Are You Missing this Critical Element of Small Business Leadership?
If we can boil down what is required to grow a small business we might get to this overarching truth: Everyone must be moving in the same direction. Anyone with a Facebook account has seen enough videos of people trying to herd cats that they know how pointless and frustrating that is. That truth applies to any organization. You will never make progress unless you have people moving in the same direction. When individuals start to stray off course, not only does it lessen the power of the core group through the loss of those contributing members, it also requires energy to go out and try to bring the wanderers back into the fold. Fortunately, there is a relatively simple – and please note that I didn’t say “easy” – way to keep your team moving in the same direction. It’s called leadership and specifically it’s small business leadership through example. Before we look at some of the practical implications and benefits of leadership by example in a small business, let me set the foundation by quoting an old adage: More is caught than taught. I’m a huge believer in proactive and thorough training programs, but training programs are a far better tool for teaching knowledge, skills and systems than they are at passing along the DNA of attitudes and priorities, which are the critical elements of small business success. Further, I think it’s undeniable that the growth and success of many businesses – even very large ones – can be traced back to a founder who leads by strong example. I might even point to Apple Computer. The company did very well at the beginning when founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were actively leading. When new – non-founder – leadership (John Sculley) took over, the company floundered. When Jobs was brought back, the company got back on course and now that Jobs is gone, it looks like Apple is floundering somewhat again. I don’t think I need to say more to stress the importance of founder leadership by example, so let’s look at some specifics. Customer service The customer service bar is set quite high today and you must instill a customer-centric attitude into your team, from bottom to top. To do this I want to point out a very important truth that applies to you as a small business owner: Your employees are your first line of customers. How you treat your employees should reflect how you want them to treat your customers. If you are an ogre of a boss, you can expect that attitude to filter down through the ranks. However, if you work hard to make your business the ideal environment for your team, that is the attitude that will permeate your small business and be sensed by your customers. It’s important to remember that ultimately people do business with people, not “companies.” You will create a team of people who others want to do business with if you relate to your team like people who deserve to be understood and respected. Dedication I was talking to a woman recently who once owned a small cleaning business. She hired relatives and had a very hard time getting them to be dependable and dedicated workers. Because they were family, they felt they could take...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: The importance of positive engagement and your small business culture
The importance of how you engage people is highlighted in this week’s collection of curated content from around the Internet; we should probably credit Dale Carnegie with these fundamental principles that extend even into the virtual world today. Leadership, management, and productivity In this interview I explain why you need to develop a mission statement that will inform your vision and shape behavior as you pilot your business through the next five years. Where are you with outsourcing? This article outlines the benefits and gives you hourly freelance rates from around the world. It’s not merely “customer service” today, successful companies are focused on the customer experience. And to help even more, here are five tips for driving valuable customer experiences via your company culture. Marketing and sales The timeless lessons of Dale Carnegie apply today, even in the way you engage people on your website. You know about the importance of video to your small business marketing, but are you applying what you know to every platform? A powerful blog positions you as an authority and brings in new customers. Here are 17 tips to help you create that powerful blog. Anthea Kelsick, strategy director at bluemarlin, explains why your marketing needs to promote the product, not the promise. You need to be diligent, but if you are, Snapchat 2.0 opens up new marketing opportunities. Politics, government and the economy Federal regulations are taking a toll on small business and if you want to get a feel for how bad the situation is, check out this article by Clyde Wayne Crews. Last week’s employment numbers were dismal. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised given Fed policy, which is holding down business formation, says Jeffrey Dorfman....
read moreNative Advertising: The Key to your Competitive Edge?
