Is the Survival of Your Small Business Killing You? How To Tell and What To Do
Hey small business owner: Would you like to know an easy way to tell if you’re at a higher risk for depression, alcoholism, type-2 diabetes, heart attack, stroke and just about every other modern health and wellness nightmare? You can find out by answering one question: Do you work more than 55 hours a week in your small business? If you answer yes to that question, there’s a good chance that you’re on a road to some severe health problems, if you haven’t arrived there already. The British medical journal, “The Lancet,” recently published a study that uncovered many of these health issues related to being a workaholic. However, there have been many studies over the last decade or so that have found similar associations between overwork and bad health. It’s important to make one thing very clear: These health issues are associated with long hours of work. In other words, where overwork is found, there is a good chance that overconsumption of alcohol (and other health problems) will be found as well. I make this point because there is a difference between association and causation. In my drinking example, both might be caused by a bad marriage, a failing business or any number of reasons. However, since so many bad outcomes are associated with working too many hours, we can consider “hours worked” as sort of a “canary in the coal mine.” Miners used to take canaries down into the mines with them because the birds were more sensitive to hazardous gases. If the canary died, the miners knew they had to take action. In the same way, if you’re logging upwards of 55 hours a week in your small business, your canary is starting to stagger around its cage. You need to take a step back and figure out what’s wrong in your approach to managing your small business. Start asking yourself questions like these: Is my business model bound to fail? Am I too reluctant to delegate? Am I avoiding other aspects of my life by filling the hours with work? Is fear my primary motivator? Perhaps I haven’t listed the exact question that applies to your situation. If so, the point is to find out why you are working so many hours and then do something about it. Further, if you’re logging this many hours, not only are your harming your health, you aren’t doing your small business any favor either. A Stanford University study showed that productivity starts to fall off after 50 hours of work. Once you get that that point, you’ll be working more and more and achieving less and less. That’s not the best way to get the edge you need to be successful in your small business. By the way, cognitive skills decrease as well, so when you’re overworked you’re more likely to make bad decisions. Have I scared you, or at least warned you sufficiently? You should take the concept of work-life balance seriously, for the good of both your work and your life. Check out the series of guest posts work-life balance expert Jeff Davidson has written for us. While you build your small business up, don’t let your small business run you down. ...
read moreHow To Get the Benefits of a Flexible Schedule in Your Small Business
As a small business owner sometimes it’s easy to feel that big companies enjoy some advantages that will never be available to you. You’ll probably never bring in Emeril Legasse to do a cooking demonstration in your company cantina, right? But what would you think if I told you that you can give employees the perk that ranks highest on their list of desired job benefits? In fact, many of you can probably do this more easily than some large companies. The single most desirable job benefit is flexible work hours. Several surveys put this benefit at or near the top of the list when fulltime employees are asked what they want at work. If you aren’t yet on the bandwagon you need to consider flexible work schedules in your small business. Clearing the hurdles The questions owners typically ask are, “What is flexible scheduling?” and “How can my small business offer flexible working hours?” Of course, there’s no single answer that covers every situation, but with some creativity you can probably find a way to begin offering flexible hours to your small business team. Let me give you two starting points. My first point starts with another popular benefit employees are looking for: working fewer hours. I saw one figure recently that said most fulltime employees work, on average, 47 hours a week. Do you have employees who would like to reduce their hours? If you do, that could make it easier to offer more flexible work schedules in your small business. Frankly, when people are putting in 47 hours, there’s often little room for flexibility! If there are members of your team who would appreciate rolling back their hours a bit, that gives you the opportunity to bring this group together and work out the parameters of a more flexible work schedule in your small business. In some cases, two employees could coordinate, with one person working from home, while the other handles the office. They could switch home and office duties in a way that works for both of them. Your critical supervision In the scenarios I suggested above, one thing is important: You, as the owner of your small business, are involved in making the decisions and communicating your expectations. This is the second important point when you decide to experiment with flexible scheduling in your small business. You can’t afford to leave this to chance. That would be unfair to you and to your employees. (I should mention that often productivity increases with flexible scheduling, but if you don’t provide the proper guidance, you could experience exactly the opposite.) Communication is key when allowing employees to work with less direct supervision, which is the case when you move your small business to flexible hours. If your version of flex scheduling makes use of home or “off-campus” telecommuting, consider going with a specialized chat service like Slack. At a minimum, be sure your employees who are involved in flex hours understand what they need to do to meet your communication expectations. If this is new to you, you can expect a learning curve where you’ll have to iron out bugs and grow more comfortable with the arrangements. However, as a small business owner you should also take heart in the fact that by offering flex...
read moreForget bullet points. Discover the Power of Story for Business Success.
