9 Factors That Helped Me Make My First $1M in Profits Making a million dollars in revenue is hard. Making a million dollars in profit is even harder. Every entrepreneur dreams of reaching his or her first million dollars in profit. I was no different when I started my first business with only a few dollars to my name. Here is a list of nine factors that helped me reach my first million in profit -- I hope they can help you reach this milestone as well. 1. I started my business without any outside capital and without any business loans. Related: 5 Steps to Build a Million-Dollar Business in One Year 2. It is very rare that an entrepreneur will hit a home run with his or her very first venture. 3. When you set limits and work within those limits it lays a solid foundation to build from. Even though I continue to increase overheads in line with ever-increasing revenue, I am still conservative with spending as I’ve become disciplined from years of bootstrapping. 4. 5. You can’t wear every single hat within your business. 6. 7. 8. 9.
3 Tweaks in Thinking That Turn a Goal Set Into a Goal Achieved With their robust sound systems, bright paint and can-do slogans, fitness centers brim with the hope of delivering a new you. But the desire to improve health and wellness has a lot more to do with what happens each moment and day, long after the ink dries on your iron-clad contract. Whatever commitment you intend to make, here are three ways to increase your chances of success: 1. Be specific. At the time of this writing, Jawbone’s website features typical goals -- Get more sleep, drink more water and get more exercise. Bring only items to bed that will improve my sleep (no electronics). Replace my commute-time coffee with water. Go for a walk during my lunch break once a week. These turn your goals into specific actions that eventually translate into habits. Related: Forget Big Goals. 2. After staying in her room for months at a time, Byron Katie reached 200 pounds and slept on the floor. If you feel a goal is too far outside your comfort zone or that you can’t achieve it, you are right.
The Best Ways to Do Market Research for Your Business Plan In their book Write Your Business Plan, the staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. offer an in-depth understanding of what’s essential to any business plan, what’s appropriate for your venture, and what it takes to ensure success. In this edited excerpt, the authors discuss the whys and hows of conducting market research. Market research aims to understand the reasons consumers will buy your product. It studies such things as consumer behavior, including how cultural, societal and personal factors influence that behavior. Market research is further split into two varieties: primary and secondary. The basic questions you’ll try to answer with your market research include: Who are your customers? What do they buy now? Why do they buy? What will make them buy from you? You can also find companies that will sell you everything from industry studies to credit reports on individual companies. For companies of all sizes, the best market research is the research you do on your own. 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. 2.
27 Tips for Mastering Anything It Only Takes Five Minutes to Become a Morning Person How you start your day sets the context and your mindset for the rest of the day. Yet, most people start the day with procrastination by hitting the snooze button, telling their subconscious that they don’t even have the self-discipline to get out of bed in the morning, let alone do what’s necessary to be happy, healthy and successful. Stand-up comedian Demetri Martin's humorous take on the subject sums it up well: Hitting the snooze button in the morning doesn’t even make sense. It’s like saying, "I hate getting up in the morning so I do it over and over and over again." When the alarm clocks starts beeping in the morning, consider it to be akin to life’s first gift to us. If it weren't for the following strategy, I'd still be snoozing through my alarm clock every morning and clinging to my old limiting belief, claiming that I was not a morning person. Related: How to Become More of a Morning Person (Infographic) Step #1: Set intentions before bed. Step #3: Brush your teeth.
Femke Becomes Funke: Celebrating Mediocrity In Nigeria By Femke van Zeijl I used to think corruption was Nigeria’s biggest problem, but I’m starting to doubt that. Every time I probe into one of the many issues this country is encountering, at the core I find the same phenomenon: the widespread celebration of mediocrity. Unrebuked underachievement seems to be the rule in all facets of society. A governor building a single road during his entire tenure is revered like the next Messiah; an averagely talented author who writes a colourless book gets sponsored to represent Nigerian literature overseas; and a young woman with no secretarial skills to speak of gets promoted to the oga’s office faster than any of her properly trained colleagues. Needless to say the politician is probably hailed by those awaiting part of the loot he is stealing; the writer might have got his sponsorship from buddies he has been sucking up to in hagiographies paid for by the subjects; and the young woman’s promotion is likely to be an exchange for sex or the expectancy of it.
4 Movies Every Entrepreneur Should Watch As I look back on my entrepreneurial life, I find it interesting to think about the information that has influenced my entrepreneurial framework. I’ve found that much of my knowledge about entrepreneurship has been formed by books that I have read over the years. However, upon some reflection, it occurs to me that certain films have also made a significant impression on me, directly impacting and shaping my business philosophy. The following four films fall into this category, and I believe that all entrepreneurs can find something of value to take from them: 1. One movie that first comes to mind as a good reference point for entrepreneurs is The Lost Interview of Steve Jobs. I realize in advance that Steve Jobs tends to be a controversial figure, to the point that even mentioning his name provokes strong reactions. Related: The 9 Biggest Financial Warning Signs 2. 3. Startup.com is a documentary about govWorks, a failed startup company from the dotcom-bubble era. 4.
