First, let’s talk about “what” and “why”.

What

I don’t need to tell you that business lunches are lunches you eat while on business. But what I do want to tell you is this: They are made up of some important factors that are important to their success:

• They are typically uninterrupted (or, more accurately, less interrupted).
• They mix casual (“this is some weather we’re experiencing”) with business (“so, let’s talk about the service you’re receiving from us”).
• And there’s eating!

Why

Business lunches are valuable. Invaluable, I’d say. Lots of things happen over business lunch because two (or more) people sit down for an uninterrupted period of time to eat and talk. The mix of casual-plus-business and the eating-plus-conversation is an equation that results in sales, business ideas, new enterprises, problems solved, new jobs, new vendors, better business, and so much more.

But there are some problems:

We don’t always have the hour or hour-and-a-half that is needed for a business lunch. (If you do, that’s great. But many people I know simply don’t have that time). In fact, we want to experience the benefits of a business lunch but we’re stuck at our desks. Or, the kind of business we run doesn’t always benefit from a typical business lunch (because we sell digital products, for example).

I believe that entrepreneurs, freelancers, small business owners, and coaches can enjoy effective business lunches and I’m going to show you a few ways that you can spend 10 minutes to enjoy better business lunches.

Option 1: Spend ten minutes before lunch to prepare

If you are going out for a regular business lunch (and by “regular” I mean you’re expecting to spend an hour or an hour and a half at a restaurant), you should spend 10 minutes before lunch to prepare. It doesn’t matter whether you are the inviter or the invitee, take the time to prepare.

• Research the person you’re eating with or their business. For example, if a sales person has asked you to join them for lunch, take the time to learn more about them and their business. Or, if you are the sales person and you invited someone for lunch, take the time to learn about them.

• Write out at least one goal you want to achieve. Again, it doesn’t matter if you’re the initiator of the meal or not. If you are the initiator of the meal, you might have the goal of “closing the deal” or “gaining a client” by the end of the meal. But if you’ve been invited out for lunch, you can still have a goal. If you’re eating with a business mentor, your goal is easy: Learn something! If you’re eating with a sales person, your goal is a little more challenging but you should still find it. Perhaps your goal might be: “Get the lowest price possible for the product I’m about to commit to.”

• Make notes. You don’t have to bring them with you but if you make notes about what your goal is and how you are going to achieve it, you will be so prepared! For example, if your goal is to get the lowest price possible for the product that you’re about to commit to, try researching the product’s price, finding out what others are paying for it, determining how much you need of it on any given month, and what you can afford to pay. Leave your notes in your office but the act of writing the notes will help.

Option 2: Eat for ten minutes

Hey, we’re all busy. I’d love to be able to spend an hour to an hour and a half eating at a restaurant every day. But the truth is, none of us have the time (and it’s also hard on our wallets and our diets, right?). So, consider a faster option (which is less appropriate if you’re a sales person inviting someone out on a sales lunch but is more appropriate if this business lunch is a peer-to-peer lunch or if you’re eating with a business mentor):

• Pack a lunch and eat part of it at the park with the person you’re meeting. You can eat the rest of it on your own in the office, but simply meeting for a few minutes out of the office for some eating-plus-conversation will be good.

• Even a business lunch that includes juice and a salad at a local restaurant can be a quick (and healthy) way to benefit from a business lunch without the time (or cholesterol) commitment.

There are no rules saying your business lunch needs to be the ENTIRE lunch or an ENTIRE hour. I think you’ll be surprised at how much you can accomplish when you get together for part of your lunch. Of course I’d suggest that you still have a goal in mind when you meet.

Again, if you’re a sales person, this might not be a great option since it could seem less classy to invite your prospect to bring their own sandwich and meet you in the park. But a business peer would likely embrace the idea of a faster lunch and a bit of fresh air during a busy day.

Option 3: Virtual lunch in ten minutes

Sometimes we can’t get away from our desks. That’s the reality of life in today’s business world. We might have to cover the phones or we might have a crazy day or we might only have a few minutes between meetings. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a few minutes break with a quick lunch while also getting the benefits of a business lunch:

• Schedule a chat/IM session with a friend with the expressed intention of making it a quick virtual business lunch. Like other business lunches, arrive with a goal and eat while you chat. (A joke about not typing while you have food in your hands seems like it might fit here).

• Participate in Business Lunch Club, which is a project I’ve co-created and it is designed exactly for this purpose: Business owners and professionals who are stuck at their desks can participate by adding “#blc” to their tweets and visiting businesslunchclub.com to see business lunch conversations, interviews, and seminars unfold. You can DM your peers for a side conversation or you can participate in the broader discussion… just be sure to add the hashtag #blc in order to participate.

These ideas won’t replace the traditional hour-long lunches that businesses thrive on. They are still important and valuable. But, entrepreneurs who want to benefit from business lunches but don’t always have the time commitment can still enjoy ten minute lunches that help to grow their businesses.

Bonus tip:

One important thing to state, if you don’t have ‘something’ that you have to do during your lunch time, take a rest. Sometimes that mid-day rest from work is what we need. Read a few chapters of a book or enjoy casual conversation by participating on Twitter with the Business Lunch Club.

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1. 8 Ways to use #businesslunchclub to grow your business
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Confessions of a Twitter Virgin – I tweet, you tweet and we all tweet. Or do we? Ali has many great points on how twitter can expand your business potential. However, the best practice is humanness first, business second. As Ali found out, Twitter can not only help with business it can also help on the personal side.