I bet that you could relate to me, in detail, the best stories that you’ve read or seen in movies over the years. But how well could you relate to me the details of the best college-level textbook that you’ve read? Great stories stick with us. They become embedded in our consciousness. This is the power and beauty of Bob Burg and John David Mann’s “The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea.” It takes a truly special book for me to toss this label out, but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I call “The Go-Giver” a modern classic. Here’s one independent measure: The book gets a solid five stars on Amazon. I point this out because ratings for even the best business books usually end with that little “half star.” But after some 800 reviews (even that raw number tells you a lot) this book rates a full five stars. Further, the book has been among the bestselling business books for years, having sold more than 500,000 copies. (When they hit that mark, their publisher asked them to start working on an expanded edition.) I’m writing about it today because this new edition has just been released. Bob is a friend and mentor and I’m proud of the success he has had with “The Go-Giver.” I don’t make a dime from writing about it here, but if you’re involved in sales or any facet of running a business, investing in this small volume could pay off handsomely for you. The story follows an ambitious young salesman named Joe as he is mentored by a legendary consultant who is most often referred to by his devotees as the “Chairman.” Joe learns a set of values that transform him from “go-getter” to “go-giver” and propel him to business success. It’s a short book with a powerful message, one you won’t soon (if ever) forget. And to make this new edition even better, Bob and John have added a Q&A section as well as a Discussion Guide immediately following the story. As you can imagine, wherever they speak they get questions about the book, so they took the opportunity of the new edition to address those questions. If you’ve never read “The Go-Giver,” now’s the time. You owe it to yourself and your future. If you read the first edition, pull together a group of colleagues, create a mastermind or study group, and go through it together, using the provided discussion guide. Bob has more to say about the new edition on his website. You can also get a sample chapter there as well as links to various booksellers. Do it...
read moreAct, Don’t React: Five Tips to Create a Great Online Reputation
The best defense is a good offense. If you live in a household where TV football broadcasts provide the normal Sunday afternoon ambiance this time of the year, you probably hear that truism almost every week. But while it’s generally true that the best defense is a good offense in football, it’s even more true – and important – in managing your online reputation. And if you think because you’re a smaller business, or because you have really nice clients or customers, that you’re immune to online reputation problems, you’re wrong. The scary fact is that a single person who sets out to harm your reputation can do a lot of damage. Before I serve up the “meat and potatoes” of waging your reputation management offense, let me urge you to keep tabs on what people are saying about you and your business. Monitoring isn’t time consuming and it’s a very inexpensive insurance policy. Set up a Google alert for your name and business. You’ll get an email whenever the search engine finds something new about you. With that said, let me tell you our goal here: To keep positive or neutral mentions of you and your business at the top of Google search results. Sounds simple, right? Frankly, it is, but it requires activity on your part and that’s the guidance I’m going to provide. To achieve that goal, here’s our strategy: Drum up as many positive and “matter-of-fact” online mentions of you and your business as possible and keep working at it. If your Internet web presence is fairly narrow, perhaps your small business website and Facebook page, then Google will not have many results to show. If someone started badmouthing you or your business on one of the free blog websites, for example, that bad publicity would probably pop up in a search. Here are five easy ways to creating glowing search results for yourself and your small business: Establish social media accounts everywhere. Google indexes social media accounts, so if you have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Vine, and others, those will command a lot of territory on the first page of your search results. Be active in the community. Do things that get you and your business mentioned on the websites of other businesses, individuals and media outlets. Volunteer your time. Make donations. Give free talks. Guest post on other websites. What you need to understand here is that one guest post, with an accompanying “About the Author” blurb on 10 different websites is far more valuable than 10 different posts on one website. Post your job openings online. Google finds companies who list jobs in the various online employment sites. Even if you don’t have any openings, go to these sites and create a profile on each one. Actively send press releases to local media outlets. Whenever you or your business does something worthy of notice within your community, write a short press release that gives the details. If there are online community calendars in your area, send them information regularly. If you take these steps, it will be difficult for a lone malcontent to do you very much harm. However, keep monitoring your online mentions and if someone does get on your radar screen with a complaint, make contact and do your...