6 Best Practices for Working from Home Join us live at Entrepreneur's Accelerate Your Business event series in Chicago or Denver. Secure your spot » More and more entrepreneurs are working remotely. They may have an "office" at home, in a co-working space or even at the nearest coffee shop. Fortunately, technology has allowed everyone -- even entrepreneurs who commute to a traditional office every day -- to benefit from the flexibility of working from home when it’s needed or preferred. Anyone who works from home will tell you that it has its benefits, yet also challenges. After working for a large hotel for nearly six years, I had grown accustomed to being surrounded by people each day. I had no one to interact with except my yellow Labrador. But after a while, I set up a regular routine, joined some networking groups and adopted some best practices. Related: 8 Essentials to Get the Most Out of Working From Home 1. Most people who work from home find they work too much rather than too little. 2. Related: Working From Home?
Jump Start Your Business With This 5-Step Tool If you want to jump start your business, we have a tool that can help. It is called cycle-time reduction. Related: 6 Surefire Ways to Prepare Your Business for Growth This Year Making improvements in cost, quality and timeliness all at once is like hitting the trifecta in business. It may seem improbable that you could accomplish them all, but you can. Cycle-time-reduction programs can work in almost any business. 1. The first step in cycle-time reduction is to document your processes. 2. After documenting processes, examine them to see how you can rework or eliminate portions of your process. 3. The largest contributor to speeding up processes comes from greatly reducing waiting time. Related: 5 Core Lessons for Expanding Your Growing Company 4. You may find that processes that have historically been done one after the other (in series) can be done at the same time (in parallel). 5. Automating selected steps in a process can reduce time and cost while improving quality.
Close Deals Faster With These 5 Steps The first thing I would look at in any sales process is how to shorten and simplify it. I focus on this because of the countless times I have seen buyers demonstrate a sensitivity to time. Whether filling up the gas tank, checking out a gym membership, shopping for an outfit or for groceries -- time is on your buyer’s mind. Related: 4 Tips for Persuading People by Listening to Them Basically, the sales process is finding out who the buyer is, what they want to buy, why they want to buy it and what you can do to fulfill that want. Here are five steps that will bring you massive success in sales and help you close deals faster: 1. The goal of the greeting is to introduce yourself, make a good impression and put the buyer at ease. 2. After your greeting, you want to start out by outlining price, well before you get to the presentation or demonstration of the product or service. Related: 3 Tweaks in Thinking That Turn a Goal Set Into a Goal Achieved 3. 4. 5.
Chart Goals to Create a Road Map to Your Success Many people suffer from being rational dreamers. They want to achieve a big dream but hold themselves back by being risk averse. They don't want to disrupt the status quo and play things safe. To coax themselves out of their comfort zones, people learn to set goals. Approach goal setting like creating a customized road map to chart your success. Before venturing out, you might decide to stop a quarter of the way along for food, then at the halfway point for gas, at the two-thirds mark to stretch and perhaps 100 miles beyond that for more gas. You’re meeting smaller, more immediate goals that build on your efforts to reach the final destination. Create a personalized road map for arriving at your desired destination by setting the following types of goals: immediate, intermediate and stretch goals. Related: Create a Personal Business Plan That You'll Really Use 1. Start by developing stretch goals, a long-term objective that will take years to accomplish. A stretch goal should be big. 2. 3.
Create a Personal Business Plan That You'll Really Use Every successful business leader I’ve encountered is in some way a prolific goal setter. For this reason, the single most important piece of advice I give any aspiring entrepreneur or business professional is to figure out exactly what you want, document it on paper and then attack it every day. A personal business plan is something that I develop each year to help me put my own advice into action. Related: Why Business Leaders Must Set a Personal Mission 1. Break down your role in the company into small parts and be sure it’s comprehensive. 2. Your brainstorming list probably contains an overwhelming number of potential starting points. I made the mistake of developing a massive 100-page personal business plan that I never looked at. Take your brainstorming list and organize it according to the biggest potential impact. My company's CEO, Duane Hixon, does a wonderful job of narrowing down his list into what he refers to as his “rocks.” 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
5 Daily Habits That Will Increase Your Productivity Levels “How can I become more productive?” is a question that will continue to always come up. Everyone wants to get more done and feel a sense of accomplishment as each day comes to an end. There are a million different productivity tips out there, but here a five ways to increase your productivity levels that have worked wonders in my own life. 1. Living in a congested city such as Chicago, I have found that if I start my workday before everyone else, I can save time by beating traffic and getting to my most important tasks right away. Related: Want to Be Successful? Your ability to save these extra hours can not only increase your productivity levels drastically, but help you become one of the highest paid and most productive people in your field. 2. This is a total game changer. 3. This is something so small that can have such a powerful effect on how you work for the remainder of your day. 4. This seems self-explanatory, but in this day and age, distractions are everywhere. 5.