How YOU can Grow Your Own Million Dollar Business
Hey everyone - I'm new here and I wanted to share some of the insights I've gained in the last few months with respect to growing a business. I started working for myself two months ago, following the vision of "business as a lifestyle". What that meant to me was actually being around partners and friends all the time who are focused on the same goals as me - being successful in life and creating abundance.
If you have people around you that don't share this mindset, they are potentially very toxic to your overall demeanor and what you're trying to achieve. When I first read that my income would be the average of the incomes of my five closest friends, I didn't understand the immediacy of that statement. The people I hung around with drank every weekend, did lots of drugs, wasted time watching movies and playing video games and had goals like "become a teacher" or "help struggling students".
Today, I can say that everyone I spend time around on a regular basis is going to be a millionaire. Your friends create a barometer for your own success. They're who you draw inspiration from and who you compare yourself to. They're also the people that you try to impress. Who would inspire you to do the most with your life - Bill Gates or Bill Smith down the street? Do you get it?
I made the decision that I wanted more out of my life than having fun on the weekends and waiting for time to pass, so I got involved and actually became a partner in two businesses. In the last month, I went from languishing on my mother's couch in her basement to actually meeting a room full of high-powered executives that manage multi-million budgets for a huge institution and actually closing a $25,000 deal with those folks for my new company. How that all came to happen is another story, but I wanted to share two or three lessons I learned in the last few weeks. With these few lessons, I think anyone can start a business and understand how to make it grow.
Businesses are Systems
A business is a repeatable system that generates a profit. Every business survives by creating or refining a system and then repeating it in order to make money. A great example would be McDonalds - their system is making burgers. When they make a burger, they sell it for a profit. McDonalds is a multi-billion dollar company, all based on repeating the process of cooking a burger, billions of times.
FedEx repeats the process of delivering a package. Coca-cola repeats the process of creating and distributing a drink, everyone just builds and repeats a process.
Systems Produce Predictable Results
Systems work because they are designed to be repeatable. If the system is effective, it produces consistent results, which in business means, consistent profits. So, if you can build a system that produces a predictable result, then repeat and scale it, all of a sudden you're in the money.
Businesses have Processes for Everything
Businesses document all of their most common practices and make that documentation available for employees so that they can understand how to execute their roles in a consistent way. In doing this, companies create internal systems that their employees following order to facilitate repeating the system that generates profit. This includes things like reporting for work at specific times, how to process a refund, what e-mail template to market with and any other operations the company does to support its business model.
The best way to succeed in business is to learn how to create, implement and scale processes. First, find a process that works and then build a business around that process.
If you have people around you that don't share this mindset, they are potentially very toxic to your overall demeanor and what you're trying to achieve. When I first read that my income would be the average of the incomes of my five closest friends, I didn't understand the immediacy of that statement. The people I hung around with drank every weekend, did lots of drugs, wasted time watching movies and playing video games and had goals like "become a teacher" or "help struggling students".
Today, I can say that everyone I spend time around on a regular basis is going to be a millionaire. Your friends create a barometer for your own success. They're who you draw inspiration from and who you compare yourself to. They're also the people that you try to impress. Who would inspire you to do the most with your life - Bill Gates or Bill Smith down the street? Do you get it?
I made the decision that I wanted more out of my life than having fun on the weekends and waiting for time to pass, so I got involved and actually became a partner in two businesses. In the last month, I went from languishing on my mother's couch in her basement to actually meeting a room full of high-powered executives that manage multi-million budgets for a huge institution and actually closing a $25,000 deal with those folks for my new company. How that all came to happen is another story, but I wanted to share two or three lessons I learned in the last few weeks. With these few lessons, I think anyone can start a business and understand how to make it grow.
Businesses are Systems
A business is a repeatable system that generates a profit. Every business survives by creating or refining a system and then repeating it in order to make money. A great example would be McDonalds - their system is making burgers. When they make a burger, they sell it for a profit. McDonalds is a multi-billion dollar company, all based on repeating the process of cooking a burger, billions of times.
FedEx repeats the process of delivering a package. Coca-cola repeats the process of creating and distributing a drink, everyone just builds and repeats a process.
Systems Produce Predictable Results
Systems work because they are designed to be repeatable. If the system is effective, it produces consistent results, which in business means, consistent profits. So, if you can build a system that produces a predictable result, then repeat and scale it, all of a sudden you're in the money.
Businesses have Processes for Everything
Businesses document all of their most common practices and make that documentation available for employees so that they can understand how to execute their roles in a consistent way. In doing this, companies create internal systems that their employees following order to facilitate repeating the system that generates profit. This includes things like reporting for work at specific times, how to process a refund, what e-mail template to market with and any other operations the company does to support its business model.
The best way to succeed in business is to learn how to create, implement and scale processes. First, find a process that works and then build a business around that process.