Business Success and Branding For Beginners: Grow Your Brand

1. Business Success and Branding For Beginners PROMO: welcome to this business success in branding course for beginners. Figuring out the recipe for success as well as utilizing the overall power of a great brand , is extremely important for the success of your business. In this course, we're going to discuss what branding is. And, yes, it's far more than just your logo. We'll talk about how to position your business in a way that will create the best chance of success over the long run, how to understand your customers and the main factor that plays into if they'll become a repeat customer or fill end up just leaving you a bad review. Also cover several other factors, such as the business mentality and owner should have your values and your business value, your customers, audience employees and much more. My name's will and I run several businesses, including a commercial video production corporation, an education business that strained over 180,000 people worldwide, as well as a blogger style online business. Over the years, I've produced hundreds of commercial video projects for a ton of different clients. All of this experience has allowed me to understand the business world to the point where I've noticed what works and what doesn't work and how to navigate effectively through all the noise to arrive at a sustainable business model and strategy with a strong brand. If you're new to business, thinking about starting a business or looking to grow your existing small business brand, there's a lot of practical information in this course that you can implement right away, and by the end of it, you'll be better equipped on how to make smarter decisions, create a brand that stands out and take your business to the next level. Thanks for checking this course out, and I hope to see you in there. 2. 01 Introduction: welcome to this business success and brining course for beginners. And thanks for enrolling. If you've just started a business or thinking about starting one, this course will provide you with practical knowledge. To help you navigate more clearly as you continue to build your brand. Business is not easy. It requires a lot of work and sacrifices. And if it fails or isn't doing well, it could be devastating not only for you but for the people you may have working for you. As someone who's being self employed since 2009 and effectively runs multiple businesses, I've learned quite a lot about what it takes to build a successful brand. This course was designed to give you a head start with your business so that you could make better decisions by learning from other's mistakes. As you progressing through this course, I encourage you to write down or type out notes for the many points or thoughts in each section. Beyond this, I also encourage you to write down and ask yourself the many questions laid out in the course. The majority of the questions will apply to you or will apply to you at some point in the future in your business. So it's a good idea to get the ball rolling by thinking about what your answers are or to at least write them down for future reference in consideration. Getting success from this course will require a little bit of care and responsibility from you, the viewer to ensure the best results. Remember that results require actions, so it's up to you to take the necessary actions in your life and business to get the results you'd like. 3. 02 Getting Started: All right, let's get started, Throat This course. I will mention the word customer quite a bit, and I'd like to be clear that you might be working on a business where you have viewers or consumers and not necessarily customers. So, depending on your situation, please substitute customer or consumer with what applies to you as the underlying information is still relevant and important to learn. Let's start off by talking about what branding is. When people think about branding, they default to the logo or a tagline. But in reality, branding is almost everything that makes up your business or your brand. It's the message you're sending out in your marketing. The values you have is a leader, the impact you're having on your customers or the way you choose to advertise. It's what your customer services like, as well as what your entire business reputation is. Branding is one of the most important parts of your business. You could have an incredible product, but a poor functioning website and an ugly, non clear logo with confusing information about your business and product, and you might find yourself struggling to get sales on the other side. You could have a relatively simple product that's not very innovative. However, your branding is great. Your website designs Fallis, your brand messages being communicated excellently to your customers. They find it easy to jump on board and support your business, and in return you're getting lots of sales. While marketing is the first point of contact between your business and customer, don't overlook it because it's extremely important. Repeat business is also very important in orderto have long term success in business. So if your marketing is great and the first visual impression in your branding that you've put in place is getting sales, but your products are dissatisfying, people won't be coming back and spending money with you, so your products or services need to stand out as well beyond your branding. In fact, I've heard of a few similar situations where business owners were excellent and marketing and convinced a lot of people to spend money with them through fund raising platforms. But the products never ended up being sold because they were caught up in manufacturing delays or other issues that prevented them from making it to the end customer. Since this wasted a lot of people's time it really hurt the reputation of those businesses . People learn they shouldn't trust the brand anymore, and in return they're next. Launch was not successful in this situation. It may not have been the fault of the owner, but it doesn't matter to the customer. All they care about is receiving a product they paid for in a reasonable amount of time. Remember that as the owner, everything is ultimately your responsibility. So making sure your brand is well thought out in positioned, that your products make it to the customer and that when they receive them they're satisfied will pay off immensely in the long run, it all has to work, and there's gonna be a lot of effort that needs to be put in the place. But there is a huge amount of opportunity in business if you're willing to work at it. Now that you have an idea of the importance of establishing a great business and brain presence, let's dive deeper into how to start thinking about your business and how to position your brand to succeed 4. 03 Business Name Overview: I won't spend too much time discussing good business names or how to structure your business as that heavily depends on where you live, what your business is and what makes the most sense for you personally. But regarding your business name, it should be easy to remember and easy to pronounce bonus points. If you can come up with a clever name that relates to your business, it can take a very long time to come up with a name for your business. And trust me, you should definitely brainstorm a bunch of names and right thumb down. Wait at least 24 hours, then look at them again. This will help make sure that you're choosing the right name. Think about how they sound when you say them out loud. Do you feel good about a certain name when you say it? Do you think it's a name you'll feel proud of 10 years from now, cross the ones out that you're not into anymore with the remaining names, right the mall out again, but this time larger and on another piece of paper once again, come back the next day after you've slept on it, so that you have a fresh perspective. Repeat this process until you eventually arrive at a name that sticks. It might be a good idea to have friends and family help you pick, however, try to ask people who would be in the same demographic as your potential customer. In other words, if you're making a clothing business intended for young adults, it might not be the best idea to get opinions from your grand parents as their preferences are most likely going to be different. 5. 04 Branding Personality and Logo: moving into the logo before creating one. It's important to think about what your brand's personality is. Does it come off as fun? Modern, innovative, classy, professional, traditional, serious, funny and friendly. Whichever road you take, chances are those keywords will reflect you as a person. So if you're known for being funny, classy, technical or professional, it's probably a good idea to understand that and see if you can fit it into the business. Somehow, either through your advertising campaigns on your website, on the products themselves or within your actual logo, chances are you will, over time, feel more and more uninspired if you're trying to make the businesses personality come off as quirky and fun. When at your core, you are about being perceived as very professional and rarely make jokes in person. This isn't always a case, as there are always exceptions, however, it's something to think about and consider. It's better to position your brain in a way that similar to your style as an individual. Once you've thought about your style and have established some keywords for your brand's personality, it will help you with the next stage, which is creating a logo your business is logo should be easy to understand and easily recognizable Beyond that, if you've established that your brand's personality is professional and not quirky, see if there's a way that a professional theme can fit into your logo. For example, all law firms business personality might probably want to be considered serious and professional, of course, so by incorporating a visual element into your logo that fits, the more serious tone, such as the outline of a person in a suit, would help complete the logo and brand identity. Your business logo is often what people will see first, so I would suggest working with a professional to help you come up with a logo, because there are, Ah, lot of factors. Unless your business is in graphic design and your graphic designer chances are, a professional will be able to come up with the higher end looking logo than what you can and remember that this is something that's gonna be representing your business for years. It is not a good idea to slack on your logo. There's a few websites you can try, such as fibre dot com or 99 designs dot c a. Provide them with a bit of information, and then they'll start the design work. Once you receive the design, markups from them continue to work with them to figure out the color scheme. Font style graphics elements, icons as well is the sizing and positioning of your logo. Eventually you'll arrive at the final result, which will be the face of your brand. 