Build Your Soul Purpose- Business coaching, Business Education from Brandon R Allen
By Brandon Allen
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Podcast Description
Small Business with a Purpose
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Overcoming Your Case Of Rugged Individualism- Podcast | Rugged individualism is a serious condition that affects many business owners. Symptoms of this disease include an overwhelming desire to do everything, an destructive viewpoint that leads business owners to think that only they have the solution, routinely working in activities that aren't their Soul Purpose and ultimately extreme fatigue and a waning desire to work in their business. There is a cure for Rugged Individualism. There is hope. The key is to gain as much understanding around what your Soul Purpose is and how you best create value in your business. Once you know your top activities, it's a matter of systematically off- loading those tasks to others. In the end you will have a Soul Purpose team who are assisting you in bringing your value creation to the masses. Listen to this week's podcast for more information on how you can make better delegating decisions and not fall victim to doing it all. Listen below: | 5/2/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Controlling What You Can Control | God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. ~The Serenity Prayer Even though a business owner wouldn't tell you that this is their first reason for being a business owner, control is important. Business owners like calling the shots and not having to answer to people. The question is, are you taking control too far by trying to control things that happen in your business that you can't control. This week's podcast episode tackles that particular issue and helps business owners recognizes areas that they try to control that they have no control over. I also talk about what you should do instead. I'll give you a hint, it has to do with last week's episode on business habits. Listen to the podcast below. | 4/26/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Tips For Delegating And Hiring- Podcast | When it comes to employee management, this isn't always something that comes natural to newer business owners. Particular areas of concern is for business is with hiring talent and delegating responsibilities. With regards to hiring, the main tip that I can give here it to know what you want and what you value. Business owners that are clear on what they want can better find and assess candidates. If you know your values, then you can ask questions that will provide some insight on whether or not the candidate you are looking at shares the same values as your company. With delegation, it comes down to protecting your Soul Purpose and ensuring that you are working in the areas that create the most value for your business. When you manage people, it's easy to lose sight of that fact. As soon as someone makes a mistake or things aren't done the way you like them done, you say things like; "I just need to do it myself." or "I can't count on anyone." One of the best things that you can do to help delegation is to connect with your team on as deep of a level as possible. What are their goals? What do they think they are great at? What's the next step for their career? Why do they work for you? When you know the answers to these questions, you can feel better about the person you are delegating to. You can also use this information to connect the best people with specific objectives that need to be accomplished in your business. Now you have the best people engaged in the most important work. Listen below for a call that I recently did for a company, Freedom FastTrack, that I do a lot of work for where I can about hiring and delegation tips. While you're here, share the best hiring and delegation tips that you have as well. | 4/23/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Creating The Right Habits In Your Business | You matter a lot to your business. You are the primary driver of the culture and what happens in the business. When I work with a business owner, the first place I start is habits. I want to see how you interact with your business. There are some specific are that we cover when it comes to habits. The first place to start is with beliefs. If you have limiting beliefs that negatively affect your productivity then all the tools in the world won't help you. What are those things you tell yourself that hold you back? How you start your day is also important. Getting your day started on the fast track is important. The right start creates the conditions that you need for success. A couple other habits that are important are your management habits which consists of how you manage your system and what kind of time you spend working on your business. The last habit deals with finances. Understanding them isn't second nature but once you know how to look at your financial statements, you can use them as a growth tool for your business. These are the specific habits that I talk about in this week's podcast. Check out the podcast below and make sure you subscribe in iTunes, to get the latest episodes. Let me know how you create great habits for your business and any other habits that you think are important that I didn't discuss. | 4/19/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Making Planning Easy- Podcast | Sometimes the best things for us are the hardest things to engage in and do. Put planning at the top of that list. Planning doesn't need to be seen as a difficult task for your business. In fact, when done right, planning will make your life easier in four different ways. 1. You can't do it all yourself. When you get good at planning, you realize that you need help and that there are some things in your business that you shouldn't be doing. Rather than focus on what you shouldn't be doing, it's better to look at your top five most important activities. When you know what you absolutely should be doing, then you know what you shouldn't be doing. 2. Get your team involved. Planning is easier when you get the power of feedback and collaboration. The key is to have a team that is working with you and not against you. 3. Use the right metrics. There is a specific process for identifying and using metrics in your business. Once you identify the right metrics, you can use them to get feedback on your business quicker and easier. 4. Take your high level vision and put it into ground level action. You're an entrepreneur, you think big. Now how do you take the big vision and put it into manageable steps. The planning process will help you with that. I cover these details in more depth in this week's podcast so check it out, enjoy, like and comment. | 4/4/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Aligning Your Business- New Podcast | Cue the theme from Welcome Back Kotter because the Your Life, Your Purpose podcast has been resurrected from the ashes. Today I wanted to talk more about aligning your business. Why it's important and what problems that aligning your business solves. Also make sure you check out these recent posts on the subject as well: Success This Year Starts At The Core Of Your Business The Process of Aligning Your Business Want A Stronger Team? Communicate. Enjoy the podcast below. | 3/7/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Building A Business Around Your Soul Purpose | Last week I had the opportunity to be interviewed by financial coach Chris Miles on his monthly client call. The topic was, what do you do with your Soul Purpose once you have an idea on what it is that you can do to create value in the world. Chris is a unique financial coach in that he focuses on an individuals ability to create value in the world which then leads them to the ability to create more wealth. On our call last week, I gave four points that I feel are critical to getting started: 1. Self Understanding- Knowing what your skills are and how you can match those skills up with problems that need to be solved or value that needs to be created. 2. Build a Rep- Are you getting out and letting the world know who you are and what you are exceptional at? 3. Understanding Your End Game- Where do you want to go? It doesn't have to be perfect but do you have an idea? 4. Create Products and Services- Once you have the above things in place and while you have been doing the above things, hopefully you discovered ways to create products and services for your following. You can listen to the rest of the call below. As always, let me know what platform building questions I can answer for you. | 5/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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8 Deadly Sins Of Website Design | Is my website making money? How often do you ask yourself the above question? For most business owners who have enough to worry about. Their website is often a forgotten tool specifically if you don't rely on e-commerce to drive your business. I interview Richard Swart of Aspen Web Services late last year about what business owners can do to improve their website and make money from their website efforts. Richard gave me his 8 Deadly sins of website design. (I also recording this as a podcast which you can listen to below.) Sin #1: Confusing Graphics- We look at a website as a graphical piece but sometimes we forget that it needs to be functional. Too many cute graphics and displays can have the opposite effect. Sin #2: Overwhelming People With Content- You only have a short amount of time to get someone's attention. Giving them too much content on your home page can turn people off who are overwhelmed with what they are seeing. Sin #3: Too Many Choices- Follow me on Twitter. Like me on Facebook. Sign up for my newsletter. What do I do? I see this a ton with websites where they have 10 things they want you to do on their home page. Sin #4: Being Rude- People who are visiting your website are guests and should be treating accordingly. Make sure they know what to do and how to navigate your website. Sin #5: Lying To People- Most small business owners aren't trying to purposely deceive people but sometimes it happens unintentionally. There are also times where it is intentional. Just make sure that when people click on a link that they get what they are expecting. Sin #6: Not Providing Enough Reassurance- You need to reassure your visitors that they came to the right place. Make sure they understand what you do and how you can help them right away. Testimonials are also a great tool here as well. Sin #7: Invasion of Privacy- When you are collecting information from people get what you need and no more. Asking for too much info and people start getting leery. Sin #8: Ignore Your Customer- So your customer signs up for a newsletter or buys a book from you and then you never talk to them again. Once your client engages with you. Engage back and build a relationship not a one sell stand. Your website for your small business can be a money generator, credibility builder and an engagement tool. Take a look at your website and see if you are committing any of the deadly sins of website design. | 4/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Simple Sentence For Business Clarity | How can I describe my business in one simple sentence? Ever been to a networking event or mingling at a party and had that question pop into your head? I think we all have. Being able to describe what problem you are solving or what you aim to achieve in the simplest terms can be a powerful tool for your business. I was in a board meeting for a company that I work with about six months ago and one of the gentleman in the board, Rick Sapio, called this simple statement a "Catalyzing Statement". He gave a few examples of catalyzing statements: Fed Ex – When It Absolutely Positively Has To Be There Overnight— Microsoft Bill Gates – I pitcture a world with a PC on every desktop and in every home – 1975 President Kennedy – We will put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the century. A great statement of clarity for your business allows you to communicate effectively with your internal team as well as any outside partners. This tool comes in handy when you are looking for mentoring help, talking to your clients and building a team. If you can't describe what it is that you do to a prospective job applicant. Unless they are desperate, how likely are they to accept your job? Look at how a simple statement like the one that Zappos has around creating the best customer service possible. Zappos made it their mission to create great customer service, their employees got behind and deliver it every day to their customers. This is how a great statement works. The statement has to stir some emotion in your team and to the people outside of your organization. If you can get people behind what your business is about on an emotional level. Look out. Lots of businesses function in the same manner within their industry what often sets them apart are the emotions that hearing the name of the company evokes. Your business has to back up your big, hairy, audacious goal. If you say you stand for something big then stand for it completely. No shortcuts. no days off. Your company must breath it each and every day. How does your business look? Is it clear what value you deliver? Does it inspire passion? These are the questions you need to ask yourself and your team. This is also a great way to interact with your client base and get their input as well. Once you have the feedback in place then go out and create that simple sentence that can drive your business to success. | 2/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Can Writing Make You A Better Business Owner? | To write or not to write. That's the question. Many business owners that I talk to feel like they don't have time for writing or that it's not important. Writing in and of itself won't make or break your business but it could make you a better business owner. Writing is a great tool for self discovery and for gaining additional clarity about your business. It's also a great way to be social in the social media landscape without being present. Today I wanted to go over some time where it may make sense to write and times where it may not make sense. Sales copy: If you are needing sales copy my advice is to get the help of professionals. You need sales copy that is persuasive and that drives someone to want to pursue a deeper relationship. While you should get a professional to help I don't think that means you wash your hands of the process altogether. I see a lot of business owners have no involvement in the creation of sales materials and web copy. This is a mistake. No one knows your business like you do. No one can speak your customers language like you can (At least I hope that's the case). You can't expect even the best copy writer to nail it on his/her own. Article writing/Blogging: This is something that you should spend time doing yourself. Some people are more gifted than others but writing can definitely be learned and is something that you can improve on. If you need help with article writing, you can certainly get help but make sure that it stays true to your business and the message you want to convey to the public. Book creation: Lots of people need an experienced writer to help them organize a book and polish it up. Writing a book is a great tool for building clarity personally and in your business. Writing a book can help you understand your business offering, who your customer is and where you truly provide the most value. If you aren't involved in this process, you are missing out on this discovery process. Those are just a few of the opportunities you have to get involved in writing for your business. Will it make you a superior business owner? It can't hurt and most likely writing will help you understand your business at a deeper level and show you where you provide the most value in the world. Get your pen out and start