less than a minute): Alibaba’s World

The post How to Create a $217,660,000,000.00 Importing Company: Alibaba’s World by VP Porter Erisman appeared first on StartupBros.

Your employees are your most valuable assets and managing them is critical to your business, albeit challenging. This is especially true for small businesses where employee productivity is a serious concern. However, you cannot blame the employees alone for lower productivity. Employers too play a significant role in motivating their workforce to become more productive at work. After all employee satisfaction plays key role in boosting productivity and can finally impact the company’s bottom line.

Often small business owners think that they lack the money or other resources required to meet their employees’ needs. But this is far from being true. Most employee motivation strategies require little or no financial investment. They are mostly a matter of simple management adjusting practices. Besides, there are strategies that need financial investment and they are usually returned by enhancing employee productivity.

What Makes Employee Motivation Challenging?

Small business owners often face a mammoth challenge to keep their people motivated at work, especially in environments that fail to make employee satisfaction a part of their core business strategy. While these businesses are aware of the fact that they draw their power and success from the best their employees have to offer, they feel unsupported when it comes to develop motivated and contributing employees.

In fact, a number of issues sap an employee’s motivation and also affect his/her productivity, including:

• Low self-confidence of an employee: Confidence acts as a motivation enhancing factor for employees. It contributes towards an employee’s willingness to continue to complete tasks with total dedication. But the lack of it makes a person feel unworthy and unable to make decisions and to remain motivated at work. It even stops an employee from forming good work relationships. Such employees also tend to procrastinate more.
• Employees’ lack of interest in the subject matter: An interested employee is more likely to take action; he/she will be curious about a given task and would work harder to perform it well. An employee who lacks kin interest in the subject matter, on the other hand, is less likely to fully engage in the work and usually perform poorly. It is often challenging to motivate such employees.
• Employer’s low expectation for success: Positive expectations from our workforce again work as a motivation factor. High expectations of the employer often motivate an employee to do better on-the-job performance. This even increases their self-esteem and makes them more willing to accept challenging assignments in the future as well. Low expectations, in contrast, make the employees feel unmotivated and hey eventually tend to underperform. Besides, employers who have no or low expectations from their employees are less likely to invest in tools and resources necessary to accomplish a given task. This further diminishes the employee’s motivation.
• Fear of failure: No one likes to be a failure; but an employee who fears failure will tend to avoid work in which he/she lacks confidence. Such employees usually perceive a lack of success as failure and would rather prefer avoiding tasks than experiencing shame due to their inability to accomplish a goal. The more they fear failure, the less motivated they are likely to be.
• Achievement anxiety: People who experience such emotions are sensitive to punishment. Even mere criticism can de-motivate them. Achievement anxiety usually inhibits employee behavior and such employees are less interested and less motivated in completing a given task and to achieve organizational goals. They often begin a task but stops before completing it should they happen to become anxious regarding potential negative feedback.

A lot of these factors are directly related to the workplace environment, work conditions and work culture. Employers usually tend to recruit the best available talent to achieve organizational goals and success without realizing that it is also essential to look beneath the surface and consider the workplace environment these talents work in.

It is therefore imperative for employers to implement certain changes in their core strategies in order to boost employee productivity.

What Managers should Do?

First thing first, get over it. There is no workplace environment that perfectly supports employers and managers’ efforts to help their employees become motivated at work. Challenges prevail even in the most supportive work environments. The good news is you can enhance employee motivation and boost productivity, irrespective of the work culture of your organization, should you try to extend your reach and create a work environment that encourage positivity, harmony and recognition.

Now the question arise: what are the things that motivate people?

Influencing Your Employees’ Motivation

Employers and managers can take small, daily actions to increase employee satisfaction to motivate them. According to SHRM 2014 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Survey, the top aspects contributing to employee job satisfaction are compensation/pay, job security, opportunities to use skills and abilities, relationship with immediate supervisor, benefits (especially health care and retirement benefits), organization’s financial stability, and the work itself. Besides, there are several other contributing factors that are considered “Very Important” by employees.

Businesses, small and large, should therefore try to take management actions in and around these areas to motivate employees to become more productive.

Motivation Methods that Small Businesses can Implement

There are certain specific actions that can increase employee motivation. While some of the motivation strategies are industry/area/demography specific, there are some ubiquitous methods every organization needs to follow in order to improve employee motivation. The best motivation efforts focus on factors that are important to employees.

Employees (even within the same organization or department) have different motivators. It is therefore essential for organizations to have flexibility within the work scope and reward systems that are designed to enhance employee morale and improve productivity.

The following are some employee motivation methods small businesses can implement without investing a lot of money or resources.

Employee Empowerment: One of the best ways to motivate your people is to give them more responsibility and decision-making powers so that they have enough realm of control over a given task. This simple strategy goes a long way to diminish frustrations arising from being held responsible wrongfully for something over which one does not have any control (e.g. lacking proper resources to carry out a task). Besides, you can divert energy from self-preservation to better and improved task accomplishment by empowering your workforce.

Learning Opportunities: There is a reason why multi-nationals and large enterprises invest in employee learning programs. It is a great employee retention policy that also helps you to motivate your people to achieve more by enhancing their skills. All you need to do is provide required tools and opportunities to your employees to accomplish more. Chances are most of your staff will take on this challenge.

Accreditation and licensing programs are effective in escalating employee knowledge and motivation and are in great demand. Thought leadership and management education also provides a deep understanding of business to your employees and can improve their attitudes toward the company and clients, while boosting self-confidence.

However, providing trainings and learning programs is not enough. You must ensure that employees are able to apply the knowledge gained to accomplish their work and further benefit their career utility. In other words, the acquisition of knowledge must be worthwhile for both the employee and employer to influence motivation; otherwise it is just wastage of time and effort.

Encourage Innovation and Creativity: Companies where employees hesitate to express their creative ideas to management for the fear of being ignored or worse, ridiculed can hardly make it to the list for employee motivators. In fact, both the employee and the company suffer from such practices.

A better approach is to push the power down to line personnel. Give opportunities to employees who know the jobs or products/services best to use their ideas for further improvement. Encourage exchange of insightful information and ideas among your employees and departments. This way you are using your employees’ experience more wisely and making them feel valued and wanted.

It will not only bolster employee motivation within the organization but also help in creating a more flexible working environment as it creates an openness to change. Furthermore, you will gain the ability to react fast to market changes as well as gain first mover advantages in the marketplace.

Financial Incentives: According to the SHRM 2014 survey, compensation/pay tops the list of aspects that contribute to employee job satisfaction. Money holds a major place in motivating employees to become more productive. It is therefore no surprise that many companies share their profits with employees in form of incentives.

Providing financial incentives to employees motivate them to produce a better quality product, offer quality service, and/or improve the quality of organizational process. It is essential to make your workforce realize that what benefits the company also benefits them directly. You can provide monetary incentives for various purposes, such as:

• Generating process-improving and cost-savings ideas
• Reducing absenteeism
• Enhancing productivity

On the down-side, the motivating effects of money (although effective) are short-lived. In addition, it must be made available to all employees (based on his/her contribution towards the success) otherwise it can prove counterproductive. You should therefore couple monetary incentives with other, nonmonetary motivators which brings us to our next method.

Nonmonetary Incentives: Studies indicate that nonmonetary incentives are effective tools for motivating employees. As mentioned, there are certain downsides of using monetary systems as motivators. Expectations, in such cases, often exceed results; besides, disparity between salaried individuals can divide them instead of uniting the workforce.

Nonmonetary incentives that serve as positive motivators include responsibility, recognition, and advancement. Employers and managers also need to recognize employees’ small wins in order to promote participatory environments. In addition, it is imperative to treat all employees equally with fairness and respect to create highly motivated working environment.

Other effective nonmonetary rewards include time off from work, letters of commendation, enhanced personal fulfilment, and sincere praise from peers and the higher management. Such personal gestures are by far most effective employee motivator. When combined with monetary rewards, these programs have potentials to satisfy intrinsic and self-actualizing needs of your workforce.

Quality of Life: The U.S. is the world’s most overworked developed nation. In fact, the number of working hours each week is increasing for American workers. Reports suggest that full-time workers in the U.S. are actually working 47 hours weekly. As a result, most workers don’t have a quality life beyond the workplace. This has an adverse effect on an employee’s morale and productivity.

Companies with flexible employee arrangements can easily get away with such negativities and motivated employees for increased productivity. Many are incorporating programs like flextime, job sharing, and condensed workweeks to help employees meet the demands of their respective private lives and at the same time accomplish the given tasks at work successfully.

Specific Actions for Bolstering Employee Motivation

Here are a few consequential ways that will help small businesses to foster employee motivation and improve productivity.

Effective and Responsible Communication from Management Boost Motivation

If there is any information your employees need to know to successfully perform their jobs, communicate that responsibly and effectively. Make sure they have enough information to make good decisions. Also, remember that keeping your employees in dark won’t help you in the long-run. You should therefore make your employees aware of changes being made within the organization, before it’s too late. The following are some best practices you can implement:

• Update your employees about company information, especially if it is likely to impact their work following each management meeting.
• Discuss about customer feedback, changing due dates, training opportunities, product improvements, change in interaction structures or departmental reporting with employees.
• If certain employees are particularly affected by a recent change, talk to them personally or stop by their work area to communicate more. Your goal is to make them clear about the change and what it means to the organization and to them as well.
• Foster the habit of daily communication with every employee, especially those who reports to you. In addition, hold one-on-one meeting with them once a week and encourage them to come prepared with troubleshooting ideas, questions, information and/or requests for support that will further help to improve productivity.

Interaction with and Attention from Senior Managers Motivates Employees

A study by Towers Watson called the Global Workforce Study emphasised the roles senior managers play “in attracting employee discretionary effort”. The study indicated that businesses need to maintain employee engagement over time and a few ways to do so include:

• Communicate openly, frequently and honestly. Senior managers need to hold meetings with all employees periodically and demonstrate the interest work area of individual employee.
• Small businesses should also implement an open door policy and encourage staff to discuss concerns, share ideas and talk freely.
• Congratulate employees on their personal life events such as wedding, new babies, purchase of new house or cars, inquire about vacation trips, and more to connect with them and establish one-on-one relationships.
• Take your staff member to interesting and unusual events such as stress management trainings, motivational seminars and workshops.
  Cross-train your employees in other roles and responsibilities.

Improving Employee Productivity at the Workplace

There are certain factors that can help improving employee productivity. By focusing on these factors you can not only boost efficiency but also create a highly motivated work environment.

Accountability: Make sure all employees are aware that they are accountable for every action and decision they take. This also diminishes the practice of blaming others if things go wrong and your employees will work more meticulously.

Follow up: As an employer your work is more than setting targets. You need to follow-up with staff members and make sure that progress is sufficient. If not, take interim measures to salvage a situation before it’s too late. Following up on regular basis also helps in keeping your employees on track.

Say ‘NO’ to Micromanagement: While it is important to follow-up on your employees, micromanagement is something you must avoid. Provide direction and give assistance as and when required, but also trust your employees and on their capabilities to carry out the task successfully without your interference. Give them freedom and let them do things their way to deliver results.

Giving freedom to your employees not only keeps them happy and motivated but also encourages them to perform better. Micro management, on the other hand is detrimental to such achievement and a continual practice will make your employees too much depended on you for direction and they are less likely to learn to think for themselves.

Reach Out to Your Employees: Everyone likes to be heard and your employees are no exception. Although it sounds really appealing, don’t try to appear a larger than life and distant figure in front of your employees. This is especially applicable for small business owners and new entrepreneurs. You should look one of them and more humane so that your employees can warm up to you and feel happy working for you.

Make extra efforts to reach out to your staff members, if possible, even beyond the work place for better engagement.

Conclusion

Motivating employees is a never-ending cycle of encouraging, engaging, rewarding and recognizing your workforce. All methods, strategies and actions we have discussed so far are designed keeping this factor in mind. As an employer you need to connect with your people, share words of encouragement, help them move forward in their career and make them feel happy about working for and with you.

Be innovative as well as genuine in your approach to motivate them, no matter how simple and small the gesture is. Most importantly, value them as there is no shortage of better opportunities out there. And your employees will take no time to start looking for greener pastures, if you don’t value them enough.

The post How Small Business can Motivate Employees to Boost Productivity appeared first on StartupBros.

[Note: This is a guest post from Robert James Collier and it’s just in time for the playoffs!]

LeBron James is the biggest basketball star on the planet.

He’s arguably the biggest star in sports, period.

Regardless of how the NBA Finals turn out, here’s what diehard Sportscenter viewers (and indifferent observers) know to be true: LeBron James is not only the best basketball player in the world today, he’s in the running for the best basketball player ever.

The greats of every industry know that temporary loss doesn’t mean permanent defeat.

Top performers know that in order to win at the highest level, you need to overcome serious failures and adopt world-class mental frameworks to succeed after difficult losses.

What if I told you LeBron James followed a repeatable process for world-class performance to go from good to all-time great, and he uncovered a deeply-hidden psychological ‘flip’ that turned him into a world champion?

“Hmm… sounds kinda interesting” you might respond.

Now, what if I told you that I’ve broken down these hidden secrets of success by dissecting real-world examples from LeBron James’ life to give you a no bullshit, mind-blowingly practical manual for achieving the highest levels of success in any industry AND, like a leading a horse to water, I’ve showed exactly how YOU can use them too…

Oh, so nowww you’re thoroughly interested!

Look, in the stories below, I offer 2 remarkable lessons that you can take from LeBron’s story to apply to your own life to use as strategies to unlock the well of greatness stored inside of you.

WARNING: These are very powerful, specific, actionable techniques which can be adopted and used to your advantage IMMEDIATELY. These techniques have been used and polished by the likes of Steve Jobs, Napoleon Bonaparte, Pablo Picasso and other greats. These tactics are very real and I’m going to show you HOW you can use them to get what you want. Pay close attention.

Bonus Download: Want to know the 10 talents that drive entrepreneurial success and how you can use them to tilt the odds significantly in your favor?

Click here to download your FREE “10 Talents of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs” 12-page Report!

1. “THE DECISION” — WORST MARKETING MOVE EVER OR BEST DECISION OF HIS LIFE?

As an unrestricted free agent after playing 7 seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron James and his business manager, Maverick Carter (founder of LRMR management firm and LeBron’s childhood friend), accepted an invitation to host his announcement on national television.

Broadcasted live on ESPN, over 13 million viewers from all over the world tuned into to hear where James would sign with in free agency.

It was appropriately titled “The Decision.”

On July 8, 2010 at 9:28 EST, he made his announcement:

“I’m going to take my talents to South Beach…”

(listen to the in-studio crowd reaction of shock as he makes his announcement)

And with that one sentence, LeBron James become the most hated athlete in America.

Cleveland Cavaliers fans were the most outraged, even burning his jersey on national television.

It was the immediate reaction of fans who felt betrayed by their hometown star.

Cleveland fans would later rank the departure of James second only to former Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell’s decision to move entire franchise to Baltimore (after lying to the public stating that he wouldn’t).

Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Charles Barkley all weighed-in on The Decision, deriding the choice by LeBron James to team up with his “rivals” instead of chasing a championship without them.

LeBron James became the villain of the NBA for the entire season that followed.

He was jeered in every NBA arena he entered, except his own.

According to ESPN Sports Poll data, in the season after The Decision, LeBron’s favorability plummeted from 15.6 percent of respondents calling him their favorite player to only 10.4 percent.

To make matters worse, the Heat lost in the NBA finals that year to the Dallas Mavericks. And it seemed everyone was all too pleased.

LeBron’s favorability dropped even further to 9.4 percent in the following season.

Mind you, this is for an athlete that wasn’t caught cheating at his sport, taking performance-enhancing drugs, caught in infidelity in his marriage, or in any trouble with law enforcement (like many of the athletes making headlines over the past year… *cough* Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson *cough*).

What does LeBron Think Now?

So, looking back, how does LeBron feel about The Decision now?

According to his interview in GQ magazine, LeBron said this about The Decision:

“The best thing that ever happened to me,” he says. “I needed it. It helped me grow as a man. As a professional, as a father. At the time, as a boyfriend. It helped me grow. Being confined, I spent my whole life in Akron, Ohio. For twenty-five years. Even though I played professionally in Cleveland, I still lived in Akron. Everything was comfortable. I knew everything, everybody knew me—everything was comfortable. I needed to become uncomfortable. Now I’ve seen everything on and off the floor this league has to offer.”

Did you miss that?

If you didn’t catch it, let me make it clear for you.

His environment. His friends. His home. His acquaintances. His daily routine. The same drive to work every day. The same local support system that praised him every year. The same people he grew up with his entire life.

Everything promoted a sense of ease for him. Everything made him comfortable.

What LeBron needed was to become uncomfortable.

(Sound familiar..?)

That’s exactly what The Decision offered to LeBron: an opportunity to become uncomfortable so that he could transform and evolve.

As a result of the overwhelmingly negative attention LeBron received, he was forced to assume a different perspective because he was no longer able to be the LeBron James that everyone perceived him to be all his life—well-liked, jovial, and outgoing.

He was now cast as the villain.

At first he accepted the role of a villain. Playing to fans on-and-off the court; inciting further negative exchanges from the booing crowds; and avoiding members of the media and others after his games.

But after he lost in the finals that season, James spent the next two weeks in a room mostly by himself, talking to almost no one.

It was one of the lowest moments in his entire life.

“PEOPLE WHO CANNOT SUFFER CAN NEVER GROW UP, CAN NEVER DISCOVER WHO THEY ARE…”
– JAMES BALDWIN

After time spent in reflection, he discovered that he was allowing others to dictate the way he approached the game. And it was affecting his entire life.

LeBron realized he had only two options:

1. He could allow his approach to constrict him and allow his critics’ reactions to contradict his true character
2. Or, he could alter his attitude to allow for more freedom of action by framing this experience as a positive and forever disregarding his critics

He decided to go back to the playing the game the way he knew how—with fun and full of joy.

But one important thing changed: he no longer remained sensitive to what others said about him.

THE POWERFUL PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND WHAT ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE

LeBron employed a “reversal.”

A reversal is overcoming the negative of a particular fear and flipping it on its head so that it can lead to a much stronger positive quality, such as self-reliance, patience, supreme self-confidence, and so forth.

This is a powerful psychological concept used by leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Steve Jobs, which has very practical application and real world effects.

Here’s how he did it…

LeBron reversed a seemingly bleak situation into an opportunity for complete freedom by mentally reframing his circumstances and manipulating his responses to them. This simple reversal gave him more power to control his own fate and more freedom of action—completely unencumbered by the opinions of detractors.

Here is the paradox of a reversal: you mentally transform a negative event into an opportunity or challenge, providing you with more internal power and motivation. As a result, you care less of what people think about you, paradoxically causing them to admire you more.

The negative publicity is then turned around.

ROBERT’S NOTE: All circumstances can be converted and turned into opportunities. As you read, think about negative circumstances in your business and life, then how you can apply the power of a reversal to transform it into an opportunity.

Psychologists sometimes refer the difficult experience that LeBron went through after The Decision as “adversarial growth” and “post-traumatic growth.”

The struggle against some obstacle propels the individual to a new level of functioning. The extent of their struggle determines the extent of their growth.

The obstacle becomes an advantage.

In LeBron’s situation, he learned that people were going to dislike him anyway, despite how he acted or didn’t act in accordance with their expectations. So he figured he would act as himself and live with the consequences since it wouldn’t alter public opinion anyway. Only winning, he felt, would do that.

What LeBron had to do was overcome his fear of being uncomfortable.

Do you think this nightmarish experience prepared him for major decisions like leaving the Miami Heat organization to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers, despite outside opinion?

ABSOLUTELY!

He has since carried this critical lesson with him to create even more freedom of action and take further control of his fate in matters on-and-off the court, including his mega endorsement deals, his global icon plan, and his decision to opt-out of his contract with the Miami Heat.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT TO YOU

Understanding and applying this simple psychological concept to your unique problems can make all the difference in turning a seemingly overwhelming failure into a complete success.

To do so, you need to identify possibilities to employ reversals in similar areas of your own life.

We can accomplish this by noticing the opportunities to convert negative circumstances, such as not earning the raise we expected or being passed over for a promotion, and turning those into a powerful opportunities to create greater possibilities for ourselves.

These new circumstances become valuable occasions for us to make progress on our own goals despite objections from the outside.

The opportunities are all around us.

We just need to adopt the proper mental frameworks to take advantage.

LESSON LEARNED: YOU CAN TURN YOUR WORST TRIALS INTO YOUR GREATEST TRIUMPHS THROUGH THE POWER OF REVERSAL — OVERCOMING THE NEGATIVE OF A PARTICULAR FEAR LEADS TO A POSITIVE QUALITY SUCH AS SELF-RELIANCE, PATIENCE, OR SUPREME SELF-CONFIDENCE. USE THIS EXPERIENCE TO YOUR ADVANTAGE BY GROWING IN PROPORTION TO YOUR STRUGGLE TO A NEW, HIGHER LEVEL OF FUNCTIONING DESPITE OUTSIDE OPINION.

2. HOW THE BEST GET EVEN BETTER — THE SECRET TO WORLD-CLASS PERFORMANCE

LeBron James is arguably the most athletic player to ever play in the NBA.

His speed, power, and agility is unlike anything ever witnessed in any player his size. In any sport, really.

At 6 feet 8 inches, he simply shouldn’t be able to perform, with skill and finesse, the acts that he does…

In recent years, his past coach, Miami Heat’s Erik Spoelstra, donned LeBron with the moniker “NBA’s Swiss Army Knife” for his ability to guard every position on defense and play multiple roles offensively.

But he didn’t always have this ability.

LeBron identified the gaps in his ability and what his team required of him in order to win a championship.

And then he worked at it. Tirelessly.

According to an article on Grantland, Coach Spoelstra says:

“It took the ultimate failure in the Finals to view LeBron and our offense with a different lens. He was the most versatile player in the league. We had to figure out a way to use him in the most versatile of ways — in unconventional ways.

“Shortly after our loss to Dallas in the Finals, LeBron and I met. He mentioned that he was going to work on his game relentlessly during the offseason, and specifically on his post-up game. This absolutely made sense for us. We had to improve offensively, and one of the best ways would be to be able to play inside-out with a post-up attack.”

“I AM ALWAYS DOING THAT WHICH I CANNOT DO, IN ORDER THAT I MAY LEARN HOW TO DO IT.”
– PABLO PICASSO

LeBron meticulously analyzed his team’s performance in the Finals to identify the gap between where their team was currently performing and the level they needed perform at in order to win a championship.

He found that their post play contributed the most inconsistency. In particular, their lack of a post presence on offense was causing them to shoot way too many low-efficiency jump shots, and it forced their guards to initiate offensive sets by dribbling the ball to create spacing and most of their scoring opportunities for the team.

LeBron immediately began working to make dramatic improvements in the area of post play by working out with one of the all-time greats to enhance his low-post game: Hakeem Olajuwon.

(Tape of LeBron’s training sessions with Hakeem Olajuwon)

“The biggest thing isn’t how much you work on things, it’s ‘Can you work on something, then implement it into a game situation?’” James says. “Can you bring what you’ve worked on so much and put it out on the floor with the finished product? I was happy that I was able to do that and make that transformation.”

