Small business leadership: Are you a queen bee or a worker bee?
“Nothing gets done around here unless I do it myself!” Have you ever said that? If you have, it may be telling you a lot about your leadership. While it’s important for small business leaders to lead by example and be willing to get their hands dirty, it’s critical that they understand the position and responsibilities that come with leadership. If you see yourself mainly as one among many “worker bees” you severely limit the growth potential of your small business. You may seem to win a lot of friends among your employees, but ultimately you will be doing them a disservice by failing to provide them with the enhanced opportunities that occur when a business enjoys healthy growth. You need to see yourself in something of a queen bee role (sorry men, there’s no king bee for my analogy). The future health and very survival of the hive depend on the queen bee performing her function. I need to mention, by the way, that the first thing a new queen bee does after emerging is to seek out and kill any competitors to her “reign.” This too somewhat parallels one of your main responsibilities as a small business leader. You need to always be aware of new competitors and work hard to keep them from usurping your position. Although I’ve been framing discussion this using the worker bee versus queen bee analogy, it’s where the analogy doesn’t apply that really captures the art of leadership, and I alluded to it at the top. To be a successful small business leader you need to strike a balance between being the chief strategist and the leader willing to do the heavy lifting alongside his or her employees. The strategist spurs growth while the practical leader inspires hard work and loyalty. Both of these are necessary for a successful small business. What kind of report card would you give yourself in these areas? If you’re honest with yourself, it’s really pretty easy to find the areas where you can improve. Are you having trouble inspiring the kind of loyalty you would like to see among your employees? If so, you may need to spend more time “shoulder-to-shoulder” with people on your team. They may have begun to see a reluctance in you to get down in the trenches. You may no longer understand the issues they face on a daily basis. Is your growth stalled? In this case, you may have created a job rather than a business. If it’s necessary that you spend all your time working alongside your employees just to get the daily requirements accomplished, you’re shirking your responsibility for strategic growth. You need to delegate or get an assistant so you can start to move your business forward again. Take a few minutes and fill out your leadership report card. Are you getting straight A’s, or are there areas where you need...
read moreYour small business YouTube strategy: 8 videos you should be using
Sometimes the world of online video can seem like it’s in an incredible a state of turmoil. Right now Twitter is either shutting down or selling Vine. Blab is being repurposed (maybe). Yet for your small business, YouTube is like the video Rock of Gibraltar. It was there yesterday, it will be there tomorrow, and it stands firm against all the currents that cause other video providers to spin out of control. This gives you the confidence to know that any content you create will perform for you day in and day out for as long as you want to keep it posted. And, while videos destined for being viewed by your customers are still a mainstay, they don’t completely define small business YouTube usefulness. Let’s outline some ways you can make better use of YouTube specifically and video in general. In-house employee videos. Create a private YouTube channel for your team. Use it to post training videos and important company meetings. If your employees have to perform tasks at computers, one of the best ways to train them is through screen-capture videos, which are easy to make and virtually free. PowerPoint and other slide presentations. Any presentation that uses PowerPoint (or can be exported to PowerPoint) can be saved in a video format. Useful videos for both your customers and your employees can be created this way. I know a teacher who relies on PowerPoint for classroom presentations. He records his audio while going through his PowerPoint slides and then posts them as video on a website for his students. When students miss class, they can easily catch up. Marketing. Almost any video you make will have some potential to boost your marketing, but also consider producing professional videos that would serve as ads. You may not be able to afford a 30-second spot on a local TV station, but you probably can produce a slick ad that you can put on YouTube and your website. Branding. You’ve seen the video white board animations where someone draws an illustration or the company logo. You can get this kind of video produced very inexpensively, sometimes for as little as $5 on Fiverr. They can be very effective on the homepage of your small business website. Customer service. A high percentage of small business YouTube videos fall into this category. You can show your customers how to do things with your products and demonstrate new products or services. You can answer questions. They often serve the dual purpose of customer service and marketing. They also help establish your authority in your niche. Vlog. A video blog (vlog) can serve a wide range of purposes and can be approached from many different angles. For example, it could just be you talking. It could be you and one other person discussing something. You could interview someone. You could take people on a tour of your business. You could translate a written blog into a vlog. You can do all of these things at different times. Need a little technical advice to get started vlogging? Check out this article by Susan Gunelius on how to create a Vlog in 10 easy steps. Testimonials. Social proof is one of the most powerful sales tools you have. Frankly, when I see a text quote on...
read moreSmall business management: When is it time to move on, dig in?