writing today. | 1/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Underrated Marketing Tool | Business owners spend a lot of time worrying about bringing in new business and rightfully so. As we sit and worry about these customers we haven't met, we often forget about the customers we already have. Introducing customer service, the most underrated and underutilized marketing and sales tool that a business owner has at his/her disposal. In the 1950s, Peter Drucker said that "there is no business without customers". It seems as if we forget that in this day and age. We have all heard stories of good customer service, good and bad. The big question that so many have is, "why can't businesses get customer service right?" This is good question and it's often a question that we can answer for ourselves. The same people asking the question are some of the same people giving bad customer service in their own business and in their current jobs. When there is a large problem that needs to be solved, we often look at the problem in its entirety and decide that it's too big for us. The reality is that if you want to solve the problem of customer service, follow the advice of the late Michael Jackson and start with the man in the mirror. If you are a business owner, what's your companies' approach to customer service. You do have an approach right? If you are an employee, how do you approach customer service? Here are a few tips for both business owners and employees alike: For Business Owners: Do you outsource your customer service functions including collections? Should you? Do you have a set of articulated standards in place for your business that your team can follow when it comes to service? Are there systems present to put people in a position to succeed? Do you give your team autonomy to solve problems on the spot? For Employees: Do you have a service attitude? Are you thinking about how you can take an additional step with the customer that is unexpected and goes above and beyond? Do you understand what your companies wants with regards to customer service? Those are just a few questions you can ask with regards to service. I think when we change our thought process on an individual level, we can then inspire the collective to follow suit. In the meantime, start kicking ass with your own service and bury the other companies that work in your space. In this day and age, if you want to get the word out about your product/service there isn't better tool than using the people who have already experienced what you have to offer and ensuring that the experience they talk to people about is a good one. What are some examples that you have on great customer service? | 11/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How Do You Filter Your Decisions? | When you start a business one of the hardest things to do is turn down, what we perceive to be, an opportunity. Saying yes to too many things puts us and our business in a position of being stretched thin. How do you overcome this dilemma? Values based decision making. What is values based decision making? Values based decision making is based upon having a set of principles that you stand for as an individual and as a business that help guide the decisions you make personally and professionally. How does values based decision making help you? Focus- How many entrepreneurs do you know that seem to have their hands in everything but don't ever seem to master anything? I know I have been guilty of this and I know plenty of people who struggle in this area. Having values articulated for your business gives you the ability to say "no" to more things so you can say "yes" to the right ones. Time- When you lack focus, your time management suffers. Do you have a hard time completing tasks? Do you miss deadlines or fail to do what you are supposed to do. Values based decisions making in your business allows you to identify and spend your time on those core activities in your business. More Production- Want to create maximum value? Values based decision making helps to make you a more productive person by structuring the activities you do around your passions and wants. In the book, Unique Ability, they make a distinction between what you are very good at and what you are exceptional at. Do you know the difference? Aligning with values helps you be exceptional which then allows you to create more value in less time. Personal- Is family a personal core value of yours? If it is, how does travel and working long hours affect that and ultimately affect your ability to create value in your business. This is not a knock against people who spend time away from your families but if you have values identified and you stand true to them, you will ensure that you don't have to compromise your personal values. When you are aligned with values, you are putting yourself in a position to really affect the world in a positive way by being the most productive person that you can be. If you haven't done so, take some time and brain storm what those values may be personally and professionally. How has values based decision making helped you in the past? PS... Rick Sapio joined us on our membership, 5 Tracks of Wealth to talk about values based decision making. You can watch the clip here. PSS...If you want to listen to the podcast click the play button below. | 10/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Jobs For Life…Insane or Brilliant? | Every once in a while I see an article that sounds so crazy I have to read it immediately. The recent article by Steve Tobak from BNET, Jobs for Life: If It Works in Germany, Why Not America? The article is about how the German company Siemens gave 128,000 of their German workers jobs for life. In the article Tobak wondered if this was insane on the surface. I am wondering the same thing. I can't tell if this is a brilliant move or disastrous. Essentially, it comes down to two competing theories with regards to offering ultimate job security. The people for a move like this would argue that rewarding with loyalty would pay off in the end and that workers who don't have to look over their shoulder all the time and worry about their jobs may work better. Some may indeed work better because of this move. The other side says that giving workers too much comfort is like giving them a permission slip for mediocrity. Everyone would agree that all workers are not the same. Some are better and other are destructive. One area that is near and dear to my heart where you can see job security= mediocrity is with the Major League Baseball umpires. They have a strong union and are able to be tenured just like college professors which essentially guarantees their jobs regardless of how their performance is on the field. I have heard several opinions around the sports world that this is why the officiating in the baseball play offs is so poor. There have been similar criticisms made of other union employees as well. So is the concept of jobs for life brilliant or crazy? Think about any work environment that you have ever been in. You have no doubt worked with some people who were supremely talented and also some people that were so bad that, if it wasn't against the law, you would have killed. Work today is so much about autonomy and creativity that it seems as if we are taking away some incentive to push the boundaries of what's possible in our worlds of work when we give a certain level of comfort. My questions to you are: Can you see this working in America? In what industries do you think this could work? How would you structure something like this? Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic. PS... You can also listen to the podcast below. | 10/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Importance of Strategery | Your business has some specific things that must happen in order for it and you to be successful. You and I know this. The real question is, do you know what those activities are and how do you ensure that your business stays focused on these tasks day-in and day-out? The minute that you say the word "strategic" to business owners, either their eyes start glazing over or they think that anything else you are going to say is some variation of business buzz words that they don't care about. I get that. However when it comes to having strategic objectives for your business, it's important that have these clearly defined and that you and your team are working towards these objectives. So what are strategic objectives? I define strategic objectives as simply the framework that your business creates to highlight the most critical tasks in your business. There should be a handful of these so that you can stay focused. Why are strategic objectives important? We have an epidemic of time wasting in our work culture because of all of the tools that we have that are supposed to help us do things more efficiently. E-mail, smart phones, social media, search engines are here to make our lives easier but can also be time killers if we don't manage them properly. In the book Fake Work, the authors discuss the inability of the average employee to align their work with the most important tasks in their company. There is also too many leaders who aren't communicating these properly if at all. A great way for a small business owner to assess whether or not their work is aligned is in the area of marketing. How often have you gone to a networking event and met tons of potentially great relationships and then failed to call any of them? What about putting together a marketing plan and initiating it? If you are not doing these things you are probably neglecting critical areas of your business. When our teams are properly aligned with strategic objectives. We have teams that are focused on the work that truly makes the company better and the business prospers as a result. You also get an engaged team who is truly excited about the work they do. What are the roadblocks to aligning with strategic objectives? One the biggest roadblocks is getting caught up in non essentials. Particularly e-mail. We tend to think that we need to respond to every interruption that comes our way and we don't. Another roadblock is not clearly defining an end game for your business. Do you have a mission, vision and values? Do you have strategic objectives laid out for you and your team? If not then you aren't going to be as effective. The end game for your business When your team is focused on the most critical areas of success for your business, then you are positioning your business for a great possibility of success. Having objectives is not enough, you must align your team to be working towards them. This will result in better innovation, better service, better clients and a better overall team and business. | 10/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What Is Your Career Built On? | You need a platform that makes it easy to turn your insight into a movement. ~ Seth Godin from the book Linchpin There's a new world of work that exists in today's marketplace. I call it the New Work Revolution. This new world of work starts with understanding and building a platform for yourself that you can work from to create maximum value in the marketplace. What is a platform and is your career built on one that is solid enough? The reason having a platform is becoming so important is that the work environment is changing. The way we create products in the United States has changed as I am sure it has in other nations with similar economies. Unemployment hovers around 9-10% and the jobs that are being created by the government are not the kinds of jobs that the average American is looking to fill. With a changing work environment how can we change the way that people see us and the way that we create value for others. It starts with building the right platform for yourself. It doesn't matter if you work for someone else or if you are a business owner, you need a platform either way. A work platform consists of your passions, purpose, core values, mission, etc. The main message of your platform is who are you and how do you create value in the marketplace. Your platform drives everything you do and guides your decision making. The individuals who are creating massive value in the world have established their platforms before they have started spreading their message. This is a must if you are going to stand firm in your convictions as having a platform means a lot of times that you are taking a stand. Taking a stand means that many people will not agree with your opinion on the matter. Standing strong, in this case, means having the ability to understand fully what you are doing and why. Work has changed. In his book Linchpin, Seth Godin also says that the days of getting paid well to be told what to do at work are ending. Positioning yourself with a platform to create value will allow you to navigate this landscape confidently and effectively. What's your platform? PS... If you are looking to build a platform for yourself, we have created our coaching club specifically for those individuals who want to change the way that they create value in the market. Check out our coaching club to get started in the discussion and to access our platform building tools. | 7/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How Bad Do You Want It? | Taking action has been discovered to be, if not the ultimate, at least one of the top 5 principles for success. Even though we know that taking action is the right call, we still don't take the steps necessary to achieve the results we are looking for. Today I want to dive into your mindset by asking the question: How bad do you want it? From a mindset standpoint there are three main culprits that inhibit our success. Those inhibitors are fear, stories and complexity. Fear is the most recognizable for us because it is immediate and more tangible than other mindset issues. We fear failure and in a peculiar way we fear success as well. The dichotomy between the two fears is mystifying and in some parts cruel. On the one hand we don't want to be rejected so we fear putting ourselves out there. On the other hand what if we are accepted? Then what happens. Now I am scared because I am out in the open and exposed to criticism and scrutiny. This reminds me of the high school guy who wants to ask a girl out but worries that she will say no. Then when he gets the nerve to ask and she says yes, it doesn't get rid of the fear it just shifts to a set of new concerns. What if I am not interesting? What if she thinks I am a bad kisser? What if she laughs at my car? Deeper than fear lies a much harder obstacle to spot and overcome. That obstacle is the stories that we create for our lives that if you were to really examine them just aren't true. These stories are created by negative experiences that happen in our past that we then take on and use it to define us. If you were an unpopular nerd in high school, you may still be holding onto some of the conversations around that experience and they may still be holding you back. You may think that people generally don't like you. You may think that you aren't suited to stand out or that you are not special. The reality is that when we step back and take a look at these stories, we realize that they aren't true for us today and we need to release their hold on us. Another issue that keeps us from taking action is the complexity that we create in our minds about a certain project. This happens to me when it comes to fixing things around my house. Recently I had a situation where my kitchen sink was leaking. It leaked for a few months and my solutions was to put a flower vase underneath the leak and empty it once a week. (This was not a favored move by my better half.) The reason why I didn't fix it is that I had told myself that I don't know anything about plumbing and therefore would be unable to fix this problem. The reality was that when I finally dove in and looked at the problem, it was not nearly as hard as I made it out to be and was able to fix