There are a number of companies who were once giants but have fallen into bankruptcy. Think Kodak, Blockbuster, and soon-to-be Barnes and Noble. The fact is, Amazon is dominating the book market, and if you’re not first, you’re last. B&N hasn’t been expanding the past few years, they’ve been closing stores and contracting. If you don’t take the market you will surrender it.
You must get in the mindset of continual expansion because contracting is just a form of retreating.
Without continued growth, any entity—be it a corporation, dream, or even an entire race—would cease to exist. History is full of examples that support the notion that disaster occurs when expansion doesn’t continue. You can include the Vikings, Ancient Rome and Greece, Communist Russia, and an endless list of companies such as Kodak, Blockbuster, and soon-to-be Barnes and Noble.
What broke the city of Detroit a few years ago is what breaks many businesses today—a dependence upon one source of income and the inability to make changes quickly. The Nook E-reader doesn’t sell like the amazon kindle and Amazon is slaughtering Barnes online. They are too dependent upon brick-and-mortar, which is falling away in an age of one-click buys and drone delivery. Borders already lost, so it’s just a matter of time for Barnes and Noble—even CNN can see the writing on the wall.
Amazon is dominating the book space. I first started writing about the concept of domination in my book If You’re Not First, You’re Last, but most people misunderstood what I meant by “domination.” They thought I was talking about overcoming the competition. But true domination—and true obsession—starts with dominating yourself. It might seem easy, but many people never master this concept: You can’t dominate your business or life—you can’t even create a corporate or family culture—unless you dominate your own mindset.
You dominate by learning to control your thinking, your actions, and your choices. Dominating your space starts with you and spreads to the people who work for you, and then to your customers and competitors. Becoming the overwhelming presence—the example—means you must be the leader in all areas. If you can dominate your own thinking, your employees’ thinking, your competitors’ thinking, and the public’s thinking, then you own the space.
There is no shortage of money on Earth.
Your own personal lack of wealth merely means that you don’t understand something or don’t have the correct motivation. Once you start dominating you, then you can advance and conquer. This is true for individuals and companies since all companies are made up of individuals.
A business is bankrupt when it is unprofitable and insolvent. Solvency is a different concept from profitability, which refers to the ability to earn a profit. Businesses can be profitable without being solvent (e.g., when they are expanding rapidly); they can even be solvent while losing money—like when they cannibalize future cash flows from accounts receivable. How long will Barnes and Noble remain solvent, how long will it be until they are bankrupt? That depends on their ability to take back the market they’ve lost and are continuing to lose.
All businesses and individuals should have a financial plan that clearly states monetary goals. It should outline exactly how you’re going to create surpluses of money, what to do with the surpluses, and how to manage and invest that money. A plan suggests that you’re doing something to make things happen; it’s not a historic evaluation of what has been done already (a budget). Plan means a method of achieving an end, a strategy of how one is going to stay viable and solvent as a household or a business.
What Barnes and Noble’s plan is I have no idea, but I know for you and I quitting on our dreams is personal bankruptcy. Never quit—keep looking to the future and write your goals down every day. You want to think big, like Amazon big. Dominate your space, and start that by dominating yourself.
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Be obsessed or be average,
GC