Design Success for Network Marketers
Well ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages I want to welcome you to my 100th post at Doulos Marketing! In many respects it seems like I just started and in other ways it seems like I have bee doing this for ever. Now with 100 posts under my belt, I thought I would go back to my core thought and speak to it again.
What do you think? How do you define a successful business? Is there more to life than just money?
Image via Wikipedia
In the midst of an extremely turbulent worldwide economy and in a generation of people who are more and more concerned with the social impact of both governments and businesses, it is important for current and prospective business owners to consider creating a “legacy” business. This is the kind of business that considers more than just the bottom line of profit. (Although profit is a good place to start.) It looks at products, services, suppliers, and even customers in ways that relate to social impact and the “greater good.”
Now before you start to panic or find yourself in need of smelling salts, I am advocating nothing more than an idea that many of the great industrial capitalists of the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. One (Andrew Carnegie) has been widely quoted as saying that you should spend the first half of your life making money and the second half giving it away! If more companies looked at life with this kind of vision, the more they could argue for government to be strong, but limited (I think that idea was expressed in the founding documents of the USA.)
The antithesis of this kind of “legacy” business is the “greed” oriented business that sees only profits and dollars earned as the sole interest of the corporate structure. Another of the industrial giants of the same era of Andrew Carnegie (name withheld on purpose) was reported to say when asked how much money is enough, “One dollar more than I have.” In his mind the only thing a business was to provide was profit to the owners.
I think that there are three essentials to creating a legacy business:
I think that if you are going going to have long-term success in our current economic condition, the “legacy” business model is right choice. To do otherwise is to throw your lot in with those seen by so many as greedy profiteers whose only goal is to get more in order to get more. It’s time to choose. Where will you and your business stand?
In what ways are you acting as a legacy business? How can budding entrepreneurs learn from you to start right and stay on the right path?
Image by Tom Raftery via Flickr
I was reading a book today about managing a social media strategy for your business. I was struck by something that the authors said that I have thought to be true for some time. While speaking to the responsibility a business has to its social media followers they said, “Consumers are evaluating their providers with the social responsibility yardstick today more than ever. Companies that don’t measure up in the consumers” eyes risk being taken to task and exposed of all the world to see.” (The Social Media Management Handbook, Nick Smith and Robert Wollan with Catherine Zhou, pg. 13 – Affiliate Link) This is often called social entrepreneurship and it is as important for local businesses as it is for multinational corporations.
My take on this quote is that, like it or not, we live in a world where people want more from the businesses that they work with than just the product they sell or the services they perform. Instead, they want to work with companies and entrepreneurs that see their place in the world as something more than just a place to make a dollar. They want to see that we are concerned with what we produce, how we produce and how our products/services/business benefit not only the customer, but society at large.
Even though local companies/entrepreneurs don’t have the time or the resources that large companies do, customers still expect to see and hear that your company is concerned about making society better with our products, our services and/or a portion of our proceeds. The more that you make this social entrepreneurship known, the more your customers will see the heart of your company and the more prepared they will be to not only buy your products/services but the more they will be your vocal advocates both on and offline.
Now it’s your turn!
What do you think? How do you make your social responsibility known and visible to your customers?
Image via Wikipedia
I have been working on information for a business lunch over the weekend. I am making a presentation at this meeting in which I have ten minutes to describe my business and its value proposition to potential clients. Trying to boil my whole business down to a ten minute presentation has been an interesting exercise for a talker like me.
Basically what I do is to help new businesses in creating a business identity. I do this primarily by learning as much as I can about the business owner, their “loves and hates,” their “wants and wishes,” their “passions and purpose.” Then the goal is to mold the business around who these businesses owners are as a person rather than molding them around their business.
Let me give you an example to bring this idea into the light. I was recently reading about a real estate agent who had developed an amazing niche market for herself. She has a real, personal passion for women who are in a transitional period in their lives (divorce, death of a spouse, etc.). Because of this passion, she built an online presence to seek ways to help women in this condition, to provide them with information, counsel and advice. As part of what she does to help these women she offers her services to help meet their housing needs.
What makes this niche work is that she has a real passion for helping the women who come to her and that passion shines through. She wants what is best for them, even if that does not include her receiving a commission check. The passion she shows shines through in every thing she does and she is best know for her work with women in transition, NOT her work as a real estate agent.
In creating a business identity she has made her life’s passion the driving force in her business success. That, my friend, is the way it ought to be!! Letting life and passion mold your business will help you get up every day and will make what you do seem less like “work” and more like just being who you are.
