How to Succeed in Business: The 3 Pillars of Business Success I Rich Schefren

So just to jog your memory, the three core pillars were strategy, source and speed. Now I want to unpack those a little bit for you right now. So strategy is ultimately how you're going to do what it is you're going to do to get what it is you want. But it is what is the least amount that you need to do, what is the least amount of resources you need to use to get that outcome? That is what being strategic is all about. It's about using the least amount of resources to get the maximum output. And so the question that a lot of entrepreneurs ask, like what else can I do? Is the most anti strategic question to ask because it already implies more as opposed to less. I could share quite a bit about strategy, I guess, primarily because that's my wheelhouse. What I want to share with you today are just a few overarching ideas. One is, is that you don't want to be very dependent on any single platform. Think about sequential storytelling and moving a prospect or customer from Facebook to your YouTube channel, right? Then maybe to your Twitter page and moving your prospects around so that they join in numerous places so that ultimately you're not dependent on any one platform. In addition to that, it will increase the bonding with you. In addition to that, you should get their email address, their physical address, their, their phone numbers, as many different points of contact as you can have, recognizing that prospects and customers are an asset that even the big platforms can't take away from you. So that's first, right? Next, I would strongly recommend that you begin thinking of most of the marketing that you've been doing as demand chasing and that I'm suggesting that you move from demand chasing to demand creating, or at least start including some demand creating into your marketing mix. So let me explain what I mean by that. Marketing kind of moved to acquiring customers relatively recently because of the advent of like Facebooks and things like that, where you can get in front of a group of people that are all showing certain buying signals. Now that's demand chasing. Getting your offer in front of someone who is already displaying buying indicators. And that's great. But if you speak to any seasoned media buyer, and I've spoken to many, there's a common consensus that media buying will go away within the next three years because algorithms will take that over completely. And it makes total sense. That's an AI capability. What is not an AI capability is creating demand. If you look at my reports, for example, every single report I wrote created demand for something that did not exist before. It channeled the desire of the people in my marketplace to see that my product was a better alternative to what they had been pursuing, to get the outcome that they wanted. So I channeled their desire into demand for my product. It gave me what you could call a blue ocean, if you're familiar with that. It gave me staying power because I didn't have any competitors and it required me to create demand. But guess what? If you look at any guru's product out there, any product you've ever bought, it was because demand was created. And then, last but not least, as we relate to strategy, and this is more, like I said, just a concept to get your head around, because it might open up opportunity. Technology now has the ability to do things that we hadn't imagined before. And that's going to happen again. It's going to happen again really soon. When 4G was developed, it opened up the opportunity for platforms like Uber, things that people had never thought of before because of the new capabilities that technology enabled. We have no concept of what 5G is going to enable, except that it's going to enable a lot of stuff that was not able to be enabled in 4G. How that plays out, we don't know. But one of the things that you need to do to be an effective entrepreneur, marketer, small business owner, what have you, is to begin looking at your entire business as a system, as one system that your customer uses to get a specific outcome or result. And that helps you avoid, like what happened to the railroad industry, right, where they only thought they were in the railroad business, not the people moving business. It kind of takes into account that Black and Decker idea that they sell holes, not drills, right? You're in the business of getting an outcome for your customers, clients, and your business will thrive or die based on whether it's a better or worse system for your clients to use to get that outcome. So with the advent of IoT 5G, all these kinds of things, there's going to be plenty of opportunities to be able to actually make more interactive products, more products that leverage what is currently going on. And I just want you to keep your eyes open and be aware that there are going to be new opportunities for almost every business out there to help their customers get the outcomes they want in an easier manner, in a simpler manner, with less friction. And whatever business capitalizes on those is going to win. So that's strategy. But within strategy really are the other two pillars. You could say so source and speed are the two other pillars, and they're an element of your Strategy. So first, let's talk about source. Really, you want to have sources that you believe in that have proven themselves, because with those sources in place, it gives you more certainty, and more certainty gives you the ability to operate with more speed. That's what I mean by saying that source and speed are within strategy. So what are those sources that are going to give you the confidence to operate with as much certainty as you can have in an uncertain environment? One is to value your own knowledge and your own data and the data that your business throws off. Right. It's one of the reasons I keep a journal is that my experience has been my best teacher. This is my personal data about myself, your business. You want to recognize that every interaction that you ever have as a business with anyone, a customer, prospect, employee, is a opportunity to one, leverage the information that you are bringing into that environment, the context, the person you know, the offer, what have you. And then also that every interaction is also creating new information. So every interaction is both an opportunity to source, get new data, and also to leverage the data that you have so far. As AI tools become more prevalent, your the data you have will become the determining factor whether you'll be able to use these AI tools or not. And almost every entrepreneur I know does not have the data to power AI tools. And they need to start getting it. And part of the way of getting it is to recognize what a great source of information that is for you in making decisions and capturing it along the way. Next is who you plug into. You know, the right sources can make a world of difference. Part of the reason I believe I've been successful is that, you know, I've had people like Jay Abraham and Clayton Makepeace personally mentor me. And I was able to plug into their network and their source of information. That really kind of helped me jump many levels. The true experts who have created the models that their suggestions are money in the bank. So those sources so that you can operate with complete confidence. Operating with complete confidence removes a lot of friction. It makes you able to do more, faster and benefit from it. And so between your own information and the best sources, that's really what the pillar of source is all about. With those in place, you can then live within the bounds or within the realm of speed. We live in a accelerated time where the speed of change is actually accelerating as it's accelerating. And so your business has to operate with speed. There are windows that open up online where a platform becomes very easy to leverage, where everyone's making money advertising, and then that closes up or a tactic that immediately delivers a much better result and then over time it diminishes. VSL's great example of that. There was a time when it boosted response between 300 and 400% consistently all the time. Nowadays when we split test, either one could win. Now, the people that started using VSLs when they first came out who made the 400% returns are very happy. They jumped on it as soon as they did. The people that I told to jump on automated webinars were happy they did whatever platform or tactic comes out. The people that jump on them soonest are the ones that profit the most from it.