“Take action to make something good happen in your life.”
Your first day in boot camp is always about “mindset.”
When you step off the bus at Indoc, your drill sergeant’s primary job is to get your attention by shocking you into facing a new reality. Likewise, your first day of small business boot camp should be a reality check. You need to make sure you have your priorities straight and that you are fully cognizant of what may or may not be required to make money in your prospective business.
In the business world we call this “due diligence.” Surprisingly, many business failures can be traced to a complete lack of due diligence, which can further be traced to stubbornness or flat out hard-headedness. I can say this because I am the poster child for stubbornness, and have been known to resist sound advice.
Resistance comes naturally to me, because you see, I was born stubborn and hard-headed. And while stubbornness may be valuable in the right context, there are times when it can hold you back.
So, just how hard-headed and stubborn am I? And, how does this apply to your boot camp training? Let me tell you a couple stories about my childhood to illustrate my point.
I can remember when I was five years old my dad was backing his pickup truck out of the driveway. When my mom said, “watch your feet or you’ll get run over,” I took that as a personal challenge. Sure enough, the back tire on my dad’s truck rolled over my foot, and to make matters worse, my mom only shook her head and walked away as I screamed in pain.
I told you I was hard-headed. But that was just the least of my antics.
Around that same time my dad caught a small burro in the mountains near my home in the Mojave Desert. When he released it into the corral he told all of us kids, including the neighborhood kids, “stay away from him. He’s wild and he will kick the tar out of you.”
Yes, you’re right. The moment I heard that I knew I had just been challenged. Out of over 15 kids standing around the corral that morning only one snuck back alone to see just how hard that donkey could kick—yours truly.
I climbed through the rails in the corral fence and stared at the donkey. Bewildered, he trotted to a corner of the corral and pointed his backside towards me in an instinctively defensive position. Not to be deterred, I walked towards the donkey. About 3 seconds later I found myself clawing at the ground in pain, unable to breathe.
Let me tell you, the first time you get your breath knocked out of you, you think the world is coming to an end.
So, you see, I’m notoriously too stubborn and hard-headed to back away from a challenge, which has been the bane of my life—except for a handful of times when dogged determination paid out in spades, as it did when I accepted the challenge of noted authors Robert Kiyosaki and Robert Allen to create, “multiple streams of automated income.” Now, I truly hope you are not as stubborn or hard-headed as me. But, if you have a little bit of gumption or self-determination, you may find the concept of creating multiple streams of income worth the effort.
The point of Day 1 is to illustrate how a weakness or bad character trait can be tweaked to become an asset. In my case, my stubbornness and unwillingness to take advice nearly led to my self-inflicted destruction. I spent the majority of my childhood rebelling against authority and challenging everything anybody had to say…
…And truthfully, I haven’t changed much as an adult. However, I have learned to listen long enough to determine the validity of the advice and instruction I get from others, and to take action on whatever advice passes my validity “litmus” test.
For example, Robert Kiyosaki’s and Robert Allen’s advice makes sense. It is prudent to build multiple streams of income, and in many ways it is the quickest and easiest way to achieve financial success. Their model is a lot like the advice a baseball coach gives his players: namely, we can swing for the fences and get an occasional homerun, or we can swing for singles, load the bases, and score multiple runs.
One route leads to glory for a handful of players, while the other route wins games for the team.
In this first day of your small business boot camp I want you to start thinking about ways you can generate an extra income outside your traditional job income. For many of us this challenge becomes mind numbing because we are focused on hitting homeruns (what Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author Randy Komisar calls “The Big Idea), while the simple ideas and strategies that may generate $100 to $500 per month in passive income are deemed unworthy of consideration.
Let me tell you something I learned the hard way: Five hundred dollars in positive cash flow from a little business beats the pants off a big business that loses thousands every month, so put your innate stubbornness aside for a moment and think of a way you can create a recurring income of $100 to $500 per month. Consider this real life example I witnessed in my community.
