An Entrepreneurs Guide to Leverage

This article will explain the concept of leverage for business owners and give good guidelines on how to use it for themselves.

When I talk about leverage in this article, I am talking about leverage as to gain advantage through the use of a tool. There are specific financial terms of leverage that we could address, however this not part of this article. As business owners there are 7 different kinds of leverage you can use to make your business more profitable.

You can leverage other people’s energy. By delegation and outsourcing tasks that do not bring in money, you can focus on the tasks that do result in money. You do not have to hire an employee. You can go online and virtual assistants and technical people that you can hire online.

You can leverage someone’s success. Biography’s can be a great place to learn about other people’s lives. You will begin to see their pattern of success.  You can learn from their difficulties. This is a great way to learn to save yourself time on your journey to success.  You can avoid their mistakes. This is why many entrepreneurs love biographies of great people.

You can leverage other people’s contacts. You can ask your current contacts for specific introductions to other people. Keep a running list of who you want to meet; you will be surprised at who knows them. Remember the six degrees of separation is real and easily working in our digital domains.

You can leverage other people’s credibility. By having a thought leader introduce you to a particular group, you get to use some of their credibility. The group already respects this person, so since you are also    respected by this person, they are more apt to accept you. Your status as an expert is greatly enhances by this strategy.

You can leverage other people’ ideas. It only takes one good idea to be super successful. It only takes one good idea, put to work to create a multi-million dollar business. One idea sparks another idea and so on. Some business ideas are like ugly babies. If you wait a while, they will grow into lovely children that pay off. If you throw them out because they are ugly at the beginning.

You can leverage other people’s knowledge, especially in a mentoring or coaching situation. What you are doing is getting accelerated learning courses for the topics you need help. With access to one on one coaching or even group coaching, you can use this knowledge that you did not have to spend formal time in a class or seminar to get.

Action items:

Get a coach or mentor

Buy a biography of a successful person and read it or listen to the audio book

Connect with someone who can lend you their credibility

Ask a colleague or mentor for an introduction to someone you need to connect with.

Get a virtual assistant or add someone to the team at least part tim

How a Fault can Unlock a Vault

This article is inspired by Robert Caldini and in work on influence. Readers will find tips on how to be more influential in business by increasing their trustworthiness.

 

Rochefoucauld wrote “We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.” I look around in the current news and I can see people putting this idea to work. Palin resigned. Governor Sanford tried to use it but he kept talking too much. Volkswagen used it when it came out and was not afraid to tell everyone how ugly the little car was. Having given your buyers two sides of the coin, you will be more effective in your persuasion. You have to have clear connections between the negative and positive attributes. If you want to increase your trustworthiness, then you do not have to think too hard about the things you reveal as a weakness.

 

Always make sure your dark cloud has a silver lining. The price can be high if your products last longer. Follow up with a benefit related to the buyers cost and not anything else that goes with your product. You need to make lemonade out of any lemons you may have. You can neutralize your drawback just by thinking it through.

 

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7 Activities That Waste Tons of Time

Time wasters can be the downfall of any business. Especially if you are a Solo Entrepreneur. This article will cover the 7 things that waste tons of time and do not give you anything in return. You?ll learn to save time and keep your business growing.

1. Rabbit Trails: Here is how it goes, you get a great idea, and you jot it down and start writing out a business plan and who you want on the team. You write out the idea as much as you can, dreaming of the cash that will be flooded upon you when you launch this. An hour or two later, you look up and the work you were working on is still there. Yes, that boring work, is staring at you like Gieco Money.

The cure: Get small note book to jot down ideas and the basic nuggets for later. Just in case that idea really can make you $1 million dollars, you don?t want to lose it.

2. To do list: They just never, never, never, never, never ever end! You add to them daily, you add what you left out last week or last year. Most items have no priority.

The cure: Have a project list, then with each project, list what has to be done for that project. You can focus better and better monitor exactly where your project is.

3. Deciding: You have a lunch appt and somehow you wind up volunteering to find out which place is midway and priced correctly and has the food you can both eat without someone having a gastric emergency or rash.

The Cure: Let them decide. Once you agree to the time and write it in your calendar, tell them to pick the place and you just show up. If you look at the address and feel like that?s too far to go for that meeting, cancel it and talk by phone. Re-evaluate why you wanted to meet face to face. If it?s not going to create real business for you, why are you doing it?

4. Searching Craigslist: You want to find the one thing. Your business can use you, you can use it and you know someone on craigslist must be selling it cheap! You look on craigslist for what you want, like everyone tells you to. Six hours later, you feel like you know Craig personally, however you still have not found your item, because people are constantly listing new items, you have to keep re-freshing.

The Cure: Get a FREE craigslist reader and use it, it can sort for you while you do something else. It also keeps you from getting caught up in the scam ads.

5. Doing everything yourself: You are overwhelmed, your marketing finally paid off. You have got great new customers coming in and you are ready to pull what is left of your hair out!

The Cure: Virtual Assistants. Be clear on what you want done and know how long it should take someone, so that they are not charging you by the hour for nothing. Also if they have any contact with customers make several calls to them and listen to how they answer the phone. You want that person to help you continue to grow, not kill the growth.

6. The Telephone: You look over your schedule and realize you are spending too much time on the phone that is not productive.

The Cure: Timers: When you get on a call put on a timer, when it goes off, let the person know, you?ll have to pick it up later, you need to move on to your next appointment. This will train people to get to the point when they talk to you and not waste time. If the problem is YOU and not them, it will help you get to the point, go it?

7. Distractions: Depending on what you are doing and where you work, anything can be a distraction. The phone is not a distraction for me, I never feel compelled to answer it. I can let it ring until it goes to voice mail. If you are unlike me and feel like you have to pick up each call, turn the ringer off, so you can focus on finishing a task. That goes for email, tweetdeck and anything else that would make you stop what you are doing and do something else. The truth is this: multi-tasking does not work. I will not go into the brain science that proves it; this is something you can find for yourself. You have to remove what distracts YOU. It?s about YOU not me. Do not let anyone give you the list, make it yourself and start removing them one by one and find your productivity grow by leaps and bounds.

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