November 10, 2025 • 49 mins
Right Thinking with Steve Coplon.
This week's show is called "Personal Finance and Small Business Ownership Part 4 - Encore Edition #19". Tune in and hear Steve as he continues in the last of this four-part series to teach valuable lessons on how to reach success in business. Now that you've established your Sales Goals, your best chance to reach them is with a well-managed Marketing Plan.
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
This week's show is called "Personal Finance and Small Business Ownership Part 4 - Encore Edition #19". Tune in and hear Steve as he continues in the last of this four-part series to teach valuable lessons on how to reach success in business. Now that you've established your Sales Goals, your best chance to reach them is with a well-managed Marketing Plan.
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
There must be live starting lighter somewhere. Got to be why.
Good morning, Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm
your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
(00:35):
Let's have a great day. Good morning everybody. I hope
everybody had a wonderful day like I did yesterday. It
was Father's Day, and I hope that all of you
were just absolutely enjoying your families yesterday. It was probably
one of the best days I've ever enjoyed with my family,
(00:58):
and I just hope that you all did. Also. Last week,
Robin Cossargeon was my guest, and Robin, I want to
say thank you one more time. I was accused by
many many people of saying thank you too many times
to you. But at the same time, everybody that said
(01:20):
that to me said that they thought that you were
everything I said you were so Robin, your peaceful heart,
your love of other people, the tools that you give
are are just wonderful. And and I left the show
believing that anybody that took the time to listen to
(01:43):
you on the show last week would have a whole
lot of ways that they could look at their own
situation and find a way to be more peaceful and
have a better life and just move on with their lives,
which is your goal is in the first place. And
I thank you. I got lots of responses. I got
(02:05):
one of my listeners took the time to send me
an email and he himself had been experienced in mindfulness
meditation and he just loved listening to you talk about
that tool. So I encourage everybody, if you want to
learn more, go to Lionheart dot org www dot lionheart
(02:27):
dot org and go to the park with the meditations
that you spoke about last week. It is life changing,
what Robin had to say last week. So that's a
that's a tool that's there for everyone. Okay, well today
I just want to kind of kind of start off
with a couple of thoughts. He who works his land
(02:50):
will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.
That comes from Proverb twelve, verse eleven. Here's another thought.
All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads
only to poverty. That's Proverbs fourteen, verse twenty three. And
(03:13):
here's one last one that's going to sort of set
the tone for the direction that I want to go today.
In his heart, a man plans his course, but the
Lord determines his steps Proverbs sixteen, verse nine. Okay, so
why did I choose these three proverbs today? I chose
(03:35):
these three proverbs today because all of us sometimes are
faced with the exact same situation in life. Do you
ever feel like there's a tall brick wall that's very
thick right there in front of you, and you just
feel like you're beating your head against it. Well, I
(03:58):
feel like that a lot, and then I try to
go into my meditations and get that inter piece that
Robin talked about last week on the show. But life
is not easy sometimes, and I have tried to develop
a program where I provide people some answers, some encouragement
(04:22):
that gives them hope so that they can better themselves
and get out of a situation that seems to be
that brick wall in front of you beating your head
against it, to where you can take positive steps to
improve your situation. Over the last month or so, I've
done three parts to a four part series on personal
(04:46):
finance and small business ownership. And if you go back
to the first part, I talked about what it takes
if you want to be in business for yourself, to
learn to think like an owner, to leave in yourself
and the basics, and I really covered the risk factors
that are involved. And then I continued in the next
(05:10):
lesson on understanding what your expenses and your overheads were
in those kind of things, and I gave you a
formula that I use that we've been very very successful
over the last thirty thirty five years teaching people that
has changed many lives, and that is view yourself as
self employed, even if you're an employee. Know what your
(05:32):
personal needs are, and then figure out how much business
you have to do to bring in the amount of
money to cover your personal lifestyle. And then when you
get to where you know what your needs are and
you know what your overheads are, at that point, you'll
be able to know what your target goal is, which
(05:54):
is another way to look at what we call the
gross profit. And then I taught the formal financial equation
sales less direct expenses equals the gross profit. And I
gave that the name your target goal. And if you
hit your target goal, you'll be able to cover your
overheads and have enough money pulled out to meet your
(06:16):
personal needs. But it all starts with knowing what your
needs are. Well, after three sessions on being in business
for yourself and becoming successful and referencing many of the
other shows that that I've had about surrounding yourself with
the right people and having good associations and things of
(06:39):
that nature, having good credit. Today is going to be
the session on Now that you know what your sales
goals are, the best way to reach them is to
be able to have a well managed sales marketing plan. Now,
(07:01):
what's interesting about what I'm telling you is once you
are in position to be in business and move forward
and to start to concentrate on your sales, that is
probably seventy five percent of where all of your efforts
are going to be spent. In my seminar that's online
(07:23):
www dot right, think dot org, r I g hd
h I n K dot org, you'll see a page
in there that tells you that whenever I approach a
consulting relationship to where I'm trying to help people move
(07:45):
into success in their own business, the first thing we
spend five percent of our time making sure they know
their personal needs. You've got to do that before you
do anything else. And then we spend ten percent defining
what all the overheads are that you're going to have
(08:05):
to incur once you are in business. You can go
back to the earlier show to get those I'm going
to just move right by it, and then we spend
ten percent on knowing your costs, knowing your cost percentage,
being able to control your costs. And I've made the
statement in the last show two weeks ago on this
(08:25):
we took a break so that we brought Robin in
last week, but i made the statement that it's simple myth.
If you keep your overheads on budget or under budget,
you control your costs so that they don't go out
of the budget the percentage that you set, and you
(08:48):
hit your sales goal, you're guaranteed to have the success
that you want, which is being business for yourself and
produce enough income to take care of your personal lifestyle
over all of your needs and whatever it is that
you are budgeting into your lifestyle. So today we are
at the point to where I'm going to tell you
(09:08):
that once you've got your needs established, you've defined your
overheads and know how to keep track of them, keep
them on budget, and you've done all the work to
know all about your cost and how to keep track
of your costs, to control your cost, to reduce waste, etc.
Now we're going to approach. We now can calculate how
(09:30):
much our gross sales need to be in order to
be able to achieve the result we're looking for, which
is to support our family, to support our lifestyle. Okay,
when I tell you that now we're at the most
important part, it's a tricky way. I said that it's
(09:51):
the most important part after you've done the other work
to get to this level. But now, if you've done
your homework properly, you've got your self set up right,
You've got your your credit established, you've got your credit
lines there, you've got enough working capital to move forward.
Now let's go after driving that sales to make the
(10:11):
money that we need. Okay, so let me start with
what's the very first thing that you need to do
if you want to be able to hit your sales goals. Well,
I would like to tell you that you need to
have had a well defined marketing plan that will help
you go after your sales goals. That's what I think.
(10:34):
The first thing is if you go into business without
a plan, I don't think you're going to be able
to drive it where it needs to go. You'll be
too passive. So as you go into a marketing plan,
what are the components of a marketing plan? First of all,
success in business is very simple. You've got to have
(10:57):
the right product at the right price, at the right place,
and you got to do the right promotions to get
your product out there so people will buy it. That's
not too complicated, but basically there's a lot of parts
to it. The right product. If you have a product
(11:22):
or a service that you know how to produce, you
might be able to succeed if people know about it.
So you're going to have to make sure that you
get your marketing and your advertising, your exposure out there.
When you start you start selling. But what I want
(11:45):
to say about that is when you embark on what
you're going to sell, let's talk about that. Let's say
you got a product that you feel very comfortable is
going to be a successful product that people need. Well,
let me give you sales one oh one. You're selling
(12:08):
yourself in anything you do now, and if you've extended
that to a product that you've created that you want
to produce in market to people, it's an extension of yourself.
But let's talk about some of the great sales definitions.
