Today’s question comes from a busy professional:
I can’t seem to stay motive past a few weeks on my New Year’s Resolutions. How can I stay motivated in my New Year’s Resolutions?
You are not alone. Although many of us make resolutions, only 10% of us actually keep them.
A busy professional has this question regarding project management:
How can I manage multiple web projects with a deadline without outsourcing?
I don’t have money to invest in outsourcing. Beside outsourcing, what is the most effective way of complete 20 website design projects that are fully monetized and traffic generation optimized on or before December 2017? I fell into the folly of pursuing many site projects at the same time and I don’t want to give up. I strongly believe nothing is impossible to him who believes. I’m in dire need of an expert’s advice please.
Without understanding the full scope of each project, there are a few things to consider and try.
In order to keep your clients – you need to be realistic and transparent about your talents and delivery schedule. Tell your clients your current situation and give them a chance to either work with you or find another website developer. This is the only way to keep your clients welfare and business in good standing.
At best – it would be selfish and unprofessional to jeopardize your clients’ business and income – because your mismanaged your business. At worst, knowingly taking money for projects that you cannot deliver is fraud.
Please, share your plans with your clients and give them the opportunity to decide what they want to do.
Have a list of other website developers that you can refer them to – as an option. Work with affiliated referral partners to create a referral program – for cases such as this (more information on this below).
Work with each client to minimize the requirements and delivery timeline. By this I mean, identify exactly what needs to be delivered and when. This may allow you to interlace your deliverables in phases to each of your clients. Although this may extend the delivery to the entire projects past December 2017 – it may allow a working version of all the sites by December 2017. This may allow all your clients to accomplish their goals, even though the full contract hasn’t been delivered in the original time schedule.
In either way – please be transparent to your clients regarding your schedule dilemma.
Investigate using routings or pre-tested functions/packages that do the required tasks (versus coding manually yourself). This is different from outsourcing because you are doing a one-time purchase of the features or functions that you are interested in. Your task would be to successfully integrate them into your various websites. You can often purchase functionality at low costs or even free on open source sites.
The negative is the maintenance of such routines. It might take you longer to fix any issues found in that code.
Although your contract may promise a December 2017 delivery date, some of your clients may agree to extend the deadline. Offer discounts or additional free months of maintenance to their contract in order to extend the deadline. Create a new contract that outlines exactly what will be delivered in each phases, what the clients will be able to do with their website and when it will be finalized. These changes in the statement of work needs to be documented and signed to afford problems in the future.
Actually give away some of the projects to other website developers that you hold in high regards. This allows you to keep your promises to your clients and refer business to other website developers. This also opens the door for those same website developers to hand-off business to your when they are over-loaded. Discuss some type of referral fee when you and your referral partners exchange business as a way to motivate referrals.
As you mentioned earlier – this is your folly to schedule so many website projects in the same project schedule. Don’t let your clients suffer for your mismanagement. Your foremost goals is to keep your client’s welfare in mind at all time – even if that means you not making the profit.
Sometimes you can best serve your clients by referring them to someone else.
If you need additional help on this, just let me know.
A busy professional has this question regarding branding and marketing:
What is the best way to advertise a forum on a niche topic?
I have a forum on a niche topic. I am advertising the forum via ads (Although some of the keywords have low quality scores, they are all very specific to this niche).
Now, do I directly link the ad to the forum home page, or add some high quality article/posts around the ads? Does this matter?
Thanks in advance for any help. I didn’t find the right answer from searching the internet.
Whether you are marketing your forum, book, website, product or service, you can use similar marketing strategies. But a successful marketing strategy has lots of moving parts and tools. I recommend doing a combination of things:
It will take time to create a following from scratch. Therefore, investigate or go where your target marketing is already. For instance, if your target market is parents, you might want to visit or guest speak at forums for single parents, divorced dads, and other topics that interest your same target group.
As you can see – there’s no 1 thing that you do. There’s a never-ending list of things you can do to market and expose your forum.
