“It’s amazing how fast later comes when you buy now!” ~ Milton Berle

Buy now, pay later is the gimmick marketers use to get you. And who can blame them?

After all, they’re getting paid now. Did you ever stop to think about that?

They typically don’t finance you. They let a third-party do it.

So what if you became your own third-party?

What if you could turn this idea in your favor?

Instead of buying now and paying later, you paid now and bought later.

In other words, you do a 180 degree shift. You prepay for all your purchases.

What if you always had enough cash on hand to cover you for the next month? The next quarter? The next six months? The next year?

What if you had enough money so you knew you would never run out for the rest of your life?

Can you picture that? How does it feel?

Pretty darn good right? Can’t you just feel the stress rolling away?

So how do you do it? One month at a time!

Determine how much you spend in a month

You don’t have to track your expenses forever. But keep track for a month.

How much do you spend? This is your first goal.

Determine how much you can save

Start by figuring out your net disposable income. How much do you bring home after taxes, retirement and everything else?

Now subtract how much you spend. The net is how much you can save.

Create a milestone

How long will it take you to save an amount equal to what you spend?

That’s your first milestone. You have a definite amount to save. You have a time frame in which you plan to save it.

Now put all your thoughts and energy into doing it.

Then go for a second month.

And a third…

Continue this program until you reach the amount you really want on hand.

Keep in mind that financial experts generally recommend at least three to six months in emergency reserves.

It leads to peace of mind. And that’s BIGG success!

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The weight loss industry generates over $60 billion a year in sales. And, of course, losing weight is one of the most commonly cited New Year’s resolutions.

But for entrepreneurs, being too skinny may cost you money – at least when it comes to your point-of-view.

Who cares about the product?

Take the salesperson we know who became the Sales Manager and then the General Manager of the local branch of a large public company. There’s just one problem – he’s running a creative business but he has no respect for the artists! It’s all about sales for him.

He’s agnostic about the product. He thinks the customers don’t care either. So he doesn’t show any interest, care or concern for the people who create the product. He just expects them to do more and more and more.

Morale is low. He keeps cutting costs because sales are falling. And everyone wonders why. This is a true story. The names have been omitted to protect the guilty!

Who cares about profit?

Let’s not single out sales people – it could be someone from another functional area of the business. It costs you money to keep a skinny point-of-view.

Even if you somehow manage to make a profit, you won’t make as much as you could if you were more broad-minded. And you’ll lose money when times get tough.

Who cares about shareholders? Or customers?

Finance types talk about maximizing shareholder value. Marketers remind us that we need to be customer-centric.

They both get so busy promoting their point-of-view that they fail to see the BIGG picture: They’re both right. And they’re both wrong.

Maximizing shareholder value is a worthy goal. Theoretically, shareholder value is maximized by balancing the interests of the various stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers and investors. However, this isn’t necessarily the case. In the short run, the share price can rise by short-sighted actions which lead to short-term profits that aren’t sustainable.

Focusing on the customer is also critical. You must find a group of people or businesses looking for a solution to an unsolved problem in order to succeed. However, you have to be able to deliver the solution profitably. Otherwise, the better you are at marketing, the more money you will lose.

Who cares about delivering on promises?

This all leads us to our final point – you have to understand the operational side of your business to succeed as an entrepreneurial leader. Everyone makes promises. Most of the time, Operations has to deliver.

You can promise the world. You can crunch numbers until blood comes out of them. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t deliver upon your promises.

Who cares about the BIGG picture?

As an entrepreneurial leader, you deliver upon your promises by first understanding the BIGG picture. Then you can make sure all of your leaders understand your whole business. And then they can help your employees get on board, too.

When everyone has a broad view of your business, they can weigh in with more substantive ideas. It’s not a skinny view but it is a view that will fatten your wallet!

A new program to bulk up your bottom line

We have a complete e-learning program for Chambers of Commerce to offer their members as part of the dues they’re already paying. In other words, it doesn’t cost Chamber members a single penny.

We have a great group of experts writing articles on all areas of business, all designed to help you make more money and grow your business.

At this time, we’re only offering this program through Chambers in the United States. If you’re a Chamber member, send us an e-mail at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com.

Tell us the name of your Chamber and we’ll help you get access to this e-learning program for small businesses. It will help you bulk up your bottom line!

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I have to tell you, Seth, that your book The Dip was very influential in my decision to leave radio to build my own brand. You talked about how the industry forgot they were in the relationship business, not just the radio business. That really helped take me over the top and I said, “Yes, I’m going to start Bigg Success!”

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I’m so glad to hear that and Tribes is going to help you even more because I talk a lot about the difference between having faith in a vision, faith in the future, or faith in the content about what you do and abandoning the rules or the religion of the status quo.

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What is a tribe?

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We love this book, Seth. We see some of the themes from your previous books and you pull it all together, which is fantastic. Why don’t you start by telling us what a “tribe” is?

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A tribe is a group of people that are connected by a common goal, a common language, and common rituals. Usually they have a leader and a movement – they’re trying to make something happen. A tribe is very different than a crowd. A crowd is just a bunch of people. A crowd is people coming to your Grand Opening Sale, people clicking through to your web site, or people looking at your ads on TV. Marketers love crowds, but they have to earn a tribe, which is a totally different thing.

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Because a tribe interacts with each other and that’s what starts creating the movement.

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That’s exactly right. Tribes are always bigger than the leader himself. We can look at some famous ones, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. Clearly it was the movement and the tribe that made the difference, not the person at the front of the room. We see tribes in everything from marathon runners or triathletes all the way to the Red Hat Ladies, the fifty- or sixty-year old women you’ll see around the world at cafes or the women who have now taken up roller derby and do it in the evenings instead of watching TV.

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Engagement comes from quality, not quantity

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One of the things in your new book goes back to the crowd theme. It’s the quality, not the quantity, that matters.

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Exactly. What we’re seeing is there’s a guy named Gary Vaynerchuk, who has his own TV show about wine. Gary has a tribe. It’s only a couple of hundred thousand strong, so it’s tiny compared to what any TV network would want. But Gary has benefited enormously, both in terms of revenue and public appearances but also in terms of his impact on society and the people he wants to reach. It’s far more effective than if he had a spot on The Today Show.

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In your book, you point out something about Gary that I thought was very interesting. What he does is narrate his tribe’s passion. He doesn’t push it on them; he just leads the passion.

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That’s right. Almost every tribe was there before you got there to lead it. Almost all the things that human beings want to do, they’ve already figured out. What they’ve been waiting for is someone to connect them and give them a voice. My friend, Jacqueline Novogratz, runs the Acumen Fund, a very important philanthropic venture out of New York. She has trouble finding people who all along believed there was a better solution to the developing world. Once she finds them, all she has to do is point them in the right direction and they’re eager to get on board. It’s not about persuading the undecided; it’s about connecting the committed.

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Seth is also the founder of Squidoo, where you can find a special page about Tribes.

Next time, we’ll continue our conversation with Seth. We’ll learn what pushed Seth to become a tribe leader. He’ll also tell us about the power of one. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Related posts

Seth Godin on Tribes: Part 2

Seth Godin on Tribes: Part 3