Tag Archives: Blooming entrepreneurs

3 Sure-fire Ways to Screw Up a Project

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This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and efficiency coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my Professional Development Toolkit package , I go into professional development and real-world IT topics in detail. If you are interested in more training in these areas, get signed up

There are several ways to fall behind in a project.  Most times we can rebound from them  But these three mistakes are very hard to recover from.  Please keep an eye out for them:

1) Not verifying that everyone understands the success criteria.
For example: Make sure everyone has the same definition of DONE and the quality criteria. A developer may feel that “done” means that he has completed his section of code. But the project definition of ‘done’ means design spec written, reviewed, approved; code developed, reviewed, tested, unit tests done and automated, all Severity 1 defects fixed and retested on that section of code.
Make sure the entire team (business analyst, developer, tester, technical writer, technical support, managers etc )  is using the same definitions.
2) Not sharing the reason behind the quality metrics.
For example: The quality metric goal is to fix, retest and clear all high-level, Severity 1 defects by 6 weeks before code-freeze. In other words, the team’s goal is to have the count of  0 (none) High-level, Severity 1 defects at the 6 week milestone before code-freeze. This is because with every code change, there is a 10% chance of introducing new defects or uncovering hidden defects. In this example: Retesting 100 fixed defects has the possibility of finding another 10 new defects. By finding these new defects 6 weeks before the code-freeze allows you to fix and retest those 10 fixed defects before code freeze. If people do not understand the purpose of retesting the logged fixes that many weeks before code-freeze – they may decide to just close the fixed defects (to meet the 0 Severity 1 defect goal) without retesting them. This meets the 0 Severity 1 Defect metric criteria – but bypasses the intent or reason for the quality metric. If you just close the fixed defects without retesting – you have released with an additional (potential) 11 defects that would have been found/fixed if you had retested prior to the 6-week milestone.
Make sure everyone fully understands the reason behind the procedures and not just number goals.
3) Not selecting and reporting meaningful metrics.
Every project’s quality, forecasting, and progress metrics should be re-evaluated for each project. While past project report templates may be relevant – it should not be assumed that they are relevant. You still need to re-evaluate for each new project. Every project should have a mission and goal. Every metric that you report needs to support the mission and project goal. If you can not align the project mission and the metrics you are reporting, you are not emphasizing the meaningful targets.
In my Professional Toolkit, I provide worksheet, templates and guidance on how to accomplish these things.    In my Book of Answers: Companion piece to the Professional Toolkit, I have 100 work-life scenarios like the above.  The scenarios show how to accomplish your goals in similar situation.
For more information on how to get this toolkit or the “Book of Answers”, please contact:

vConferenceOnline.com/Bits on the Wire, Inc.
6420 E. Broadway, Suite A300
Tucson, AZ 85710
520-760-2400 or (877) 853-9158
info@vconferenceonline.com

Try it and let me know what you think.

Avoid the ‘Let’s do lunch’ dance

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This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and efficiency coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my Professional Development Toolkit package , I go into professional development and real-world IT topics in detail. If you are interested in more training in these areas, get signed up

Take this scenario:

  • Co-worker emails you: “Can we meet at the end of this week on this topic?”
  •         But in the email, the person does not suggest any date or time for this important meeting.  It’s just a quick one-liner with the above message.
  • You quickly email back:  “Of course”
  • You and your co-workers emails only took 10 seconds to initiate and respond, but nothing was really accomplished.  And no one took the responsibility for actually setting up the meeting.  Nothing really got accomplished here.  You are very busy and you feel that if he was the one requesting the meeting, he should be the one championing it.  He feels he is very busy and if it was important to you, you would push it.  Weeks go by without any progress and you both loose out.

