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!

Related posts:

1. How Entrepreneurs Can Get the Benefits of a Team (Without Selling Part of Their Business)
2. These People Will Destroy Your Business
3. 6 Lessons that Moving Can Remind Us about Business

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Your business is up and running and growing… and you want to grow your business further. You want your growth to be smart and effective and you want to avoid costly missteps and expensive “rabbit trails” that can pull you off track.

The problem is: You’re busy. You’ve got a full plate. You’ve got enough to do without piling on other activities (even though you know that business growth is critical). So, do you cut back on current success to encourage growth? Do you cut back on future growth to enjoy current success? Neither of those options is ideal!

There’s good news and it’s something you already know. With effective delegation to an assistant, you can enjoy even greater success today while strengthening and building your business for an even greater future.

This probably isn’t news to you but here’s why I’m mentioning it: I’m holding a free teleconference for a small group of people who will have the opportunity to “pick my brain” and learn what you can do to grow your business with more effective delegation or through the better use of a VA.

Teleconference overview
The teleconference is called “Full Schedules to Fulfilled: Delegating and VA’s for Business Growth” and it is free to a limited number of participants. I’ll be joined by my colleague Deb Walker and we’ll offer some advice and answer your questions about delegation and working with an assistant and how those elements contribute to growing your business.

Even though you know that delegating and having an assistant are good ideas, there may be techniques, ideas, challenges, tricks, and tips that we can help you with. Drawing from my years of experience as an entrepreneur of several small businesses, as a project manager, and as a productivity advisor for business owners around the world, I would love to share some “delegation mastery” ideas. And Deb’s insight will be valuable too. She brings a wealth of cross-industry experience to her work at ContemporaryVA and the oversight she provides to a staff of 30 VA’s ensures consistent, high quality work gets delivered to clients.

Normally I charge for all consultations but these calls (which I will be recording and plan to use in the future for promotional purposes) will be completely free. The teleconference will be about 60 minutes in length with 10 to 15 people on the call and we will specifically cover these three areas:

• Delegation Effectiveness
• Whether a VA might work for you
• How to use your VA more effectively

…and how these “tools” can grow your business.

I’d love to see you there!
If you already have a virtual assistant, we’ll show you how to use them more effectively by turning them into a valuable, proactive business asset (rather than a helpful but reactive order-taker). If you don’t have a virtual assistant already, we’ll show you why this might be the next best step for your business; a step that will transform your business in ways you never realized were possible.

So, if you’d like to grow your business and have been looking for an “edge”, this call could be it. But there are only a few slots left (I’ve already had some interest from a couple of my other channels) and I’d love to include you in the teleconference! Just enter your name and email address below and we will send the dial-in information to the first twenty who sign up!

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Can’t wait to speak with you!—

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 2
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
3. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3

With only hours to go before 2010, your planning is probably finished. Your strategizing is tucked away. Your dreams are sitting on your desk, waiting for you to show up on Monday morning. You’ve done everything you can do this year and now it’s coming to close.

And the champagne is flowing generously.

Before things get too carried away, over the next few hours, take a moment to pause and consider what I’m about to tell you: The week between Christmas and New Year is often an INSANE week, filled with gifts and festive activities and diets-be-damned eating. And the entire year leading up to this moment has been INSANE for many people, filled with bad news compounded by bad news. This past week – and this past year – has possibly been all about you running around and trying not to go crazy.

All that is about to change
Take a brief moment and reset your thinking. Make the following 10 promises to yourself for 2010:

1.    Promise to give the very best of yourself to every customer you meet. (They will reciprocate with repeat business).

2.    Promise to be positive, upbeat, enthusiastic, optimistic, and encouraging. (Smile brightly and the world will smile back).

3.    Promise to see every crisis as an opportunity. (You might just find the springboard to stellar success).

4.    Promise to invest in yourself and your business. (You know it takes money to make money… so spend a bit on your business).

