Archive for business growth
Boldly Build Your Way to Business Success, by Ali Brown
Posted by: | Comments
As you’re growing your business, your own personal level of confidence and passion comes into play on a number of levels. When you’re confident in your business and you’re working on a project you love, your clients can tell. In fact, they feed from your positive energy and learn to trust you as a resource. That’s why choosing the right path and taking the right steps along the way can tremendously improve your business – and your bottom line.
Here’s how.
Match your business to your personality. Passion is a broad, often abstract concept, but personality is a bit easier to define. Both are important considerations as you’re deciding on a business model. You might be passionate about writing, but if your personality craves social interaction, then sitting alone at your computer for hours probably won’t bring you happiness.
You might decide to join forces with other creative professionals and offer a full slate of marketing and creative services, or you could incorporate teaching and speaking into your business model. On the other hand, if you dread being in the spotlight, then an online business might be a perfect fit for your personality.
Build your skill set. Many career coaches will advise you to “follow your passion,” but you also need a strategy for monetizing it. If your beloved hobby isn’t profitable, then think about related interests or search for something else that ignites that feeling of passion. If you’re passionate about an area where you already have in-depth knowledge and a money-making idea, then you’re in great shape already! If not, then buckle down and start building your expertise.
Regardless of what your business does, many business-owners benefit from taking classes in negotiation and public speaking. You never know when you might have the chance to appear on camera or on a panel, and you’ll want to be ready!
Offer solutions. Meeting the needs of your customers is a huge confidence booster! When you satisfy someone else and solve their problems, you feel better about yourself, too. Think about what products, services, or other ideas will make your customer’s lives easier and better. What problems do they face? What frustrates them or prevents them from achieving their full potential? How you can alleviate those issues? This is a great way to capitalize on your passion and make money in the process.
Do it better than the competition. Knowing you are the best at what you do serves the needs of your clients and gives you a competitive edge. You don’t need to be the most innovative or famous if you know that your company can deliver its products or services better than any of its competitors. Friendly, prompt customer service goes a long way in edging out the competition, because so few companies make it a priority.
Entrepreneurial confidence comes from many sources. Remember, you are “designing your business to create an extraordinary life,” so let no part of you suffer to succeed, and success will surely be yours!
Self-made multimillionaire entrepreneur and Inc. 500 CEO Ali Brown is devoted to creating financial freedom for women globally through the power of entrepreneurship. To learn how to create wealth and live an extraordinary life now, register for her free weekly articles at www.AliBrown.com
5 Signs That You May Need to Hire an Online Business Manager, by Tina Forsyth
Posted by: | Comments
Wondering if you should hire an Online Business Manager?
Here are 5 tell-tale signs that it may be time for you to add an OBM to your team.
- 1. Your business is growing while your own free-time is shrinking.
- I’m betting you started your business to create more freedom in your life yes? Freedom of time, money and choice. Let me ask you – as your business grows are you actually working more or less time?
If you are on the ‘working more time’ side of things you certainly aren’t alone… I can’t count how many times i’ve talked to business owners who have shared how they are actually working more hours in their own business than they ever did in their ‘old job’.
However it doesn’t have to be this way… as a business owner you have the ‘freedom of choice’ to be able to make changes in your business, including hiring the right help to get stuff off your plate.
This is exactly what an Online Business Manager does – their main focus is to free up the business owner so that they can focus their time and energy on the things that only THEY can do in their business.
2. You are having to turn away opportunities because you are so busy!
This is a sad by-product of the first point. Are you so busy that you can’t take advantage of the opportunities that are coming your way? Do you ever find yourself saying “I would love to do X and know it would be a great new revenue stream… but I simply don’t have the time for it right now… ”
Not only can an Online Business Manager help free up your own time to be able to explore these opportunities, they can also work on bringing some of these opportunities to life for you! An Online Business Manager is very focused on implementation, and can help manage the process of creating new revenue streams in your business from concept to launch.
3. You are still doing things the same things you were doing when you started your business.
Remember when you first started your business and had to wear many hats? You were the cook, hostess, waitress and busboy (so to speak, hehe.) Now that your business is growing, are you still doing the same things as you were in the beginning? Are you still updating your own website? Are you still managing your shopping cart? Are you still answering all your customer service emails?
As your business grows your role will (and should!) change. An Online Business Manager can lovingly ’slap your wrist’ when it comes to you doing some of these things… helping you let go of some of the ‘old’ stuff taking up your time that gets in the way of you growing your business.
4. You have a great team, but find yourself frustrated by them always ‘bugging’ you.
This is actually a very common complaint from business owners – they have a great team of VAs, webmasters and such. And yet they are constantly frustrated by how much their team needs from them. They feel like someone is always tapping them on the shoulder with a question or request. The thing is, your team does need someone to manage them. They need someone who they can turn to with questions, to get what they need to complete their projects quickly and on time.
And if there is not an Online Business Manager on the team who do they turn to? You – the business owner. As a colleague of mine so eloquently shared: “My VAs were doing a fine job – it was ME who was unhappy managing them.” Most business owners really don’t enjoying being managers, and i’m guessing this may be the same for you. An Online Business Manager becomes the key point of contact for your team – all questions, requests and such go to the OBM instead of you.
5. You are stuck at $X revenue and can’t seem to get past that point!
When you find yourself stuck at a certain point in revenue there is usually one thing getting in the way – you! My business partner Andrea Lee calls this the quarter million dollar speedbump (can be more or less than that of course) and a big part of the solution usually requires you removing yourself from the day-to-day of your business.
Start to ask yourself as you go about your day – do I need to be the person to do X? (with X being the many things you spend your time on each day.)
Chances are many things on your to-do list could be passed along to someone else on your team. And an Online Business Manager can help with that process by delegating and managing those tasks on your behalf.
Ready to hire an Online Business Manager?
Tina Forsyth is the author of Becoming an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Game with Your Clients and Yourself. She writes and consults in advanced online marketing and business systems for business owners and their support teams. www.OnlineBusinessManager.com
