• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Wealth Pilgrim

No Money Worries. No Matter What.

Neal Frankle featured in
  • Home
  • Life Insurance
  • Investing
    • Build Strong Investment Building Blocks To Avoid Going Broke In Retirement
    • Systematic Mutual Fund and ETF Investing
    • Stock Market Investing Guide
    • Choosing the Right Investment Brokerage Guide
    • How Bonds Work Guide
    • How Banks Really Work Guide
    • Annuities – What You Need To Know Before You Invest
    • A Beginners Guide To Buying Individual Stocks
    • Create A Pool Of Great Mutual Funds and ETFs To Pick From To Secure Your Retirement
    • ETF and Index Fund Investment Guide
  • Earn More
  • Banking
  • Retirement Planning
    • Retirement Guide
  • Ask Neal a Question
  • Reviews
    • Upgrade Personal Loans Review
    • Lending Club Review
    • Prosper Review
    • Ally Invest TradeKing Review
    • CIT Bank Review
    • LegalZoom Review
    • Lexington Law Review
    • Airbnb Host Review
    • Should You Drive For Uber?
  • Tax
  • Courses
    • Raise Your Credit Score So You Can Buy a House – Free Video Course

How to Make a Business Successful – The Secret Sauce

by Neal Frankle, CFP ®, The article represents the author's opinion. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more info.

Part of the “secret” of how to make a business successful is to first understand whether you are a “personality business” or a “product business.” If you look at most of the great small businesses, they fall into one of these two camps. Let me explain.

Personality Businesses

A personality business is run based on your personal skills and personality. In this type of enterprise, people do business with you because of you. A really important ingredient for success for this kind of business is obviously having a great deal of professional skill and knowledge and being great with people. While you might already know that, what you might not really understand is that this is still a business. Many professionals have tremendous skill and love working with people – but their business fails anyway.

Why? Because they fail to run their business like a business. They don’t do the books like they should. They don’t understand cash flow and they don’t have procedures. They often don’t have enough working capital. It’s all personality and no process. These businesses fail because it doesn’t put the client first. It’s more of an ego-centered enterprise.

When you put your client first, you try to create an experience that goes beyond their expectations and an experience you can replicate. You can only do this if you have systems in place.

Product Businesses

On the other hand, you have businesses that customers love because of the product. Customers aren’t drawn to your business because of you, per se. They want the product you offer. You might own a small bottle cap factory or have a car detailing company. It doesn’t matter; people want the product you offer.

Most people are drawn to open a product-based business because they want “process” and they may not like dealing with people that much. The mistake that people make in this sector is they forget about the importance of personality.

Let me tell you something. You might have the greatest product in the world, but if you’re a jerk, people will find a way NOT to do business with you sooner or later. On top of that, just see how long your business runs if you treat your staff poorly.

The bottom line is that no matter what business you are in, you need to pay attention to your people and process skills. I “know” this, but I forget it sometimes too. I constantly have to re-think the processes at work and make sure my clients are being served as best I can. This is something that never ends.

What’s been your experience? Do you think a person can succeed by ignoring either of these ingredients for success?

 

Tweet
Pin
Share7

Reader Interactions

User Generated Content (UGC) Disclosure: Please note that the opinions of the commenters are not necessarily the opinions of this site.

Comments

  1. Ginamarie Callahan says

    April 8, 2012 at 5:00 PM

    MY HUSBAND IS CONTRACTOR WINDOWS/SIDING /REMODELING
    HE IS EXCELLENT AT THE PHYSICAL BUT NOT SMART WITH BUSINESS
    PART. HE ALLOWS PEOPLE TO BULLY HIM HE IS NEVER FIRM ON A PRICE PEOPLE ALWAYS MANAGE TO GET IT FOR BARLEY NOTHING THIS HAS BEEN A PROBLEM FOR SOMETIME NOW. AND HE DOES NOT FIGURE OUT THE JOB COST THE WAY HE SHOULD LOSING MONEY PAYING OUT TO MUCH IN PAYROLL CAN SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE I NEED SOME ADVICE

    Reply
  2. Financial Samurai says

    August 1, 2010 at 10:00 PM

    Good stuff Neal. Would love to read more about the liberties of writing off expenses as a small business owner. Whatcha think?

    Best, Sam

    Reply
  3. The Editor says

    July 21, 2010 at 7:33 AM

    Staying in the ring and not opting out when things get tough is important to succeeding in business. Many know this theoretically, most need to experience it to really understand.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Are You Human? * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

Primary Sidebar

Who is Neal Frankle

Neal Frankle

I'm a Certified Financial Planner™ with more than 25 years of experience. I feel very blessed and hope to share my personal financial experience and professional wisdom with readers of WealthPilgrim.
Read More »

Stay Connected

Facebook Twitter YouTube RSS

More Categories

Career Development
College Funding
Credit Cards
Credit Score Fixes
Money and Marriage
Debt Relief
Estate Protection
Property Investment Loans
Small Business Strategies
Spend Less Money

Disclaimer

Wealth Pilgrim is not responsible for and does not endorse any advertising, products or resource available from advertisements on this website. Wealth Pilgrim receives compensation from Google for advertising space on this website, but does not control the advertising selection or content. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers. The information contained in WealthPilgrim.com is for general information or entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional financial advice. Please contact an independent financial professional for advice regarding your specific situation. Wealth Pilgrim does not provide investment advisory services and is not a registered investment adviser. Neal may provide advisory services through Wealth Resources Group, a registered investment adviser. Wealth Pilgrim and Wealth Resources Group are affiliated companies. In accordance with FTC guidelines, we state that we have a financial relationship with some of the companies mentioned in this website. This may include receiving payments,access to free products and services for product and service reviews and giveaways. Any references to third party products, rates, or websites are subject to change without notice. We do our best to maintain current information, but due to the rapidly changing environment, some information may have changed since it was published. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers.


About · Contact · Disclaimer & Privacy policy

Copyright © Wealth Pilgrim 2021 All Rights Reserved