by Ahmed Muzammil | Jun 15, 2017 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Startup |
In 2015, I was in a room with over 2000 people.
At a Tony Robbins seminar in Singapore. If you don’t know about Tony, the best introduction that I can give you is his very popular TED talk: “Why We Do What We Do” (Check out the video below)
The first lesson Tony taught us is the 6 Human Needs.
As a human, our six human needs define why we do what we do and why our actions are the way as they are.
A person who’s satisfied with all the six human needs is usually happy and feels more accomplished. On the contrary, they would be depressed and can even be suicidal. Today I’m gonna speak about the first two needs:
1. Certainty:
An assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure today, tomorrow, and in the future.
We want to have the assurance that there will be food, water, and air so that we can breathe and live healthily.
So is the certainty of making money, that’s why most stick to a paycheck because of the certainty.
2. Uncertainty/Variety:
It’s the necessity of the unknown, the surprise, the change, new stimuli.
You always like a surprise gift from your girlfriend or spouse don’t you?
Both the needs Certainty and Uncertainty are a paradox. i.e. Some people like more certainty and fewer surprises and some vice versa.
Who are you? Comment and tell me whether you like more certainty or whether you like surprises more than certainty?
In my next blog, you will learn about the next two of the human needs. My emails are going to be short purposefully so that you can quickly consume them.
by Ahmed Muzammil | Dec 27, 2015 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Management |
“Leeches are segmented worms that belong to the phylum Annelida and comprise the subclass Hirudinea…Blood-eating leeches use their suckers to attach to the skin of various animals.” – Wikipedia
Wait, what? Why Leeches?
Yes, if you are building a selfish company like a leech that sucks the blood out of your employees, your customers, your partners, your peers, your competitors, and your family. And doesn’t deliver value to them.
And you want to build a $100 Million Business, Then don’t read this post. Yes. Don’t read it!
I read a few blog posts from Forbes, Business Insider, Entrepreneur.com, and some other popular articles on this. Also, I listened to a podcast from The School of Greatness on this topic.
I have distilled what I learned into a comprehensive list of 20 mindset changes to Take Your Business To A Hundred Million Dollars:
- Find a growing market – Market Research is key here.
- Keep your business Focused.
- Be the best – Dominate your niche.
- Promote Your Passion – Personal Branding – You are the face of your business, tell a compelling story why you are passionate.
- Disrupt the Market – Don’t follow. Dominate!
- Set Unreasonably High Expectations – Don’t be mediocre, Strive for Excellence.
- Client Referral / Viral Effect – Make your customers share – excellent customer experience and customer value can take you there.
- Create a Charitable Mission for your business.
- High Life Time Value (LTV) per customer – Go for High Ticket.
- Consume data – Market News, Ride the news, Growth Hack your way.
- Form Allies / Long Term Affiliates – Pay commission to affiliates for the lifetime of the customer to an affiliate.
- Over-Invest Early in Sales – Hire Salespeople to duplicate your customer acquisition.
- Stay Scrappy on Marketing Spend – use the free-ways to deliver value and build up your audience.
- Hire Wisely – Before you hire, give them a mini project to do that’s related to the job for which you are hiring.
- Build an Infrastructure at 20x of what you think you will need – Scale up your infrastructure early.
- Get out of the building – Talk to customers, understand the market, and their pains. Address them with the help of your business.
- Think monetization from the start. Freemium is dead.
- Hire all-star A players. Say no to mediocrity.
- Know Your Numbers / Metrics.
- Fire Yourself from your business – Systemize everything.
For a limited time, I’m available for a 30-minute strategy session. We can talk about how systemization, metrics, and processes can help your business to INCREASE YOUR PROFITS. You can schedule a 30-minute call for FREE at my profile here: https://calendly.com/mzee/30min
by Ahmed Muzammil | Dec 25, 2015 | Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing |
It’s the new year soon; you would be getting ready to set your goals and resolutions. Well, we all do. Are you someone who sets goals like:
- Make my company more profitable
- Get more customers
- Get more exposure
- Meet more partners
If you are, then you should read this post. I am going to give you a step by step formula to achieve these goals at the end of this post. Let’s rock 2016 together!
Subjectivity vs. Objectivity
Can you hope to lose weight next year and lose 10 pounds? Can you hope to get more customers and make sales? Does it even make sense to hope for the best next year? Hoping is high-level thinking feeling.
