Posted by Stephanie Valentine on Dec 3, 2009 in
Small Business Customer Service 
Do you want to just laugh when you have a lousy interaction with a company’s customer service department and then they ask you to take a survey about their customer service?
The other day I dealt with customer service at a software company. The representative blew me off, his supervisor did the same, and the top dog manager was only mildly accommodating. At the end of all this merry-go-round, they asked me to take a 3 question survey to rate their customer service. I told them they had to be joking!
However, there are companies that do manage to make excellent use of customer feedback, and I definitely want to highlight one example.
Royal Resorts: 5 Ways to Make Use of Customer Feedback
Every year we go down to Cancun, Mexico for 5 weeks with the family. We stay at a timeshare called Royal Resorts. These five-star resorts have customer service that will meet or beat that of any of the top hotels like the Hyatt or Ritz-Carlton. Here are 5 things that Royal Resorts does with customer feedback that allow me, as a member, to know that my comments are being heard.
#1 - Be Persistent in Asking for Feedback
As with most timeshares, the Royal Resorts timeshares are sold in weeks that start and end on Saturdays. Every Friday, our bill is delivered to our villa along with a survey form. The survey form covers every resort service, from maid service and maintenance to restaurant quality and salon services. When we go to pay our bill, on Friday night or Saturday morning, the staff already knows whether we have turned in our survey form. If not, they ask us to please take a few minutes to complete the survey. They ask very politely, but they are persistent.
We attend yoga classes every weekday morning. On Fridays, the yoga instructors always remind us that it is the end of the week and that they would appreciate us filling out the survey forms, noting especially the quality or lack thereof of their yoga class. This serves as a further reminder to fill out the form.
#2 - Reward Feedback
Every time we fill out the survey form and turn it in, we are entered into a drawing for a free week’s stay at one of the resorts. I’ve never been picked for this prize, but the extra incentive always helps!
#3 - Respond to Feedback via Corporate Communication
All members of the Royal Resorts receive monthly e-newsletters, and can also sign up for additional information feeds from the company’s website. In addition, magazines that detail any new developments at the resorts are mailed out quarterly. The company uses these communication methods to respond in general to the feedback they receive, especially to the more common requests.
For instance, in the last couple of years many guests from the U.S. have requested that the resorts have wireless internet in the rooms. The company put out a survey asking whether people would be willing to pay for wireless internet on a weekly basis, and if so, how much? A high percentage of members jumped on the survey, and the results were displayed live on the website. Most guests from the U.S. would easily have paid for the service. The result? There is now wireless internet available in the villas at the Royal Sands, one of the newest resorts. While it is clear that resort management can’t quite figure out why American workaholics want to work on vacation, they nevertheless listened to and acted on the feedback.
#4 - Pay Attention to the Smallest Details
The villas at each resort are beautifully decorated with stone floors. While the stone floors are certainly pretty to look at and easy to maintain, they create a lot of noise when you move furniture across them. For instance, every time I pushed a chair back from the dining table, the chair scraped across the floor so loudly that the sound could be heard in the villas above and below us. I know this because I could hear chairs scraping across the floors above and below us.
In one of our comment forms, we suggested that the company place felt pads under all the furniture to prevent this noisy scraping. Boy were we surprised when we arrived the next year to find felt pads on every piece of furniture in the villa. That’s a lot of felt pads! There are at least 10 chairs (with 4 legs each) in each villa, not to mention the dining table, coffee tables, and nightstands. That attention to detail made me want to fill out the survey forms with more zeal than ever.
#5 - Educate the Staff to Respond to Feedback
Not every customer request can be accommodated, of course, so having a knowledgeable staff that can explain the reasons behind certain policies is important. For instance, we requested a recycling program for several years in a row but saw no results. When I queried the front desk about this issue, the clerk was well-informed and responded immediately. He said that while most Americans were conscious about recycling, many Mexican visitors found recycling a hassle, especially on vacation. As a result, the resort staff simply collected all the garbage from the villas and sorted out the recycling by hand.
Ick! That grossed me out, but I was totally impressed by their willingness to recycle as well as respect the needs of their Mexican guests. Moreover, I was impressed with how the clerk immediately knew the answer to my question. The same has been true of almost any other question I have posed to the front desk staff.
