Eric Rice's Entrepreneur Tips

We see it all the time, “Eric my product is amazing, my office design is perfect, my books are run well…….why am I going broke” and the answer is always the same—YOU ARE NOT SELLING. The purpose of any business is to sell products or services, period. Most businesses fail, not because it is the law of averages, because the person running them had one of the following problems:

1. They couldn’t break the paradigm of going from a W-2 salary employee to a 1099 Self –Employed machine. This is a problem. This is why most businesses fail. Most people are taught to do “a job”, not “run a business”, which are far different things. “Doing a job” is nothing more than filing your role within the system, and most of the time getting paid a fraction of the value of the job. “Running a business”, has no function, YOU MUST KNOW AND DO EVERYTHING, from the smallest to most important task—EVERY DAY.
2. They couldn’t get out of their comfort zone. People are funny; they love to do what is easy and want to be paid like they did the things that are hard. Being successful is all about doing things that everyone else hates to do or doesn’t want to do. We have to teach these candidates to get out of their comfort zone and break through the barriers that hold back their peers.
3. They never learned to sell. What a problem this can be for an entrepreneur, not knowing HOW to sell. Think about it, once you have a product or service, what good is it if nobody buys it? Sometimes the best product or service in the market is never heard of because the owners didn’t know how to sell, really know HOW to sell. We teach them TO sell and HOW to sell during this phase, while they sell their business that they have been working on.
4. “I am a business person not a salesman”. WOW, this is a killer. No one says that you have to sell used cars out of the back of a flea market like a bad movie. Think of some of the best salespeople out there, they are the names you know. The entire panel of multi-millionaires on Shark Tank, some of the best salespeople to ever live. Sean (P-Diddy) Combs, Tony Robbins, Donald Trump, Suzie Orman, David Letterman, the list goes on and on. These people have made it in their industry because they are always on the sale. When people realize that a salesman is the same thing as a businessman, they sky is not even close to the limit. The common misconception that salesmen are bad is controlled by the way that a sale is done. Learn to embrace it and use it right.
5. I need money to make this work! Big problem for most businesses. Entrepreneurs seem to follow the trend of the popular failures and successes of those that have been where they are. Make sure you have a product and or service that is good enough to not need money from anyone else.
6. One revenue stream. This is 2009 and the world of specialization has hit, but the specialty is in knowing how to pay your bills. Companies that limit themselves to their business alone as a revenue stream will be left behind. We will teach our candidates to learn about other businesses and partner with the right ones to ensure that SOMEONE is always selling and revenue is always coming in. Make no mistake about it, the consolidation era is here and those that embrace it will come out on top.