Have you ever walked into an empty café or shop and found that it suddenly became crowded just moments after you arrived? You might feel that this is just a coincidence until…
Education is important, but how much does it affect as an indication of how successfully you will be in the future?
Seeing the success of these people makes many people think, what kind of education did they get during school? Or how well they did in school? Apparently, there are many successful people who managed to be successful even though they failed in school.
It doesn’t mean that you are now thinking of quitting college and switching professions. Of course other people’s life journey is not necessarily the same as ours. But it can be a rough idea that there are people who are successful even without graduating from university.
1. Paul Allen
When building Microsoft, Bill Gates did not build the company alone. Bill Gates contacted his friends to co-found Microsoft. The friend Bill Gates contacted was Paul Gardner Allen. Paul Allen is a business magnate, programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist.
Together with Bill Gates, they both founded Microsoft Corporation in 1975. Paul Allen was a student at the University of Washington but left in just 2 years. The reason Paul Allen left at that time was to become Honeywell’s programmer. Paul Allen died on October 15, 2018 from cancer-related septic shock.
2. Jack Dorsey
There were many social media that emerged in the 2000s. And we all know the famous social media, Twitter. Twitter was founded by Jack Patrick Dorsey.
By many, Jack Dorsey is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the founder and former CEO of Twitter. In 2021, Jack Dorsey completely quit Twitter and founded Block, Inc, a financial payments company.
3. Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook first appeared in 2004 and is still active until today. Facebook is one of the most favorite social media and has many users. The person behind the success of Facebook is none other than Mark Elliot Zuckerberg or commonly referred to by his short name, Mark Zuckerberg.
This man is an internet entrepreneur and philanthropist from the United States. While studied in Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg decided to drop out in 2005. Mark prefers to focus on developing Facebook. The choice was not wrong, he managed to succeed as it is now thanks to his choice to raise Facebook.
4. Michael Dell
Dell had become a company that occupies the first position in terms of computer sales worldwide. Of course this is not an easy thing to do if you don’t have a great leader. The person who played a major role in Dell’s success as well as being the founder of Dell, is Michael S. Dell.
Dell, headquartered in Round Rock, Texas, is engaged in developing, selling, repairing, and supporting all kinds of computer related things. Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Inc., attended the University of Texas at Austin. After the first year of college, Michael decided to leave and founded a computer company by the name of Dell.
5. Ted Turner
News is a very important thing that is needed by many people. Nowadays everyone needs the latest news all the time. And CNN is one of the news media that can provide this. Cable New Network is a broadcasting company headquartered in Atlanta, United States.
The person who founded CNN is Robert Edward Turner III or who can be called Ted Turner. It is known that Ted Turner had studied at Brown University. Unfortunately, he made a mistake that caused him to be kicked out of the university where he studied. He is known to sneak his female friends in the dormitory. This resulted in him being expelled. He then worked for his father in an advertising firm. Ted Turner developed it into CNN.
6. Bill Gates
It’s outrageous if there are people who don’t know Bill Gates. He is a business entrepreneur, software developer, investor, author, and philanthropist from the United States. Bill is very successful and his name has always been on the list of the richest people in the world for several years.
He is the person who founded the company Microsoft. His story is always talked about by many people because Bill Gates prefers to leave Harvard to create Microsoft. Not alone, Bill Gates invited his friend Paul Allen to jointly raise Microsoft. His net worth is currently estimated at 134.1 billion USD.
7. Gautam Adani
When you want to be a successful businessman, people will think you have to take college with the appropriate major. Dig as much knowledge, graduate, and start a business. But apparently, there are some successful people that are failed in school. For example, Gautam Adani, this Indian-blooded man is actually successful even though he did not graduate from college.
Gautam Adani is the founder of the Adani Group. Adani Group itself is a multinational conglomerate company engaged in many fields. Call it the port industry, aerospace, thermal energy, and also coal. Gautam Adani founded this company himself from 1988 and is now worth 88.5 billion USD.
8. Larry Ellison
The software world will never forget Larry Ellison. How not, he was the one who managed to find the Oracle software. He created the software with the company he founded called Oracle Corp. Larry Ellison founded the company in 1977. Its headquarters are in Austin, United States.
Being able to create software as good and useful as Oracle, we might think that Larry Ellison was very intelligent and graduated with high grades. Larry Ellison did study at the University of Chicago but did not finish. He was only able to finish one semester and then continued to create his own software firm which he named Oracle.