the problem in about 20 minutes time. I let the complexity get in the way of my taking action and in retrospect this was foolish. I wasted tons of time and worry with my band aid solution of the flower vase. These are the mind set issues that keep us from doing the things we know we should be doing to achieve greater success. Take a look at these issues and ask yourself which of these applies to you. It really comes down to how bad you want it? Most of us wait until something bad happens before we make a positive change. Is that going to be your story too? | 7/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Business As Usual Is Dead | While I was getting a coffee during a recent visit to St. George, Utah, a sign from a local business caught my eye. It said that the store needed to close because they didn't get TARP money from the government. The reality that a lot of businesses like Jolley's Boot Town are facing is that it's not business as usual and to survive they can't rely on the government for help. Don't get me wrong, it's a shame when long time local businesses fail. You feel like a piece of your town/city dies with it. As tragic as this is, businesses need to adapt themselves to a changing business landscape. It's not enough to just put up a storefront and run a few ads in the paper and on local TV and think that people will flock to your store. Today, consumers can buy from retailers all over the country. Geography isn't nearly as important as it used to be. So how do business owners take advantage of this? One of the first things to do if your business is struggling in tough times is take a step back and look at your business from a 30,000 ft. viewpoint. Where is there waste? Are there product lines that you have been thinking about adding but haven't? Are there dead product lines that you just need to kill? Are there employees that need to be fired? You get the point, leave no stone left unturned. Another consistent factor with small businesses that have failed in the past couple of years is their stubborn refusal to get active on the web. With customers moving more and more towards making purchases on the web and engaging with each other and the places that they do business with, if you don't have a website for your business, you have no chance to make those sales or get people engaged in your business. Social media is another avenue to explore although not critical but what about creating online content about your particular niche? Most small businesses that fail don't engage in online content creation and their business ultimately suffers for it. We are a social society today. We want to engage with the businesses that we patronize. We get excited when a business engages us online through Twitter or a blog post. Old school businesses like Jolley's have a hard time with this concept. They see conversing with people online as a waste of time. Seth Godin refers to emotional capital in his most recent book Linchpin and how emotional capital is the way that we separate ourselves from other businesses and people. The key is finding your voice and your platform for delivering your message in a manner that works for you. In times when your business is struggling it's time to take hard look at where your business is at currently and how well it is positioned to do business in the current landscape. Don't hold onto antiquated business practices and keep an open mind about what the future holds. Business is constantly changing and evolving. A Taoist principle that comes to mind when I think about this topic is that of keeping yourself formless like water so that you can overcome the different obstacles that arise because you haven't attached yourself to any particular way. The government isn't going to help you do that. Smart, flexible business owners do that for themselves. | 6/16/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Creating In Solitude vs. In A Group | Everyone has a different style when it comes to generating ideas and creating. Developing new ideas and creating new possibilities is a driving force behind today's economy. Knowing that creating and leveraging ideas is important, what keeps us from doing it? The biggest obstacle for creating starts with our mindset. How often do you hear; "I'm not good at that." or "I never have any good ideas." The truth is that we have lots of good ideas, we just don't have a process for filtering those ideas. This brings me to what process we should use for innovating and creating in the marketplace. There's a lot of conflicting information out there about what works best. For every article you hear on the power of brainstorming, you see another article on why brainstorming doesn't work. An important aspect of creation is obviously people. We know that we, as individuals, need to be involved in the process of creating/innovating but when do we get other people involved in our creation process? Creating in solitude definitely has it's value. Zen Habits recently called solitude the #1 habit of highly creative people. I talk a lot in this blog about having a morning ritual that focuses in mind, body and spirit. This is a great time for quiet and to create. Working in a communal setting was listed by Zen Habits as the #2 habit of highly creative people. Working in a group is where I think you take an idea that you have put together and bounce it off the right people to really refine the idea. I know I have had many instances where I have come together with my team and we end of with something even more incredible than when it was first conceived. Use both a solo and team approach to creation and innovating. A challenge that we face is creating the time and space in our lives for solitude. This is why I suggest doing this type of an activity first thing in the morning to limit the distractions. Then use your work from your solo time and bring your best ideas to a group or to people that you enjoy collaborating with. There are going to be some disciplines where it makes more sense to work solo vs. working in a group. Other times the opposite is true. Innovating and creating is about people and the best innovators make time to create in their own space and also know when to get together and refine their ideas with people they trust. What's your creation process? | 6/2/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Bringing Humanity Back To Testimonials | You ever been to a website or visited a sales page or seen an endorsement on the cover a book and wonder, is that real? I know I have and I think a lot of you reading this have experienced that to. The problem with testimonials today is that businesses have gotten sloppy in their use of endorsements for their product or service. We are all too content with the generic phrases such as; "This product/service was great, really informative!" What does that really tell a customer about your product/service? You guessed it, nothing. When we look at testimonials, we want to see authenticity. We want to feel like the person talking about a product/service is a human being. That sounds pretty straight forward right? What can we do as business owners to make our testimonials more authentic? A technique that I recently learned about and have employed with success was from Sean D'Souza. Sean has a book called The Brain Audit that talks about how to create compelling messages as a writer and takes you through a specific process. In that book, Sean touched on testimonials and how to avoid making crappy testimonials. I am not going to get into his entire testimonial process. You can visit his site for more info on that. The testimonial process has one specific step that really brings the humanity back into your testimonial. This specific step is actually the first step in the testimonial process. The step deals with asking your client right off the bat, what specific concerns or issues did they have with getting engaged in your product/service. In other words, were they worried about spending the money? Do they a really busy schedule and didn't feel they had time? Had they used similar services in the past with less than stellar results? As business owners, we focus a lot on the potential outcomes from using our product/service but not enough on the psychology behind why they would or would not buy. We decided to employ this specific step into our own testimonial process for an event that we do. People fly in from all over the country to participate so we knew there were sacrifices involved, we were just ignorant as to what those sacrifices were specifically. In that event, we learned that some of our clients are worried about leaving their kids. One of our clients is currently taking care of their elderly parents and really had a hard time breaking free from that for a couple of day. Another client was worried about a trip that was taking them out of the country and some deadlines coming up in their business. On the surface we have some really authentic testimonials for our workshop which is cool. The real benefits, however, go much deeper than that. We connected with our clients through that process on a much deeper level. We see them with different eyes, that are more compassionate and more understanding. That's really cool. If you have a testimonial process, ask yourself one question. Does it bring out the human side of your product/service? Do your testimonials feel like they were written by human beings? If not, how can you change that? If you aren't getting testimonials, implement a system to start getting them. Your business and, more importantly, your clients will be better for it. | 5/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Want Better Productivity? Start With Soul Purpose | Business owners and people in general look all they have to do in a day and think that answer to their problems lies in just having more time. You can ask all you want but the reality is that you aren't going to get it. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. What makes some people more productive than others? It start with knowing and understanding your Soul Purpose. At the base of productivity is having greater personal clarity. When you have that clarity about not only what it is that you should be doing but also how you should be doing it, you are able to accomplish things that keep your career/life moving forward. We ignore ourselves when we look at productivity. We address the symptoms of our inefficiencies at work without really addressing/curing the root cause. It's not a good idea to do this with regards to our health and the same is true for productivity. If you are struggling with productivity or feel like you are letting the day get away from you more often than not, don't start implementing strategies to fix productivity without looking at yourself in more depth. Having greater clarity of your Soul's Purpose will allow you to then have greater clarity on what you should be doing and how you should be doing it. Understanding Soul Purpose gives you greater clarity in the following areas of your career: Are you in a career where you are passionate and deliver value to the best of you ability? Are you engaging in your chosen field in a way that plays to your strengths? (Are you the kind of detailed person that will put the correct cover sheet on the TPS reports?) Should you jump on that business opportunity or promotion? Should you travel a lot? Are you suited for leadership? What continuing education should you engage in? For example, Is a master's degree going to further my career or am I doing it just say that I did it? What kind of team environment is best for you? Some people thrive in group settings other are completely drained by it? These are some questions that you can answer about yourself in a more concise manner when you really understand your Soul Purpose. Knowing what kind of activities you should be doing and how you should do them is going to put you in a position to maximize productivity. I always thought of myself as an analyzer, someone who could pore through data. I would accept these types of projects and then couldn't figure out why I procrastinated on them so much. I later realized that I actually hate analyzing and doing detail work but for some reason had created a story about myself that I liked it and it just simply wasn't true. It turns out I am somewhere in the middle of obtaining facts. I like to have just the right amount of info to make a decision. No more, no less. In the end, you can see how engaging in this activity slowed my productivity way down because it wasn't something I was fully engaged in even though overall, I loved my job. I thought the problem was not enough time when it was really not enough passion. Sometimes we worry only about time when what we should really be worrying about is how we are spending that time, now and in the future. If you want to be more productive in your careers, start with Soul Purpose as your base. Don't build your career on a shaky platform. Many have tried this and failed. Once you gain that personal clarity, you will be able to better assess where, what and how you should be sharing your talents. Once you get there, greater productivity naturally follows. | 4/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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My Soul Purpose Story | If you would have told me about Soul Purpose five years ago, I may have said something like, "Sounds great, call me when you land back on Earth." When it came to my specific set of talents and abilities. I just never gave it much thought at all. This post is a journey through my Soul Purpose discovery process. When it came to having ability, I knew that there were some things that I did very well. Even easier to pinpoint was the list of things that I didn't do well. ( Isn't that always the case? We are always so good at what we suck at.) The problem is that I didn't value a lot of the things that I did well and so I never bothered to explore them at a deeper level. The reason we do this a lot of the time is because the things we do well come some easy and natural to us that because they are so natural, we think that everyone can do it. We get stuck in this place of thinking that we have no talent, no ability and nothing that distinguishes us from anyone else. Because of this thought process, my career path was that of working for a Fortune 100 company and trying to move up the ranks within that company as fast as I could. When it came to be being an employee at the firm I worked for, I was better than average but certainly not exceptional. I was being promoted but not always as quickly as I would have liked mainly due to the fact that the operation that I ran was not always delivering consistent results. This inconsistency drove me crazy. I couldn't put my finger on it. I will tell you this. I worked at a job for almost 9 years and hated it 75% of the time. I loved it during the extremely high points of my success but was constantly having to pep talk myself and get myself up to go in and work. Mondays were the worst days of my life. During my career I had friends who made comments about why I was working where I was working and those comments just p****d me off. I think they made me mad because I really wasn't sure why I was doing what I was doing. It wasn't really until one my daughters was hospitalized at 3 weeks old with pneumonia that I really got serious about my career and where I was going. At that point I realized that life is short and I should spend it doing what I love to do and what allows me to create the most value in the world. So I quit. I went to work for a smaller firm that allowed me to be more of an intrapreneur and I loved it. I ran projects with a lot of autonomy. During this time I decided to start educating myself on what my skills were and decided that I needed a deeper understanding of what I brought to the table and what I truly loved to do. I took tests like the Kolbe A index and Meyers- Briggs. I read books like Unique Ability. It all started to slowly