Many people in the Heat organization state that LeBron’s development of his low-post game is what turned the Miami Heat from a runners-up into champions the following year.

“When he returned after the lockout, he was a totally different player,” says Spoelstra. “I don’t know if I’ve seen a player improve that much in a specific area in one offseason. His improvement in that area alone transformed our offense to a championship level in 2012.”

His improvement in the post contributed to increased shot efficiency all over the floor. Take a look at the shot chart below comparing LeBron’s final year in Cleveland to his first year in Miami.

How Just 90 Days of Focus Changed EVERYTHING

In his last year in Cleveland before leaving to join the Miami Heat in 2010, LeBron took a lot of 3 point shots. For a player of his size and strength, he’s not utilizing his physical gifts most effectively when he’s shooting outside of the arc. Also, he took a lot of mid-range shots (low-efficiency) and some shots near the basket (high-efficiency).

His first year in Miami, LeBron better leveraged his physical gifts by taking more shots inside of the arc. He increased the volume of shots taken near the basket for a higher percentage of shots made and reduced the volume of three point shots taken.

However, his Miami Heat team still lost in the Finals to the Dallas Mavericks.

Now, let’s take a look at his shot chart the following season after LeBron worked with Hakeem Olajuwon to improve his post play…

His second year in Miami LeBron significantly reduced the volume of 3 point shots taken. There’s only one dot outside of the arc for this year.

Additionally, he increased the volume of shots taken at the low block on the left side. This new concentration of shots taken on the floor represent an addition to LeBron’s game.

This is where his work on the low post with Hakeem paid off!

To make sense of these shot charts, let’s put these numbers in perspective…

In LeBron’s rookie year, he shot 42 percent from the field and 29 percent from beyond the arc. In his second year in Miami those numbers rose to 53 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

This is an impressive feat for anyone!

All the more incredible that these improvements were made by the best player in the world!

And it turns out it was just what they needed to win his first championship.

LeBron continued his improving efficiency rising to 56 percent from the field and 41 from beyond the arc the following year when he won his second championship.

The best part of LeBron’s increased efficiency on offense is that the effect wasn’t limited to just LeBron — it affected everyone on the team.

LeBron’s migration to the left block not only helped his scoring efficiency, it opened up space elsewhere for spot-up shooters like Ray Allen, Shane Battier, and Mike Miller who made big contributions in the Finals so that LeBron could win his second championship with Miami.

“GREAT THINGS ARE NOT DONE BY IMPULSE, BUT BY A SERIES OF SMALL THINGS BROUGHT TOGETHER”
– VINCENT VAN GOGH

HOW TOP PERFORMERS BECOME WORLD-CLASS

Here’s the thing: LeBron was already head-and-shoulders the best player in the world.

Many analysts even questioned just exactly how LeBron could actually become any better.

Where the vast majority of people get better for a while and level off, reaching the limit of their abilities where even years of additional work have not made them any better, LeBron made dramatic improvements in one offseason that resulted in a world championship.

How did he improve so dramatically in just one year, especially when many “experts” didn’t even think it would be possible for him to become any better?

Well, the answer isn’t “by practicing.”

Sorry.

LeBron wasn’t just practicing. That’s not how world class performers become better at their craft.

He was practicing with a purpose. LeBron was practicing with the specific intention to improve his low post offensive ability.

This practice with the specific intention is referred to as “deliberate practice.”

What is Deliberate Practice, Really?

Deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them.

You may have heard this popular term before, but what you may not know is, exactly what is deliberate practice?

According to Anders Ericsson, the psychologist who advanced the concept of deliberate practice, “the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”

The concept of deliberate practice is characterized by several elements.

These elements can be divided into 5 criterion:

1. activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help
2. it can be repeated a lot
3. feedback on results is continuously available
4. it’s highly demanding mentally, whether it’s purely intellectual or heavily physical
5. it isn’t much fun

Let’s see take a look at how the example I detailed above with LeBron stacks up to this criteria:

1. improve performance (low post offensive ability), often with a teacher’s help (Hall of Famer, Hakeem Olajuwon) ✓
2. it can be repeated a lot (practiced shooting and low post positioning, twice a day for 5 days with Hakeem, then every day for the rest of the summer)✓
3. feedback is available (made shot vs. missed shot; gaining low post position vs. being pushed out of the paint) ✓
4. highly demanding mentally, whether it’s purely intellectual or heavily physical
5. it isn’t much fun

Think his exercises weren’t highly demanding mentally? Or worse… do you actually think it was fun?

Read LeBron’s self-enforced punishment for not attaining his own shooting goals and you’ll soon think otherwise:

“It’s a lot of work. It’s being in workouts, and not accomplishing your goal, and paying for it. So, if I get to a spot in a workout and want to make eight out of 10, if I don’t make eight of 10, then I run. I push myself to the point of exhaustion until I make that goal. So you build up that mentality that you got to make that shot and then use that in a game situation — it’s the ultimate feeling, when you’re able to work on something and implement it.”

You can see how much feedback, detail, and intensity is interwoven throughout LeBron’s workout to make progress on his goal.

Every element of the deliberate practice criteria is met in LeBron’s workout, ensuring that he’s getting better with every repetition.

Now, let’s talk about how this applies to you…

HOW THIS IS USEFUL TO YOU

LeBron may not have known he was following the requirements for deliberate practice in his workouts. However, chances are, he knows EXACTLY what deliberate practice is, and he’s implemented it for years to become better at his craft.

So have others like Kobe Bryant, Mozart, and Picasso.

Have you?

Well, chances are you didn’t know that researchers confirm that the top performers in every industry engage in and are committed to deliberate practice.

It’s not merely that top performers are “putting in the hours.”

No, it’s that top performers break down the skills that are required to become an expert and focus on improving those skill chunks during practice.

You can start today to analyze the gaps in your performance relative to where you desire to perform.

Then you can use the same criteria outlined above to ensure you’re following the necessary framework.

Although it may not be fun, it will undoubtedly move you closer to your goal and, in the process, bring you closer to mastery over your chosen craft.

LESSON LEARNED: YOU CAN ADOPT THE SAME APPROACH THAT TOP PERFORMERS USE TO BECOME WORLD-CLASS IN THEIR CRAFT. ANALYZE THE GAPS BETWEEN YOUR CURRENT PERFORMANCE AND WHAT’S REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE MASTERY; BREAK DOWN THE SKILLS INTO SPECIFIC SKILL CHUNKS; AND COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE PROCESS OF DELIBERATE PRACTICE TO IMPROVE WITH EACH REPETITION DURING PRACTICE. OVER TIME, YOUR COMMITMENT WILL BRING YOU TO MASTERY OVER YOUR CHOSEN CRAFT.

CONCLUSION

There’s no question that LeBron wants to be the best basketball player ever.

Fans of Michael Jordan are quick to rule out this possibility, but there’s no doubt that LeBron is positioning himself to be near the top in the conversation when all is said and done.

It’s no coincidence that LeBron James became the first player in over 50 years to take his team to 5 straight NBA Finals appearances (now that’s a world-class performance!).

And, if history is any indicator, LeBron knows EXACTLY what he needs to do in order to win another NBA championship.

Being the best in any profession isn’t about being the most talented; it’s about adopting the mental frameworks and practice habits that the best use to become great.

By leveraging the power of reversals and committing to deliberate practice using the process outlined above, you give yourself an excellent chance to become great.

Just like LeBron James.

FURTHER READING:

The 10 Talents of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs. This 12-page report describes the 10 talents of highly successful entrepreneurs as found by researchers who studied over 2,500 of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. Research concluded that there are 10 specific talents responsible for business success. These talents can be used by aspiring entrepreneurs to enjoy a much greater chance of success in business — if applied properly. Click here to download the free 12-page report.

The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene discusses the powerful role of reversals, along with other strategies and tactics for success in life and work based upon a single principle: fear nothing. He utilizes several examples of leaders who have overcome adversity through understanding and practicing the 50th Law, including Napoleon Bonaparte, Malcolm X, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and more.

Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoffrey Colvin details the concept of deliberate practice. Backed by scientific research, it shares the secrets of extraordinary performance and shows how to apply these principles. The book features the stories of professionals who have achieved world-class greatness through deliberate practice, including Benjamin Franklin, Chris Rock, Jerry Rice, and others.

The post LeBron James’ Top 2 Success Strategies (And How You Can Use Them) appeared first on StartupBros.

The advisors a President surrounds himself with determines the quality of decisions he makes. The same is true of CEOs. The same has always been true of anyone in power.

Kings and generals have always depended on expert advisors to help them make decisions.

For all of history, this was a skill that only mattered for a select few. Now it’s important for each of us.

As software and machines continue to leverage our effort and multiply our productivity we all find ourselves relying on experts. Experts can come as coaches, advisors, and consultants. They also come as authors of books, blog posts, and news articles. Or YouTube stars or podcasters…

You are exposed to many experts every day. People who form your opinions and help direct your actions. In fact, there are way too many of them.

It’s more important than ever to be conscious of the experts you let advise you. The information you take in defines your perspective on the world. Bad information means bad perspective.

Being able to effectively find and use quality information is more important than ever as technology adds leverage to your actions and beliefs.

The economist Tyler Cowen recognized this early on and wrote about it in his book Average is Over:

“High-skilled performers, including business executives, will have some kind of coach. There will be too much value at stake to let high performers operate without a steady stream of external advice, even if that advice has to be applied rather subtly. Top doctors will have a coach, just as today’s top tennis players (and some of the mediocre ones) all have coaches. Today the coach of a CEO is very often the spouse, the personal assistant, or even a subordinate, or sometimes a member of the board of directors. Coaching is already remarkably important in our economy, and the high productivity of top earners will cause it to become essential.”

I’m going to give you 13 ways in which you can select the very best experts to surround yourself with. First, a 60-second story about one of the best executive coaches in the world…

***

I knew him as the family friend from across the lake that sunbathed like it was his job, refused to talk politics, and was somehow always relaxed.

Then I found out he worked with top executives at Goldman Sachs, Ford, various hedge funds and other Fortune 100 companies.

I immediately asked him for all his secrets. I was young enough where this came off as charming instead of rude (I hope). This is the stuff he got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for, now he was going to share it with me, for free…

“Write two lists: the first of your strengths and the second of your weaknesses. Now focus on your top three for each of those.”

I thought he was joking. Nope.

He continued on with similarly basic advice. I sat staring, slack-jawed, wondering how the hell he pulled off this con on some of the most powerful people in the country. Everything he said I had read in all the standard self-development books.

What was his book recommendation?

“Science and Health: With Key to the Scriptures,” an interpretation of the Bible by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. What?!?

I didn’t understand–he wasn’t a spiritual adviser, he was paid to help these executives perform better.

The most interesting thing about this exchange was how uninteresting it was.

Nothing new, no secrets, no magic.

What was it then? Why was he so sought after?

***

That was three years ago.

I’ve spent much of those years questioning whether experts are worth listening to at all.

There are good reasons for this, according to Vanguard, 72% of mutual funds benchmarked to the S&P 500 underperformed the index over the 20-year period ending with 2010. That means that 72% of mutual funds are charging people a ton of money to do worse than the default.

Beyond poor performance, experts’ incentives are rarely lined up with your interests, their ego gets in the way of helping, they think too narrowly, they think they know more than they do, and it’s nearly impossible for them to admit that they’re wrong (they weren’t hired to be wrong). In all honesty, I despised them.

Then I looked in the mirror and realized something… I’m an expert. I’m an advisor and coach.

Shit.

It was time to reconcile my paranoia and disdain for people who “know better” and my own work (which I objectively know does a lot of good for a lot of people).

It’s obviously important to use advisors, coaches, and experts. We just have to learn how to recruit them correctly.

The problem of selecting and using expert advisors is only going to become more prominent in the coming years. Cowen predicts that, “Expert coaching or motivating will be a competitive growth sector for jobs,” and I suspect he’s right. Just look at the number of people publishing Kindle books and starting blogs… everyone’s an “expert”.

Each of us now has the responsibility of choosing our cabinet of experts.

You don’t need to hire someone for this to matter. Most of our advisors come through books, blogs, videos, and people we talk to throughout the day.

You need a set of tools to make the most of the good advice you get, navigate the contradicting advice, and discard the bad. That’s what we’ll focus on for the rest of this article.

How to Answer: “Who should you listen to?”

1. Incentives

This is the only thing that must be right. Steven Levitt, the economist of Freakonomics fame refers to an incentive as, “a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation.”

Warren Buffett once quipped that he could end the US deficit in 5 minutes:

“You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

It’s not just actions that are shaped by incentives. Even our fundamental belief systems can be formed by incentives.

Buffett’s partner Charlie Munger says that, “If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason. The man changed his view when his incentives made him change it, and not before.”

It is a simple idea, but excruciatingly difficult to execute on. Many experts who you would assume have aligned incentives actually don’t.

Hedge fund managers are incentivized to bring more money under management and make massive returns, not to preserve your capital. If they lose your money, they take their management fee and let you keep the downside. If they make a ton of money, they get 20% (or more) of the upside. They are incentivized to act carelessly.

You would assume incentives would be straightened out when there are billions of dollars at risk, but they absolutely aren’t.

Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and billionaire investor, believes that one of the key reasons biotech has been lagging is because the scientists involved in these companies are rarely properly incentivized. They act more as consultants than owners.

The question then is: How can we get a consultant to act as an owner?

Proper incentives.

They should win when you win and, ideally, lose when you lose.

That second piece is harder to accomplish, but having skin in the game changes everything.

Most people get most of their advice from reading, it’s important to check incentives here as well.

Ask yourself before reading a book or blog post, “Why did this person write this?”

Are they trying to get you into their sales funnel? Did they have to write five blog posts that day? Did their boss tell them to promote something? Are they just passionate about figuring something out or sharing an idea? Do they just need to be heard?

Selling isn’t bad, by the way. I hope you buy something from me.

Alright, that was really long. The others won’t be.

Remember:

Is this person incentivized in a way that benefits me?

2. What are their ideologies?

What are the fundamental assumptions they have about the world, your industry, and life?

If you’re working with a paleo-obsessed nutritionist, make sure it doesn’t disagree with things that science has proven.

If your financial advisor is heavily invested in 3D printing, verify his claims about food being printed instead of cooked.

We all work from a base set of assumptions that frame our worlds. Make sure you’re okay with the ideologies of the expert you’re considering.

And make sure this ideology works as an incentive in your favor.

3. Private testimonial from someone with a clear head.

Talk to someone who has successfully used their services and has no incentive to sugarcoat anything.

A testimonial from someone walking out of a Tony Robbins event isn’t useful. A testimonial from someone who went to a Tony Robbins event 5 years ago? Much more reliable.

People who are good at what they do aren’t afraid to make these available. I invite people regularly to talk to random clients if they doubt the effectiveness about our importing coaching program.

4. Can they talk about specifics or do they only speak about vaguely promising potentials?

I’m not saying they need to be able to tell the future, nobody can, but it’s a serious red flag if they avoid answering your question straight on.

5. Guarantee.

Is there a promise of something working? There doesn’t always need to be, but it certainly helps.

The best surgeon in the world can’t guarantee the operation will work. Warren Buffett can’t guarantee you’ll make money buying Berkshire stock. (In fact, he usually recommends you don’t buy it.) The psychologist can’t guarantee you’ll never get depressed again.

Some things should be guaranteed, though. You know them when you see them.

6. It should be expensive.

Cheap advice is worse than no advice. A crappy life coach is going to make your life worse, not better. A crappy consultant is going to bankrupt your business, not increase profits.

This isn’t to say that expensive life coaches or business consultants are going to offer any guarantees, but you’ll have a much better chance.

We also tend to take action on advice that we’ve paid for. Paying what feels expensive acts as a commitment device. When I pay a couple thousand dollars for a program I’m going to use it for all it’s worth.

“Cheap” can also mean advice that feels good to hear but doesn’t have any substance.

7. Ignore their origin story, focus on now.

This can be impossible sometimes, but at least be aware that it’s been consciously shaped… sometimes out of events that never happened.

Someone’s origins have little to do with the work they will do for you. If it does matter, it will be the origins that they don’t want to tell you about. What matters more is what is going on in their life right now.

If they are getting divorced, in debt, or in any other kind of desperate situation, they’re incentives are all out of line. Their advice will be heavily influenced by their current needs.

8. Keep your expectations in check.

As we learn to use advisors and experts we want it to be simple. We want to find the one person with all the answers. There are plenty of people who will tell you they do, indeed, have all the answers.

This kind of arrogant certainty should immediately filter out a large group of experts.

It’s better to find someone a little less confident who knows what they don’t know.

Remember, an expert is a person who has focused on a subject. This is worth quite a bit, but never as much as we think.

Lincoln created a “team of rivals” so that he might get both sides of every story and weigh them as fairly as possible. This is what you should aim for.

Resist the temptation to hire “shamans” or “sages” who pretend to know the future with certainty.

9. Are you willing to put the work in?

If you’re hiring a trainer to feel good about yourself but know you’re not going to get to the gym, then forget about it.

If you’re hiring an editor but aren’t willing to go through more drafts, don’t bother.

Every day people email me, “I want to start a business.”

I give them an idea of how and they reply about not having time.

They don’t want to start a business; they want to have a business.

A trainer cannot do your pushups for you. A priest cannot pray for you. A yogi cannot meditate for you. A therapist cannot accept you for you.

It’s still all on you.

10. Be honest about why you’re getting an expert.

Business consultants are often hired because an executive is afraid to be blamed for a decision.

A trainer is rarely hired for his fitness knowledge. We just need someone to push us.

Be honest with yourself: maybe you just need someone to motivate you.

It’s difficult to admit this. We think we ought to be able to motivate ourselves. It’s weak to need support.

Knowledge isn’t what we’re lacking anymore. As information becomes ubiquitous the role of the teacher shifts from disseminating information to making people care about that information. From Cowen’s Average is Over:

“The professor is then a good motivator first and foremost. Let’s hire good motivators. Let’s teach our professors how to motivate. Let’s judge them on that basis. Let’s treat professors more like athletics coaches, personal therapists, and preachers, because that is what they will evolve to be.”

The executive coach I introduced you to at the beginning of this article wasn’t a business genius. He just understood the fundamentals of humans.

He wasn’t valuable for having clever tricks up his sleeve. He was valuable for guiding his clients’ attention to more useful places at the correct times. He was valuable because he could frame things for his clients so they could think more clearly about them.

We tend to overvalue new knowledge and undervalue the proper application of existing knowledge. Being aware of this will help us in understanding what experts we need.

11. Do not hire a mentor; hire an expert advisor.

You don’t want to confuse these. Both of them know more than you and both are supposed to help you out. That doesn’t make them the same.

The biggest difference is that a mentor is invested in your life in general while an expert advisor is invested in helping you in a specific area.

While an expert advisor can transform your life, you shouldn’t trust them to care about it.

12. Indicators of expertise aren’t enough.

If a hedge fund manager has had 5 years of stellar returns, chances are pretty terrible he’ll continue into his 6^th. It’s important to know why this person has been successful, will that strategy continue to work?

Paul Graham is one of the most successful investors in Silicone Valley and lives at the cutting edge of technology where new areas of expertise pop up overnight and disappear just as quickly. He has this to say about expertise:

“In practice “sufficiently expert” doesn’t require one to be recognized as an expert—which is a trailing indicator in any case. In many fields a year of focused work plus caring a lot would be enough.”

If we can recognize expertise before others call it expertise we can get a great advantage.

Currently, there are few expert “data scientists.” Barely anyone knows what it means and nobody is handing out degrees for it. We’re all aware that they (like “growth hackers”) are important but don’t have a great way to test for expertise.

A degree won’t work (there aren’t any), a track record won’t work (it’s too new to have any), so only current performance and a bet on character can work.

13. Maintain self-reliance.

Hiring an expert creates a tension between trusting yourself and trusting others.

Just because someone knows more about food than you doesn’t give them the final say about what the right diet for you is.

Just because someone knows more about marketing than you doesn’t mean they know what campaign is best for your business.

You need to lean on others a bit for support and new knowledge, but you cannot forget your core. Too many CEOs are ruled by consultants. Too many people are ruled by priests, gurus, or scientists.

It’s about collecting data, ideas, and perspectives. Like Lincoln and his team of rivals, you are the only one who can make the final call. (Or do the pushups.)

Paul Graham, in the same essay on expertise quoted earlier, wrote:

“It seems to me that beliefs about the future are so rarely correct that they usually aren’t worth the extra rigidity they impose, and that the best strategy is simply to be aggressively open-minded. Instead of trying to point yourself in the right direction, admit you have no idea what the right direction is, and try instead to be super sensitive to the winds of change.”

There is no better way to become “sensitive to the winds of change” than having a team of experts (coaches, books, advisors, communities).

The post Who Should You Listen To?: 13 Steps to Choosing the Best Coaches, Advisors, and Authors appeared first on StartupBros.

The post How to Quit Your Job in 120 Days or Less appeared first on StartupBros.

As an entrepreneur, you know how important it is to optimize all your investments so you’re getting the best possible ROI.

You probably track your marketing ROI, your profits and losses, but what about optimizing the most important thing you’ve got working for you…your brain?

Recently I’ve been exploring neuroscience as a way to help people do things like beat social anxiety and boost self-confidence by gaining a “mental advantage.” The biggest takeaway I’ve learned is that the brain is a remarkable tool.

I’m talking about a tool so fast that information travels between neurons at over 260 mph, is so strong that it stays alive even after you die, and generates more electrical impulses in one day than all the telephones on this planet.*

Mental Hack #1: Transforming Your Habits

It’s easy to consume information about what we should be doing…but how many times have you actually put those things into action?

Today I want to start off by setting the stage with habits. If you understand the science behind habits, you’ll be able to implement the tips that follow to ensure long-term change as well as establish any type of habit you want to perform.

Habits regulate what we do almost every second of every day, whether we consciously realize it or not. They are established in the neural pathways of your brain and are strengthened upon repetition.

Habits come in all shapes and sizes. They can be:

• Mental- i.e. your inner-critic triggered after a tiny mistake
• Physical- i.e. your exercise routine
• Verbal- i.e. losing your temper when someone says something you don’t agree with

Habits live in a very deep, primitive part of your brain called the basal ganglia.

It’s responsible for habit regulation and it’s so powerful that even people who have memory loss and brain damage still remember their old habits if the basal ganglia isn’t damaged.

Let’s dive into the science behind habits called the “habit loop” introduced by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit. Once you understand the habit loop, you can transform ANY habit you have and turn it into the habit you want to do.

The habit loop consists of three things–let’s use brushing your teeth as an example:

1. Cue– this is the “trigger” that precedes the routine– it would be the time of day since it’s the first thing you do in the mornings
2. Routine– this is the actual “act” of what you are doing– brushing your teeth
3. Reward– this is the intrinsic or extrinsic reward you get from performing the routine– the “tingling” sensation you feel after brushing

Let’s dive deeper into each of these facets and how you can use it to transform your habits.

Step 1: Identify the Cue

Think of cues as triggers, it’s what makes you perform the routine. If you wake up at 6:00 am everyday your cue is likely your alarm going off. Here’s one I can attest to– turning on your TV as soon as you plop on your couch (cue).

Cues can be based upon:

• Location
• Time
• Mental State
• Other People
• Immediately preceding action

Cues are also a great way to get you to do something. For example to make sure I don’t skip breakfast, I measure out and put my oatmeal in a bowl the night before. When I wake up in the mornings I’ll see it on the kitchen counter, cueing me to simply throw in some water and pop it in the microwave. This helps guarantee I have a healthy breakfast everyday.

When it comes to effective habit change, you first have to identify the cues that trigger your routine.

For example, if you end up eating a donut everyday at 3:00 pm think about what is cueing that: is your blood sugar low? Are you feeling stressed out? Are you eating out of boredom because you run out of tasks to do at that time of the day?

How to identify your cues:

I recommend tracking the cues that you’re identifying in a journal. Note down the time of day, how you’re feeling, what your environment is like, who you’re with, energy levels, etc. that way you can focus in on the cues that are getting you to perform those bad habits.

Now that you understand how important it is to identify your cues, let’s talk changing the routine?

Step 2: Change the Routine

Changing the routine is the most important part of the habit loop because it’s the only part that can be changed.

Let’s suppose you have a nasty habit of getting sucked into social media when you’re starting your workday. You’ve identified that the cue is relatively harmless–  you initially hop on social media in the mornings to tweet out a blog post you wrote. But the next thing you know you’re, sucked into all the “bright lights” of social media like pictures of your friend’s new baby.

How to change the routine:

You know that logging into social media in the mornings is throwing off your productivity, so you can replace the routine by scheduling your tweets the night before to avoid the temptation of social networking in the mornings. It’s important to be specific, take it a step further and define the exact time that you’re going to be scheduling tweets in advance.

Now that you have a routine replacement, let’s move on to the next step.

Step 3: Reward Yourself!

Immediately after a successful routine transformation, reward yourself with a meaningful reward.

The man, the legend: B.F. Skinner

You may know this strategy as  “positive reinforcement” coined by the famous psychologist B.F. Skinner.

Simply put, rewarding a certain behavior will make it more likely to be repeated.

Skinner illustrated this using the famous “Skinner box” where a rat was placed inside a box with a lever and every time the rat ran into the lever a food pellet would fall out. Well guess what the rat did after a few times of bumping into the lever and getting some food pellets? Yep, it went straight to the lever every time it was placed in that box.

Now I’m not trying to compare you to a rat, but a principle is a principle!

How to choose a reward:

Make sure your reward is:

• Gratifying– something you genuinely like
• Minor– make it reasonable. You can’t reward yourself with $1,000 every time you change your routine (or maybe you can…) you get the picture
• Accessible– it’s best to reward yourself right after a successful routine transformation, by choosing a reward that you have easy access to you’ll make it easier to attain rather than waiting for.

Reward options can be things like a cup of coffee, a 15-minute guilt-free session of web surfing, a beer after a hard workout or something that has sentimental value to you.

Step 4: Repeat the Above

In order to strengthen the new neural pathways you’re creating, you have to repeat your new habit loop. If you do this effectively you’ll find yourself on auto-pilot, performing the new habits without much thought.

The better you are at identifying the cues that lead to negative routines, the better shot you have at changing the habit. Once you successfully transform them, positively reinforce yourself immediately to strengthen the new neural pathway.

Most of the research suggests that 21 days is the optimal number of days to repeat the habit to make it permanent, but it varies widely depending on the person, the routine, and environment.

The Habit Loop in Action (Example)

Now that you understand the different parts of the habit loop, let’s put it all together. I’ll use a personal example of how I used the habit loop to wake up earlier everyday.

In the past, my mornings were short and hectic. My alarm would go off, I’d snooze a bunch of times and before I knew it I was running late to get to the office. I’d throw something on, make a quick coffee and run out the door.

My day started off stressful and it wasn’t a great start. I wanted to have a consistent routine in the mornings so I could wake up earlier and not feel stressed out.

Cue:

I realized the main reason my mornings were off was because I kept on snoozing. The number of times I’d snooze depended on how tired I was. Doing some analysis of the cue, I figured out it was because I was going to bed at various times..anywhere from 11:00 pm to 1:00 am.

In order to course correct, I started going to bed consistently, no later than 11:30 pm every night. That alone was a game-changer. I also read that it’s a good practice to drink a glass of water before you go to bed and as soon as you get up. I placed a glass of water by my phone making it easy to drink as soon as my alarm went off and it served as an effective visual cue.

Routine:

When my alarm would go off I’d wake up and chug the water, it actually did help me feel refreshed. The other interesting thing was because I drank a glass of water prior to sleeping, I had to use the bathroom making me even more eager to get my butt up!

Were there days when my alarm went off and I still felt tired? Of course! That’s where the reward came into play.

Reward:

I’m a huge coffee lover and recently discovered bulletproof coffee, so I decided to make that my reward when I’d wake up on time without snoozing.

The reward worked because it takes a few minutes to make (meaning I had to get up a bit earlier) and I really enjoy it..finally, it gave me a ton of energy to start my day!

On days where I felt tempted to hit snooze, I’d just picture sipping my bulletproof coffee and that helped me harness the motivation I needed to follow through.

I did this consistently for about two weeks and now it’s on auto-pilot!

You can use these principles to make change when it comes to anything from the way you work, getting yourself to exercise or quit a habit you’ve been wanting to change forever. The power is now yours, use it wisely.

2. Mental Hack #2: Optimizing Your Willpower

Now that you’ve mastered habits, let’s talk about willpower. The reason why I covered habits first is because the more behaviors that are auto-piloted by your habits, the more willpower you have reserved to do better at things that matter.

Wouldn’t you rather use up your willpower to make a business decision rather than trying to decide how you’ll have a healthy breakfast in the morning?

Let’s deep dive into willpower and how you can optimize it to become more effective as an entrepreneur.

Do you ever come home after a long day at work and give up on deciding what to make for dinner? You pickup the phone and order pizza because you can’t even imagine spending brain power on deciding what to cook and how you’ll do it. Trust me, I’ve been there many times.

Well that long day probably included performing difficult tasks that require extreme focus, making a bunch of tough decisions, and interacting with coworkers.

Basically you’re “drained” from using your willpower, this is because it functions like a fuel tank and gets depleted throughout the day by two factors: exercising self-control and making decisions.

The Limitations of Self-Control

In a classic willpower experiment, two sets of students were invited into a room with chocolate-chip cookies and radishes.  The first group that entered was invited to eat the cookies. The second group was asked to resist the cookies and eat radishes instead.

Afterwards, they gave everyone an impossible geometry puzzle to solve. The students who ate the cookies worked on them for an average of 20 minutes. Guess how long the radish-eating students who had to resist the cookies worked on the puzzle? An average of 8 minutes, they then gave up.

The study illustrates that using self-control in one task negatively impacts your willpower to perform sequential tasks, that’s why the second group gave up so easily. To put this in startup terms, this may be when you’re working 24/7 on your project and let other things slip like hygiene (is your beard getting too long?) or eating healthily.

By the way, exerting self-control goes beyond simply resisting temptation. Anytime you have to control your emotions in some way you’re exerting self-control, this is something we do an average of four hours a day.  

In another study, people who were told to suppress their emotions while watching a sad movie showed depleted levels of willpower compared to those who were simply told to watch the movie without instructions.

Anytime you’re trying to control your emotions like when you’re trying really hard to not lose your temper or putting on a “brave face” during the entrepreneurial lows, you’re using up willpower.

The Limitations of Decision-Making

Decision-making is the other factor that withers your willpower.

In an astonishing study, researchers studied 1,112 rulings by Israeli judges on whether or not to grant a criminal parole. What was the #1 determinant in whether the criminal would get parole or not? It was not their ethnicity, religion or severity of the crime…it was the time of day!

The earlier in the day the case was, the higher the odds of the criminal getting parole. It turns out that the judges suffered from “decision fatigue” towards the end of the day and the easy decision to make after being fatigued was to simply say “no.”

When we face difficult decisions after our willpower has been depleted, the brain looks for shortcuts by doing one of two things:

1. Making impulsive choices– this is when you give up and order pizza or when the judge denies a criminal parole because it’s the easy thing to do
2. Do nothing– this is when you simply have no energy to even consider the factors of decision-making and don’t make a choice

Now that you understand the limitations around willpower, how can you use it to your advantage?

Tip #1 : Do your hardest work earlier in the day

Since your willpower is like a tank of gas that gets depleted throughout the day, try to schedule doing your hardest work earlier.

Use the habit loop to turn this hack into a daily routine where you tackle the most difficult tasks first. Here’s an example of a habit loop you can use:

1. Cue– the night before, schedule a Google calendar event for 7:00 am and title it as the hardest task you have to do that day. The next morning you’ll get a pop-up reminder that serves as your cue
2. Routine– do the task at 7:00, duh!
3. Reward- you can reward yourself with a morning coffee or a 15-minute break to do whatever you want

Tip #2: Avoid willpower drains

Your goal is to reserve your willpower, therefore it’s critical to avoid things that quickly deplete your self-control like interacting with a coworker who you find hard to deal with or putting yourself in situations where you have to resist temptation.

A University of Toronto study, “found that people whose willpower was depleted by self-control tasks showed decreased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region involved with cognition.”

Be sure to avoid putting yourself in situations where you have to exert a lot of self-control or hold back your emotions right before an important meeting or event.

Tip #3: Eat

Glucose is fuel for your brain, interestingly it has been scientifically proven to improve self-control. Studies show that both humans and dogs who had to exert willpower show depleted levels of glucose compared to those who didn’t. Something as simple as drinking a glass of lemonade or Gatorade has been shown to improve self-control.

If you have to focus or make continual decisions throughout the day, make sure you’re blood sugar levels are sufficient.  

You may want to get a hit of glucose before making that next big decision!

Tip# 4: Build your willpower muscle

Willpower is like a muscle that can be strengthened. Strengthening willpower is a great way to improve your discipline over the long-term.

You can build your willpower by systematically avoiding temptation and improving your self-control. A helpful tactic to use is called “implementation intention.”

The idea is to have a pre-planned action step when you’re tempted with something you want to avoid. You can think of it as an “if, then” statement.

For example, if you are trying to kick the habit of constantly checking your inbox, your “then” statement can be: 

“Every time I’m tempted to check my email, I will double check my ‘to-do’ list for the day and work on my #1 task instead.”

Getting specific around what your “then” action will be will help you exert self-control over the things that matter and doing this repeatedly will help you both build new habits and strengthen your willpower.

Mental Hack #3: Training Your Brain For Success

It’s pretty obvious that we’re constantly overloaded with information. In one day we’re exposed to the equivalent of 174 newspapers worth of data. Of course you’re too busy to pay attention to all that information, so you simply pay attention what’s relevant to you. How?

There’s a part of your brain that’s solely dedicated to filtering and focusing your attention to things that are important, it’s called the reticular activating system (RAS). It’s a loose network of neurons and neural fibers that run through your brain stem.

You may have experienced your RAS in action when you’ve considered buying a particular car. Do you realize that you start noticing that car everywhere?

Well it’s not that everyone went out and bought that car, it’s that your RAS has been primed to focus on it since it’s now deemed “important” to you.

Simply put, the RAS links your thoughts and feelings with similar things in your environment.

How can you use the RAS to your advantage?

Tip #1: Write down your goals

Writing down your goals helps your brain focus on the things that are important to you. Since the RAS links the unconscious and conscious parts of your brain, you want to prime it to focus on the things that can give you disproportionate results.

To help you do this, take some time to clearly define what your goals are and how you will execute them:

1. Envision your desired future: Vividly imagine what you want your future to be like. What type of business will you be running? Where will you be living? Who will you be hanging out with? Working with?
2. Establish long term-goals: Get specific on what your long-term goals are. For example, if you want to “work from wherever” then your long-term goal may be to generate at least 75% of the income from your startup that you’re generating from your day job. Create a few long-term goals that are in line with the desired future you just mapped out
3. Establish micro-goals: Once you understand your desired future and have a few long-term goals you want to achieve, chunk them down into short-term micro-goals to set yourself up for small wins.

If one of your long-term goals is to start your own business, your micro-goal would be to identify a specific market with a specific problem you can fix. If you’ve already done that your next micro-goal could be simply making $100 in 30 days.

Make sure your micro-goals are specific, achievable, and have a deadline. You can then get even more specific and outline the action items that would get you to $100.

Writing this down will activate your RAS and get you concentrating on the things that matter while ignoring all the other “noise” that can distract you from reaching your goals. Studies have shown increased retention and brain activity when you write things down versus typing.

Tip #2: Visualize

The RAS also controls your belief system, you can use it to cultivate a stronger belief in yourself through visualization.

You can use this to improve your mental strength, whether it’s to silence your inner-critic or harness the motivation you need to get through the entrepreneurial lows.

Think back on a moment when you achieved something challenging in your life. Maybe it was the time you worked hard on a project that was well received or the time you hit the game winning shot?

Visualize those moments in vivid detail, down to the tiny things like what you were wearing and thinking in your head as it happened.

What did it sound like, feel like, who were you with, what traits got you there, how did you persevere when the going got tough?

By visualizing your past success you can feel that same sense of achievement you felt back then and you can identify the traits that got you to that “win.” You can then focus on those traits to cultivate them in a deeper way to replicate success.

Let’s suppose that one of the main reasons you were able to learn a new language quickly was because you had a language partner that helped you practice and improve.

In business terms, that may translate into identifying a mentor in your field who can push you to practice and improve.

Taking the time to visualize past success will help you identify the top qualities that got you there and will prime your brain to begin focusing on developing those traits. You may find yourself becoming hyper-aware of networking events or people in your life who could serve as mentors once you’ve identified that as a factor for success.

Another positive byproduct of visualizing past success is that you activate the same sensory and motor programs in the brain that were involved with the action you’re visualizing.

In a groundbreaking experiment piano players were divided in two groups. One was told to physically practice, while the other was told to “mentally” practice by visualizing playing the piano.

In both groups, the same physical changes in the brain were found in the motor cortex and after three days their accuracy was exactly the same regardless of how they practiced. Crazy right?!

Visualization is not some new-agey voodoo, it’s a real way to activate the areas in your brain that can help you achieve your goals tangibly. Top athletes also use visualization techniques to prepare for victories and you can too!

In Conclusion

Being an entrepreneur is tough, the path is paved with numerous challenges.

By being able to build positive habits, make good decisions, work “smartly,” and deeply focus on the stuff that matters are essential to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

By understanding how your brain works and optimizing it to your advantage, you can have a “mental edge” on your entrepreneurial journey.

Get started optimizing your brain today! Now that you have the framework of the habit loop, you can actually put these tips into action. Comment below and share your favorite tip and how you’re going to implement it in your day!

This is a guest post by communication coach Katrina Razavi, founder of CommunicationforNerds.com. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, visit her site and get your free eBook: 4 Social Skills of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs.

The post How Elite Entrepreneurs Do More With Less Time – 3 Science-Backed Brain Hacks You Can Start Using Today appeared first on StartupBros.

Ever wonder what sales tactics startups and major tech companies use to scale?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s not this^

Highly  successful companies such as Yelp, Seamless, and especially Groupon were built from the ground up through cold calling.

My first job out of college was doing sales at one of the coolest tech companies in the country, Google which has even tried to acquire that company several times. They went public back in 2012 and have over 100 million visitors to the site each month!

How do startups become massively successful like the ones mentioned above?

Well it starts with having a great product, then generating revenue. Companies like these recruit and train some of the best salespeople you will ever meet. The tactics they teach can help launch someone with literally no sales experience, to generating thousand of dollars in revenue for the company in a matter of months.

The amazing part of my job was seeing 23 and 24 year olds bringing in thousands of dollars each month for the company. Sales is a great field because it comes down to raw talent.

Who cares how old you are or how much tenure you have, the real question is:

“Can you perform?”

If you want to have your own business, then it’s imperative that you know how to sell. That’s why I decided to get a sales job, so that I could learn how to persuade people to give me money.

When I first started, I was extremely anxious when cold calling business owners.

During my breaks I would often call my mom for a pep talk. Fast forward a year later; I’ve closed over 130k and I no longer cringe at the thought of calling business owners, and expecting them to talk to me about advertising.

A large part of being successful in sales is your mindset. If you’re not fearful and believe that you will close, then you will. A theory I coined called “The Gastby Effect” explores how you can think yourself into success.

It’s no coincidence that several widely successful entrepreneurs like Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban had jobs in sales before becoming successful. It teaches you grit, resilience, and the art of persuasion.

How To Find Good Prospects

Cold calling starts with prospecting.

The goal of a cold call is to set an appointment with the business owner, also referred to as the DM (decision maker), to demo your product/service via phone or in person. No matter how good you are or how many calls you make, you won’t be successful if you’re reaching out to the wrong people.

It’s temping to just want to call everyone, for as we all know, sales is a numbers game right? Well, yes and no.

The best sales reps work smarter and not harder. The end game is to eventually close a client for a deal. Therefore, you don’t want to waste your time on someone that isn’t a potential buyer, or a good fit for your product or service.

How can you determine if someone is a good prospect?

It depends on what you’re selling. However, to give you a better understanding, let’s pretend you’re a salesperson for Seamless, the largest online food ordering platform.

Seamless has been deemed a staple for busy millennials, especially in NYC. When you order delivery…it’s almost always through Seamless. Now, I’m going to give you a scenario. Try to guess if it’s a good prospect or not.

Scenario 1: Seamless Salesperson

Take a look at the qualities of the business below. If you were a salesperson for Seamless, would you call Pete’s Pizza?

Pete’s Pizza

Qualities:

Has website

Takes deliveries via phone

Advertises by passing out flyers

Active Facebook page

What do you think, is this a good lead or not?

Yes it is, and let me tell you why:

1. He sees the value in having an online presence, since he engages with customers via Facebook and invested in being online by paying for a website.
2. He already put a system in place to accept delivery orders.
3. He is actively trying to get new business by passing out flyers.

This is someone a Seamless salesperson would want to call.

Scenario 2: Groupon Salesperson

Wunderschon Hotel

Qualities:

Posh hotel (one where celebs and diplomats stay)

They don’t advertise

Has 10 rooms

Has website

Good prospect, yes or no?

Probably not, here’s why:

1. Expensive hotels won’t want to discount their prices or appeal to deal hunters.
2. They don’t advertise, so they don’t have a need to get new business.
3. Only 10 rooms, so most likely operating at full occupancy, and wouldn’t be able to accommodate the flood of new business.

Although both scenarios could potentially be closed for a sale, you want to focus your efforts on prospects that have a better chance of closing. Cold calling is already tough, so calling the right prospects will make your conversations easier.

Do an audit of the people you plan to reach out to, and ask yourself, are they really potential buyers? What is their need? How can my product improve their business?

If you answer these questions honestly to yourself that will help you pick the right prospects to pursue.

How To Make Cold Calls

During my sales training, we were taught the Open Call Tree process. When doing your cold calls, this is a simple process to follow when you get a business owner on the phone:

1. Introduce yourself
2. Find out their familiarity with your product or service
3. Give them value
4. Show them the opportunity
5. Ask for the appointment

Here are examples of how each step in the Open Call Tree sounds. Let’s be a Seamless sales rep again:

Introduction: Hi it’s Alicia, how’s it going?

Don’t mention the product or service you are calling from right away. This allows you to gauge their attitude. If they sound rushy and impatient, then you know it’s not because they’re upset that you called from your particular company, but because they are rushed and overwhelmed in general.

Familiarity: I’m calling from Seamless, have you heard of us?

Value (if they say yes): Great, well there are thousands of searches happening every month for restaurants in your area that deliver on Seamless.

If they say no: Seamless is the most popular website people use to order food online.

Be sure to explain your product or service to them in layman’s terms, then mention the value statement from the previous example.

Demonstrating the value of your product or service is a must. You need to give the DM a reason to stay on the phone, since they get several calls a day from salespeople.

Opportunity: There’s an opportunity for you to grow your business through Seamless as well.

Then you have to ask for the appointment, like so… “When do you have 15 minutes so I can show you what we’re doing with other restaurants in your area?”

This formula works for any industry. Whether you’re a graphic designer or freelance writer, you can use these steps to set appointments with prospective clients. The key to success with cold calling is to be prepared.

The quote is true that “success is where preparation and opportunity meet.”

I put together the Open Call Tree steps in a doc so you can easily download, print, and have it in plain sight whenever you’re making calls.

How To Set Solid Appointments

The goal of setting an appointment is to not only get the business owner to verbally agree, but to set a strong appointment (one in which they show up) with the right expectations.

If your goal is to get them to buy at the end of your pitch, then you need to state that upfront on the cold call. It’s also important to find out their need for your product or service, so that they make your appointment a priority.

Now there are a few checklist items you need to address on the call to ensure you have a solid appointment:

1. Know the decision making process

Does the DM run their decision by someone else? A significant other? This is important to ask because you want everyone that helps make decisions present during your pitch. You will be thankful you did this, because at the end of your pitch the DM can’t pull the good ole, “Let me run this by my wife, marketing manager, etc.” excuse.

2. Make sure you find out their timeline

Are they open to utilizing your product or service right now? For instance, if you’re selling ads, you need to ask:

Are you looking to take on new business now?

2. Get their goals

Find out how your product/service can help them. If they don’t have a need or specific goals your conversation won’t be a priority for them.

3. Set the agenda of your pitch.

Here’s an example of how setting the agenda sounds:

“So Bob, for our appointment I’ll learn more about your business, show you our product and how it can help grow your business, and get you started on the call if it’s something you like. Sound good?”

The reason you want to set the agenda is to make sure that your potential client isn’t blindsided at the end of your meeting. If the goal is to have them buy/sign up for a product or service at the end, say that…don’t shy away to avoid objections, because on the contrary you want to address objections early before the close.

4. Get all the info you need

Make sure you get their best email address, number, and whatever else that could apply. This is so that you can remind them of your appointment, and continually touch base with them.

If you follow these checklist items, then it gives you ammo and permission to call your client out at the end of your meeting.

If they say “Call me back in a few months” you can point out the fact that you asked them their timeline prior to the meeting by saying, “What’s really holding you back? You said you could handle getting more business now” Or if they say they don’t think your product or service will be a good fit for their business, tie it back to the goals they mentioned.

How To Overcome Common Objections

What happens when you get a DM on the phone and they don’t want to speak with you?

Well, most of the time business owners won’t jump at the opportunity to take an appointment with you. About  90% of my job was overcoming objections. I had to convince them to speak with me.

I did that by following the process of the Objection Handling Triangle:

Objection Handling Triangle

A business owner gives you an objection (“I don’t have time to talk,”) you give them value: “This is worth your time, we have thousand of searches happening for pizza each month.”

Then ask for the appointment: “Let’s set up some time to talk.”

If they give you another objection, you continue the process as many times as it takes to set the appointment.

The first step to overcoming ANY objection is to Acknowledge and Respond. You want to let them know that you heard their concern, and that you care by taking the time to address it.

Here are a few of the most common objections to buying:

• Budget:

The budget objection is typically a defense mechanism.

From the DM’s perspective, you’re just another person after their money. Therefore, it’s your job to give them value, and show why your product or service is worth their time.

How many times do we go to a store with the intention of buying ONE thing but end up leaving with FIVE? If you’re anything like me, that happens way too often.

If someone initially asked me as I walked into the store if I was interested in buying a few things, I would say no, and that I only need and have money to get one thing. Reason being is that I haven’t looked around the store yet, so I didn’t have a chance to see the value in the things that I ultimately ended up buying later.

