By Dr. John Demartini
A few of the primary keys to becoming successful in business include having a clear intent or purpose, a truly inspiring vision, a grand message to share, a genuine social calling and a targeted niche to serve. From these initial basics arise the primary strategic objectives you would love to accomplish or achieve and a plan for their implementation. Here are ten basic principles of business that I hope will assist you to succeed.
- FIND A NEED IN THE MARKET PLACE: The first component in building a business is finding out what the world demands, what services, what problems, what needs the world has. If you don’t fill a need, there’s no business. When I was nine years old, I went to my dad and asked if I could earn some money and he told me that all the things that he needed were done, so if I wanted to make money I had to go to the neighbors. So I went to the neighbors and asked them what needs they had, what problems I could solve for them. As a result of that, by asking and being willing to do a service, I was able to earn extra money.
So the first principle of business success is identifying the needs of the society and then directly or indirectly filling those needs. In other words – either you with your services, your skills or your products filling a need or your broker, or somebody else who is producing the product and service to fill the need. But whatever it is, it’s necessary to find a need.
- FIND WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO:Ideally you want to find what inspires you and produce and sell what you love to do most. This is in addition to filling peoples’ needs. So if you can identify what the needs are and then find the ones you are inspired to fill, you have two components: a need from society and a desire inside you to fill it. Those two components are very empowering. When you can’t wait to get up in the morning and bring a service to people, people can’t wait to get that service.
- IDENTIFY THE HIGHEST PRIORITY ACTIONS THAT WILL HELP YOU FULFILL THOSE NEEDS: Prioritize the primary actions that it takes to fulfill those needs and identify what the highest priority secondary actions are that will help you fulfill those primary actions. Make sure that you are working on top priority actions and delegating the low priority actions. If you are doing things that are most important and you are doing them with inspiration, you are going to increase your business.
- STRUCTURE YOUR BUSINESS IN SUCH A WAY THAT IT MAXIMIZES ITS PROFITS:You want to reduce redundancies, make sure you are not doing things that are superfluous and make sure you are doing things most effectively and efficiently. Scan your daily actions quarterly to assure your maximal productivity.
- SAVE A PORTION OF YOUR PROFITS AND BUILD A CUSHION OF LIQUIDITY:When you have a cushion of liquidity, you automatically have more stability in the business, you have higher quality clients, you’ll end up attracting more opportunities and you won’t be desperate. You’ll be inspired to select the quality of clients that you choose.
- INVEST A PORTION OF YOUR MONEY: Make sure your money is working for you and you are not working all your life for your money.
- COMMUNICATE THE PRODUCT IN THE VALUES AND NEEDS OF YOUR EMPLOYEES AND CLIENTS.When you are inspiring you team, make sure you are communicating in their values – their individual values are what they are inspired to do. Nobody goes to work for the sake of work; they go to work to fulfill their values. If you communicate the vision of the company and job duties in terms of peoples’ values, they are inspired by what they do and they produce more.
Also, make sure you are communicating effectively in sales, advertising and marketing within your clients’ values and needs. Not only do you need to discover what those are, but you constantly need to keep at the forefront of what they are as they change. Keep getting feedback from your customers to assist you in filling their needs. Make sure that you are honoring their needs and get feedback regularly for those needs – don’t live on assumptions.
- MAKE SURE YOU EXPAND YOUR BUSINESS VISION.You’ll only grow to the level of the vision and if you are not expanding the vision, you’ll plateau the business and you’ll plateau your wealth.
- PUT ENERGY INTO INNOVATION AND RESEARCH.Keep your eyes open for new customer opportunities and new ways of presenting products or services for those opportunities. You need to put energy into innovation and research. When you are constantly at the cutting edge, in the frontiers of research and innovation, you tend to draw more opportunities to you and lead the way.
About Dr. John Demartini
Dr. John Demartini, a native of Houston, is a world renowned human behavior specialist, success consultant, educator and internationally published author. He is the founder of the Demartini Institute, a private research and education organization headquartered in Houston with a curriculum of over 72 different courses covering multiple aspects of human development. For more information and to download a free Value Determination Process Workbook, please visit www.DrDemartini.com.
