Profits Are Proof of Concept

Proof of Concept

The phrase Proof of Concept is one I learned from my friend Russell Brumfield, a successful business builder and entrepreneur.  Proof of Concept means the business model is viable. Viable means it is making or will be making a profit.

If you are not making a profit you are not in business. Does this mean that any business idea that is not instantly profitable is not viable? No it does not. Twitter is not profitable. Twitter has attracted over $100 million in investment funding.  Does this mean Twitter is viable as a business? No it does not mean that either. Ultimately Twitter must be profitable or all the interest and investment funding dries up. That is true for any “for profit business”.

Note: People interested in paying you money for what you are offering is key and having enough people pay you so you are able to make a profit is Proof of Concept. You don’t have to have a business model of a Google or a Twitter.  You have to have a business where your revenue exceeds your costs. Once you are in profit then you can focus on strategies that will help you further increase the profit percentage for your business. Increasing the percentage of profit being earned by your business is part of the scope of what is covered in the Build Profits Group on Facebook.

Video Version

Now if this all seems obvious I can assure you I have consulted with some very large companies that no longer had Proof of Concept. They once may have profitable, but part of my work was to help them regain their viability as a business. Key point: you may be profitable today but there are no guarantees you will be profitable tomorrow. Managing change is key.

If you are in business, take a hard look as to whether you have proof of concept. If you do not now, you need to have that soon. I have not kept track of the number of ideas that seemed great but failed.  Does failure mean the idea was not a good one? It does not. It may mean the timing was not right, a rapid change in the competitive landscape or decisions by owners that were not good for the business.

If you are thinking about getting into business be sure there sufficient evidence as to proof of concept. This applies to starting a company, buying a business, joining a network marketing company, it also applies to considering a job with a company. I encourage you to be particularly careful with new start-ups. As this is written there is a major buzz surrounding a business opportunity backed by several well known celebrities.  This could be great and maybe not. If it is great, there will be Proof of Concept and there will be plenty of time to become involved and make money.

Finally on this topic it does not matter what other people are experiencing with a business, Proof of Concept applies to you and your experience. In the next article, we will review the primary key success factors for most business that evidence Proof of Concept.

Sending you energy of health, happiness, prosperity

Steve Pohlit

Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
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About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies.  Steve is a business owner and an expert business consultant focused on building profits and net asset value. He is very experienced with Internet marketing and social media marketing.  All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.


If Your Twitter Account Has Been Suspended – Read This Now

Sunday, July 5th, 2009: A lot of people with legitimate Twitter accounts are currently suffering from having their accounts suspended (late Sunday afternoon).

It is not TweetLater’s doing or fault. So, please do not submit a TweetLater support request about it.

We just heard back from Twitter via email, and they said : “Spamcloud hit. We’re working on restoring accounts.

We just need to be patient. The suspended accounts will be restored.

Update: We have no idea exactly what a “spam cloud” means. It is probably Twitter staff lingo for a massive spam attack.

Update: We have seen during previous spam attacks that Twitter tends to shoot first and ask questions later and indiscriminately lay down carpet bombing when their system comes under a spam attack. A lot of innocent-bystander accounts get massacred in the process, which they then have to restore afterwards. This is most likely what has happened again.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit, Expert Business Consulting

Email Me, Steve Pohlit to schedule A No Obligation Consultation On Building Your Business Profits.Need more customers? Let’s discuss how to use cutting edge Social Media Marketing in the revenue building cycle of your business to drive your profits sky high. If  your company is not growing revenue and profits,  if your company is not cash flow positive Click Here for more information about Turnaround Consulting Services for Business In Crisis

Follow Me and I Follow You http://Twitter.com/BuildProfits

FREE Report:
How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

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About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies.  Steve is business owner and an expert business consultant, direct response and social media marketing  and social networking security expert . Steve is  focused on helping companies improve their business performance. All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

USA Today Reports on How Businesses Use Twitter To Communicate With Cusotomers Plus My Published Comments

USA Today published an accurate article today based on my experience. This article is on how an increasing number of companies are using Twitter to communicate with customers.  I am connected with a number of the companies referenced in the article and have seen how they are using Twitter and other social media sites.  Like the USA today I think they have it more right than wrong. I also know the vast majority of businesses have no idea what social media is or how to use it.

I think it is important to establish some credibility when publishing a point of view on social media. I have included here my comments that you will find connected with the USA today article.

Click Here For The Full Article.  My comments that are published there also follow:

———————————–

My experience with social media started about 14 months ago with Facebook and extended to Twitter and others about 6 months later. My sole purpose was to understand how to use social media for effective marketing. Effective marketing is building trust, authenticity and transparency.

This article is right on siting a number of companies effectively using Twitter and other social media services. Twitter is a very effective service for me as it is an integral part of building several businesses. Manifest Mastermind, http://manifestmastermind.com has been build entirely using social media. A recent large business consulting project is a direct result of using social media. My consulting practice is presented on a blog and includes YouTube video at http://irconsultinginc.com

There is work involved in all of this and the work needs to support a strategy. I feel the people who question the usefulness of the tools don’t understand them and don’t do the work.

