In this particular podcast, I want to share some of my experiences with you. Sure, different entrepreneurs have different takes on things and different entrepreneurs have different orders. That's fine. The benefit of listening to podcasts like this, listen to other great speakers out there, is you get different perspectives on things. We encourage that. That's awesome. From our point of view, there's really five fundamental areas that you need to be conversant with if you're going to be successful as an entrepreneur.

If you're weak in any of these areas, this is going to have an impact on your results. It means you're going to be more reliant on others to help you navigate your path. If your team's established or it's a fairly early start, it can be risky. You won't be a pro overnight. You won't be a pro in all areas straight away. Knowledgeable and having a core understanding of these five areas will really help you make informed decisions in your business and help you understand what impact the decisions you are making, what are you making in your business.

Without further ado, let's break these five categories down in summary form. Number one, straight out of the gate guys, is finance. Number two, operations, your systems and your processes. Number three, people. Human resources we need to get delivered out there. Number four Sales and marketing to bring in the revenue. Number five Corporate governance, managing the business correctly and in line and adopting good policies.

Hey and welcome to The Open Mike show. In this episode two, we're going to be talking all about the strategy compass. Now as lead strategist and an infusionsoft Certified partner here at the successor, personally I'm really excited to be digging deep into this topic. I've chosen to discuss this topic right out of the gate part as this podcast series. Why? I believe really it is an essential tool that will help you as a next level or young entrepreneur with your business and marketing strategy to guide you what we call hiking through the mountain range in your entrepreneurial life.

As you follow on with continued personal development, it's likely that you will want to apply changes to your existing business model. Plans, as you learn and from your peers and your new found knowledge, things are going to change. They always do. What I find is, that a lot of entrepreneurs, they sort of look at it in isolation. They're not looking at the wider picture and they can make a decision or enter into a debate, waste valuable time or money investing in areas to try and get things back on track and not really considering the impact it has on other areas of the business.

The strategy compass. What do I mean when I say this? Well, it's a tool we use here at Successor with our clients to firstly dismiss their belief that their business is different. You know you maybe sat here listening to this saying, but hey Mike, my business is different. Trust me I've been doing this a long, long time. Your business is no different to any other. The way you may deliver your product or service, yeah sure that'll differ for sure. Your culture, your goals, the way you manage your customer service, absolutely, but your fundamental business model is no different that any other. Okay?

It's ultimately made up of the same components. Secondly and more importantly, we use the strategy compass to help maintain focus with key decision making. The secret is you just have to have the points understood of the strategy compass when decision making in your strategic sessions. If you apply this wisely to ensure decisions do not adversely affect your business performance.

Hey and welcome to this episode three of The Open Mike show, which is all about data segmentation. As the lead strategist and an Infusionsoft certified partner where we get all sorts of challenges here at the SuccessHub, I'm really excited to be delivering this for you in what I call a mini action plan. Whilst this podcast is going to cover theoretical stuff, it's also going to set you a work project that you can download. You just visit blog.thesuccesshub.io, go over to the Podcast section, and episode three, data segmentation. There's a little, mini project there you can do. You can implement this right out of the gate, and hopefully that'll make some impact into your business and help you on your journey.

I know what it's like starting over. You get into personal development curve and then you suddenly get overwhelmed. You try to implement all the longer term strategies and I hear when you scream, "But Mike, what about now? I need to eat today to be able to deliver tomorrow. It's like a second part-time job in some respects, so I'm all for personal development, but it can be confusing, it can be overwhelming. You don't always get it straight away and sometimes some of the stuff, whilst very impactful to start with, can't yield results for the longer term.

These little mini action plans are designed to get you going today, so we've got your back. That's why as part of this podcast series we'll be putting quick win tactic exercises like this in between other episodes to help you get off the bench and in the game faster whilst the medium to long term strategies take hold.

Data segmentation benefit, is that a myth or a reality?

A question that we get asked a lot, is this really necessary. Like anything, if you do it well, the reality of the result shines through. We all have data in our businesses and in reality more than we know. Later in this podcast I'll open up a few extra areas you might not have thought about or didn't know you had access to, but once you do and if you can put these different types of data into different buckets as we call them, then what you're left with is an awesome data set that allows you to send the right message to the right audience at the right time, and re-target existing data, whether that's with promotions or offer a new service that they may not know about.