Secret Strategies Of The Gurus: Guru 1 - Bill Gates As A Small Business Entrepreneur
Introduction: Strategies are strategies. Dismiss for a momentfrom your mind what some people are saying about Bill Gates'soffensive practices he used to transform himself from a smallbusiness entrepreneur to a titan in the business world. Thereare yet honest-to-goodness strategies we can glean from hissleeves. We can study, learn from them and possibly apply themin our own home based business. Upon this premise that thisarticle was written. Strategy of Bill Gates - Have a Vis...
...ion: At the outset, I willlay down the results of my research on one secret strategy ofBill Gates. He used the same strategy to jump-start his smallbusiness to today's business behemoth. Based on my research, thestrategy of Bill Gates is grounded upon the following: "Have a VISION of what you want to achieve and hold on to thatvision come wrath or high water." His vision was:"A Personal Computer on every desk."By the way, I didn't want to use the grammatically correctexpression "come hell or high water" - for personal reason - soexcuse my grammatical preference. Anyway, let's go back to oursubject. When you have a vision, you can make the impossiblepossible. Almost everybody is familiar about how once upon a time thesmall business entrepreneur Bill Gates secured mighty IBM'scontract to supply the latter's operating system. When he wasnegotiating with the IBM people, he had no operating system asyet. He was able to buy a Disk Operating System or DOS for $50thousand. In the end, he got the contract. Why?Bill Gates was guided by his vision - that every desk all overthe world should have a computer on it. This vision enabled himto provide IBM with a DOS operating system and have control overit including to whom he wanted it sold to.Beginning Entrepreneur: Before he became an entrepreneur, BillGates had nurtured the vision that software will one day rulethe world. During high school he spent many late nights withfriend Paul Allen tinkering with the school's computer system. He dropped out of college after completing his junior year atHarvard. Instead, he and his bosom friend Paul Allen set up asmall business - a software company - in far away New Mexico.This move was in accordance with his vision.His vision became clearer as he moved from a total newbie to onewith a small business to keep. His vision was clothed in clearerterms, as he negotiated the DOS deal with IBM.Better late than never: Bill Gates's company ultimately becamethe leader in the software arena. During the first half of the1990's - 1993 to be exact - he was among the last of thesoftware titans to acknowledge the future significance of theInternet. But once he did realize that indeed Internet was the wave of thefuture, he had the tenacity to reshape his vision. His visionretained its old flavor - that is, software dominance incommerce, industry and in every field. It was rehashed in hisown words as follows: "In the years ahead, the Internet will have an even moreprofound effect on the way we work, live and learn … thistechnology will be one of the key cultural and economic forcesof the early 21st century."At this moment in time, Bill Gates is guided by the vision thatthe Internet is the wave of the present and the foreseeablefuture.Lessons Learned: You can learn from Bill Gates by having yourown vision for your small business. Lay down this vision in yourmind. Then put it into writing. Read your vision everyday whileat work in your small corner of the house. Your vision could beas short-term as the following:"To make my web site land within the top five of Google whenpeople search for the keywords 'home based business,'" or"$200,000 earning this year from Google Adsense,"or"To enrich the content of my web site using the theme 'scrapbook making.'"Do not limit yourself to short-term vision. Aim for thelong-term. A five to ten years period would suffice. Technologymay change but your vision will essentially be the same. You mayrefine it if deemed necessary, like incorporating the effect oftechnological changes - as Bill Gates did. Your Share of the Pie: Everybody - from Bill Gates down to yournetpreneur friend - has recognized the tremendous role of theInternet in business developments. Some of the more immediatepressing concerns you should consider at this stage concerningyour home based business are the following:- General preference for digital transactions by clients. Forexample, as a beginning Internet entrepreneur you should meetyour clients' demands who favor the use of online paymentsystem. At this juncture, I would like to refer you to my web site atInternetMarketingLearningCenter.com which offers free learningstuff on Internet marketing and home based business. Onecategory being tackled in the web site is the online paymentsystem. You may read online news and keep yourself abreast ofthe best software companion for your small business.- Choose products that are preferred by people at this time whenthe Internet is dominating people's lives. It has beendetermined that information products and web shopping arefavored by most consumers. Information products include yourvery own ebooks and "how-to" manuals.- Make it your aim that your products are cheap, very useful,and the best among the rest of competing products. This appliesmost especially to shopping products. For your own digitalproducts, you have the advantage of pricing them according toyour own estimation. You as the author of your own digital product determines theprice level. It is no wonder why gurus like Jay Abraham, JimDaniels and the late Corey Rudl have become so wealthy fromselling their own digital pieces.As for these three, they will be among the titans that we willtackle in future issues of this series.
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