Is Can't Limiting Your Growth?
Article Overview: Replacing "We can't," with "What if?" is a big step toward releasing the status quo that's holding us back. Once we ditch that gravity, the sky can be our limit!
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Free Download - Are you Stuck in Failure? By Rebel Brown
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Is Can't Limiting Your Growth?
Do you know someone whose response to any new idea is "We Can't!"?
In my book, Defy Gravity, I call these harbingers of cheer the Drones. When a Drone steps up to share their opinions, we all roll our eyes. We know that this Drone will support something based on the past and a safer, less risk approach.
Drives you crazy, doesn't it?
Don't get me wrong. It's good to have contrarian opinions as we brainstorm new approaches - in business or life. But Drones go far beyond contrarian. They drone on with their same status quo ideas, saying "we can't," to every new approach or thought. Drones continue to follow their own course no matter what direction the rest of the organization wants to go. After all, that's what Drones do!
Drones are one of the many reasons that companies get stuck in their status quo thinking. When Drones are leaders, they can single handedly cause a company to crash and burn. Manager or worker Drones will have nearly as much of a negative impact, depending on their roles. I've seen a single Drone hold a company in it's status quo all the way to the ground - all because no one would step up and say "Enough"!
"We Can't" is probably one of the most dangerous phrases in our business and personal lives. Every time we think we can't do, we limit our potential - as leaders and as people.
People ask me what I believe separates growth companies from those that get stuck in the status quo.
Companies empower positive thinking grow. Those who allow "We can't" to be part of their accepted corporate vocabulary don't experience high-velocity growth.
"But sometimes we really can't," you say. You're right, sometimes you can't make major shifts. But you can usually find a forward step toward that new shift that will move you into your future. That's the key difference - the willingness to try new things, to evolve and shift with our markets.
Replacing "We can't," with "What if?" is a big step toward releasing the status quo that's holding us back. Once we ditch that gravity, the sky can be our limit!
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Article Tags:
business growth strategy,
ceo,
change,
Defy Gravity,
leaders
About the Author: Rebel Brown
RSS for Rebel's articles - Visit Rebel's website
I've been an executive consultant for over 20 years now. I work with boards of directors, executive teams, sales, marketing and product management to create business and go-to-market strategies that drive profitable growth. My clients hire me for my expertise in business strategy, corporate and product market positioning and high momentum market launches. I also assist with fund raising and M&A strategies.
My best selling market strategy book - Defy Gravity - shares the lessons I've learned in my client engagements. I'm thrilled to be able to share these experiences with business leaders in a variety of markets. We all have Gravity - myself included! When we shift from gravity thinking - high velocity growth is ours for the taking!
I'm honored to have been featured in media including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, Business Insider, Startup Nation, First Business TV, ChangeThis.com, 800CEORead, Exceptional People and more. I'm a frequent radio show guest - sharing tips 'n tricks to help all business leaders excel. I'm also an executive speaker for companies, associations, events and audiences who are ready to Shift - from Gravity to High Velocity Growth.
Visit www.RebelBrown.com for Rebel's thought-provoking and informative videos and articles.
Click here to visit Rebel's website

More from Rebel Brown
The Thin Line
When Good EnoughIsnt
What If
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Related Forum Posts
Re: The 3 Factors That are Limiting Your Productivity
- Hi Evan,
Thanks for a great article and video on 'The 3 Factors That are Limiting Your Productivity'. I think that no matter whether you are self employed like myself or a CEO with staff, it is so important to manage your time so as to maximize the benefit to your business.
Your expression Eliminate; Automate; Delegate is easy to remember and will certainly stick in my mind. There are many good business ideas out there but they will ultimately run into difficulty without proper planning and execution so these tips will certainly help.
I have also left this comment on the article and will place a link to it on my blog.
regards,
Mal.
It's not easy
- Evan,
It's not easy to franchise a business! Franchising requires a strong business model, significant capital resources, and very talented people to be successful.
There are over 3000 franchise opportunities out there, most (80%) don't have the three criteria I listed above.
The biggest benefit to using franchising to grow your business is that you bring in someone else's capital and human resource. What you are giving up is control in operating that business.
I have seen successful companies get in trouble attempting to franchise their business, franchising requires a different skill set than simply operating units.
Growth would have been much easier if they had just opened their own units and sought grown from within.
Different Hats
- CEO Sales & Marketing & Leadership Development Company
Strategic Vision 10
Alliances & Growth Strategies 10
Hiring & Managing People 8
Mentoring 8-9
Strategic Planning for Clients 10
Execution of Marketing Campaigns 9-10 (i have great people who do the nitty gritty)
Financial Management 9
Bookkeeping 3 (outsourced as I really hate the fine details like GST0
Administrative Follow Up 6-7 (again have great staff)
Writing & Publishing 9 (getting better all the time!)
Speaking 10 (so I have been told)
Self Promotion 9-10
Web development & Promotion 6-7 (learning more and have brought on players who are 10+)
Babysitting Employees (1 - wont do it, that's why I work so hard to hire and motivate the people I have)
Great topic Kevin!!
Jude
Sports is queen!
- About four years ago I started a webzine called The Thunder Child, devoted to science fiction and fantasy in all media. Growth was verrrrrrrrrrrrry slow at first, but has gradually picked up so that now I'm making a respectable income from my amazon.com and google adsense. (Well, from adsense, anyway. Amazon is a drop in the bucket compared to what adsense brings in.)
Last year I put together a website showcasing the Tennessee Lady Vols (who won the NCAA championships last year), and just two weeks ago I put together a small website for Jacoby Ellsbury, a rookie outfielder for the Boston Red Sox - called a "phenom" and already very popular.
The Lady Vols site has about 20 pages...the Ellsbury site has 5. Compared with The Thunder Child that, started out with about 20, and is now at about 1,000 and growing.
Well, the hits on those two sports sites are more than three times what the hits on my Thunder Child site was during the first year of its existence. Since I've been a sports fan all my life, I reaaaaally wish that I'd started a sports webzine four years ago instead of this sci fi one, because I think my income now would be treble what it is.
No doubt about it, sports rules!
$3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO
- $3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO
Content and Community Driven Pet Websites
________________________________________
Profile: Two Pet Related Websites
Price: $65,000 OBO
Age of sites: 2 years 4 months
Monthly revenue: $3300 (plus or minus a couple hundred)
Key details:
Growth Year over Year: 641%
Uniques: 200,000 per Month
Page Views: 1 mil + per Month
Referrers: 10,000+ Monthly
Search Engine Traffic: 61%
Members: 7500+/-
Articles: 318
Blog Posts: 189+
Forum Posts: 256,000+
Topics: 19,000+
Adsense Revenue: $1500-$1700 per month
Kontera Revenue: $900+ per month
Direct Advertisers: $90 - $300 per month
Monthly Server Costs: $100
Monthly Advertising Costs: $0
Total Profit Per Month $2500 - $3000
Organic Growth Month over Month: 10% +/- (Zero spent on advertising – all word of mouth and search engine)
Software Licenses: All Open source and thus free: Linux, Apache, MySQL, Zen Cart, PHPLIST, WordPress, SMF, and the rest Custom Programming.
Software Editions: All software running latest releases.
Uniques Last Month: 200,000
Page Views Last Month: *2,000,000+ per month
Referring Sources: 1,000 different referrers
Referring Keywords: 60,000 Search Terms
First Page Results: Thousands of keywords and keyword combinations
Indexed pages (Google): 65,000+
Indexed pages (Yahoo): 26,000+
Google page rank: 5-6 (Lots of 3’s and 4’s throughout the sites)
Pages of Content: 60,000+/-
Alexa site rank: 124,000 (way off the mark due to audience profile)
Compete Site Rank: Much closer but still off.. See image
Brand Value: All Original Creative and Content including Logo, Forum Template, Front-end, CSS, Code, Images etc. Extremely well made to render fast as well as accessible, to both humans and search engines. Search optimized throughout.
Description:
I actually posted this for sale almost 11 months ago but didn’t take any offers. Since then traffic has increased almost 650% and revenue has increase by almost as much, closer to 600%. Revenue comes from direct advertising ($150-$350 per mo) but primarily Google Adsense ($1500 - $1750 per mo) and Kontera Links ($700-$900 per mo).
Letting go as I’m working full time and just started Business School… I just don’t have the time. However, these sites are ripe for one to build a better business direction.
I started these sites as the pet industry happens to be exploding, exponentially and almost parabolically. Google “pet spending” to find a glimpse. Some articles you’ll find:
“The Growing Pet Industry Is One Trend You Can Bank On”
"In the past 10 years, pet spending has more than doubled to an estimated $38.4 billion for 2006."
"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the pet industry is now the seventh largest retail segment in the country."
“We have only begun to see the tip of the spending iceberg"
“Pet Spending at All Time High”
"Pet ownership is on the increase in the US, and the amount of money spent on pets is dramatically increasing too."
The two sites are content and community driven websites with 350+ health related articles on pets, a pet blog that discusses current issues, and a very active message board and community. They compliment each other perfectly and as such are being sold together as a package. The templates are completely custom designed and CSS powered. They would be XHTML Strict Compliant however we’ve included a couple of things that just wouldn’t let it pass. There are almost 8000 members between the two sites. Several hundred more between the blog subscribers and the email list subscribers. At one time we had a store (its all still there however it’s been shut off) and we had about 200 customers. The store lasted only about a month and a half as our careers just didn’t allow us to provide the customer service this site deserves. We also had a drop ship company that worked out really well, (and we still do if we want them). Much more work than our careers had time for. The logos are custom. I’ve got the logo in vector version for Signs and tee shirts. The Design is custom. All software front-ends are custom and running clean - open source applications. Runs extremely well.
The entire 2 sites run on a dedicated server that runs about $100 a month.. The sites run on a LAMP environment, meaning Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. All of the software is open source and requires no fees. We run PHPLIST, Zen Cart, and SMF Simple Machines Forum. The blog is Word Press. The article system is completely custom however the back end panel is ran simple from phpMyAdmin – straight to the database.
I think there is enormous potential with the two sites as the brands have a very loyal following and is growing by leaps and bounds. It has been mentioned in 10 or so online and offline newspapers (that I am aware of) as well as a magazine – all of which will be provided. The site was featured as Yahoo’s Site of the Week. The site was forever (and perhaps still is) the number one pet site viewed on StumbleUpon.com. The blog also has 177 links from 56 sites according to Technorati.com and ranks 52,000. The database is huge. It’s full of fully owned content, images, customer data, subscriber data, members etc etc. The brand really sells when it comes to tee shirts and calendars. We have a drop shipper when needed that we buy tee’s at 4 dollars a shirt. Each shirt sold for $20 so there was a great margin.
The two sites have a solid existence and are trenched well into all the major search engines with perhaps thousands of first place results for keywords and keyword combinations. The majority of traffic is all organic from Google, Yahoo and MSN and it will stay that way forever. The site was built solidly by SEO pros with Search Engine Spiders in mind as every part of the site is search friendly. All pages have been correctly and lightly coded. The database powers the meta tags, title tags, h1’s, h2’s, image titles and bold tags. The site has tens of thousands of dollars put into the design and functionality.
petsite4sale@gmail.com
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