The same thing goes for business owners. They have the ability to invest in something if they see how it can make them a return on their investment.

Let’s be real. They can’t afford to advertise with everyone that calls them, so it’s up to you to emphasize why taking a meeting with you is worth their time.

Here’s some verbiage to handle the budget objection:

“Hey Bob, I understand budget is an issue for you, but it doesn’t cost anything to hear about your options. There’s an opportunity for you to grow your business through [insert your product/service here], you should at least learn about it before you close the door on us. If you see the value in how this product can make you more than you spend, you can invest. If not, we can go our separate ways.”

• Busy:

This is a very common objection DM’s use to brush you off. If every time you call they say, “I’m busy, call me next week” say this:

“Hi Bob, I get that I’m calling you out of the blue and you’re probably super busy (this ties back to the importance of acknowledging what a business owner is saying,) when is a good time for me to call you back?”

“Ok, I’ll call you at 2pm. By the way Bob, are you actually interested in learning about [insert product or value statement here]?”

If they say yes, great. If they say no, then at least you know that they’re brushing you off, and that gives you a chance to dig in and address their objections.

• I’m already with: [insert competitor’s name]

This objection can be good, because if the DM is already working with a competitor that means they see the value in having a product that similar to yours.

Let’s use Groupon (the #1 daily deals site in the US) and LivingSocial (their biggest competitor) as an example.

Here’s how a Groupon salesperson might overcome that objection:

“Bob, it’s great that you’re working with LivingSocial (Acknowledge and Respond) and I’m glad that you see the value in offering discounts to potential customers. However, if you’re working with LivingSocial, then you have to see what we’re doing here at Groupon.”

[value statement] “We’re the number one daily deals site in the US. Let me show you what we’re doing with other businesses in your area.”

Then ask for the appointment again:

“Let’s set up some time to talk. Are you available today at noon?”

I’ve put together an additional list of objections and ways to overcome them.

You can download my objection handling script here.

Start practicing objection handling with a friend.

Role playing was a large part of my sales training, and even continued development. It’s when you get a partner, which can be a friend, family member or coworker, and you role play cold calling scenarios. They will give you objections, and you practice overcoming them. Doing that will prepare you to handle objections fast and efficiently.

When it comes to handling objections, it’s important to not let the business owner sell YOU into THEIR objections.

If they say they don’t have a budget, don’t immediately believe them. Try to figure out what’s really holding them back.

How many times have you shooed off a salesperson with an excuse like, “I’m busy” or “I don’t have any money?”

Why do we do that? Because we haven’t seen the value of what the person is offering and we lump them in the category of  “annoying salesperson.”

When all is said and done, people have the power to invest if they see value.

To separate yourself, show genuine interest in their business, and show how you can help them. Keep in mind the tips that I covered, and you will close more deals.

Sales is the best opportunity to see what you’re made of. If you can bypass your initial fears and insecurities, then you’ll be successful and reap the financial benefits.

The post Cold-Calling Your Way to $100k – A Step-by-Step Strategy You Can Use appeared first on StartupBros.

[Note: This is a guest post from our good friend Edmund Lowman. He has built the #1 rated chain of hostels in Thailand along with a bunch of other successful businesses that he’ll tell you about below. He’s also a rock star. Legitimately. He was in Red Jumpsuit Apparatus before becoming an entrepreneur. He knows what’s what–check it!]

These days having your own business is all the rage.

Everyone thinks it’s like the cool thing to do and it’s going to make them super-mega-crazy-boy-band-rich…

The truth is that it just may, but if that’s your only logic for jumping into the sea of sharks, unfortunately you are in for a very big surprise.

However, if you are staring at the sea of sharks and thinking to yourself, “Man I really want to punch that shark in the mouth,” or “This is going to be exciting as hell and hopefully I won’t get eaten,” well then my friend you might just have a fighting chance.

Based on my personal experience and experience coaching others, I’ve found that there are typically 7 deadly sins that are sure to sink your startup.

1. Not Validating Your Idea

If I had a dollar for every time that someone has come to me and said:

“Oh man, I have this great idea, I am developing this software that (insert useless task that no one cares about in the first place) it’s going to revolutionize the way people (poop in the streets, or something else useless) and then I would never ever have to work again and I would be able to spend way more time expanding my farmville empire.”

I think my favorite talk I have heard on this is from Derek Sivers, talking about Billion dollar ideas.

Basically he outlines the probability of having a billion dollar idea, and then how much the amount of effort, results and execution actually effects this valuation.

The thing is this, people do not want to hear about great ideas, they want to see them. (unless you are a really really good salesman, then just telling them might be enough)

However, for the other 99.9% of us people who want to see something, it does not have to be the 100% finished product, but people want to see that you:

A. Believe in it enough to get it going and,

B. That you actually have some results to back up what you are saying about your great idea.

You would be shocked at how far a little effort will go in showing results, so validate and show people you are serious first.

2. Inaction

Now believe it or not there are people that have pretty good idea that could potentially be amazing, but they suffer from the inability to act.

Their reasons are typically because they want to make it perfect, the website isn’t ready, their business cards are being printed, they’re just waiting for my LLC papers, the economy is bad… Whatever.

All of these are just excuses and the reality is what is holding them up is FEAR.

Fear is crippling, trust me I know.

Even after I had had a business for several years, when thinking of ideas for a new one I found myself paralyzed by inaction and fear. Eventually I decided to take an online course on “How to start a business” and keep in mind I already owned a multi-million dollar company, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

The course was Noah Kagan’s Monthly 1k it was AMAZING!

It changed my outlook on business completely and led me to starting Slumber Party Hostel, which is now a million dollar company and growing by the day.

Slumber Party Hostel: A business or do I just get to party? Sometimes I can’t tell.

Here’s the thing, what is the absolute worst that could happen?

You quit your job? You can probably get another one.

You fail? Big deal.

You lose some money? Happens to everyone.

Very rarely do people start a business that just kicks ass from the get-go. Its just not how it works. It takes time, persistence and a bit of planning to make it happen.

I look at most businesses, real estate investments, or really anything like this:

• How much is this going to cost me?
• If things go marginally well can I pay myself back in 12 months?

If the answer is yes and it is something I am pumped about I typically do it. Pretty simple.

No fancy charts, graphs, or anything.

3. Over Planning

The evil twin brother of inaction is over planning.

A plan is good, I think.

Actually I cannot really say because I am not really much of a planner.

I am more of a doer. Baring all financial and moral barriers, if something feels right to me and I am excited about it, I will generally do it. Sometimes this is awesome like Kekai Express or Slumber Party Hostel, other times it falls flat on its face like a few of my less noteworthy ventures.

The point is that yeah, some of these failures sucked and were a set back mentally (which is usually the worst part) and financially, but if you pivot set backs the right way they can be a huge step in the right direction–even though it might feel like a kick in the balls.

If you over plan, then the task before you becomes so huge and overwhelming that you more than likely will never take the first real step.

The great irony is that many people create huge, elaborate plans to feel like they are actually accomplishing something when in reality, they are just creating busy work so that they can protect themselves from the potential of failure.

The key is to get out there and do the bare minimum required to get a paying customer. You can always improve your business as you go, but if you spend your whole life planning your master scheme, you’ll never make that first dollar.

4. Financial Mismanagement

Let me start off by saying, I am HORRIBLE with money.

I like to spend and I like to buy.

Thus my success is more out of necessity than anything else. That being said, you need to track where you started and where you are going from the beginning.  Financial forecasting and planning is one thing I do plan for.

Yes I know I am totally contradicting what I said above… but hear me out.

In all of my businesses I only focus on one metric and one metric only: customer satisfaction.

That’s it. Mystery solved.

If your customers love you then they are going to stay with you, tell people about you, and never want to leave your side. If you have these kind of customers, then you do not have to worry so much about money, because you know it is always going to be coming in. Furthermore, you can easily plan for the future and forecast your finances, which is HUGE when it comes to running your business.

The worst thing you can do with money is have no idea where it came from, where you spent it, and no idea where you are going to get more.

Personally I use excel for everything. I am sure there are better programs out there, but I like to keep it simple and it works for me.

So if there is one thing you DO plan, let it be your finances.

5. Lack of Structure

There is always this special/painful moment in a startup where you go from a staff of 10 -15 to a staff of 25-30.

Now this may not sound like a huge jump, but it is.

All of a sudden there is a hierarchy and a company culture, people who have been there from the beginning get defensive of their place in the company, and often times those original staff members end up leaving because of some misplaced sense of ownership or importance.

This can be a VERY painful time for startups and can also be crippling if there is no clear structure and process in place for employees to follow and get things done.

Often times it will cause severe bottlenecks, typically with the founders, who generally will have a difficult time relinquishing some of their responsibilities to focus on the big picture.

Any successful business has a well thought out structure, which leads me to our next deadly startup sin:

6. Inability to Replicate

One of the most important lessons I learned at a very young age is that if you plan on hiring staff and you plan on not running the business full time you need to map out every process you do, no matter how insignificant it might be.

McDonald’s has a 20 page document on how to clean bathrooms at their restaurants.

Yeah, you need to be like that.

The more clear you are about how to do things the way that you do them, the easier it is to have someone replicate it later.

The easier you can spell out the detailed steps to replicate, the easier your life will be when you finally decide to start handing off tasks to others.

Without well defined systems and structures, your start up will NEVER grow beyond a small business.

Replication and proper training go hand-in-hand.  If you do not develop consistent methods of training new employees that can be later used to train later hires, your organization will eventually fall apart.

Either that, or you or your staff will be consumed with fixing bad employee habits that should have been addressed in their initial training and your growth and productivity will be severely stunted.

7. No Company Ethos

You have to have a spirit and a culture behind your company.

This often stems from your “Why?” Your “Why” is really up to you.

Do you want to get rich? Awesome do it!

Save the spotted Owl? Why not!

Put your name on the side of large building? Absolutely!

Build and organization that enriches your employees as well as customers? Now that’s noble!

The sooner you are honest with yourself about the big “Why” or reason that you are building your company, the sooner you will get there.

My ethos for every company has always been:

Keep the customer happy, NO MATTER WHAT. (unless they are assholes and you do not mind losing them as customers, this important to keep in mind)

Generally speaking the above Ethos has done the following for me:

• Lead my staff to be extremely creative/fun about keeping customers happy
• Made our company culture awesome
• Empowered the staff to make their own problem solving decisions without constant babysitting

Determining a company’s ethos comes down to asking yourself 3 main lines of questioning:

1. What is my company’s creation story?

Throughout history humans have traditionally communicated through stories. People always feel more comfortable once we get to know who someone is and where they came from–or their personal story.  The same goes for companies. Educating employees as well as customers about where the company came from generates a greater level of understanding, trust, and bonding.

2. What is my company’s vision?

Once people know where you came from, they want to know where you are going. Having a vision for your business gives it not only a past to reference, but also a future to look forward to in your employee’s minds. Your company’s vision helps complete the overall story and gives employees an understand of “Why” they are coming into work each day. Be sure to tie this vision into you employee’s future because someone who believes in the future of an enterprise is not only more likely to stay with that company, but will also be more inspired to work harder to get there.

3. What are my company’s values?

This adds the human element to a business and is at the core of it’s ethos. It is also what makes a workplace more like a family and less like a large, mechanical machine with people instead of cogs and gears. My companies’ primary values have always been customer satisfaction and this has set the tone for every customer/employee interaction. With this in mind, choose your values wisely.

In Conclusion…

So are you guilty?

SINNER!

I know I’ve been guilty of a few of these at one time or another:

1. Not Validating An Idea First
2. Inaction
3. Over Planning
4. Financial Mismanagement
5. Lack of Structure
6. Inability to Replicate
7. No Company Ethos

Luckily, over planning has never been an issue for me.

Based on my work coaching up-and-coming importers with the StartupBros, I would say that the 2 sins that most people suffer from when they’re first starting out are: 1) Not properly validating their idea–and 2) plain old Inaction.

People get so spooked at the idea of failing–whether unconsciously or not–that they don’t even get the experience of messing up on sins 4-7.

Failing is good. Failing is real world education, as long as you are aware enough to learn from the experience.

So get out there, take action, validate your idea and watch your finances.  If you develop a customer-oriented company ethos, your startup just may survive to the point where you can build a replicable structure.

All of this starts with that first step.  Move swiftly.

The post 7 Deadly Startup Sins appeared first on StartupBros.

Here’s something I’m extremely excited to show you

We’ve been working on a documentary for the past month or two – and it’s finally complete…

A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into the making of this documentary. But I think you will find it was well worth it!

You’re the first to see this – consider it the ‘world premiere’ of the StartupBros Origins Documentary…

There’s a lot of people out there trying to build communities like ours, but most of these communities fail.

I want to connect with you on a real, genuine, and personal level. That’s why we made this documentary.

So grab a bowl of popcorn, and get ready to meet ‘the real’ me/team behind the StartupBros ‘You Don’t Need a Job’ Movement…

Now – I have one favor to ask from you…

Our whole team is on the edge of our seats, waiting to hear what you think! Please comment below or email us and let us know…

After all, the only reason we’re here is to help you on your own entrepreneurial journey!

Together, we can make each other better and help each other build the lives of our dreams…

I look forward to hearing from you via comment or email.

Much love <3
Will

The post [World Premiere] Who are the StartupBros? Meet the Team Behind the Movement – About Us/Origins Documentary appeared first on StartupBros.

“The unified championship belt” held by my podcast “25 Minuter”. It ranks #1 in All Categories, All, #1 in All Categories, Audio, #1 in Business, and #1 in Education on iTunes New & Noteworthy for Sweden. After 14 weeks.

About 1.5 years ago I wrote an article titled “How to Blast Out Of Obscurity” for StartupBros.

That article was about how I started a decent-sized blog with high readership engagement, in relatively short time while being busy.

Basically, I broke down the process of starting a blog into the fundamental 80/20 activities and showed actionable ways you could do the same—and many people did!

(I know because I received emails from them.)

Today, I wanna walk you through a similar “80/20-activity-process,” for how you can start a popular podcast. This is something I’ve done over the last 3 months, and I didn’t have to put in soul-killing hours to accomplish it. Read on and you’ll find out why.

Here’s What We’ll Cover:

• A Quick Glance at My Podcast: “25 Minuter”
• How to Start a Popular Podcast
• 10 I Things Noticed When Studying the Competition for Ways to Stand Out
• How to Create Your Unique Content Formula
• How to Structure Your First Episode
• How to Become Featured in iTunes New & Noteworthy
• 4 Common Mistakes Podcasters Make
• How to Pace Future Episodes
• 2 Time-Saving Tips

Please note: I’m covering the most important strategic decisions you’ll need to make, NOT all the boring technical stuff. When the time comes for you to do those things, just Google how to do it.

A Quick Glance at My Podcast: “25 Minuter”

My podcast is called 25 Minuter.

25 Minuter (which means 25 minutes, in Swedish) is a podcast about business, career, and personal development. We frequently draw on financial theory and we always have concrete takeaways for the listeners. As suggested by the name, we keep our episodes to 25 minutes.

I say “my” podcast, but it’s really a team effort.

I do the podcast together with Mikael Syding (the beefy guy on the left in the picture below). Mikael is a “retired” hedge fund manager. His hedge fund, Futuris Asset Management, was awarded European Hedge Fund of the Decade.

–They only give out one of those awards every 10 years, and only to one hedge fund.

Mikael has listened to tons of podcasts over the years, and because of this he has a good sense of “good podcasting” vs “bad podcasting”. This experience has been invaluable.

We also do our podcast in collaboration with the company TradeVenue, a Swedish investment platform. Having TradeVenue as our strategic partner has been extremely helpful, because it means that me and Mikael have the time to work on our separate business projects, and don’t have to kill ourselves “just” to put out a popular podcast.

(I’ll go into some of the specific benefits of having a strategic partner at the end of the article.)

So far, we’ve received more than 100k downloads on iTunes since we started 3 months ago.

[Pictured: Statistics from our Libsyn account, measuring iTunes downloads.]

In total we’ve had maybe 150k downloads, if you count SoundCloud and other podcasting platforms. But iTunes is by far the most important one, so that’s the one we track.

And, as you saw in the image on top, we’re also the #1 ranked New and Noteworthy podcast in 2 categories—plus all categories— simultaneously.
Let me tell you how we did it…

How We Started a Popular Podcast

It started with me doing my homework on the Swedish podcasting industry and then applying some neat stuff—having to do with positioning, differentiation, and target audience—that I learned during the StartupBros Import Empire Summit.

Two guys whom I learned a lot from during the event were Zach Smith (CEO of Funded.Today), who has a solid background in marketing, and the enigmatic serial-entrepreneur Edmund Lowman (whom you already know from StartupBros. If not, read this article).

In particular, two of Edmund’s speeches made an impact on me.

The first one was about his “Business Marketing Checklist” and the other one was about branding; two areas in which Edmund has a proven track record from building 4 successful businesses.

[After the talk I asked Edmund if he would please email me his checklist. He did. But Gmail didn’t show it, so asked him again. Three times! After his 3rd email it showed up in Gmail. It was embarrassing, but I wanted it.]

Edmund talked about companies which had looked at what the competition was doing, paid attention to consumer needs which were not being met, and then decided they would provide an alternative to the industry status quo and meet these needs.

Edmund said his three favorite examples of companies which had done this successfully were:

1. Emirates Airline: (by unfailingly providing really good service, though expensive.)
2. Evernote: (by using an extreme Freemium model.)
3. Tune Hotels: (by being cheap but charging you for everything else. Opposite of Evernote.)

When I talked to Edmund after his speech, he prodded me: “What are others doing that annoy you? Do the opposite!”

He continued: “If everyone else (in the niche or industry) is doing something, it becomes boring. By breaking this pattern you can gain attention from contrast.”

I already sort of “knew” this stuff, but the way Edmund put it made it go “CLICK” inside my head. So when I got back to Sweden I immediately put his advice into action. And it was powerful!

The first thing I did was to find ways for the podcast to stand out from the crowd…

10 Things I Noticed When Studying the Competition for Ways to Stand Out

When I studied the competition of Swedish podcasts I noticed that:

1. Most Swedish podcasts don’t do proper cutting or editing, and those who do typically do a poor job at it.
2. Many podcasts (not just Swedish) have mediocre sound quality. This is easy to amend.
3. They are not practical enough. And when the podcasts are practical, the advice is generally low quality and time-consuming. Episodes often go on for 40-60 minutes, talking around the point.
4. Most of the podcasts are just empty banter and gossip (which can work when two celebrities come together to do a podcast, but not otherwise).
5. They have unoriginal names. Most of them are called something along the lines of “The [insert niche] Podcast” or “The [insert niche podcast] with [name] & [name]”.
6. Most podcasts use cover images of the host(s) or they have some cluttered design.
7. Most podcasts do not have a sufficiently clear-cut target audience.
8. They typically do not have a unique content formula tailored to differentiate them and benefit their target audience.
9. Most of them do a bad job with copywriting (in the headlines and episode descriptions).
10. Nearly all podcasts lack logical pacing of episodes and long-term planning.

The most popular podcasts, by comparison, typically do many or all of these things well.

(Note 1: all of these points provide an avenue for differentiation!)

(Note 2: Re #5, we also took a picture like that—as you saw earlier—but we decided not to use it for our profile picture in iTunes because, again, we wanted to use every way possible to stand out from the crowd!)

[We think our—simple—logo stands out.]

[How many “people images” & “cluttered designs” can you spot in this image?]

We came to this conclusion by our own reasoning and observations, not by mindless mimicry.

We came to this conclusion because we—as Edmund said—looked at what was not being done, and decisively decided that we would provide that thing.

Don’t Forget the Music!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Thanks for reminding me, you’re the best!

For music, we noticed—(unfortunately)—that most podcasts actually do a pretty good job. So, that means it would be difficult for us to stand out there…

But that doesn’t mean music isn’t important—it is important. And ours is cool.

So what kind of music do you want? It depends on the nature of your podcast. But generally, you want something that is UPBEAT and energizing, without being hard on the listener—unlike Tim Ferriss’s podcast intro music (sorry Tim, but it hurts my ears!)

[smart_track_player url=”https://soundcloud.com/startupbros/30-sek-podcast-intro” social=”false” ]

Two Important Things You Should Figure out Before Starting a Podcast

First, for how long will you do the podcast?

Will you do it like most TV series (focused on only 1 or 2 seasons), or will you make it “forever,” like Seinfeld or Friends? (Ours is “forever”.)

One example of why you may want to do a time-limited podcast could be that your podcast will be about how you’re gonna achieve some specific goal. Like how you will become a powerlifter, the best paid stripper in your city, or whatever else you want to do…

Second, what formula will you follow?

You need a formula, a unique benefit baked into the show!

This is SUPER important, especially if you’re doing the “forever” approach.

You Must Create Your Unique Content Formula

–Because, every successful podcast has one!
A good case study for this is the Entrepreneur on Fire (EOF) podcast.

Though EOF (which is an interview-based show with entrepreneurs) is very different from my podcast, 25 Minuter, I still learned a great deal by studying it.

The EOF unique content formula looks like this:

• The entrepreneur guest’s biggest failure and success.
• The entrepreneur guest’s biggest “AHA-moment” in business.
• “The Lightning Round,” where the guest is asked 6 random questions.

–As you can see, these are all gambits which revolve around telling stories.

In fact, the entire EOF podcast is built around stories, meant to inspire the listener to take action. Given EOF’s target audience, this is clever. This is an important point in itself: Tailor your show around your intended target audience. EOF’s creator, John Lee Dumas, explains:

“I sat down and created my perfect listener (Jimmy in the video above) and then crafted the perfect show for that perfect listener.”

EOF was also (to my knowledge) the first podcast to ever put out regular daily episodes. This, too, was a strong differentiator acting in its favor.

The formula for my podcast 25 Minuter looks like this:

• Intro music + a highlighted part of the episode.
• Introduce theme of the episode.
• This week’s mindset.
• This week’s practical tip.
• This week’s quote.
• This week’s book.
• And occasionally, this week’s _______ [insert random quirky thing].
• Teaser for next episode & CTA.
• Ending music.

When it comes to the “this week’s ______,” we don’t always do it in that specific sequence of order, but we always have these characteristic elements in the show. We usually separate them from the rest of the content by inserting a drumroll or a short jingle. This acts a psychological cue for listeners, making it easier for them to pay extra attention and remember the most important stuff.

The “highlighted part of the episode” used in the beginning to accompany the music contains a short segment where Mikael or I say something that’s:

• Taken out of context, funny/weird, or gives off a “WTF-factor” that makes people think “what the hell are they talking about? I better listen and find out!”
• Representative of the core message of the episode.
• Quirky, Interesting or thought-provoking—thereby inspiring curiosity.

(Just listen to the first 10 seconds of any of our episodes and you’ll understand.)

Again, the reason we do this is to stand out from the large crowd of bland and uncreatively designed podcasts. So that we can grab—and keep—the interest of listeners.

Your homework: Study some of the most popular podcasts and decipher their unique content formula, then take bits and pieces you like to create your own unique content formula.

Warning: Do NOT blatantly copy the unique content formula of the most popular podcast in the niche you’re trying to enter. It will not work.

Assuming you’ve done this, it’s time to start thinking about producing your first episode.

The First Episode is Extremely Important!

