Knowing what you are doing and measuring your progress.
It turns out the key to all this learning, practicing, and sustainability revolves around the ability to measure.
The purpose of measuring is to know what to change!
Someone once told me that “gut” is an acronym for “Gave Up thinking.” I agree.
The environment is changing too quickly, margins are too tight, and the competition is too fierce to rely on a haphazard “maybe I’ll get lucky” approach to business success.
Leverage is simply any tool, technique, or process that allows you to do more with less.
Log Lessons Learned
I decided a foundational key to my ultimate success was to avoid repeating my prior mistakes. I wanted twenty years of experience, not one year’s experience repeated twenty times!
Measure your progress and results. Identify, correct, and improve the activities that are causing those results.
Our problem is not that we don’t have enough opportunities to make money. Our problem is that we have too many opportunities to lose it.
simply loving to do something will not create financial success.
anyone who is a master at what they do is a measurement freak.
Get clear on where you are—measure. Decide where you want to go—your goal. Identify the root problem that is blocking this progress—the cause. Tackle the problem—execute. Determine your progress—measure.
“If I tweak this, I can double my profits. If I adjust that, I can triple my cash flow.”
How big would your business be if you still had every customer who ever tried you?
you can become really, really successful being really, really small. And you can go really, really broke becoming really, really big.
a business that forgot that the point of being in business was to make money, not get big.
“I would rather own a $10 million a year business making 15 percent than a $20 million a year making 5 percent.”
There is no way to win this game by guessing.
“If we increase the square footage of the Coca-Cola display by two inches, and we take two inches away from Pepsi, are we going in the right direction on the sales per square foot?”
Ask yourself, is that $1,000 ergonomic chair going to produce more revenue?
every dollar he spends on fancy chairs is one less dollar he can invest in his business. Smart man.
If you spend $500 on the hottest new iPhone package, that’s $500 you no longer have to invest in your business.
In order for us to achieve the success we want, one of the first things we have to do is leave our ego and the need to impress others at the door.
Those who have become truly successful created their wealth first and then grew their lifestyles.
They have understood that money is never spent, it is only invested. And investments either produce a return or they don’t.
For every purchase, ask yourself, “Do I really need this? Will this help me make more money?” Because once you spend it, the cash is gone.
Build the scoreboard. Measure the results. Change the activities.
Every dime I spend is an investment in keeping (and servicing) the customers I have or in getting new ones. Money spent that does not support one of these two outcomes is a waste.
what gets measured is what gets managed. Measure results, change activities.
Be proactive with your customers. Call frequently and repeatedly. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Getting big is a result of success. Success is not a result of getting big.
Acquiring the skills and tools required for sustainability is paramount.
Perhaps your business is affected by the size of each transaction, the number of speeches you gave, the commissions per sale, or the number of cold calls made. Any of these could be a critical driver for the revenue of your business.
Regardless of the industry or business you’re in, you’ll only have three to five critical drivers.
Any time the effect you want is missing, so is the cause. Manage the cause, and the effect takes care of itself.
No risk can be controlled or minimized unless it has first been identified. Think about and make a list of the things that could go wrong.
Anyone who tries to run their business without measuring, financial optics, and a scoreboard is assuming they can successfully fly their business by the seat of their pants.
The most important financial decision you will ever make is not how to make money—it’s how to keep it, how to grow it, and how to maximize it.
They understood what could go wrong, had a “Plan B,” and managed their business to minimize the probability and cost in the event of a mistake
In today’s world being a good company is a prescription for mediocrity and disaster. If you want to succeed, you must be outstanding.
Forever Winter 