To help narrow your focus, clearly describe your target audience or personas. By deciding the age group, interests, income, hobbies, and lifestyle – you can better focus your marketing strategies to get the bigger bang for your time and budget.
A busy professional asks a question regarding customer sales.
I’m an international trading clerk, I have some customers who used to talk to me smoothly, but once I give them the price, they don’t reply me or even a comment on the price. So how should I contact them in a polite and comfortable way as a follow up?
Well, email isn’t the only tool in your toolbox. Also email isn’t actually “talking to you smoothly”. My recommendation is to use email:
One recommendation is don’t craft a polite email, call them. Calling them shows that you’re serious about winning their business, as you actually took time out of your day to follow up in a more personal manner. Attempting to speak with them directly shows initiative on your part, and a desire to do what is necessary to not only wins their business, but to retain it.
With an actual phone conversation, you can provide additional information, demonstrations, and charm them with your personality and sense of humor. You can also discuss next steps and get verbal agreements throughout the conversation. Verbal agreements lead to sales.
As far as price: price is never the biggest sticking point in the prospect decision making process. It’s usually that
Bantering through email doesn’t really resolve any of these things.
Consider a more personal approach:
Bottom line: If one method of communication isn’t working, do not continue with that method. Switch it up and make your next method more personal with a sense of urgency.
See what you think about those ideas.
This question came from a loving parent and business owner.
How do I define my role in my daughter’s business that I will be funding?
My daughter wants to start her own business in a field in which she is not only certified, with 5 yrs. experience, a solid client list, but has some excellent ideas in which to grow the clientele. She has no credit, so my husband and I would be taking out the loan on her behalf. How do we ensure that we get our ROI? She has already asked me to help her with bill paying and such. I have read the posts about silent partners, but I’m unsure that is what I’ll be.
Starting a new business is not an easy endeavor and many businesses fail within the first 3-5 years. If they do succeed, it may not be until the 5th year until they see any profits.
Add to this the complication of loaning a child or family member and you are in very, very risky territory.
It is very difficult to “loan” a children money, because even though they may initially recognize it as a “loan”, they often it do not pay it back. Other expenses take precedence and they are predisposed to accepting your help. This is doubly risky if you introduce the idea of “investing” or becoming a silent partner. You are now “investing” in a new business that may not succeed or may take several years to see any profits. Therefore if you have to take out a loan that you need to be paying back in a timely fashion, I do not recommend “investing” as a silent partner. Investments are not guaranteed to be paid back. A new business is a gamble. And if you do not have the money to lose, do not do it.
Instead – treat this as a strict business loan with payback expectations (along with any interest you agree as your ROI – as well as timelines for payback).
Have a signed contract with well-defined payment schedule AND consequences for defaulting on the loan. Avoid a payment schedule that states “payment due when business starts to make money” (or anything similar). Don’t tie the payment schedule to her business success…. BUT consider her Business Plans and income forecasts when defining a tangible schedule with actual dates. (Even silent partners do their homework to verify that the Business Plan is solid and there is actually a reasonable expectation of ROI)
For instance – Require her to show you her Business Plan with income forecasts, budgets, expenses, and forecast revenues. Help her with coming up a realistic Business plan. DO NOT TAKE OUT THE LOAN IN YOUR NAME until you see and approve of her detail business plan. Demand that the loan payment become a regular expense in their business plan (just like any other business expense).
Then create a calendar of payments based on her actual revenue forecasts. Review her company expense schedule to verify that the load payment is included as a regular fee of doing business.
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Also include consequences for not meeting those payment schedules (late fees, payment in other forms, payment extension with increased interest rates, etc).
For instance, if her business folds or she abandons the business – she still needs to meet the payment schedule BECAUSE you still need to pay back the loan (regardless). Iron out all the scenarios and exit strategies if things do not go as plan. Do you expect late-payment fees, etc. How many months of non-payment determines an abandonment – and what would the next step in that scenario. Do you want to hold any collateral for payment, etc.
