Here I am out on a five exhibition with my family. We decided to get out of dodge and go explore the wilderness of Eastern Oregon, and we’re having a great time. What I’ve asked the team to do is put together a mashup of some of the best listener requests that we’ve had for Author of Your Own Story, with the over 100 Daily Growth Hacks we’ve had. I hope you enjoy these next couple of days. We’re going to revisit these older Daily Growth Hacks so you can go ahead and go back. If you haven’t heard them, go back and do the work, and get a chance to actually listen to them. Remember, go back and listen to the whole library while it’s still available.
Now, if you have heard these before, don’t worry. Doing the work again, you’ve changed, so you’re going to have a different outlook on each of these Daily Growth Hacks. That’s it for me, I’m out living my Author of My Own Story lifestyle, and I hope you’re doing the same.
Jay Abraham has something he talks about, which is your three ways to grow a business. Now, this is something that I use in all of my businesses on a regular basis, but I especially use it for my strategic planning, and when I’m performing my 90-day goals. First thing, what are the three ways? The three ways are to increase the number of customers. Obviously, number of customers or clients you have, increasing the base is one way. Number two is to increase the average transactional value. If somebody’s buying one widget, can you get them to buy another? One way to think about this is when you’re going to a grocery store, how often are you waiting in that line to checkout, and you grab a pack of gum, or a magazine, or something else that’s there? “Oh yeah, that’s right. I do need batteries,” or whatever it may be, a drink. You’re grabbing it with that.
Another way to think about it is, “Hey, would you like fries with that?” McDonald’s has done a great way, and so have the other fast food industries, as well as restaurants at upgrading you. The third way is to increase the frequency of repurchasing. Increase the frequency that people are buying from you. Those are the three solid ways you can increase your business. What do we do? Step one, write down in a box, so you’re going to have boxes across your paper. One box is how many customers do you have? How many clients and customers do you have? Then the second box, what I want to know is what’s the average transactional value? What’s the average amount the average customer spends at your establishment, your business? Whether it be through your website, or your brick and mortar store. What’s the average sale? The third box, what I want you to put in there is what is actually the number of repeat buys you get? Is it a subscription based model? How often do they actually buy something else? Then you’re going to have a total.
You’re going to take box one, multiply it by box two. Then multiply it by box three, and that’s going to equal your total. That’s your total value. Then what I want you to do is take box one. Remember, box one’s the number of clients or customers you have. Multiply that by 10% and put that number under. Can you grow your business in a year by 10% number of people? If you have 100 clients, do you think you can get 10% more? I certainly hope so. I mean, that’s really less than one extra client a month. That shouldn’t be too difficult for you. Write that number down. We’ll use 100 as the first example, and your next box should be 110. Not tough.
Now we’re going to look at, again, what’s the average transactional value? Let’s go and take that number and multiply that by 10%, right? Maybe you sell mattresses. We’ll go back that analogy, ’cause I could see somebody saying, “Hey Doug, I sell mattresses. People don’t come in. The transaction value is a mattress.” BS. You can sell sheets, you can sell pillows, you can sell pillowcases, you can sell warranties. There are all kinds of things. If you can deliver value, you can increase that transactional value as well, just coming up with like minded products.
Something else you might want to think of is coming up with products and bundling. The third way is the repeat of a buyer. How can you get them into a subscription model? How can you get them into something else? Maybe you’re that mattress guy and you’re like, “Okay, well people buy every two years.” Maybe you say, “Hey look, if you come back and buy a new mattress in a year, I’m going to go ahead and give you X discount.”
Once you’ve taken those numbers and you multiply them together, so 10% increase in customers or clients, 10% increase in transactional value, and a 10% increase in the repeat purchasing power, so the number of times they come back and buy from you. You’re really increasing your business by 33.1%. That’s amazing. Very doable, very sustainable. Take Jay Abraham’s three ways to grow your business, take this chart, and grow.
Now, I’m often asked by people, especially young entrepreneurs, of how they can increase their revenue. Now, whether you’re an intrapreneur, meaning you’re working in a business already. Or, an entrepreneur, meaning you have your own business, having some extra revenue and cashflow is always key, I mean. Now, we all have skills and assets that other people want to know. That could be something you know about fitness, something you know about cooking. There are so many things that you know that others want to know, it’s just a matter of taking that out, and putting it into action.
I was talking to one of my clients the other day, and how he happens to own a catering business. One of his issues was increasing his revenue. He wanted to think about how can he make a reoccurring revenue stream that would get him at least a million dollars. Now, you think about owning your own catering company, I asked him, “How many people do you know, or how often do you actually get asked on how to actually setup this business? How many people do you know that want to do this?” We sat down and scratched our heads, and seeing that there are seven billion people in the world roughly, you think there are 1,000 people that want to start their own catering business? He said, “Absolutely Doug. There’s at least 10,000 or more. There’s just not a lot of information out there on how to really start a good catering business.”
