10 secrets of the stinking rich

Wanna get stinkin rich? SmartCompany.com.au has an article today telling you the 10 ways to get dirty stinkin' rich by learning from the some of Australia's richest entrepreneurs. SmartCompany is Australia's online magazine for entrepreneurs & SMEs and it's worth subscribing to their email newsletter.

Be prepared to work and work and work
The secret of most successful entrepreneurs is not that they are particularly smart or insightful. Rather, most have an incredible capacity for work. Most successful entrepreneurs still work seven days a week, even when they have made their millions. Gerry Harvey even turned his favorite holiday spot at Byron Bay into a luxury resort – money never rests.

Be a serial entrepreneur
Few of Australia's richest business people strike it lucky on their first try. Queensland billionaire Terry Peabody, who now runs waste management business Transpacific, has successfully floated three companies, including a cement business and a truck company.

Seven Network boss Kerry Stokes tried everything from trucking and property development before becoming a media mogul. Perth billionaire Stan Perron has tried his hand at earthmoving, ice rinks, airlines and car retailing.

Even when they find a particularly successful venture, the stinking rich always keep their fingers in a number of pies.

Be prepared to take at least one big risk
Every stinking rich person had at least one moment early in their career when everything was on the line – all their money, all the bank's money, their house, their reputation and their future.

Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond put everything into his first business, Mortgage Acceptance Group, and lost $10 million, his home and his marriage when it collapsed. He's now worth almost $600 million, which goes to show you can survive, and prosper, even if your big gamble fails.

Follow your passion and skills
Can't decide which type of billion-dollar business you want to be in? Start by thinking about the things that you really love. Love fashion? Then start a fashion label, just like Sass & Bide founders Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton did.
Bruce Gordon followed his love of entertainment (he was once a stage magician) into the film industry before building the WIN regional television empire. Tasmanian Allen Hansen loved diving for abalone, so he built one of Australia's largest seafood companies.
Cool, dispassionate analysis is important in building a business, but some good old-fashioned enthusiasm is also essential, particularly to get you through the tough times.

Build networks
It is incredible how many of Australia's most successful business people are old friends. John Singleton and Gerry Harvey? They backpacked together through Europe. Solomon Lew and Lindsay Fox? Old friends. Jack Cowin and Brett Blundy? They know each other well and are co-investors in Sydney Harbour Bridge tourist attraction BridgeClimb.

Networking can sometimes be a time-consuming (and even boring) process, but having influential friends is always an asset.

Go it alone
When you are trying to grow your company quickly, there is a huge temptation to sell a slice of the business in order to fund expansion. Don't do it.

People like Richard Pratt, Lindsay Fox, David Hains and Harry Triguboff are billionaires because they have resisted the temptation to sell out to venture capitalists or investment bankers.

If you do have to float or sell shares in your business, make sure you keep a majority stake. The stinking rich don’t manage by committee.

Anticipate future trends
One of the richest men in the world, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, built an empire by knowing what consumers want before they know themselves. The Australian business scene is full of similar examples.

"Crazy" John Ilhan picked the mobile phone boom better than anyone else. Paul and Andrew Bassat started the online job ads business Seek when the majority of employers were placing newspaper ads. Eddy Groves built Australia's first corporate child-care company, ABC Learning Centres, and now dominates the sector.

Sell when the price is right
Timing is everything, and if you want to get stinking rich, you've got to know when to cut and run. Retail king Solomon Lew is a genius at picking the top of the market and has recently locked in big profits on his stakes in Coles Group, Colorado and fashion chain Witchery.

In the 1990s, recruitment industry veterans Andrew Banks and Geoff Morgan sold their recruitment company for a big price and bought it back, netting them more than $100 million. Kerry Packer famously did the same with the Nine Network.

Go global
The Australian economy is relatively small and mature, so many local entrepreneurs have been forced to go overseas to build their empire. For money managers like hedge fund guru Michael Hintze (worth $600 million) being based in London means ready access to European clients and capital markets.

If Paul Stoddard tried to base his aircraft spare parts business in Australia, he simply wouldn't have enough customers, but over in Europe he has as much work as he can handle.

Get into mining or financial services
If you want to get rich quick, find a patch of dirt with some minerals in it and start digging. If that's not an option, start an investment bank or funds management business. Resources and financial services will continue to be the hottest sectors in the Australian economy.

Social Marketing – Marketing For Good (CSR)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in its marketing form is call social marketing. CSR is about doing all the good things for the good of the organisation. Looking at it this way, it is really another form of marketing where the organisation is marketing and conducting business for the social goods. Social marketing has 3 major components: proactive CSR activity, promoting charities and good causes, and encourage others to give support to charity as well as participate in projects, communities or group for the good of society and environment.

The emergence of social marketing comes about with the rapid increase of the global market and the increase in global competition. Marketers and businesses are finding harder and harder to find points of differentiations to distinguish their offerings. The difficult task of differentiating both products and services thus lead to the path in differentiating through CSR or social marketing. Social marketing allows an increase in its brand value as well as sustaining competitive advantage.

Social marketing works very well in today's societal conscious consumers. Consumers are trying and doing more good things for both society and environment. Organisations that actively does social marketing are thus able to 'engage' these consumers and achieve a higher brand share within its market.

Communication is Everything

Bad communication is a problem. No communication is unforgivable.

Productive and long lasting client relationships are nourished through frequent client communications.

As an account/project manager like myself, communication is the only way to find out if you are doing a great job or if there are areas where you can improve. Remember that each and every you communicate with a client, you are doing essentially one of two things - increasing trust or decreasing trust.

Trust with a client can be very difficult to obtain, especially when things don't go exactly as planned during a project. But nevertheless communication with a client can be the easiest and smartest thing you can do to help you build the trust desired. First, always provide a periodic status update to the client. This can be as simple as a phone call, face to face meeting, or through an email. Even if there is no job progress, the client will be kept in the loop of where the project is at that point in time, increase the potential to build your trust with them.

Next, whenever there's an important meeting, do a recap of the conversation or meeting and then emailed to each person on the communication, to ensure everyone is on the same page and that you have not left anything uncovered. If you send some documentation, make sure to sit with them (in person or on the phone) and answer any of the questions they may have. Not only will they be able to garner the knowledge needed, but also will be building a trust with you.

Without communication, no relationship stands a chance in any aspects of our life and work.

*The above communication cartoon is taken from Grantland - communication comics. They have a great collection of communication related cartoons.*

Yahoo! SmartAds

For too many years, Yahoo is always second, behind search giant Google. Yahoo has always been the follower of Google such as its successful adsense and adwords program. However, it looks like Yahoo is finally leading a new way in its recent launched of SmartAds, an advertising product that will allow marketers to offer custom and relevant advertisements on the fly based on a user's behaviour.

Here's how it works, for example, if a user is browsing for hybrid cars in Yahoo Autos and had previously selected San Francisco as his or her default location in Yahoo Weather, Yahoo's SmartAds platform can assemble and deliver a display ad in real time to showcase a hybrid vehicle from a major auto brand, as well as local dealer information and current lease rates.

Yahoo SmartAds will utilise demographic, geographic and behavioral targeting to create more relevant advertisements for the user. Using the new technology, ads will be created on the spot, utilising several known factors about a user, including recently-visited sites, location, age, and income. The search engine's recent $680 million acquisition of Right Media will allow SmartAds to appear on the ad provider's extensive advertising network

For a complete overview, visit the Yahoo! SmartAds web site and check out it's demo.

Here's Yahoo's Press Release on SmartAds.