6. 05 Tagline And Mission Statement: at the same time as starting to think of your logo, you'll want to start thinking about your business tagline and mission statement. A tagline is normally placed under the logo to help people identify what your business offers or represents, and is often an additional way to help people remember your business beyond just the logo. An example of a well known tagline is from McDonald's. I'm loving it. It doesn't exactly tell you what is being loved, but over time it has become a very catchy tagline that goes hand in hand with McDonald branding and identity. You'll notice that McDonald's is very consistent with including their tagline in all of their marketing for the mission statement. These air typically longer sentences that provide a direct into the point explanation of what the businesses purposes. It's rarely used in marketing purposes, so it won't be found in ads where the tagline may be used. Instead, a mission statement is often used more professionally in applications such as a business proposal or in documents where businesses looking to gain investors creating a clear and easy to understand mission statement is valuable. It defines a very specific, well thought out explanation of your business that creates clarity for you and others. An example of a great mission statement is from Tesla to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. It's a great mission statement because not only does it clearly tell you that the purpose of the company is to help the world move into sustainable energy, but since it's a company that creates vehicles, their mission statement uses the word accelerate. Beyond this, it's a good idea to have an elevator pitch prepared, but an elevator pitch can be very different, depending on the industry and type of business. So I'll keep things. General, you've probably heard the term before. Basically, an elevator pitch is a more professional presentation meant to be conversational between you and someone else. That leaves them intrigued to continue talking to you, depending on your business and what you want from the conversation. It could include a brief explanation of who you are, what your role in the businesses, what your business does, how it delivers and, most importantly, why that matters to someone. It should all be no longer than a couple sentences and well rehearsed. I suggest practicing saying it. A few 100 times before saying it to anyone. And remember that your elevator pitch is Onley meant to be said to certain people, including a question of the end, will naturally keep the conversation going and give you new information to work with, such as if they are very interested or if they're not so interested. Now that you have some ideas on establishing your brand identity and the types of information you should have prepared, let's dive deeper in the structure of a business. 7. 06 The Goal Of A Business: welcome back to another lesson in this one will discuss the goal of a business and why it's important to get very specific. The goal of a business is typically to add value to an industry and constantly increase its income year after year to sustain long term success even for a non for profit business. The more money brings in the more king grow each year and increasingly provide value since the goal of the business is success. Typically that means figuring out exactly who the ideal customer is or who the audience is , and then to target them in various ways to achieve sales or attention. Figuring out your ideal customer will take time and the more defined you get, the higher chance your branding will resonate with you years targeting to figure it out, think about your business and who would use your services, Buy your products or subscribe to your content primarily. What is the age of your ideal customer? What problems might they have? What interest do they have? What other products and brands do they use where they located? What's their approximate income? Who are they inspired or influenced by? Will they likely by all year round or once every few years. There are a lot of questions you can ask, and the more answers you know, the better positioned you'll be for success. The result will be a much clearer understanding of your ideal customer, and this is extremely valuable information because now you can take that information and mold your entire business around it. You'll have a much clearer idea of how to speak to this demographic, and also you'll have a much clearer idea of the reasons your competition is doing, what they're doing and how you can do it better. There are many factors to achieving success in business and getting clear on your goals for your business in the short term. But also the long term is not only a good idea but a major factor in success. For the short term, creating and setting small daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly goals will seem realistic and attainable. It will also keep you on track for reaching your longer term goals, which is in most cases to scale your business in some way. If you're not into setting goals, consider these stats from a Harvard business study in the October Business Planning guide. 83% of the population do not set goals for the people who do cycles. But don't write them down there 10 times more successful. And for the remaining 3% that do right there goes down. They are three times more successful than the 14%. Those are some drastically different numbers. Another approach I like to take is to tell friends and family about my goals because it creates a sense of accountability and an obligation to not fail. I'm not asking them for advice, though, because later in the course, I'll talk a bit about why that's a bad idea. But letting them know about your goals creates a psychological trick that works. For most people, business can be very hard, so leveraging any strategy to stay motivated and on track to reach your goals is a must. Here are some other questions you can ask. What are the goals of your competitors? What do you think they're aiming for? Are they doing as much as they can to serve their customers when researching your competition? It's always good to think about what they might be doing wrong so you can tap into that area within your business and do it right. I wouldn't recommend copying another business in doing things exactly as they are, though it won't likely work out in the long run, since you'll always be following and waiting for them to do the next thing instead of innovating and progressing in your own unique way, since your competitors or similar by analyzing how they run their business and understanding what they are doing well and not so well, you can find clarity and direction for the goals of your own brand. 8. 07 Getting Clear About Your Businesses Value: thin. This lesson will discuss two different types of the word value in relation to business and branding. As you're progressing through the lesson and as mentioned earlier, I encourage you to posit when needed and write down the questions as I'm asking them. Try to answer them and get clearer on what your business represents and the value it provides. You don't have to have perfect answers. The goal here is to only get you thinking the 1st 1 is the value your business provides to your customers. For example, you have an innovative product that helps people read faster. And because people want to be able to read faster, they find it worthwhile to pay for your product. That's an exchange of value between you and your customer. Remember, you're in business to serve in some way. You're either providing products, services, entertainment or a combination of any of those other way. You are serving your customer or audience by providing value to them. So what value does your business provide? Do you have a service that stands out from the rest? Do you have a product that's better than the competition? Is your product very similar to the competition, but you have figured out a way toe produce it cheaper. Okay, so that was the first type of value. The second type is what your business's own values are and how you conduct your business. Do you care about being honest and transparent to your customers, even though that might mean you miss out on some opportunities or income? Do you care about protecting the environment and therefore, choose to pay more for higher quality, greener supplies to make your products, even though you'll have to charge more for your products, which will limit your customer base? What does your business representing? What do you believe in as the business owner, your business will reflect what you believe in, and the success of your business will be directly related to the effort and care you put into it. A successful brand should always leverage the owners strength, so ask yourself what you're good at and how you can utilize that strength within your business. So how do you stand out from the competition? Do you morally care more than your competition? Are you a people person? Are you highly skilled in writing computer code? What would be the value you can contribute is that a willingness to work 16 hours a day, including weekends? Anything you can come up with that gives you an edge over the competition is added value. Thinking about the answers to all of these questions will help you create a better picture of how you and your business fits into the business world again. You don't need to answer everything perfectly, but the more thought you put into it, the higher the chance you'll be better off in the future with your business. 9. 08 Becoming a Bigger Brand: a small business might focus more on promoting their product features to their potential customers. While larger businesses tend to focus more on selling a lifestyle like Nike does or a culture of like minded people such as what? Apple tights? There's a feeling of a group environment when people feel a certain way about owning a product. Basically, there was a feeling of inclusion their customers felt included and connected with the brands at a deeper level than just features. They will defend the brand and go out of their way to talk highly about it. They will have loyalty to the products they use. Apple is a great example of this because they became so large because of their brand positioning. He created products that people felt proud of. Sure, they created fast computers that got the job done and modern looking designs. But it was so much more than that. People feel good using Apple products, and because of this, they care. Apple created an emotion within their customers, and it is those emotions and feelings that make a brand powerful Amazon is another great example. They also became so large because of their brand positioning, they created an online marketplace that saves people time. And that means less stress, more time to enjoy life, ultimately making the lives of millions easier. There's a really good feeling that comes with that. People feel good using Amazon because there's nothing really to complain about when the competition takes weeks to deliver something and Amazon will send you something in a day or two. Loyalty within your customers is the key. So by figuring out how to understand your potential customer and their emotional triggers, you will create the best chance of converting them into a customer and then becoming a repeat customer. We'll dive deeper into this a little later. Here's something to think about in order to become a bigger brand. Transition your marketing on focusing on storytelling instead of your actual products or services directly. Because psychologically, people will respond far better to a story. They relate to that a product they've never tried before. This is why top brands like Apple and Nike have done so well. They've understood the importance of relating to a customer through some sort of storytelling within their advertising. Another excellent way to grow fast and establish your brand as a larger business is to hire a coach, But there are way too many life and business coaches out there, so make sure you do your due diligence and hire the right person. Ask for case studies showing how their input helped other businesses grow. Check out their social media channels and websites and find out what their approach will be with your brand Beyond this, visit local networking events. Purchase a booth at conventions to show off your products or services, and look into mastermind groups to join where you'll be surrounded by like minded people who can keep you accountable for the last point in this lesson, it's an obvious one, but something a lot of people overlook and don't take seriously. And that is to always keep learning. There's an abundance of knowledge on any subject ready to go via courses, books, e books, events, seminars, webinars, mentors, etcetera and knowledge is power. The more you know, the better positioned you'll be. Four Success make it a non negotiable that you'll never be too smart to learn. Sometimes all it takes is a chapter of a book, another lesson of a course or one sentence that a mentor says to give you the motivation or knowledge to align yourself up with success 10. 09 Your Customers Part 1: to get right to the point. The majority of people watch or buy things emotionally. Humans air very emotional beings by nature. We care about art, music being loved, being inspired and feeling the impacts of life around us. We often enjoy change, not because it's always better for us, but because there are feelings attached to it. If you think about a business, on the other hand, it is ran very rationally, not emotionally. There's a leader at the top controlling everything managers underneath, making sure the numbers work in various other positions, making sure all of the elements of the business are moving seamlessly every day. Or at least that's the goal. Everything is done with a very specific plan, and in most cases it's best to remove emotion entirely from decisions and focus on the data . The irony in all of this is that data shows that connecting with your customers on an emotional level is the way to go. So in other words, the business should be structured with systems and rational thinking. But the point of contact between your business and customer should be focused on emotional triggers within your customers. You'll notice that all of the big brands of the world tend tohave ads where you see people throughout the majority of the video. They include lifestyle shots of people smiling and loving life, all the while mixing in some product placement in subtle ways. Even though, let's say the companies trying to sell a product the product is secondary. These big brands are establishing emotion within their ads because they're selling to human beings, not robots. Of course, a human will care if a product makes them happy or excited or inspired. These air, all emotions a human will care about wanting to go on vacation or how great the design of a product looks. If people weren't influenced by their emotions and the way they feel about certain things, there wouldn't be billions of dollars every year spent on the design, color, shape, texture and sounds of a product. Next, I'd like to talk about a common phrase in business that has to do with your customers. Have you ever heard the phrase that customer is always right? If you've been in business for a while, you've probably experienced a customer who was dissatisfied and had different expectations than what you had even though 99% of your other clients are happy and you did nothing different. Your business's reputation is key to your success. But unfortunately, if you experience an unhappy customer, they may open up a series of bad reviews or a trend of new, unhappy customers. As the phrase suggests, it's best to not blame them directly for their views on your product or service. And instead I apologize for the inconvenience. Consider, if it's worthwhile to offer something in return and then figure out why they feel the way they do. Is this something that you can improve? Is there a slightly different approach that won't take very long to implement but may result in less bad reviews or less unhappy customers? While I believe the phrase the customer is always right, 99% of time is accurate. There are some exceptions where it's clear you've done everything you can, and it's just not a good fit in this case. Keep your cool, apologize and move on, but never become triggered by a customer and make things worse. 11. 10 Your Customers Part 2: So let's take this a step further in talking about your customers. Survey them. Listen to their feedback. You might be able to avoid the entire situation of a dissatisfied customer by collecting data ahead of time and then basing your product or service launch accordingly. So why is it so important to make sure your customers or viewers are happy and satisfied? It could be six or seven times more expensive to gain new customers, research suggests, than keeping existing ones. That's a huge difference. If we think about why that is, it becomes a little more obvious. To gain a customer, you need to somehow reach them, so marketing and advertising is done. Then, once your product or service is in front of them, you need them to click on it and not only like it, but decided to move forward with spending the money on it. You need to prove to them it's something they want in advertising. There's a pattern that people have noticed where it generally takes seven points or more of contact before someone decides to buy, meaning you need to target the person and show them the products seven different times, then they'll by that, of course, can be extremely expensive. Now let's talk about a repeat customer. Chances are you will have them in an email list or in some other form, where you can promote new products or promotions to them. If they like the product, all you have to do is send out an email with the new product, and there's a much higher chance they'll convert to a sale on the first or second time since they've already purchased from your brand. Another reason why it's important to maintain happy and satisfied customers is because the higher