Category: How-To Guides

From the very beginning, they were a tough client.

Demanding and special; they said they were like no other company I had worked with.   And they were right, but not for the reasons they thought.

All of my clients are like no other I’ve worked with.

They micro managed and wanted everything documented.  And I mean EVERYTHING!  They focused on what was not working.

When we finally got James into the room he barely raised his eyes from the laptop screen in front of him.  He seemed to be distracted and barely acknowledged even when the conversation referenced him directly.

Finally he looked up and said, ‘well my clients are too busy, stressed and conservative to listen to a story’.  I smiled and said to him, “James, can I tell you a story?”  He shrugged and reluctantly agreed.

I told him a quite a long tale with a great message; about opening up and trust and abundance.  An inspiring story about faith in what is and reconnecting with the core reason you do what you do.

I can’t say he was totally transformed but he certainly lightened up and his reluctance melted.  He was 100% more engaged and began to ask specific questions about how I deal with the kind of clients he described.

I gave the example of the story I had just told him.  He nodded and then began to smile.  He didn’t say it but I knew he had seen it.

What he described in his ‘very difficult’ clients was a complete mirror of how he was behaving in the meeting.  He could begin to see it now.

So often the very thing we identify in others is the biggest issue we struggle with ourselves.

The frustration we experience in our clients is the challenge we face ourselves.

This ‘tough’ client was a huge learning experience for me.  It was a fantastic opportunity to really trust myself and my work; to be beyond confident as I had to continually reassure them.

It was the chance to fully show up, to face and be resilient to constant doubt, criticism and negative focus.

It was the amazing experience of fully walking my talk, using my own tools and resources to tell a fantastic story and live that   story.

So, where are you facing your biggest fears, doubts and negativity?  Are you managing to tell a powerful story?  What story can you tell that would shift the negativity for you and for your client?

Article Contributed by Doug Barden

A lot of start-up businesses are created from nothing more than a brilliant idea and a willingness to work hard. Others are awash with working capital and bloated with assets from day one. But lean is a good philosophy to buy into for it will keep you focussed on the core principles as you build a sustainable business.

Take the Fast Road to Profit

No business is truly a business until it is capable of generating a sustainable profit. Until that point, it is a work in progress. In order to reach that point, you need to be 100% focussed on building the business and acquiring new customers. Getting bogged down in unnecessary details will only distract from this task. So instead of wasting time checking out fancy new office space in a desirable part of town, concentrate on the important stuff.

Six Ways to Keep Your Business Lean

1. Do not borrow too much capital – Only borrow what you need. The more money you borrow the more the loan will cost you in terms of interest.
2. Rent instead of buy – Never buy an asset when you can rent it. Buying assets ties up too much working capital and negatively impacts on cash flow.
3. Keep management systems streamlined, simple and cost effective at all times.
4. Keep a close eye on the financials – Tracking income and expenditure will help keep costs down and prevent cash flow problems.
5. Don’t over staff your organisation – Employees cost money, so make sure each employee you hire can be justified, and if they can cover multiple roles, even better.
6. Keep your overheads down – Never pay any more than you absolutely have to and always renegotiate supplier contracts regularly to ensure they remain competitive in the current market conditions.

Develop a Customer Centric Business Model

Your customers are the heart of your business, or at least they should be. To this end, the ethos of your business should be about improving your products and services and ensuring the customer experience is positive at all times. Make ‘repeat business’ your buzz word. The more repeat business you can generate the shorter the amount of time it will take for your business to start making a profit. On the other side of the coin, if your products and services are of a sub-standard quality and your costs are spiralling out of control, it won’t be long before the business is in trouble.

Why Lean is a Long Term Strategy for Success

Excessive business debt and bloated cost heads are the enemy of a successful business. If you can work hard at keeping your running costs down to the bare minimum whilst increasing a healthy sales ledger, you are well on the way to building a long term successful organisation that will be sustainable even in an economic downturn.

It isn’t always easy to run a ruthlessly streamlined organisation, but if you want to be successful, it is a smart approach. Adopt a lean approach from the inception of your business and it won’t be long before you are running a successful, profitable business that will survive whatever the prevailing economic conditions.

