The World’s Best Frozen Margarita Recipe – Movies are a great source of inspiration. You can learn valuable lessons from watching how others deal with failure and overcome obstacles, as well as taking note of the perspective they take toward life. Listed are some great inspirational moments in film.

Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em: How business is like poker – Poker and business are very similar: They’re studies in money-making through opponent evaluation and risk acceptance. Aaron has a great comparison here between poker and business. By becoming a better poker player you will intern become a better business owner.

I’m Granting Wishes Today – Who has seen an authentic voodoo doll? I sure haven’t nor would I know what to do with one, until I read this. With a little bit of humor this personal story explains what to do with a voodoo doll if you ever come across one.

This is Why You Don’t Bury Your Blog’s Gold- Don’t bury your blog’s best content; find ways to share it with your readers. That can only help grow your readership and bring more exposure to your blogging efforts. Mack talks about quality not quantity when writing you blogs also, linking out to 2-3 of your most popular posts every week on Twitter.

Getting Ahead By Not Being A Cliché – Differentiation is like a bridge which creates the proper context for your work to reach the right target. When instead of being a cliche, you are different; this allows you to stand out. And when you stand out, three essential things happen: You get noticed; You get remembered; People get curious about you. This is the key to getting ahead by not being a cliche.

If you’re looking for more, see the rest of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

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• High maintenance clients who are focused on your rate. If you have clients who require a lot of hand-holding, who constantly ask for free services, and who call you back to go over invoices in detail, you’ve got a business-destroying problem on your hands. They may be the nicest people in the world but they can take away from other customers who cost less to manage and are therefore more profitable. If a clients gets too demanding (even if their demands are disguised as requests), revisit how much you do for them for free.

• Vendors with whom you are too closely tied for critical situations. As a business owner, you probably have vendors who provide you with any number of services. And it’s often nice to work with just a few people who know what they are doing rather than spread yourself too thin by trying to manage a whole bunch of people. But you need to watch your vendors carefully: If you are extremely reliant on them to come through (because they provide you with several critical services) make sure their own business is in good shape. You don’t want them dropping the ball for too long simply because they can’t keep their own house in order).

• Employees who just warm desks. The world somehow has balance: There are entrepreneurs who dream of living a life of unfettered freedom and there are employees who like the consistency of employment. We need each other in order to coexist in perfect harmony. But sometimes you get an employee who likes the consistency of employment without the hassle and sweat of actually doing work. They are a drain on your revenue without contributing to your business. Unfortunately, if you run a small office, it can be extremely difficult to do anything about them.

• Decision makers who have a different view than you. Decision makers could include majority shareholders, partners, COOs or CFOs (if you’re the CEO), or other key people on your management team. You need everyone moving in the same direction but if they feel that the business should go somewhere else, you’ve got a potentially bad situation if they start making decisions that run counter to how you feel the business needs to go.

Businesses frequently fail from these people because these business-destroyers are cloaked in good relationships. They get close to entrepreneurs and usually have the best intentions and positive feelings toward the business owner and the business. But, as you can see by reading descriptions of them; their views are just not aligned.

One of the most difficult things you’ll have to do as an entrepreneur is identify and remove these people from a position of influence in your business.

Good luck!

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There is an invisible set of stairs that entrepreneurs perceive in the life of their business and every business owner has the desire to move their business up these stairs toward some (possibly unknown or unstated) level of success. They know that each level requires new efforts and techniques and ideas and comes with its own challenges and rewards.

But the problem is, what the heck are the levels? There’s no manual anywhere suggesting what the levels are. Yet, every entrepreneur knows that they are at one level and they want to get to a higher level. I have people asking me all the time to help them move to a higher level.

