Archive for the ‘Success’ Category

If you own and run your own business, you may relate to the idiom, “its lonely at the top.” It doesn’t much matter if the top is being in charge of hundreds of employees, or just one. Being chief decision maker means taking all of the responsibility. That is why it is so important for small business owners to have people they can go to for advice. I wrote about this before when I suggested every small business owner should have a M.O.M. I wanted to revisit the subject because I believe it is one of the core things every business owner should focus on.

Specifically, I want to talk to you about creating an advisory board. You may think of this as an abstract idea or something for bigger businesses, but its not. Every business, no matter how small, should have one. I am currently a one person business and I am working on creating my own advisory board.

What an Advisory Board Looks Like

The main thing to understand is that this board can be made up of anyone, anywhere. You don’t need to pay the people who you go to for advice, at least not until you grow so big that you need a formal board of directors. Furthermore, an advisory board can be a give and take situation. Everyone on the board can be small business owners and can share ideas with one another. That is how Becky McCray created her board.

This might work for you, or you might want a more mixed board that you feel more accountable to. In an upcoming episode of my podcast I talk to Melinda Emerson, who suggests that your advisory board include at least one former executive, one small business owner or entrepreneur, one person from another industry, and one customer.

Setting up and Running an Advisory Board

Putting a board together is often as simple as asking. You need to take the initiative and schedule monthly meetings. You might meet with them all at once or one by one. Your board might be local so you can have face to face meetings, or all over the world. What matters is that you have people that you respect that you can go to for advice.

The second thing you need to do, once you have a board in place, is to actually listen to these people and act on their advice. An advisory board is only as good as the action you take.

Geoffrey P. Lamdin, of Left Field Solutions, LLC., had this advice to share in the All Business Answers Success in 2010 Free Report.

“Create, re-invigorate, or expand your Advisory Board. Then listen to them and ACT upon what they are telling you! Seek out the BEST of the BEST for your advisors, regardless of where in the world they are – the internet and Skype are at your disposal. Small businesses often suffer from isolation, “small business think” paradigm, and perceived limitations. These are a sure path to eventual (or sooner) failure. Reach out to successful advisors for continuous, energized mentoring – and go!”

Can You Use Advice?

Take a moment and think about what a little good advice can do for you. Think about what it means if that advice can come from a perspective outside of your business, or even from your customer base.

We all need advice. We can all benefit from a different point of view, and from someone else’s expertise. If you do not have people that you go to on a regular basis for advice, why not? I’d be willing to wager that it’s not because you are pompous S.O.B. who thinks you know it all. Instead, you probably just don’t know how, or who, to ask.

It is okay to ask for advice. It doesn’t make you stupid. In fact, it is one of the secrets to great business success.

This post is part of a series on Success.

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I’ll admit that I am usually more comfortable giving advice than in asking for it. But I really believe that getting good advice is key to building a successful business, and I’m working on it. If you need advice on how to optimize your website for search traffic and lead generation, check out my business at BroadRiverCreative.com.

This post is part of a series on Success.

See more posts from this series. Get a Free Report on Success for Small Business.

If you want your business to become ever more successful and you want a team around you that is loyal and trustworthy, one of the best investments you can make is to further educate for your employees.

This could include helping with college bills, but it also encompasses a wide range of education opportunities including attending conferences, listening in on webinars, reading books and blogs, and more.

To educate employees is like reinvesting in a stock that offers you a great dividend and a long term upside. Yes, there is a chance that the stock will go south, and there is a chance an employee that you invest education dollars in will move on. But the potential reward is a loyal workforce that is committed to improving themselves and your business.

Here’s the thing. The business world is changing. These changes will have a bigger and bigger impact on your business. You can keep yourself and your employees up to date, or you can just hope that you will still be able to compete.

Kathi Elster, co-author of Working for You Isn’t Working for Me, offers this advice:

“Invest in educating your people – webinars, classes, books, guest speakers – this is the time to learn what is NEW and how that will impact your industry and your company.”

If you have employees, the great news is that you do not have to stay on top of changes all by yourself. By offering up education, you can recruit your workforce to help your business grow and continue to succeed, even in an ever-changing environment. Not investing in education will leave you far behind. If your sales rep still uses a Rolodex, it is time to upgrade. And it is far better and cheaper to upgrade through education than through firing and hiring.

Not only will a better educated workforce be able to do a better job, your business will also benefit from more engaged employees and a greater level of employee loyalty. Here is what Alan Vengel, author of 20 Minutes to a Top Performer, has to say about engaging employees to build loyalty.

