Many people look at being an entrepreneur like driving up a narrow dirt road on the side of a steep mountain. The  loose dirt road is barely wide enough for all the tires to fit and each turn is filled with unknown dangers and low visibility. The possibility of oncoming traffic forcing you off the road down a thousand foot cliff to your death is a constant thought. If you are not feeling uncertain, uncomfortable, or pressure occasionally; you’re not growing and playing it too safe. This is part of being an entrepreneur. Nothing guaranteed except a chance to win.

These types of emotions will happen. They shouldn’t happen to the point of crippling you or stopping you from moving forward. The emotions are like road markers to let you know that you are growing and pushing forward. Trying to completely avoid what’s uncomfortable will keep you where you are. In order to rise to a level you have never been you must strengthen the muscles you’ve been using or use new ones. If your current level of abilities and talents were enough to take you where you want to go, you would already be there. They are not. That is why we must increase our abilities, our mental toughness and skills.

We cannot change the laws of nature. If we try to break them, we’re usually the only thing that gets broken. It doesn’t matter rather we know them or believe them. If you know nothing about the law of gravity it will still pull you to the earth. You can choose not to believe the laws of gravity. Step off a cliff you will still go down. No matter how much you hope, wish, or pray to float in the air. If you know nothing about the laws of business, but you conduct yourself instinctively within the success principles you will still succeed and if you don’t will fail. In today’s world of technology and available information there has never been so much information available to us. You can find information on just about any subject you can think of. So there is no excuse for not knowing.

Although the road of the entrepreneur is narrow and may appear scary. The fear can be minimized or even eliminated if you increase what I refer to as your KUSA level. What is a KUSA Level? The acronym KUSA is Knowledge, Understanding, Skills, and Action.  Most fear comes from the unknown.  Once we increase our Knowledge about something the fear of it begins to decrease or leave completely. Once we acquire knowledge we now can begin to understand. Understanding allows us to create solutions and preventions. To help explain KUSA levels let’s use learning a foreign language as an example.

K – Knowledge

I view knowledge as having the ability to recognize a foreign language, Spanish, German, Chinese, but not how to read, speak or understand it. You know it’s a different language. You know you can’t understand it. You know you can’t read or speak it. This phase is important because you are able to recognize what you don’t know. Unfortunately in business failing entrepreneurs fail because they don’t know until it’s too late. They move from crises to crises never gaining knowledge on why the problems keep happening. For those who are able to recognize early what they don’t know and seek advise and solutions are able to navigate the winding narrow road much easier.

U – Understanding

Understanding is having the ability to interpret the knowledge you are getting. This would be recognizing some of the words of the foreign language. Not be fluent just yet, but able to interpret the meaning of the words as they relate to something you are familiar with.  This is what I call starting to make it your own.  This were an entrepreneur starts getting the “Aha” moments and things starts making sense. Not just about the product or service, but also the accounting, marketing, and sales parts of the  business.  The more you understand, the more knowledge you desire have.

S – Skill

Skill would be the ability to take that knowledge and understanding, test it in real world applications and make corrections based on the feedback you’d get. As  you continue to test and correct your skill level and understanding increases. This would be trying to use the foreign language to speak, read, write or translate. The more you practice the more you improve.  As entrepreneurs we have to test and adjust our marketing plans, our pricing plans and all aspects of our business until it we’re getting the results we want.

A – Action

Action would be to avoid procrastination and complacency. Taking constant, purposed, and deliberate action leads to mastery. In the case of the foreign language we reach fluency. In the case of business we reach niche market dominance. Our actions must continue with the purpose of increasing our skills, understanding our customers, and gaining knowledge of what they want. We must not sit on what we have learned. We must constantly validate our policies, plans and directions because the tastes and needs of our customers changes over time.

As entrepreneurs we must spend time increasing our knowledge about our Industry, product/service, and our customer. This knowledge allows us to increase our understanding. An increase in understanding allows us to develop skills to take actions that leads to our ultimate success. This increase in our KUSA level acts like guardrails on that narrow road making it safer to travel. It also makes the road a little wider so we can increase our speed along the way.

