Tuesday, October 30, 2007

How To Grow Your Business without spending a single cent

How To Grow Your Business without spending a single cent” written by the great motivational guru Justin Herald. Here he has discussed all the things in straightforward and confident style. This book describes how the author turned $50 into a $25-million business in seven years without ever going into debt or borrowing money—and without a business degree. Aspiring entrepreneurs are shown Herald's secrets, which include creative, innovative, and inexpensive marketing ideas that harness the power of branding in order to showcase innovative products and services.Justin Herald grew a multi-million dollar business from just $50--all without spending a cent on advertising, marketing or promotion.
So how did he do it? What are his secrets? How to grow your business without spending a single cent is packed with creative, innovative marketing ideas that don't cost a lot of money.
Learn how to harness the power of branding to showcase your products and services to the market. Don't go into overdraft or waste money on ineffective advertising--try some of these simple ideas today and watch your business grow.
Herald started Attitude Inc@. Though it was a crowded market he had to think of to be different and to stand out. The easiest to stand out is to have price differentiation with the competitors.

To grow a business you need more sales, you need more customers and you need a fresh approach more often. Now to gain those things you can do it one of two ways. You can do it the hard way, spending a lot of money hoping and praying that the customer notices your funky advertisement or you can do it the easy and less expensive way, and find what it is about your business that separates you from the rest.
One may have heard the old expression, “Sell the Sizzle not the Sausage”. This is so true of finding and promoting your point of difference. That does not mean to always create new and different aspects of your business; it is about pointing out already existing aspects. If you find you point of difference and you start capitalizing on it, you could potentially create a niche market for yourself.

When one understands what your point of difference is, you create a way to target your customers in a totally different way than your competitors. Ultimately, this will give you an edge on your competition. But make sure that the customers are aware of your point of difference, else it is wasted effort.

 Attracting media attention for free

In this chapter the author want to highlight an area that could potentially create positive results for your business; it will not cost you anything except your time and is certain to create a huge impact on your potential customer base.
If you want to know what are you doing and potentially highlight your business and the story behind your business, you need to let them know that you are out there. Persistence is the key to success of any business. As you are trying to do advertise your business the media is also trying to find out some free advertising out of you so that they will drop you like a hot potato. Getting attention through the media is all about going where your customers are, being involved in their day-to-day lives. Another area to think about when targeting the media is to watch what is actually gong on in the media on a daily basis.

 Using your customers to grow your business

The first and most important thing I had to do was to see if the customer or consumer was truly interested in my product. The most important key to business growth is understanding your customer’s perception of your product or service. One of the funny thing that most of the business owners do is, the most important person we have to prove to that we have what it takes is our self, but we seem to spend most of our time proving it to others. It is very important to focus on the customers and treat them as your opportunity. Customers are to be treated as a great resource. It is al about using your customer and grow the business. It is always better to ask questions to the customers and get the feedback and this is the only way to get difference from the other business owners. That does not mean that you need to come up with some funky and way-out-there idea or concepts to get your customer involved. But you need to capitalize on their loyalty. If you do your job well the customers will take care of you and help you get your accomplishment. Again never assume that your customers know everything about your business. This job s yours; to inform the customer about your business. There are some benefits if your customer understands you then they itself do the advertisement kind of thing for you and give help when required. By seeking ways to provide value first, you’ll understand with clarity what your customers will need — and in turn, what they will buy from you. You should treat your customers as one of your vital element in the growth of our business. Lastly if you look after your customers, they will look after you.

 Understanding what the customer wants costs nothing

All any customer wants is to be listened to and understood. This costs nothing! Remember the old saying ‘the customer is always right’’. But a lot of time the customer is wrong! Simple really. But that does not mean that he pointed as the wrong one rather some smart business owner and salesperson do not do it. They do not want to lose the customer by disrespecting them. To build a sustaining business that grows revenue every year, focus on the secret sweet spot we absolutely, totally, and almost-illegally love: Customer retention.
Customer retention rocks because instead of restarting your sales efforts, you’re building on top of what you already have.
1. When you can retain a customer’s pocketbook the following year, you’ll — guess what — retain your revenues.
2. Then, any additional sale will improve your revenues from the previous year.
Yeah, you probably won’t retain 100% of your customers. But if you’re providing value, you’ll keep a good majority around, who’ll then likely refer you to even more customers. If you truly care about your customer’s success, you’ll do something pretty valuable. When you genuinely care about your customers, you start doing whatever it takes to improve their lives/businesses/bottom-lines/etc.

