Heather Villa » Email

Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 6/25/10

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:45:26 +0000

The Bitch Slap: You Run a Business, Not a Free Clinic – Kind of a stand out name but it does catch your eye. Some pretty serious points here about not working for free. The best way to ruin a business is working for less than you should.

Are We There Yet? – Yes, we are there yet. We are there now. You’re already home. Confused? What a fun twist on overcoming the constant need to resolve uncertainty. Like a small child we all become impatient at times. Wanting the answer now, not willing to wait. Many great examples are listed here to alter the need for constant clarity in life’s situation. Sometimes it just is what it is.

A Kid, A Tie and a Chocolate Smile – One smile can do a world of good. In today’s world we rarely slow down to take in the good moments from strangers. In this post you will find out how one little boy in a busy city could transform a man’s day.

8 Websites You Need to STOP Building – Very funny! This comic like post will keep you laughing. It goes into several unnecessary points behind certain web sites.

5 Reasons Email is Now Snail Mail – Email in the past seemed to be super fast right? Not anymore. With more ways to communicate nowadays IM and Twitter have left email in the dust. Some interesting point are listed here as to the cause of slowness with emails. However, I have to say I’m still a fan of email slow or not.

Create Your Own Awesomely Weird Chocolate Bars – What will they think of next? Odd but somewhat interesting you will find the makings for the most unique candy bar in this post. From potato chips to herbs you name and they can put it in your custom chocolate bar. I think I’ll just stick with a normal good old chocolate bar.

Number of Twitter followers is the most overrated metric in social media – Mark makes some great points here about the volume followers. Sometimes more is just more and not benefiting you in the long run. He gives good examples of the outcome when having more followers than you can keep up with. “Numbers of followers/friends/readers matters, but in my opinion how connected you are to them is even more important in determining influence and reach”.

The 9 Stages to Social Media Acceptance – Social Media made simple. For newcomers the tips listed in this post will be most beneficial. The step by step process of what to expect when entering the social media experience will turn you into a master tweeter in no time.

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

Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 6/4/10

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:24:01 +0000

You Can Learn A Lot From Your Customers – Do you sell a product or services to your customers? Have you ever made the time to reach out to them individually by way of a phone-survey, or email survey, or heck even an old fashioned snail mailed survey? Michael Fleischner reminds us of the importance of doing so. He also provides some tips on how to (creatively) get your customers interested in taking a survey or learning about survey’s in which they can be rewarded for taking!

What the Lost Series Finale Taught Me About Personal Branding – Flash sideways is apparently a concept introduced through Lost. It is somewhat confusing but take a look at what David Trahan thinks of it. And don’t forget to look at the tips he includes!

How to Create Guest Post Guidelines for Your Blog- This is a really great and highly informative blog that discusses the hows and whys of writing a guest blog. Sometimes bloggers forget about the simpler ways of going about marketing themselves. Why not get your name out there – everywhere – and use other people’s influence and audience to your advantage.

Why BP Should Embrace the Fake BP Twitter Account – We all know about it; it’s the talk of every media outlet imaginable! This environmental disaster involving BP also made it onto twitter via a fake account @BPGlobalPR Outspoken Media came up with a compelling and well thought out list of reasons for BP to embrace the falsies out there!

Beware: Baby Lambs Cause Computer Viruses – The internet is an amazing thing and I can hardly remember life before www. This is a really great blog from one of my favorite bloggers. She wrote how she received an email from a friend of her who described how she got a virus from a website about baby lambs. Seriously – baby lambs! Take a look at this article and make sure you read the comments.

Rubber boots and sales copy – Poor Aaron. Working in his living room because his office is full of water. Poor guy! Take a look at what he had to face and then the awesome advice he gives about writing amazing sales copy at the end. Great advice from his temporary office on Hoos Island!

