4 Key Business Principles for Success (And How I Plan to Apply Them)

Although I’m not very successful in business monetarily, I feel I understand several core principles that, if I follow, would ensure success.

The first is to use ‘The One Thing’ principle. This is about focusing on the single most important goal to achieve success, rather than trying to do many things at once.

The second is the 80/20 principle, which is about focusing on the most impactful tasks to achieve more with less effort. That is, 80% of results come from 20% of efforts.

Principle number 3 is something called the ‘Blue Ocean Strategy.’ This is essentially about choosing or creating a market where there is little to no competition (Blue Oceans), as opposed to fighting over customers in crowded, competitive markets (Red Oceans.)

The final principle is to be persistent. This is basically to not give up. You need to give it a real go and keep at it, not to say there isn’t a time to throw in your chips if something really isn’t working, but in many cases I think people give up way too easily.

Admittedly, I do not execute any of these principles well, so my goal is to change that by the end of the year with the hope of growing profits in the business.

I haven’t thought about this deeply yet but I do have a few thoughts.

Firstly, I will concentrate on the book publishing business. This covers The One Thing principle, even though I will split the business into two, but it is really one. It might just be me justifying doing what I want, but let me explain how this also integrates the Blue Ocean Strategy.

I think my end goal is to focus the business on helping independent authors create their own lifestyle businesses. This is similar to what I have done, but obviously customized to their goals.

Initially, this is about helping them publish and market their books. I will create information products for this, and perhaps even do some coaching.

The second part of the business is to continue to publish and market our own books. I feel this grows the business and helps me keep skin in the game, so I am actively practicing what I preach and can keep up to date on developments in the independent publishing field.

Eventually, I will expand the teachings to helping independent authors use their published works to create well-run lifestyle businesses based on their idea of an ideal lifestyle.

It’s highly possible that this isn’t really a Blue Ocean Strategy, but it is more of a niche than just publishing and marketing, which is very saturated.

For the 80/20 principle, well, I know that product creation and marketing are priorities, and there will be marketing processes that are more effective than others, so I just need to try different approaches until I can get some data on what works better.

Of course, I will also have to follow the general principles of success. I have a goal, now I need a plan. I'll figure that out over the next month.