customer satisfaction your business has, the more you will stand out from your competition. And that means higher brand awareness, better search results, more repeat customers better reviews, more referrals to customers that you didn't need to spend any money on to obtain and ultimately, more sales. Next, let's talk about a way to get clearer on who your customers are. A great way to understand your customer is to create a write up that describes your ideal customer as if they're a real person. This is known as a customer persona or marketing profile. After you've collected relevant information about your ideal customer by surveying your existing customers or through other research, create your business's customer persona. It can be used in marketing campaigns to better target potential customers and to get clear on who, exactly, you are creating products or services for. In other words, it allows the business to better empathize with their customers and understand their needs , which ultimately means serving them better. The following example is a customer persona I made up for the ideal customer of a heating and air conditioning company. Alison is a 31 year old orthodontist, married with two Children, living in a house near a downtown of a large city with an annual household income of 125,000. Her home came with an H Vac unit installed. However, it is outdated and loud. She's concerned about the quality of air, the families breathing, and it's costing her too much each month to operate. She wants her family to breathe fresh air while also saving money in the long run because of the high cost of living in a large city. So as mentioned, creating a customer persona is a great idea to figure out and know how to target your ideal customer 12. 11 Attract Customers Through Psychology Driven Strategies: attracting customers can be challenging, especially for younger brands. However, there are some basic psychology driven strategies you can implement to attract new customers. People love discounts and setting up holiday promo codes that people can share with their family and friends to save them all. Money is a great way to encourage your customers to spend a little extra and help bring in new customers. Beyond that, you can offer no money down pay after the service is complete or monthly payments on more expensive products or services. You could create a loyalty program and offer inclusive live Facebook chats, free products or discounts on services When sharing info about your product or service. Sharing the benefits will b'more impactful to a customer than sharing the features. People are more likely to buy if they know how your product will enhance there. Life compared to being told about how your product works. Also, people want to feel important, like there are part of a group. Remember, people tend to make decisions emotionally and then justify them using logic. It's up to you as a service or product provider to figure out how to create something that people want. Another great strategy is by using comparative pricing. Offer a lower price product or service that serves the basic needs of your customer, then offer AH, higher priced item that offers several additional features and a higher price product that contains additional bells and whistles. Whichever price point you've made the most valuable is likely what the customer will choose . If that's the middle products price that you've set, that means it's the most bang for the buck and therefore the most sought after. Beyond that, there's a really great psychology driven strategy for service businesses or businesses that offer different products. And that's to increase the perceived value of an offer you have by lowering the perceived value of the other offers around it. The first step to setting this up is to determine one price point and then to attach a value that will be provided for that price point. The important step here is to create the price point and value provided around something you believe is well worth it or ideal for your brand to sell or provide. Once this is done, set up a lower and a higher price point with less attractive offers, so that you're psychologically funneling people to the offer you'd like them to choose. Here's an example for a company providing cleaning services Package to was designed as the ideal price and service to provide customers at a cost of $249 includes four hours of cleaning with premium quality products. AH, free cleaning product for the customer to keep and a 15% discount on a future cleaning. Then package one was created to be only slightly cheaper but offers much less value. It is $199 which is only $50 cheaper includes only 1.5 hours of cleaning with standard cleaning products. No free product is included for the customer and Onley. A 5% discount on future cleaning is offered for Package three. It only has slightly more value than the ideal package, but is significantly more expensive. It's $499 which is $250 more than the ideal package comes with five hours of cleaning with premium quality products. And that's just one hour more than the ideal package provides to free cleaning products, which are relatively inexpensive for the business to provide extra of and also includes the same 15% discount on future cleaning that the ideal package has based on the three packages package to is the best value by far because it has the highest perceived value in comparison to the other options available. Keep in mind, though, that the business created this as their ideal package to sell, which means if customers choose the others, it's very worthwhile for the business. However, the customer wouldn't be taking advantage of the best deal offered. Psychology driven price points can help your brand final customers into spending a lot more to get a better value in package one. It doesn't make sense to pay. A $199 went for only $50 more. You can get twice the cleaning better products, a free cleaning product and a much larger discount in the future. And by offering a much higher price package, there will be some people that choose it just because they tend to lake receiving the best fast food companies have psychology driven price points set on almost all of their menus. $2.99 for small fries, or $3 in 25 for medium. But for $3.50 you can get large fries, which are only 50 cents more than the small become with three times as much. They specifically set the price for small fries to be a bad deal in hopes of you thinking you're getting a great deal in the large fries, even though it's only relative to the small fries. Price. If all three fries offers were priced evenly apart based on quantity, the large fries would sell much less, and the brand would make less income. Fast food chains do this with other things to, such as when they offer adding the combo toe a burger for only a couple dollars more than the $8 burger. Suddenly spending only $2 more fried ing fries and a drink compared to the initial $8 seems like a great deal. So consider that people like discounts and great offers because it makes them feel like they're getting a deal, even if it's really just increased perceived value. They're getting. So think about how you can set up your package pricing to incentivize people toe. Want to choose the ideal price point and value that you'd like to offer 13. 12 Filtering Out The Noise: The more successful you become, the more people will dislike you. It's just part of the game and learning early to filter out that noise will be a huge advantage for you. You simply cannot please everybody. There will always be opposing opinions of your business, especially as your brand grows much larger. If you are getting sales or viewership but also are receiving some hate or negative feedback, take it as a sign you're doing something right. Of course, it's good to understand why they're leaving negative feedback, but don't get too caught up trying to please everyone. It simply isn't possible. There will always be people who prefer PCs and other Super for Max, and that's a good thing. It means people are passionate about what they buy and use, and it creates a great opportunity to innovate for them. In a world where there are 1000 ads and voices every day trying to tell you something, and on top of that, your friends or family giving you their own expert advice on what you should do with your life since of course they know you better than you do in reality, you are in control of your life and on Lee, you are living your life, so it's important to understand how to filter out the noise that's all around you. I've had family members and friends either directly or indirectly tell me a ton of things that they think I should or shouldn't be doing, which proved to be terrible advice. In the long run, They said things like, Why are you working so hard? You should enjoy your weekends. Well, as it turned out, working seven days a week was the best thing I ever decided to do. I sacrifice things they weren't willing to sacrifice, and I was rewarded hugely for that by having roughly 30% more time to focus on my goals and reach them far faster. What I'm getting at here is, the more you listen to people who aren't involved in your industry or don't know relevant information about what you're doing, the more you will be held back. I've learned it's best to only take advice from people who are already at where you want to be. What I mean by this is if your goals are to establish your brand, get an office base or a studio space. However a few employees or scale your business to a certain revenue target, try to find someone that you can speak to already has achieved these. The chances of them giving you great advice is significantly higher. Beyond that, there may be certain ways the world is used to being like, such as gas powered cars. When electric vehicles first started to be taken seriously around 2009 or 10 they also had a lot of resistance by very large publishers. For example, in 2011 Forbes said, electric cars are an extraordinarily bad idea, or the daily Mail said sorry, but electric cars are a waste of space here we are years later, and almost every major car brand is getting involved in electric cars. This goes to show that sometimes it just takes a few years for an entire industry to change . But along that journey, there will be a lot of distracting noise to filter out. Another type of noise is when your brand becomes big enough that others start to imitate and copy what you're doing. This can be very frustrating and distract you from your own business because you spent a lot of time and money figuring your business out, all for someone to come along and rip it all off. Which is, of course, good for the competition and very bad for you. However, it's important to stay focused and expect people to copy you as you grow. That means you're doing something right and people see there's value involved. Learning to not be bothered by the competition allow you to have a fresh mind, so keep that up. This mentality will prove to be a huge advantage. That, being said, if it's possible for you to get a patent for your product, I definitely consider it. They can be a few $100 or if it's done 100% professionally with lawyers involved, it could be a few 1000 to set up, but if you get approved, it's well worth it. Having a patent allows you to have more control in a market because you're able to prevent others from stealing your designs or innovations, and also by negotiating terms and royalty payments. If another company wants to use your product in summary, people will try to discourage you and rip off your ideas more times than not and understanding them and why they're saying what they're saying or acting the way they are is important. But that does not mean you should be taking advice from them or changing your direction. Learn to understand the discouraging comments or why the competition is copying or business . But Onley, take advice and change direction based on your research and consideration and from people who are at or have achieved the level of success your after or have bean through what you are about to go through. 14. 13 On Brand: When it comes to building a business that stands out, it's important to stay on brand. It's best to spend time figuring out and identifying who your customers are. It is very unlikely that a business will grow and become successful if they haven't catered to a specific target audience or customer base. So once you know your niche, stay within it. If we break this down a little more and discuss what an individual consumer expects every time you put out a new post, a new video and new picture a new advertising campaign it needs to be consistent with your brand identity, so that next time the consumer visits your website or comes to one of your social media posts, they get a very similar experience as what connected to them in the first place. Your goal is to have a loyal customer base, of course, and that means all of your content in products and the way you provide services need to connect with your customers in a cohesive way. The consumer should, over time, learn and expect the way your brand makes them feel. Whether that's happy or inspired or productive, your audience or customer is interested in one thing. That's why they bought your product, paid for your service or watched your video. An example of what not to do. And I see this all the time on social media accounts is when brands post a specific type of content regularly, such as travel videos, events and other fun. Easy to judge US content. And then every so often they post something that has nothing to do with their brand, such as posting a video about politics. I'm not sure why they share these off brand posts, but I do know that people aren't fans of it and will often trigger them toe on follow. Second to that, it's important to stay on brand with your logos and designs across all advertising accounts . Use the same logo with the same colors and the same design on your website. Business cards, social media accounts, billboards, flyers, etcetera. Make it easy for a potential customer toe. Learn your logo and brand style, and the best way to do that is to keep things consistent, since your brand is not what you think or say it is. Rather, it's what your customers or audience perceives it as staying on Brand can be thought of as similar to a person's integrity. Someone who repeatedly gives their words says they're going to do certain things, and that ends up not being honest and doing other things doesn't have much integrity. In the same way a brand that is inconsistent with their communication isn't going to be considered a company that people trust or want to be associated with. This is why it's important to stay consistent with your brand identity across all your platforms and follow up and deliver what you promised. Initially, that's one of the recipes for a cohesive connection to the market your business is in and ultimately the customers it serves. 15. 14 Ego: while making money is important for a business to be successful, the reality is that money is the by product of your company's values and efforts, so we haven't set up your business to succeed. Chances are it won't if we think your product or service is better than everyone else's, but only spend one or two hours a week on your business. Chances are you're either wrong or your competition will catch up shortly with you. Other way. Your ego's too big, and you should strongly consider taking a step back and evaluating your situation. Having an ego that's too big will, in most cases negatively affect you and your business. In the long run, deciding to approach your business with a high level of humility will keep you grounded and ultimately proved to your customers. You're passionate about improving their lives and providing value to them. People only care about what a product does for them, or how a service makes their lives better and how they feel, rather than how awesome you are is a CEO. So leverage your product or service and let your entire brand do the speaking. That being said over time, when a business does grow large enough where brand becomes popular enough, the owner will develop some form of celebrity status. And in this case, it's an excellent idea to start adapting your business and brand to play into that popularity. More people will be attracted to your success and will want to be associated with your success and not necessarily with you as the individual. This is important to remember if your business gets to this stage. Because while it might be tough to hear that people care more about your success than you, it's the truth. And the sooner you realize that, the better you can leverage it within your business to scale even higher. Another point I'd like to make on the topic of ego is, no matter how perfect someone thinks they might be, they are far from it. As people, we naturally have many flaws and knees flaws make us unique and human. So don't be afraid of failing at something as long as you, no matter what, get back up and adapt. Oftentimes, failure is the fastest way to grow. I believe experiencing failure is the only way to success. It teaches you what doesn't work and what not to do. It provides you with very specific information that you can leverage in the future toe overtime, make less and less mistakes. So don't be afraid of failure, but at the same time make sure you're learning from those experiences from all the business books I've read the mentors I've spoken with the seminars I've attended and the experiences I've had in my life. I can say with confidence that the common theme is failing is part of the process, and it's essential to success. So try new things and learn from them. 16. 15 Your Employees Matter: your employees matter a lot. They facilitate most aspects of your business once you've set it up, so it's important that they are aligned with the values of your brand. If they don't, it's probably not going toe last. If you don't have employees yet, you can hire with these notes in mind. Most of the time, your employees will be the ones directly connecting with your customers or audience. So naturally it's important to have them be aligned with your company's values. You can train people to be more valuable to your organization, but if they don't have similar values to what you and your business represent, then it's only a matter of time until they lose steam, because it'll be just a job to them with not much care to go above and beyond. It can be very challenging to find people who share similar values with you and have that extra level of care. So take some extra time and make sure you are hiring the right person if you can. The old business saying is very true, higher, slow and fire fast. Unfortunately, most businesses do it the other way around and waste a lot of their time and money. Basically, if you take it slow and hire the right person, chances are they'll stick around for a long time and be a huge benefit to your company. While hiring fast will often turn into having someone who just doesn't care all that much about your business and will probably end up making you miss out on greater opportunities. The reason for that is when you're surrounded by positive energy and like minded people, you will be more productive and effective. And in contrast, if you're surrounded by not so positive people who don't share your values, it's likely to make you less productive and not as inspired. Once you're surrounded by great employees or contractors that have served your business well, reward them. You are the boss, and it's your job to make them feel good about working with you. If they feel good, they'll continue to go above and beyond for your business, So rewarding them is a win win scenario. I believe if your not rewarding and working with your employees to make sure they have what they need to succeed, you're just a boss and not a leader, and you're destined to miss out on a lot of success. To have a successful long term business, you need to be more than just the boss. You need to be a great leader, and that means setting up systems where your employees or contractors have what they need to succeed and are encouraged to do So. Many bosses have expectations from their employees, but they don't reward them when they reach those expectations. Ultimately, in these scenarios, the boss crumbles, and the boss wonders why. Think of your employees as the foundation to your brand. Without them, you're not supported, so it's in your best interest to treat them well, encourage them to go above and beyond and then reward them when they do. In other words, make your employees feel good and it will trickle down to your customers. 