A young lady in my neighborhood decided she wanted to open a bakery in a local strip mall. Neighborhood bakeries are rare in my town, and I thought she had a good idea. However, she wanted the glamor and glitz of a big name, with all the hoopla and extravaganza associated with a particular franchise opportunity. She secured the franchise and necessary restaurant equipment with a hefty loan of several hundred thousand dollars and rented a retail space for around $6,000 per month, plus utilities.
From her first day my friend was challenged with the herculean task of making enough money from her bread sales to pay the rent, service her loan, and allow for enough profit to make her long days worthwhile. Several months later I noticed she was marketing some of her bread products at a local farmer’s market each Saturday. She sold about 75 to 100 loaves of bread per weekend from her booth and managed to make around $125 in profits each weekend. At the same time her wonderful bread was being sold from her store, but the heavy franchise fees and high rent always kept her in the hole.
Less than a year after opening her store she was out of business and in debt for several hundred thousand dollars.
The store and the franchise arrangement represented her “swing for the fences” attempt to score big, while her farmer’s market booth represented her “swing for a single” and actually made her money.
If you’re looking at getting involved in any business endeavor please take the time to “crunch the numbers.” Be realistic about the costs versus the projected sales and profit potential—and as Robert Kiyosaki would advise, never accept a negative cash flow proposition.
Day 1 asks you to make a paradigm shift in your thinking. If you are new to the business world, or do not have a profitable, ongoing business or investment in your hip pocket, stop swinging for the fences and find a way to make a hundred bucks this month. When you can load the bases with half a dozen little money makers, churning away month after month with little to no input by you, you’re ready to let it rip and knock one out of the park.
Day 1 Assignment
A drill sergeant is more than just a trainer and a strict disciplinarian. He or she is also a role model, and for many recruits represents their first exposure to their chosen branch of military service.
Except for their abrasive behavior as drill sergeants, everything a drill sergeant does in the performance of his or her duties, how he or she wears the uniform, and how he or she conducts themselves around officers and formal ceremonies, is meant to rub off on his or her trainees. This leadership by example proves the timeless value of the role of a mentor in your life, and I believe a mentor or role model may be the fastest and easiest route to success in your business.
Your first assignment in small business boot camp is to find a role model. You need to find a person who is already doing what you want to do, achieving what you want to achieve, and living the lifestyle you want to follow.
For example, if you want to become the top insurance salesperson in your company or industry, you will need to identify the current top sales leaders and copy their techniques and strategies. If you want to open a diner in your community, find a diner that is achieving the success you want and study their operations, and then duplicate their methods in your diner. If you want to build a huge residual income in your network marketing opportunity find somebody in your upline who is successful and learn from them.
Every industry or business imaginable has somebody at the top. Find out how they market themselves and their products, study their behavior, and emulate what they do. This is not to suggest that you plagiarize their menu, borrow their trademarks, or steal their secrets. Instead, simply become a student of their success and duplicate their success in your business.
Recommended Reading Assignment
A typical training day in a military boot camp means blister popping 16 to 18 hour days of marching, physical exercise, and classroom training. On top of that, most recruits must also perform guard duty on rotating 2 hour shifts while everybody else sleeps. It’s designed to test your mettle and mentally and physically push you beyond your self-conceived breaking point.
To that end, your daily assignments in this small business boot camp may ask you to do more in a day than most people do in a month. As a warm up exercise, your first assignment is easy and quite doable. I need you to read “The Parable of the Pipeline,” by Burke Hedges.
If you cannot find the book in your library or download it on your Kindle, hop onto the Internet and do a search using the book title as your search term. Spend at least one hour reading reviews or forum discussions on the book. You may also head over to YouTube and watch at least 60 minutes worth of videos on the subject (there are dozens of videos available on this book). Look for the 11 minute animated version presented by Burke Hedges himself, but don’t short change yourself by not reading this book as soon as possible.