TES 026 - 8 Traits to Increase Your Business Success

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience Live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the brand new number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life, a life of financial freedom and peace of mind. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. You know, in the last episode I talked about the eight warning signs. Someone had asked me a question at a recent conference I was speaking at. And, and I thought that it was a really great question to consider. But, you know, so I talked about the 8 warning signs that a business might be in trouble or that it's heading towards trouble. The things that, that I've seen as a pattern in businesses. In this episode, I'm going to go to the other side of that. I'm going to give you the eight traits that I see with most successful businesses. The eight things that when I see these, I go, now this business is really hitting it. And when you see that and when you get these things in place, your chances of success, success, your chances of growing, your, of having that dream come true, raise greatly. And so just like every other episode, there's a downloadable guidebook that goes with this episode that'll take you through the process, take you through some of the questions to help you through the process. And I invite you to download the guidebook in every episode and work with me, stay with me, be active in the process. That's how you're going to grow. That's how it's going to shift and have you doing things differently based upon what I've learned as 30 plus years as an entrepreneur and working with successful businesses. So in order to get that guidebook, go to melabraham.com session026 and if you happen to not be by your computer, if you happen to be running or out working out at the gym or driving and you can't get to the computer, go ahead and just text mylegacy one word, no spaces. Mylegacy to 38470. We'll send you a link so you can get the download when you get a chance to get to your computer. So right after this brief introduction, we'll come back and we're going to talk about the eight traits successful businesses. See you soon.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Solution where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want. One of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution where it's time for you to be bold, dream big and live life your way.

Hey there. Welcome back. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy. And thank you for coming back to the Entrepreneur Solutions show. And in this episode we're going to talk about the eight traits that exist for successful businesses. The things that I've seen over the years that when these exist, the more of these that exist, the more successful, the more probability of success exists for that business. Now, we talked in the last episode about the eight warning signs. So if you haven't had a chance to listen or watch that episode, go back and look at that because I think it sets the tone for this one really well. But let's get into it right away. What are the eight traits that when I see them or that I look for in a business that will demonstrate that there's a high likelihood of success? There's a high probability of success. And the first one is that strategic plan. We talked about it in the last episode. Many businesses that lack a strategic plan, what's your plan? And hope, prayer, faith are not plans. And they're the worst business strategy you can put in place. And so we need to think about and say, what is a strategic plan? We're going to talk deeper about this concept of a business plan. But what's your strategic plan? What are the specific strategies that you're going to use to build your business, to access your market, to communicate with your market with, connect with your market to build that business? What's the team behind it? What's the strategy behind it? What are the tactics behind it? The more formalized plan you have the more that you are executing based upon the plan, the more thought out your business is. And the more thought out it is makes me realize that you've thought about alternatives, you thought about challenges, you thought about the obstacles, and you've put it all together in a strategy that then you turn around and say, here's the tactics to make this strategy come to life. And then it's focused on execution, execution, execution, execution. And that's the key. So first thing I'm going to look for is, is there a plan? Is there a strategic plan? Has there been a strategic plan for a period of time? And when they've exercised on that strategic plan, you know, when you've exercised on a strategic plan, does it come true? Does it, you know, how good are your plans.

In how effective are they? Number two is it's lengthy. It says using market driven refinements to increase value, existing products and services. Let me put it to you another way. Are you listening to your market?

What is your market telling you? Do you have a mechanism in which you are consistently and repeatedly going to your marketplace and having that conversation, that dialogue with them, that connection with them in a way that they give you meaningful feedback, meaningful information that allows you to then say, we need to change things, we need to adjust things and continually tweak things so we can increase the value exchange with our customer. And when we increase the value exchange with our customer, we can increase the pricing to our customer because they perceive more value and they're willing to pay more value. So the question is, how connected are you to the marketplace.

And is there a system in place for your market to give you the feedback? Do you have a process in place? Then number three, are you truly committed to it versus interested?

What I mean by this is that I have worked with entrepreneurs and businesses where they're not really committed to the outcome, they're not really committed to the results. They're interested in getting results, but they're not willing to do everything that is necessary and to really make those results a reality. So they're not committed to it. So the question that we need to look at, I want to understand how committed you are to the success of the company, to the business. In other words, are you putting the time in, Are you putting the effort in? And you know.

I have a lot of friends that talk about motivation and talk about inspiration and all that. And I. And I'm not sure that I don't believe that I can motivate people. I believe that maybe we can inspire people, but the commitment for you to be in business has to come from within. There has to be a burning desire on the inside. Something that's just fighting to come out in order for you to be committed. And if you don't have that burning desire, if you don't have that energy, that fireball in the gut, in the heart that really is moving you forward, that gets you to say, no, this is really what I want. Not sure you committed enough to it. Because trust me, being in business is not for the faint of heart. It's not about if you're going to have obstacles, if you're going to have challenges. It's about when we're all going to have challenges. Let me tell you, in my 30 plus years as an entrepreneur, I've had plenty of challenges. Lost clients, you know, canceled contracts, bad receivables where they wouldn't, they couldn't pay me, they went bankrupt. I've been through it. I've made bad choices, bad decisions. Many of you know that I made some bad decisions, investments, lost one third of my net worth and had to rebuild it again.

It's not about if, it's about when. So in order to get through that when we need to be committed, we need to know that that dream, that vision, the results that we're trying to get for our customers, for our team and for our lives is so full of life and so connected to us that we're going to do what it takes. And when I see an executive team that is truly committed to the outcome, then the likelihood doesn't mean we're going to always be successful. But the likelihood of success is much, much higher. I mean, think about it. I don't know. For those of you that are movie watchers, one of my favorite movies of all time is Apollo 13. And I remember that scene where Ed Harris comes in to the conference room. He's got all the engineers there in that conference room and he turns around and pours a box of stuff out. He says, that's what those three guys up in the capsule have with them. Let's figure out how we use this to get them back to Earth safely. Because failure is not an option. That's commitment. That's commitment. And we know how that Apollo 13 ended in the sense that they got all of those astronauts safely back to Earth. So are you committed and not simply interested? Is it a nice to have? Well, that's not commitment. It's I need to have and I'm willing to do what it takes. Number four, you have the clarity of market and Identity, These are two different things. You have a clarity as to who your customer is, who your ideal customer is. I just did an episode on your ideal customer profile. So if you haven't gone through that, make sure you get to that episode and go through the guidebook and work through it. Identify who your market is. Because we can't. You know, I've had so many people that I hear them, I say, who's your market? Who's your customer? And say, well, everyone. Well, it can't be everyone. If you try to sell everyone, you'll sell to no one. It's a cliche term, but it's true. We can't sell to everyone. Who is your specific customer? Who is that customer that is right in your wheelhouse? That that's the prime customer, the ideal customer you should be serving doesn't mean we're not going to serve the fringes. But let's start with the ideal first. Let's put, let's stack the deck in our favor first. Let's get clarity of who our customer is and more importantly, who our customer is not. Let's not spend the time having conversations with people that aren't our customers. If we have to spend the time trying to convince people that we're right for them, it's wrong. I've talked about this whole concept of conviction selling versus convincing selling. Convincing selling is the wrong way to do it. If we are spending our time trying to convince someone that we're right.

It's like trying to get the girl or the guy to go on a date and you're saying, no, I'm really good, I'm really good.

It doesn't feel good, it doesn't look good, you're begging almost. And convincing selling is never sustainable versus conviction selling where you're sitting back saying, here's who we are, here's what we do, here's how we can transform your life. Here's how we can do it in a cost effective way. And then sit back and say, if this is for you, join us on the journey. And if it's not, you get it, but you're not spending the time trying to twist the arm and convince them because the buyer's remorse, the failure rate is just awful. So that's clarity of market. The second piece of this is clarity of identity. Who are you? Who is your business in that market? What do you provide? What you know? Many of you have heard me say these terms repeatedly, but it is at the core of everything I teach. What do you stand for and does Your market know what you stand for. You think about some businesses. Like, if I say Volvo, I've talked all around the world, and when I mention the word Volvo, I said, what comes to mind? They say safety.