More important than most podcasters seem to realize, I should add.

Why? Because, like famous ad-man David Ogilvy said, you’ve got to “develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga.”

Meaning: Brand consistency is important.

The better you know your podcast’s specific concept, the better your first episode will be. Because, then you can make the first episode consistent with future episodes.

First impressions are important, so do your best to prepare a good one.

Our first episode of 25 Minuter wasn’t optimal in terms of delivery (no first episode ever is), but the content formula was perfectly consistent with our future episodes.
It gave people a strong sense of what they would get by listening to us in the future.

Your First Episode Should Look Something Like This. . .

• Intro: Introduction of who you are, why people should listen to you, and what the show’s going to be about (but avoid over-qualifying yourself). “Hi, I’m Ludvig Sunström. I have a marketing business and I’m currently writing the book Breaking out of Homeostasis about…. and I read a book a week, usually biographies, business and history. Today we’re going to talk about becoming future proof.”
• Your unique content formula: Go into your content formula ASAP (which is what makes your podcast stand out). “This week’s mindset is to be a learning machine. What we mean with that is that you gotta…”
• WTF-factor: Have a WTF-factor in the episode—inject something weird, memorable and/or useful. Mikael [rhetorically]: “How long is a string?” Ludvig [serious]: “My favorite one, which I carry in my pocket for protection, is 23 centimeters.”
• Teaser: Give listeners a reason to listen to the next episode. Perhaps by quickly mentioning 3 benefits they will get from listening to it. Maybe stated in the form of questions, to inspire curiosity. “Next week we’ll talk about how you can match your talents with a market need. We’ll also answer questions such as: 1) should you compensate for your weaknesses, or should you build on your strengths? 2) Should you follow your heart, or should you have a more planned approach? 3) How can you know if you have talent for something, and if so, how do you develop it?”
• End with a clear call to action: Rate us on iTunes, ask one of your friends to listen, follow our Twitter, join our newsletter, eat our secret rainbow-colored fruit from an ancient valley in the Himalayas…and so on. You get the point. Try to keep it to one CTA in the first episode. Preferably to be rated on iTunes. “Please don’t forget to give us a 5-star rating or review on iTunes, it would mean a lot!”

Please Don’t Make This Common Mistake in Your First Episode

I notice many other first episodes of podcasts are too long-winded. As a (picky) listener, it leaves me feeling that I wasted my time, and, as a result, I don’t want to hear the second episode!

Often, this long-windedness comes because the podcast hosts drag on (for too long) about their life stories and why they’re a credible authority.

Don’t get me wrong: It is important to immediately give the listeners a reason why they should be listening to you—perhaps by giving your credentials and talking about why you are in a position to be teaching them about topic XYZ you’ve chosen to centre your podcast around, but. . .

This often results in violation of the 2 most important rules of content creation:

1. Show, don’t tell. Instead of talking forever about how much of an authority you are, DEMONSTRATE it by providing interesting and/or valuable content to help listeners.
2. Don’t be boring. Guess what? You’re being a bore by telling me your (often incoherent) life story for 20-60 minutes. You can tell it later. After demonstrating value.

I may not be the most charismatic person, but my ideas—my content—are interesting and useful. And, at the end of the day, interesting, entertaining and valuable content keeps listeners returning for more; not charisma (unless you’re running a comedy show).

Accordingly, in our first episode of 25 Minuter, we spent about 3 minutes on introductions and the remaining 24 minutes on useful content, thereby setting the standard for future episodes.

How to Become Featured in iTunes New & Noteworthy

The iTunes New and Noteworthy is the default screen you end up in when you open up iTunes and look for podcasts. Here’s what it looks like on my computer:

You want to be featured in iTunes New and Noteworthy!

It will attract eyeballs and give you free listeners.

But how many listeners?

That’s very hard to say—it differs, especially from country to country. I’ve read about people who were “made” and got thousands of loyal long-term subscribers from prominent rankings on iTunes N&N, but I’ve also read about those which it barely helped at all!

Our show, 25 Minuter, currently gets around 4000 sure-shot downloads on iTunes the same day that we publish new episodes (which is always on Mondays, 6 AM).

It’s hard to say just how much we’ve benefited from being featured on the Swedish N&N. But I would guess that we have got several thousand subscribers (or at least recurring listeners) from our 12-week ranking-spree.

How do you rank on iTunes N&N?
There are many articles you can read about how to rank on iTunes N&N (see links in study material in the end), so I’m not going to go in-depth on that. But here are some of the key things to consider:

• Ratings & reviews: Ask everyone you know to do it! And their friends too! Create incentives for other people. And tell people to do it at the end of the show.
• Rating & reviews #2: Try to get the ratings & reviews to taper out over time. Think marathon, not sprint.
• Warning: if you have a non-international podcast, ratings and reviews from other countries will NOT count.
• Publish several episodes immediately: We did not do this. We felt we did not need to because 1) we planned a launch and 2) we had existing audiences. You may still want to do it.

We were able to get to #6 on New & Noteworthy, All Categories during our first week.

That was a good start.

I read somewhere that a podcast can only remain featured in the New & Noteworthy for 58 days, but this must not be true—because we’ve been able to stay ranked high for 12 weeks straight!

The image you saw in the beginning of this article was taken just now, after 12 weeks.

One last thing about ranking on iTunes New and Noteworthy:

Ratings & reviews are FAR more important than episode downloads.

Now, let’s jump into the future, like that movie with Michael J. Fox, when he was still young!

So, Now You’ve Got a Popular Podcast. What’s Next?

You’ve got off to a great start. You’ve managed to become featured on iTunes New & Noteworthy in at least one category. You have X amount of loyal listeners tuning in for every episode, and that number keeps growing as you get more eyeballs, courtesy of being New & Noteworthy.

—And, as you gain more listeners (and reviews, I hope) it becomes a self-sustaining feedback loop that allows you to stay on the iTunes N&N!

You’re clever for accomplishing that.

But what now?

What’s the next step towards world domination?

Which new audience should you conquer now?

Trick question!

You shall NOT take your eyes off the ball.

What you did is working, so don’t let up—especially now that your ball is gaining momentum.

Like Notorious B.I.G said, “Once you learn the formula, why would you go against it?”

So here’s the plan:

1. You continue to focus on providing your core audience with interesting and helpful content. That will lead to word-of-mouth referrals, which is the most potent sort of advertising you can get.

When you feel that you’ve milked that for all it’s worth, which you may be able to ascertain by looking at your statistics (perhaps from Libsyn and Soundcloud), only then do you start to consider outward expansion to other audiences.

[Pictured: Positive feedback (word-of-mouth recommendations) from listeners via our Twitter account.]

4 Common Mistakes Podcasters Make

You know what really freaking peeves me?

It’s when you’re listening to a podcast and—all of a sudden—it stops…

Next thing you know, a loud and annoying voice announces: “YOU’RE LISTENING TO THE BOB & DYLAN SHOW, THE ONLY SHOW ABOUT HAIRY PETS, DIRTY DIAPERS, AND OTHER THINGS MEN SECRETLY LIKE TO TALK ABOUT WHEN THEY THINK NO ONE ELSE IS AROUND.”

God damnit.

I already know I’m listening to the Bob & Dylan Show about hairy pets, dirty diapers, and other things men secretly like to talk about when they think no one else is around!
You don’t need to remind me.

So why do many podcasts insist on doing this? My guess is that they think it’s clever branding.

But it’s not. If it were a TV show or a YouTube show, where people have the attention span of ants and are “zapping” between channels, then it would serve a purpose.

But on a podcast, it’s plain stupid. It ruins the listener’s experience!

I believe many podcasts do this out of mindlessly mimicry—which happens to be one of the four most common mistakes podcasters make:

1. Mindless mimicry. They copy elements of other successful podcasts without thinking carefully about why they do it. This is especially dangerous to do if you’re mimicking a popular podcast in the niche you’re trying to enter. It is highly unlikely you will succeed by doing this, and even if you do, people will—at best—see you as a #2.
2. Inconsistent output of content. They don’t decide on a specific weekday on which to put out their new episodes. We always post on Mondays at 6 AM sharp. In the future, when we do bonus episodes, we will put them on another day, and we will keep it clearly distinguished from our regular, thematic, Monday episodes.
3. Lack of thematic uniqueness and brand consistency. You’d be surprised how few podcasts do this well. Even podcasts produced by industry experts. You can get away with it if you are a celebrity and you have an existing fan base, but not otherwise.
4. Not thinking long-term. Many podcasts start off with a sort of “just go with it”-attitude. It rarely works because it ruins #3 (thematic and brand consistency), and confuses listeners. And confused listeners do not stick around!

How to Think Long-term

You don’t necessarily have to think long-term to create a popular podcast, but it certainly improves your odds. Almost all really popular podcasts were started with a long-term oriented mindset; they were constructed in a robust manner to not only stand the test of time, but to improve with age.

One example of how we do this is that we try to put out 80 % big ideas and 20 % other content, and always with at least one useful, actionable takeaway. We will follow this strategy our first year.

We’re hoping this will lead to cool stuff such as:

• Higher quality, and therefore listener retention as well as growth.
• Increased differentiation (in Sweden there’s not really any podcast that does this).
• Improved understanding of how we think, and therefore higher commitment and better bonding with listeners. This, in turn, allows us to open up for wider discussions in the future.

And, if that proves correct, it will become extremely easy (and fun!) to produce future episodes.

Should You Think Long-term? It Depends…

One reason why you may not want to think long-term is because you’re not interested in doing the podcast for more than 6-12 months, perhaps as part of some larger strategy you’ve got going on—like if you’re doing the podcast as a part of the marketing for your business—and that’s fine.

Maybe your goal is self-promotion, positioning yourself as an expert (by doing interviews with successful people in your niche), or providing free content while upselling your existing products. Again, that’s fine…

—But when you follow that approach, don’t be upset if your podcast does not take off.

Most podcasts just hope for success by putting out one episode after another. We want(ed) to be different. We thought about future listeners. Future Binge-listeners.
I think you should also do this, because then you:

1. Increase the chances of getting new listeners and of
2. Getting ranked on the New and Noteworthy or Most Popular lists of iTunes at some point in the future.

Is there any way you can improve your chances at doing this? Yes, two ways: Themed episodes and natural pacing.

Themed episodes (part 1, part 2, etc) is a no-brainer. Pacing is worth delving into quickly…

What is Pacing And How Do You Do it?

Like my grandpa once said to me, “Ludvig, pacing is a lot like a college hazing.”

(He never said that to me.)

Pacing is simple, you just plan out—in a coherent manner—what themes you will cover in future episodes.

It is a good habit to always have at least 3 episodes planned out in advance. This makes it easier for you to transition between episodes and easier for the listener to follow your thinking.

Here’s an example:

Martial arts

> Fencing

>> Indoor sports

Notice how each topic sort of transitions into the next one in a seamless manner?
Another strategy you can use is to create contrast from one episode to another:

How to Be a Sloppy Eater

Followed by:

How to Have Excellent Table Manners

2 Time-Saving Tips

1) Don’t do the podcast alone: Because you may end up with a lonely, broken heart!

Because it will take a lot of time!

Don’t do it unless you want to make it your full-time job.

25 Minuter is not my full-time job, and I don’t want it to be either. That’s why I’m in a team.

I recommend having a strategic partnership with someone else. In exchange you can give them credit in each episode at the end: “this episode of [our awesome podcast] was produced by [partner company].”

…or something along those lines. Be creative. Strike a win-win relationship!

2) Create processes to save time:

We don’t do marketing. Our partner, TradeVenue, does it, when needed. This frees up time for Mikael and I to focus 100% on content.

We don’t do the editing. We just put in the preliminary suggested cuts in an excel file over DropBox.

[Pictured: Our current process for DropBox. The top 4 folders are for cutting. The bottom one is where we upload the name and description for the episode.]

Also, to save time, I recommend recording 2-3 episodes at a time. (Any more than that and you may fail to act on valuable feedback from listeners.)

The Top 5 Takeaways from This Article

“Obvious is crowded. Stick out from the crowd. How can you be different?”
–Edmund Lowman

If you only take away 5 things from this article (maybe because you skimmed it? Shame on you!) then it should be these five:

1. Study other (popular) podcasts and copy smart stuff they’re doing (like their unique content formula).
2. Find any and every way you can to differentiate your podcast.
3. Make a good first episode, which would make an ideal listener want to tune in to the next one too. It doesn’t have to be perfect in terms of delivery, but the content should be good.
4. Put a lot of effort into getting ratings and reviews. Think of it like a launch. Email everyone you know and ask them for help. (If your podcast is not international, then ratings and reviews from people outside your country will not register!)
5. I don’t recommend doing the podcast alone. It will be time-consuming.

Study Material:

Steve Chou, another cool guy I met during the StartupBros Import Empire Summit, was also able to rank his podcast quite fast. Steve has written a very good technical “how-to” article on the subject: How To Start A Podcast In Under 2 Hours

Steve also wrote a descriptive article on how he solicited ratings and reviews for his podcast: My Podcast Is Live And I’m Doing A Big Giveaway

Oh yeah, and one more thing…

Please do not ask me, “how much money can I make by doing a podcast?” Read this article instead.

A Final Word

The stuff you just learned in this article really does work, but you will have to do your own analysis based on the country you live in and the niche of your podcast. Some countries are more competitive (like the U.S) and other countries are less competitive (like Sweden).

I believe there is a HUGE opportunity to create a popular podcast in many smaller countries. But, as with blogging (which was a goldmine 5-10 years ago, but is now very competitive), I believe this opportunity will go away within 2-3 years.

SO ACT NOW!

Thanks for reading.

If you’ve got questions, I’ve got answers. Really cool answers.

P.S – No questions are dumb. Ask anything—except how I procure my secret rainbow-colored fruits from the ancient valley in the Himalayas.

P.P.S – Here’s some funny fan art made by listeners of my podcast, 25 Minuter

The post How to Start a Popular Podcast (and be #1 on iTunes New and Noteworthy) Without Killing Yourself appeared first on StartupBros.

[ Note: We get emails every week from people asking us to promote their product or service and usually we turn them down. The one and only exception to this rule is when it’s a product that we use in our businesses. So when our good friend Mark Faggiano, CEO of Taxjar, presented us with this article–we couldn’t refuse.  Our clients use Mark’s software, we use it, and we recommend it for anyone involved in e-commerce space in the US.  Sales tax can be a nightmare to deal with, which is why we love Mark since he’s made dealing with this a breeze. ] 

There’s no feeling like starting your own business and finally controlling your own destiny.

You feel unstoppable – until some tiny administrative hassle throws you for a loop. And one of those administrative hassles with a lot of potential to derail your progress is sales tax.

We all have to buy stuff, so you probably have a pretty good idea what sales tax is from the buyer’s perspective. A customer makes a purchase and the merchant adds a small percentage of sales tax to the sale.

But when you’re the merchant, things start to get trickier. Everything from who to charge, how much to charge and what to do with all the sales tax you’ve collected isn’t so straightforward.

This guide will demystify sales tax for product sellers so you can get back to doing what you do – running your kickass business.

Sales Tax 101

Forty-five states and D.C. all have a sales tax. There’s no IRS for sales tax. It’s governed at the individual state level and managed by the state’s taxing authority (usually called the “department of revenue.”) Sales tax rates can vary from state to county to city. Merchants are unusually required to charge sales tax on tangible products like books or furniture, but that’s starting to change as some states want to tax services, too.

The key thing to remember here is that states get a large portion of their revenue from sales tax. This means they’re becoming aggressive about ensuring merchants are collecting.

The next five steps will help you make sure you’re a-okay when it comes to stepping up to your sales tax obligations.

Step 1: Determine Where You Have Sales Tax nexus

Sales tax nexus is just a fancy legalese way to say “significant connection” to a state. If you have nexus in a state, then that state considers you on the hook for charging sales tax to buyers in the state.  You’ll always have sales tax nexus in your home state, but you may find that certain business activities create nexus in other states, too. They include:

• A location – an office, warehouse, store, or other physical place of business
• Personnel – an employee, contractor, salesperson, installer or other person doing work for your business
• Inventory – Most states consider storing inventory in the state to cause nexus even if you have no other place of business or personnel
• Affiliates – Someone who advertises your products in exchange for a cut of the profits creates nexus in many states
• A drop shipping relationship – If you have a 3^rd party ship to your buyers, you may create nexus
• Selling products at a tradeshow or other event – Some states consider you to have nexus even if you only sell there temporarily

To help you determine whether or not your business activities give you sales tax nexus, you can find out what every state’s laws have to say about nexus here.

Once you’ve determined that you have nexus in a state, your next move is to get registered with that state.

Step 2: Register for a Sales Tax Permit

Always register for a state sales tax permit before you begin collecting sales tax. Most states consider it unlawful to collect without a permit. (In their deepest suspicious you could be a villain who tells customers you’re collecting on behalf of the state but really just pocketing the money.)

You can find step-by-step guides on how to register for a sales tax permit here. Or you can hire a sales tax pro to register for you.

When they issue your sales tax permit the state will also issue you a sales tax filing frequency (usually monthly, quarterly or annually.) Hang on to that information for steps 4 and 5.

As soon as your permit is in your hand, it’s time to start collecting from customers.

Step 3: Collect Sales Tax from Customers

Next make sure that you’ve set up your shopping cart of other sales platform to collect sales tax from the customers in states where you have sales tax nexus.

If you sell products at a brick and mortar store, your sales tax life is fairly simple. You’d just charge your customers the local sales tax rate at that spot. But online sellers have a more difficult time of it. Most states are “destination-based” sales tax states, meaning you are required to charge sales tax at your buyer’s ship-to location. Since rates can vary from locality to locality, this can get complicated fast.

Fortunately, most shopping carts have built in sales tax functionality (some better than others.) You can find out more about setting up sales tax collection on the most common shopping carts here.

If you sell on multiple channels, be sure to set up all of your shopping carts to collect sales tax from buyers in all of the states where you have nexus.

Step 4: Report How Much Sales Tax You’ve Collected

When your sales tax filing due date approaches, you’ll need to figure out how much sales tax you’ve collected from which customers in which states. Sadly, the complexity doesn’t stop there. While a handful of states make sales tax simple, most rely on you, as the seller, to report how much you collected not just in the state in general, but how much you collected from buyers in each county, city and other special taxing district.

For example, here’s just a small portion of what California wants to see:

That’s where sales tax automation comes in. With apps like TaxJar, you can connect all your shopping carts and other channels with one-click and then have these reports automatically filled out for you. Before we created TaxJar we heard horror stories of teams who huddled together in a room over the weekend to get sales tax filing done. You don’t have to be that startup!

Once all that is finished, your next step is to actually file and send that sales tax to the state.

Step 5: File Your Sales Tax Return(s)

You’re almost to the finish line now! The next step is to actually file your sales tax return and remit the sales tax you collected to the state. You can either login on the state department of revenue’s website or let TaxJar AutoFile your sales tax returns for you.

Either way, make sure to keep these couple of things in mind:

• File “Zero Returns” – If you have a sales tax license in a state, file a return by your due date even if you didn’t collect any sales tax in that state over the taxable period. Failing to do so can result in everything from a $50 fine to having your sales tax license revoked

• Don’t Discount Discounts – About half the states will allow you to keep a small portion of your sales tax collected if you file on time. Here’s a list of states that offer sales tax discounts. If you AutoFile with TaxJar, we’ll do the math and make sure you keep your discount.

And that’s it – you’ve mastered sales tax. You’re all done until the next filing deadline comes along.

If you have questions or comments, you can find out way more than you probably ever wanted to know about sales tax in our TaxJar Sales Tax 101 Guide.  Or start the conversation in the comments!

TaxJar is a service built to make sales tax compliance simple for eCommerce sellers. Try a 30-day-free trial of TaxJar today and eliminate sales tax compliance headaches from your life!

The post How to Stop Stressing about Sales Tax and Get on With Growing Your Business appeared first on StartupBros.

[Note: In this case study, you’ll see how one of our rock-star clients (Dr. Ben) launched his e-commerce business from scratch and grew it into the multi-million dollar business it is today. You’ll see how he started from the bottom (with some rice cakes) and quickly clawed his way to the top, build a business with over $1,000,000 in projected annual sales in his first year in business.  Ben started working with us about one year ago, and since then has never ceased to amaze the StartupBros team. I could go on all day about this guy, so I will just let you read his case study below ]

This is the story of how I took my side business from $0 to over $600,000 in 365 days, while working 60 hours a week in my day job.

And it all started with $2,200 in rice cakes…

Who Am I?

My name is Ben. My StartupBros friends call me ‘Dr. Ben’, because I’m a practicing resident physician. I’m never really sure if people understand what that means, so I always describe it as “a lot like the TV show Grey’s Anatomy, but with less sex.”

We work too much, get paid too little, and are trapped by student debt. Sound familiar?

My $1,000,000 Business

So one year ago, on February 2, 2015, I started a side business with $360 of spare cash.

Since then, we’ve grossed over $600,000. If you extrapolate our current monthly sales volume of $90k (without factoring in growth), that puts us just over the $1 Million mark for the next 12 months.

Is that cheating? I don’t think so…

We’re going to destroy that projection.

Here’s How It Happened

Rewind to nearly two years ago, in March 2014.

I was driving home from a night shift in the hospital with a zombie stare on my face that would probably get me a guest spot on The Walking Dead.

There’s something satisfying about being a doctor, about “saving lives,” if that’s what I did that night. But honestly, the drudgery wears you down.

To keep from falling asleep on my drive home, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts of all time, “The Smart Passive Income Podcast,” with Patt Flynn. Heard of it? I thought so…

In particular I was listening to Episode 99 with Jessica & Cliff Larrew that detailed how she and her family were making hundreds of thousands of dollars by buying things from big box stores like Walmart or Target and reselling them on Amazon. It’s a process that’s known as Retail Arbitrage.

By the time I finished the podcast, I was hooked on the idea of giving Retail Arbitrage a try. And because I’m addicted to taking action, I did it.

The Results of Taking Action

By the next day I had hit all three Walmarts, the Target, the Lowes, the Home Depot, the Big Lots, and the Sam’s Club. By the end of the week, I’d bought $389 worth of retail goods to send into Amazon.

That’s when I found the backbone of my retail arbitrage products: Quaker Popped Variety Packs. These suckers cost me $3.50 a bag at my local Walmart and sold for $15 on Amazon. That’s $7 profit!

SERIOUSLY!

There’s nobody even selling these things right now. If you see them on the shelf in your local Walmart, it’s like picking up $7 off the shelf every single time.

In 90 days I’d sold over $4500 on Amazon, which included $2200 of rice cakes. That’s over $1000 in PROFIT on rice cakes!

The Hiatus

The whole reason I started doing Retail Arbitrage wasn’t to make a big business out of it. I just don’t think it’s easy to scale an RA business.

No, for me the reason was simply because I wanted to learn the process, so if I happened to see an opportunity in the future, I’d be able to take quick action on it.

Learning skills just for the sake of learning them has been a recurring theme in my life. This last year, those skills I’d amassed helped me achieve rapid success.

Eventually, I got bored with the whole RA process and I began to go back to my normal routine. Cash continually trickled in for the next 4-6 months as the inventory I’d accumulated slowly sold out.

