I studied Computing at Monash University many years ago. It has had very little impact on where I am now. I still use computers. But I do not use the specific skills that I was taught at uni. I studied programming and software engineering and now I do neither. In fact, I am so far removed from computing in my day-to-day business that I find it quite amusing.

Monash University’s motto is Ancora Imparo which is Latin for I am still learning. I have always admired that motto and I think of it often. As a young entrepreneur I learn something every day and I think it is key to ongoing success in business and in life.

The smart entrepreneur looks to learn from every situation. It is no secret that every successful entrepreneur has spent many

hours learning their craft, either from a mentor, at the coal front, from books, videos and the internet, from colleagues … you get the picture. A failure to educate oneself in the machinations of business is to invite disaster.

You don’t need to attend university or pay for insanely expensive business courses (although you may learn from them). There are a lot of relatively inexpensive and sometimes free channels of learning. I have included a few of my favourites in this post.

Books

• Malcolm Gladwell
  • The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
  • Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
  • Outliers: The Story of Success

• Dale Carnegie
  • How to Win Friends & Influence People
  • How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

• Seth Godin
  • Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
  • Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
  • The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
  • Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers

• Various authors
  • The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
  • Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition by Harvey B. Mackay
  • The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth by Mark Victor Hansen
  • Billionaire In Training (Instant Success Series) by Bradley J. Sugar
  • The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss

Websites

• Life
  • On Simplicity – creating a happier, easier, more enjoyable life for yourself
  • Zen Habits – simple productivity
  • Simple. Organised. Life. – simplifying your life, one step at a time

• Entrepreneurship
  • Mixergy – where ambitious start-ups mix
  • Chris Brogan – 25 ways to build you community

• Tools
  • 85 Absolutely Free Online Business Classes
  • The Break-even Calculator

This is not a complete list of my favourite business and entrepreneurial titles but it is a great start for anyone wanting to increase their understanding of many aspects of what is required to succeed. Please also refer to previous post for other important and highly recommended titles.

Yes, yes … there are so many more links out there. Please add your favourites in a comment.

The whole point of this post is to show you that there is so much information available to you. In fact, you could never absorb all that there is. That’s okay though. Take what’s right for you, mold it and use it.

I will be writing reviews on some of the above books in the future. So stay tuned.

As children we learned a lot of important lessons via fairytales, children’s stories and nursery rhymes. Religion uses stories to explain its dogma. Our friends regale us with stories of their exploits. We watch movies, read books, listen to radio plays. Stories are everywhere. Stories have been around since humans had the ability to communicate.

Stories are important.

People love stories.

Can you tell a story about yourself or your business? Better still can one of your customers write a story about you?

It’s one thing to read a website or brochure that explains your products and services, it’s another to read a story about how your products and services solved someone’s problems. A story makes the information tangible and gives it that special something that allows us to see it, to feel it, to imagine it.

Which works better for you?

This one:

At Acme Tools we sell everything you could ever need in tools: screwdrivers, hammers, levels, paint brushes, shovels and much, much more. At our stores you can everything you need to renovate, repair and build. We are open 7 days a week and our friendly staff are here to help.

Or this one:

It was my son’s third birthday, we bought him a small pedal car. He managed to break it in about three and a half minutes. The rear axle came off its mounting. The pressure was on to get it fixed and fast. The young man was getting a little cracnky that his new tool didn’t work. So, I jumped in the car and heading to Acme Tools, the store was open even though it was 9am on a Sunday. I didn’t know what I’d need to fix the car but Charlie helped me. I got all the bits and pieces and a plan from Charlie and got back home eager to fix the car. It took some doing as I’m not that handy but Charlie’s advice and the stuff I bought worked a treat. Best of all the young man was happy all day. Thank you Acme Tools!

So, before you embark on your next marketing campaign, think about your stories. What are they? Who can write them? What can you teach people about your and your business through stories?

