Passionate Business
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(excerpted from Marc Allen's "Visionary Business")
1. Every company needs a solid, well-written business plan that charts a clear course for the next year, and projects a vision five years into the future, both in words and in numbers. A well-written plan is your map, your visualization of the future.
2. The business plan should start with a brief, concise mission statement that is idealistic and grand.
3. Before writing the business plan, do the "ideal scene" process: Assume five years have passed, and your business has succeeded brilliantly: What would you like to be doing? Put it in writing, and compare it with others involved in your business.
4. Plan on everything in a start-up business to take twice as long and cost twice as much as you expect.
5. Your plan has to be strong enough to overcome every possible hurdle and obstacle, both external and internal.
6. Every successful business is based on a vision. Without a vision of the future, there is no future.
7. You have to have a higher purpose than making money in a business. When you have a higher purpose, you marshal all kinds of forces behind you that support you in your goal. Money is essential in business, but it is secondary.
8. For every adversity there is an equal or greater benefit. That is a key to visionary business. Life is always filled with problems, but it is filled with opportunities as well.
9. There are no bad businesses, there are only poor managers. A good manager can take any kind of business and turn it around and make it successful. A poor manager can take any kind of business and run it into the ground. Don't dwell on pictures of failure. Keep picturing success.
10. Plan your work and work your plan. Your success may take a different route than you planned.
11. Put the interests of the corporation before your own interests, and before the interests of any owners, any employees, or anyone else. Take care of the corporation, first and foremost, and it will take care of you, and take care of all of its owners and employees and many others as well.
12. Create an employee handbook. Include generous employee benefits: vacations, wellness days, health and dental insurance, and profit sharing. Give away a substantial share of your profits to your employees, and the company will do so well that, in the long run, the owners will make more than if they had kept all the profits. Make sure every employee becomes a stockholder.
13. Only you can create your success, and only you can block your success. If your visualization of success is stronger than your doubts and fears, you will succeed.
14. There are two styles of management: management by crisis, and management by goals. Train youself and your team so that your style reflects the latter.
15. With ownership comes responsibility. The owners of a business have a responsibility toward the welfare of their employees and of the environment. If you can't run a business without exploiting people or polluting the planet, you shouldn't be in that business in the first place.
16. Give a generous portion of your profits to organizations working to improve the world. If every profitable business in the world gave even just 5 percent of their profits to non-profit corporations that are working to help people and the environment, we could end starvation around the world, house the homeless, and clean up the whole planet.
17. Money is not the final measure of a person's worth -- there are far more important things: the quality of life we lead; the way we treat others, and treat our environment; the service we do for others; the amount of love and compassion we have for others; our purpose in life, and the degree to which we fulfill it.
18. It makes great business sense to follow the three rules of Pepsico's CEO: (1) love change -- we either learn to love it, or resist the inevitable; (2) learn to dance -- our working relationships should be a dance, not a struggle; (3) leave J. Edgar Hoover behind -- hire good people, clearly define their responsibilities, and let them do it their own way.
19. Hire people who are passionate about their work. Learn the difference between technicians, managers, and entrepreneurs, and hire appropriate people to do what they love to do. Treat them like adults, and they will act like adults; give them responsibility, and they will be responsible.
20. Every business reflects the consciousness of the owner. It's important to reflect on the events that have shaped our lives, and discover the core beliefs that we've created for ourselves because of those events. Once our negative beliefs are identified, we can let them go because they are not true -- they are simply self-fulfilling; they become true if we believe them. You are capable of anything; there are no limits to what you can accomplish -- if you believe it to be true.
21. The more you give, the more you receive -- and not just financially. You receive even more important things: satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, and love.
22. The words of Christ are still brilliant today, and should be remembered: Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened unto you.... Judge not, lest you be judged. ... Love your enemies.... Turn the other cheek.... The Kingdom of Heaven is within..
23. It's invaluable to have some kind of understanding of a higher power, to help turn life's problems into opportunities, to help you have a life well-lived.
24. Keep learning about the business, from everyone and everything you can. Keep reinventing your business: it's a never-ending process.
25. Follow your bliss: Do what you love to do, work with passion, live with passion, and you'll create a visionary business, in your own absolutely unique way.
With enough money and understanding and creativity, every major problem the world faces can be solved. And money is infinitely available, if we know how to manifest it. So all we lack is understanding and creativity: All we lack is vision. One person's vision can change the world -- that's been proven in the past.
The ultimate purpose of passionate business is not to make money, it is to transform the world, by doing what we love to do, what we're here to do, whatever that is....
Passionate Business
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Other Business Wisdom
Links to Other Sites Containing Business WisdomSet forth below are a number of links to other sources of business wisdom. Some are funny, some inspirational, some are profound; all of them will provide help in guiding you through the challenges of creating and growing your business successfully.
Sam Walton: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Business
Doing Business the Old Way, with New Technology