Amazon had become an afterthought…

The Return to Amazon

Several months later in November 2014 I was listening to yet another podcast discussing the merits of making money on Amazon. Niche Pursuits Podcast 53: How to Earn Over $12,000 Per Month Selling Physical Products on Amazon with Chris Guthrie.

In this episode they discuss the idea of importing and private labeling on Amazon.

There was a little pitch for an Amazon selling course at the end of the episode, but after Googling it a little bit, the course seemed a little to “Internet Markety” for me.

Nevertheless, I was SOLD on the idea of importing from China and selling on Amazon, so I went searching for more information and came across Will Mitchell’s post on StartupBros.com, How You Can Make Big Money Importing From China – The Rise and Fall of My Empire…

We’ll take a brief intermission while you go read that….

Done? Ok, good.

I ended up joining the StartupBros Import Empire January 2015 Jumpstart Group, now called the E-Commerce Empire Elite Program.

I was a little apprehensive to spend big bucks on a course, because after all–a resident’s salary isn’t exactly a King’s Ransom.

But it’s a good thing I did, because my investment was returned hundreds–and I do mean HUNDREDS–of times over the next 365 days.

But this isn’t a pitch for E-Commerce Empire. If you want to hear more about EEE and get some exclusive bonuses to launch your own E-Commerce Empire, you should watch this 3-part video series “How I Launched My $1 Million Business with $300.”

The First Sale

Within my first 30-days I had sourced my first product, ordered 40 units, and sent them into Amazon FBA. Did I mention I’m addicted to taking action?

An animated gif so good, it deserves to be posted twice.

While my inventory was in transit to the FBA warehouses, my buddies and I left Missouri and headed up to Crested Butte for a much needed ski vacation.

I was driving through the mountains just outside of Denver listening to a live EEE webinar when I got an email alerting me that my inventory had been checked into Amazon and my listing was now live.

YES!!!

An hour later, just before we we lost cell signal, I decided to check my Amazon stats one last time. Just for kicks…

When I opened my Amazon Seller Central app, I could hardly believe my eyes. I’d made my first sale of my private label product within an hour of hitting the Amazon warehouse.

For the next 5 days, I was getting sale after sale while knee deep in powder on the side of a mountain. I had to order 300 more units on the 2nd day of my vacation!

The Next 365 Days

The next year was a crazy whirlwind of sales, product launches, travel, team building, speaking, product sourcing, number crunching and growing.

It won’t happen the same way for everyone, but here’s how it happened for me:

Month #1: Feb 2 – Mar 2

Gross Revenue: $4,620

In January I spent probably 100 hours researching my first product and setting everything up. That means a thorough listing on Amazon including GREAT pictures.

When I finally launched on February 2nd, I spent the next 30 days in a hyper-focused state. I launched this product on my personal Amazon account.

I didn’t have a business setup.

I didn’t have an EIN number.

I didn’t even have a business bank account.

THAT CRAP DOESN’T MATTER RIGHT NOW!

My single focus was simply reviews. You CANNOT have a good product launch on Amazon without getting hustling for reviews. Period.

I got my reviews by giving away product to friends and family.

Key Points:

1. Reviews, reviews, reviews. REVIEWS!

Month #2: Mar 2 – Apr 2

Gross Revenue: $12,368

Difference: +$7,748

By the second month, I knew that I was going to be able to make this product a success. I was working at a little over a 40% margin, so profit was somewhere around $5,000.

It was at this point that I partnered up with a friend of mine from med school, Peter.

We both saw the potential and decided to each invest $10,000 to stock up on inventory and launch some new products.

We decided to open a new Amazon Seller Central account just for the business, which is why you see the sales at zero at the beginning of the month.

We set up an LLC S-Corp, set up a bank account, and got our EIN. At this point we also started researching and ordering test products for a second product line in a new niche.

Key Points:

1. Stay in stock.
2. Reviews, Reviews, Reviews.
3. Feed the beast (reinvest).
4. Setup business structure.
5. Research new products.

Month #3: Apr 2 – May 2

Gross Revenue: $17,782

Difference: +$5,414

By month 3 we had stocked up enough inventory of our first product, which included 2 color variations. We received about 100 units of 3 new products in an entirely different product line.

These three products accounted for a $2,500 bump in revenue during this month. Having multiple products within a product line allowed us to start getting some cross-selling between our own products.  HOORAY!

Key Points:

1. Stay in stock.
2. Test multiple new products in a new product line.
3. Reviews, Reviews, Reviews.

Month #4: May 2 – June 2

Gross Revenue: $21,704

Difference: +$3,922

We continued to expand Product Line #2 as sales of Product Line #1 continued to grow. At this point we placed large orders for all 5 new products in Product Line #2.

Key Points:

1. Added 2 more products in Product Line #2 giving us a total of 5 products in the line.
2. Reviews, Reviews, Reviews.

Month #5: June 2 – July 2

Gross Revenue: $31,225

Difference: +$9,521

Same old story here.

We continued to add to our product lines and test new products. As sales continued to grow, it became more and more time consuming to answer customer emails.

I started to get stuck working in my business rather than on my business–an age old problem.

That’s when I began the search for our very first employee, a customer service agent.

At this point we had more time than money, so I opted for Chris Ducker’s, Virtual Staff Finder service to find myself a Filipino virtual assistant.

Key Points:

1. Added a 3rd product to Product Line #1, which we launched as a variation of product #1.
2. Tested a 6th product in Product Line #2.
3. Reviews, Reviews, Reviews.
4. Started interviewing Customer Service Agents.

Month #6: July 2 – Aug 2

Gross Revenue: $53,734

Difference: +$22,509

While we were in Alaska fishing, err… I mean discussing business strategy… a couple things happened.

First, Amazon had Prime Day. We weren’t a part of Prime Day, but we say a good 50% boost in daily sales.

Second, we began doing heavy promos on a few of our products using Viral Launch, which really pushed our sales to the next level. We also saw our organic sales on our two product lines continue to grow.

There’s no feeling quite like being on a river in Alaska and knowing that your business is bringing in cash all by itself.

This was the first day off that I had taken since launching in February.

The only reason I was able to get away with this was due to our recent hiring of Dyan, our customer service agent.

Key Points:

1. Began running aggressive promotions.
2. Hired our first employee.

Month #7: Aug 2 – Sep 2

Gross Revenue: $54,164

Difference: +$430

We hit a bit of a plateau phase when we started to streamline our business processes and develop new products that were taking a little bit longer to get to market.

It can be a little discouraging to see your revenue flatline after such tremendous growth, but it was all a part of the plan.

Key Points:

1. Stay in stock.
2. Continue developing new products.
3. Streamline business processes during the plateau phase.

Month #8: Sept 2 – Oct 2

Gross Revenue: $70,148

Difference: +$15,984

We had another pretty decent jump here as we launched a few new products. Notice the increase in average sales price per order jumped up about 50 cents.

As we built out our product lines, we noticed more and more cross selling, which increased our average order size.

Key Points:

1. Continue to expand your product lines.

Month #9: Oct 2 – Nov 2

Gross Revenue: $82,450

Difference: +$12,302

In October we applied for and were accepted into 4 days of lightning deals that included 5 of our products.

The first one that you can see as the giant sales spike, is responsible for the $12,000 revenue increase in October.

Key Points:

1. If you get an opportunity for lightning deals, jump on it.

Month #10: Nov 2 – Dec 2

Gross Revenue: $105,532

Difference: +$23,082

The lightning deals continued into November and December and we saw BIG spikes in revenue.

Early in November we realized that we needed to buy a crap-ton of inventory, but we didn’t have the money to do it because we put it all into new products in August and September. So we took out two personal loans totaling $30,000.

Our company was now in debt $50,000.

Key Points:

1. Manage your cash flow while experiencing rapid growth.
2. Only consider taking on debt to fund key parts of your business.

Month #11: Dec 2 – Jan 2

Gross Revenue: $93,364

Difference: -$12,168

Oh no! Our first month of regression!

This was to be expected as the lightning deals ended and the Christmas buying season came to a close. Many people see a tripling of sales leading up to Christmas, but our organic sales were relatively flat with a minimal 50% increase.

Key Points:

1. Expect a decrease in revenue at the end of December and into January.

Month #12: Jan 2 – Feb 2

Gross Revenue: $96,994

Difference: +$3,630

In January sales picked back up for us and we were finally caught up with all the inventory that we needed.

We all of a sudden had a lot of cash coming in and not a lot of cash going out.

For the last year, we had focused on top line growth by reinvesting all of our profits. Once you decide to stop reinvesting, that’s when things start to get really exciting.

Key Points:

1. Reinvest for top line growth to scale fast.

UPDATE: Month #14

Gross Revenue: $155,273

Difference: +$58,279

In February of 2016, we launched 6 new products into one of our existing lines.

This includes a product that we found at the Canton Fair after a guy from a US company stormed into a booth we were at and told us “You have to sell this. People in the US LOVE this!” So we did….

The result of the 6 products was 1 homerun, 2 doubles, 2 singles, and 1 player who’s just a little slow getting to first base.

Key Points:

1. Launch more products!

What Should You Take Away From All of This?

To be honest, I never expected things to move this quickly.

I knew there was a TON of potential importing and private labeling products, but it didn’t really hit me until I was on the side of the mountain replenishing my inventory.

For anyone out there reading this who is interested in following my path, I would highly recommend getting your feet wet with Retail Arbitrage first.

Once you do begin to dive into private labeling, be sure to follow these pro-tips:

1. Find a mastermind group. Without help from the E-Commerce Empire Community, I wouldn’t have had access to the tools and resources needed to grow as quickly as I have. You’re a reflection of who you surround yourself with, so surround yourself with the best.
2. Focus on reviews early on. This is part of Amazon’s unique value proposition–they are one part e-commerce platform, one part review club. Do not underestimate the importance of this.
3. Keep your product in stock. Going out of stock will effect your Amazon search ranking, so be sure to keep a close eye on your inventory numbers.
4. Reinvest your profits. This is a business, not your personal piggy bank–you’ve got to think long term.
5. Focus on customer service. If there is a problem, take care of it IMMEDIATELY. If you neglect a customer complaint, Amazon will hate you. Period.
6. Research new products once you’re having success and expand your product line.
7. Reviews, reviews, reviews, I can’t state this enough.
8. Use Amazon PPC to boost the sales of already successful products.
9. Once the workload becomes too much, hire a virtual assistant. This way you can focus on growing your business instead of working within it.
10. Be mindful of your cash flow and only take on debt if absolutely necessary for growth.
11. TAKE ACTION! Yeah, I’ve said it a million times by now, but there isn’t anyone doing 6-figures on Amazon who didn’t first work their tail off to get themselves established. Just keep taking consistent action, and you too may find yourself on the side of a mountain or fishing in Alaska with the sales pouring in and not a care in the world.

If you’d like a more detailed, ‘over-my-shoulder’ view of how I launched and grew my e-commerce business from scratch, make sure you watch this quick video I put together for you.

So if there is one thing you take away from this, it’s not that I’m special or have some mutant DNA (although the thought of that is pretty cool). It’s that I simply took action on the opportunities surrounding me.

And there are opportunities EVERYWHERE.

Sure, I’m a bit of a workaholic, but if I can pull this off while working 60+ hours a week while in my medical residency, then I know anybody can be successful with this too!

So get out out there, and DO IT.

The post [Case Study] How I Turned $2,200 of Rice Cakes Into a $1-Million E-Commerce Business appeared first on StartupBros.

Are you frustrated with product research & selection?

Do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, making no progress towards building the business of your dreams?

You’re not alone. The #1 thing I see new Amazon sellers getting stuck on is product research & selection.

But when I speak with successful e-commerce entrepreneurs, finding new products to sell tends to be the least stressful part of their business.

Why is there such a HUGE disconnect?

How can new sellers be so overwhelmed with something experienced sellers barely think about?

It’s because new sellers are using outdated strategies.

E-commerce is currently the fastest growing business model in the world. In fact, it’s one of the fastest growing business model ever. 

With rapid growth, comes rapid change. And here’s where new sellers have a big disadvantage…

When I figure out a new strategy in my e-commerce business, here’s what I do (in order) –

• Implement it across my main e-commerce company
• Help my high-end clients implement it for themselves
• Help my other clients implement it
• Write about it on my blog / make some YouTube videos

New sellers typically learn how to launch & grow their businesses from blogs (like this one), YouTube (like our channel), etc.

That usually works out just fine – except when you’re talking about the fastest growing business model ever.

You see, Amazon & E-Commerce are growing mind-numbingly fast. Strategies that are working today will be stale by Christmas.

By the time I (or other like me) write about the strategies that are working for us, they’re already outdated.

And that’s why you’re so frustrated – you’re using strategies that used to work, but simply don’t any more.

How Can You Break Free?

If you want to break free, you need to use a magnet.

Experienced sellers don’t need to spend hours and hours on product research & selection – we use strategies that attract the best ideas to us.

What are those strategies, you ask? No worries – I’ve got you covered

Over the past 3-years, we’ve worked with over 5,000 clients to successfully launch new e-commerce brands from scratch. I’ve probably seen every product research & selection strategy known to mankind…

Some of those strategies are solid and timeless, like surveying your target customer for pain points. Most strategies, however, are purely a waste of time (such as scanning Amazon’s Best Seller Lists).

Up until now, the only way to know what works (and what’s a waste of time), has been searching through an endless sea of blog posts, podcasts, and more. And it simply takes way too much time.

Since our team has been prepping to open enrollment to a new round of clients (in about 2-weeks), we’ve been digging into the data and checking what’s working vs. not working for our clients.

What we found, was pretty surprising…

Out of all the hundreds of strategies out there, there’s just 3 main product research & selection tactics working right now. I wrote a detailed breakdown of each strategy, showing you exactly what it is, how it works, and how you can put it to good use.

Click here to download your copy now. (or click the picture below)

I’ll also be sitting down later tonight and recording videos to explain each strategy more in-depth.

This e-book will only be available for the next couple weeks, so be sure to grab your copy now (even if you’re saving it for later).

Once we open up enrollment and take on a new round of clients – we’ll be taking this down and keeping this private.

Hope this ebook can help fuel some breakthroughs for you and your business!

P.S. – What’s the worst product research & selection tactic you’ve ever heard of? Share in the comments below.

I’ll pick my favorite comments and give you an all-expenses-paid scholarship to our premium coaching community for e-commerce entrepreneurs (worth $3k).

Just download the ebook & leave a comment for your chance to win.

The post Amazon/E-Commerce Sellers: Here’s 3 Product Research & Selection Tactics (working right now) appeared first on StartupBros.

Why are you reading this article, what are you trying to get out of this?

Are you trying to sell a product or service?

…Or what about networking? Do you have trouble introducing yourself?

…Maybe you blank-out around the opposite sex–terrified that you won’t know what to say next?

Whatever context you’re looking to apply these skills, if you can follow this 4-phase conversational framework I’m about to show you–you’ll ALWAYS have something to talk about.

Most importantly, you’ll be able to wrap up a conversation in a way that gets people nodding their head in agreement.

Around 10 years ago I was asked a good question, it was:

”If you could do anything with your life, and if you knew that no matter what you did, that you could not fail, what would you choose to do?”

When I first heard this question, I had been reading and listening to a lot of Jim Rohn and Brian Tracy. For 2 to 3 years I had convinced myself I would become a master salesman, although in retrospect sales was merely a boot camp for my larger vision.

I started out selling face to face to consumers, then to small businesses, and eventually settled on consulting clients online. I think all entrepreneurs should have at least 6 months of face to face sales experience. There’s no better way to build entrepreneurial grit than to look someone directly in the eye and ask them for money.

After awhile, it’s a thrill.  And when you have a process to lean on, it’s so easy..

The key to making it effortless is to understand that all good deals are based on mutual self-interest. You find out what people really care about, persuade them towards a common path where both your interests are served, and finally move them to action.

With this sort of skill set I knew that whatever goal I set for myself, I would only need to keep moving until I found the right people to make ithappen.

It’s all a numbers game and persistence is the key determining factor.

As Zig Ziglar famously said:

“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

I took this to heart, and so should you–and in this article I’ll explain exactly how.

So let’s get to it—I present to you: The Four Phases of a Successful Conversation:

(TLDR; version)

Phase One: Rapport

The first phase of any successful conversation is establishing rapport, otherwise known as breaking the ice.

Rapport is defined as: a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well.

Now you don’t necessarily need to be close or especially “harmonious” with the other person, the keys to pay attention to in the definition above are “feelings or ideas.”

As logical as we’d like to think that we are, most of our communication and actions are based on some feeling or emotion. This is the human condition, even our more rational decisions still contain a blend of feelings.

So rapport is as simple as “feeling” comfortable around someone or having something in common with them.

The second key mentioned above are shared “ideas and concepts.” Think of this as contexts, places, experiences, likes, dislikes, and roles that people play. The more of these factors that two people know about each other, the more likely they are to be open, creative, and engaged with one another.

The concept is easy to grasp: You have to create a real, personal connection with this individual–quickly–and it doesn’t have to be deep, just real.

This isn’t hard to do. In fact, it happens in a moment, you do it all the time.

My go-to method of establishing rapport with someone is asking them their name, then repeating it back to them immediately in my response and at least couple more times throughout the conversation. It shows that you recognize them as an individual.

By expressing interest and engaging with them on a personal level, you’re better able to hold their attention, but getting their name is only the first step.

A few other good examples are:

What do you do for a living?
Exchanging information about what each other does builds understanding and trust.

Where are you from?
Even if they’ve never been to your hometown, they’ll be more comfortable with you by knowing it.

Do you have any interesting/crazy/weird hobbies?
They’ll feel much more comfortable sharing things about themselves if you have an accepting attitude to unique or strange things.

Use anything that connects to them on a personal level. Talk about family, friends, places they’ve visited, or entertainment they consume. It’s far easier to understand and relate to a person if you’re able to humanize them and understand what their day to day life might be like.

Remember to also provide some information about yourself while you’re doing this.

While it’s important to get to know them, they’re also going to want to know something about you so that the bond you’re creating is mutual.

So once a connection is established, follow that momentum right into the second phase.

Phase Two: Leverage

The second phase is all about understanding a person’s motivations and what they really care about. We scratched the surface level with gaining rapport, but now it’s time to dig deeper.

This phase is all about the other person, you may have talked about yourself previously, but now it is time to ask and listen.

Really pay attention–you’ve got to actually care about the person you’re talking to in order for this method to work.

Now that you’ve got a comfortable conversation initiated, it’s time to start finding out who they REALLY are and what they believe about themselves, other people, and the world at large.

My favorite question to ask for this purpose is simply: “Why?”

By asking “Why?” you’ll end up discovering much about their morals, ethics, and what they believe to be true about life. Asking “Why is that important to you?” will reveal a person’s core values and motivations.

The key here is to ask open ended questions so they can elaborate and tell you their personal story.

For example:
“Hey Tom, do you like it where you live?”
This limits Tom to a yes or no answer, it does nothing to invite further conversation.

However, posed like this:
“Hey Tom, what stands out about where you live?”
This is completely open-ended and gives a great deal of room for Tom to expand.

And as always, if they don’t answer sufficiently enough for you to understand, my second-favorite tactic to use the question:

“How do you mean?”

This is the PERFECT question to use to for everything. It’s like hot sauce.

You can use it to diffuse tense situations or just to gain a sharper understanding of another person’s perspective.

Often you’ll find that by asking “how do you mean?” you’ll discover that you had completely misinterpreted what they had initially said.

So even if your questions aren’t that thought-provoking, people will still tell you all you need to know about them–provided you’re paying attention to what they’re saying.

And after some back and forth, you’ll know who they are and what they stand for, making it a lot easier to put forward your side of things in a manner that’s going to benefit them. Which leads right into the third phase…

Phase Three: Story Telling a Benefit

You came into this conversation (hopefully) with an end result in mind. You’ve begun to understand the personal you’re talking to as an individual, you know what they value and some of their perspective on life.

This third phase is all about taking what you’ve learned about the other person’s model of the world and tying it together with the point you’d like to get across. You’re trying to give them a personally compelling reason to nod ‘yes.’

Imagine that you are trying to get a friend to come to a conference with you. In past conversations you’ve learned what they really care about, what gets them excited, and what motivates them to act.

The key is to forget about the reasons why you want to go and focus on them.

Make them the most important person in the world and present the option of joining you as something that directly benefits them as well. In this way, you’re able to tell a story about them (or someone else in a similar situation) by painting a picture of what their future will look like with you, based upon their unique values and desires.

In the end you’re looking for a win-win proposition. If you cannot find a way that both parties will benefit then you probably shouldn’t be talking people into things, now should you?

By asking enough questions, people will tell you everything you need to know to persuade them. You just need to listen and weave their values & goals into a story that offers a direct benefit to them.

Phase Four: Call to Agreement

This is the test to see how well you’ve presented your proposition.

This next phase happens in an instant. It’s as simple as asking a short question which gauges their interest and agreement. By doing this, you’ll know whether or not you’ve made your case in a way that compels them to side with you.

In the call to agreement we want to use short tie-down questions.

Some examples of tie-downs are:

How’s that sound?
That makes sense, right?
Are you following me on this?
That’s something you’d be interested in, isn’t it?
That’d be fun, wouldn’t it?
Could you?
You’d like that, right?
Do you want to go?

If they immediately agree with you or you get a positive response out of them, seal in the deal by asking them why they agree or what they liked about your proposition. By having them explain their reasoning to you they’ll create an internal bias and be far less likely to change their mind.

If they don’t respond immediately, don’t panic! The beauty of this template is that even if they are unsure or outright disagree, you can just circle right back to the first phase and start again.

In fact, you’ll probably cycle through these 4 conversational phases at least a dozen times in a normal conversation.

Think of it like this:

(1) Relate to them
(2) Understand them
(3) Present why & how they benefit
(4) Ask for agreement
 …Rinse & repeat

Just remember to take note of why they’re disagreeing. What did you miss? What perspective of theirs did you fail to account for?

Explore that area to find out what’s valuable to them and why they think they way that they do, then re-frame your proposal based off of that new information.

If you run into an obstacle, circle back around to the beginning: (1) Relate to them to strengthen rapport, (2) ask them quality questions to better understand them, (3) present a compelling story, and (4) finally tie it all down with a short call to agreement.

This process is meant to be circular in nature, so you won’t get perfect agreement right off the bat, but if you keep cycling through these 4 phases you can get small measures of agreement which eventually build into full-blown commitment.

Final Challenge

So now that you’ve learned the template, you’ve got to practice it!  Get out there and actually have these types of conversations.

You’ve learned that people need to have some kind of connection or reason to give you their attention.

And to keep that attention, it’s best to ask them questions about what is important to them and just let them talk. Usually people are more than comfortable talking about what they care about and this information is crucial for you to ensure that your proposition is a win-win.

Once you have painted a picture of how they’ll be better off by accepting what you propose, ask them if what you’re saying makes sense.

By directly asking for feedback you can readjust and gauge exactly where they stand.

You’re going to be nervous at first, but that is to be expected. Lean on this 4 step template to simplify things and keep yourself on track. It’s even easier to master when you realize that you’ll be spending most of your time in the Leverage and Story Telling a Benefit phases.

And as always, practice makes perfect here. Expect yourself to take multiple runs through the process to get the hang of it, but once you do, you’ll be a conversational machine. As long as you can remain curious about other people, they will be interested in you in return.