9. Richard Branson
When you have a goal, work hard to achieve it. This lesson can be learned from the figure of Richard Branson. As a child, Richard Branson had dreams of becoming a successful businessman. He managed to do it with now he managed to become one of the world’s richest people with a fortune of 5.3 billion USD.
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is a successful person from Britain. he is an entrepreneur and business magnet. In the 1970s, he founded a company called Virgin Group. The company controls more than 400 companies with various fields. Please note that Richard Branson suffers from dyslexia and he never graduated from college.
10. Steve Jobs
Even though he’s gone, we can’t forget Steve Jobs. When he appeared, Steve Jobs always wore a plain black t-shirt. But, who is this figure that he can be so known and respected? Steve Jobs is a man who played a big role in the world of technology by founding the company Apple Inc. and Pixar.
If you use a product from Apple, that is one of the ideas that came from Steve Jobs’ head. Steve Jobs was indeed a very genius, he chose Reed College in Portland to study. But he dropped out after one semester. Had studied Eastern spiritualism in India and finally returned to the United States and invited a friend named Steve Wozniak to establish a company.
Bottom Line
You’ve seen the list of successful people that were failed in school. A good grades doesn’t reflect how your future will be.
If you’re one of it, don’t give up yet. Stay hustle!
There are actually some secrets behind the top businesses that keep them survive and growing: they are actually keep tracking their KPI success and measure it regularly. If you want your business or company performance to achieve massive success, your business must have these fundamental KPIs.
What and how the top businesses measure their fundamental KPI success? And why are these 7 KPIs the most decisive indicator for the future success of your business?
What is KPI?
KPI itself we know stands for key performance indicators – or a series of key performance indicators that are measurable.
Without KPIs that are monitored consistently every week or every month, the performance of a business or company can be ridiculous. Why? Because you never know how far the progress of your business performance. And without this information, you don’t know what improvement steps should be your work priority.
In fact, there are hundreds of types of KPIs that can be formulated in determining the direction of business performance.
In this article, we will explore how to measure the 7 most fundamental KPI for the success of businesses:
- Sales Revenue
- Profit Margin
- Net Promoter Score
- Quality Score
- Innovation Score
- Manager Competency Score
- Employee Satisfaction Score
What are these 7 magic KPIs? Let’s dissect one by one.
Business KPI #1 : Sales Revenue
This is the most fundamental measure of the success of businesses. How much is the sales turnover or sales revenue each year? Is it rising or stagnant?
In various industries in the country, the revenue growth rate that becomes the benchmark standard is around 10%. A business is considered healthy if its sales revenue growth can be double digits, or 10% and above.
A business is considered to have a brilliant performance if its sales revenue can rise above 20% per year or even more. This achievement is usually achieved by new companies that are in the high growth phase. Or by a company entering a new market area.
Business KPI #2 : Profit Margin
High sales revenue can be nonsense if it turns out that the margin is zero, or even minus. So, this second KPI becomes important. What percentage of profit is obtained after deducting various costs. It’s called profit margin.
Each industry has a different profit margin reference. For example, in retail businesses the average profit margin is only around 7%. This means that if the turnover is 1 billion, then the net profit is around 50-70 million only.
On the other hand, in the culinary industry, the profit margin can be around 20%.
For the telco industry, the profit margin is around 25% – a massive margin considering that their sales revenue is already above 100 trillion.
For businesses that sell applications or digital products such as online courses, the profit margin is certainly even greater, it can be around 60% – 70%.
Business KPI #3 : Net Promoter Score (NPS)
This KPI is actually the culmination of a combination of various other KPIs such as customer satisfaction scores, brand image to customer loyalty levels.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) refers to how high a customer’s desire to recommend the product to his friends or relatives. The number is 1 – 10. The higher it means, the greater the willingness of the customer to do the review and recommend the product or service to all his friends and relatives.
Scientific studies show the NPS KPI is the most crucial indicator for the future of a business. A company that has a high NPS will certainly increase its sales volume in the future, vice versa.
A high NPS score indicates that your customers are satisfied, loyal and at the same time willing to participate in promoting the products or services you sell.
This means that only with the NPS KPI, we actually also summarize other important indicators such as customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Business KPI #4 : Quality Product Score
This is a type of KPI leading indicator that plays a role in achieving the two KPIs we have reviewed above, which are KPI sales revenue and NPS.
This means: if the quality score of our product is really excellent, then the customer will definitely satisfy and recommend the product. This will make the NPS go up. And when the NPS number increases, automatically sales revenue will also increase.
KPI Quality Score can be translated into product defect rate or product reject rate. The lower the number, the better.