2nd scenario:

  •  You get into the following email on Monday:
  • Co-worker: “Can we meet at the end of this week on this topic?”
  •         But in the email, the person does not suggest any date or time for this important meeting.  It’s just a quick one-liner with the above message.
  • You email back:  “Of course.  I am available this week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday between 9:00am and 11:30am.  Please pick a 30 minute slot that fits your schedule.  If none of those time slots are convenient, please send me 3 alternative dates and times – so that we can get this on our calendars.”
  •          Even though he is asking for the meeting, you are taking responsibility (able to respond to complete the task of setting up the meeting) for getting this in the calendar.  He had the opportunity to provide a handful of dates/times for the meeting that was convenient for him – but he didn’t do it.   Therefore, you provide various time blocks (that is convenient to you) to give your co-worker an opportunity to pick a time that fits in his schedule.  While you are waiting for his response, you feel somewhat restricted or in a holding pattern because you have essentially promised all those time slots for now.  But it also gives you some freedom  to schedule things around those time slots.
  • You get no response for two days.  Since you are very busy, you feel that you are in a holding pattern on this (because you could really use some of those time slots that you temporarily promised your co-worker).  You don’t want to resent your co-workers for not responding to you and you want to feel free to do what you want to do with your own time.  Therefore, you resend your previous response and also call him.   By calling him, you are escalating the request.  Because they are not at their desk, you leave a voice mail requesting them to respond to the email meeting request.
  • An hour later, you get an email from him stating: “I apologize I am so far behind this week. Can we perhaps shoot for next week? “
  •            The email still has no specific date or time for the meeting. There is still no closure to this. He did not match the urgency level of the communication.  This means, if someone calls you because you have not responded to them — you should match their urgency by calling them back.  Emailing back may be quicker for you – but it does very little to build that working relationship in a positive direction.  Emailing may be easier for you to send an excuse for not responding – but it does very little to build that working relationship in a positive direction.   Even though his email took him 10 seconds to write, it will doesn’t accomplish the goal of setting up a meeting and hurt his business reputation.
  • You respond: “Certainly.  Let’s meet on Monday, June 10 at 11:00am for 30 minutes.  The agenda will include: ……”
  •             At this point, you have given him ample opportunity to select a specific date/time of his convenience – and he continues to elect to leave it up to you.  You have given him ample opportunity to pick up the phone to rectify his delay in setting the meeting.  After all, he was the one that requested the meeting; he was the one that asked for it to be conducted ‘later this week’; he was the one that failed to respond with an explicit date/time and he was the one that postponed it to the following week.  Regardless of his professionalism, you need to keep a professional demeanor.  You are still working toward building a positive working relationship.  So, you take the responsibility (able to respond and complete the task) to set the meeting date,  the pace and agenda of the meeting.
  • Even though you did all you could do to help move this forward, it took 3 days of back-and-forth emails to accomplish this.

3rd scenario:

  • You need to setup a meeting with a co-worker
  • You email:  “I am excited about this upcoming project and really want to hear your thoughts on this topic.  Can we meet at the end of this week on this topic?  I am interested in discussing the following XYZ to accomplish <goal A> .  I know we both are very busy and expect this talk to take only 20-30 minutes.  I am available this week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday between 9:00am and 11:30am.  Please pick a 30 minute slot that fits your schedule.  If none of those time slots are convenient, please send me 3 alternative dates and times – so that we can get this on our calendars.”
  •         You also call and leave a voice message that summarizes what you sent in an email.  In the voice message, you include the reason for the call, call back information, and your availability.  In the phone message, you show your personality and enthusiasm for this topic.  You emphasize that you are really looking forward to working with him on this.  You are friendly and enthusiastic.
  •         The email and the phone call took you about 5 minutes to do.
  • Your co-worker calls back relatively quickly: “Hey.  Thanks for your voice and email.  I was thinking the exact same thing. Great minds think alike. My boss it out of town this week, so I am pretty swamped.  But this is very important and I don’t want it to sit too long.  Are you available on Monday, June 10 at 11:00?
  •            You say, “Yes.  That’s a great time.  Do you think we can cover those topics in 30 minutes?”
  •             Your co-worker:  “Absolutely.  I’ve looked over the agenda and it looks like you have covered all the important highlights.  If we can’t fit them in, we can schedule another meeting before we exit that meeting.”
  •             You: “Sounds like a plan.  Talk to you Monday at 11:00am.  And thanks for taking your time on this.  I really appreciate it. “
  •             Your co-worker:  “Heck, no.  I appreciate you including me in this project.  It’s really the direction that I want to go.”
  •             This telephone conversation takes less than 5 minutes and builds rapport and a collaborative atmosphere. Within 30 minutes you and your co-worker have the meeting, the pace, the agenda all ironed out (versus the 3 days just doing it by email) and so much more.