So get out there, find out what people care about and show them how you can get to that place together—sound like a plan?

The post How To Ask Anyone For Anything: The 4 Phases Of A Successful Conversation appeared first on StartupBros.

The other day I was running through a park in Austin with my friend Noah.
As we are looping through some amazing trails we came across a guy who had a very perplexed look on his face.

He had just caught a fish, presumably his first, and he had it out of the water and was just kind of staring at it. Clearly he had no idea what to do once he actually caught the fish, no action plan, no back up, just letting the poor little guy suffocate on land.

Which got me to thinking…

The biggest problems with most successful entrepreneurs is success.

Getting there is the battle and the struggle, but once you get there what do you do?
You finally got money, a business, freedom, all the things you were hoping for, but somehow still we feel empty, so what do most of us do?

We start another business.

Often times this second business has dire consequences, because we have had our first taste of success and believe we are unbeatable, so we jump head first into another project without having the same mindset that we did before, now our risk tolerance is much higher, our confidence is higher, and our margin for error / cushion is bigger.

And what happens??

THIS

Below I am going to show you how to avoid this, by putting yourself back in startup, broke desperation mode, because I truly believe if you set the right constraints on yourself you have  a far greater chance of success.

So first off what kind of limits should you set on yourself?

This is really true for people starting out and for people starting second businesses.

Have a super ROI. For example:

All of my businesses have a projected ROI of 12-16 months, the longest I feel comfortable is 20 months. Why? This helps me cut down to the core of what I need to get things going and also helps me decide what is absolutely essential to make this business work and more importantly to get my money back as quickly as possible.

Make a tight budget

One the most dangerous things that happens to successful people is they have money and think they cannot fail. They have one success and then they go big and they go all in on their next venture without getting back to the core of what made their first venture successful. Usual symptoms of this are: Huge over investments, buying failed businesses and thinking they can fix them, opening too much too quick, getting too far away from their core.

No one to pull the plug

Next is Concorde Fallacy of Sunk Cost, for years after the British and French governments knew that the Concorde was going to be a complete failure, however they continued to sink money into to it with the logic of “Well we’ve come this far” when in reality there was no economic case for the project.

The most recent example I can think of that defines all of the above to a T is Target entering the Canadian market. It was a FUCKING disaster… (full disclosure, my father is a former Target Exec, so I heard a lot of this nightmare first hand)

Probably the biggest mistakes were:

Their- ROI was 12 months on a 133 store chain and they were opening all 133 stores on the same day…. Ok, now I have big balls and do some stupid shit, but this tops any stupid shit I have done to date.

Thinking they couldn’t fail- they went all in on buying out a lease from a failing brand called Zellers for 1.8 billion dollars, they did little research on the stores themselves, and instead focused on the large footprint it would give them all across canada. This was a  huge mistake.

They went too BIG they implemented a completely new inventory management system SAP, I worked on a SAP integration for a company once, it was the worst 6 months of my life. Now imagine having 24 months to do that for 133 stores, in theory it should be rather easier to replicate, but it’s not and I have never heard of a SAP integration that takes less than 2 years and even then it’s usually buggy as fuck for another 2 years.

Concorde Fallacy, on a number of fronts Target should have pulled them plug, the timeline was too tight they should have stopped there, SAP wasn’t working properly they should have reverted back to their old system, staff wasn’t trained because they needed more time and the list goes on and on and on.

So how can you apply all of this to your first business?

Or two your second business after being successful at your first one?

Like this…

One Location:
Be it online or a physical location no where you are going to be positioned, know what customers are around there, what are the positives and negatives of being in that position, with all data do you still fill could about this location? Here the good and the bad, do not be overly optimistic.

Don’t go too big too quick:
Yes you are a rockstar, and yes you cannot fail, but my friend even the best fail. Be VERY realistic about how you are going to run your operation. Last year a month before high season I decided to implement an entirely new POS, Inventory management and booking system. It was a nightmare, I did not take into account how long it would take to get it running, that high season was just around the corner, and that I had no idea what I was doing. It ended up costing me around $18,000 to fix my mistake

Keep your systems to a minimum:
Yes it’s great to have a tool shed with every tool in the world, but when all you need to do is build a fence you don’t want to have to dig through a 1,000 tools to find a nail and hammer.

Focus on what works: I had a buddy in Thailand a few weeks ago we went through all of my marketing, looked through my business systems and talked a lot about my business here. I talked about new email funnels I was working on, new ad spend I was doing, and new marketing ideas I had, at which point he said “Why? Are you changing everything? It’s been working for 3 years, why not just focus on what is working?” Wow that was a very simple but very good point, why wasn’t I focusing on what was working?

Concorde Fallacy: I am not saying if it is not working to just abandon ship, but you should have a work case scenario in mind and if that worst case hits you should be prepared to jump ship. I have just recently run into this for my first time ever by taking on two locations at once, very quickly into it, I decided to abandon the one project (even though it cost me a shit ton of money) because I knew I was in over my head and was not prepared to deal with what was coming. It was painful, but it was the right move.

The post The Biggest Business Pitfall That No One Talks About… Success appeared first on StartupBros.

What do you do? How do you do it? And perhaps most importantly, why do you do it?

Many people never take the time to stop and smell the roses, as they say. So what on earth would make them stop for long enough to examine their own behavior, analyze it, and take corrective measures?

What would make them realize that they have all of the answers? That all they need to know is where to look for them?

Well, articles like this, hopefully.

Intention might be invisible, but so is air. And you need that stuff.

The chances are that you’re familiar with the following tired, yet tried and true sentiment: Intention accounts for a massive chunk of reality. Sure, it could be classified as a cliché, but that doesn’t do anything to debunk its validity.

Say that you hold the door for an old lady as she scoots her motorized cart through it. Where was your head – rather, where was your heart when you made that split-second decision?

Any real Good Samaritan would hook Tabitha up. You think she can move that giant slab of steel all by herself?

Was it truly an altruistic, self-sacrificial, enlightenment-filled, bleeding-heart-driven random act of kindness?

Or was it one of those “If I just walk right through without letting her in, the cashier will see and I’ll look like a huge jerk,” situations?

We know what you’re thinking: “Either way, I held the door, so what’s the difference?”

The difference might seem invisible right now, but you can uncover it by zooming out and taking a screen shot of your life over time.

Examining the deeper reasoning, motivation, or purpose that underlies your actions and behavior is often the key to amending the tendencies you have and trading up for better, healthier, and more productive ones.

“Well how exactly am I supposed to get started? It seems like way too broad of a concept to wrestle, and I don’t know where to take the first bite.”

Up top, you need to know this: You can talk the talk for the rest of your natural life without ever actually taking even a single baby step in the right direction. Actions speak louder.

So many people get caught in the trap of being vague with their goals. Surely you’ve seen speakers and even brands boast about “the hustle” like it’s going out of style, but what exactly is it that they are doing?

Yeah, Captain Muscles has it all figured out, I bet.

You will find that focusing on real, actionable, tangible ways to increase productivity and reach for the stars will bear noticeably more fruit. I mean, we’re talking a whole orchard more.

The setting of concrete goals while keeping your vision clear and transparent will help you with both the formulation of a game plan and the whole “sticking to it” part.

Step 1: Toot your own horn (aka list your career highlights).

This could seem hard to narrow down at first, but think of it this way: Zero in on the events that had the greatest positive impact on you, your attitude, and how you operate in both the business and personal realms of your life.

Some things seem small on the outside, but make serious waves internally, so be sure to include those as well. Size isn’t important here, but magnitude is, if that makes sense. The effect these events had on you is the key.

Now, it is painfully true how accurate the yin/yang dynamic is and how applicable it seems to be in every situation. Balance is a constant, and polarity can get you into trouble when you try to isolate two sides of the very same coin.

Many of the things we experience in our journeys are riddled with both pleasurable and stomach-churning aspects, and we get that. Don’t get caught up here.

Maybe you achieved a lifelong goal, but totally neglected your significant other in the process, and your distraction from the romance totally tanked your relationship.

Although they appear inseparable, see if you can focus on the good and the bad one at a time – at least for this exercise.

Not every little thing is as objectively black or white as we would like it to be, but for this step, we are really urging you to separate the wheat from the chaff as best you can.

If you didn’t separate the wheat from the chaff, then you’d just have one of these things. And who would eat that?

Starting off on a positive foot should ease you into the process. These highlights can come in a plethora of shapes and sizes, so definitely avoid preoccupying yourself with whether or not something is worthy enough to make the list.

See if you can list five especially memorable, spine-tingling moments when you had that unshakeable feeling that you were on the right path, at long last.

Of course, winning an award or receiving praise from publications and judges would fall under this category. However, don’t forget that dedication-inspiring encouragement like that can just as easily grace your journey on a smaller scale.

That is, if you’re paying close enough attention.

Sometimes, a simple letter of thanks from a happy customer or a smile from someone whose life has changed as a result of your care and attention can do wonders for the soul.

After all, what better validation is there than knowing that you made a positive impact on the life of someone else?

Got your list? Okay, on to the not-as-fun-but-equally-as-important part of the process.

Step 2: List your career low-lights. That’s a word, right? No? Well it should be. I’m calling Merriam-Webster.

At first glance, this part might seem expendable and borderline disqualifiable because of the very nature of what you’re digging up.

Who wants to relive mistakes? Who wants to live in the past? Who wants to beat themselves up over regrets and think about the negative when they can just as easily focus on the positive?

While those gripes are perfectly valid, please don’t be turned off by this. It is admittedly not as ego-stroking as the first step, but we promise, it matters just as much.

In the present moment, negative events that have had a major impact on you can be turned into life-giving opportunities to learn and improve instead of simple lingering skeletons in your dust-filled, and in all likelihood odorous, closet.

A failure is just an opportunity to learn, adjust, and win in the future. If you approach this list with that mindset, you’ll be relieved at how painless it can be to rifle through your past.

These low-lights (give me a break, we’ll trademark it or something), like the highlights you listed already, can come in all sorts of forms, so stay open and try not to pass any judgment just yet.

BOOYAH! Take that, doubting Thomas. It’s not very popular, but it is legal tender. Let that be the last time you question StartupBros.

A seemingly harmless mistake like ringing a celebrity up with the wrong coupon code and being mortally embarrassed certainly counts.

On the other end of the spectrum, a major lapse in judgment that resulted in your termination from a position would also qualify.

Some of the other common negative events that could make the list include receiving criticism from someone you respect (or even a perfect yet ruthless stranger on Yelp), taking more than you are giving to your position, or underperforming because of a poor attitude.

Hopefully, you will be able to fill both of your lists with 5 items each, which will keep the next steps nice and balanced.

This world isn’t fair as it is, so you might as well be as diplomatic as you can be when dealing with your own performance.

Step 3: Look for a common thread. There has to be something stringing all of these items together.

Obviously, if you are just taking things for their surface-level value, you will retort with something like, “What does me winning the Nobel Prize have to do with that time I dropped a vase when I worked at Target?”

This means that you’re not digging deep enough, pal. Grab that shovel and go to town. Dig straight to China if you have to. Take the time to read into the subtext of the events, and you just might strike gold.

Because it can be sort of tricky to pick these things apart on your own without being overcome by self-defense and eager justification, we recommend sharing your list with a friend to get an unbiased outside opinion.

This person will serve as a fresh pair of eyes and ears. Find someone that you trust and respect deeply, book a coffee date, and bring a notepad. The odds are that this friend will hear things you didn’t even say, and likely couldn’t have seen on your own.

Don’t be surprised if you come up with multiple common threads – this is normal, and means that your potential for self-improvement is now greater than you expected. Score!

When looking for this thread, it would help to boil everything down into a more generalized form. We’re talking about zooming out and getting a big-picture perspective on each item.

By doing this, you would realize that dropping a vase could be a form of inattentiveness or absentmindedness. Maybe you were looking at a particularly attractive customer, or goofing off with another employee, or you were trying to text.

PRO TIP: Don’t try to text while handling a vase. That’s department store conduct 101.

As for winning the Nobel Prize, you could maybe break that down into a striving for recognition, fame, achievement, success, or excellence. Do you have a competitive nature? Are you goal-oriented? Insatiably driven?

Maybe you just wanted to be onstage in front of a buttload of people to receive an award. Maybe you just wanted to give that acceptance speech. Maybe you get a kick out of having a large platform. These are all possible generalizations you could extract from that.

Likewise, another common theme that pops up in the lives of many is the desire to help others and make a positive impact. Bringing value to this world, answering questions, solving problems, and changing lives.

When you really examine the fundamental atom-sized building blocks that comprise your intentions, isn’t that the ultimate hunger of countless wantrepreneurs around the globe?

Step 4: Break it down. Like, again. But further.

Okay, so this is a lot like step 3, we know. What sets this level apart is that you should be looking for massive, general overarching themes that pervade every step you take in your career – the good ones, the bad ones, and even the ugly ones.

This is sort of like trying to discern the moral of a movie when they don’t lay it on very thick in the dialogue or the plot. Sometimes you leave the theater thinking, “Why on earth did any of that even happen? What was I supposed to take from that?”

Anybody else leave Inception scratching their head and questioning reality?

These are the questions you are trying to answer with this step. You are literally finding your “why” – and once you address that, the rest of the revelation starts to flow in much more smoothly. You’ve finally gotten to the bottom of it. Congratulations!

Some examples of these hyper-general and oversimplified themes include the building and preservation of relationships and the value of an “I can totally overcome this and bounce back stronger than ever” attitude.

“To be honest, I didn’t read this whole article. It’s too long. I just kind of skimmed while scrolling to the bottom to see if there was a recap.”

You’ve got something better to do? Fine. Let’s go over what we’ve learned and how and why it helps.

First, you need to ask what you are doing. Seriously, what the heck are you doing? That’s the initial step that kicks it all off, and for this, you need a very basic level of self-awareness.

The next level down, underneath that crust, is the how. How do you do what you do? In what manner do you carry out your daily activities? Through what means? With what attitude?

If you’ve answered these questions, and you’ve managed to dig this deep, pat yourself on the back. The why is the most essential, and yet most evasive, aspect in the relationship between you and your behavior.

Simply ask yourself, Why am I doing this? Essentially, this is searching for the root, what connects the trunk and its branches to the soil, nutrients, and other things that this digging/plant metaphor need to stay afloat.

The only meme on the internet with a profound, existential implication.

Your intention is of the utmost importance. Once you discover why you do these things, you can easily pinpoint the healthiest, safest, most responsible and productive route of pursuing the deeper things you’re actually striving for.

This direct approach provides enough clarity to boost your efficiency so that you can spend your valuable time cutting to the chase.

Have you ever heard someone aimlessly ramble on for an hour? You just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them, shouting in their face, “GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!”

You might even find yourself doing that with this article, but the miracle of it is that you are already there. You have found the point. You’re standing in it. The point, of this and quite literally everything, is the why.

Dive into this, and you find the key that unlocks what makes you tick. There is no better way to equip yourself for productivity than this.

“Okay, so you talked my ear off about giant, overarching themes. Does this article have one?”

Of course it does. We didn’t string you along for no reason. You know us better than that.

We touched on it several times here, but it wouldn’t hurt to reiterate: Intention, mentality, and attitude are kings. These aspects of the why have an undeniable impact on the outcome of anything you do.

Conveniently, the more you know about your past, the more equipped you are for the future. Zooming out better equips you to zoom in. Weird, huh?

Begin this series with the intention of becoming more productive so you can better achieve your goals (winning awards, receiving validation, building relationships, helping others, impacting the world, etc.) and watch what happens next.

Luckily for you, we have the intention of helping you do exactly that, and two heads are better than one.

The post Double Your Productivity Part 1: Finding Your “WHY” appeared first on StartupBros.

Ah, the modern era. It seems like money really does grow on trees.

If someone can make a Kickstarter for the sole purpose of whipping up some potato salad and raise a jillion dollars in a week, surely your heroic business proposal will float itself.

This will likely happen without a boatload of elbow grease on your part, right? As long as you set aside a fat chunk of dough for marketing, you’ve covered all your bases…

Right?

Wrong. Very, very wrong. Bad wantrepreneur. Tsk, tsk.

Okay, here’s the scoop, you hopeful soul.

Dumping stacks of bills into a corner and letting some PR/marketing guru gobble them up in exchange for bringing your venture to the next level could be synonymous with flushing those precious dollars down the drain.

There’s a serious chance that your campaign isn’t going particularly well because of the precursory steps that lead up to the launch.

Unfortunately, this means that even a social media Jedi could have a difficult time resurrecting your comatose effort.

Well, wait a second. Why do I even need to market anything? IndieGoGo and Kickstarter have enormous followings. Shouldn’t that suffice?

Oh, no! You’ve fallen into an all-too-enticing trap.

Now, don’t be too hard on yourself, because tons of folks who are looking to crowdfund endeavors assume that the incredible reach of the host sites they choose will do all the legwork.

It’s a real shame that it doesn’t work like this, but the “why” behind it actually makes quite a bit of sense.

Think of YouTube, for example. How many kooks upload videos of themselves trying to burp the ABC’s or dance along to whatever viral craze is taking the internet by storm every day?

You have loads of competition — and whether or not you deem that competition worthy of anyone’s time doesn’t matter one lick.

The fact is that big-shot host sites like the ones mentioned above are saturated with campaigns, which means that there’s a very real danger of yours getting lost in the mix.

Okay, fine. So how do I make mine stand out? My breakfast-food-sock startup is unique and it deserves attention!

Crowdfunding sites take a lean 5% off the top of everything you earn, and that’s their whole basis for profit.

That’s right — they only make money if you do.

They’re mainly going to focus their efforts of promotion and marketing on the campaigns that are already soaring above and beyond expectations.

Now ain’t that some “rich get richer” junk right there…

Have you ever taken the time to scroll through your preferred site?

Sometimes you’ll see featured campaigns, top-of-the-list lucky ducks that get to bask in the glory of their host’s payment structure.

What makes them so special?
How come they get all the attention?
Who’s coffee do I have to top off to get some dang SERVICE around here?

Well, you salty patron, Kickstarter saw that these campaigns raised a significant portion of their goal amount within the first couple of days.

Sites can smell success from a mile away, so they are likely to boost the ranking of and direct traffic to these particular pages.

Like we said above, it’s all in the prep work.

Crowdfunding is kind of like cooking — the outcome depends almost entirely on the preparation. So make sure you’re dominating that kitchen with a recipe for success.

Alright, patient readers. Are you ready for the secret ingredient? *Cue fanfare* Audience! Mmmm… tasty.

We can’t stress enough how important it is to build an audience before you even dream of launching anything at all.

This can be as simple as sending a quick email to your friends, family, coworkers, or neighbors about what you’re trying to get off the ground.

If that many supporters already have the inside scoop before you announce, they’ll be at the ready to toss a few greenbacks your way.

This initial investment is how you get that inflating boost that will attract attention, traffic, awareness, and ideally donors.

This might take a little bit of your time — don’t be put off by spending months and months building this foundation of supporters.

If you can rely on these generous participants to raise 30–40% of your goal within the first 72 hours, you can bet your Peruvian cherry peppers that your campaign will gain the interest of outsiders.

See? That doesn’t sound so hard.

Following these tips will save you the heart-wrenching pain of shoveling money out the window, or worse: A dead campaign.

Stand out by being successful, and be successful by starting your launch on the right foot.

Remember this: The savvy entrepreneur never underestimates the power of a good first impression.

Now train your eyes on the road ahead and get ready to knock your next crowdfunded venture right out of the park!

Special thanks to Khierstyn Ross @ http://www.crowdfundinguncut.com for the inspiration behind this article as well as the amazing video!

The post Looking to Crowdfund A Project? These Quick Tips Might Save Your Hide appeared first on StartupBros.

Of course you want to be productive. It’s a basic human desire that you’ve been nursing over the years.

A life of mediocrity, peaking only on Wednesday afternoons when your favorite soap opera comes on, does not appeal to you.

You want more.

You want to create, you want to learn, you want to grow.

The key is maintaining focus and steering clear of alluring distractions. You need metaphorical blinders.

Please don’t make us put literal blinders on you… Because you would look like this. And no one would talk to you.

“Before we start, what do I need to know about productivity?”

This is probably the opposite of what you wanted to hear, but the pieces that comprise productivity are matched in gravity only by the very pieces that comprise its opposite.

That’s right, folks. Productivity flourishes when you know what to do, yes.

But it’s also just as important to know what habits can hinder it.

An understanding that plants need water and sunlight to survive is paramount, but so is an understanding that you can’t set your fancy new chrysanthemum on the lip of your fireplace.

Don’t worry, though. We’ll get into all the specifics here. For each point, we’ll tell you what measures to take, and which to avoid at all costs.

1) Social Media: The Venus flytrap of the internet age

It’s not your fault. Everything on the internet is so frickin’ clickable these days. Tricksters are lined up around the block competing for your valuable online attention.

From targeted underwear ads to the useless political ramblings of your uncle that your family no longer speaks to, these social networks have a way of sucking in the minds of well-meaning scrollers and spitting them out hours later with nothing at all to show for it.

I know you logged onto Facebook to make a post from your business page and engage your customers, but wouldn’t you like to know all about the ten most extravagant celebrity vacations??

That, friends, is a total trap. Please do not fall for that. You don’t need any of that so-called “knowledge.” You need to stay focused on the task at hand instead of stumbling backwards down the dark rabbit hole of the deep web.

“So what am I supposed do about it?”

You can start by housing each project that you’re working on in its own tab. Out of sight, out of mind. The less distractions that are in your field of vision, the better.

This will keep that all-too-enticing Twitter icon on your home page from catching your eye, eventually curbing your curiosity about what your high school sweetheart is doing for the holidays this year.

In addition, did you know that you have the power to mute notifications from social apps? Of course you did. Don’t plead ignorance. Exercise that power to keep your phone from playing a chime every time some stranger on Facebook invites you to play Candy Crush.

You could also try limiting your time on social media. Does that sound extreme to you? Then you might have a problem. Whenever you catch yourself scrolling mindlessly like a zombie, close out of the window immediately.

If none of that works, you can always take the cold turkey approach and delete all of those distracting apps from your phone and desktop so that you can elude the temptation with greater ease.

2) Multitasking: Productivity’s impostor

“Surely I’m being productive. I am constantly doing five things at once, and I never have a spare second to take a break, take a leak, or even take a breath in between tasks.”

Yeah, this looks safe. I always try to keep my kids within arm’s reach of a hot stove.

Oh no! It looks like you’ve fallen for the illusion that entraps motivated and driven people across the globe. Please know this, memorize this, and get it tattooed across your forehead if you have to: Being busy is not necessarily being productive.

Being wholly occupied comes with an air of immediate satisfaction, but don’t get it confused with a sense of accomplishment. The latter reward comes from focus and the completion of top-notch work.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none”? You could either give a sliver of your attention to a handful of things simultaneously, or zero in on a single task and devote your very livelihood to it.

Making such an effort to juggle multiple projects at once can fatally dilute the quality of your output, which will devalue both your work and your brand itself.

Would you rather smack a couple bunts that result in a succession of quick outs or a bat-shattering over-the-fence home run? (+3 pts for baseball reference)

“So what am I supposed do about it?”

Concentrate, fool. If you really give 110% of your care, focus, heart, blood, sweat, tears, effort, and mental juice to one task, don’t you think you’d nail it?