In a 2014 Copyblogger survey, nearly half of the respondents didn’t know what “native advertising” was. Are you in the group that doesn’t know what native advertising is? The survey, as I understand it, measured the general population, but for purposes of our discussion I want to break that down into two groups: Small business owners, and Consumers. In many ways, consumers aren’t supposed to know what native advertising is, but if you’re a small business owner you really need to understand it and see if it is a marketing or advertising tactic that would benefit your business. What are native ads? Simply put, native advertising is advertising designed to look like regular content wherever it is used. It’s been around for a long time. You may have seen newspaper articles like the clipping below where an ad is designed to look like standard newspaper editorial content. Or you may have seen a TV commercial where it looks like a news anchor is talking to a health care provider about a new procedure for relieving back pain, or something similar. With the rise of the Internet, many new native ad formats have become popular. In fact, much of what we read in the social media are native ads, or “sponsored content advertising.” An interesting fact is that consumers do not seem to object to native ads. They get a tremendous amount of engagement. Frankly, I think the content of most native ads is superior to regular content because advertisers need to set high standards in order for their ads to be effective. NerdWallet is one online company whose native advertising I’ve noticed, and in fact I’ve shared links to many NerdWallet articles; they are generally quite good. You’ll see here how a company as big as Nasdaq is using native ads for content through its partnership with NerdWallet, and others I suppose. Even Google seems to like native ads. I subscribe to various Google alerts and I’ve noticed that quite often they include articles that are actually native ads. I don’t know if Google’s algorithm is written to recognize native ads on a blog, for example, or not. I should also mention that the ads at the top of Google’s search results are themselves native ads – they look almost identical to regular search results. Native ad networks If you are working hard to create great content but not getting the traffic you want – or not getting it as quickly as you want – you might consider signing up with a native advertising network. Among the contenders for your native ad business are TripleLift, Gravity, Taboola, Outbrain, and Sharethrough. This is far from all of your options, so dig into the topic a little more deeply if you think native ads are worth pursuing. Mobile native ads The boom in mobile has created a parallel boom in mobile native advertising. These can be content, apps, social media and other creative forms of advertising. You’ll find ad networks that specialize in mobile native ads, including Mopub, Inmobi, Appsfire, and NativeX. The biggest player here may be Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg et al, are intent on being the leaders in all things mobile and advertising is at the top of their list. There is a lot to learn about this arm...
read moreDiscover this free tool and size up the competition
There are a lot of jokes that contain the line, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” But putting the satire aside for a moment, the Small Business Administration website can prove very helpful for established, new and proposed small businesses, and I want to point you at a free tool you might find very useful. The tool I’m talking about is called “Size Up.” It’s the creation of the online business SizeUp.com, who has licensed it to the SBA. You can get directly to this tool here or by navigating to it through the SBA’s Small Business Tools page, where you’ll find other useful free business tools. To use the Size Up tool, you enter the type of business you own or are researching, its location and in some cases its annual revenue. With that information entered, the online tool delivers valuable information in three areas: A comparison of your business volume against other similar businesses in your location, A map that shows where your competitors, customers, and suppliers are located, and A list of the best zip codes for your advertising. To show you how it works, I pretended that I operated a yoga studio in Chicago with an annual revenue of $150,000. Here’s how my business volume compared with other yoga studios: The tool also creates a map that color codes revenue to various areas (zip codes) in your location. If you wanted to relocate your business to a neighborhood where you might be able to boost your annual sales, this map could be extremely helpful. This data can also be presented in list form. Here’s the map for yoga instruction in Chicago: You can map all of your competition, which is a great feature, but it’s more powerful than that. Once the map has been drawn and plotted with competitors, you can create overlays that tell you how much consumers spend in various areas. For my example, the overlay shows consumer spending in the “Personal Care” category. The advertising map drops pins in various areas that mark combined business revenues for your industry. You might want to do targeted advertising in the places where your potential customers are spending the most on your product or service. Further, if you combine this with the map that shows the locations of your competitors, you might use it for a geofencing ad campaign. If you depend on local customers, I encourage you to explore this tool. You might discover some opportunities. And if you’re planning a new venture, take your time and analyze a wide variety of potential locations....
