Get Your Business Back On Track: Part 1

This is part one of a two part business audit series. In this post I am going to help you get your business running lean and mean and in the next one I'll help you work on a process to grow it.

This post is for anyone that’s been building a business for while or has been stuck in the quagmire of thinking about starting a business. If you fall into either of these camps I’m willing to bet that, more than you’d like to admit, from time to time you pick your head up, look around and think quietly to yourself… 

“What am I doing?” 

This question can be born from a lot of things happening to you on your business journey. It could be that you’ve been trying for a while and haven’t been getting the traction that you want. It could be that you’ve been so focused on making the sale that you’ve diluted your offers over time. It could even be that you’ve been talking about this idea for so long that your inner circle is tired of hearing about it. 

It doesn’t have to be this out of control reactionary business spiral anymore. In this post I’m going to walk you through a quick and dirty business audit that you can do to help you get your idea and your business back on track. The best part is that you can do it any time and as often as you need to get back to clarity. 

Back to business model basics. 

With all the technology, platforms and social networks driving attention to transactions you can quickly over complicate how you deliver your value to your customers and collect payments from your customers. To help get your business model running lean and mean you need to answer these questions. 

1. What are you selling? 

Sounds basic but I want to challenge you to answer this question in terms of specific outcomes for your customers. Is it a product or service and what is the end benefit to your customer for interacting with you. 

2. What does the transaction life cycle look like? 

Transaction life cycle? What does that even mean, right?! What I’m challenging you to think about here is the ‘how’ part of your transaction. More specifically is it as easy as it should be? If people buy from you online is the process streamlined and trustworthy? Do people pay you in one lump sum and you deliver a specific product? Are they paying for a service? How often are they paying and if it’s more than once is the recurring payment method easy and clear? 

3. How did you come up with your current prices? 

Your prices send as strong a message to your target customers as your marketing does. Picking arbitrary numbers because they “felt” right is a terrible way to price. Are your prices tied to your costs? Are they tied to the benefit you're delivering? Why should anyone pay what your asking? Are you the cheapest? Are the customers that are willing and able to buy your product the kinds of customers you are trying to attract. Think back to your intro economics courses; specifically price elasticity of demand for all my economics nerds in the audience.

Yeah, I see you! 

4. What are you tracking? 

I’m a big fan of the saying - “what gets measured gets managed”. I also know that the reality of running a business can be messy at times so I want to encourage you to look at what you’re actually tracking in your business. How are you defining success and are your actions in the business mapping to those metrics? 

5. Can you identify potential gaps in your value proposition? 

I don’t have to tell you that you can’t be all things to all people. But, there may be opportunities to provide additional value for customers. Now this is a slippery slope because it can be easy to squirrel off and build a menu of offerings that you believe can add value to people’s lives. I want to challenge you to think about just those options that fall within the scope of work and deliverables you’re already executing on. 

Those are the five questions I would recommend that you start with to help you get your business back on track. To help give you a little more context let’s do a quick hypothetical example of these questions in action. 

Hypothetical Wellness Coaching Business (HWCB)

Hypothetical Tagline: Teaching you the tools you need to live a happier, healthier life. 

Hypothetical Scenario: HWCB has been in business for over a year and hasn’t had enough interest in the business to justify going full time. Business owner still works part time at a traditional job to make up the income need gap. Over the past year this business has offered everything from reiki, to life coaching, to relationship coaching, to holistic dietary coaching, to essential oil sales and even career coaching. Up to this point business owner continues to “invest” in resources and skills they believe will continue to differentiate them against the sea of other “coaches” in local market. HWCB has even dabbled in creating a course or program offering but has failed to get it launched after a handful of creation attempts. 

Here’s an example of how this business owner could use this audit process: 

1. What are you selling?

Hypothetical Response: HWCB primarily sells a coaching or advisory service. While the reiki and essential oils are also possible revenue generating activities they aren’t the primary way HWCB prefers to interact with customers. The hope was to run an online course or coaching program but it hasn’t come been created yet. 

Takeaway: Prioritize the coaching right now. In this example there are a lot of resources being wasted trying to build out, market and sell all these different services. 

2. What does the transaction life cycle look like?

Hypothetical Response: With reiki and essential oils people pay HWCB directly in person and either get the service or product. With the coaching HWCB sends out an invoice for the month, customers pay through a link in the invoice and then meets weekly with customers. The coaching engagements just ends at the end of the prepaid invoice retainer/fee. No real follow up after the coaching engagement ends. HWCB has to keep track of cash and electronic payments as they clear through different accounts and through different mediums. 

Takeaway: Since HWCB is going focus on coaching there will be no need to handle actual cash anymore. This will simplify the accounting process as well as the scheduling process (time management) as HWCB will be focusing on a single coaching offering. At this point HWCB also didn’t have a good follow up process for after the coaching engagement ended so this should be a point for continued development. 

3. How did you come up with your current prices? 

Hypothetical Response: After doing some superficial searching online and looking around at some local peers the price per hour was just decided to be $100/hr. Felt right. 

Takeaway: Don’t use YOUR feelings to price. Dig deeper into the value you offer as well as accounting for any relevant experience, successes or credentials you hold. Those things may help you command a premium. Digging deeper into customer profiles could also give you a better idea of what they might be willing and able to pay for your services. Keeping an eye on competition is important because you want to be relatively competitive but that shouldn’t be the only pillar you use to price. 

4. What are you tracking? 

Hypothetical Response: Not really anything because HWCB isn’t really doing much. Why bother?

Takeaway: This is a toxic business building mindset. Tracking nothing means you can, with some real certainty, expect nothing. With a business in this stage and upon getting to this point where HWCB has resolved to focus on coaching my recommendation would be to focus on:

1. Sales activities: referrals generated, emails sent out, consults scheduled, coaching programs sold per month, etc. 

2. Success metrics: How much have people’s lives improved? 

3. Content Schedule: What is HWCB doing every week to provide value to people that find HWCB in the places it turns up online. 

Even with just these three ideas HWCB can start to build some consistency into how the business is being run and potentially grown. 

5. Can you identify potential gaps in your value proposition? 

Hypothetical Response: Thought I was doing that with my essential oil sales and other services I offered. 

Takeaway: Wrong. What HWCB was doing was confusing the main offering, what they were essentially best at. In this example it might be beneficial to see if there’s a level two version of the coaching offering. Maybe HWCB focuses on coaching a person through a specific problem with a specific outcome goal in mind and can foresee that down the road there will be another, different, set of obstacles. Maybe there’s a resource like a book or a web tool that can be recommended to augment the newly focused coaching process. These are things that could enhance the business not just a spray and pray approach to solving everyone’s problems all the time at any stage in their lives. 

Final Takeaway: At this point hopefully it’s clear that HWCB should get more focused on a coaching offering specifically, make the offer clear, solicit prices that makes sense, keep the transaction simple, sprint towards getting great results for people that can be shared and get laser focused on the sales and marketing tracking aspects. Selling more and different stuff doesn’t make HWCB attractive to more people, it scares them away because they aren’t confident that HWCB can do any of them well. By doing these things HWCB has stripped away all the extra stuff that was just consuming resources and frees up time, money and even mental space to do the work that will matter most for the business. 

If you’re a health and wellness business I hope this was helpful for you and even if you’re not you can still get a ton of insight on your business by going through this process. This will help you get to the heart of the work that matters most in your business but you have to be absolutely honest with the process. 

Otherwise you’re just playing business and nothing will get better. 

I STILL WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Below this post is a one question survey. I’d love to help you with what you're struggling with when it comes to your business development. I’m promising to do my best to get back to everyone that responds. 

Is #Hustle Hurting Your Business?

If you’re the kind of entrepreneur or business owner that uses #hustle after every social post then this blog post is for you. I want to try to scratch the surface on what #hustle really is and if you’re constantly #hustlehard’ing, what kind of damage could you actually be doing to your business. 

Let’s start by trying to get to the heart of #hustle. Immediately below this text is a 2:00 video from Gary Vaynerchuk (the OG of #hustle) defining what #hustle means to him. Give it a quick watch and then we’ll catch-up. 

Ok, so “squeezing every last bit of juice out of the orange”, “maximizing the energy you’re putting into somebody”, and “putting all your effort into achieving the goal you have at hand”. I think those are probably the best little bits out of that video because they are objective - mostly. They also convey a lesson that almost anyone can apply wherever they are on their entrepreneurial journey. In the rest of the video he goes on about how he doesn’t have Friday nights because he uses that time to hustle, hiring an assistant, etc. Those are things that are Gary Vaynerchuk specific and unfortunately the things that people pay the most attention to. 

I think, for the most part, he does a great job in this video conveying the heart of what #hustle is and at the same time there are a lot of people that get this concept very wrong. They get it wrong because they try to map their goals against someone like Gary Vaynerchuk’s. They map their activity against what he documents and throws out all over the web. They map his actions in growing the multiple businesses he’s responsible for to the business they are growing.

And, that’s a problem. 

It’s a problem because every business owner has different strengths, capabilities and are at different stages. What happens when you map where you are today against what someone like Gary Vaynerchuk has built over decades? You end up with an abundance of entrepreneurs confusing spammy sales techniques and short-cut growth tactics with sustainable and authentic business growth. 

Let’s do a real time experiment. I challenge you to open up Instagram and search the #hustle tag. Even though there’s a gap between the writing of this post and you doing this exercise I guarantee the results will be the same. You’re going to see THOUSANDS of posts with quotables, hacky business guru’s giving generic advice, Ferraris and lots of fitness model types either trying to grow their brand or sell you something like Herbalife. 

This is my problem with #hustle. Anyone can take a few minutes and Google an image then use an app to throw some advice-y text over it and position themselves as an expert. You end up doing something that feels like work and even delivers the great little accomplishment dopamine hit we all chase but, it’s probably not going to be the activity that delivers the most value for your business. 

I know that’s not everyone so let’s divide people up into a few simple categories. 

Category 1: Are some of these accounts capturing moments of “squeezing every last bit of juice out of the orange”, “maximizing the energy you’re putting into somebody”, and “putting all your effort into achieving the goal you have at hand”? 

Sure. 

Category 2: Are some of them trying to emulate the activity they see work for larger accounts, capitalize on a popular # or are idealizing the act of working 100 hour weeks? 

Also, sure. 

Ok so you did this little experiment and are now thinking, so what? 

This applies less to the people that fall in the first category and more into the second. The ones that confuse the amount activity or the amount of hours they're working with #hustle. It’s a problem because they are using a volume metric to measure success for their business. 

It’s my goal to help you avoid burnout and the damage can go along with blindly #hustleharder’ing. Burnout is a very real issue because just working harder may end up costing you money, time and even important relationships you could otherwise leverage your business growth against. #hustle can also be unsustainable and even worse could possibly convince you to quit too soon because your not getting the results that your favorite social guru may be getting. 

I want to see you grow your business at rates that make sense for you. I want to see you reach the goals you set for yourself and deliver the value you’re promising to the people that you serve. So I’ve come up with a few questions you can ask yourself when you’re floating around online and realize that you’re not living the life that social media says you should be. 

Below is a list of things to think about when you’re feeling like you’re not #hustleharder’ing enough: 

1. Are you doing more of the Deep Work - the work that really matters in your business? Or, are you just plowing through a to-do list full of tasks where you’re just playing in the business? 

2. Are you trying to sell to everyone instead of spending the time to really get to know your customers and figuring out how they could best be served? 

3. Are you tracking the handful of metrics that matter most in your business? Like: units sold, number of contacts required to get to a sales meeting, clients managed, etc. Something that is quantifiable and that isn’t some kind of vanity metric. 

4. Is your messaging authentically you? This matters because this is how the world sees your business. You don’t want to be drowning in a sea of Tai Lopez quotes, supercar pictures and photos of stacks of money. 

5. Are you really engaging with people? Are you having real conversations with people either in real life or online and offering value or getting feedback. If you’re just always shouting the same stuff everyone else is you’ll never be able to scream louder than the noise in the room. 

6. Do you have clear goals set for yourself that you check in on regularly? 

7. Are you suffering from “Butt In Seat Syndrome”? It’s an affliction that many entrepreneurs suffer from that results in talking about the things you’re going to do and never doing them, over developing plans and never starting them and general avoidance of the hard work that goes into building a business. 

I’m all for working harder and smarter. It’s a mission of mine to support entrepreneurs as they are trying to grow. I just want to make sure that you’re doing it in a way that makes sense for you and that allows you to do your best work.

Here’s to #hustle’ing responsibly! 

I STILL WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Below this post is a one question survey. I’d love to help you with what you're struggling with when it comes to your business development. I’m promising to do my best to get back to everyone that responds.  

