Planning and Goal Setting for your small business
Sunday night I was watching Conan O’Brien on Inside the Actor’s Studio. During the interview Conan talked about how as a university student he plastered the campus with caricatures of himself. When people asked him why, he told them it was advanced advertising for the Conan O’Brien Show he planned to have some day. The […]
Goal Setting the Conan O’Brien Way Read More »
I often hear from people who spent some time on Facebook or LinkedIn but eventually gave up because they just didn’t see results. Others keep going but are telling me they don’t know if it’s working. If you’re not seeing results – or you’re just not sure what they are – you need to take
Are you unhappy with the results you’re getting from social media? Read More »
For many small business owners, learning is a key part of becoming successful. No matter how much experience you had in the work world, there will be areas of running a business that are new to you: perhaps accounting, marketing, sales, technology. And worse, technology changes so rapidly that even if you were up to
Get Off the Information Merry-go-Round and Start Implementing What You Know Read More »
Because we are beginning a new year, it seems natural for many of us to set new goals for our business. We set goals to earn X dollars this year, or to increase our email list by Y percent. We do this because we know our goals need to be measurable so we know when
What Types of Goals Are You Setting? Read More »
Since this is the beginning of 2009 I’ve naturally been thinking about my goals for the coming year. I’m working on what I want to accomplish and how I’m going to do it. While I was pondering this question, I read an article by Charlie Cook. He says if you’re setting goals for 2009 you
A Tip for Achieving Your Goals in 2009 Read More »
You have a blog and post to it regularly. You Tweet several times a day on Twitter. You comment on Friends’ pages on Facebook. You work your network on LinkedIn. Everyone is telling you social media marketing is the key to success. But it takes time. How do you know if it’s worth the effort?
How To Measure Social Media Marketing Success Read More »
Yesterday I talked about the reasons for having an exit strategy. Now I’ll look at what you need to do to create one. First, you need to identify your exit date. Obviously you’ll be doing things differently if you’re looking at exiting your business within five years than if you’re planning to continue working for
Preparing Your Exit Strategy Read More »
According to the Canadian Federation for Independent Business over one third of Canadian small business owners plan to leave their business within the next five years, two thirds within the next ten. Yet only ten percent have a formal, written succession plan, 38 percent have an informal plan and 52 percent have no plan at
Succession Planning: Do You Have An Exit Strategy For Your Business? Read More »
Seth Godin wrote “If you want people to embrace your version of the future, talk about it like it’s right around the corner, not on another planet.” “For example: “We’re going to launch a new product next year” sounds a lot more distant than handing someone a prototype and saying, “this launches on January 3rd
Make Your Goals Sound Like They’re Right Around the Corner Read More »
The last day of September: where did the summer go? The third quarter of 2008 was particularly challenging for me. I like to accomplish things; concrete things I can check off on a list and hold up as being complete. Sometimes I think I should have been a brick layer so I could actually see
Goals Revisited: Sometimes You Need to Stop to Move Forward Read More »