I have been inspired by Jobs because of his passion and profound ability to relate to his customers and deliver precisely what they want.

He did not invent the MP3 player, yet the iPod is the dominant force now in mobile music.

When I grew up, I listened to a Sony Walkman and bought several generations of them over the years. The Sony Walkman was mobile music.  Every other player simply imitated what Sony created.

When MP3 players emerged I found the whole experience of trying to put music onto them too difficult and clumsy, so I didn't bother.  The iPod was a revelation, integrating a great source of music at a reasonable price (iTunes) with a player that is incredibly intuitive and pleasant to use.

When Apple entered the mobile phone market, they re-invented the genre with the iPhone and gave us another device that showed an incredible understanding of the customer experience.  Make it wonderfully easy to use and beautiful to look at and people will love it.

Yet Steve Jobs was a university dropout and took the road less travelled.  He was sacked from Apple 10 years after creating it with his friend Steve Wozniak and went on to create Pixar and come back to Apple as its saviour in the mid 1990s.

In this speech he gave at Stanford University he gives inspiring advice for anybody in business – and life.  If you have a passion for business, you will enjoy this.  If you don't have a passion for your business, it might make you stop and think about why are you doing it…

Being a lone male, I tried to pick an action movie rather than getting caught up in a love story, as I didn't want to stand out as a sad lonely man in a sea of couples.  So I chose the film with Matt Damon that I'd seen a clip from a week or two before called  The Adjustment Bureau.

It was a love story.  D'oh!

Fortunately, the cinema was pretty empty so I didn't feel like a complete idiot, and I settled in to watch the movie.

As the story unfolded, it became clear that it's based around the idea of fate, that whatever you do, there is a hidden force at play that creates opportunies and takes them away, following some kind of plan that's been laid out for you.

If you think like this, you're giving up without really trying. Sometimes I'll get an enquiry from a client who thinks I can wave a magic wand and make their world a better place, without them having to do anything.

Last year I worked very briefly with a client who has a good business, but who is sitting back and watching it die.  We agreed a strategy to bring in a bunch more business.

But instead of putting the plans into action each week, he made excuses for why he couldn't do it.  The truth was he was scared to try.  He was scared to face up to his life being hard.  He was scared of taking responsbility for his own actions and the results in his life and business.

You have just 70 years or so on the planet.  Make every year count.  Do what it takes to live your life to the max, as the Pepsi advert goes, because at the end you don't want to die with any regrets.

When there's so much opportunity in the world, you have to make the effort to reach out and give it your best shot, or else you'll live in the shadow of the life you could have and it'll make you sad, bitter or miserable, possibly all three.

The truth is that life throws all kinds of troubles your way.  In his famous book, "The Road Less Travelled", Dr M. Scott Peck starts with the wonderful three word sentence…

"Life is hard."

And life can be hard.  But feeling sorry for yourself doesn't make it any easier.  In fact, it makes it even worse.  It's living in denial – thinking that life is unfair and that you don't get the breaks.

But look for inspiration from the people around you who have achieved something with their life.  Don't find things to criticise about them, but look instead for the positive things they do to get what they want.

Notice how they take chances and don't fear failure.  Then copy them. Meet your life head on, instead of looking for an easy ride.

Stop making excuses about why you can't, and just get on with it.  Don't fear rejection or failure, because those fears are simply the feelings of helplessness that hold you back from a happier, more successful and fulfilling life.

While The Adjustment Bureau may not have been the action movie I was looking for, it was a great reminder that we need to take action when something is precious in our lives, or the opportunity may disappear forever…

Fast-forward to this week and there's a great book that describes exactly why this happens.  Once you get over the rather strange name – it's called The New Psycho-Cybernetics – you realise that it's written by a successful plastic surgeon called Maxwell Maltz, who died some time ago.  However, it's been edited and brought bang up to date by Dan Kennedy, probably the biggest name in training for direct marketing for small businesses and somebody who Chris Cardell brought to the UK for his London seminar a couple of years ago.

What distinguishes this from so many "self help" books is that it's based on his observations of people before and after plastic surgery.

