Trizle

1. Think big company.
2. Most of their stuff sucks.

Now, think:

1. New startup entrepreneurs.
2. They're vying to dominate the world.
3. They're slowly and gradually tinkering for the perfect product.
4. They're constantly pushing back their launch dates.
5. "We just got to perfect it some more," they yell.

What happens?

They run out of cash, while their "perfect" product never gets released.

Meanwhile, Big.Suck.Company grabs market share with Big.Suck.Product.

BOO.

As it turns out, you can't @#@! sell nothing; but, you can sell the S.U.C.K.

You. Ready.

Entrepreneurs lose customers because they're sitting at home, thinking, wondering, and tinkering.

• Result: Lost customers, daily/constantly/until-the-end-of-time.

Waiting to demo a product to Customer X because you haven't perfected the product yet?

Slap. Yo. Self.

Tip:

• #1: Stick to launch dates / meeting times.
• #2: Get in the habit of launching sucky things, by deadlines.
• #3: Remember, Customer X prefers S.U.C.K. over blank.

Psychologically, you won't want to look like a dumb-dumb anyway, so you'll release something better than you might have imagined. Trust. Us.

At the very least, you'll give yourself a shot to impress Customer X.

(And, your subsequent constant iterations, and refinements to Customer X's ideas, will enthrall the major @$@ out of him further.)

Don't believe it?

Experiment!

If you don't believe anything you just read, try this:

• Test on Customer A: Show him your S.U.C.K. product.
• Test on Customer B: "Perfect" your product first before you present.

See who you attract more to the product.

You'll be pleasantlyfrokokin surprised.

As that one dude said, eighty percent of success is showing up.

Show. Up.

1. What you do today: Doesn't matter.
2. What you do habitually: Matters.

Think: You + Brushing + Teeth

How does a 30-year-old get to 20,000 brushes?

1. Not in one sitting.
2. Not in freakish blocks (e.g., 1,000 times, x20 times)

It's this:

• Twice-a-day, everyday, for 30 years.

Revolutionary change MOTHER-$%#@%#@%#@ check.

Growth. In. Bits.

Freakish success doesn't rely on one magical event; it relies on what you do today, everyday, for X years.

How does a 500-lb slob become a Richard-Simmons-freshtastic?

• Freaks: magical grasshopper.
• The Wise: 10 windsprints, every day, for 365 days a year.

How do you become a the craziest-baddest-of-the-badass marketer in town?

• Freaks: magical grasshopper.
• The Wise: Learn one new marketing tip, everyday, for 365 days a year.

How does a start-up get to a million-dollar in revenue?

• Freaks: magical grasshopper.
• The Wise: X new customers every week, for 52 weeks.

Like a Plant

Try implementing revolutionary change in X days/weeks, and you'll either: fail, suck, die.

At best, you'll burn out.

If you're a 30-year-old, you've probably eaten over 30,000 meals. How?

1. You did it habitually.
2. You did it constantly.

...and you'll still continue your prolific streak of 10,000 meals every decade.

What You Do Everyday

What you do everyday determines what your business will become in X years.

• R&D'ing everyday like you're about to affect change 10 years down-the-road: S.U.C.K.
• Improving one new customer's life everyday for 10 years: Freakish business.

Choose your daily tasks wisely.

Who wins at the end?

The MOTHER@$#%@@#%$@ TORTOISE.

Everyday, I/we will: _____________.

1. You sell everything at a fixed margin.
2. Zero customers come to you.
3. You suck.

How do you bring in customers?

1. Busy gas stations do it by selling gas at a loss, so customers could buy stuff at their convenience stores.
2. Busy supermarkets do it by selling milk at a loss, so customer could buy their more profitable items.
3. Busy dental practices do it by offering free teeth whitening, so they could generate additional opps. and a recurring customer.

The strategy:

1. Sell an enticing item at a ridiculously low price (either where you're selling at a loss or no gross margin).
2. Bring in customers to sell more profitable items.

How Fry's Promotes its Stores

Frequent Fry's Electronics promotions:

1. Hot dogs and Coke.
2. $0.25.
3. Unlimited.

Result:

• Freakish customers.
• Freakish exposure to their profitable electronics.
• Freakish sales.

$#@%$#@%#@?

The gist to marketing:

• The more exposure you have to your target market (i.e., those likeliest to buy). the more you will sell.

The more your target market is in front of your business, the likelier they'll buy your profitable items.

How should we do it?

Creativity thrives here. Examples:

1. Sell at a loss, to upsell more profitable items.
2. Sell at a loss, to generate a recurring customer.
3. Offer a "basic" version at a loss, to sell a more premium version.
4. _____get fancy.