come together. Clarity of purpose started to manifest itself. I also started spending time in the mornings doing what I call a power hour which consisted of physical, spiritual and mental exercises that helped further my clarity. With this increased clarity I started a business on the side while working at the small firm. Eventually I went out on my own full time. I haven't looked back since. I never considered myself to be an entrepreneur growing up. It's funny how thing's change. Soul Purpose starts with questions and possibilities and then creating a process to develop the possibilities and answer the questions. It's not an easy process and one that I am still working through but it has certainly been worth it. What things do you value in your life? Are you in a position to create the most value for the world? Do you know what your core strengths and abilities are? | 4/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How Can You Do Better? | Ever sat back and asked yourself that question? I'm sure that you have at one point and time. I ask this question today as it pertains to leadership and your role as a leader to get the best out of the people around you. The central question in leadership is how can we do better? When looking at doing better the first thing you need to examine is how you are being as person. Before you can change your actions you have to make a commitment to yourself to change the way you are and also be willing to see your world through a different lens. Leadership can be a challenge whether you are a business owner, a manager or a parent. What's the right balance of support and toughness? How do I get the best out of the people around me? What really made me think about this topic with regards to business was at a workshop that we run for business owners. We spend a lot of time talking about relationships and the subject of employees always comes up. Once you get business owners talking about their employees, you are likely to hear some of the following statements. My employees are lazy. My employees don't seem to care. Why can't my employees just get it? Young kids today are just bad workers. These are just a few of the comments that you will hear. The truth is that maybe their employees really aren't doing that well and there really are bad employees. However I never once hear business owners talk about how they can do better with regards to leading their teams. I never hear them ask, "What am I doing wrong?" It's always their team. Penelope Trunk wrote an interesting piece for BNET on how employees need to approach their work. I respect the article and the place that it was written from as it talks about the employee taking responsibility for the direction of their careers. I agree with that but I will say this, leaders are leaders for a reason. Employees are employees for a reason. Leaders are supposed to handle things better than their employees that's why they are in the position they are in in the first place. If employees were that good at holding themselves accountable, they would already be a business owner or a leader somewhere. The reality is that they are probably not good at doing this currently. So this puts a lot of responsibility on the leader and it starts with self analysis and a willingness to accept criticism. If you can continually ask yourself what you can do better as a leader for your people, you will drive much better results for your individual team members as well as your organization as a whole. How can you do better? You can ask this of yourself as a parent, as a manager, as a business owners and even as an employee. If you keep asking yourself this question and don't allow yourself to filter the results, there's no question in mind that you will be better for yourself and put yourself in a position to get the best out of people around you. | 4/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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How To Create Content That People Want- Part 1 | You already know that getting found on the internet is important. What a lot of us struggle with is engaging readers/clients once they get to our site. Creating content is one thing. Creating good content is another story altogether. So how do we create content that readers/clients want? Today we are going to start with how your material is presented from a look and feel standpoint. I ran across on article from the Search Engine Blog that got me thinking about this. The article is titled, SEO 101 - part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content. We often get so caught up into the different tricks that we can employ to get people to our site that we often forget about the most important aspect, which is having content that readers want and presenting it to them in a way that engages them. The point of the Search Engine Guide article that I want to most talk about is just in the simple layout of your blog. If you do nothing else, start there. How much thought are you putting into your headlines? Headlines are a good place to start because it's typically the first thing that someone sees. Headline should be something compelling that draws people in. Without a compelling headline, many readers may not take the time to even look at your article. There are several different approaches to writing a headline that you can use. Copyblogger gives you some examples of different headlines that you can read about on their blog. Beyond the headline, take a look at how your material is presented. Is it presented in a clean, easy to process manner? There is not one way to present your content that will please every reader (we will talk more about this in a couple of days). You can start with utilizing pictures to enhance the readability of blogs. The use of white space is also very important. There are a lot of articles out there that seem to just steam roll the reader with their content and for most it's too overwhelming and they don't read it. Relevant links in your article are also important in your posts. You should try and link back to past relevant content as much as possible. Linking to other people's content is a great way to enhance the readability of your content as well. Take a look at your content and ask in what ways can your content be enhanced to increase your readability. Pay attention to what other sites are doing that you like to read as well. Looking at your content layout is a simple place to start. | 4/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Is Your Business Building Relationships? | When you build an online presence in the online community, that's just the start. Truth is, when you build it, they don't just come. You have to go out and actively bring people to you. Once you move to a neighborhood, you have to figure out what it takes to be a good online neighbor. Communication is the key. Are you sharing? Is your content good? Do you consistently update? Do you respond in a timely manner? Do you actively engage your community and build new relationships? Are you looking for ways to build great relationships with your clients? These are all good questions to ask yourself to assess where you are at with regards to your online relationship building. Building relationships in person is a much easier task than building them in a virtual setting. Virtual relationships take extra work and extra thought. For a business owner it come down to one thing, helping people win. Search Engine Guide has a post that I think is great in breaking down the philosophy of successful online relationship building. The post shares the following quote from Pete Vossler: People are insecure; give them confidence. People want to feel special; compliment them. People desire a better tomorrow; show them hope. People need to be understood; listen to them. People are selfish; speak to their needs first. People are emotionally low; encourage them. People want to be associated with success; help them win. I think that all of these points are important but the last point about helping people win really stuck out to me. In reality, building relationships is about getting creating value for others. I doesn't have to come in the form of money. It can come in the form of feelings for instance. When you create an online presence for your business, you are creating a platform to help a wider range of people be successful than you could be having just a local presence. There is a lot of power in that but we tend to take it for granted in today's day and age. We take it for granted by not having an online presence at all by thinking that the web is over-saturated and that we can't provide anything new to the space. We take it for granted by not creating content on a regular basis or by failing to create new content at all. There are several great examples of businesses interacting with their community and creating some positive results: Dogfish Head Brewery Craft Ales- (I always like to spot light a beer company doing it right.) They have built their business on giving their customers what they want. Sam Calagione, president and founder says this about using social media with his business: "Social media has leveled the playing field...We can have intimate conversations with customers." Mashable had a recent article that talks about businesses using social media right. They give several examples of what companies are doing to engage their people. Houlihan's restaurant was recently featured in a recent edition of Fast Company for their efforts in using social media to increase profitability. The restaurant change went ahead and built their own social media outlet to communicate with their clients. You don't have to do something exactly like the examples above but at the very least, they should give you some great ideas. To be a good neighbor on the web, we have to be willing to create good content at a consistent level and not take our relationships for granted. It's also about going out and actively looking to create new relationships as well. We have to keep in mind that the reason our businesses have an online presence is to create value in the marketplace and help people win. Is your online presence doing that? | 3/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Hiring Challenges That Small Businesses Face | Making hiring decisions for your small business can be a nerve racking affair. How do I find the right people? Where do I go to look? How do I approach them in the interview without sounding desperate? These are all questions that we have asked, or will ask, during the course of running our businesses. It's challenging to be a small business owner who has a business that is growing and needs the right people to get the business to the next level. As a small business owner, you probably don't have an extensive budget with which to bring in top talent. That means you have to be creative. Beyond salary, what do you have to offer? Do you have a compelling vision? Is your company positioned for massive growth? Do you have an opportunity to make a wide spread difference in the community? Great (and authentic) answers to these questions can be the deciding factor on whether or not you will bring on the talent you are looking for. If your business is up and coming, it stands to reason that there are also some up and coming talent who are looking for the opportunity that your business has to offer. How creative you will be in this process is critical. Crafting a creative offering is just one challenge however. Another challenge that you face as a small business owner is the competition in the marketplace. You are not only competing with large businesses to land talent, you are also competing with other small businesses just like you who are also looking for ways to creatively position themselves in the minds of the talent pool. As a business owner, you have to figure out how to separate your business and what you have to offer from everyone else. If being creative and working in the competitive landscape of hiring talent isn't hard enough, as a business owner, you also have to find time to participate in the search for talent. You have to do some research on where to find the talent. You need to work on crafting wants ads for talent. You have to know what kind of person you are looking for. All of these things take precious time that you don't necessarily have. Understanding the challenges that you face as a small business owner when looking for talent will help you develop strategies to overcome them. These practices will then create a powerful landscape for your business to hire talented people and allow your business to thrive. | 2/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When Should You Keep Your Day Job? | It feels a little weird for me to be writing about keeping your day job on a blog about small business and entrepreneurship. But I do think there are some scenarios where you can build a business that you own without putting all your chips in the middle so to speak. I care about business owners structuring their business in a way that works for them and the question of when should you keep your day job is important. Everyone has heard or seen the romanticized version of the entrepreneur, the rugged individualist who overcomes all of the odds to build a successful business and becomes a millionaire. He/she puts in long hours and years of hard work and has built something that he/she owns. Great story. Or there is the other story that people like to tell about entrepreneurs. The story of the fortunate entrepreneur who just happens to be at the right place at the right time. His/her success more a product of luck and a series of fortunate circumstances vs actual work. A lot of us for some reason hope this is true and that success will just fall into our lap one day. The truth is that running a business probably falls somewhere between the two opposing visions that people have about successful entrepreneurs. It is hard work but that hard work puts you in a position to get some breaks. Before I get into why you may consider keeping your day job while building or running a business, I do want to say that I am not talking about doing some work from home or some online get rich quick scheme. Those opportunities don't exist. People who are successful building online businesses work their ass off to make them work just like everyone else. Even if they have a success formula, chances are it's not going to equate into the kind of success that the individual who is teaching the formula had. This is nothing against that type of business but I think that unless you feel your Soul Purpose revolves around online commerce, you should not waste your time. I read Hugh Macleod's book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity a few weeks ago and the concept of keeping your day job did resonate with me as I did see the wisdom in this advice. Like any piece advice, there is not a one size easy fit for every single individual. I worked in sales for a number of years and I can say that if you are a commission sales person, you practically have a business even though you don't have any input of the companies' decisions, you do control your earnings to a certain extent and it requires a lot of work physically, emotionally and mentally. It would be hard to be a salesperson and be able to run a business on the side. With that being said, I do think there are a number of industries that would work nicely with running a business on the side. Any kind of creative business is a no brainer. If you write, design, build websites, code websites, paint etc all of these types of businesses are easier to run on the side as you can do this on project to project freelance basis. It's also easier to run a business on the side if you have the kind of job that when you leave, your done for the day and you don't have to be responsible for your work outside of your work time. Also, it may make sense to keep your day job if you really enjoy it and it gives you some freedom to do projects on the side. These are just a couple of scenarios that I thought that really make sense when it comes to keeping your day job. Obviously there are financial considerations that come into play here as well. What are some other scenarios where you think this makes sense? Does this even make sense to do this? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. | 1/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Social Media is Dumb and A Waste Of Time— Pt. 2 | In case you missed yesterday's post, I talked about getting your small business involved in social media through blogging. If you are going to do one thing with regards to social media, that is where I feel you will get your most bang for your buck. Once you start blogging and assert that social media is not dumb and a waste of time, you may want to get more involved with social media. This is the point where business owners get curious about sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. What are the best social media outlets for your business. That's really up to you and your clients to decide. You can look for networks that are favored by your industry, you can look at what your clients are using, you can look at what networks may be the most appropriate for your business. Here's a breakdown of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn: Twitter: I have said this before but when I first signed up for Twitter, it seemed ridiculous to me. I just didn't get it. I really think that Twitter doesn't make sense until you start expanding your network with people who are really using it. The main complaint that I get from small business owners about Twitter revolves around this same lack of understanding that I had. What's great about Twitter is that it gives you access to a whole group of people that you would typically not have access to. It's a great opportunity to meet new people, run across great ideas and share your own great ideas. I will avoid getting on a soap box about how to best use Twitter or any other social networking platform for that matter. I am certainly not a social media expert but I do use it on a daily basis. What I will do is share how I use Twitter so that it works for me. The first thing I do with Twitter is use it to update my followers on information that is relevant to small business owners. Typically I do this by sharing other people's content that I run across on a daily basis. The second thing I do is use to expand the reach of my own information that I create. Beyond content, I use Twitter as a connection tool. I am not so much of a conversationalist on Twitter itself but I do try to set up 1-2 calls/meetings a week with people that I connect with on Twitter. The connection aspect has been a great way to find mentors as well as create synergies with people to move my business forward. One word of caution about Twitter, be careful what you say, you don't want to have this happen to you. Facebook: For me Facebook is more of a friendship site. I don't link my Twitter account to it and I don't really pursue a lot of business there. However, that doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't use Facebook for business. I have made great professional connections through Facebook. I have also seen business owners really use the fan page function of Facebook to get communicate and share with their clientele on a regular basis. Alex Mandossian has done a great job with this through his Productivity Strategies platform. They post content regularly and seem to have created an active and engaged following through their fan page. You can certainly pick up some tips for how Alex has structured his page to get ideas for your own business. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the more buttoned up and professional of the major social networking sites. LinkedIn provides a lot of unique features for its users. One of my favorite features is the ability to recommend people in your network. This is a great way to share with others the great things that people in your network are doing. I also enjoy the question and answer feature that allows you to weigh in on questions that other LinkedIn users have about various topics. You can also integrate Slide Share into your profile which is a great tool for my graphic and web design business. As a business owner there is plenty to like about LinkedIn. Those are the 3 main sites that I use regularly. | 1/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Do You Own a Business or A Job? | When I finally read the book E-Myth by Michael Gerber it reinforced for me the importance of building systems and processes for your business so that you own a business and not a job. Michael gives some specific advice for ensuring that your business ... | 1/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Benevolence of Confrontation | I know it's not often that you hear confrontation referred to as a gift but when used properly it is a powerful management tool. If you are in any type of leadership position, you know there are times when confrontation is essential to your business. So with all the talk about avoiding confrontation, why is confrontation good? We spend a lot of time talking about how to avoid confrontation. On the flip side, we rarely talk about how to confront people to create positive outcomes in the workplace or in your business. We fear confrontation so that we don't hurt people's feelings or rock the boat. When it comes down to it, it's much easier to be the "so-called" nice guy/gal rather than be the jerk. However, let me run you through a couple of scenarios and you can judge for yourself which you would prefer. Scenario #1 You have been working with a company for a couple of years. You aren't sure what direction your career is headed but no one has really talked to you about doing poorly so you figure that no news is good news. The only feedback you get is the occasional, hollow sounding, "good job". Your manager is a real "players coach". He gets along with people really well and everyone likes him. In your mind, you think he is the best manager you have ever had. Always agreeable, always nice, always telling you that you are doing great. Then one day your manager calls you into his office. You see the look on his face and know there is a problem even though your manager is having a hard time spitting it out. As it turns out your performance has been below standard and the company needs to let you go as a result. When you ask for specifics, you get a laundry list of things that you have been doing wrong that no one has mentioned up until now. Unfortunately, you have no time to correct it because you're fired. All you get now is a sorry from your manager and box to put your stuff in. Nice. Scenario #2 You start with a new firm and you are a little nervous as is everyone who starts in a new position. Your boss sits you down day one and lays out expectations that they have for you and she also asks you for your goals that you want to attain with the company. Day 2 you fall short of the assigned expectations for that day and your new boss comes over to your desk after the day is over to see how you did. She hears how you fell short of expectations and makes you stay that night until you hit the expectations that you have been given. You drive home that night looking at the hour and a half of overtime that you just worked and can't believe what a hard ass your boss was on just your second day! A funny thing happens to you over the course of the next year. Since you know the score very well and what's expected of you on a day-to-day basis, your performance has been getting better and better. In fact, you not only get a raise but you also hear that if you keep it up, you are in line for a promotion. Your boss isn't always buddy buddy with you but she has you on track to hitting your goals. These 2 scenarios certainly seem extreme but as a leader the difference between someone succeeding or failing in your organization is your leadership. How you confront poor performance is an important part of great leadership. In the end, who would you rather the work for? The nice guy who helped you get fired or the manager that isn't afraid to draw a hard line because they aren't willing to compromise your success? The above scenarios have varying degrees to them for sure. These scenarios can also be used in your personal relationships, parenting etc. It all comes down to creating the right conditions in your life as well as other people's lives. Confrontation allows you to not only be more successful but it also allows for the people around you to be more successful also. You are able to create better teamwork and come up with better solutions to problems. | 12/30/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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One Simple Personal Inventory Task for The Upcoming Year | Productivity is not just about systems and getting tasks accomplished. It's more about where you spend your time and the specific tasks that you accomplish. One simple personal inventory task that you can implement for the coming year is to identify your most critical tasks and also the time waster/less important tasks that you need to stop doing altogether. This is something that should take you maybe an hour to complete and once it's done, will help you in your goal setting and planning for next year. The first step is to look at what tasks that you could engage in that would ensure personal success. This could be in any area of your life: financially, family, career, business, you name it. Whatever your top 5 core values are, game plan around them. This is important as we often know what tasks are important but we don't commit them in writing and put a plan together for how we are going to achieve them. We just assume that because they are in our mind, that's good enough. When you have your important tasks laid out for yourself, then take out a piece pf paper and write down every activity/person that exists in your life that is a time waster or that you have identified as tasks you don't want to do. If you aren't sure if a task falls in this category then write it down anyway because it probably does belong. Go through each activity and ask the following questions: Is it a task that you can eliminate entirely? If not, how can you reduce the amount of time spent on the activity? Do you need to hire someone to take care of the tasks that you can't get to or don't do well? Are there people you need to cut out of your life that are dragging you down? Is there a system that may exist that would allow you to handle the task more efficiently? Is there automation that exists in the form of technology that would allow tasks to be handled in a more time efficient manner? This simple inventory can make a big difference for you next year. We have all fallen victim to time wasters (Social media, e-mail, talking at the water cooler etc.) that we can manage better. We all get stuck trying to handle the many tasks that we are responsible for when we should get help to manage them. Take some time in the next couple of weeks to do this and get your upcoming year started in a more productive and efficient manner and prosper in ways that you didn't know were possible. | 12/18/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Best Way To Influence Others | Loss of mindfulness is why people engage in useless pursuits, do not care for their own interests, and remain unalarmed in the presence of things which actually menace their welfare. Buddha Influence is a critical piece for small business owners. The sooner they can get some traction with the public and start building some visibility, the better your chance at building a successful business. Building influence and reach is tough despite all of the tools that are available. The best way to influence others and expand your reach starts with one simple piece. The piece that I am referring to is to have personal clarity, or a better way of putting it is to know what you stand for. When it comes to gaining clarity, unfortunately it's not a matter of a light switch being turned on and us no longer being in the dark. Gaining clarity is more like a slow decent out of a dark cave. Every step gets you closer to being in the light. To get yourself on the right path towards that clarity light, we must have daily discipline and practice that allows us to discover more about ourselves and get a better understanding of what we stand for. In the book Siddhartha, it recounts the story of Siddhartha Gotama's own quest for enlightenment. His quest for enlightenment took 6 years of immersing himself into the practice of self discovery before he was known as Buddha, The Enlightened One. The harsh reality for a lot of small business owners is that there is not a lot of time for you to be able to take a sabbatical in order to do this self discovery. We have to become little Buddhas on the fly doing it while worrying about taking care of our families and paying bills. This doesn't mean that discovery is impossible, it just means that we have to be more intentional with our behaviors. The good news is that a little bit of understanding of what you stand for will put you ahead of most people who just live their lives hoping that this knowledge will fall into their lap one day. Once you have attained greater knowledge of what you stand for, you will be more influential in the conversations you have with others. You will gain this influence for two reasons. The first reason is obviously because you will be able to more confidently articulate what it is that you are looking to do in the world and what you stand for. Because of the scarcity of confidence in our lives, people tend to be really impressed by the presence of a confident individual. They will remember you because of it. The second reason has to do with your own self esteem. When you have more knowledge of who you are, you stop worrying so much about who you are not. This translates to confidence as well and also allows you to have meaningful conversations with people without having to prove yourself to them with your words. Better connections with people equals a more profound impact on those people you connect with. If you want to expand your reach and be more influential then start by knowing and understand what it is that you stand for. Don't stand for many things, stand for just one and relentlessly pursue it. This is the first and best step to making your mark on the world and creating your position of influence for the masses. | 12/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Myth of Talent | Talent is a concept that we hear a lot about in our lives. Talent is also an area that can be a sore spot for people as they beat themselves up over a perceived lack of it. For all the talk of talent, there have been some interesting studies on the subject and some good books that have come out recently on whether or not having talent is a myth. Last year I saw an interview on Charlie Rose with Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor at Large for Fortune magazine, who wrote a book titled, Talent is Overrated. In the interview and the book, Mr. Colvin talks about the idea that we have of talent and how this concept of talent has never been proven despite all of the research that have on genes and in other areas. In fact he goes on to discuss how this idea has been proven to be untrue. In the interview, he goes on to discuss famous people who have achieved at high levels and how it took them a certain amount of time to reach the stage of their careers where they started making a significant difference in their chosen industry. The myth of talent that currently exists hamper our own personal development. When we don't excel at something that is obvious to us, we discount ourselves by saying that we don't have any talent to offer the world. It's hard for us to see the forest from the trees regarding our abilities. As individuals, we get hung up on talent rather than discovering and expressing our Soul Purpose. The myth of talent