The Trump Blog

If you are starting a new business, the day will finally come to stop planning and start interacting with your customers. That day is of critical importance. Ultimately, it will determine your success or failure.

To get the most from that moment, I recommend an approach that I call giving your customers 100 percent of your promise, plus an additional one percent. How can you deliver101 percent of your promise? Let me explain.

You start by answering this question:

What is my promise to my customers?

Let's say, for example, that you are starting a company that will install swimming pools. If that is your business, this might be your promise:

My company will install only the most durable, beautiful, state-of-the-art pools.

That is a good promise. But it is not enough, because you also need to fulfill:

Your promise plus one percent.

Now, what do I mean by your promise plus one percent?

Let me return to the example of a company that installs swimming pools. If that is your business, you know that deciding to have a swimming pool installed is a very big moment in your customers' lives. But it is also a dangerous moment for you, because your customers are so focused on the idea of having a pool, they will forget that you are going to have to dig a big ditch first. They will forget that your trucks are going to back up and make a mess of the yard. They never stop to think that they are going to be scared silly because their kids are going to want to run around in the work area.

If you can identify and manage that extra one percent of issues, you are going to stand out as a company and make profits.

You can add that extra one percent of value by explaining the whole construction process to your customers, so they will know what to expect. You can introduce all your workers to your customers, so they will not be alarmed to see strangers on their property. You can take extra measures to ensure their kids' safety. And you can completeyour work in a way so that when your pools are installed, your customers will say, --Wow, my yard and landscaping look even nicer now than when the pool company came!--

That is delivering on your promise plus one percent. And it will make all the difference in your company's ability to generate profits and outperform the competition. Your satisfied customers are going to tell people what a wonderful job you did. They will be handing out your business cards to their friends. They will be happy to give you testimonials.

Now, you might say that a pool business is unusual and that the things I say above don't translate to your company. But the principle of adding an extra one percent does translate. Have you ever had a terrific car-buying experience, for example, or a terrible one? If you have, you know that you have told other people.

So build your promise plus one percent plan, and remember to use it in lead generation. Run ads that say that you will care for your customers' landscaping as though it were your own, or that you are a caring, family-run enterprise. The more effectively you communicate how well you manage that extra one percent, the faster your enterprise will prosper.

Jeff Burrows is professor of entrepreneurship at Trump University. This post is adapted from the great success principles that Jeff presents in The Wealth Builder's Blueprint premium self-instructional course from Trump University.

To master the art of starting your own company, be sure to enroll in The Entrepreneurship Mastery Program at Trump University.Classes forming now.

Life-changing ideas from Trump University's Entrepreneur's Success Code

Many entrepreneurs nearly kill themselves running their businesses. They work such long hours that they experience no joy or true abundance in their lives.

When they finally get fed up, their solution is often to limit the size or scope of the business. True, that reduces the demands that their business places on their lives. But their organizations are still out of control, only smaller. That is hardly a recipe for success.

The solution is management, and that is a problem for many entrepreneurs. After all, we start companies because we hate that word. We don't want to manage people. We want to do what we love, but that becomes harder as our companies grow. We are pulled in hundreds of different directions.

Yet there are ways to get back in control of your company and your life.

Identify the tasks you will give away

First, keep a list of every single thing you do every day, every week and every month. Then circle all the things that you don't love doing. Those are the activities that you should get other people to do. You probably hesitate because you believe that you, and you alone, know how to handle those tasks. But you have to get the courage to give them away.

Second, make a list of the excuses you have for why you can't get back to doing what you love. Your excuse might be, "I can't do what I love because I am too busy making sales calls to potential customers" or, "I am too busy keeping the books." If you write down all those excuses, you will have another list of functions to delegate away.

Give those tasks away by delegating, hiring, outsourcing or whatever it takes. But first, optimize those tasks by following the advice that follows.

Put systems in place

First, walk around your organization and make a list of everything that everyone is doing. Write down shipping, receiving, calling, marketing, and everything else that you see.

Second, put a system in place to handle every one of those tasks. A system is simply a list of tasks that are entailed in each job. For instance, your receptionist: greets people when they arrive; answers the phone in a way that communicates the energy of your company; connects visitors with the people they have come to see, and so on. That list of tasks becomes your system for that position. Then when the time comes to replace someone, you can hire the best person to oversee that system, which is already in place.

And there should be a system in place for every function in your company - the ones that you plan to delegate away and all the others. This level of organization (dare I use the word management?) allows your organization to become what it was destined to be, without killing you or robbing the joy that led you to become an entrepreneur in the first place.

Jeff Burrows, professor of entrepreneurship at Trump University, specializes in helping entrepreneurs build their businesses without sacrificing their personal lives or their dreams. This post has been adapted from his self-instructional course, The Entrepreneur's Success Code.

To master the art of starting your own company, be sure to enroll in The Entrepreneurship Mastery Program at Trump University.Classes forming now.

Faculty Member, Trump University

If you're running your own business, you had better cast yourself as the star of the show. Too many entrepreneurs waste their time playing every supporting role from sidekick to understudy. But to be truly successful in business, owners must place themselves at the center of the action. If you're going to be the diva, however, you have to learn how to delegate. Success in the business world requires balancing your desire for control with a need to bring the star quality out in those who work for you.

Finding your balance will allow you the freedom to perform at your best. Spending every spare minute toiling away for the "good" of your company is no guarantee of success. Achieving balance means strategizing to make your business less reliant on you.

Too often owners act as if they need to be personally involved with every aspect of their company in order to be successful. Yet, this approach frequently has the opposite and sometimes disastrous effect of running the business as well as the business owner into the ground. The show can't go on if you mix too much time at work with not enough time for family and friends; stir in a dozen sleepless nights and a steady supply of quickie meals and countless thwarted pleasures.

Being a business owner, especially in a start-up, is difficult under the best circumstances, but it is a grave mistake to believe that relentless dedication to the business--to the exclusion of all else--is the only way to succeed. In fact, this approach almost always guarantees that you will not be performing at your personal best. Instead, you need to envision yourself as your company's top-billed performer and grant yourself permission to live a fuller life, with plenty of room for personal growth.

Why do business owners fail? Or if their companies take off, why do they get mired in their businesses at the expense of their personal lives? It's because they're pulled down by the day-to-day demands of running their companies.

So what is it that determines entrepreneurial success? The answer is easy. . .

The owner has star quality, the confidence and flare to do what is necessary to perform at his or her personal best.

Master Business Coach Jeff Burrows will be leading an upcoming TrumpU Bootcamp, The COO Success Codes. Learn the Trump Way to organize your business for maximum profitability and efficiency. To learn more about this exclusive program, click here.