How Taking Care of Business?

An alarming number of business owners believe that when they're building a business they shouldn't pay themselves a salary. They sacrifice their own income for many years to get their business up and running. Venture capitalists call this "sweat equity". I call it working for nothing and being a fool.

The inability to pay yourself a reasonable salary is a red flag that your business is not working. Making loans to the company so you can pay yourself, and not charging the company rent if you own the building, are equally foolish. If your business doesn't allow you to pay yourself a living wage, what are you doing wrong?

Of the more than 6,000 businesses I've worked with, I can't think of a single one that failed because the owner paid himself or herself a decent salary. You've got to take care of yourself first. There's a pervasive belief among small business owners that "One day I'll get mine." These are good people raised with the simple edict that you should work hard, treat people fairly, and be patient. THERE ARE NO RICH MARTYRS! When they have a bad year with no profits, they take a second mortgage on their homes so they can afford to pay their workers a holiday bonus. It's nice to treat people fairly, but not at your expense. The only thing you're going to end up with is a large amount of personal debt.

Always work to make a good salary. THEN cover the expenses. Not the other way around. And if things are tight, don't be the only one to take a pay cut, everyone should make adjustments. 5% pay cuts all around and if you fear employees will leave, let them. If they're that uncommitted to their job, why would you want them to stick around? You are not in business to be a benefactor. You started your company to make money and build wealth. Why work for free so others don't have to tighten their belts?

I have established a rough formula for how much salary business owners should pay themselves, before profit distributions.

FORMULA: Pay yourself 3 to 4 cents on each dollar of revenue for doing the job of CEO. If you have a ten million dollar business, the ownership, should be receiving $300,000 to $400,000 in total salary.

Remember, after you and the owners pay yourselves salaries, your business should still be making profits equal to the top quarter of your industry, not the bottom half. If you can't afford to pay yourself the first few cents on every dollar, there's something seriously wrong with your business model and you need to fix it.

Paying yourself is not just a way of keeping check on the health of the business. If you're sacrificing yourself and scaling back on expenses for yourself and your family, you're not in the best position to lead. Take care of yourself first so you can stay sharp and become the kind of boss you need to be to take your business to the next level. You can't lead the way if you're behind the pack. And then by all means enjoy the good life.

5 Ways to Simplify Your Life As a Small Business Owner

Most small business owners decided to start their own business because they believed it would allow them the freedom and flexibility to set their own schedule, make their own decisions, and only work as much as they wanted to. They might have thought that running a small business would give them more personal time and the opportunity to explore other activities outside of work. However, the nature of running a small business is such that most small business owners quickly discover that their business is controlling their entire life, and that they are working much harder than they ever did at any previous job. This is why it is always crucial for business owners take a step back and consider ways in which they can simplify their lives, practice better time management, and be more focused on the issues that are truly pressing at their business.

Here are five tips that will help you if you find yourself in this predicament:

1. Quit Sweating the Small Stuff

Don't let the minutia of owning and operating a business get in the way of you working effectively to achieve larger goals. While the small details of your business are certainly important, you can't let them hold you back from the more large-scale projects and tasks that you must accomplish. The lesson applies to perfectionists too: you will either have to let the small details and problems wait, or you will need to expand your staff to take care of them for you.

2. Set Concrete Goals

One way to deal with the issue of having too many projects to deal with at the same time is to set concrete goals and follow timetables. Once a week on Monday mornings, or every day - if necessary - write down a list of the goals you hope to accomplish that week or day. Keep your goals realistic. Remember how much time you have and who is helping. No matter what issues may arise, ask yourself a few times every day, "Am I doing what I need to to accomplish my goals for the week?"

3. Stop Planning, Start Doing

There is at least one new study, blog entry, book, or Podcast published every week to help small business owners achieve success. Especially when it comes to small business marketing - a rapidly evolving and expanding field - it seems like there is way more information out there than any small business owner could feasibly comprehend and follow. This is why it is more important to take a look at what has actually worked to produce money for your business, and to use this knowledge as your own framework for success. You know your own business better than any author does, no matter how reputable they may be.

4. Allocate a Certain Amount of Time To Your Personal Life Every Week

No matter how pressing the issues confronting your business may be, there is nothing more important than your own health and happiness when it comes to running a business well. Balance is extremely important. If you are feeling overworked, exhausted, or overly stressed out, your emotions might begin to affect the way you work and the people with whom you work. There is nothing worse than snapping at a staff member or a customer because you aren't tending to your own well being. Give yourself a certain amount of time every week to spend with people you love, or doing the things you love, to help clear your head from all the work-related stress.

5. Make Your Workplace Your Happy Place

Regardless of how much you choose to follow the preceding four tips, the fact remains that, as a business owner, you will be spending a very large portion of your daily life in your workplace. This is why it is crucial to make sure that you enjoy your surroundings as much as possible. Hang up pictures of the people you love, bring some of your favorite or most sentimental pieces of art from home, or decorate in whatever other way makes you feel comfortable and at peace. Buy yourself a comfortable chair or invest in a nice sound system to play your favorite album (if the nature of your business permits it). Personalizing your work space and making it somewhere you like to spend your time will reflect in your work ethic and attitude more than you may realize.

Five Must Follow Trends for Your 2012 Events

Individuals have become digitized now-a-days with the emergence of various social media websites, interactive online games, and smart mobile devices. The present age of information and technology has provided them with new ways of connecting, interacting, and sharing their thoughts and ideas with other like-minded people. The emergence of the internet has, therefore, made organizations use the above-mentioned online channels to promote their events and activities to reach out to even more audience.

In this article, I have discussed the 5 must-follow trends for organizing events this year as well as for the upcoming ones.

Registration Software

The registration software lets you easily create and publish event registration forms online. You don't need to buy, install, or download any software or hardware to use this solution. All it needs is a PC and an internet connection to get started with the sign-up process. Since the solution is Cloud-based, anyone, sitting at any corner of the world, can access your event registration portal to complete registering their names. Moreover, this web-based registration software comes with an integrated payment option to let you easily pay the registration fees using credit cards, PayPal, and similar other standard payment gateways.

Webinars

Webinars refer to meetings and seminars hosted over the internet. You no longer have to be physically present to attend these programs. Several social media tools (Skype and so on) have made it possible for organizations to set-up an important conference from a remote location. You can even conduct multiple webinars simultaneously via the video conferencing facility. You will get to see all the participants as well as carry on live discussions and file transfers without any problem.

Social Media Networking

Organizations can use a range of highly popular social media websites to promote their products and programs online. Social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others have millions of account holders. You can make use of these sites in your marketing ploy to make the event or product details visible to numerous people from various geographical boundaries.

Create an Application for Mobile Phones

Large to small businesses can use applications for mobile phones to market an event and keep the potential attendees engaged. Organizations can start using these mobile phone applications to send updates of their present and upcoming events to their attendees' handset.

Introduce Online Games

As an event planner, you can introduce some online interactive games for your attendees to play during an event. Through these online video games, you can create an environment where your guests will get a chance to interact with each other. It can also lead to exchange of business cards as well as have some fun and relaxation after a relevant meeting or seminar.

How Way to Get More Clients?

In a recent survey I conducted, 56.8% of the service providers surveyed cited "how to get clients" as the #1 challenge they face in their business. 34.7% of them said that the lack of "how to do it" marketing skill was the primary obstacle holding them back from success.

I'm going to address both issues in an effort to demystify this topic and help you get more clients, more easily. (I didn't say faster. More on that in a moment.)

A few weeks ago, I presented a webinar about getting more clients. In the webinar, I talked about how to create a "solar system" of things that slowly and gently PULL clients into your world. (The emphasis is on the words slowly and gently.)

That's key.

Why?

To answer that question, let me tell you a short story.

Right now, my wife is pregnant with our sixth child. She's a midwife, so I know a lot more about the birth process than probably 99.9% of men on this planet.

It is truly amazing when you understand the thousands and thousands of things that are going on as a little one grows from a tiny little spec into a full grown baby.

Perhaps the MOST amazing thing, however, is that the instructions and blueprint for that entire being are included right from the getgo.

Just like a plant growing in the garden, the course of its entire development (environmental influences aside) is programmed into that tiny seed.

The Same Thing Can Be Said About Your Clients

When your clients show up, they too contain just about everything for their development as a client of yours.

Where do they get their programming?

From your marketing of course. They get it from the system you use to attract clients.

If you have clients that balk at your fees, are annoying to work with and just make your life crazy, then take a look at your client attraction process.

Something in there led them to believe that their current behavior is acceptable to you.

Something in there attracted those folks to you.

You have to find out what that is and change it.

It all begins with...

The Care and Feeding of Leads

It's easy to get frustrated when you're trying to generate leads.