Here are a few resources and references:

• SMB is about telling your story
• The nine best story lines for marketing
• All Marketers Are Liars – The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by Seth Godin
• The All Marketers are Liars Blog
• Telling Stories at WebInkNow

Going into business for yourself is a big move. There are numerous reasons to do so. Some people want freedom, some want to make a lot of money, some think – know – that they can do it better than the last mob they worked for. Whatever the reason, going into business for yourself is one of the biggest decisions you can ever make. It is also one of the best decisions that you can ever make.

Finally, you will be in control of your own destiny, you get to make the decisions, you get to navigate the ship and steer it and feed the crew and fix the leaks. Sounds daunting? It is. But it’s also rewarding in ways you can only understand once you’ve taken the jump and started your own thing. And you won’t be working for a pain in the neck boss but you just may be working for a crazy boss. Let’s face it, you have to be slightly mad to start your own business. But where would we be without the likes of Branson, Gates, Jobs and others?

Want to be like Branson?

Here’s a great way to start out on the right foot: ask yourself ‘why?’…

• Why am I starting this business?
• Why will this business succeed?
• Why am I not content doing what I am doing now?

Write your answers down. Then review them. Think hard about what you’ve discovered.

Next, ask ‘what?’…

• What do I want to achieve?
• What do I want to get out of running this business?
• What is it about me that will see me be successful?

And here’s the big one:

• What is my definite purpose?

In his amazing book “Think and grow rich”, Napoleon Hill determined that answering this one question is the key to becoming successful in business and in life. He is not wrong. Without knowing why you are doing what you are doing how can you possibly succeed? It’s like trying to get from A to B in a car you’ve never driven, without a map, in the dark.

Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men of all time and a believer in a definite purpose

It may sound simple to define your definite purpose. In my experience it isn’t. Even if you end up with a definite purpose that seems quite obvious, the process of actually thinking about it is invaluable.

My definite purpose is: to create wealth for the benefit of my family and the fulfillment of a happy and rewarding life.

It took quite a bit of thinking to reach this definite purpose. Now that I have it, it guides everything I do. I have it printed and laminated and stuck on the wall near my bed. I read it every morning and every night. In addition to my definite purpose I have also written a number of goals that are on the wall too, these have a lot more detail (this is a subject of a future post).

Once, you have taken the necessary time to consider why and what, you have to consider how. All the dreams, goals, desires and thoughts are nothing without action, without execution, but before you can do anything you need a plan and this is your how.

Your plan (or plans) don’t have to be part of professional documents, they don’t have to be written eloquently but they do have to be real and they have to be yours. You must believe in your plans and your ability to execute your plans in order for you to reach your goals. The plans I am talking about are not those inside your business, not the marketing plans or the sales strategies or the business plans you will write and review numerous times. I mean the plans that underlie everything. The plans that determine how you will run each business, what you will do with the money you make, where you will live, what you will buy, who you will support. Once you truly know what you want in life you can set out to achieve it.

Be definite.

Be daring.

Asking why, what and how and taking the time to think about your own answers to these questions will lead you toward success.

Here are a few resources:

• “Think and grow rich” by Napoleon Hill – the book!
• About Andrew Carnegie (WikiPedia) – a great bio about a great businessman
• Action Coach – Think Believe Dream Dare – a short article to remind you that you can do it
• Daily affirmation exercises – this blog post takes the definite purpose to a very detailed level. It may work for you. My definite purpose is somewhat broad but it works for me, you might need/want something more tightly defined.
• “Think and grow rich” on YouTube

Every single day we are inundated with thousands of messages; billboards, radio spots, tv ads, flyers, posters, signs, letters, phone calls, tweets etcetera etcetera ad nauseum.

It’s no wonder that your message is prone to getting lost in this maelstrom of messages. Society is so desensitised to messages that we hardly pay attention to messages that are truly important (do you listen the the safety advice presentation prior to take off when you fly?).

Where is your message?

