As a business owner, you probably take classes and courses and are invested in ways to incorporate new training into your daily life as an entrepreneur. Do you commit to your personal success as often as you commit to business growth and personal growth? how to commit to personal success is as important as committing to business success and growth.
We have put together a list of ways to commit to personal growth that I have found to be crucial to my clients as part of our coaching programs.
How To Commit To Personal Success
For many, they have to purposefully commit to their personal success. We tie our personal success with our business success but they may need to be separated in order for you to thrive.
Your business will grow when you grow and you will grow when your business grows. As entrepreneurs we are closely tied to the success of our business and that just might push us forward toward pursuing personal growth. Just because you work a 16-hour day doesn’t mean your business is a success, it just means you’re working a lot of hours. Just because you take a day off doesn’t mean you are growing personally. Focus on personal success to grow your business.
You cannot separate yourself from your business — it’s impossible so don’t try. That does mean that your business is a reflection of you, your morals and ethics and beliefs.
Don’t get bogged down in the tasks that you don’t leave the office. You need to network for business and you also need to take courses or pursue hobbies to grow personally.
Focus energy on core competencies. Don’t think you have to do it all. You won’t succeed if you try. You will only feel overwhelmed and burn out. Why do your own bookkeeping if it’s not what you know how to do? Why waste your time on this area if it’s not your expertise and you should be building the business instead.
If you don’t have a definition of what personal success means, you won’t know when you’ve achieved it. Do you measure success on your bank account or the number of new clients you sign up , the hours you put in at the office, or how happy you are?
What helps your business succeed and thrive? Your employees, right? If you are looking to grow or retain your staff we have 5 ways to build employee engagement. An engaged employee is more likely to stay and more likely to perform at his or her peak.
How can you ensure your employees are engaged? You can certainly ask, but if they value their jobs they may just say they are engaged — to humor you. You need to cultivate an environment of engagement and making your employees feel valued and heard.
5 Ways To Build Employee Engagement
Here are the best ways we have found to keep employees and even vendors engaged.
Offer seamless support. Don’t make employees have to jump through hoops to effect change or be heard. Have a service desk that caters to your staff. You have that for customers, why not staff.
Onboard with purpose. Don’t just hire an employee, give them the keys to the restroom and set them free. An employee who feels supported in the first days will be happier and more engaged. Even if you’re hiring remote and work from home staff, you can still successfully and effectively onboard them and help them succeed from day one.
Train from the beginning. Even if you hire an employee who met all the experience criteria, each organization has unique nuances and you can’t expect a new employee to know how yours works, just because he or she has the experience you sought.
Keep the lines of communication open. If you have an open door policy, let them know. If the new hire reports to a different supervisor, introduce them and introduce them to their co workers. Make them feel welcome.
Have an employee recognition program in place and let an employee know what he or she needs to do to earn that recognition. Also, on occasion, for no reason recognize an employee for a random act. Being recognized and even given a small gift card can go a long way in building engagement. Don’t forget to let the entire organization know who is being recognized and why.
When is the last time you thought about employee engagement? What is your turnover rate? Do you need to lower that? Engagement practices may be just what you need!
We know that post-covid may not be happening yet for many entrepreneurs. Some are still struggling to pick up the pieces, others are back up and running but are struggling to find workers, but there are others who are thriving and thrived during the entire past year. We know though that it is hard to be productive, no matter when, but we have tips on how to be more productive post-covid.
No matter where you are on the spectrum, I find that there are entrepreneurs who I work with that struggle to get it all done and we typically find out that the reason they aren’t getting everything done that they need to get done is that they’re doing tasks they should be delegating. In other cases, entrepreneurs will focus on tasks that are unnecessary because they are procrastinating on what truly needs to be done.
How To Be More Productive Post-Covid
Here are tips to regain your organizational and productive mojo.
Build a system with a structure that fits your personality. You can only be efficient and effective if you have a system in place. Use a synced calendar so you don’t miss meetings. Use a shared calendar with your staff. Respect your calendar, schedule downtime so you can recharge and so you can also make plans for the future.
What tasks can be automated.
What tasks can be delegated.
Where can you streamline operations?
Are you using too many applications to track projects that you spend too much time on the tech and less on the task
Are you focusing on the future? Don’t get stuck spinning your wheels in the present. Put together steps to move into the future with your goals.
Take a look at your schedule, your to-do lists and then take a long, hard look at what you accomplish daily or weekly. Are you moving toward future goals or are you stuck in tasks that are holding you back?
In the customer service world, having an email chain of conversation can be helpful. It is a great way for the customer to have written instructions if that was the reason they wrote. Even for customer service complaints, email can be a helpful medium. That being said, you need to have customer email best practice tips in place to keep every one of your customer service reps on the same page.
It makes sense that at times your customer service reps may go off script so their emails don’t make them sound like robots. However, this can be an issue if the customer service rep is dealing with a disgruntled customer.