How Do I Know if It'll Work?

Test.

Two experiments (i.e., A/B Testing):

• One with the loss-leader promotion.
• One without the promotion.

Do it simultaneously (if at all possible) -- so you results aren't skewed to some freakish market condition.

Then, see which gives you a bigger return.

Proceed accordingly.

KABAM.

Sell. Loss. See.

1. You + Your business's bank account.
2. "Don't let anyone manage your finances!" they tell you.
3. So, you continue doing your own payroll/payables/yaddas.

Result:

• You waste a chunk of time managing company finances.
• More important (i.e., more profitable) things go unsettled.
• Your business continues sucking like a suck-suck.

Revenues = flat.

Customer satisfaction = flat.

Product innovation = nil.

Your business = BOO.

How do you let others manage your finances?

First, unless you're open to bankrupting your bizo, never give away your master keys.

Instead, do this simple financial trick that most small business owners haven't done:

1. Open a secondary bank account -- under your company's name.
2. Occasionally throw in manageable-enough-but-certainly-won't-destroy-you-if-some-nut-decides-to-spend-everything-on-Cheetos funds.
3. Give someone else the keys to manage that account.

OMGADT#@FDASDF!

What happens?

1. You start saving time/headaches/worries.
2. You free yourself to work on more profitable opps.
3. You slowly and surely build an operation that doesn't require your presence -- the hallmark of excellent business-buildmaker-YOU.

Sweeter Financial Tricks?

Separate accounts.

1. An account for payroll
2. An account for human resources
3. An account for marketing
4. An account for vendor payables
5. An account for Product XYZ
6. An account for Service ABC
7. ..and so #$@! on...

Result:

• More delegation
• Exponentially lower risk
• Free up friggin time

The Ultimate Business Effects of Diversified Accounts?

• Your company starts organizing its finances better, helping it make better decisions (e.g., distinguishing between a money-drainer and a cash-cow).
• Your company starts budgeting smarter -- realizing it can't go over what you've placed into the accounts (e.g., X funds into the marketing account).
• Time/headaches/confusion/complexities saved for all.

More importantly, it lets you focus on what matters: building and growing your business for the world.

BAM.

Diversify Finances.

You're getting flustered with the hundreds of financial ratios/terms/yaddas, preventing you from understanding the full measure of your company.

What do you do?

Think: Football game.

Quarterback rating, # of turnovers, the # of penalties, # of Pro-Bowl players on each team.

What matters most?

# of Points.

Nothing else is a 100000000000000th as important.

How Do You Track # Points in Business?

Profits.

• Not sales.
• Not # of employees.
• Not # of products.
• Not # PHDs on your staff.

Profits.

Profits.

Profits.

Companies mistakenly focus too much on making X revenue, according to Google's CEO, that they're forgetting what matters most at the end of the day.

The only number that ultimately matters to Google's management team?

Profits.

You can achieve ridiculous revenue, but if you're leveraging your business with freakish debt that puts your company into the red every-frickin-quarter (see the bank catastrophe, and Detroit):

• Your company = The suck.

Don't let the freakish number of terms on complex financial statements and a kajillion finanical ratios confuse the mothereff out of you:

• Focus on the bottom-line figure. See how it's trending.
• Use everything else (e.g., cash flows, turnover ratios, the yaddas) as the reasons why your company achieved that bottom-line figure.

What Profits Tell You

In a free market world, profits tell you:

• how much output you're getting from every input
• how much value you're giving the world

If you're in the red every quarter, your business is causing a freakish drain on society as others pick up your slack to help you survive.

It's like 38-year-old Billy B. still living at home while his mama provides for his couch-sitting @#!$@ Cheetoh-eating behind.

BOO.

"BUT PROFITS ARE EVIL! OH NOES!"

First, the moral issue:

Companies that are profitable:

• pay taxes (which funds 987956875609875 things)
• fund philanthropies
• provide many more jobs (for employees who pay many more taxes)

Point: Profits = crucial for a free society.

Now, peep this from a business and social perspective:

• The free market lets Consumer X choose where to spend her hard-earned dollars.
• If Company Z is a freakish bizattchi to Customer X, Customer X will choose a competitor.
• Company Z then better get its act together, or it'll run out of customers.

For the financial freaktards:

• Like water, companies need profits to survive.
• If Company Z can't sufficiently provide for Customer X's needs, Company Z = no profits.
• Without profits, financially smarter competitors will destroy Company Z -- draining its number of jobs/contractors/vendors/projects/RFPs/the-yaddas.

