In life, I had always believed that we need to work on our weaknesses so that we can become better people. Turn your weaknesses into strengths was my motto in life and I thought this was the way to do business as well.

So I went and did things where I knew I was weak – with the aim of improving my skills so that I could then make more money.

Dumb!

Really, really dumb!!

By taking this path, I lost money, time, my self confidence and everything that goes with that. I worked my butt off for years for zero return. In fact, not only did I make zero return I went backwards.I would have achieved more doing nothing, sitting around watching TV and eating junk food all day.

Seriously!! It was terrible.

Does that mean you never work on your weaknesses? Absolutely not! There is definitely a time for working on your weaknesses and a time for leading with your strengths. In today’s video I go through this in some detail so I really hope you enjoy it. The lessons I talk about in this video could have saved me a number of years of heartache and pain. And tens of thousands of dollars in lost income.

Use these lessons and I guarantee your path to success will be a lot more enjoyable, fulfilling and profitable.

Watch the video now:

Now, let me know what you thought of the video. Leave me a comment below and then share this on twitter, facebook or stumbleupon.

To your success,

Niro Thambipillay

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Have you ever struggled in business? Almost every entrepreneur has at some time or other – and it really sucks! As entrepreneurs, we take the risk of going against the grain, being different to the masses and following our dreams. Yet for most of us, this decision only results in pain, both financial and emotional. At times, it seems that the entire universe is conspiring against us.

I know I’ve been there.

When I decided to open up a pizza restaurant a few years ago, one of the most stupid decisions I ever made (a decision that was driven purely by my ego and greed) we struggled to get customers in the door. We seemed to be working so hard to pay the rent and to pay our staff, only to have very little for me and my business partner to live off. It was a terrible time.

So what did we decide to do when times were tough? We decided to cut prices by 10% thinking that would do the trick. And what did that do? That just dropped revenue by 10%. So now we were struggling even more – it became all too much for my business partner who one day stole the remaining $20,000 I loaned to the business and skipped town, leaving me to face the firing line..  This was not a happy time at all but one in which I learned several lessons.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, the majority of us believe that if we drop our prices, everything will be ok – yet, this is rarely a sustainable way of doing business, especially since our original prices are often not that high to begin with.

The main reason we think that lowering prices is a solution is because even though we are business owners, entrepreneurs and producers of products and services, we think like consumers. You see, as consumers we are often conditioned to look for the lowest price so many entrepreneurs sadly think lowering prices is the way to line their pockets.

Here’s the truth – lowering prices will NEVER make any long term positive difference to your business, especially if not enough people know about your product or service in the first place. That was the case with my pizza store. I opened it up in a small country town with a tiny population thinking that my business partner and I could grow this into the next big multinational pizza franchise. I’m not sure exactly where my head was at, but it certainly wasn’t anywhere intelligent – that’s for sure. Opening up the restaurant in a bad location placed at a disadvantage to start off with and then lowering prices only killed us off completely.

So how can you turn around a struggling business? There are only two ways – you need to sell and educate your way out of a hole! That’s it – these are the only two ways to get off struggle street. For example, if you have a great product but you can’t sell enough, don’t lower your price – instead look at your marketing. What can you do differently?

One of the key things to ask yourself as well is whether there is actually a market for what you have to sell. Most of us go into business thinking we have this great product or service that people need. Yet, rarely do people buy what we think they need – instead they buy what they want. So when you’re going into business or if you have already started a business that is struggling (like my pizza shop), do some research to confirm there is a market for what you have to sell. Then get some education about how you can tap into that market.

Invest in your most valuable asset which is your mind and your thinking. It is often said that to earn more, we must first learn more – and that is never truer than in business.  The successful entrepreneurs and business owners really do think differently and it is their thinking that ultimately makes all the difference.

What are your thoughts? How would you turn a business around? I’d love to hear from you so please leave me a comment below and then please share this article on twitter and facebook.

