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Here we are it s Black Friday the day when, historically, retailers get into the black. So they re hoping that people shop, shop, shop. ___ ___ ___ Black Friday has almost become a sporting event. I just don t enjoy shopping that much so it s not for me. But plenty of people sure do enjoy trying to find that irresistible bargain. ___ ___ I don t like standing in line for anything but I especially don t like doing it to spend money! Crowds are great at a concert or a ball game! ___ In honor of Black Friday, we want to talk about merchandising in your business. We ll discuss four lessons you can learn from retailers about selling your wares. Price check in Lane 123 If you re a true retailer you buy goods at wholesale and resell them it s easy to determine your cost. If you re a service business, it s more difficult. But you have to know how much anything you sell costs or you risk charging too little. A lot of small business owners fail for this very reason. Attention K-Mart Shoppers. There s a blue light special on K-Mart had scrapped this program. They brought it back earlier this year. Surprise your good customers with a special deal now and then. We heard about a car dealer who would occasionally pick a customer whose car was getting serviced and give them their service that day for free. It created tremendous goodwill. It would be a customer who had bought the car from him and did all their service with him. In other words, a customer on whom he made a lot of money. Occasionally giving them free service was just a small rebate. But it paid dividends to the car dealer as well he got a lot of word of mouth advertising. Manager on duty to the front of the store please The front of the store makes us think about the psychology of buyers. Have you ever noticed how most grocery stores have a fairly similar layout? Research shows that most people walk into a store and turn to the right. So what do you want to put in the front of the store on the right side? High margin items, of course! In a grocery store, you notice the milk and eggs are usually in the back nowhere near the bread. They want you to walk through the whole store so you see more things you might buy on impulse. Every business has customers who behave in similar ways. Get to understand how you can naturally show your customers more of your products and services. Clean up in aisle 5 Just about every business that handles inventory ends up with some slow moving items. You need to clean them out so you can get new inventory in that will turn faster so you make more money. The mistake some small business owners make is being afraid to discount an item especially for lower than cost. But the sooner you get an item that isn t selling off your shelf, the better. Another version of this is displaying a discounted item with a full-priced item. Think about it How many times do you see a skirt that s on sale displayed with a full-priced top? You like the combination so you buy it. You may be able to do the same type of thing in your business. Retailers have become pretty sophisticated at discounting items to draw people to their store. They know the law of averages means these people will buy a lot more than just the sale items. Find the lures to bring in your customers and you ll be a bigg success! ___ Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly it s FREE! ___ Thanks so much for reading our post today. Please join us next time when we ll look at the only three ways to get more done. Until then, here s to your bigg success! Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file: http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00526-112709.mp3 Related posts 2 Important Things to Know About Your Customers The Trick to Keeping Customers

Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! You re kidding, you remark to your Japanese friends. It can t be. I ve been around Tokyo, I ve looked at the maps, and there just cannot be a forest in the middle of the city. And you re sure that no place in the middle of Tokyo can ever be quiet, peaceful, and energizing. [...]

Happy Thanksgiving! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in the US, so from all of us to all of you, Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are! We are thankful for much and many. May your day be filled with food, fun and family! Listen to our audio message