Business Development 101: Stop thinking and start growing your business!

One of the questions I get most often is, “How do I get more customers?”. Whether it’s the clients I’m working with, entrepreneurs I meet at networking events or even family members thinking about finally starting their own thing it’s always the same. As soon as someone hears that I’m a management consultant or that it’s my job to help businesses grow the barrage of how-to questions starts. Most of the time I love talking to people about what they are up to in their businesses - especially my clients. But sometimes it can be a little trying because regardless of what I have to say some entrepreneurs aren’t interested in the “it takes work or patience” prescription. Those people are interested in the silver bullet. They are looking for me to share that one super-secret piece of advice that will launch them ahead of their competition.

And I hate to say it but that kind of advice doesn’t exist. Or, if it does it’s probably coming from someone trying to sell you something that you probably don’t need.

Sure there are strategies, tactics or tricks that may work in the short run to help you collect based on taking advantage of some short term market trend or technology but that’s not sustainable. I’m interested in helping people see sustainable growth and developing the tools to help them be successful in the long term. Not just working on a piece of copy for example that designed to motivate a buyer to buy in the next email you’re sending out.

So, in this post I’m going to share a quick and dirty business development process that will help you identify opportunities and give you a system to measure your business growing efforts against. Let’s call it Business Development 101. Oh, and of course I’ll share some of the tools I recommend to help you get started on a zero/small budget.

Let’s start with the process!

1. Identify your target prospects.

Depending on your business you might be looking to sell to end consumers directly, get in front of influencers, identify business or enterprise customers or to connect with a specific role within a company. You can’t start the business development process until you know exactly who you are trying connect with.

2. Why should your prospects care?

Once you have an idea of who you are trying to connect with it’s important to try to get a handle on why they should care. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a business or an individual if you don’t have a compelling reason for someone to care about what you’re offering you will not get any kind of response. How are you going to add value to the things they are working on? How are you adding value to the things they care about most? If you can’t clearly articulate how your prospect’s life will be better after having engaged with you then you shouldn’t reach out.

3. Is your prospect going to respond?

You may have identified the VP of Marketing at a company you’re looking to connect with but are they going to respond if you shoot an email to them? Maybe?! If you have a strong enough ask, a warm introduction or some extra social proof juice of your own you may have a chance at getting a response. Most of the time you may not though. So digging a little deeper you may have to try to identify people that would be more likely to respond to you. Are there others working in that Marketing Department that would look like a hero if they forwarded your idea up to the VP? Can you offer your products or services a resource for that team to make their lives easier? You won’t be able to succeed if you can’t find people that are going to be most likely to respond to you.

4. Mine for contact information.

I like trying to start off with an email if I’m trying to get ahold of someone for the first time. It’s not as intrusive as a call and it allows you an opportunity to try to capture their interest. The trick is that finding someone’s email address isn’t always easy. Sometimes you may get lucky and find some contact info on a social or professional profile but those are far and few between. Later on in this post I’ll share one of the tools I use to get the naming conventions for emails from parent domains in an attempt to reach someone specifically. If you have the time my recommendation would be to find them on social and attempt to build the relationship there first. It’s very much a long-play but your chance of success is way higher when someone gets to know, like and trust you.

5. Craft and send your initial pitch.

Less is more with for first emails. Instead of explaining what should and shouldn’t be in your emails here’s a template I’ve used in the past. WARNING: Spamming the same pitch to lots of people IS NOT BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. Doing this goes against everything we’ve already talked about when it comes to offering real value to the people you’re trying to connect with.

NAME,

My name is YOUR NAME and I'm from YOUR BUSINESS. REASON WHY YOU'RE REACHING OUT.  REASON WHY THEY SHOULD CARE OR BE INTERESTED IN A FOLLOW UP CONVERSATION.  FOLLOW UP BY REFERENCING SOMETHING OF RELEVANCE TO YOUR PROSPECTS JOB/CAMPAIGN/NEED.

To give a quick snapshot of what some of our work has looked like in the past here are few links with view counts as well. There’s also a link directly to our website.

1.

2.

3.

If you think we can add value to the work you're already doing let's set up a time to chat in the next week or so.

Best,

YOUR NAME

That’s it! Short, sweet and personalized to make a connection to something that they value.

6. Follow up.

For every 100 emails you send you may get between zero and a few responses. That doesn’t mean you give up. Remember you’re trying to develop a relationship where there was probably none before. So, it’s ok to follow up with additional information from a position of you giving value first.

7. Repeat.

Sending a few emails, getting no response and quitting doesn’t mean you’re business development process failed. It just means you didn’t give it enough time and/or your heart really wasn’t in trying to develop actual relationships with people. This is the part where there’s no magic bullet that most people hate to hear - it takes real work, more time than you think and lots of patience to give any business development plan a chance at success.

Ok, that’s the process!

So from this process you are already probably gleaning how to track success. My recommendation would be to either use a CRM that you like or just a spreadsheet to track things like contacts, dates of emails sent, whether or not they were responded to, how many emails were exchanged and what kind of business resulted from those communications. Tracking your reach and engagement over time will help you hone your message in a way that respects the time and interests of those you’re trying to get a hold of and supports your business growing efforts.

On to the tools.

Here is a list of tools that I think are worth checking out. Most of them are free or have a very usable free option for those that are just starting out or are looking to keep their budget as lean as possible. These are NOT referral or affiliate links, I’m recommending these tools because I’ve used them myself and think they are solid resources.

1. Hubspot. http://www.hubspot.com Here’s you’ll find a really good CRM and Sales Management platform. What I like most is that with the free version of Sales you get to see the opens and behavior for 250 emails you send out. The CRM is really robust as well. It might take a little time to set everything up the way you like it but once you get rolling it’s an awesome source to store and analyze the data your business development spits back at you.

2. LinkedIn. http://www.linkedin.com Regardless the size of your personal network LinkedIn is an awesome professional person search engine. If you’re looking to connect with anyone that works in a business or that owns a business odds are you’ll be able to find them on LinkedIn. Depending on their profile settings you’ll also be able to get a sense of who they are as professionals, interests, accomplishments, etc. All great things for trying to find common ground in which to connect.

3. Email Hunter. http://www.hunter.io After you’ve identified the people and businesses you are trying to get in front of you’ll need an email address. This is where Email Hunter comes in. You get access to a handful of searches free and then if you register (also free) it goes to 100. Here you’ll type in the domain and this site will do its best to give you the naming conventions of the email addresses used on the site. From there you just match it to your prospects name and you’ll have a pretty good chance of sending an email off that actually lands in someone’s inbox. Whether they open it or not is a whole other story.

So there you have it! That’s a quick and dirty Business Development 101. Are there other tools or approaches you can use to grow your business? Absolutely. But this post is designed to help you stop stalling, stop evaluating CRMs, stop playing in Excel in an attempt to build the perfect sales tracker and just start doing. One of the biggest reasons that you’re not finding the business development results you want is because you’re not spending enough time doing the actual development work.

Stop thinking, start building new relationships and building a sustainable business.

Build More Foot Traffic For Your Business

This week I wanted to answer a two part question that I get a lot from the businesses I work with:

How do I bring more customers into my business? 

And, on top of that, how can I make it happen right now? 

At first glance it sounds like a question that you can throw into Google, instantly get 2.7 million results for, visit the first few links then cherry pick and try a few of your favorite business growing tactics. Then, sit back and watch the wallets and purses stroll in. 

Totally simple right? 

If it were totally simple my question to you is then, why do so many business owners struggle with getting and keeping the attention of their ideal customers? 

Because, something like this may be simple but it’s definitely not easy. That’s where this post comes in to help. This week I want to dissect this question a bit and hopefully provide a little insight and a few systematic actions you can build into the business-growing work you’re already doing every day. 

Let’s first dispel the terrible business myth and tactic that advises you that lowering your prices will instantly solve all your lack of customers problem. Sure, lowering prices may work in the short term but it won’t support you as you’re trying to build your brand’s integrity and it probably won’t inspire thralls of new customers to rush your check out counters. In (most likely) your case your goal should be figuring out how to beat the hurdle of obscurity in your ideal customer’s minds. Beating obscurity means being interesting enough for your customer’s to give you a shot at winning their business. 

To help you jump that hurdle I’ve outlined three things you can start doing today that will help you sustainably establish yourself as a trustworthy brand and be interesting enough to earn that increased foot traffic (and ultimately convert that traffic into customers) you need to see your business grow. 

1. Become an Event Planner.

It doesn’t matter what you are retailing or the service you are providing, if you put together interesting events people will come. This can be anything from speakers to small group events. An example that comes to mind recently is a yoga studio attempting to throw a giant outdoors yoga class in the middle of a busy outdoor shopping plaza. Lot’s of people, relaxed fun group workout, a DJ spinning trendy music all and lots of regular looking people enjoying an activity that is sometimes over glamorized by Instagram fitness models. People having fun, good music and great branding could be a triple win for this business. Event that you throw can be as intimate or as big as you want. Here’s another example for a coffee shop with a large student population. This coffee shop doesn’t have a ton of square footage but it can host intimate open mic’s, bring in authors, or even speakers on controversial topics to draw in different coffee drinking crowds every night of the week. Taking advantage of your social media (which you totally should have running) presences will help get the initial word out and provide an awesome platform for future conversation and engagement. Don’t worry about packing the house right off the bat; just stay consistent and show the people that do show up the best possible time. By virtue of the event you might see an uptick in your retail/service sales during the events but it’s the long term where you will really benefit. Show your stakeholders you’re willing to invest in creating diverse and enriching experiences and your business will steadily grow. 

2. Cross Promotion. 

Businesses are often not islands unto themselves - even though it feels like that sometimes. Entrepreneurs make friends, join networking groups and even local professional/social/civic organizations. A great way to build some foot traffic and to get some extra attention is to offer  incentives for the customers of other businesses to interact with you or host another business’ call to action. I don’t recommend this because most receipts often go straight into garbage cans but it can be something as easy as a coupon in the form of a receipt. A tactic like that might work for your local grocery store and a Jiffy Lube but odds are you aren’t either of those businesses. So, you have to get creative! What kinds of products or services can you give away or provide your patrons with for honoring some arrangement made with a neighboring business? Can you make it interesting? Unique? Unexpected? Even gamify the experience? If pizza shops and gas stations can keep customers loyal by offering rewards for patronage why can’t you and the businesses that are around you do the same thing by offering value your respective customers will actually enjoy? 

3. Give a little, but give often. 

If you have ever donated time or money (and shared your contact information) you know that every once and awhile you get a call to action via mail or email from the organization you either supported or that needs your support. Giving is good for a lot of reasons but most importantly for your foot traffic problem it’s good optics. Giving shows your community that you are connected and invested in the place that you do business. Plus, donations don’t have to be major dollar contributions as most businesses can’t substantiate that and still keep their doors open. But, small in kind donations, donations of time, and even small financial donations can really go a long way because you are putting yourself out in the community and also in front of your ideal customers who also support those organizations. If you have a brick and mortar space think about how you can host events that would benefit the nonprofits that ask of you. What old inventory can you donate? How can you motivate your employees to get more involved in the community on your behalf? If yours is the business that becomes the hub for social nonprofit activity you will be growing your foot traffic and your reputation all while having a little fun. 

If you’ve made it this far two things: thank you and you can see that none of these answers address getting people through the door right now. That’s the tough thing about building a business, building  a business sustainably means playing a bit of the long game. Along with these three tips you can also work on creatively making the most out of any kind of advertising or marketing budget you might have to get people’s attention. Doing that might be a bit of a bandaid to get a few quick sales but you won’t be doing the work to cultivate a sense of community. It’s community that makes people not only want to keep buying from you but to bring their friends to buy from you as well. I believe that planning great events, figuring out how to give and collaborating with other businesses are the best ways to maximize your brand’s personality and helping you overcome the hurdle of obscurity.

Don’t worry about space or infrastructure - just get it going! Put some chairs out, find someone to come speak and go. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just good. You can tweak on the fly and best of all your business will benefit every step of the way.
 

Better Navigate Your Business Support System

When you are working on a business that’s been in the works for a while or even just starting from scratch getting support is super important. No one tells you that working on a business can be pretty isolating and lonely at times. And, on top of that when you’re feeling isolated and lonely your motivation to do anything basically flatlines. Win-Win-Win, right?! 
 
NO. 
 
You can’t focus on growing your business if you're struggling to find the inspiration to produce content, find new customers or even just put pants on when you show up to scroll through your inbox in the morning. 
 
Pants. The struggle is real. 
 
This is why it’s important that your family, friends and community support you because, (in as anti-woo a tone as possible) that support is what is going to give you the strength to push forward when times get a little tough or you’ve been wearing sweatpants a little too long. 
 
Asking for and receiving support is a bit of a double edged sword though. How do you balance the support you need and the unsolicited (often well intentioned and inevitably worthless) advice that comes with it? 
 
As an entrepreneur here’s how you can get the most out of your support system. These five tips for navigating everyone’s feedback (with some support from me to you as well), will help you stay true to your vision and mission and while helping to drive you past whatever hurdle has kept you from doing your best work. 

1. Listen sympathetically.

Don’t just shut down when your support system offers tips and suggestions around helping you grow your business. I know they might not be offering anything that you will ever remotely implement but they are looking out for you. So be supportive back, take the suggestions with a grain of salt but most importantly validate the business support giver. Do not just shut them down because that’s the quickest way you will lose what the support or interest that person has in you. Getting good at being a great listener can literally make or break your brand.

2. Document everything.

Now I’m not just talking about what needs to be done or what you are doing at the moment. When friends and family help make sure you take notes. It shows that you’re engaged, that you appreciate them and will allow you to thank them appropriately. This is big because it helps to curb false senses of entitlement or resentment later on.  Everyone likes to feel important and it’s critical that you make an effort to show your gratitude.  As you're building a business getting your community to invest in your growth with more than their wallets means you’re creating advocates and raving fans in the future. 

3. Use accounting systems that work for you.

This tips is money specific and I had to put it in because literally everyone, including me, thinks they have the perfect solution when it comes to money. Also, it’s probably one of the most popular pieces of unsolicited advice you’ll receive from any would-be business advisor. Everyone has an idea for how you SHOULD be keeping track of your finances. Some old, some new, some pretty obscure and some legally ambiguous. Older generations might encourage you to use paper and pen, newer ones might have cloud based suggestions but it’s really up to you and your tax preparers. Your numbers are ultimately your numbers! You are responsible for all the liability and the gains. Me personally, I love Freshbooks. It’ cloud based and super easy to use.  

4. Choose your favors and resources carefully.

Everyone “knows someone” these days. Most of the time when your support system offers help it’s because they think it will really be valuable or cost saving for you. That’s not always the case. It’s important to navigate these relationships and suggestions carefully. You might have to let people know that your budget can’t handle a service or product or that you don’t think it will be a good fit at the moment. Gratitude is king here too, make sure your support systems knows you appreciate them! 

5. Settle up as soon as possible.

If you have friends and family working for you it’s important that they are compensated for their efforts.

Reciprocity is KING.  

It’s not just about handing over cold hard cash either it’s really any kind of value exchange. Think about the last time you helped a friend move in exchange for pizza and beers. Yes you were willing to help but the value exchange made it a little easier. Even if they refuse to accept, the act of offering is critically important. It validates experiences and keeps people from harboring resentment for your project or business. It’s easy for someone to contribute and feel a sense of entitlement or feel like they have some kind of stake in the profits or proceeds if what you’re working on really takes off. As an operator you need to manage those expectations as soon as possible. So, by offering some kind of repayment helps to wipe slates and egos clean. 
 
Make sure you are careful navigating personal relationships - it’s just as easy to offend when dealing with close knit support systems and money!
 
Hope you enjoyed these tips and they cover at least a few of the real issues you might be dealing with in your business developments. If you feel like I might have missed any feel free to leave it in the comments below - I’d love to keep this conversation moving!

6 Actions To Help You Build Momentum In Your Business

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” - Michael Porter
 
There is no better way to start this post or a Monday morning than with a with a quote from famed Harvard Business Professor and Strategist, Michael Porter. This is a great quote because it applies to established or more mature businesses that are focusing on allocating resources for the week at a macro level as well as to the new solo entrepreneur who is firing up GMail for the first time Monday morning and trying to decide which thread needs responding to first. 
 
Short (and most likely true) answer is none of them. 
 
#MondayMotivation
 
Monday mornings are my favorite time of the week and here’s why. They are great for setting intentions, making plans and getting your desk ready for all the epic activity that’s going to come. Monday’s also provide the interesting opportunity to decide what not to do. Choosing what not to do is important because, regardless of the size of your business, it forces you to decide on the most mission critical actions that will move the needle forward in your business. We all have constraints that we are dealing with so making deliberate choices around how you allocate resources in any given day, week or quarter is important. Long term winging-it is always a losing strategy.  It also helps to keep you from diluting what makes your brand special by trying to be too many things to too many people. 
 
I’m sure you wouldn’t have to think long and hard to find enough work to fill a 100 hour work week. But, would all of those 100 hours be efficient? Value-adding? Activities that will support the direct growth of your business? Or, would you be playing in your CRM trying to decide the perfect amount of data fields when you don’t have any data to input yet be what’s going to drive more people into your pipelines and dollars through the door?
 
Probably not. 
 
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a tidy and well managed customer relationship management system as much as the next sales driven professional but at some point the diminishing marginal utility on your administrative activities will catch up with you. 
 
With today’s post I want to offer you six actions you can take right now to start building momentum on the week and to help you decide which actions are worth the investment towards making this week count. 

1. Close on something. 
 
You don’t have to be in sales to finalize a deal or a sale. Before you hit full on Monday triage mode after an inbox ignored through the weekend take a look at your to-do list. Is there a conversation that needs to happen, an order that needs to be filled, a proposal to be followed up with? Sealing any deal helps to start to build momentum and honestly feels pretty good! 
 
2. Rearrange your tasks.
 
Front-loading your responsibilities with all the easy stuff can actually be a negative thing because you are eventually dreading doing the not-so-easy stuff later. You’ll start to procrastinate and get distracted. Moving your lists around and reordering them in a way that mixes the heavy and the light lifting will also help keep you motivated and moving through the rest of the day. 
 
3. Stop focusing on Inbox Zero. 
 
I can honestly say that for a while I was little obsessed with my email inbox. (I think a part of me still is but, it’s that part is getting smaller by the day). While effectively communicating is crucial to help you start to the week of with a bang it’s not going to magically make you more successful - and it’s a distraction. Streamline your notifications so that you aren’t getting texts, app updates, desktop alerts, or any other notifications and focus on the important stuff in Actions 1 and 2 above. I’m not saying ignore your inbox but I am saying learn to identify the stuff that needs an immediate response from everything else. (No, not everything needs an immediate response!)
 
4. Take on a new project or two. 
 
Everyone is busy or at least they think they’re busy. You are no exception. Saying yes to help out with a project or taking on a new project can help set your productivity gears in motion. Doing this accomplishes a few things: you are continuing to prove your value as a resource to the people you serve and you will have to deliberately allocate the scarcity of your time a little smarter. Showing colleagues, co-workers, clients, etc. that you can be counted on and that you are willing to jump into something new always has the potential to create new opportunities for success. 
 
5. Get your prep-work done! 
 
Just because you have a meeting on Wednesday doesn't mean that you should wait until Wednesday morning to prepare for it. That’s what everyone else is going to be doing. If you have some time today do it now. The work you do today will be more researched and prepared than anything you might rush to come up with - no you don’t work “better” under pressure. It will also help take some pressure off of your task lists and schedule. If you haven’t already, working to shift your mindset to one of investing time and not spending it will start to pay off immediately. Better prepared means more efficient, more professional, and a better chance for you to be recognized for being awesome by not wasting people’s (boss’/client’s/stakeholder’s) time. 
 
6. Read something.

If all else fails today make sure you take some time to work on bettering yourself. It can be professionally, intellectually, emotionally, or even spiritually. Invest some time in learning a new skill or sharpening ones that will help you create the week that you want for yourself. If you are an entrepreneur take some time to work on the parts of running a business that you might not be too strong in. I find that happens a lot with regards to getting the most out of a small business's financials. There are tools and websites that are all about helping you grow as a professional - this blog included! 
 
Hope these six actions help you drill down and figure out what’s not worth doing. As a business builder and grower your primary responsibility is to deliver the best experience possible to your customers and then after that it’s to figure out the work that will best bring in more of those customers. When you’re firing on the most important cylinders doing good work for great people it won’t be hard to build up a little momentum. 

If You Want Business Growth You Need Accountability

Transcript:

Hi everyone! I’m Nunzio and you’re watching Manager Minutes: Episode 3. In this series it’s my goal to help you close the gap between what you planned to do to grow your business and what you’re actually doing in the business - in 5 minutes or less..
 
In this episode I want to cover accountability and how I’ve been seeing a lack of it lately.
 
If you’re trying to grow your business you need to be accountable for your actions. If you’re expecting success I can tell you that it WILL NOT come unless there’s some kind of activity attached to it. You can’t keep blaming your setbacks and false starts to externalities. It’s not the world’s job to remind you how to run your business. 
 
No one owes you attention. No one owes you referrals and no one owes you success. 
 
You have to put your big boy or big girl plants on and decide if what you’re doing is worth your continued efforts. You also have to decide if you actually care about the goals you set for yourself.
 
If deep down in your squishy bits the goals you have on paper aren’t really the things that motivate you then you’ll never be able to hold yourself accountable. 
 
My challenge for you today is to look for sources of feedback in your business. Are there things that are happening or not happening that you can draw some kind of inference from. If stuff is going how you planned and your response is just posting all kinds of success quotes all over social media then you need to stop - and get to doing more of the work that matters. Look for the levers that you can push or pull that will support you working towards some kind of goal. 
 
Moral of the story here is to strengthen your accountability you have to start doing (and measuring) the work you keep telling people you’re doing. 
 
I’m Nunzio you’ve just finished Manger Minutes: Episode 3 and I’ll see you in the next one.

Stop Consuming Motivation And Start Mining For It!

Motivation is an interesting concept. 

It has the potential to refill your entrepreneurial gas tank allowing you to crush your to-do list and at the same time; the acts of hunting for and consuming motivation related materials can literally cripple your productivity. 

What I’d like to explore today is how you can use motivation to push your business forward. It’s not the Tony Robbins or Gary Vaynerchuk kind of motivation that I want to explore though. The motivation I’m talking about is getting to intimately understand what motivates the people you’re trying to get to listen to your message. 

A critical and fundamental concept you need to understand as you’re growing your business is getting to the heart of what motivates the people you’re trying to serve. 

Before we start I need to potentially call you out. (Sorry in advance.) I need to call out the people who are a different person when they are trying to get some kind of engagement out of their audience. Different from their normal everyday, walking through life buying stuff kind of person that we ALL are. I need to call out all the people that have and share all kinds of tips, tricks and tactics for growing a business but never actually do any of those things themselves. It’s like saying, “Having clearly articulated goals are really important but, I’m a better operator when I just wing it.” They are the people that binge watch/listen to business development stuff but never take any action...and then complain about the externalities that are working against them when they get zero traction. 

What?! 

This is one of the problems with motivation. You expect consuming some soundbite driven piece of content to magically change you into a super-productive-business-building machine. That might work for a few people that need a push on an off day because they already put in the time to build real business infrastructure. If you’re the “entrepreneur” that’s been waiting to start for three years, one more podcast isn’t going to be the thing to push you into launch mode. 

For the love HubSpot, it’s not the economy’s fault! 

So, let’s approach motivation from a different angle. Let’s turn motivation into an asset that you can deploy strategically to support you building your business. In order to turn this consumable into a value-add for you we have to define motivation. 

Motivation’s New Definition: Benefits offered, earned or granted to help someone in their decision making process. It’s an incentive that is offered to encourage someone to take action. 

Sounds basic but sometimes revisiting the fundamentals is how you get better.  So, now that we are on the same page let’s talk about what you can do to better understand what motivates the people you’re trying to serve, to take action. I have a few questions you should think about when you’re trying to get to the heart of what motivates people. There’s also a point you should avoid as it can be a false-indicator for a lot of people. 

1. Where are they already spending their time online? 

When you observe your potential customers spending time on social and streaming platforms what do you do? They are clearly willing to accept the benefits of consuming some type of online media and chasing some kind of feeling in exchange for the finite minutes they have in any given day. If you’re trying to get into the headspace of your market, figure out where they are going online, what they are consuming and how they are engaging each other. If you can get to the heart of why they are chasing a quick dopamine hit from binge watching another episode of the Flash instead of buying from you, you can start to work on making your value proposition a little more interesting. 

2. What are they most proud of? 

Being proud of your kids, a DIY craft project you just finished or the website you built can tell a lot about what motivates you. We are in a market where the default for a lot of people is to over-share. You can use this to your advantage. Pay attention to the feelings and outcomes your prospects share when they tell you a story about a time they were most proud recently. You’ll be able to infer what outcome or value-delivering switches need to be manipulated to deliver a must-have experience to your customers. Big shiny new purchases might signify a preference for seeking high-end consumables, high quality products or getting great deals. If someone tells you in painstakingly proud detail all about how little Jimmy learned how to ride his bike without training wheels and proud-papa insists you watch all 30 minutes of the video he shot on his phone, quality family time might be something important. 