You will want to iron all these scenarios out and make the expectations clear up front. Do your homework to make sure this even makes sense. Or hire a business coach to help you with these decisions and help her with a realistic business plan. Understand the start-up costs, the recurring costs, the target revenue goals, what steps will be taken if the revenue goals are off-target, the resources and equipment needs, and everything else a realistic business plan covers.
If you don’t want to approach this as a business loan – then just agree to “gift” her money (with ZERO expectations of ROI or repayment). And only give her money you can afford to lose (not get paid back).
I know your situation is different. If you would like additional information on this topic, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It’s easy to sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ
With enough notice, it would be my honor to guest-speak at no cost to your group organization.
Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of the business and time management books TimePeace: Making peace with time – the The Book of Answers: 105 Career Critical Situations – and I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.
Today’s discussion is regarding how to break bad news to employees.
A busy professional asks:
How do I break bad news to employees? It might be staffing changes, a lost contract or even the death of someone close to the business. When should I:
Giving bad news is never comfortable, but necessary. The way you do it can influence the way people accept the news.
Some tips:
See what you think about those ideas.
I know your situation is different. If you would like additional information on this topic, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It’s easy to sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ
With enough notice, it would be my honor to guest-speak at no cost to your group organization.
Today’s question came from a busy entrepreneur the same week of Small Business Saturday:
I have a small business on the side and I want to take full advantage of small business Saturday. My business is a retail mom and pop type store, but I do have budget for advertising.
I applaud that you want to take the most advantage of the Small Business Saturday event. The mistake that most small business owners make is to look at each event (such as the Small Business Saturday) as a “single entity” or single opportunity. Unfortunately, by taking each event as they come (as in this question arriving the week of Small Business Saturday) – you are actually too late to actually do something meaningful for and with it.
The key to taking full advantage of Small Business Saturday – is to recognize that it’s just one of many business opportunities to take advantage and leverage.
Here are some ideas to implement in your current marketing plan:
As you can see, to take full advantage of anything – you need up-front planning. For example – creating a Retail Block Party Sale for Small Business Saturday will take lots of time and collaboration. Defining cross-promotional service bundles or packages (to lure more people to your block) takes planning. This is not something you can turn around in few days. But is you mapped out all your business opportunities a year in advance – you would have the time to take full advantage of these single dates.
If you need more information on this or help, just let me know.
I know your situation is different. If you would like additional information on this topic, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It’s easy to sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ
With enough notice, it would be my honor to guest-speak at no cost to your group organization.
Today’s question came from a busy professional and business owner.
How do I work with team members located in different parts of the world?
I want to work effectively with team members located in different parts of the world. How do I ensure that location, time difference, culture and beliefs and personality will not affect my work with the team?
Whether you team members are across town or across the world, creating a Communication Plan fits the build.
Your communication plan includes (but not limited to):
1) A directory of your significant members, preferred method of communication, telephone numbers, email addresses, Skype id, Time Zones, etc
2) How you plan to convey regular Status information (daily meetings, weekly meetings, emails, phone calls, etc)
3) How you plan to convey Critical or High Priority information (phone call? text?)
4) Your Service Agreement or Response time expectations (respond by EOD, within 1 business day, within 2 hours).
5) What is expected when someone misses a meeting. Are you going to have the meetings recorded?
6) Where you are locating your shared meeting minutes, presentations, audios, or other materials. Will you be recording your meetings and placing them on a shared location for people to refer to, etc.
7) Incorporate weekly or twice-a-month one-on-one meetings with each team member. Regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings (via phone or in person) eliminate much confusion that email may cause.
8) Supply templates and checklists to assure the work gets completed the way you way, each time. Consistency eliminates confusion and errors. If people are getting your status in the same way each week (and vice-versa), they know what to expect and how to respond.
