Prevential » success

Success Factors (Recap)

J D — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:35:59 +0000

Why do some people and businesses become extraordinarily successful? Is it luck? Talent? Just what does it take to go from good to great?

Whether you are an entrepreneur or a CEO, you’ve got ideas on how to be successful, but can you list the concrete factors that separate the titans the peons?

The Success Factors blog series will show you how people and companies achieve success. All you need to do is keep an open mind and go through each Success Factors article.

Success Factors: Improve Your Business

This is the Success Factors basics. If you read these 8 articles, you will learn how to improve your business.

Success Factors: Case Studies

Are you looking for more ways to grow your business? why don’t you take a look at these Success Factors case studies? You will learn what other companies have done to improve their business.

Success Factors: Expert Advice

Here is a quick look at some of the most successful people in both business and life. From musicians to billionaires, there is something here for everyone.

Success Factors: Inspiration

Need some inspiration? Why don’t you take a look at these two success factors articles?

Success Factors: Personal Development

A company is only as successful as the people who work for it. So, why don’t you take a look at these great personal development articles?

Do You Like What You See?

Why Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Help You (and how to use them)

J D — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:01:53 +0000

Here is Jun Loayza’s contribution to the Success Factors blog series. Check back daily for more updates in January 2009.

The concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy refers to a false statement that changes your behavior so that the statement comes true. Suppose, for example, that you thought you would fail your upcoming test so you neglected to study. Your self-fulling prophecy made you ignore test preparation and ignoring test preparation fulfilled your self-fulfilling prophecy. But psychology aside, in the remaining part of this article I will show you how the self-fulfilling prophecy can help you and your business.

1. Create Your Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Just like the thought of failure can make you fail, the thought of success can make you succeed. So, be sure you craft a self-fulfilling prophecy that aligns with your business goals. Please note, you need to be specific. You can’t say something like, “I will be rich” or “I will be CEO.” Instead, you need to break your prophecy down to its core. For example, we know rich people know how to make money, but more importantly, they know how to save money. Now how easy does “deposit one dollar per day into my savings account” sound compared to “save money?”

2. Plant the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Seeds

When I rushed Delta Sigma Pi, I was terrified of public speaking. To my dismay, one of our tasks required just that. My group and I were given an object and we had to create an infomercial with five minutes of preparation. I was the group leader, so they decided I had to present and I thought I flopped. Later that night, Yu-Kai, the CEO of Future Delivery, said to me “I first noticed you during that infomercial. You caught the attention of the whole room.”

Fast forwarding a few months, I know I’m good at public speaking. Yu-Kai planted the seed, whether it was true or false, and now I crush speeches regularly. So, if you want to grow your business, you should look out for what other people say about you since every compliment is a potential seed of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On the flip side, you can also plant your own self-fulfilling prophecy seeds. You can do this by crafting a specific self-fulfilling prophecy as mentioned above.

3. Water The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Seeds

The seeds are planted, but without water, they won’t grow. Yu-Kai wanted me to grow from a good public speaker, to a great public speaker, so he bought me three books: Never Eat Alone, Made to Stick, and Good to Great. He knew that practice doesn’t make perfect, but instead, perfect practice makes perfect. So, these three handbooks was his way of watering my public speaking seed and it worked.

Like what Yu-Kai did for me, you need to do for your business. If you want to be the star salesmen, you need to make those extra sales calls. You need to study the latest trends in persuasion and how to sell. This effort is what makes the self-fulfilling prophecy come true.

4. Even the Biggest Trees Need Water

Despite being a confident publich speaker, Yu-kai consistently reminds me that he thinks I’m the best. He gives me positive reinforcement and provides me with much water for growth because after all, even the biggest trees still need water.

I remember last March when I saw an MBA student give the greatest speech I had ever seen. Yu-kai turned to me and said, “You’re way better than him.” I thought he was joking, but he was being sincere. Now I had to live up to Yu-kai’s expectations of me.

Now if you’re looking to apply this to your business, you may not always have someone like Yu-kai pumping you up. However, you need to live up to your own expectations and goals. After all, the only thing worse than letting someone down is letting yourself down.

The Bottom Line

As John Steinbeck once said, “It is the nature of man to achieve greatness when greatness is expected of him.” So, make sure you expect greatness from yourself and your colleagues and you will develop the most powerful self-fulfilling prophecy in business.

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Jun Loayza is the founder of Future Delivery. Find out more about him at his personal blog and feel free to contact him at Jun.Loayza (at) FutureDelivery.tv

A Lesson in Cool: What Miles Davis Taught Us About Success

J D — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:14:18 +0000

Do you want to learn how to make your company successful? Here is Matt Rodela’s contribution to the Success Factors blog series.

