Tweet

14 Pillars to Business-Building Breakthroughs

Guest post by: Kerri Salls

Article Overview: When you set out to build your business, did you know your business was going to break the million dollar mark in revenues in a year? Two years? Five years? Did you set out intentionally to build a business or invest in others? Or did your hobby evolve accidentally into solo-preneurship or a bit bigger business?

14 Pillars to Business-Building Breakthroughs

When you set out to build your business, did you know your business was going to break the million dollar mark in revenues in a year? Two years? Five years? Did you set out intentionally to build a business or invest in others? Or did your hobby evolve accidentally into solo-preneurship or a bit bigger business?

If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and acts like a duck, it must be a duck. Looking at your business, what does it look like to others? How is your expertise or professionalism conveyed to prospects and clients every day?

If you want others to take your business seriously, to drive sales and clients to you, then you and your entire (internal and external) team must possess the following 14 characteristics:

1. Setting and Achieving your own lofty goals and living your dreams: your flight plan, written goals shared with others, etc.

2. Learning how to easily and effectively overcome obstacles: persistence, determination, learning curve.

3. Turning Negatives into Positives: depend on it, things go wrong. Learn to turn lemons into lemonade, develop resilience.

4. Persistence: be willing to test, innovate, and optimize to achieve breakthroughs. Keep trying different iterations of your postcard, mailing, business card, website, program offer.

5. Ethics: stellar ethics go without saying. Don’t sell your integrity – you can’t get it back. Taking the high road is truly more fulfilling. Hold on to your values: integrity, honesty, authenticity, service, commitment.

6. Belief and Commitment: You must have a clear vision of what you set out to achieve. You must believe you deserve the results and rewards. And you must develop a system which you believe will achieve it; that is, reverse-engineer it with a hedge-plan to get the results you want.

7. Focus and Unstoppable Drive: your vision, mission, plan, passion, and “Hedgehog Concept” must be established and aligned.

8. Risk Taking: especially financially in the early test stages or pilot stages of your product or service rollout(s). Indeed, you are likely to lose more money at this stage than you win. It is necessary to stretch yourself into new arenas, formats, markets, sales & marketing channels. You even have to risk looking silly. But in the long-run, the law of averages always works with you if you harness them.

9. Fearlessness: This includes persistence and risk-taking but goes beyond that to bounce-back-ability.

10. Learn from the Mistakes of Others: Continually study and learn from others. Read case studies – not just in your own industry. Plug in to mastermind groups/create one. Seek out a mentor you can learn from – someone in your field. Just ask them. Let them lead.

11. Daily Motivation: If you don’t have them in place yet, set up systems, processes, self-talk, affirmations to weigh the factors of the situation in your own interest. Without them, you expend too much energy on the alternatives and get trapped in the negatives.

12. Handling Newfound Success: With all these pillars in place it will happen, not gradually but geometrically. When it does, maintain your humility, and maturity. Maintain a high level of deservedness and appreciate the accomplishment. You still must face the person in the mirror each morning – be sure you like what he/she stands for.

13. Giving Back: Someone, or many someones, have given you a hand up as you climb your ladder of success. It is equally important to extend a hand to others. You can mentor people in your company, in your industry or students. You can nurture those around you. Always give with the intent of making the world better off from your contributions.

14. Success-ion: When it’s time to let go or move on, be sure you are leaving a legacy. Sell your business as an asset by creating long-term value not just a one-time transaction.

Each of these pillars is a foundation of your business. The more pillars you put in place, the stronger the foundation will be - supporting your business. Each of these pillars is a mindset you must have, act on and instill in others. They must permeate all you do: your vision, your unique selling proposition, and your strategies. The integrity and authenticity you exemplify when you personify all fourteen mindset pillars will inspire your team and your clients to follow your example.

Related Articles
  Lean Marketing House - the Pillars
  THE SIX PILLARS OF SELF DISCOVERY
  Why do The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House™ crumble?
  Integrity and Honesty - Qualities Necessary for a Successful Business
  Recommendations
  How to Triple Your Income - 6 Pillars
  Environmental Leadership Part 2
  The Six Pillars of Energy-Aware Entrepreneuring
  The Two Best Ways to Keep the Sales You Make
  The Keys to Business Success
  10 Tips On Getting The Most Out Of Coaching
  EI - The Most Powerful Tool in Your Kit
  Build your business on the Pillars of Profitably
  Social Networking and the End of Advertising
  Get Rid of Your Marketing Vision Statement and Address the NEED!
  Does It Make Sense for UNDP to Help Launch Small and New Organizations?
  Business Communication in a Light Speed World
  PR: Healthcare’s #1 Educational Marketing Tool
  The 2 Pillars To Every Business Success
  The three pillars of a good brand are authenticity, consistency, and clarity

Article Tags: breakthrough, business building, goals, mindset, overcome obstacles, persistence, risktaking



Related Forum Posts
Re: Why do people hate Network Marketing / MLM? - You make a great point abotu the sales industry GT. Unfortunately, sales businesses have a really high attrition rate. From car salesmen to real estate or insurance agents, anywhere from 60-80% (depending on the chosen market) fail and quit without ever making a single sale. Since most people think of MLM as a sales business, it's no wonder the attrition rate is that high or higher. The fact is, MLM is NOT a sales business. It's a PEOPLE business, or more specifically, a Coaching and mentoring business. As for an example, I do have one, as you would expect. But, rather than pitching my company here, I would suggest learning the basics of what makes a successful mlm company. A mentor of mine, Michael Dlouhy developed the 5 Pillars to Network Marketing. If the company has all 5 pillars, you can almost guarantee success. If not, the chances are not good. Michael developed this over 20 years ago. He knew MLM could work, but had no luck himself. SO, he joined over 100 companies in under 2 years just so he could compare and see what worked, and what didn't. Bottom line, you need a 5 pillars company if you hope to be successful. Bill
Success Strategies - How to get the results you want now? Success Strategies and Action Steps I have used are: The Power of Choice Where you are at this present moment, is exactly perfect from the choices you have made. If you want to be somewhere else, you have to decide clearly what that is (your goal/outcome) and create action steps to achieve this. The Power of Focus The book "The Power of Focus" by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt, is one of my treasures in my Entrepreneur Library. If you focus on what you want versus what you do not want, your conscious and sub-conscious mind will direct attention to this. The movie, What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole, explains this in detail about quantum physics and what we create in our lives. The Power of Commitment This is not about commitment to others. The first step is the commitment, your word, you make to yourself. Accountability and responsibility are additional success strategies and ingredients to creating the success, defined by you, that you want. The commitment to others reflects your integrity, your word and the team you work with. Co-workers, clients, yoru family, friends and community. My Success Acronyn in Success Breakthroughs(c) is: S pecific & self-directed U nlimited opportunities & possibilities C reate powerful outcomes C onsistent measureable results E xperience pwoerful transformation S olution and action-oriented S uccessful habits and outcomes Break Through to Powerful LIfestyle & Performance Choices Moira
How To Build Great Pillar Content For Your Internet Business - I’ve found that a successful Internet businesses must start with a solid foundation. As I’ve seen, most Internet businesses will integrate a blog onto their website and start to build a solid foundation of pillar content. Pillar content or pillar articles are posts that are written to help a consumer establish what your Internet business is all about. What Is Pillar Content? This termed was first coined by a famous blogger called Yaro Starak at his website Entrepreneur’s Journey. Yaro provides the following detailed definition: “A pillar is blog content, usually an article, which does some very important things: * It will bring in a rush of new readers and backlinks (other sites linking to your blog). * It will continue to bring in more readers over time as you and other people refer to it, even though it may be buried in the archives of your blog. * Eventually it will bring in traffic from search engines (this is largely because so many other web pages link to it). * You can list it in a separate area (like an articles page) with all your other pillars so your best content can easily be accessed and your value clearly demonstrated. * It is not time dependent, so in twelve months’ time it will still be relevant and popular.” Why Is Pillar Content Important? Looking at the bigger picture, pillar content is your foundation of your Internet business as it will continue to bring consumers and readers to your website. You may think that just having a product or service to sell is all that’s needed to run a successful business. Not quite so. Consumers today are very hungry for information and want to know more about your business. Therefore providing pillar content relating to your products or services can add value for your consumers and generate more sales for you. For example, if I were selling a watch online and it had a description and listed features, it may not be enough for a consumer to purchase the watch from my site. Reason being, most people would want to read reviews from others who have purchased this watch and see their feedback. What if I wrote an article about the watch talking about the history and make of it and asked an expert to state their opinion, and had other consumers respond with comments and feedback. Then this would provide social proof and adds value to your product without the consumer leaving your site and spending time looking for more information elsewhere. Examples Of Pillar Content Most pillar content articles are longer than 500 words and have lots of practical tips or advice. There are many different forms of pillar content you can create and I have listed some examples below for you to apply to your industry: 1. How To Article - shows people how to do a certain task or instructions on building something 2. Definition Article - defines a term in your industry 3. Present A Theory Or Argument - writing to present some unique thought 4. Release A Significant Resource - a report, podcast, video 5. A “List” Article - it’s very easy to scan and share. Can be a top 10 list or action points 6. Technical Or Visual Guide - a screen capture presentation or how to fix something using a video presentation. It is also a very detailed step by step blueprint on exactly how to complete a task. Pillars I’ve seen how effective pillar content can be for any Internet business and I recommend you have at least 10 pillar articles on your website before marketing to consumers. That way you’ll provide them with something valuable to read and also gain their interest to come back again. If you can write an article each day using the above examples, then you can build a very strong foundation for your Internet business. Tyrone Shum Pillar Article Writer


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Google Panda and Your Search Engine Rankings

10 Golden rules to survive the Global Crisis

What is an Adaptive Organization

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.