About the author:

Doug Barden is a managing partner at Barlow Andrews, a leading chartered accountancy company in the UK.  For more information, visit http://www.barlow-andrews.co.uk today.

The most important thing a startup company can do is efficiently market in a way to introduce themselves and establish their spot in the business world. The most important place to tackle first is the internet.

With newspapers, magazines and just about every other medium you can imagine now located in the vast world wide web, there are strategies that can be put into place to ensure success for a company. The most common, and important, is Search Engine Optimization.

It’s a way of using search engine keyword searches to have a company stick out above the others. Here are some tips on how to make the most of out SEO.

For further Entrepreneurial tips, Tomas Cabrerizo got his start in the business world at a very young age.  This served to feed his drive for success.  He built upon each experience and used to increase his knowledge.  This has led him to several entrepreneurial opportunities.  He has met each one with success.

Interlinking

Some older posts may not have successful at first, but since the information is still available, newer and more successful posts can be linked to these past ones to bring back attention. Just because it has already been posted, doesn’t mean it’s dead and buried.

This will drive more traffic through an entire website instead of just one post, allowing your customers to use your website as a point of reference for multiple subjects. This increases the amount of time that each visitor is on your site, which is taken into consideration by search engines when it comes time to rank relevant topics.

Surveys

The average person isn’t usually willing to participate in a survey, but even if a small group of visitors do, then this can be vital. With the information that you gather from these surveys are instrumental in establishing your marketing strategy.

Questioning how they found a particular website can be used to retool marketing if they have reached it in a way that wasn’t originally planned. This new information is free and helpful for a company.

While you won’t see an immediate SEO increase, you will in the long term. This is because as more visitors view your site after you have customized it to their needs, the traffic will put you closer to the top in search engines.

Map

Providing a sitemap for a website will ensure that visitors are able to find exactly what they are looking for. Also, search engines will show the most popular links for a website as part of the search result if there is a sitemap established.

The less time a person has to search to find what they are looking for, the more likely they are to return to that site because of the convenience. Not to mention the fact that less time spent searching allows for more time reading on your site.

Articles

Often times when news is breaking and people are searching for it through sites like Google, they want the most up to date information. Even if it’s just an article on tips or suggestions for anything, it can still pop up first as it may be the most relevant.

This will shoot a site up the rankings on a search result and can establish a base of viewers that will keep coming back.

In addition, guest bloggers can be a nice way of branching out as there is already a built-in audience with their own blogs. These guests will now draw attention and expertise to the site.

Comment Boards

Having a comment board for each of the pages on a web site will allow customers and readers to submit feedback. It’s similar to a survey but people are more willing to participate. With many actively engaged readers, there is a strong likelihood that they will keep coming back to take part in discussions and view replies their comments may have received.

This can massively increase the amount of time spent on the site and the feedback will boost social scores that are taken into consideration for SEO-based results.

Now that you have some of the most important tools for using SEO, put them to the test for your site and you will see great results.

Thanks to Jenna Smith for supporting the site with this guest post.

Aspiring entrepreneurs all around the globe often find themselves in a disastrous scenario – broke, unmotivated, and stuck, all after quitting their day job to pursue their dreams.

The danger here is that culture makes that scenario a legendary, admirable action – quitting your day job to pursue bigger and better things. Society respects the individuals who “take a leap of faith” in their careers and quit their day jobs to pursue their dreams, and actually devalues the workers who remain working hard behind a desk, day in and day out.

Unfortunately, that system is broken, misleading, and its perceived glamour is oftentimes what prevents dreams from happening altogether.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Yet

You probably aren’t going to find that advice in a lot of other places. It’s not popular, and it’s barely even conventional anymore. There are simply too many stories about the courageous individuals who left everything to follow their passions and became wildly successful. What those stories don’t mention are the waves of workers who quit their jobs and didn’t find success.

Instead, I’m going to propose an alternative tactic, one that probably isn’t popular or awe-inspiring. Keep your day job, for now. You’ll need it for later.

