Starting Your Own Small Business | 5 Secrets to Success!

Getting your Mobile Business Administrator (MBA) Part 3

This is the last installment on my series on getting your Mobile MBA… Which really isn’t an MBA at all But can be vastly more profitable and there’s no student loans at the end!

Getting your Mobile MBA and owning your own business, no matter how small, go hand in hand. But when your starting your own small business it seems as if there are endless pitfalls in the process. So here I put together 5 secrets to success that have helped me immensely launch & make profitable the small businesses I’ve started in record time.

starting your own small business can be fun!

Get organized before there’s anything to organize. If you are a year into your business or have only come up with a name, stop right now and get organized. I don’t mean just buy a day planner and re-arrange your pens I mean go nuts. Act as if you are organizing from the ground up a multi-million dollar conglomerate, leave no rock unturned & structure your business from the very start for massive success. I do it by acting like I’m preparing to sell my business as a franchise, I learned this model from The E-Myth’s Michael Gerber. It is an ingenious ploy to force yourself to make operation manuals for everything you do in your small business, be it invoicing clients or firing someone. This can be used at ANY stage a business is in, even if your just now getting your LLC. Here’s how in a nutshell, for more pointers on serious organization (that you will be so grateful you did later) check out The E-Myth and Getting Things Done.

• Get a FREE account for Google docs, then use them to organize each angle of your business. Create folders for clients, accounts receivable/payable, employees… as much as you can think of. Don’t fill it all up now but just lay the foundation.
• Next start working “on” not “in” your business… that means with each task you do for your business, say it is dropping off your merchandise with retail stores, be sure to write a clear, bullet point account of all you did, what you did and how you did it. If you create a ‘check list’ this is optimum. Do this right one time and you’ll have this ‘operation manual’ forever to be used by you, your employees and maybe later investors for a whole range of things.
• Take all the operation manuals you’ve created and store them both offline (in folders that mimic your google doc set up) and in your google doc system.
• When your business goes from selling 10 units a month to 1000 you’ll seriously thank yourself, then you can hire new recruits with ease and just point them in the direction of the operation manuals. Also this ensures that there is always continuity in your business proceedings and dealings.

Leverage like crazy. The word leveraging to me goes hand in hand with the idea of ‘bs-ing’ your way through things except its a little cleaned up. This was my M.O. entirely when I got started, I didn’t know squat about squat but every time I learned a little thing, even something like putting up a WordPress blog I’d use it to leverage my way up. I.E. If i knew I could put together a pretty good social media account for someone who wrote awesome copy I’d ‘trade’ them and leverage my small skills to get better skills. I wouldn’t only trade them for the services but I would spend time watching them & learning from them as they did what they were best at, that way I learned it as well. Another way to leverage is to get doors open, if you presented to client B and you have to present to client C later that afternoon be sure to drop the fact you were showing a proposal to client B earlier in the day. It makes you seem bigger, more professional & in demand… which is always a good thing. Linkedin is a perfect example of leveraging what you’ve got to get more. You may have 30 connections on Linkedin but those 30 connections have thousands of connections, who have thousands of connections. If you are interested in partnering up with a certain person who you don’t know directly use your Linkedin leverage to have a mutual connection ‘introduce’ you.

Cash flow is King. Get your cash flow up as quick as possible. You may be thinking ‘no bleep’ Maren, ‘no bleep’ but hold on… I didn’t say get a LARGE cash flow or even over $100 bucks in cash flow. Just get something, even if it is a buddy who will pay you $15 for your services, products, etc. As soon as you make your first dollar the others are faster to come, and so on and so on. Have you ever heard the phrase “making your first million is the harder than making ten million”? Its because we have psychological barriers that are always warring with our optimism & drive. So instead think making my first dollar will be harder than making my first hundred, then just grow from there…

I’m big online. Even if your running your small business out of your Grandma’s basement you can project a professional and very impressive presence online with a little bit of effort. Your website is key, now more than ever when people hear about a company they later Google it to see if it’s legit. You want to look like a big business even if you are small beans, so get on the social media networks, get an online presence & get active so you can say with fervor ‘I’m big online’.

Be a shameless self promoter. I’ve landed several thousand dollar monthly contracts by being shamelessly self promoting. I made a deal with myself a while ago that no matter what non-business thing I was doing I’d make sure to mention my business at least once, even if this is in a round a bout way. Because of this I have landed big clients & forged great relationships with influential people via just being friendly. I carry my cards which i got for cheap at hotcards.com with me everywhere and even if you don’t have that yet write your name down on a piece of paper & most importantly get their card for later contact.

So that’s my top 5 secrets to success in a nutshell, if you are starting your own small business you need to leverage as much as possible in your favor. Be aggressive, get out there & if you have any tips about things I didn’t add in the blog please comment below, I love hearing from you!