Whether you are dealing with supply chain disruptions and may businesses still are because of coronavirus or if a customer received a product they consider subpar, the emails your team sends can either calm a customer down or ruffle his or her feathers even higher.
Customer Email Best Practice Tips
Whether your customer is justified in their feeling, it is up to you to work with him or her to see what you can do to help address the situation. After all, an angry customer is more likely to take to social media and run your company down than is a happy customer.
Here are some best practices you should put in place.
Don’t be defensive in your email practices. Be proactive. Try to anticipate customer complaints with shipping delays and other issues. Don’t be patronizing and say, “all business is suffering slowdowns because of coronavirus.” They don’t care. They want to be taken care of and came to you to ensure you do that just.
Answer a customer complaint in fewer than twenty four hours. The longer a customer has to wait for a response, the angrier they will be. They don’t want to be ignored. Even if you don’t have any answer, let them know you received their message and that you’re working on it.
Remember that a “joking” tone doesn’t show through in the written word especially if you don’t know how high of a level of understanding the customer has of your language nuances. Stick to a friendly, warm tone and skip the jokes.
If you work in a small company, encourage the team to talk to the customer on the phone. It’s easier to send an email, but a phone call is so much more personal and the customer could appreciate that.
Keep i mind that just because you know something, doesn’t mean your customer does. Think of this in the tech realm. It may seem simple to you to hit “control, alt, delete” but those terms may not mean anything to the person you’re speaking with. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and address them from there.
How often do you review customer service emails and best practice tips with your staff and vendors? It may be time to review those now.
Rex Richard of Peak Dynamics has been quoted as saying, “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, knowledge, or skill, but rather a lack of will…” Willpower in work and life matters and there are ways to “get more” willpower. We’ve been told that our willpower is a limited resource and we only have so much of it to work with every day.
We know that willpower or lack of willpower comes when your self-control is ebbing and when you’re emotionally and mentally exhausted.
Can you improve or regain willpower and self-control? Yes!
Willpower In Work And Life
Rex Richard has compiled his top three ways to improve your willpower in work and in life
Know your triggers. What makes you lose self-control? Stress? Boredom? Because your self-control is limited and you deplete it daily, you need to save some or bank some for later in the day when you may need it most. If you know you have a challenging day or event ahead — or at the end of the day — you need to “save” your self-control until then. For example, if you’re hungry or angry or bored, don’t grocery shop — this is especially true if food is your trigger.
Keep yourself out of tempting or stressful situations if you simply don’t have the reserves to control yourself or harness your willpower.
Strengthen your willpower through exercising it. Willpower and self-control are muscles and the more you work it, the stronger it will be. What can you do to improve your willpower and self-control and find reserves of it when you need it? These may seem odd, but they work.
Watch a movie that makes you cry and don’t let yourself shed a tear
Watch a movie that always makes you laugh, but don’t laugh
Solve a hard puzzle — crossword, Soduko or others
Control your emotions when you’re in a situation that tries your willpower. Shop when you’re hungry and resist the urge to stock up on junk food
Drink juice. Whip up a green drink (kale, spinach, fruit juice). The glucose in the fruit juice will help restore your brain and get you back in balance and in control. Feeding your brain can strengthen your willpower and self-control.
When it comes to business tools, we still say and believe that blogging is one of the most effective marketing tools an entrepreneur can have in his or her arsenal. Whether you’re doing your own blogging or hiring a professional writer, your blogging should be bringing in ROI — if not, why are you doing it? If you’re wondering how to make your business blog work for you we have advice.
If you have a business website, the biggest benefit of regular blogging is that every time a new blog post goes live and Google takes notice. Google loves good, new, valuable content and your blogs can be just that and they could help your business rank and get found online.
How To Make Your Business Blog Work For You
Try these tips for your blogging efforts.
Cluster your topics. If you have a LONG article or blog post, consider breaking it up into a series. Google, and readers, love a series. When you do a series you can specialize on the topic and it truly shows your expertise. When you write a series make certain you’re linking back and forth between all parts of the series and make it easier for your readers to find. Also, when doing a series, make sure you’re not making the reader wait weeks and weeks for the next part — they will lose interest.
Be authentic and yes, personable. Regardless of the niche in which your business is, you can still have a personality, right? Do you have to be so staid that you don’t have hobbies? A sense of humor? A story to share? Readers and potential clients will connect with you more readily if they see that you are a “real person” not just a business name with an unknown entity behind it.
Don’t forget the CTA (call to action). What do you want your reader to do after he or she has read your article? Do you want them to call you? Sign up for your newsletter? Buy something? Follow you on social media? If you don’t ask for or prompt a reader, chances are they will read your article and walk away. Don’t let them go until they have been prompted to action.
Keep in mind where your audience is. Are they at the 101 level or are they more advanced? Why do you think they Googled and found your site and are reading your articles? Do your readers understand complex topics you’re sharing? Sure, they may need that complex information BUT you may want to lead them along before you jump right to the highest level. Meet them where they are and nurture them along.