Tips on Persuading Effectively – Persuasion vs. Manipulation do they both mean the same? Many may think they are closely related. The two differ in many ways. This is a great read with some pertinent tips on how to better your persuasive skills.

What I Learned From My Broadband Blackout – Christine has the right mindset here. In today’s high tech world more often than not we forget to unplug. Even if it’s only for a few minutes each day it’s a must for everyone. What a great story!

Is That Client Legit or Just a Tire Kicker? – Don’t waste your time with clients who are not serious. When anyone starts a new business they welcome all potential clients. Why not? You need the work right? Don’t fall into the shopper trap. You will find some really good points on how to keep the tire kickers at bay.

Remembering How to Relax – Leaving work behind can be tough at times. . How effective can you truly be if you’re tired, stressed and your family is not speaking to you? Just one of the many great points in this read. I recommend this to everyone, not just business owners.

010 Virtual Assistant Podcast – Tech Tools For Collaboration Part 4 – If you’ve read most of my blog posts then you know I’m all about outsourcing and using virtual assistants.  If you’re looking to hire a VA or have ever just thought about it, I highly recommend these podcasts. Cliff continues to provide some great insight in the client side of this growing industry.

Catching Lightning Bugs – Laurie puts a fun twist on how to look at marketing. We all differ on our view that’s human nature. Her main point here is simplifying the way you interpret things. I have my jar ready, how about you?

There was a lot of good reads this week. Be sure the check out HeatherVilla StumbleUpon for a full list of my favorites.

Have a great weekend and don’t get sunburned at the beach!

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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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There are so many good ideas and suggestions to start off on the right foot for success in this new year that began today.  I have only listed a few here, but you can read more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Happy New Year!

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Will I Use the Software Frequently Enough to Invest?
You may not consider software in the same category as business devices but its necessity and complexity in use certainly qualifies it as a very popular and required devices. In general, businesses can be classified in three broad categories: Very Small, Small to Medium, and Large. Very small businesses can often be run using software that was designed for personal applications. Large businesses will produce enough volume to make expensive software purchases worthwhile. Small to medium businesses, however, face a bit of a dilemma. They have likely outgrown the ability to get by on personal software applications. Yet it may be difficult to justify an expensive purchase of software that may be only rarely used.

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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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

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One of the most important (and most overlooked) steps in any complex project is the end-game play. You don’t have to be a sports aficionado to know what I’m talking about. The end-game is the last step in the project. If a business is developing a new product to bring to market, the initial end-game is often perceived to be: “selling the product successfully”. While that’s important, it shouldn’t be the end-game. That goal is positive and optimistic and should be present in your planning, but there are other considerations that a project manager should allow for:

• What if the product isn’t successful?
• What if the product becomes so expensive to produce that it will never sell?
• What if the market shifts while the product is being developed?

That’s just an example from bringing a product to market. There are other examples. Another common one is the start-up of a new business. For entrepreneurs, the end-game is often thought to be “profitable operation”. That?s a great goal to work towards, but…

• What about when the entrepreneur wants to retire?
• What happens if the business isn’t profitable?

End-game plays should not be confused with goals. A successfully selling product or a business’ profitable operation are both ideal goals. But the end-game is very different. The end game should take into account a variety of contingencies, each with their own exit strategy.

For example, if the product isn’t successful, is there a way to make it successful? Is there a way to sell just the concept? Should it be scrapped? What happens to the project team if each of those scenarios happen?

Or, another example: If the entrepreneur wants to retire, should she or he shut down the business? Can they sell it to someone? (Who? How?) Can they pass it along to a family member?

In each example, a contingency is selected and thought through and the organization’s recommended exit strategy is outlined. The result? No matter what happens, there’s a plan.

Rock your plan,

Heather Villa

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I said that 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.

But there’s a second part to that conundrum and that is: your new commitments aren’t fixed. In other words, your prospects aren’t perfect. You can (and should) market to fill your pipeline but not all of those prospects will react in the same way at the same time. Some will come to market faster than others. Some might suddenly buy more at one time than anyone else. You might have one quarter where all of your prospects fall out of your pipeline and sales diminish.

Let’s talk about the consultant example again. The consultant has several clients (“commitments”) and he or she stays busy with them, carving out just a little bit of time to market because it’s important to generate new business. When all progresses well, it’s a perfect system. But then “part 2″ of the conundrum kicks in and the prospects suddenly (and unexpectedly) buy more. What should the consultant do?

It’s a tough balance. Turning some away might be the wrong answer in today’s economy. Putting in extra hours is probably a good idea. But there’s a risk to this sudden influx of new commitments: the consultant notices that he or she doesn’t deliver as quickly anymore. And some might say that he or she is working too long each day. And there’s the risk that this “overwork” will diminish the amount of time to market.

Guess what. There’s no easy answer. Every business needs to find that special state of Zen in which they have a healthy number of commitments to continue earning an income but marketing in such a way that there is and continuously full pipeline. And they need to acknowledge that new potential commitments could suddenly increase and they should be prepared for it… but not to the detriment of their business today.

So, the consultant should leave a bit of ‘wiggle room’ (but not too much) to market and perhaps a bit more (but not too much) just in case there is a sudden influx of clients. And the manufacturer should leave just a bit of excess inventory (but not too much) to manage any surprise and they should have a plan in place to produce more inventory (but not too much) if demand rises unexpectedly.

In the next blog (tommorrow), I’ll give some more ideas about what businesses can do to work with this conundrum.

Speak Soon,

Heather

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