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Why 96 Percent of Businesses Fail Within 10 Years

While there may be many contributing factors, there is only one reason businesses fail. Here’s what you can do to prevent your business from closing its doors.

I can remember the first time I heard that 96% of businesses fail in ten years. I was shocked and upset. How can this be? Most people are smart and if they have taken the risk to go out on their own and start their own company, they are willing to take calculated risks. Small businesses are part of the American Dream — it’s how entrepreneurs control their own destiny and make the world a better place.

But what’s happening if only 4 out of 100 businesses survive past the 10 year mark? If your company is a decade or more old, then congratulations, you’re one of the 4%! If your business is less than 10 years old, then I would like to share one of the most important lessons I learned from Keith Cunningham (otherwise known as “Rich Dad” from Robert Kiyosaki’s book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”) at the Tony Robbins Business Mastery event. It could be the defining difference between going out of business or accomplishing the very goals you set out to achieve.

Profit is a Theory. Cash is a Fact.
Why do most businesses fail? Because they can’t pay their bills. Most entrepreneurs either are (or start out as) financially illiterate. Unless you are into financial services or accounting, most entrepreneurs don’t go into business because they love numbers. Most entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to make the world better in some way and built a company around that idea. So what do they do? They hire accountants and controllers to manage their books.

The way Profit & Loss and Income Statements are constructed, most CEOs are trained to focus on the profits or EBITA of their businesses. After all, it’s what you are taxed on and how your business is evaluated. But profits are simply a snapshot in time. They are a theory because a number of factors determine if you can actually pull the cash out of the business.

This is where the “Cash is a Fact” comes into play. Why do most businesses fail? Because they can’t pay their bills. When you run out of cash, it’s game over. None of your vendors / creditors care in the least how much profit you’re showing on your books if you can’t pay your bills. Companies don’t go out of business because they lack profits on their financial documents, they go out of business because they don’t manage their cash and can’t pay their bills.

You Are Financing Your Clients (And Your Vendors)
Ever notice why massive companies tend not to pay faster than 45 to as much as 120 days? They are using their size and position in the industry to set their cash management terms. Unfortunately for many small and medium sized businesses, entrepreneurs end up financing their clients who are ten times their size.

The problem gets worse because in order to attract the vendors you need to deliver your product and you usually end up paying fast (as in less than 30 days). It makes logical sense as your ability to pay quickly puts your requests at the top of most of the vendors you have engaged. The problem comes when you get squeezed between attempting to be a good corporate citizen to your vendors, and being raked over the coals by your slow paying clients.

Controlling Your Cash Can Also Help Increase Your Profits!
If you’re not tightly managing your cash, then you will eventually be blindsided one day. Conversely, tighter cash controls will actually improve your profits. How? By having higher visibility around your expenses when you are focused on managing your cash. For example, did you know that by cutting your expenses by 10% you can increase your bottom line profit by as much as 50%? This is because as businesses grow, most entrepreneurs are focused on the big picture such as top-line revenue growth and their expenses begin to grow. Many of these expenses can easily be cut as they are not critical to servicing your clients or growing your business.

If you want to cut your expenses by as much as 10% in the next 90 days, sign every check. This is how most entrepreneurs started in the first place. Once you hire your financial support team, you stop being so diligent about the expenses of the business. Consider this a “check up.” You don’t have to do it all the time, just pick a quarter in which you see every penny moving through your company. Right away, you’ll see expenses that are either too high or simply not needed in your business. Cutting these costs will drop money to your bottom line and increase the amount of cash you can keep.

Taking Control of Your Business and Financial Future
If you’re tracking with me thus far, you are probably asking yourself how else you can you ensure your long-term financial health. In Keith Cunningham’s view, the number one problem CEO’s have is that they are not clear on what they are looking at when they read the financial documents that are prepared for them (usually by their accountant or CFO). After many years consulting on this problem, Keith created a tool called The CFO Scoreboard. The premise being that if you have a better idea of what you should be looking at, you are likely to manage the most important areas of your business.

I have been using this tool for the last couple of months and I highly recommend it. At its most basic level, it’s a financial dashboard that pulls important information from your financial documents and illustrates key issues in simple graphs and color coded positive (green) and negative (red) impacts on your business. The tools automates the red flags that show up when your financial data seems out of whack. In essence, it gives you a very clear picture of what’s working and not working in your business financially.