A lot of people that are the best there are
say sales is no more than identifying a need that
(12:34):
your customer needs filled and filling that need. So I'm
going to make it a little simpler than what it
sounds like I'm trying to do here. If you know
that somebody needs something and you can produce or deliver
give them for a certain price what they need, then
(12:57):
you ought to be able to sell it. But let's
talk about some of the some of the things that
go into that. Other people might be selling the same
thing or something similar. So before you get too much further,
part of your marketing plan that you have to concentrate
(13:18):
on is you've got to know beyond who your market is.
Those are the people that have the need that's your market.
So I'm just gonna take a pause on that and say, Okay,
I'm in business and I need to make sales for
all the reasons that we've covered over the last three
(13:39):
parts of the seminar, and I have to decide what
it is I'm going to sell and who I'm going
to sell it to. And once I decide that I
have to make sure that I understand my competition. One
(14:00):
of the biggest deterrence of selling anything is to try
to sell something and go head on head with competition
that's selling the same thing you are. And if you're
selling it at a price that's higher than someone else
and the product is substantially identical, you probably are overpricing
(14:25):
it because why would somebody buy something from you if
the other product is available from someone else and pay
you more. Well, people will pay more from you if
they have a certain loyalty to you, if they have
a certain trust to you, if they have experience with
(14:48):
you where they've used your product, use your services and
they've ended up having a very very good experience. But
most time, if it's a homogeneous type of a product,
which means they don't know you personally, they just need
the product, they can get it on the shelf somewhere.
(15:11):
If it's exactly the same, they're not going to pay
more for it if they've done their homework. So you've
got to know your competition who is selling the same
thing that you are, and then you've got to understand
they're pricing and your pricing. Now a lot of people
(15:34):
that are looking for a certain type of a product,
they're just going to buy the lowest price one because
quality doesn't make that much difference. But if you want
to charge more, then you may have to be able
to have them know that your product is of a
higher quality, that perhaps the quality comes from the service
that comes behind the product. We've all been diluged in
(16:00):
our life with TV commercials for automotive companies. There's thousands
and thousands of car dealerships that advertise on television that
want to let you know that the reason that you
want to buy from them, bring you their business is
(16:20):
because you are going to be there to give them
the best possible service. A maginable Now. I know for
a fact that in the house that I live, we
have appliances. We've got a stove, a refrigerator, a freezer,
a dishwasher, and a microwave. Now the microwave that's more generic.
(16:45):
You can buy a microwave from a Walmart all up
to a high appliance store from a department store. And
the differences in the microwaves, there's some good differences, but
you might not need all the features to pay more.
I have an electrician friend pliant for my whole life,
that always told me he buys the cheapest microwave available
(17:08):
because they're going to break, and it's got all the
features that he needs. He doesn't use all those sophisticated
bells and whistles, So he just buys the lowest priced microwave,
and when it wears out and it breaks, he buys
another cheap one. Some people they want to buy now
that the range that he spends money in one hundred
and twenty five dollars a couple of years ago to
(17:29):
one hundred and thirty seven dollars, and you can go
buy a microwave for seven hundred dollars. It's got amazing features.
In fact, it's so powerful that you can not have
to ever use your oven because this thing will brook
and bake and slice and dice. But Barry is my friend,
that's the electrician. He's learned over his life and his
(17:51):
opinion that he'd rather buy cheap microwaves. Some of them
will last for five or six or seven years, and
he's gotten his money out of it. But a more
expensive product like a refrigerator, you got a lot of
choices where you go to get a refrigerator, but for
twenty five years the original appliance dealership here. I live
(18:18):
in Norfolk, Virginia, but it was in Chesapeake. I used
this appliance store for every major appliance purchase that I
ever did, and they were generally a little more expensive
than I could buy it if I went straight to
a larger store like a Sears or even a Walmart
(18:42):
or something like that. But I chose to buy from
this appliance company because their service was incredible. They never
let me down. Instead of over charging me and telling
me that I could fix something and then another part
(19:04):
might go a year later, they always let me know
exactly where I was and gave me my odds. If
I spend this money on disrepair, how long should it last?
Et cetera. And the same thing with my car mechanic.
But what I'm getting at is it is a whole
lot easier if you know how to treat your customers.
(19:26):
If you're in business, it's a whole lot easier and
less expensive to get referrals from your existing customers and
to get repeat business from your existing customers than it
is to go out and acquire new customers constantly. Now,
(19:50):
if we're talking about a national company that's going to
have locations and all the major cities in the United States,
a whole different business models than what I'm talking about.
What I'm trying to talk about today is a small business,
the model for a small business and give you some
(20:12):
some overview, guidance of what you're up against and what
you got to be careful of. And I'm not speaking
of the McDonald's. McDonald's is a great example of a
small business. A guy that was selling hamburgers and I
don't know the last count, but he might be in
(20:32):
the trillions by now. Ray Kroc, you know, McDonald's is
up probably one of the largest franchises in the world,
of course, but any small business has the potential to
grow large like that. But that's not what I want
to focus on today. I want to focus on more
of a reality that we have to be realistic. The
(20:53):
road reality realistic fits together. If you want to be
self employed and take responsibility for yourself, you can succeed.
You have to believe in yourself. You have to make
that decision to do it. Like the proverb that I read,
don't talk about it, decide to do it, and then
(21:14):
lay out the plan to do it. You got to
roll up your sleeves and you gotta work hard, but
you gotta work smart, and you got to never quit.
Don Green, the executive director of the Paul and Hill Foundation,
whose book Everything I Know about Success I learned from
Napoleon Hill. That book is so incredible, and on the
(21:39):
very first page of the book he has this quote,
I am not trying to tell you some particular way
to get rich, as there are literally thousands of ways
to become financially secure. If you have a passion and
are willing to work hard, develop a plan or plans,
(21:59):
involve others and persists. That's the basic formula. You've got
to decide that that's what you want to do. You've
got to have that burning desire that becomes your passion.
You've got to surround yourself with people that want to
help you succeed, and you've got to never quit. The
(22:20):
poul and Hill set as simple as it's ever been
set himself, the secret to success is to know your
desire and never quit. Okay, so what I'm getting at
today is, if you're going to go after your sales,
and you know you have a target sales, goal that
you have to meet. The days of putting out your
(22:43):
shingle and just competing with a whole bunch of people
that you don't even know who they are, you're going
to sail. The Internet has taken over. This may not
be the exact statistic, but I think that last Christmas
I read that it was the very first Christmas season
that there were more sales online than there were not online.
(23:07):
When we know that it's getting easier and easier with
the way freight is so amazing. I'm just amazed that
you can order something and you can get it the
next day or in two days, the way they have
all the depots, with the way tuble Express and ups
and the US Postal Service have mastered delivery. So it's
(23:28):
harder and harder than it's ever been before to go
into your own business and sell because there's so many
other choices people have. One of the main choices people
have is priced, another one's quality, and so we're competing
against those things. So let's make sure that when we
(23:50):
have a product that we want to sell, that we
price it right. Now, do your homework. You can get
all kinds of informations. Go to your local small business
development and they'll help you figure out what's your price
he needs to be. They've got databases that they can
go into and tell you what the what the industry
standards are in your geographical region. There's a lot of
(24:11):
resources out there. I'm going to repeat that one for you.
Small Business Development Center. It's it's nonprofits that's affiliated with
a small Business administration and each state has their own ones.
I was a counselor for fifteen years with them. They've
got great counselors, they've got great services that they can
provide you. So call them if you're looking to start
(24:34):
your own business and work with the counselor there. So
that's that's a that's a mandatory thing that you need
to do if you're going into a small business. Now,
so we're talking about your competition and we're talking about
your pricing. Okay, now you really need to define your
(24:55):
target market. Who is it that I'm trying to reach.
You might want to done that first, So, but your
target market and your composition, those are two fundamentals that
I'm bringing to your attention. But your target market, you
have to keep this in mind. You can never be
(25:15):
all things to all people. You have to be focused.
