It can be hard when you're running a small business to feel totally confident all the time because we have to be so good at so many things. In my case it covers stuff like:
marketing,
selling,
PR (my core business),
producing DVDs,
photography,
networking,
R&D - turning services into bundled products,
admin,
finance including management accounting and Ltd company regulations,
IT,
CRM (customer relationship management),
CSR (corporate social responsibility/being green),
staff recruitment, induction, training, appraisals, basic employment law & management.
design on and offline, plus interior design to create a great impression and a good working environment
There's no way that I'm expert in all these areas. After all, each are capable of supporting an entire career. So it can be pretty easy to feel inadequate. On the other hand, it's the diversity of challenges that suits my particular mindset and I expect many entrepreneurs are similar: you could say we're narrow generalists.
Even when we delegate, we still need to know enough to manage the process and cover for any lapses of others - the buck always stops here when you run a business.
The longer I'm in business, the more I try to learn, which is probably why that sixth sense that homes me in on the trouble spots works pretty well.
I soak up freebie and low cost courses and seminars (good for networking too).
Whenever a high cost course is tempting me because it has exposed a need to know more about something, I have often saved thousands of pounds with a browse through the internet and Amazon's bookshop to find sources of enough know-how to top up my expertise. Sometimes I don't even need to read the thing: it's enough to skim the contents or file the article and know it's there if I need it.
Best of all: sometimes I don't even buy it. I just add the tome to my Amazon wishlist and a few months later, the need for more info in that area has usually faded. And if it's hardened into an absolute need to know, I'm just one click away from ordering it.
But that this is no uncontrolled process. I and any staff have a individual training plans and a budget, with success outcomes to achieve - often sparked off by that initial temptation to go on an expensive course!
Showing posts with label running a small business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label running a small business. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Keeping Motivated
Sometimes it's hard to rise above a sea of email, phone calls and client demands to think about interesting new offerings so your business stays fresh and interesting, keeps selling more to existing customers and staves off competitors who are tempting your customers with their novelty factor.
My business coach, the redoubtable Phil Olley, always says that people already have all they need to know to take their business to the next level. The problem is not lack of training, knowledge, money or anything else we think we need. These are just excuses we make not to get on and do it.
Whether you think you need to tidy your desk before you succeed or do an MBA, just make a list of 5 things you could do today to make your business better. And don't have that cup of coffee or touch a pile of emails until you've done at least one of them.
Phil is a breath of practical fresh air. He spends his life dreaming up tools and strategies to strengthen the right core vision for you, so that you tap into your own natural enthusiasm to drive your business and life in the right direction. His website has some excellent free downloads in his Treasure Chest to get you started and a free newsletter to keep you thinking about ways to work ON your business, not IN it.
And no, he’s not a client. He’s very good at doing his own PR and has been on mainstream TV as well as being featured in a number of national newspapers and magazines.
And on my list today? Make my blogs shorter and more time effective for everyone!
My business coach, the redoubtable Phil Olley, always says that people already have all they need to know to take their business to the next level. The problem is not lack of training, knowledge, money or anything else we think we need. These are just excuses we make not to get on and do it.
Whether you think you need to tidy your desk before you succeed or do an MBA, just make a list of 5 things you could do today to make your business better. And don't have that cup of coffee or touch a pile of emails until you've done at least one of them.
Phil is a breath of practical fresh air. He spends his life dreaming up tools and strategies to strengthen the right core vision for you, so that you tap into your own natural enthusiasm to drive your business and life in the right direction. His website has some excellent free downloads in his Treasure Chest to get you started and a free newsletter to keep you thinking about ways to work ON your business, not IN it.
And no, he’s not a client. He’s very good at doing his own PR and has been on mainstream TV as well as being featured in a number of national newspapers and magazines.
And on my list today? Make my blogs shorter and more time effective for everyone!
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Spam, spam, spam, spam
Much as I love Monty Python, I'm increasingly fed up of spam, but as a small PR business owner who represents clients, my details appear on press releases posted in places where web crawlers go.
For a while, my ISP (BT broadband) seemed to be doing an OK job of filtering spam and my own message rules and blocked senders list took care of much of the rest.
But there's been a recent increase in US investment-related trash trying to talk up low value shares (apparently it works fleetingly, but by the time we get the emails, the early birds have mostly extracted the inflated value, generating a reversion on the share price).
Plus phishing attempts on behalf of banks and payment systems, some of which I've never even heard of, despite being in banking for 13 years.
Not to mention all those people out there that, for some reason, think I need a bigger, better willy (in case you haven't twigged, I am not a bloke), or any other form of med$ (my body is a temple although some wine and malts do slip in on high feast and priest days).