You communication plans should also consider vacation schedules. Regardless of your holiday hours, make sure you consider the following:
For additional information on this topic, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It’s easy to sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ
Today’s take-away is that Numbers Move People.
If you need a way to move coworkers, clients, managers, family members or even yourself toward action, consider adding a number to your conversation.
Numbers help people move toward a decision and action. Whether it’s a calendar date, a meeting time, a price for service or product, salary, or even that pesky number on the bathroom scale; numbers move people into action.
Consider the number ZERO – as in A Complimentary or Free eBook, White Paper, or other offer. That Zero Cost item attracts many people to share their contact information with you.
Ways to influence others with number come in many forms.
Whether you are in the corporate environment or starting your own business, you need to understand your numbers.
If you are in business for yourself, you need to understand:
If you are in the corporate world, you need to understand:
If you are working with clients, and they are on the fence on something; find a way to add a number to the conversation.
Some examples could be:
These are just a few ways numbers can influence us and keep us moving forward.
For additional information on how to use numbers to your advantage, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It’s easy to sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ
Today we are very fortunate to have a TV program to emulate regarding the perfect pitch deck. If you haven’t already watched ABC’s the Shark Tank, make the time to watch and take notes.
It gives you a very good illustration of pitching to investors. Even though the ABC’s reality show “Shark Tank” is available for all to learn from, I am always surprised when an entrepreneur shows up unprepared.
If you are interested, I have a list of the most frequently asked Shark Tank questions in a separate article Things we can learn from Shark Tank
For now, below is a list of 6 big pitch deck mistakes that you may be making:
We will cover each mistake separately.
Many entrepreneurs are so focused on their own product, their own needs, and their own wants – that they forget the true goal of this presentation. Your goal is to adequately interest the investors such that they will want to do business with you.
People do business with people they know, like and trust. And the quickest way to earn trust is to show the investors that you already know them, what their needs and wants are, and how your product or service can help them reach their goals.
In other words, why should they care about you and your products or services?
Use Stephen Covey’s 5 Habit from his top-selling 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “Seek first to understand, and then be understood”
Spend time researching your investors. Find out what excites them. Find out how they make their investment money back.
Your prepared pitch should be no longer than 5-8 minute in length. So you really need to get your investor’s attention quickly. If they are interested, they will ask additional questions and will get to know you better. Your pitch needs to interest them quickly.
Once you have a better understanding of your audience, make sure you get to the important stuff as quickly and succinctly as possible. What is the “important stuff”? The important stuff is the stuff that the investors care about (and not necessarily what you care about).
This is where watching the Shark Tank will help. Here are some of the typical questions you need to cover, and a fuller list is available at: Things we can learn from Shark Tank
A pitch presentation falls into the category of a training presentation: “Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you have told them”. But many forget the summary or “tell them what you have told them” part. Your summary should end with a CALL TO ACTION.
Investors are interested in a quick return on their investment; therefore, make sure you understand your numbers. And just knowing the dollar figure isn’t enough. You need to be able to articulate where these numbers are coming from, on what platform, are they driven by promotions, and what sort of partners are you working with? Is the marketing working? What does it cost to produce? What are your expenses?
Know your sales information inside and out.
You won’t have much time; therefore, make the best use of that time. Incorporating the investor’s terminology and experience into your pitch will not only eliminate miscommunication but lead them to feel that you already speak the same language. That you are connected.
Don’t fall into the trap of creating 1-perfect-pitch-deck. Consider having a “perfect-pitch-deck template”. By understanding your audience, their terminology, and their unique interest in your products or services, you can tweak and quickly customize your single-perfect-pitch-deck template to win-over each unique investor.
Now that we’ve discussed mistakes to avoid, below is a quick list of things to think about when preparing your “pitch”.
At the end of the day, there are various Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind. The best recommendation is to run your pitch deck past a “mock Shark Tank”. One such “mock Shark Tank” panel are the experts at Crowdsourcia. You can’t go wrong with this set of experts.