I'm sure you can think back to a time when you were talking to a prospect on the phone, everything seemed great, and you were 110% sure you'd get the business.

And then the business just up and disappeared.

That stinks.

Understand this: leads are just like plants. They require time to grow.

You don't just generate leads, you grow them.

You don't "get" clients, you grow them.

Think of yourself planting a garden. (This is hard for me because everything green I touch seems to die a very quick death. Hopefully you fare better with the plant kingdom.) When you plant your seeds, you don't expect to wake up the next day and find a beautiful garden.

In that case, you know that you have to provide the food and care required for the seeds to grow. If you rush things, you run the risk of killing the plants before they even have a chance.

It's no different with leads.

The process of generating a lead and having that lead become a client can take a long time.

It can require phone calls, and many, many touches where you deliver value to your prospect.

There is nothing wrong with this.

In fact, a long process is often preferable. If you force things, you become an obvious salesman in the eyes of your prospect.

If you don't force things, it is easier to cement yourself as a professional in the mind of your prospect.

As the leads come in, don't put pressure on yourself to "sell them." Simply take them as far as they will go and then put them on your follow-up system (you do have a follow-up system right?).

Some of the leads will close right away and others won't. This is how you fill your pipeline with business at various stages of development.

Then, you allow your systems (email, direct mail, public speaking, etc.) to provide the food and care required to grow them into a client.

But What If You Need to Get More Clients Fast?

I repeat: the best clients are the ones that slowly and gently end up at your doorstep, NOT the ones you beat over the head and drag back home. (As if that's a smart way to get a client anyway.)

My recommendation is to give up on the idea of getting clients fast. It can happen, it does happen and it will happen, but to make that your goal is not going to allow you to attract the quality clients you really want to be working with.

You have to have a SYSTEM. (Don't freak thinking this sounds complicated. A system can be one simple thing you do consistently.)

Three Ways to Feed Your Business Positively

I really enjoy feeding the birds this time of year. I set up a bird feeder in our backyard. The problem is that squirrels love bird seed, too.

I waged war on the bird-seed-stealing squirrels one winter. I borrowed an air rifle and looked for the squirrels as I walked by our bay window. I even put our younger daughter on alert-"Honey, let me know if you see a squirrel on our bird feeder."

That is, until one day she said, "Daddy, we used to look out the window for pretty birds. Now we look for ugly squirrels."

It's easy to stop looking for the beautiful qualities in your business these days, to cease listening for the lovely songs of the cash register cha-ching or the relieved look on a customer's face when you solve a problem; to miss the brilliant colors of the relationships you enjoy with employees and clients alike.

Here are three ways to look for the beautiful at work and feed your business positively.

Abstain from negative conversations

Choose your conversations carefully whether on the phone or in the hallway. Listen actively. Redirect quickly when the conversation spirals downward into negativity without a suggestion of course correction. Attempt to reframe-"Yes, and yet..."-if the redirect is ineffective. Remove yourself with "I must go" if the redirect or reframe fails.

Words impact our perception of reality. Think about how you feel after hanging up or what you're thinking as you walk away from conversations. Positive exchanges lift dark clouds and energize you. Negative words do the opposite.

Deal with conversations quickly. Ask yourself, "Where is this going? Do I want to participate?" and choose accordingly.

Allow for interruptions

You're goal-focused with a prioritized list for the day's activity. That's great-focus on the positive and do those things that increase your profitability most effectively.

Also, allow for interruptions which happen regardless. A customer appears suddenly with a situation you can resolve. A client calls in with an opportunity for more work.

It's easy when these detours appear on the day's path to get frustrated, and sideways in your mental model. Such a reaction prevents you from feeding your business positively.

Instead, anticipate interruptions. Deal with them positively, quickly, and effectively. If resolution is achieved in a matter of minutes, do it. If not, promise to get back with the person and get your Work Positive dream team on it.

Then return to your schedule with a renewed interest sustained by your expectation of interruptions.

Access news/information positively

When you watch TV and listen to radio news, you abdicate your editorial license to someone with a negative agenda. Your filters are down and you simply absorb. These are "push" media that will shove their spin into your mind...as you let them.

You Must Recruit Talent Now

Alright, so you're in charge of recruiting employees for your business. You want to recruit stars, but how? Well, there are a few things you need to do: understand their expectations, identify talents, define the job, prescreen candidates, and involve current employees. Recruiting stars is tough work but well worth it.

