Part 3: Make The Time To Diligently Plan Your Business To Ensure Success

As we continue with Part 3 of our series regarding how to “Avoid Becoming An Online Business Statistic”, if you’ve missed the other 2 installments and the introduction of this series you can easily find them in sequential order under “Past Articles” on the right hand margin of this page.  Let’s pick up where we left off.

“The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable pre-requisite for success.”~Brian Tracy

Essential Questions for Planning A Successful Online Business

After taking an inventory of your skills, abilities and passionate aspirations and after fleshing out the mission and passionate purpose for your business, you are now ready to create your business plan and complete your foundation.  Your business plan must answer the following questions:

• What is the problem you will solve, service you will provide or need you desire to meet for your target market?
• Explain in detail how the business will provide that service or meet that need.
• Describe in detail your target market  (see video in training section on identifying your target market)
• How will you reach them?  What is your marketing strategy?
• What are the best way for you to turn the solution, service or met need into a financial transaction?

Identifying with your target market is essential however you need to go far deeper and most unfortunately barely scratch the surface.  Doing your due-diligence and gathering this information is key to unearthing the viability of a potential business idea.  I don’t understand how anyone can run head-first over the entrepreneurial cliff without gathering this critical information before hand. 

If for example, you have a business opportunity to market then it needs to be more than “to help people be financially independent”.  Or if you have an online business service it needs to be more in-depth than “to provide a service that helps other be successful”.  This is where most who attempt a business plan totally falter and drop the ball because they neglect to be specific. Those are good opening mission statements however you will need to take the time to identify and communicate the obstacles, challenges and frustrations that you will eradicate through your deliverables.  If you can’t identify the obstacle or pain that your business, product or service is designed to alleviate for your target market, there is no compelling reason for potential customers to be attracted enough to motivate their eventual financial commitment.

Staying with our previous example; if you’re marketing a business opportunity your opening statement might be: “To educate and empower others who desire a more fulfilling life to achieve financial independence by providing……”.  There should then be bullet points describing how your business will be designed to solve the problems and meet the needs of your target market.  You will then take each one of those bullet points and drill down, fleshing each out so that they specifically detail how you intend to carry out those efforts to support your overall mission and reach your goals.  This same methodology should be utilized no matter what business you might be creating the foundation for and aspiring to launch.

The #1 Threat To Your Business

After you’ve identified the pain, challenge and obstacle of your target market and how your deliverables are positioned to eradicate and/or solve those issues, you’re then ready to specifically identify your action items.  Your action items will constitute a list of objectives you need to have completed in order to bring the business into reality so that it is designed to meet the commitments you’ve detailed in your business plan.  These action items will be divided into the same 3 categories you used when you first conceptualized your business. 

• Those that you desire to perform because you are passionate about which utilize skills & abilities you currently possess
• Those you desire to perform but require self-education to acquire the knowledge needed to properly execute the action step so that it meets the listed objective
• Those that you require or choose to delegate to accomplish because they either require expertise you do not currently posses or are not passionate about (usually both).

This is the #1 largest killer of businesses in the first year so listen up folks.  The key is identification of what you will passionately pursue, what you will commit to self education and what you will choose to delegate.  So many fall into the trap of trying to do everything themselves but seriously, why would you put yourself through that self-imposed hell if you didn’t need to? I’ve found without a doubt that committing to this 3 category identification system combined with strategic partnering & delegation will prevent business owner burn out while at the same time, propel more businesses to be successful than any other single business strategy.  The fact is that identifying what action steps you don’t want to be bothered with allows you the freedom to create the type of business that is custom fit for you.

There is another observation that I’ve found to be repeatedly proven true.  At the start, most aspiring entrepreneurs have grandiose visions of the empire they desire to create predicated upon unrealistic expectations regarding scope of the functions they will have the time and expertise to complete while still enjoying performing those tasks.  They are soon after punched in the stomach by the reality that they are doing too many things at or below average, while having the majority of their time spent completing tasks that do not fulfill them. 

As they recalibrate their business plan they then dream smaller to fit their shrinking perception of their abilities, instead of dreaming larger through strategically utilizing the natural strengths of others to become successful.   I’ve seen this cycle played over and over and spiral out of control like a home business owner circling a drain.  Trust me; there is an enormous amount to learn in order to perform the action steps you are actually motivated to complete.  Sentencing yourself to be a lone ranger has proven to be a recipe for failure.

