Finding time for yourself is critical in running your business for a ton of different reasons.
1. It helps you perform better when you are working.
2. It increases personal satisfaction.
3. It allows for worklife balance and overall satisfaction.
4. It prevents burnout which is one of the leading causes of business failure.
5. It is better for your personal well being and health.
When all is said and done, making time for yourself could be the difference between business success and failure.
About Elise: Her main inspiration comes from providing physiotherapy treatments to long-term care patients and living with her 85 year old Greek grandmother.
A quote that keeps her going: “Thinking is easy, acting is difficult and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.” – Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Your small business exit strategy is one of the most important parts of running your business.
The reality is, if you want money quickly it is better to get a job than start a small business. Starting a small business helps you in the long run financially as you are building equity and value in your business year over year.
But the only way to get this equity and value out of the business is having a solid exit strategy that allows you to realize this.
There are 6 major exit strategies to consider;
1. Getting the most out your business now.
2. Liquidating your business which means selling all of your assets.
3. Selling your business to someone you know.
4. Being acquired by another business for a strategic reason.
5. Issuing shares publically and getting out of the business.
6. Create a family empire with a solid succession plan.
One of these should be selected and planned for. The video walks through these strategies, gives examples of how it has worked, and highlights the top tip for each exit strategy that you should be focusing on.
When we think marketing we often think advertising. But with business becoming more of a science, there are now marketing software out there that can help grow your business.
Obviously technology is more than just social media and your computer, and this is your opportunity to understand what some of those tools are that could help your business.
Marketing automation is one of the newest techniques out there. And it is becoming increasingly important as by 2020 it is estimated that 85% of a company’s customer interactions will be automated and through technology. This means that these marketing automation best practices are only going to become more important.
The 10 Commandments of Marketing Automation
1. Be 100% customer focused. What are your customers pain points?
2. Be pressure free. Gone are the days of the pushy sales person.
3. Support the internal sale. Remember that you are working with more than the decider when you are selling. There are influencers and other stakeholders you need to communicate with.
4. Marketing automation is part of your integrated inbound marketing strategy.
5. Drive repeat purchases. Keep them engaged!
6. Content driven. Have relevant new content to keep them interested.
7. It must be multi channel. Not everyone uses one communication channels. There are many and they are growing!
8. Reflect interest, not just action. Interest is important too!
9. Accessible no matter how someone is accessing the information.
10. Cross platform. The new normal is using different devices.
Find out more and what software is available through the video!
As you grow your business, one of the first things that you start doing is hiring employees. Hiring right the first time is critical as it impacts your sales, customer service, your ability to hire others, your brand image, and maybe even the survival of your business.
The expert for this webinar is Marci Schnapp, a Workplace Futurist, Executive Search and Strategic Human Infrastructure Consultant is responsible for TeamQuest Systems vision of being a premier Teamability®-based Executive Search and Human Infrastructure Solutions firm.
Netwriting or writing on the web is an evolving art. With more and more consumers turning to the web prior to making a purchase, it is becoming a more important medium.
Some of the questions that are answered in this video are;
– how do you write differently for web?
– how do you write differently for mobile phones?
– where do you put the most important messages?
– what are some emerging trends in online writing?
Some best practices when writing in general is to use the inverted pyramid approach where the most important or key points are at the top. Another is to use an active voice and ensure that the message is what the audience is looking for.
Web writing takes these writing best practices and turbo charges them with some other things you need to take into consideration.
1. Simplicity. Web needs to simple. Mobile needs to be even more simple.
2. Scan-able. People read websites in a pre defined order. Make sure your most important messaging are in these areas.
3. Search-able. Traditional search engine optimization best practices are no longer as important. Content (your writing!) is becoming increasingly important and providing relevant and credible information is critical. There is an entire new industry on content marketing based on this requirement.
As a small business owner we need creativity to help us with product development, creating new ideas in our business, and to stay ahead of the competition.
Sometimes we think that other people are the creative ones and that this is not a strength that we have ourselves. But that is not true! Everyone has creativity inside of them, they just need to know the tools and how to recognize it in yourself.
This video outlines the three major steps of creativity:
1. Brainstorming. Some different tactics to approach brainstorming and tools that you should try out. A lot of times it is as simple as starting to write things down.
2. Prioritization. Once you have a bunch of ideas it is important to figure out which ones are the best ideas or what order you can actually approach them. Everyone has a limitation on time and money, so prioritization becomes important.
3. Implementation. Once you’ve decided on the ideas, action becomes necessary. Many times people want to wait and make things perfect, but often it is good to get your MVP (minimum viable product) out there to begin your testing.
At the end of the video, there are additional tips and tricks, as well as an example of where creativity has made a huge difference.
Large businesses and small business alike use performance metrics with the intent to motivate their employees. However often these metrics are misguided and resulting in undesirable behaviour. They are not tied to the strategic performance of the organization.
In this video learn…
1. Why have metrics?
2. How to create your metrics that will actually help your business
3. Understand what a balanced scorecard is and what components make up a small business’ balanced scorecard
4. Learn how to monitor and implement the metrics in the most effective and efficient way possible
There are a lot of red flags when it comes to metrics, and if done improperly a metric can actually stunt your business’ growth rather than foster it.