read moreGuide to Free Online Infographic Services
Several online infographic (and general graphics) creation services have popped up over the last couple of years. They usually offer free and paid plans so you can get a good feel for how they work and the templates and artwork available on each one without having to dig into your wallet. It’s a good idea to find one of these free infographic creation sites that you like and stick with it. They all seem to work on grid systems for their layout and this doesn’t make them super easy to use, but once you get the hang of how a specific site operates, you’ll be able to complete your artwork fairly quickly. You’ll also want to learn how to upload your own graphics so you can brand any infographic you create. I made this simple infographic using Canva. I took a template the site provided, changed the type, changed the graphic in each little box, uploaded by logo and downloaded the finished infographic. The free infographic creation sites provide guides that pop up to show you how things are aligning. It’s the smaller tweaks that take time. It probably took about 30 minutes to create this and if I did this more often, it would go more quickly. Below the infographic are live links to each site. Find one you like and start using it. Graphics will really boost your social media posts if you aren’t using them already. Have fun taking these sites on test drives. Links to free online infographic makers: https://www.canva.com/ http://www.easel.ly/ https://infogr.am/ https://venngage.com/ http://www.visme.co/ http://piktochart.com/ Note: I did a screen capture and some markup to illustrate the guides on the graphic and some resolution was lost. The downloaded, unaltered infographic from Canva is quite sharp:...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: SEO strategies Google loves, ways to perfect email marketing and more
It’s not everyday that we get to mention Rihanna and Jerry Maguire in the same article; today is one of those days. But more important than learning about them, you’ll get insights into marketing, where our economy is headed and how to pilot your small business to the next level of success. Leadership, management and productivity Want to add same-day local delivery to your small business without having the hassle of providing your own vehicle, insurance, etc.? Uber is debuting an on-demand small business delivery service in NYC, San Francisco and Chicago. The new year is sneaking up on us and that always foreshadows tax time. Discover how simple documentation can lower your small business’ taxes. Speaking of taxes, do you know how to report a loss in your small business? The NY Times and Amazon have been squabbling about an unflattering article on Amazon’s management style. We’ll see who comes out on top of that dustup. In the meantime, here’s how to get the high performance of Amazon without the backstabbing, says Jason Forrest. Maximum Performance Strategist Matt Mayberry says that listening is an art and mastering it will make you a great leader. Marketing and sales Have you considered social bookmarking in your campaign to boost website traffic? That’s one of the nine simple strategies listed in this YFS Magazine article. You aren’t going to have Rihanna’s record sales, but you can have some of the strategies she, and other celebrities, use to maximize their social media exposure. Sometimes it’s easy to think that every marketing strategy involves social media. Here are five that don’t. But if you are heavy into social media marketing, you’re probably using Facebook. Here’s how to quickly overcome seven “fatal” FB marketing mistakes. Black Hat SEO is out. Link building from a holistic SEO perspective is in. Online branding or building authority is another Google-friendly strategy. If you’re trying to squeeze cash out of your WordPress site, you need to know about these 10 affiliate marketing tools and plugins. Successful small business owners never stop improving what they do. Here are eight steps for perfecting your email marketing. Two-thirds of the B2C content marketers who use Facebook say it’s effective. Is that high, or low? Here are 5 ways to generate 25 small business blog post ideas in 25 Minutes. (Does that equal 125 post ideas in 125 minutes?) In the spirit of being ecofriendly, efficient and creating less work for ourselves, try these five tips for getting more mileage out of your small business blog archive. But when you sit down to create new blogs, keep these 39 tips in mind. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation Bill Wagner says that critical thinking isn’t essential for startups – rational thinking is! (Preview: critical thinkers are critics, not solution finders.) Politics, government and the economy Boris Schlossberg, BK’s director of FX strategy, says that we’re stuck in a “Jerry Maguire” economy – Show me the money! What this means for the Fed and economic...
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