Entrepreneurs need to have a business plan. This phrase may strike fear into your heart, but a business plan doesn’t have to be frightening. In fact, business plans made simple should be the focus of any business coach with whom you work.
If you are spending days, weeks or months preparing your business plan you’re procrastinating growing the business and isn’t that the reason you became an entrepreneur? To run a business?
We want to work with our clients and get their businesses up and running and here are some ways to do just that.
Business Plans Made Simple
Keep it short. There is no law that says your business plan has to be hundreds of pages, or even fifty or twenty pages long! It can be short. It can be ten pages if you can fit all the relevant information in it.
Make it look good. Don’t scratch out your business plan on a bar napkin. Make it look and feel professional. Insert your business name and logo. Insert page numbers and sub heads and bullet points. Make it readable and something you’d be proud to show an investor.
Keep the language simple. You don’t have to insert $100 words when a $.10 word will do the same. Write your business plan the way you speak. Make it easy for your audience to read and comprehend.
Don’t use cliches or acronyms. Just because you understand the meaning of a cliche or an industry phrase or buzzword or acronym, don’t assume your audience knows what you’re talking about.
Don’t use too many graphs, charts or colors. If you need a diagram to illustrate a point, use it wisely. Don’t overwhelm the plan with images.
Use whitespace. Leave room for the reader’s eye to get a rest and a break from the text.
Have your business plan proofread and edited. Remember your eye and brain will fill in words and pass over misspellings if you’ve spelled that same word incorrectly for years. Don’t rely on spell check to catch all errors.
Insert a table of contents. Don’t make the reader have to flip through every page if he is only searching for a specific bit of information. Many word processing programs will insert a table of contents or you can design one once the plan is complete.
Business plans, whether you’re looking for investors or not, will help keep you focused and moving foward with your business. It is an entrepreneurs’ friend. If you don’t have a business plan and are afraid of making one, let us know, we can help!
Can you believe it’s March already? Where did the first months of 2019 go? Now that we are heading into the last month of the first quarter of the new year, it’s time to review your first quarter business success.
You still have one month — March — to get back on track if you’re not where you want to be. You also still have time to celebrate successes and amp up your efforts so you can sail into the first quarter on a business upswing!
Review Your First Quarter Business Success
What can you do, right now, before the first week of March has passed to propel your business toward its first quarter goals? Here are a few things to consider and implement:
Your business goal is to turn a profit. Don’t underprice products and services. You can’t and never want to compete on price. It’s a losing game.
The terms of the deal are sometimes more important than price. Don’t accept any a you can’t ethically live with. Don’t accept a deal that devalues your business or crosses a line with your business mission and vision.
Plan a cushion into all contracts because many deals take longer and cost more to implement than you’ve planned for.
Persistence, perseverance and promotion = Keys to success.
Do you need to course correct? Knowing what went “wrong” will help you do that. Make certain you write down wins, losses, lessons learned and any other items that will help you move forward with purpose.
Are you ready to move your business forward? Are you on track to meet your projected first quarter goals? If you’re facing challenges, let us know and our business coaching service may be just what your business needs!
Entrepreneurs simply cannot do it all. We certainly try, but there are tasks we do that we love and there are business tasks that we do that we hate — and frankly that we are bad at. Outsourcing those tasks at which we don’t excel is the solution but how to effectively outsource is a question entrepreneurs struggle with and ultimately procrastinate.
Entrepreneurs will also procrastinate tasks at which they aren’t good or which they don’t like and that saps productivity and, frankly, our mental energy. Procrasination is a weight that pushes against us and weighs us down. It’s truly never out of sight, out of mind. Undone tasks are always there.
How To Effectively Outsource
We know we need to work on our core business competencies — that is what our business is focused on, right? We also know there are tasks that the business requires (bookkeeping, blogging, marketing, etc.) that aren’t in our wheelhouse, but we do them anyway — rather than outsourcing them.
Why is outsourcing such a frightening prospect?
What if we hire the “wrong” person
What if they don’t perform the task the way we would?
There are others, but these are the top that I’ve heard. If you take your time and vet the contractor or employee, you won’t have hired the “wrong” person. If you have, you need to let that person go and begin your search again. As long as the task gets done, and gets done correctly, does it matter if it’s performed the way you would have done it? Not really.