That alone would be worth it, but what you’ll really appreciate is the “What If” tab that allows you to project out and see in real-time what small 1 to 3% changes in your operations will do for your bottom line. Without seeing these impacts illustrated, it’s really difficult to internalize just how much of an impact a 3% change in your costs of goods sold has on your bottom line. By playing with the built-in financial models, you quickly discover just where you need to focus in order to take control of your business and financial future. I highly recommend setting up a demo of The CFO Scoreboard and seeing it for yourself. You’ll never look at your financial statements the same way again.

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Tony Robbins on Acing the Age-Old Question ‘What Does Your Company Do?’

What business are you in? No, I mean what business are you really in? In other words, what core benefit do you deliver to your prospective client beyond the category or industry in which you’ve built your career? Here’s how to pivot to a much more powerful response.

One of the most powerful lessons Tony Robbins teaches at Business Mastery is to know where you really are and create an effective business map to where you want to go. Sounds simple enough, but most companies struggle to clearly articulate the business value of what they do for their customers.

Take my marketing firm, Trepoint, for example. If someone asked me, “So, what business are you in?” the short answer might be, “Digital marketing.” But that does nothing to inspire the person I’m talking to and make him or her want to hire me. In fact, all it really does is allow the person I’m speaking with to quickly file my business into a known category and switch to a different topic (thereby losing an opportunity to explore possible ways of working together).

What Business Are You Really In?
Tony Robbins asked his more than 1,500 attendees, “What business are you really in?” Meaning, what core benefit do you deliver to your client beyond the category or industry in which you’ve built your career? For Trepoint, we came up with, “We create breakthrough marketing and innovation that is as powerful as the clients we serve.” That really resonated to my core. The result was that it unleashed my passion and was much more interesting to whomever I was speaking with. What business is Tony Robbins in? “I get you to be the man or woman you were meant to be,” he said. “That’s what the F I do for a living.”

Many Incredible Examples
Scott Harrison, one of Tony Robbin’s top speakers, told the audience, “This is a wonderful time for you to review what your neighbor has written and, if you like it, steal it.” Agreed. While you are certainly encouraged to come up with your own unique answer, it really does help to get some diverse examples of breakthroughs in several different industries.

With that in mind, I will use the balance of this article to highlight eight industry examples that I thought were much more powerful than their original industry-specific response. I’ve also encouraged my fellow Business Mastery Gladiators to use the comment section of this article to include their own, as it just wasn’t practical to capture all 1,500 in this article.

  1. Are you in the real estate business? No, you’re actually in the business of helping families achieve the American dream. Or, better yet, you’re in the business of creating wealth through home ownership. Much better description from Century 21 Allstars’ Mirna Martinez.
  2. How about the video production business? You’re actually in the business of helping companies express and market themselves through turnkey video production services. Or, better yet, you’re in the business of making it easier for all companies to embrace and market themselves through digital media, saysVSP Worldwide Productions.
  3. Perhaps you’re a lawyer. Actually, you’re a professional problem solver. Or better yet, you’re providing peace of mind and a good night’s sleep during people’s most turbulent times. Wow. Love that one, from KER Legal Group.
  4. Are you competing in the fast casual food service business? Perhaps you are you in the business of fueling the world with energy, health, and vitality to help reduce the sickness and suffering in the world. Or you’re in the business of changing people’s lives through proper nutrition and lifestyle choices. Watch out, Chipotle! Johnny’s Garden is coming for you.
  5. Have a hardware store? To compete with Home Depot, you need to be in the business of helping your clients love and care for their home by providing world-class products, knowledge, and passion. Crown Ace Hardware is putting much needed services back into the hardware-store business.
  6. How about the insurance business? The value is really keeping people and their valuables safe and making sure they are financially secure when things do go wrong. Or, better yet, you’re in the business of creating an environment in which people have total security on what matters most to them, thereby allowing them peace of mind and to focus on living life to the fullest. It helps when your business’s name is iCare.
  7. Do you write children’s books? Well, you could be in the business of enlightening kids so that they can wake up from the paralyzing fear of death, while using book profits to improve the quality of life of those kids endangered by poverty and violence in America. Powerful stuff, Joseph Diaz-Oldenburg!
  8. And finally, what if you run a children’s camp? Perhaps you are really in the business of empowering kids to become their best self through inner confidence, self awareness, contribution, and success. Or perhaps you’re in the business of creating opportunities for kids to create the life they want. Now that’s a camp I want to send my kids to. Sign me up, Camp Lonehollow.

