In my third series on business, I will be sharing the ways that you could grow your business exponentially. Business can make someone rich, provided you can grow it quick enough. Having just a small business all the time will not take you anywhere. You need to figure out ways which you could keep doubling your income. I will share some of the tips you could employ to get the results you wanted, but it will still depend on your enthusiasm. You need the passion AND the hard work to make your business work even harder for you.

First, you need to work for the business for the first 2 years and build up a strong foundation, train enthusiastic staffs, and more importantly you need to learn how to delegate jobs. Doing the business alone will not make it a success because each of us has only 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. You can never ask for more. So, you need to train up some competent employees and get them to commit themselves in the business as much as you.

I did say that we only have 24 hours in a day and 7 days a week, so how to make sure that your business keeps growing? You need a lot of hands to make this work, and it is not as easy as it sounds. The tricky part here is to try to DUPLICATE yourself. Of course you can't just photocopy yourself. So, you need to TRAIN up your employees and give them some perks for jobs well done. We always say that 2 brains are better than 1.

We want to make use of 1% from 100 people rather than 100% from 1 person. You do this by LEVERAGING. Be a leader and get your employees to copy what you do. You don't tell them what to do, but you show them by example. Imagine if you have 100 employees doing the same job as you everyday, you would have 2400 hours a day and 700 days a week. So, if you can get the revenue of $30,000 per month by yourself, putting this leveraging into place would bring you a revenue of $3,000,000 per month. Is this not what we want to achieve?

You must never save on marketing or advertising expenses. These are good expenses for your business. You need to let the whole world knows what you are doing. Start your marketing small if you only have a small budget, and when this brings you increased result, start growing your advertising budget. Sponsor or run some events in your local business area to attract more attention. There are lots and lots of events which you could sponsor, and the good part is, even a small amount is good enough.

Doing these would ensure a stable growth of your small business and of course, your income! In times to come, I will add more tips and tricks you could do with your business. So stay tuned.

Howdy visitors, the Part 1 of this post has been gaining attention since it was posted, so I thought this is a good time for me to continue with Part 2. Just a brief review, I discussed on the 3 basic ways to get you started on your journey to success and getting rich. We have to break ourselves free, think rich to be rich and most importantly is not just to sit there but act upon it. A lot of us have a lot of ideas, but do we have the strategies to work on them? How did people like Donald Trump and Richard Brenson do it? Most of the richest people in Forbes 500 rich list were ordinary people like us. But how did they get so rich in such a short time, or better yet, what are their SECRETS? Well, to tell you the truth, there are no secrets these people are hiding. There are a few strategies that they employed during their humble beginnings to work their way up, and they will be discussed in this part :-

1. Read, read and read more books. It may sound boring, and you may tell me that "education or certification has nothing to do with getting rich". I am here to tell you that you are right! I do not feel that what we have been taught were relevant in the business world. While that is a valid statement, but we need the basic knowledge of the business overview, how businesses work and also knowing how economic cycles affect our businesses. I would suggest that you read a few books on Management, a few books on Economics, and a few books on Taxation. Having that basic knowledge of taxation in your respective country does help. You need to know how you could save on taxes running your business! So, spend at least 1-2 years prior to starting up your business is sufficient enough.
2. When starting up, do not depend on your employees to run your business. You need to be your OWN employee after your have started your business. You need to work in order for your business to work! No rich man in the world would tell you to start employing people to run your business on auto-mode. As the owner of the business, you need to oversee your operations and work out ways to overcome problems as they occur. No business is fool-proof at the beginning, and you cannot afford those problems. The best person to mend these "wounds" is no one but yourself. So work the way you expect your employees to work for you.
3. Start your networking early. Do not wait until a time when you think your business is growing to network, as it would be a little late by then. Time is money, so by wasting time, you are incuring opportunity costs. The best people you could start networking with are those within your business cycle. You may start by getting to know your competitors. As you are still just a start up, they wouldn't mind chatting with you, and from those conversations, you would get to notice how they run their businesses and then compare it with yours. It would only benefit you in the beginning stage because they are not afraid of telling you more about the business you are running. Like I said, you are just a start up at this point, so you do not pose any threats to them, YET.
4. When you think you are ready to grow your business, get around to look for the best deals in a little advertising. You need the publicity for more people to know your existance, and it wouldn't hurt to spend some money for this purpose. You could start by distributing flyers to those around your neighbourhood, then if you think the traffic is building, start giving your best services to them. Words of mouth is your best tool. If your products and services are good, people will eventually talk about them to their peers. You get free advertising. There is no use going to newspapers for advertising at this stage as you will incur more expenditure, but your business is out of reach to most of the readers. You could try smaller community circulars though, as they are more concentrated in your area.
5. Having done your publicity, you will notice a greater demand for your products or services. Now, you can think about employing more people to help you around the business. You should choose those that are competent though, but most importantly, your future employees should possess good characteristics and attitudes. You don't want them to start ruining your business now do you? Start learning to delegate the jobs around and get them used to the environment. Lead them as how you would be running the business. They will learn from your actions and follow your footprints eventually.

These 5 steps will have your business up and running. I will not go into much details now as then the post would look as long as a business proposal. So, I will stop here and allow your some time to ponder upon. If you have started your business and if it is still in its infancy, you could employ these strategies to get your started. There are other ways that you may think of, and you can try them. After all, business is about trial and error. As I said, no business is fool-proof, but as long as you are able to make up for the errors, you are alright. Next on my list for this series are ways you can start growing your businesses exponentially.

