This is a book I recently read whilst on holiday & found it easy to read & excellent motivator for budding entrepreneurs. Heres a quick intro:

“Inspired by the true story of a flight with Sir Richard Branson, Millionaire Upgrade blows the lid off the accepted belief that successful entrepreneurs are a breed apart, possessing some special magic.

Through the combined wisdom of interviews with 50 self-made millionaire entrepreneurs, this book takes you on your own personal master class in success, as experienced through the eyes of Tom, a frustrated employee who is upgraded on a long haul flight, and finds himself sitting next to self made millionaire Michael. During the flight Michael shares the science and secrets behind his own success.

Better than any in-flight movie, Millionaire Upgrade gets you inside the minds of successful entrepreneurs and self-made millionaires giving you the inside track on how they think and act.”

And heres what other successful entrepreneurs have said about this excellent publication:

“It took me a long time to learn this stuff—I wish I’d been on that plane 30 years ago!”
—Simon Woodroffe – YO! Sushi & Dragons Den

“The principles of success apply equally whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur, chief executive of a large plc or simply looking for inspiration for your own personal life. Here’s where you start, by reading this book.”
—Allan Leighton – Chairman, Royal Mail

“If you want a toolkit to help you become a successful entrepreneur, read this book. Then put it into practice.”
—Duncan Bannatyne – Bannatyne Leisure & Dragons Den

“Everything in business is a learning experience. I should know! I’d recommend all would-be entrepreneurs to read this book and be inspired to boldly set out on your own entrepreneurial journey. You won’t regret it.”
—Rachel Elnaugh – Red Letter Days and Dragons’ Den

“It is refreshing to find a book that describes the key difference between the entrepreneur and the rest – attitude. So often in life a cigarette paper’s thickness separates success from failure and Richard has written a book that perfectly captures this and suggests a way of thinking that can transform the tin of dog food into a thoroughbred racehorse.”
—Tim Smit – Eden Project

“Millionaire Upgrade captures the essence of what it takes to be successful in anything you choose to do. The rules of success are timeless and simply explained so you can apply them in your own business or personal life.”
—BJ Cunningham – Founder of Death Cigarettes

“In Millionaire MBA, Richard decoded entrepreneurs and unpicked their millionaire mindset. With Millionaire Upgrade, he has put it all back together again through IBELIEVE and a compelling story. Very clever and a must read for any budding entrepreneur!”
—Rene Carayol – Leadership Guru

“It takes a certain mindset to succeed in creating your own business. This book spells out how you need to think and act to succeed – whether you are an entrepreneur or a professional manager. It’s a great read too.”
—Matthew Barrett – Chairman, Barclays Bank

Read more here

After reading Shoemoney’s blog on how much money he made in one month from promoting other people’s products using pay per click engines such as Google Adwords, Yahoo PPC & MSN AdCenter I decided to give it a go myself.

I already have a Commission Junction account which has a wide range of affilliate products but as the reporting is slow I decided to setup a AzoogleAds account as most of their products offer realtime reporting so I will know when I’ve made a sale & where the sale came from pretty much instantly.

I consider real time reporting as a crucial point after reading how many people have got burnt by trying to make it via PPC engines. At least with instant reporting I can react immediatley, if I have to wait 24 hours to get my sales stats my Adwords & other PPC accounts could have burnt through $x,000′s & I havent even made a single sale!

These are what I consider keypoints in making money from PPC via selling other people products:

1) Product demand

2) Product competition

3) What does the client have to do to convert into a sale for me ie. enter their mobile number, fill in a registration form, submit credit card details etc.

4) Cost per click for my target keywords

5) Payout from AzoogleAds for each conversion

6) A realisitc CPC to Conversion ratio to make sure theres potentially some profit here

So what im looking for is a product in demand with low competition, doesn’t require too much input from the potential customer to convert, low cost per click & a good payout. Hmm doesnt sound that easy !

Well Im off to start making a list of possible targets & scripting some adverts for my PPC campaigns.

To be continued…….

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1. The consumer is in control.
“We need to embrace the urgent implications of consumer control.” Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer, Procter & Gamble

2. The consumer is sceptical and increasingly resistant to advertising.
“In the US 69 per cent of consumers are interested in products and services that allow them to block, skip or opt out of advertising and marketing messages.” Yanklevich Partners

3. Media fragmentation is pervasive.
“The average British internet user now spends 164 minutes online each day for personal use, compared to 148 minutes spent watching TV”. March 2006

4. Mass markets are being replaced by niche markets.
“McDonalds global head of marketing, Larry Light, has declared that mass marketing no longer works. Furthermore, Light goes onto declare, ‘the end of brand positioning as we know it”. Advertising Age, June 16th, 2004

5. Corporate executives are under greater levels of scrutiny.
“As ever, the debate in the industry centres on the best way to achieve results.” The Harder Hard Sell, Economist, May 13th 2004

6. Companies that understand Internet Culture best will benefit most.
“What I worry about much more is our ability to make the necessary cultural changes to meet the new demands of the digital native.” Rupert Murdoch, 13 April 2006

7. Consumers are mobilizing themselves in new, powerful ways.
“The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog.” Rupert Murdoch, April 13th 2005.

8. The broadcast model isn’t working.
“What you’ve been selling for the last 50 years, no longer works.” John Stratton, CMO, Verizon Wireless, talking to Agency Chiefs, March 2006

9. Broadband is a mass medium.
“Overall, the EU market more than doubled in 2005 to 48.2 million DSL subscribers, where the UK sits third, behind Germany and France.” 20th March 2006

10. User generated content (CGM) is influential and growing rapidly.
“Our audiences have moved on dramatically. Now they are consuming, creating, sharing and publishing their own content online.” Tom Glocer, CEO, Reuters

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After years of running various small businesses I have finally come to conclude that people are bad for your profits! What made me arrive at this conclusion? Well obviously it’s a very broad statement & people are not always bad for profits. Of course they are not, as many businesses make all their money by selling to the end consumer. But I believe there are better ways for people looking to set up a small profitable business than dealing direct with customers to make their money.

When considering about 50% of small businesses fail within the first year you need to make your business as smooth & efficient as possible. Especially if there are only a few employees or you are the only employee.

This is where people are bad for your profits. Dealing directly with the customer in order to close a sale & then thereafter support the customer if/when any future issues arise will be a major drain on your very limited resources. How much time can you really afford to spend on each customer to make X amount of profit? Do you really have the resource to be able to provide the after sales service as well, which will enhance your reputation in the community & hopefully earn you more sales? If you don’t provide a good after sales service you will soon get a bad reputation & your business will fail before it has even begun! I believe this is the mistake many people make when setting up their small business, the reality of the time required to deal with customers directly and still make a profit.

People are all different as are their requirements. This is the variable that makes it hard to automate any business where you have to deal directly with the customer. I believe that letting the companies already geared up with all the logistics of dealing direct with customers is the key in setting up a profitable new business with minimum overheads.

The key to making money in business is how can you serve more people & in turn generate more money? But after what I have just talked about we want to serve more people without draining company resources. Well if you are looking to set up a new business I would look at setting up an online business & sell other people’s products or services through your website. This means you can concentrate on generating your online sales & let the company who you are representing deal with the customer. This way if you generate 10 sales a day or 1000 sales a day it makes no difference to the load on resources within your small business, let the company you are representing deal with the extra costs and you concentrate on making the sales & more importantly money!

If you are successful in this and start making good profits with low overheads then maybe you can look at expanding your business in to different areas but at least this way you are giving yourself a chance to beat the statistics.

Until you have established a cash generative & profitable business people ARE bad for your profits!

Check out our making money & small business forum

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Rupert Steiner in his book ‘My First Break’ attempted to define the secret of becoming an entrepreneur and following interviews with over one hundred entrepreneurs, Steiner concluded that there was not one defined path. He has, however, drawn out observations of an entrepreneur’s personality traits. They have a tendency to be rebels, outsiders, original thinkers, risk takers and break new ground. Entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for new business opportunities and have the guts it needs to start up a business. They have total commitment to what they are doing, which verges on obsession behaviour.

Although some of the traits that they exhibit are similar to those of ‘ordinary’ businessmen, entrepreneurs have a tendency to come up with good ideas, which they execute better than anyone else. The have the flair to identify niche opportunities and are able to secure finances and to build an infrastructure and to keep the organisation afloat until it starts to make a profit.

Sue Birley, Imperial College Management School Professor of Entrepreneurship has tried to identify when the spark of an entrepreneur comes from. She concluded that to get a business established you need someone with persuasion, persistence with no inhibitions about identifying resources to transform the vision into reality.

People do not typically switch on being an entrepreneur. Some comes from nature, some from nurture. It is hard for people to be taught to be entrepreneurial: they either have it in their genes or in their upbringing or not at all. People cannot be taught to relish risk taking. Imagination is not taught in the classroom.

However, academics believe that education can help to provide those with a spark with at least some of the skills they will need to turn that spark into something more substantive. Michael Hay, Director for the Foundation for Entrepreneurial Management at the London Business School says it is possible to give aspiring entrepreneurs some insight and help to build their confidence. He says that you cannot teach people to have a good idea but you can develop inter-personal skills, sales and marketing and general management skills. You can make them better prepared and increase the odds for success. He says that it is crude to say that people are born entrepreneurs but thinks they are shaped by early experiences and role models.

Other theories regarding the psychological traits of an entrepreneur suggest that they are driven by specific psychological traits or even flaws. Some have a passion to be able to prove to themselves and to others that they can achieve although deep down they are suffering from low self-esteem. It has been found that some entrepreneurs are profoundly insecure and they strive to prove to themselves that they are better than they perceive themselves to be. However, they do tend to have an insight into other people’s strengths and weaknesses and have a great ability to lead and motivate their staff. They generally have a gut feel for what customers want.

Extensive research has been carried out on the psychology of entrepreneurs by Cary Cooper who is Bupa Professor of Organisational Psychology at Manchester University’s Institute of Science and Technology and he states that many entrepreneurs are ‘bounce-back’ people with a powerful desire to achieve. He says that ‘….they do not get distracted by either success or failure; they just plough on, never satisfied and constantly in fear of ‘being found out’. Often after one success they think ‘I fooled them’ and need to do it again to prove it was not just a freak event.’

Cooper also says that entrepreneurs see failure as confirming their inner fears but following failure they do not give up; they just get started again to try and prove that they can get it right a second time. Cooper also observes that being an entrepreneur has negative aspects to it. They tend to be unable to have and miss out on close relationships and the family life that others have. Their focus is only on the business to an obsessional degree, which can be likened to a drug. Only a few entrepreneurs actually set out to build big businesses and to attain wealth and, interestingly, money I is not a prime motivator.

Cooper has classified entrepreneurs into two categories; those who are functional and those who are real. He suggests that functional types are not genuine entrepreneurs. They tend to have one success and subsequently live off that success and need to show to people that they have been successful. They like to be seen with their money as they have little drive to establish another success. This varies significantly from the real entrepreneur. They keep coming up with new ideas to prove to themselves and to their peers that they are capable to doing so. Their main driver is a fear of failure and not for tangible wealth benefits. A real entrepreneur never stops.

It has been demonstrated that many entrepreneurs grow tired of their business after a while and sell them or recruit fresh managers to free them up from day to day involvement. Once the buzz has gone from the original risk, many are on the look for their next entrepreneurial ‘fix’.

By definition they are risk takers, modern merchant adventurers avoiding the stifling bureaucracy and politics of big companies.

Cooper notes that many entrepreneurs are actually incapable of running a business. They do not like the tedium of building a company. They employ a strong team of managers to do this

Cooper says entrepreneurs are driven by a need to control the world in a way that they were unable to control in their childhood’s. In a survey he discovered many were inspired by a caring parent or a mentor. More than 70% of entrepreneurs could identify some significant shaping event in their childhood. A factor common too many entrepreneurs Cooper has researched are the number who suffered bereavement at an early age.

Richard Branson of the Virgin Group says that he would not have been able to start Virgin if he had not done so whilst he was a teenager, with no mortgage, dependants or ties. He states that half of his success is getting the right people around him and encouraging them to be committed to what he is doing. He states the importance of having a passion for what you are doing.

Krueger and Thueson using the Myers-Briggs Type Personality Indicator would describe an entrepreneur as having an ENTP type of personality – extrovert, intuitive, thinker, and perceiver. An ENTP looks for one exciting challenge after another. They are highly inventive types whose enthusiasm leads to a variety of activities. Their inventiveness is attributable to their rich intuition which gives them a world of endless possibilities, which, when combined with their objective decision making facility and directed outwardly converts everything to ideas and schemes.

During an interview with a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, he described entrepreneurs as extroverts. Serebriakoff describes entrepreneurs as an outward looking, socially friendly and uninhibited type of person. Enjoys company, feels at ease in a large circle and tends to form a large number of relatively shallow relationships. They are confident, assertive and friendly, we can represent this extreme type as a boisterous, talkative and friendly commercial traveler who is very much at home in a bar or at the club.

The constant variable in being an entrepreneur is getting a break.

Any country that ignores its entrepreneurs quickly runs into trouble!

Aurel Voiculescu MBA http://www.aurelvoiculescu.com Corporate strategy research – Media Industry – The honey pot for entrepreneurs. http://www.aurelvoiculescu.com/mba/strategy.htm For a full list of references follow the links in the resource box.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Aurel_Voiculescu

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