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How to Run Your Business Like Tony Soprano...not get whacked.

Guest post by: Mike Martel

Article Overview: ou might not think that organized crime is a good model for running your business. I will definitely agree that you don’t want extortion, prostitution, murder,, theft, drug running and all the other nasty dealings that mobsters are involved with as part of your business plan. As with anything though, there are elements that can be learned from.

How to Run Your Business Like Tony Soprano...not get whacked.

You might not think that organized crime is a good model for running your business. I will definitely agree that you don’t want extortion, prostitution, murder,, theft, drug running and all the other nasty dealings that mobsters are involved with as part of your business plan. As with anything though, there are elements that can be learned from.

Be Alert To Opportunities The mob was always scanning the headlines for opportunities. It could be as simple as a new store opening in the neighborhood. This was an extortion opportunity. It could be a more modern day opportunity where the Pacific Tsunami created the opening for worldwide criminal rings to set up fake charities to scam donors.

You won’t of course set your sites on harming anyone. What business owners should do is always be on the look out for potential joint venture partners, new markets, new technologies. You should pay attention to the news, move rapidly and be one of the first to take advantage of new developments.

Bring in the Heat When you watch crime shows on television, you always see the crime family bring in someone from New York or Las Vegas to “take care of someone.” They don’t use their own people. They bring in a specialist. Two reasons, first they don’t want their own people put in the spotlight in case something goes wrong and they want a pro for the task at hand.

As a business owner, you want to bring in the heat. I am talking about outsourcing. You and your team don’t have to do it all yourselves. You end up limiting yourself and maybe putting other projects at risk by relying on in house talent. Grow a trusted list of freelancers that you can call on to get the job done for you.

The Secret Deal You might think that the different organized crime groups were always at each other’s throats. Not the case. The Italians, Irish, Russians, Japanese and so on many times had secret deals to share territory and even personnel when it suited them.

You as a small business person should not look at your competitors as only rivals. There might be areas or times that it is in both your mutual benefit to team up and form a partnership.

The Big Score isn’t the Big Score In the movies you see the junior mobsters going from store to store collecting the protection money each day. You might ask yourself, “why didn’t they just clean out the store and be done with it?” The reason is that would not be the big score. The big score is the steady stream of money coming in everyday. By only taking a little many times over, they collected far more than going for the one big payday.

This is called continuity in the business world. Continuity is where the big money is made online now. Paid newsletters, coaching groups, members only websites provide constant streams of income that rapidly add up to big money. Don’t push for a single big purchase. Build a continuity feature for your business.

Don’t Get Whacked In the mob shows, the person who always got whacked was the one who was weaker, not on their toes to see what was coming. As a business person you don’t want to be the one to get whacked. I’m not saying you should turn into the sociopath that Tony Soprano was. I am suggesting that you can look everywhere to find ways to improve the way you operate your business.

Is there any thing about Tony that you would bring into your business?

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Article Tags: continuity, run your business, tony soprano



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