“I hope I can have a million dollars in my bank account” will not magically bring in a million dollars to your bank account. You need to work for that.!
Ok, maybe if you win a lottery then there is a chance of getting the million dollars in your bank account. A sidebar fact about Lotteries, there is a higher probability for a human in this world to get killed in a terrorist attack than for her to win a lottery!
Sidebar aside, and back to “Hope”. As you can already make out what I am going to say, “Hope is not a strategy!”. Setting subjective goals like the ones I mentioned above is like hoping for the best.
Subjective goals are broad goals that you will not be able to measure by the numbers. You can’t measure progress for a subjective goal as well.
To have clarity, to achieve, to drive your team, to reach the goal, you need to see progress. To have the motivation to achieve your objectives, you need to measure progress!
If you can’t measure it, you can’t see the progress. Not seeing progress will affect your motivation as well as the team’s motivation towards the goal.
Cut subjectivity and bring objectivity to your business. When you bring objectivity, you bring organization, you bring seriousness, you bring progress, you will produce results.
So, “how can I set objectivity?”, Is that what’s running through your mind? Let’s see that in detail:
Bringing objectivity means bringing three things to the table:
- Measurable Goals
- Measurable Progress
- Measurable Results
Measurable Goals:
When you decide your goals. Make sure your goals are measurable. There’s a saying by someone, that “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.”, Same way if you overwhelm with plans (Goals) then you are setting yourself for failure. Goal setting can fail you let me show you some examples of subjective vs. objective goals.
I’d advise you to pick one big goal for your business for the next year. And three other Key Three goals for making the Big goal possible. Let me show you some examples of subjective vs. objective goals.
#1 The Big Goal
Subjective: Make my company more profitable
Objective: Increase my company’s profits by 50% (From $63,000 to $137,000)
#2 Key Three #1
Subjective: Get more customers for my business
Objective: Add 1200 new customers by 2016
#3 Key Three #2
Subjective: Get more exposure
Objective: Add 12,000 subscribers to my email list
#4 Key Three #3
Subjective: Meet more partners
Objective: Sign 12 strategic partnerships
Measurable Progress
If you thought through your goals and set it as a measurable goal already, it’s easier to track progress.
When you track progress, it’s best to adopt the model of sprints. Usually, large companies go for a three month (12 weeks) sprint. It’s a short and sweet time period to make some progress. And to review your goals.
It goes like this, divide your goal measure into twelve and set targets for each month, where you should be. Note that, during a few months your sales may surge due to external factors like climate, or political conditions. That’s the reason the 12-week sprint is going to make more sense to you.
The point is that, even if you fail to make the goal for a month, you can catch up the next month, however, your hard goal is to achieve the Quarter’s goals.
There is a book on how to make this 12-week plan work out. Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book yet. But a respectable person recommended me the book. So, it should be good.
Here’s the link to the Amazon page, if you’d like to buy that and read more about this topic: The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months
Book aside, I’ve prepared a spreadsheet dashboard with the Big Goal and Key Threes and charts for the same to track progress. Read on now.
Measurable Results
In order to measure your results, you need to have the proper systems and processes in place to report the numbers in real-time.
The best way to do something related to sales and marketing is using a reporting tool such as Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Hubspot CRM, Salesforce CRM, or others.
For finance, your existing financial reporting software can already do a good job. The free and easy way to get your finances together would be to sign-up for an online Finance software. The one I recommend is WaveApps, it’s free and also reporting is really good and user-friendly.
For other custom workflows and solutions, you can implement using manual process documents as I outlined it here. But the problem about manual process documents is that measuring requires manual effort and it will be error-prone.
Another option to have custom workflows could be by using google docs and forms. I’ll explain this in one of the upcoming posts on how you can use google docs to set up a workflow.
Even there, the measurement will be error-prone. Google docs are not the best way for you to build a custom workflow.
The best way is to use a Business Process Management software to build the workflows and also generate the relevant metrics for you automatically. You can go for custom software, but for building your business processes they are not the best way to go about.
