LIFE LESSONS

Essential Pillars For Any Business To Flourish

Extract from “The Personal MBA” by Josh Kaufman

The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman is the best business book I have ever read. I have learned heaps from this book and I wish I could have read it earlier.

I have written a series on this book and have published it in the publication “Professional Development”.

Photo by Tuur Tisseghem on Pexels

But here are the 10 key lessons that I have learned and will be carrying for life.

1. Two Rules to keep in Mind about business

(a) If money is the only thing that you have in mind, you may quit well before you see any positive cash flow, and

(b) It is easy to forget that there’s often a huge difference between an interesting idea and a solid business.

2. Consider 10 factors before starting a new business

Urgency, Market Size, Pricing Potential, Cost of Customer Acquisition, Cost of Value Delivery, Uniqueness of the offer, Speed to Market, Upfront investment, Upsell Potential, and Evergreen potential (publishing a book, which is a one-time task vs consulting that will be ongoing work).

Score each of these from 0 to 10. If the sum of the score for all the above factors falls below 75, then your business idea may not be worth pursuing.

3. Prototyping

Instead of striving to produce a final perfect product that may take years and consume a heavy amount of funds, consider Prototyping.

4. Feedback

(i) Get feedback from real customers and not friends and family

(ii) Ask Open-ended questions,

and

(iii) Try not to get offended if the feedback is not positive. Keep calm. Even the worst feedback can give you points to make your product better.

5. Qualification

Not every customer is a good customer. By evaluating a prospect before they buy, you can minimize the chance of wasting your time dealing with a customer who’s not a good fit for your business.

6. Sales

If you want to be good at Sales, you should focus on asking detailed questions to understand what the prospect actually wants.

Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her to solve a problem or achieve a goal, not selling a product or service. — Brian Tracy

7. Persuasion Resistance

If the prospect starts feeling that you are desperate or are chasing them to close the deal, they will resist signing the deal.

As a salesperson, you should be helping your prospects make an informed decision about what’s best for them.

8. Competition

The more time and energy you spend following your competition, the less time and energy you have to build your business. Don’t focus on the competition, focus on delivering even more value.

9. Risk Reversal

The customers inherently take some risk by making a purchase. With risk reversal, you attempt to transfer some or all of the risks from the buyer to the seller.

10. Time Value of Money

Calculating the Time Value of Money can help in making Decisions in the face of Opportunity Costs.

It can help you in choosing the right options for investing funds in various streams and how much you should spend.

Hope you learned something too.

Shout outs to

1. Hermione Wilds Writes for this beautiful story on Nature and Seasons

[embed]Trees herald the Seasons A rumination on the stability of timemedium.com

2. David Rudder for this lovely poem on Quietness and Solitude

[embed]The Quietness and the Solitude They often feel the samemedium.com