5.    Promise to be more productive and make the most of every moment. (You can do more in the same amount of time).

6.    Promise to find the balance between work and family. (It’s a reward that can’t be counted).

7.    Promise to leap into new challenges. (Action and boldness are key ingredients that will help this year to be spectacular).

8.    Promise to be productive and to fight procrastination at ever turn. (Cut out that time playing Farmville in Facebook in favor of more revenue-generation).

9.    Promise to focus on operating a smart, efficient, profitable business. (That’s what it’s all about).

10.    Promise yourself that 2010 will be a great year for you and for your business. (It all starts with this decision).

These promises aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. They are achievable every single day and the business that commits to these 10 promises will have a successful 2010.

Here’s what I’d recommend
Write these promises to yourself. Put them on your desk. Read them every day before your day starts and review them every day before you sign off for the evening. If you’re REALLY serious about succeeding and these promises make sense to you, then create a metric for each one and use them as a checklist. (For example, for the “see every crisis as an opportunity” promise, why not create a list of things that stress you out and then choose on each week and find the opportunity in it).

When you countdown and shout “Happy New Year” today, you’re not just celebrating the turn of the calendar, you’re saying goodbye to a year of challenge and saying hello to a year of opportunity. This is an exciting time for business owners!

On that note:

10…
9…
8…
7…
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2…
1…

Related posts:

1. It’s December… Now is NOT the time to slow down
2. One Month In…

There are lots of innovation opportunities that we face everyday, but acting on them can scare people off. Entrepreneurs might wonder “What if I fail?” The answer to that question is: “Great!”

Innovation and failure are both important
In his blog, For Better Innovation – Fail Often, Fail Fast, Fail Cheap, business venture capitalist, Jim Estill writes about the three things that every entrepreneur needs to do when they fail.

Estill goes on to explain what he means. In being willing to fail often, businesses are actually innovating more frequently and they are likely to succeed more often than a business that only wants home runs and barely does any innovating at all. Fail fast and fail cheap are his second and third points and he asserts that failing fast and cheap allow for more rapid (and less costly) innovation to occur.

That’s brilliant. I like it because it first recognizes that people don’t succeed 100% of the time and, in saying that, it also admits that people probably shouldn’t succeed 100% of the time. (It’s the old adage that says if you are achieving 100% of your goals, you aren’t setting high enough goals).

How you can make sure that you fail often, fail fast, and fail cheap
First, make sure that you are building innovation time into your schedule. Start by setting aside some time each week and keep a running list of problems or challenges that you want to work on.

Second, decide how much time you can spend on innovation before you make a go/no-go decision. A day? A week? A month? It might depend on what the ultimate pay-off is at the end. (If it will earn you millions then you might give yourself more time than if it is simply an innovation that can save you a couple minutes a day).

Third, decide how much money you are willing to invest. Don’t try to bootstrap every innovation without spending a cent. Instead, at the beginning of the year, set aside a percentage of your revenue as research and development money and decide on the parameters of the project that will determine where you will spend your money. For example, you may want to spend money on projects that will have a direct bottom-line impact to your business or that you are only willing to spend up to 25% of your R&D budget on any single project.

Jim Estill is right: Entrepreneurs should adopt the willingness and drive to fail often, fail fast, and fail cheap and when they do they will see far greater success because of it.

Happy blogging!

Related posts:

1. An Innovation Mindset – “Should you listen to your customers?” Continued
2. Good Fast Cheap is still relevant
3. Heather Podcasts – Good, Fast, Cheap – Pick 2 (Episode 2)

• You’ll be more successful when you identify a problem that your target market is facing… and you solve it.

• While many of your customers will leave happy, some will return the product or express dissatisfaction with the service – that’s a problem.

• You’ll also encounter problems each and every day – whether staff issues or accounts receivables challenges or vendor concerns – all of which can hold your business back from the success you desire.

• Even working on big projects, which requires a certain amount of project management, also requires a healthy dose of problem solving to navigate complex projects through to their successful completion.

With so many problems facing you, how do you run a successful business… and how do you do it enjoyably?