is so powerful that it overpowers our road to discovery of Soul Purpose. In America, talent is the easy road. Talent is sexy and glamorous. Self discovery, on the other hand, is hard. Self discovery takes effort on our part to do. Self discovery is that new agey friend who we like but that we also think is crazy sometimes. The myth of talent has us believe that talent allows us to just do things effortlessly without any work at all because we are just "born with it". This myth has hurt our ability to value ourselves and our gifts properly as well as kept us from working to achieve at the highest level possible. What is your experience with talent? How many people have you come accross that swear they have no unique talents and gifts? If you are like me, you have run accross several people like this. The exciting thing is that everyone has a Soul Purpose and everyone has abilities that can be used to create value in the world regardless if they believe that they do. It comes down to getting past old notions that we perceive as truth. This is the case with regards to talent and why the myth hurts us today. It's time to stop selling ourselves short and be the kind of people that we want to be. | 11/25/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Power of One Goal | I was doing some reading last week and came across a great piece by Zen Habits that gave 16 Ways To Get Motivated When You're In a Slump. The key point in staying motivated that the post makes is their first point which is to focus on one goal. There is a lot of power in being able to have that singular focus. The reason that this post resonated with me right now is that I feel that I have personally been in violation of the one goal rule. I took a step back and looked at some of the different ventures that I am involved in and wondered to myself how I had gotten in the position that I currently stood. I realized that if you aren't careful, it's really easy to overload yourself with projects and ventures as an entrepreneur. This brings me to the topic of one goal. Success stories begin with this concept. You hear of people and organizations who are successful because they have that laser focus on one goal that they want to achieve. You don't hear of people like Bill Gates or Lance Armstrong being successful at multiple things at the same time. They may have success in one arena and then once they have gotten as far as they can (or want to) with that arena, they move onto something else. Entrepreneurs have a hard time with staying focused on one goal typically because of money. We figure sometimes that the more things that we are involved with, the more of a chance we will have at stumbling upon success. The problem with the many irons in the fire mentality is that it never works out to the kind of financial and business success that we are looking for in the first place. In the end we master nothing and then end up starting over. There is a lot of power in one goal for the simple fact that it's simple. One goal allows us to avoid over-complicating our lives and gives us the space to focus on that one goal that we feel is most important. The power ultimately lies in our ability to master that goal that we have and when we master something, we are able to create the highest potential value in the marketplace for our clients. What's your one goal? | 11/18/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 Components of Your Marketing Plan | Small business owners don't put together a business plan let alone a marketing plan but if you ask these same business owners what their #1 concern with their business has to do with marketing and sales. I am not sure why we don't put marketing plans together. Maybe it's apathy, laziness or just the hope that the problem will work itself out on its own. A good marketing plan can be broken down int0 4 main components. Assess Your Business The first thing that you need to do to put together your marketing plan is take a look at where your business is. If you have a business plan put together then most of your questions have been answered. Some questions you ask in this phase and information you have put together are: Market research- how much do you know about the market for your business. You customer- What do they value? How do they want to be communicated to? Who is your customer? Mission, vision and values- You have to know where your business is going and why. Target market- what niche can you excel in? The more specific, the better. USP- What makes our business different Who do I know? Budget- what can you set aside for marketing Framework In the framework, this where you set your parameters. What are your goals with your marketing, short term and long? How long do you work with a client? How long does it take to get a new client? What's my budget? What channels will I use to market (social media, blogging, SEO, PPC etc) Plan In this phase you start outlining specifics. What segments do you have in your client base? How will you bring each one along in the buying process? Will you do a free newsletter and then offer a $39 product? What channels are you going to use to get them? What ones are you passionate about? Don't use a marketing channel that you hate and if you hate all online marketing channels, hire someone who loves them. Put testing into your plan. What prices work best? What channels are working and what aren't? Evaluate We just talked about testing and that is important in this phase. It's important that you have a way to track how each channel, that you are marketing from, is performing. Make sure that you have a set time that is frequent where you can evaluate your marketing efforts. Putting together a marketing plan is a great way to really discover some great things about your business. You will find out who your customer really is, what your offering really is and what channels work best to distribute your message. Get your plan in place today with these 4 components in mind. | 11/11/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Entrepreneurial Curse of Knowledge | When you initially start a small business, you wear many different hats to keep things going. As your small business grows, you can't do all of the things inside of your small business as you used to be able to. This is a great thing. The next step is to start hiring/building a team to help you run your business. The challenge is that a lot of entrepreneurs aren't initially strong at the management aspect of their business. One condition that I see a lot of entrepreneurs suffer from is the curse of knowledge. We have all worked for or with someone who suffered from the curse of knowledge. This is the boss/entrepreneur who assumes that everyone clearly understands their complete vision after talking with them for five minutes or assumes that you know what they are thinking just because you work there. Even though I had experienced the curse of knowledge many times, it was articulated to me in a concrete manner by the book Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. In the book they give an example of a test that was run where they had one person tap a song that they had in their head on a table. While this person was tapping out their tune, another person sits there and tries to guess the tune that is being tapped. Rarely did the listener guess the right tune much to the frustration of the tapper. The tapper couldn't understand why the listener didn't get it. It seemed so obvious to the person in charge of tapping the tune. This is the same plight of the leader/entrepreneur. The vision in our mind is so clear that we think that everyone just gets it. In order to build high performing teams for your organization, it's important to get past the curse of knowledge so that you are able to get everyone associated with your business, whether it be internal or external team members, on the same page and driving towards a common goal. Business owners who are able to do this find that their business is able to get high results much faster and easier than business owners who ignore this. What tips can you give for articulating the vision of your business? How has this worked for you in the past? | 11/4/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why Your Small Business Does Not Need a Bailout | I have read a ton of articles recently on what the current administration is planning on doing to "bail out" small businesses which have been hit so hard in this recession. The question is, does your small business really need a bail out? To start, I consider myself to have fairly reasonable views politically. (Don't we all?) With that being said, I may not agree with everything that President Obama does but I don't think he is knowingly trying to create the 2nd coming of the Third Reich. In fact if any of us ever completely agreed with a president I don't know what we would do. In the case of his plans to infuse capital into small businesses, I appreciate the spirit of the message but not the tactics used to employ them. The issue I have with this is two fold. The first issue is that the current administration apparently forgot about what just happened to the housing market. This is with regards to the proposal to funnel money at a reduced cost to community banks and credit unions. Sounds great right? Except that cheap cost of funds was the same thing that helped kill the mortgage industry as banks lost their minds. The real issue with the plan is that not only are banks getting money at a reduced rate, they are also required to lend that money specifically to small businesses. If I am a bank president, I am positive that I don't like being told how to lend my money for my bank but in this case what does the bank have to lose? They have no skin in the game on this deal. They borrow the money for cheap and then if the loans don't work out, which a lot of them wont, they will just say that the government made them lend the money. What were they to do? This is the same thing that we did with mortgages. Cheap money+regulation that encouraged more people to be home owners=epic fail A message to the small business owner: If you are looking for a bail out or are angry because corporations are getting all of the bail out money, get over it. This is no different than any other time. An 80% failure rate in the first 5 years historically for small business tells me that times have always been tough for small business owners. This just didn't develop over the past couple of years. Looking for a bail out, to me, shows a lack of leadership. You're telling your organization that you can't solve the problems within your organization. Waiting and thinking about a bail out just keeps you farther from finding the solution. Leadership means facing tough times and asking what your organization can do to overcome. Ultimately, there are root causes to a businesses problems that more often than not don't include a lack of capital. Infusing money into your business without understanding what the real reasons are that your business lacks capital is essentially throwing good money after bad. The proposition is risky at best. I firmly believe that the problems that exist within small business today can be solved without the governments help. Somewhere within your organization lies the answers to the questions that you seek. Now it's time to get dig deep and start looking for the solutions to make your business a winner. What do you think small businesses can do to help themselves? | 10/28/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The One Thing You Don’t Know About Yourself That Others Already Do | The underlying theme of this blog is based on the powerful concept of Soul Purpose. When it comes to understanding our strengths , it seems to be one area that we really suck at figuring out, until it's too late. Knowing our strengths is the one thing that everyone else already has figured out about us long before we ever do. Maybe this just happened to me but I have a feeling that it has happened to most of us at some point. I also still hear a disturbingly high number of people who suggest to me that they don't have any kind of special and unique talent. The reason why I think that so few people recognize their abilities is because we haven't designed a system for this discovery. The system that is currently used is called school. But school falls short due to the fact that there is no outside analysis on a student's gifts. It's up to the student to figure out his/her passions and strengths. The problem with leaving this up to the individual to discover is that our gifts and abilities come so easy and natural to us that we fail to identify them as special because we think anyone can do what we do. Therefore we think there must be some other type of complex gift that we possess that have not yet discovered. The reason I bring this up is that knowledge of self is a vital component to starting and running a successful business operation. Too many business owner don't understand themselves well enough and trap themselves in an operation that is better suited to someone else. Understanding your gifts and abilities as an individual allows you to create your operation with your specific skills in mind. This is the first step to long term business success. | 10/21/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Business Of You- A Lesson in Branding | At the start of a business venture, there are a lot of things to consider. Some of the considerations revolve around market research, putting together a business plan, assembling a team among other things. The one area that doesn't get as much consideration is you and what you bring to the table. You are the key to your companies' initial brand. As I said in yesterday's post, how well you manage the internal aspects of your business will dictate how positively the public perceives your business. In the beginning of a companies' life cycle, the business owner is the foremost dictator of how things play out in their business. This is why when you consider your companies brand, you identify concisely what you want to be known for. Once you have done that, you can then identify what you personally bring to the table. Start by looking at your strengths, your weaknesses and what resources you bring to the table. One of the personal assessment tests that I took a couple of years ago was the Kolbe A index. This assessment breaks down 4 categories: Fact Finder, Follow Through, Quick Start and Implementation. It scores you on how heavily you rank in each category and there is no right or wrong to the assessment it just shows how you get things done and how you process information. One thing I have found with entrepreneurs is they tend to score high in the "Quick Start" category which means they don't take a lot of time to think about moving forward on an idea which can be a great asset for an entrepreneur. While they tend to take action quickly I have noticed that entrepreneurs aren't "Follow Through" people. Again this isn't good or bad it just shows how you do things. The follow through aspect is the most tricky for entrepreneurs. Because they don't normally have the attention span to see things to completion, things always fall through the cracks. They don't return calls or e-mails on time, they are frequently unorganized and unprepared for important meetings, communicate poorly and most importantly activities that need to be accomplished seem to pile up. These areas affect customers, vendors that do business with you, partnerships and employees. Ultimately being poor in these areas affects your brand as it starts to break the trust that you are trying to build with these different groups. This is why I mentioned putting a list together that identifies strengths and weaknesses. Look at where you are weak and then figure out what personnel or system needs to be in place to make up for your deficiencies in this area. The Kolbe test is one great resource for helping you hire the right team. A common mistake that I see business owners make is hiring