3. What does their life look like? 

Scanning the landscape of your ideal customer’s life can provide you with a lot of insight. As consumers we make decisions everyday that to us, feel inconsequentially when looked at individually but, summed up can tell a lot about what motivates us. If you’re marketing savvy this is the part where you start to build up the demographic profile of your ideal customer. Ages, neighborhoods, employers, favorite brands, celebrity crushes - all these things (and more) can offer you insight on how your ideal customer makes their decisions and the values they truly hold dear. 

Those three questions are a good start and if you start to really dig into each of them you’ll be able to collect a ton of data about your ideal customer. There is one thing that I want you to look out for though and it goes back to what I said early around the disconnect between people say they are and what they actually do. 

Be wary of taking things like social profile one-liners for granted. Be wary of any singular piece of information you collect, actually. When you’re trolling through a seemingly endless sea of available data on people, you can’t let a singular piece of information carry a significant amount of weight. What you’re really looking for are patterns in behavior and patterns for incentives. Just because a random social profile in what you believe is your ideal demographic says they love travel doesn’t mean they have ever actually traveled. Taking information on face value can be dangerous as you’re trying to craft your value proposition. 

Remember you’re trying to provide value and sell to real people, not the disconnected version of themselves they display online. 

So the next time you’re feeling a little behind get hydrated and avoid the urge to binge watch motivational videos on YouTube. Instead, roll up your sleeves and try to get a little deeper into the heads of your consumers - your business will thank you for it. 
 

5 Tips To Help You Narrow Your Market And Your Focus

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! 

This weekend marks the unofficial start to summer and with any good season change it's also a good time to take stock in your business and do a little reflecting on your plans the next couple of months. To help you with that I'm going to share with you 5 questions you can use to help you build ideas and think through who exactly are the people you want to serve. 

"Well, I'm serving everyone that I can" - said the business owner who was so afraid of losing the sale they weren't thinking about authentically growing. 

Wanting to serve everyone is natural. If you felt that it was easy right out of the entrepreneurial gate to turn potential sales away then you are a really rare breed.

It doesn’t matter if you are a new business or have been around for a while there is always pressure to bend to the whims of the people that are willing and able to spend their money on us. The trick is to get really good at picking which of those whims to indulge and which to just let site in the suggestion box. 
 
In order to help you control constantly changing and adapting your brand around for what everyone wants one of the first things you need a handle on is deciding in which market your particular good or service is playing.

That’s not to say that you can’t grow beyond it, pivot away from it, or create new stuff entirely down the line. Getting narrow and specific about your market or your best target customer/experience will be crucial in accelerating your growth. Not to mention increase the rate of return on your time and capital investments. 
 
When you focus and get narrow on your market it gives you the opportunity to serve that market with a greater level of depth. You are working on building relationships and authority with your potential customers and on becoming a resource for them. When you niche down you also have the opportunity to better understand all the pieces of your own value chain - especially with what happens after the customer engages with you.

Here are 5 questions to help you narrow your focus:

1.) Of the people you serve the hardest are there any common factors that tie all of them together beyond the solution you provide? 

2.) Does your product or service address a pain point entirely or is what you offer part of a bigger solution? 

3.) How big is your market and is there room for realistic growth? 

4.) Are you differentiating against any competitors? Are there any core capabilities that give you an edge over them? 

5.) Do your stakeholders believe that you are an expert in your market? If not, how can you tweak your marketing to best communicate that to your customers in the best medium for them?
 
This list of 5 questions are important and hopefully hit you with a bit dose of “real”. When you are talking about identifying markets it can be easy to drift off into academic-exercise land and out of answering the questions that matter most.

Think about your business and these questions with the focus on narrowing your market so that you can dig deep and start growing. Move away from being a mile wide and an inch deep and into an inch wide and a mile deep - that’s where real connections and solutions get made.

How To Go From Business Casual To Business Growth

Let’s set the stage. 

It’s Monday (or any weekday morning or whenever the equivalent of “Monday” would be in your business). 

Today’s the day you’re taking things seriously. You woke up in your CEO pants and you have more determination now than you’ve had since you made your business growth-centric New Year’s Resolutions. 

You get to your desk, shake your mouse to wake your computer up, open up your inbox and a new tab in your browser and...just stare. In an instant all the thoughts you had about making today the most productive day you’ve ever experienced evaporate, like a dream you can almost remember after waking up. And, just like that your motivation takes a bit of hit and you fall back into your normal start of the work week routine. Or, worse is you have to deal with some fire that instantly bogards your plans for today. 

I can help get your business back on track today and any other day that you happen to wake up wearing your CEO pants. I’m going to introduce you to a few Lean principles that you don’t need a “belt” or certification to put into practice that can help keep you on track when you’re business (or motivation) feels like it’s running off the rails. 

Let’s start with a quick, non-business, definition of the Lean process. It’s basically just a set of ideas, principles and processes designed to help your business deliver the most value possible in a way that keeps your expenses (money, time, emotional capacity) as low as possible. It’s a way of thinking designed to help you more efficiently shape and organize how you’re getting to the goals you have for your business. 

Below I’m going to outline four concepts you can put into action right now. This could be especially useful for those of you that have been distracted by their inboxes and are running a little low on business growth momentum at the moment. 

1. Jump on the Continuous Improvement bandwagon.

Continuous improvement is definitely a concept that gets lots of lip service but ends up being one of those things that gets thought about but never really put into place. The heart of continuous improvement is:

1. Getting you to think about the opportunities you have in a project, 
2. Then working on how you might be able take advantage of those opportunities, 
3. Trying out those changes or actions,
4. And, reviewing how those changes or actions worked out for you. 

Here’s where you can change that. Schedule a chunk of time every week essentially creating a meeting with yourself that you CAN NOT cancel or reschedule to work on your projects. Working on the planning, evaluating and tracking of your highest value projects weekly will allow you to focus on the work that matters most and force you to make decisions about how you’re carving up your work week. The goal is to avoid just showing up and blindly working on whatever needs immediate attention or what you think you “should” be working on. Adding a little more structure and an extra lens or two to the work you’re doing in your business will also help you figure out if the goals and outcomes you’re working towards are authentically the right ones for you and your business. 

2. Decide how you want to compete in your market. 

Clearly defining strategy is the concept that business owners sweep under the rug the most. I know because I see it every week. Business owners trying to grow think that strategy is just an academic exercise. They believe it’s important but don’t have the time to really think about because they are busy running their business. Well if you want to be successful, defining your strategy can’t be an afterthought. An easy, do it right now, way to get to the heart of your business strategy is to think of your business in terms of what. The biggest what you should be deciding on is what are you doing to consistently set yourself apart from your competitors and still delivering on the value your customers expect from you. 

3. Make friends with Pareto. 

You’re probably a little too close to your processes. Your marketing processes, your financial processes and operations processes can be a lot to try to keep organized as you’re in grow-mode. I mean that in the most loving way possible. Being close to your business is usually a great thing because it means you have your finger on the pulse of everything it takes to move your business forward. It also means you can get a little nearsighted about your processes and will sometimes be unable to tell what’s wrong with them. The Pareto Principle can help you figure out what work really matters and which parts of your processes matter most when you apply it to the work you’re doing and the data you’re collecting. Essentially, the principle states that 80% of your outcomes will derive from 20% of the work that you’re doing. At first glance this is a little deflating if you’re asking yourself about the other 80% of the work you’re already doing. Try not to worry about that and instead invest in optimizing that 20% of work that’s producing your results and do more of that kind of work! 

4. Stop (or strive to stop) doing all the work yourself. 

As you’re peeling through your business data and are starting to enjoy the good feelings that come from better efficiency care of the Pareto Principle you’ll start to notice that it’s getting easier to repeat the work you’re doing daily. Taking the time to stabilize and document the processes you use everyday will help you move away from doing everything all by yourself. If you’re serious about growing your business you’re going to have to hand off some of the things you have made yourself responsible for so that you have more time to focus on growing. I know it’s tough right now if you’re a solopreneur or part of a small team but you have to start writing things down. Not only will it be helpful when you’re trying to track whether or not your activity is producing the outcomes you want for the business but it’ll save you lots of time when you decide to grow your workforce. At the very least it will save you time having to relearn some task that you may only do quarterly - like building a cheat sheet for yourself essentially. I’m working on a process right now to help me edit video faster so that I don’t get stuck toying with all the neat features in Adobe Premiere. 

This is a good place to end for this post and a great place for you to start working more efficiently in your business. Taking control of your time has more to do with growing your business than you initially thought. How can you give dedicated attention to customer development and marketing if you’re spending time doing work that only marginally benefits the business? And, for the love of Gary Vaynerchuk spending 100 hours a week working and #hustle’ing doesn’t mean anything if the work you’re doing isn’t directly delivering value or making it easier for you to deliver value to your end consumer. 
 

7 Things To Keep Track Of To Keep Your Business Growing

There’s a ton of stuff to keep track of when you’re trying to grow a business. Inputs, outputs, customers, time, investment, impact and the list goes on and on. How do you know what’s important to track and what’s not? What’s the difference between vanity metrics and the metrics that represent real dollars in your bank account? 

I have some tips to help you out and they all revolve around supporting the strategy your building for your business already. 

Having your strategy (essentially your why, what and how) together will help you manage and measure the effort you’re throwing into your business. There’s a catch though, business strategy, the instructions that you're constantly building and adjusting for your business comes in lots of flavors and sizes. 

On top of that there’s no single best approach that is always applicable for every situation and no single tool that fixes every problem or overcomes every challenge in your business. Which ultimately leads me to one of my BIGGEST pet peeves, when I hear “consultants” talk about a single process they run everyone through. 

Literally makes my skin crawl. 

I am a big fan of having a strategic toolbox to sift through to help the business owners I work with find resources that makes sense to them and create change that matters. It works because just like in real life when you have a specific problem with your car or house you (or someone you pay) reaches into a real tool box and pulls out the right tool for the job. In this post I’m going to outline some important metrics you should be keeping track of, these help you identify specific problems or opportunities. That way when you reach into your strategic tool box you have the right information to pick the right tool for your business growing job.

Why should you care?! 

The challenge for you as a busy business owner is to choose the right approach or tool to help you manage your business. Maybe you’re looking to create overarching guidelines in your business or you need to decide how you’re going to sell you to a particular customer. Maybe you’re somewhere in between the 30,000 foot view of your business and boots-on-the-floor action. At each one of those stages there might be a different tool to help you navigate the buffet of possible decisions you could make and track all the outcomes that are possible.

How do you know which one is for you at any given moment? 

You know based on the data you’re using. If you’re a savvy entrepreneur type you might better know the meat and potatoes of your business as metrics. If you don’t identify as with the sexy way entrepreneurs are portrayed in the media that’s ok too - this is also for you. 

Better data (or metrics) means that you can better scan through all your options and pick the advice and resources that will be the most helpful. Better data and metrics will also save you and your business lots of time and frustration if you’re working with any type of would-be “consultant” that might be trying to funnel you through some predetermined evidence-based system. 

PRO -TIP: Most peer reviewed, well documented and established strategic frameworks are evidence-based. 

Here are a list of 7 metrics you should be keeping track of in your business. These are not the only 7 you should be keeping track but it’s a good start if you’ve just been winging it for a while. It’s in identifying challenges or opportunities in any/some of these that should guide how you find solutions or resources to get the most out of the time and energy you’re putting into your business. 

I need to throw out this disclaimer before we get into these - If you’re not tracking these in any kind of real and quantifiable way (some might be a little fuzzy I know) then you will not get any value out of this! 

1. Gross Revenue 

This is the money that’s coming into your business. Tracking gross revenue weekly or monthly can help you keep track of how the return on your efforts as you’re out in the world making people’s lives better. It can also help you identify patterns in your customer's behavior, especially if there is some kind of seasonality to your business. 

2. Leads and Referrals

This one can be applied to you retail folk but it’s better suited for any kind of service business. Tracking your leads and referrals every week or month can be really helpful in identifying where your business is coming from. I am a big fan of doing the most important work and putting your most attentive energy into the places you know yield great results for you. I know resources are finite and I know you know what it feels like to have lots of lines in the water with nothing biting. Keeping track of where your leads and referrals are coming from will help you avoid sales and marketing burnout and find the resources to help you better leverage the places you know your best business comes from. 

3. Profit Per Customer/Sale

It blows my mind when I ask people what their profitability looks like per customer or sale and they stare blankly at me. Don’t be a blank-stare’er. You need to know how much profit you’re getting from each client or sale for so many reasons. A few of which include how you’re pricing your goodies, how much time or energy each transaction demands of you and how scalable your business is. If every time someone pays you for something you are winging it how can you expect to get better and build a sustainable business that will support the lifestyle you want? 

4. Cash or Operating Reserves

If you're small you might not have much cash but your biggest asset could be time. You still want to manage time just as you would any cash in your business. How are you spending your resources? Are you weighing any opportunity costs? Have a list of priorities in terms of what gets your attention or cash when you’re working? It’s ok if you don’t have answers to all of those questions right now. What’s not ok is not tracking where those resources are going and what the returns or outcomes are on any of those investments. Keep track of your cash it will help you manage any kind of seasonality you happen to uncover while you’re keeping an eye on your gross revenue. See what I did there? It’s all connected! 

5. Inventory or Client Turnover/Lifecycle 

This is a fun one. How long do your goodies usually stay on your shelves before they sell? If you sell anything every extra day something sits represents cash your business doesn’t have and the growing possibility that it might not sell/expire. You might not ever be as tight an inventory management ship as Wal-Mart but buying appropriately will help you from sinking cash into too much inventory. For my service kin out there the equivalent measure is capacity. How many people can you serve in any given day, week, or month? If you are charging a fixed fee for service you want to make sure you are doing the best job you can and moving those clients through your service pipeline so that you can free up space to take on new clients. The longer it takes you to deliver the longer it will be before your next paying customer steps up and engages with you. 

6. Market Share and Brand Equity 

These metrics can be a little fuzzy for some business owners. The goal here is for you to keep an eye on where your business is in relation to your competitors in your industry. If you can get census data or some kind of industry specific insight on where you place that’s great. It’s also ok if you can’t but, if you’re fighting to get people to walk through your doors (physical or digital) and spend money then you should evaluate your competitive landscape every once and awhile.  Don’t think you have competitors? I’m willing to call you out and challenge you. I challenge you to think about any feasible substitute someone might be able to spend their discretionary dollars on and achieve some kind of similar outcome, feeling or experience. 

7. Time To Market

How long does it take for something to go from being an idea in your brain to an actual saleable thing. Keeping an eye on Time To Market will give you an idea of efficient your operational processes are. If you’re like me then you probably have lots of projects that you get really excited about, start and then never finish. Measuring Time To Market will help you keep yourself from investing too much into projects like this and to help keep you focused on the things that matter in your business. Those are things like serving your existing customers and doing the work that gets you recognized in your market. 

Just because your business is small, or smaller than your competitors, that does not mean that you can overlook being analytical. Every week or month you should be sitting down, getting elbow deep in the data of your business and looking for trends. It’s in how the data of your business changes over time that you will be able to identify REAL opportunities and challenges.

It’s through your data that you can make decisions, take actions and actually track your outcomes. You’ll also be able to look for the right tools or resources to help you make the decisions you need to make to push your business forward. No generic or blanket approaches to address your business’ specific needs. Keeping track of metrics in your business also keeps you from just feeling helplessly stuck or worse throwing money at anyone that sounds like they might have a good idea on getting your business unstuck. 

Here Are 4 Things To Remember When You're Looking For New Office Space

I’m sure at some point in your life you’ve heard the phrase, “If you build it, they will come.” It’s from a 1989 Kevin Costner movie called “Field of Dreams” and it’s totally relevant for today’s post. Odds are you’re like me and have never seen the movie in its entirety but, you’ve heard your dad/uncle/older brother say that quote more times than you can probably remember.

Most people use this quote when referencing building a new product or service in their business. It comes from the idea that if you can identify your customer's pain point and offer a solution then you’re chances at organic business success greatly improve. Maybe that’s the case every once in awhile but, if you’re an entrepreneur struggling to grow I can say that 99% of the time that saying is total bunk.

Real life is not a baseball diamond in the middle of a farm field where ghosts of players show up and everyone has a grand old time. In fact, if you’re building into a physical space hoping new customers will come you are in for, probabilistically, a world of hurt.

This is a problem that I see all the time. I see business builders getting really excited about their ideas and solutions jump into an over leveraged buildout hoping that a grand opening celebration will solve their cash flow issues.  Then, when it doesn’t, scramble to figure out how bills are going to get paid while trying to simultaneously drive more traffic through the doors. It’s a really tough situation to see and a tougher situation to be in if you're the business owner.

So, when do you know if jumping into a new space or investing a bunch of time and money into your current space is worth it?

By keeping these concepts in mind.

1.) Are you beating obscurity?

If you’re business wasn’t getting any attention before your new space why would jumping to a space change that? Odds are it won’t. Taking stock of your business’ audience and community is a great place to start. Are people showing up at your events? Interacting with you on social media? Leaving you great reviews and testimonials? Coming back as a paying customer on a regular basis? Being able to leverage a real and engaged community is going to be critical if you hope to see real bodies in your space when you open your doors.

2.) Do you have enough revenue to support a space?

There are some expenses that you have to make when you’re starting a business. Building a website, getting business cards possibly investing is some kind of inventory/customer management system all qualify. These expenses, while potentially significant, are all flexible in terms of when you choose to incur those expenses. You know what isn’t a flexible expense? A long term lease payment. Well, that and all the other fixed expenses that go with buying into a new physical space. If you’re just starting out, struggling to grow or have really inconsistent sales why would you commit to a long term expense? Using some credit to finance expansion is great only when you can, with some minimal level of certainty, predict what your revenue is going to look like in the future. And no, just because your five year plan says you’ll be profitable in six months doesn’t mean the market you’re serving thinks the same thing.

3.) Will your customer’s tastes and expectations be changing any time soon?

Opening the doors on your shiny new business space is a great feeling. The fact that that your customers are walking through your doors,  engaging with you, buying from you and walking out getting the solution you’re offering them is why you chased the entrepreneur feelings in the first place. Will those feelings last though? How much research have you done on the disruption that could be happening in your market space? Can reasonably expect consumers to maintain their buying habits for at least as long as you have your lease? Transportation and medical aren’t the only industries that are subject to disruption anymore. Everyone knows the story of Uber and AirBNB but have you seriously thought about what disruption would like for your business? Before jumping into your new space or signing the dotted line on that renovation loan it’s really important that you try to take the temperature on how people consume similar products or services.

4.) Fit vs Opportunity

Opportunity is a tricky beast, especially when it comes to real estate decisions. Before you jump in a new space because it feels like fate dropped the space into your lap you need to think through a few questions. First, is this really the best space for you? Will being in this space make it easier for your current and potential customers to interact with you? Will the space be able to grow with you? At it’s core though this is the old “right vs right now” dilemma and the weighing of the costs/benefits of being in whatever space you’re thinking about. How you navigate this dilemma really comes down to making sure that the decision reflects the heart of your business as well as the financial needs that go along with financing your aspiring growth. The best thing you can do for yourself is to remove the emotional component of the fit and create a checklist of “must haves” for the space. That way, no matter how serendipitous something feels, you can use your checklist as a guiding light to ensure that you’re really making the best decision for your business.

Growing a business is tough. It’s hard enough as it is to fight for the attention of your audience then get them to trust you enough to buy from you. Don’t make it even harder by jumping into a space that leads you to transferring your financial stress on to your customers. When you make the decision to expand into a physical space it’s important to remember that your decisions should be enhancing the customer’s experience, not taxing it. Just because you drop a fro-yo spot in a popular shopping plaza doesn’t mean you’re entitled to the foot traffic - RIP Let’s Yo! East Longmeadow.

How Accountability Helps You Succeed

Do you have an accountability partner?

Having a great strategy or business model is only part of the process of building a successful business. You need someone to help keep you accountable and push you on your journey. Your accountability partner is the person(s) that keeps you moving forward, tells you when you mess up, looks out for you when you are venturing into new territory, and offers a different (objective) perspective. That can be a single person, a group of people, or even an online community.

In this post you see the 5 most important things you need to look for in an accountability partner. 

One quick clarification - this is about finding an accountability partner for your business. There are lots of versions of "accountability partners" that run a spectrum of interpersonal needs and various configurations, I will be covering exactly none of those. 

1. Empathy + Commitment.

You need to find someone who understands your story. They might not have to agree with your values or your core “why” but they have to acknowledge that what your business is doing is important. The same goes for you strategy and why you are looking for someone to help you stay accountable. They have to be committed to helping you take the actions and make the choices you need to make to grow your business. It will definitely be less than helpful if your accountability partner isn’t reliable in providing you feedback and constructive advice. Kind of defeats the purpose. 

2. Challenging.

They need to be challenging. What I mean by challenging is that they will do their best to ask you the hard questions about how you are moving your business forward. That doesn’t mean they have to question each and every piece of your strategic framework but a good accountability partner will not let you slip on deadlines or deliverables without a fight. Remember you asked them to help keep you in check because you needed some help with your accountability - try not to lash out when they are holding you to it!

3. Open and earnest conversation.

Your accountability partner needs to get to know you a little bit. It’s important to have conversations around what motivates you, any weaknesses you have, and what your goals are for this relationship. Trust is a big part of this so make sure the person you choose is comfortable with having these conversations with you. You also need to set expectations early on for everyone involved because this about helping you take action in your business and you are leaning on someone that is potentially on the outside for help. 

4. Decide on metrics.

My all time favorite saying is - What gets measured, gets managed. This absolutely applies here too! You are getting someone to help keep you accountable, it’s important that you are tracking your successes and failures so that your accountability partner knows how to best motivate you. Deciding on metrics includes deciding on how frequently they will be checking in on you too. You should be setting times to meet or chat regularly with preset metrics you are working on so that you can report efficiently and work on the things you need the most help with. 

5. Take responsibility.

As a business owner it can be almost too easy to blame your business woes on any number of externalities. That has to stop. Unless there is an absolute market meltdown you have a lot of power in how your business is perceived and the responses you make to what’s going on in the economy around you. Successful strategy is about choices and allocating resources. It’s about taking action and measuring results. It’s about iteration. Those are all things you can take responsibility for and it’s how your accountability partner is going to push you to being a better business owner. 

Everything in this post can be applied to what you might be looking for in an accountability partner or even mentor. If you are a part of a larger organization and are working on your department's strategy look for some senior leadership or even a colleague to help you up your implementation game.  Accountability partners can be an amazing resource and you shouldn’t think that having one means you are showing weakness. If it says anything at all, having an someone to help make you better can only be seen as a strength. 

If you are struggling to find someone you can trust feel free to reach out to me! I am always willing to help entrepreneurs that want to get better. 

10 Quick Actions To Grow Your Business

T-Minus eight days until the 2017 tax filing deadline. I’m hoping at this point you’re not one of the people that’s waiting until the last minute to file because we all know that’s when software stops working, Post Offices run out of stamps and servers are so overloaded that your returns never get transmitted. But that’s not you right?!

Right!

With all that extra time you can work on other parts of your business.

I’ve been running into businesses lately that are looking to get out of the flurry of their day to day to do’s and get into acquiring their next clients or customers ASAP. Which is what I'd like to help you spend that extra time that you have because you won't be scrambling to file your taxes.

Spring, in general, is an awesome time of year for businesses - the flowers start to bud and business owners start to pop their heads up from their desks and realize that maybe they weren’t as proactive as they thought they were going to be through the winter.

So, let’s get to working ON (not in) your business!

It’s my job to make access to better strategy easier and more actionable for you. In the spirit of that, and to kick off Spring 2017 right, I have put together a list of 10 quick actions you can take today to better shape your business’ strategy and to make your business more profitable.

Action 1: Decide who is going to get your focus right now.

You need to be able to articulate those who are the most important in your business right now. Is it a specific kind of customer, a new market segment, the people you’re interacting with online, the neighboring businesses in your community, your fans, etc. Getting clear on who you want to give dedicated focus to will help you better hone how you spend your energy and more articulately measure the return you’re getting on those efforts.  

Action 2: Look Around.

Determine who your most relevant competitors are and understand how they do business. This will help you dial in what makes you special and how you deliver the best value to your customers.

Action 3: Business Aspirations

Get clear on what success looks like for you. Is it a dollar amount, a specific profit margin per transaction or a certain number of customers served? Being clear and SPECIFIC about what success looks like will help you make more consistent decisions in your business.

Action 4: What Gets Measured, Gets Managed.

You won’t know if you are spending your time well if you aren’t keep track of it. The same goes will all your resources. Right now, pick a few things that you think are important and start tracking them. How can you know if your business is on the right track if you aren’t measuring what you are doing?