What Business Do You Need to Be In?
The last question in this exercise is future looking. Regardless of how awesomely you articulated your current state, technology, and innovation are moving so rapidly, you need to continuously look to the future to determine the business you are becoming. So, while Trepoint currently creates breakthrough marketing and innovation that is as powerful as the clients we serve, we also need to be working on our future business: Transhuman Revenue Reengineering for Web 5.0. But explaining that is for a future article.

The point is simply that you need to always be working on two businesses: the one you’re currently in and the one you are becoming. That way, you’ll never find yourself in the company of Blockbuster, Kodak, and Borders–none of whom changed fast enough to stay relevant and compete with the likes of Netflix, Apple, and Amazon.

So the next time someone asks, “What does your company do?” make sure you give that person a compelling answer that is client-benefit based to truly ace this question.

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4 Ways to Boost Your Social Selling Profile (Courtesy of LinkedIn)

Mike Derezin is the vice president of LinkedIn Sales Solutions. Here are the 4 things you should be doing on LinkedIn, but statistically are not doing on LinkedIn, to drive B2B Social Selling.

Before we begin, I realize it’s a bold statement to say there are four secrets of social selling (as in things you’re most likely not doing on LinkedIn, but should be doing to drive social sales). So let me prove it to you with a single click. Go to thisLinkedIn site and, assuming you have a LinkedIn profile, you will immediately see how you rank on LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI). While I have a score of 75 (out of 100), most of my peers rank around 25.

If you have a score of 50 or less, this article will arm you with the four things you can do to immediately improve your score and dramatically increase your social selling effectiveness.

According to a recent case study with SAP, the sales pipeline increased by more than 40 percent when SAP’s Inside Sales team implemented LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. In other words, social selling has crossed the proverbial chasm. We know that social improves the selling and buying process for all parties. Companies such as SAP, Microsoft, and EY are going all in on social selling. Mike Derezin, vice president of LinkedIn Sales Solutions, is seeing this first-hand with salespeople signing up for its Sales Navigator product.

And while Derezin would love you to sign up for his team’s platform, he was kind enough to share several things you can do right now today (for free) to boost your social selling game. Think of these steps as training wheels (or a “gateway”) to taking full advantage of the 400 million members in the public domain that the world’s largest B2B network, LinkedIn, can help you attract into your business.

Put another way, if you’re not leveraging social to expand your relationships and engage your customers, someone else will. And, eventually, your competitor(s) will build a rapport using the Know, Like and Trust model of doing business online today, which will inevitably take business away from you and your company. So here’s what you need to do to turn it around.

1. Build a professional profile and establish your personal brand (25 percent).

Sounds obvious, but chances are your profile needs significant improvement. If you set up your LinkedIn profile to get a job, then I can tell you it’s woefully out of date. “Buyers today are doing research on you and your company on LinkedIn,” says Derezin. “Most sellers still have a bullet-point resume format and that’s not helping them win business.”

Instead, think about your ideal customer reviewing your LinkedIn profile. What problems do they have that you not merely solve, but eat for breakfast? Remember my previous article when I asked you “What’s Your Superpower?” — perhaps it’s time to go back and update your LinkedIn profile to really speak to the incredible power you have and how you can unleash that power to solve the most difficult problems your ideal customer is looking to solve.

This is by far the easiest place to start and will have an immediate impact. Add photos, videos, links to presentations, and white papers. Anything that makes you stand out like the badass you are should be front and center for your ideal prospect to quickly learn about you. Because, let’s face it, nobody agrees to have a meeting with you without first Googling you and checking out your LinkedIn profile. So do you like what they see before they meet with you? If not, spend an hour spicing up your profile and track the immediate impact it has on your sales.

2. Find the right people and prospects (25 percent).

“The days of having a single buyer are over,” says Derezin. “Today there are, on average, 5.4 buyers in the B2B sales process. And when you include the key influencers, there are probably closer to 10 people influencing the buying decision.”