(Knowledge + Understanding + Skill) X Action = SUCCESS

Please Subscribe. If you have any comments, questions or a topic you would like for me discuss, please leave a comment. I will get back to you and possibly feature your comment in a future post.

Thank you,

Dewong Lucas, Sr.

http://www.HelpingEntrepreneurs.com

Price is not the Issue.

This one issue has been the demise of many startup business. Many new entrepreneurs and some veteran entrepreneurs get caught in a pricing war with another business they perceive as their competition. The problem with this process is no one wins in the long run. I’ve consulted with many startups and one of the answers they gave me for going into business was they “feel” that the price is too high and they “believe” that they can sell it for cheaper and get “all” the customers to come to them. They have not done any research in the market. They have not determined their costs, and they don’t know what their “competition’s” cost is either.  One of the major problems with underpricing is that there is very little capital for up-keep, improvements, quality staffing, marketing, expansion, or a quality product or service.

Have you ever gone to a store to purchase an item, but you decided not to buy strictly based on how you were treated? Have you purchased something from somewhere although you knew you could get it cheaper elsewhere? Where did price factor into the equation? It didn’t. Was price the issue in either of those instance? NO. Price is rarely the issue when it comes to providing a quality product or service to your target market. I want to make sure there is no confusion. I not saying that you can sell a Hyundai at the price of a Rolls Royce. I am saying that you can request and receive top dollar for your product in your market niche. When it comes to pricing I have seen more entrepreneurs underprice their product or service than overprice it. Many are afraid to hear the words “That’s too much.” It doesn’t matter how low you price it. You will always have someone that will say the price is too high. Don’t believe me? Have a yard sale. You can sell something for 5 cents and you will have someone offer 2 cents.

For many years I have consulted, partnered and owned MLM/Network Marketing companies. I have designed and written commission/pay systems and marketing plans. I have also built and trained down-lines of significant sizes. Many entrepreneurs should pay close attention to how these companies create brand loyalty and growth in spite of price. These companies experience billions of dollars in annual sales because they understand the power of relationships. As an entrepreneur if you are not building relationships online and off-line then your competition who is, will leave you behind. There is nothing more powerful than being referred to someone’s warm market. Automatically you are now someone they can trust. I will keep emphasizing that “People do business with people they like and trust.” There has never been a time in history when you have immediate access to so many people (for free). To those entrepreneurs who are starting to get into social media and they look at only a means of pushing a product or service, it will not work. Social media is not traditional advertising. It is “social” media. So you must be social. You must build relationships. I wrote a blog a while ago titled “Those who give the most will have the most.” I discussed the importance of giving first. There is a natural balance in life. When you are consistently providing value to your market you are creating and imbalance. This causes the market to flow back towards you to balance this out. Have you ever asked anyone to change a dollar for 4 quarters? What happens if they gave you only 1 quarter? You would demand your other three quarters. What if they gave you 95 cents and said keep the bill. You would be trying to chase them down to give them the dollar. Most people are familiar with the phrase “Pay it forward.” That is based completely on the belief of creating an equal balance.

Proper marketing of you product ties all the value into one complete package and eliminates the price issue. The one thing that can completely undermine all the value you are providing is poor marketing. Marketing is every contact your business has with a customer or potential customer. This includes you advertisement, how you answer the phone, your website presence, how easy it to conduct a transaction, how customers are treated, how your employees, dress and conduct themselves. Marketing is everything and everything is marketing. Change your point of view. Stand in your customer’s shoes. Review every customer contact point and ask yourself would you want to do business with this company. If you answer is no. That’s probably what your would-be customers are saying too.

As entrepreneurs let’s not focus on being the lowest price in every venture we undertake. Let’s try to be the best choice for what we are providing. If that happens to be the lowest price, then so be it. It’s O.K. to end there, but not to start there. Educate your customers on their cost not your price.

Please Subscribe. If you have any comments, questions or a topic you would like for me discuss, please leave a comment. I will get back to you and possibly feature your comment in a future post.

Thank you,

Dewong Lucas, Sr.

http://www.HelpingEntrepreneurs.com