Can you really create extra time to spend on your business?

When you run your own business and work for yourself, spending time on your business can be hard to do.  After all, you are so busy trying to market yourself and then working on the clients you generate, spending time “on” your business can be hard to proritise.

Are you really able to increase the number of hours that you have in a day?

No, of course not.  Time management is such an awful phrase, isn’t it!  Of course you can’t manage time. Time just keeps ticking away the same way that it has been for millions of years.

What you can manage is yourself.  How you manage yourself in the hours that you have available is what counts.

And making sure you spend some of these precious hours working “on” your business and not “in” your business, is critical to your long term success (as well as your personal sanity!)

So how do you create the time for your business?

This topic comes up time and time again within my coaching and mentoring sessions (especially in regards to creating social media strategies!) and these were some of the strategies that we use to help create the time.

Use your diary. Whether you prefer electronic or good old fashioned paper, your diary can be used for more than just your client appointments and networking meetings.  Why not schedule in a “Meeting with Me” (and never re-schedule!).

Time commit your deadlines. Planning this month’s marketing is all very well, but if this planning session just doesn’t make it to the top of pile of things to do, it is never going to happen.  And all that means is another month of not setting up your LinkedIn profile or planning out your speaking strategy!  Set a deadline to projects.  Commit to a time, day and month – and stick to it.

Block out key days in your schedule. Whether you can work full time on your business or part time, you can’t work “in” your business all the time.  The magic formula that works for me is 3/5 working “in” the business, 1/5 on writing, setting up systems and general admin and 1/5 “on” the business for my business & marketing planning, including reviewing activity reports and statistics.

Learn and build your skills. It may be that it is your confidence or a lack of understanding that is stopping you from taking the time to plan out your business or marketing strategy.  Build up your confidence by going out to learn how to do plan a business, set goals and review your finances.  Don’t just stick your head in the sand and complain that you don’t have enough time.  That’s a poor excuse.

Little and often. Far better to spend one hour a week thinking, planning and reviewing your business every week, than leaving it until you run out of clients and start panicking about the lack of cashflow.  The business planning process becomes much more daunting then.

Take off and disappear. It is amazing how a change of scenary can allow us to be more creative with our business.  Sit and stare, let your mind think without your phone ringing or your inbox bleeping at you.  You may just come back to your business refreshed and renewed.

And finally, stop wilfing. A great term which stands for “What Was I Looking For?”  For those of you who spend hours being “busy” in front of your PC, searching for websites and reading articles, you may be better off pulling the plug and give those hours back to planning and developing new programmes.

What other ideas do you use to create more time for you in your business?

Do people judge a book by its cover?

Most of us have been taught to never pre-judge people and to always look beyond someone’s appearance before casting an opinion.  And yes, in society this is certainly how I like to be treated.

But, in business, we often find ourselves making snap decisions.

You meet a stranger at a networking event and BAM – you just can’t help it.  The way they shook hands with you, the way they did (or didn’t) look you in the eye and the way they said their name – all these things are immediately processed and an instant judgement is made on whether you want to stick around and carry on the conversation.

Statistics say that, on average, what you actually say contributes just 7% to how someone perceives you.  38% comes from the way you say your words and a massive 55% is affected by your appearance.

Scary isn’t it?

When we start out in business, we often worry so much about what we actually say when go out and network and present ourselves to prospective clients.  But from these statistics (and just look at how you react to people you meet in business for the first time) what we actually say slips rapidly down the priority list.

The way you say things and the way you present yourself, both in terms of clothing and body language, are incredibly important factors to how your personal brand is interpreted.

And your personal brand is an incredibly important factor when it comes to attracting clients.

Imagine two nutritional therapists standing up to speak at a networking event.  They both offer the same elevator speech in that they work with clients on a 1-2-1 basis to help them lose weight and feel healthier.

One nutritional therapist is nicely slim (not lollipop-model!), well groomed and has a clear complexion.  The other seems to be wearing ill-fitting trousers (two sizes too small), has a huge spot in the middle of her forehead and looks slightly out-of-breath having walked up two flights of stairs.

OK, I’m being a little extreme to make my point here but Which one are you going to “judge” to be the “better” nutritional therapist?

So what’s your book cover saying to people?

What is your appearance, your body language and your speech patterns saying about your business?

Understanding your personal brand and identifying how people perceive you and your business, can be daunting.  But it’s got to be done! Take time out to check yourself out in the mirror before leaving for your next networking event.

If you work from home, it’s easy not see any one for several days. Especially if you work with clients by email or phone.