Photo Courtesy of Peter

Miles Davis is a legend. Rising from the relative obscurity of the suburbs of Illinois he grew quickly to become one of the most influential, and controversial, musicians. With over 100 recordings, Miles was a monster musician. No denying that he was a virtuoso on his instrument, but even more impressive is that he was able to take this remarkable playing and parlay it into a nearly 50 year career. During his career Davis developed new sounds and styles of music, like cool jazz, hard bop, jazz-funk, and fusion, all of which made possible much of the music heard today (R&B, Soul, Smooth Jazz).

There is a lot that this genius of hip can teach us about being successful. Here’s a rundown of how the techniques Davis used to stay ahead of the curve are ones that you can apply to help you jump all of today’s hurdles with a liberal dose of cool.

Reinvention

What Miles Did: Miles Davis was able to stay relevant and on top of his genre by dramatically changing his style and approach every few years. He was never satisfied with where he was at any given moment. He pushed the envelope with a creative fearlessness that often saw him jumping from group to group and leaving one record label to sign on with another. The fact that Davis was able to stay fresh is what helped him define music on his own terms and change the musical landscape for decades to come.

How You Can Do It Too: Reinvention works well in business, as well as all other facets of life. As soon as you become comfortable with where you are now, you loose your competitive edge. Always look for new ways to push the envelope and strive to be in a different place now than you were a few years ago. If you’re in danger of falling off of people’s radar, change your game and make a comeback. Miles Davis understood this and proves that there are really only two choices in life: progress and grow or stay where you are and fade away.

Less is more

What Miles Did: Much of Miles’ signature sound came from the spaces in between the notes he played. Davis was known for leaving huge gaps in between the musical phrases he would play during solos. This came during a time when most other jazz musicians were trying to cram as many notes as possible into as short a time as possible. What this technique did was give each note he played more weight, value, and impact. It also set him apart from the other entertainers of his time.

How You Can Do It Too: The ideas of simplicity and space are a key factors to living a successful life. Cutting out distractions and focusing on what’s important will give your ideas and actions room to breath. By focusing and simplifying, at a time when everyone else is overworked and overstressed, you’re giving yourself a critical competitive advantage.

Trend Setting

What Miles Did: Davis started his career by imitating and following his mentors in jazz and bebop. Soon, however, he realized that he could only get so far by following in others’ footsteps and started blazing his own trail. Introducing the world to hard bop, modal jazz, and fusion, Miles Davis made a name for himself and set trends in popular music that lasted decades.

How You Can Do It Too: To be a trend setter means being bold and taking risks. Take the time to learn from those who have been successful before you and then don’t be afraid to travel off the beaten path to forge your own legacy. Miles shows us the best way to accomplish this is to be confident in your abilities and true to yourself.

Collaboration and Mentoring

What Miles Did: Arguably Davis’ most important contribution to the jazz community was his ability to bring talented musicians together and push them to do incredible things. From his early works with Charlie Parker and John Coltrane to his later recordings with the likes of Herbie Hancock and John Scofield, Miles Davis made sure to surround himself with impressive musicians. In fact, there’s hardly a musician that came of age between the 50’s and 90’s that Miles Davis did not influence in some way. The musicians that were lucky enough to be picked to join him came away with a new understanding of music and often carried the Miles Davis sound with them throughout their career. Even artists like Jimi Hendrix and James Brown site Miles as a direct influence on their music.

How You Can Do It Too: Success is never achieved alone. Even someone as individualistic as Miles Davis understood this. To be great, you need to have the ability to choose and work with great people. Once you have great people working for you, make sure you instill within them the traits that you’ve learned over the years. That way, you’ll create a small army of people who will share your vision and spread your legacy. That is how Miles Davis made a name for himself, and how you can too.

You don’t have to be a musical virtuoso to make your own mark on the world. Instead, by applying some of the tricks used by the king of cool, you can rise to the top, separate yourself from the competition, and make a name for yourself.

You can follow my attempts to start a small part-time computer consulting business and turn it into a full time success on my blog, Your Friendly Neighborhood Computer Guy. I’m also trying to make my own mark on the musical world. Keep up with me as I begin recording my first full-length CD at MattRodela.com and twitter.com/mattrodela.

Five Timeless Lessons From Warren Buffett

J D — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:25:32 +0000

Do you want to learn how to make your company successful? Join Prevential and follow the Success Factors blog series daily in January 2009.

If you were to use anyone as a hero, there would be no better man than Warren Buffett. He has been one of the richest men in the world for the past 20 years and it should come as no surprise. He doesn’t try to please anyone other than his shareholders and his stock performance proves it. So, without further ado, here are five timeless lessons from the world’s most successful investor.