Today, there are recycling bins located in each villa as well as all around the resorts. Over the last several years the company has been educating its guests about the importance of recycling, and it seems that at last most people agree with this policy.
I’m Impressed, Are You?
As you can probably tell, I am impressed as heck at the level of customer service at these resorts. Any company that gets down to the nitty-gritty and takes action on a tiny suggestion like adding felt pads to the furniture has earned my loyalty for life. And I’m not the only one. The first of the resorts in this chain opened back in the 1970s, and since then families have been passing their timeshare weeks down through the generations. Based on a straw poll I did around the pool, I would say that the multiple generations of members coming to the resorts are just as rabidly loyal as me.
What about you and your small business? Are you asking for feedback from your customers? If so, are you really listening to what they have to say?
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Tags: customer feedback, customer service, small business owners
Posted by Stephanie Valentine on Dec 1, 2009 in
Small Business Customer Service 
Have you noticed that the number cranky customers is on the rise? This isn’t a huge surprise, since the current economic situation tends to make people testy about anything to do with money, including shipping fees, taxes, and product cost. And while it may be irritating to deal with unhappy customers, finding ways to soothe these customers can actually increase your small business profitability and generate customer loyalty in the long run.
Cranky Customers and Profitability: An Example
Recently I have had several interactions with cranky customers that has reshaped the way I handle customer service for my small businesses. In one case, a customer complained about the shipping cost for a single bottle of nutritional supplements he ordered from my small business website.
The bottle of supplements cost around $55 and the shipping ran about $8.50. The customer sent in a rude email complaining about the greed of my small business, and how my small business was taking unfair advantage of people suffering from economic woes by charging super-high shipping costs.
Unfortunately, being the distributor rather than the producer of this product, I wasn’t able to change the shipping charge. I sent the customer an email explaining this, and offering to send him a $5.00 check to ease the situation. After a few more grumpy emails back and forth, the customer finally realized that while my small business was not responsible for the actual shipping charge, I was offering to help.
When he finally understood the situation, he commented, “This says a lot about the integrity and helpfulness of your company. I will buy from you again.” While the $5.00 shipping reimbursement does cut into the profit margin for this single order, I now have a loyal customer who will shop with me again in the future. The value of that loyalty? Priceless!
Cranky Customers Just Need More Love
Everyone is under economic stress and, as a result, crankier than usual. If your small business encounters an unhappy customer, try this three step process to deflate the customer’s anger and create a loyal customer instead:
- Realize it’s not personal. Everyone is under stress. Once you realize this, you won’t be as tempted to get angry.
- Discover what the customer really wants. Try to see through all the bluster and find out what the customer is really asking for. Sometimes it’s just an apology, while other times it is a small token of appreciation, like the $5.00 shipping credit. In other words, most cranky customers feel bad (for whatever reason) and just need a little love.
- Take necessary action promptly. Once you reach a mutually acceptable solution to the problem (even if the customer wants to return the product for a full refund), take action now. Prompt action is another way to show consideration, and will often create customer loyalty even if the current transaction does not reach completion.
We are building an incredible customer base by following these three steps. With many retail stores, banks, and other large organizations are “under the gun” and failing to offer customers any freebies, instant and friendly customer service from your small business can often garner you loyal customers who would normally shop with larger companies.
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Photo credit: Free Digital Photos
Tags: cranky customer, customer loyalty, small business, small business customer loyalty, small business owners
Asking if you suck at personal finance can seem insulting, but the question is not meant to be insulting. It’s just that, being a small business owner and having recently taken a deep look at my personal finances, I have to say that I suck at personal finance. A lot of my small business owner buddies do, too. How do I know this? Because we have all been taking the 30-Day Challenge by Ramit Sethi of the Scrooge Strategy, and it has been truly eye-opening.
What is the Scrooge Strategy 30-Day Challenge?
Basically, it’s an ebook written by national bestselling author Ramit Sethi. The challenge is to see if you can save $1,000 in 30 days by doing the steps in his ebook. There is one step per day.
