Blog: How to Become a Business Coach

Don’t Just Teach a Man to Fish!

12/27/2013

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day

Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime

Teach a man to SELL fish, and he will eat STEAK!

Special thanks to Bono for the ‘Sell Fish’ part and to Jay Leno for the ‘Eat Steak’ part!

Isn't that what we want from our business? To eat Steak? What are some of the benefits of running a successful business?

- More time to give back to the community

- More time to strengthen relationships

- More time to expand our horizons

- Financial security in your future

- Financial freedom

- The pure joy of success

- The satisfaction of having created something out of nothing

Mmm. Steak.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

0 Comments

Time Management for Business Owners: The Task List

12/16/2013

0 Comments

Read on to learn how to create time...

A few years back, while sitting on a Southwest Airlines flight to Las Vegas, I read an incredibly valuable tidbit in an airline magazine. A tiny, sidebar paragraph hidden deep in the magazine had this golden nugget of information: stop creating a task list and put those tasks on your calendar. The point is: if a task is worth doing, it’s worth scheduling time to do it.

So, here’s my recommendation, one that I've made a thousand times since reading that gem:
1. Sit down with your To Do list and your calendar and schedule each task as an event on your calendar.
2. The ones you don’t schedule time for are really low-priority tasks. You can file those away under a ‘brainstorming’ type of file somewhere
3. DO the items on your calendar as scheduled, or move them around as necessary.
4. Pull out that brainstorming file once a quarter or so just to make sure you don’t lose the idea of the century.

The greatest thing about scheduling these tasks on the calendar is that they actually get completed, right?
NOPE. That definitely is a good thing, but the real benefit here is that it’s hard to schedule an event for less than 15-30 minutes on a calendar. When that task actually only takes 5-10 minutes, you have just bought 10-25 minutes!

What are you going to do with the time?

I’ll tell you:work ON your business.

Use this new-found time to sit back and think about the Big Picture of your business. At the end of the day, you will have completed your tasks, gotten rid of that nagging To Do list, and spent time being the entrepreneur your company needs you to be.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

"Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net".

0 Comments

Vision: Building a Strategy for Success in Small Business

12/10/2013

0 Comments

As small business owners, it is very important that we direct our companies toward a clear vision of success. In order to do so, we need a well-defined strategy. Here is how I define strategy:

1. Know where you are today

2. Know where you want to be tomorrow

3. Have a good plan to get from here to there.

I’m going to focus on #2 for now: Know where you want to be tomorrow. This means having a vision of your success. If you can envision your company as it will be at that moment you have achieved success, then you can start building that company today.

To you imagine your company the way it needs to be once you've achieved success, think about the following things:

1. How many employees will you need?

2. How much are you doing in sales?

3. What kind of profits will you need (gross and net) to feed the growth?

4. What process and procedures need to be defined and implemented?

5. Will you need more financing?

6. What about your facility…will it need to be larger?

If you can keep this vision in your mind (where you want to be tomorrow), then the third step above, creating a plan to get there, will become very clear. At this point, you will know that you are creating a winning strategy.

Where Should I Go Now?
Main Blog Page
Become A Business Coach like Stuart

0 Comments

Don’t Just Teach a Man to Fish!

Time Management for Business Owners: The Task List

Vision: Building a Strategy for Success in Small Business

Stuart Preston

Archives

Categories