Work Smarter Not Harder and Fast Track Your Business

Most businesses after a period of growth, hit plateau and that proverbial glass ceiling, and the business owners struggles with trying to figure out why. You haven't really changed anything, you've gone through this significant growth period, and now, sales are flat or maybe declining a bit. You're frustrated/ You're discouraged. You're scratching your head wondering "What's going on? Why can I continue to maintain this growth trajectory?" What you don't realize is that you haven't properly prepared your organization to scale. What I mean by that is you haven't put systems, processes, procedures, disciplines and structures in place to enable the organization to prepare for growth. Yes, you might have this in place, but what have don’t realize as business guru, Marshal Goldsmith says, “Is that what got you here, won’t get you there”. You’ve out grown the initial systems you put in place. What's happened is that as the organization ha...

What is the true test of marketing success? I call it testing and measuring. Most people hate it that’s because there’s a chance, however remote, that every marketing strategy that you're going to try will not work the first time you try it. In other words, it's possible that you could be spending money without seeing any returns, and that sucks. No one wants that. But consider this: you’ve probably been testing and measuring all your business life. Remember that old newspaper ad that you tried and it didn't work or radio spots, maybe, that did okay, and you weren't even sure if they worked or not. Well, that's what testing is. Testing what works and what doesn't. The next step is really to do it properly; to do it with the proper intention. In this business tip, you will learn 6 steps on how to successfully determine what works and what doesn't. Start by asking people where they heard about you. Start right now. Do it immediately! If there's one thing t...

Finding good employees are hard to find in any economy. Sometimes we just settle for a warm body. We then end up with a group of people that might or might not be a good fit for our organization and culture. What I want to talk about now is one of the hardest things that you might have to face as a business owner or leader. What do you do when you have a really loyal employee, someone who's been with you for a long time, but their performance has slipped. Their performance is not where it needs to be anymore, you just can't get rid of them or you just don't want to. They've been with you for a long time. They've been loyal, somebody that you could always count on. Somebody who had your back. Loyalty really matters.. and you value that. Plus, you don't want to be flippant about somebody's life and somebody's job, their livelihood. But, consider for a moment... What if, what you're perceiving, to be continued loyalty is partially loyalty, but it...

  I’m going to let you in on a secret, if you want to build a business that works without you, well you can’t.  You probably weren’t expecting me to say that.  This will take a shift in mindset.  You don’t build your business your team does. Now you’re probably thinking, "yea right, I can’t get them to show up on time.  Do you really expect them to grow my business?"  The answer is, well, yes and no. To have a great business you’ll need to hire great people.  I know you’re thinking, "Hey, I can’t find people to even show up to the interview."  This is going to take another mind shift because most businesses do recruitment all wrong. Recruitment is not about hiring great people; it’s about attracting great people.  Now if you looked at your business from an outside perspective, would the best in your industry want to work for you?  Interesting question, isn’t it? Recruitment is not about hiring it’s about marketing.  You need to crea...

  If you want to grow your business, there's one person you need to fire right now. This person is holding you back from scaling up your business to the next level. So who am I talking about? You probably guessed it. Yup, I'm talking about you - the Business Owner. Just think about it for a minute. You probably have so much on your plate that you can't do everything well. In this business tip, I'm going to share a strategy to help you fire yourself from the things that you don't want to do or really shouldn't be doing. What I'm saying is, fire yourself from the non-strategic elements of your business. What I've seen is that the business owners and particularly, maybe founders of the company, they're still hanging on to some of the tasks that they used to do when they started their business. Well, whether it’s sales or some level of service delivery. This is something that they've always done. They’re probably good at it or they really enjoy doing...

  A question I get asked a lot, as a small business owner I wear so many hats I don't have time to get things done. This common feeling for most small biz owners. Here are 6 keys to help you to gain focus to make sure you and your business are getting the most important tasks done. First, you need to step back and get a birds-eye view of your business, an objective look away from the day-to-day. 1. Determine, out of all the things you do, what do you do that brings the most value to your business. Your goal should be to eventually take everything off your plate and focus on just those areas. 2. Break your business down by function, 4 functions, Marketing, Sales, Operation, Financial. For each function determine the 5 roles or outcomes that each function delivers. 3. Next look at who currently owns that function. If you have employees does someone really own that function? Are they clear on what that means? You need to create how-to SOPs and a checklist for each of these funct...

  Have you ever felt overwhelmed in your business? You know you've been working hard but don't feel that you are making enough progress. Or do you just have no time for yourself? I think we've all been there at one point or another, it's frustrating, isn't it? In this business tip, I'm going to share with you some strategies to help you go from being overwhelmed and stressed to being focused on your most productive tasks that you can execute to move you to your next level of success fast. As I mentioned before it's not unusual to feel overwhelmed in business. I see it all the time. Frankly, it's not sustainable, it leads to burn out and it's detrimental to your business. It's easy to fall into this trap as we overcommit for a project or get a new customer or opening up a new location This has got to stop and end right now. First, we must realize that it's normal to get over committed for a little while and feel a little overwhelmed. It...