Play Baseball Without Strikes

In 1999, Warren Buffett compared investing to baseball without strikes. You can wait for the right pitch all day and there is no penalty other than lost opportunity. So, “when the fielders are asleep, step up and hit the pitch.”

What a simple concept, yet many businesses, including myself, make this mistake daily.

When my blog took off, I looked for advertising sales reps. I was tired of low CPMs from ad networks like Google and I wanted direct sales. I did minimal research and went with the first company who made me an offer. I swung at the first pitch.

I was locked into a 12 month agreement, but I didn’t mind. I was set to make a ton of money. Unfortunately, they didn’t pay me anything. I gave them millions of advertising impressions and never received one penny. My home run ended up being a foul.

I learned that it’s easy to swing at sub-par pitches, but when you’re in the business game, those sub-par pitches are what breaks your company. Just take a look at some banks in 2008 and 2009.

Keep Score on Your Inner Scorecard

For those of you who read “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life,” you will know what I’m talking about. For those of you who haven’t, Alice Schroeder talks about how Warren Buffett views success. He believes you need to keep score on your inner scorecard as opposed to your outer scorecard. In other words, measure yourself vs your own standards and not against other people.

Yet another mistake I made. I compared my business to others regularly. It was a huge waste of time. So, here are two ways I make my visits to the competition productive:

Action Plans – When I visit the competition, I won’t leave without an action plan that would work for my business. I may not use it, but at least I have it for further reference.

Interesting Stories – Great stories are powerful and rare. When I visit the competition, I look for great stories to log into my moleskin. This has been a huge help with my writing and my presentations.

So, while learning from your competition can be beneficial, comparing yourself to them is a waste of time. Don’t worry about who’s better or who earns more money. Instead, focus on what you can do to earn more money and achieve your business goals.

Be Greedy When Others Are Fearful

During the bottom of the bear market of 1974, Forbes asked Warren Buffett, “How do you feel?” He responded with “Like an oversexed guy in a whorehouse. Now is the time to invest and get rich.” This was the first time he made a public prediction about the stock market. The second time came in late 2008 when he said, “I’m buying American and you should be too.”

These two time periods have one thing in common. Buffett puts his money on the line and lives his quote “be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” Now we know it worked for Buffett, but what about everyone else?

In the past few months I was able to buy some stocks at extremely cheap prices since blood was in the streets. Now, I’m looking at websites who are in a panic because of plummeting CPMs. I’m waiting for a fair price on great websites and I’m sure it’s going to pay off in the long haul. In short, if you look for opportunities, you can be greedy when others are fearful.

Diversity Protects Ignorance

Many people love to say “you need to diversify” to become successful, but it doesn’t make sense and Warren Buffett agrees. He said, “Diversity is protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.”

When I started earning money on the internet, I focused on several websites. I ended up making no money on all of them. Once I focused on one website, it took a few short months and I started earning good money. This strategy worked because I limited my opportunities and focused on one of them.

Buffett was right when he said “it makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing,” but it was not complete. It also makes very little sense for people who don’t know what they’re doing. Without focus, you will never become world-class. Studies show that you need 10,000 hours of practice and if you diversify, you will never reach that goal.

High Tide Shields the Naked

I know you heard the Warren Buffett quote “It is only when the tide goes out that you know who was swimming naked,” but now I would like you to write it down. When the financial tide went out in 2008, people like Madoff and the highly leveraged investment banks were left naked on the beach. The bull economy hid their mistakes, but the bear economy exposed them.

When I was running my entertainment blog, I rested on my success and watched my advertising CPMS deteriorate in the down market. The high tide was hiding my uncompetitive business model, but now that the tide is out, one of my businesses suffered significant profit loss. I was left standing naked.

So, whether you’re in a good market or a bad market, you need to commit to success. You need to make sure you are always doing everything in your power to stay competitive. The system I adopted to help me get through this was the Kaizen system and thus far it has worked for me.

Tying It All Together

When the majority of the world was hungry for tech stocks earlier this century, Buffett stuck to what he knew and measured himself vs his own goals. Many people thought he was crazy, but when the market crashed, he emerged out on top. Now in 2009, if history repeats itself, who better than Buffett to teach you about success?

How Customer Vanity Can Improve Your Business

J D — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:47:50 +0000

Do you want to learn how to make your company successful? Join Prevential and follow the Success Factors blog series daily in January 2009.

People love the sound of their own names. They want people to remember their names. They want businesses to recognize their names. More importantly, they want their names to mean something to other people. So, let’s talk about how promoting vanity helped some businesses.