an assistant to help them with follow through and then you find out that the assistant isn't strong in follow through either. Math is still the only area I have seen where 2 negatives can become a positive. There are resources to help you create a great image for your company and insure that your weaknesses don't become your firms weaknesses and ultimately cripple your brand in the process. What resources have you been able to use to ensure that your company operates smoothly and your weaknesses aren't exposed? | 9/23/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Fallacy Of “The Path of Least Resistance”- Blogging Edition | Bootstrapping, creativity, maximizing resources...All of these things describe how a business owner survives in their initial stages of business. However, there is a fine line between being resourceful and not preparing yourself for the long term. Blogging is one of those areas where small business owners try to cut corners and travel the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, small business owners learn the hard way that, in some cases, the path of least resistance is a fallacy. It seems like I have been getting tons of questions about blogging lately and a lot of it is coming from inside my own house. My wife has a business and she started blogging a while back on free hosting blog service. She hadn't really added content consistently but she wanted to start doing it more and asked me what I thought she should do. I told her she should redo her blog and self host her blog if she was really going to get serious about it and use it as a business tool. My wife was very hesitant to do this. It wasn't because she couldn't do it. It really boils down to wanting to do it. When you don't enjoy something, in this case technology, it's extremely painful to do it. Unfortunately as a business owner there are things that we have to do that we don't like. To make a long story short, I helped my wife set up her blog and got it up and running. The funniest part of the process was looking at the glazed over look in her eyes as I walked her through the process. In the end she is appreciative of the customization that is available to her on her new site. We often try and cut corners on things especially when we don't like doing them. Sometimes cutting a corner makes sense but it's important to think your decision through and assess the long term consequences of today's actions. Blogging is no exception. It has become an important tool for small business owners to build their platform on and should not be taken lightly. | 9/16/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Difference Between The Successful and Unsuccessful | Success in life is a hot topic. People are so obsessed with unlocking the key to success that a huge self help movement was created around the subject to assist people in taking control of the lives they supposedly lost. What really is the difference between successful and unsuccessful people? This particular topic has been on my mind recently due to the fact that I have been reading Geoff Colvin's excellent book, Talent is Overrated. In it, the author talks about what really separates high achievers from average performers. One thing that I found particularly interesting is in the mindset that average achievers have around how success is achieved. Average achievers tend to think that success happens because someone is incredibly gifted, has a flash of brilliance or finds lightning in a bottle. The reality is that high achievers can point to having a plan, working diligently on that plan and then realizing success after years of deliberate practice in their chosen domain of expertise. What it really comes down to is planning and execution. You set the path that you feel inspired to travel and then you figure out what disciplines you need to walk the path and practice those disciplines daily. The self help industry has made millions on the premise that you can be successful through some easy, step by step method to living the life of your dreams. Just because someone else was successful utilizing a system in no way actually means that you are going to realize the same success. The gurus success typically has more to do with who they are than the system that they used. The great news and maybe the bad news is that your success also depends on you. No one else is going to be successful for you. It takes diligently planning and diligent execution on an individual level to make that high level of success possible. What are you keys to success? What do you do to maintain success? | 9/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Measuring Results Starts With Clarity | Measuring results is important for any organization to have long term sustainable success. Before you can understand what results you need and why, you need to make sure that you understand your business at its' core. Before you mearsure results, you mist have clarity in place. I have already talked about why mission, vision and values are important to your business. They really are the foundation for everything that you do and your results are no different. Many small business owners wander ahead with their business without understanding the fundamental questions about their business. Questions such as: Why do I exist? Where do I want to go? What's most important to my business? Knowing these questions will then allow you to create the results that will make the answers to the aforementioned questions a reality for your business. To be sure, your business can have success without having solid clarity behind it...in the short term. Businesses who have success without defining mission, vision and values do one of two things. They either realize that to sustain the success, they are going to need to understand their business better because they aren't sure why they were successful or they end up failing because they can't duplicate the success in the long term. Business can even have success without defining results...also in the short term. The reason businesses don't define results is due to the lack of clarity or for other reasons that I will discuss later this week. Having success without defined results or an understanding of why results happened is the most dangerous kind of success because at that point you have grown your business which means more liabilities and more customers to answer to. Not having a plan in place to manage your results then becomes suicide for your organization. What's the first step? Get results defined for yoru business but before you do that make sure that you understand why your business exists in the first place and where you want it to go. The long term success of your business is counting on it. | 9/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Why You Need a Business Plan | All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved. Sun Tzu Once you have clearly articulated your mission, vision and values, the next piece to your business should be putting together a plan. There are varying opinions on whether or not you should spend the time putting together a business plan. There are several reasons that a business plan can help you and your business get started on the right track. The first reason is to have a road map for your business to guide you in where you are going and how you are getting these. Spending the time to put this down on paper will help put it firmly in your mind. Not only will you know it well but I believe having a plan gives you more confidence when you are networking, looking for vendors for your business, hiring etc. With a business plan you are able to better measure results because you actually know what they are. You can also make and recognize adjustments that need to be made more quickly when you know what you are looking for and why. Measurement of results is where a lot of business owners fall short because they don't take the time to figure out what numbers are important to their business. If you are starting your business with employees, you can build a sense of teamwork by working on this plan together. Everyone will be on the same page and will understand what is going on in the company. When you bring on new team members, your business plan can get them up to speed much more quickly by showing them the plan and talking it over with them. The last reason is one that most people talk about when the subject of business planning comes up. That reason is to get funding for your business. A plan alone does not get your business funding, it's more like your ticket to the game. The businesses that get funding without a plan are few and far between. You are kidding yourself if you think you will be that special business. Like I said at the beginning there are some who would suggest that you don't need a business plan. They would suggest that you can get by with something written down that's much more simple because people don't look at their business plan after it is written. My argument is that if you wont take the time to look at your business plan, you probably wont take the time to look at anything else. This is more of a discipline issue more than anything else. Business owners need to have discipline or they will fail. Even if you did not ever look at your plan again after it is written, I believe the journey is just as important. Putting together a business plan requires you to take a serious look at your business and spend some time thinking about how your business is going to work, what you need and what obstacles exist for you currently. You will have gained some important knowledge up front even if you fail to review later. How have you been able to use a business plan for success? What are some other reasons for and against putting together a plan? PS Listen below to this week's podcast where I talk more about business planning. | 8/27/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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What’s The Best Way To Manage Relationship Capital? | Relationship capital is the most underutilized capital that all of us have at our disposal. The best thing about it is that with a little effort and decorum, you can build it quickly and easily. There are different schools of thought about managing relationships which bring to the question: What's the best way to manage your relationship capital? What got me thinking about this was after I recently read Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. The last chapter is titled The Art of Being a Mensch. Guy wrote a blog post about what a mensch is as well as his 5 guidelines to follow. His 5 guidelines are: Help people who cannot help you. A mensch helps people who cannot ever return the favor. He doesn't care if the recipient is rich, famous, or powerful. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't help rich, famous, or powerful people (indeed, they may need the most help), but you shouldn't help only rich, famous, and powerful people. Help without the expectation of return. A mensch helps people without the expectation of return--at least in this life. What's the payoff? Not that there has to be a payoff, but the payoff is the pure satisfaction of helping others. Nothing more, nothing less. Help many people. Menschdom is a numbers game: you should help many people, so you don't hide your generosity under a bushel. (Of course, not even a mensch can help everyone. To try to do so would mean failing to help anyone.) Do the right thing the right way. A mensch always does the right thing the right way. She would never cop an attitude like, “We're not as bad as Enron.” There is a bright, clear line between right and wrong, and a mensch never crosses that line. Pay back society. A mensch realizes that he's blessed. For example, entrepreneurs are blessed with vision and passion plus the ability to recruit, raise money, and change the world. These blessings come with the obligation to pay back society. The baseline is that we owe something to society--we're not a doing a favor by paying back society. Personally, I agree with everything that Guy talks about above. The one thing that we must be careful about is with how far we go with some of these things. Specifically as it pertains to points 1 and 2. It seems that if we aren't careful we can end up wasting time helping people who need our help while sacrificing our own time and money in the process. Doing this on a small scale (this is relative to where you are at personally) is perfectly acceptable but how far do you go before you are not helping someone, you are being used. We have all done someone a favor and then seen that other person turn into the cable guy after the fact. Always wanting more and working to get every last bit of time, patience and energy that we have left. I have always believed in giving without expectation of return and to help people without regard to how it will benefit me. Entrepreneurs, in general, tend to be giving people. Because of this I think having a filter for how to manage your relationships would be important. Is a better question, how will helping this person possibly hurt me? Do I have the time? The resources? How do you manage your relationship capital? Am I off base with my thinking? Would love to know your thoughts. PS...For more on relationship capital, listen to my podcast below. | 8/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Vision: See It, Live It | Creating a solid foundation for your business starts with clearly understanding your business. Your vision for your business is a great place to start. Once your organization has a clear vision you are able to see the vision and live it as well. When your organization has a clearly defined vision, you have answered the fundamental question of "Where am I going?". When you have this set, everyone in your organization knows where the business is going and can use this to guide their decision making. By using a vision effectively, you can also better dictate the culture that you want to create in your organization. As far as building your organization goes, vision allows you to better see what players that you need on the team to make your vision a reality. It also lets you figure out what qualities that these new players need as well. In the end, you have a better quality team and a more efficient team. Another benefit to understanding your vision is in your communication to the public. Your marketing will be more effective because you better understand what channels work for your business and what message is right for your client base. Business owners network better when they can communicate more clearly with other people they meet at events. Ever talked with someone about their venture and walked away having no clue what they do? Don't worry about it, chances are they aren't sure either. Last, but not least, vision helps you to communicate your business through a business plan which can lead to potential funding for your business in the future. A couple of words of caution about vision: The first word of caution is that vision is no different than anything else. If you don't take care of it and cultivate it properly, it will die. There are too many businesses that pay vision lip service and then watch as it has no impact on their business. The second is the fact that vision is an ongoing process and is constantly evolving. Make sure that you take the time to review this so that the only time you go off course is because you planned it. If you don't have a vision in place for your business then spend some time and work on this now. If you have a vision, how is it working for your organization? Where does it help you? Where does it hinder you? | 8/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Look and Listen: A Beginners Guide to Podcasting and Video | Even though it's easier to produce content through audio and visual channels. Many business owners/platform builders don't utilize the mediums in trying to put their message out to the public. This post is for those who want to put together a