Money and Your Business with Jay Kilberg
January 26, 2012 | Posted by Chris Barany | Tags: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Marketing | 3 Comments
PRO U President Jay Kilberg delivered the first Money and Your Business call for Foundation members this week. On the call, Kilberg discussed 10 key things he learned in his 30-year corporate career that are relevant to entrepreneurs:
1. Know your market. As Stephen Covey says: “Begin with the end in mind.” By focusing on execution, not analysis, we stay plan-oriented and stick to the process of becoming successful instead of examining it. Remember, a goal without a plan is just a wish.
2. Be customer driven. Always keep the end user in mind when making any decisions about your business. Your business exists to serve them, and that should be reflected in your business every day.
3. Make sure to be a lifelong student. To grow as entrepreneurs, we must constantly expose ourselves to new people and ideas. The one idea you learn may be life-changing. There is always a better way to accomplish any goal in business, and new people and ideas are the way we can experience these better ways and put them to use for us.
4. Think of yourself as a brand. Everything you do is a reflection on your brand. All purchasing decisions your customers make for your business will be made in assessing YOU as a brand.
5. Cash is king. Build a budget and manage it to see the return on your investments, and invest in the areas where you receive the biggest return.
6. Time is money. Avoid the “B” and “C” level tasks that eat up your time and aren’t mission critical to growing your business. Keep on the “A” tasks that are transformational to your business and advance your overall life goals. “Life is not a dress rehearsal.”
7. Innovation must be a constant process. As entrepreneurs, we must always look for the better way. If you don’t evolve, you’ll die; it’s a rule of nature AND a rule of business. In order to be great, you have to have failures – that’s how you grow. Apple, the most valuable company on the stock exchange, learned to improve its products through launching failed products.
8. Mentor and be a mentor. Whatever position you are in life, you can teach things to some people and learn things from others. Allow yourself to be mentored by someone with success, and then give back to those once you become more successful. This is how we ensure everyone has the greatest opportunity to become successful.
9. Discover your purpose and passion. Once you have a driving force in your life, you’ll approach everything with greater clarity of purpose. All great successes come from a powerful passion that drove that success onward through anything in the way.
10. Be a leader. All of us have something we can share. And we all have a different leadership style. There’s no right way to lead; it’s a state of mind, and it comes from us bringing our passion to everything we do. Everything you do defines what kind of leader you are. And people always follow leadership when they see it.
Money and Your Business with Jay Kilberg is a featured monthly call for PRO Foundation members.
