Ready To Run Your Dream Business?

Yesterday I’ve talked about how your business should be like a bamboo and why you should build a solid foundation before you seek expansion and growth in the market place.

In this post I would like to explain what Business Foundation is and How To Build One when starting out in internet marketing.

Believe it or not but your business’s foundation is… YOU. The technical part of building a business from ground up is nothing compared to what you have to go through in your mind during the preparation stages of business development.

There are a total of 6 different areas you need to turn over in your mind before “getting physical:”

1. Mindset

“A mindset, in decision theory and general systems theory, refers to a set of assumptions, methods or notations held by one or more people or groups of people which is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviours, choices, or tools”

What is your mental attitude regarding your business? Is it Positive or Negative? Do you see a bright future or hard times? Do you envision yourself being the first one in your niche within certain amount of time or are you willing to settle for mediocre success? Do you even believe that you can succeed in this business or you just doing it because you’re bored “working for the man?”

Many entrepreneurs start a business (especially offline, where you need a substantial startup investment) without believing they can make it. They don’t see themselves capable of becoming wealthy. They start a business because someone’s suggested they should or because they believe that if they’re capable of doing the technical work – they can run a business.

It may very well be the reason why 90% of them fail during the first 5 years, but who am I to judge, right? All I know is that if you are to start a business, you need to see a clear vision of it becoming successful – otherwise, it’s destined for failure.

2. Goals

“A goal or objective is a projected state of affairs that a person or a system plans or intends to achieve—a personal or organizational desired end-point in some sort of assumed development”

The thing about goals that amazes me is that everyone knows they should set goals, but no one actually does it. I know that because I am as guilty as the next man.

The first time I have witnessed the power of goal setting was exactly one year ago. I have found an old notebook with a list of long term goals I have written down a year earlier. You should have seen the look on my face when I realized that I’ve accomplished 90% of the things on that list.

Since that very moment I always write my goals down and more often than not – I succeed at accomplishing them.

You need to have specific goals for your business:

• How much money are you planning to make after a month? 3? 6? A year?
• How many employees are you planning to have in 6 months? 9?2 years?
• How many units per day are you planning to sell and at what cost?

These are three out of hundreds of questions you need to ask yourself when setting goals and benchmarks for your business. But don’t get overwhelmed: divide your goals into short and long term. It will make your life easier. You’ll have more moments to celebrate thus increasing your motivation to keep moving forward.

3. Strengths

“A skill (also called talent) is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both.”

Another thing you should do is to find out what are your skills and talents. What are you best at? Which aspects of internet marketing you’ve mastered to a high degree? Is it Twitter, Facebook, Social Media? Is it Copywriting? Or maybe it’s Traffic Generation? Whichever it might be, that’s the one (several) thing(s) you will produce the most results in shortest time possible with.

As soon as you identify your strengths, you need to invest more time in those activities than in anything else. It may sound confusing to you right now, why in the hell would you spend more time on something you already know if you can learn other things instead, right? WRONG!

That’s what the majority of internet marketers does – they try to master everything instead becoming extraordinary at one or couple of particular skills. Sorry to disappoint you, but you don’t have enough time in a day to become the Ultimate Internet Marketer.

You’ll end up spending 18-20 hours in front of the computer screen, banging your head against the keyboard, trying to decide which color your headline should be in order to match the background, analyzing the traffic flow trying to decrease the bounce rate of your blog, you’ll probably gulp a gallon of coffee before cracking up the perfect package for your product and while you would be doing all of that –your business wouldn’t be moving anywhere, because you’re the one that needs to handle EVERYTHING around here…

You should develop several strengths and stick with them and get someone else to do the rest.

4. Outsourcing

“Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company”

The moment you identified your strengths and weaknesses, you need to look for help. Let’s say that your strengths are: Copywriting and Making Deals with Other Business Men and Women.And your weaknesses are: Traffic Generation, Website Design and Content Creation.

Your next step is to find a person (or people) who will do the “hard” work for you so you can focus your time on doing what you do best. For internet marketers who are just starting out it may not seem like such a great idea, especially if you’re on a budget, but the total opposite is the truth. You’ll end up losing more money by not following this principle. Here’s why:

You will have to invest more time in doing things you aren’t good at when you could have been doing profitable activities, the activities that would generate you instant profits, while other aspects of your business would be taken care of by a professional(s).

That way, you will save time, and energy, and generate more profits faster (and with less effort) than if you’d try doing everything on your own.

5. Partnerships

“A partnership is a type of business entity in which partners (owners) share with each other the profits or losses of the business.”

Now that you have a clear picture of what your business is, it is time to ask yourself a question: “Do I need a partner?”

Having a partner means sharing profits, but if you choose your partners right, having a partner means increasing profits as well. Often, having a partner increases profits so much that the idea of sharing those profits isn’t so bad.

Sometimes you can even skip outsourcing and turn straight to looking for a partner that can fulfill your needs while you do the same for him. Together you’ll form strong union of skills (just like the X-Men) and will be able to do much more than both of you could have done alone.

Having a partner suits both professionals and beginners. It is good for newbies because you don’t have to pay upfront and it is great for professionals because merging Two Good things will lead to creation of a single Great One.

6. The Plan

“A plan is typically any procedure used to achieve an objective. It is a set of intended actions, through which one expects to achieve a goal”

When the owner of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, was asked what is the one thing he owes IBM’s success to, he said that it is the way he approached building IBM from the very beginning.

“I knew that in order for IBM to become a major corporation it had to be built as one.”

You need to approach your business as the business you want it to be. If you plan banking a million dollars by this time next year, ask yourself: “What my company needs look like in order to produce a million dollars in gross profits a year?”

Start your business as if it is already your dream business. Create a scheme with all the positions that need to be filled such as CEO, Share Holders, Customer Support, Website Design, Content Management, Social Media Department, Affiliate Coordinator, etc. Approach your Business as you Dream Business right from the very beginning!

Have any questions or thoughts? Leave a comment!

Related posts:

1. Local Internet Marketing For Small Business Success
2. Solid Business Foundation-Build Yours Now Or You’ll Hate Your Self Later