Steve
http://stevereports.com

BTW my social network is now large. If you have a product or service you would like to market, you are welcome to contact me.

Help Others by Adding To This Article Using The Comment Section

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit, Expert Business Consulting

IR Consulting, Inc.

Email Me, Steve Pohlit to schedule A No Obligation Consultation On Building Your Business Profits.Need more customers? Let’s discuss how to use cutting edge Social Media Marketing in the revenue building cycle of your business to drive your profits sky high. If  your company is not growing revenue and profits,  if your company is not cash flow positive Click Here for more information about Turnaround Consulting Services for Business In Crisis

Follow Me and I Follow You
Join My Fan Page on Facebook  Click Here

FREE Report:
How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

Is The Law of Attraction The Key To Achieving Business Profit Goals?

Yes! In fact revenue and profit goals are always only achieved with The Law of Attraction.

I can write about my own experiences until I am “blue in the face”…..until “the cows come home”  None of  that matters. What matters is your experience.

What you focus on expands. You can study how to apply The Law of Attraction in your business  or get on the  fast track  with my help.  Actually doing it yourself is more costly when you price  your time and calculate the impact on business revenue and profits.

My experience with using the Law of Attraction is extensive. For example,

  • I continually image and create successful results with my business clients.

With my mastermind partner:

  • We imaged and created a successful membership site Manifest Mastermind which is based on The Law of Attraction.
  • We Imaged and created a successful social media marketing business.

There is more.  For now, Email Me, Steve Pohlit if :

  • Your company with revenues exceeding $5 million need help with profitable growth, business turnaround or crisis management.
  • You would like to discuss how social media marketing can drive targeted traffic to your business. We are very interested in working with companies selling consumer products.

If you are interested in learning more about the Law of Attraction, you are invited to register for our free course at http://manifestmastermind.com I see increasing evidence of The Law of Attraction working perfectly every minute of every day. I encourage you to consider the information from our free course.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit, The Profit Expert

Email Me, Steve Pohlit to schedule A No Obligation Consultation On Building Your Business Profits.  Need more customers? Let’s discuss how to use cutting edge Social Media Marketing in the revenue building cycle of your business to drive your profits sky high.

Follow Me and I Follow You

Join My Fan Page on Facebook

FREE Report:
How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

Marketing Is All About Traffic and Conversion

If you are in a for profit business you must have a continual stream of customers that buy what you offer. If you don’t have that working nothing else matters. Given that, what is your priority?  Correct…Marketing!!

There are only three ways to increase revenue:

1. Sell more products or services to an existing customer

2. Sell the same amount of products or services to a customer at a higher price

3. Add more customers

When anyone visits your business that is traffic.  When anyone who visits buys your offer that is conversion.

Recently, article posted here have been highlighting social media marketing for business. That arena is increasingly being used to generate traffic. I have helped many companies implement marketing programs that use a combination of tools including: a blog, a website, pay per click advertising, email marketing and more. These are all tools that work when used properly.

The landscape is changing with droves of people pouring into sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.  There are many people who claim to know why social media sites have become so popular but the reasons don’t matter. The facts are that there are huge numbers of people entering these sites and others like them for the first time each week.

Open up a Twitter account at Twitter.com and use the search feature at the bottom of the page and type in the keyword phrase social media.  Then begin to click on profiles and discover how many people are referring to themselves as a social media expert.

Key Point: If your primary intent is to do business, having a growing network of connected people on Twitter or anywhere else for that matter means nothing if they are not buying your offer. You have traffic but they are moving on by and the conversion piece of the formula is missing. So when someone calls themselves an expert ask them to show you the profitable business they have developed using social media. Don’t be surprised at the lack of response.

We started from scratch and developed two businesses that are profitable and cash flow positive using only social media. Social media we used  includes a blog for each business, and  a network we grew on several of the larger social media sites.

There was a lot of work involved in doing this. I know because I did a lot of it and so did my business partner.  Brian Campbell is the strategist on the detailed steps needed for this to work. Does this mean we are experts?  It means we really have a lot of skills, and now systems, for building meaningful market share in important niche markets.

My Top Two Recommendations for Businesses Wanting To Improve The Effectiveness of Their Marketing

1. Building a contact data base is key. Effectively communicate with that list. This is not new and remains a foundation principle. It is still an alien concept for most companies.

2. Have a find tuned marketing plan, budget and return on investment monitoring in place and reviewed weekly and for some actions, daily. All activity must be focused on building traffic and converting that traffic.

Closing Comments:

The social media landscape is hot and getting hotter. But there are also other proven business development tools including pay per click, email marketing, print media, electronic advertising, trade shows  and more. Each must be evaluated and tested in terms of benefit to your business. You can invest your time and that of your employees or outsource a lot of this. If you want fast results, outsource.  If you do, again migrate based on priorities and test.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit
The Profit Expert

Email Steve to schedule A No Obligation Consultation On Building Your Business Profits.  Let’s discuss how to use cutting edge Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing and Direct Response Marketing in the revenue building cycle of your business to drive your profits sky high.

FREE Report:

How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less