So if you’ve got a buddy inside a company and you’re relying on that one person to help you close a deal, you’re betting your sale on an incredibly outdated system and chances are you’re losing deals to a more savvy social seller who’s using LinkedIn more effectively than you are.

How? By mapping out the different buyers (and influencers) in the organization. You can start with a basic (free) company search on LinkedIn. As you become an expert, you’re going to want the more refined search filters and look-alike modeling that are available via LinkedIn’s paid (Sales Navigator) version. But if you’re not doing this at all, get started immediately with the free basic search.

Most sales people aren’t even doing the most basic research on their buyers. Start by looking up the titles of director and above and immediately identify the 10 other people who are likely to be in the sphere of influence. You can ask about them by name when you speak with your primary contact and strategize with them on how to build consensus among all influencers and decision makers. Knowing the names and titles of the people you need to influence makes your job a lot easier than relying on one buyer to do the heavy lifting for you.

3. Engaging with insights (25 percent).

Cold calling sucks and you shouldn’t do it. How many times has someone called you out of the blue and tried to close you on something over the phone. Sure, you can get deals done that way, but you’d better be prepared for 80 to 90 percent rejection rate and be able to not take all that rejection personally.

Instead, why not be the thought leader that you actually are? “Start simply by sharing, liking, and curating content relevant to your audience,” suggests Derezin. “Not everyone is a prolific writer, and you don’t have to be. A single one-line comment on an article you found to be relevant is more than enough to keep you top of mind.”

The point is that you can’t just reach out when you’re ready to sell someone something. Wouldn’t you much rather receive an email or phone call from your ideal prospect that starts like this: “Hey, Bill, I saw the article you shared and I’ve been meaning to reach out to you. I have a question that I know you have the answer to …” I’ll take that call all day long, wouldn’t you?

Have a top 10 or 20 key prospect list? Then pay attention to when theses prospects: (1) change jobs, (2) get promoted, (3) are mentioned in the news, (4) have a birthday, or (5) celebrate a work anniversary. LinkedIn keeps track of what’s going on in your network and serves up reminders you can review each morning before you start your day. A simple “Congratulations” or “You deserve it” may not seem like much, but it’s way better than trying to force a sale on an unqualified non-sales-ready prospect.

4. Building strong relationships (25 percent).

Having a strong first-degree network is important. These are the people whom you’ve done business with or have a strong relationship with who can help you grow in your industry. A strong first-degree network means having a couple hundred or more people who support what you’re doing and think you’re a good person to know. Most people either invite too many or too few people into their network and both are a problem.

Those who invite too many people are going after anyone and everyone who has the title they want to connect with — even when they don’t know this person personally. This is a mistake. Not only is it discouraged on LinkedIn, but it also dilutes the true value of having a strong first-degree network. People who are not interested in you and what you have to say will not support your engagements or requests to connect with more of the people you want to do business with.

For those with too few connections, these people tend not to reach out before or after a meeting to establish a social connection. These are the road warriors who believe that face-to-face is the only way to get business done. That may have been true in the past, but not today. Only a combination of social and real-world engagements delivers the results you seek. So go ahead and invite the people you have established meetings with. It will remind them to take a look at your awesome profile (which you’ve already cleaned up in Step 1) and give you permission to show up in their news feed.

More on social selling.

When you go to https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi you will find links to short slide shows on each of the areas we’ve covered in this article. But if you’re really digging this content, you can see Mike Derezin and his team live at their annual Sales Connect (LinkedIn’s Social Selling conference) or sign up for Sales Navigator. There are also really great actionable guides on how to improve your LinkedIn profile visibility (like this one: https://www.cleverism.com/increase-linkedin-profile-visibility-for-women/)

What you can’t do is ignore the power of social selling. Otherwise, you’re likely going to be fighting an increasingly unwinnable sales battle in the future.You simply can’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and without leveraging the power of LinkedIn, you’re not connecting with or influencing the right decision makers. Now that you know what to do differently, it’s time to take massive action against the four steps outlined in this article. Let this year be the year you crush your stretch sales goals by leveraging the power of social selling.