Stocks are up significantly from their low in March of this year. Of course, they still haven t clawed their way back to the level we saw in 2007. However, you have to ask yourself if stocks are the best place to put your money right now. ___ ___ Treasuries bonds issued by our government have also had quite a run as investors have fled to safety. If interest rates go down, the value of the underlying note goes up. Interest rates are incredibly low right now. How much lower can they go? Even if you hold it in cash, savings accounts are paying a paltry amount of interest right now. It would take you about 144 years to double your money on a 1-year CD, given the best rates posted on Bankrate.com. We don t know about you, but we re not sure we ll live that long! We re looking at generalities here. You should discuss your specific situation with your financial planner. But our point is that it s hard to look into the future right now and see an obvious place to put your money. As we were talking about this, we realized there are some good places to put your money, even now. Your own debt If you have any debt, you can earn a decent return by paying it down. Let s say you have a car loan on which you re paying 6% interest. You can earn a guaranteed 6% per year return by paying it off. That s pretty hard to beat right now. Of course, if you have credit card debt, your returns may be as high as 30%! Durable goods You can still get a good deal on durable goods. Think cars, appliances and those sorts of things. Some dealers are still hungry, although not as much as they were six months to a year ago. So you may be able to strike a good deal by buying a little bit prematurely. Non-perishables Think canned goods, household supplies and such. If you see something that you regularly use priced at half its normal cost and you know it doesn t go on sale very often you can get a good return by stocking up. Energy-efficiency This is one of the few outlays you can make that will pay you back month-after-month. For example, if you have inefficient windows, you can seal up your home better by replacing them. Energy prices are relatively low right now compared to what we will probably see in the years ahead. So getting a good deal now may very well give you a decent return. These are good places to invest. But we haven t discussed the best place to invest right now. ___ Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly it s FREE! ___ Yourself Invest in yourself! It s the best place to invest now. Does that surprise you? You may invest in more education that you know will make you more marketable in the future. Your investment of time and money may pay handsome dividends. You may make a lateral move to beef up your resume or invest a little extra time to learn a new skill related to your current work. ___ That s how I learned to do audio production. When I was in the early years of my career in radio, after I got done with my on-air shift, I would go into the production room where the commercials were being made and soak up all the information I could get. The only investment on my part was my time, but I have to tell you, it continues paying dividends to this day! ___ ___ If it weren t for that, The Bigg Success Show may have never happened! ___ You may want to dip your toes in the entrepreneurial waters, even just part time. First, you may invest time and perhaps some money to hone up the skills required to run a business. Then, you may invest money in samples of the product you want to sell and test it with potential customers. Next, you may make a small investment in the infrastructure of the business (e.g. a web site) to see if you can attract enough customers to make it worth your while. By keeping your costs low while you test a concept, you ll be able to keep testing them until you find one that makes you money. Invest in yourself it s the best investment you can make right now. Let s face it it s the best investment you can ever make at any time because it leads to bigg success! What are you doing to invest in yourself? Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file: http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00525-112409.mp3 Related posts How to Weather Financial Climate Change The Recipe for Life on Your Own Terms (Image in today s post by svilen001)

iPod Ready Video Douglas speaks at PodCampAZ 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona on "Stay in control of your RSS feeds." Links mentioned in this presentation: New Media Interchange New Media Interchange Community Site Feedburner Blubrry.com Powerpress Blip.tv

Douglas speaks at PodCampAZ 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona on "Stay in control of your RSS feeds." Links mentioned in this presentation: New Media Interchange New Media Interchange Community Site Feedburner Blubrry.com Powerpress Blip.tv Listen to the entire presentation (45 Mins)

Picture a group of adults given a task to perform. Research has shown that, if one adult performs worse than his or her peers on that task, it will result in a loss of self-esteem. Furthermore, that person is likely to perform more poorly on that same task in the future. ___ ___ Now put a group of four- to five-years old kids in the same situation. There is no affect on the child who didn t perform as well as his or her peers. So what do kids know that we adults have forgotten? They think they can learn new tricks, they can adapt. We adults think that an old dog can t be taught new tricks! Kids also think they can try harder next time and make up the difference. Isn t that a healthy attitude? So why don t we think that as adults? Have we been beat down too many times? Are we too hard on ourselves? Do we want to think that things should come easily for us? Life will throw you curve bills. On the path to bigg success, there will be times when you try and you don t succeed. It s important to learn from your mistakes, but we often learn the wrong lesson. Learn. Adapt. Then double your efforts. Don t compete with the opposite sex A more recent study at the University of Michigan showed that kids can be affected by competition. Little girls respond negatively if a little boy does better on a task. Little boys respond likewise there s a damaging impact if a little girl does better. So what can we conclude? Should we learn that women shouldn t try to compete with men? Or that men shouldn t try to compete with women? See them as a role model, not competition There will almost certainly always be somebody better. If not, maybe a good dose of humility is in order! But rather than comparing yourself to that person and getting discouraged, look at that person as a role model. You are where you are. They are where you want to be. See what you can learn from them so you get to where they are. Chances are they got started earlier. Chances are they ve put more time in. Chances are they ve gotten a few lucky breaks the kind of luck that comes to people who put themselves out there and take calculated risks. So don t see them as competition; look at them as a role model. Don t compete with others at all But there s a higher order a higher level of consciousness regarding comparisons. Here it is: Don t compete with anyone else man, woman or beast! Compete with yourself. Find that thing you at which you excel. Then strive to improve a little bit every day day after day, the new you competing against the old you . Focus on making yourself the best competitor you could ever encounter! Have you ever noticed that a great competitor brings out the best in his or her opponents? Become your own best competitor and you ll be a bigg success! ___ Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly it s FREE! ___ Thank you so much for the gift of your time today. Please join us next time when we ll discuss the best investment you can make right now. Until then, here s to your bigg success. Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file: http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00524-112009.mp3 Related posts Entrepreneuring Life on Your Own Terms (Image in today s post by personalfx)

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great article for The New Yorker a while ago. He talks about how David beats Goliath. It s a great read full of stories about underdogs. The main story is about a girl s basketball team that made the national championships when they shouldn t have won a game. The other stories from David to Lawrence of Arabia all support why these girls were able to achieve what they did. ___ ___ He cites a study that showed that small armies beat superior opponents a little over one-fourth of the time (28.5%). However, when these underdogs ignored the conventions of war and fought on their own terms, they won nearly two-thirds of the time (63.6%)! So you re two times more likely to win if you set the rules of the game! Set your terms to get your terms Bigg success is life on your own terms. So it turns out that it s a circle. You set the terms (your strategy) so you get the terms you desire (your mission). You are the entrepreneur of your life. You re in charge. Set the terms for the battles you engage in so you re more likely to win those battles. Small businesses, the Davids of the business world, can trump the Goliaths. Not by trying to compete head on. Not by following the conventions. By crafting strategies that may fly in the face of wisdom and engaging the Goliaths in unfamiliar ways, Davids can be victorious. The price for bigg success If you plan to go head-to-head with the Goliaths, there s a price you must be willing to pay. It takes effort. You have to be willing to work longer. You have to work harder. As Gladwell says, effort trumps ability. He cites the girls basketball team. Their secret? A full court press. Not just when the game was in its final minutes like a lot of teams do. These girls used a full court press for the entire game. It rattled their opponents who hadn t practiced for a full court press. Their standard plays started at half court. By engaging their opponents on the whole court, these girls put them on unfamiliar turf. There are many ways today for small businesses even solopreneurs to trump large competitors. In many cases, they don t involve money. They involve time. But that s okay because you know that effort trumps ability if you focus that effort on unconventional tactics. That s how to make your small business a bigg success! ___ Would you like more tips and tools to live your life on your own terms? Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly it s FREE! ___ Thank you so much for checking in with us today. Next time, we ll chat about why women shouldn t compete with men. Or is it the other way around? Please join us next time to find out. Until then, here s to your bigg success! Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file: http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00523-111809.mp3 Related posts The Coming Age of Small Business Part 1

iPod Ready Video Douglas speaks at PodCampAZ 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona on "My Podcast Process." Links mentioned in this presentation: Audacity New Media Interchange New Media Interchange Community Site Feedburner

Douglas speaks at PodCampAZ 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona on "My Podcast Process." Links mentioned in this presentation: Audacity New Media Interchange New Media Interchange Community Site Feedburner Listen to the entire presentation (55 Mins)

