Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
To all my readers, clients and followers – have a Merry Christmas, come back revived and excited to have a happy and successful New Year!
Systems for Resilience
Last week, I wrote the first of a two-part article called “How to create a resilient business” and I promised the second part this week which will be called “Creating a resilient climate in your business”.
This isn’t it!
So, those of you who were looking forward to continuing reading about how to create a resilient climate in your business – well you’ll have to wait and come back to the blog huh? Got you!
No, seriously I will be publishing the second part next week but I thought I’d interrupt the flow with an on-topic real life story.
Something happened to someone close to me (not me, so I won’t share it with you) that meant I suddenly had to take time off work, several weeks in fact, and without a great deal of warning. In many, less resilient businesses this could have been catastrophic to the conduct and flow of the business, let alone your income. You could be going along nicely, or at least coasting, when – WHAM! – a crisis happens and you find that you have a choice as a small business owner. You can do what’s right and take time off to look after the personal crisis or you can carry on working in the business and cause whatever damage to your personal life and relationships.
Before you answer that your business is your livelihood and you would need to look for a compromise, let me remind you of two facts that I’m sure I share with you – first, some crises cannot be compromised, second you started the business to achieve a good life/work balance. Right?
So having to suddenly take 6 weeks off – and doing so successfully – what lessons have been learned by me that you can benefit from in crisis proofing your resilient business? Read More
How to Create a Resilient Business
Whether you are about to start a new business or running an established one, whether you are looking to expand your business or consolidate or even deal with some contraction, whether your business is micro, small, medium or large, whether you hire 100 people or none, at some stage you will want to ensure that your business is resilient.
Resilient from what?
You know, it almost doesn’t matter.
You might want to create a resilience in your business that will shelter you from national or international economic woes; you might want your business to be resilient against loss of key personnel; you might simply want your business to carry on undiminished forever.
Many entrepreneurs start a business by investing themselves, along with their money, into the business because their business is an extension of themselves – and do you not want to be resilient yourself? More than skills, experience or training, a person’s level of resilience will determine if they fail or succeed. Intuitively you know this is true whether you are playing a sport or building a business empire.
In this two part series of articles I will deal with how to create a resilient business. This first part is on identifying the characteristics of a resilient organisation. Part two will be about creating a cultural climate for organisational resilience.
So before we start to create the climate in which your business can become resilient, let’s first identify the characteristics of a resilient organisation. Read More
SMART Marketing available on Amazon!
Hey, I thought I’d just let you know that my books, SMART Marketing, and The SMART Marketing Workbook, are available on Amazon.
The publishers have let me know that overall, sales have gone over 1,000!
If you haven’t got it yet, get over to Amazon and get yourself a copy of both books, they will revolutionise how you market your small business.
SMART Marketing is written as a novella, a story of how a husband & wife small business discovered that they could develop their own marketing plan and focused marketing strategies by following 7 simple steps.
Business is highly competitive these days, whether you sell on the web or in a bricks and mortar store. You need an edge. You need to specifically target those customers who are set up to buy from you, who (unknown to themselves) already need your product.
The SMART Marketing methodology has been compiled from my 35 years in advising small businesses how to cut through the garbage and get to the centre of the message and grow their sales. This is experience married to practical methodology that cannot fail!
What’s in it for YOU? You will learn how, in 7 easy to follow steps, you too can transform the sales and marketing of your business. You will see how to understand the benefits of your products that the customers want, you will see which customers you are wasting your time on and which customers you need to target for easily achievable sales. You will learn how to prioritise your marketing activities so that you get the BIGGEST bang for your buck.
All my clients have benefitted from this methodology – why don’t you?
You can buy it now by clicking on this link to get you over to Amazon:-
Once you have read SMART Marketing, you can start straight away and follow the step by step methodology detailed in the book. However, if you want guidance on how to implement each phase towards getting more focused marketing and attracting the right customer already set up to buy, get The SMART Marketing Workbook, which lays out the methodology in step by step workshop format. It’s as if I were in front of you facilitating each and every question. The Workbook is complete with templates that start by capturing your product information, and then funnel it through a series of filters to arrive at your focused marketing strategies and action plans.
Click here to go to Amazon and buy your copy now!
If you enjoyed the books, I ask you to leave a review on Amazon! Help me spread the word about how easy it is to set up your own business for sales growth and business success!
Does my small business really need a Board?
Last week I wrote about establishing a governance framework in a family business. If you missed it, look here.
Just to refresh ourselves, the difference between governance and management is that governance is about strategic direction, overall policies, establishing a vision and mission, whereas management is about caring for the operations of the business, the “how’s” of running the business to meet strategic direction and policy.
The decisions correctly made in governance are about the really big things in the business that will affect the long term future of the business.
Appropriately these governance decisions are made by a Board of Directors while the CEO and other managers look after operational management.
In a small business, whether a single owner-manager business, or one with a number of family or unrelated partners, both governance and management decisions are often made by the same people wearing different hats, and more often than not, the decisions are made smoothly and efficiently.
So, why would you need to put a Board in place?
I believe a number of issues make the establishment of a good Board beneficial to your business, at the right time. Read More
Do you want to grow a successful business that you can look back and be proud of?
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