You have to know exactly who it is that you're
trying to reach, and not just do this shotgun approach. Now,
once you start understanding who it is that you want
to sell your product to, and then you do your
homework and do your research and find out who else
(25:35):
is doing something similar with their prices, then if your
product is good enough and you can afford to make
it within the cost constraints that you need to, then
you should go after it. I like that. Well, I
want to tell you that if you do everything right,
(25:59):
sadly enough, it may come about that you're still not
meeting your sales goals. So you have to go back
and look at it some more. You have to constantly
monitor this. Now, if you're not reaching your sales goals,
what are your options to sell more? Well, generally, it's
(26:24):
getting the word out. It's finding some way to let
people know you're there. If you got the right price,
if you really believe you have the right price, then
you just got to get the word out better. And
networking through the internet, social media, that's obviously a great
way to get the word out. I told you already
(26:45):
that the word of mouth from existing customers is the
number one thing that a small business should always do.
But eventually it comes down to the idea of spending
advertising dollars to market your product. Now, let me give
you the simplest example that I can and Deerfield Correctional.
(27:09):
A couple of years ago, I mentored a gentleman that
was one of my favorite favorite returning citizens that I
ever had the pleasure to work with. It was forty
weeks in a row that he and I spent time
together going over what his idea was. He was going
to get out. He wanted to be self employed, and
his idea that he wanted to do was he wanted
(27:31):
to go into the pressure washing business. He wanted to
be able to use a pressure washer to clean sightings
of houses, driveways, docks, things like that. And he had
all the tools physically to do this, and he had
some experience. He had been in prison for fourteen years,
(27:55):
I think, but he had already had some experience doing it.
And it's not that complicated a business to be able
to do what needs to be done to be able
to clean somebody's house if you have the right equipment
and all that stuff. But here's the key. You have
to be able to have people know that you're there
(28:18):
and buy your services. And this is where it got
difficult for this individual. He was a little shy and
he wasn't gifted in the area of sales and marketing
and talking. So that was his obstacle. So for weeks
(28:40):
and weeks week we planned out how are we going
to do this, and I gave him insights on how
to do a brochure, how to go on the computer,
use word processing and make a brochure like a little flyer.
We've all seen people that come by and they got
to pick up and they'd got their lawn mower in
(29:02):
the back and their rakes and so forth, and they
drive around the neighborhoods and they hand out flyers and
they asked people, would you let me take care of
your yard? Well, if you can break into a nice
neighborhood and you're going to be doing like yard work
like that as opposed to pressure washing, it's the same
concept getting that first customer. Getting that first customer is
(29:27):
the key. And let me tell you a story real
quick about getting that first customer. Years ago, I went
into the marina business. I put together a group and
we bought interest in a local marina. It had been
well established for twenty some years. It was a family business,
(29:50):
but it never made a profit, or if it did,
it was very minor. One of the best compliments I
ever got from my eventual partner that I spent eight
years in this business with, he said, if I had
known it was this easy to make money, I would
have done it a long time ago. But that was
a compliment because what we did was we did a
lot of promotions. We did a lot of a lot
(30:12):
of sales and promotions, but we built a dry storage.
That's where you have this great big barn and you
put boats in there on a great big forklift and
you keep them out of the weather up on a
rack inside a building. And so I had a partner
that had been in that business for thirty years, and
(30:34):
I had another partner that already owned the marina. And
so my job was to get in there and grow
the business. And I'll never forget my wife and I
went to a boat show. A boat show is the
best place to go if you want to start selling
space in either your marina, to buy a boat slip
(30:57):
to keep your boat there, or to fly a rack.
They call it to keep your boat sheltered indoors. For
those of you who don't know the concept of that business,
the dry storage business in the marina industry, people keep
their boat, maybe it's a fishing boat or maybe it's
a pleasure craft, and they can bury in size and
(31:18):
link generally sixteen feet to like about. I guess the
biggest boats we had in there were in the mid
thirties every now and then, but that's pretty big. But
the sweet spot of the market were boats that were
probably twenty four to thirty two feet and they had
different heights and they needed more space vertically to be
able to put them up in there. Well, the part
(31:40):
of the story is this, when I got everything lined
up with my partners and the capital resources and the
banks that were going to be involved, my wife and
I went to a boat show and had a booth
and the Marina dry Storage was not going to be
built for probably about eight months, and then it wasn't
going to be available for occupancy for about a year.
(32:03):
But I had to sell space in order to prove
to my bank that there was a market there that
people were going to be buying well, so we took
a lot of pictures and we wrote a lot of
copy and we started selling at a boat show. Well, hey,
(32:23):
some people know how to sell swamp land in Florida.
I haven't mastered that technique yet, but but I do
know how to sell certain things. And so what we
did was I found people that wanted to be in
the location where the marina was, and so I already
had people that I knew would like to bring their
(32:44):
boat into that geographical location. So I had that plus
going for me. And I had to be able to
convince people that we were going to be a state
of the art, high quality facility, and I established what
the prices were going to be once we opened, So
at the boat show, I gave an introductory price that
(33:07):
was an incredibly low price, but it was only for
a short time. And I also did a drawing where
everybody that came to the roof at the boat show
filled out their name and information. So I started building
a list of potential prospects that I could could customers
that I could go back to at a later date
and solicit them to see if they want to bring
(33:29):
their boat to me or move their boat from another
place to my marina. Dry stores, and I had a drawing,
and we gave a thousand dollars worth of fishing rods
and other equipment and things that voters use, fishermen used,
and it was almost like a joker. I had one
(33:51):
person that he was the you had to sign a
contract to get in the drawing. So I gave this
one person my first customer. I gave him the most
incredible deal imaginable, and he won one thousand dollars first
prize because by the end of the day, I told
him this is how I closed the sale. I said, hey,
(34:13):
let me just tell you something. I want you to
get this contract and if you signed the contract, you're
going to win first prize because you're the only one
that's going to be in the drawing. And he thought
about it, thought about it and thought about it, and
he came back and he did it. So I got
my first customer, so I was up and running well.
(34:34):
Then my goal was to get my next three customers,
and I got that in a short period of time,
and then I wanted to get up to my first
ten customers, and I kept setting my sales goals like that.
I got my first customer, that's all I cared about.
Then I got three customers now, so now and I'm
talking like, hey, my business is grown. And I got ten.
(34:56):
And then after I got my first ten, then we
were going to be opening up within a month or two.
So I had a grand opening special and then I
got up to past fifty. Then I hit one hundred,
and I got up to where I had that full
dry storage filled up a year early, and it was
(35:18):
doing beautifully well. But that's how you have to approach
your business. You have to look at every sale as
critical and important. You've got to give your customers great service. Now,
once we got the marina dry storage up and running,
then we had a big challenge. And this is how
we really got successful. And the marina business, there is
(35:43):
one thing that's done at most marinas across the country.
They have fishing tournaments. And you've got these fishermen that
are basically like professional fishermen, and they will enter tournaments
all over the place of different marinas and you've got
some some fishermen that are the top dog. They always
(36:03):
win well if you've got twenty five boats that pay
an entry fee. And the way it's always done is
the night before the tournament, they have like a party pizza,
beer party or something, and they just let everybody have
a good time. And then the next morning the tournament
starts at like lines in the water at four in
(36:24):
the morning, they drop their lines in. They got to
come in, say at six o'clock at night, and then
you do the way in to see who caught the
biggest fish, and they win. Well, the problem is you
got people winning your tournament that have their boats housed
at other marinas, that have no intention of bringing their
(36:45):
boat to your marina to give you their business because
they're already fishing out of another marina that they're loyal to.
And there's only prize money for the first three places, first, second,
and third place. I saw it pretty quickly that I
don't like this way that it's being done in this
industry because you end up with twenty five entries and
(37:11):
twenty two people are losers. So the average tournament used
to cost about three thousand or four thousand dollars to
promote with prize money and so forth. And so what
I did was I changed the image of the marina
that I owned, and I turned into a family atmosphere
and we had big parties where it was very very
(37:35):
family friendly cookouts and big roast and etc. And then
we had a fishing tournament for kids where everybody got prizes.