The Larry David Sandwich

How many of you are fans of “Curb Your Enthusiasm?” For those of you who aren’t, there was an episode where a deli named their sandwiches after local people, most of which were celebrities. These people would compete with each other over whos sandwich was better. They would tell their friends about their sandwiches and bring them to the deli to try it. In short, the deli tapped into the local vanity market and sold a ton of sandwiches.

Names, Names, Names

Now, consider the local newspaper success story Chip and Dan Heath talk about in “Made to Stick.” The Daily Record, founded by Hoover Adams, focused on “names, names, names.” This strategy helped them take this local newspaper from startup to the number one Dunn, North Carolina newspaper. Or, more specifically, one of the only local papers that had more subscriptions than people living in town.Overall, The Daily Record crushed the competition because they stuck to their local roots by using community names and community pictures.

College Girls on College Humor

When I was in college I remember these two girls. They went out one night and drank too much. They ended up making out and pictures were taken of them. About a week later, one of the girls said, “How cool is this? We’re on College Humor.” They told their friends about it and asked us to check it out. College Humor gave people their five minutes of fame and every person featured talked about it, which resulted in more traffic for College Humor.

More recently, they launched the “Hottest College Girl” contest where they ask for user submissions and let the community vote on the hottest college girl. Since these girls want to win, they will tell their friends and family to vote resulting in more traffic for College Humor.

The Success Factors Prescription

You now know three things:

How a deli built buzz
How a newspaper crushed its competition,
How College Humor grew organic traffic

But, now you are asking yourself, “What can this information do for me? How can it improve my business?”

1. Make Your Customers Celebrities - The college girls were personally involved in promoting the College Humor website since they wanted votes to win the contest. So, you should look to make your customers personally involved in promoting your business. For example, when Shoemoney sends out a free Shoemoney t-shirt, he asks people to take a picture wearing it. They’re glad to do it because they get on Shoemoney’s popular website, and he’s glad to let them because he gets free promotion.

2. Find the Influencers and Talk About Them - The deli found the local influencers and played on their vanity. While the influencers argued over who had a better sandwich, several local customers would be buying the sandwiches and trying it for themselves. You can look to use this in your business by getting the big name influencers involved. For bloggers, you don’t need these celebrities to promote you. Instead, write an article about them and see what happens.

3. Join the Community – The Daily Record joined the local community and stayed local, which made local people want to read it. You can accomplish this by immersing yourself in your niche and never leaving. For example, now that Darren Rowse started Twitip, have you noticed how much he talks about Twitter on Twitter?

What Do You Think?

Do you have anything to add? Leave a comment.

How to Set and Achieve Business Goals

J D — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:05:06 +0000

Do you want to know what makes a business successful? It’s not profit, reputation, or impact. It’s not marketing or finance. It’s not whether you’re sitting in a Herman Miller chair or on a park bench. It is when you set business goals and achieve them.

Without business goals, you will never know “What’s Important Now?” You can work on anything you want and never hold your business accountable. If you don’t set business goals, success will remain intangible and impossible to find. After all, how can you reach for what you can’t see?

So how do you set business goals and achieve them?

One or Two Goals, Max

We have enough going on with just “living” our lives. We have to shower, eat, work, clean, and the list goes on and on. You need to set one or two goals, max, because you won’t have time for anything else. You need to put all of your eggs in one basket and devote your time to fortifying that basket. You’re a business person and your time is limited. You simply won’t have time for more than one or two goals.

Command Your Ship

The leadership expert John C. Maxwell said, “A Pessimist complains about the wind. An optimist expects it to change. A leader adjusts the sails.” And that my friends, is how you create a business goal. You need to look at something you control and aim to control it. Don’t focus on the weather, focus on what you can do to change the weather.

Two Versions Of Your Goal

You need to have two versions of your goals. You need to have one goal that you think you can achieve and then one goal that is much higher than the first. You never know what you might accomplish and you don’t want to sell yourself short by setting your goals too low.

Make Your Goals Public

When I started this “Success Factors” series I committed to one article per day. Let me tell you, it’s hard. It’s real hard to find one unique article per day to write about. Yet, here I am, staying up all hours of the night and losing sleep to make sure I get one article up per day. My goal is public and I don’t want to fail.

Do Something Today

I just launched Prevential.com and I kept asking myself, “What can I do right now to grow my audience?” So I started a blog series. Instead of trying to optimize my website for search engines, I focused on what I did best and started writing immediately.

Forget Effort. Manage Activity

It doesn’t matter how hard you work. What matters is how much you do while you work hard. So, if you’re trying to sell shower doors, you should contact 500 people instead of 400 people. Don’t work on improving your conversion ratio because that could take a lifetime of practice. Instead, focus on what you control and that’s how many people you talk to.

Now, how about you join the conversation?