Always remember that what gets measured will get done!
Growing your business is something that most entrepreneurs strive to do. They want to grow their business to help increase their profit, grow the value of their business to sell it at a later date, they want to hire more people, they want to help the community, they want to build something for their family, they are competitive, they never quit, and there are many other personal reasons.
Regardless, most small business owners are looking for ways to grow. The two that often come to mind is to grow outside of your geographical location and expand the size of the market or to create a new product. But there are a ton of other strategies to growing a business and many examples to follow. Click on the image to see them.
Watch this 30 minute video to find out;
– 12 small business growth strategies
– examples of businesses that used these strategies and how it worked for them
– draw out key takeways and ideas to use for each strategy
Expert’s Contact Information
Carla Langhorst
Small Business Consultant
Carla@smallbusinesssolver.com
Think about the excitement you felt when you first thought about running your own business. Did you dream of financial freedom? More time with your family? Travel to exotic places?
Where has all the excitement gone? Many small business owners experience incredible stress, time pressures and little personal time with loved ones. They realize that their business will collapse if they are absent from it. What started out as a dream has now become a cage.
The transition from a business that is a burden to a business that enables you to have the lifestyle that you dream of is not as difficult as you might think.
Learn to avoid:
•The stress from being the bottleneck in your business.
•The stress of poor cash flow
•The stress from not feeling in control
And how to achieve:
•Financial Freedom
•A business that works for you instead of a business you have to work for
•More time with your loved ones
If you would like to rekindle the dream, watch this video!
Customer service is the backbone of customer retention and customer loyalty. Customer retention is the backbone of increasing your revenue year over year.
This webinar will walk through the basics that you need to know about customer service and what you should know NOT to do.
Customer Service for Products
If you are selling a product, here are your customer service metrics.
1. Available products: do you actually have the product that they want on the shelf or in stock? Think about Chapters/Indigo, and the fact that you can order books on computers in store or find out physical stores where.
2. On time delivery: think about anything that you’ve ordered online and if it is close to when you need the gift, let’s say Christmas, they have a cut off online when they can get it to you by. If they missed the date, you’d be upset!
3. Zero defects: Do you buy your new pair of jeans with a hole in it (that wasn’t for fashion?) How upset are you about having to exchange it. Sometimes you’ll simply return it as you are that upset. Or you may simply never buy from that store again.
4. Meets customer specifications: If you want something custom, like ordering a custom suit. If it comes to you with pink thread and you expected black, you might be a little upset.
5. Amazes customers: This is the extra step. Is there something unexpected like a thank you card? A bonus gift? A loyalty card? For the suit example, maybe they threw in a tie?
Customer Service for Services
If you are selling a service, it is tougher as it is intangible. Here are your metrics;
1. Proximity to customers. Location, location, location becomes increasingly important for many services. It is less likely that someone will go to a salon across town or in another town, than down the street. That’s why franchises make so much sense. You love the product/service, but you simply aren’t willing to make the trek. So they bring it to you.
2. Zero wait time. How often have you gone to Tim Horton’s or Starbucks, and decided to wait on your coffee because the wait was too long. That is part of customer service. Both of them ended up changing their processes and adopting payment cards to save time. You might have even seen the Mastercard advertising about their PayPass program that has saved millions of minutes of time. It is the wait time in customer service of why this is sooooo important.
3. Consistent delivery. Services are trickier, as it is easy to provide great customer service as a single owner/operator of a business. But if you plan on scaling up, this will become more and more challenging. Maybe get your new employees to watch the recording of this video to start understanding the bigger perspective of customer service.
Part of this is understanding your process, and writing it down. That helps to train your employees as well as to improve upon what you are doing.
4. No mistakes in the delivery or unexpected interference. Mistakes happen! At Tim Horton’s I always order Steeped Tea. But I often get coffee instead as they might not have heard me with the noise or it was assumed. Another problem is sometimes the customer makes mistakes! They were talking about mistakes at Tim Horton’s the other day on the radio. One of the stories was about a woman talking on her phone while going through drive through. Apparently she heard the order taker speaking to the car ahead of her, and she ended up giving her order to a garbage can rather than to the order taker. When she got to getting her order, it obviously wasn’t ready for her. She was overheard saying on the phone “they got my order wrong again!”. This is a classic case of the customer not always being right.
5. Meets customer expectations. Services are tougher, as often the customer doesn’t know what to expect. Think about your last hair cut, and explaining that you just want a trim. You don’t know until your hair cut is done if it compares to your expectations.
6. Amazes customers. One of my best examples is at a nail salon I once went to. They ended up giving me a 5 minute massage while my nails dried. Completely unexpected and appreciated!
From here you need to know the best practices where are;
1. Managing expectations
2. Being fair and equitable with all of your customers
3. Listening
4. Over communicating
5. Recovering from mistakes
6. Mass customization
The subject matter expert was Carla Langhorst, the President of Small Business Solver. You can reach her at carla@smallbusinesssolver.com