Here’s the giveaway I promised: Google Sheet to define the Big Goal, Key Threes, and Track Progress For 2016
For a limited time, I’m available for a 30-minute strategy session. We can talk about how systemization can help your business to INCREASE YOUR PROFITS. You can schedule a 30-minute call for free at my profile here: https://calendly.com/mzee/30min
GET THE GOALS AND PROGRESS SPREADSHEET
by Ahmed Muzammil | Dec 23, 2015 | Business, Development, Startup |
Ok, today is my 5th post and the 5th day since I committed to writing one blog post every day. I was procrastinating on writing posts and sharing knowledge for a very long time. For years, I’d say.
Then I found this concept called Tiny Habits framed by BJ Fogg. It was a recommendation to me by one of my mentors Amy Hoy.
That pointed me to this concept called micro-commitments. The idea goes like this: If you set a micro-commitment, then you are likely to follow through and finish the task. That’s how the science of the human brain works.
The concept of Tiny Habits goes like this; you set micro-commitments with a trigger to do every day. Like:
- “AFTER I get up from the bed, I will do three push-ups.”
- “AFTER I lay down at night, I will think of one thing for which I’m grateful for.”
So, I broke down the Tiny Habit into a Tiny Goal. As I’m on a full-time job, it varies when I can write the blog post.
Should I write it in the morning or the evening, that doesn’t matter. My goal is to get that done within the day.
Another thing I got introduced to recently is setting Key 3s and Big 3s by my sales coach Jeremy DeMerchant of Permission To Sell. His advice me to write down and commit to the Key 3s for the week when I have my weekly coaching call with him.
I took the advice and applied to my everyday life. So I started writing a list of Key 3s for every day.
Initially, I failed with my Key 3s consistently because I always set staggering big goals, which will take a lot of time to complete. It was counterproductive in a way. This week I tried something different. I said I will write tiny goals instead of writing the big goals.
BEFORE:
My Key 3 looked like this: (Which made me procrastinate)
- Write one blog post, write one outline
- Design 10 slides
- Do 20 Push-ups
AFTER:
My key 3 for a day looks like this: (Which made me just to do it)
- Write 50 words for your blog
- Design one slide
- Do three push-ups
What happens is that these are not a biggie kinda goals for that day. So I end up convincing my procrastinator mind to say let’s do it. The good thing is that the other part of the brain that is my perfectionist will say, “Hey Ahmed, you can do more!”. That makes me complete what I started and eventually
- I’m churning out one blog post a day
- I have even designed an entire slide deck for my upcoming youtube series.
- I end up doing 15 or sometimes even 45 push-ups
It’s true, wait and see me doing wonders with this new tiny habit of mine to set my key 3s every day. It feels fulfilling to have these wins every day. And makes me more motivated towards my “Huge Goals” that I wrote down after reading “The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure” book by Grant Cardone.
There is a free email course at the Tiny Habits website that runs for five daytime. There will be a personal coach working with you to implement a few tiny habits. So, go ahead and sign-up for it if you want to learn more about tiny habits and also to give it a shot.
If you are not convinced yet about setting tiny habits to get stuff done, you can watch this TEDx Talk by BJ Fogg to get a detailed understanding of the power of tiny habits.
by Ahmed Muzammil | Dec 23, 2015 | Business, Management, Marketing |
I discussed 7 different ways to double up your profits in an earlier blog post. In this article, I am focussing on teaching you how to build more revenue for your business. Additionally, you will find some random ideas I have brainstormed for making it possible.
Get More Customers
- Increase your customer base.
- Bump up your marketing efforts.
- Build your authority figure.
- Get a front-end offer. (a small ticket offer to onboard a client)
- Hire more experienced salespeople who have already been there and done that.
- Get advice from experts. Hire a coach.
- Get your messaging clear on the product or service. Hire a copywriter to sketch it out for you.
- Use social media to generate more leads. Put up youtube videos, use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
- Build up your email list.
- On-board JV partners, bring in more clients through them.
Increase your prices
- Increase the price of your product to at least 50% above market price – this gives your product some additional perceived value. Of course, you should deliver the value and the product should be worth paying for.
- Add a bonus and increase the price.
- Add more value to your product and increase the price.
Get People to buy more from you – Increase the Customer Life Time Value (LTV)
- Add upsells to your product – build up your value ladder.
- Sell products of your JV partners to your existing customers.
- Add additional product lines to your business.
- Add different versions of your product.
- Provide training packages.
- Provide consulting packages.
by Ahmed Muzammil | Dec 21, 2015 | Business, Technology |
Every year, Gartner surveys about 3000 CIOs to understand their needs and problems and trends in their world. This year, their priorities are completely around systemization. Which makes me feel so excited.
