This is the one article you can’t put off reading. Really.
September 6 was “Fight Procrastination Day,” so I hope you’re reading this the first day you came across it! Now, do you want to hear something funny? September 5 was “Be Late for Something Day.” Were you able to live up to the goal of that special day? I don’t know if I should give you kudos for achieving the goal of “Be Late for Something Day,” or Kudos for messing it up! You may not believe the next thing I’m going to tell you, but I want you to stick with me – at least for a few moments – while I explain myself. Fight Procrastination Day and Be Late for Something Day – if seen in the proper light – actually complement each other. The purpose of Be Late for Something Day is not to inconvenience people around you; its goal is to have you remember that: Things can go on without you, Not everything is as important as you think it is, and You need some time to yourself. It’s only when we turn off the noise in our lives that we can concentrate on the beautiful music being played. I know you experience this in your small business. There have probably been countless days when you were so busy dealing with inconsequential items that at the end of the day you said to yourself, “I don’t know where this day went, but I sure didn’t get around to anything I planned on doing!” It’s time you truly took an inventory of the tasks and responsibilities that fill up your days and find the ones you can “be late to,” completely offload to someone else, or stop doing altogether. With that done, the next step is to stop procrastinating and this should be easier to accomplish because all that’s left for you are the things that are actually important to running your small business and pushing it to the next level of growth and success. Let me give you three quick tips to wring procrastination out of your day: 1. Box up the digital distractions Get off personal social media during the workday. I remember one young man who went to the Air Force Academy after he graduated from high school. The first thing they did to the cadets was to take them off social media. It was an eye-opener for many of them. They could not have handled the load at the academy had they continued with their social media habits. In the same way, restrict checking your email to once or twice a day. You can decide when the best time is for you, but many successful entrepreneurs deal with email at the end of the day. 2. Commit to an accountability group or mentor Note that in my example of the Air Force Academy, it was their superiors who made the cadets change their habits. Find someone you respect and who is willing to hold you accountable for carrying out your plans and establish a strong relationship with that person. I also suggest as the first line of accountability you should start keeping a journal. Taking a few moments in the morning, evening, or both can help you hold yourself accountable. The first step in any journey is the most difficult: Commit to...
read moreHow to Get Your Mission Statement Components Right the First Time
“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” – Zig Ziglar. This quote from Zig Ziglar captures why it is critical to craft a good mission statement for your business. Your mission statement components will, in no more than a few sentences, define the reason your business exists and provide the “target” at which you and the rest of your team are always aiming. But, before I get too deeply into standard mission statement components and the principles that should be driving your mission statement, let me address those of you who might be getting a little “statement” weary. I’ve discussed the importance of your brand promise, as well as your value proposition, positioning statement, and elevator pitch. So you may be asking, “Why bother with all of these statements about my business?” I assure you that they’re all important and probably the most important distinction between them is the main audiences for whom they are intended. Your brand promise is intended for the consumer and your value proposition, positioning statement, and elevator pitch are generally written for investors and peers within your industry. Mission statements must inform and guide And while all of these groups may read your mission statement and find it informative, the primary audience for your mission statement is you and your team. Your mission statement should cover – either directly or indirectly – these points: What you do. How you do it. Whom you do it for. The value you bring. When you have the responses for each of those prompts, you can examine everything you do in your business in light of those criteria. You and your employees can ask yourself questions such as: Is this proposed change to a product or service in line with what we want to be doing? Is the way this customer was treated in line with how we deliver our product or service? Does this marketing campaign target the people we hope to serve? Further, we often discuss the compelling reasons you should be working hard to establish a strong company culture. That process starts with writing an excellent mission statement for your company. Without an accurate mission statement that you are committed to, it’s impossible to establish a healthy company culture. Try to do it without a good mission statement and you’ll wind up demonstrating the truth in Zig Ziglar’s observation. Tips for writing your mission statement First, don’t expect to quickly knock out a handful of sentences, think you have all your mission statement components covered, and be done with it. Take your time and go over it with the other principal team members in your company. If you’re coming to this task “late in the game,” it will really help you sharpen the vision you have of your small business. Whether you’re drafting a mission statement for a new company or for a legacy organization, these are questions that should be deeply understood at the beginning of the process: Why are you in this industry? Why did you start your business? The answers to these questions will get to the core of your motivation for even being in business in the first place. When you take ownership of those motives, the other mission statement components should begin to fall into place....