The first thing you should do is simply understand the expectations of talented employees. What's the salary? Benefits? The job environment? You should be upfront and honest during the interview: candidates expect you to be forthright about what it will be like working at your company.

Before the interview itself, though, you need to define the job. Don't just provide a vague title and description. Instead, go into detail about what the job entails, but still leave wiggle room for the candidate to bring their talents to the table. After all, stars are stars because they are unique! Here's a few tips to write great job descriptions:

    Job Title
    Start with a very typical job title and spruce it up a little bit. Read a few blog post about how to write magnetic headline and applies your learning here.

    About Our Company
    Prospect should understand what you do in the first two sentences. The rest of the paragraph would ideally describe: work environment, company mission, key statistics about the growth or success of the company, how big the company is, who are the executives and underlines the company values (with meaningful exemples only).

    About the Job
    Start with one or two sentences on why this is a great job. Is it about the people, the technical challenges, the manager, the growth or importance of the role inside the company, the travel, the pay: what is it that makes this job great?

    Requirements
    This is the absolute bare minimum requirements for the position. Keep it short. If you come up with 10, there's a problem and you should re-think your definition of requirements. 4 or 5 is good.

    Nice to Have
    This is where you can list all the things you'd like to see in a perfect candidate. It won't happen, but if one relates to 4-5 elements of your 10 items list, this is a pretty strong signal he might be in a good spot.

    Tone and style
    This is key. By reading the job post, a candidate should have a feel of either the company as a whole (works only for SMB) or the hiring manager style. The reader should be able to tell the type of person he/she will be working for from the style of writing: funny, laid-back, very corporate, precise, detailled, etc.

Now once a candidate applies, identify their talents so that you can cover this in the interview. Don't be afraid to check their Facebook profile or run a Google search. You can also identify talents through prescreening; that is, meet the candidate at a place like a coffee shop before the interview. This provides a chance for you to meet the candidate in an informal setting, which will allow the candidate to open up more.

How Warren Buffett Makes Money

Warren Buffett, a brilliant business man, one of the richest and most charitable people in the world, was being interviewed on CBS's "Person to Person". The premise of the show is to give viewers a glimpse into the lives of some of today's most important artists and newsmakers.

We got a tour of Buffett's office. I have no doubt that it was straightened up a bit before the cameras rolled but this is what I saw.

- An inviting room with a lot of natural light.

- A large desk with a lot of working space.

- A phone front and center.

- A small pile of reading material on the desk.

- Pictures on the wall representing some of the most influential people and moments of his life.

- And most notably... NO computer.

For the most part my office is a lot like Mr. Buffett's (okay, it's not quite as big). I have a lot of natural light. A nice, large desk. A small pile of paper on my desk of things that I'm currently working on and pictures around me of the most important and influential people in my life. The real difference is that my phone is a little left of center because my computer and monitor take front and center stage in my life.

How could Buffett not have a computer anywhere in his office? He's a gazillionaire and has made most of his fortune in the stock market buying and selling on information. I spent 15 years working on Wall Street. I know there HAS TO BE a computer and a TV. How else could he know what's going on in the world every single second?

Ahh... but that's just it. One of the things Buffett said during the interview was that he is happy if he makes one good decision a year. He does his research by speaking to people (on his phone) and by reading reports and other information (mostly on paper). He takes his time to study the landscape, make a few solid decisions and act on them. And when he acts he sticks with his decision. He is known for buying stock in a company and holding onto it for the long run.

I am positive that Buffett has missed out on a lot of opportunities with his way of thinking but at the same time his strategy has done pretty well.

Granted, he has many people working for him that consolidate information for him and present him with what he specifically wants, but he does not spend his day distracted by all of the incoming email and the second-by-second news headlines. He gives himself the space and permission to focus his attention on his decision making process and what works for him.

Here are my top seven takeaways from Mr. Buffett's interview.

1. Make one really good decision a year you're golden.

2. Don't try to do it all.

3. If you miss something it's okay.

4. When you take your time and make a solid decision stick with it and see where it goes. The day to day fluctuations aren't the concern it's performance over the long run.

5. It's all about connections. The most important thing in Buffett's office is his phone.

6. Don't forget what made you who you are and what's important to you. In addition to pictures of family, Buffett has his Dale Carnegie Speaking Class diploma on his wall. He swears that this $100 class is what led him to where he is today.

7. Remove the distractions. Move away from the computer when you need to really focus on something (or at least shut off the "you've got mail" notifications!).