Customer Quote of the Week                       

“Standard Operating Procedures?  We have ‘em but just don’t follow them and we pay for it daily.

Could your Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) be better described as Hopeful Operating Procedures Never Complied With (HOP-NCW)?  

Most of us understand that systems and processes are necessary to be efficient.   A business coach I work with (Gary Furr) claims you don’t have a business if you don’t have organized systems and processes.   Why then do so many companies have their SOP (Standard Operating Procedures collecting dust on a shelf?

One of the first things that I ask new clients is to give me an overview of their Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).  If you have a process / checklist oriented mindset, with embedded automation and controls (DIGITIZE IT!), a business owner can immediately  realize incredible returns on investment.  Too often, I find that companies started with some form of specific procedures for carrying out routine operations but they became lost in the rush and inconsistencies of daily business.

Customer Quote of the Week

Social Media ... "Where is the money?"

This is a great question.   First, stay away from marketing people in trying to answer it.

I was asked to review a proposal a client received from a marketing professional to do "social media" marketing for them.    Below is my response.   

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Hi Susan,

Thanks for asking for my advice.   I think you can tell that I think more like a business owner than a marketing person.    In this light, as you explore hiring a marketing person to "do social media" I would recommend quantifying the outcomes you want to see and investing in a few inexpensive tools that can help them achieve those outcomes.   The proposal you have received, has no target outcomes, and you easily could pay for months of busy work with no outcomes.   There is no shortage of channels and good ideas to waste money on.   Fortunately you have Infusionsoft, a powerful marketing automation solution that can help you verify your channel return on investment.

Questionable Quote of the Week

"I need new business."

Ok.   From where?

Marketing / Life Lesson 101   
Remember, you can usually count on the people closest to you.

After filtering out those you can't trust, you might be surprised how much "business within your business" that has been otherwise hidden from you.    

The thumbnail on the left represents a new infographic that we are proud of,  showing just one case study of the "business within your business".   These results were achieved with Infusionsoft marketing automation and our sharp G-Force apprentices.          

The full size infographic and some tabular results of 6 similar campaigns are below.

Questionable Quote of the Week

"I wish I could have some superbowl level coaching and live training to help my business".

You can.

Have you ever participated in an event that inspired you so much you wanted to share it with everyone?   What if unlike many events, after attending, your inspiration and confidence didn't fade but grew?

This was my experience when I attended last year's Infusioncon (this year its called ICON14).    

In my opinion, ICON is the best "superbowl level" coaching and training conference for small business leaders. 
  
Two goals for this blog:

First, practically speaking, the price of this year's ICON14 goes up February 7th from $399 to $499.  If you are remotely interested in attending, I recommend checking it out and making a decision this week.   FYI - Since I am now a Certified Partner of Infusionsoft, you can use promo code NEWSOME10 and you can get 10% off.   Pretty darn incredible event value for $350.  

Second, there are things we can learn as business leaders as well as individuals from principally the Infusionsoft culture behind their ICON event.    

Are you like me and had your fill of conferences chock full of big ego talking heads who give inspiration without implementation help?   Have you noticed how there is no shortage of good ideas but there is always a gross shortage of help in implementing those ideas?   This is what made ICON stand out for me last year.  

The questionable quote of the week

"The purpose of business is to make a profit...right?"

Wrong.

A dear friend, a nuclear scientist, while working for a software company helped me understand a few years back that what is simple and intuitive is not always right.    

We live in an age of sound bites and a pop culture that reinforces that our purpose individually or as business is fame and fortune.   This entitled focus is cancerous and is lethal to long term success individually and in organizations.   Last week I spent some time with a super fast growing organization where the CEO's number one metric WAS NOT profitability.   

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Customer Quote of the Week

Entrepreneurship Is Not for Everyone

Or is it?  

Many view entrepreneurs as that radical and constantly broke inventor or that friend that thinks business is an "extreme" sport, taking risk where no one else will.     

What if entrepreneurship is at the heart of our longevity in each of us as working members of society?    On this Thanksgiving holiday, I am thankful for our forefathers' entrepreneurship but also our future entrepreneurs.  

What if you could find more satisfaction with your work if you viewed yourself more as an entrepreneur?    What if we could cultivate the same enthusiasm for a new future as our forefathers?    I think we can.

What's obvious to improve is not always what is best to improve.   Making a bigger and better sandcastle, with a bad habit of building it too close to the sea ... is well... predictable.  

Do we really need another "improved" diet program?   Maybe we just need to stick with the last one we started and find a practical way to address our bad habits (eat less, exercise more, and do it consistently).   

