Simply Business Coaching

Important Tasks : Productivity501

Have you ever started a day with some great ideas of everything you want to accomplish, but suddenly it is 6pm and you have nothing to show for your day?  While it is probably impossible to keep this from ever happening, we can minimize it by doing something very simple: Do something important first.

via www.productivity501.com

It's so easy to get distracted, especially if your work involves the internet! At least if you follow the suggestions in this article you'll end the day with a sense of, at least some, achievement.

Don't Delegate Your Customers

A delegate at one of my recent time management workshops was telling me he’d taken someone on to help in his web design business.  As he explained how he’d been so relieved to hand over a number of customer accounts, alarm bells started to ring.  Here’s why:

• Employing someone to manage any of your customer accounts is risky – especially if that person has similar skills to you.  What’s to stop them from setting up their own business once they’ve learned everything from you, and then ‘stealing’ those customers away from you?  

Tiny Revolutions

By “revolution,” let’s consider these your moments of break away. You decide one day that you loathe being a cubicle farmer. You decide one day that you need more money. You decide one day that you’re sick of feeling fat and lazy. You pick whatever the “cause” is. What happens next is that you move from thinking into action-taking.

via www.chrisbrogan.com

This great post from Chris Brogan reminds us of the importance of making decisions and acting on them. Planning is good, action is even better!

What I like about copycats!

In previous posts I’ve had a good moan - and the odd rant - about people who copy ideas, designs, offers and generally jump on the latest bandwagon, regardless of where it might take them – just so long as there could be money somewhere along the way!

As soon as you put an idea ‘out there’ it really is fair game isn’t it?  Whether people model it respectfully, or just downright copy it wholesale without even bothering to change the words.  I suppose it’s kind of a back-handed compliment even if very annoying.

But there could also be a benefit.

The people who came up with the original ideas are the real achievers and winners.  Being copied forces them to keep thinking of new ideas that are even better than before.  In fact, often they’ve already moved on from the original idea and leave the copycats standing in the dust as they power ahead.

I’m certainly not condoning copycats or plagiarists, just smiling slightly at how they’ve unwittingly raised the bar for the rest of us who can’t resist a challenge.

What if they don’t like me?

I remember coaching a client some years ago when she was just starting her business.  We were working on getting the basics in place, including her new website.  But I noticed that every time there was work to be done on the website, it wouldn’t happen and my client would be full of apologies and excuses in our next call.

When I delved deeper, it turned out she felt very vulnerable knowing so many people would be able to read about her and her business.  I confess I hadn’t thought about it in those terms before – but it’s hardly surprising since a fear of rejection is one of the basic human fears which can stop us in our tracks.

I wonder how many people approach social networking with the same trepidation?

Soon after I started blogging, I received a long angry email from someone who decided one of my posts was a direct criticism of her.  The message ended with me being ‘struck off’ her mailing list.  I have to admit I was mortified to think this person ‘didn’t like me any more’.  Until I saw sense.

It was actually nothing to do with me, it was about the words I used and more importantly, the way this one person chose to interpret them.

One of the whole points of blogs, and Web 2.0 in general, is to be able to share information, thoughts and opinions – and we actively invite comments!  Whatever we write, someone, somewhere won’t agree with our words, just as we won’t agree with everything another person writes.  But it doesn’t mean they don’t like us or that we don’t like them.

By being prepared to be vulnerable we let people get to know us (as little or as much as we choose).  We are taking a small chance, but a necessary one if we’re to build successful business and personal relationships. 

Getting Twitter Clear on What you Do

One of the unexpected side benefits of using Twitter is that I’ve found it’s possible to say quite a lot with very few words.  I’ve also noticed my blog posts and articles getting shorter and containing fewer long or unnecessary words!

When you only have 140 characters to get your message across, you’re forced to pare back to the bare essentials.  While some people resort to ‘text speak’ or use automated abbreviation tools, most people just use less words.  I actually quite enjoy the challenge!

So if it’s possible to do this on Twitter, what would happen if we cut out all the extraneous words in our marketing messages?  After all, there are only 3 (initial) questions that need answering:

What you do
Who you do it for
What people get as a result of doing business with you

By getting very clear on your answers to these questions, marketing your business becomes a whole lot easier.

If you only had 140 characters to answer the three questions, what message would you come up with?  Here’s mine:

“I help business owners get very clear about 3 things: what business they’re in, what they currently have & what they really want. Then I help them fill in the gaps.”