Don’t be fooled by the defect rate which is only 1%. Why? For example, an internet service promises 99% reliability. Looks nice. But 1% down in a month is the same as down for 7.2 hours. Take a long time.
Likewise, if a manufacturer makes 1 million units, then 1% damage to goods is equal to 10,000 units damaged. Bankrupt the business.
Ideally, if there is 1 million production, only 100 units will be damaged, or about 0.01%.
Business KPI #5 : Innovation Score
This innovation score refers not only to how many new products were launched (or what new service features were developed). However, it also refers to the number of internal process innovations that have been carried out.
In other words, real innovation is not only related to new products or new features, but also includes new processes developed so that they become more efficient and optimal.
A small example of process innovation: how the employee performance appraisal process can be done through an app on a smartphone screen and no longer use old excel tables or forms. Thus, the process of monitoring the achievement of KPIs is enough through a tap and click on the cellphone screen.
On the other hand, new product or service innovation remains very crucial. Because a business can be confused if it rarely innovates products. Without product innovation, over time the service or product will become increasingly irrelevant to customer interests.
Then slowly, your business can die in agonizing silence.
Business KPI #6 : Manager Competency Score
The competency level of HR, especially those at the team leader level (supervisor/manager/GM) has a very crucial impact on business performance. This is because the team leader will be responsible for building the system and managing the performance of his subordinates.
If the competence of the team leader is trivial, then their business will also be increasingly plunged into the valley of misery.
Therefore, it is important to measure the competency scores of the team leaders in your company. The types of competencies that are measured are not only soft competencies (managerial competencies such as leadership and teamwork skills); but also their level of functional competence related to the technical work they are doing.
Great business is always built by great people.
Business KPI #7 : Employee Job Satisfaction Score
Scientific studies have found an interesting fact: employee satisfaction has a significant impact on future business performance. If the current employee job satisfaction score is good, then the future performance of the business will definitely be good. And vice versa.
The employee job satisfaction (with tens or hundreds of your coworkers) will indeed determine the level of future business performance.
Bottom Line
These KPI metrics act to measure success and ensure the businesses are on the right track in achieving their goals.
It also can be the indicators to find out where the problem lies. This way, you can always highlight which areas that need the improvement for your business.
Further Reading:
The Importance of Employee Training in Your Business Organization
The Process Business Strategic Planning Before Starting Any Startup
The success of the business that you want to carry out is highly depends on how solid the business strategic planning that you set.
When we fail to make a good business plan, that means we are actually planning for a failure.
Therefore, when we want to start a new business, we must be able to formulate a solid business plan.
How to Formulate a Business Strategic Planning
For those of you who may be planning to build a new business on a small scale, then all you need is just a simple business plan that is concise.
The content of a “simple business strategic planning” should include the following aspects:
- Description of the business and the uniqueness of the product
- Market potential analysis
- Marketing plan (marketing plan)
- Production plan and business operations
- Cash flow projection
Let us discuss one by one briefly.
1. Brief Description
A simple business plan should start with a brief description of your business. What is the product or service that your business offer, and what is uniqueness about it compared to your competitor.
For example, one of the businesses I run is selling business books and self-development.
The unique point: the title of the book is eye catching and the content are written in a down-to-earth and easy-to-understand language. Another unique thing is that every purchase of a book package will get an attractive audiobook bonus (not many of my competitor’s business book products provide an audiobook as the bonus).
2. Market Potential Analysis
Next, the business plan needs to analyze the market potential of the product or service you want to market out. Is it big enough and have good prospects?
Do a check on the market potential. You can do it by looking at the sales figures of products that are similar to the product or service that your business is going to sell (or identical products).
For example, when I wanted to start writing, publishing and selling business books, I researched how many business and self-development books were sold around.
In addition, I also see the sales of similar products from other authors who sold their books directly (direct selling) through online channels.
On the other hand, I also looked at the number of readers of my blog and social media followers; and predict how many of them will buy the books that I market.
From the various data, then I can estimate the market potential of my book.
3. Marketing Plan
Furthermore, the contents of the business plan should dissect the marketing plan that you will do. This is one of the keys that will determine the success of your business.
In the marketing plan, you need to at least describe:
- What are the types and content of the promotional materials
- Where will the promotion take place (online/offline?)
- How is the process of getting customer prospects
- What is the provided marketing budget; and for anything
- How many sales targets will be obtained through marketing costs that have been spent
For example, when I want to launch a book that I write and market, I plan the advertising material that I will publish.
Then, I determine through which channels I will do the marketing. In this case, I rely on thousands of paid advertising and emails that I have to carry out sales promotions during the launching period.