17. 16 How To Win And Stay Ahead Of The Competition: thin. This lesson will discuss how to win and stay ahead of the competition. The more value you provide to your customers, the more money you will make. An in return, the faster you will grow and outperform the competition. A successful business will make their customers feel like they received more value than what they paid for. But that's only part of it. Be always crystal clear and consistent on your brand's identity, because if you're having trouble keeping your content on brand and your brand story consistent, I can guarantee your customers will have an even harder time. Identifying what's different about your brand. That your customers or audience will remember is a major factor to your brand success. What impression will your product or service leave? If your industry has a lot of competition, what are you going to do or change that will make you stand out? Being unique is tough in a world where it seems like everything has been done, however often times. If you change slight things in your approach, you can establish yourself in an entirely new place within the market. Next, we'll talk about risk. There are many factors regarding the risk involved in a business such as the people you hire that represent you investing in the right contractors or employees and understanding their people with their own needs and lifestyles will help keep you grounded to ensure a work environment that encourages growth beyond this, trusting your team to do their job, but also allowing them to fail, learn and grow with you and your business is a vital part to your success because mistakes will happen. It's not about who made it. It's about how it happened and how to learn from it to navigate better in the future. Remember, any mistakes represent you and your entire business. So while they may happen at an individual level, the culture shouldn't be to blame the individual but to be Ford thinking by implementing systems best practices and having great communication with your team so that everyone is on the same page. Mitigating risk by weighing the pros and cons for every decision, and by considering all factors when planning out each business move so that they're all calculated risks is very important. It not only will keep you focused, but it will greatly reduce the chances of something happening that could negatively affect your business. There's no perfect rule, though. When it comes to this. Business is risky by nature and to grow, you need to take on some risk. The amount of risk, however, is very subjective, since it's up to you, your team's capabilities, your resources, your confidence, the market and many other factors. Another way to win and stay ahead of the competition is to allocate a small percentage every year for high risk taking endeavors. Have a brainstorming meeting with your team and ask them to come up with outside the box ideas and tell each person they will be voting once for someone else's idea that they like the best. And the chosen idea will have a budget put towards it somewhere between half a percent and 5% of your business's yearly earnings. For example, we talked a bit about Amazon earlier in the course, and there's a good reason for that. Amazon is a great example of a company that stays ahead of the competition. They innovated and changed the game of an entire industry which forced the competition to play along their competition, quickly realized that if they don't start implementing very fast delivery time and make the online ordering process very easy. They will lose a lot of business. That's not the only reason why Amazon stays ahead of their competition, though. Think about how they treat customers. They have an incredible return policy, for example, the majority of the time they will process a refund right away and give you back your money before they even received the product. How does that make the customer feel really good? Of course, it makes them feel trusted. It ends the return process for them right away, instead of waiting weeks to hear back. And beyond that, they get their money back to spend elsewhere as soon as possible. I will bet that other companies will jump on board with this way of business because it's a great strategy to keep customers feeling good about buying, which ultimately means what we talked about earlier Repeat business as Amazon has shown, doing everything you can to have your customers develop a trust for your brand, and to feel good about choosing your business can be a huge advantage. Apparently, Amazon consistently loses money in the delivery stages, and they are okay with that because they treat it like a business investment that keeps customers using their services and buying their products. In other words, lose a bit here to make a lot there. Next, let's move on to your network. You may have heard the quote by Tim Sanders. Your network. Is your net worth this quote? Based on my experiences in business? Many business owners I spoken to, as well as comparing the businesses I know of that have done well versus the ones who have struggled. You probably won't have any issues with this if you're an extrovert, someone who gains energy by interacting with others. But if you're an introvert like I am, someone who often loses energy in social situations and needs time alone to recharge. Staying on top of your network game can be challenging. Create a budget every year specifically for taking your clients or certain individuals out for dinner who have had or may have a positive impact on your brand every few months, reach out and offer to take them to dinner. This isn't about you selling them. It's about you being fresh in their mind the next time they are looking to buy something it may seem like a waste of time to spend 50 102 $100 or more just to catch up with someone that you may not even consider a personal friend. But the importance of this cannot be overstated. The few 100 or $1000 you will spend in a year will pay back in many multiples from these connections, through referrals, repeat business investing opportunities and partnerships. 18. 17 Steps To Determine The Unique Qualities To Stand Out In A Competitive Business Space: in the early stages of developing your business. You are your business. You may be the only one or have just one other employees. But no matter how smaller big your company is, infusing your own personality into your brand is a valuable way to connect with the right customers. People buy from people they know like and trust, and you build trust through being trustworthy. So how do you become trustworthy? Well, provide what you promised. Stick to your values, be consistent and always make it your goal to provide enough value that your audience or customer feels like it was worth their time or money. Embrace the qualities that make you who you are and share qualities and interest with the world in relation to your brand. To build sincere connections, leaning to your unique strengths. The qualities that make you special. Do you often hear the same sort of compliments from people? Maybe people always tell you what a great storyteller you are or that you make them feel comfortable and at ease immediately. Perhaps you're often told your thorough in detail oriented, or that you always come through when needed. The qualities people go out of their way to mention to you are often some of the qualities that make you uniquely you, and these are the type of qualities that you can start to implement into your brand. If you're not sure what some of your unique and awesome qualities are, ask your friends and family and make sure they're being specific and direct. Finding out the parts of you that others enjoy is the first step to you figuring out how to infuse those qualities into your business. And these qualities are a key aspect that will set you and your brand apart from your competition. Standing out in a competitive market can be tough, but there are many ways to outshine the others. One way of doing this is creating a sense of urgency in promotions by having flash sales saying sale ends at midnight to incentivize people to buy from your brand. Having these strategically time sales throughout the year is a great way to help generate extra income and to stand out in a world where so much business and customer service is done through robotic automated messages. Being riel and showing you are human is a definite competitive advantage. People will want to deal with people until automatic