Strutzel Dan - Entrepreneurship: How to Start and Grow Your Own Business

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

How to Start and Grow Your Own Business

BRIAN TRACY

Published 2019 by Gildan Media LLC

aka G&D Media

www.GandDmedia.com

Copyright 2019 by Brian Tracy

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. No liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained within. Although every precaution has been taken, the author and publisher assume no liability for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

First Edition: 2019

Front cover design by David Rheinhardt of Pyrographx

Interior design by Meghan Day Healey of Story Horse, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

ISBN: 978-1-7225-1017-6

eISBN: 978-1-7225-2135-6

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Brian Tracy is one of the worlds foremost authorities on business and personal success. He has given more than 5,000 talks and seminars to over five million people and is a business coach to top leaders in major industries worldwide.

In Entrepreneurship: How to Start and Grow Your Own Business, Brian will help you become knowledgeable about the best ideas for personal success, wealth, happiness, and fulfillment, and expose you to the most innovative, current, and, most importantly, proven ideas on how to become successful. Entrepreneurship will be the vehicle that will take you, as Brians late friend Zig Ziglar used to say, all the way to the top.

You might ask why Brian chose this topic, entrepreneurship. Simply this: The world that we live in today, and the world that you will build your career in favors the entrepreneur. If youre in your twenties and thirties, you may forge a second or third career as an entrepreneur; and if youre in your forties, fifties, or beyond, you will decidedly favor the idea of starting and owning your own business.

Here are a few statistics: According to Fortune magazine, as of 2016, millennial entrepreneurswhat they call millennipreneurs, who are twenty to thirty-five years oldare starting more companies, managing bigger staffs, and targeting higher profits than their baby boomer predecessors.

Fifty-two percent of all small businesses are home-based, and many of those are started and run by people in their mid-career. Of those businesses, 75% of all U.S. businesses are non-employer businesses, such as sole proprietorships.

According to Ed Hess, professor of business administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, over the next ten to fifteen years, 47% of all jobs in the U.S. are likely to be replaced by technology, more than 80 million in all.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker holds ten different jobs before age forty, and this number is projected to grow. Forrester Research predicts that todays youngest workers will hold twelve to fifteen jobs in their lifetime.

What do all these statistics show? That whether you are early in your career or are in mid-career, whether you have ambitions to run a larger business or a very small business, and whether you start a business because its youre desire or youre forced to by automation and layoffs, entrepreneurship is more likely than ever to be a part of your future.

According to Brian Tracy, thats a very good thing. Just think about that last statistic, switching jobs up to fifteen times. Wouldnt it be better to own that job and have greater control over your own destiny? Whats more, as Brian will explain, it has never been easier to start and run your own business.

Years ago, when Brian presented How to Start and Succeed in Your Own Business, way back in the 1980s, the barriers to starting a business were much greater. Staffing costs, marketing costs, long-distance calling costs, the availability of startup capital, and even the infrastructure required, made running your own business a distant dream for most people. Today you can start a business with a laptop, a wireless cable connection, and a very strong LinkedIn profile.

The barriers to entry in nearly every market have been broken down. You can start a business with little or no staff. Marketing and advertising costs are being driven lower and lower. Production and distribution costs are being driven to zero. You can easily start a business from your home office, and startup capital is so accessible that websites like kickstarter.com and other crowdfunding sites have become household names.

In this timely book, Brian will show you how to take advantage of all of these options. Start your own highly profitable business, and grow that business to any size in terms of staff and revenue that you desire. Best of all, hell teach you how to make that business successful and sustainable for the long term, so you dont become one of those unfortunate statistics in two to three years, like the vast majority of business owners.

In this brave new world, the best vehicle for reaching the top and for controlling your own destiny is entrepreneurship. Get ready, as Brian presents the secret formula that the majority of successful entrepreneurs follow. You can be one of them.

Editor

ONE

Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Age!

Years ago, when I started off, I came from a limited background. I didnt graduate from high school. I worked at laboring jobs for years, and I struggled. I was envious of people who were doing better than me, and I began to ask why some people are more successful than others. Then I began to study economics, especially entrepreneurial economics. I found that for the last 200 or 300 years, the driving engine in our society has been the entrepreneur.

The entrepreneur is a person who sees an opportunity to serve people in some way with a product or service that they want and need, and then is able to bring this product or service to the customer at a cost that is lower than the customer is willing to pay. Its a very simple equation. I spent hundreds of hours studying this, because its fascinating. The bottom line is that human needs are unlimited. Whatever a person has, they want something more, and they want something different.

Ive written eighty-five books now, and Im thinking of writing another. It would be called The ER Factor. ER stands for ER, so bett-ER, fast-ER, easi-ER, cheap-ER, and so on. Youll find that all human beings are motivated by ER. Successful companies are the ones that offer the best ER to this customer at this time in this product or service area. There are no limits to what you can do.

The fastest way for you to become financially independent and to have a wonderful life and a wonderful standard of living is to find a way to offer something that people want and need thats faster, better, cheaper, easier, and more convenient.

My favorite example is Jeff Bezos and Amazon. A couple of decades ago, even less, he drove out from New York to Seattle, and while his wife drove, he typed up a business plan, which well talk about later. The business plan was very simple. Its what is it that people want and need and are willing to pay for?

People love to buy books. You go to a bookstore, and the store will have a few thousand copies of different books, but in many cases, they dont have the one that you want, so you have to place an order, give them your credit card, then go back in a few days or a week. They order the book in. This was the standard method of buying books, as you recall.