Recent Blog Posts
Crafting Your Vision
Think of your Vision Statement as a picture of your company at some point in the future - maybe 2, 3 or 5 years. A vision is a way to articulate your dreams and hopes for your business while quantifying the expected results with a realistic "on or before date". It...
Everyone Has The Same Opportunities.
Everyone has the same opportunities and the same opportunity to become successful and financially independent. It is true that some people might have a better start, such as they come from money or know someone that gave them a leg up on the competition but in the end...
Theft
Let’s face it, theft is more common than any of us want to admit. You want to believe that your staff would never steal from you and your business is immune to thieving hands. Well, it is time to face reality and guard yourself and your business from dishonest staff members. One of the ways to protect your business is by using a tracking system for all of your business transactions. Keeping accurate business records especially of inventory and cash is crucial. Your inventory is what makes your business money.
One of the more obvious and most common are staff members giving away products or services free to customers on a constant basis in order to win more sales. An example would be a bar tender giving away drinks for better tips. Be careful of letting your staff give away any product or service without prior approval. Include the amount your staff is allowed to compensate any given customer in your yearly totals. This will help your staff spread out the comps over the entire year.
What IS Your Mission?
Just imagine you are at a Chamber Luncheon and someone asks you “What is your mission?” If you can’t answer that question immediately and succulently all the fairy dust in the world won’t motivate people to follow you. Being the capitalist that I am, the unwritten ending to any for-profit business mission will be “and make money”. But what comes before needs to inspire and NOT rely on the charisma of the leader. A good mission will speak to employees, customers and stakeholders. Furthermore, I’m partial to mission statements that every employee can repeat easily. That means often less than 20 words.
Remember, your mission is what gets you excited and energized each and every day. If it excites you, your staff will see your excitement and most will join in the adventure.
Here are some for companies that I know and use:
Starbucks: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.
Toyota: To sustain profitable growth by providing the best customer experience and dealer support.
DuPont: Sustainable Growth: Increasing shareholder and societal value while reducing our environmental footprint.
St Luke’s Hospital in Maumee: Improve your health and well-being by promising to put our Patients first. Always.
The Andersons: We channel our time, talent and energy in pursuit of fundamental goal of serving God by service others.
Ebay: global, social, and entrepreneurial trading that is enabled by eBay’s Internet ecommerce systems and services.
Amazon: Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
Facebook: Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.
What is your Mission? Read [More] and share your mission.
Hiring Great Management
Hiring can be difficult but knowing what you want in your management can make or break the way your company is perceived by the public. A bad leader can create a negative atmosphere that will spread itself throughput your company and eventually into your customer service.
Next time you are in the market for a new leader for your team, look for these seven aspects:
Integrity – Does your candidate have morals, ethical principles and honesty?
Passion – Can they see opportunities instead of obstacles?
Courage – Do they have the ability to face conflict without hesitation?
Emotional Intelligence – Do they know the difference in what they feel and how they act? [More]
Frustration Becometh
This past month has been very frustrating to say the least. Excuse my venting for a moment, but not much has gone according to plan lately. First the logo I’ve been working on for a client just isn’t coming out right. Moving my clients to a new hosting server has proven very time consuming.
It just seems lately that no matter what I try to do it never works out right or it turns into a huge mess. I would be fine if it was one or two things but it seems like pretty much every major project I have going is a disaster. *sigh. Then I stopped myself. Yes, things have been frustrating lately but some good has come out of it and I know if I just power through it, in the end I will be much better off. [More]
So what frustrates you about your business life and how are you dealing with it? We’d love to see a comment about your successes.
How Much Time Do You Spend on Your Financials?
Last week, I was reading the agenda for the mastermind group I attend and listed in the informational section was “15 minutes–social media; 5 minutes–financial”. Thats all, just that cryptic statement. So I started thinking what my business or some of my clients businesses might look like if we spent 15 minutes each day on social media and 5 minutes a day on their studying their financial information.
Right now, I know some of you are saying “I spend way more than 15 minutes on social media everyday, to compete I have to spend hours on that stuff“. And that is my point, if you are spending hours on social media and only look at the financial side of your business irregularly or less than monthly, you may be spending time on something (social media) that your financial data will not prove are useful.
If I spend 5 minutes everyday on my financial side of my business, I wonder what it will look like at the end of a month, a year?
Automatic Withdrawals
Automatic withdrawals are great, no more forgetting to mail out a check or call the creditor with your credit card numbers. The drawback, however, is forgetting about how many of those convenient withdrawals you have and how much they are for.
If you have set yourself up with multiple withdrawals, keep a close eye on your accounts. Each month look at the bill your creditor has sent you and make sure you’re accounting for the corrected amount.
Setting yourself up with a little spreadsheet can also help remind you of the bills that are coming up.I like to keep information such as a contact phone number, website and sign in information on my spreadsheet. Remember, you can always password protect files and the computer the sensitive information is stored on. Read on for an example.
Your Dreams
I came across a motivational image this past week that really hit home. I'm sure you are saying, "Wait a minute, Changing Lanes and Liquid Mechanix Studio are both businesses that help other people build their dreams!"That is true and that is our dream, helping you...
Have you Fallen into The Mile Wide Trap?
If your company’s revenue has stalled after a period of rapid growth, you may have fallen into The Mile Wide Trap. The Mile Wide Trap ensnares you when you do an excellent job serving a small number of great customers and they ask you to handle more of their work. You keep delivering, and they keep broadening the list of products and services they want you to supply.
Your company is wildly profitable serving the expanding needs of this small list of “great customers” so you keep falling deeper and deeper into the trap.
Pretty soon, you’re an inch deep and a mile wide in offerings and the only person in your company with the depth of industry experience to deliver all of the services is you. But you’re trapped because your expenses have crept up as your revenue has exploded – leaving you dependent on the sales you get from a small group of demanding customers.