In addition, I also set a sales target during launching. I am one of those people who prefers small and easy-to-reach targets when setting a target. In my opinion, this is a better way than setting a very high target that are not achievable (the cost of failure can be very high if the target is too ambitious).
Studies also show that achieving business targets that are easy to reach (because we have set small targets from the start), in the long term will actually make us more consistent in taking action. This is better than setting an overly ambitious initial target, and then failing to achieve it, then eventually causing motivation to plummet. Disappointed because ambitious targets failed to be achieved.
So start small. Create easy and reachable targets.
4. Production Plan and Business Operation
Furthermore, the business plan also needs to outline a production plan or business operations. For example, how is the production process (if you produce it yourself)? How is the supply of raw materials and availability of machines? How many employees are needed?
If the product is purchased from a supplier; who the supplier will be a partner; how to pay; as well as how to store stock in the warehouse?
5. Cash Flow Projection
Another key part of the business plan is the cash flow projection. It describes:
- Sales target (and income) per month
- Expenditure plan per month
- Maybe at the beginning of the month there was still a deficit (more money going out than money coming in).
However, you must determine when or in what month the cash flow target to be surplus. This is because only with positive cash flow, your business will survive.
Final Thought
Statistical data shows, only 50% of new businesses can survive more than 5 years. And only 30% of businesses can last up to 10 years.
The chance of business success will be higher if our business starts with a solid business strategic planning.
Smartphone addiction has been developed since the development of the technology. But, have you ever wonder what happens to your brain when you look at a screen for too long?
What does our brain power have to do with smartphone addiction? It turned out to be very closely related.
Delayed Gratification
Various scientific studies show that a powerful way to hone our brain power is persistence to live something deeply and in a long enough duration. This process requires the power of concentration and a deep focus of attention on what we’re doing (Duckworth, 2017). Our brain will expand positively when we do this process.
In addition, our mental strength and mind will be more resilient when we can do thing is known as “delayed gratification” (Mischel, 2006). Or the ability to delay instant gratification or instant rewards.
Delayed gratification is the ability to be willing to pursue a long and tiring process, to postpone immediate pleasure, in order to achieve goals in the future. In short, delayed gratification is the ability to float upstream, swim later, or get sick first, have fun later.
Our mental and brain power will grow when we diligently practice concentration and deep focus of attention, as well as the ability to undergo delayed gratification.
Now, all of those key components were shattered and damaged by the presence of smartphone addiction.
Yes, that’s right, the power of perseverance, the power of concentration and deep focus of attention, as well as the ability of delayed gratification. All lay dead in the roar of the onslaught of smartphone addiction that is increasing.
Screen Addiction Will Reduce The Attention Span
In fact, studies on smartphone use confirm this grim truth: using cellphones too often, will significantly reduce the “attention span” in us. It becomes increasingly difficult for us to build deep attention on a point of interest. Our attention span is getting shorter.
Through the pattern of scrolling and clicking on our cellphone screens repeatedly, our minds are trained to keep jumping from one point of attention to the next.
When using cellphones, we often rush from one content to another. Scroll, pause, and then scroll again. This continues to be done repeatedly, every day.
Such patterns train our brains to keep jumping up and down, and never have room to build long and deep focus of attention.
Our ability to build deep focus and long-term concentration becomes increasingly lost due to the habit of playing cellphones that keep jumping and rushing.
Instant Satisfaction Pattern Developed From Smartphone Addiction
In addition, the ability to cultivate delayed gratification skills is also getting rare.
Why? Because when playing cellphones, we continuously get instant rewards. Every time you look at the screen, scrolling and clicking, your brain happens to find enjoyment instantly. Your curiosity is instantly satisfied. This kind of pattern is also slowly growing instant culture. We feel that everything should be like playing a cell phone. Whatever we want to enjoy, it can come instantly as easy as scrolling and clicking.
These habits and mindsets make us even more unable to appreciate a long and tiring process. Without realizing, you ruin your ability to postpone pleasure for the sake of a later reward. Because when we are trapped in smartphone culture, our brains have been trained to get used to finding rewards instantly, or experiencing instant pleasure.
Attention span is getting shorter; loss of focus and concentration; and the lack of ability to appreciate the long and deep process due to the culture of wanting everything to be instant, such as playing with cellphones; all of this has a bad impact on strengthening our brain and mental.
Bottom Line
Perseverance to go through the painstaking process, deep focus and power of concentration, and the ability to delay immediate gratification. All are key components for us to be successful in realizing our dreams.