read more4 Steps: How to business network successfully
I’m a big believer in business networking and it’s a topic we’ve looked at from several different angles over the years. Whenever we talk about networking, business professionals understand it’s importance and realize that it’s a big topic. It’s for those reasons that I’m going to break it down into some fundamental components today, because when you look at the “building blocks” of how to network effectively, it’s easier to make concrete plans that you can implement. 1. Micro networking We’re going to start small and work our way up. Some of your most important and effective networking will happen locally in small groups. Frankly, in the old days (and still today, really) the Friday night poker game could be one of the best local venues for networking. It doesn’t have to be a poker game or a Friday night. But the “institution” I’m talking about is some regular get-together where there is a commercial, community, or industry affinity between the people involved. It could be people in related industries, regular customers, local business owners, etc. And if not a poker game, it could be a bowling league, karaoke night, regular golf game, brew pub crawl, or any number of social events. The good thing about these small, regular events is that you can organize them. That makes it easy for you to be networking effectively, because you’re making contact with all the others involved. You’re the hub. 2. Local networking One step up from networking with a tight-knit circle of individuals, is networking with other local business or industry leaders. These groups are found in your town and your state. I’m thinking about groups such as your local chamber of commerce and various industry associations in your area. If you’ve been successful with micro networking, you’ll have no problem parlaying your success there into success with bigger groups of people. Although I mentioned chambers of commerce above, networking anywhere your customers are likely to be is a good idea. Again, step up and take a leadership role. Volunteer to head up events, because when you do, everything flows through you; you will be automatically networking by virtue of doing your job. And if you’re successful, you’ll also build your authority within your community. That authority will translate to trust and that trust will carry over to your business. Remember, even more than “companies,” we do business with people. 3. Wider networking Once you have command of the higher echelons of local networking, jumping to national and even international events for networking purposes will be possible. Consider making presentations and holding seminars at trade shows. If you’ve been busy making presentations locally, be sure you get some nicely produced videos made. You can use those videos to land speaking engagements at events outside of your local area. 4. Virtual networking The Internet is probably the single best of all business networking tools today. Being able to direct message Twitter users gives you a way to connect with leaders in your industry or potential clients. Introduce yourself to people you want to network with through the social media before you meet them in person. If you’re wondering how to network effectively at events, a “pre-introduction” via a Twitter direct message may be your best strategy. With the proliferation of online...
read moreIgnorant and intransigent: Beware the Dunning-Kruger Effect!
All of us suffer from the condition that we don’t know what we don’t know. However, for many, there lurks a problem that is even greater and it has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger uncovered and described an interesting – and troubling– phenomenon. Many of the people who are the least informed or knowledgeable, nonetheless believe that they are among the most informed and knowledgeable. This is exactly the opposite of the way it should be, right? We would like to think that we can recognize our weaknesses, but the Dunning-Kruger Effect (which has been reaffirmed by many follow-up studies) says that we often don’t. Dunning and Kruger found that people whose knowledge puts them in the bottom 12 percent thought they were in the top 65 percent. This has practical implications for small business owners: It’s another reason every small business owner should be working with a coach or mentor. It should make you cautious to believe everything employees tell you with regards to their skills and knowledge. It proves how important ongoing training and retraining are for your team. Let’s look at each of these three issues a bit more closely. Get a coach It’s a great idea to be working with a coach or mentor because an experienced business professional will be able to teach you things beyond your personal experience. This person will have lived through economic conditions and business situations that have not yet crossed your path. But beyond this, if you have an open, honest, and communicative relationship with your coach, your coach will be able to point out areas where you hold misguided – or flat out wrong – ideas. Your responsibility is to be open to the possibility, and even the likelihood, that some of your pet ideas may be way off base. By the way, I came across a simple five-question financial literacy quiz as I was preparing to write this. It so happens that one of the areas where Americans suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect most is in the financial realm. We think we understand finances better than we do. I hope you’ll ace this quiz, but if you don’t, let it be a warning sign that you need to talk about finances with a professional! Be somewhat skeptical People oversell their skills and knowledge during the job interviewing process anyway, but when you add the Dunning-Kruger Effect to that, it compounds the problem. You need to always have a respectful, polite and open “show me” attitude. When people on your small business team say they can do something, be on hand to watch them do it the first time. Let your employees know that everyone on your team is there to help one another, including you. Put emphasis on training All of this shines a spotlight on the importance of training. Another element of your training and your company culture should be that you want processes done in a uniform manner. In other words, you don’t want it to be “every man for himself” when it comes to processes and procedures. Unfortunately, with severe cases of Dunning-Kruger, sufferers are reluctant to let go of their ways. After all, they believe in their hearts that they are right. Consistent nudging via...
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