Scientists have a term for being thus desensitised. It is downregulation. Wikipedia defines downregulation (in science-speak) as “the process by which a cell decreases the quantity of a cellular component, such as RNA or protein, in response to an external variable.” An example of downregulation (again from Wikipedia) is “the cellular decrease in the number of receptors to a molecule, such as a hormone or neurotransmitter, which reduces the cell’s sensitivity to the molecule.”

Here’s an example that may make more sense: You’re at a party, a lady enters the room wearing a very strong perfume, it’s overpowering, you can’t smell anything else. However, after a while the smell isn’t as strong and you don’t notice it as much. Eventually, you no longer notice the smell. Your nasal receptors have downregulated and your sensitivity to the smell has been blunted. This same principle applies to your marketing message.

Attracting people to your product or service is not an easy as it used to be. In decades passed it was enough to throw some money at a TV spot and wait for the phone to ring. Today, that just doesn’t work. No-one is really paying attention to the TV. The same is true of banner advertising on websites. When was the last time that you made a purchase based solely on a TV spot or clicked on an unsolicited banner ad and proceeded to purchase something?

Society is distracted, desensited and impatient but people still want to buy. This is both good and bad for the small business owner. The challenge is getting noticed. You do want to get noticed don’t you?

Let’s go back to the perfume example for a moment. If the lady was to leave the room for some time your blunted receptors would return to their normal state as the cause of the downregulation has been removed. However, when the lady returns, whammo! the strong smell is back again and you are searching for a gas mask. The cycle recommences and the lady is getting noticed (again).

So, how do you get noticed? Perhaps you could pile on the perfume. The perfume trick works for the lady in our example because she’s poured it on, has very little competition in the room and is doing all she can to get noticed. And she is certainly making an impact (for better or for worse). You could apply this to your marketing if all the other messages disappeared OR if your message is so amazing, so remarkable (a nod here to Seth Godin and Purple Cow) that it stands out and gets noticed. I am a big advocate of being remarkable but before you go head-to-head with other messages using the perfume approach you need to tighten up.

First, you must tightly define your message. It may take some time to tighten up. It is a matter of trial, error and patience. Test, test and test again. Here’s a real world example from one of my businesses:

CrossFit Victoria is a provider of fitness coaching. The fitness industry is huge. Competition is rampant. Choices are multitude and options confuse and confound potential gym goers. There is no way that this business can compete with every other provider in the industry. So, we sliced and diced until we found our niche: elite fitness. Then we found CrossFit and tightened our niche too.

Take a moment to Google “fitness”, now limit your search to Australia. We didn’t even come close to the top of those search results. You can try the same exercise for “personal trainer” and for “gym”. Same result. But if you search for “CrossFit”, you will notice a massive difference. As of writing this, we rank third worldwide (and we fluctuate from position two to three based on changes in Google’s ranking algorithm and our efforts to spread our message online).

CrossFit is a little different

We have tightened our message so much that we only aim for those people who know about CrossFit. We don’t compete with businesses providing fitness training, we compete with businesses providing CrossFit training. An added bonus is that we only attract the kinds of clients that we want to train. We call them “intelligent exercisers”.

Now, we didn’t get to this position overnight. We agonised for a long time about how to differentiate ourselves from the pack. CrossFit was our answer. The Google results are only an example of our efforts. We do a lot of other things in the background as well. Our approach to fitness training is contrary and so is our approach to marketing.

How can you apply this? By tightening your message. Next, you have to work out how to put your message out there and get noticed.

You can try to pile on the perfume. This will get you noticed. But … people will get desensitised to your message and forget about you unless you leave the room and then return (or pour on even more perfume). This approached could be very costly and possibly hit-and-miss. Maybe it’s suitable for a single product launch but I doubt it’s the right approach for getting your business noticed.

I suggest that you find a way to slowly infiltrate the maelstrom of messages. Do something remarkable. Pursue virtuosity and consistency in your message and its presentation. Give something away. Talk to people. Create believers. Find mavens (as Malcolm Gladwell advises in The Tipping Point). And be patient.

Some valuable resources:

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip & Dan Heath