To your success,

Niro

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It is an overused quote that the difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich think differently. However, it is true. In this short video, I talk about a great quote from the late Jim Rohn that typifies how the rich think differently. This quote took me from struggling to pay my bills to a six figure income and so I hope you get some great value from this 3 minute video.

If you liked the video, please leave me a comment below and then sign up for my newsletter so I can send you more great content.

To your success,

Niro

In this 3 minute video, I share some advice that I recently learned that I wish I’d known before I started some of my past failed entrepreneurial ventures. This advice could have easily saved me personally and my business partners hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. So take the time to watch the video and then please leave me a comment below.

Note: Please don’t dispel this wisdom just because it seems so simple – often the greatest advice we can ever receive is simple.

If you enjoyed this video, please leave me a comment below and subscribe to my newsletter so I can share more of this sort of content with you.

Yours in gratitude,

Niro

As business owners and entrepreneurs, we are constantly looking for different ways to grow our revenue. However, did you know that there are 3 ways to grow your business? Yet most of us only focus on one way and this is often the hardest path to travel. What is even more amazing is that when we focus on incremental improvements in all areas, the growth in our business can be exponential!

What are the three ways?

1. Increase the number of customers – this is without doubt the most common way and also the most difficult way to grow a business because the cost of acquisition of a new customer is so high. Also the time and effort is great – yet this is often the only way people know how to grow a business.
2. Increase the number of times a customer buys from you. May business owners only sell to our customers a fixed number of times – yet once a customer buys from us, they are far more likely to buy from us again. Any successful business owner will tell you that it is much easier to sell to an existing customer than to a first time customer.So why don’t we then try and sell more often to our customers? Often because most business owners believe that customers are there to buy our products and we are there to sell customers our products. However, this is not the case – in fact once we have sold a customer on something, our sales opportunities do not end; in fact they are just beginning.

   Once a customer has bought from us, we have gained their trust (presuming of course that our goods and services are of great quality). Once they trust us, we have an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of their needs and we can then sell them complementary products which they are more than willing to buy from us.

3. Increase the average value of each customer transaction. In tough economic times, when people are cutting prices, how can we justify increasing our prices? The only way is because we increase the value of what customers get even more. For example – if the average sale from each customer is $100, is it possible for us to give them $250 worth of value and then charge $200? In many cases it is. In this example, the customer is actually getting a $50 or 20% saving off their purchase – yet we as the business owner are getting a 100% increase in revenue. It’s all about looking at what we have and working out how we can give more value.

Now a 100% increase in the average transaction may not sound feasible. So let’s look at a more plausible example. Let’s say you have a business that has:

1. 1000 customers
2. Each customer buys on average twice per year from you
3. The average cost per transaction of each customer is $100.

Therefore your average annual turnover is 1000 x 2 x $100 = $200,000

Now let’s imagine that we make some changes to your advertising and you increase your customer base by just 10%. Is that possible? Absolutely! So you now have 1100 customers buying from you.

Let’s also look at adding more value to our customers such that they buy more from us. Let’s again be conservative and presume that our customer now buys 10% more from us – so the average income per transaction is now $110.

Finally, let’s say we’re also able to increase the average number of times a customer buys from you per year – and conservatively speaking, let’s say we can increase that by 10% as well. So by increasing the 3 key business growth factors by 10%, have we increased business turnover by 10%?

Well, let’s have a look.

Annual turnover = 1100 customers x 2.2 transactions per year x $110 (average sale) = $266,200

In other words, by making small 10% increments in each key factor of our business, we have increased total business turnover by over 33%!! That’s exponential growth and that’s what we want in our business – and it happens by realising that there are 3 ways to grow our business (not just one) and we can make small increments in any of the 3 factors but we get the maximum results when we make increments in all three.

I hope you found this article helpful and if you did, please share it on Digg, Delicious and Stumbleupon and retweet it. I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Niro

PS: If you would like someone to help you with growing your business, feel free to email me at niro@undergroundsuccess.com