Business Development Archives

When SMART Goals Get You Stuck

February 15, 2025/in Business Development/by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster

SMART goals are important to set, but for entrepreneurs, there’s a different approach to goal-setting that alleviates some of the pressure.

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Our discussion today is about a different way of looking at goals that is very complimentary to our way of looking at goals for entrepreneurs. Click the player to listen to The BIGG Success Show podcast. Here is a summary…

We saw a great article over at the online magazine for swimmers called Swim Swam. It’s a goal setting strategy to use if you are struggling with hard goals. The author, Olivier Poirier-Leroy, is a former national-level swimmer who says there is a problem with traditional goal-setting . The process of trying to accomplish the goal gets left out, and the pressure to achieve a goal can cause people to fail.

You’ve Heard of the Purple Cow, but Have You Seen The Purple Tree?

October 5, 2024/in Business Development/by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster

Learn how the purple tree concept helped one man turned a $15,000 investment into $10 million! Click the player to listen to this BIGG Success Show podcast. Find the summary below.

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One of the most frequent questions we get is how we come up with show topics. So we thought we’d give you a peak behind the curtain and show you how we arrived at today’s show idea.

We were eating!

That’s why today’s show topic is really … I can’t believe I ate that whole thing! Plop … plop … fizz … fizz!

Mary-Lynn recalled …
We were at a family diner. I started reminiscing about when I was a kid. There was this restaurant that we would go to when we went to visit my grandma. It was called the Hen House. The outside looked like a big red barn. The inside had a country décor and a fun little gift shop that my sister and I would always visit after eating. They had games and books and candy …

George added …
We’re showing our roots here. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it (which is likely most of you), the Hen House was a Midwestern chain. Sort of a smaller version of Cracker Barrel.

I have a book by William Dooner, the guy who started the Hen House chain. And to me, the most memorable thing from his book is when he talks about the purple tree in the forest.

Hence the subject of today’s show!

Would You Profit More by Making Less?

June 19, 2024/in Business Development/by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster

A small business owner recently told us about an innovative opportunity he had passed up. (Actually, he said “Maybe.” He wanted to think about it. Hence, our conversation with him.)

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Another small business owner had offered him a turn-key operation. The first owner said he and his people had been talking about offering a similar product to their customers.

He didn’t accept the offer because:

1. They could do it themselves
So we asked: Why haven’t they? They haven’t had the budget or the manpower. However, he didn’t expect to have the necessary resources going forward either.

He also acknowledged that his firm doesn’t have the same sort of expertise in this particular product as the other firm. We think this is at least as much of a contributor as resources to it not getting developed.

2. It might cannibalize sales
He was afraid that this new product may compete with one of his existing products. This new product capitalized on new technology. His product didn’t.

He admitted that his customers might want both of them. But let’s assume that’s not the case:

If his customers prefer a new product instead of the one he’s offering them, wouldn’t he be better off at least making some money from it? Otherwise, his customers will find the new product somewhere else.

3. He had to share the profit

When he sold his own products, he got to keep 100% of the money earned. With the program he turned down, he was only going to get 20%.

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I’ll paraphrase something I often heard my Dad say: “20% of something is better than 100% of nothing.”

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That’s one of my favorite quotes from your Dad, George. It makes the point – right now, they’re not making anything on the new product. To make 20% or 10% or even 1% would be money in the bank!

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Sometimes, as small business owners, our independent nature works against us. Sometimes, it pays to collaborate with other like-minded business owners. You may make more money by making less and, in the process, reach BIGG success!

Direct link to The BIGG Success Show audio file | podcast:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/01153-061924.mp3

4 Steps to Find Transformational Opportunities

April 25, 2024/in Business Development/by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster

With change happening faster than ever, you need to be prepared to capitalize on it. We share 4 steps to find transformational opportunities.

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Click the player to listen to this episode of The BIGG Success Show Podcast. Below is a summary of our discussion.

We saw an article that asserted that change is occurring a million times faster than the average person’s ability to handle it. Sure seems like it! A lot of times these changes are transformational.

In a post for The Small Business Advocate, author and futurist Dan Burrus said: