Archive for Planning
Organize Your Business
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As an entrepreneur, your systems are the processes and procedures by which everything in your business runs. When your systems work, everything runs smoothly, or as smoothly as possible when running a business.
Systems are essentially a step-by-step process written out for each aspect of your business. They help you stay on track, they make you more efficient, they streamline your business and they help you see where you can improve and where your business is excelling. When your systems work, everything runs smoothly. When they don’t work…well you get the picture.
Some potential systems include:
- Customer service
- Marketing
- Sales
- Product creation
- Product development
- Purchasing
- Production
- Producing an ezine
- Billing
- Invoicing
- Outsourcing
Systems are particularly useful when you’re outsourcing a task to a virtual assistant. If you’ve done the processes in advance, then, you’ll have everything written down from the very first to the very last step, and your virtual assistant will know how you like your business handled.
Creating your systems
The first step to creating systems is to realize what processes your business uses. Simply make a list of the processes you go through on a daily or weekly basis. Once you have your list, it’s time to actually create your systems. They’re created initially by simply writing down the steps to accomplish a task. As new processes are added to your business, you’ll simply create a new system for that process. For example, if you add on an affiliate program then you’ll have several new system like a payment system, a communication system, a recruiting system and so on.
Once your systems are created, the processes can be fine-tuned by using several steps. Firstly, you may want to simply evaluate the process you’ve written to see if it works and if there are any loopholes or steps you’ve missed. Secondly, you may want to include goals and measurements to determine whether the system is a success.
For example, if you have a customer service system and your goal is to have 100% customer satisfaction, and you end up losing 20% of your customers due to an inadequate customer service policy, then you know the system needs to be tweaked.
Storing your systems
Because you are a business owner, you are probably on your computer at least 50% of the working day, and more than likely you’re on it almost 100% of the working day. This means it makes sense to organize your systems on your computer. A simple file with the date and the name of the system will make them easy to access. You’ll also want to organize your goals and how you’re going to measure the goals.
Systems are a business owner’s best friend. They’ll help keep you on track and running smoothly today, tomorrow and for years to come.
Adding Speaking As An Additional Income Stream
Posted by: | CommentsGetting speaking engagements is not all hard work. What it takes is a mind that is open and knowledgeable about your business subject. With a little bit of creativity, you can leverage what you do already by adding speaking to increase sales and product variety.
The first strategy you use to become known as a speaker is visibility. Others have to know that you exist and have something important to say. Through speaking and building relationships with your audience, your “sphere of influence” will begin to grow.
Wouldn’t you like to take advantage of tools that help you become an expert without breaking a sweat? We figured that you might. So, here are some ways that you can do that:
The Pitch…
Let’s say that you have been coaching individuals and get great results. The next logical step may be to create an entire program around a specific need that you serve. For example, if you write articles to increase your visibility and coach others to do the same, why not create a 4 week teleseminar series dedicated to “Increasing Your Visibility By Writing Articles.” This will help you get your feet wet speaking, will increase your visibility and increase your expert status. Not to mention the additional income stream you created for your speaking.
The Hit…
The speaking engagements that you do aren’t just for one time use, but rather carry a ton of potential. One single speaking engagement can give rise to another. Look at your topics with new eyes. You can probably see them turning into:
- Ebooks
- Special Reports
- Audio products
- Video products
- Articles
The list goes on but you get the idea. The information in just one 60 minute speaking topic can morph into each one of these. Better yet, take a series of talks, bundle them to create a special report or an ebook if there is a lot of information. Take each section of the eBook and create a course that customers can buy. Add audio and video to the course and turn your course material into a study guide to accompany them.
It’s Out of the Park…
Instead of one speaking topic, you now have leveraged that piece into a variety of product offerings all of which will add to your expert status and your bottom line.
Creating A Strong Brand for Your Business
Posted by: | CommentsCreating a business brand is one thing, but creating a strong business brand is another. Every entrepreneur needs to be aware of the fundamentals involved in creating a business brand that will enable your service or product to excel in the market. However, you must not be scared by this process, instead, try to enjoy building your brand by creating one that you can be proud of and that your customers will love.
Focus on the Business
Before thinking of a brand, think first of your business. After all, the brand is merely a representation of your business. So, you must refrain from focusing too much on developing an effective brand without giving attention to your business. Your brand must come as a result of your business, not the other way around.
You need to come up with your brand depending on the following factors:
*nature of business
*type of service
*distinction from competitors
Nature of Business
One of the main purposes of creating a brand is to communicate to the consumers what your company does. Therefore, take time to evaluate the nature of your business and the distinct attributes and images it conveys to the market. If possible, try to produce your brand according to the specific target market of your business. Is your business catering to doctors, six figure entrepreneurs or children? This will help establish the name and image for your business.
Once you increase awareness of your brand as a representation of your company’s products or services, only then can you expect to experience increased sales. Creating a firm brand that will be easily remembered and distinct will enable you to create a loyal customer base.
Type of Service
The concept surrounding a brand name such as a logo, mission statement, or color scheme are just abstract concepts. What establishes a brand as a concrete representation for your company and business is the experience that your customer has with your product or service. Therefore, you need to establish that relationship between your customer and the kind of service you bring to them.
The perceived value of your company is a vital formula that will produce a strong business brand. It is not all about images, but includes delivering of tangible results to the emotional and physical needs of your customer.
Distinction From Competition
Although examining the type of brands that are utilized by your competitors will help you establish your own brand, you need to differentiate from them while exceeding them at the same time. Distinction must not only arise from the business name or logo itself, but in terms of the quality of service that you deliver. What can you offer that your competitors do not and cannot offer? Then, incorporate that into the creation of your brand so you will easily be able to capture your customers’ attention to the possibility of doing business with you.
In a market that is flooded with several other businesses, making yourself unique and distinct from others is one way to establish the reputation of your business. Couple that with a passion for delivering top-notch customer and quality service and you are sure to establish a strong business brand that will help your company achieve its goals.
Add Facebook or Twitter to Your 2010 Business Plan
Posted by: | CommentsYou want to make 2010 a better year for business than you’ve ever had before…
and there are powerful new tools to make it happen!
It’s time to be looking ahead to 2010 and planning how you will achieve success for your business.
Many entrepreneurs do not take the time to write a business plan to guide their decisions as their business grows. Don’t make that mistake – make sure you have an effective business plan that will grow your business and help you achieve your dreams.
You’ve heard that Facebook and Twitter are some of the most powerful free marketing tools ever and now is the time to plan how you might use them in your business. Learn the basics of business planning, explore whether these social media tools are right for your business and learn ways to incorporate Facebook and Twitter into your marketing plans for increased success.
Join me on Tuesday, December 29th at 1:00pm ET for the free teleseminar, Add Facebook or Twitter to Your 2010 Business Plan.
You’ve been thinking about using social media and now is the time to see how to fit it into your plans. You’ll learn –
- Simple five step process to an effective business plan
- 4 Tips to prevent an incomplete or ineffective plan
- Business benefits of Facebook and Twitter
- How to integrate free online marketing successfully
- And much more…
Register for the free call here.
This call will give you details of planning for your success in 2010. If you aren’t familiar with updating your business plan for the year or aren’t sure how to include Facebook or Twitter, you’ll want to be on this call. This is a business planning call so come with pencil and paper to begin work on your plan for 2010. If you can’t be on the call, be sure to register anyway so that after the call, we can send you the link to listen to the recording.
Register now for the call and then make sure to mark your calendar so you don’t miss it.
Use Social Networking in Your Marketing Plan in 2010
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You’d be hard-pressed to find someone these days that isn’t a part of at least one social network. Use that to your advantage. Join in and find ways to engage users, promote your website and increase your traffic for at no cost.
Social Networking Craze
Social networking is one of the easiest ways to stay connected to friends and family near and far. You can share pictures, stories and send instant messages when you are both logged in. This way of keeping in touch has extended into the business world and become useful as a marketing tool. Joining a social network is free so there’s no reason not to give it a try. These sites bridge the gap across the miles better than simple email.