Three Ways to Prevent Common Decision Making Mistakes

J D — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:20:56 +0000

Do you want to learn how to make your company successful? Join Prevential and follow the Success Factors blog series daily in January 2009.

Let me tell you this quick story about my friend John the speechwriter. While getting ready for work, his wife told him about the article where the media officially declared that “we are in a recession.” At first, he thought nothing of it, but when he got into work, the first thing he checked was his 401K account. He sat down at his computer, started it up, and checked his balance.

“50% down? Oh my…” was what he said, but he had no idea what to do. While running his hands through his hair, he thought about Sam (his newborn son). Would he still be able to go to college? John wanted to be the sole provider, but his retirement savings lost half of its value. So, he moved it out of the stock account and into the fixed savings account. “Perfect, he thought.”

His sense of “perfect” cost him his retirement. He solidified his losses and ensured that he would never see his money again. He saw a problem and immediately wanted to fix it. After all, he couldn’t just sit back and watch more of his money disappear.

Now what did John do wrong and how can we prevent it from happening in the future?

Defer the Decision Temporarily

John was acting on emotion. His financial move was life-changing and he seemingly didn’t give it a second thought. He just had to “do it now.” Unfortunately, with “doing it now,” John didn’t take the time to evaluate his decision. So, he has no idea whether or not it was right. All he knows is that it felt good to “do something.”

When you make a major decision in business or life with emotion, you may not be thinking rationally. So, you should sit on the major decision for a few hours or days. This will help you get back into the right frame of mind for a proper decision making process.

Consultant With a Friend or an Adviser

John was also inexperienced. He was a speech writer and was by no means a qualified financial adviser. Not only did he make the decision himself, but he made it with bad criteria. He assumed that since his 401k was down 50%, it would be smart to move it into a fixed interest account. Unfortunately, just because a 401k is down, doesn’t mean you should abandon it. However, there is no way John would have known that since he wasn’t an expert.

When you are dealing with tough decisions in your business and life, you should get a second opinion. It will help ensure that you are making the right assumptions and hopefully catch any grave mistakes.

Research and Evaluate the Decision

And here is John’s main mistake. Not only did he act with emotion and without a consult, but he failed to do any research. Additionally, he based his decision on how he felt about his results. When he saw that his 401k was down by 50%, he thought that was an indicator that something needed to change. Unfortunately, John didn’t realize that you can’t evaluate your decision based on how you feel about the results.

You should never make a decision without conducting your own research. It may be easier to rely on an expert, but you need to understand what they’re talking about anyway, so do some of the work.

How Many John’s Do You Have?

Most of my friends are on their way to becoming successful. They either get paid decent money or run successful businesses. However, with all of this great experience under their belt, I can still count more than four “Johns.” So, why don’t you tell me how many “Johns” you have in your life?

How to Improve Your Business With The Kaizen System

J D — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:02:37 +0000

Do you want to learn how to make your company successful? Join Prevential and follow the Success Factors blog series daily in January 2009.

Why is Toyota dominating the car manufacturing business in America? Do they have secrets that the rest of the world doesn’t know? Do they innovate and implement the best technology or are they just really lucky that people love the Toyota Prius?

There is a secret and it can be used to improve all businesses. From running a small retail business to running a blog, the Toyota way of approaching manufacturing can help you grow your business and increase your profits.

The Toyota Secret is “Kaizen,” or for the direct translation, “continuous improvement.” Employees are encouraged to come up with and share ways to improve their job function – even if it only saves 1/2 a second or 1 penny. The “Kaizen” system focuses a company on small improvements that will add up to big results when you give it a lot of time and leverage it over a lot of people.

But how can you use it to improve your business?

In the remaining part of this article, you’ll learn about the five key steps needed to implement the “Kaizen” or the Japanese way of doing business. So, let’s get started:

Standardize Your Process

When you want to implement “Kaizen,” you need to standardize your process. You probably remember the importance of standardization from your 3rd grade Science class when you learned about the Scientific method. You need to set a control so you know whether your small change is improving or hurting your business.

Here are some ways to Standardize your process:

The Time Standard: You can conduct business at the same time for the same amount of time. For example, if you are a blogger, you may want to spend X hours per week on writing blog posts. No matter what, when you hit your time standard you stop.

The Place Standard: You can conduct business at the same place. For bloggers, this means if you want to write your blog posts at a coffee shop, you can, but make sure you keep track of what blog posts you wrote at a coffee shop.

The Action Standard: You can conduct business the same way as usual. If you’re a telemarketer, this means you make phone calls, or if you’re a blogger, this means you write blog posts.

Please note, the more specific you are with your standard the better. It will help you make sure you can find an accurate correlation.

