Never Get a ”Real„ Job (13 page)

Failure should never be an option if you were able to see it coming. Check each area of your business regularly. Look for improvements and work to fine-tune every element. Identify the real problems behind the small stuff before you find yourself getting ruined by the big stuff.

Win the war, not just a battle
. Entrepreneurship is a daily game of kill or be killed, with high stakes: your livelihood and your future. For every triumph, there may be 10 defeats. There may be many rejections before your first sale. Lessons learned from a series of failed marketing tactics might be the reason you score big with a later, more informed campaign. Some days, you’ll take five steps backward for every step forward. However—at the risk of sounding cliché—it’s true that whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.

Mental fortitude and persistence are the keys to prevailing over adversity. Never retreat in the face of hardship or let the game kill you. Even the most successful entrepreneurs suffer sales and marketing setbacks and resistant marketplaces. Play to win instead. Find the balls you didn’t know you had and attack obstacles—and your competition—head on with only one mission in mind: complete and total annihilation.

Remember, it’s not how you fall down that defines you, but how fast and strong you get back up.

GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME, CHUMP

Successful entrepreneurs aren’t just experts at strategy and execution. They’ve also mastered the art of communication, winning over skeptics, and positioning their companies against others.

Achieving success requires that you properly prepare yourself to engage in daily psychological warfare. Everything about you and your business must be designed to maximize and control the flow of information and inspire others to act in your favor.

Make your own luck
. Luck plays a major role in every business; however, that doesn’t mean you should sit around and wait for good fortune to knock on your door. It will never just
show up
. You need to search it out.

Get fired up!

From what you wear to how you act, you must be a walking, talking billboard who is comfortable with marketing your business—and yourself. Convey your message and brand image with everything you do. You need not be a meek little mouse, but take care not to irritate people with overly excessive self-praise or used car salesman–type enthusiasm.

Don’t sit at a desk all day; get out into the world! Be a scrappy and resilient self-starter with infectious energy and passion. Strike up random conversations. Join new social circles. Participate in business meet-ups and activities with like-minded people. Be a creative networker. I once attended a crowded marketer-networking event wearing a T-shirt with the phrase: INTRODUCE YOURSELF & I’LL GIVE YOU $1. That shirt attracted attention and earned me conversations with other guests. I was able to turn a $62 investment into five clients and thousands of dollars in revenue.

Make your own luck by hustling every day. You never know whom you’ll meet or what you’ll experience until you consistently put yourself out there.

Trust everyone, but always cut the deck
. Many people will say they want to work with you. Others will promise you everything under the sun. But talk is cheap. Rarely will anyone be looking to do you some big favor for nothing in return. From “guaranteeing” results they can’t provide to overcharging you for mediocre services, wolves in sheep’s clothing will try to take advantage of you every step of the way. Never forget that everyone you meet will always put his own interests before yours.

Trust must be earned, not given.

My friend once hired a freelance Web designer he found from an ad on an online job board. The ad promised that said Web designer could build a professional-looking Web site in less than one week for $300. Two weeks later, there was still no Web site. The designer was in fact a con artist who knew nothing about Web design and disappeared with my friend’s money.

Don’t fall for unsubstantiated claims. Keep your guard up. When it comes to judging character, trust your gut. If you have a bad feeling or the slightest hesitation about someone’s integrity or motives, say thanks but no thanks and walk away without looking back.

Bait more than one hook
. Your product or service may be responsible for reeling in the fish, but you’re in charge of setting the bait.

Do your due diligence on prospects before scheduled appointments and meetings. Conduct online background checks on all involved parties, and use this information to develop the bait based on the common ground you share with each individual. Similar hobbies, philanthropic interests, and business ambitions are a few bait examples.

Always keep an interesting conversation topic in your back pocket for chance encounters—and not one that starts with something as trivial and contrived as, “Do you believe this weather we’re having?”

Don’t look like you’re
trying
to get a conversation going; just use a normal, relevant starting point to kick things off. Devise a series of conversation starters that will help you break the ice in any situation. Become a generalist. Don’t just know about your own industry; learn others as well. Know what is going on in your local community and the world at large.