“Now, if knowing that you’re making over six figures a year in this catering business, do you think that people will buy kind of how to start your own catering business course for 200, $500?” He said, “Doug, absolutely. People would actually spend thousands of dollars for a course like this.” “Okay, so let’s keep it at $200. You’re telling me there are thousands of people out there.” He said, “Yeah Doug, at least a couple thousand. I would say 10,000 or more that probably would want this information.” “Well did you know that if you could get 5,000 people to pay you $200 for a course or a seminar, that’s a million dollars right there. And if you had a continuity program, so let’s just say you had those 5,000 people and you’re only charging them $17 a month, over that course of 12 months you’d be a millionaire.”
There’s multiple ways you can actually think about this, and strategize. Now let’s say he decides, “You know what? I’m going all in, I’m filming a course on how to start your own catering business. It’s going to have all the nuts and bolts in there. It’s going to provide a ton of value. It’s going to tell them how to start their business, it’s going to tell them what products to buy, where to get clients from A to Z. I’m going to sell it for $4,000.” They put down $4,000, he only needs 250 people during the course of that year, 250 people that actually invest that $4,000 for him to become a millionaire.
All of us have hidden talents, and hidden goals, and things that we can teach people that people want to know. All it is, is us having to share it. We often forget that the things that we know, are things that we’ve had to learn, and people just want to learn themselves. They just don’t know it yet. Again, I ask you, what is it that you know, that you can apply to a course or teach other people, and add massive value that you can become a millionaire as well?
I was on a call with one of my competitors. It’s a younger version of myself is I would say. It’s a younger man, and he’s a hustler. He’s doing a great job, and he’s running a marketing agency. He’s actually running a marketing agency that’s targeting the niche that one of my businesses is going after. At the end of the conversation, he said, “Doug, let me ask you one more question if you don’t mind. I’m building my team, I’m building my team all over the world. You’ve done this successfully, what is one piece of advice, what’s the best piece of advice you could give me?”
If I were to pick my biggest learning lesson, my biggest learning lesson and building a team, and not only remotely, but a team in person, would be one thing. That would be communication. That’s the constant communication. As business owners we see the vision so clearly, we see it in our heads, and maybe we communicate it clearly. But we forget to keep communicating it to our team, over and over again. It’s not their vision. They may have a shared vision, or something similar. But the vision in our head isn’t theirs. As a business owner, what I was suggesting to him is, “Hey look, yes. Build your team, build the systems, build everything you need in business. Business fundamentals apply whether you’re running a virtual business, or a brick and mortar.”
“One thing that’s a little bit different virtually is it can be a little bit more difficult to communicate on a regular basis. Now, especially if you’re working with a virtual team across multiple cultures. Now you have cultural differences, language differences, and religious differences. Then, of course, timezones. How do you that?” My solution is over communication. What I told him specifically, is I said, “Treat each person on your team like a person.” See, I set alerts for all our virtual staff where they live. I’m reading the news. I also try my best to communicate to my team what the vision is.
I don’t communicate everything to them because I don’t need to dump five businesses worth of information on them every single week. But I do need to communicate to them the general vision, and where they play into that future. Not only where they play into that future, but how does it relate to them as individuals? I was telling this gentleman, was I was like, “Look, you need to set the standards, set your systems, but also communicate on a regular basis. Yes, put your head down, get your work done. You’ve got to. At the end of the day, you’re an entrepreneur, you gotta get stuff done.”
“If you’re running a business now, where are you not communicating? Where are the gaps in communication? Does everything in your company understand your vision? And equally as important, do you know their vision? Pick your head up. Look around, and make sure you’re communicating with your team on a regular basis, and treat them like people. Love them deeply, cherish them. These are people just like anybody else, and they deserve your respect, as well as your time.”
Knowing and communicating with your team on a regular basis really helps you not only better them, but also your own business. I was recently talking to a tech entrepreneur, and they were doing great. But the problem that they were having is they didn’t have a consistent cashflow coming in. Their marketing was working, their processes were working, but sales just didn’t seem to be happening. It seemed to be happenstance. When we were having a conversation I asked him, “Do you have a rain maker on your team?” He said, “Doug, what is that?”
Well, a rain maker in business or in sales is commonly someone who’s able to make it rain. They’re able to consistently bring in new business, new leads, and new sales consistently to your business line. Now, when I was talking to him I said, “Look, rain makers always win. Every business owner needs a rain maker, and that’s why they can be hard to the fun.” When a rain maker … Regardless of the economy. The economy went down in 2008, and there’s a lot of these doomsdayer’s that say, “Hey, it’s cyclical Doug. It’s very cyclical, and it’s going to happen again.” It typically happens every seven or eight years.