A Beginner’s Guide to Trail Running – Literally, this is a blog that gives you instruction, guidance, and tips an what is required to begin making a habit of Trail Running. I will admit, I am not an avid Trail Blazer but it is something that I have thought about doing. This is the most thorough articles I have found on the topic!

Check out HeatherVilla StumbleUpon to see more of my favorites.

Have a great weekend!

The Secret Sauce for a Successful Business

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Thu, 27 May 2010 11:29:50 +0000

I’m not a big believer in the “magic bullet” theory of business. I’ve never believed that a particular business model or the perfect product will turn a business from a mediocre business into a super-success. I’ve always subscribed to the notion that if you work hard and provide value and do good in the world, you’ll enjoy some business success. But IF ever there was a secret to success, I think a good set of systems is a contender to be nominated as one.

Systems are the processes that we develop for our business. It’s a preplanned structure; an outline; a pre-determined way of doing something. Sometimes the idea of systems is one of automation but I don’t think that’s always accurate (and I’ll show you why in a moment).

Systems make your day easier and they save time. When those two things happen, you can do more in less time. And when you can do more in less time, you can make and sell more and your business will grow.

So, what kind of systems am I talking about? I would recommend a system for everything you can make a system for:

Create a checklist to make sure that every email you send out contains specific pieces of information that your clients usually ask for.
Create an easy way to write a blog so you take less time thinking up a topic and writing about it.
Create a workflow system so that every incoming project ends up in one central location and is scheduled appropriately.
Implement a CRM system so that every prospect and customer gets treated right and doesn’t fall through the cracks.
Create a bookkeeping workflow so that every income or expense item gets passed to your assistant on the day it is received and logged within one day in the right spot.
Create a flowchart for common “mini-disasters” you face in the day, such as an irate client or a customer service issue.
Create a social media checklist to make sure that you are engaging appropriately each day without wasting time by starting at a Twitter stream without a clear idea of what you need to do.
Create a checklist of the 10 things you need to do each day to market your business.

See what I’m doing? I’m listing the most common tasks that you (and every other business owner) go through and I’m recommending a type of system to be developed. Systems don’t have to be technologically automated. They just need to have an established process in place. It could be as simple as a checklist or a flow chart. (By the way, one of my clients has exactly this: a 12 point checklist posted on his wall right in front of his computer. As long as he goes through each point each and every day, he earns six figures a year. Having the list, he says, has helped to free up his time).

Systems ensure that you don’t reinvent the wheel every time. Systems ensure that you do what needs to be done and you don’t miss something. Systems simplify your work by freeing you from having to remember what to do each day. Systems make work predictable so you can spend your energy on the value-adding efforts for your clients.

Want the secret sauce recipe for your business? It starts with a system of the things you do every day.

Let’s go make some sauce!

7 Time Management Tips To Enhance Your Business

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:00:47 +0000

Last time I checked, there were only 24 hours in a day. Clients and employees and administration can each demand all of those hours. It takes bold and confident time management to run your business successfully. Here are a few tips to help you:

1. Pick a time management system and run with it. Sometimes one system might come along and seem better – and it could be better – but it could also be a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side situation. Try it out for a week or two first and run both systems concurrently to see if the new one is actually the superior one.

2. Ruthlessly plug holes. Every system has holes where projects fall off. One problem I see all the time among GTD users is too many inboxes. Another problem I see is when someone crosses off an entire project as being complete even though they haven’t yet finished a final step or two. Figure out where these holes are for you and address them. Limit your inboxes. Keep a master list that only gets crossed off when you receive confirmation from the bank that the client’s check cleared, etc.

3. Build systems. Build systems, build systems, build systems. Make this your daily mantra. If you’re doing something today and you do the same thing tomorrow, you need a system. It could be as simple as a prescheduled reminder email or it could be that you have a specific number of programs that open on your computer when you start it up in the morning or it could be a list or a spreadsheet or a flowchart. Whatever. I have a big wall calendar that I use for everything. My friend has his 4-step sales funnel printed on his wall with his daily tasks in each section. These are systems, workflows, and checklists that make sure we get everything done in the day.