Which sites can you use? Actually, business owners have found most of the more popular sites useful: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace. The results from each site are different for every business so don’t be afraid to test and track which ones yield the best outcome for your business. Once you sign up with a valid email address and password, you are ready to get started.
Using sites like these, you can create a page that tells all about you and your business. Look for friends, family and business associates who are also connected so you can keep up with what is going on in their lives and businesses as well.
How to Use Them Effectively
Let’s look at a site like Facebook. It is highly popular and can be beneficial for both business and personal use. On the business side, you can post links to your website when new products are launched, new newsletters are published or sales are going on. If you blog, post links to your newest blog posts (or to guest blog posts you’re doing elsewhere around the blogosphere). Highlight contests, guest bloggers and other events that you are a part of. Have an online radio show? You can invite friends to listen to live podcasts to learn more about your business.
On a site like YouTube, you can post videos and add the links to your Facebook profile, Twitter stream, etc. Invite friends to view and leave comments.
The best part about social sites such as these is that friends and business contacts can pass your links on to others who might be interested in the topics as well. Quite possibly viral marketing at its best!
Relationships Matter
The one thing to remember about promoting your website or blog on social networking sites is not to do so just for that purpose. Relax and get to know the people you are trying to reach out to. They say that social networking can be addictive. While it can be a double edged sword if you’re not careful, setting boundaries will make it addictive in a good way by growing your business.
Just like so many other marketing tools, the name of the game is relationships. You can build meaningful ones not only with friends and family, but with your target audience and business associates on all the social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook of course, and others.
Comment on your friends posts and visit their links as well. As an Internet marketing tool, social networking works both ways. Don’t think of it as a means to an end but one of the more fun marketing tools you get to use to grow your business.
If you aren’t currently using any social networking platform, now is a great time to start. It can serve dual purposes in your life; both to your benefit. Each business contact you meet, invite them to be your friend or follower. Who knows? You could be connecting with a future joint venture partner or find that diamond in the rough service provider to help you take your business to the next level.
If it feels like I am speaking another language or you want to learn more about social networking and its advantages for your business, join me for Social Media Made Easy.
Planning and Overcoming Time Management Obstacles: Part 2
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To overcome these planning and time management obstacles, consider these four steps:
1. What’s stopping you?
Look at what’s holding you up. Is it procrastination? Perfection? A lack of planning? What’s getting in your way?
2. Prioritize and set goals
Prioritizing and goal setting are two very important components of time management. Goal setting is easiest to accomplish when you set a goal that is attainable and measurable and when you break it down into smaller manageable goals.
Creating a task list is another item that, as strange as it may sound, needs to become a scheduled part of your day and your week. You’ll want to spend a bit of time prior to Monday morning creating a list of tasks and goals for the upcoming week. Keep in mind that some days may be set aside as planning days, days off or meeting days.
3. Plan and schedule your day, week and month
Make sure you have time to accomplish the goals, tasks and priorities you’ve established. Set aside the time you need by planning your days, weeks, and even your month out.
To make this process easier, and to lighten your load, there are time management tools like a PDA, desktop scheduling software and the good old fashioned paper calendar, which can help you establish and maintain time management success.
4. Get help
Finally, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, it may be time to seek outside help. Consider hiring someone to manage the tasks that seem to get in the way. Often these are the administrative tasks. You can partner with a virtual assistant to lighten the load and streamline your technology and automation. You can also hire a housekeeper if daily chores are a distraction from your business. Last but not least, hire a business coach who can help you take your business to the next level.
Overcoming your time management obstacles is easy when you are able to acknowledge what they are and why they exist. From there it’s merely a process of planning how to overcome them and using the right tools to get the job done.
Planning and Overcoming Time Management Obstacles: Part 1
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Planning and time management can be the biggest challenges to starting a business and being a successful entrepreneur. Learning to overcome these obstacles can be the key to managing and leading a successful business.
What are time management obstacles and what causes them? Many things cause time management obstacles including:
1. Perfectionism – Many people use perfectionism as a crutch, a way to stay busy doing what they know how to do and to let the rest slide. For example, you’re a skilled writer but detest accounting, which means you spend days on a sales letter and your books are in such shambles that you are unsure who owes you what or how much money you’re making or losing.