Measure Your Process

The next step in the “Kaizen” method is to measure your process. If you don’t measure what you’re doing, there will be no way for you to know if you’re making improvements. For example, how would you know if you are losing weight if you don’t weigh yourself?

Here are some examples:

Money: How much money does this process make you? How much money does the process cost you?

Time: How much time does it take you to complete?

Widgets: How many widgets do you create? How many phonecalls do you make? How many blog posts do you write?

Compare Your Actual Results vs Desired Results

The third step in the “Kaizen” method is to compare where you are with where you want to be. However, to do this you need a clear understanding of where you want to be. Some people may want to increase their earnings, whereas some people may want to become more efficient.

Additionally, this is a great time to discover where you want to be. Once you know your actual measured results, you should make your desired results just a little bit higher than your actual results. For example, if you’re making 10 sales call per day, why not aim for 13 sales call? Or, if you’re averaging 3 blog posts per week, why don’t you aim for 5?

Discover How to Achieve Your Desired Results

And here is the big one. How do you plan on achieving your goals? You can’t simply make a goal and hope for it to happen. You need to create a plan and follow through with it. If your plan doesn’t work, you need to create a new plan and follow through with it.

During this stage of the “Kaizen” plan you should focus on activity or more simply, focus on what you can control. Here is where you make that one extra sales call or write one extra blog post. Here is where you comment on one more blog or meet one new person.

More specifically, if you are a blogger, don’t spend your time focusing on “search engine optimization” and ranking in Google. Sure, you may be able to influence it slightly, but you could simply just write four more blog posts or e-mail four new bloggers.

Make Your Your New Results Your Standard

Congratulations. At this point in the “Kaizen” method, you achieved your desired results. However, Toyota didn’t completely dominate the car industry by sitting still and enjoying their past success. They did it all over again.

Once you make gains, you need to make sure you make your gains the new standard. Then, focus on how you plan to achieve your next set of desired results. Please note, once you get to a certain point and completely maximize what you and your team are doing, there is only one more way to accomplish more and that is to work with more people.

The Success Factors Spotlight

Do you want to learn how Toyota implemented the “Kaizen” method specifically? Why don’t you check out “The Toyota Way” over at Wikipedia. It is comprehensive and should help you find ways to implement this into your work stream or startup.

The Bottom Line

Much of this may seem like common sense, but that isn’t the point. The “Kaizen” way is about implementing this process into your work stream so you can improve it. So, while this may seem like common sense, are you currently using it? Are you able to describe in words what your “Kaizen” system is? If so, I invite you to share it in the comments.

Why Einstein Became Immortal (and how your company can join him)

J D — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:55:10 +0000

Do you want to learn how to make your company successful? Join Prevential and follow the Success Factors blog series daily in January 2009.

How can you ensure that people remember your company? How can you prevent your products and innovations from spiraling into a black hole? What can you do to be the 1 out of 10 businesses that become successful?

These are all tough questions with no easily discernible answer. However, we can learn a lot from Einstein and how he joined the immortal ranks of Aristotle, Galileo, and Isaac Newton.

Einstein was a genius. Some claim he was one of the smartest people who have ever lived. But his intelligence did not make him an international celebrity. For example, can you tell me a different physicist who won the Nobel prize?

Einstein was also innovative. He created the micro and macro description of the world (quantum physics and relativity respectively). But his innovation in science did not make people know his name. For example, can you tell me who created Penicillin or the Polio vaccination?

So then, what makes Einstein different? Why does everyone know about Einstein and E=mc2? Is it possible for your company to stand out like Einstein?

Smash Your Company

Let me take you back to the early 1900s. A Coca-Cola executive approached a designer and asked him to create a glass bottle that would be easily identified as a Coca-Cola bottle — even if you smashed the bottle into 100 pieces. This idea went down in history as the “Smash Your Brand” test.

Now, lets apply this to Einstein. Can you smash Einstein into 100 pieces and identify him as Einstein? What if I were to show you a picture of wild crazy gray hair that is standing on edge? I’m willing to bet you would be reminded of Einstein.

From a physics perspective, Einstein’s work is obviously Einstein’s work. Scientists can identify Einstein’s ideas just by looking at the scope of the ideas. This is similar to how many people can identify Van Gogh’s art just by looking at it.

Whatever business you are in you need to make sure you can smash it. You need to make sure people will recognize what you do by focusing on seemingly insignificant details like your hair style. Or, in Chris Pearson’s case, a nifty options panel for a wordpress theme.

Differentiate Your Company

What happens when you want to break into an elitist genre of old dogs and proclaimed experts? You will battle resistance, but it isn’t impossible to overcome it.

