Management

Search expert Danny Sullivan has written a great piece on small business and local search, echoing my own words here on the Open Forum blog. From his post:

I spent the past 12 years living in a small English village, where there was little need to turn to search engines if I needed help with my home. Everyone in the village knew who the plumber was, the two people who painted homes or that if you wanted a meal delivered, only one little Chinese food place would make the trip out. Dominos Pizza? Forget it.

Now I’ve just moved back to where I’m originally from, suburban Southern California. Getting my new house in order has sent me to search engines again and again, leaving me almost in shock at the mess I find out there.

Sometimes cartoons just fall into your lap.

I was in this very meeting with our manager trying to motivate us with all manner of sports related inspiration.”It’s the ninth inning, people, and the bases are loaded with sales! It’s fourth and inches! They’re on the ropes! Time for a slam dunk!”

Not being a sports guy, I didn’t find it particularly moving, but it did make for a good cartoon. read more

One of the Psychology Today blogs provided three great tips to combating procrastination in a posting called “3 Tips to Reduce Procrastination.” Here’s my interpretation of the posting.

1. Just get started. Research shows that starting a task changes our perceptions of that task. If you wait for the perfect time, you might never get started–indeed, waiting for the perfect time might be the start of procrastination.
2. Suck it up. Don’t chase after good feelings. Every task has its unpleasant characteristics. You just have to gut through them. I’ve found that when I just get started and suck it up the task usually becomes satisfying and procrastination goes away.
3. Be honest with yourself. Don’t trick yourself into thinking that you work better under better conditions and put off the task until those condition exist. When you recognize this self-deception, remind yourself of steps 1 and 2.

These tips are great for everyday productivity if you have a tendency to procrastinate, but there are also some useful lessons for small businesses–especially in these economic times. If you have a great product, don’t procrastinate by obsessing about every imperfection and try to make the perfect product.

Instead, get your company going, don’t be afraid to meet the challenges when they arise, and get into the market. You can improve upon the specifics as you go. If we had waited for the perfect Macintosh, we would have never shipped. To paraphrase Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, be crappy.”

The smartest investment you’ll make in this economy is your investment in your employees. Companies that plan to survive, even thrive, in this economy should increase their investments in their employees. That’s right. Companies should invest more in their employees during this challenging economic period.

Forget those CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) or CDSs (collateralized debt swaps) and Wall Street banks hoping for a comeback or those secret Santa Claus-like portfolios of sub-prime home loans you’ve heard are all the rage. Forget about green energy technologies like wind or solar or geothermal. The smartest investment you’ll make in this or any economy is your investments in your employees.

Now’s the time to not only maintain your current investment program of salary and benefits (You do offer benefits, don’t you?), but find ways to increase that investment. Here’s why: Employees are your company’s number one asset. Oh sure, we’ve all heard that cliche bandied about. Peter Drucker, the legendary management expert, coined that phrase decades ago. It stuck. It stuck because it’s true.

Who makes your company’s products and services? Who talks to your customers? Whose efforts make them love your company and tolerate your mistakes to their credit cards and bank accounts that ruin their day and waste their time? And, who comes up with the systemic solutions to those problems? read more

The best advice I ever heard was when a wise person said to me the time to evaluate your business cost and cash position is not when times are tough but when times are good. Even so, most people don’t do that. However, there are many things a business can do to weather rocky financial conditions. They fall into three buckets: managing costs, managing cash flow and increasing business volume.

Managing costs

Now more than ever it is easier to reduce costs by doing many tasks electronically. For instance:

1. Move routine communications to email or instant messaging.
2. Bank online for both payments and receipts.
3. Bill electronically.

At an operational level, you should be scrutinizing every expense or overhead line item, looking for areas of waste or opportunities to lower cost:

1. Negotiate new terms for property leases, offering longer terms at a reduced rate.
2. Where possible, consolidate occupancy.
3. Consider switching to homeworking for staff ,and so release property requirements but ensure that communications will not be impeded.
4. Consider the extent to which you can operate hot desking.
5. Negotiate or switch communications carriers ensuring that each category (voice, mobile and data) is optimized for your consumption levels. read more

Great news! The lure of Wall Street and disproportionately paid finance executives is finally behind us. The current debacle presents an amazing opportunity to liberate America’s top talent from the great opportunity cost of being brave and starting something new. For the first time in decades, the most talented people might actually follow their true interests rather than the masses. Our economy will benefit in the long-term if we have the brightest minds taking the risks to make new and bold ideas happen.

Here are three reasons why I’m excited about the future:

(1) Bright minds will want to create value rather than move money.
Over the past decade, the smartest students I have known have sought a career in finance (my sample set are former classmates at Cornell University and Harvard Business School). Why? Because the classic story of the superstar banker or hedge fund manager making tens of millions of dollars per year was too salivating to pass up. The logic for ambitious, bright, over-achievers was: Get the best job in finance and have surefire success. Well, the migration of the brightest and most motivated minds to the world of finance – an industry based on moving money around and devoid of value-creation – made the notion of entrepreneurship and starting a small business seem sub-par. Suddenly, as Wall Street suffers, the brilliant minds are considering “something different.” The risk of pursuing a new idea or jumping into a friend’s start-up effort seems a little more tolerable or, dare we say, safe. read more

Legendary companies like Google and Goldman Sachs are famous for saying that success is all about people. Gathering great talent, it seems, is a sure bet for tremendous breakthroughs. Entire industries have sprung up to help managers find and hire top talent (think head-hunters!). And many leaders claim that all they think about is finding great people — “nothing,” they claim, “is more important than hiring a great team.”

Ahh, if only “success” could be so simple! There are many examples of incredible groups of people that assemble and fail to achieve greatness. Whether it is the largest software company in the world that pays top dollar for talent but creates sub-par products, or the small start-up of all-stars that can’t launch a product — we learn that a “hire great people” strategy won’t cut it. When great people fail, they tend to blame the quality of the idea or the market conditions. However, we have started to notice another ingredient that seems to be a BETTER predictor of success than people: Chemistry. read more

Today I was speaking to a long time friend of mine, who happens to be an accountant (CPA) and all-around guru in business finances and taxes.

In listening to him, I was reminded that no matter how much technology you purchase and how well you implement it in your business, you need the basics of business properly implemented first. Cash flow. Sales. Marketing. Employees. Location. Business Processes.

In fact you can use technology to do these things better, faster and smarter. But the fundamentals of each of these things is not anchored in technology, they should be anchored in core business fundamentals.

Inc Magazine columnist and serial entrepreneur Norm Brodsky, has a new book The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up and it is filled with insight on the real life fundamental’s of business growth. The book is co-authored by Bo Burlingham, editor-at-large of Inc Magazine and author of another great book, Small Giants.

While you are on the road to growing your business, keep in mind that your expertise, which your business is based on, is important. Maybe you are a florist and sell flowers, or a dentist and have a dental practice or are a graphic designer or design book covers. However, whatever your expertise is, surrounding yourself with and seeking the advice of others who can guide you into how to hire better, sell better, manage your cash flow or retain great employees is the only way your business will really grow. Norm and Bo dispense years of advice in The Knack. read more