4. If you find yourself with too many things to do in one day, but you’re always finding more great ideas to try (join the club – that’s me!) then don’t adopt everything at once. Keep a big list of things that you want to do and slowly add new actions or ideas into your business. But do them one at a time and make each one a habit before you go on to the next one.

5. On the subject of habits, identify yours and eliminate the bad ones. If you’re the kind of person who procrastinates, figure out what you need to do to stop. A client of mine has the right idea: She admits that she used to be a terrible procrastinator and the only way she can keep it from happening is by offering insanely fast turnaround times on her work for clients. She ends up being so busy that she doesn’t have time to procrastinate!

6. Know your peak times and work towards those. If you slump in the afternoons, as most of us do, don’t schedule your most important work for that time. Find the times when you are at your best and expect to work on your most important work at those times. I know the theory that says you should work on the least enjoyable project first, but I tend to subscribe to the theory that you need to work on whatever is most important for your mental state at the time.

7. If you work online and tend to get distracted by interesting stuff (ahem: Woot, Ebay, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter), write it down instead of looking it up. Keep a distractions page and when you think “I wonder what’s on Woot right now”, write it down and look it up later during a time-limited browse-the-web reward-for-hard-work session.

There isn’t a great, magical time management technique that will give you hours of time. But if you pick a few winning best practices to control the chaos in life, you’ll gain back a few minutes here and a few minutes there and that adds up!

Happy Blogging!

Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 3/12/10

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:45:06 +0000

How a Small New York City Hotel Put Itself on the Map through Social Media – A really nice and incredibly informative article which describes how the Roger Smith Hotel has now become known as the Social Networking Hotel of NYC. Check out the video montage, very cleaver and well put together!!! Oh yeah, the hotel amenities are amazing, I clicked through the link and looked at their site.

Granny DJ Spins the Internet into a Frenzy – OMG, here is the viral DJ Ruth Flowers video. I had to watch it twice! I wonder if she only wears the glasses when she is portraying DJ Flowers? =P

Breaking up is hard to do: Why businesses need to occasionally fire clients – Is there a “totally true” button here? Aaron discusses how the customer is not always right. Also talks in detail about how a business relationship with a customer can get to the point where it just makes sense to go separate ways. Maybe their focus has changed, or they no longer fit the bill in what your company defines as a customer. There is a great process/tool that the author describes to help you discover if you have to “trim the fat” when it comes to the best customer base for your company, and for the customer.

What Happens to Your Website If You Die? – This article talks about a topic most of us probably have never even thought about. What happens when you pass on and you have a bunch of websites that you monitored daily, contributed to, blogged on? It does make one think – what happens to your email inboxes? Can you “leave” them to a relative, or an employee through your will? This is a really good read and really makes you stop and think about it for a minute.

Personal Branding & Finding Your Naked Superhero – Captivating title, a photo that demands you to look twice, and content to boot! One of my favorite bloggers, Lisa Barone talks about the traits necessary to ensure you apply that personal branding paint nice and thick – so people will be drawn in to reading most everything you write about. As she mentioned in past blogs “….create a character around yourself so that you are always presenting people with the absolute best version of who you are”. A must read for bloggers who are looking to perfecting their own branding.

Why Entrepreneurs Should Eat Their Young – Jonathan Fields says it best – ” Entrepreneurs often get so emotionally-wed to their babies, they lose the ability to make good decisions”. He actually provides some information taken from a study by Hope Klug and uses it to the relationship between entrepreneurs and their still wet behind the ears followers.

Check out more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy reading!

22.5 Minutes is all You Really Need to Make a Big Difference

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:14:15 +0000

Paul Lemberg and I share a similar goal in the work that we each do. Ultimately, both of us strive to help business owners use productivity to increase business success.