messages or AI in general becomes indistinguishable. Personalizing your services so that each element of your brand has a bit of you involved will not only make your brand unique and memorable, but it's a great way to keep you passionate about what you're doing, because it's easy to keep being yourself. Defining your niche and then making it your own will give you greater clarity as to where you confined your future customers and how to adapt your brand to reach them. Also, consider what may be happening in your demographics world and think about how you and your brand fits into it. As the months and seasons change, your demographic may have different interests and needs. So celebrating that by making new seasonal specific products or providing services that incorporate themes that are specific to that group will keep things fresh and provide many opportunities to continue adding your own custom touches. Another great way to figure out a unique quality of yours and how to stand out is by testing membership groups where people joined to receive additional value in some way. The website patron provides great services to brands toe offer more to their audiences, and this includes multiple ways that their audience or customers can continue to support them. Membership groups allow for more direct conversations where you get to know them better, and they get to know your brand better. So make it count. Think of ways you can make the experience fund while continuing to be valuable and as mentioned, try to incorporate your style whenever you can. Maybe that's with weekly personalized newsletters to your membership group or behind the scenes of your business, where they get to learn more about the employees and how the business is run. Experiment with your communication style and have fun with your most loyal customers. Make sure you reward them well as they are your biggest fans. Rewarding your customers for their loyalty will keep customers coming back and referrals coming in in order to stand out. Creating a company profile will also help. Ah, company profile provides background information about your business and is usually included in your social media or the about page of your website. It's a great area to add some personal touches to make your brand more unique. Include your businesses story their products or services your company provides how they're beneficial, your company goals or mission in relation to your customers and any awards air accomplishments your company has received. Here's an example of a great company profile from Starbucks. The Starbucks story. Our story began in 1971. Back then, we were a roaster and retailer of whole bean and ground coffee, tea and spices with a single store in Seattle's Pike Place Market. Today we are privileged to connect with millions of customers every day with exceptional products and more than 30,000 retail stores in 80 markets. Next they talk about their coffee. We've always believed in serving the best coffee possible. It's our goal for all of our coffee to be grown under the highest standards of quality. Using ethical sourcing practices, our coffee buyers personally traveled to coffee farms in Latin America, Africa and Asia to select high quality beans, and our master roasters bring out the balance and rich flavor of the beans through the signature Starbucks roast. As you just heard, Starbucks gets very specific and unique with some information they're proud of about the brands history and look out them to where they are today. It's interesting to hear where they originated from what they're passionate about, how the name was formed and what makes their customers love their coffee. 19. 18 Developing Your Online Presence: your online presence is not only a relevant tool in growing your brand, it's a connection point to your customers or audience that must be taken seriously in regards to developing and maintaining a strong online presence. You should have a professional, easy to navigate, aesthetically appealing website that is mobile friendly. Using companies like Square Space or wicks to create your website yourself are fantastic options. If you want to save the cost of hiring a Web person or avoid using more complex ways to build websites like using WordPress, make sure the layout and design of your website reflects your brand's personality and is updated frequently with photos, information, testimonials and block posts include social media icons that link to your social media channels so that everything involved in your brand is connected. Customers today are extremely resourceful and want to feel confident when making purchases or using the services of companies. If you don't have a strong online presence not only with an engaging website but also across your social media channels, you will lose credibility. I would suggest going through all of your social media pages, personal and professional and removing hiding any post comments, photos videos, etcetera. That may hurt your business if someone knew were to discover them. In the world of business, it's always best to limit negativity. So when it comes to your competitors, unhappy clients or simply just a negative minded person, it's best to not have things available for them to discover online as something they could potentially use against you To hurt your business. Having a strong online presence on social media builds trust and rapport with your customers and provides an opportunity for free advertising and brand exposure. Figuring out which social media channels your target audience mainly uses is important, so make sure you do the necessary research and then choose the 2 to 3 top platforms to focus your time with that your audience uses. Building your presence on these platforms is something that takes time and commitment. Working each day toward it is how you win long term because it's not something that will happen overnight. Spend 15 minutes or so each day on these platforms to maintain your brands presence. Be sure to engage with your customers or audience because they need to know that you're invested in these platforms and ultimately with them try your best to respond quickly to any online enquiries. As this is a great way to build relationships with clients or fans, they'll feel confident in being part of your online community or being customers of yours. This way, when it comes to how often you should post, I'd suggest posting regularly at least a few times a week or if you can, once or twice a day. It does depend on your knee, so so be careful with your posting. If you're posting too much, you may end up annoying people, which will have the opposite outcome of what you're aiming for. Remember, you want to share more than just promotions or things that are directly selling your service or product share articles, ideas and photos that relate to your brand and that your target audience will enjoy when you're sharing your own brand content. Cross promoted throat each platform and make it easy for your customers to stay connected with your business across these social sites by effectively indicating how they will benefit from doing so, such as reminding them to join your Facebook group than mentioning why that would benefit them or that they should follow your INSTAGRAM account and why they would want to. There are many advantages to having an online presence and depending on the type of brand you have building your audience over time. Kenbrell incredible opportunities. Besides the benefits of having a strong online presence for audience retention, repeatability and growth for your brand, you can also have the opportunity to work with other brands for paid sponsorships and cross promotion. When you have a large enough audience, companies may reach out to you to give you free products to review prizes to give away, as well as payment for simply mentioning them in a poster video. Of course, this does depend on the type of business or brand you're running, but sponsorships can go a long way to maintain consistency with your brand's values. I recommend partnering with other companies that you truly like and feel will help your customers and audience otherwise. Working with a brand that doesn't really fit well with your business can negatively affect your income and growth In the long term, it's better to be selective about the brand deals you choose to take on and to not sell out just for money or free stuff. If a brand offers you something that doesn't align with your values or your customers, it's most likely best to pass on the opportunity. There will be others. Utilizing the Internet to build your brand's reputation is something that takes time, consistency and a lot of thought and care, but it's an essential part of growing your brand. 20. 