So what do you stand for? What's the one word, the two words, the sentence that if you went to your marketplace and say, what are we known for? What do we stand for? That's what you want to know. Okay. Having the clarity of the customer and the market and clarity of what you stand for is extremely important. And the clearer you are, the less likely you're going to waste resources, chasing the wrong customers or trying to build a reputation that isn't who you are. So get that clarity first, then. You're constantly looking at the scoreboard. We talked about measurement systems in the last episode. You have a scorecard. You are constantly measuring your performance as a business, your team's performance, productivity, and the key metrics, what I call the prime indicators of your business, so that you can be proactive in your strategic decisions, so that you can make and shift and do course changes as needed and not wait till it's too late. So I want to see someone that has systems in place where they're constantly looking at the scorecard and they constantly have the metrics in front of them that say we're going the wrong way or we're going the right way. And if we're going the right way, how do we expand on it? How do we escalate it, elevate it? If we're going the wrong way, how do we stop it? But if we're not looking at all or we're looking late in the game, it's too late to course correct. And now we find ourselves really playing catch up, and that becomes a problem. Number six. Number six is mentors. When we start to understand, and I'll be the first one to say that my success, the success that I've had as an entrepreneur, the success that I continue to have as an entrepreneur, is a direct result of not only my execution of my efforts, but more likely a direct result of everyone around me, my support team, the mentors that I've had, the colleagues that I've had, and the people that have served me.

On my journey. As an entrepreneur, I've had some tremendous mentors going back decades that I didn't realize how they influenced me, but they shifted and changed the way I did things and the way I saw things that change the dynamics of all I do. And I continually have mentors. I still have mentors. Today I belong to masterminds and those entrepreneurs that are open minded enough to realize that they don't know it all and that maybe someone with a different perspective, not even in the same industry, it could be a mechanic, it could be a painter that just has a different perspective and sees things differently and can give you different perspective that gets you to go, oh wait, I never thought of that. So I want to see people that have mentors, have business coaches, have people in their lives and surround themselves with people that they can lean on, what I call cabinet, if you will, that help them elevate themselves, that aren't so caught up in some myopic view of everything they do is right.

But that's what's going to accelerate your success. I can't tell you the impact of mentors on success. They will accelerate your success because they've traveled the journey. Now I'm not talking about.

I'm talking about people that have been down the road, that have traveled the journey, that know where the potholes are. So, so what they can do is they can take their learning curve and give it to you without you having to go up the up the same steep learning curve. And that's the key behind.

And they're going to give it to you in a way that is direct, caring, compassionate, but not just telling you what you want to hear. So having good mentors is huge in your growth and in a business and what you're doing. Align team and not controlling everything.

