Perform a Mid-Year Check Up

Is the pace of your business slower in the summer? For many businesses this is the perfect time to perform a mid-year check up to reflect on the direction of your business. Determine if you are on track to reach the goals you set for this year. You did spend some time setting goals for 2012, didn't you?  If not, it's not too late. If you did, let's stack your business' performance against those goals.

Join me at my "Build a Better Business" workshop on June 22. We will go over an assessment of your business and discuss the key indicators that you should be using to objectively assess where you stand.  It's great to be honest with yourself.

We'll take a look at:

1. Employee engagement, which is different from employee satisfaction.  Do your employees understand why you do what you do? Do they understand their role in the company's mission?
2. Customer satisfaction. You may survey your customers from time-to-time and the ones that like you respond to that survey. But what happens to the ones that don't bother to respond? Are they the customers who quietly stop doing business with you? We'll disucss a solution for that group.
3. A final indicator is Cash Flow. Cash flow doesn't lie. It is an accurate reflection of your business status. Are you where you want to be? What adjustments must you make to get your cash flow on track?

To learn more about these key indicators and other factors to gauge the health of your business, join us on June 22. Seats are limited. Please register now. Follow the link to Eventbrite to register.

Starting a Business is Easy . . .Running it is Tough

An experienced business owner came to see me recently. I'll call him Joe.  Joe had  left his paycheck job to start the business he'd always wanted without knowing how to run a business. He had been successful for about five years. His success was built on his passion to do something with the work experience he'd accumulated.  He’s very good at what he does, so business kept coming his way—for a while. Then around year five something happened that scared him. The business dried up. There were no jobs lined up waiting for him when he finished his last project.  Without knowing why customers came to him in the first place, he didn’t know what to do to start customers coming again. He thought he was making a lot of money because he had a lot of customers; he was always busy. Yet he has no money for marketing or advertising.

He'd never advertised. Nor had he paid himself or created or budget. With all of his business "success," there were quite a few things he had not done. He admitted that the business had a few problems. What Joe did not realize was that the problems did not suddenly appear overnight. They were there when the company was smaller. They simply had less impact. The problems he had as a small start-up grew as his company grew. Keeping the company solvent will grow harder each year. He has reached some major milestones, but there is no guarantee that his business will be a success.

Joe had failed to surround himself with people who understood his business. who could keep him on the right path. Without the right infrastructure in place, he’d set himself up for failure. He had managed to survive for five years, but will he survive for another five? Who can he turn to for help?

If you want to meet the experts who can help Joe, join me for a workshop on Friday, June 22. For details, click here.

Business Essentials: Building a Better Business

Starting a business is easy. Running it is tough. We can help. Join us for an intensive one-day workshop that will set you on a growth trajectory that will create the business of your dreams. Every business owner needs legal, accounting, marketing and management advice. We have experts in all those areas ready to share their secrets with you in one place in one day. We’re inviting you to step away from the day-to-day operations of your business and spend one-day making sure you’ve got your business ready to grow! This timely information can be the difference between having a good business and having a great business. Follow link to register.