The Ticket to Successful Business Growth
Issue #2149
- WEALTHY: How to create a business where innovation - and sales - can flourish (Michael Masterson)
- HEALTHY: Cutting calories isn’t all you need to do (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Bill Gates on innovation
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- What it would be like to work for Steve Jobs
- 6 ways to make a time-management tool even more effective (Will Newman)
- It’s Good to Know… about bypassing the bureaucracy by going online
- Add "quiescent" to your vocabulary
The Ideal Vehicle For Getting Wealthy In The 21st Century?
Today you have a rare and exciting opportunity to take advantage of one of the largest industries on earth. And it is - most experts agree - the one that has the greatest growth potential.
I am referring to the Information Publishing industry.
Now don’t be intimidated by that phrase. You won’t need a printing press, typesetting equipment or even employees.
Information Publishing is simply about marketing products based on ideas (e-letters, teleconferences, special reports, etc) instead of hard goods (flowers, jewelry, computers, etc). And now, with the explosion of the Internet, it has the lowest production costs of any industry in today’s world.
Because of that low cost-of-entry and growth potential, it is the ideal vehicle for getting wealthy in the 21st century. Whether you intend to make your fortune on your own (as an entrepreneur) or within the context of a corporate environment (as an intrapreneur), taking advantage of these forces is the best and easiest way to achieve fast success and acquire great wealth.
Come to ETR’s October Bootcamp and we’ll show you how to build your own Information Publishing company that could make from $1 million to $100 million a year.
- Patrick Coffey
"Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time."
Bill Gates
The Ticket to Successful Business Growth
Consider the two most basic options companies have when they seek to grow their businesses:
(1) They can try to increase their market shares by sustaining innovations - by continually improving a product everyone is using.
(2) They can use disruptive innovations to create a new market or take over the low end of an existing market.
Sustaining innovations (a microprocessor that enables personal computers to operate faster, for example, or a laptop battery that lasts longer) are perhaps the easiest to produce, because their need is apparent. (Just ask the users.) Plus, the technology to accomplish them comes usually from existing research.
Improving your product and service incrementally will keep it fresh in the minds of your customers and thus sustain back-end and continued sales - but such innovations are unlikely to give you a quantum leap forward. The big progress is usually made via more radical innovation - what has been called "disruptive" innovation.
Disruptive innovations often initially result in worse performance as compared with established products and services in mainstream markets. But they are often cheaper, simpler, and more convenient… so they can create new markets.
An example of disruptive innovation: the transistor-powered, hand-held radio that had very poor fidelity but was extremely popular with a new market back in the 50s - teenagers who wanted to listen to rock ‘n’ roll. The innovation (the transistor) did not make conventional radios sound better, so it wasn’t embraced by the existing market (adults at home). But transistors did offer the added benefit of portability, which was not very useful to the adults but very attractive to their children.
The distinction between sustaining improvements and disruptive innovation makes sense in most businesses I can think of, including the business of running ETR. We are always looking for ways to make ETR more useful and easier to use - by adding expert editorial and improving delivery methods, for example. But it’s the more radical innovations (such as the self-guided program we created to teach direct marketing) that has resulted in quantum growth.
Most experts say that disruptive innovations are where it’s at, and they are right. But any business that hopes to grow and prosper for any length of time… and particularly during times when economic conditions are difficult… must make continuous improvements in product quality and service as well.
How do you create a business atmosphere where both types of innovation flourish?
First, by recognizing how change begins. Rarely are good ideas born fully developed. Most often, they begin as "half-baked propositions." Before they reach senior management and are accepted and funded, they usually go through a somewhat elaborate process of formal and informal shaping and editing.
If a business has only one way to shape new ideas, experts argue, most of the ideas that survive the process will end up looking pretty much the same. The problem is especially acute for disruptive innovations, because the shaping process is usually one in which ideas are measured against past experience and existing customer bases.
Since most disruptive innovations end up servicing new markets or new market segments, they are unlikely to be approved by such a process - because they generally don’t really help the existing customer base.
To make sure your business succeeds, you need two parallel processes of innovation: one that allows for sustained improvements, and another that gets you into radically different markets.
Both processes start, I think, in your head. You need to believe in improving your product and service and put some pressure on your product and service people to keep coming up with new ideas. At the same time, you have to recognize that any sizable growth will come from ideas that are further afield - and that generating them requires a culture and a financial structure that permits some amount of experimentation.
At a newsletter-publishing company I’m involved with, the big growth has recently come from developing a unique program for e-mail business. What we did was not what the books told us to do, and it wasn’t what we were doing already. It was a combination of ideas we had seen work elsewhere but put together in an innovative way. Results included a cheaper way to service our customers, a slew of new products, a new and very profitable market, and a big jump in sales and income.
At a company I consult with that sells nutritional supplements, we’ve made good steady progress with sustained improvements. This year, however, we introduced a new idea to our marketplace: a product that was more, not less, expensive. That had a remarkable effect on business.
I wonder what the right mix is in regard to innovative improvement vs. disruptive innovation. In the newsletter business, you need to create one new product per year for every four or five existing products. The same ratio may hold true for nutritional supplements. I’m not sure … but I do know you need to do both.
Do you have an active program to promote both kinds of innovation in your business?
[Ed. Note: Get dozens of proven business-building strategies and sales-boosting techniques from Michael Masterson and a group of the world’s leading Internet marketing experts this fall at ETR’s Info Marketing Bootcamp: Making a Fast Fortune on the "Other Side" of the Internet. Sign up today.]
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Worth Quoting: Steve Jobs on Managing for Innovation
"We hire people who want to make the best things in the world. You’d be surprised how hard people work around here. They work nights and weekends, sometimes not seeing their families for a while. Sometimes people work through Christmas to make sure the tooling is just right at some factory in some corner of the world so our product comes out the best it can be. People care so much, and it shows."
(Source: Business Week)
How to Make To-Do Lists Work for You
By Will Newman
To-do lists are effective time-management tools - but only if they’re easy to use. Here are six strategies for making your to-do lists work hard for you.
1. Keep it simple.
Whether you use a computer-based to-do list or a paper tablet, it must be simple. If it’s too complex, you won’t use it… guaranteed. I keep my to-do lists on a 5" x 7" paper tablet. I list "major" tasks to be accomplished, with big sub-steps underneath each one. For example, "Edit The Golden Thread e-letter for AWAI" is a major task of mine. "Write main article," "write Quick Tip," and "write Introduction" are big sub-steps.
Note: A major task is not necessarily one that takes a long time.
2. Limit yourself.
Small paper tablets work well, because there’s a limit to how much you can write on a page. I stick to a maximum of 10 tasks, all of which can be accomplished within a week of when I list them.
3. Set a due date - and stick to it.
Due dates help prioritize what you do and when. Do not work on tasks in the order in which you write them down. Jot down the due date beside each one, and do them in the order of their deadlines.
4. Use a dark marker to reinforce your feeling of accomplishment.
Cross off sub-steps as you complete them with a regular pen. Use a dark marker to cross off the major tasks. Boy, does it feel good!
5. Redo the list every workday.
Do it every evening. This gives you a clear idea of what you have to do before the end of the next day.
6. Add "pop-ups" to your list.
When something pops up during the day that has to be attended to (such as an important phone call), add it to your to-do list - even if you’ve already done it. Then cross it off. To-do lists not only tell you what you have to do, they can tell you if you’re using your time well.
[Ed. Note: Will Newman is the editor of AWAI’s The Golden Thread online newsletter - a free weekly alert loaded with writing and marketing secrets, tips, and insights.]
Reader Feedback: "You make a big difference in people’s lives."
"I have recently gotten plugged in with your e-zine. Wow! I have been blown away at how useful the information is to me. It’s now to the point that I’m taking handwritten notes when I read your stuff.
"You make a big difference in people’s lives. Thank you."
- Coney Burgess
Memphis, TN
Diet or Exercise?
You may have heard of the "calorie restriction movement," based on animal studies that indicate cutting your calorie intake by 20 percent could reduce your risk of disease and even help increase your lifespan by 20 percent. Despite the fact that researchers don’t yet know whether calorie restriction will work for humans, this form of dieting is gaining popularity.
But there is a downside to extreme dieting: If you diet and don’t also exercise, you’ll lose muscle mass and fitness.
In a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, healthy men and women between 50 and 60 years of age went on a one-year weight-loss program. One group lost weight through diet only (calorie restriction), while the other group lost weight through exercise (just cardio - no strength training).
Both groups lost a similar amount of weight. However, while the exercise group increased their fitness levels, the diet group lost lower-body strength and muscle and cardiovascular fitness.
Obviously, the best choice for a fat-loss program is a combination of diet and exercise. So don’t just starve yourself thin. Focus on healthy eating, interval training, and total-body strength training to build the health and fitness you need as you grow older.
[Ed. Note: Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne is the creator of the Turbulence Training for Fat Loss system. If you want a free online source of information, motivation, and social support to help you improve your health, lose weight, and get fit, sign up for ETR’s natural health e-letter.]
It’s Good to Know: Bypass the Bureaucracy by Going Online
Some tasks - like renewing a driver’s license or changing your mailing address - inspire dread in those reluctant to face long lines and seemingly endless forms at government offices. The good news is that you can do a lot of this online. Or, if you still have to be physically present for a certain service, you can at least be totally prepared with the proper documentation to make your visit as quick as possible.
Check out these useful websites:
- Renew your driver’s license: usa.gov/Topics/Motor_Vehicles.shtml
- Renew your passport: travel.state.gov/passport/passport_1738.html
- Change of address: moversguide.usps.com
- Apply for Social Security/Medicare benefits or replace your Social Security card: ssa.gov/top10.html
- Register to vote: fec.gov/votregis/vr.shtml
- Find government forms related to taxes, small business, veteran benefits, FEMA, and more: forms.gov.
(Source: Lifehacker)
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When would you stop going there?
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Word to the Wise: Quiescent
"Quiescent" (kwy-ES-unt) - from the Latin for "rest" - means inactive or at rest.
Example (as used by Jawaharlal Nehru in The Discovery of India): "Have we had our day and are we… just carrying on after the manner of the aged, quiescent, devitalized, uncreative, desiring peace and sleep above all else?"
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker … build your self-confidence and intellect … increase your attractiveness to others … just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR’s new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007