podcast and video presence on their own without hiring someone to do it. Podcasting: A lot of people still don't know what a podcast is. If you aren't sure what a podcast is click here. In the past if you wanted to host a show or get audio content produced, you had to have a radio show or book time in a studio. Those times are over. Now all you need is microphone, some headphones and a method for recording to be able to put together a podcast. With programs like Apple's Garage Band, mixing an intro/outro and editing are easier than ever as well. If you want to go through the podcasting process step by step as well as download a free program to get started, go here. There are tons a resources on the internet for putting together a podcast as well as different networks. The are also numerous directories to list your podcast for exposure such as iTunes. You can find a comprehensive list of directories at Podcast411. Just keep in mind that you still need to set up hosting for your podcast before you submit to any directories. You can do this yourself or get a third party to host it for you. iTunes is one directory that people typically ask about. Here's an FAQ for submitting a podcast to iTunes. Video Video was something that a few years back was difficult to distribute as well. Those days are also done. Now with the help of YouTube and other video outlets people are watching hundreds of millions of videos each day. TubeMogul is a great, free resource for getting your videos to multiple video sharing sites and increase your exposure. The ultimate question with video is how do I get started recording video inexpensively. One of my business partners recently got a Flip camera and he uses it now constantly to record videos to provide inofrmation and talk about upcoming events. These cameras are compact and can plug right into your computer to upload to video sharing sites in a matter of minutes. The cost for one of these cameras is a few hundred dollars but is worth the investment. This is one way that you can start recording content at a fairly inexpensive price (I relaize this is relative). For more outlets to capture video visit TechRepublic who put together a nice list of services related to online video. You can also do simple recording of screenshots with voice over with services like Camtasia that come in handy if you want to record a presentation you are doing and make it available later online. I have also heard that they are working on expanding cell phone video capabilities that records video in HD! I don't know how soon that is coming but that is crazy. These are just some resources that do in some cases require a little bit of money but not much to get started. If you are serious about building a presence for your business or building a platform for your self personally, it's time to start podcasting and using video to get your message out. I didn't even mention that this is also a great way to build products and services for your business as well. | 8/5/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Value of Your Idea | "The value of an idea lies in the using of it." - Thomas Edison Ideas are where all great businesses start. They are the inspiration and life blood of an entrepreneur. There are millions of people who have taken a great idea right to their grave. The true value of your idea lies in the action that comes behind it. We have all had friends who have talked about lofty aspirations and ideas only to see them take no action on it and still wonder why their dreams are not reality. In fact, most of us have probably done that at some point in time in our lives. There are two reasons why we don't take action on our ideas. The first is because it's perceived as being easier to do nothing. The second is that we fear what might happen if we do take action on a great idea. As time goes by it's easy to become complacent with our lives. We are also taught that chasing after a dream is foolish. I still catch hell for leaving the corporate world and starting my own business which is funny when you look at the landscape for employees right now. In any event, we already have a listening about chasing dreams and following up on ideas that doing so is for foolish people with their head in the clouds. The reality is that the more crazy your idea is the better your idea may be. Think about electricity. When you are used to doing everything by candlelight and by hand and someone told you they could generate power for lights and other devices in the future, you would have told that person they were insane. It's easy to look back and critique past achievement. It's much harder to have faith and vision of what the future may look like. But what if we do have vision and can see how we are able to impact the future with an idea? That's scary too. You risk putting yourself out there for all the world to see. You open yourself up to more success which means more demands. You open yourself up to more demands of your time and more criticism. When you add these things up they can be terrifying. Especially if you don't value yourself enough to think that you can handle it. To overcome inaction and fear it takes a high level of consciousness and belief that we were not put here on this Earth to play small. Many us don't believe this so we let fear and inaction take over. As Thomas Edison said, your idea is only valuable if you put it into action, otherwise it's no good to anyone. So what's the answer? How do we overcome? Changing your mindset is key. We will talk more about this and other action steps in my next post. Stay tuned.... PS... If you absolutely can't wait, listen to this week's podcast right now. | 7/22/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Lesson The Pioneers Can Teach Us About Innovation | We are 10 days away from a holiday here in Utah called Pioneer day. It's basically a celebration of when the first Mormon settlers came and set up shop. Since I live in Utah and want to talk about innovation, I thought talking about the pioneers that settled the west is a perfect parallel to this discussion. The lesson that pioneers can teach us about innovation? It's pretty damn hard to be the first at anything. For your business, innovation is no different. There are 2 types of innovators. There's the inventor who comes up with ideas that no one else thought possible and works for years to try and make it a reality and there's the business person who takes what's already in the marketplace and sees a way to improve upon that. Both are important, it just depends on what you are willing to sacrifice. Pioneers in the 19th century endured many hardships to settle in the west. Illness and death, confrontation with native people, lack of knowledge of what may lay ahead, weather, lack of food and lack of resources just to name a few. As an inventor of new products, you face a high degree of uncertainty. Is your product something that the market will purchase? Can it be made in a cost effective manner? Will my family be able to endure the stress financially? Do I have the resources to make it happen? How will I market it? How will I protect the idea? As you can see there are a lot of unknowns involved. For the entrepreneur who wants to improve what already exists in the marketplace, there is a higher degree of certainty. Namely, there is already a niche carved out for your product. You know what types of people buy it. You have an idea on pricing structure. These are the same advantages that the people who followed the first settlers had. They could observe and find out what routes worked best and avoid earlier mistakes. When they settled in a spot that was already settled they could observe what crops grew best in the area and where to find resources for building a home. Look at some of the improvements to existing products over the past 15 years. HDTV, Blu Ray, Lap top computers, cell phones, e-mail, DVR etc. All of these products improved a product that already existed. Take the cell phone, a company like AT&T did not have to wonder if people wanted a phone or if a phone was useful. It was already established that people found value in a phone, the cell phone just made it even more convenient for the marketplace. Do you remember the BASF commercials? Observing the market and what exists currently is a path of much less resistance than looking to create a product and market from scratch. Most entrepreneurs would be better served to taking this approach in the beginning of their venture. Regardless of the innovation that currently exists, there are still problems that need to solved in the world. The current state of our financial system in America is proof of that. You don't have to be a pioneer to have a successful business and product line. What is broken out there that you can fix? What are you currently observing in the marketplace that can be improved upon that you have knowledge in? | 7/15/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Do You Have a Process For Product Creation? Podcast | Processes. Some of us love to create processes and systems, tinker with them, analyze what works and what doesn't and some of us hate them. When it comes to consistent creation of new product for your small business processes are necessary to make sure that time is taken to get it done. Processes for your business can be simple or, depending on the task, very complex. The key is to have something in place that you can repeat and make a habit of time after time. This is necessary for you as the individual business owner and for any team members that you have. Here is a simple explanation and lay out on how to create a process. For product creation, I would include all of the steps mentioned and I would add 1 more step. Business owners should not create any processes without having a fully developed mission, vision and values as well as a business plan. Once you have the road map you can start to work on how to travel to your destination. Who should create a process for product creation? Entrepreneurs who have ideas on product improvement but after months and months they are still merely ideas. This is especially handy for the thousands of entrepreneurs who continuously say that they are writing a book but no one has ever seen it including the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs who struggle with coming up with new ideas. Entrepreneurs who have several ideas that they have started working but have not been completed. Regardless of the stage of the idea. Having a process in place means more ideas completed which means getting a better feel for what works and what doesn't which ultimately leads to more profitable products that can be put out on the market. A process for product creation will keep your business moving forward and ensure that it will remain competitive in today's marketplace. It will also hold entrepreneurs more accountable for getting their ideas to market. How have you been able to get product and ideas formulated into a tangible product? Where have you struggled? What other ideas would be useful for entrepreneurs to know? What's your process for product creation? | 7/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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External vs. Internal Accountability tools | Putting your accountability system in place requires looking at all the resources that you have at your disposal to keep us on track. There are 2 methods of tools that we need to think about to assist us in accountability- internal tools and external tools. External tools Your boss, if you are employed, is one tool for external accountability. As an employee we all need help getting to our goals and seeing new directions and good boss can help us do that. A business coach can help guide business owners in any number of business issues from sales and marketing to building your start up. Life coaching takes a holistic look at everything you have going on in your life and career and gets to the core of you and why you do what you do. They are able to blend your professional and personal life to allow you to focus on the things in your life that are most important. Books: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a great book to help build the right personal habits. Good to Great by Jim Collins is not just a great book about organizations but good insight on how we can apply these principles to our lives as individuals. Winning With Accountability: The Secret Language of High Performing Organizations by Henry J Evans. These are just a few examples of books that can help us with external accountability. Retail programs and workshops can give us great insight on accountability as well. There are a lot of great workshops and programs that exist that can help us develop an accountability plan. Internal Tools Goal setting: Or for a business, we can call this business planning. This is a road map that can make sure we are able to assess where we stand throughout our success journey. This is a seriously overlooked and simple tool for success. Morning routine: We call our morning routine a "power hour". Regardless of how we do it or what we call it, the key is to get a routine implemented and do it. Daily markers: Markers in conjunction with your goals are powerful tools to help keep us on track by reviewing where we are at daily. Time management: How we manage our time is critical to dictating how we hold ourselves accountable in other areas as well. Getting a consistent time management system will ensure that we are doing the things that need to be done in a timely manner. There is not a one size fits all accountability system. It's a matter of trying different things out and seeing what works for us personally. This takes a little time but once we have it done, it makes a huge difference in how effective we are. What works for you with regards to accountability? How have you figured out what works and what doesn't? | 7/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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It All Starts With Now | What are you doing right now? What was your game plan for today? How are you doing so far? Putting a game plan and executing it is a winning habit that will take us where we want to go in our personal and professional lives. This post may motivate some to go out and change some behaviors...tomorrow. If we are really serious about changing how we go about our day, why not start now? Do you know anyone whose whole life seems incomplete? They have tons of unfinished business going on. They always use words like some day. Their life is in perpetual crisis. They never seem to get anything done on time. (If this is you, it's going to be OK.) They want to take action but it always seems to be starting the next day. When we identify behavior that is keeping us from achieving success, it's important to stop that behavior as soon as possible. Here are some steps to utilize to help you with this, Four Easy Steps To Change Thoughts-Feelings-Behavior. I would also recommend meditation as well to help you with the thought control that the 4 easy steps talks about. If there are some things that need to be changed, will it start now? What are you waiting for with regards to changing of behavior? How can you more positively impact those around you by getting the important things done in your day consistently? | 6/24/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 50 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Finding Purpose
This podcast is great. Brandon is articulate and shares great information. Life is to short to waste, and this podcast gave me some really good ideas and helps me keep my head on straight. Finding purpose in life is not always easy, this podcast also shares great ideas how to go about finding and living a greater purpose in your life. Everybody needs that right?
Simply outstanding
So clear, so simple to implement. Really really glad I found this podcast. Every business owner should listen to this.
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