Maltz noticed that when talking to his clients before and after their operations, there was often a transformation in self-confidence, self-esteem and their whole approach to life.  Many became more successful after getting rid of ugly scars from accidents and similar physical issues with their appearance.

But sometimes after surgery had transformed them from ugly duckling to beautiful swan, his patient would still complain about being ugly, despite the evidence to the contrary.

It was from watching and documenting similar cases that led Maltz to the conclusion that what really controls us is our self image, which is imagined in our heads, rather than the real world.  This is best summed up by a quote from the book,

Human beings always act and feel and perform in accordance with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their environment.

Did you notice that the always and imagine are underlined in that sentence, because we do not act completely out of character – we always act consistent with the way we think we are.

So the person who has a self-image of being reserved will be shy at parties, until the alcohol kicks in and lets the hidden extrovert see the light of day.  The person who was told they're a slow reader as a child will read slowly as an adult, even though they've got the same reading apparatus as the rest of us.  The person who thinks advertising never works won't spend the time to understand the art of sales copywriting, because it goes against what they believe, and so on.

The truth is that all of us have some beliefs that limit our potential in one way or another.  Many people feel they're not good enough.  Others feel they don't deserve success.  Another may think that earning more money would be immoral.  All these things are just concepts inside our heads.  If you believe, then in your world, it's true.

A few years ago I ran a 2 day workshop to help  therapists make more money.  It was called The Profitable Therapist and the single biggest thing it exposed was the reason that most of the people didn't make more money was simply what they believed about themselves, their services or money.

One therapist in particular I remember clearly saying that it would be immoral to charge more for what he does.  Others felt it was key that they should always have time to give to the needy.  When asked "how much time do you want to devote to the needy?", he replied, "as much as it takes".

That's not a business, that's a charity.  Yet he had paid good money to learn how to become more profitable.  Despite this, his beliefs about money meant that he spent the whole event doing one of two things – (1) defending his right to treat poor people for free and (2) justifying why it was immoral to charge more than £40 for a session.  This was despite his desire to double his income without increasing his hours.

He became quite angry when I pointed out the flaw in his logic, that to earn more without increasing his hours would require him to charge more.  The crazy thing was that he was working flat out and most of his customers would have gladly paid an extra £5 or £10 per session.  But that's the power of a limiting belief.

This is not something that's limited to just one or two people.  Most of us have some form of limited beliefs, we just don't know what they are.

If you think you may be holding back your business with limiting beliefs, get yourself a copy of Maxwell Maltz's New Psycho-Cybernetics book, a snip for under £10 at Amazon.

On the other hand, if it's time to really get things moving, why not call now for a chat about my business coaching services.

Last year, Woolworths gave a last gasp for air before sinking beneath the waves of change, after a 100 year history.  They were comprehensively beaten on just about every front by Tesco, Sainsbury, Morrisons and Asda.

And the writing was on the wall for years before too – they had nothing unique to offer in terms of service or products, apart from Pick & Mix.  On the other hand, Tesco offers parking on their doorstep and sells groceries, too. 

Picking up the odds and ends you'd normally nip into Woolworths to get was just too convenient during your weekly shop. 

Woolworths became obsolete because they failed to create a strategy for the changing times.  They ignored it and hoped it would go away.

The same is true in small business.  You are the leader of your business – what is happening in your market?

And what will you do about it?

He benchmarks himself against his competitors in the town, but I was curious when he avoided comparison with the Italian restaurant across the street.  He told me they've been making so many special offers and really pushing the boat out to get customers that it's not a fair comparison.

Hmm, I see…

So was it coincidence that they're the only restaurant around who are busy every night and seem to have a real buzz going inside?

Hmm…

So this idea of a "fair comparison" is that we can't look at businesses that have taken the initiative and marketed their socks off, to keep themselves busy?

As we talked, he realised that he had a blinkered view and was oblivious to the hard truth.  When you've been running a business for a while it's easy to become blinkered from reality.

Fortunately as soon as we started talking about it, he realised just how much opportunity is in his hands, how some smart marketing and real focus on the basics of getting more customers will make a big jump in his sales within a month or two. 

And that's without the option of heavy promotion on takeaway food, too.