Action 5: Communicate Your Mission

For your strategy and your business to be successful, everyone involved needs to understand not just what you are doing but why you are doing it. Is your mission and vision written or presented in the easiest most earnest way possible? People won’t support you if they can’t understand why what you are doing is important.

Action 6: Stop Planning.

Strategy is not planning. Strategy is deciding what’s important, creating a way to make systematically better decisions and taking action. Do something right now that will push your business forward in way you can measure that aligns with your mission.

Action 7:  Competitive Advantage.

It’s really tough to be the lowest cost option and the highest quality {insert what your business does}. Don’t worry about chasing market share and start worrying about what you do better than everyone else around you. Make a conscious decision to focus on keeping what’s special about you and communicating that specialness with everyone.  

Action 8: Look For Trends.

Customer’s tastes and tastes are always changing. Look for trends in how people are spending to make sure that you are delivering what they want how they want it.

Action 9: Do All Of Your Branding Assets Align?

Perspective and perception are everything in business. Take stock of what your business culture looks like. Does how you run your business match how you interact with your customers? What about your social media and other web assets - are all of those personas aligned? People are a big part of your strategy and how you present yourself to people matters.

Action 10: Simplify Your Business Model.

Businesses are most profitable when they are easy and intuitive to deal with. Look at how your business functions from start of customer relationship to finish. Are there any steps you can remove, streamline or products/services you can repackage. Your business model is how you make money, it’s important that you make it as easy and as clear as possible for better engagement.

Strategy doesn’t get better of more effective unless you actively work on it. You shouldn’t just be winging it! You might not have time to do all of these right now but pick the ones you think could help you get motivated and taking actions first and knock them out.

Commit a little time to making your business more profitable this year, I mean it’s still only April!

Oh oh oh..before you go, I want to share something with you! If you were wondering if any of the stuff I write about is worth anything I want to share a testimonial with you. This is a business I’ve worked with that’s seen some great results because of the work we’ve done together. It’s super exciting because it means the stuff we talk about (and the stuff I write about) really works!

“Last week Nunzio gave a very compelling feature presentation about how he helps businesses maximize their profit. This week I want to share how he has supported Serenity since we started working together four months ago.

The first thing we discussed was setting Serenity apart from all the other yoga studios in the valley. And there are a lot of them! He asked me specific questions to flush out my value proposition and to get me thinking about my mission and vision for the business. Where did I land? Real people, doing real yoga, with their real bodies. Catchy!

Nunzio helped me identify and describe my ideal client so we could brainstorm techniques to sell more services to both current and future customers. We talk regularly about building relationships with fellow community businesses to generate sales and using current satisfied customers to help spread the word. We’re now talking about bringing in new products that I can sell to current customers to increase revenue. Green tea or Luna bars, anyone? He held my hand while I raised prices, he played a large part in developing the script for my commercial and he remains extremely patient with me as I struggle with my technological issues. And, we support all our ideas and decisions with data. The numbers don’t lie.

Drum role please … thanks to Nunzio’s support, I have increased my revenue year over year by 80%! I think that’s pretty impressive!

Finally, Nunzio is the consummate professional. He pushes me outside my comfort zone while also maintaining guardrails to keep me focused. He learned all about the yoga industry in order to provide educated opinions and direction. I am extremely grateful for his support and his positive attitude. Being an entrepreneur can sometimes feel pretty lonely, but it’s nice to know I have someone in my corner who is always watching out for me!


Michele Lyman
Serenity Yoga
”

— http://www.serenityyogastudio.net/

How To Ruin Your Credibility

Building a business is hard. It’s hard to make your way through all the little decisions you need to make to pump out a minimum viable product, launch, and then grow. It can be hard to get and then keep people’s attention. It can even be tough to figure out what makes your ideal customers tick. 

Well, I should clarify just a little bit. It’s not inherently hard, it’s a ton of work and for the most part people just make it hard on themselves. I’m not saying that there isn’t  learning curve or an investment you have to make in yourself, what I am saying is that it takes dedicated attention. 

It takes focus and dedication to not only get a business up and running but to keep it running. As you grow your business you will be adding even more variables to the mix. All the while you have to maintain your position as a credible resource. More than providing value at each transaction (social or monetary) your customers and clients will keep using you because they like you and can trust you. 

One of the cores of building a successful business is establishing yourself as a credible resource. A person (or business) that people can trust to deliver on the promises you make. 

If finding success is NOT what you are looking for then I have 5 ways you can destroy your credibility. 

My honest and humble opinion is that you do the opposite of these. 

NOTE: There is going to be a lot of sarcasm going forward. I really hope you do the opposite of these 5 Tips :) 

1. Don’t follow up.

Following up is time consuming. It’s easier to just “yes” your way through conversations, networking events, and professional/social interactions. Eventually people will just stop putting any value on you and your ability to deliver if you don’t follow up. Developing relationships takes time and empathy and if you treat them like a commodity you can potentially free up your time for other things.  

2. Be inconsistent.

Customers, clients, family, and friends stress too much on reliability and consistency. If you are bringing a product or service to market it’s always easier to wing it. Being inconsistent will help lower your stress on the quality and value of your delivery and it will generally lower everyone’s expectations. You only really need that first sale from every customer right?! 

3. Always do everything yourself.

It’s challenging sometimes to try to trust people with the really important stuff. It’s easier to just leave everything up to you and try to cram as much of it into any one working period as possible. You already have all the resources you need. Plus getting others to help you in the decision making process only slows your business down. If you do it yourself you know it will be done right. The first time...probably the second...at the very least the third time. 

4. Lots of excuses and blame everything on externalities.

Everyone knows that building a business means you have to wear a lot of hats. Because of that there are going to be a lot of variables that you won’t have control over. Can you really be expected to predict what the entire economy is going to do? In dealing with problems and trying to get your business to grow be sure to make yourself look as positive and without responsibility as possible by framing that you are doing your very best and everything that goes wrong is out of your hands. 

5. Be unbending in your business's policies.

If you are a solopreneur that means sticking to the rules you created in dealing with all of the stakeholders you interact with. If you are a manager or a business owner with employees it means being unyielding in policy enforcement. The rules are there to keep order right?! If a business is to grow it has to be as strict as possible when dealing with customers, vendors, end users - they don’t know any better. Plus like I said already the economy is volatile and unpredictable so if you have an ironclad policy the business will always know the exact parameters of who it can interact with and how those interactions go down. Just because the culture of business is changing around us doesn’t mean you have to. If a party couldn’t abide by your policy then it probably wasn’t going to be a lucrative interaction. 

So there you have it! 

The 5 Ways To Ruin Your Credibility. If you are guilty of any of these I would encourage a hard look into what you are doing and how you are interacting with the communities around you. If you are indeed trying to ruin your business or reputation then I suggest you exercise these 5 tips every day. I hope you’re not though. It makes me sad to think that you might be. I’m even sad now even knowing that this is a bit of a parody, I'm sad thinking that out there right now are some businesses and people doing these things and thinking it's ok.

Are You Making Good Decisions In Your Business?

When you decided to give the whirlwind of entrepreneurship a try, you were probably making lots of hard and fast decisions in your business.

You had to right?!

In order to figure out if your business was worth pursuing you needed data and in the early stages making lots decisions and collecting any kind data about your audience or customers is critical.

The real question I want to get to the heart of today then is:

Are you now making good decisions in your business?

Or, have you found what feels like a rhythm but has revealed to be a rut? I bet I know why your business feels like it’s just spinning its wheels in place and before we dig in there is a quick disclaimer.

This is not an intellectual exercise in the different models of making decisions – it’s the real-time actionable decision making that I want to talk about.

Let’s really start by calling it like it is, you’re hoarding your freedom aren’t you?

Hoarding your freedom is when you value the ability to make choices so much that it actually prevents you from making any choices. It’s like the friend who never commits to anything because he or she is waiting to see if any better plans are happening. Hoarding the freedom to make choices is a terrible thing. You are constantly burying yourself in the extremes of opportunity costs and for good reason...so you think.

Resources are scarce even for businesses that seem to be thriving, that’s always a barrier you will bump up against. Making bad decisions and hoarding freedom of choice can actually do more damage to your business than making decently-informed-probably-not-perfect choices.

In as actionable and fluff free a way as possible let’s make you a more decisive and effective decision maker.

Before we get into the actionable bits let’s bust a few decision making fallacies. Fallacies are the things that will eat up lots of time, energy, and produce more stress than your body should probably be handling. I don’t have to tell you that making decisions isn’t always easy. Something I want you to keep in mind through all of this and to help get you out of the indecisive stupor is realistically thinking about the worst possible outcome. If you aren’t an evil scientist out of a comic book then accidentally blowing up the Earth is probably not an issue for you. So what’s the worst thing that can happen? Probably nothing you couldn’t bounce back from with a little extra work and maybe even a pivot in your business. What I’m getting at is that a bad choice is temporary – even when it feels like it’s not.

Fallacy Busting 101

First is the Information Mud Pit.

Feeling like you need as much information as possible from as many different experts, gurus and web-sites is like having your car stuck in the mud while you just hammer the accelerator. Sure it’s going to make lots of noise, throw lots of dirt around, and maybe even start to give you some forward motion but eventually you are just going to overheat your engine, breakdown and still be stuck. Don’t let your brain throttle about in the mud and then breakdown.  All those expert sources are just people and they may not be in exactly your situation.  Do those people have the same values, personal/professional experiences, or even biases that you do? Work on gathering enough information to cover any of the possible outcomes you can predict (there will be some you won’t be able to predict) and move from there. Just like getting out of the mud in your car it’s going to take a little patience, finesse, and the right tools. Not all the tools ever made – the same goes for research.

Next is being too busy.

Everyone is busy so that excuse can’t cut it anymore. What you are doing is finding new and different (read: easier) things to deal with that can give you some satisfaction from safe handling the things on your to-do list that can be completed with the least amount of energy and work. The other part of the being too busy is trying to multitask a little too much. When your attention is always diverted in lots of different directions the choices you make tend to be less informed, less qualified, less efficient, and just chock-full-of-mediocre. So no more excuses! They will just keep stressing you out as your list of decisions won’t be getting smaller.

The last fallacy I want to kick in the face is that you can’t get what you need done properly because there are always little fires that need your immediate attention.

The problem isn’t that you are constantly in a flurry of micro-emergencies it’s that you have failed to set your priorities. Decision making effectively takes a little work and a little prep time. It’s in the prep time that you should be stripping out your perceived opportunities for making decisions and reorganizing them in a way that reflects their relative importance. There is a lot of importance in building momentum in getting things done but you shouldn’t front load your decisions will all the easy stuff. You won’t be taking advantage of the momentum and flexing your decision making muscles the best way unless you prioritize.

Now that we busted a few fallacies let’s get to some action steps help make you a lean, mean decision making machine.

1. Are you actually making the decision? Sounds like a silly question to ask but it’s important to think about whom really has the final say. If you are a solopreneur it may very well be you. But are you part of a team or have a partner you have to run this by? Decide who is going to be making that decision and then move forward with purpose.

2. Set the stage. Very few decisions you make will only affect you. So it’s important to consider how your decision is going to affect the rest of your business and stakeholders. Make sure that everyone is comfortable with what’s going on and understands at least a few of the major consequences of those choices.

3. Make every decision (even the tiny ones) part of the big picture. Remember when you started your business you put a whole bunch of time and effort into your values and mission. Yeah, those still exist. So make sure that your decisions are in line with what you want your business to continue to be and to be perceived being. Everything from color pallets, paper supplies, and even how you package your product will all impact how your brand is perceived.

4. Do your research. At this point I would like to direct your attention up a few paragraphs to the part about hiding behind information.  You want to make sure that when you are making your considerations you are using good information. Good information in hopefully leads to good decisions out. Keep your information lean and relevant. What that means is that you do not necessarily need to be an expert on how paper products are manufactured and distributed to pick a new coffee cup vendor.

5. Consider solutions, side effects and possibilities. You want to make sure you try to anticipate as many probable outcomes as possible. It’s important to be aware of how your decisions will interact with the rest of your business environment. Your goal should be to get the most out of whatever your resources are all the time. That and making sure the different departments continue to play nice together to make your business perform as best it can.

Your business’ integrity is more than just making sure that all your decisions are in line with your business mission. It’s about allowing your customers and stakeholders to trust your business. It’s trust in you and your brand that will keep your customers coming back. You get to being a trusted resource by continuing to make decisions (for your offerings and how you manage your business) that continue to improve the experience for the customer and client. That includes how you manage your finances, how you handle bad customer experiences, and even how you choose to interact with your community.

