Posts Tagged ‘rate’
Too many small business owners spend money because they have a positive bank balance or because they think they have a positive bank balance. This can be a very dangerous practice to the health of their business.
When a business makes a big sale or gets a large upfront deposit on a new order the owner of the business may begin to spend the money to pay various bills, take the spouse out to an expensive restaurant or even buy a new boat. The owner first needs to know how much “free” cash he/she really has available to spend, before it is spent. If you are a contractor of some kind, you may need that money to buy materials for that specific job or to make payroll on that job. Just because cash is there does not mean it can be spent without a plan.
Every business needs to have some kind of “cash needs” analysis to know what is due, when it is due and how much is due. An employee may see a large check come in and think, “well, the owner has a lot of money, I am going to ask for a raise”. The employee may not realize that the job is only a break even job and all of the available funds will go to pay labor, materials and overhead on the job. There will be no profit on this certain job. Many do not realize that things like insurance, rent, utilities, etc. need to be paid every month.
Several years ago there was a contractor who received a large deposit on a job. Because he had so much money in his bank account he made a few purchasing decisions that cost him his business. He spent some of the job deposit on, yes you guessed it, a new boat. But it was only a down payment. He later lost the boat to repossession, the job was never completed and he later lost his whole business.
All business owners need to find a workable system that will help them know what to pay, when it is due and how much is due, so they will have an accurate accountability for their cash. As a wise person once said, “cash is king”. That is still a truism today. Be very careful with your “free” cash. It may mean the difference between survival and the alternative. Good luck with your business!
Most people (and especially those who have never been through a coaching process) never really understand how important their values and their recognition of them are. Our values determine what makes us happy and what makes us stressed. Our values, if we are aware of them, can serve as a compass that navigates us toward our best choices – having the career that is ideal for us, being just one of them.
From my extensive experience as a coach, I know that people often become restless in their careers because they don’t understand the impact their values have on their everyday working lives.
Let’s say one of your highly rated values is freedom. Yet you go to the same office, day in, day out, meeting the same colleagues, following the same routine. Is there any wonder that at a certain point this situation begins to upset you; you become bored, lazy and de-motivated? Your performance drops and you get fired? Another options is, you keep giving it your best effort, even if you don´t enjoy it, you keep going, only to get seriously physically unwell some time later, from suppressing the same unhappy emotions. This didn’t show in your performance but took its toll on your health. Needless to say, that very same person, who has freedom as one of their values, would thrive in a job with flexible hours, with unexpected situations that would require unusual solutions, or as an entrepreneur.
On the other hand, we can have a person whose number 1 value is stability. For such a person, anything unexpected represents stress; anything unusual can create a panic attack. Such a person would never dream about having their own business and enjoys knowing the environment and routines that go with it.
Both of the examples above are, of course, a little bit extreme but I am sure many of you can find yourselves in them or somewhere on the spectrum between them.
If you are feeling unsettled/unhappy/unsatisfied in your current career and don´t know where to begin when it comes to possibly changing it, being honest about your values would help you a lot. But how do you go about it?
1.) Ask yourself which situations make you the happiest.
2.) Ask yourself what you enjoy doing the most.
3.) If nothing substantial comes up, return to your childhood/youth and recall your favorite games, sports or activities.
4.) List all the parts of your work that you enjoy the most.
5.) Explain why these particular parts of your job are the best for you.
If, after following the previous 5 steps, you still feel unsure about your values, you can try going through a professionally led “values elicitation exercise”, which any experienced life coach should be able to do for you.
Many small business owners and home based business owners put up a website describing their product or services. In addition to their ground business, this ensures they reach a greater number of consumers plus growing their brand or service. There are, however, many pitfalls and gray areas in owning a website; the legal system is only just beginning to enumerate them and prosecute offenders. It is these legalities of which the small business owner and the home based business owner must be aware in addition to some of the consequences of infringement. The cost to the business owner could be astronomical if he doesn’t take steps at the beginning to safeguard all his hard work.
First and foremost is registering the name and logo of the website. The business owner has done a lot of work designing the logo and site, writing the disclaimer, terms of use and legal statement. Creation of the site constitutes copyright, but the logo and design can be infringed upon and should be trademarked.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, has pages to help the business owner with registration. This is going to cost, but not as much as legal fees, court costs and attorney fees required to sue whomever steals the business owner’s work. It takes between nine and twelve months in addition to some $300 to complete this task, but the rights are the business owner’s thereafter.
There are an unlimited amount of domain names available. Names uncomfortably close to the business owner’s domain name can cause confusion among customers, causing the business owner to lose revenue to a look-alike or cyber-squatter. Court cases can be researched in which the judge fined the person infringing upon the site. Business owner’s should institute a search of like-sounding domain names in order to prevent such cases from happening.
Registering the business owner’s social media pages is also a big step toward remaining free of website legal trouble. This immediately sets up the business owner’s name as unique and further establishes a common law ownership of a domain name. Social media is handy for promoting the business owner’s product or service and should likewise be protected. The business owner would be well advised to hire a trademark attorney to further educate him in addition to protecting him from other pitfalls and gray areas in website ownership.
Do you have your own business? Is it listed online? Say goodbye to the days of the yellow pages, online business directories are the method that most consumers and customers go to today for finding the local business that they are looking for. Whether you are looking for local automotive industries, restaurants, clothing outlet store, retail shops, grocery stores, bars, or any other type of business, internet business listings are the preferred method of the public.
One thing you might have noticed is that searching for a business online is much easier than searching for a business in the yellow pages or calling a phone directory service. The reason that this is, is because the internet is updated every day. Phone book and phone directories are only updated every few months, so if a business moves, goes out of business, or a new business opens up, the phone book directory will not be updated. Plus, you can find more than just the address of a business if you look for it online. An internet search of a business will provide the address, a phone number, a website, a physical map, links other locations, competitive businesses, and even videos.
Videos are search tools that are being used for a search engine more and more each day. YouTube.com is officially the second highest rated search engine, just under Google. With a video, your business becomes more visible on the internet, and allows customers an in-depth view of your business with a simple interactive video.
So one thing you may have noticed is that even though a business may be listed online, it might not come up in the search results on Google as the first item, or even on the first page. Just because you have a business listing online doesn’t mean that Google will automatically push it to the top of the search results.
The action of getting a website to climb the ranks of Google search results is called S.E.O., or Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization entails detailing your website and other web properties around it to ensure that Google puts it at the top of the search results listed under the keywords you anticipate that your customers will search for when they are looking for a business like yours. This entails proper meta-tagging, daily unique content, the website domain name, blogs, backlinks and other sources to give your site proper search engine optimization.
But the most import part of have your company listed on local business search is to make sales. With website or listing on the internet, your business can make sales in the store or on the web. Customers can easily find where you are located at if they want to come by your physical store, and if you sell products or services online a customer can go directly to your website and purchase your products. With an online store that is listed in a local business search, your business can sell products 24 hours a day and seven days a week. You will have a virtual storefront that never closes.
A wise man once said “Marketing = Education”. What he meant by that is that you need to use you marketing to educate your prospects. But what do you need to educate your prospects on? You need to educate your prospects on the solution your services provide, your expertise and the value of your services.
Although you can educate your audience through teleseminars, article marketing or your blog, my personal favorite is workshops and seminars. You can invite your prospects to an inexpensive 1 hour or ½ day workshop and teach them about your area of expertise. This does several things:
– It establishes your credibility, because when you are in front of the room, you are instantly perceived to be the undisputed expert. Whether you think you are or not, you are the expert in the eyes of your audience.
– It educates your audience on the solution that your product or services provide. Remember, you never sell just a service, you sell a solution to the problem your audience has. Focus on the problem and educate your audience on how your services provide the solution.
– Clients buy from people they know, like and trust. When you are up on stage, your audience obviously knows you. When you tell your story and share some vulnerability, people will like you. Since you demonstrate your expertise by teaching your audience, you are getting your audience to trust you. So having a workshop is the ideal vehicle to get people to buy from you.
– If people have objections to buying from you, that generally means that they do not have all the information yet. Your workshop should be able to give them all the information they need to make a decision one way or another. Not everyone is a good fit for you, but they will know after your workshop.
– Your workshop establishes the value of your services. Through your success stories and your content, you can show the value of what you do. You can demonstrate through examples the money clients made or saved my using your services. That is a powerful tool and cannot be underestimated.
So take the plunge and start teaching. You will not only educate your audience, you will also market yourself and your services. You will be surprised at the new clients you will attract and better yet, the increase in your bottom line.