This email dance happens quite often between busy people.  Even though email seems a quick way to communicate – it’s often not the most efficient way of communicating and completing tasks.  Email often takes people days to accomplish the same thing that a phone call could accomplish it in 5 minutes.   Just because email seems convenient, it’s not always a productive way of communication.  Before you send an email, consider the following:

1) Have you included everything that the receiver  (not you, but the audience of your email) needs to accomplish your request.
Sending a quick one-liner:  “We should meet something this week”  is not providing all the necessary information for your audience to accomplish your request.

Leaving a voice mail: “Call me” is not providing all the necessary information for your audience to accomplish your request.
2) Have you emphasized the proper importance by your method of communication.
If someone is calling you because you failed to respond to their email – you need to match their level of urgency.  Do not disrespect them by quickly emailing a one-line excuse like “I am very busy.  Can we do this next week.”  Take the hit in person.  Call or even drop by their office (if you are located in the same place), to apologize for the mix-up.  People don’t normally loose their reputation on a mistake.  They loose their reputation on how they react or respond to their mistakes.  If you go out of  your way to take responsibility for your actions and go beyond expectations on making amends – you actually will improve your professional reputation.

3) Combining communication methods is often the most efficient way to accomplish a task between team members.
Combining email and phone calls is a good combination to accomplish tasks.
Combining phone calls (with an email summary of what occurred on the phone) and face-to-face meetings (with email summary of the meeting minutes) is a good combination when possible.
Combining email, phone calls, face-to-face meetings is a great combination when possible.

Bottom line: Combining communication methods and providing enough information in your communication saves time.

In my Professional Toolkit, I provide worksheet, templates and guidance on how to accomplish these things.    In my Book of Answers: Companion piece to the Professional Toolkit, I have 100 work-life scenarios like the above.  The scenarios show how to accomplish your goals in similar situation.
For more information on how to get this toolkit or the “Book of Answers”, please contact:

vConferenceOnline.com/Bits on the Wire, Inc.
6420 E. Broadway, Suite A300
Tucson, AZ 85710
520-760-2400 or (877) 853-9158
info@vconferenceonline.com

Try it and let me know what you think.

What should job hunters highlight for a contract job?

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This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and efficiency coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my Professional Development Toolkit package , I go into professional development and real-world IT topics in detail. If you are interested in more training in these areas, get signed up

What special steps do job hunters need to take if a company is contracting?

If a company is looking to hire contract consultants, their main focus is to make sure the candidate will hit the ground running. People are normally searching for contracts because:
1) They are behind in their delivery schedule and are looking to quickly make-up the time with additional resources with no need for training or learning-curve costs.
2) They don’t have the expertise in-house to accomplish the task – and do not have the time or budget to training in-house expertise
3) They discovered an unexpected need for an additional resource with a certain skill sets and they don’t have any available people at this time.
In all three cases, the contractor will have a limited time to produce. Therefore, they need to emphasize that they have the ability to produce at the get-go. Therefore, in your resume, highlight past products and services that are comparable to the current position needs. Illustrate the design to market speed rate of your past contracts. Include satisfied client testimonials on your professionalism and productivity.
In my Professional Toolkit, I provide worksheet, templates and guidance on how to accomplish these things.  For more information on how to get this toolkit, please contact:

vConferenceOnline.com/Bits on the Wire, Inc.
6420 E. Broadway, Suite A300
Tucson, AZ 85710
520-760-2400 or (877) 853-9158
info@vconferenceonline.com

Try it and let me know what you think.