Integrity Pro Tips:

1. Always do your best to meet your commitments – saying no is ok.

2. Treat everyone with respect that includes your competitors and even naysayers.

3. Always be honest. If a delivery is late, you’ve made an error, or shipped the wrong product out - your customers will always appreciate you being open and upfront. Their compassion and respect for you because of that honesty might actually surprise you.

How To Keep Track Of Money In Your Business

When was the last time you really looked at your finances? It’s tax season right now so I’m sure you’ve been a little extra sensitive about where your money is coming from and where it’s going but, checking your online statements from the bank or credit processing company does not count. 

Better question – are you still on pace to make/earn/generate whatever income you quoted for yourself in those initial projections in <insert time of start here>? 

Are you tracking everything or is it more of a check book balance ballet? The checkbook balance ballet is a display of grace, creativity and checkbook ninja’ing that makes you proud that you made it to the end of another month, quarter or even week.  

Last question I promise, do you actually understand how QuickBooks works or are you just winging it? I would rather hear that you are keeping track of expenses in a raw unedited list of an Excel file instead of winging it through QuickBooks. 

One of my favorite things to hear about a business’ finances is when I hear owners and entrepreneurs tell me they are too busy to worry about the minutiae details of the finances and that as long as there is cash in the register they are doing OK. 

Those individuals couldn’t be any more wrong. 

This post is aimed at being your businesses minimum viable finance fundamentals crash course and it is going to teach you how to organize and what to look for in your Income Statements (Profit/Loss) and your Statements of Cash Flows. These steps and tips will help you plan better so that you are spending better (read: more efficiently). It’s also a good idea to know when your endeavor is hemorrhaging resources so that you can do some entrepreneurial triage and get yourself back on track. 

Cash Flow Statement  

A Cash Flow Statement (CFS) measures the amount of cash and cash equivalents that are coming in and going out of your business. A CFS literally follows the money. No, your bank account statements, check register, or receipt tapes are not CFS’s. All the information that those sources and sources like that provide should be housed in one easy to find and easy to read place. Remember it’s all liquid resources, no Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable here – just cold hard cash (flow). 

Here’s what cash flow will look like. First it starts with your cash on hand for the period you are measuring like days, weeks, months, quarters, etc. Then you should break it out into three big sections. Cash flows from operations, finance activity, and asset activities. Within each one of those sections you will be listing the cash-ins then cash-outs and a subtotal for each section. (Positive cash flow implies more cash in than cash out which is a good thing most of the time.)  Lastly you tally the three sections add in your beginning of period cash and what you are left with is your cash at the end of the period all nice and tidy right?! Not always. Now that you have an idea of what the statement will look like let’s break out those sections. 

Operations

This is the cash that comes in or goes out that is directly related to the core business operations. The biggest cash-in you will probably encounter is the income/revenue received from sales or services offered. After that common cash-outs will be stuff like: rent, utilities, payroll, and inventory. If the expenditure has anything to do with the core business operation and it was paid in cash it will be categorized under operations. 

Asset Activity (Economic Investment)

This is the cash flow activity surrounding bigger ticket items. These are things that would be categorized as plant, property or equipment. Let’s take a look at an example. Say you sold an old delivery van so that you could buy a new oven for your bakery. It would be a cash-in under Asset Activity for the sale of the delivery van and a cash-out for the purchase of the oven. If those were the only two transactions that period and you had cash left over you would have a positive cash balance in this section. 

Lastly is Finance Activity

This is the cash activity that relates to how you are using your money. If you took out a loan and have to make payments every month. That would be a cash-out. If you are an S-Corp or an LLC and you pay dividends or make disbursements to the shareholders that is a cash-out.  If you issued any stock or sold any bonds to raise money then those activities would be cash-ins. 

The goal for the CFS is to stack the information from period to period next to each other. You want to be able to look for trends, patterns, or things that are out of the ordinary. This will be able to help you find spots where you could potentially save money or give insight on where your money is going every month. One of the most popular things I hear from entrepreneurs is that they feel like they pour huge sums of money into their businesses and then look around and are unable to fathom where that money went. Your CFS will show you exactly where all that money went. 

Profit and Loss Statement/Income Statement  

An Income Statement or Profit and Loss Statement (P/L) is a financial statement that outlines your business’ revenue and measures it against your expenses. The goal is to find out how profitable your business is for that period and the periods to follow. It’s a crucial planning tool because it shows you exactly what your business is doing and whether or not you are sticking to the budgets you started your entrepreneurial adventure with. The P/L can also help you keep tabs on things like rates of product returns, and making sure that your costs to bring your product or service to market don’t get too out of control. This is different than the CFS because it takes your Accounts Receivables and Payables into consideration as well as a few other non-cash accounting measures like depreciation. 

There’s a little more involved with the P/L so let’s jump right into what goes into it. Then, we can talk a little more about how to use both of these statements to keep your business running like the well-oiled machine you thought it could be at the start. 

Net Sales

The net sales figure represents the amount of revenue or income generated by the business. The dollar figure recorded here is the total sales, less any product returns or sales discounts.  This is what you want to keep an eye on if you are starting to look at how fast your business is growing.

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) 

This represents the costs directly associated with making or acquiring your products or services. Costs include materials purchased from suppliers used in the creation of your product, as well as any internal expenses directly expended. If you are a service based like a cleaning business costs might include the supplies used to get to the final deliverable. 

Gross profit

Gross profit comes from subtracting the cost of goods sold from net sales. It does not include any operating expenses or income taxes. Focusing on how much your Gross Profit is changing over time in its own amount as well as in relation to your Costs of Goods Sold can be important to follow. Financial goals can be to manage and maintain your gross profits as you scale your production up. 

Operating expenses

These are the everyday expenses incurred in the operation of your business. Some of these categories will even match some of the items in your CFS. In this sample, they are divided into two categories: fixed expenses and variable expenses. 

Payroll and Salary

These are the salaries, wages, and payroll plus bonuses and commissions paid to your staff. It’s for full time and part-time alike. 

General, Selling, and Administrative

This item is made up of all the direct and indirect selling expenses and the administrative expenses associated with being in business. These could be costs associated with advertising or marketing your products or services, travel, meals, equipment rental, and printing costs. It’s an umbrella for everything that’s not Operating, COGS, or Payroll.  
Rent: These are the fees incurred to rent or lease office or industrial space.
Utilities

These include costs for internet, cable, heating, air conditioning, electricity, phone equipment rental, and phone usage used in connection with your business. 
Depreciation

Depreciation is an annual expense that takes into account the loss in value of equipment used in your business. Examples of equipment that may be subject to depreciation include copiers, computers, printers, and fax machines.
Miscellaneous Expenses

Expense items that do not fall into other categories or cannot be clearly associated with a particular product or function are considered to be other overhead costs. These types of expenses may include insurance, office supplies, or cleaning services. It is crucial that you outline each of these costs as sub-items below this heading. 
Total expenses

This is the summation of all expenses incurred in running your business. It does not include any taxes or interest expense on interest income if there is any.

<Take a breath> A little recap. 

If you are following along, you have outlined the quantity of sales that have come in. Then you subtract away the cost of making the sales to get to Gross Profit. Then you subtract away all the rest of the expenses and costs of doing business in general and that leaves you with another magic number – Net Income Before Taxes. This, like Gross Profit, is another place you want to keep an eye one. An example of something that you may encounter is your Gross Profit is increasing but your Net Income Before Taxes is staying the same or getting worse. Big Red Flag! When you see that it’s time to get back into those expenses and CFS for the period and investigate where all your potential profit is going. Ok, on we go…

Net Income Before Taxes

This number represents the amount of income earned by a business prior to paying income taxes.  I had to state it like this just for the sake of good form. 

Taxes

This is the amount of income taxes you owe to the federal government and, if applicable, state and local government taxes. Pro Tip: Don’t sleep on your taxes. I’ve seen instances where the IRS can and will issue liens on bank accounts. That makes operating your business very tricky if you don’t have access to your accounts. It makes paying employees even trickier. Stay on top of your reporting or get some help with it. The IRS aren’t the bad guys (not all the time anyway) and they are willing to work with you but you have to have your act together. 

Net income

This is the amount of money the business has earned after all your expenses, interest payments and paying income taxes. This is wrongfully the first place a lot of businesses look to figure out the health of the business. Don’t let this be you. It’s also easy to see extra money and just put it in your pocket – also a bad idea. You have to evaluate the opportunity costs of using that Net Income in a variety of ways. Sure your pocket is one way but so is reinvestment, increasing the pay of your employees, paying down and debt more rapidly, or just saving it for a rainy day. 

Lastly if it’s negative then you definitely need to dig back into these financial statements and figure out where your resources are going as well as ways to increases those sales numbers at the top. I don’t want to spend too much more time in these statements though – think of this as a reawakening to your financial management responsibilities. Let’s get into some metrics you can use to gage the health of your business without worrying about flipping through each line item of each statement.

You may have noticed that there was no talk of the Balance Sheet. Not because you shouldn’t like or care for the balance sheet but because when you are in the trenches and trying to make changes on the fly you will need the most up to date information possible. You are going to want to keep an eye on the speed at which money is coming in and out of your situation. The Balance Sheet is more of a long term snapshot. Just like with the P/L and the CFS, there is a template for the Balance Sheet and some information on Balance Sheets in the Resource Section at the end of this book. 

On to the ratios. 

The two types of ratios that are really important for figuring where you stand and how to plan are efficiency ratios and liquidity ratios. How this is going to go is I will give you a brief description and then the ratio. The idea is that you start using these ratios to not only track your own progress but that of your industry. You can get some industry ratios from places like census.gov and others by doing simple searches in Google. 

Quick Ratio

Is a measure of a company’s ability to handle debt if it needed to, or its short term liquidity. The higher the ratio the more liquid the firm - which is a good thing. 
= Current Assets - Inventory/Current Liabilities
Debt to Equity Ratio 

This measures your leverage. It’s how much debt have you used to help your company grow. Having and managing debt can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you handle it. The important thing is keep track of what the ratio is doing over time as well how you servicing your debt. More debt might not always mean more growth. 
= Total Liabilities/Owners Equity 

Interest Coverage Ratio

This is an interesting one. In the planning process it’s easy to get caught up in showing that you can cover and debt that will be issued. It’s equally, if not more, important to make sure that you can cover the interest payments that go along with that debt. Here the rule is a ratio of 1 or more means you can service all your obligatory interest. 
= Operating Profit/Interest Payment

Collection Period

This ratio will help you keep track of how long it takes clients or customers to pay. The longer the period the more working capital you may need to support your business while waiting for payment. Remember efficient businesses don’t really use much extra cash. It can also help keep your payment policies tracked and enforced. 
= Ending Accounts Receivable/ Revenue per Day

Lastly ROA and ROE

Both of these ratios will help you get a sense of how much return you are getting out of your Assets (A) and your Owners Equity (E). As you keep track of this you will be able to see how capital expenditures are affecting your bottom line or if you are really using everything you have to it’s best potential. Having the money to buy stuff is great but buying stuff alone is not going to make you money. You need to manage the stuff and the people in charge of that stuff appropriately. 
= Net Profits/Assets and Net Profits or/Owner's Equity

Now this is not the conclusive list. These are a few key ratios you should start with when you are snapping out of the entrepreneurial honeymoon. From here it will help you to pick the spots in your financials that you want to focus on and work on to make stronger. These are some of the ratios that can help you see patterns for better or worse before the raw data might indicate. The statements these variables come from also vary in length and complexity. You need to keep on top of this so that you can confidently focus more time on doing the work that matters most to the people you serve. 

Otherwise, you might not be in business for as long as you planned. #moneymatters

How to Get More Done In Your Business

Don't get stuck staring at the loading screen in your business. 

There are lots of ways you can organize, operate and deliver value as a business. You can be an independent online business, an Amazon seller, a cooperatively owned farm, a brick and mortar restaurant, or a residential cleaning company to name a few. If you can identify a problem and offer a solution that people are willing and able to pay for, you have yourself a business. Even though businesses come in all shapes and sizes, for all the different problem-seekers and solution-offerers that exist there is something that connects them all.

That common thread that ties all of these business together is the drive to produce the best quality product, service, or experience using as few resources for as much profit as possible.

That was a mouthful.

Yes sustainability, honoring mission, and providing value are also big drivers for business but to keep operating, on average, it takes bringing dollars in the door. Then using those dollars in the best way you possibly can to continue to bring the next dollars through the door.

This post is going to provide you with some tools to help make sure you are being as efficient as possible.

Start by segmenting each department or operational area of your business into projects. Boil everything down to the most basic functions in the business. Making something simple but not simpler should be reminiscent of methodically putting together your childhood science fair projects or at least putting together IKEA furniture (way more fun than the furniture though). The term we use to describe this process is Project Management. Project Management is all about planning, organizing, monitoring, and allocating resources to successfully complete a specific outcome.

Operationally, most businesses are made up of lots of projects – some short term and some long term.  Take this process and adjust it so that it best works for you – here is your crash course in project management.

1. Start with the cash flow. More specifically where cash is going and how it is being used in your business. Some easy ways to bring these costs down are to re-evaluate your shipping costs, credit card processing and insurance or liability needs.

2. Manage your businesses schedule. One of the biggest drains on resources and reason businesses hemorrhage money is over-staffing.  If you are a one person operation, audit your time hour by hour to see where you get the most return on your time. If you have employees it means possibly trimming those hours. Are you paying the right people to do the right job?

3. Plan how your product or service goes from client engagement to final delivery and map out all the costs and tasks along the way.

If this is feeling a little overwhelming try breaking down each department or group of related activities and treat them like individual projects. Then find the goal of each project by asking:

1. Does this department or group of activities have specific or measurable goals? What are they?

2. Does this department (now project) contain all the related tasks to reach those goals?

3. Is there a clear start and end point in the process?

4.Is this so important or different that it needs to remain a standalone project? If not where can I combine these activities to be more efficient?  

Now you have your project defined and it’s time to set it up.  Here is a format to help you define what you need within each component of your business. It’s called the Triple Constraint:

1. Time Constraint: When does the outcome need to occur or is required?

2. Budget Constraint: What funds or resources are available to get the desired outcome?

3. Performance Criteria: Are there any barriers or quality issues related to producing the outcome.

For each project set up charts to track progress and measure from week to week, month to month and quarter to quarter.

Here is a personal example –

Sometimes, I hate doing the administrative work associated with running my consulting business. I wish I could just spend my days talking to people and lecturing to my students. But, invoices need to be sent out. So I have set up some constraints for the A/R or Invoicing Project in my business. This will ensure that I utilize my resources as efficiently as possible. For my time constraint I block off a chunk of time on Monday’s biweekly to go over and review invoices that need to be sent out. I physically and mentally limit myself to 1.5 hours maximum in dealing with this. If it needs to take longer I’ll pick another favorable time and do it then. My time, like yours, is important and after 1.5 hours I probably need to be somewhere else.

Budget Constraints are interesting for me. I tend to be a softy when it comes to invoicing and each week give myself an allowance for discounting. That’s part of the budget as well as the monthly fee I pay for Freshbooks, my invoicing and financial management service. Freshbooks is where I keep a good chunk of my client invoicing and billing information and is something I highly recommend to everyone.

That leaves me with quantifying and measuring performance. For my invoicing project this gives me the opportunity to see my billable hours or any other client services and measure them against the past. I can see how many invoice related communications are sent, follow up with old invoices as well as send out new ones. It also gives me the opportunity to review for errors or test new tactics to try to get my invoices paid faster and more accurately.

A real life fumble on my part was leaving the wrong mailing address on my invoice and losing out on a client’s payment for over a quarter – that’s how long it took for the Post Office to get the client's letter back to them. Quality of information and process is super important – otherwise you end up like I did and carry an opportunity cost on receiving that late payment.

Now it’s your turn. Start small and try to build momentum by breaking down one of the things you need to get done in your business into a single project. It’s not going to be perfect but taking the time to break down what really needs to get done, how to measure success and how to build systems around the stuff that you can. Taking the time to do this work will also help you get out of your own way so that you can do more of the work that matters to you and to your business.

5 Tools I Use To Grow My Business

Welcome to 2017!

I know that today is the observed holiday but I couldn’t help myself, I had to get to my desk and get started. I had a little extra spring in my step as I made my way to the office this morning because I was excited to answer a question that I get all the time from entrepreneurs and business builders. That question:

How do you keep your business going and get everything you need to do done when you’re a small team or even just a team of one?

I know a lot of you out there have set goals, resolutions or even just intentions for your businesses this year and I want to continue to support you in reaching those goals in any way that I can. So, I’m going to peel the curtain back a bit on my business and talk about the five resources I use to keep me moving forward in my business that you can use too.

Again to be super clear, these are tools that I use everyday and that I tell people about when they ask. None of the links I’m sharing are affiliate or paid  for in any way, just pointing you to where you can learn more.

1. Evernote -  https://evernote.com/

There are a ton of posts and articles on the internet that talk about the greatness of Evernote. I don’t want to bore you with another review. What I want to do is talk about how practical and essential this app is for me, and could be for you, every week. One of the necessary evils of growing a business is that you’re going to take and host meetings. Some of them will be amazing like, meeting with clients if you are a coach or consultant and some of them will be less amazing like, meeting someone for a “networking” coffee only to have them try to pitch you the whole time on a service you don’t need. Recording your thoughts, conversations and follow up actions in a way that’s easily organizable, time stamped and searchable is huge. For me this app is more than just a place to write ideas to go back to at a later date they are repositories for business development information I use everyday. I track client conversations, write my blog posts and use them as a home base for the projects I need to keep track of in my business. Plus with the premium you can make documents, pictures you take, scans, etc searchable - how cool is that!

2. Hubspot Sales - https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales

Building a business probably means that you are sending a ton of emails out everyday. I know it can be really frustrating to send them out and then just wait. Not really sure if your emails landed where they were intended or if they were read at all. With Hubspot Sales you can send your emails out and actually see if/when they get opened and even track click throughs. It’s a little sneaky but I love it and I think you will too. Hubspot also has a decent CRM to help keep your prospects and sales pipeline organized. It’s also got a really neat Google Chrome and GMail extensions that will push you notifications so you don’t have to keep checking in on the app/site. The free version gets you up to 250 open notifications per month and then you can upgrade from there. If you rely on email for the bulk of your business development then something like this can be really helpful because you can better time and position your follow up emails or the other steps in your sales pipeline.

3. Buffer - https://buffer.com/

There are a lot of social media aggregators and planners out there today. Buffer is one that I started using when they were pretty young and have grown with them. Buffer is a huge resource for me because it helps me plan my social content for the day or week. You can set the share frequencies, choose how you want links to show up and it gives you decent analytics. If you are a small team or a team of one then you know how tough it can be to prioritize being active in social and balancing everything else you need to get done in a day. While there is NO SUBSTITUTE for real interactions you can plan the things you want to share and then carve out smaller chunks of time to go out into the web and be a real person. Social moves fast and is still a really relevant place to be. Buffer makes it easy to keep your face showing up in people’s feeds. The free version lets you plan 10 social posts I believe and then you pay up from there.

4. Any.do/Cal - http://www.any.do/

Any.do and Cal are sister apps that live on your phone and the web. It’s a to-do and calendar duo that helps extend the functionality of what a calendar app like Google Calendar can do when you’re trying to fit in all the little stuff that needs to get done in a day that doesn't really need a full on calendar entry. I love Any.do because you can create all kinds of categories and reminders that will integrate well with the calendar. You can save files, set location based  reminders and all kinds of other neat customizations. Cal also pulls the data from your Google Calendar in so you can keep everything really organized and in one place. It’s really intuitive which is important for me because it means it’s easy to edit, check off and adjust on the fly. There is a free version but for $26.99 for the year you get all kinds of goodies including one of my favorites is a prompt everyday to plan my day.

5. Trello - https://trello.com/

I love Trello because it can be whatever you need it to be. It can be a project manager, an extension of your to-do list or even a place to host processes that you create for your business. In Trello you create “boards” and within the board you can break them out into actions, sub-actions, leave notes, assign people and even store documents. Because I use Any.do for my main to-do list and planning I use Trello more for creating project management timelines and benchmarks. It’s great for taking big ideas and them breaking them down so that you can actually get work done. I use it as a place to keep my vanilla processes too. I can create step by step outlines for things like New Client On-boarding and even Blog Posts. Trello saves time and creates consistency for my workflow because all that information is in one place and contains processes that I use all the time. It’s also really good for small teams that need a place to collaborate and communicate through the work process. It also integrates with a TON of stuff like all-things-Google, Dropbox, Slack and all the Evernote. (I’m big on stuff that plays nicely together.)

That it!

Those are the five tools or resources that I use everyday in my business. They help me stay organized, keep track of what I have going on and keep me doing work that is pushing my business forward. I believe they can do the same thing for you. There’s a catch though, these resources are not silver bullets. They aren't going to do your work for you but they will help keep you organized and help you set finish lines up for yourself. That’s really important because in order to make progress in your business you have to be able to start something, finish it and move on to the next thing. So often I see people stuck in this quagmire of tasks they are always working on and never create the momentum they need to really grow because they are stuck always working in their business.

Take some time, set them up and then get to work trusting that your systems will support you along the way. Your business at the end of 2017 will thank you for it.

4 Ways To Start The New Year Off Right

For the last post of 2016 on the Disruptive Strategy Co. Blog I’m shooting for a callback to the blogs of yesteryear. (For those that don’t remember yesteryear, it was a Wednesday and I mean the cool thing blogs did from 2000’s to about 2013.) Today’s post is a round-up of posts/articles that I think are really useful in helping you kick 2017 off right. There’s a ton of great stuff out there about business development, goal setting and entrepreneurship so rather than adding more to the pile I thought I would help you spend less time searching for what to do next and more time taking action.

Plus, I mean, there are only so many articles you can read about planning before you are essentially numb to all things New Year Resolutions so hopefully this list mixes it up for you.

Below are four posts/articles from across the web that I believe are worth your time and that if executed on will help you get farther than anyone else inspired by the New Year. (The links to the articles are in the sub-headings.)

1. 7 Steps to Achieving Any Goal in Life - Entrepreneur

This is a great article because creating SMART goals get’s a lot of lip service but not in a really useful way. Let me explain. SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals are easy enough to understand conceptually for people. That’s usually as far as most people get in trying to set goals. They understand that this is an important framework but often overestimate their own abilities and set expectations so high that the goals they set get abandoned. This article makes SMART goals SMARTER by adding a few extra letters to help keep you on track and actually achieving your goals. The E gives you the opportunity to evaluate your progress along the way, acknowledging that goal setting is more than just a two step process - set and achieve. The R gives you permission to re-adjust because life isn’t always as easy or predictable as you think it’s going to be. If you’re setting goals this week this post is a great way to help frame what you’re working towards.

2. 6 Ways Work Environment Shapes Your Productivity - Fizzle

In this podcast the folks at Fizzle talk about how where you work impacts the quality of that work. You might not think about it but, your environment plays a big part in the amount of stuff you get done in a day. If you’re looking to start the New Year off with a productivity sprint then you should definitely give this a listen. (I think they are the perfect blend of entertaining, engaging and instructive.) They talk about the importance of separation, making changes, organizing your browsers, ergonomics, clutter and lighting. Take control of your space to get better results with this podcast.

3. Forget the Resolutions - Write Your Personal Manifesto - Strategy + Business

This one is for those of you that have plans of continuing to take action long after the January New Year Resolution Honeymoon phase passes. It’s also not a “quick” exercise. Going through this process if going to take time but it’s going to help you find the warm squishy core of what’s important to you and bring it up to the surface so that you can keep it top of mind. This manifesto that you build for yourself is going to help you stay motivated and fuel you when it feels like the hits from 2016 are continuing to push their way into 2017. (RIP George Michael)

4. How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar for a Year - Social Media Examiner

Whether you’re a small business, a corporate ninja, a weekend warrior or a person with an internet connection you need a social media planning tool to help you avoid being “that” person that shares a little too much in their feeds. If building a brand is important for you in 2017 then you’ll want to make sure that you’re giving your audiences the quality and consistency that will keep them coming back every day/week/month. This post will walk you through creating an excel calendar that works in holidays and lets you see how your content maps out thematically throughout the year. If you’re serious about going pro in the New Year you have to stop winging it. Winging it takes time and attention that you need to be investing in the value you are delivering.

Bonus (Video) Post

5. Shia LaBeouf “Just Do It” - YouTube

“If you’re tired of starting over, stop giving up.” That is my favorite quote from this one minute video. I know that this was one of the biggest memes of 2016 but at it’s core he’s right about a few things when it comes to motivation and getting stuff done. Everyone needs a little jumpstart now and then and while there’s no direct takeaways from this maybe Shia’s message will give you the boost you need to take massive action.

Joshua Parker's segment from #INTRODUCTIONS by LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner Full 30-minute version: https://vimeo.com/125095515 YouTube views prior to 31 August 2015: 27.5 million. Released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike licence.

I hope that you make the most out of this “dead week”. 2017 is essentially here and I hope that I’ve saved you some search time so that you can start to dig into the work that matters. See you in 2017!

Oh and...

JUST DO IT!

(Sorry couldn’t help myself.)