One of the first things you need to do is accept that there will be problems. Actually, don’t just accept it; embrace it. Realize that you WILL encounter problems in your work and determine that you won’t let them hold you back but you will over come. This is a simple mindset switch that can make all the difference in the world. (Compare it to the small business owners who try once, fail early, and become “guy-shy” after that, never willing to try again).

The next thing you need to do is learn to be creative. Yes, creativity is a learned skill and the more creative you are, the more proficient you will be at creative problem solving. The site jpb.com is a rich resource of creative ideas and solutions and content. One place to start on that site is this article: Ten Step for Boosting Creativity.
Third, and this is the point that inspired me to write an entire blog about problem solving, make problem solving fun. I was a consultant for a company who contracted several consultants at the same time. We all did our jobs and produced quality work, but the highlight for all of us – and some of the best quality we ever produced – was when the company put on a fun little competition pitting teams of consultants together to come up with creative solutions to their problem. I just read a blog this week at the Harvard Business School, How to Make Solving Problems Fun, that outlined some successes businesses had when they made problem solving fun among their staff. They rightly point out that money is highly valued but a fun prize for problem solving can even trump a monetary reward.

With a three step list like this, problems disappear: Every time they surface, you simply follow these steps toward a solution and then move on to the next problem. There WILL be problems, but that won’t be a problem for you!

Happy problem solving!

Related posts:

1. Project Management Gone Wrong
2. Why Deadlines are a Good Thing
3. Nine Tips for a More Successful Business

I was recently reading a blog in the New York Times (published October 15th) by a CEO of a NY-based company. She referenced that, in a previous blog (published October 7th), she had written about ways to bypass high-priced agencies and run your own PR. And in that blog, someone had shared with her a brilliant piece of wisdom which sounds like something I tell people every day: In essence, the commenter said “you’re already busy as a CEO; why do the PR yourself as well? Focus on your core competencies to build your business and leave PR to someone else.” Read her original October 7th blog, entitled “Which PR Firm Do You Use?” .

That was her October 7th blog and she followed it up a week later with a reflection on that comment and the challenges she faces in deciding what work to keep and what work to delegate. Read her follow-up October 15th blog entitled “More On Do It Yourself PR and My Role as CEO” .

Finding the delegation balance amidst our busy roles
Many of us have been in her shoes: We’re leading a growing organization and trying to discover the balance between what we should do ourselves and what we give up. Although there are different sizes of businesses – the freelancer who hires a virtual assistant and the CEO of a 15-person firm who hires a COO, and everything in between – the challenge is surprisingly similar: Each leader is busy and has to figure out what to give up and what to keep.

Rules of thumb for leaders who want to delegate
First, give up what you don’t like to do. After all, you should enjoy your work! This isn’t always possible, depending on who you hire, but it might help to influence who you hire. (For example, if you’re a freelancer and you hate selling, you might want an assistant who can handle a large part of your selling process).

Second, give up the work that isn’t related to your core competency. This is easier to do for the freelancer than for the CEO of the larger business because a freelancer can easily identify his or her core competency as the specific revenue-generating activities they do. But a CEO has core competencies that are not necessarily specific to revenue generation, and this is discussed briefly in the October 15th blog I referenced earlier. The CEO is good at PR, even if she’s not running a PR firm. So, core competencies are more “business-growing” activities rather than strictly “revenue-generating” activities. If you’re a CEO and you’re a visionary, then embrace that and hand off the day-to-day to a COO.

Third, give up the work that is your core competency. No, this advice doesn’t conflict with the passage above. I think it’s the “next step” in taking a small business into the big business world. Small business owners do the revenue generation themselves; in big businesses, leaders eventually need to pass off business growing activities to sales and marketing experts, revenue-generation activities to production people, and they even willingly pass off core competency work to others, ideally duplicating their effort by sharing their wisdom. Take a look at a mammoth company like Dell: Michael Dell may have once picked up a screwdriver to assemble a computer… that was a revenue generating core competency of his. However, I’m fairly certain that he hasn’t picked up a screwdriver in a quite a while. And even if he has competencies in other areas (like efficient systems, for example) we can be fairly certain that he has other people doing that too. He’s kept a few things and passed off many other things (business building, revenue generating, core competencies) to other people.

