Small Business Minute

As business owners, we sometimes forget that every employee can have an impact on sales in our organizations. (TWEET THIS) For example is the shipper receiver courteous to all who present themselves at the loading dock? Do those customers have a pleasant experience that reflects favorably on your organization? There’s nothing worse than going through the sales process only to drop the ball at the...

One dreaded and often neglected aspects of being a business owner and managing employees, is the annual performance reviews. Although you’re well intentioned and sincere in your desire to perform this exercise in a timely manner, most of us just end up forgetting about them or, because we never get around to preparing the formal review, we just keep putting it off, much to the frustration of the e...

Being a great leader is about helping others achieve, it’s not a position, it’s an attitude and anyone can be a leader, no matter where you are in an organization. Great leaders work hard and are humble. Great leaders are empathetic and they have an uncanny ability to see around corners. Great leaders engage and empower their people. Tweet this! Great leaders act as coaches and mentors, There is t...

Entrepreneurship is currently all the rage. It’s the Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s the magic elixir that will fix everyone’s problems and so many people are spending hours daydreaming about the life they will enjoy once they get into business. Unfortunately for the uninitiated, going into business is very hard work and for the most part the reality of being in business doesn’t come a...

  One of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face doesn’t have anything to do with revenues or expenses, but has everything to do with achieving that elusive goal of Work Life Balance. Starting a business requires a total commitment and dedication over an extended period of time because overnight successes are very rare. Fortunately for most of us, we are blessed with a significant other wh...

Successful entrepreneurs rarely engage in the Blame Game. The Blame Game is when anything negative happens it’s always someone else’s fault and never theirs. You see at the end of the day, we make the decision to proceed down a given path even when we’ve consulted or solicited input other professionals. And once we have gathered as much information as we think we’ll need, it is then we make the de...

 Successful entrepreneurs have long learned that identifying internal deficiencies can increase profitability far more quickly than the chasing new ideas. These owners do not like waste. Wasted time, wasted effort equals wasted profits. Doing something over again because of carelessness, doesn’t sit well with them. We’re all human I’m not talking about the occasional mistake, heck, we’...

  Growth for the sake of growth is a dangerous strategy for most small businesses. By making revenue generation the prime mission of the company, it fails to take into account how the rest of the organization will execute the product or service delivery of the increased sales. Risks Assuming that everything else in the company will expand naturally as revenue grows, is wishful thinking. A small gr...

At one time or another, many owners are faced with a business that has stalled out, and often it’s a simple matter of a sluggish economy and with a little patience things recover and growth resumes. Look under the hood For others though, their business has just plateaued and are at a loss as to how to regain their rhythm and push through to next level. When this happens, the first place I look is...

Nothing undermines your professionalism more than using one of the many free email services available today. Being in business is hard enough. On a daily basis we are faced with numerous challenges that keep us awake at nigh.  We struggle to take our business to the next level and yet we penalize ourselves by not taking care of some of the simple no brainer activities. Domain based email Doma...

One of the hardest skills business owners have to learn is Networking. People regularly comment on how adept I am at networking and it usually makes me chuckle. Yes I can network now with relative ease but it wasn’t always that way. I used to hate it! The high school dance all over again It wasn’t that long ago that I would absolutely dread going to a networking event, as I would spend...

Going into business is easy, running a business is hard and until we get in it we don’t realize how very hard it is. Oh sure we talk a good game by telling people that we know it will be difficult but that the hard work will pay off in the long run. The reality is, we haven’t got the foggiest idea of what lays ahead. For those of us who have made it with most of sanity in tack, it is said that, mu...

Validating your idea, is one of the best pieces of advice I can give start-ups as well as existing business owners. This one item should be at the top of your to do list if you’re considering starting a new business or thinking of adding a new product or service to your existing operation. You may think it’s a great idea and all your friends and family nod their heads in agreement, but frankly the...

Building a business is hard work and not for the faint of heart. It’s where Survival of the Fittest rules the day. In an effort to be one of the survivors, many small business owners make the strategic error of trying to make everyone their customer. In other words, trying to be everything to everyone. Although the idea is forged on their belief that having everyone as their customer, will allow t...