There’s nothing really revelatory in the book but one message comes through loud and clear, especially for small business owners:
Most of us are far too busy maintaining our business finances that we let our personal finances fall by the wayside.
Or, to put it another way, we are too tired, lazy, or burned-out at the end of a business day to do the steps that Ramit suggests in his ebook. Being a small business owner can be difficult, and at the end of the day many of us want to take refuge in comfort rather than engage in the drudgery of personal finance.
An Enlightening Example of Why We Suck at Personal Finance
When it comes to saving money, most of what Ramit talks about is common sense. He calls it the “well, duh!” factor. An educated small business owner might read one of the personal finance tips, find it to be common sense, and say, “Well, duh! I already know that.” And that’s the end of it.
That’s all well and great, but just knowing about something and taking action are two completely different things. One example he gives in the book is pretty relevant as we move into winter and colder weather. One of his tips is to turn your thermostat down by three degrees to save money. He gives specific savings figures for several major cities so that you can estimate the amount of money you will probably save by turning down your thermostat.
Well, duh, right? OK, suppose you actually decide to turn down your thermostat. You bounce out of bed in the morning full of enthusiasm for saving money, and crank the sucker down by three degrees. Fabulous. Good for you.
Off you go to your small business, where you have a lousy day and waste lots of time fighting fires and producing little. You drag your butt home at night, feeling worn out and looking forward to a cozy evening on the couch with dinner and a glass of wine.
What a shocker when you open the front door and are greeted by the arctic temperatures inside your house. Oh yeah, you cranked your thermostat down by three degrees that morning. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now it seems like a totally lousy idea invented by a complete moron. You are tired, hungry, and not in the mood to suffer. You rush to the thermostat, turn the dial up to 85 degrees, and promise that you’ll do better tomorrow. In actuality, the thermostat stays at 85 degrees and never goes back down.
That’s what Ramit means about the “well, duh” factor. We know better than we act, and thus our personal finances suck the big one. To fix this problem, he suggests that we stack a fuzzy robe, hat, and warm slippers by the front door before we leave for work in the morning. That way, when we drag our butts home at night, we will not only be reminded of why we turned the thermostat down, but we will have some immediate warmth to help us get through the shock of the cold air inside the house.
What’s the Moral of This Story?
The moral of this story is that if you are like most small business owners, you work yourself to the bone to squeeze the maximum profit out of your business, only to squander it with lousy personal finance skills.
Hmmm … sounds like a quandary to me. After all, why am I busting my butt at work only to end up with very little to show at the end of the day, week, month, or year? That seems silly. I might as well quit my small business, flip burgers for a living, and use some savvier personal finance skills to get ahead.
That’s why the Scrooge Strategy ebook has been so valuable to me. It helps me retain more of what I earn through my small business. Sound like a good idea to you? You can download the book for free and read it for 30 days. If you hate it, you don’t get charged. If you love it, there’s a one time charge of around $28. It’s been a heckuva deal for this small biz owner.
Check out the Scrooge Strategy for yourself here.
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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonas_brothers_luvs_ammy_lou/ / CC BY 2.0
Tags: personal finance, Ramit Sethi, Scrooge Strategy, small business, small business owners
Posted by Stephanie Valentine on Nov 17, 2009 in
Small Business Leadership 
With the current business environment, small business owners are definitely struggling and “giving up” may start to look like a better and better option. While only you can decide when enough is enough, I heartily encourage you to consider staying in the game as long as possible.
For one thing, small businesses are the engines that really drive our economy, so just by keeping your doors open you are helping the economy to recover. Second, if you have been in business for more than 5 years, you have already beaten the odds, since 95% of small businesses fail by their fifth year. If you have come this far, maybe it’s worth trying to keep your small business afloat a while longer.
Inspiration from Winston Churchill and Abe Lincoln
Whenever I feel like having a pity party because one or more of my small businesses is floundering, I always turn to the examples of two inspiring leaders: Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln.
Consider Winston Churchill, who survived two world wars, much criticism (as well as praise), and the turmoil of British politics for many decades. He was definitely a maverick, and suffered the indignities that are often heaped upon such characters. When invited to give a commencement speech at Eton, a well known private school in England, Churchill endured the 20-minute introduction, and then stood up and said:
“Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never.”