Commitment To Self-Educate

Once you’ve identified what tasks you will perform, you immediately need to commit to identifying resources that will train, coach and educate you in those areas.  If refusing to identify and allocate daily business functions and action steps effectively is the #1 cause of business failure, then refusing to truly commit to self-education to equip yourself to be successful in your passionate pursuit is the 2^nd largest threat to your business. 

This is why I’ve committed myself to training and coaching entrepreneurs to learn the proven best practices of online business building.  I have found that if you are not challenged, motivated, coached and encouraged the commitment to self-education by online entrepreneurs wanes. This is why I’ve created systems of success and will continue to convey strategies of the online business high achievers to stoke that passionate fire and equip you for success. 

Achieving emotional and financial fulfillment in your business is not a result of some magic potion but rather proven steps to success that need to be conveyed so that it is understood and demystified.  The bottom line is that your eventual long term success is not based on luck, or some roll of the dice.  Those who are successful have painfully learned through trial and error which is why I’m passionate about guiding others through the pitfalls that have snuffed out the entrepreneurial flame of so many. 

Conclusion

I say all this to encourage you to stay committed to equipping yourself to be successful from reliable sources of training, coaching and information. The patience, perseverance and passion to deliberately take these steps: to create a thorough business plan, to accurately allocate every action step, commit to self-educate and learn from your failures, WILL ensure your success…. It’s just a matter of time.

Your Coach & Fan

Patrick Daugherty

The “Biz Coach”

CEO of Learn2earn it now Training & Support

Author of:  “The Success Steps For Building Wealth Online” AND  

                     ”The Success Step Training System” For Network Marketers

At “Learn2Earn it now” we believe:

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.” 

- President Woodrow Wilson

Winning The Battle For Your Prosperity

This is our next installment as we continue the series of instructive posts regarding how to avoid becoming a business statistic. Let me start by saying that I believe everyone who has ever started a business began their pursuit with some emotionally fueled passionate reason as the motivating factor to take the leap.  Unfortunately the fact is that over 95% of new online home business owners, mostly due to habit, exchange their passionate pursuit that brought about the entrepreneurial freedom into something more reflective of a job which if left unchecked, is systematically followed by total burn-out and the death of that dream. 

When I work with those struggling to make money online it is fairly simple to identify who is stuck in this cycle. When they hit obstacles or have something fail they immediately think “why me?” or “here we go again!” and debate two paths; either to seek another shot of motivational “kool-aid” to get them going again or think about throwing in the towel and giving up.  They now look for the easy way to success and feel that the world seems to be stacked against them.  In reality, it is not.  Their brain software contains programming that is faulty, causing a skewed perspective of both themselves and what they truly want out of life which results in a defeatist attitude.  A far cry from the glass half full optimism they once adopted when they first began.

Ask yourself why on the other hand, are there those that have little or no success for years yet never give up their passionate pursuit?  Why when seemingly slapped in the face by life, are there people who seem totally undaunted and undeterred?  What makes them different and (as a client once asked) since facts back up that it appears to be a pre-requisite to success, where can I get some of that in a bottle? 

Let me logically walk you through a typical scenario where you will be able to easily see the cause and effect to help it make sense in your everyday real world.  I’ve found that making the case in this way is vitally important to enable you to implement the strategies and get your business equipped to be a mechanism that creates financial and personal fulfillment in your life.  The answer lies in how seriously you’ve taken the steps to accurately identify how the motives for the foundation of your business reflect your skills, your abilities and what truly fulfills you.  Before you roll your eyes let me show you why this is incredibly important. The accuracy and purity of those motives create the perspective by which you see yourself and are thus reflected in the overall purpose of your business.  This is why I’ve said that business growth reflects your personal growth (or lack their of).

Real World Scenario

Let’s look at a very typical scenario.  A person who has felt trapped in corporate environment and taken for granted desires to live life on their terms. They are excited about all the possibilities.  When they settle on the online business niche, business opportunity or network marketing opportunity as their vehicle they immediately think of how successful they will be since they can finally shine, unencumbered by managers and corporate structure that held them back.  After planning which consisted of taking a little more than an afternoon to create some unrealistic scenarios that get them excited about making a large amount of money, they immediately set out to run hard like a pioneer after the Louisiana Purchase, racing west to stake their claim and seek their fortune. 

