How to Avoid Starting a Failing Business - Pt. 2

OK, after a long layoff, I'm back to posting on my blog, so I guess I better complete my thoughts on How to Avoid Starting a Failing Business.

Hare some tips I've come up with if you're considering starting your own retail business from scratch:
1) Become an expert in Marketing
Marketing is the science of attracting customers to your business. To do it right you must understand human motivation and psychology, and have enough financial resources to test a variety of strategies and messages to find what works and what doesn't.

Before you plunk down one penny to start your business immerse yourself in studying the best in contemporary marketing strategies with proven experts.

People such as Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy for traditional marketing, Yanik Silver & Alex Mandosian for internet marketing, among others.

I'm noticing that few startup entreprenuers have enough resources to market themselves to begin with, and don't do it thoroughly enough. Usually they put all their eggs in one basket suggested to them, usually by those that sell the medium (such as yellow page sales reps, radio account executives, etc.) and go down a path spending significant resources getting little results.

2) Know Your Limitations & Get Help to Fill the Gap
The best thing about being your own boss is being your own boss and you get to come and go as you please. The worst thing about being your own boss is that you are your own boss and you can come and go as you please.

There is NO accountability and I'm finding it is very easy to fool yourself that you are doing 'important' things, yet they are not the things that will ensure business success, they are just things you have to do to be 'open' for business.

Identify the roles that need to be filled, that are not the 'very best' use of your time and sub-contract for those roles or hire people to fill those roles. Then become the best at the sales and marketing side of your business because no one is going to be as committed to selling your company as you are.

When you focus your energies in this area, you will be able to generate enough to cover the expenses of the staff and sub-contractors you have (you'll have to, and you'll have nothing else to waste your time on!).

3) Commit to Being a Leader not just a Business Owner/Boss
The number one complaint I hear is "you just can't get good help these days,' and "I can't keep any good people on staff." If you want good people to work for your company, you have to do more work before hiring them, instead of after. Usually rookie business owners get it backwards and works like this:

a. Identify how many staff positions you need to fill to function and serve your customers;
b. Put an advertisement in the paper, or ask friends/family for referrals;
c. Take the applications and go through a superficial interview process;
d. Hire whoever has the nicest personality, or has been referred by a friend, family or colleague with little background checking or any further due diligence;
e. Bring them on with little training and communicating very little details regarding the expectations of the job they will be performing and the company they'll be working for;
f. Spend the rest of their time after hiring them worrying about the quality of their work, having to look over their shoulder, correcting mistakes they don't take ownership of, and you go home with stress, frustration and anger, and they go home carefree.

Let's turn this around and see what that creates:
a. Create detailed job descriptions for the roles you need to have fulfilled;
b. Decide on your company's Values and what those values mean to you and how you know when they are being fulfilled by you and your company's team;
c. Interview with those values in mind and notice how the prospective employee fits with those values and the work ethic you need;
d. Spend significant amount of time in a second interview explaining in detail what is expected of the new employee should they be offered a position;
e. Monitor their behavior during their first 3 months and hold them consistently accountable in order to train the desired and expected behavior
e. Provide positive feedback and reinforce things you see they do right.

This is the formula for creating a thriving business you'll eventually be proud of.

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