“Take care of your people. These are the employees who have survived with you and helped your business stay afloat in the last 18 months. Most business owners and managers have been so focused on keeping the business going, and keeping revenue flowing, that they have forgotten to take the basic steps necessary to keep loyal employees motivated and engaged. Right now would be a great time for leaders and small business owners to begin to reengage their workforce with conversations about professional needs to improve engagement in the work and future personal development. The same people who helped sustain your business will be the people who grow your business as the economy improves. Businesses that focus on their people will be best for prepared for success in the future.”

The personal development of your employees is more important than you might think. You should seek to create a company full of specialists whose skills complement one another. By creating a culture of improvement, you will increase engagement and loyalty in current workers and be able to attract the best new hires.

Do you do anything now to encourage or help employees get further education? Training and personal development is a big key to success. You can start rather cheaply, even connecting employees with some free web resources. Pass on books that will be helpful to employees as they do their jobs. Of course, a commitment to company wide improvement means that you also need to be committed to your own self improvement and education.

What are you going to do about this?

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I am an education-junkie, and can’t begin to tell you how much my thirst for learning has helped me. You can connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.

photo credit: debaird™

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This post is part of a series on Success. See more posts from this series. Get a Free Report on Success for Small Business.

Managing employees is one of the most difficult things for many small business owners. As owner, you have a lot of influence over their lives. One of the things that is heart-wrenching for most is to have to fire a good employee simply because there is not enough work. But it is also important to keep your business solvent so that you and everyone else keeps an income.

The trick is to not grow too fast when times are good, and to maximize your staff so they stay busy, even during the growing pains of your business.

In our free report, The Number One Thing You Can Do To Make Your Small Business More Successful in 2010, Randy Morris of Middlebury Inn offers this advice:

“Flexible staffing is a must. If you can cross-train your staff to perform multiple duties, you can alleviate costly overtime and retain employees. While many companies are reducing hours or laying off employees due to reduced workload, we are cross-training employees which helps to create a full work week for some while giving others the ability to take time away from work for illness related incidents while avoiding overtime to those who are filling in. The other reason we have found cross-training to work well is that business is booking at the last minute and it is critical to pull help from multiple sources and make scheduling adjustments on the fly. Only flexibility of staff can accomplish this.”

This is one of the strengths of a small business, where every employee knows each other and the owner can communicate the stakes. Cross-training not only helps you fill in holes, but it also makes employee (rightly) feel more essential. For the most part, people are okay with variety at work, and even welcome it.

Of course, this is easier for some businesses than for others. It might not work very well in a hospital, for instance. But for most small businesses with a small staff, cross-training can be the answer for handling growth wisely. The alternative is to hire help when you are in a pinch and flush with cash, only to have to let them go when the growth stops.

By investing your time into your current employees and finding ways to keep them busy, and thus keep them essential, you can save money and save jobs. And that is an idea everyone can get behind.

If you do it right, you will also build a stronger culture at your company, one where everyone is happy to roll up their sleeves and get the job done. No longer will one employee have to stay late because she is the only one who is trained on a certain task. Employees can better help each other, fill in for one another, and keep your business going strong when they have a broader base of skills to work from.

So, instead of hiring a part time employee, see if you can pull from your current resources. If you can, you will be taking steps toward a more sound company, even when times get tough.

What are some ways you can cross-train your current staff?

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I am a big fan of Johnny Cash. So is my wife, which is pretty cool since she didn’t listen to any Cash before we were married. Some things just work out like that. I also have a passion for helping small businesses succeed. I do it here by providing my best advice and over at BroadRiverCreative.com where I build websites specifically designed to work for small businesses. The best place to interact with me is on Twitter, or in the comments section below.

There is a lot of talk these days about hiring freelancers instead of employees. With the web at our fingertips, it is easy to find highly specialized individuals to do certain tasks, and to pay them just for those tasks. Many experts recommend doing this, and I have as well.

James Little, of the Fusion PR Group, is a fan. He says that “small business owners can be more successful and save money by working with freelancers and consultants.”

Diana Ennen, of Virtual Word Publishing, has similar advice, but more specifically about virtual assistants. She says, “The #1 thing you can do in 2010 is to hire a virtual assistant and not do all the work yourself. This allows you to not only focus on what you do best, but also allows you to get out there more in front of your clients. Virtual assistants can handle all your social media and social marketing, publicity, administrative tasks, etc. Focus on the areas that make you the most money, and let someone else handle everything else. Plus, they can help your business be consistent with blogging, tweeting, being on Facebook, etc.”