What’s in it for you?
You never know when a conversation can lead to new clients or revenue for your business. Sure, your business shouldn’t be the first thing you talk about
every
time you start a conversation. However, it should be the first thing on your mind. Having a conversation with a used car salesman might not seem like a natural fit for your SAT prep tutoring service at first, but should you find out his wife is the local high school’s principal and his daughter is about to start her college search, the used car salesman you almost wrote off just might be a client or referrer in your midst.

Small talk will get you nowhere fast. Always look for noninvasive methods of getting what you want from every encounter. Find ways to steer the conversation to a topic of your choosing. Use your situation, surroundings, or the prospect’s chosen topics as an opening to steer the conversation. Whenever possible, find a way to help the person solve a problem—even if it’s not related to your business in any way. If appropriate, get the person’s contact information at the end of the conversation so you can follow up. Don’t just trust an individual to call you or e-mail you because you handed the person a business card.

Master your poker face
. Communication is 10 percent what you say, 20 percent how you say it, and 70 percent body language while you say it. Perception is reality. Just because your business is a small fish in a big pond doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to convey the same confidence and reliability as the big guys.

You may be a one-person wrecking crew behind the scenes—but no one will care whether your products come from a factory or a makeshift assembly line in your garage, as long as they arrive at their destination on time, on budget, and of the quality promised.

Never give away the real size of your company. Use “we” phrases instead of saying “I” or “me.” Opt for team-oriented titles such as managing partner or principal instead of CEO or president. Create custom e-mail accounts by using your Web site’s URL for company e-mail addresses rather than the generic Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! accounts. Use multiple e-mail addresses for different departments such as
[email protected]
or
[email protected]
. If your business has clients in multiple states or countries, include those territories on your Web site, business cards, and sales materials. But be smart about “office locations.” Don’t let this tactic backfire by saying that your company operates in New York, New Jersey, and Iraq unless you can really back it up.

Even your company’s name can help you appear larger than you are. John Doe Realty sounds like a mom and pop operation. The Doe Realty Group sounds like a bigger player.

Playing your hand close to the vest is important; however, be sure that you don’t leave evidence of poor workmanship to damage, undo, or tarnish your reputation. Protect and preserve your identity and image at all costs. Be careful about what you put out into the world, especially the information you upload to social networks. The last thing you want to do is have a true believer in your reputable and reliable business see old college photos of you riding a goat naked with a bottle of vodka in hand.

Never offer more information about anything than absolutely necessary. Don’t give away your tactics or your secret sauce under any circumstance. How you carry yourself will determine if customers believe your company is an ant or a titan of industry. Let prospects formulate their own opinions about the size of your operation. Never lie outright to consumers, but don’t feel the need to correct their perceptions either. Play to their egos, not your own, and you’ll be cashing bigger checks as a result.

Analyze the advice
. If someone told you to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it? I expect not. The same applies when it comes to listening to random pundits, bloggers, and “experts” just because they are “successful”—and, yes, that includes me.

I have no illusions that every tip in this book will be an exact fit for your business needs. I’m fairly sure that most will work, a few won’t, and many will help you to inform your own ideas you’ll use to build your business. Start-up tips and tricks found in magazines, blogs, and TV programs are not one size fits all. What benefits one business can destroy another. There may be a considerable amount of great advice available, but it’s on you to determine whether it will help
your
business to make or save real money. If not, don’t waste your time.

DESIGN YOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL LIFE

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you have nothing to do and thereby rationalize taking long lunches, surfing Facebook for hours, or sleeping in—because there is
always
something to do! Thinking anything else is simply careless, irresponsible, and shortsighted.

There should never be a moment when sitting back, kicking your feet up, and taking an undeserved break seems like a viable option. Impromptu breaks and excessive inactivity will lead to nothing more than procrastination, lethargy, and insolvency. The only time it’s okay to relax is when you schedule time to do so.

That’s why it is essential that you consistently live according to an entrepreneurial strategy—a code of your own design that will keep you sharp, get the most out of each day, and make certain that you don’t fall into a trap of unproductivity. Properly planning out how you allocate your time will reinforce your resolve, strengthen your work ethic, and increase your efficiency.

In time, your entrepreneurial strategy will become second nature—and you’ll wonder how you ever lived any other way.

Make time for you
. Working more hours doesn’t necessarily make you more productive. In fact, toiling 24/7 to the point of exhaustion will result in burnout, stress, and possibly spikes in your blood pressure. It’s essential to set aside personal time and learn to treasure your free time as a reward you’ve earned rather than something that’s readily available.