Like many small business owners, I know enough IT to get by (and after twenty years, I have all sorts of useless bits of DOS and other arcane OS floating around my head). But really, expecting individual computer owners to deal with this avalanche of 'stuff' is patently ridiculous. And it's instructive to note that my MS Word spell-checker doesn't even have the word 'spam' in its dictionary!
ISPs are in a much stronger position to spot a flood of material, evaluate it and stop it in its tracks, or forward it with a spam? flag in the subject line so we can trash it using message rules.
I have been doing my bit, patiently forwarding offending spam to my ISP in the full knowledge that most spam uses a once-only source address, so it's a waste of time. And recently, it's been taking up far too much time.
I can't help but think that the prospect of facing an enormous fine would focus ISPs on finding a solution in no time and look forward to the first prosecutions of ISPs for inflicting this time-wasting rubbish on us.
Just think of what spam is doing collectively. It must be sapping millions of years-worth of endeavour all over the planet. What could we achieve if we aggregated all the time wasted by spam? We might have conquered climate change, cancer and most other diseases of the mind and body, fed the world and colonised the moon before breakfast!
In the meantime, a free download of Mailwasher from ComputerActive magazine's website (the only source of software downloads I like) and I am bouncing spam with fake emails saying my email address doesn't exist (heh heh) and creating blacklists of entire domains. Plus Mailwasher allows you to apply other well-known blacklists to beat the spammers.
In just 24 hours, spam has all but gone: wheee heee!
And while you're at ComputerActive downloads, if your computer doesn't have antivirus, a firewall and spyware protection, there's no excuse because you can download AVG anti-virus plus the excellent Zonealarm firewall, plus Ad-aware to keep things protected.
For a while, my ISP (BT broadband) seemed to be doing an OK job of filtering spam and my own message rules and blocked senders list took care of much of the rest.
But there's been a recent increase in US investment-related trash trying to talk up low value shares (apparently it works fleetingly, but by the time we get the emails, the early birds have mostly extracted the inflated value, generating a reversion on the share price).
Plus phishing attempts on behalf of banks and payment systems, some of which I've never even heard of, despite being in banking for 13 years.
Not to mention all those people out there that, for some reason, think I need a bigger, better willy (in case you haven't twigged, I am not a bloke), or any other form of med$ (my body is a temple although some wine and malts do slip in on high feast and priest days).
Like many small business owners, I know enough IT to get by (and after twenty years, I have all sorts of useless bits of DOS and other arcane OS floating around my head). But really, expecting individual computer owners to deal with this avalanche of 'stuff' is patently ridiculous. And it's instructive to note that my MS Word spell-checker doesn't even have the word 'spam' in its dictionary!
ISPs are in a much stronger position to spot a flood of material, evaluate it and stop it in its tracks, or forward it with a spam? flag in the subject line so we can trash it using message rules.
I have been doing my bit, patiently forwarding offending spam to my ISP in the full knowledge that most spam uses a once-only source address, so it's a waste of time. And recently, it's been taking up far too much time.
I can't help but think that the prospect of facing an enormous fine would focus ISPs on finding a solution in no time and look forward to the first prosecutions of ISPs for inflicting this time-wasting rubbish on us.
Just think of what spam is doing collectively. It must be sapping millions of years-worth of endeavour all over the planet. What could we achieve if we aggregated all the time wasted by spam? We might have conquered climate change, cancer and most other diseases of the mind and body, fed the world and colonised the moon before breakfast!
In the meantime, a free download of Mailwasher from ComputerActive magazine's website (the only source of software downloads I like) and I am bouncing spam with fake emails saying my email address doesn't exist (heh heh) and creating blacklists of entire domains. Plus Mailwasher allows you to apply other well-known blacklists to beat the spammers.
In just 24 hours, spam has all but gone: wheee heee!
And while you're at ComputerActive downloads, if your computer doesn't have antivirus, a firewall and spyware protection, there's no excuse because you can download AVG anti-virus plus the excellent Zonealarm firewall, plus Ad-aware to keep things protected.
Friday, October 27, 2006
PR Agency time bombs
Today's PR Week, the UK PR trade weekly reports research by Time Act Solutions that a 'typical' 50-strong consumer PR agency spends 44.9% of its time on account management. That's not focusing on their finances, you understand. It's time spent on managing client relationships. On top of this, there's an additional 17.8% of time spent in formal reporting back to clients.
Many clients will be shocked to learn that less than 20% of the time was spent on media relations. While media relations isn't the only PR trick in the book, it is the one that many clients prize (I listed 30 low cost promo techniques in my book: DIYPR, including media relations, although some strayed into marketing territory as it was designed for small business owners who rarely the luxury of separate PR, marketing and sales specialists).
The study was based on analysing the staff timelogs from 50 agencies.
PR Week doesn't duck the obvious: if the findings are right, then larger PR agencies appear to be wasting much of their time. But it tries to soften the blow by pointing out that, where an agency is engaged in strategic consultancy, they won't be devoting so much time to communications delivery. Only trouble is, the survey shows just 0.6% of time devoted to strategic counsel....
Admin and staff management account for under 15% of the time logged, and as financial matters are not listed separately, we must assume they're lumped in with admin. The only other time shown in the PR Week article is 1.5% spent on business development. This seems extraordinarily low, unless some of that 44.9% account management time is actually devoted to following the eminently sensible business maxim: it's always cheaper to sell more to an existing client than seek out new customers.
Small is Beautiful
Not surprisingly, it looks as if smaller agencies manage to reverse the goods delivery v talking about it trend. PR Week showed the 7-strong Oxford-based Brazil team's timelogs spent 42% on media relations + 15% on writing press releases and account management + admin taking up 21%.
Our own timelogs at (the small, but beautiful) PHPR are roughly split between client service delivery on the one hand, and marketing, admin, staff management, finance and training (which, interestingly, the report didn't seem to track despite a push to develop professional skills in the industry from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations www.cipr.co.uk). At least the PR industry now seems to be taking timelogs seriously. When we started in 1986, most clients had never seen a timelog for PR agency staff, and I still hear new clients say we're the first to offer them transparent timelogs and invoicing. Seemed like good PR to me...
More on small agencies' reactions to the survey at www.PRWeek.com/uk
Many clients will be shocked to learn that less than 20% of the time was spent on media relations. While media relations isn't the only PR trick in the book, it is the one that many clients prize (I listed 30 low cost promo techniques in my book: DIYPR, including media relations, although some strayed into marketing territory as it was designed for small business owners who rarely the luxury of separate PR, marketing and sales specialists).
The study was based on analysing the staff timelogs from 50 agencies.
PR Week doesn't duck the obvious: if the findings are right, then larger PR agencies appear to be wasting much of their time. But it tries to soften the blow by pointing out that, where an agency is engaged in strategic consultancy, they won't be devoting so much time to communications delivery. Only trouble is, the survey shows just 0.6% of time devoted to strategic counsel....
Admin and staff management account for under 15% of the time logged, and as financial matters are not listed separately, we must assume they're lumped in with admin. The only other time shown in the PR Week article is 1.5% spent on business development. This seems extraordinarily low, unless some of that 44.9% account management time is actually devoted to following the eminently sensible business maxim: it's always cheaper to sell more to an existing client than seek out new customers.
Small is Beautiful
Not surprisingly, it looks as if smaller agencies manage to reverse the goods delivery v talking about it trend. PR Week showed the 7-strong Oxford-based Brazil team's timelogs spent 42% on media relations + 15% on writing press releases and account management + admin taking up 21%.
Our own timelogs at (the small, but beautiful) PHPR are roughly split between client service delivery on the one hand, and marketing, admin, staff management, finance and training (which, interestingly, the report didn't seem to track despite a push to develop professional skills in the industry from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations www.cipr.co.uk). At least the PR industry now seems to be taking timelogs seriously. When we started in 1986, most clients had never seen a timelog for PR agency staff, and I still hear new clients say we're the first to offer them transparent timelogs and invoicing. Seemed like good PR to me...
More on small agencies' reactions to the survey at www.PRWeek.com/uk
Thursday, October 26, 2006
PR & Spin
Every time I see 'spin' used for PR, it makes me mad.
It may be a reflection of how public sector PR (and in particular, government PR) operates, but it is far removed from most routine business PR.
The reason there's such a divergence between private and public sector PR is because the public sector, by its nature, is involved in decisions that are taken on behalf of us all, even if they don't directly impact on everyone. Consequently, new public initiatives will almost always affect more readers/ viewers/ listeners than any private sector initiatives. So public sector PROs are fending off huge waves of media interest and some have become quite times cynical in their disregard for the media.
The private sector PROs have to be extremely inventive in order to get a media look-in. But inventive doesn't mean making it up. The big trick - and it's one that any business can copy - is to find ways to hitch your news stories to bigger issues, names or celebrities. Whether it's climate change, health, education, the environment, defence, travel, jobs, work-life balance, etc the more you think in terms of wider context, the more your press releases will appear to echo genuine news reports and will stand a much better chance of being carried. Plus your reputation as a social commentator starts to build up. Play that card regularly and well, and you will start to find the media comes to you for a comment and your organisation gets a name check every time you are quoted. Being seen as an expert in the media will go a lot further in enhancing your organisation's reputation and prestige than a few obviously commercially-motivated plugs. That's where skillful follow-up with sales approaches and distribution of marketing materials (on or off-line) pays off. When PR, sales and marketing are worked together like this, the results are dramatically greater than veering from one to the other. Good luck with your integrated PR, sales and marketing campaigns.
It may be a reflection of how public sector PR (and in particular, government PR) operates, but it is far removed from most routine business PR.
The reason there's such a divergence between private and public sector PR is because the public sector, by its nature, is involved in decisions that are taken on behalf of us all, even if they don't directly impact on everyone. Consequently, new public initiatives will almost always affect more readers/ viewers/ listeners than any private sector initiatives. So public sector PROs are fending off huge waves of media interest and some have become quite times cynical in their disregard for the media.
The private sector PROs have to be extremely inventive in order to get a media look-in. But inventive doesn't mean making it up. The big trick - and it's one that any business can copy - is to find ways to hitch your news stories to bigger issues, names or celebrities. Whether it's climate change, health, education, the environment, defence, travel, jobs, work-life balance, etc the more you think in terms of wider context, the more your press releases will appear to echo genuine news reports and will stand a much better chance of being carried. Plus your reputation as a social commentator starts to build up. Play that card regularly and well, and you will start to find the media comes to you for a comment and your organisation gets a name check every time you are quoted. Being seen as an expert in the media will go a lot further in enhancing your organisation's reputation and prestige than a few obviously commercially-motivated plugs. That's where skillful follow-up with sales approaches and distribution of marketing materials (on or off-line) pays off. When PR, sales and marketing are worked together like this, the results are dramatically greater than veering from one to the other. Good luck with your integrated PR, sales and marketing campaigns.
Making Money and Small Business Blogs
This blog is in response to two claims made this week by well respected business observers with their finger on the small business pulse.
The first is the Daily Telegraph's Business Club's programme director, the redoubtable David Sumner Smith, who says in his latest email to members (24th October 2006) that he (and his bright nephew) have tried and failed to find examples of UK businesses making money out of blogs.
It seems incredible after all that's been written about blogs, and the millions of corporate blogs on the go, but he say that, "apart from http://s1.e-srv.net:80/?s2=01-4-4CWvbgNvkbviLu0-38377, credible stories are rare. "
No doubt, they'll follow up if some good examples are persuaded to crawl out of the woodwork as a result of his email. In the meantime he wants to "make the Business Club a 'launch pad' for business blogs. Reporting frustrations. Discussing problems. Sharing solutions. And hopefully driving business successes too!"
That's very close to the heart of a comment make by a good friend, Simon Allen, MD of Shopfitter, the low cost e-commerce solution, who told me he's yet to spot a good blog on what it's like to run a small business so that people can learn what works.
So, here goes....!
Taking David's point first, businesses may be about making money, but that's not directly what blogs are for. They are about communicating with a business' audiences to deepen understanding and foster a greater feel good factor. And that's exactly the same thing PR does when it focusses on media relations, sponsorships and speaking awareness programmes. It's that feel good factor that creates the climate in which sales and marketing work. In fact, it's so good at turbo-charging sales and marketing that it's commonly claimed that sales go up 50% if the prospective client has heard positive things about the company before the sales or marketing approach.
Of course, sometimes PR is so oversold as a low cost publicity solution that small business owners think they just need to find a PR budget and nothing else. Sadly 50% of zero sales and marketing input is still £0. The sales and marketing effort and spend must be there to benefit from the PR uplift, otherwise you'll just get a sporadic few enquiries from a good editorial piece. Which would be a criminal waste as you'll be failing to capitalise on the thousands of prospective customers that have read the piece and are warm to the idea of doing business with you, but haven't got round to actually contacting you directly. But if you were to follow up that editorial mention by contacting them.....
So maybe it's good business not to be obviously trying to make money from blogs? Certainly, covering the blog in money-grabbing ads is unlikely to improve its effectiveness although it might generate a little Adsense income.
Like everything in the indirect PR approach, the effect of good, honest, clear and relevant blogs will build up over time. Don't expect overnight miracles, but, like PR, look for a good uplift on your sales and marketing efforts over 6-12 months.
Now that leaves Simon's point about the lack of a blog to give the inside track on running a small business. I suspect that most small business owners are too busy running their businesses to stand back from them. Certainly, my business coach, Phil Olley, and many others point out that most businesspeople are too busy working in the business, instead of addressing the important issues by working on the business.
Why me? I'm the first to admit that I run the business to provide interesting jobs and work with reputable clients, so no-one's going to learn how to make millions from me. But I have make a comfortable living in a competitive environment where few last 10 years, let alone the 30 I've enjoyed. In that time, I've worked for banks and had run-ins with banks. I've gone solo, employed people, set up a limited company, written a best-selling book, won awards, punched way beyond my size working with top companies and the public sector, tried to teach others how to do PR, learned about new aspects of business constantly, found a husband through business networking and expanded into a whole new business activity with him, done my bit for charity, operated a transparent business policy, and had a green policy in place since 1986 - long before 'green' was anything other than a colour. As a fellow communicator said, running my business is the best fun you can have with your clothes on. I am still having a fascinating time doing it. I'm well short of perfect, but I do sleep easily at night.
So, I'll have a go at dealing with common business situations I encounter on a weekly basis. Watch this space.
The first is the Daily Telegraph's Business Club's programme director, the redoubtable David Sumner Smith, who says in his latest email to members (24th October 2006) that he (and his bright nephew) have tried and failed to find examples of UK businesses making money out of blogs.
It seems incredible after all that's been written about blogs, and the millions of corporate blogs on the go, but he say that, "apart from http://s1.e-srv.net:80/?s2=01-4-4CWvbgNvkbviLu0-38377, credible stories are rare. "
No doubt, they'll follow up if some good examples are persuaded to crawl out of the woodwork as a result of his email. In the meantime he wants to "make the Business Club a 'launch pad' for business blogs. Reporting frustrations. Discussing problems. Sharing solutions. And hopefully driving business successes too!"
That's very close to the heart of a comment make by a good friend, Simon Allen, MD of Shopfitter, the low cost e-commerce solution, who told me he's yet to spot a good blog on what it's like to run a small business so that people can learn what works.
So, here goes....!
Taking David's point first, businesses may be about making money, but that's not directly what blogs are for. They are about communicating with a business' audiences to deepen understanding and foster a greater feel good factor. And that's exactly the same thing PR does when it focusses on media relations, sponsorships and speaking awareness programmes. It's that feel good factor that creates the climate in which sales and marketing work. In fact, it's so good at turbo-charging sales and marketing that it's commonly claimed that sales go up 50% if the prospective client has heard positive things about the company before the sales or marketing approach.
Of course, sometimes PR is so oversold as a low cost publicity solution that small business owners think they just need to find a PR budget and nothing else. Sadly 50% of zero sales and marketing input is still £0. The sales and marketing effort and spend must be there to benefit from the PR uplift, otherwise you'll just get a sporadic few enquiries from a good editorial piece. Which would be a criminal waste as you'll be failing to capitalise on the thousands of prospective customers that have read the piece and are warm to the idea of doing business with you, but haven't got round to actually contacting you directly. But if you were to follow up that editorial mention by contacting them.....
So maybe it's good business not to be obviously trying to make money from blogs? Certainly, covering the blog in money-grabbing ads is unlikely to improve its effectiveness although it might generate a little Adsense income.
Like everything in the indirect PR approach, the effect of good, honest, clear and relevant blogs will build up over time. Don't expect overnight miracles, but, like PR, look for a good uplift on your sales and marketing efforts over 6-12 months.
Now that leaves Simon's point about the lack of a blog to give the inside track on running a small business. I suspect that most small business owners are too busy running their businesses to stand back from them. Certainly, my business coach, Phil Olley, and many others point out that most businesspeople are too busy working in the business, instead of addressing the important issues by working on the business.
Why me? I'm the first to admit that I run the business to provide interesting jobs and work with reputable clients, so no-one's going to learn how to make millions from me. But I have make a comfortable living in a competitive environment where few last 10 years, let alone the 30 I've enjoyed. In that time, I've worked for banks and had run-ins with banks. I've gone solo, employed people, set up a limited company, written a best-selling book, won awards, punched way beyond my size working with top companies and the public sector, tried to teach others how to do PR, learned about new aspects of business constantly, found a husband through business networking and expanded into a whole new business activity with him, done my bit for charity, operated a transparent business policy, and had a green policy in place since 1986 - long before 'green' was anything other than a colour. As a fellow communicator said, running my business is the best fun you can have with your clothes on. I am still having a fascinating time doing it. I'm well short of perfect, but I do sleep easily at night.
So, I'll have a go at dealing with common business situations I encounter on a weekly basis. Watch this space.
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