It seems the best argument for a small business to hire freelancers is that it will free up the owner to focus on what he or she is best at. There are other benefits, of course. For one, getting a highly qualified person to do a job is a plus. To hire that person full time is out of reach for most small businesses. The alternative has always been to hire people who do good enough. In today’s business world, good enough isn’t cutting it. Employees need to specialize, and small businesses need to hire specialists.

Hiring someone on contract, as a freelancer, is usually more cost effective than bringing on an employee. For one thing, there is no workers compensation or additional taxes to worry about. Sure, the freelancer comes at a higher “price-per-hour”, but you only need to use them for the hours it takes to get the job done. A freelancer can usually do the job faster and better then a general employee.

But there are things freelancers can’t do. You can’t have them help out on the production line for the day. They can’t be a fill-in. Getting freelancers to understand and embrace company culture is harder (but not impossible, especially if you hire the right freelancer). Since most freelancers work long distance, they don’t become part of your office environment. The biggest downfall here is that you don’t have direct control over the freelancer. They usually work from their perspective. This isn’t always a bad thing, but your goals as a small business owner may include building a great culture, helping employees to improve themselves, and being able to see everyone face to face. If so, freelancers are probably not the route that you want to take.

Overall, I would say that freelance employees are great when you have focused tasks that you need to complete. This could be marketing, web design (ah hem, I can help with those two), accounting, law, personal assistants, data entry, typists, public relations, or any number of things. If, however, you want to groom someone into a management role, you need to hire and train.

So look at the things you need to do for your business that aren’t core to your culture and outsource those things. Keep important tasks under closer control by hiring employees.

Here is a final example. If you use sales reps, you can go in house or outsource. If you don’t care how your product gets sold, just that it does, you can hire a freelance salesperson. If you want to provide scripts, track progress daily, and train your reps a certain way, you need to hire in house sales reps.

Freelancers can do a great job. In many cases, better than you or any of your employees. Use them in these instances. But make sure you are developing a company at the same time. You need employees for some things, people who are going to be accountable to you and who are going to be flexible to grow with your business.

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Hi, I’m Bradford Shimp. I head things up here at All Business Answers. If you want to write for this blog, please send me an email. If you have a question that you want answered, click here. If you just want to be my friend, send me an @reply on Twitter or join me on Facebook.

I build Wordpress websites and themes for small businesses. Check out my business at BroadRiverCreative.com.

THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF POSTS ON WHAT YOU CAN DO TO BE MORE SUCCESSFUL IN YOUR BUSINESS THIS YEAR. TO GET A FREE REPORT FULL OF SUCCESS TIPS FOR YOUR BUSINESS, CLICK HERE.

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I want to start of this post with a quote from The Number One Thing You Can Do to Make Your Small Business More Successful in 2010, which is a free report I compiled with over 100 business experts. This comes from Tom Shay of ProfitsPlus.org. His advice on what you need to do to be successful is this:

In a word – target. Identify the ideal customer to make sure your product /service is the right one.

Then look for additional products/services to sell to that customer. The idea is to sell 5 to the one customer as compared to selling one product/service to five customers.

Tom’s advice really got me thinking. The question I came up with is how often do we develop products then hope to find a market for them, versus finding a market and then developing products for it?

Now, I am all for following your passion and going with your gut. But at the end of the day, I think we’ll all find that it is the people in our lives that matter, not the things. So, in business, we may think it is all about our product, but it really isn’t. It is about the people we get to work with and for (our customers).

Tom’s advice is to get to know your customer. Find the one customer type that you really jive with, and then perfect your product for that ideal customer. And, instead of repeating this process with a different product and a different customer base, simply drill down and find out what else you can offer your ideal customer. It really comes down to picking a well-defined niche and living there.

I think this is really good advice. I believe that the more you can focus yourself and your business, the more successful you can be. You become more purposeful, start to take on a clear identity, and you find yourself developing a sense of community with your customers.

What do you think?

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Hello, I am Bradford Shimp. I write most of the articles here at All Business Answers. If you would like to help out, let me know. I am always happy to publish guest posts and am looking for some regular contributors.

I help small businesses develop a presence on the web via web sites and online marketing with my business, Broad River Creative.

photo credit: Orin Zebest
photo credit: barryskeates