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Transformed by Tony Robbins

The success of your business is driven by the energy you put into it. This is why personal transformation is so critically important.

When was the last time you felt unstoppable? Think back to a time in your life when you felt that you could do no wrong. When you felt that you were doing exactly what you were put on this earth to achieve. If you’re honest with yourself, it’s been far too long since you felt that way. But, the truth is, it’s all in your head. And the best part of this is that you can change your state of mind in an instant.

This weekend I was transformed. After four of the most intense and awe-inspiring days of my life, I can honestly say without an ounce of hesitation that I am who I was born to be; and I challenge you to do the same–specifically, to live your life to the absolute fullest and seize every moment and opportunity that is in front of you. It’s not nearly as hard as it might seem.

Before I go any further, let me fully acknowledge the Kool-Aid I’m guzzling. About a month ago, Lewis Schiff, co-founder of the New York Inc. Owners Council, presented me with the opportunity to join him for a Tony Robbins conference called Unleash the Power Within. If you haven’t attended one of Tony Robbins’s conferences, you owe it to yourself to check them out. I have been to hundreds of conferences in the past two decades and I tell you that there is nothing like the amazing event that Tony Robbins has created. It stands in a category all by itself.

The success of your business is driven by the energy you put into it. This is why personal transformation is so critically important. If you feel sluggish, tired, overwhelmed, and out of control, how can you possibly reach the peak performance your team and your customers expect of you? When you are feeling uncertain and lost, how can you possibly lead? The simple truth is, you can’t–at least, not effectively, anyway.

So what’s so transformational about the Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within event? To quote Schiff, “Do you have at least 30 minutes for me to explain?” In a similar vein, I will do my best to summarize something that deserves more explanation than can be truly captured in this short article.

Would you believe that I’ve lost seven pounds in as many days? Or that I will drop 40 pounds in the next four months–extra weight that I’ve been carrying around for at least the past 10 years? Let’s be clear. This was in no way a conference about weight loss–it was about destroying your limiting beliefs and seeing the truth about who you really are. I’m not that fat guy I have seen in the mirror for so long. But somewhere along the line, I had created limiting beliefs that were self-destructive and not just about my weight.

We all have limiting beliefs that hold us back. It comes from that negative voice inside our heads that says the meanest and cruelest things that we would never say about someone else. You know what I’m talking about. “I’m not ________ enough.” I’m not … good enough, successful enough, strong enough, etc. And the worst voice of all is the one that says the people closest to me will judge me and they won’t love me. It’s all nonsense, but the longer we let that voice tell us whom we can’t be, we start to believe it and act accordingly.

I realize that all of this makes intellectual sense to you and that you probably feel that you can just change it yourself without going to an event like Unleash the Power Within. But here’s the thing. You haven’t. I know because I hadn’t. There was no mystery as to what my problems were–I just kept sabotaging my own efforts to change because I had these incredibly powerful limiting beliefs that prevented me from doing the things I knew I had to do. But never again. Not another moment will go by in my life when I feel powerless to change the things that need to change.

To quote Tony Robbins, “Now I am the Voice. I will LEAD, not follow. I will BELIEVE, not doubt. I will CREATE, not destroy. I am a Force for GOOD. I am a Leader. Defy the odds! Set a new standard! Step up!”

This is his mantra and it’s really great. I use it to help keep me centered and focused. There is, however, a substantial gap between knowing how to live and fully committing to the life you were born to lead. The difference is all about letting go of your limiting beliefs and internalizing the truth of who you really are. I am so grateful to Lewis Schiff for introducing me to this life-long transformation and to Tony Robbins for having the courage to “play full out.” I am and always will be a raving fan of Robbins and I urge you to check this out for yourself.

One last thing. If your life has been transformed by Robbins and you’re willing to share your story, please reach out to me on Twitter or leave a comment below. I know I’m not alone here and I would love the opportunity to listen to your story and even help you share it if you are so moved. Thank you! I appreciate your reading this article and sharing your story.

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How to Fail Your Way to the Top

Playing it safe is a path toward ‘me too’ products and irrelevancy.

As a company grows, often it becomes more averse to risk and failure. Mature companies are almost desperate for tried-and-true techniques to implement. The goal of fast-growth companies should be to learn from (and not to repeat) failures rather than “not to fail.”