How to Speed Operations in a Small Business

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This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my Professional Development Toolkit package , I go into professional development and real-world IT topics in detail. If you are interested in more training in these areas, get signed up
Today’s question came from a reporter working with small business owners.
With clients expecting orders to be turned around faster than in the past, how can small businesses speed up their operations?
Anything that repeats can be optimized and automated. To speed up operations, give discounts to entice the client to do most of the work for you. For instance, if your business is to design and create ads for a free local business directory magazine – then if  the client provides you with the ad and graphics (such that all you have to do is publish), they get a discount.
The best way to get clients to easily adhere to certain standards and format, is to create some type of application for them to use.  In this ‘free local business directory magazine’ example, a website application page can be created for internal staff as well as clients. This webpage application would increase the number of resources (both staff and clients) that you can distribute the work without lowering the quality.  Increasing the number of people that can do the work will speed up your operations.
For this example:
1) Provide a customer designer website page that allows clients to create their own promotional material.
2) Provide various templates that 80% of their clients can use as their promotional design foundation.
3) Provide basic design options (example upload logos, adding text, preview ability etc).
4) Provide a video tutorial to show how people can create their own materials.
5) The more the client does on their own, the bigger the discount they get.
You still send clients their resulting ad for final approval before publishing. And if they need your help to finalize it – you can decide to limit it to 20 minutes (for example) without additional charge.
For the 20% of customers that the promotional website does not work for, you charge for your time, graphic expertise, editing, etc. But you have cut your time and effort by 80% and all your clients get a faster result.
If you do not want to provide an automated design website — still use the concept. If the client provides you with the ad and graphics (such that all you have to do is publish), they get a discount.
Bottom line: To speed up operations, give discounts to entice the client to do most of the work for you.
What steps or things can you optimize, delegate and automate in your area?  If you need assistance in pinpointing these areas, setup a project-specific coaching session with me LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
In my Professional Toolkit, I provide worksheet, templates and guidance on how to accomplish these things.  For more information on how to get this toolkit, please contact:

vConferenceOnline.com/Bits on the Wire, Inc.
6420 E. Broadway, Suite A300
Tucson, AZ 85710
520-760-2400 or (877) 853-9158
info@vconferenceonline.com

How to narrow your career options.

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Work Scenario:  You have 25 years of experience in various skills.  You could go into consulting, you could start your own business, you could go back to school to learn a new skill, you could do so many things that you don’t know where you should start.  Instead of focusing on ‘what you want to do’, you are actually focusing on ‘what you could do’ – which is giving you this waffling affect.
You feel overwhelmed because you are looking at so many directions.
Take it in little steps. Decide on tiny decisions that helps you focus on what you really want.
Don’t focus on “what I can do” – instead, visualize what you really want to do.
1) Decide if you either want to be an entrepreneur or work in a company/corporation.
2) Visualize yourself in either environment and decide which you are most comfortable in.
3) For the time being – forget what you ‘can do’. Focus on what you really want to do.
4) For instance: Now that you have decided on company/corporation (as an example) – decide if you want to work with a small or larger company.
5) Once you have decided on the size of the company (as an example) – decide if you are more comfortable consulting daily with people or organizing or administration activities.
6) Once you decide what you are more comfortable with, your focus will be more deliberate and not all over the place. For instance, if you now decided that your preference is to work in a small company with paper/administration type things — you can better focus your attention and energy on the coding and billing route. If your preference is consulting daily with people in a large company – that helps you better focus your energy on jobs in that type of environment.
In my Professional Toolkit, I provide worksheet, templates and guidance on how to accomplish the above.  For more information on how to get this toolkit, please contact:
vConferenceOnline.com/Bits on the Wire, Inc.
6420 E. Broadway, Suite A300
Tucson, AZ 85710
520-760-2400 or (877) 853-9158
info@vconferenceonline.com

How to steal a competitors client.

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I find the best way to gain customers from competitors is to collaborate and affiliate with them.

Most services are niche enough that, although they seem competing, they aren’t really stepping on each other toes.  While they may share the same service space,  their products are slightly different and may even be complimentary.   While they may seem to share the same market, their target client description is slightly different.

A successful scheme is to create a catalyst event in which your competitors are invited to speak, perform, or showcase their wares. Every business is responsibly for promoting and advertising this event to their clients.  This offers a Win/Win for everyone. The advantage is that now everyone is gaining exposure beyond their individual circle of influence.  You also include your products and services at this event.  Now you have other service providers bringing in their clients to see your products as well as their products.

Creating a collaborative versus adversarial atmosphere often works better in the long run. In this type of environment, companies often can create a referral program in which you share revenue on clients you refer to each other.  You can also make an agreement to off-load some business during your busy times to the other company (and visa-versa).  If one or the other move into a different market, you are the first they will recommend to their clients.

How to capture that hiring manager’s attention

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Your work history is solid.  Your experience is exceptional.  Yet you are not getting the job offers that you want.  How can you get your resume out in front?

One thing that would make your resume more powerful and therefore, stand ahead of the others, is to quantify your achievements toward “what it means to the company” (money wise).

Remember that companies are in the business of making money.

Add a section of Professional Skills — that quickly lists all your technical and transferable skills.

Then ….

Rethink your great achievements (and qualifications) and voice them in “what it really means to the company” – or “what did the company get out of it” in regards to (but not limited to):

  • Increased customer satisfaction
  • Retention of customers in migration process
  •  Brought in new customers/clients
  • Speediness of customer to find->see->purchase and repurchase
  • Increased referral of new customers by previous clients (referrals increase revenue without additional marketing costs. It’s expensive to find new clients because of a large lead-to-sales conversion rate. Getting referrals from previous customers is a Win/Win/Win).
  •  Reduction of lead-to-sales conversion rate (it may take 100 leads to make one sale….if you can show how you reduced this conversion rate….)
  •  Increased revenue into a new market or client base
  •  Conversion of customers from competitors to your product
  • Use of affiliates and even competitors to gain a market advantage
  • On-time delivery into the market
  • Reduced time to market to gain the sweet spot of the market window – and gain a competitive edge
  • Reduced technical support and maintenance costs which increased customer loyalty
  • Reduced the number of maintenance cycles or eliminated them altogether – which reduced costs and increased client satisfaction.

Do the same with your performance evaluation summaries as well.

If you can put some tangible $$ or % numbers to your accomplishments that explicitly quantifies your value to the company’s bottom line – I think that would be a show-stopper.

Made up examples – just to give you the idea:

Things like:

  •  Initiated a referral program that allowed us to track the number of clients getting referred to us, but also allowed us to devise an improvement program to increase (and forecast) the number of referrals in the future.
  • Increased customer satisfaction by 50%, which resulted in a 30% rise in client referrals.
  • RE-introduced ProductX into a totally different market. By slightly re-engineering the product, we were able to launch our solution into an unsaturated market with little overhead. This resulted in an additional $100,000.00 in revenue the first quarter and forecast to double in the next.
  • Redesigned the e-commerce site for more visibility that resulted in 50% more traffic to our sights, and an increase of $100,000 in sales per month
  • Initiated 2 affiliation partnership with complimentary companies/products. These partnerships increased our advertisement exposure by 75% with no increase our marketing budget. It also resulted in $100,000.00 additional sales per quarter.
  • Wrote monthly whitepapers on hot-topics in the industry. This free subscription added approximately 200 new sales leads a month, which resulted in 100 new clients a quarter (resulting in additional $50,000 in sales a quarter).
  • Implemented various shopping cart optimization routines that made it more efficient for clients to view, select, and purchase the products. This reduce their shopping-to-purchase time by 10% and increase customer satisfaction by 30%. Because of these changes, “Returning customer numbers” increased by 45%. And referrals (by previous customers) increased by 30%.
  • Achieved 100% on-time delivery of 7 of YYY products and services which resulted in 100% client retention between releases.
  • Incorporated Early Product Release to certain high-profile clients – to assure these million dollar clients stayed with the company.
  •  Initiated a loyalty reward program that resulted in 30% increase retention rates of clients
  • 100% retention of our client base through the migration of Product X to Product y. Typical migrations lose up to 7% of our customer base in addition to bad reviews. This migration not only accomplished our 100% retention rate, but gained us an 5% bump in referrals.
  • Increased company revenue by $1,000,000.00 by converting a competitor’s client to our product line.
  • Consistently pulled in the release dates on <list the products> – which enabled the company to hit the market early and before competitors. Early release allowed the company a greater lead time and resulted in a million dollars of new market shares. Our current 100% rate was written in the XXX Technical Journal, giving us free advertisement and contributed to a 30% bump in sales leads.