In case you’re reading this and wondering if I have somehow divined what the levels are, I haven’t. But I have discovered something else: Moving from one level to another is often preceded by dissatisfaction at the current level as well as an increasing amount of chaos and sometimes an unsettled feeling. I compare it to a child’s top that is spinning smoothly for a while and then starts to wobble. The business starts to wobble, unbalanced, just like that top. That “wobble” is often the time when a business owner wants to move to the next level. But here’s what I recommend first:

Instead of focusing on the next level (which is difficult to do anyway because it’s hard to know exactly what it is for each business), focus on making your current level perfect. Address that unsettled feeling and that chaos. Get it under control.

You can do this by:

• Creating or revising your business’ systems.
• Revisiting your business plan.
• Hiring someone to take care of your details (or extending the responsibilities of someone you’ve already hired).
• Taking a vacation to clear your head.
• Perfecting your current operation.
• Looking at your expenses and reducing them.
• Revisiting your business model to see if there are additional revenue opportunities.
• Strengthening your customer service.
• Increasing the consistency and quality of your marketing.
• Increasing the quality of your deliverables.

“But Heather,” you say, “I want to get to the next level. What you are telling me is how to make my current level better.”

Indeed that is exactly what I am doing. And the reason is: Your current business, which is probably running well enough (after all, you are looking at moving forward) needs to be tightened up a bit in order to more effectively move forward anyway. And, as you move forward, you want to maintain as much control as you can (and as much profit as you can) and cleaning house will help with that. You will also gain a fair amount of insight into how your business is running (and that could reveal for you exactly how you can move forward).

If your business is starting to feel like it’s becoming unbalanced and you’re wondering if you’re ready to move to the next level, make your first step a house-cleaning effort to strengthen your current business and that will help you get to the next level faster and more profitably.

On to the next level!

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In this post, I will talk about social bookmarking.

I love social bookmarking for a couple of reasons. I like it because it makes my bookmarks computer-independent so I can access them from anywhere. I also like social bookmarking because they turn my bookmarks into positioning tools – when people see what I’m bookmarking, they read it and understand who I am and what I think about. And I like social bookmarking because of the social aspect – I like to see what other people are linking to because I always uncover good gems.

The Social Media Framework mindmap (MindMeister mindmap) lists a few different branches within the social bookmarking category. This category doesn’t look at clean and well organized as some of the other categories in the map but all the good stuff is there.

There are bookmark sites (like Delicious and StumbleUpon), article submission sites (like Reddit, Mixx, and Digg), and tools you can use to empower your social bookmarking (like OnlyWire). So, where to start?

BOOKMARKS: I recommend that you pick one social bookmark site as your main site. That’s not to say that you can’t use and thrive on more than one but there is only so much benefit that you can get out of these sites and if you expend a lot of energy in these places making sure they are all synched up, I think you’ll lose benefits elsewhere. Just try to find something that works for you. I like StumbleUpon. I know someone else who is a big Delicious user. Find a bookmark site and go with it. Make it useful to you as your primary bookmarking site.

ARTICLE SUBMISSION SITES: These sites have mixed value to the business owner. I know that’s probably shocking for me to say because other people swear by them, but here’s why I say that: It’s not really in good taste (and, in some cases, it’s forbidden) to post your own content on these article submission sites. So you can post other people’s stuff (and that’s okay) but the point is to get your own content listed there. The other problem with these sites is that some of them can be somewhat restrictive in terms of who reads the content. Make sure that your niche reads the content before posting there! If you want a best practice, here’s my advice: Write great content that could be listed on these sites and use one of the tools below to help get your content posted there.

TOOLS: Retweet and AddThis are good tools to add to your site. These make it easy for people to share your content with their networks or on their bookmarking sites. Another tool I really like but have only started to explore is OnlyWire. For just a couple of bucks a month, you can auto-distribute your content to various bookmarking sites at the click of a button. The idea is great but the jury is still out on whether or not it is really as valuable as it claims to be.

Your bookmarks have a few roles to play:  First, being useful to you but also positioning you. But I think the payback is limited (compared to other kinds of marketing efforts). My advice is to pick one and make it useful to you and focus your social marketing energy on something else. Although you can market your business with social bookmarks, I’ve never heard of someone getting a lot of business out of it.

