Posts Tagged ‘Business Principles’

In the world of business, marketing and advertising is everything. Marketing is at least as important as the products or services you sell. Without marketing, you have no one to demonstrate the superiority of what you offer!

There is a reason people build businesses in cities surrounded by people, rather than in a desert surrounded by cactus! You need people to market to, and you need customers coming in your door. The success of your business relies on how well you market your product or service first, and second by how well you deliver it. Very few businesses survive on word of mouth alone. But what many small business owners fail to realize is that while marketing is everything, everything you do is marketing!

Click here to keep learning

If you ask people if they want to be successful, almost unanimously, they will say yes. But if you watch what people do, you’ll see that they are neither interested in nor committed to doing the things that are required to become successful.

Most people look for ways to “succeed” by investing the least amount of effort possible. That’s why the lottery makes so much money for the government. One dollar can make you extremely rich. If you’re extremely lucky.

Click here to keep learning

No matter where you go in life, you’re sure to find people who seem to make it their life’s joy to make you angry. They probably don’t even realize what they are doing… it just comes naturally. Two conflicting personalities at work.

I find it fun to think of people who you can’t stand the most, then think of their spouses, friends, or children who love and support them, and probably don’t have the faintest clue that you think they are an ass.

I remember the first time I met my ex-wife, she found me rude and annoying. I was teaching a card game to a group of kids after church and she came up to talk to one of the girls, the daughter of her best friend. Here I was trying to herd cats, so to speak, and I finally got everybody to listen to the rules when she interrupts not once, but twice.

Click here to keep learning

Registering multiple domain names is, and should be, common practice for businesses wishing to protect their brands. I discussed buying alternative domain names earlier this week, but I wanted to address it again, this time from the context of duplicate content issues which may arise if you don’t set up your new domain names properly.

Domain Name Redirects

Click here to keep learning

Success means a lot of things to a lot of people, but the bottom line, for most of us, is that success doesn’t come easy. Most people who see someone else’s “overnight success” cannot fathom the months or years of hard work, lost sleep and sacrifices made to achieve that success.

Of course success is more than money or power. I tend to subscribe to definition #1 above rather than #2. You don’t have to have any of those things to truly be successful, and you can be successful in many things that won’t ever provide them. In business, success merely means that you’ve achieved your goals and dreams.

A few months back I came across these little bits about “success” that I thought would be worth discussing:

Click here to keep learning

A two-hour live season finale of the Celebrity version of The Apprentice seems somewhat frivolous. It’s almost as if Trump is taking this seriously. Maybe this gives us a little more insight on how un-seriously Trump takes the regular seasons when someone will actually be working for him.

But the ratings must be good. On signing off Trump declared they’d be around for “many more years”. My hope is that they get back to what made the show great to begin with, that is being about the business tasks and not about the personalities.

Click here to keep learning

I loved the interviews as part of the narrowing down process in the first few seasons of The Apprentice. I think the last couple of seasons they moved away from that, but now they brought it back. Considering that none of these people will actually be working for Trump, this time it seems kind of superfluous. What’s the point? Let’s get back to the game… and the lessons!

Business Lesson One: The quality of the team can make or break your success.

Click here to keep learning

In Last Thursday’s episode the teams had to build and sell a Quiznos sandwich. I think this episode really showed where the celebrity candidates are weakest, and that is in genuine business and marketing. They could not rely on their celebrity so everything came down to how to market a new sandwich to the average person on the street. But on with the lessons…

Business Lesson One: Savor victory, but don’t gloat.

Click here to keep learning

The task for this episode of The Apprentice finally offered a true business related task that didn’t let the candidates rely on star power or the pocket books of their rich friends. This was a true marketing oriented task. I really wish they would do more of these. On with the lessons…

Business Lesson One: Your marketing must answer questions before they are asked.

Click here to keep learning

The QVC task is one that they’ve done before on The Apprentice, so this episode didn’t really offer up anything new. And since there were no real fireworks to speak of, this was a pretty bland episode. I’d love if The Apprentice would get back to tasks that require some unique business savvy, but there I go again longing for the days of Season One.

Let’s get right to the lessons…

Click here to keep learning