If you haven’t read my short story about systemization, go ahead and read it by clicking this link.
Gartner proves my case again that systemization is really working and bringing more revenue to their businesses. In the next five years, CIOs expect digital revenues to grow from 16% to 37%.
Here’s the summary of the Gartner CIO Agenda Report below:
https://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/cio/pdf/cio_agenda_insights_2016.pdf
Let’s look at the top enterprise technology trends around systemization:
Business intelligence, or BI, is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data. It is the process of making meaningful decisions based on the analysis done on Raw Data.BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing,
BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data warehousing, mining, online analytical processing (OLAP), querying and reporting.
Gone are the days of acquiring hard-drives and memory and blade, or rack servers for running your company’s technology operations. Now the time is to get pay-as-you-use servers online with the click of a button.
Cloud computing is providing flexibility for businesses to pay-as-you-go for technology resources. Here are few of the benefits of moving your infrastructure to the cloud:
- Pay As You Use
- Low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
- Reliable, Scalable, and Sustainable
- Secure Storage
- Lower Expenditure
- Agile Deployment
- 24×7 Support
There are more than one billion smartphone users worldwide, and about six billion mobile phone users in total, According to the International Telecommunications Union.
The Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) trend we’ve seen popping up in enterprises is only the beginning of the shift towards taking businesses mobile and accessible from anywhere. Recently I heard a few of my friends and family moved to a remote location and were continuing to work when Chennai was affected by floods.
The good news is that many businesses are seeing the light and are now encouraging employees to work from their own personal mobile devices. This also saves the company on hardware and training costs. The CFO of Pandora Media had noticed
The CFO of Pandora Media had noticed increased employee productivity and happiness by allowing their employees to use their own devices. It’s really a win-win situation.
Cloud, social media and mobile are modern buzzwords symbolizing a broad shift toward Internet-based business and consumer software. More fundamentally, this shift implies the need for companies to adapt business models and processes in response to
More and more companies are moving towards getting online and bringing their business to the online audience. This is allowing them to make a lot of changes to their core business model.
Companies who are adopting digitization are seeing new revenue streams, a shift in the company culture, and are also finding new customers and interactions.
Facebook, Google, and other advertising providers have already bought a very targeted way of advertising to the masses. Here’s where the target demographics really matter. Facebook, Apple, and a few others even allow location-based targeting of customers.
The key objective is to promote brands, build preference and increase sales through various digital marketing.
Digital Marketing is all about utilizing the highly targeted, measurable, and interactive marketing of products or services using an online medium. Digital Marketing covers the aspects of reaching and converting leads into customers and retaining them.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools allow companies to maintain their relationship with their customers in the most efficient way.
CRM is not the only pure business but also it’s about creating a strong personal bonding with the business. Developing such bonding is helping businesses to drive towards new levels of success.
CRM systems allow to efficiently deal with all the customers, provide them with what they actually need, and increase customer satisfaction. This ends up in bringing more business as well as getting more referrals.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is business process management software that allows an organization to use a system of integrated applications to manage the business and automate many back-office functions related to technology, services, and human resources.
The most popular ERP software that almost everybody knows is SAP. There are new small-scale providers of ERP software as well. It’s all about managing the operations of a company in the most efficient way and to avoid chaos in an organization.
Information security, sometimes shortened to InfoSec, is the practice of protecting information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, perusal, inspection, recording or destruction.
Recent attacks on banks and government websites by hackers and attackers have made a significant impact both financially and also on reputation. More and more different media is arising and opening more holes to the security of the organizations. Security if ignored, it could lead to a great loss for companies.
The key concept of security is popularly known by the CIA triad:
- Confidentiality
It’s the property which is defined as Information is not made available or disclosed to unauthorized individuals, entities, or processes
- Integrity
It’s the property which defines whether the data has been not modified and is accurate throughout its lifetime.
- Availability
It’s the property that says that an information system should be available at all times and when it is required.
A recent study, in 2013 expanded the CIA tried to the IAS Octave. Now security is a wider topic:
- Confidentiality
- Integrity
- Availability
- Accountability
- Auditability
- Authenticity/Trustworthiness
- Non-repudiation
- Privacy
Wider or not, Security is an important trend that CIOs of enterprises are looking to spend on next year.
