Tech Travel Tip Tuesday: Keep a small power strip with your carry-on gadgets. When airport outlets are coveted, you'll make friends fast! - JetBlue on Twitter.
It's a great idea to network with other road warriors.
37Signals blog: Choosing the Right Things to Say No To.
“I’ve made much more money by choosing the right things to say no to than by choosing things to say yes to. I measure it by the money I haven’t lost and the quality I haven’t sacrificed.” - Danny Meyer of the Union Square Hospitality Group
Me, too. My biggest mistakes arose from my reluctance to say "no" and say it soon.
Be Excellent blog: Management and the Growth Challenge.
...building a stretch of strong internal growth depends on creating “a seamless, consistent, self-reinforcing alignment across strategy, execution processes, structure, leadership, culture, HR policies, accountability, technology, measurement and rewards. In other words, good growth leaders are able to think in a systems integrative mindset across functions
Small Business Trends: Get a free copy of Execution Revolution. (It's a great book. I've got my signed copy just to the left of my monitor.)
SmallBiz Survival: As Much as They Do.
The advertising has already started. It's Olympics time.
The Olympics is a collection of stories of hope, of overcoming insurmountable odds, of underdogs, of longshots. (In a sense, it's like a meeting of small business owners.)
Pick just one of these areas to work on for the next three months. Use every Olympic commercial you see or hear as a reminder to work on that area. Trim distractions out of your life for just this time.
Fred Wilson, at A VC blog, has 6 tips on Managing "Unproductive" Meetings.
They're all excellent. There's enough been said about the importance of managing your time and minimizing the distractions of unproductive meetings. And with a small business, time is even more precious. And there's good tips in the comments to his post, too.
Pay special attention to his thoughts on unscheduled meetings and the serendipity they bring to your day.
As CEO, time was of the essence. I had more than enough to do with reports and vendor relations and customers and marketing and leading and coaching, inspiring...so personally I was conflicted about how to handle unscheduled meetings:
YES. I always wanted everyone in the company to feel they could walk in my office at any time for any thing. The value of that came from the connectedness and openness and transparency and the spontaneous surprises of solutions.
NO. On the other hand, I also strove to make sure they had the confidence and resources and mandate to take the first 3-5 steps towards finding a solution on their own, including the inevitable failure or missteps. And interruptions are not innovations.
YES. I deferred to yes. Better to have too much connection, than too little.
From MyCustomers.com is a useful post if you're ready to install a CRM system. It lists 10 ways to implement CRM on a tight budget. They're practical, real-world, steps to make sure you get the right CRM at the right time.
I'd add an eleventh way:
11. Get the CRM you need 3 years from now.
Like kids and shoes, you're growing fast. Unlike kids and shoes, CRM programs are vastly more expensive and vastly more difficult to move from one to another. (Kids shoes just end up under their bed...) Buy the CRM system with the features you'll need in a few years, 3 is a good timeline. Sure, you won't use all of them now. Sure, it may be a bit more expensive...today. But you'll skip the pain and expense of moving to another platform 2-3 years from now when your data and dependence on that data has grown.
I like lists. I like them even more if they follow my personal A-B-C's for list: A. short; B. useful; C. well-written.
Gene Marks penned for Business Week his Ten Penny-Pinching Ideas for 2008. His list satisfies my A-B-C's, completely. Here's a few samples, in hopes you'll be enticed to read his whole post:
1. Increase your network bandwidth.
Faster is better. Just ask Laurie. She found that the faster she could enter an invoice, print a check, or record a customer order, the faster she could get on to the next productive task. [ Pretty obvious. But, so many businesses of every size don't make that connection.]
2. Set up remote access.
Work isn't done just between the four walls of your office. Get with the program! People like to do work over lattes. They like to access their files while driving down the turnpike. They want to send e-mails while getting a lap dance. Remote access tools are inexpensive and easy to deploy.
5. Avoid Vista
I think Microsoft Windows Vista is a great operating system. But then again I still think O.J. is innocent and Donald Trump's hair is real. So if you don't agree with my view, stick with Windows XP for as long as you possibly can.
8. Consider an intranet.
Big Business is buying into intranets in a big way, so, like supply-side economics, it's only a matter of time before it all trickles down to smaller companies.
[ As a small business you're competing against the Big Boys...always. To do that, you need the same tools. These days those tools aren't always that expensive, especially for an intranet. ]
9. Create a few alerts.
Sam, a client of mine, gets an e-mail every time a customer's invoice goes over 30 days. It always puts him in a bad mood. Why? Because late payers drive him nuts. But these alerts are a necessary evil.
[Cash is king; cash-flows make you a bigger king. It's good to be King.]
Gene Marks also shares penny-pinching tips at www.quickerbetterwiser.com.
Link to Gene's story was from James E. Gaskin at Small Business Tech.
Barry Moltz's post Capital One Takes Aim with Slingshot profiles the newest, most interesting, corporate entrant into creating community with their customers.
Link from Chris Brogan
Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of PR firms. I know you've read it here many times. I recognize that my bias may be as much from a bias in my news sources as justified from hard data gathered from independent sources. Having said that, the best and most sustainable PR remains that of your customers and employees.
Still, clearly PR firms play an important role in expanding the reach of your message quickly or improving your message. A good PR firm can bring a broader perspective, tools and resources, that can help you reach your goals.
So, Does Anyone Know a Good PR Firm? That's the question put forth by Christine Perkett of Perkett PR. And she lists a series of questions you should ask a prospective PR firm before hiring them. They're great questions. This question was my favorite:
Do the executives in the meeting use words such as “me,” “mine” and “I” or “we,” “us” and “ours”? PR agencies are teams. Good ones emphasize this across their culture in every way.
That's a question you should ask everyone in your company, as well as every prospective consultant.
And if you follow her advice, you probably will find the right PR firm and if I get to the point of hiring a PR firm, I'd make the list short and keep her firm on that list.
Tim Walker at Business Insight Zone asks What's the Straight Line:
What’s the straight line from here to there?
If you aren’t following it, what’s preventing you?
His blog post lists all the things we see, I've done, to avoid moving forward. The list and reasons are silly, really. I guarantee they're still being done, sometimes by me. I'm getting better at seeing the pattern develop. I can head it off more often now at the pass, so to speak.
Sometimes, it's from mental fatigue. UNC's b'ball coach Ol' Roy Williams had a great qoute about fatigue: Fatigue makes cowards of us all. ( Being a lifelong Duke fan doesn't keep me from tipping my hat to him on that one.)
Sometimes, it's not seeing that first step and where it will land.
Sometimes, it's fear of getting out of my comfort zone.
I do know that mapping the unknown into doable steps replaces the uncertainty of where I'm going with the certainty of the first steps I can take right now.
And then I'll see where I'm at.
Here are the resources I use to get back and walk the line:
* Notepad with me at all times. I carry a notepad with me, even in the house, as I never know when/where I'll have a solution come to mind. I recommend the moleskine for it's simple functional design and its different sizes. It may sound pretentious. It's not. I've tried other notepads. And they don't last or work as well. Use what works for you.
* JOTT. Jott replaces the notepad when I'm in the car. I have it's number speed-dialed into my cell phone and (using hands-free calling) I call JOTT, dictate my to-do's and they're waiting for me at my computer. Then I can start immediately on the list.
* Basecamp. I've used the wiki Basecamp for 2 years now. I get more value out of it every month. It's simple, easy, cheap. Powerful. I use the to-do lists and milestones now to prepare my week on Sunday. It includes email reminders and the dashboard features shows what's due and...what's overdue. And there I can turn to it anytime I lose focus or find myself distracted. I find the to-do list for the day's milestone. And start working it.
* Balance in Life. Walking away from a persistent problem generates the best results. The operative term is persistent. That requires me to persist in finding a solution. When no more paths to a solution can be walked, I walk away. Go to bed early, go for a walk, go for a run, eat..., hang with my family (though sometimes it drives my wife crazy when she sees me looking at her but my attention is verrrry distant...). Inevitably, a solution will come when I relax and walk away from the problem at this point.
Neither individually, nor collectively, do these resources assure I reach my goals. They do raise the likelihood I'll reach them faster. And at the same time, they assure I'll fail faster, too. But regardless, I have a system that keeps me on track, on target and it's one where I gather my lessons learned along the way. And that means more success, fewer and shorter-lived failures.
And I can pay full attention to my wife and family. That's what it's all about.
Time-Warner announced their new metered-use internet service plan for the lucky residents of Beaumont, Texas. From TechCrunch.
Time-Warner's slogan now is The power of you. After today, for the residents of Beaumont, it should say The Power of You (as measured and controlled by us).
The power of innovation that's been unleashed until now in the US with internet access is what's opened the doors to opportunities and startups and competition and innovation, regardless of locale. It's a level playing field that's benefited everyone. THAT's what's unleashed the power of you. And not a single corporate provider.
And now by limiting it, by controlling it and metering it ...they serve only to control (stifle) this power of innovation and creativity and enterpreneurship...they seek to become the gatekeepers of small business, the jobs they create, our ability to compete globally...
Yeah, it is that big a deal, especially for small business, startups and small communities. You know, those places where over 50% of new jobs are created.
I'm blessed in many ways. One way is our community's commitment to bringing fiber to each home. 1/4 of the town has it now. We'll have ours later this summer. Let's measure the job growth in each town, Fairfield and Beaumont, over the next few years. For job growth, my money's on my town.
Ironically, not as in funny irony, but the kind of irony that makes you get...agitated, we've, all of us, maybe already paid for fiber to the home. From TechDirt: You've Already Paid...
Shel Holtz shares one of the best resources for small businesses. It's PR Smallball. His examples aren't small businesses. And his focus is on the PR and broadcast industry and it's challenge in creating personalized, meaningful communications as part of, not instead of, traditional PR.
Still...PR is one of the many hats you and everyone wears in a small company. And Smallball is one of the key strengths of a small business: Personalized, real, meaningful, targeted, unique interactions with your customers.
There's some ideas and suggestions a small business can glean from PR Smallball. And it's validation for small business models when big corporate type like Comcast, etal, use smallball interactions with their customers as Big Ball approaches continue to fail.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Recent Comments