Maybe we should take a break from "new" improvements, "new" ideas, "new" causes, "new" education, and stop avoiding or reinforcing our bad habits. 

Another pointed example?    Being "busy" and involved in "good works" are great for covering up bad habits.    Consider church, volunteer organizations, or political causes.     These are great places to get excited (and distracted) with the "bigger cause" and avoid our own bad habit gremlins.  
  

This logic applies to our business owner / business leader audience as well as our apprentice age audience.    If you have bad habits, and you can admit what they are (if you can't identify any, just ask a colleague or family member...), be sure to ask yourself if that loan you are considering will further enable those habits.   

Business Owners / Leaders:   If you do not systematically engage and interact with your ENTIRE network, fueling word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing, a loan will simply compensate for your indiscipline.  Word-of-mouth sales would have averted your need for a loan in the first place!   Read more for some solutions.

Young Folks:   If you get a loan for cash you otherwise could have earned but didn't because of a lack of self-discipline and hard work, you are making your future work that much harder.    Perhaps being sure that you know how to work hard, smart, and earn money, even if it is digging ditches, should be the first form of higher education that you invest in.    

Ponder this quote by motivational speaker Tama Kieves "The worship of convention will never lead to astonishment".   Skepticism in moderation and with the right motive is healthy.   However, skepticism driven from a reluctance to leave our comfort zones in my opinion is equivalent to self-imprisonment or intentional delusion.          

I am pretty comfortable challenging convention (yes, sometimes to a fault).  In the past few weeks it has paid off.    In this blog I will share my latest "astonishment" in regard to how "cloud computing" is especially valuable to small business.    Some of the "cloud computing" based apps that are exploding around us to integrate completely different "cloud based" software platforms and databases with no programming skill required is simply awesome.  

Just like politicians, too often we throw money at or hire individuals as a magic pill for fixing things.    Do we really own the problem and do we really have the knowledge to fix or even hire the solution for that problem area?  

Sales, marketing, and general administration are a few favorite and easy places to misappropriate funds, talent, and unrealistic expectations; especially as the digital market place continues to become more complex.   

Here are a few classic examples:

Without a clear strategy and clear execution processes, or hiring a proven strategist in the field to determine those fundamentals, throwing money or people at problems simply perpetuates bad habits and empty hopes.    The complexity of the digital age is compounding this problem.    The digital age is our greatest opportunity but also our greatest threat.    This link provides several infographics that exposes the depth of this complexity that we take for granted and is burying many of us.    A recent 2013 Gartner Report highlighted how "companies are outsourcing up to 50% of all digital marketing activities ...[as] the technological complexity of digital marketing has created a need for a new type of marketing leader, the Chief Marketing Technologist"  See the article here. 

It is our opinion that it is important to hire proven strategists for functions outside your expertise.  Strategists that are personally proud of their own individual competitiveness in the market, are well connected in their field, and who apply the latest technology to maintain their edge.    Their strength is not their own.   Their strength is in their ability to call up when needed the right talent, the right technology, at the right time, and at the right (best) price.   

I encourage you to dig deep as to why you like having a "captured" employee at your beck and call more than a "free agent", pay-for-performance, independent contractor.   Do you have employees that happily perpetuate your bad habits to keep their jobs or do you have strategists (employee or independent contractors) empowered and compensated to clearly improve your business, including even eliminating their own position?    What incentives are you giving your overhead consuming employees to eliminate some of their job functions with some of the latest, super cool, cloud based business automation software (have a cool blog on the topic coming up soon)?

In closing, for your sake and your future employees, be slower to hire.   Also, don't be afraid of what you don't know.   If you have not yet engaged any virtual contract support, do some research on the topic and try some out.   From virtual chief executives and executive business coaches to virtual assistants or apprentices, they can be a great value for the money.    However, just like any employee or contractor, there are no magic pills for solving your problems.   Everyone who works for you must be appropriate for the task, given SMART objectives (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely) and regularly followed up with (managed).  

“Entrepreneurs have long seen outsourcing as a strategy reserved for big business, but technology has made it a more accessible tool for small businesses--and for some small firms, outsourcing has made a powerful impact on their growth, productivity and bottom lines.”   http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/204652

Association of Corporate Counsel talking about the growth of virtual corporate legal counsel here.

Global Accounting Alliance talking about the growth of virtual CFOs here.   One more reference here.

Maybe one day someone will write about G-Force leading the charge for virtual marketing support?