Then he sat down. In just nine words, Churchill captured the very essence of his indomitable will to succeed. Do those words ring a bell for you?
And then there is Abraham Lincoln, who demonstrated a similar sort of stubborn persistence that eventually led to success. Although many of us are familiar with parts of Lincoln’s political career, many are unaware of how many failures he suffered before he became President. Here’s a short chronology of Lincoln’s career:
1831 Failure in business
1832 Defeated for Legislature
1833 Failure in business again
1834 Elected to Legislature
1835 Sweetheart died
1836 Nervous breakdown
1838 Defeated for Speaker
1840 Defeated for Elector
1843 Defeated for Congressional Nomination
1846 Elected to Congress
1848 Defeated for Congress
1855 Defeated for Senate
1856 Defeated for Vice President
1859 Defeated for Senate
1860 Elected President
While Lincoln wasn’t recorded as saying, “Never give up on what you want,” it’s clear that he never did. Twelve defeats and major life losses marked his life, yet Lincoln never faltered in going after what he wanted.
Feel Inspired About Your Small Business Yet?
So if your small business has hit a bump in the road, be it a minor pothole or a major road hazard, think of Lincoln and Churchill. Perhaps by comparing the scale of your problems to the scale of the problems these two men faced, your business problems will shrink into perspective. In this time of economic correction, we need more small business owners with Churchill’s spirit and Lincoln’s will to step up and lead the way to recovery. So perhaps Churchill’s commencement comments can become a battle cry for your small business (as it has become for mine):
Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never!
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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-o/ / CC BY 2.0
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, small business owners, small businesses, Winston Churchill
Posted by Stephanie Valentine on Nov 10, 2009 in
Small Business Management 
Adrian Monk is one of my favorite characters on television, probably because my husband resembles him so much … everything has to be “just so”! I catch reruns of “Monk” on the tube at least once a week, and I love how he uses his OCD mind, which is truly detail-oriented, to solve crimes. It has occurred to me more than once that small business owners could benefit from a little Monkishness to create a more efficient and productive business.
Small Business Owners and Adrian Monk
It’s true that Monk’s OCD tends to hinder rather than help him on a daily basis, since he spends so much time staying sanitary and clean. However, his “devil is in the details” approach is pretty useful for the small business owner.
Why? Well, think about this. How time do you spend looking for stuff (files, documents, phone numbers, etc.) that you’ve misplaced somewhere? How often do you dig around trying to find a business card? How many times have you tried to find that important email in the masses of them stacked in your inbox?
If you are like the typical small business owner, the answer is clear: a lot! The typical small business owner is a business-savvy risk taker who is adventurous but not necessarily organized. Lack of organization results in a lot of wasted time.
A Monkish Example
Let me give you a simple example. At the moment we are in Cancun, vacationing for 5 weeks. We have digital room keys. The first few days, I just carelessly laid my room key anywhere that was handy, often dropping it, along with sunglasses, sunscreen, and lip balm, on the counter or night stand. Sometimes I left it on the kitchen counter or dining room table of our condo. Wherever.
Those few days I spent at least 15 minutes per day looking for that darned key! Not that it makes a big difference on vacation, but it illustrated an important point: not knowing where stuff is wastes a lot of time!
My husband and I decided after a few days to always put our room keys on top of the television so we wouldn’t waste time looking for them. After all, looking for our keys one day made us late for a taco party!
Tools for the Monkish Small Business Owner
Misplacing a room key is a small matter, but throw a few of these “time wasters” into your business day and you’ll easily lose an hour or more hunting down stuff that should be at your fingertips. Luckily, there are a number of useful tools for the small business owner who wants to be more like Adrian Monk. Here are a few of my favorites.
Password Agent
This encrypted software safely stores your login and password information, as well as notes about anything important. If you are like the average small business owner, then your online accounts abound. With this software, when you need to login to a website, all you have to do is open it and access your login information. Because this software is encrypted and lives on your computer rather than in your browser, it gives you an added layer of protection. This software comes in a free “Lite” version, which allows you to store a limited number of records, or a full version which gives you unlimited records. Free downloads are available at Tucows and other software download sites.
Chaos Intellect
I recently purchased this software for contact management and email list management. The software is quite inexpensive and allows you to easily store contact information about customers, vendors, and business partners. Best of all, it allows you to easily group contacts and send emails to entire groups at a time. The email-sending function on this software throttles the sending speed, so you don’t overwhelm your email server. Finally, contact records are linked to documents, emails, and any other form of correspondence, so that each contact record automatically stores a full record of every email or piece of correspondence sent. Compared to better-known but costlier contact management software programs, this program is a good buy.
Memo to Me
I love this online software because through it I can program email reminders to myself, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or on a specific date. I don’t like to have “reminder software” running in the background because it often eats up RAM, but having reminders come through email is convenient, since I check email at least twice a day. The software is available for an inexpensive subscription fee or you can get the free lite version.
I adore all three of these software programs because they keep all my necessary information at my fingertips. If you’ve got some nifty tools that help you be a more Monkish small business owner, I’d love to hear about it. As always, the pursuit of a more productive business life that allows more time for fun is ongoing!
P.S. If you’d like to know why I’m down in Cancun, Mexico for five weeks (and how I afford it), drop me a line. I love to connect with people about this!
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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kinghuang/ / CC BY 2.0
Tags: Adrian Monk, small business, small business owners, software for small business owners
Posted by Stephanie Valentine on Oct 6, 2009 in
Small Business Leadership,
Small Business Management 
There’s no doubt that most organizations, from small businesses to large corporations, are struggling. It’s been a darn hard time for most people. And yet giving up just really isn’t an option for many small business owners since the job market doesn’t offer a lot of hope and many retirement plans have suffered serious setbacks.
But even though the economic situation is less than perfect, it does present us small business owners with a perfect opportunity to ask some penetrating questions. It allows us to ask ourselves what is important about our small businesses. It helps us remember why we started our small businesses, and determine whether those reasons are still important to us.
That’s why it’s important for us small business owners to ask themselves three crucial questions. The answers to these questions will either get you back to feeling great about your small business or clarify the fact that you need to move into some other form of livelihood.
An Example: My Four Small Businesses
For instance, I run four small businesses. Three are well-established and require fairly passive management on a daily basis. The fourth is a startup, not quite a year old, and one that I hope to grow within the next two years. The startup takes some fairly active work to keep afloat, not to mention monetary investment, but I don’t resent the investment or the elbow grease. Having done three other startups, which are now established businesses, I know the length of time it takes to launch a startup. I know the patience required.
On the other hand, there are days when I just want to give up the ghost and call it quits. Some days I get very little done or I’m just too tired to even stagger over to my cigar stash for a relaxing puff. It’s off to bed so I can get up and do it all over again tomorrow. These are the days I ask myself, “Why the hell am I doing this?” These are the days when the two years I’ve given myself to build my startup seem like the equivalent of living in purgatory …forever. These are the days when I have to sit down and reflect on why I have small businesses, and why they are important to me.
Three Questions for Small Business Owners
On those DODs (days of despair, not Department of Defense), I ask myself three questions:
1. What do I get from my small businesses and what do I pay?
2. Are the original reasons I started these businesses still important, and if not, are there new reasons to keep going?
3. Is there a way to change my business model to fit this new economy?
My Answers
It would be too long-winded and boring to list my answers to those questions for all my small businesses, but I will give you the answers for one business, just for grins. So one business I have is an online school that teaches magic (like spellwork and Tarot) and shamanic traditions. Answers to the three questions are as follows:
1. What do I get from my small businesses and what do I pay?
I get to spread this esoteric information to people all over the world, especially in countries where this kind of information isn’t readily available, like Nigeria and New Zealand. I get to play a part in spreading magic into the world. I also get a solid paycheck.
Aside from regular operating expenses, I pay in elbow grease … in the attempt to reach the right audience. The information we offer is for people who really want to learn the art and science of magic and shamanism, not for people who want a free online spell to help them win the lottery. I pay to develop my own patience and tolerance while wading through hundreds of “send me a free spell” emails.
2. Are the original reasons I started these businesses still important, and if not, are there new reasons to keep going?
Yes. Not only do we have a group of advanced students who have been with us for more than a decade and really take part in bringing magic and shamanism into the world, but teaching the classes and creating the materials keeps me in touch with my own spiritual practice.
3. Is there a way to change my business model to fit this new economy?
Definitely. Offering the information in different online forms, from YouTube videos to webinars, is the way I’m going. It makes the information more readily available, and can be transmitted at the speed of light. It takes work to convert the material to online form, but it’s happening little by little.
What About You?
So those are my answers, good, bad, or ugly. What about you? How is your small business treating you, and how are you treating it? Is it time to re-evaluate your reasons for owning a small business? Is it time to change the way you run your small business? Most importantly, do you still remember what is important about your small business?
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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcobellucci/ / CC BY 2.0
Tags: small business owners, small business questions
It pays to be a maverick these days because nothing seems to work like it used to. Sure, a lot of people are doing their best ostrich act, sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that when the alarm beeps in the morning the world will have returned to its normal order.
Not gonna happen, folks. “Business as usual” isn’t going to cut the mustard in this new economy, this time of prolonged uncertainty. By the way, did you know that prolonged uncertainty is one of the greatest causes of stress a human being can suffer? They’ve done studies that prove it. So here we are, in a time of prolonged uncertainty, and we are, well, uncertain.
We live in a strange emotional mix that resembles those multi-layered cocktails: hope floats on top, “business as usual” hovers somewhere in the middle layers, and at the bottom is the dismal swamp of despair. We try to drink in only hope, but if you’ve ever tried drinking one of these layered cocktails, you know that as soon as you tip the glass you get a little of each layer. So we swallow the hope with the despair and end up doing “business as usual.”
Maverick Tricks and Old-Fashioned Values for Small Business Owners
As small business owners, we may not know what we need during these times, but it’s not the usual stuff. If you’re doing business by rote, stop! Times have changed, and your small business needs to as well.
I’ve recently been on some teleconferences and webinars offered by small business leaders who are expert in everything from online marketing and social media to accounting and cash-flow generation. While the topics of these seminars are all different, a peculiar theme is emerging in all of them:
… small business owners need to both become mavericks and return to old-fashioned values …
This may seem a contradiction, yet it is what those who are successful are saying.
Maverick Tricks for Small Business Owners
Let’s take the maverick part first. The webinars and teleconferences are all about maverick-ism — how small business owners need to do things differently. For instance, one webinar covered 13 new ways small business owners can ask for and get paid by their clients more quickly. This is important because cash flow means the difference between staying alive and closing the doors on your small business. Are these methods always polite, conventional, or socially acceptable? No, a lot of them are not. But these are new times and small business owners and clients alike are adapting to maverick ways of doing business.
Another webinar introduced the maverick idea of creating your own hedge funds in your small business. Southwest Airlines has been hedging fuel prices forever: they pre-buy large quantities of fuel when it’s less expensive, and then take delivery of that fuel when prices go up. Small business owners can create hedge funds in a slightly different manner. Instead of pre-buying something in bulk, you stash money away in a hedge fund when prices are low, say for inventory items. Then when the prices go up, you use the money in your hedge fund to keep your cash flow going. So there are a lot of ways to use new maverick techniques to keep your small business afloat.
The Value of Old-Fashioned Values
At the same time that these experts are teaching maverick methods for small business owners, they are also talking about a return to old-fashioned values. In a word, they are saying that we have become lazy. Recent studies show that more people believe that they can “get rich quick” with a small business than ever before.
Despite the wise words of business leaders like Robert Kiyosaki, the majority of people who start small businesses today expect to “make it big” within a year or two. Kiyosaki warns small business owners to set aside at least 5 years before expecting a pay back. Back in the day, it was expected that a small business was a lifetime endeavor, not a get rich quick scheme. “Get rich quick” is a bad idea … it’s how we ended up in this financial mess to begin with.
So if you are starting a small business or you already have one, prepare to dig in. Don’t spend all of your resources at once, preserve cash and cash flow, and give your business at least five years to start paying you back for your efforts. Those are the old-fashioned values that made the U.S. of A. one of the strongest economic forces in the world. To those values we will need to return if we want to maintain that status.
The Maverick in Me and My Small Businesses
As for me, despite all the flak I’ll probably catch for saying this, I’m profoundly happy about this economic correction. It has forced me to make changes I have wished to make for years, but have never had the motivation or necessity to make. I am grateful for the outer economic forces that provide the motivation for the changes I am making to my small business and my personal financial situation. So be it!
What about you? See any sunshine yet?
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Tags: maverick, old-fashioned values, small business owners, small businesses, Southwest Airlines
Posted by Stephanie Valentine on Sep 22, 2009 in
Small Business Management 
Time is one of the most precious commodities for a small business owner. Between business development, client work, employee or contract worker management, marketing, and fire-fighting, there’s hardly enough time for coffee and bathroom breaks.
In fact, recent studies show that time management issues are among the main obstacles to small business owners being successful and keeping the doors to their businesses open. So what’s a small business owner to do? Here are some time management tips I recently gathered from a workshop sponsored by my local chamber of commerce.
Tip #1 - Decide What is Important
Most small business owners go to the office and fall into a black hole of disorganized chaos from which they emerge, sometime late in the day, having done a lot but made questionable progress towards definite goals. The time management expert at the seminar suggested that we small business owners plan our work weeks before they start … like on Friday afternoon or during the weekend.
We should decide what major goals we wanted to accomplish during the week, and what amount of time we were willing to commit to each goal. Then we need to schedule that time into our calendars, carving chunks of time when we did not allow disturbances like phone calls or checking email.
Tip #2 - Check the Calendar
A calendar is only useful if you check it and follow it. The time management expert stressed that while some small business owners are good at making plans for the week, they are terrible at following those plans. She suggested we check our calendars first thing in the morning, mid-morning, at lunch, mid-afternoon, and at the end of the time. While this may seem a little anal retentive or remind us too much of Adrian Monk, it seems that most small business owners easily get derailed without this level of persistent checking. So make your calendar, and then check, double-check, and triple-check to make sure you are following it.
Tip #3 - Avoid Fire-Fighting
I love this part. The time management expert gave us a mantra: “A lack of planning on someone else’s part does not constitute an emergency on your part.” I like this. Small business owners who do their own planning usually end up fighting fires because someone else forgot to plan. Whether it is a client, an employee, a friend, or a business partner who forgot to plan, learn to ignore it. Follow your own calendar because fire-fighting equals lost time, which means poor productivity on your part. Unless the emergency means a loss of thousands of dollars of revenue, learn to walk away!
There were a lot of other time management tips offered at this seminar, but these three seemed to be the most relevant and interesting, hence they are included here.
Do you have some time management tips to share with small business owners? If so, please share!
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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aarongeller/ / CC BY 2.0
Tags: small business, small business owners, time management tips
Posted by Stephanie Valentine on Jun 2, 2009 in
Small Business Management 
Putting a New Face on My Small Business
For a while now, I’ve been worried about getting old. It’s rather silly, I’m in my 30s, so worrying about getting old is just plain dumb. But it didn’t just happen out of the blue. There was a cascade of events in my life that caused me to feel old. Here’s how it played out:
1. One of my horses fell down with me, crushing my leg and tweaking my back.
2. Two weeks later, a different horse bucked me off, tweaking my shoulder.
3. A few days later, I tried to lift a 40-gallon weed sprayer I thought was empty. It actually had water in it, so I ended up ripping some muscles in my back.
4. I stopped getting carded at the liquor store.
5. People started telling me I looked tired, and I hated to look at my reflection in the sun, which reveals all!
As silly as this seems, I noticed that I started to feel and act kind of, well, old. I couldn’t ride my horses because my back hurt, and I stopped wanting look in the mirror. But that’s really not a big deal.
When My Face Got in the Way of My Small Business
What was not OK is when I started noticing myself wavering in some business transactions, backing down on stuff that I would never let go by in the past. I didn’t question a couple of items on an invoice from a vendor, which resulted in a mess that took several weeks to “clean up.” I avoided a face-to-face meeting with a potential client and opted for a phone call instead. I started oversleeping, resulting in fewer hours of working time. I work for myself, so there’s no employer hovering over my shoulder, but I wasn’t getting to everything I wanted and needed to.