2. Procrastination – This happens for a number of reasons. If you’re facing burnout, then you’ll likely feel like avoiding anything related to your business. However, if you’re facing a task you don’t want to do it’s much easier to procrastinate.
3. An inability to say no – Guess what…not only should you not be doing everything – you can’t! And if you try to, something’s going to give. You’re not going to be able to devote your full attention to your business-related tasks, they’ll suffer and your bottom line will suffer.
4. Lack of planning – It’s easy to become caught up in tasks like
- Social networking
- Phone calls
- Checking stats and website analytics (This is important but you don’t need to obsessively watch the numbers)
- Surfing the net, reading blogs and industry information
One quick email check can turn into a full hour of back and forth email correspondence and before you know it, your entire schedule is off for the day. Planning, and sticking to your plan, helps you stay on track. In part two of this article series, we’ll talk about how to overcome these obstacles.
Getting Down to Business on Facebook
Posted by: | CommentsHow To Successfully Use the Most Powerful Free Marketing Tool Ever
Thursday @3 Call – sponsored by The Coaches Console
Special call for coaches to develop their coaching businesses!
Learning to use online tools like Facebook to grow our coaching businesses can be
confusing & frustrating….
But we all know that our business success may now rest in the online world!
Learn what you need to know to make Facebook work for your business.
Are you one of the coaches who is playing with Facebook and wondering how to use it for business? Or maybe you have been using Facebook for a while but haven’t seen any results in your business. You may even be one of the folks who hasn’t started using Facebook at all because it can be so confusing or overwhelming…
Then this is the call for you!
In this interactive call, Kate Steinbacher of The Coaches Console will be hosting me as we discuss –
• Why Facebook is the most powerful marketing tool available to your business today.
• How to establish a business presence separate than your personal use of Facebook.
• 5 Facebook tools for business promotion
• Understanding recent Facebook changes
• And much more….
If you are a coach looking to find powerful, free ways to grow your coaching business, you’ll want to join me on this call.
Date and Time: Thursday, December 10th at 3:00-4:00 pm EST.
There is no charge for this call. Please register here.
Solopreneurbiz: What’s New On Facebook
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Have you been to our Facebook Fan Page recently? I highly encourage you to go to http://www.facebook.com/solopreneurbiz right now and share your business insights with us. We have been getting a lot of interaction lately and it really makes for a lively yet meaningful discussion.
Recently we’ve talked about:
10 Tips for the New Business Owner
Tips for Profiting from Social Media
Top 10 Blogs for Writers
and so much more!
I also encourage you to take a few minutes and go to our discussions page and add your business to “What is Your Solopreneur Biz?” While you are there, visit some of the awesome businesses listed! Also, please feel free to start your own discussion on the board.
If you’re not already, go on over to our Facebook Fan Page and become a “fan” today! We would love to have your input in our discussions.
Save on Coaches Console (only 2 days left!)
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Coaches Console wants to help as many coaches as possible, so they put together a summer sale for any coach who signs up before August 5th.
The Sizzling Summer Sale makes it easy and especially valuable for coaches to start using the system.
When a you sign up before August 5th, they are automatically qualified to receive.
- Coaches Console Setup Fee at 50% off, which gives them a $49 savings over normal price
- A free copy of “The Top 30 Ways Successful Coaches Are Using Coaches Console to Coach More Clients, Earn More Money and Make a Difference“
But, That’s Not All…
There is a special bonus Coaches Console is giving to each new member who decides to become a Coaches Console member before August 5th.
“The Life Coach’s Guide: 25 Proven Fool-Proof Steps to Starting (and Filling!) Your Business”
Written by Rhonda Hess, Coaching Business Success Strategist and Founder of Prosperous Coach®, The Life Coach’s Guide gives you easy-to-apply steps for the business side of your coaching practice:
- How to choose a viable coaching niche.
- How to talk to prospects and win them.
- How to use Powerful Thinking to become a top coach.
If you’ve been thinking about adding Coaches Console to your arsenal, there has never been a better time!