After falling down a few times and learning things the hard way, they begin to think that there’s something wrong with this picture.  Surely they’re talented enough. So they reassess & re-adjust their goals become far more honest with themselves with what it might take to be successful.  Unfortunately the new goals revolve around desiring purely to make far more money.  Now, with that being their only priority, they begin to fall into the “ends justify the means” philosophy and become willing to do anything to get rich because that in their minds equates to success.  They then read from others who are caught in the same cycle, that it’s all about how bad you want it and begin the “bull in the china shop” approach as they ram their marketing message down everyone’s throat.  Every rejection, every failure and every setback is becoming harder and harder to run from which is how they feel they must deal with negativity in order to stay positive.  The once excited business owner begins their spiral into full fledged burn out. If anyone they identify as a potential prospect, customer or partner is anything other than enthusiastically interested in their offering, they begin to feel contempt toward them which begins to show more and more often. 

The Slow Business Death & Autopsy

At some point they feel they must have run too fast out of the gate before establishing a foundation however, they feel that they are already on borrowed time.  Their impatience causes them to begin searching as many magic potion, magic pill, marketing magic and magic secret products that promise a faster track to riches.  After being let down repeatedly, they find that their source of motivation, that drug they use to get them “pumped up” and excited, is no longer sufficient to get them high enough to jump back on their entrepreneurial horse to ride again.  

They begin to accept that they’ve been fooling themselves all along.  They have spent little or no time with their families and when they do, they are so stressed that they can’t hide it anymore. They end up feeling stupid for ever thinking that they could hope for a different outcome.  As they mourn the death of their aspirations, they retool their resume and like a good soldier, re-enter the corporate army promising never to go AWOL again.

It is said that the road to failure is often set out in a direction that’s just 10-degrees off the road to success but after miles have been traveled, you can’t see the successful path from the road to “slow failure” and wonder how you ever got to where you’re standing.  I intend to prove to you how, if certain steps were taken in the front end, the direction this scenario took this entrepreneur would not have left them so wayward from reaching their goals. 

The Solution Part 1: Customize Your Business To Showcase Your Strengths

I will be imparting this game-changing business construction blueprint in 2 distinct perspectives. We will first begin examining details on the ground level before rising up to 30,000 feet to examine the big picture of your business.  It might appear a bit backwards but it will make sense when we’re through. 

Start by examining what functions will be required to successfully launch your business (or re-vamp an existing business) along with effectively performing the day to day operations. I want to walk you through a step by step, how to customize your business to play to your strengths while having it fit what you’re naturally motivated to do. You have to begin by taking stock of your strengths and what fulfills you.  I’ve found that doing such an inventory is best begun by asking yourself several questions. 

• What functions would you like to perform that play to your strengths and fulfill you? 
• Where do your weaknesses lie and what essential business functions do they involve? 
• What training is available to educate yourself in those areas to improve them? 
• What areas/functions do not fulfill you or fit with your personality make up that need to be done for your business to be successful? 
• What resources are available to partner with that can do the heavy lifting when it comes to those functions?

These are the type of questions you want to ask yourself in each dimension of your business. Once you have taken the time to answer these questions, you should then have a list of strengths & weaknesses followed by functions that are affected by each.  Those functions will be divided into those that fulfill you, those that are less fulfilling but could be done once self-educated and finally those functions that you choose to out-source. 

Your first of two actions steps will then be to educate yourself how to learn to effectively perform the first 2 categories of functions as proficiently as possible. The next action step will be to do your due-diligence to find an optimal plan of partnering with either a free/cheap resource, a reputable professional outsourcing service or a networked contact to perform those functions in a win-win or bartering arrangement. 

The greatest overlooked advantage of taking the time to be patient, downshift and strategically plan your business foundation is the control & freedom it provides. When you take the time to custom create your business to play to your strengths, educates your functional weaknesses and delegates the mundane and torturous duties, you have learned the secret of building a successful business that uniquely fits you.  When you think about it, why, when given such freedom would you ever do the things you absolutely hate and aren’t wired to excel at. 

This methodology will then be woven into your business plan.  Understand that when you begin you don’t know what you don’t know yet and there will be functions that you first desired to learn to perform which you later determine to be better outsourced.  Believe it or not, this is also true with those functions that you originally determine to outsource.  I know plenty of those who originally wanted to outsource their blog posts who, after seeing it as a great way to personally connect with their target market, actually found the function to be one that they grew to love performing.

Part 2: The Big Picture & Your Mission

The second focus that needs to be dealt with is concerning your business’s big picture.  A 2-4 sentence mission statement is absolutely imperative to your success whether you are marketing yourself or providing a service.  That is; to define what your business is intended to accomplish for your target market, (other than making you money) that enables you to connect with your business purpose emotionally.  It empowers you to psychologically get behind your business and champion it as your passionate purpose, reflecting the unique identity or who you are.  Many preach that the main reason for doing this is to brand yourself uniquely in the market place.  I say that’s crap.  This is your plum line.  This essentially plots the course of your business that will keep you from veering that 10degrees which threatens pull you and your business off course. 

As you begin making strategic decisions about your business you will be looking at those decisions to determine if they in fact line up with your original purpose you’ve laid out. It also becomes your anchor when you hit obstacles.   When you face several failures in succession, it becomes your battle cry that is woven into the fabric of who you are.  Desiring to merely “get rich” or “make more money” cannot provide this type of motivational conviction.  No, this is my friends is your noble cause.

Conclusion

I have learned that if you lay out your passionate purpose in this way, with this focus, for these reasons, the byproduct will be that you will brand yourself far more accurately and effectively than just some slogan and be far more financially successful as a direct result.  It doesn’t matter if you are launching your new online business or re-vamping a current business opportunity. 

As you proceed you find yourself further and further away from your originally intended path.  A new course correction will breathe new life into your business if you follow the 2 stage blueprint laid out above and reconnect you with the passion you first had when you first struck out on this journey.  If you cannot do so within your current business model then you need to find one where you can to avoid the same slow death as those that have gone before.  Remember, you’re an entrepreneur; you’re in full control and have the freedom to stop on a dime, discard any dead weight that deemed to serve no function in advancing toward your mission and charge forward with your customized passionate purpose.

If you are a relatively new online home business entrepreneur or haven’t even formally decided on a business opportunity or niche to pursue, I strongly recommend that you get this blueprint in place before you do so.  I always stress that at least the broad brush strokes of this blueprint be in place to allow you to better identify what pursuit will best fit your unique abilities, allowing you to play to your strengths and outsource the mundane and monotonous.  Otherwise you might be convinced through skilled marketing to make such things as potential for monetary gain as your top and only decision criteria.

Most entrepreneurs are leaders who want to run.  Their nature is to go out, work harder than the next guy to hunt and kill their dinner and return with it on display to be seen by others as the successful meat eating leader you aspire to be.  Few are willing to force themselves to delay the hunt in order to ensure the fruitful reward for their efforts.  What I’ve shown you are not secrets but rather proven strategies that have rebuilt and solidified the foundations of failing businesses.  Unfortunately they are seen as donkey-work which over 95% of new entrepreneurs are not willing to do.  Think about it. It’s what smart, mature and successful online business owners do.  You can take my word for it or you can live through the illustration and become a business statistic.

Your Coach & Fan

Patrick Daugherty

The “Biz Coach”

CEO of Learn2earn it now Training & Support

Author of:  “The Success Steps For Building Wealth Online” AND  

                 ”The Success Step Training System” For Network Marketers

At “Learn2Earn it now” we believe:

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.”

- President Woodrow Wilson

Are You Building Your Business To Give You True Freedom?

I speak with so many who’ve built their business or business opportunity so that they are shackled to a hamster wheel long term.   I can remember several years ago working with a large company to discover why their top employees never desired for advancement.  They couldn’t promote from within and didn’t know why? I found the reason; the responsibilities and culture surrounding each advanced position demanded an immense amount of time commitment to the extent that most of their management core were divorced.  As a result, no self-respecting person would apply to join what several called “the management cult” because the company structure positioned success and advancement to be a threat to their personal lives.  I’ve said it before and I’ll quote Covey again, when it comes to our business we must “begin with the end in mind”. 

You have to ask yourself, if I achieve even a respectable level of success, will I be more enslaved by the business model I’m currently in or less? Pardon my direct tone my friends, but if you’re not building your business to at least have the choice to semi-retire in 8-12 months then you’re foundational business plan is terribly flawed.  It’s not necessarily your fault however, you’ll be forced to live with the consequences unless your course is altered.

The Reasons Why

So the next natural question is why.  There are many scenarios however most can be traced back to one of these three:

1. Started the business with wild unrealistic long term goals but without short term action steps and proper training
2. Found a business opportunity designed to keep you on the hamsters wheel that got you excited and passionate about potential financial freedom.  You’ve run incredibly hard with it and never looked up.
3. You know you’re on the right track but you’ve never learned the strategies behind building your business so that you could truly walk away while it still earned you revenue, returning periodically when you choose to tweak it.

So What Do You Do?

If you are building an affiliate or Internet marketing company then you have full freedom here to incorporate changes and I’ll get to you in a second.  If you’re involved in a business opportunity or a network marketing company you must first examine the compensation and advancement structure.  Is it a realistic one or a carrot meant to bait you?  Second look at the culture.  With many business opportunities you have the flexibility to practically run your business the way you want within that structure.  If the company is sound and you have an attachment to the product line or offering, it is often difficult to just pick up and walk away from an emotional standpoint.  So in either case if you are building your own business or building a business opportunity, here are your choices:

• Scrap it all together, take what you’ve learned and start from scratch with a new foundation
• Remain but with a different philosophy and try to change it from within
• Remain but learn to build a complimentary “Plan B Venture” with the right foundation.

But How Do I Build My Business To Semi-Retire?

As I always preach, you first must be passionate about what you do. The second however is that you have to be building the business so that you control it as it grows or it will control you and destroy all the reasons you first pursued the venture in the first place. You see, if you’re not starting your business to at least have the choice to semi-retire within a year then why are you doing it? 

So how do you structure and build your business to semi-retire? Ah! That is the real question isn’t it.  It’s actually pretty easy and I teach it to all those that are part of the “free coaching for life” that I’m offering on my crusade to teach 1000 people how to earn 6-figures  this year which is getting some phenomenal results. I know those who I’ve coached that are “work-aholics” but build a business with this foundation every 6-10 months and then travels for several weeks before coming back and doing it again.  The point is, that they have the freedom to do that because they’ve built it that way. 

When I work with you we can make your business (or your “plan B venture”) do this as well by utilizing several strategies in which to structure your business for it to provide that for you.  If you sign up to jump start your business by getting either of the “Success-Step” training systems (see below), I’ll teach you how to structure your business to achieve the future you really want. You deserve to live a fulfilled life which is why you decided to start your online business in the first place.  Now take the next step and create it to reward you with the future you want.

Your coach & fan

Patrick Daugherty

The “Biz Coach”

CEO of Learn2earn it now Training & Support

Author of:  “The Success Steps For Building Wealth Online” for Online Marketers AND  

                 ”The Success Step Training System” For Network Marketers

At “Learn2Earn it now” we believe:

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.”

- President Woodrow Wilson

You’ve heard me say this before but the fact is, whether you’re an aspiring Internet or affiliate marketer, creating an online business or growing an MLM organization, if you aren’t coached or taught how to use SEO, Social Media branding & advanced internet marketing techniques then you’re doomed already.  

It’s also a fact that the challenge of navigating through the “training minefield” causes 9-out-of-10 new online home businesses to fail in the first 63 days. That’s right – 63 days!  But why do most fail within 2 months??

After months of being preyed-upon by “training vultures”, basically giving away your money for instructional products that are WAY overhyped and provide only partial truths with no results, you begin to think this just isn’t for you.

You have to realize that there are people out there that have become successful purely by taking the money of those who are starving for insight and reliable instruction.  I’m dead serious when I say that this decision will literally make or break your chances for success!

I just couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore knowing what I know and yet do nothing as I watched good people continue to fail!

So last year I committed to creating a training system that covered everything you’d need to know to establish and run a successful growing business online.

It’s a complete how-to guide written for “non-geeks” that not only teaches you everything you need to know to create a thriving successful online business, but also contains exercises to walk you through creating & executing your unique business plan & marketing strategies.

I’ve also wrapped that instruction around an online educational website that would enable you to receive continuous training and support. I told you – it has everything!

I’m committed to training 1000 people how to earn 6 figures this year.  For a limited time I will give you complete access to all the training absolutely RISK FREE!  I’m out to change lives this year in a big way!

To learn how you can become 1 of the 1000 visit “The Success Steps” training system and lets create the life you want!

Now is the time! 

Patrick Daugherty

The “Biz Coach”

CEO of “Learn2Earnitnow” Online-Education & Support

 You can also connect with me at: