Starting a business today is far tougher than a few years ago, not only do you have to know your business, you have to know how to market your business within your budget in a world where companies are spending tens of thousands on marketing and branding. We hear the statistics that a successful business is 80% psychology and the rest is skill, timing and luck; and we invest a good proportion of money into marketing, when really the driving factor of any business is the owner. The owner can make or break a business and the owner is governed by their knowledge and their psychology. The problem is that knowledge without action and flexibility is never going to make the grade and that is the main reason why over 75% of businesses fail in the first three years. The concepts required to make your business grow are in themselves very simple, but they need to be applied consistently.
It is commonly remarked that business is one of the toughest games out there, you have to be mentally tough with the resilience to bounce back from many challenges. If you were a professional athlete, you would not dream of competing without a coach. A extraordinary sportsperson will have an extraordinary coach and be training both physically and mentally.
Training provides you with
a) the ability to draw the skill set required out
b) tips and techniques to take you to the top of your game
c) the psychology to get up when others would be beaten
Business is a game and if you do not know the rules your business, your life and the life of your employees is going to be severely affected. You need to know how to stand out from the crowd in psychology as well as appearance.
In business, success depends on the owner and the feeling and psychology of the customer. A good reliable product provides your customer with comfort and you will sell well, but provide your customer with significance and they will pay a higher price tag (sometimes the higher price tag itself also provides significance - fashion designers rely on such psychology)
However, if you increase the value to the customer in terms of an intangible psychological lift, such as happiness, you have a customer fan base for the duration that you can keep that feeling alive in your customer. Service industries have a perfect opportunity to tap into this aspect of the psychology of their customer and as such can have dramatically increase profit but other businesses can adapt as well.