Certainly, there are no easy answers and it does look different for every business owner or business leader. But one answer is clear: You can’t do it all so you have to pass some things to other people.

Happy Blogging!

Related posts:

1. There’s only one thing that can’t be delegated
2. The conundrum of committedness – part 3
3. When things are going really well

Great discussion today on #businesslunchclub (on Twitter; but see BusinessLunchClub.com for more details).
The conversation today centered around delegation, and specifically around something that @IAC_Heather calls “the 3 Strikes, You’re Out” rule. The conversation was primarily between @IAC_Heather, @askleo, and myself (@AaronHoos), with @Hazewalker chiming in towards the end.
You can read our entire conversation on BusinessLunchClub (If you’re not reading this on the day it’s posted, go to BusinessLunchClub.com/users/archive and select July 13 from the calendar).

The “3 Strikes, You’re Out” rules are 3 simple rules to help you know what to delegate. The rules are:

• 3 strikes rule 1: Is it something that you don’t personally have to do; is it something that someone else can do or be trained to do for you?

• 3 strikes rule 2: Does the alternate person that could do it for you have an hourly wage less than your billable wage?

• 3 strikes rule 3: Could you use that spare time on revenue generating activities or to increase your quality of life?

@askleo talked about the challenges of finding the right person and training them appropriately. And I talked about the challenge of being a sole operator for so long that it was difficult to “disassemble” projects I normally do automatically and identify which portions of the tasks should be done by me and which portions should be outsourced.

@IAC_Heather used the example of a babysitter when responding to @askleo, pointing out that parents do the best job of raising their children but they still “outsource” to a babysitter from time to time. She also recommended the use of Camtasia to capture processes to enable faster training.

I was curious to know what people outsourced (which is relevant to a conversation I had yesterday with a friend who suggested that he only outsources items that don’t add value to the client relationship). So far, I’ve only outsourced administrative work but kept my value-adding work and most of my sales efforts as my own tasks. @IAC_Heather outsources as much as possible (except where liability might be a concern) and, just as Business Lunch Club was wrapping up, @Hazewalker added this helpful advice: As long as you are unwilling to delegate, you cannot create a business that runs without you.

Good conversation in today’s Business Lunch Club!

As originally posted on: Blog by Aaron Hoos

Related posts:

1. Lunch 2.0 Launched! #BusinessLunchClub, #BizLunchClub, #BLC
2. 8 Ways to use #businesslunchclub to grow your business
3. Tips to get more out of #businesslunchclub

In project management we bring together numerous smaller pieces so that, by the end, we have a completed project – whether that’s a book or a product or an invention or a new business. There are many different kinds of project management tools and techniques out there and the one that is used most often is the “one liner”.

Think of it like this: You’re sitting around a conference room and you know that your department has to bring a new project to market. So someone goes up to the whiteboard, pulls out a marker and then draws a big line down the middle. Then, everyone starts to fill in what needs to be done:

• A business case needs to be completed.
• The legal department needs to review the material
• Vendors need to be sourced.
• Production needs to be ramped up.
• Marketing needs to start promoting the product.
• …(and so on).

And someone draw it like this:

This method seems to make sense, at first, and it’s easy to create a list of tasks and accountabilities that come out of it.

Unfortunately, it misses an important element in project management: the idea that these individual items are not single events in and of themselves.

Completing the business case is not as simple as completing the business case! Rather, the business case is simply the result of a variety of smaller, focused tasks like:

• Finding someone to spearhead the program
• Finding a writer to write the business case
• Supporting the writer with pre-existing research
• Performing research on an as-needed basis
• Reviewing the business case
• Making changes
• Review the business case again
• Presenting the business case to stakeholders
• …(and so on)

Filling the “one liner” with those tasks creates 3 challenges: First, it becomes incredibly unwieldy, forcing the one project line to become so long that it becomes overwhelming. Second, it incorrectly sets the priority of all tasks at the highest priority and tends to make projects take longer than they should because people are often left waiting for one task to finish before the next one can start. Third, it still makes things easy to miss.

