How to get to a $10 million business - Eban Pagan offers to show you how.

Hi fellow Numberers. I've just finished watching a 47 minute video where Eban gives clear advice, with many examples, on the 5 things you'll need to focus on to get to a $10 million business.

They are:
1) You;
2) Your market;
3) Your marketing;
4) Your people; and
5) Your systems.

1) You.
"Get out of the grey zone" - its not clever or productive to multi-task; stop the distractions and focus on one thing for a continuous period of time. You wouldn't drive down the freeway and stop and start every 100 yards, so why do you believe you're working smart when you don't focus on a single thing?

2) Your market.
Most businesses fail. Why? They develop the product first, and then only find out if anybody wants to buy it after the business has started. This is the wrong way round. You need to know what's wanted, and then setup the business to supply to that need.

Here's 3 questions you need to ask, to be sure your business is one of the 10% that succeed.

Q1. Is your customer experiencing pain or urgency or irrational passion? Buying is not logical - it is emotional, so please don't use logic to sell your product. Logic won't sell video games, and that's a business that's bigger than the entertainment industry.

Q2. Is your customer pro-actively looking for solutions? If Search Engine marketing doesn't work, then your business is not likely to work through other media.

Q3. Do your customers have few or no perceived options? Don't get into a market with lots of competitors. Create a new category (like "dating advice") so you're the only kid on the block. Like Proctor & Gamble, enter a niche with the intention of dominating it.

3) Your marketing.
"Move the free line" - most people won't play a game that actually puts money in their pocket if they feel they're co-player is being unfair.

If your co-player is allowed to set the split of profits from a game, and if you are able to say whether the game should go on or should stop, most people won't allow the game to continue if the co-player sets the percentages "unfairly".

So if the co-player says we'll split it 90/10, then although you stand to receive 10 every time, you would rather receive nothing than let him have so much more.

And even poor people in the developing world, where $10 is a month's wages, still stop the game.

We need to turn this perceived injustice on its head so we get rich quicker - we'll self-consciously set out to give away valuable material for free, so we can profit from the remainder that we do sell. This will allow you to have an enormous customer base, that you can up-sell to, that will give you three times the profit if you'd just sold the stuff you're now giving away for free.

Plan to get away from the "1-shot sale" idea. Your business should be about continuing dialogue, so get your customers to subscribe to an e-mail newsletter where you can educate them about your other products. Its not about getting a sale now; its about building further sales in the future. And customers love it (he alleges).

4) Your people.
Even a $10k business will need staff, so you'll need even more for the target $10M. To get a $10M business, you'll only get there if you've got the best people.

Identify them at interview by asking them what happened in previous projects, and watch out for whether their approach seemed to be re-active or pro-active. You only want the pro-actives, who have not come to work to work, but to achieve results. They are "drivers" and they show initiative.

5) Your systems.
There's a bit of overlap here with (4) above. Here's a monitoring system to find out if your new staff member is going to be any good.

Everyday ask them to spend up to 10 minutes writing an e-mail to you with the following 3 headings:
a) what I did today and the results I achieved;
b) problems and challenges encountered; and
c) questions for the boss to answer.

If their e-mails show they have no intiative and they are not pro-active, then fire them.

Always hire slowly and fire quickly.

His training is called "Altitude" as you're supposed to take a helicopter's "bird's eye" zoomed-out view of your business, if you're going to grow it to the 10 Mill level.

Further free videos will follow, including case studies from people who are on the training.

The particular video that tells the advice quoted above is at:

http://www.altitudeblog.com/2008/12/081202-alt-prelaunch.php