A company that cultivates a culture in which it is OK to fail has a distinct competitive advantage, because we learn so much more from our failures than we ever do from our successes. When we succeed, we often apply 20-20 hindsight to rationalize our decisions and reasons for our success. As the saying goes, “Success has many parents, but failure is an orphan.” That is, many people will jump at the chance to take credit for success, but very few will accept responsibility for failure when it happens. That group-think dynamic is what holds many companies back.

Dr. Astro Teller currently oversees Google[x], which he describes as “Google’s moonshot factory for building magical, audacious ideas that through science and technology can be brought to reality.” In his Wired article he explains that:

It’s often easier to make something 10 times better than it is to make it 10 percent better.

Yes … really.

Because when you’re working to make things 10 percent better, you inevitably focus on the existing tools and assumptions, and on building on top of an existing solution that many people have already spent a lot of time thinking about. Such incremental progress is driven by extra effort, extra money, and extra resources. It’s tempting to feel improving things this way means we’re being good soldiers, with the grit and perseverance to continue where others may have failed–but most of the time we find ourselves stuck in the same old slog.

I’ve never been a fan of “fast follower” companies, but the idea that it’s easier to make something 10x better than 10 percent better seemed counterintuitive. The 10x efforts are about fundamentally changing the world–space travel, self-driving cars, wearable technology, and all the amazing ideas that win our hearts and minds. To accomplish these giant leaps forward, we not only have to be willing to fail but also “own” failure so that we can learn from it.

Rather than pay lip service to creativity, innovation, and substantive change, true leaders must be willing to own their failures, lead by example, and be brave enough to fail publicly. Jim Collins, in his bestselling book, Good to Great, noted that leaders of great companies tended to “look in the mirror” when dealing with problems (or failure) while “looking through the window” to give credit for success. In this way, leaders of great companies were the first to take responsibility for failures, rather than waste time looking for someone to blame. Likewise, these companies were also quick to point out others who were driving the success of their company.

If you want to ensure your long-term growth and sustainability, your company needs to adopt a culture of calculated risk. Playing it safe is a path toward “me too” products and irrelevancy. The alternative is to fail your way to the top. By embracing the insights and key lessons that come with failure, we open new doors and new possibilities. Only by blazing your own trail and learning from your own unique failures will you discover your true path–a path that leads to sustainable growth.

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How Saying ‘No’ Can Help You Grow

By not chasing after every opportunity, you give yourself time to succeed at the few important things that drive your business.

When you really look for it, there is opportunity all around you. It’s easy to fall into the trap of inviting too much opportunity into your life, only to find out that it sucks up your time, leaving you feeling drained and unfocused.

When you say “yes” to too many things, you overcommit yourself. Rather than being laser focused, you find your attention is split into smaller, less important tasks that keep you busy but not very productive. Multitasking is “the art of doing many things poorly.”

If you find yourself too busy to think, take a step back and look at the big picture. Saying “no” can feel contrary to your growth objectives. It’s easier to say “no” to things that cost you money than it is to say “no” to things that pay your bills. Saying “no” to a client or a sale is a lot harder than saying “no” to a vendor or asset purchase. But when the client or sale is not aligned with your company’s mission or purpose, this is precisely the time to say “no” so that you can say “yes” to something more relevant.

Saying “no” is not a weakness. Saying “no” is a key strength to building your business. Knowing what to say “no” to means that you have clearly identified your objectives, mission, and purpose. By not chasing after every opportunity, you give yourself time to succeed at the few important things that drive your business.

When “No” Means “Yes”

It was Alexander Graham Bell who said, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” To avoid wasting time regretting what you say “no” to, spend more time defining what your priorities are and clearly identifying your business goals. Anything that doesn’t fit should be rejected so that you remain focused and can attract even more of what fuels your growth.

We once had a client who was incredibly rude and obnoxious to one of our employees. He was shocked when I “fired” him as a client. I said “no” to his business at a time when it represented a good percentage of our revenue. That action had two important benefits that I could not have foreseen at the time: (1) It emboldened my team to double their efforts to build our business and (2) It avoided attracting similarly hostile clients into our company (“birds of a feather flock together”).

Saying “no” to a hostile client meant that I was saying “yes” to a more positive and inviting work environment for our team. It also meant I was saying “yes” to current and future clients our team wanted to work hard for to ensure their success. One committed “no” meant several new opportunities we could say “yes” to. And that has made all the difference.

What are you willing to say “no” to? By answering this question, you can better define your fastest path to sustainable growth. Knowing what your company is not is sometimes more important than defining what your company is all about.

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How Can I Help? Why ‘Adding Value First’ Is the Winning Formula for Growth

Connect problems with your passion and purpose and you will never lack for opportunity and growth. Help as many people as you are capable of assisting every day and you will be unstoppable.

If you have been blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit, then you are no stranger to hard work or commitment. But a great idea and a strong work ethic alone are not sufficient to grow your business. Today your customers have virtually unlimited options that are only a click away, so competing on price alone will not be enough to fuel growth. In fact, the historically tried and true four P’s of marketing (Product, Price, Place & Promotion) are all being challenged by a simple winning formula–add value first.

What is your gift to the world? What is the one thing your company is willing to give away that both provides value to your customers and illustrates your company’s value? If you’re Google, that would include everything from Android (its mobile phone operating system) to Gmail. Google’s market cap is almost $400 billion dollars, and the majority of its customers have never paid Google a dime. Same goes for Facebook. These companies figured out how to give value to the world in exchange for data (which they subsequently sell to advertisers interested in connecting with you).

But what if you’re not in the advertising and data business? What if you sell physical goods? You need look no further than five-time Inc 5000 honoree, MyCaseBuilder.comwho discovered that by giving away its award winning custom foam software, it could provide its customers the perfect fit for anything they want to protect inside of their case.

What if you’re a restaurant? What could you give away in order to grow? Some restaurants will give away a free drink or appetizer, but soon discover that this becomes almost “expected” and doesn’t really facilitate growth. Instead, some family-owned restaurants have started randomly giving out entire meals for free with a simple note of appreciation for their customer’s patronage. This kind of surprise-and-delight is guaranteed to generate buzz and is ultimately better than any traditional (read “interrupt and talk at you”) advertising.

According to Deepak Chopra in his bestselling book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, “How can I help?” is the only question that truly matters. Each and every one of us has a unique talent that no one else has and a special way of expressing that talent. This is Spiritual Law #7–The Law of Dharma.

When thinking about how best to accelerate the growth of your company, start with asking yourself, “How can I help?” Don’t think small. Think about what you were born to do; work like hell to remove any and all roadblocks in front of you; live your purpose and allow your reason-for-being to fuel your growth–both professionally and personally.

As a digital marketing agency, we are constantly asking our clients “How can I help?” Their answer is not always what you’d think. Most companies have not spent enough time developing and optimizing the effectiveness of their website, social and mobile marketing efforts, but if you start a conversation with “Your website sucks”, you have missed an opportunity to participate in active listening.

Assume nothing. Even if you know what your customer’s problem is, there is no harm in asking them to define their challenges so that you have a clear picture of what your customer’s needs are. Then, by following up with the simple question, “How can I help?” you will immediately understand why your customer is engaging with you, what their expectations are and how you may be of service.

In the past 20 years of meeting with a diverse set of clients with every possible marketing need you could imagine, it has become crystal clear to me that asking the right questions is a much more effective strategy than trying to demonstrate why you’re the right person with whom to do business.

Once your client has illustrated a clear problem where you, your company or your product can be of service, the next most important step is to find a way to add value first. Connect the identified problem with your passion and purpose and you will never lack for opportunity and growth. Help as many people as you are capable of assisting every day and you will be unstoppable.

And please don’t forget to do this for the people sitting right next to you. In most companies, it’s your team that is the real engine behind your growth and ultimate success. If you have any shot at exponentially growing your company, you first need to align your purpose and passion with your team. Inspiring your own team and culture is your first priority before you can ever make a real impact with your customers, your industry and the world.

So, stop reading this article, turn to your coworker and ask them, “How can I help you?” Once they recover from their initial shock of being asked (and size you up to see if you’re actually serious), you will be amazed at what you learn.

In short, listen deeply, ask great questions (which demonstrate you are listening), soul search for all the ways you can give value first–and then do it. Your heartfelt actions will spur all kinds of new and interesting growth opportunities.

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