Big Business Principles You Must Apply To Your ‘Small’ Business (And Your Life)
Added 2024-07-02 15:16:04 +0000 UTCThis is a guide on what big businesses do that small business owners usually miss, ignore, or don’t even know about.
Note: These are principles and not ‘techniques’ and strategies. Principles will ALWAYS be applicable no matter the size of your business. If you are in business, you should be doing these things.
I will explain:
What those principles are
How they work
Why you should use them
These principles I will mention are the backbone of success in business (or life), regardless of your business size or business income.
1. They Are ALWAYS Advertising & Marketing
Big businesses are always getting their products and services in front of as many people as possible.
Take Nike, for example—they spend $11 million a day just on advertising. Despite being a massive, globally recognised company, they still prioritise marketing.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/685734/nike-ad-spend/
Yet, many small business owners are almost ashamed to spend any money on promotion, marketing and advertising. They cling to this fantasy of ‘growing organically.’
Let’s get real:
No one is going to magically find you. You need to have budget just for marketing and promoting your business.
You have to spend money to make people aware that you exist. If no one knows you exist, it doesn’t matter how amazing your product or service is—you won’t get any customers or clients.
Organic growth is cool but with organic growth you have no control on who you will reach organically. so a bunch of unqualified people can end up seeing your product or service but none will turn into customers.
with paid marketing / advertising, you can target your adverts at your target customer or client which will result to a much higher conversion rate when it comes to getting customers and clients.
Every major company you know has a marketing and advertising budget, regardless of their size.
Marketing is all about positioning yourself to sell.
Successful companies are big because they make a lot of money.
They make a lot of money because they make a lot of sales.
They make a lot of sales because they’re always setting themselves up to sell their stuff
They’re constantly doing things to make you aware they have products to sell. They do things to make you to visit their store or website and buy stuff.
It’s not magic. It’s intentional and strategic marketing. Big companies do this every day, every hour of the week and so should you.
They have entire departments dedicated to marketing alone.
There are people whose entire careers are focused on figuring out how to make someone buy a product.
Beyond money, effective marketing is the most important thing for your business.
In this podcast (below) I spoke on how many (new) business owners get too caught up in perfecting their craft and they don't spend enough time or effort figuring how they’re going to sell their products.
they believe that as long they have an amazing product , then the customers will come out of nowhere.
If you have an amazing product but can’t sell it, what’s the point?
If you're in business, you must prioritise marketing over perfecting your product. It’s crucial for your business's success.
This is a principle which also applies to regular life.
You cannot ‘relax’ just because you have achieved a certain amount of accomplishment(s) up to this current point.
2. A Clear Vision And Mission
Question to self: Where am I going?
Question to self: What do I want to do with my business (or life)
The answer to these questions should be clear to you and those you work with (if any)
Big businesses have already planned out the next 5-10 years. Similar to how successful people have a good roadmap for what they set to achieve in the next 5-10 years whereas unsuccessful people struggle to think past 3 weeks.
If you want massive success, do not ‘go with the flow’ and let life lead you to your ‘destiny’
Will the things in your 5-10 year plans change before you reach that time, yes most likely.
However the PRINCIPLE here is that it is important to have a plan, roadmap and a vision you are following.
Having a plan can be a simple as having a list of goals of things you wish to accomplish in the next 5-10 years.
Successful people and big business plan and visualise their futures. Nothing happens by accident.
Therefore this will make your subconscious mind to lead you doing the things you need to do in order to achieve that goal.
That’s how the law of attraction actually works.
There are too many people trying to freestyle their way through life. Too many people have the “Yeah things will end up figuring things out on their own” type of mentality.
Think DEEPLY about your future and start planning out your future because no-one else will do this for you.
Make this an intentional process you are doing often.
3. Strategic Planning
Again, don’t freestyle and YOLO your way through things.
Take everything associated with the plan of your future success.
Whether thats with business, relationships or with your life and write it down on paper or in your notes app.
Get it out of your head and empty out your brain and now you don’t have to use more brain energy from trying to remember it and you can use that brain energy for other stuff.
Your plan does not have to be perfect. most of our plans will not work out picture perfect like we imagine.
The most important thing is that you have a plan on what you want to do.
4. Dumping Bad Ideas QUICKLY
How to know something is a bad idea?
A bad idea is something that is not producing the desired results once you’ve started doing it.
You need to know what your desired results are.
You need to have ways of measuring if your action is reaching that result or not.
When an action is not reaching that result, you need to have the discipline and the confidence to scrap that idea.
Contrary to popular belief, following the “never give up and quit” advice could actually set you back.
I have written an article on knowing when is the best time to quit to something, give it a read.
A big part of success is knowing when to put an end to something which is clearly not working. Not sticking through and hoping things miraculously make a massive comeback.
It’s like those people in a bad relationship but they refuse to leave because they still have hope that one day their partner will change. Just to end up wasting 10 years in a toxic, abusive and unhealthy relationship.
Whereas it would have served them better to have left at the first signs of toxic behaviours.
The biggest companies in the world will test out 100s of variations to a single product they will end up releasing.
iPhone will test hundreds of different Iphones variations before they release 1 every year.
Big companies have more failing products than winning products. It’s just that they get rid of the losing product soo fast that you didn’t even realise it happened.
How often are you hesitating to get rid of things and costing yourself a lot of time in the process.
You must know when an idea is not working and ‘throw away the garbage’ as soon as it starts to smell. ASAP.
If you don’t throw it out asap, the it will attract rats, flies and maggots.
5. Continuous Improvement
Businesses are expected to continue improving.
If a business made $100 million dollars this year and next year they make $95 million, this becomes a big problem which will require an emergency meeting to figure out what went wrong.
Even-though 95 Mill is still a lot, businesses are expected to continue improving.
You must keep improving mainly because improvement will help you stay relevant.
Sometimes some people won’t become customers / clients for months or years later but you must give them that opportunity to do s by remaining relevant.
You remain relevant by not falling off.
You avoid falling off by continuous improvement in what you are doing.
What are you doing to stay in front of your potential customers?
What are you doing to continuously make yourself better?
Are you investing into your ongoing growth, development and advancement?
You don’t always have to create something thats totally new. You can have 1 product you improve with time.
Just like apple. They have a phone, watch, PC and earphones.
They just make upgraded versions of the same products every year.
Whereas a company like Nike, release different variations of their products.
Or you can have 1 product / service which never really changes and can be sold forever. e.g. food supplements and coaching.
The only thing they do is find different ways to market it to get it into the hands of the customers.
if you have any questions feel free to ask.
-Till next time.