It might help you to make a specific goal the central focus of your day. Accomplishing one thing at a time gives you a deep feeling of fulfillment and finality.

This will prevent your work day from feeling monotonous. You won’t be caught up in the same general thing every day, but instead, smaller, more incremental and totally surmountable tasks.

No more weeks blending together into one grueling blur! Hoo-rah.

Looking for a way to increase stamina, focus, morale, and all-around fuel for your productivity fire? Miniature victories like this along the way will serve as checkpoints, like water stations for marathon runners. Drink up!

3) Taking Breaks: Ahhh… Sweet, sweet, addictive relief

We’ve already talked about how “busy-ness” can be a true hindrance in the workplace by a) fooling you into thinking you’re being hyper-productive and b) gradually wearing you down and eroding your will like waves against a cliff.

This slow grinding stokes the insatiable urge inside of you to take time away from your desk and do something else – anything else – to get your head straight again.

Whether it’s a quick episode of Stranger Things on Netflix or a spring break banger at Panama City Beach, your reasoning behind wanting the reprieve is normally uniform.

Know this, though, you clever wantrepreneur: Too much of a good thing can be terrible. Cake is great, but how would you feel if you ate an entire double-decker in 30 minutes flat?

There is an uncomfortable truth regarding time off that many people refuse to acknowledge: When you’re working for yourself (as many of you are), every minute you spend away from your business is costing you something.

It could be progress, or it could be paper money, but someone is paying for that vacation, literally or figuratively.

On top of that, keep in mind that returning to your desk after a nice, cleansing bender can be difficult. Your week off could very well bleed into and taint the productivity of your first few days back in the office.

Remember how hard it was to pay attention in school on the first day back from summer break? It takes quite a bit of adjustment to realign yourself to a schedule and tune your brain to the right frequency in order to regain that focus.

40 hours a week of whatever the heck this guy is doing looks a lot more appealing than sitting in a stuffy office.

“So what am I supposed do about it?”

If you really want to nip the issue in the bud, you should do your best to avoid being needlessly busy at all costs. This is the number one cause of that impulse to break from the schedule and give yourself another holiday.

Breaking up your workday into chunks can cure that monotonous drone that drives many hardworking geniuses to the brink of insanity.

However, this is not to say that taking breaks is objectively bad. It is important to put things down and clear your mind every once in a while, especially when you get stuck or hit a creative roadblock.

Taking breaks allows you to remove yourself for a moment, zoom out, reassess, and come back to the project feeling refreshed, inspired, and ready to kick some serious booty. Sometimes, it’s absolutely necessary to step away.

This concept, like many others, revolves around balance. Make every effort to space things out and learn to read signs of exhaustion before they worsen. This should keep that urge to steal out the window and haul tail to the coast at bay.

When you need a break, take it. Just don’t let it become a guilty pleasure that consumes your drive whole!

4) Prioritization: Separating the lucrative from the useless

A habit, albeit a hopeful one, that winds up holding many entrepreneurs back is saying “yes” to every single opportunity that knocks at your door. Developing discernment and the ability to say “no” is more valuable than you know.

Would you open up for the door-to-door vacuum salesman? You already have a brand new Dyson, man. Stay focused.

Poor prioritization can lead to multitasking, as discussed earlier, which results in a massive decline in productivity. Instead, you’ll want to handle the most important things first and work your way down the list from there.

“So what am I supposed do about it?”

Some things will align with your goals, while others just plain miss the mark. Trust your entrepreneurial gut instinct.

When in doubt, trace it all back to your mission.

When still in doubt, go with what you know you can immediately receive an ROI on. (This isn’t necessarily applicable across the board, so that’s where your intuition will come in handy.)

When still in doubt after that, ask yourself the following questions:

1) Do I enjoy this?

2) Will this make money?

a. Will this bring in new revenue?

b. Will this help maintain current revenue?

3) Is it essential?

4) Is this the greatest contribution I can be making right now?

5) Is there a better use of my time?

6) Will our clients love this?

5) Your Competition: Stop staring at them, it’s creepy

Unfortunately, this isn’t solely an issue that entrepreneurs struggle with. Habitually, from the day you were born, you’ve been comparing yourself to others.

Although it can be very useful as far as learning and gauging where you are in the lineup, it is dangerously easy to get tangled up in the act and lose yourself in the process.

Everyone has their own cocktail of factors that works perfectly for them. You might have a friend that wakes up at 4 am every day and runs 15 miles. Sounds insane, right? But it’s his recipe for productivity, not yours.

Focusing on the competition won’t get you ahead. If your eyes are on your neighbor rather than on your own performance and the road ahead of you, the odds of you tripping and falling are 10x greater.

PLEASE watch where you’re going. There is a tree 3 feet in front of you, but you won’t see it unless you face forward.

What your competitor is doing might work for them, but the trap is assuming that it would work for your brand as well. We can’t stress enough how unique each venture is. There are countless variable that effect things like this.

“So what am I supposed do about it?”

BE that uncatchable, enviable competition! Don’t give anyone else that power, because YOU deserve it.

Listening to other people is one of the most useful ways to grow, and rooting around the web for resources can be an incredible help when you’re looking to learn.

However, adopting their exact structure or method might not jive with you, which could discourage you and siphon all of your willpower right out of your nose. Or, wherever it’s stored in the human body.

Take the time to experiment and tailor something that is expressly effective for your personality type, your level of energy, and your work style.

Preferences and comfort are huge when you’re looking to increase productivity, so jump through the trial and error hoops until you find the perfect mixture that complements the nature of your work and your goals.

Finally, measure your success against your own performance in terms of progress. As soon as you use another entity for your benchmark, you lose sight of yourself and get caught up in the rat race. Improve upon your own work, not theirs!

6) Failure: The building block of success

Let’s get one thing out of the way right out the dang gate: Sometimes, things suck. You lost the deal, you dropped the ball, you burnt your proverbial toast. We’re not saying that bad things don’t happen.

What we are saying is that perspective has everything to do with the nature of your reality. See if you can apply a positive attitude to the trial you’re going through. What lesson can you learn from this?

Wow. Did we really just hit you with a cheesy motivational photo? Yep. That just happened.

Even the worst, most miserable and embarrassing failure imaginable can be transformed into a life-changing lesson or opportunity that arms you for success in the future. Smells like alchemy, sounds like wizardry, but it’s all real – and very, very effective.

Don’t get sidetracked and waste buckets of time kicking your own butt for messing up. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Nobody said it won’t sting a bit, though.

“So what am I supposed do about it?”

Be the boss that you are and follow these simple steps when faced with a failure:

1) Throw a massive hissy fit like a giant middle-aged baby

1) Accept the circumstances that you are in

2) Let go and forgive the culprit behind your misfortune (yourself if necessary)

3) Start digging for opportunities in the rubble

4) Give thanks for the lessons that you’ve learned and apply them in the future

Resilience is the cornerstone of a good entrepreneur. Someone fails every five seconds doing exactly what you’re trying to do, so don’t sweat that part. It’s all about being able to bounce back with more vigor and know-how than ever!

The sooner you start failing, the sooner you start learning. Talk to any successful baller and you’ll find out just how essential failure is to the journey.

Navigate your way to productivity by avoiding pitfalls.

Now that you can identify these tricky traps, it will be much easier to stay on the straight and narrow.

Keep those blinders on! Block out distractions, maintain focus, and keep that gaze trained on the prize. Apply these tips and watch your productivity double before your very eyes.

The post Double Your Productivity Part 2: Having the right mindset means dropping the wrong habits appeared first on StartupBros.

A lot of the hang-ups you’re struggling with look like one thing on the surface, but they’re really something else at their roots.

It’s a tricky business, staring your demons in the face and all.

Don’t worry, though. StartupBros have your back.

Your best bet is to address each matter at its very source, which boils it down to the routines and habits that have become natural and normal to you over time.

You can put a Band-Aid on a cut, but why not cure the infection instead of just stopping the bleeding? Let’s get to the bottom of this, y’all.

1) Stir a little structure into your routine and watch what happens.

Structure is important. Consistency is important. Stability is important.

These are characteristics that actually beg productivity.

Being unfocused, unproductive, and unmotivated are classic side effects of systemic problems that have surprisingly simple cures.

This conversation might make us sound like finger-wagging parents, but we need to have… the talk.

1. Get some dang sleep, would ya?

Morning routines are invaluable to the life of an entrepreneur. Have you ever ordered coffee from someone who certainly woke up on the wrong side of the bed? Poor sleep is the key ingredient in the recipe for bad business.

Although all-nighters might make you feel superhuman in the moment, they can throw you way off course. The next few days will morph into frantic, yet yawn-ridden matches of catch-up rather than fruitful, focus-filled ventures.

Try going to bed at the same time every night – or at least get as close as you can to adhering to a sleep schedule. It doesn’t have to be precise to the minute, so yes, you can stay up until your hockey team is done playing. But then it’s time to snooze, kiddo.

In the same vein, see if you can set an everyday alarm on your phone and actually stick to it. This will keep your melatonin production and circadian rhythm in the loop about when you are in work mode and when it’s time to hit the hay.

Your alarm clock is your friend, not your enemy. Please do not smash it into oblivion with a sledgehammer.

Don’t hesitate to plug in your favorite song as the tone. Hearing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” at the crack of dawn would make greeting the day much less arduous.

The accompanying message can say something positive, like “Hey there, you beautiful snowflake. Time to shine like the sun and take over the world.”

Or maybe something less goopy. Doesn’t matter, though. This is a judgment-free zone. Whatever works. *Ahem* (Weirdo.)

b) Ditch your irregular trash-heap of a diet (no offense).

Get that infernal milkshake off of your desk, dummy. Don’t you know that cost you four whole dollars? Do you think that is feeding your brain what it needs?

I bet you didn’t even know that you could score an entire well-rounded, already-prepared, fresh, delicious paleo meal for less than twice that. This prevents you from eating out or trying to eat cheap – or worse, both.

Have the strength to say NO to fast food, no matter how good it looks.

Admittedly, the thought of signing up for a meal service sounds like some hoity-toity 1% crap, but there are some affordable ones out there that totally deliver on the flavor front.

The beauty here is two-fold, so pay attention. Of course the meals are pre-planned and proportioned healthily (making sure you’re not overeating just because you have access to giant amounts of food).

The other side of this coin is that having all of your culinary endeavors sorted out before you even get out of bed in the morning means that you are saving inordinate amounts of time.

Time you could spend being productive.

Think of the collective hours you spend deciding where to eat next, actually driving there and back, waiting for your food, and paying for it.

Cooking at home? The same principle applies. Grocery shopping, prep and cook time, dishes and cleanup. We’re talking quite a bit of energy and clock ticks that you could save with a meal plan.

Some of them come out to about $7 per meal, but think about it this way: Would you pay $21 for a 26-hour day instead of the standard 24-hour one?

You’d be parting with an Andrew Jackson in exchange for the superhuman ability to create time out of thin air. Can you say, “WORTH IT”?

It’s not just about what you eat, though. Keeping your meal schedule regulated and eating around the same time every day will make a difference as well.

Staving off hunger while you’re trying to keep your nose on or near the grindstone means that you’re resisting one of the most powerful distractions known to man… SNACKS. *shudders*

P.S. DRINK A TON OF WATER. Duh. Sufficient hydration is essential for healthy brain function and helps clear mental fog, keeping you on the ball. Looks like your middle school P.E. coach was right, just this once.

3. Your desk is a freaking mess (no offense x2).

When you are elbow-deep in clutter, it is extra challenging to buckle down. Keeping folders and documents in neat piles on your desk – or even better, not on your desk at all – allows you to focus on the task at hand without being jerked out of the productivity zone.

Get into the habit of clearing your workstation at the end of every day. Put away what needs to be put away so you can kick down your door the next morning and sit down to a clean slate.

Tabula rasa, baby. Hitting that reset button does wonders for the think tank.

3. An 8-hour workday doesn’t have to suck you dry.

Adding a touch of structure to your schedule can help relieve that rush of mid-afternoon fatigue that washes over you daily like a tidal wave.

To prevent this, break your workday up into 2-3 hour chunks of uninterrupted focus on different things.

When you move on to the next task, don’t carry the previous one with you. That’s how hours bleed together into a driveling slop of soul-crushing monotony.

One thing at a time, champ.

2) Pay attention to how you spend (and waste) your precious time on this floating rock.

None of us really know exactly how much time we are throwing away on a daily basis. Without facts and figures to shock us into overhauling our lifestyles, how are we ever supposed to change anything?

Give this a try: track your time on a spreadsheet over the course of a month or so. Make categories that apply to your routine and log how many hours you spend doing each activity.

Some examples could be exercising, eating, spending time with your friends or spouse, shopping, working, scrolling through social media, watching Netflix, and so on.

If you want to get really specific, you can even split the Netflix category up into “Watching” and “Waiting for the next episode to load, for Pete’s sake.”

The rat race is so all-consuming that most of us mindlessly participate without realizing how inefficient it’s making us. Breaking things down and quantifying them lets you visualize and comprehend how pervasive (and destructive) your habits truly are.

Hopefully, this will not inspire existential dread and anxiety in you. It’s actually a much-needed opportunity to break free from the cycle of unproductivity that you’ve grown so accustomed to. Chances are that you didn’t even know you were stuck.

Pro tip: You can also try this exercise with tracking how you spend your money. You’ll be like, “Who the heck spends $128 on alcohol in one week? How does that even happen? I need to get it together.”

3) Shrink your inner circle – Yes, that means you will have less friends. It’s okay, we promise.

It is perfectly healthy to be picky about your network! Is it scary to end friendships? Sometimes. Is it necessary to end friendships that are a disservice to your growth? Always.

Look at Spongebob. He only has 2 friends, and he’s as happy as a clam. Happier, even.

Remember that it’s okay to have standards. If someone is holding you back, it could be time to kick them to the curb and minimize your network. Quality > quantity.

By that same token, don’t be afraid to spend time with people who are “better” than you, aka people who have what you want. Jealousy won’t serve you here, so view them as shining examples that you can learn from instead of competition.

Your immediate surroundings have a monumental impact on the way you behave and the habits you develop. The inner circle that you chisel out of the crowd should challenge you intellectually and embody the values that you hold dear.

You can’t become what you haven’t seen or heard. Surrounding yourself with those who are currently killing the game should inspire you and remind you that it is totally possible. If these folks can do it, so can you. Simple as that.

Hanging around the right type of people puts you within osmosis distance of traits and tricks that most resources can’t offer in such an engaging, hands-on manner.

Negative influences can hold you back and knock you off the horse. Trim the fat every so often and reassess which relationships are healthy, positive, and symbiotic, and which are bleeding you like a stuck pig.

“But I don’t personally know anyone who is a positive influence on me. What am I supposed to do?”

This is actually true for more people than you might realize, so don’t feel alone. You can still “surround” yourself with the right people, but on a less literal level. (Don’t worry, it’s just as effective.)

A few handy tricks: listen to podcasts about what you value, read books by inspiring people, watch videos of powerful speakers, and keep positive and inspirational quotes within your eyesight.

Even tossing some scribble-ridden sticky notes spouting upbeat, encouraging messages on a bathroom mirror could give you that extra kick you need to keep your head in the game.

4) Jam the F out at your workstation.

In an office setting, the slightest clink of a stapler or glug-glug-glug of a water cooler can be enough to snap you out of the zone and steal your attention – and productivity – right out from under you.

Throwing in some headphones and listening to music can keep you locked in on your work while eliminating distracting noises.

While some people find easy listening music with no lyrics the most helpful because there’s so little going on, others want to blast some gangster rap or brutal death metal.

This is why we recommended using headphones. Your coworkers might not be big headbangers.

It’s all a matter of preference, so in the end, go with whatever keeps you motivated and focused on your work. There’s no one road to take, so noodle around on Spotify and find a playlist that loves you as much as you love it.

5) Your computer setup should look like the command center of the USS Enterprise.

You spend all day hunched over your computer, straining your neck and eyeballs while it burns a hole straight through your poor lap to the unwitting office chair beneath your bum.

The screen is tiny. You keep having to zoom to 150% in order to properly read text on a website or a document, but you don’t want to admit it.

Have you ever thought that this seemingly irrelevant factor could have a tremendous influence on the way you work?

Mainly, this has to do with what you allow into your field of vision. Say that your screen is 13 inches across. How much of your immediate eyesight does that occupy?

Your peripheral is picking up the trees swaying outside, your neighbor’s cat eating flowers again, and your acoustic guitar in the corner. You might as well pick it up for a few minutes and see if you can remember how “Wonderwall” goes, right?

This is one of the typical traps that small, single screens set. If your work only takes up a puny sliver of your field of vision, this means that deadly distraction is looming at arm’s length, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Also, we know this part is going to sound super insane-o, but hear us out. How do you feel about having… multiple monitors? Seems unnecessary, until you consider the research.

Good luck sneaking a peek at the clock when you’re being blasted with 6 jillion pixels of illumination.

Microsoft is one of those companies that will stop at nothing to discover what can extract the highest level of productivity from an employee. They dumped millions into trying to learn the secret, and here are the results.

Using bigger screens, and multiple screens, made the biggest difference across the board as far as creating the environment most conducive to productivity. That’s it.

It saves you from having to click over and over again, maximizing and minimizing tabs, and running the risk of some shiny icon on your desktop catching your eye and luring you in like an anglerfish ready for brunch. (I assume they’re not a breakfast fish.)

You already know from our other articles that keeping each project in its own tab helps eliminate distractions on the sidelines. The same logic applies to giving each piece of the puzzle you’re working on its own screen.

Keeping things organized and differentiating your tasks allows whatever you are doing at this exact moment to occupy all of your attention and maintain your entire focus.

Don’t want to spend the money? Well, before you toss the idea, consider the ROI.

Would dropping a few bucks on an additional monitor today keep you from peeing time down the drain and ultimately hold your focus in the long term?

Don’t believe it? Well, you should. It’s science, man. Microsoft already did the digging.

“Some of these things seem way too simple to work. I’m not sure if I buy this whole thing.”

That’s the beauty of it all. It is so blatantly obvious, and yet we all overlook these factors repeatedly because they’re right under our nose.

And have you ever tried to look directly under your nose? Exactly.

 So yeah, it’s simple. But isn’t that better than the alternative? What if we gave you annoyingly complex advice that would be endlessly difficult to apply to your daily life? Now that would be a rip-off.

This is real-life, actionable stuff that you can put into practice right freaking now. You’ve waited long enough, and if you’ve read this much of the article, it’s clear that you’re ready to make the necessary changes to boost yourself to the next level.

Manually amending your routines and practices to embody the concepts we’ve discussed here will have a borderline immeasurable impact on your productivity.

Go ahead, give any of these a shot. Feel free to stare into the distance incredulously as the very nature of your attitude, and ultimately the product of your hard work, transform. It’s straight up fascinating. #Yawelcome

The post Double Your Productivity Part 3: Tricks and Hacks To Keep Your Goals On Track appeared first on StartupBros.

Unless you live in a cave, you’ve heard that the new iPhones don’t have a headphone jack. This nonsense led to a frenzy of Apple fans searching far and wide for Bluetooth headphones that are as clear and convenient as their old wired pair.

To you, that may look like a problem, but to the keen, optimistic eye of an entrepreneur, it’s an opportunity.

I jumped on the hype train and launched an e-commerce business that aimed to undercut Apple’s Airpods. Those suckers are $159, which would appear akin to robbery if Apple didn’t have a free pass to do whatever the flip they want.

Y U do, Apple?

The market for wireless headphones is pretty narrow right now, as they’re not yet a large-scale necessity. Plus, most sellers are pricing their products at well over a hundred bucks. Surely, I’ll be able to sell them for less and still turn a profit, right?

Mehh… It’s not as simple as that, apparently. Here’s how it went down.

Since I wanted to price them somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-$90, I needed the point of entry to be so low that I could skate over it like a crack in the sidewalk.

Startup costs had to be borderline nonexistent. Shipping had to be filthy cheap or literally free. The ads had to be completely covered by the money I made from sales.

Electronics are notoriously risky, too (StartupBros constantly preaches this, but I waived that warning), so I needed to do this right.

I began by scouring AliExpress.com for wireless Bluetooth headphones. After rifling through reviews, I found a reliable seller and “borrowed” their stock images to create my own store and the advertisements for it (sorry, not sorry).

The name of my venture: RunPods. You know, like fitness, blended with Airpods… you get it. With that out of the way, I published my Shopify store and crossed my fingers.

Orders started rolling in almost immediately, which was a pleasant surprise. I experimented with different prices, and the highest anyone paid was around $79, while the lowest was $39 during my Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

So why didn’t it work?

A good entrepreneur can admit his own mistakes, and there were a few major flaws with my plan.

Despite the cost-effectiveness of the method, because I was drop-shipping (from China, mind you), the average delivery window was within 20–40 days.

That, my friends, is a long freaking time.

Aaaany day now, my RunPods will be here…

I was trying to sell the product at such a low price that customers would stomach the wait without question because of the overall value I was offering. But people have craaazy high expectations when it comes to electronics. Tech folks are a tough crowd.

Another weird hurdle I ran into is that people aren’t used to wireless headphones, so they look a little strange when sitting in your ears without that familiar wire dangling down.

Also, who is going to enjoy having to charge their headphones? It’s inconvenient, annoying, and impractical from the perspective of someone who has never owned a wireless pair before.

This led to customer service speed bumps like complaints and returns, which made a big honkin’ dent in my profits.

Yes, I did 3 grand in sales in a month flat, but I wound up $150 in the red after returns and the piling costs of purchase, ads, etc. Ouch.

My wife’s approach seems similar, but it wasn’t. At all.

She got wind of my plan and decided to hop on a different trend: The whole strappy-back underneath-your-tank-top bra craze.

Hitting AliExpress, she ordered 10 of these bras for $1.70 per to the house. From there, she sold through existing online channels like eBay, Poshmark, and Mercari, while using stock photos to make her listings look primo.

She didn’t make a Shopify store, she didn’t run expensive ads, and she didn’t rely on a social media algorithm target potential customers. All she did was post them up online, and get this: The woman sold one every single day for $10.99 a pop.

Rub it in, why don’t you.

Minus the ~10% fee from the platform, and the cost of the initial investment, she wound up profiting around $6 per sale. No shipping expenses, either. A true genius, that one.

With the $60 she made from those sales, she invested another $20 for a new batch of bras and experienced the same result. If she scaled it up, she’d be rolling in paper.

That’s right, folks. By the end of our run, my business-savvy wife pocketed $100, while I was in the hole for that much and then some.

Well then, class, what have we learned?

I’m not going to lie, RunPods was technically a failure, albeit a fun and valuable one. Through this trial, I was blessed with the following kernels of truth:

1. Don’t be afraid to try something because of initial investment costs! My wife spent a measly $40 and walked away with 250% of what she put down. If you ask me, that’s a killer ROI.

2. If you can, try to avoid the tech trap. Just because there can be a higher profit margin in electronics doesn’t mean you’re actually going to make any cash.

3. Test out your product on existing channels (eBay, Poshmark, Mecari, Facebook Marketplace…etc) before building your own store.

4. Don’t shell out moolah for Facebook to target customers right out the gate.

5. Fine, honey, you win. Ugh.

The post How my Wife Kicked my Butt in an E-Commerce Showdown appeared first on StartupBros.