Paul has developed something called the Formula 5 system in which he lists 5 aspects of a business that can be altered to grow the business. The first 3 parts of his Formula 5 are:

1) Increase your conversion rate.
2) Increase your value per customer.
3) Increase the number of leads.

You can read more about them here: Formula Five – Learn the Secrets to Growth.

Okay, all of that is just my introduction to this video — Time Management Secrets: Getting More Done — which is the first of a 4-part video series (each one is about 15 minutes long). In the first video, about 2 – 3 minutes into the video, Paul says that his research has found people only spend 2 1/2 productive hours of time each day. Yikes! It’s scary but probably true. When you add up the phone calls and the email and the coffee breaks, he’s probably not far off.

Now, here’s what makes Paul’s system so compelling to me and I think you’ll like it too. Paul says that asking us to make adjustments so that we double our conversion rate or triple our value to our customer or get 6 hours of productive time each day is really unrealistic. It’s difficult to make such a profound change all at once. It’s disruptive to the business. (Yes, we WANT to make big improvements but they’re not likely to be healthy and long lasting).

So Paul says what we really need to do to make actual, valuable change in our businesses is to just increase something by 15%.

That’s it!

So if you acquire 20 leads in one month, try to get 23 leads the next month. Although we may dream about getting 40 leads next month, it’s not likely going to happen. But 3 more leads is very possible. And if you earn $1,000 per customer per month, try to get $1,150 per customer the next month. 15% isn’t that hard to get, is it!?!

And the same goes for your time. Since we only get 2 1/2 productive hours of time each day, a 15% increase is 22.5 minutes. So, although it might be difficult to bump up an average productive time each day to 5 hours (doubling it from 2 1/2), it’s easy to get an extra 22.5 minutes with just a few small changes.

The strength of this system is not one 15% change and then a subsequent retirement on the beach because of the increased wealth. Rather, I find the strength of this system is that these 15% incremental improvements can take place again and again over a period of time and they are painless to implement and, when you add them up, they can really be quite profound.

Here’s my advice: As we approach April, choose 5 measurable aspects of your business and aim to improve just one aspect by 15% each week.

Keep Your Eggs in One Basket – Part 1

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:05:41 +0000

If you’re just starting out in business, this blog won’t apply to you… yet. But if you’ve been in business for a while, I think this will really resonate with you:

You get up in the morning to start your day. You open your email. There are 25 new emails plus a dozen from yesterday that you didn’t get to. You go to your task management system; there are a dozen tasks waiting, perhaps shaded with various colors of green (good!) and red (never good!). Then you look at your schedule. Then you look at your wall calendar. Then you check the proprietary task management systems that four of your clients have set up for you to use. Oh, and you haven’t checked voicemail yet.

After all of that is done, it’s time to get to work. But it’s not very efficient. And as you go through your day, new items pile up in each of these collection points and they need to be juggled. It’s like having a bunch of people talking to you all at once! It gets chaotic and you’re not actually very efficient by running from one place to another to keep on top of it all. You spend more of your time trying to manage your tasks than you need to.

BUT… At the same time, I’m realistic enough to recognize that you can’t always use one system. Clients may not want to work in a particular system and you can’t eliminate email and voicemail. We have lots of collection points and they don’t all automatically synch.

Here’s what you need to do:

Find one place where you can put it all. Find one collection point that acts as the ULTIMATE collection point – a dumping ground for all of your other collection points. David Allen of GTD talks about this, but I think it’s a part of his system that doesn’t get as much credit as it should. I’ve drank a little bit of the GTD Kool-aid – enough to pick out the parts that I like – and I think his idea of minimizing in-baskets is one of the key strengths of GTD.

I don’t think it matters what you use:

Maybe you have your own task management system.
Maybe you use something really simple like RememberTheMilk.com
Maybe you use Google Calendar. Maybe you use your email inbox.
Maybe you go old school and you write a list on a piece of paper.