Think like the owner.   What is he/she most interested in knowing?   Quantify your accomplishments in those terms.   Don’t get rid of your other resumes … just see how this new version of your resume feels to you.

How to handle jealousy in the office

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I received the below great question a few days after my Art of War for Product Managers and High-Performing Professionals.  I thought you might be interested in the answer as well.

Q: Many senior employees work under my lead. In this case, many other senior employees think that what a lucky me. Jealousy is coming up from them. Do you have any tips for me as new entrant in product management to face this kind of condition?

Thank you for writing me. And congratulations for getting such an amazing position! You deserve it.
I do understand about jealousy. Jealousy is more about your senior employees’ confidence level in themselves. If one is competent, well-balanced and talented – there is no need to be jealous or even feel a need to defend ourselves. Even understanding this, you still may have some conflicts in the office.

3 tips to reduce:

  1. Take on the attitude of service. They are senior employees and know a great deal about their area of expertise. Give them their due respect in their field. Acknowledge that, even though you feel they are working under your lead, you are actually in a service position. They know way more about their jobs than you do. But you know way more about directing traffic than they do. Acknowledge that without their piece, there would be no product release. Acknowledge that their position and experience is very valuable and critical to the product success. Continue to openly appreciate their position in the stream of things (tell them how much you admire what they do). Continuously remind them that the purpose of your position is to be of service to them. (All great leaders take on the attitude of service.)  Continue to ask them what they need from you to help them achieve their goals. Explain to them that you admire what they do (they are the drivers that will get the product released). And that you see yourself as the traffic cop whose job is it to keep the traffic moving smoothly, in the right direction, and avoid traffic jams to get the product out the door on time.
  2. If someone seems particularly envious or jealous, maybe they want to be a product manager. Ask them if they really want to be a product manager? Do they want you to put in a good word for them in your department? Help them get the job that they really want. If they really want to get into the product management arena, start introducing them to the staff and management of the team. Share the type of tasks and experience that they need to do the job. Share what a day in the life of a product manager looks like. Take them to lunch with some of your department staff. Keep that service attitude – and ask them what you can do to help.
  3. Sun Tzu (author of Art of War) would say: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. Make these people your friends. Periodically bring in breakfast or snack treats to their staff meetings or labs (where ever they gather in a group), make public announcement of appreciation when they do something that you have been asking the team for; write thank-you email to them and their managers – when they turn in their status reports early, show appreciation when they are doing what they are supposed to be doing (and make sure their managers get a copy of these things to show that you are on these people’s side); and acknowledge acts that make your job run smoother and easier. Keep your manager and their manager aware of the good things that are going on in the group (this shows the individuals that you are on their side to get them a good performance review). Take the most troublesome folks out to lunch and ask them for their advice on some things OR -better yet – say that you want to understand better what they do. People love to talk about what they do and give their opinions on things. Asking about them is another way of showing respect and interest in them. The more time you spend understanding them, the more they will take the time to understand you. The more you understand how they work, the better you can devise processes that naturally blend with the way they already work. Treat them with the respect that senior employees are due. Consider their insight, feedback and advice. Choose the path that feels right for you (which probably will include some of their ideas and your ideas). Don’t do what they say, just because they say it. But use their insight to improve your product process so that it better fits into what they are already doing.  The more things you implement that naturally fit the way things work – the easier your life with be.