Everybody won. It wasn't based on the number of the
size of the things she caught. It was based on
(37:55):
the number of fish she caught. And we had age categories.
And I did something that's a real oxy morning in
the industry. It was an honor system. So if a
five year old had a line in the water and
he caught up menu, there's no size limit, and he
broke the waterline and that fish came out of the
water and then it jumped off the hook and he
(38:17):
caught the same Minno again, that count is two, not one.
All I'm trying to say, and I've gone pretty far
into doing this, is you've got to think about your customers.
You've got to be creative, you've got to think about things.
And so basically, the image of my marina became a
family marina overnight and we filled it up. We had
people coming from all over the area from other marinas
(38:40):
because they liked our atmosphere. So that's just an example
of trying to figure out what your market is and
paying close attention to it. So we've got pricing, we've
got location, we've got quality, and we've got service support.
If you're a technology company and you're given website, then
make sure you give good support. Okay, So what I want,
(39:04):
what I want to transition into is this. I've got
a very close friend and his name is Steve Forbes,
and Steve Forbes is the earner of Master Touch Barber
School of Excellence. Steve Forbes has been running Master's Touch
(39:26):
for about twenty five years now. But what I want
to tell you about Steve is he is just one godly,
hard working, focused man. Before he started his barber school
and he's he's got a partner named Fred Cameron. Before
(39:49):
he started the school and Fred were both incarcerated for
five and a half and six years a piece armed robbery,
things of this nature, and he learned how to cut hair,
both of them, they learned how to cut hair while
they're incarcerated. And I'm using Steve's story for a moment
here to make my point today. Well, that's not easy sometimes.
(40:15):
But if you're focused, hardworking, honest, h o n eest
honest capital letters, if you're willing to work hard and
always know that you've got to keep it between the lines.
That's one of the expressions that we use here. Steve
(40:35):
uses that expression. The temptations of the dangers in life
are always there, but if you just stay focused and
keep it between the lines. That's a highway term. For
those of you who don't know it. It would be
changing lanes and do reckless driving if you keep it
between the lines. Steve gets up every single day and
(40:59):
works about a twelve biber day, pretty close to seven
days a week, because it would be so easy to
experience failure, but he's willing to work hard. He's made
something out of his life, and he has opened up
the door for countless numbers of other people that have
come out of incarceration, found their way to his barber
(41:19):
school learn how to cut hair and turn their lives around.
His main thing, his main thing is helping other people succeed,
and he set the example by doing that. This Wednesday,
Hen and I are going to be going to Deerfield
Correctional Center up in U part Virginia to a job
(41:43):
resource fare to motivate people that are getting ready to
get out and let them know of the resources that
are on the outside. But Steve, Steve is amazing that
he has had a business. And you know, he doesn't
make a fortune, but he makes a living. He supports
his family, he takes care of what he does. He
does take time off when he wants to, but he
(42:07):
has got the work ethic, he has got the dedication,
he's got the focus, he's got the reality that he
fights every day. And so I just want you to
remember this. It doesn't matter where you come from. If
you make up your mind that you want to do something,
you can succeed. So let me give you just another
(42:27):
couple of pointers as to what I want to I
want to share with you today. There are a lot
of people that try to motivate other people, and they'll
tell him the story about a person whose life was
in this array, might have been incarcerated, and they went
on to start their own construction company, and they end
(42:49):
up growing their company to where they get really, really big,
and they get into the millions of dollars a year
and they hire a lot of employees. Well, their stories
are absolutely wonderful, and they urge me, they motivate me.
But I'm more into Steve Forbes's story. A guy that
has basically understood what his opportunities are and his options,
(43:15):
and he's found a way to achieve success. But his
goals weren't to make a million dollars a year, And
so I think that most of us are in that category.
We're not We're not going to be that that ghetto
person that wants to play NBA basketball and he plays
(43:37):
an awful lot of basketball with the hope that he's
going to get that contract because there's so many wonderful
success stories in the NBA. Sure, well, what's the real
chance of reaching that success yourself. It's a hard thing. Hey,
I'm not saying that you can't do it, but what
I'm saying is, let's be practical here. Let's use the
(43:59):
met that I'm trying to teach. You. Know who you are,
know what your lifestyle is, know what you need to
do to support your family and support your lifestyle, and
then get that money coming in from a job where
you're taking on the job training so that one day
you might want to be an entrepreneur yourself. If you
(44:20):
go into business for yourself, do your homework, know your overheads,
learn your costs, monitor everything very closely, and manage set
up an accounting system, set up a system where you
pay close attention to the trends that are going on.
You need to do that. One of the things that
(44:41):
I want to tell you that might be a good
opportunity for a lot of you. If you really really
want to go into business for yourself, franchises might be
a great option. There are literally thousands of franchises out
there that if it's the type of thing that that
you have an ability that you think you could succeed at,
(45:04):
explore franchises. There's plenty of ways you can research franchises.
But what that does is that it gives you the
chance to be an entrepreneur, to work for yourself. But
it also gives you a proven system where they give
you management tools, and they give you consulting, and they
(45:26):
give you different things you need to be affiliated with
a product that you can get out there and do.
I mean, look at all the franchises that you each
know about. A lot of the fast foods are franchises.
That's a good one. But there's plenty of franchises out there,
but that might be a good way to do it.
I've told you all about an adult daycare that I'm
(45:48):
counseling with my friends over there at Newport News. And
I call them mature, I'm going to tell you that
they are not just mature. They are very very mature.
They are moving into exploring whether or not that this
business that that that I've come to them to help
them see what they want to do, is really going
to be viable. And so we're going through all the
(46:10):
right steps to it to get educated, to get trained,
to know all the different parts to it. And then
the part that I'm not with them right now is
they have to make a commitment. If they decide that
they want to do it, then once they decide that
it's going to happen, it doesn't mean it's going to
(46:32):
happen the way they thought it was going to happen.
It might mean that they have to roll with the punches.
That's another thing about being an entrepreneur going into business
for yourself. If your sales aren't happening, then you've gotta
gotta gotta look and see what can I do differently?
And so I know that today is on sales, but
I'm trying to tell you, when you're totally committed, you're
(46:54):
going to find a way to make the sales you need.
You might introduce a new product. You might you might
take a product that's to high price and lower the price.
Don't know. But the point is I want you to
remember this. This is a fundamental that it's critical if
you start doing marketing advertising to be able to try
(47:14):
to boost your sales up. Remember this, that is a
new expense and you have to view it as a
form of an investment because if it doesn't produce the
required results, it's going to make your situation worse. Let
me give you a quick example. Say you're ten thousand
(47:35):
dollars short on your sales goal. Remember this, the ten
thousand dollars of sales has cost against it, and it
helps you cover your overheads. But if you've already got
your overheads covered, your cost has to be covered. So
if you spend one thousand dollars on advertising and it
(47:55):
only produces one thousand dollars in sales, then you've lost
money because it cost you money to produce that product.
So you're worse off than you were before you spent
the money. What I want to say to you in
summary today is that all of us can be a
success when we know who we are and what we want.
(48:17):
We believe in ourselves and our burning desire becomes a
passion and we know we're going to do what we
got to do. I encourage you, if you're going to
go into business for yourself, to become a student of business.
Not just the business you want to go into, but
become a student of business. Lead success stories of all
kinds of people that have been successful. You'll learn a
(48:40):
great deal. So I just want to I just want
to kind of sum up today with a couple things.
It's not always easy, but it's possible, and if you
go about it the right way, you can succeed. But
keep track of it and know your goals. Do not
(49:05):
just go hang a shingle and hope and pray that
the customers come to see you. Anybody that wants more information,
I've tried to just kind of do a big overview
here as to what it's about to be in your
own business. There's so much more in sales and marketing.
