Let me tell you an important story about modern day entrepreneurship. If you can master two skills, then you will be successful. With only 2 skills you can start almost any business on earth and find success. These imperative skills are marketing and innovation. Marketing is so incredibly scary when you don't understand it. I was horrible at marketing at one point. I soon realized that the only thing worse than sucking a marketing, was being business owner and sucking at marketing. Then there's innovation, well that's fairly scary as well isn't it? When you're starting your own business, or growing a company marketing and innovation rule all. If you don't understand these topics, you'd better learn quick, or you're screwed.

It wasn't until I read Robert Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad Poor Dad that I thought to myself, "Yikes! I need to make some changes." This book changed my my mindset in a major way, as it has many others. But it was just the beginning. It's easy to read that book and be motivated to make some changes. I've started 4 businesses since reading that book. 2 of them in real estate and 2 more online businesses. What is great about all of them is that they have low startup costs. The online businesses especially. Creating a business for just a few hundred dollars is incredible, because even if they fail you can just start another one. I've spent thousands of hours learning to grow these businesses on my own and through various training programs. The really important thing I learned was that marketing and innovation are where it's at. They are without a doubt the keys to success in your business. Nothing else matters if you don't understand marketing and innovation. Nothing.

Perhaps you've seen this great quote from Peter Drucker. "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business."

You of course need marketing to show people that your product or service is available. Without good marketing no one cares enough to ever purchase your product or service. Becoming good at marketing can transform your business in a massive way. When I launched my first business, I thought I knew a thing or two about marketing. By that I mean, I knew how to say to potential customers, "Here is my product and here is the price." And I knew how to get a few eyes on that message. What I didn't know was how to make people want to view it and want to buy it. More importantly, I certainly didn't know how to do this online, aside from making the basic Kijiji and Craigslist ads.

But then I did something amazing. I began to educate myself in online marketing. I'm very excited about where my businesses are headed now. Your business, whether it be an offline or online business, needs internet exposure in the year 2013. And now it's not enough to just be there online, you need to market well in order to beat out your competition. This usually requires some education. A simple, well designed website is great, but you also need compelling headlines and good copywriting. You won't understand these things without some first hand experience so it isn't always easy. Of course, entrepreneurship isn't meant to be simple.

Innovation is a key to being able to actually sell your products. Innovation is about creating products or services that are new, better and different, but more importantly solving problems for your prospects. Innovation must provide solutions for your customers. This was something that I was aware of, but I still wasn't using it completely in my businesses. The main thing here is to stop thinking about ways to help your business prosper, and instead think about ways to help your customers grow or solve their problems. Your business will grow even more as a result of this. Sincerely care about your customers. Think about what they want in every thing you do. Do this and you'll find your marketing becomes much more simplified.

By understanding marketing and innovation, you will essentially allow yourself to build the marketing into your product, making your job much easier. All that matter is marketing and innovation. The rest can be developed as you go. now I understand the points that Robert Kiyosaki made in the Rich Dad Poor Dad book even greater. Proper education is so very important to your success. It's a shame that our school systems don't bother to teach us more of this stuff.