It s one of the most famous opening lines of any novel. Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, wrote, It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Could the same be true for small business owners today? ___ ___ Many small businesses are struggling. According to Discover s Small Business Watch, half of the small business owners surveyed reported cash flow problems over the last three months. The good news is the number is down slightly, but it s still significant. It s been tough to get credit. Vendors are more demanding than ever while, at the same time, customers are paying slowly especially if you do business with certain state governments. But it s also a great time to be a small business owner. In a post awhile back on the Harvard Business blog, Peter Bergman said small companies will win. He talked about a small business that had won large accounts and got prepaid even though they were competing against much bigger, more established companies. He says clients aren t looking for big names flashy offices lots of time in the industry highly-capitalized vendors. So what do they want? Bergman says: Small is the new big. Sustainable is the new growth. Trust is the new competitive advantage. He reports that even senior level managers at many large companies have lost faith in their companies. As go the employees, so goes the company. People want to do business with people they trust. Not companies. Not organizations. Not institutions. People. People want to do business with people. People want to trust again. People want to do business with people they trust. Increasingly, that s small businesses. Trust is one of the reasons small companies have an inherent competitive advantage right now. So to capitalize on this trend, super-serve your customers in your chosen niche. Build relationships by building trust and you ll create a competitive advantage. It s hard for large companies to create a culture of trust. It s much easier for small business owners. If you think about it, we re back where we started. In days gone by, we did business with people we knew. It wasn t about the promises of a faceless brand; it was about the promises of a person. Deliver on your promises and you ll be a bigg success! ___ Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly it s FREE! ___ Thanks so much for reading our post today. We trust you enjoyed it! Please join us next time when we ll look at this topic again by exploring two other ways small businesses can gain a competitive advantage. Until then, here s to your bigg success! Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file: http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00522-111009.mp3 Related posts 2 Important Things to Know About Your Customers If You Want to Increase Your Profit, Don’t Put Your Customers First

People who reach bigg success aren t constrained by the same forces we are. Baloney! It s a myth that we all aren t constrained in the same ways. But there s a bigg difference between the average Joe or Jane and people who ultimately reach bigg success. ___ ___ Remove the constraints! The average person gives in to those constraints. Bigg goal-getters don t see themselves as constrained so they don t allow themselves to be constrained. They don t waste time telling themselves all of the reasons why they can t do something. They focus, instead, on why they can do it and how they will get it done. There s a key lesson for us: By changing your focus from can t to can you open your mind to all sorts of possibilities. Your mind follows your lead Your mind will let you take it wherever you want. Think about why something can t be done and your mind will come up with all kinds of reasons to prove you right! Think about how it can be done and your mind will start figuring out any number of ways to overcome every challenge that holds others back. Sure, some ideas won t work out. You won t care. You know one of them will lead you to bigg success. But if you never get out of the gate if you just assume that you can t win the race you won t. The first part of the killer combo: Child-like imagination People who reach bigg success dream bigg. You must dream again. You must dream the kind of dreams you dreamed when you were young. Your dreams probably won t be exactly the same as they were then. But they will be as bigg as the dreams you saw through the eyes of a child. When the world was your oyster. When there was nothing you couldn t do. When you could imagine all of the bigg things that you would accomplish. When you knew that nothing could stop you. When you couldn t wait to grow up so we could get to all these wonderful ideas. The second part: Experiential wisdom But you re not a child anymore and that s good. You re better equipped now to achieve your bigg dreams than you were then. Combine that child-like imagination with the wisdom you have gained from your experiences. Together, they will help you achieve things that other people only fantasize about, if they allow themselves to think about them at all. That s the difference. That s why you should celebrate your age. You have gained an asset that you didn t have when you were young. You have learned from your experiences, haven t you? Celebrate them! Take joy in all of them the good, the bad and the ugly! You have the killer combination to achieve bigg success! Because of it, the possibility of achieving the impossible is more probable! Believe But too much of the time, we don t think about that. We stopped dreaming bigg dreams. We accepted being average and ordinary. Deep in your soul, you know that you re excellent and extraordinary. You have to believe again! Believe that you can achieve what you can conceive! Then find a way to do it. It only takes one person discovering one way to do anything that s never been done before. Then people marvel at the accomplishment. You re still the one! You are that one person! You were born to dream bigg dreams. You know it because you ve done it. You were born to be excellent and extraordinary. But first you must remove the limits that keep you from dreaming bigg. Dream. Then think of ways to make your dream your reality. Believe that you will win. Did you hear that? You will win. You will achieve your dream. You re still the one! Now, take action and you ll be a bigg success! ___ Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly it s FREE! ___ Thank you so much for the gift of your time today. Please join us next time when we ll talk about why it pays to be small in business today. Until next time, here s to your bigg success. Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file: http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00521-111309.mp3 Related posts Overcome Self Doubt in 4 Steps The Hero Within the Hero (Image in today s post by asifthebes)

Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! Come on, you ll really want to see this. Your friend has been practically dragging you through the walkways of the Japanese temple, and you ve been dragging your feet ever since you passed the red gate. At least you have the strength to answer him in Japanese. Why don t we just sit [...]

Bigg Success is two years old today! What a two years it has been! Over the past two years, you ve given us two thumbs up in so many ways. You ve made us one of the regularly featured business career podcasts in iTunes. You ve helped us grow the number of people who visit our site every day. ___ ___ Bigg Success is not a two-seater. We love to hear from you. We re so happy that you ve been here to share your thoughts with us over the past two years. Because it takes two to tango. We couldn t do this if it weren t for you. We thank you so much for all your support. Bigg success is life on your own terms. It s two for the price of one here. We feel so fortunate to be able to work together. That s life on our own terms! Now on to the topic of today s post. There s a two-step in selecting your partner or partners. We got lucky on this one, even though we had two left feet! It naturally happened for us. But don t follow our lead. You probably want to be more intentional. There s a dichotomy at play your partnership must be two-faced. The first face: You and any partner should be like two peas in a pod. Partners must share the same vision and values or they will constantly be at odds with each other. For example, business partners must agree on whether you re in business to create current income or to build long-term wealth. Your strategies will be quite different with these two different visions of success. You also have to share core values. You will face some tough decisions on the path to bigg success. Partners with different core values may respond differently. The second face: Two heads are better than one. It s important to have a shared vision. It s important to have the same core values. However, if you share too many characteristics, your partnership will likely fail. You want a partner with complementary skills. If you both have the same talents and strengths, you would probably be better off with a different partner. There won t be much synergy in your relationship. You also want a partner with a different point-of-view. You want someone who takes a different approach. Otherwise, neither of you gets a critical review of your ideas. You needlessly waste time and money because your bad ideas don t get filtered out before you take action on them. We think these principles apply to any partnership. You can extend it as far as you want. It may apply to your partner in life, a partner in business, key employees or a joint venture partner on a specific project. The key to building partnerships that aren t two-dimensional is to understand this dichotomy when you select a partner. It s critical for creating synergy which multiplies your results more than two-fold. Get this right and you ll get two tickets to paradise partnership paradise, that is. And that s bigg success! Put in your two cents worth anytime. Review our show in iTunes. Leave a comment. E-mail us at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com. Call us at 888.455.BIGG (2444). However, whatever, wherever or whenever we love to hear from you! Thanks so much for reading our post today. Please join us next time when we look at a killer combination that s two things that lead to bigg success! Until then, here s to your bigg success! Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file: http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00520-111209.mp3 Related posts Should You Go Into Business with a Friend? Entrepreneuring Life on Your Own Terms Thanks to You, Bigg Success is One Year Old! (Image in today s post by heyjoewhereyougoingwiththatguninyourhand,CC 2.0)

This episode is an hour long from the Michigan Witchesball 2009. They have the third of five episodes on the live recording at the Witches Ball 2009.