read moreWhat you can learn from the failures of the pharos
If you want to walk the shortest path to frustration and failure, short-change training. No one in the world today, even the Egyptians themselves, really know how to build a pyramid like they did during the glory days of the Egyptian pharos. Why? Because they had a lousy training program. The pharos: Didn’t document their procedures and systems, and Didn’t pass down their techniques. If you make these same mistakes in your business, one day soon your employees will be standing around wondering how you got things done back in your day. Document what you do The first step is to document what you do and for many procedures, this should take two forms: You should write step-by-step, illustrated instructions and you should make a short complementary instructional video whenever possible. With video so handy today, there’s really no excuse for not creating instructional videos to go along with your written instructions. Even something as simple as the right way to fill out a form can be videoed via a screen capture program. You can talk your way through filling out a form, or doing an online task, and it will really help your team learn a new procedure and do it in a repeatable manner. Lots of individuals today learn better by being shown something rather than reading about it, and this brings us to our next important point. Show others what you do When someone has been trained in a new procedure, I think it’s a great idea to have that person train someone else almost immediately. This is a variation on the way surgeons have for centuries learned their art: Watch someone, Do one yourself, then Teach someone else. When you’re trying to teach something you’ve just learned to another person, it quickly uncovers areas where you are weak and in that way, the “teacher” gets taught as well. Further, it reveals weaknesses in the system being taught and those can then be corrected. Finally, when “everything goes as planned” it gives your small business a certain amount of redundancy and built-in backup that will prove very handy when key team members call in sick or move on to another company. I started this out by dipping back into the history of Egypt, and I think there’s another important point to make along those lines. While I’m certain the Egyptian people today are capable of great things, I don’t think there’s any argument that their pyramids stand as symbols of their greatest achievements in human history. Here’s the lesson: If you fail to pass down efficiencies and customer service excellence through a solid training program, your greatest days will soon be behind you as...
read moreThis week in small business: Learning from the Olympics, working on Wall Street and for the feds…
Pop-up stores, dream jobs, and marketing lessons from Olympics ads are among the topics covered in the many useful articles that comprise this week’s collection of curated content. Leadership, management, and productivity Read how Sallie Krawcheck, a former senior executive at Bank of America, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch, has made it her mission to end male-domination of finance. Continuing on that theme, in this Business Insider article, six Wall Street women share their best career advice. It’s true. Sometimes it’s lonely being a small business owner. This piece helps us handle the isolation. Want to land a federal contract? Maggie Ybarra says that your best tactic is to already be working with the feds. Ouch. Marketing and sales Creating accounts on Facebook and Instagram is far from the only tactics small business owners should be doing on the social media platforms. Learn how a cosmetics entrepreneur leveraged pop-up stores and social media to power a $120-million business. Step aside athletes with multi-million dollar contracts – we are entering the age of micro-influencers! Hitting blind spots on the way to gold? Marketing Land columnist Joshua Reynolds shows us how Olympics ads remind marketers to sweat the data details. B2B marketing has its own challenges and that’s why this article by Sujan Patel giving us three B2B content marketing tips is so welcomed. Want to know which social media marketing strategies are the most effective? The five insights shared here will steer you in the right direction. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Madison Conradis discusses the value of an education and its impact in pursuing your dreams through entrepreneurship. Lisa Uhrik and her husband Dave secured a $1.65-million SBA loan to buy, then relocate their dream job. Here’s their story. Ailsa Page, small-business marketing expert, argues that not everyone is an entrepreneur, but that people can become more entrepreneurial if they’re willing to step outside their comfort zone. There are several great points to think about and ideas to adopt in this discussion of entrepreneurship, risk, and intelligent...
read more7 Critical Topics for Your Hands-on Business Plan
Isn’t it sad that so many eager wannabe small business owners end up stuffing their business plans in the top drawer of an old desk? Or never even bother to write a business plan? I have a hunch that this happens a lot because the very idea of writing a business plan seems daunting, or because an overly formal document gets produced that turns out to be of little practical use. First, let me say that I’m not telling you to blow off writing a business plan. They’re important, and in fact, I’m on record recommending that you refer to and update them often. If you’re going after funding from outside sources, every element of your business plan needs to be fully fleshed out and communicated. But, no matter where your funding is coming from, every budding small business owner needs to create a business plan that deals with all of the day-to-day items that are required to open the doors and keep the doors open. That’s what we’re going to focus on here: A practical small business plan that covers the following topics: Location and facilities. Choosing the wrong location can lead to a quick failure or a slow and agonizing death for your small business. Do all the research necessary to find a location where you can be successful. Be careful and get good advice when you negotiate your lease. Do you need warehouse space or a will you use a fulfillment service? Organization and personnel. Will you be hiring immediately? Take time to understand who will be reporting to whom, if they don’t all directly report to you. If your business will be open for longer hours than you plan on working each day, at least one employee is going to have to be given more responsibility than some others. Be sure to have good job descriptions. Further, you need at least a bare-bones employee handbook that outlines your workplace policies and employee benefits. Equipment, processes, and systems. What equipment will you need and what systems and processes do you need to put in place to give you “repeatability”? These vary widely. The requirements of a manufacturer will be different than those of a retailer. However, the retailer can’t slack off and think that employees will know how to handle situations without any documents and training to guide them. You also need processes in place to handle the financial side of your business, including accounts receivable and accounts payable. This leads us to the topic of computer systems. What software will power your business? Be sure to do your homework here because committing to a bad system can cause huge headaches and costs down the line. Sales and marketing. How are you going to get the word out about your new business? You’ll need to think about your startup period as well as how you will sustain your marketing, advertising, and selling. Inventory. This category cuts across several topics. It is important from a financial point of view because your inventory is a major cost that also has tax implications. Efficient inventory control can greatly enhance your chances at success. How you handle your inventory will also impact your facilities and the processes you put in place. Fulfillment. How to handle distribution and shipping is a...
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