I've tried to give you a few things today. Register
on rightthink dot org, contact me and I've got plenty
(49:27):
of materials and I'm there for you. God bless these
for one of you, and we'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to right Thinking with Steve Coplan. I
look forward to being with you again next week and
remember don't quit. Plan ahead. It will get better. God
bless you and have a great week
There must be live starting lighter somewhere. Got to be why.
Good morning, Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland. I'm
your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
(00:35):
Let's have a great day. Good morning everybody. I hope
everybody had a wonderful day like I did yesterday. It
was Father's Day, and I hope that all of you
were just absolutely enjoying your families yesterday. It was probably
one of the best days I've ever enjoyed with my family,
(00:58):
and I just hope that you all did. Also. Last week,
Robin Cossargeon was my guest, and Robin, I want to
say thank you one more time. I was accused by
many many people of saying thank you too many times
to you. But at the same time, everybody that said
(01:20):
that to me said that they thought that you were
everything I said you were so Robin, your peaceful heart,
your love of other people, the tools that you give
are are just wonderful. And and I left the show
believing that anybody that took the time to listen to
(01:43):
you on the show last week would have a whole
lot of ways that they could look at their own
situation and find a way to be more peaceful and
have a better life and just move on with their lives,
which is your goal is in the first place. And
I thank you. I got lots of responses. I got
(02:05):
one of my listeners took the time to send me
an email and he himself had been experienced in mindfulness
meditation and he just loved listening to you talk about
that tool. So I encourage everybody, if you want to
learn more, go to Lionheart dot org www dot lionheart
(02:27):
dot org and go to the park with the meditations
that you spoke about last week. It is life changing,
what Robin had to say last week. So that's a
that's a tool that's there for everyone. Okay, well today
I just want to kind of kind of start off
with a couple of thoughts. He who works his land
(02:50):
will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.
That comes from Proverb twelve, verse eleven. Here's another thought.
All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads
only to poverty. That's Proverbs fourteen, verse twenty three. And
(03:13):
here's one last one that's going to sort of set
the tone for the direction that I want to go today.
In his heart, a man plans his course, but the
Lord determines his steps Proverbs sixteen, verse nine. Okay, so
why did I choose these three proverbs today? I chose
(03:35):
these three proverbs today because all of us sometimes are
faced with the exact same situation in life. Do you
ever feel like there's a tall brick wall that's very
thick right there in front of you, and you just
feel like you're beating your head against it. Well, I
(03:58):
feel like that a lot, and then I try to
go into my meditations and get that inter piece that
Robin talked about last week on the show. But life
is not easy sometimes, and I have tried to develop
a program where I provide people some answers, some encouragement
(04:22):
that gives them hope so that they can better themselves
and get out of a situation that seems to be
that brick wall in front of you beating your head
against it, to where you can take positive steps to
improve your situation. Over the last month or so, I've
done three parts to a four part series on personal
(04:46):
finance and small business ownership. And if you go back
to the first part, I talked about what it takes
if you want to be in business for yourself, to
learn to think like an owner, to leave in yourself
and the basics, and I really covered the risk factors
that are involved. And then I continued in the next
(05:10):
lesson on understanding what your expenses and your overheads were
in those kind of things, and I gave you a
formula that I use that we've been very very successful
over the last thirty thirty five years teaching people that
has changed many lives, and that is view yourself as
self employed, even if you're an employee. Know what your
(05:32):
personal needs are, and then figure out how much business
you have to do to bring in the amount of
money to cover your personal lifestyle. And then when you
get to where you know what your needs are and
you know what your overheads are, at that point, you'll
be able to know what your target goal is, which
(05:54):
is another way to look at what we call the
gross profit. And then I taught the formal financial equation
sales less direct expenses equals the gross profit. And I
gave that the name your target goal. And if you
hit your target goal, you'll be able to cover your
overheads and have enough money pulled out to meet your
(06:16):
personal needs. But it all starts with knowing what your
needs are. Well, after three sessions on being in business
for yourself and becoming successful and referencing many of the
other shows that that I've had about surrounding yourself with
the right people and having good associations and things of
(06:39):
that nature, having good credit. Today is going to be
the session on Now that you know what your sales
goals are, the best way to reach them is to
be able to have a well managed sales marketing plan. Now,
(07:01):
what's interesting about what I'm telling you is once you
are in position to be in business and move forward
and to start to concentrate on your sales, that is
probably seventy five percent of where all of your efforts
are going to be spent. In my seminar that's online
(07:23):
www dot right, think dot org, r I g hd
h I n K dot org, you'll see a page
in there that tells you that whenever I approach a
consulting relationship to where I'm trying to help people move
(07:45):
into success in their own business, the first thing we
spend five percent of our time making sure they know
their personal needs. You've got to do that before you
do anything else. And then we spend ten percent defining
what all the overheads are that you're going to have
(08:05):
to incur once you are in business. You can go
back to the earlier show to get those I'm going
to just move right by it, and then we spend
ten percent on knowing your costs, knowing your cost percentage,
being able to control your costs. And I've made the
statement in the last show two weeks ago on this
(08:25):
we took a break so that we brought Robin in
last week, but i made the statement that it's simple myth.
If you keep your overheads on budget or under budget,
you control your costs so that they don't go out
of the budget the percentage that you set, and you
(08:48):
hit your sales goal, you're guaranteed to have the success
that you want, which is being business for yourself and
produce enough income to take care of your personal lifestyle
over all of your needs and whatever it is that
you are budgeting into your lifestyle. So today we are
at the point to where I'm going to tell you
(09:08):
that once you've got your needs established, you've defined your
overheads and know how to keep track of them, keep
them on budget, and you've done all the work to
know all about your cost and how to keep track
of your costs, to control your cost, to reduce waste, etc.
Now we're going to approach. We now can calculate how
(09:30):
much our gross sales need to be in order to
be able to achieve the result we're looking for, which
is to support our family, to support our lifestyle. Okay,
when I tell you that now we're at the most
important part, it's a tricky way. I said that it's
(09:51):
the most important part after you've done the other work
to get to this level. But now, if you've done
your homework properly, you've got your self set up right,
You've got your your credit established, you've got your credit
lines there, you've got enough working capital to move forward.
Now let's go after driving that sales to make the
(10:11):
money that we need. Okay, so let me start with
what's the very first thing that you need to do
if you want to be able to hit your sales goals. Well,
I would like to tell you that you need to
have had a well defined marketing plan that will help
you go after your sales goals. That's what I think.
(10:34):
The first thing is if you go into business without
a plan, I don't think you're going to be able
to drive it where it needs to go. You'll be
too passive. So as you go into a marketing plan,
what are the components of a marketing plan? First of all,
success in business is very simple. You've got to have
(10:57):
the right product at the right price, at the right place,
and you got to do the right promotions to get
your product out there so people will buy it. That's
not too complicated, but basically there's a lot of parts
to it. The right product. If you have a product
(11:22):
or a service that you know how to produce, you
might be able to succeed if people know about it.
So you're going to have to make sure that you
get your marketing and your advertising, your exposure out there.
When you start you start selling. But what I want
(11:45):
to say about that is when you embark on what
you're going to sell, let's talk about that. Let's say
you got a product that you feel very comfortable is
going to be a successful product that people need. Well,
let me give you sales one oh one. You're selling
(12:08):
yourself in anything you do now, and if you've extended
that to a product that you've created that you want
to produce in market to people, it's an extension of yourself.
But let's talk about some of the great sales definitions.
A lot of people that are the best there are
say sales is no more than identifying a need that
(12:34):
your customer needs filled and filling that need. So I'm
going to make it a little simpler than what it
sounds like I'm trying to do here. If you know
that somebody needs something and you can produce or deliver
give them for a certain price what they need, then
(12:57):
you ought to be able to sell it. But let's
talk about some of the some of the things that
go into that. Other people might be selling the same
thing or something similar. So before you get too much further,
part of your marketing plan that you have to concentrate
(13:18):
on is you've got to know beyond who your market is.