Well, we’re past that time period, so maybe it’ll happen again. But there’s one thing I do know, is I know the people that were successful even during the bad times, were the rain makers. Sure, when businesses had to cut staff, no rain makers ever get cut. The reason rain makers don’t get cut is ’cause they are the lifeblood of the business. They are driving revenue to a company. Rain makers are easy for them to move laterally. These are just the people that make it happen in business.
If you are in business, or you run a business, are you either a rain maker or do you have one on your team? This concept of rain making, right? This concept of being someone who can really drive sales, and drive business is extremely important. But I think you can be a rain maker in other areas. Are you a person that constantly brings value to the process? In your five to thrive, are you your own rain maker? Are you the person that just creates, that makes themselves invaluable to a business? In other words, the business can’t survive without you. You can do this in any area. You could be the best mail room clerk, who does things so well and so efficiently, that the company just can’t leave without you.
Even if that company moves, they’re going to take you with them. They’re going to take you with them because you do something that nobody else does. You deliver that extra stuff, that secret sauce, that special thing that nobody else can do.
I want you to ask, or I want to ask you. Are you a business owner? If you are, do you have a rain maker on your team? If not, that’s got to be one of the first priorities. Obviously building your own base is huge, but you need a rain maker. If you don’t have one, you need to be that rain maker until you can actually get one on your team.
Now, if you’re an employee somewhere, are you a rain maker? Now, maybe you’re not in sales, but are you supporting your company in such a way that the company would just go, would crumble without you? Everybody would be lost if you weren’t around. If not, why not? Why aren’t you becoming that person? Why aren’t you becoming an invaluable asset to the business you work in? This is a chance for you to really do it because remember, regardless of the economy, regardless of what’s happening politically, who’s the president, where you live, where the business moves to. A rain maker always has a seat at the table.
Put yourself in the scene, imagine you’re there. There’s a business owner at home, and he can’t find his keys. The powers out, so it’s dark in his house, so what he does is he looks out the window and notices the streetlights are on. A light bulb goes off, he walks outside, goes under the streetlight, and starts digging through the ground, and is trying to see if he can find his keys. Then a neighbor walking his dog comes by and says, “Hey, what are you doing?” “Ah, I lost my keys.” The neighbor nicely goes down, and starts looking, and looking on the ground too. The neighbor looks and says, “Well, where’d you lose him?” The business owner goes, “Oh, I lost them inside my house.” The neighbor goes, “Well why are you out there?” He’s like, “Well that’s where the lights on.”
Now, this is a funny story, and I got this from Dr. Wayne Dyer. I really like what it talks about. How often do we do this in business? We actually look outside of ourselves, or outside of the problem to find a solution. When really if we just went into the house where the actual problem is, and often times this is within ourselves, that’s where the solution lies.
Another great story that’s talked about is just imagining you go to the doctor, and you’re having chest pain. You’ve had this agonizing chest pain for several weeks, and it’s driving you nuts. You talk to the doctor and he says, “Ha, I know exactly what to do.” He takes out his prescription pad and starts writing a prescription. Peels the paper off, and sets it down. Then he repeats that process five times, now he has five prescriptions in front of him.
Finally you just go, “Hey, I know if I take these prescriptions, I’m going to be great.” You reach for the prescriptions the doctor wrote and he says, “No, no, no. This one’s for your wife, this one’s for your neighbor, this is for your colleague, this is your mentor, and this is your son.” You’re like, “Well how is that going to help me?” It’s the same idea. Those prescriptions wouldn’t help you. You know why? Because it’s outside of you, and the problem still is within.
I had a client recently and he was just like, “Doug, give me the tips and tactics. I want the shortcuts, I want to know exactly what I need to do. Do I need to do standup meetings? Do I need to scale my business? What do I need to do to be successful? You’ve done it before, tell me.” What I told him was something very simple, and I’m going to share that with you.
Nothing I tell you tactically is going to help you run your business successfully over the long haul until you work on your inner game first. Where does that start? That starts with your five to thrive. That is a wholistic process to make sure all the wheels on the bus, all the wheels on the successful journey that you’re on, are inflated fully. Making sure everything’s moving smoothly.
I also can tell you based on all the people that I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with thousands of people over the years. That working on your inner game never hurts. It always pays dividends over time. There’s no risk, you just work on yourself. You’re better yourself. Sometimes there’s financial, or time obligations that come into that, and that’s up for you to decide. Working on yourself can only pay dividends in the future, it can only help you on your path to becoming truly, the Author of Your Own Story.
Have a great day, and remember. Share this with at least three people that you know, build your tribe, start the conversation. I’d love to talk to you about it more in the Author of Your Own Story group. That’s it for today. Have a great day. Remember, go out and be the Author of Your Own Story.
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