(The same model applies for a company's employees.)

Moral:

• Serve customers and employees to the fullest #@!$@!, or die.

Focusing on short-term gain will destroy your company's long-term future (see: Enron, Lehman, Bear Stearns, Krispy Kreme, et. al.).

Two Steps to Measure Your Business

This:

1. Track your net profits every quarter.
2. Improve on your net profits every quarter.

Ta-#$@!-da.

What do you see?

• Upward net profit trend? You're building a sustainably superdupergood company. (Warren Buffett congratulates you.)
  
• Fluctuating trend? You're building a company that is the market's beyotch (i.e., unsustainable).
• Downward trend? FIX.

Focus.

Profits. (Upward.)

1. You go to a meeting.
2. You get bad vibes.
3. You don't follow-up.

Get this:

• We humans psychologically underestimate the likelihood that someone will agree to our request.

Think of this:

1. You go to a business park with Freddy.
2. Freddy tells you to go in that one office in the corner, and pitch your product.
3. You think: "No! They're going to say NO. They're going to reject me. It's a waste of time!"

So, you lose a prospect. You sell nothing. Your numbers suck.

You do it continuously:

1. You don't send an email follow-up because you "think" Mr. Kelly will say NO.
2. You don't reach out to Company XYZ because you "think" they won't need your services.
3. You don't work on a presentation because you "think" you're too small for Firm ABC.

So, you continue doing whatever you're doing, and not focusing on the most important aspect of growing your business:

• Reaching out.

You underestimate the power of asking.

You destroy your company's potential because you "think" XYZ won't need you.

The little sales secret of successful salespeople?

Just. Show. Up.

1. You run a business generating freakishlyhaptastic customers.
2. You grow your business.
3. Your customer service dwindles.

You end up s.u.c.k.

Think of JetBlue.

1. They started off enthralling their customers (satellite TVs/radios, leather seats, and sweet snacks).
2. They grew.
3. They couldn't keep up their freakishlyfatastic service.

They started sucking:

• worst on-time record for consecutive years
• losses for two straight years
• draining resources fighting the fires of growth

Know the Growth Trap?

Typical Entrepreneur Johnny D Mofikizo starts like this:

1. He opens his first store. 99% of Customers Freakishly Satisifed.
2. He opens his second. 90%.
3. He opens his third. 75%.
4. He opens his fourth. 40%.
5. He opens his fourth. 5%.
6. Yadda
7. Yadda, until X% of Customers hate his stores, and never visit again -- forcing his company to shut doors.

Exponentially kaboom.

What happens next?

1. Profits exponentially dwindle with every additional store.
2. Before he realizes his, his company gets into the red: all of his stores start losing chunks of cash.
3. He needs cash, but the banks won't lend him.

Kaput.

Happens.Every.Frickin.Day.

• Company grows with happy customers.
• Company opens second store without resources to keep up happy customers.
• Company opens third store, further draining customer satisfaction.
• The yaddas -- until they end up s.u.c.k., with no cash, goes bankrupt, and dies.

How do you grow without sucking?

Think of In-N-Out Burgers.

• Just about every customer who leaves from their 200 locations = freakishlyfatastically happy.

Your first goal:

• Make your first store = freakishly-fatastic customers (just about all of 'em).

When you reach the stage where you superificallylikemofo satisfy just about every one of your customer from your first store, open a second one.

1. Now, maintaining the level of service with your first store, make everyone who walk out of your second store frtuperifically satisfied.
2. When you reached the stage where your customers freakishly-freak-tastically at two stores, open a third one.
3. Continue cycle.

Get the pic?

• Grow only when your company can handle growth.
• Use customer satisfaction as guide to your growth plans.
• Grow only when you can make that Xth (e.g, 1000th) customer as happy as your first.

In other words:

1. First customer = "Yay! I so excited!"
2. 100th customer = "Yay! I so excited!"
3. 1000th customer = "Yay! I so excited!"

If the 1000th customer wants to punch you in the face and eat your children, scale back growth plans:

1. Cut resources on areas that doesn't directly #$@#%@ satisfy X customers (e.g., sales personnel, yaddas).
2. Inject more resources that boost-like-a-freak customer satisfaction (e.g., more service training, more product training, yaddas)

...until the last customer = as happy as your first.

(That's when you know you're growing correctly.)

Scale With WowWowWow.

Three questions:

1. Can you sell XYZ 15 years from now?
2. If you increase prices, can you still sell XYZ?
3. Do/Will/Would people repeatedly buy XYZ?

If so, you probably have a durably indestructible product that would make Warren Buffett say WO.

What.The.F?