A few weeks ago I woke up and realized that my feeling of “being old” was getting in the way of my business. I didn’t feel good. I didn’t look good. This was not good. It was time to shake myself out of this rut because, as you know, a rut is only a few feet shallower than a grave!
Girly Stuff That Actually Works
For some time my friends had been urging me to try some antioxidant facial products for the freckles, tiny wrinkles, dark circles, and little spots of eczema that had started showing up on my face. I grew up as a tomboy and never really grew out of it. I’m pretty much a zen cowgirl at heart, so makeup and facial products don’t figure largely in my shopping list. I usually use natural foods and supplements to get great skin from the inside out. Plus, the cost of the facial product was more than those sold in the grocery store. But I decided that drastic measures were required here. My face was starting to affect my small business, and that was unacceptable.
I ordered the facial products with some doubt. When they came, I dutifully followed the directions and applied them twice daily. Within four days, my hubby noticed something different about my face. He asked me if I was feeling better and whether I was getting more sleep. “Nah,” I said. “I’m just getting all girly and actually using some good stuff on my face.” He knows that I’m a tomboy so he thought that was hilarious, but appreciated the effects nevertheless.
On top of all of this facial pampering, I also upped my intake of natural antioxidants. The combination has made all the difference to the way I feel. I don’t feel like I’m 20 again, but then again, maybe I don’t want to. I was kind of silly at age 20. I do feel healthy and, best of all, confident.
Looking and Feeling Good is Good Business
I feel like I’ve literally put a whole new face on my small business. After all, I am the face of my small business, so how I feel about myself and my face is pretty important. It didn’t take a lot to change the face of my business. The hardest part was recognizing that, as a small business owner, I work hard and am often under a lot of stress. I’ve reached a point in my life where I have to start combating that stress more aggressively, especially if is starts interfering with my business and well-being.
What about you? Are you feeling worn-down by your workload? Is there a way you can put a “new face” on your small business by doing something good for yourself?
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Photo credit: My ‘Happy Meal’ Version
Tags: new face, small business, small business owners
Posted by Stephanie on May 6, 2009 in
Small Business Management 
I just got back from a local seminar on small business management and leadership. The seminar took place during lunch, so the speaker didn’t have a lot of time to cover his points, but he did review the basics of success for a small business. He was an inspirational speaker, and even after the talk was over the small crowd of attendees still buzzed with excitement.
How Do Small Business Owners Get Help?
Most of the people hung out after lunch for an informal networking meeting. I dropped in on multiple conversations, and the most common thread among all the conversations was lack of resources. In other words, most of these small business owners knew what they needed to do, but didn’t know how to go about doing these tasks.
For instance, almost everyone at the meeting knew that they needed to identify, locate, and reach out to their “target audience,” but a lot of them had no idea how to go about doing this. Plus, a lot of them were too busy with daily operations to spend much time on this kind of high-level strategy. Still, people were asking each other, “Where do I get this kind of information? How do I find my target audience?”
If you are wondering the same thing about your small business, then it’s time to SCORE!
SCORE for Small Businesses
Check out SCORE, which is a resource partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), and is dedicated to helping small businesses. SCORE is staffed by 11,200 volunteers, most of whom are working and retired executives and business owners who donate time and expertise as business counselors.
Here’s a really cool resource on SCORE to help you locate the info and stuff you need for your small business:
The Score Quick Biz Assessment
This test asks you 15 questions about you and your business. For instance, it asks how you spend the majority of your time, whether you know your target audience, and how well you understand the financial aspects of your business. At the end of the test, an entire page of recommendations pops up.
If the test identified that you didn’t know your target market well, it makes recommendations, including how to identify your market by age, income, occupation, location, and education. The recommendations also include sources of demographic information, along with books and online resources that teach you how to find and reach your target market.
As a bonus, it’s all free. Co-sponsored by E-Myth Worldwide, Michael Gerber’s company, the test is a real eye-opener. It also offers you access to a number of small business resources you might not have known about.
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Tags: SCORE, small business owners, small business resources