You can’t change how people treat you. But you can 100% control how you treat others. Make your “service attitude” more public – to show them that you’re there to help them achieve their goals. Continue to remind them that you know that they are doing the significant, heavy lifting in the product design and implementation. Your role is to help the team achieve their common and shared goal. If you approach this with the service-attitude, you are more likely to reduce much of the negativity.

p.s. Keep all your “thank-you” notes and notes of appreciation in your Achievement Folder….so that if something comes up in your performance review, you can show tangible evidence that your intend was not to agitate. Document everything as you go along — so that at the end of the year (performance review time) – you don’t have to remember what you did all year.
Try it and let me know what you think.

5 mistakes new entrepreneurs make

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soontobereleased
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and efficiency coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my Professional Development Toolkit package , I go into professional development and real-world IT topics in detail. If you are interested in more training in these areas, get signed up
It takes courage to take that first leap into entrepreneurship.  As you dive into that brave new world, be aware of some of the top 5 mistakes new entrepreneurs encounter.
A few bad habits an entrepreneur can make:
1) Not thinking like the owner
Because they are small business owners, they spend much of their time doing ‘worker-bee’ type tasks instead of ‘owner’ tasks. They they feel they don’t have enough money, they don’t invest in supporting staff and assistants that would offload the tedious activities that someone else can do — to allow them to focus on activities that ONLY THEY (as the owner) should be doing.
2) Not having a succinct, branding message.
Most new entrepreneurs don’t take the time to create a succinct, branding message and explicit target market. They tend to go throw out too large of a net, in hope of attracting a large number of clients. The results is a confused audience. No one actually understand the entrepreneurs true expertise or niche.
3) Not spending the appropriate and continuous cycles on marketing and sales.
People getting into entrepreneurship because they love doing what they are doing. Often times that ‘passion’ isn’t sales and marketing. But ‘Sales drive the bus’. As an entrepreneur, if you don’t sell – you don’t eat.
4) They don’t know or understand their numbers.
Beginning entrepreneurs often don’t understand their numbers:
  • what yearly income they want to make
  • how much their business needs to make to pay them that year income
  • how many sales they need to make to generate that business revenue
  • what their leads-to-sales ratio is (i.e. how many doors do they need to knock on, to get 1 sale)
  • how many leads do they need to get – to achieve the number of sales they need to get to generate that business revenue
  • what are the start-up costs of the business
  • how many years are they planning to get in the black
5) They don’t keep their business plan up-to-date
Entrepreneurs may create a start-up business plan; but they don’t see it as a living document. They don’t continually review or revamp with their financial adviser, investors and business coaches.
In my “Thinking Like An Owner: Taking the Leap into Entrepreneurship” I do into the who, what, where, when and how of all of the above.  For more information about this toolkit, get signed up:
GetSignedUp

Use Change Management to create an impeccable reputation

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This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.  In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into professional development and real-world IT topics in detail.

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My mother very much enjoys the daily judge programs. When I was growing up, soap operas was the prominent daytime TV.  Today, it seems to be the judge programs.  programs.  Majority of the conflicts stem from miscommunication or lack of communication.   Many times one person is suing the other for “not doing what they promised they would do”.  Other times, they are in court because one person doesn’t feel that the other is taking responsibility for their own actions.Most of these cases can be eliminated and avoided with some simple Change Management steps.
Although organizational change management processes can vary (and are often more extensive);  following these minimum steps in both your working and personal relationships, you will avoid much grief and regret.

1) Clearly state, document, and sign the agreement of action.  Have all stakeholders agree and sign the agreement.  Include communication plans in this agreement).
2) Verify that all parties understand the issues.  Get individuals to paraphrase the agreement in their own words, so that you can validate that they really understand the expectations on both sides.
3) Agree upon communication plan.  Define how parties are going to provide status, communicate problems, and discuss deviations/consequences from above agreement.
4) Immediate communicate any deviations from the signed agreement. Expect change and be totally transparent on the progress and status of the activities
5) Collaborate, document and sign the agreed change to the original plans.  Have all stakeholders agree and sign the agreement.

Taking the time to do these simple steps keeps everyone in the loop and protects both working and personal relationships.

Try it and let me know what you think.
In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into this in detail.

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