"There's no such thing!"

But, peep:

• Snickers bars.
• Chewing gum.
• Coke.

Warren Buffett calls 'em durable competitive advantages.

Or, what about recent explosions:

1. Facebook.
2. In-in-Out Burgers.
3. Google.

Other companies went out with social networks with cooler features, more delicious burgers, and better search queries; but, those products stayed indestructible.

Peep Craigslist

1. The design hasn't changed.
2. It barely updated a few features.
3. It was built in 1995.

Yet, the masses still congregate despite other competitor websites that have more stuff, are more organized user communities, and AJAX'd themselves to the freak.

Competing on the latest-and-greatest won't keep you in the game 10 years from now.

Instead, build a product that can exist until the end-of-time.

Why?

Companies with durably indestructible products don't need to:

1. increase R&D
2. retrain staff
3. or, become b$#@% to market conditions

...to stay competitive selling their gems.

That is, they keep their expenses low, generate consistently solid revenue, and can !@$#@%@% sleep while they're cash cows do all the work.

The more $$$, the more investing ka-ching, the more you fatten funds to provide more value to your clients.

How?

Two steps:

1. Choose something that can last until the end of time.
2. Make your product the best at that one thing for the rest of eternity.

Bam.

The stuff that lasts.

1. You = took a class on standard deviation.
2. You = solved that @!#$ symbol.
3. You = never grasped the @$! concept.

Why?

1. "Textbook sucked."
2. "Teacher sucked."
3. "School sucked."

No, you suck.

(We kid! We kid!)

How To Learn Like Joe Mofo

Peep this:

1. Youtube.
2. Google.
3. Message boards.
4. Good teachers/books/authors.
5. The Yaddas.

Want to learn anything?

Do this:

1. Stop relying on a single source to learn.
2. Seek multiple sources to annihilate the $#@$ subject.

You start learning new things from different perspectives.

• Result: You become freakishly smarter on the subject as you inject fuller/plumper/juicer knowledge from multiple sources into your brain.

Whenever you read some yadda article that fills in info that doesn't need to be filled in like some filled in thing that need to stop filling in words that make you not understand the mofofo, seek an alternative source to get your info.

Seek a bunch of sources to learn XYZ.

The next thing you know?

YOU start believing you can learn ANYTHING! Yeah, YOU! We're talking about YOU!

HIGH FIVE TO YOU!

Multiple sources.

Crazy business world is crazy. Peep this:

1. Company A lays off people.
2. Company B keeps their people.
3. They both cut costs by 20%.

How in the mofofrikozle?

1. One company thinks cutting people = "the only way to cut costs! OH YEEE---AAH!"
2. The other company cuts costs through business stuff.

The Business Stuff?

Examples:

• Helping your employees work faster.
• Cutting worthless expenses -- like buying expensive @!##@% chairs.
• Liquidating expensively worthless stuff -- like selling expensive #$@#%@ chairs.

Or these:

• Transitioning folks from R&D to focus on immediate revenue-generating activities (i.e., sales stuff, etc.)
• Leasing out portions of your office.
• Expanding the skills of your workers to take on more work.
• Automating repetitive tasks.
• Yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda.

For instance, if you see Sallie B being idle:

1. Give her more work.
2. Keep her upbeat to boost her productivity.
3. Coach her to improve her efficiency.
4. Have her reach out to one new prospect per day (or hour) to increase sales.
5. The yaddas.

"But I have to lay of people! OH NOES!"

If you find that you have to lay off XYZ people, you probably shouldn't have hired the XYZ folks in the first place -- even when the economy = good.

If you see Johnny A's position as interchangeable:

1. Don't hire for the position. Ever.
2. Contract his work out to a third-party -- where you rid your company from being financially-obligated to fulfilling a salary.
3. Now, set a short-term ("pay-as-you-go") contract with the third-party.

Win.

You'll cut costs in (1) the time it takes to manage his position, (2) the resources you drain to keep him productive, and (3) paying his costly salary.

Most importantly, you'll make your business more nimble to generate bigger returns (i.e., you free up more cash to invest into your company's cash-cow/strengths/expertise).

Rule of Thumb: Companies that Constantly Layoff People Managerially Suck

They take the safe and easy road:

1. Cut people.
2. Ignore improving The MotherFernuckin Business.

It's a reason why their management decisions end up sucking -- and keep sucking like the suck-suck.

"Let's take the easy road! A-OKAY!", they scream -- ignoring steps/ways/ideas/actions to improve their business stuff, and trim their fatty-fat-fat business expenses.

BOO!

Focus on The Mofo: Business Stuff.