Your business runs on the skills you offer, the problems you fix for your clients and a need your skills or products fill. Successful entrepreneurs understand they can’t let the tasks they don’t enjoy or at which they don’t excel get in the way of running the business they love. They learned to outsource. Take a moment and consider what your hourly rate is. Now look at a task you procrasinate. If you did that task, how long would it take? What would it “cost” you in lost business time? How much would it cost you to hire someone to do that task? I’ll bet you find you will save money by outsourcing.
It is your core competency and expertise that makes your business valued by your clients, they don’t care what goes on in the background. You need to rely on the expertise of others to complete those tasks that allow you to interact more fully with your clients. Outsourcing will enhance productivity and your business’s bottom line.
The benefits you gain by outsourcing will be outweighed by the time you spend hiring the individual. You should be focusing on the business for which your clients pay you, right? If you need assistance in outsourcing your marketing, or if you need a business coach to help you through business challenges, reach out to us, we can help.
Have you ever asked yourself do you lead or do you manage? Did you even know there was a difference? Employees know the difference and they really feel it the most when the time comes for their annual reviews. During the annual review, your employee will find out — in that brief time — whether they’re doing a good job, an okay job or if they have a lot of room for improvement. It is a nerve wracking time for them but it is a time for you to shine as a leader — not a manager.
Leaders can spot talent. Leaders will work with an employee who shows potential to coach them to a higher level of engagement and ownership in their job. A leader coaches the employee with promise and offers them opportunities to keep them engaged and invested in their job. A manager, simply piles on the work with no direction or feed back and the employee must continually “prove” his or her worth to the manager.
Be a leader and rely on a review schedule throughout the year rather than the annual one hour review of the employee’s performance. Done the right way you can coach and lead an employee who shows potential to a higher level of success — and your business will benefit.
Do You Lead Or Do You Manage?
Here are steps to make you a leader not a manager.
Build mutual respect. If you have a daily relationship with your employees there is a greater level of trust and respect and this will make leading a more beneficial relationship.
Set the tone when you meet with him or her. If you’re starting a leading or coaching session, set the groundwork so the employee feels comfortable with a give and take. This is not your usual annual review where they need to “prove” to you they’re valuable and you are filling out a form based on little interaction with them beforehand.
Explore alternatives and ways for the employee to take greater ownership of his or her job. Your employee is “in the trenches” he or she may very well have a different aka better way of looking at potential changes to the workflow or environment in their department.
When is the last time you sat down with your employees and had a talk with them about their jobs, about ways they feel they could perform at higher levels and whether they have aspirations within the company? If you can’t remember the last time, chances are you are a manager. Commit today to become a leader within your company.
If you’re an entrepreneur, maybe you’re considering starting a blog or a newsletter for your business. Maybe you already have a blog or newsletter for your busienss but you may be wondering how to write better business content. If you’re not getting engagement on your blog posts or your social media posts and if no one is opening your newsletters, you may need to look at your process.
Writing is an art, but you can learn to do it — if that’s what you want to do. Many entrepreneurs perfer to focus on their core competencies and hire professional writers who can create content for them. Regardless of how you go about creating content here are some tips to help you along.
How To Write Better Business Content
Write frequently. The more you write the better you will be. Just as athletes understand that the more they practice, the better they will get at their sport the same goes for writing. When you get into a writing habit you hone your skills and it will come more easily to you when you do it.
Read often. If you don’t read you will have a harder time creating content. Also, reading keeps you up on current events — if you read newspapers. Reading books and blog posts or other content in your industry keeps you current on the trends. You should always stay as informed as possible.
Understand your reason for writing for your business. Do you want to be seen as the go-to expert in your field? Do you want to get speaking engagements based on your content? Are you looking to make sales? Know why you want to write then craft your writing strategy for your business based on that.
Choose topics wisely. Remember, you cannot be everything to everyone. Choose what you write about and why. When you choose a blog topic, stick to one topic. It is easy to get off topic. When you do that, make note of the topic you veered off on and use that for a blog post at a later date.
Read it aloud or ask for a friend or colleague to read it for you. Even though you can easily go back into a blog post and make changes, it’s best to put your best words forth.
Do you write for your business? Do you need to write, but just haven’t or don’t know where to start? Let me know, I can help!
