Building a Solid Business Around a Solid System

Recently I was listening to an audio freebie that came with a Dan Kennedy book (No BS Marketing to the Affluent, link pops out, I recommend it, this'll still be here when you get back!) and he said something that struck a chord.

Now, I'm paraphrasing because I want to get this down and don't want to dig out the CD right now, but the general theme was around creating advantage in your business offering - commercial advantage, financial advantage, market advantage, and so on.

Some of these I'd expect most people to think of: You want to be the best in your market, or at least define a niche for yourself that has no competition; you want to be able to outlast the others in your market, even if that means waiting a long time to get your money back, or you want to be justifiably the most expensive in your market.

But then he said something that had echoes of a bunch of other bits and pieces of wisdom I've absorbed recently - systemic advantage.

The advantage of having a system.

As I was walking along, Dan continued his train of thought, but mine had spun off to other avenues (sorry, Mr. Kennedy!)

Here are some others who extol the virtues of a system - Dane Maxwell, creator of the 6-figure Recruiting Ninja business, and currently head honcho at The Foundation (TheFoundation.com) has a unique system that he teaches and which takes a market, creates a product based on feedback from that market, and then sells it before it's even available!

The system has been used by, among others, one Sam Ovens. Look him up, it's a worthwhile story.

Sean Ogle, the Location Rebel, has a collection of frameworks and systems. Dave Risely (of Blog Marketing Academy fame) has a system (which he calls the Blueprint) that can help you build a business from nothing.

The fast food industry is home to one of the most successful systems of all - McDonald's.

I could go on - Michael Senoff (HardToFindSeminars.com) has a system for marketing consulting, Dan Kennedy teaches a system for creating sales letters, and works a system for selling his stuff, etc. - but you get the point.

The one thing your business needs to have, if it is to be successful, is a solid foundation, built on a system that can be deployed, used to measure results, tweaked to get better results, and followed when times are tough and you lose direction.

That's the advantage of having a system.

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Lessons from Sean Ogle (Location Rebel) On Fast Learning

Sean Ogle has just released a video (looks like it's filmed in Central Park - correct me if I'm wrong!) that talks about the concept of rapid learning and how it relates to Location Rebel.I recommend that you watch it - it's just 2 minutes long - just to understand his mindset. The video can be found here.

Before you rush off and watch it, though, here's a bit of preparatory work : the key takeaway is in knowing what you don't know, and knowing what you need to know to fill that gap. Read that through again, watch the video, and read the comments that follow it.

Then come back here, because I have something else to share...

Being successful in business is often about learning. For example, to do business in China, it's going to help you to learn Chinese. But that's hard, right? Yes, of course it is. It's useful, so it will be hard.

Tim Ferris (author of the 4 Hour Work Week, The Four Hour Body and The Four Hour Chef) spoke at the Entertainment Gathering about his experience learning Japanese, which is comparably hard. The video is here.


It's okay, you can watch it later - the key part of the message for me was that he, too, concentrated on what he didn't know. Ferris calls it Material vs. Method, and it comes up in his Four Hour Chef book, in the section entitled Meta Learning.

Even if you don't want to learn how to cook - and who doesn't? - the sheer discipline that Ferris applies is worth the cover price.

Come to that, it's worth heading over to Sean Ogle's web site, too, even if you don't plan on becoming a "Location Rebel" yourself, as there are many valuable business lessons to be learned just from reading through the blog posts.

My bottom line advice is to learn as much from these two as possible, as they've both had a dream, followed it, and had a great time along the way. They might not be billionaires, but they're leading the life that they always wanted, and you can't say fairer than that!