Image by Napalm filled tires via Flickr
Yesterday I wrote about the failure of the Great Society plan of President Lyndon Johnson. I stated yesterday that the failure of the Great Society was that it made people wards of the state rather than finding the way to unleash their personal skill set to free them from the bonds of their poverty. It was great for securing votes, but did little to make our society “great.”
Today I want to consider a three-fold bottom line that can free people to their best selves while bringing to the forefront the makings of a great society.
As a business owner, the bottom line is considered the “holy grail” of metrics. I agree, but the question is what do we place on that all important bottom line? I think that three things should be considered:
1. Cash – it takes money to accomplish most everything in this world and the financial success of a business must be considered in the development of a great society. If a business is not successful in this metric, it cannot survive to be successful in the others.
2. Community – it takes a sense of community for businesses to take their place in the creation of a great society. When business sees profit as the only real metric, they will be tempted to do things detrimental to community to make the profits flow. Having a keen sense of obligation to the community in which your business creates profit is essential.
3. Creativity – it only makes sense that successful businesses would look for opportunities to create opportunities to train successive generations of entrepreneurs in the values of success and the principles necessary to accomplish it. By creating these opportunities for the next generation, business owners can inspire innovative thinking, they can allow new entrepreneurs to “get their feet wet”, and they can train a new generation of business owners who understand all three metrics of business success.
When, as business owners, we understand the three-fold bottom line we will know a kind of success that money alone can never bring. What experiences have you had with these three success metrics?
Image via Wikipedia
In the 1960′s, then President Lyndon Johnson created a set of social programs that he dubbed “The Great Society.” Nearly 50 years later, the results of those social programs are dubious at best. You see the reason for failure in programs like those proposed by President Johnson is that they made people more dependent on government and less innovative and entrepreneurial. People became (and in many cases stayed) wards of the state rather than developing their own skills to meet their needs in life and society.
I have a vision of the great society just as President Johnson did. My vision differs though. Primarily because my vision unleashes the creativity, compassion, and love for community in every person. My vision builds the esteem of the citizenry by allowing them to try AND fail, to learn from their mistakes and then to try again. My vision is shaped by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King as he spoke about being know by the content of one’s character rather than the color of your skin.
The great society can indeed come to fruition in our world when we look at the struggles we face as challenges to be better people, to live better lives, and to help others reach their greatest potential. It will require us to develop a “three-fold” bottom line (stay tuned for the definition in a later post) for our businesses rather than just the current “get all you can, can all you get, and sit on the lid” approach.
Do you want to help create the great society envisioned by people around the world for thousands of years? What do you think it will take? How can we start today?
Image via Wikipedia
On August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the world heard the famous “I have a dream” speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King. It was a dream that spoke of throwing out the stereotypes of the past and looking forward to a brighter future. To me the most powerful line in his speech was when Dr. King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
While I in no way consider myself to be the man that Dr. King was nor am I trying to “make hay” through the use of his words, I am also a dreamer, and I have a dreamer’s dream.
My dream is a very long and complicated one and I will not try to explain it all in this one post (I bet you are thankful for that!) However, I really need to say something today because I must.
The basis of my dream is my faith and, without getting into the details of that here, suffice it to say it is the driving force in all that I do. My faith teaches me that I have an obligation to live with and to treat with dignity all of mankind whether they agree with me or whether they do not. Now within this obligation of showing dignity, I do have the right to like or not like who I choose. However, my treating someone with dignity is not determined by whether I like them personally or not.
In the realm of business, my dream is to find and work with a group of people and businesses that see the opportunities of business not just as a way of enriching themselves, but as a way of making the world a better place. I dream of a future where business owners really care for their customers/clients again and where the care of those customers goes beyond product/services and includes things that benefit their communities as well. (Philanthropy, conservation of natural resources, and care for people in need are examples of such things.)
My dream is to bring the “small town” approach back to the urban world I live in and to teach that approach to new businesses/entrepreneurs before they get entrenched in the business for profit alone mindset. I want to be able to talk to my customers, clients, and other business owners as friends and fellow members of a community rather than just those who allow my business to grow and profit.
My dream is that when I or others I have the privilege to teach treat people and the community with dignity, that the dream will spread. I dream that people will respond to this way of being treated by treating others the same way. Where conflicts exist now, they can be worked through. Where the foolishness of hatred exists, it can be defeated. And where those who refuse to see a brighter future to come will loose their positions of power and influence on those who current follow them.
I don’t know why I needed to say this today, but I did. So, there it is … the skeleton of my dream. If you would like to comment, please do. If you would like to talk about the details of the dream, I would love to do that. Just let me know.
Now, go out and live your dream!