However, all of the key components collapsed due to the invasion of smartphone addiction.
In other words, smartphone addiction will make our perseverance and tenacity to realize the dream of life slowly turning into death in a very painful sorrow. And with that, our beautiful dreams will also be buried in it.
In this article, we will dissect the causes of stagnation and failure in the business world. Applicable to those of you who have their own business, or are also planning to build their own business.
There are so many variables that causes a business to stagnate. However, if condensed into the most fundamental variables, business stagnation is often caused by only the following two elements. Let’s check them out!
1. The Product or Service Doesn’t Have a Clear USP
USP stands for Unique Selling Propositions. This means that the product or service you are selling has a unique and attractive offer for potential customers.
In fact, so many businesses are stagnant and ultimately fail because their products or services do not have a USP that kicks them, which can make them rise above the crowd.
This means: the product or service being sold does not have advantages. Both in terms of the main function of the product, product features, benefits, and price aspects compared to other products from competitors.
If the product you are going to sell does not have any advantages, uniqueness or advantages, then how will it sell and sell well in the market?
Solution
The solution is to make sure that your business product offering has a valuable USP.
Specifically, there are three steps worth taking in this USP mapping process.
The first step is to make sure that the market for your business product or service is quite broad and has a high potential for demand. Or at least there is a niche market that is worth entering, and suitable for the product you are selling.
The second step, find the specific advantages of your product over competitors’. In this step there are three options:
- Product leadership
- Value for money
- Price advantage
If you want to focus on product leadership, then determine the features or benefits that stand out the product or service that you are going to market. Devote all your energy to actually be able to present products with premium quality.
Value for money is taken as an option if the product or service you are selling is able to provide good benefits but at a reasonable price.
Meanwhile, in price advantage, you can get low product costs so you can sell products at competitive prices, but you can still get a profit even though it may be thin. Price war often occurs in this option. That’s why value for money and product leadership are actually better choices.
The third step in USP mapping is that you really have the capability in the USP choices you have made.
In other words, you can deliver the products or services you sell according to the USP promises. This means that if you choose a value for money approach, then the quality of the product you offer is really worth it, or comparable to the price charged.
Even if you become a reseller, then make sure the product you are selling also has a good USP. This way you will also find it relatively easy to make sales. Don’t be a reseller of products that don’t have a kicking USP and can be a differentiator among thousands of other competing products.
2. The Marketing Process Is Not Creative
In the first stage above, we have to make sure that the product or service that we sell really has a pretty wow USP. The goal is for our business to have a chance to survive, and not get stuck in the middle of the road.
However, the USP alone is sometimes not enough, if it is not accompanied by an aggressive and creative marketing and promotion process.
Many of those who start their own business fail because they are not good at selling.
In fact, selling skills is a key skill that can make us rich, but unfortunately not widely taught in college and school.
In this digital era, many businesses are stagnant because they fail to promote themselves cleverly. This marketing mistakes lie in two arenas.
The first is the mistake of not being able or not being able to do online promotions on all online channels, either through Google Ads, SEO Marketing, Facebook Ads, Instagram Marketing to YouTube Marketing and WhatsApp Marketing.
Today everyone is busy staring at the cellphone screen. If the products and services that you sell cannot appear on their cellphone screens through clever online marketing, then your business will stagnate.
Unfortunately, there are many independent business people who do not master SEO Marketing, FB Ads, or Instagram Marketing solidly. Maybe because you are lazy to study, or maybe because you are reluctant to spend online promotion costs. Or even both.
Professional product photos, graphic design of cool online promotional posters, and strong copywriting – all are basic skills that today’s business people must possess.
Without the skills to create attractive advertising and promotional materials, your business sales can remain stagnant for a long time.
Solution
The solution to this second fundamental causes of business stagnation is quite easy. You can slowly start learning independently (self-taught) various techniques about online marketing (Google Ads, FB Ads, Instagram Marketing) to effective copywriting techniques. In this whole process, self-learning capabilities and resourcefulness (or persistence to find solutions independently) are needed.
Bottom Line
Be resilient. Be resourceful. Don’t be spoiled and lazy. Don’t expect instant results without hard work and without studying online selling skills diligently.
On the other hand, there are now also many services available that provide an effective online marketing process. Do not hesitate to invest in this field, because the impact can make your business sales skyrocket. The principle is: it is better to spend 1 million in promotion funds, in order to get a profit of 5 million than zero promotion funds, but also zero sales.
So, the two fundamental causes of business stagnation, as well as workable solutions.
In every problem, there is always a solution. In every failure, there is always room for improvement.