Your day job can actually be one of your greatest partners in reaching your dreams. It’s a solid foundation for supporting yourself and paying the bills while you work feverishly on your dreams after sundown. Bridging the gap between your day job and your dream job will happen organically this way. Sure, once you quit, you’d probably be more motivated to work hard and accomplish what needs to be done – however, you can still accomplish a lot while working 40 hours a week.

Don’t Become the Office Slacker Either

This post isn’t encouraging you to become a mediocre, minimal-work worker who only gets the bare minimum done throughout the day. This practice can also bey very detrimental to your attitude after work; if you’re a lazy, unmotivated, and preoccupied worker throughout the day, you’ll inevitably carry those patterns to your home office where you write and dream. Workers who continue to work with excellence and stay productive during a day job will also inevitably carry those traits with them after work.

Entrepreneurs from every walk of life have found success in day jobs while working for their dream jobs. Robert Saman, CLO and secretary of STEC is an excellent example of a worker who started small and rose to the top with an astounding work ethic and integrity. If you’re working at a small business and dream of quitting to pursue bigger and better things, you’re not alone. But instead of finding yourself unable to pay the bills and loading enormous stress on yourself, adopt an attitude like Saman’s and countless other workers who chose to remain excellent in work.

Don’t quit your day job, yet. Perhaps down the road, when you have enough savings, a solid business plan after you quit, and the support and encouragement of peers and family, quitting will become a viable option. Don’t get stuck working at home with no money coming in and not getting anything done.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith

Passionate, dedicated employees who remain engaged with their work are the life blood of any startup. Fostering that engagement, and learning from past experiences, is just as vital to your company’s growth as the products you create. Small businesses that maintain a handful of employees rely on those individuals to remain productive and flexible in environments that are often fast paced.

Staying engaged with your project is usually as simple as providing some incentive to finish. Creating that final product is not always motivation enough, so create a system that encourages productivity through employee action.

The Engagement Concept

Engaged employees typically have some stake in the business, a reason to see it succeed. Larger companies offer executive bonuses or increased vacation time for higher ups as an incentive to drive the company toward success.

Startups typically don’t have the resources for that kind of compensation. Many of these small businesses will foster community building in the hopes of keeping employees interested in the company future. Engagement helps keep customers hooked on products, so the same concept translates to your employees.

Tracking Engagement

Creating measurable goals that an employee can accomplish, and tracking the progress toward those goals helps measure engagement. The concept of SMART goals talks about objectives that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant to the over all picture, and time sensitive. When an employee has specific parameters, he or she can take action to attain goals.

Measurable goals include increasing traffic to a website, or answering more phone calls each week. Goals must always have relevance to the company’s mission and goals must have an end time so workers can be held accountable. Use these tips when creating task lists for yourself to keep your day more productive.

In addition to tracking goals, design surveys with the intention of discovering ways to increase employee engagement. Asking employees questions about feelings on company protocol and company culture can produce unexpected results. You might find that offering longer vacation times in place of free snack food would make a huge difference in the enthusiasm employees show toward their work. The most important element to tracking engagement is listening to employee concerns and being responsive, the same things that you expect when they deal with customers.

Contract Workers

Physical distance is becoming more commonplace in today’s workforce. In IT and graphic design professions, contract companies and individual employment are outpacing salaried workers according to the BLS. Keeping remote employees engaged in your projects is vital to keeping your products top notch. It’s best to establish a goal system that rewards contractors financially for accomplishing their tasks.

You can also try other means, like physical gifts sent to a contractor’s home or a well written recommendation for their website.

Improve Office Engagement

Not every business has a large work force, so if you can afford to do it take employees out for lunch. Failing that you can have employees meet at an event, like a local sports game, where you pay for snacks. Try paintballing, hiking or a barbecue at the park too.

Group events give everyone a chance to mingle, and introduce families to coworkers. Team building is an extension of trust that comes from coworkers becoming better acquainted. If you want a more open work environment with better team cohesiveness, improving office engagement is key to creating that culture.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith