April 15th, 2009 — MarketSmart
Here are 2 of the latest marketing tip submissions from our contest. You can get more tips, or enter your own for the chance to be published in our upcoming book ‘Small Business Marketing on a Milk Money Budget’ 365 Powerful, Cutting-Edge—and Affordable—Marketing Tactics
Every Small Business Owner Needs to Know. Watch this video and find out!
November 23rd, 2008 — ThinkSmart
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At the recent BNI International Conference in Los Angeles, almost one-thousand small business owners gathered to learn new revenue generating strategies, network with other like-minded entrepreneurs and create strategic relationships geared towards growing their business.
The special guest presenter, Brian Tracy, spoke on business building topics such as doubling your income and achieving financial independence. And as much respect as I have for the brilliance that Mr. Tracy brings to the business and sales world, I couldn’t help but think that he was not presenting any new ground breaking material…there was no rabbit in the hat, no magic blue pill…though as I looked around the room, all I saw was big eyed optimists looking for the ‘Answer’ to solve their problems, to get them focused, to generate more business and money than they could ever imagine. And as I continued to listen to Mr. Tracy present the importance of how the 80/20 rule relates to your daily activity and the overall results you are getting in your business, I noticed a strange act among the small business owning participants. In unison, they were nodding their heads up and down, they were taking notes, they were turning to the person next to them to say things like; ‘yes, he’s right’, or ’so true’. Now I understood. It wasn’t the fact that the information was not new. It was the unfortunate reality that small business owners are NOT doing what they are supposed to be doing on a daily basis, to generate the desired results that they truly want in their life and their business. The average small business owner is overwhelmed, unfocused and wearing al the hats! They know all of this stuff, their just not doing it.
What does this mean?
Well sure, it means that to increase revenues and profits and grow your business, you cannot allocate the same amount of time to all of your business management activities.
And of course, the secret to running a successful business—whether you have $1 million or $1 billion in annual sales—is to find out what you should be doing and hire, barter or outsource people to do everything else.
But this information alone is useless…you must TAKE action! You have to DO something about it!! If you choose to download this worksheet, promise me you will commit to taking action.
August 21st, 2008 — ThinkSmart
Vilfredo Pareto
One of the most popular observations I make watching small business owners is the never-ending spiral of trivial activities that they undertake day after day after day. Though most of these seem important and URGENT at the time, most are low leverage, meaning in six months it wouldn’t have made a difference whether they were done or not. We seem to focus on the trivial many versus the critical few.
Before you start another day in this overwhelm consider how the 80/20 rule plays a role in your business. The Italian economist taught us that 80% of the affects come from 20% of the causes. While you probably can already confirm that 80% of the time you wear only 20% of the clothes in your closet, consider that 80% of your results are coming from 20% of your activities in your business. So what are those activities? Most likely they are one of three things: attracting more clients, generating more revenue from existing clients or increasing profit margins. Start looking at your moment to moment activities and question yourself on their impact. By the way, you might also find that 80% of your sales are coming from 20% of your clients.
Rick Lugash
