Part Two: A New Year Marketing Strategy and Business Success Message
On Friday, I shared with you the first part of a message from noted business success guru Jay Abraham. As promised, I incude here the second part. In it, Jay cites the wisdom of Peter Drucker, who defines what it really means to be an entrepreneur, and askes us the basic question, "are you ready?" 2012 promises to be year of challeneges matched only by the size of the opportunity most of us face. I hope you look forward to this year as one where you too will leave your mark. Happy New Year!
My Wish For You: Never Give In, Never Give Up! (Part Two)
By Jay Abraham
I was reading a staggering article from legendary business guru--Peter Drucker over the holidays. It focused on the misperception most people have about entrepreneurs.
Drucker says most small business owners are NOT entrepreneurs. They are merely proprietors--who add no true value to the world other than perhaps diverting some of the commerce that their industry would normally generate over to themselves.
Stated differently, the vast majority of businesses are mere commodities, marginalized, non distinguishable vendors of stuff--providing nothing unique, nothing superior, no greater experience, no distinctive benefit or advantage to the consumer.
True entrepreneurs--on the other hand strive to create something new or better for their marketplace in what they do. They create true value for the consumer. They engineer it or execute it...or present it...or purvey it differently than the maddening crowd of generic competitors do.
In small or larger ways, true entrepreneurs are the driving forces of positive upheaval in their industries, markets and business worlds.
They have passion, purpose--a keen sense of possibility. They are anything but ambivalent. They are anything but apathetic. True entrepreneurs love change. They live for the opportunity to flex their cerebral, creative juices.
Mere business proprietors are in it only for an income. All they do is what has been done and is being done before them a thousand or a million times, over. It's almost a job. But true entrepreneurs--true entrepreneurs create new satisfaction, new demand, new experiences, new levels of dimension and possibility to (and through) whatever they do.
So here we are--at the forefront of the New Year, contemplating our fates, our futures. My question to YOU is this: are you content with mediocrity? Or are you game to create something (or some things) new, something different, something better for your market?
Do you have the willingness to transform your business and relationship with your market? Can you...will you transmute values (as Drucker says).
Will your marketing/selling strategy trigger a positive upheaval that will transform the way your marketplace sees you, connects with you, relates to you, respects you, remains loyal and a fan of you?
Some final points to consider as we begin our 2012 adventure into marketing down the path of being preeminent.
True entrepreneurs relish the chance to surmount obstacles that their other competitors find daunting. An enterprise that does NOT commit itself to constantly innovate inevitably ages, dries up and declines, then dies.
INNOVATION, by the way does NOT necessarily refer to anything high tech--though it can be done that way.
It merely refers to anything tangible or intangible that brings greater value, benefit, contribution, advantage, enjoyment, understanding, protection or enrichment to a marketplace. That gives you an enormous array of ways to become an agent of change, a creator of value--through your marketing strategy and actions.
Finally--you must be willing to perceive change as an opportunity, not a threat! Stop holding onto what already exists. Breakthroughs only occur when you are pursuing something better. Drucker says true entrepreneurs are awash with "rerum novarum cupidus." That's Latin for being "greedy for new things."
One more point. It's important: entrepreneurship, innovation, breakthrough thinking---none of it comes automatically.
It's not necessarily natural. And YES, it is work to accomplish that which your herd-based competitors won't/don't. But the rarified satisfaction and fulfillment that comes with wanting to innovate, reaching for innovation--for the benefit of your marketplace, working for it is unimaginably rewarding. Happy New Year!
Jay