Those are the people that have the need that's your market.
So I'm just gonna take a pause on that and say, Okay,
I'm in business and I need to make sales for
all the reasons that we've covered over the last three
(13:39):
parts of the seminar, and I have to decide what
it is I'm going to sell and who I'm going
to sell it to. And once I decide that I
have to make sure that I understand my competition. One
(14:00):
of the biggest deterrence of selling anything is to try
to sell something and go head on head with competition
that's selling the same thing you are. And if you're
selling it at a price that's higher than someone else
and the product is substantially identical, you probably are overpricing
(14:25):
it because why would somebody buy something from you if
the other product is available from someone else and pay
you more. Well, people will pay more from you if
they have a certain loyalty to you, if they have
a certain trust to you, if they have experience with
(14:48):
you where they've used your product, use your services and
they've ended up having a very very good experience. But
most time, if it's a homogeneous type of a product,
which means they don't know you personally, they just need
the product, they can get it on the shelf somewhere.
(15:11):
If it's exactly the same, they're not going to pay
more for it if they've done their homework. So you've
got to know your competition who is selling the same
thing that you are, and then you've got to understand
they're pricing and your pricing. Now a lot of people
(15:34):
that are looking for a certain type of a product,
they're just going to buy the lowest price one because
quality doesn't make that much difference. But if you want
to charge more, then you may have to be able
to have them know that your product is of a
higher quality, that perhaps the quality comes from the service
that comes behind the product. We've all been diluged in
(16:00):
our life with TV commercials for automotive companies. There's thousands
and thousands of car dealerships that advertise on television that
want to let you know that the reason that you
want to buy from them, bring you their business is
(16:20):
because you are going to be there to give them
the best possible service. A maginable Now. I know for
a fact that in the house that I live, we
have appliances. We've got a stove, a refrigerator, a freezer,
a dishwasher, and a microwave. Now the microwave that's more generic.
(16:45):
You can buy a microwave from a Walmart all up
to a high appliance store from a department store. And
the differences in the microwaves, there's some good differences, but
you might not need all the features to pay more.
I have an electrician friend pliant for my whole life,
that always told me he buys the cheapest microwave available
(17:08):
because they're going to break, and it's got all the
features that he needs. He doesn't use all those sophisticated
bells and whistles, So he just buys the lowest priced microwave,
and when it wears out and it breaks, he buys
another cheap one. Some people they want to buy now
that the range that he spends money in one hundred
and twenty five dollars a couple of years ago to
(17:29):
one hundred and thirty seven dollars, and you can go
buy a microwave for seven hundred dollars. It's got amazing features.
In fact, it's so powerful that you can not have
to ever use your oven because this thing will brook
and bake and slice and dice. But Barry is my friend,
that's the electrician. He's learned over his life and his
(17:51):
opinion that he'd rather buy cheap microwaves. Some of them
will last for five or six or seven years, and
he's gotten his money out of it. But a more
expensive product like a refrigerator, you got a lot of
choices where you go to get a refrigerator, but for
twenty five years the original appliance dealership here. I live
(18:18):
in Norfolk, Virginia, but it was in Chesapeake. I used
this appliance store for every major appliance purchase that I
ever did, and they were generally a little more expensive
than I could buy it if I went straight to
a larger store like a Sears or even a Walmart
(18:42):
or something like that. But I chose to buy from
this appliance company because their service was incredible. They never
let me down. Instead of over charging me and telling
me that I could fix something and then another part
(19:04):
might go a year later, they always let me know
exactly where I was and gave me my odds. If
I spend this money on disrepair, how long should it last?
Et cetera. And the same thing with my car mechanic.
But what I'm getting at is it is a whole
lot easier if you know how to treat your customers.
(19:26):
If you're in business, it's a whole lot easier and
less expensive to get referrals from your existing customers and
to get repeat business from your existing customers than it
is to go out and acquire new customers constantly. Now,
(19:50):
if we're talking about a national company that's going to
have locations and all the major cities in the United States,
a whole different business models than what I'm talking about.
What I'm trying to talk about today is a small business,
the model for a small business and give you some
(20:12):
some overview, guidance of what you're up against and what
you got to be careful of. And I'm not speaking
of the McDonald's. McDonald's is a great example of a
small business. A guy that was selling hamburgers and I
don't know the last count, but he might be in
(20:32):
the trillions by now. Ray Kroc, you know, McDonald's is
up probably one of the largest franchises in the world,
of course, but any small business has the potential to
grow large like that. But that's not what I want
to focus on today. I want to focus on more
of a reality that we have to be realistic. The
(20:53):
road reality realistic fits together. If you want to be
self employed and take responsibility for yourself, you can succeed.
You have to believe in yourself. You have to make
that decision to do it. Like the proverb that I read,
don't talk about it, decide to do it, and then
(21:14):
lay out the plan to do it. You got to
roll up your sleeves and you gotta work hard, but
you gotta work smart, and you got to never quit.
Don Green, the executive director of the Paul and Hill Foundation,
whose book Everything I Know about Success I learned from
Napoleon Hill. That book is so incredible, and on the
(21:39):
very first page of the book he has this quote,
I am not trying to tell you some particular way
to get rich, as there are literally thousands of ways
to become financially secure. If you have a passion and
are willing to work hard, develop a plan or plans,
(21:59):
involve others and persists. That's the basic formula. You've got
to decide that that's what you want to do. You've
got to have that burning desire that becomes your passion.
You've got to surround yourself with people that want to
help you succeed, and you've got to never quit. The
(22:20):
poul and Hill set as simple as it's ever been
set himself, the secret to success is to know your
desire and never quit. Okay, so what I'm getting at
today is, if you're going to go after your sales,
and you know you have a target sales, goal that
you have to meet. The days of putting out your
(22:43):
shingle and just competing with a whole bunch of people
that you don't even know who they are, you're going
to sail. The Internet has taken over. This may not
be the exact statistic, but I think that last Christmas
I read that it was the very first Christmas season
that there were more sales online than there were not online.
(23:07):
When we know that it's getting easier and easier with
the way freight is so amazing. I'm just amazed that
you can order something and you can get it the
next day or in two days, the way they have
all the depots, with the way tuble Express and ups
and the US Postal Service have mastered delivery. So it's
(23:28):
harder and harder than it's ever been before to go
into your own business and sell because there's so many
other choices people have. One of the main choices people
have is priced, another one's quality, and so we're competing
against those things. So let's make sure that when we
(23:50):
have a product that we want to sell, that we
price it right. Now, do your homework. You can get
all kinds of informations. Go to your local small business
development and they'll help you figure out what's your price
he needs to be. They've got databases that they can
go into and tell you what the what the industry
standards are in your geographical region. There's a lot of
(24:11):
resources out there. I'm going to repeat that one for you.
Small Business Development Center. It's it's nonprofits that's affiliated with
a small Business administration and each state has their own ones.
I was a counselor for fifteen years with them. They've
got great counselors, they've got great services that they can
provide you. So call them if you're looking to start
(24:34):
your own business and work with the counselor there. So
that's that's a that's a mandatory thing that you need
to do if you're going into a small business. Now,
so we're talking about your competition and we're talking about
your pricing. Okay, now you really need to define your
(24:55):
target market. Who is it that I'm trying to reach.
You might want to done that first, So, but your
target market and your composition, those are two fundamentals that
I'm bringing to your attention. But your target market, you
have to keep this in mind. You can never be
(25:15):
all things to all people. You have to be focused.