Persistence. We all admire it and without a doubt, it is one of the biggest attributes a small business owner needs to achieve success. However, sticking with a failed strategy too long can cause your entire venture to fail. So the question small business owners are always asking themselves is this: Should I give up on this or does it need more time? It’s not ab easy question, but there are a few ways to answer it or perhaps it would be better to say that there are a few different approaches you can take when you’re wrestling with this question. Know what takes time There are some aspects of building a business that clearly take time and you need to understand what they are in your industry or in your community. If you have experience, these areas are probably well known to you. But many new small business owners are venturing into personally uncharted territory. In this case, there is no substitute for working with an experienced mentor. Having an experienced and successful business leader in your corner can help you sort out the aspects of your operation that will take time and those that should be abandoned quickly. If you can get free advice from a SCORE mentor, that’s fantastic. If you can’t find a good fit via that route, consider hiring a coach. You must see this expense as an investment in your future and a way to prevent you from making costly mistakes. If a good coach can help you safely navigate around some money holes, it will be money well spent. Also, I assume that you’re reading articles and blogs, and finding advice or ideas in those places. If you encounter some impressive success stories where everything fell into place quickly for the owner, be skeptical. Those are often untrue or fail to include many important details. Long-term, industry-leading success comes from a long string of good decisions where the business owner is repeatedly making incremental 1-percent improvements. Overnight success is virtually always preceded by months and years of hard work. Throw the spaghetti against the wall When you have the opportunity to try a variety of strategies to improve your operation or solve a problem, give them all a chance via a short and inexpensive trial run. Then analyze your results and decide how to proceed. Understand that the “losers” aren’t necessarily bad. When you do comparisons like this, it should result in prioritization more than elimination. Invest in your most promising strategy or procedure first and once you have a good idea of its full potential, then give your second-place finisher a bigger trial run. The beauty of these kinds of comparison tests is that they teach you a lot. You’ll learn some unexpected lessons that you’ll ultimately be able to apply elsewhere in your business. Online marketing warning I wanted to take just a moment to give you a special warning about “all things digital.” If there’s one truth about the Internet that I think we could all agree on it’s that things get “over hyped” in a nanosecond. Further, the power and the reach of the Internet naturally create expectations that are too big and prove to be unreasonable. We read blogs about how a person starts selling via an...
read moreThis week in small business: Win-win with women!
Women in Business month is behind us now, but articles featuring successful women and their role in boosting our economy are still proving to be popular. We have three of them this week, along with other inspiration and practical advice for the entrepreneur and small business owner. Leadership, management, and productivity A. Scott Anderson, CEO and president of Zions Bank, says that empowering women employees is a win-win for businesses. That same basic idea from another perspective looks at women stepping forward in agriculture. And, here’s one more article highlighting women in business: The story of Carissa Clark, CEO of SheroBox. Don’t become a cautionary tale yourself. Learn from others: 9 Ways Ecommerce Merchants Fail In The First Year. One of the most important things you can do is equip your business with the right technology. This piece by Sarah Landrum will help you choose wisely. Pat Flynn is an entrepreneur reportedly making $135,000 a month. In this article he shares two productivity hacks that help balance a side hustle with family life. Marketing and sales Is traditional marketing dead? This Forbes article full of Instagram success stories makes us think that could be the case. In this article I wrote for AT&T, I give you three social media tips that will help keep your customers smiling. Mapping your Excel spreadsheet transforms your location-based sales data into live, interactive maps that you can share with your team. Here’s how to do it. Sameer Patel discusses the six things he’s learned about marketing automation during his first 60 days working at Kahuna. Do they make a patch to cure you of the 10 old habits that ruin sales and customer service? In any case, reading this article is step number one. Tips for coming up with social media content ideas is always appreciated. Here are eight to help you out. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation You can learn a lot from unusual sources, like this one-legged Mumbai entrepreneur. Take a moment and be inspired. Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Check yourself against these five key characteristics. Let the 2017 articles begin! 5 Marketing Trends Startups Need To Be Ready For In 2017, by AJ Agrawal. This is good news: Meggen Taylor believes that traveling more can help you hone the skills you need to be a successful entrepreneur. Start packing! Politics, government, and the economy Isobel Finkel makes the case that the economy is so normal that it’s abnormal! The hand-wringing narrative doesn’t match reality, Finkel...
read moreThis week in small business: Win-win with women!
Women in Business month is behind us now, but articles featuring successful women and their role in boosting our economy are still proving to be popular. We have three of them this week, along with other inspiration and practical advice for the entrepreneur and small business owner. Leadership, management, and productivity A. Scott Anderson, CEO and president of Zions Bank, says that empowering women employees is a win-win for businesses. That same basic idea from another perspective looks at women stepping forward in agriculture. And, here’s one more article highlighting women in business: The story of Carissa Clark, CEO of SheroBox. Don’t become a cautionary tale yourself. Learn from others: 9 Ways Ecommerce Merchants Fail In The First Year. One of the most important things you can do is equip your business with the right technology. This piece by Sarah Landrum will help you choose wisely. Pat Flynn is an entrepreneur reportedly making $135,000 a month. In this article he shares two productivity hacks that help balance a side hustle with family life. Marketing and sales Is traditional marketing dead? This Forbes article full of Instagram success stories makes us think that could be the case. In this article I wrote for AT&T, I give you three social media tips that will help keep your customers smiling. Mapping your Excel spreadsheet transforms your location-based sales data into live, interactive maps that you can share with your team. Here’s how to do it. Sameer Patel discusses the six things he’s learned about marketing automation during his first 60 days working at Kahuna. Do they make a patch to cure you of the 10 old habits that ruin sales and customer service? In any case, reading this article is step number one. Tips for coming up with social media content ideas is always appreciated. Here are eight to help you out. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation You can learn a lot from unusual sources, like this one-legged Mumbai entrepreneur. Take a moment and be inspired. Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Check yourself against these five key characteristics. Let the 2017 articles begin! 5 Marketing Trends Startups Need To Be Ready For In 2017, by AJ Agrawal. This is good news: Meggen Taylor believes that traveling more can help you hone the skills you need to be a successful entrepreneur. Start packing! Politics, government, and the economy Isobel Finkel makes the case that the economy is so normal that it’s abnormal! The hand-wringing narrative doesn’t match reality, Finkel...
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