19 Should You Run Ads: noticing what works and what doesn't is key when creating a successful brand. A successful business won't just have one marketing campaign or 20 years of business with same ways of doing things. There will be a lot of changes throughout your business, and there's a good chance it will always seem challenging. At some point, making money may not be the main challenge. The focus will change depending on your goals. And that means your marketing campaigns should also change. This could mean noticing trends and changes in the market and being early to shift your business and marketing to benefit instead of being left behind. Beyond that, you need to be on social media building your digital marketing presence. That means being active on all the popular social APS, having a fully optimized, modern and dynamic website as well as always, testing out different online advertising techniques. Most platforms have advertising options built in, and they're all very similar. So once you have a general idea of what to do, send off a test at and repeat what works and change what doesn't. This isn't a digital advertising course, but to get you started tested Facebook's advertising platform which is fairly straightforward to use. Typically, videos will perform the best so creating ad by implementing a video at a catchy title for the ad, enticing people to click and take action somehow. And then there will be options to add a call to action. It will be a button that says something like Learn more, watch now or shop now for targeting narrow your target audience to be somewhat selective. A few 100,000 to 5 million in most cases is more than enough. This is done by selecting an age demographic as well as locations to show the ad and interests or employment that the target audience may have a connection with. The final step is choosing your ad budget. I'd recommend $5 to $10 a day to start until you get a better understanding. Set it to go for at least a week's that it can bring in enough data for you to analyze now that the ad has been up for a week and you have data to see, see if it was successful for your goals, meaning that if you wanted to gain awareness for your business, it provided you with Web traffic or, if you wanted sales and provided you with sales at this stage, go into the ad duplicated and change things on both. So you have the same ad, but targeting different demographics. Run both and compare the results. This is called split testing. Once again, repeat what works and change what doesn't moving forward ads could be very expensive and very ineffective, or they can be extremely effective in very profitable. There really is no magic add formula, and every niche in every industry will need a different approach. And it will even change beyond that for every new trend or as years go on. So it's important to plan for your initial adds to fail and to think of it as paying for the collection of data. Once you have a better understanding, take that new knowledge and applied across multiple different platforms. You may find out that one platform performs very well in your niche, while others under before so don't get caught up with poor performing ads. Keep testing, change things and identify what works and what doesn't while also staying on top of the money you spend. Because these ads can add up over time, make sure you have a budget in place and then do some testing 21. 20 Running The Numbers: Since this course is focused on new entrepreneurs or small business ventures, I won't be focusing on riskier strategies like startups that specifically plan to operate with huge losses every year in an attempt to grow rapidly. It's not a good idea to spend more in a year than you're making unless you understand business very well have systems in place and investors aligned with your vision in order to pull it off. It can be extremely risky doing that. Chances are, if we're going through this beginner's course, it's best to stay within your means and control your income and expenses so that your cash flow positive. That means where you have more income than you spend throughout the life of your business. There will be many different expenses, whether that's operating expenses such as the monthly costs of running your business, accounting software, insurance, rent, etcetera or the larger investments made to start up or scale to a larger sides. For example, obtaining a second office or giving a part ownership in a business to investors like what is seen on TV show Shark Tank, are you aware of how much you're spending month to month or how much your new business will be spending 12 month. I encourage you to review your business's balance sheet often, which breaks down the financial status of a business at any given time. Either your accountant or accounting software can provide this to you. Making a habit of reviewing it each month can help you spot areas that might need to be addressed and ultimately save you money or scale you even faster. And in the long run, wise business owners air always on top of their income and expenses, even if they aren't the ones doing the bookkeeping quoting or fulfilling orders. Beyond that, do you have a contingency budget in place? This is a dedicated amount of money set aside only to be used if things don't go as planned . Without a contingency budget, you may be scrambling last minute to successfully deliver what your business offers. Or worse, you may not be able to deliver it. All mistakes happen. People go over budget all the time because businesses can have a lot of random factors at the worst times. So creating a contingency budget for those times can really help maintain a steady flow of business. If you find that your business is headed down the path to debt, it might be an early warning of a bad decision, a bad market or, in general, a bad business idea. Sometimes things won't work out exactly as you planned, and you may have a few months with negative cash flow where you spend more than you're making. And that's OK as long as you're aware of it and have planned for it often times new business owners think they don't need an accountant, but eventually find out how much more cost them in. Not having an accountant, I would suggest hiring one to help you, not only with your year and taxes, but throughout the year. To a good accountant can save you thousands of dollars by helping you see the benefits of structuring and planning your brand in a certain way. For example, an accountant can tell you when it is beneficial to start paying yourself out in dividends instead of payroll so that you keep more of the money you created. Or they can help you figure out the best time to invest in a new computer office, supplies equipment, etcetera to reduce what you owe in taxes. The accounting side of businesses often considered both a science and an art. Because while the numbers need to be accurate and everything needs to be in order, there's many different creative ways of establishing that data that can be literally the difference of billions of dollars in Amazon's case. For example, while Amazon paid over a $1,000,000,000 in income tax for the 2018 tax here, they didn't pay any federal tax because they claimed past year losses against future profits to reduce what they owe. They are also using several other strategies to reduce their tax bills, such as investing heavily in certain areas where they will receive tax credits for doing so , as well as providing stock based compensation to their employees. All of these were well thought of decisions that secure them as a fast growing, dominating brand. 22. 21 Final Thoughts: in this final lesson. Let's hammer home some main points so you can leave with some inspiring thoughts. Think about your customers daily lives and how to add value to them in some way so they feel happier, motivated, smarter, more connected, more free, richer, etcetera. Notice how that sentence was all about their them and they creating a successful business in developing a strong branding is all about providing value first, not about making you rich. If you succeeded providing enough value, the by product will be the money. Establish yourself as a leader in your niche by being unique and by proving you care about your customers or audience and have their best interest in mind. Your goal should be to provide your customers with more value than what they're paying you for. That's how they'll become repeat customers. And that's how you can grow your business, because when you're providing more than you're taking, a create a sense of loyalty where your customers will likely recommend your business, toe others and talk highly about your products or services. Remember, to become successful in business, you need to build a strong brand and to build a strong brand you need to be in business to serve, even though it's your brand. What you're providing isn't for you. The byproduct of successfully serving your customer or audience is your success. Make it easy for them to leave great reviews, buy from you again or to refer you to others. It's not about the short term being it for the long haul. I'd like to remind you to keep herself grounded. Don't let your ego get too big. Try to keep a strong sense of humility, especially when your business starts to take off. Be thankful for every customer you get every sale you make every view, your website or video gets each and every customer you have, and for the opportunity you have in owning a business as a final note, your life is unique. It's made up of years of conditioning from your past People you've spoken with experiences you've had, things you've learned, failures you went through and your environments you spent time in. All of these experiences may define you now, but you're capable of growing far greater and learning far more. And this is just the beginning. Learning to attract success is a skill and over time, you can get better at it. This is why the rich seem to get richer because they've mastered the art of attracting success. They figured out the formula for their own life and business. You can to. It's just a matter of applying yourself. Working hard and smart. Adopting to challenge is progressing past failures, focusing on setting goals and then chipping away them every day until you reach them. So that does it for this course on business. Success in branding four beginners, check out my profile for some of my other courses. If you'd like to learn more for me and also head over to YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Ali and will we have a ton of media tutorials that you may find helpful in building your business and brand thanks so much for enrolling, and I hope to see you in another course.