You have to know exactly who it is that you're
trying to reach, and not just do this shotgun approach. Now,
once you start understanding who it is that you want
to sell your product to, and then you do your
homework and do your research and find out who else
(25:35):
is doing something similar with their prices, then if your
product is good enough and you can afford to make
it within the cost constraints that you need to, then
you should go after it. I like that. Well, I
want to tell you that if you do everything right,
(25:59):
sadly enough, it may come about that you're still not
meeting your sales goals. So you have to go back
and look at it some more. You have to constantly
monitor this. Now, if you're not reaching your sales goals,
what are your options to sell more? Well, generally, it's
(26:24):
getting the word out. It's finding some way to let
people know you're there. If you got the right price,
if you really believe you have the right price, then
you just got to get the word out better. And
networking through the internet, social media, that's obviously a great
way to get the word out. I told you already
(26:45):
that the word of mouth from existing customers is the
number one thing that a small business should always do.
But eventually it comes down to the idea of spending
advertising dollars to market your product. Now, let me give
you the simplest example that I can and Deerfield Correctional.
(27:09):
A couple of years ago, I mentored a gentleman that
was one of my favorite favorite returning citizens that I
ever had the pleasure to work with. It was forty
weeks in a row that he and I spent time
together going over what his idea was. He was going
to get out. He wanted to be self employed, and
his idea that he wanted to do was he wanted
(27:31):
to go into the pressure washing business. He wanted to
be able to use a pressure washer to clean sightings
of houses, driveways, docks, things like that. And he had
all the tools physically to do this, and he had
some experience. He had been in prison for fourteen years,
(27:55):
I think, but he had already had some experience doing it.
And it's not that complicated a business to be able
to do what needs to be done to be able
to clean somebody's house if you have the right equipment
and all that stuff. But here's the key. You have
to be able to have people know that you're there
(28:18):
and buy your services. And this is where it got
difficult for this individual. He was a little shy and
he wasn't gifted in the area of sales and marketing
and talking. So that was his obstacle. So for weeks
(28:40):
and weeks week we planned out how are we going
to do this, and I gave him insights on how
to do a brochure, how to go on the computer,
use word processing and make a brochure like a little flyer.
We've all seen people that come by and they got
to pick up and they'd got their lawn mower in
(29:02):
the back and their rakes and so forth, and they
drive around the neighborhoods and they hand out flyers and
they asked people, would you let me take care of
your yard? Well, if you can break into a nice
neighborhood and you're going to be doing like yard work
like that as opposed to pressure washing, it's the same
concept getting that first customer. Getting that first customer is
(29:27):
the key. And let me tell you a story real
quick about getting that first customer. Years ago, I went
into the marina business. I put together a group and
we bought interest in a local marina. It had been
well established for twenty some years. It was a family business,
(29:50):
but it never made a profit, or if it did,
it was very minor. One of the best compliments I
ever got from my eventual partner that I spent eight
years in this business with, he said, if I had
known it was this easy to make money, I would
have done it a long time ago. But that was
a compliment because what we did was we did a
lot of promotions. We did a lot of a lot
(30:12):
of sales and promotions, but we built a dry storage.
That's where you have this great big barn and you
put boats in there on a great big forklift and
you keep them out of the weather up on a
rack inside a building. And so I had a partner
that had been in that business for thirty years, and
(30:34):
I had another partner that already owned the marina. And
so my job was to get in there and grow
the business. And I'll never forget my wife and I
went to a boat show. A boat show is the
best place to go if you want to start selling
space in either your marina, to buy a boat slip
(30:57):
to keep your boat there, or to fly a rack.
They call it to keep your boat sheltered indoors. For
those of you who don't know the concept of that business,
the dry storage business in the marina industry, people keep
their boat, maybe it's a fishing boat or maybe it's
a pleasure craft, and they can bury in size and
(31:18):
link generally sixteen feet to like about. I guess the
biggest boats we had in there were in the mid
thirties every now and then, but that's pretty big. But
the sweet spot of the market were boats that were
probably twenty four to thirty two feet and they had
different heights and they needed more space vertically to be
able to put them up in there. Well, the part
(31:40):
of the story is this, when I got everything lined
up with my partners and the capital resources and the
banks that were going to be involved, my wife and
I went to a boat show and had a booth
and the Marina dry Storage was not going to be
built for probably about eight months, and then it wasn't
going to be available for occupancy for about a year.
(32:03):
But I had to sell space in order to prove
to my bank that there was a market there that
people were going to be buying well, so we took
a lot of pictures and we wrote a lot of
copy and we started selling at a boat show. Well, hey,
(32:23):
some people know how to sell swamp land in Florida.
I haven't mastered that technique yet, but but I do
know how to sell certain things. And so what we
did was I found people that wanted to be in
the location where the marina was, and so I already
had people that I knew would like to bring their
(32:44):
boat into that geographical location. So I had that plus
going for me. And I had to be able to
convince people that we were going to be a state
of the art, high quality facility, and I established what
the prices were going to be once we opened, So
at the boat show, I gave an introductory price that
(33:07):
was an incredibly low price, but it was only for
a short time. And I also did a drawing where
everybody that came to the roof at the boat show
filled out their name and information. So I started building
a list of potential prospects that I could could customers
that I could go back to at a later date
and solicit them to see if they want to bring
(33:29):
their boat to me or move their boat from another
place to my marina. Dry stores, and I had a drawing,
and we gave a thousand dollars worth of fishing rods
and other equipment and things that voters use, fishermen used,
and it was almost like a joker. I had one
(33:51):
person that he was the you had to sign a
contract to get in the drawing. So I gave this
one person my first customer. I gave him the most
incredible deal imaginable, and he won one thousand dollars first
prize because by the end of the day, I told
him this is how I closed the sale. I said, hey,
(34:13):
let me just tell you something. I want you to
get this contract and if you signed the contract, you're
going to win first prize because you're the only one
that's going to be in the drawing. And he thought
about it, thought about it and thought about it, and
he came back and he did it. So I got
my first customer, so I was up and running well.
(34:34):
Then my goal was to get my next three customers,
and I got that in a short period of time,
and then I wanted to get up to my first
ten customers, and I kept setting my sales goals like that.
I got my first customer, that's all I cared about.
Then I got three customers now, so now and I'm
talking like, hey, my business is grown. And I got ten.
(34:56):
And then after I got my first ten, then we
were going to be opening up within a month or two.
So I had a grand opening special and then I
got up to past fifty. Then I hit one hundred,
and I got up to where I had that full
dry storage filled up a year early, and it was
(35:18):
doing beautifully well. But that's how you have to approach
your business. You have to look at every sale as
critical and important. You've got to give your customers great service. Now,
once we got the marina dry storage up and running,
then we had a big challenge. And this is how
we really got successful. And the marina business, there is
(35:43):
one thing that's done at most marinas across the country.
They have fishing tournaments. And you've got these fishermen that
are basically like professional fishermen, and they will enter tournaments
all over the place of different marinas and you've got
some some fishermen that are the top dog. They always
(36:03):
win well if you've got twenty five boats that pay
an entry fee. And the way it's always done is
the night before the tournament, they have like a party pizza,
beer party or something, and they just let everybody have
a good time. And then the next morning the tournament
starts at like lines in the water at four in
(36:24):
the morning, they drop their lines in. They got to
come in, say at six o'clock at night, and then
you do the way in to see who caught the
biggest fish, and they win. Well, the problem is you
got people winning your tournament that have their boats housed
at other marinas, that have no intention of bringing their
(36:45):
boat to your marina to give you their business because
they're already fishing out of another marina that they're loyal to.
And there's only prize money for the first three places, first, second,
and third place. I saw it pretty quickly that I
don't like this way that it's being done in this
industry because you end up with twenty five entries and
(37:11):
twenty two people are losers. So the average tournament used
to cost about three thousand or four thousand dollars to
promote with prize money and so forth. And so what
I did was I changed the image of the marina
that I owned, and I turned into a family atmosphere
and we had big parties where it was very very
(37:35):
family friendly cookouts and big roast and etc. And then
we had a fishing tournament for kids where everybody got prizes.
Everybody won. It wasn't based on the number of the
size of the things she caught. It was based on
(37:55):
the number of fish she caught. And we had age categories.