There is no coffee room talk or quick catch-ups by the photocopying machine that you used to have in PAYE world.  And sometimes it can feel just darn lonely being your own boss.

So what happens to your motivation when you have a bad day?

We all get them, don’t we?  A client who cancels a meeting at the last minute.  5 rejections on your follow up phone calls, one after another.  A laptop that decides to stop working when you have a proposal that needs doing.

If you are lucky enough to have a supportive partner or a good friend who understands what it is you are trying to achieve, then it makes it easier.  But many of you don’t.  There may even be people around you who don’t really believe that you will succeed in your plans and possibly don’t even want you to, for what ever reason.

This is why it is good to have a couple of simple strategies up your sleeve that will allow you to pick yourself after a bad day and get back on the straight and narrow.  Here are some of my favourites:

Know when to stop. One bad thing seems to attract another and when you are feeling this way, it is far better to move away from what you are doing.  Stop forcing yourself to follow up those phone calls, for example, when you are beginning to believe that you are only going to get “no’s”.  Because that is exactly what you will get at that time.

Take a break. Go out for a walk, tweet away on Twitter, do some household chores, go out and buy a newspaper – it doesn’t really matter what it is a long as you are able to distance yourself from the stuff that doesn’t seem to be going your way.

Have a business buddy. A friend may not understand what you are going through if you phone up for a moan (and can quite often encourage you to moan even more if they are being sympathetic to your needs!)  Having one or two business buddies – people you feel you can be honest with and yet can encourage each other to move forward with projects and ideas – can be a lifesaver on a bad day.  Having someone who understands but keeps you on track with a little kick on your behind!

Play your favourite tune. Cheesey I know, but playing your favourite upbeat music and having a little dance around the office can do wonders for a mind shift. No one is watching after all!

Make a daily list of achievements.  A great habit to get in to is to write down the 3 things you have been most proud of each day in a journal, diary or on your PC.  It could be as amazing as winning a huge contract or as small as making a call to someone you have been putting off for weeks.  Whenever you feel like the business is against you, read through your lists and realise how much you have achieved already.

Remember not every day is going to be a great day.  There will be days that clients cancel, work goes wrong.  You can’t control other people’s (and technology!) actions.  But the one thing you can control is the way you deal with those actions when they happen.

What do you do to get over your crap days?

Update – have had some great suggestions via Twitter so thought I’d share a few here.

I reviewed a consultant’s LinkedIn profile the other day and after I had emailed over the report, we arranged to speak on the phone to go through my advice and recommendations.

Unfortunately, to make his LinkedIn profile work harder for him, it became apparent that this consultant was trapped by the “time excuse”. He felt he was so busy he didn’t have the time to make the necessary changes I had recommended. It was a Catch 22. He knew LinkedIn could prove to be a profitable marketing platform for him – many of his target clients where active users. But even though his profile was poor and if a potential client was to Google his name, it would probably put someone off from contacting him, he felt he didn’t have the time to do anything about it.

He wanted new clients, but was too busy with day-to-day “stuff”.

But was time the real reason for not taking action?

Probably not! As small business owners, it is easy to feel there is not enough time in the working week. But if a new client was too call you’d make the time to speak with them, wouldn’t you?

Time is not genuine excuse for not getting on with your marketing. And I think the reason why you may use the time excuse is that you don’t really know what you should be doing first.

You have no plan of attack.

It’s too easy to wade through hundreds of emails that have been stacking up in your inbox. Perhaps you have lots of paperwork and invoices to send out or sort out.

These are just excuses. If you have no plan of attack, then it’s not surprising that all your good intentions are just left by the wayside. It’s not surprising that you will find yourself at the end of each month having drifted along, not having attracted any new clients or moved ahead with any new projects.

So, before you let yourself drift through the next month and allow your competitors to be one step ahead of you, follow these simple steps.

Step One. Get Clear on Your “Big Plan”. Where do you see your business in 6 months or 2 years? What do you want to known for in your industry? What product, programme or book do you want to create before next year?

Step Two: Map Out Your Journey. Your “Big Plan” is your long term plan. However, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed before you’ve begun the journey, if you have failed to chunk your plan down in to more manageable time frames. It’s easier to climb several hills than go straight for Mount Everest! Good milestones to have are 3 months, 6 months and 1 year.

Step Three: SMARTen Up Your Milestones. Classic goal setting tips here! Make sure each milestone is SMART. SMART means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timescale. If each of your milestones can be each of these, then you have a great goal that is easier to achieve.

Step Four: Create Your 3 Month Action Plan. By focusing now on just your 3 month milestone (rather than your “Big Picture”) you should find it far easier deciding what to actually do over the coming weeks. Remember though, this isn’t a to-do-list (that’s for your daily brain dumps). I suggest no more than 3 daily, 3 weekly and 3 monthly actions because this is will ensure your plan of attack is simple and easy to follow (and will also allow you to manage other parts of your life so you are not working 24/7!).

Step Five: Diarise Your Action Plan. Work out how long your daily, weekly and monthly actions should take you and diarise 30 minute or 1 hour chunks in to your diary. It can be tough allocating a whole day every week to marketing. Little and often fit better in to a working week.

Follow these five steps and the time excuse will no longer be needed as you will now know exactly what you need to do get on with your marketing.

As for the consultant I mentioned earlier – I’m looking forward to seeing what he has managed to achieve from my checklist in the one hour chunk I challenged him on!

If you want help in chunking down your “big plan” or even with the “big plan” itself, then call me on 01428 607745 or click here for more information on how working with me could help you and your business.

As you may have realised, the UK is in the middle of an election.  I know, I know! You don’t need reminding, but I did want to put this situation in to context.

We had a knock on the door the other day and it was my neighbour canvassing for our local Conservative MP.  We had a quick chat and we shared a few of our thoughts on the Live Leaders Debate programme.

And then she said something really interesting.

“You would have thought with all this internet technology, I wouldn’t have to do all this door knocking.  It would be so much easier to do this canvassing through an online form.”

Now this lady was in her 60’s so not your typical web-tech geek (unlike me!!) so suggesting that the canvassing she was doing was easier online was a surprise to me.

Yes, it may be easier to send out emails asking people to go to a website where they could register their support.  And yes, it is probably a great way of adding to marketing campaign of a MP (or any other product or service).  But to suggest the face-to-face door knocking is replaced would be a poor change in marketing strategy.

Using email and website can be easier.  And it can certainly be cheaper than printing, postage and spending time getting out and about.  Helping small business owners use web-tech tools effectively in their business is something I do all the time.

But many small business owners go online as a replacement rather than an addition to a marketing strategy.  They replace the face-to-face networking with Facebook and Twitter.  They stop picking up the phone and send more emails instead.

The ease of the internet does indeed increase your opportunities and help raise your brand awareness.  But before you take the easy way, just make sure it is the most effective way.  Because, much as I love the web, nothing beats a bit of face-to-face when winning votes – and business!

I was at the fab networking group, Horsley Business Networking, earlier this week, where Jonathan Brown from ALP ran a session on “What’s Your Problem?” And a light bulb went off. Right over my head.

You see, I am a classic creative type – as are most entrepreneurs and small business owners. Coming up with new ideas is easy for me, a strength most of the time but sometimes … a problem!

It’s been a funny last year for me. I’ve enjoyed responding to what my clients want from me and embracing the world of social media has been a natural and exciting step. I’ve gone with the flow and said yes to lots of opportunities.

But, I have to be honest here – I’ve lost my focus! I used to have a clear action plan and be in control of where I was headed. But potential projects have multiplied like baby rabbits and too many projects mean that nothing gets done.

So, what does come first – problems or opportunities? Jonathan uses the term PCOG – problems, challenges, opportunities and goals. Problems can be opportunities, but opportunities can also be challenges and problems, especially when you run your own business. And if they are not goals, you can’t make a decision to move forward and get off that problem merry-go-round.

But when you run your own business, you can choose which problems to deal with. Yes, yes, yes. I know there are some problems that you have to sort out. Client complaints, invoices not being paid, website not working. But for most of us, we do have a choice of which problem to deal with.

And that’s my light bulb.

I have a choice of what to say yes to. I have a choice of which project to work on. I have a choice of what product or service to develop next.

I have a choice to stop the merry-go-round and start heading in a direction of my choice.

And so do you. You can’t do everything, all on your own. And you certainly can’t have a dozen or so opportunities to focus on. Because that’s where the problems start.

You may know this already, so forgive me for writing this. But as writing this blog can also great therapy for me, I hope you don’t mind me sharing my problem light bulb

Last week I got an email from someone who saw me speak on the subject of using Twitter for small businesses.  It was titled “Help Please – slightly ranty and desperate”.

Having been a Twitter for some months, this small business owner was feeling like a child coming home and saying “no-one wants to play with me”.  She was frustrated that she didn’t seem to be able to attract new followers, nor be able to get her own tweets retweeted.

This is what I emailed back:

Sounds like you need to stop focusing on the numbers and start focusing on the results that you are looking to achieve on Twitter.  Twitter is never going to be successful as a business tool if you are only trying to increase your follower numbers and increase the number of Retweets you get.

Step away and take time to sort out a strategy for Twitter.  What are you trying to achieve, who do you want to be connecting with and what impact is Twitter going to have on your business?

If it feels like no-one wants to play with you, it is probably because you are hiding in the corner. Most children ignore children who do that, don’t they?  Get out there, introduce yourself, have conversations – join in with the party and people will want to play with you.

The following day, I got tweet back from this small business owner.  It simply said:

“I was missing out the “social” bit of social networking, you are such a clever girl!”

That’s exactly right!  The all important word is social.

If you feel you are being ignored, then don’t wait to be asked to play.  Start your own games and join in with the party.

When a few long term clients begin to “evaluate” their current contracts, it is easy to feel a sense of anxiety.  Perhaps your motivation and confidence is starting to wane as one after another potential lead dries up.

When business is good, you are king of the hill.  But when business gest tough, it is easy to start panicking.

And when this panic starts to filter in to your marketing, the lack of business leads only gets worse.

Why?  Because the 2 biggest mistakes you can make when business gets tough is to reduce your prices and to widen your market.

I’ll come back to reducing prices at another time, but let’s deal with the widening of your market first.  I suppose it kinda makes sense to feel you must widen your market if your business leads are drying up.  After all, you want more clients.

But never get confused with wanting new clients with wanting to have any-new-client-who-will-have-you.

When you start to widen your market, it is easy to lose your focus, your speciality and your ability to compete with other businesses.

The more niche you are and the more focused your marketing is, the more successful you will be in winning more clients and customers.  And if there is one thing that you are more likely to win over other cheaper competitors is by being a specialist.

When you try to win any-new-client-who-will-have-you, your marketing starts to become spray and pray.  The more letters, emails, calls and tweets you can get out, the more chance you feel someone will come back to you.  Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.

Here are some of the problems caused by spray and pray marketing.

Sending everyone to the same website

Problem – the attention span of your average website visitor is less than 3 seconds.  People are not as patient online and scan web pages, rather than read them. If they can’t see the right information for them, they hit the back button.  And if you are sending everyone, online and offline, to the same home page, are you giving that potential new client the right information to make a decision on whether to buy from you?

How do you know if you have this problem? – check your web stats and look at your bounce rate.  This will show you how many people click away from your site after viewing only one page.  Also keep track of your conversion rates.  If you sell products and services online, how many visitors do you need to attract to your website to make one sale?

Solution – Having a separate website for each of your target clients is ideal, but not always practical.  Start off by having separate pages relevant for different clients and give out a dedicated web address to the right clients. For example a training business could have www.yourwebsite.com/retail if they have decided to target this sector.  When a potential retail client clicks through to this page, they can read about the problems retail businesses have, what specific solutions are on offer to them and what targeted results can be achieved.  There is a greater chance that this training company is going to be perceived to be a specialist in the retail sector, thus improve their chances of winning business.

Sending everyone the same letter & brochure

Problem – 1,000 letters and brochures are sent out to a mailing list which results in not one enquiry.  Expensive!

How do you know you’ve got this problem? – When the invoices for the printing and postage start hurting your bottom line.

Solution – Break down your database in to smaller lists, for example by industry sector, location or common problem.  Spend time modifying your letter so it is written specifically to that person.  The aim is to have each person read that letter feeling that it is written personally for them.  It focuses exactly on a problem they may have and gives them a clear call to action that is desirable enough for them to act on.  Save your printing costs and do away with the brochure, unless of course you have the budget to design a specific brochure to every target client.  And keep the mailing small enough so that you (or someone in your team) can follow up each and every letter by phone.  Follow up is key!

Sending everyone the same email

Problem – Emails are being ignored and possibly even reported as spam.

How do you know you’ve got this problem? – If you are using a subscription based email service, check your unsubscribe and open rates.  It may be easier to send every email to the whole of your database, but if it is resulting in your subscribers ignoring you, you are in danger of damaging your brand.  Remember, useful emails to some may be spam to others.

– Again, break down your database in to smaller lists.  Can you define people by the products they have bought?  Or where they have subscribed from?  Is there an opportunity to make a special offer to just those who signed up for a free report you offered last year?  If you want a lesson on targeted emails, just buy something from Amazon or Tesco.

Spray and pray marketing may feel like the right thing to do when you desperate to find more clients.  But don’t!  Take the time to focus on your target clients, focus on their common problems and focus on providing a solution that is right for them.

Niche is the key to successful small business marketing.

Got a comment to make? Do take a few moments and leave your thoughts.

I met up with a new client last week and was blown away by her photography.  A self-taught amateur turned professional, it was obvious – even from someone who knows nothing about the art of photography – that she had a real eye for capturing startling images.

But talent, a business does not make!

When she started to tell me about the story behind her business and where she was at today, it became clearer and clearer to me that it wasn’t a lack of business skills that was holding back her business.

What was holding her back was her business attitude.

Her pricing was so low, that even she couldn’t quite believe what her hourly rate really was once we divided her commission rate by the number of hours she took to do the project (and I know I was being generous with the actual time she spent!).  What was her reason for charging such so low prices?

“I am just so grateful for any work that I can get,” is what she replied.

Grateful is very dangerous word to use when talking about your clients.  Thankful and even appreciative are great words.  But grateful – never!

Grateful puts you in a place where you secretly beg for a client to work with you.  When you are on the phone to them, you find yourself crossing your fingers and talking randomly to fill up the silence while the potential client decides whether to hire you or not.  And when you do get a “yes” from them, you throw yourself in to the project, nothing being too much for you to do, despite the number of hours you end up spending.

Grateful will make you bend over backwards for a client who never pays you on time.

Grateful will make you drive for miles just to have a cup of coffee with someone who picks your brains and then says goodbye, leaving you to pick up the tab.

A grateful mindset must be left well alone and you must be able to speak with potential new clients with a “I’ve got a full diary this week” mindset.  Even if you have to pretend to flick through your calendar to arrange a meeting (I did this on many an occasion in my first couple of years!!), you’ll notice a huge difference to how your potential clients make their decisions and how much you are able to charge.

Have you found yourself being too grateful for clients?  And how has a grateful mindset affected your business? It always great to read your comments, too.

When people decide to give up on their business and go back to corporate life it’s not because they prefer PAYE world. It’s usually because they have just run out money.  They aren’t able to make enough income to cover their day-to-day costs, let along make a profit.

But these businesses don’t go out of business because of bad service or poor quality products.  These businesses are usually run by people who are passionate about what they do and genuinely care about their customers.

So why is it that so many small businesses come and go?

Is it because they had a bad business idea?

Sometimes, yes but more often the real reason is that they have no idea on how marketing works and what are the easiest and simplest ways of attracting customers.

Let me give you an example.

Jane is an ex-accountant who got fed up with the commute in to work every day and because of her passion for colours and interiors, she decided to re-train and start up an interiors business.  She now offers a range of services from one-off consultations and personal home styling to project managing big decorating jobs.

Jane is based in a fairly affluent area.  The current housing market has meant that more people are extending and modifying their property to get more space rather than move.  There is a potential market place for Jane’s service, especially when Jane has worked out that she only needs to be working with a maximum of 10 clients at any given time.

She has sensibly got a 6 month financial buffer, but four months in and Jane is finding it difficult attracting enough clients to her business.  She rarely has more than the odd appointment in her diary each week.

She advertises once a month in her local newspaper because she felt she ought to have a presence and get her name out there.  And she has also just signed up for one year advertising in her parish magazine as well with a local online business directory.  She has even gone round and put a leaflet in every door in her local neighbourhood offering a free consultation, but not one person has called her about the offer.

Selling her business is becoming hard work.  It is demoralising and the passion is starting to dwindle.  If it carries on like this, Jane will be forced to give up on her dreams and return to her accountancy career to pay the bills.

It’s not fair is it?  Especially when Jane is offering a quality and professional service which is backed up by study and training.  There is a local market for what she offers and she knows that her knowledge can help increase the value of people’s homes and save them endless of hours of research.

But what she doesn’t know is how to market herself.  All her money is going in to advertising that obviously is not working for her and on leaflets that are obviously aren’t compelling enough to make people call.

Jane needs to stop and take the time out to really get to know her target customers.

Targeting the right customers with the right messages is really the secret to great marketing.  The better you know the people you want to attract, the more likely it is that you will know where to find them, how to communicate with them and how to make yourself attractive enough for these people to call you.

Jane needs to stop her advertising and go back to basics.

Who are her target customers?  What are their worries and concerns?  When it comes to home decorating and creating more space, what are their real problems and challenges?  How much are they willing to spend for to solved these problems?

By focusing on some simple questions such as these, Jane’s answers will help her work out what her special uniqueness could be to make her marketing activities and offers compelling and attractive.

So, for those of you out there who feeling like Jane, take a long hard look at how you are telling people about your business.  If your advertising isn’t working, cancel it.  If those leaflets cluttering up your office aren’t working, get rid of them.

Cleanse your business of stuff that you are doing because you think it is the right thing to do.  Stop second guessing and start understanding your customers.

What are your thoughts? Add your comments below