Simply Business Coaching

Website hacking can be disastrous for your business

Although I recorded the last of the weekly shows in December 2009, a serious and important incident happened recently that I felt I should share with my regular listeners, newsletter subscribers, blog post readers and other social networking contacts - in fact anyone in the small business community who has a website!

This show is about what happened when my friend and colleague Sam McArthur of Forty First Internet Marketing discovered her website had been hacked.  I spoke with Sam (in the UK) and with PC Security expert Debbie Mahler of MICE Technology & Training (in the USA) to learn what steps they took to resolve the problems and secure Sam's site again.

Do read the show blog and listen to the recording - there's some great advice on this very serious subject.

The Secret to Finishing - is getting started!

I've recently joined a Mastermind group. We meet weekly (by Skype conference) and each commit to an action we will take by the next call. No excuses are accepted for non-achievement of that action - just a bald 'Yes' or 'No' statement of fact.

So far I've been committing to actions I'd already been working on and which are at varying degrees of completion - it's great to get them finished at last!

But the whole point of belonging to this great group, for me, is to start and finish projects that will make a real difference to my business. The sort of projects that are a bit of a stretch and that I've been putting off starting for that very reason.

One of the reasons procrastination exists is to keep us safe from failure, but not even making a start simply keeps us in the rut of discontent.

I'm going to stick my neck out a little further each week and stretch beyond my comfort zone because that's the only way to achieve more. I'll let you know how I get on. Gosh, this is very public now, isn't it?

What would you like to finish that you haven't started yet?

Confidence is Important for Business too

When I first qualified as a Life Coach, before venturing into the exciting world of Business Coaching, helping people to improve their confidence was a regular part of my work.

You'd think people starting up a business would have plenty of confidence, yet that isn't necessarily the case - here are a few notes from my client files to explain what I mean:

Networking - walking into a room full of fellow business owners can be quite nerve-wracking, and the thought of having to stand up in front of everyone and talk about what you do, can be enough to put more timid souls off the whole idea!

Sales - picking up the phone to make those dreaded cold calls - and even follow-up calls - is another business activity many people keep putting off until another day.

Meetings - are probably less about confidence and more about the need to thoroughly prepare beforehand, and have a clear goal each time.

Presentations - whether delivering a talk to a group of your peers or to just one major potential client, these can be very important business opportunities. Many people avoid them.

Internet - it surprised me to discover some people are reluctant to become visible on the internet by having a website or starting a blog (but I'm resisting the use of video on my own site, so I'm starting to have some sympathy ....)

Although the personalities involved were very different, an instant confidence boost came when I reminded each of them how good they are at what they do and how well they know their stuff.

Building confidence is a vital requirement for business owners, and I think its importance is often forgotten until the need to learn all the varied skills associated with running a business overtakes the initial joy of making a living doing something we love and excel in.

Is there an area of your business where your confidence has been, or still is, a bit shaky?

Learning from Daffodils

Have you noticed the daffodils are only just starting to bloom at the roadsides? Last year they were so much earlier because of the milder winter. This year they waited until the worst of the frosts had passed before emerging from the ground.

Finding the right time to deliver your marketing message to a new contact can mean the difference between being frozen out or warmly received too!

Over-confident new networkers simply can't wait to let everyone know what they do, almost as soon as they enter a room (or social networking site). Timid networkers get trampled in the crush because they wait too long.

Email marketers exhibit similar behaviour. Just because I've exchanged business cards with you, or clicked to follow/friend/connect/subscribe online, doesn't give you free rein to immediately start sending me promotion after promotion.

How about testing the temperature first? Send some useful information, get to know if your product or service is at least appropriate (that's a whole other post!), before trying to sell.

Daffodils know how to do this, they're prepared to wait until the time is right. Enjoy the spring blooms!

What would you write about?

I was looking through some of the business books in my over-crowded bookcase, wondering whether to post a few reviews here.  Then I got to thinking - if I were writing a book about how I got to where I am now in my own business, what would I write?

Would I write about my early background - family, childhood, education, relationships?

Would I write about when I inhabited that grey corporate cubicle?

What about the story of starting up my first business?  The fast and furious learning curve could make for an interesting read!

Or would I be better to write about where I am now with my business, and the lessons from this trying economy?

Hmm .......

You know, I really don't think any of it is interesting enough to write a book about!  I'll just keep writing for this blog ..... for now :)

But .... if YOU were writing a business book, what would you write about?

A Matter of Timing

Regular readers of this blog and my newsletter will know how I love using an old fashioned kitchen timer to boost productivity!  Over the past couple of weeks I found a couple of timer tools online and tried them out for size.

The first is Slim Timer, which is web-based and works with Firefox, Internet Explorer 6+ and Safari.  The second is Paymo, for which you need to download some software and it displays a widget on your computer screen from start-up.  Both tools also have paid versions with more features, I used the free version.

Before starting to use these tools, you first need to spend a few minutes setting up the different activities you want to track.  Whereas Slim Timer uses a very simple list, activities on Paymo can be further sub-divided into projects and again into clients; there was also an invoicing facility which would be useful if you have to submit timesheets and charge for your time.

As far as using the tools, it's a case of selecting the appropriate activity and starting the timer with a mouse click.  When you want to stop timing, you just click on 'Stop'.  I liked that with Slim Timer it's possible to stop timing one task and start timing another with a single click of the mouse.  Paymo takes a few more clicks when you wanted to change over as you have to stop, select project, select activity, then click to Start.  Both timers run in the background, ie they're not visible on screen until you want to see them.  Paymo has an annoying pop-up message if it doesn't detect any computer activity for a few minutes - it made me feel guilty if I wasn't typing all the time!

If you forget to start timing an activity or want to include time spent out of the office in a meeting, both tools are easy to edit. 

Slim Timer's reports are very readable - giving me both weekly totals and daily breakdown.  Paymo's colourful graphs looked impressive but the more detailed reports lumped everything together for the week which I found less useful for my purposes and not so easy to interpret.

My (very non-scientific) trial was undertaken to find out what activities I'm spending most of my time on.  For that purpose Slim Timer was perfectly adequate and marginally easier to use, even if it's more 'basic' in appearance.  If I were tracking lots of projects for different clients, then Paymo would have the edge in terms of extra features.

Have you tried out any online timers lately?  I'd love to know!

A 'Short & Sweet' Start to the Week

This week is going to be a busy and exciting one for me - that is to say, even busier than usual. I'm putting the finishing touches on a couple of talks for next week, planning a 'Special' radio show (details later this week!), as well as starting work with a new Mastermind group, which I'm really looking forward to. It'll be great to be a participant this time, rather than the organiser!

As we both know, there are a finite number of hours in each day, which means that something has to go (or be put on hold) to make room for the extra tasks.

So, much as I love spending time writing these blog posts, this week they're going to be a little shorter than usual.....

What have you had to give up lately to make room for something exciting?

New Ideas need New Thinking

As Einstein famously said, you can't solve a problem with the same thinking that caused it in the first place!

So why do we think we can come up with new ideas for our business when we keep doing the same things or mixing with the same people.

Even those of us with notebooks full of ideas need to revisit them to see if they really are 'new'.

Now that it's so much easier to find out what the latest trends are, what the thought-leaders are thinking it can be easy to be swept along the same path as everyone else.  To become a 'me-too'.

Original thoughts and ideas are much harder to come by, and all the more precious for that very reason.  And if it's true that there is nothing really new in this world, then coming up with a new twist to apply to an existing idea is maybe a better place to start.

Let's take a common problem facing small businesses - that of charging what their product or service is worth - and not discounting!

Rather than only listening to what fellow business owners within your networking circle might say, how about getting a different opinion from, perhaps a

Dentist
Musician
Farmer
Barrister

These people may not know anything about your business, but they will be able to tell you about charging for your product or service - from their viewpoint.

How do you come up with new ideas for your business? 

Do you have the attention span of a butterfly?

Just as butterflies in nature flit from flower to flower, landing briefly and then moving on, butterfly business owners can’t seem to stay focused on any one topic long enough to make significant changes.

Yes, it’s the sign of a true entrepreneur to have lots of new ideas and want to pursue them. But, if those new ideas are stopping you from actually making progress – and more importantly - money in your business, because you aren’t seeing projects through to completion (or moving quickly enough), then something needs to change.

Let’s take a look at some ways you can be more focused:

Use a timer and work in short bursts of 15 or 20 minutes. During that time focus on just one task and get as much done as you can. When the buzzer goes, take a short break. Repeat as often as necessary. You’ll amaze yourself at how much you get done.

Keep a little notebook handy at all times. Use it to jot down ideas as they occur to you and capture them before they escape! One reason for a butterfly attention span is carrying too many ideas around in your head. Writing them down will free you up to concentrate on the job in hand.

If your project hasn’t got a deadline, set one anyway. Without deadlines, you’ll find yourself starting lots of projects and then letting them drift as something more urgent comes along.

Break big projects down into small action steps. It can be hard to stay focused when the overall project is too big. Work out a timeline for each step that needs to be done.

Only work on 3 projects at a time. Spreading your attention too thinly between a myriad of projects will mean that none get finished quickly. Focus on just 3 at any one time and you’ll build up an unstoppable head of steam! And, as soon as one project is complete, you can take another from your list to replace it.

The beauty of staying focused is that you will get more done in your business and make progress faster. So work with full concentration on the projects that count - and leave the butterflies to nature.

When everything seems equally important

I’ve found asking myself the following questions to be a good way to help with prioritising when everything seems to be equally important.

Question 1 – Do all my projects fall into one of the following categories?

Work for current clients
Marketing for new clients
Moving the business forward

Only projects that do should be considered a priority. The others can wait a while.

Question 2 – Is what I’m doing right now the best use of time?

This is a great question to ask periodically during the day. One side effect of having many projects and not being sure what to do first is that you can end up doing ‘busy work’ that doesn’t actually move anything forward. If your answer to this question is ‘no’, then stop doing whatever you’re doing and do something that is the best use of your time.

Question 3 – Is what I’m doing right now making me money or going to make me money soon?

An even better reality check question that should really help you prioritise your projects. If you’re ever unsure what you should work on next, check how quickly you’ll get a return on the time you spend :)

What questions do you ask to help you prioritise?