 The three most important ingredients of any business: (1) service (2) service (3) SERVICE

The art of serving your customers is the biggest key to grow your business and ensure it as an ongoing success. Giving great customer service is the easiest and cheapest way to grow your business. ‘ Do something that others aren’t doing!’ So the whole area of serving the customer is a great way for you to separate yourself from your competitors. There are different service traits discussed in this chapter such as “Greeting every customers”, “Never Argue with your customers”.

 Keep an eye on your expenses each week

Every business grows either of two ways one by increasing your income or second by decreasing your expenses. The later one doesn’t cost you a cent. This can be done improving the profits and looking after the expenses. Cash is king in any business. The minute you have to start following up for payment is the minute you start spending the profit you would have made out of that sale. The next area to be given emphasis is accounting.

 Forming strategic alliances costs nothing

Starting a business can be a daunting task. It is not only in the financial aspect but also the fact that you really don’t know. Small alliances can make a huge difference. That is the reason allying yourself with someone who is already in business and has a track record can be a good option. But before that you should be sure enough that the strategic partnership path is aiming you towards the win-win situation.

 Building your business is all about building relationships

Here the author has discussed something related to build relationship with the customers they may be your channel partners or your end customers. If you show your customers more than the sale, your sale will definitely thrive. Customer branding is more important than the expert appraisal. It can be done by just not talking about the product but giving them the experience and forming a relation with them. Building strong relationships takes time and effort but it does not cost you a cent. Building relationship with the suppliers is equally very important.

 Call in favours; ask for advice

There will be a lot of people who will be wiling to give you advice on your business but it is up to you that which advice is needed and you actually can utilize in your business. There are ‘experts’ everywhere and many of them cost money even. But if you do not watch closely, the advice they give may end up costing you money instead of making you money. There are times when advice of a business coach is relevant and helpful but its up to find out the right person to help you with good advice. Accountability is another area which does not cost you a cent and this really happens when you work for someone else. Another aspect of being accountable is to never think that you are bigger than your success.

 Aim for success outside your business

Most of the businessman thinks of some tangible outcomes of their business. These desires are the driving forces that get a lot of us from the concept of business ownership. So we need to forget all the real reasons and need to think over the business. It is very easy to lose sight of the original goals but its hard to get caught up in the day-to-day running of business. So basically 4 aspects are to focused:
1. Direction: To keep in sight the real reasons for starting the business.
2. Blurred Vision: Confusion, impatience and frustration will definitely slow down your business and all these happens due to a blurred vision regarding your vision.
3. Hindsight: Regretting for some particular mistake is to avoided rather steps should be taken to handle the situation and make better decisions.
4. 20/20 vision: This is something to see thing more clearly.


Entrepreneurs can see things normal business owners can’t. It is always better to see the smallest thing and gain bigger. This book is really about going back to the basics of good business practices and a recurring theme in the book is that it is the simple things that become the most effective tools for business success.
I would highly recommend this book as an extremely worthwhile read for any business owner who desires to boost the performance of their business.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

SMILE: Its only for U

Every individual in this world is having a child. This child is very innocent in itself that is away from all the evils of life and let the life in his own way. This really builds a creative world where there is no footprint of evils. The importance of this child is not been given the enough importance which it should hold. Although many try to keep it for a long but it gets blurred and the clarity of it get lost in this busy world where everyone is trying to find out business form one another.

I don’t want to build any relation with you but I was unable to restrict myself to share my feelings to you. The Smile you carry is really the most valuable and the most powerful ammunition you carry.

Don’t let this child to be deracinated and lost somewhere in this busy world.
A smile can definitely overcome the childish behavior and make you more confident and relaxed if you are in the most serious circumstances. Smile of yours creates an aroma of patience and jolliness.

The innocence in your smile can really make the other person will always feel to be in strength. Your smile can definitely rejuvenate a person who is very much frustrated from his life and have become very restless. Your Smile is not the cheesy grin that most of us put on our faces in order to have our picture taken.
Your smile is a curved line that can set things straight.
"The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you.
If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you."

So Always Keep Smiling.
Never leave the smile from your face.
Your Smile is certainly a stress RE-ducer rather than a stress PRO-ducer.


“pani me pathar na mar dena, kyunki use koi aur bhi pita hai
apne chehre se muskaan ko khone na dena, use dekh kar koi aur bhi jita hai.”