When Einstein started out in his career, he consistently encountered resistance. As Walter Isaacson pointed out in “Einstein,” Einstein was unable to get a job in academia or admitted into a doctoral program. However, it didn’t stop him. He worked on his theories while he worked at a patent office and his dedication and uniqueness paid off.

Now if his theories were similar to what was being discussed in academia, he would have probably stayed in that patent office for the rest of his life. After all, who would notice a no-name unqualified scientist in some silly patent office?

So, if you are thinking about starting a blog about blogging, think again. It’s been done and Darren Rowse already owns it. However, if you plan to add a unique spin or twist to the genre, do it to your heart’s content. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger is doing this perfectly. He’s not as big as Darren, but he offers much easier and practical advice than other blogs.

Or, if you’re looking to break into a a snobbish niche with snobbish followers, you should take a look at what Gary Vaynerchuk did to the wine industry. He focused on describing wine to regular people. He would say things like, “this wine has some of that raspberry slim jim action going on” instead of “esters,” “vintage,” and other words I can’t define. Oh, and he last I heard, Gary did over $50 million in sales.

The Success Factors Prescription

You have been introduced to the Success Factors Spotlight in “Why You Should Put All Your Eggs in One Basket.” Now you can see the “Success Factors Prescription,” which is where you can learn how to implement what we talked about into your company.

So, how do you differentiate your company? How can you help your company stand out?

Make People Feel Great: Many companies claim that their customers are their biggest asset. However, when we call Bank of America’s help line, it takes us more than 30 minutes to talk to a representative. So, make sure you say what you mean and focus on making people feel great. Maybe you should give them a restaurant mint?

Same Niche, Different Angle: You don’t need to come up with a unique idea. You need to find an idea and improve it slightly. For example, Facebook crushed Myspace by targeting college students. They made a slight change and emphasized it. So, if you enter a crowded niche, make sure you make your differences your main marketing tactics.

Keep Moving Forward: Einstein’s famous quote “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving” applies to business. If you want to maintain or develop your competitive advantage, you need to continuosly improve upon what you have. If you don’t, you’re likely to fall over and crash into the concrete.

Do Something Quirky: In college I remember a kid we called shades. Nobody knew him, but he always wore sunglasses and a vest 365 days a year. I still remember him to this day because of his quirkiness and I realized you can do this in business. For example, one of Sam Walton’s store managers created the largest display of laundry detergent. It garnered a ton of attention and sales.

Be Trustworthy: We live in a world where different is no longer different. We have thousands of products and companies to choose from. So, if you want to stand out, make sure you are the most trustworthy person on earth. Don’t do anything you would be ashamed of and people will respect you for it.

What Did I Miss?

Do you have anything to add to this list? Do you have any other great ways to differentiate yourself in the marketplace? Why don’t you write a follow-up blog post or leave a comment?

How to Learn From Your Competition

J D — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 17:02:54 +0000

Prevential offers Success Factors to help rewire your business and personal life for success. Please check back for new “Success Factors” articles daily in Jan. 2009.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or aspiring athlete, you will benefit from studying your competition.

Don’t believe me? Let me show you two examples.

For the first, lets take a look at one of the worlds best basketball players.

Kobe Bryant studies videos of his opponents on a portable 10″ DVD player. He combs through each video to find advantages which could help him guard his opposition in basketball games. Oh, and did I mention that he does this before every game?

The second example is about the world’s most impressive retail tycoon.

Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, would regularly visit his competitor’s stores. He started doing this as a aspiring business man and continued to do it when his stores were in first place. He believed in learning from everything and he thought his competitors could teach him the most.

But now you must be wondering, “How Can I Learn From My Competition?” In the remaining part of this article I will go over the best ways to study your competition for maximum growth potential. So, lets get started.

Who Are Your Competitors?

You need to find your competition to learn from them. It could be a teammate, a rival business, or it could be yourself, but the bottom line is that there is someone or something out there that you need to compete with. But how do you find them? Who is considered competition and why?

People and businesses compete for limited resources. We compete for sales, customer’s time, or that one promotion, or that one corner office. In short, your competition is anyone who prevents you from getting more of what you want.

You can easily define your competition by looking at your goals. If you want that promotion, your competition is anyone who may receive that promotion over you. If you create video games, your competition is all video game companies or more broadly, any company that demands a person’s “extra” time.

But what if you can’t find your competitors?

You need to define your business and goals on a broad landscape. It will help you spot potential attackers and growth opportunities. For example, if you specialize in 7″ screws, you would not want to compete in the 7″ screw market. You would want to compete in the “we help you build or hang things on the wall” market. If you specialize in iPhone games, you need to compete with “we help you waste time on your phone at work” market.

Okay, but how many competitors should you track?