Over to you!

Networking: it certainly isn't boring!

I came across these photos gathering virtual dust on my BlackBerry Storm, and which I'd forgotten to share with you.  All were taken at business networking events; each event very different from the next.

                   

The Red Devils parachuted in right over our heads (too fast to capture!) at a very entertaining afternoon event generously hosted by Gencon (in Odiham, Hampshire).  I enjoyed the hog roast, but unfortunately had to leave before the live music really got started to start my drive home (on reflection, perhaps it was just as well!).

                

As a complete change of pace, this was the rather splendid Dining Room in Chichester - where I was a guest of Chamber of Commerce President Farid Ahmed at a local breakfast meeting last month.

                       

And just last week I visited the excellent Business Focus 09 Exhibition where I saw many familiar faces - another great opportunity for networking.

(The Confident Business Networking System will help you get more from every event.)

Are you planning yourself to a standstill?

Just as it can be a terrible waste of energy to pursue a new business idea with no clear plan or direction, the opposite can have equally devastating effects on your business.

Picture this: a notebook filled with ideas, spreadsheets forecasting every financial possibility, a professional-looking business plan running into many pages, copious To-Do lists.  So far so very tidy. 

As a business coach I obviously encourage clients to spend time planning, so they know what needs doing and when.  The problem arises when they don’t seem to progress beyond the planning stage.

The reasons for this vary according to the individual concerned, but can include lack of experience, lack of knowledge or resources, lack of confidence (in ability), fear of failure, fear of success, even fear of the unknown.

The answer is, unsurprisingly, to take action and break the stalemate.  Any action in this case, is better than none so this situation doesn’t continue too long.  Because the plan may cover a large and ambitious goal, it can be hard to switch to the detailed view and identify what to do first, but that is exactly what’s needed.

In business, as in life, taking the first steps into the unknown can be scary.  Fortunately this is usually more than compensated for by the feelings of exhilaration and achievement at having taken action!

And by taking small steps every day, the plans will start to be transformed into reality.  Without those steps, they will become sad and dusty artefacts of what might have been.

What steps are you taking today?

Telling people how good you are doesn’t have to be arrogance

My neighbour at a networking breakfast last week was bemoaning how difficult she finds it to tell people she’s actually very good at what she does.

When your business is providing services rather than physical products, you don’t have anything tangible to show prospective clients, and you certainly don’t want to come across as arrogant and boastful. 

The good news is, you don’t have to.  You can let other people sing your praises, which is actually much more powerful and convincing than just your word.  With the latest internet tools you can now easily include multi-media testimonials in the form of audio clips and even video clips from satisfied clients to reinforce the usual written words.

Of course, it’s a good idea to guide them to focus on the great results you helped them achieve rather than simply enthusing about what a lovely person you are (soothing as it may be for your ego!).

If you’re newly in business and don’t have any client testimonials yet, try offering a free consultation or trial of what you do – on the understanding that you will expect a testimonial in return about their great experience of working with you (as well as some referral names while you’re about it!).

The law of attraction is a great ideal and undoubtedly works for many people.  But I don’t think there’s any harm in giving it a helping hand, do you?

Keeping things simple

Much as I love the internet and all the tools that enable immediate communication and access to the wealth of fascinating information, there are times when I need to switch off the constant chatter and focus.

For example, writing articles for my newsletter and even this blog post, require my undivided attention.  So I’ve temporarily closed down my internet connection, abandoned my Twitter friends, and logged out of my email program.  Now the number of open working windows have been reduced to just this one screen, and my working experience is just about as simple as it gets – without going to the extreme of traditional pen & paper because I actually prefer typing when I’m thinking what to say.

I  like to have music playing in the background and have recently switched to a new local radio station that plays my kind of music with minimal chat.  I tried playing podcasts while I’m working, but found I don’t take anything in, so they are now downloaded and listened to in the car.  

While I’ll admit to being a bit of a hoarder when it comes to paperwork, it is all tidy and mostly out of sight.  There’s very little on my desk & certainly nothing to distract me from the task in hand (see photo above).  

I know some people thrive on juggling many projects and even tasks at any one time and I’ve tried to work that way in the past.  But keeping things simple gives me better results and gets the job finished more quickly.

That’s what works for me, how about you?  What gets you the best results?