In this post, I will focus on the first aspect of all small businesses, the "Start up". Starting up is always the hardest for any budding entrepreneur. The first hurdle that you have to put up with is thinking of a perfect business idea. This is the first step in business planning. While it may sound easy to come up with hundreds of ideas and putting them down on paper, most of them are hard to be executed. I have personally been approached by a few youngsters to comment on their ideas that they "think" would make them successful and rich. Well, I should be frank. Some of them do have GREAT business ideas, but you are always limited by your capacity. So, I would like to share some of my knowledge on how you can overcome your first hurdle.

Whenever you think of a business idea, take a paper and a pen and write it down. I can think of at least 3 business ideas in a day, and I have a list FULL with them. If you do this, soon you will come to see how much your list has grown in a very short time. By doing this, you will not forget the ideas that you thought of earlier. So, what do you do when your list starts to grow? It is time that you do your research on each of them. You may need some time to do this though, but it is so essential that it actually helps you to "filter" out the ones that are out of your reach.

Spend at least a few days to a week to research and analise EACH and every business ideas on your list. You can start doing your research online, discuss them with friends, family or ask those that are doing the business. Do not be afraid to ask, as many of them would be more than happy to help you. Trust me, I have tried asking some business owners the ways they started up their businesses, where to get supplies and how they market their businesses. Most of them even shared their stories with me for hours! By asking the right person, you stand a better chance in succeeding in the business that you intended. You have to first make sure though, that they are successful too themselves.

Here are the few ways you can conduct your analysis :-

1. First, you need to have a basic idea of how much the start up cost would be. Start filtering out those which would cost you a fortune, or those which you have no financial ability to support.
2. Having done that, we move on to the second step which is to analise the demographics for the area which you intend to start the business. The information you should be collecting are your intended audience, the purchasing power of your audience, the population in that area and your potential competitions.
3. When all those information has been collected, you may want to start thinking about the growth prospects of your ideas. You require some thinking skills to make this work though, as you would be looking into some thing in the future. There might be some resources that may help you with this on the internet, so try to look around.
4. Next on the list would be to think of the marketing strategies which you are adopting to promote each of your ideas. Different businesses have different marketing channels, so avoid having only ONE similar marketing strategy for ALL of your ideas. While it may work on some, but it might not work as well for some. Once you are over with this, see if you have the sufficient capacity carry on with the strategies. Cross off those ideas which require strategies that you are unable to support.
5. Surveys help a long way, althought it may seem like an "old" way, but it is still one of the most effective way to search for a workable business idea. Start conducting surveys among your peers, relatives, strangers or by using online survey platforms. You may incur some costs here, but trust me, it is well worth for the amount that you have invested in. You may be able to discover what are the NEEDS of those around you. Setting up a business that is needed is one of the success factors.

When you have done from numbers 1-5, notice that your list have shrunk in size. Well, if it does, then congratulations! It shows that you are have put in serious thoughts into your planning. You would then need to compile all the information and the ideas that suit your situation most. The following articles would cover the other hurdles that would eventually lead you to starting your own small business. My comments box is always open for discussion. If you think this post would help you, please post a comment for this post. I welcome any questions which you may have as well. Questions can be posted in the comments box too.

P.S. If you are leaving a comment, please also include your blog URL in order for me to get back to you. There would be no other way for me to reach you if you do not leave your URL.

Did this title get into you? If it does, then congratulations, as now you are one step closer to getting rich. Mind you though, that I couldn't make you rich overnight, but I could merely just HELP you to be rich. Basically, there are only three, yes 3 ways to get you started on your journey to getting rich, and I am not joking. Read on to see how the one beside you could get really rich, but you couldn't!

Break yourself free
Make a change in your life! You should be realising it by now that you can never get rich just by keeping that 9-to-5 job 0f yours, EVER! Your job could just make you a Millionaire in your lifetime merely, but you will never be as rich as Donald Trump, Richard Branson or Marc Benioff with your job. These people have learned that working for other rich people is not a choice. You need to take the very FIRST step in getting you there, working for yourself. It is not going to be easy though, but you have to stop giving yourself excuses and start getting on it!

Think rich to be rich
It sounds a little weird, but I am sure you have seen books writing about it. The authors did not deceive you, neither do I intend to. Think about the 3 names mentioned above. What do they have that is common within their community, but is different from ours? It is their mindset and their desire to be rich. One's value is not just based on how much money he has, but how much financial knowledge was acquired. You need first to get the right mindset and feed your minds with countless of financial knowledge. Put it bluntly, if you take away ALL of either Richard Benson's or Donald Trump's money and assets, they will still be able to get them back within a matter of years. If you were to take all the money off a person on the streets who have just striked a jackpot, he will never recover the money. This is because if your mind was set to be rich, you will be rich!

Don't just sit there
If you think that by sitting there reading through this post would make you rich, NO! You need to read and then DO something! Action speaks louder than words, and the earlier you act, the more time you have to make up for any mistakes. Whatever you have planned all these while prior to reading this post just needs some immediate actions. Take out your pens and papers, write down all your ideas, and pick the ones you are able to start working on immediately. There is no such thing as a "rich idea" or a "poor idea". No idea would make you rich unless you do them. When you act on them, take note of your business growth. If it is positive, then congratulations, as you are on the way! Keep doing them and think of ways to grow your business bigger.

These are what you should do to start your journey to richness, but it will still boil down to your determination and your commitment. Do nothing and hoping for success is not give you anything. You will just keep seeing more and more people around you striking it rich, while you are not. In the next part, I will discuss the strategies rich people take to stay ahead.