Image by andycarvin

Do you invoke fear in your employees? Or maybe you’re cool, but you got that great at paperwork, bad with people kind of manager working for you.

Today I want to talk about something most people don’t think about when it comes to their company - internal fear.

The internal workings of a company and interpersonal relationships between your managers and employees are just as important as treating your external customers like treasures.

In their quest to earn a profit, many entrepreneurs forget there is a such thing as an internal customer (internal customers are your employees). Many times these customers buy from you, but more importantly their attitudes and work ethic reflect how well your business will do.

If you own a company, it’s important to keep a watchful eye over your staff and read between the lines.

Image by James Young Art

I can’t tell you how many times I hear or read about something and go, “That’s a good idea; good thing I’m already doing that.”

As entrepreneurs, it is important to achieve a level of enlightenment where you unconsciously and automatically choose good decisions.

You need to see what you should do, what you need to do, and what you would like to do and how you should go about implementing them in the right way without much research. It should become something automatic.

For me, things become second nature by the way I approach topics and new ideas, apply them to what I do, and practice them. It’s more in how I absorb them into the overall big picture rather than simply understanding what I’m reading.

I’m always learning. That is the key, to learn. Learning allows the brain to make connections with similar and dissimilar things. This can lead to creativity. Of course experience is part of it, too. But learning comes first.

Image by oberazzi (Tim O’Brien)

A quick note to thank everyone for giving Lindsey and me a week’s break from blog posts for the birth of our son, Ethan. He was born on 4/8/08 and yes, we no longer sleep!

Is a question just a question or is there a deeper meaning behind it?

When someone asks me a question, I try to look beyond the surface of what they are asking and try to find out what they truly are meaning. I find many times people don’t know how to ask for what they really want.

As an entrepreneur, it’s your job to solve problems. When people ask meaningless questions, you need to figure out what it is they truly want and then fulfill those needs for them. That’s how you win.

Let’s look at an example.

Ok, maybe not this simple Image by superciliousness

This may be my last post for a week. My wife is about to have our second child and I may have to skip a week of posts. I promise to be back shortly providing great content we can chat about.

I can’t stress enough the importance of keeping things simple – in everything you do.

Why?

Because if you confuse your customer, they’ll say no.

This doesn’t mean you can’t put together a complicated website or a chef can’t whip up a spicy dish with tons of ingredients and prep time. It means the end result for your customer must make sense to them. They must know how to do what they need to do with little effort. There can be no distractions or confusion.

As a real estate investor, many times I can find ways to put a deal together that would ultimately net me the most profit while also giving my buyer or seller what they really are asking for.

What’s that the title said? Did it say there’s a plan I can use to play it safe and build wealth at the same time?

This budgeting plan won’t make you wealthy, but it will optimize your position for creating wealth while setting you up for retirement even if you don’t hit the jackpot. It also will provide protection during a slow economy when people hurt for money.

I was inspired to write this post because a) I know this stuff and b) I just finished reading an article on CNNMoney.com which left a confused grin on my face. The link I clicked on to read the article was entitled Making A Budget.

Sounds great, right? Well it taught me nothing when it comes to making a budget.

So here’s the budget I know and love.

Image Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Bruce Lee once mentioned how the way martial arts were designed, you had to keep training or you lost your skill over a short time. As long as one trains, they can maintain their skill, but as soon as they quit, they immediately start to decline in their abilities.

And after two years of quitting, they are only a mere shadow of themselves.

For me, to stay on my A-game I need to constantly be pushing myself to learn new concepts and practicing those that I have already learned. This doesn’t mean I set aside time for practice like I use to do when I was a student of Kung-Fu, but it means my mind rarely rests.

The following are some techniques and good practices I use to maximize my potential. Many of them I don’t think about and thus my wife has pointed out to me that I do.

Image by Commack Guitars

I first began learning persuasive skills when I was 15.

I worked in a guitar store and sold, you guessed it, guitars. Rarely did someone walk in and say, “I’ll take it.” I typically had to do a little convincing to get them to buy. No wait, not just convince them to buy, the owner wanted me to sell them the most expensive guitar they could afford.

At the time, he was the entrepreneur, not me.

Since then, I’ve learned the value of being a persuasive person and how it relates to business. Whether it be content sales or face-to-face sales, there is an art to persuasion and there are key
components to the trade.

My 5 keys to being a persuasive person consists of being observant, knowledgeable, listening, timing, and making use of storytelling.