And I did something that's a real oxy morning in
the industry. It was an honor system. So if a
five year old had a line in the water and
he caught up menu, there's no size limit, and he
broke the waterline and that fish came out of the
water and then it jumped off the hook and he
(38:17):
caught the same Minno again, that count is two, not one.
All I'm trying to say, and I've gone pretty far
into doing this, is you've got to think about your customers.
You've got to be creative, you've got to think about things.
And so basically, the image of my marina became a
family marina overnight and we filled it up. We had
people coming from all over the area from other marinas
(38:40):
because they liked our atmosphere. So that's just an example
of trying to figure out what your market is and
paying close attention to it. So we've got pricing, we've
got location, we've got quality, and we've got service support.
If you're a technology company and you're given website, then
make sure you give good support. Okay, So what I want,
(39:04):
what I want to transition into is this. I've got
a very close friend and his name is Steve Forbes,
and Steve Forbes is the earner of Master Touch Barber
School of Excellence. Steve Forbes has been running Master's Touch
(39:26):
for about twenty five years now. But what I want
to tell you about Steve is he is just one godly,
hard working, focused man. Before he started his barber school
and he's he's got a partner named Fred Cameron. Before
(39:49):
he started the school and Fred were both incarcerated for
five and a half and six years a piece armed robbery,
things of this nature, and he learned how to cut hair,
both of them, they learned how to cut hair while
they're incarcerated. And I'm using Steve's story for a moment
here to make my point today. Well, that's not easy sometimes.
(40:15):
But if you're focused, hardworking, honest, h o n eest
honest capital letters, if you're willing to work hard and
always know that you've got to keep it between the lines.
That's one of the expressions that we use here. Steve
(40:35):
uses that expression. The temptations of the dangers in life
are always there, but if you just stay focused and
keep it between the lines. That's a highway term. For
those of you who don't know it. It would be
changing lanes and do reckless driving if you keep it
between the lines. Steve gets up every single day and
(40:59):
works about a twelve biber day, pretty close to seven
days a week, because it would be so easy to
experience failure, but he's willing to work hard. He's made
something out of his life, and he has opened up
the door for countless numbers of other people that have
come out of incarceration, found their way to his barber
(41:19):
school learn how to cut hair and turn their lives around.
His main thing, his main thing is helping other people succeed,
and he set the example by doing that. This Wednesday,
Hen and I are going to be going to Deerfield
Correctional Center up in U part Virginia to a job
(41:43):
resource fare to motivate people that are getting ready to
get out and let them know of the resources that
are on the outside. But Steve, Steve is amazing that
he has had a business. And you know, he doesn't
make a fortune, but he makes a living. He supports
his family, he takes care of what he does. He
does take time off when he wants to, but he
(42:07):
has got the work ethic, he has got the dedication,
he's got the focus, he's got the reality that he
fights every day. And so I just want you to
remember this. It doesn't matter where you come from. If
you make up your mind that you want to do something,
you can succeed. So let me give you just another
(42:27):
couple of pointers as to what I want to I
want to share with you today. There are a lot
of people that try to motivate other people, and they'll
tell him the story about a person whose life was
in this array, might have been incarcerated, and they went
on to start their own construction company, and they end
(42:49):
up growing their company to where they get really, really big,
and they get into the millions of dollars a year
and they hire a lot of employees. Well, their stories
are absolutely wonderful, and they urge me, they motivate me.
But I'm more into Steve Forbes's story. A guy that
has basically understood what his opportunities are and his options,
(43:15):
and he's found a way to achieve success. But his
goals weren't to make a million dollars a year, And
so I think that most of us are in that category.
We're not We're not going to be that that ghetto
person that wants to play NBA basketball and he plays
(43:37):
an awful lot of basketball with the hope that he's
going to get that contract because there's so many wonderful
success stories in the NBA. Sure, well, what's the real
chance of reaching that success yourself. It's a hard thing. Hey,
I'm not saying that you can't do it, but what
I'm saying is, let's be practical here. Let's use the
(43:59):
met that I'm trying to teach. You. Know who you are,
know what your lifestyle is, know what you need to
do to support your family and support your lifestyle, and
then get that money coming in from a job where
you're taking on the job training so that one day
you might want to be an entrepreneur yourself. If you
(44:20):
go into business for yourself, do your homework, know your overheads,
learn your costs, monitor everything very closely, and manage set
up an accounting system, set up a system where you
pay close attention to the trends that are going on.
You need to do that. One of the things that
(44:41):
I want to tell you that might be a good
opportunity for a lot of you. If you really really
want to go into business for yourself, franchises might be
a great option. There are literally thousands of franchises out
there that if it's the type of thing that that
you have an ability that you think you could succeed at,
(45:04):
explore franchises. There's plenty of ways you can research franchises.
But what that does is that it gives you the
chance to be an entrepreneur, to work for yourself. But
it also gives you a proven system where they give
you management tools, and they give you consulting, and they
(45:26):
give you different things you need to be affiliated with
a product that you can get out there and do.
I mean, look at all the franchises that you each
know about. A lot of the fast foods are franchises.
That's a good one. But there's plenty of franchises out there,
but that might be a good way to do it.
I've told you all about an adult daycare that I'm
(45:48):
counseling with my friends over there at Newport News. And
I call them mature, I'm going to tell you that
they are not just mature. They are very very mature.
They are moving into exploring whether or not that this
business that that that I've come to them to help
them see what they want to do, is really going
to be viable. And so we're going through all the
(46:10):
right steps to it to get educated, to get trained,
to know all the different parts to it. And then
the part that I'm not with them right now is
they have to make a commitment. If they decide that
they want to do it, then once they decide that
it's going to happen, it doesn't mean it's going to
(46:32):
happen the way they thought it was going to happen.
It might mean that they have to roll with the punches.
That's another thing about being an entrepreneur going into business
for yourself. If your sales aren't happening, then you've gotta
gotta gotta look and see what can I do differently?
And so I know that today is on sales, but
I'm trying to tell you, when you're totally committed, you're
(46:54):
going to find a way to make the sales you need.
You might introduce a new product. You might you might
take a product that's to high price and lower the price.
Don't know. But the point is I want you to
remember this. This is a fundamental that it's critical if
you start doing marketing advertising to be able to try
(47:14):
to boost your sales up. Remember this, that is a
new expense and you have to view it as a
form of an investment because if it doesn't produce the
required results, it's going to make your situation worse. Let
me give you a quick example. Say you're ten thousand
(47:35):
dollars short on your sales goal. Remember this, the ten
thousand dollars of sales has cost against it, and it
helps you cover your overheads. But if you've already got
your overheads covered, your cost has to be covered. So
if you spend one thousand dollars on advertising and it
(47:55):
only produces one thousand dollars in sales, then you've lost
money because it cost you money to produce that product.
So you're worse off than you were before you spent
the money. What I want to say to you in
summary today is that all of us can be a
success when we know who we are and what we want.
(48:17):
We believe in ourselves and our burning desire becomes a
passion and we know we're going to do what we
got to do. I encourage you, if you're going to
go into business for yourself, to become a student of business.
Not just the business you want to go into, but
become a student of business. Lead success stories of all
kinds of people that have been successful. You'll learn a
(48:40):
great deal. So I just want to I just want
to kind of sum up today with a couple things.
It's not always easy, but it's possible, and if you
go about it the right way, you can succeed. But
keep track of it and know your goals. Do not
(49:05):
just go hang a shingle and hope and pray that
the customers come to see you. Anybody that wants more information,
I've tried to just kind of do a big overview
here as to what it's about to be in your
own business. There's so much more in sales and marketing.
I've tried to give you a few things today. Register
on rightthink dot org, contact me and I've got plenty
(49:27):
of materials and I'm there for you. God bless these
for one of you, and we'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to right Thinking with Steve Coplan. I
look forward to being with you again next week and
remember don't quit. Plan ahead. It will get better. God
bless you and have a great week
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