Although I think some things are slightly more efficient than others, I think the very first step is to have one single collection point from which everything else is gathered. If you can synch those things together electronically, all the better, but sometimes those things don’t synch.

Find one place to dump everything and you can sort from there. This will help you feel considerably less stressed in your day because you’ll be able to look at everything all at once. When a project is done, cross it off of your task management system, remove it from whatever original source it came from (email, or a client’s project management system) and you’re done.

Now, some of you are saying to me: “But Heather, it doesn’t sound very efficient to copy things from one task management system to another.” However, I would argue that a quick copy-and-paste to put all of your work in one single place is way more efficient than clicking here and there to manage half a dozen management systems for each client. It gives you one place to see, prioritize, and work through everything, rather than having many places that each have their own priority.

In the next blog, I’m going to give you some pointers to help you do this.

Stay tuned!

The Metrics of Social Media

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:29:09 +0000

A friend of mine is a freelancer and he is a self-confessed tyrant of metrics. He analyzes the proposals he sends out and monitors how many people call him as a result. He analyzes every action in his sales process and has goals and can tell me at the end of the day how close he came to achieving his daily goals. He claims that he’s not obsessed with charts, per se, but with the productivity that results from them.

It’s the old “what gets measured gets managed” adage. Makes sense (even if it seems excessive to the rest of us).

Recently, he got me thinking about measuring and managing social media conversations with metrics. This blog isn’t so much me talking about what I do, but rather it’s a blog of me writing down my thoughts on the matter.

Social media is a difficult form of marketing/networking to apply metrics to, simply because it’s as much of an engaged lifestyle as it is a form of marketing. (Just compare the difference between most Gen-Y and Gen-X people when it comes to Twitter: Gen-Y people tend to adopt it as another part of life while Gen-X try to schedule it in like email. That’s just a generalization but it nicely illustrates how social media is a form of an engaged lifestyle even more than just marketing).

So, are there metrics you can derive from social media? If my friend wanted to add another column to his spreadsheet of business metrics, what might he put into it when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of social media?

Looking at Twitter, I’d suggest that he might use the number of followers as a metric. It’s not always reliable because of the number of spam followers that fester on Twitter, but it’s a start. He might think about measuring the number of tweets he’s made. Perhaps he could use Google Analytics (or some of the Twitter click-through analytics that are available) to see how many people are clicking through his links to his site. He might also count the number of Retweets that are made of his tweets and even the number of #followfriday references.

None of these are perfect but they’re not bad and, collectively, they give a good picture.

Then I turned my attention to Facebook to see if I could think of metrics there. Number of friends, obviously, is one of the ones that spring to mind. It would be nice if you could keep track of the number of comments or “likes” that people make, but that’s not possible on a personal page. (There are some further metrics along these lines available on a fan page, actually, so you can monitor interaction metrics there).

What gets measured does get managed and many businesses could stand to use a healthy does of measurement when it comes to social media.

Image credit: MRI

Happy Blogging!

A “workout” regimen for small business owners

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:21:58 +0000

Exercise is something we all know we need but we often avoid or overlook until it’s too late. Our muscles aren’t just physical, though. We have mental “muscles” that need working out, too.

Recently, I read a great article Forbes by Dr. Douglas McKenna about this very thing. McKenna used to work for Microsoft and now runs his own coaching firm called Oceanside Institute. Thus, he brings a great balance of big business and small business sensibility to this concept.

You can read the full article, called “Exercise Your Self Control Muscle”, but I will summarize it here for you.

McKenna says that self control is like a muscle and he gives a few tips to exercising this muscle for business owners. Self control, he says, is crucial for professional well-being. At first I thought he was just talking about things like avoiding Facebook until the workday is done or not responding in anger to an email, but he has far greater and more applicable advice than that. Self control, he says, has to do with our total control of self and what we make of each moment of the day.

1. His first tip is “plan your time with depletion in mind”. In real exercise, you can do a lot more earlier in the workout but you get tired as you go and can’t do as much towards the end. It’s the same with self control. You need to give yourself a bit of a break and expect to have less self control towards the end of the day than you do at the beginning. I think this is a great tip and applicable to far more than just self control, but also to all kinds of productivity: Expect to do less later in the day than you do earlier in the day.

2. His second tip is to standardize recurring tasks. Once again, this a great tip beyond self control and is a valuable productivity-enhancing tip. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of my readers that I embrace this idea whole-heartedly! Ultimately, you should do less so you can do more. (Yeah, it’s a paradox).

3. Rest and refuel. Great advice to every small business owner who works 24/7 because they thing they have to. There may be periods of time when you do need to work 24/7 but try to keep those to a minimum and focus on giving a solid 8 hours of quality work and taking time for yourself. You’ll recharge just being around family and friends (and sleeping, of course) and that will make a huge difference. This is another paradox: You’ll get more done in 8 hours after some rest than you would get done by pushing yourself through 12 hours of work.

4. Regular “workout” of this muscle is the key to making sure that you stay in control of your day… AND in control of your business. Like any other kind of exercise, you’ll gain the most benefits when you intentionally spend time working out every day.

Small business owners: Read the article, work out your self control muscle every day and take control of yourself (and your business).

Happy Blogging!

Time Off: Do Small Business Owners Get Any?

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:41:46 +0000

If you run a small business, you may find yourself quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work that is required. Not only must you juggle constant deadlines from a wide range of clients, but the housekeeping tasks can be immense. From bookkeeping and accounting to cost estimating and project management, the small business owner can quickly become overwhelmed.

But at the same time, trying to take time off for business owners is extremely difficult. With so much to do, it can be extremely difficult to break away at the end of the day. Twelve or fourteen hour workdays may soon become the norm as you try to keep your head above water. Success breeds success, leading you down an ever busier path. No matter how much you love your work, sooner or later you will begin to feel ready for a vacation.

When a business owner considers taking some time off they inevitably begin asking themselves:

What will happen during your vacation?
Will you be able to completely clear your schedule for a week or two?
What happens if you do?
Will you lose track of important clients, or possibly even lose work due to the inability to get things done in a timely manner?
Will you lose out on future clients simply because you were unable to answer your email before someone else was hired instead?

There are no simple answers to these questions. Every business owner’s personal, vocational and financial picture is different. However, a basic truth holds for every person on Earth, whether or not that person is a business owner. We as human beings need down time. We need time to relax, spend time with loved ones, and have fun. Not allowing yourself some time off is a sure path to burnout.

Here are some tips on how to take time off for business owners

Begin by outsourcing as much as possible. A virtual assistant can transform the small business experience for the business owner who is struggling to keep up. Your virtual assistant can manage many of the day to day tasks of business management, from bookkeeping and accounting to answering phones and email. He or she can also manage your calendar, sending you reminders of important upcoming events. A VA can work as many or as few hours as you require, and those hours may change by the week, month or project. The cost of a VA is generally much less than that of recruiting, hiring, training and retaining an employee.
Plan your vacation well in advance. Work longer hours to get as far ahead as possible before you leave town. Let your clients know about your vacation well ahead of time. Plan realistic project deadlines that account for the time that you will be away.

Working during your vacation is a viable option, as long as your work hours are limited. There is little point in paying for a hotel room that you will sit in for days on end, working. However, setting aside an hour a day to check email and return phone calls, and perhaps one or two days a week to complete work tasks is a reasonable goal.

Let your VA work for you while you are on vacation. Arrange for him or her to answer your phone and respond to emails. Have anything that requires your attention forwarded to your voicemail or email for you to respond to at your leisure.

Balancing work and downtime can be difficult for any business owner. However, time off is essential to mental health and stability. Outsource those tasks that you do not need to personally handle and structure your schedule to allow for vacations. The peace of mind and refreshment of mind, body and spirit are worth the effort.

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.