The magic number is all of them. Unfortunately, who has the time for that? So, if you are a small business or corporate executive, I would focus on 3 competitors. If you don’t have 3, redefine your business and goals so you have 3. If you have more than 3, redefine your business and goals so you have 3.

You may think 3 is too much or 3 is too little, but it is a very manageable number for a single person. On average, you should spend at least 3 hours per competitor per month and 9 hours isn’t too demanding for one person. If you have the resources and time, you should expand your competitor tracking, but if you don’t, 3 is a great start.

What Are Your Competitors Doing?

Here is where we take some insight from people like Sam Walton and Kobe Bryant. You need to find out what your competitors are doing and why. If you can’t find out why, make sure you know what they are doing so you can use it to improve your business.

When the Holidays started coming around I noticed my local Barnes and Nobles did a few changes. I’m not competing with them, but what they did was interesting. They created a huge table of board games and placed it near the customer service desk. Additionally, they moved their “clearance” items from the back-end of the store to near the customer service desk. I found myself asking, “Why did they do it?”

Well, when the holidays come around many people spend impulsively. A parent comes into a book store to buy their daughter the new Harry Potter book and asks customer service where to find it. While waiting for help, she spots 50% off signs and “great games for children.” Now she leaves with the hottest new game Blokus, some cheap 50% index learning cards, and the latest Harry Potter book.

So, make sure you make note of what your competitors are doing. There is a reason for it and it may help you improve your business.

But how do you do it? How do you find out what your competitors are up to?

Are you ready for the answer? it is going to be very complicated. Get dressed, leave your house, and go look at what they are doing. Look at the products they are selling, Look at their light fixtures, look at their signage, look at their event promotions. Just use your eyes and you will find out what they are up to.

What Are People Saying About Your Competitors?

Why does it matter what people are saying about your competitors? Are there opportunities hiding in conversation?

If you’re reading a blog, I doubt I have to tell you this, but yes there is. There are tons of opportunities.

When you look at what people are saying about your competition, you can find one of two things: 1) a thread of discontent or 2) a success story. Lets talk about both of them.

A Success Story: When you look at what your competitors are doing, you need to use your judgment to decide whether or not it is positive or negative. When you have a testimonial, you have proof. If you see on Yelp that the local diner received a ton of praise for their simple 15 item menu, you may think about cutting 50 items off of your 100 item menu.

A Thread of Discontent: If you see people complaining about the pizza place’s customer service, you can position yourself as “the pizza place with the best customer service.” If you see people complaining about a lack of information on a competitors blog, you can provide a ton of information on your blog.

But how can you discover what people are saying about your competitors?

Ask them: Many people love to give their opinion. So, you might as well use it to your advantage.
Twitter: By now I’m sure you’re familiar with how much Twitter has grown. You should use Twitter Search to scope out your competitors and market regularly.
Yelp: If you are a small business, you know about Yelp. You probably dealt with some bad reviews before or good reviews, but you should look at your competition’s bad reviews as well.
Google Blog Search: Blogging is the source of conversation. You can search brand names, peoples names, or anything you want and you will find someone talking about it. Don’t let this free information go to waste. So, use Google Blog Search.

What Are The Experts Saying About Your Competitors?

If you regularly read Prevential.com, you know how cynical I am about proclaimed “experts.” However, they do have a ton of insight into your competition and your market. So, you should read what the experts are saying.

To start, you want to follow your industry news. You want to see what the independent trade journals and dedicated media outlets are saying. If they’re talking about some new great Point of Sale system or Content Management System, you should probably check it out. If they are talking about a new innovative product, you may want to consider adding something similar.

Why You Should Talk to Your Competitors

Many businessmen and executives hate their competition. They view them as villains who are trying to rob their bank accounts. However, this kind of hostility is not beneficial and will hurt your business.

When you view your competitor as a villain, you assume you are the savior. You think everything you do is right and everything they do is wrong. This kind of mindset will prevent you from doing the right things at the right time. You may not be able to keep an open mind when you see them doing something different because you will assume it is wrong.

Instead, you should talk with your competition regularly. They can be a huge help.

You don’t have to give away your secrets, but you should share certain best practices. This type of stuff will promote good will and respectable competition. You wouldn’t want a hostile competitor throwing a rock through your window or hacking your website right?

Additionally, if small businesses or executives communicate, they may fair much better against larger competitors with thousands of employees. I remember when I started an entertainment blog, the way I grew it was by talking with other entertainment blogs of similar size. We worked together and we eventually caught up to the huge entertainment blogs.

The Bottom Line

So you know what people are saying, you know what your competitors are doing, and you talk to your competitors regularly, but what do you do to differentiate? How can you make sure you and your company beats your competition?

Want to know How To Differentiate From Your Competition?