It's really easy to blame the recession now for any and all problems.  But be honest – if your business is not a monopoly, all you need to do is a better job than your competitors on your marketing and service and you'll steal customers from them.

My recommendation to this restaurateur?  Get into an effective marketing frenzy!  Track the offers the competition are doing – if it's working for them, we get to understand what customers love and can do the same.

And remember – just because copying was wrong at school, does not make it wrong all the time.  In business, we have to watch our competitors carefully and copy the things that work.  In fact, business copying has a couple of special names – "market research" and "competitor analysis".  Do some today and get your business on the growth path!

Want to leap-frog your competition?  Book yourself a no-obligation, completely free business coaching consultation. You'll find out in 90 minutes at least 3 things you're not already doing that could add 30% or more to your sales.  Fill in the form below to reserve yours now…

He told me, and he really believed this, that it's all the government's fault.  In fact he said, "until the government changes things, manufacturing will continue to die out in this country".

Well let's take a step back from this, and look at the pattern of the economy for the past 30 years – we had a big recession in the early 80's, a recession in the early 90's and now we've got another one.  This cycle repeats itself every ten to twenty years.  So surprise surprise, we've got another one! 

These things are part of a cycle we continually go through.  On top of that, manufacturing has special challenges because of labour costs – so the cheapest place to make things is normally where the cheap labour is.  No real surprise then that so many companies have moved production to China.  But these things have been a long time coming – there are forecasts of this happening from over 10 years ago. 

But what has this guy done since then?  Ignored the forecasts?  Carried on with his own way regardless, hoping the world will stick with him?  He could have outsourced his manufacture, or moved his factory overseas, or heavily automated to reduce labour costs.  Lots of companies own factories abroad, in China, Latvia, Lithuania and so on, with lower costs and high quality education, it's not difficult to set up a great office or factory overseas. 

You can even make overseas production a feature of selling – one of my clients did this for engineering goods and got an incredible response from a direct mail letter.

Smart businesses keep themselves lean and fit and are able to react quickly and positively to market conditions.  Slow-moving businesses get caught in the belief that it's easy to succeed – just keep turning the handle, never doing anything different or special.

Then when business goes downhill, blame the government, or the state of the economy, and you're off the hook.  "Oh, business is going down the pan, the economy is to blame." 

What a cop-out!  Can you imagine that spirit in the Second World War?  "They've bombed my house, I'm making a white flag now, the Germans have won, Churchill should have saved my town, but he's useless!".  What a load of twaddle!

It's great to blame somebody or something else for all your problems, because it absolves you of responsibility for it personally.  But how does it help you?  You spend energy on bitterness and moaning, rather than taking responsibility for your situation and doing something about it.  You're far better off spending your energy and time figuring out what you CAN do to change things for the better.

How did a company like Phones 4 U, John Caudwell's old business, manage to keep doubling its sales every year, even through the recession of the early 90's?  He worked twice as hard, that's how.  And not just harder, but smarter.

In fact, whenever you hear somebody saying, "business is horrible, it's the economy", ask them what they're doing different to make their business more competitive.  And don't let them tell you there's nothing that can be done, that they are a victim of circumstance, because there's a whole load of things you can do differently…

• Get rid of low performing staff to protect the rest of your business
• Change the way you advertise or promote to increase leads
• Hold a sale of old or slow-selling stock
• Renegotiate rent
• Fix cash flow problems with longer terms from suppliers and sharper collection of invoices

That's just five specific items – there is so much more that can be done.  I've got a mortgage broker client who's still recruiting brokers and growing at the moment, despite the awful lending conditions.  In this economy, how on earth can they do it?  Because they took actions fast and early, then kept a focus on their numbers.

Yes, business is tougher at the moment, but just doing the same things and hoping for different results is crazy.  Business has been pretty easy for the past 10 years, so if you were only doing OK before, you need to change what you're doing, quickly, because it won't be good enough in a recession.

If your business keeps doing the same it's always done, you'll almost certainly see a drop in sales and you might end up going bust.  On the other hand, if you act now and make changes for the better, you will give yourself a better than average chance of pulling away from the pack.  You might even double your sales like Caudwell did through the 90's recession.