Save time and effort. Make your bookmarks useful to you in one channel and move on to something else.

Happy Monday and have a great week!

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Your email inbox might SEEM like a minor thing, an innocuous thing; just a useful tool and that’s it. But, unchecked, it can become a powerful force against productivity. It can become a bully that takes over your time and ultimately destroys your ability to produce revenue. In some of the business productivity coaching I do, one of the first things we take care of is mastering the inbox.

I have a few different ways to help people with their inbox; it really just depends on the business owner and the business itself. In this post I’m going to give you a few of the inbox best practices that I’ve found to be helpful.

• Don’t keep your inbox open. Schedule time to look at your email once an hour or once every 90 minutes.

• If you feel that you can’t survive without having your email open all the time (and I understand that there are some businesses that require it) then get a notification system that will discreetly pop up the sender and subject line in the corner of your screen. That way, you can do other things and can watch as emails come in.

• Don’t use your email as a to-do list. The reason is, you’ll end up with a to-do list here and a to-do list in another place (and maybe more) and something will get lost. Keep one to-do list and when an email comes into your inbox, look at it and add it to your to-do list.

• Unsubscribe from stuff you don’t read.

• Filters are your friend! Filter the predictable emails into the right places. If there are newsletters you do read, filter them into their own file so they don’t clutter up your inbox. If you get cc’d on stuff that you need to keep a record of but you never read, filter it into a file.

• Set up useful file structures. If you’re a subscriber to my Tips In Ten newsletters, you’ll have read my email issue and hopefully you are using the file structure I provided there. But there are other file structures that might work for you. I have one client who uses a file structure sorted by days of the week and he puts emails into them so he can access them on that day.

• In general, approach your inbox with the idea that you handle an email once, you act on it (by reading it, moving it to your to-do list, responding to it, forwarding it, and/or deleting it). That’s it. There aren’t any other actions to take on your emails.

• Set a timer and go through your emails in that time period. This helps you to avoid those frequent occasions when an email sends us down a proverbial rabbit trail.

• Deal with an email by handling it once, delete it, and move on.

Inboxes can overwhelm us. But they don’t have to. By using some of these techniques, you’ll master your inbox and it will become helpful to you again.

Happy Blogging!

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I’m not much into video games. I have nothing against them (although they can eat up time like crazy) but I just have other things on my radar that are more pressing for me. Regardless, I can appreciate a good video game, not just for its artistry but for what it can teach business owners:

Video games are a great intersection between technical proficiency, artistic ability, and user experience.

When those things intersect in the right ways, a compelling game is created. Your business is similar:It’s an intersection between those three things.

• You need technical proficiency to make sure your website and backoffice operations are running correctly
• You need artistic ability in your design, branding, marketing, content creation, packaging,
• You need a positive user experience throughout the entire process, from the time someone first interacts with your business until long past the time that they’ve purchased and used your products.

Since there is a clear link between video game excellence and business excellence, there are a few things we might be able to learn from video games that we can apply to business.

The first thing we can learn is this: You can’t do it all alone. There are very few video games designed and successfully distributed by just one person. (There might be some but I’m sure those are the exception). Instead, it takes a team approach, with each person leveraging the things they are good at, to make it happen.

The second thing we can learn is closely related to the first thing: A team is not made up of people who do the same things. Each person brings something different to the table and, as a result, business owners end up doing the hard work of managing projects to keep everyone happily collaborating.

The third thing we can learn is this: The most successful projects – whether video games or businesses – are achieved when the business-owner/project-manager acts as a visionary head and relies on the team to work together. (Compare this to the more frequent circumstance where business owners are familiar with their small slice of business and try to shoehorn others to fit their ideas).

What inspired me to write this blog was an article I read in the New York Times called: “On Will Wright’s Team, Would You Be a Solvent or the Glue?“  Will Wright is the guy who created the Sim line of games, starting with SimCity (and all of its iterations) and most recently “The Sims” series (and a bunch of other games I confess I’ve never heard of). So if there’s anyone who knows how to take a team of disparate people and create something popular, it’s Will Wright.

This article should be a must-read for any business owner or project manager to learn how to get different people to work together to create something. Be sure to read all 3 pages of the article and get ready to take notes.

Happy Blogging!

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In a couple of days, my calendar is going to ping me with a reminder. It’s going to say “One month in – how’s it going, Heather?” This reminder is for me to review the new business strategies I intended to integrate into my business this year.

Each year, I list out a bunch of strategies I want to integrate into my business. Some are marketing strategies, some are productivity strategies, some are customer service strategies; that kind of thing. I always have a really bold and vibrant vision of the year ahead and it’s easy for me to actually create so many strategies that I simply can’t implement them all effectively.

What I find is that over time, some strategies simply can’t be done in the day (because I don’t have time, for example) while other strategies become quickly integrated into my daily routine.

I was speaking with a colleague of mine who does something similar. She had developed several strategies she wanted to integrate into her year. For example, she wanted to increase her article marketing and she wanted to do more blog commenting. We usually chat about our strategies from time to time so I asked her how hers were going nearly one month into the year. The blogs were easily integrated in and are now a habit for her. The articles, however, are not. We talked about the reasons that could be and what she and I discussed might be helpful for you, too:

• Integrating new strategies into your daily schedule is important to do from time to time, but not always easy. I’ve found that if you want to be more successful at making them habits, you need to do everything possible to make it super-easy to do. The easier they are, the more likely you’ll do them and the more likely they will become habits.

Take exercise as an example: Lots of people make a New Year’s Resolution to start exercising… and then they fail. One of the reasons is that exercise might be an hour or two commitment a few times a week: Driving to the gym, working out, showering, driving home. It adds up so it’s not compelling to do. The secret to integrating it into your life is to make it really easy at the very beginning. Start with a 5 minute workout at home; have a friend call to remind you. Then, increase your workout to ten minutes. Then to fifteen. Then twenty. Eventually you will find yourself at the gym doing a full workout, but by then it will be a habit. To get there, though, it had to start easy.

It’s the same with my friend and her articles: Instead of writing an article a day – her original goal – she should start with an article a week. Or, split the work between herself and a freelancer. Eventually, she can increase her own effort. And she should decide ahead of time what the article will be about, rather than staring at a blank page.

And it’s the same for your 2010 goals. The goals that easily integrated into your business – celebrate them. And the ones that you’re struggling with one month in – take baby steps and make them easy. You may not start out as boldly as you had originally dreamed but making them easy will help to make them habits.

Have a great time!

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What happens when you decide to use the services of virtual staff? How does that impact your traditional office? What adjustments will you need to make? These are good questions and the answers can help you easily navigate the transition.

Robyn is the president of an online publishing software company and found herself faced with these same questions. She transitioned from working at a newspaper to operating the software company. Robyn was used to the daily interaction with other employees and discovered that there are some adjustments to working in the virtual world. Robyn shares three helpful tips when making this addition to your company.

First, “An employer must be intentional about creating a bond with a virtual employee,” Robyn states. “When you are in a traditional work environment, that interaction comes naturally, but when you deal with someone that you may never actually meet, building that relationship and establishing a bond of trust takes a little more effort,” Robyn continues. Of course, working on the relationship is part of the outsource staff member’s responsibility as well.

Good communication is essential to forming an effective working relationship, no matter where your employee is working: Establishing a good working relationship with your outsource staff is just as important as the relationships you have with your in-house employees.

Next, Robyn encourages other business owners to establish a schedule or routine with their outsource staff. Since these offsite staff do not necessarily have set hours, the employer and virtual workers need to agree upon what is expected in regards to a work schedule and the duties to be performed. Having a pre-determined list of expectations can prevent any confusion in the future and keep the lines of communication open.

Finally, implement all of the available technologies to keep the work flowing between employer and outsource staff. According to Robyn, the more you make use of things like instant messaging, teleconferencing , faxing and emailing, the easier the communication will be. “Don’t limit yourself to one method of keeping in touch. Be sure your offsite employee has all of the software that is needed to complete the work you have assigned,” emphasizes Robyn.

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

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I believe that many successful people seek help early: They realize they can’t do it all so they bring someone else on board. While I don’t know the exact details of the 3 people mentioned above, I do know many successful people and one of the things they have in common is that they have help: They have people to whom they can delegate work and they recognize that they can’t do it all themselves.

I don’t think that’s a new concept to business owners, but many small business owners who might be reading this might be thinking, “but I don’t have the revenue to support an employee, nor do I have the time or office space (or employee liability or software licenses or equipment or desire to post a job opening).

This is where another step comes in that I believe is the perfect step between the solopreneur and the growing multi-employee enterprise:

Assistants. And, specifically (thanks to today’s web-based interaction opportunities) virtual assistants.

Now, you might be wondering: “How can an assistant make any difference?” Here’s my answer: Assistants can be used in every aspect of a business organization to help with administrative work, bookkeeping, and customer support. By taking care of these tasks, the business owner has recaptured time that was formerly spent on important (but non-revenue-generating) tasks. Even though they are spending money on an assistant, they are still earning more money, making their time even more valuable.

As an example, consider the consultant who bills $100/hour and spends 4 hours a day consulting and 4 hours a day on marketing, administrative work, research, bookkeeping, scheduling, and more. While they might bill $100/hour, they only bill 4 of their 8 working hours; so their effective rate is only $50/hour. But when the consultant hires an assistant, they might pay that assistant $20 for 4 hours of work per day and the assistant does the marketing, administrative work, research, bookkeeping, and scheduling. This leaves the consultant spending $80 per day on an assistant, but they now have an additional 4 hours of potential billing time! They could do another 4 hours of consulting to earn an additional $400 per day, or they could do a couple more hours and hit the golf course.

But an assistant can do even more. If you find the right assistant, you can even give them some of your marketing, sales, and customer service work. In some cases, they can do some of your revenue generation for you (depending on the product or service you provide, of course).

This is the concept of “scaling”. Many small businesses stay small because they feel that it’s too big of a leap between solopreneur and multi-employee enterprise. But there IS an intermediate step: the virtual assistant. They’re affordable, skilled in many things, and you can scale up your virtual assistants by several iterations long before you ever hire your first employee.

And that is how you make the step forward.

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

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One investment that gets overlooked early in the business (and is usually invested in much later down road) is an accountant. Early in the life of the business, the entrepreneur might just use pen and paper and a shoebox to do their financials. Then later, they might invest in computer-based or web-based bookkeeping software. And later, perhaps they might bring an onsite or virtual bookkeeper on board.

There is some advantage to using the computer-based or web-based software… if the business owner has the time to input the numbers themselves (or if they have an assistant who can do it for them). And, there is some advantage to hiring a bookkeeper to take care of the books. Either of these two options is a good, lower cost option (and definitely superior to the “shoebox” method). The advantage, of course, is that the software or the bookkeeper can bring some order and structure to the business’ financials.

While the software and the bookkeeper are investments into the business owner’s sanity, the accountant is actually an investment into the business’ longevity and profitability. That’s because a bookkeeper, like the software, is just about maintaining order but an accountant is about developing insight and uncovering opportunity.

A bookkeeper will punch the numbers on the calculator and deliver nice, clean books to you. An accountant will deliver your books to you and point out where you can lower expenses, how you can raise revenue, what growth opportunities exist, and what challenges you’ll face in the near and distant future. As well, they’ll help you through the complex process of taxes.

(Now, I should note here that this article is NOT disparaging bookkeepers. They have an invaluable role in an organization and they can bring a certain level of helpful insight to the business owner. However, the accountant is certified to deliver more insight in more ways.)

So, what should you as a business owner invest in? Early on in your business you should consider a bookkeeper or some bookkeeping software, just to keep the books in order. But as early as possible you should consider bringing in an accountant who can deliver the insight you need to grow.

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

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