How to Make More Money in Business by Doing the Right Thing –
Every now and then you run across a business leader who has worked successfully across multiple business segments. Very occasionally, you find a business leader who has successfully built businesses from the ground up across multiple business segments.
If you are lucky enough to find a business leader like this, you need to learn as much as possible from them as fast as you can!
And this is where, Jeff Morrill comes in!
Morrill has successfully built businesses from the ground up in the automotive retail, real estate, telecommunications, and insurance market segments. And, just in case you were wondering, these businesses generate over $100M in revenue each year!
To top it off, Morrill has written “Profit Wise” as a means of sharing his business knowledge with the rest of the world!
Profit Wise: How to Make More Money in Business
I have read through his book and found it loaded with great advice covering topics like; vision, hiring, leading, marketing, customer service, negotiating, decision making, time management, and business sustainability.
He backs up his advice with entertaining stories from his businesses! I have picked out my favorite business principles and summarized them for you below.
- Take the high road to raise the bottom line – Do not sell out your personal values to make a buck. It is possible to do what is right for your business, your staff, and society.
- Swim around the sharks – Guard your business from those people who will try to intentionally drag you down.
- We have a moral responsibility to run our business in a way that minimizes negative societal impacts and maximizes benefits to society.
- Clearly define and model your vision, mission, values – This is your corporate reality! Use this definition to identify the key customers that you want to attract and the employees that you want to hire. Keep this flexible so you can adapt to the ever-changing business landscape.
- Build a diverse team and hire based on good character.
- Design your compensation plans the way you stick your head into the mouth of an alligator – very carefully!
- Learn from your employees – This means you must listen . . . if your mouth is moving, you are not learning!
- Empower your front line people to solve problems and make their own decisions
- Communicate relentlessly!
- Culture building is continuous and never ends. A forest that takes decades to grow can be burned to the ground in seconds if you bring in the wrong people!
- Leverage earned media wherever possible – This is referring to news articles, blogs, review sites, industry newsletters, etc..
- Superior customer service remains a profitable way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
- Implement an incident review process – This is a process that reviews any negative event and defines the root cause of the event. Rather than placing blame, look for process, system, or tool improvements that will eliminate future occurrences of that event.
- Do the toughest, most impactful tasks first thing in the day when you have the energy and creativity to deal with them.
Take Action
In conclusion, as Morrill says; “Your life is a brief candle. Cast light where there is darkness and share your flame with the world . . .”
Go get a copy of this book, read it, learn from it and cast your light where there is darkness . . . Make a positive impact in your business and on the world!
Finally, stay on top of your leadership game by checking out all my past book reviews here and signing up for my weekly blog posts here.