Some tools have been created to solve this. Two popular tools are the Gantt chart and the NASA-developed PERT chart. While these are good, some people find them to be slightly over-complicated and unwieldy.

On many projects, one of the key tools I like to use is the fishbone diagram. The fishbone diagram is (in my opinion) a nice, user-friendly balance between the too-simple one liner and the too complicated Gantt and PERT charts. The fishbone diagram starts out like this:

Then, individual tasks are added:

This makes the time line much more manageable and user-friendly while keeping smaller (normally unstated) tasks in view.

Of course, this isn’t the only project management tool I use when I’m doing project management work for my clients, but it’s one that I’ve found to be superior to many others in its comprehensiveness while also making sure that it captures all the “mini projects” that contribute to making the actual project a success.

Wishing Best Success,

Heather Villa

Related posts:

1. Project management best practice: The report
2. The P Word
3. Unsticking a project

Here are some ways to manage that situation for your business:

• Know your numbers! How many prospects do you need to have, on average, to get one client? While the number is not a fixed number, there is probably a good average to work from.
• Know how long it takes for the average prospect to become a client… and then for that client to pay.
• Don’t stop doing what you’re doing! Continue working with current clients, continue marketing your services.
• Do what it takes to go the extra mile. It might mean late nights or running the assembly line through the weekend from time to time, but those steps are necessary to keep clients happy, especially when there are unpredictable changes.
• Automate. If possible, automate some of your processes so you are no longer working on the mundane details that might distract you from your focus. Over at IAC-EZ, that’s what kind of help we give to businesses.
• Hire out. You might or might not want to outsource your core competencies, but you should probably consider hiring out your non-core efforts so you can spend more time on the work that earns your income. Over at IAC Professionals, we helps all kinds of businesses do that all the time.
• Plan for it. As a consultant, I see these challenges in businesses all the time, particularly as we work at increasing a business or bringing a new product to market and then facing the demand it generates.

Best,

Heather Villa

Related posts:

1. The conundrum of committedness – part 1
2. The conundrum of committedness – part 2
3. What should be delegated?

But one of the challenges that businesses of all sizes face is something I call ‘committedness’. And as a business works to strengthen itself, the ‘conundrum of committedness’ increases and can cause all kinds of problems.

Let me use the example of a consultant for a moment to give you an example of what I mean:

A consultant has 24 hours in a day. Presumably, at least half of that time will be spent eating, sleeping, and in personal pursuits with the other half (or less) on the business. Now, if a consultant wants to get more business (client commitments), he or she needs to do more marketing. As the client commitments start to increase, the time available to market tends to decrease.

Now, if the consultant only had to market once in order to get client commitments, and then those clients stayed around and sustained the consultant’s income, that would be okay. But, clients come and go and if a consultant wants to stay committed, they need to market more to generate new commitments.

So the first part of the conundrum of committedness is: The more commitments you have now, the less time you have to generate new commitments. But the less time you spend on generating new commitments, the fewer you will soon have.

In other words, the consultant needs to find the balance between staying busy with current clients so that there is a healthy income being earned, but also to leave enough time to market in order to get more clients.

All businesses face a similar situation, not just consultants. A manufacturer, for example, doesn’t want to produce too many products so that their inventory is completely overloaded. But they don’t want to produce too few products so that they anger their customers and drive them away.

Whether your commitment is related to time-spent, like a consultant, or products-produced, like a manufacturer, your business may suffer from this first part of the conundrum.

But there’s a second part to this conundrum of committedness that I will talk about in my next blog tommorrow.

Best,

Heather Villa

Related posts:

1. The conundrum of committedness – part 2
2. The conundrum of committedness – part 3
3. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3