We talked originally at the very first about strategic plan and I would tell you this strategy is important, but it's secondary to culture. If I have a bad culture in a business, if I have a bad philosophy in a business, if I have a bad mindset in business, all the strategies in the world will not solve it. So the key is to make sure that we have the right culture. Do I have an alignment of values? We spent a lot of time going through the businesses and looking at culture and saying, all right, let's get the value system aligned properly. Let's bring the right people in with an aligned team with the proper value. So we're all looking down the same direction and let's build a culture on that basis. There's a lot of companies out there that are doing this. Clif Bar, Zappos, Patagonia, I mean Tomshoes. There's a lot of companies out there that have thought through this and understood the importance of culture because no matter what business you're in, it's a people business and there's Interaction between teams, vendors and customers, people to people. It's not business to business or consumer to business. It's not that. It's all people to people. And the culture matters. So I want to create an aligned team. If I see infighting between the team members, if I see backstabbing between the team members, see politics between the team members, then I know that that's an issue. So I want to look for aligned team or I want to strive to building an aligned team and remove the entrepreneur so the entrepreneur isn't a myopic, micromanaging minute managing entrepreneur. If you bring a team in and everything they do has to run through the entrepreneur, that's not a team. You're not empowering them. Granted, they may make mistakes, granted, they may not do things exactly the way you would do them, but allow them to make three left turns instead of one right turn. Let them learn and build on it. I have often said that the first time a mistake is made, it's not a mistake, it's a learning. The second time it's a mistake. The third time it's a problem. Okay? So allow them to learn and give them the latitude to grow and give them the openness for them to come to you with solutions, to come to you openly and not have them slam down and say that's stupid or that's silly because they're going to stop. But if you think about it, if you think about this whole concept of an organization, you have team members allowing them to speak their mind and at least bring ideas to you. Great, you have veto power. But at the same time, they may think of things that you're not thinking of. They may be in the trenches talking with the customers that maybe you're not talking with and they're hearing things. So listen to them and create alignment based on values. Don't try to control everything that will allow you to grow. And then the last piece is that I look for entrepreneurs that rise above the daily details. And this really kind of focuses on, again on this last point before also. But if I have an entrepreneur that is so muddled in all the daily details that they can't create the vision that they don't have a bigger vision that they're not looking ahead. There's two different levels of how to operate that business. One is up in the visionary, bold thinking, future thinking aspect. All businesses need that. And that visionary leader, that one that can envision what the future is like, to present it in a compelling way that the team and the aligned team will get behind it and say, yeah, we love that vision, we want to be part of that vision, we want to be part of this race and we're with you. And then to step down and say, alright, so what are the executables? What are the different tactics and the details that we need to do on a daily basis to make that vision come true? If we spend all the time down here as an entrepreneur, we're going to create one thing, but we're not going to have the vision for the future. So what ends up happening is the business has a finite life and I hope that makes sense, is that if we're not continually looking at the future and saying what's next? What's next? How can we make it better? How can we make it better cost? How can we make it more effective, more efficient, more convenient if we're not continually looking out the windshield to something bigger and better to continue to grow? What we have is a business with a finite life. So I want to look at the fact that I've got someone that has the ability to rise above the daily details, even if they spend a lot of time in the daily details in doing that, or a team that has some people that are the visionary, the inspiration behind the business, the motivation behind the business, and those that are executing this vision on an ongoing basis. So that's the eight traits that I, that I've seen and when I've looked at businesses or the things that when I see these things, existing business, there is a much higher likelihood of success, much higher probability of growth and profitability. And you also find that it's typically more meaningful, more fulfilling working with businesses in that context. So strategic plan, listening to your marketplace or market driven refinements, being totally committed to the outcome, to the results, to the transformation that you're making in everyone's lives, to have clarity of market and identity, to constantly being looking at the scoreboard and measuring your metrics and watching the metrics, to have mentors in place that are going to assist you and help you grow and give you a vision of things that they've been through that maybe you haven't been through. To have a team that's aligned and you're not focused on controlling everything and to be able to rise above the daily details that will make a huge difference in your business and in your, in your future as you move forward. Hope you found this of value to you and in thinking about what it is that's going on in your business, what it is and how you're building your business the team that you have in place, what it is you're looking at, the culture that you're building in that process. And do me a favor, if you found this of value, share it with a friend. Give them the gift. Give them the gift of some of the training and some of the tactics and tools that we're providing. I really believe that entrepreneurship is the way of the future. It is how we're going to shift and change this world, change society, and to give people their lives back again, to give control of their lives back again so they're not dependent on someone else and a paycheck, but they can create something that's meaningful for other people, transforming other people's lives while transforming their lives at the same time. And so make sure that you share this with a friend. And if you haven't subscribed yet, go ahead and subscribe. Let's make sure that I can get to you all of the information, all the tools and tactics and strategies that I've used over 30 plus years as an entrepreneur to help you navigate your future. And then if you have a question in the process, question about success, business, entrepreneurship, wealth, any of those types of questions, go to askmelnow.com and leave me your question. We'll be sure that I answer Answer those questions on an upcoming episode. It's another way that I can be your entrepreneurial mentor. Remember to download download the guidebook for this session by going to melabraham.com session026 and if you're not by your computer and you're just listening to the podcast or you are on the road somewhere, go ahead and text text mylegacy one word, no spaces to 38470. We'll give you a reminder with the download link as a text so you can get it when you get back to a safe place to the computer where you can get that information. Stay with me on this. I look forward to serving you, supporting you in your growth and in your future and in your entrepreneurial endeavors. It's about building a life of freedom and peace of mind as we move through it until we get a chance to see each other on the next episode. May your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way. Because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

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