I like to define entrepreneurs into one of two categories, they are either a hunter or gatherer.

A hunter is someone who’s business requires them to go out every day and find new customers. Whereas a gatherer is much like a farmer who continuously harvests business from an established base of existing customers. The best businesses do both.

Of course, all entrepreneurs start out as hunters. They must, because they don’t have an existing customer base from which to harvest. Survival in the early days requires hunting every day, otherwise they won’t be in business very long.

Neglected Opportunities

Unfortunately, far too many entrepreneurs neglect the opportunities that exist to become a gatherer. They are so accustomed to the thrill of getting a new customer, they completely miss out on or don’t realize the potential that exist from generating incremental business from their previous customer base.

Long vs Short Purchase Cycles

To be fair, some businesses have incredibly long customer purchase cycles. An example of this is roofing sales as most people only replace their roofs every 15-20 years. Another example is new car sales, whereby people are keeping their vehicles an average of 7+ years. So, trying sell these people any sooner is very difficult.

In these situations, there still exists the opportunity to harvest from these relationships through referrals to friends and families. Easy to do, but seldom tried and wastes all the goodwill generated. Even hunter type businesses can become gatherers, if they stay in business long enough.

Many other businesses with shorter purchase cycles, think months not years, still don’t try to increase the purchase frequency. They are in such a habit of hunting that they overlook or fail to identify the many opportunities to promote complimentary or supplementary purchases. They just wait and hope that the customers return or calls them.

Look for Opportunities

Entrepreneurs that act as gatherers look for opportunities to be constantly in front of their customers, reminding them of the products and services they have to offer. With the all tools available today, such as, social media or email, staying visible is far easier than ever before.

Hunting everyday is far more difficult than gathering. Finding a balance between hunting and gathering can reduce the pressure to find a new customer every single day. Understanding whether you’re a hunter or gatherer business allows you to design the most effective strategy that will allow you to maximize your potential from all the goodwill you’ve already generated.

You may also enjoy No New Customers

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

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Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

Many entrepreneurs’ struggles can be traced to their inability to bring focus to their business. It is said that if you try to be great at everything, you’ll end up being good at nothing. I like to use the example of sunlight to explain the power of focus.

The Power of Focus

Most day our world is full of sunlight and even on the hottest of days there’s little risk of it setting anything on fire. But take that same sunlight and let it pass through a magnifying glass held at just the right angle and within seconds you can create a flame. Then, if properly stoked, it can become a raging inferno. That’s the power of focus and by applying the principles of focus to your business can take a mediocre enterprise and turn it into one that is highly profitable and sustainable.

Not That Popular

Bringing focus is easier than most realize and can applied to many areas of your business but none are more important than sales and marketing. The first step is to identify your most profitable products and services and then rank them. You’ll most likely discover that upwards of 80% of your revenue is coming from approximately 20% of your services or products. This is key. Far too often we waste time and energy on our slow moving products. One of the reasons we do this is that they offer higher margins but also because we hate admitting we made a mistake. However, in many instances these more profitable products are just not that popular.

Now, do the same with your customers. You need to determine, their purchase frequency and order size. Chances are that you’ll find an interesting overlap of your most profitable products and type of customers.

Now here comes the hard part. Ideally you should look to lose or reduce your activity opposite these low volume or unprofitable products. Next, stop chasing those non-profitable customers and focus all your attention on those products, services and customers that are making you money.

For example, if you discover that the most profitable customers are those with 10-20 employees, then that size of company becomes your focus. Clearly, you have something they want, otherwise they wouldn’t be your biggest market. Can you have a secondary target market? Of course, but in most cases, you’ll never exhaust the primary list.

Outliers

Meanwhile, if non-targeted customers want to avail themselves of your business, that’s okay and you should gladly accept their business. But point is you shouldn’t be chasing them, let them come to you, they are outliers. Focus on those individuals or companies where you’ve already experienced a higher level of success and spend all your sales and marketing efforts accordingly.

Narrowing your focus helps you to become an industry specialist or even an expert. The deeper you go in your target market the higher your reputation will soar and the more in demand you become.

Light a fire under your business by narrowing your focus.

You may also enjoy The 80/20 Rule

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog.

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

What if, you could start your business all over again? What would you do differently? What do you like or dislike about your current business? What would you change?

Why Mess With A Good Thing?

These sound like simple questions and that’s because they are. As entrepreneurs, we seem to get ourselves trapped into doing things one way. And why wouldn’t we, if it’s brought us some success? Why mess with a good thing, right? Not necessarily.

One of the problems is that the longer we’re in business, the harder it is to make changes. We’ve managed to survive and maybe even consider ourselves successful or resigned ourselves to the fact that this is as good as it gets, even if deep down inside we know it could be better. But aren’t entrepreneurs supposed to work hard and overcome challenges? Of course, but not everyday!

It’s Not A Fair Trade

Didn’t you go into business to have a better life? I don’t believe anybody goes into business to sacrifice their life or their family for the cause. But so many do and all the long they know it’s not right. It’s not a fair trade, but they do it anyways, and many lose more than they gain.

So, what if you could do a “do over”? How would organize and operate your business differently than it is now? Should you have grown bigger or stayed smaller? Would you have a larger staff or less? Should you have targeted different customers? Should you have narrowed your product offerings? Wish you could have more automation or electronic processes?

Don’t Let Fear Stop You

The point is we all make mistakes and head down rabbit holes that take our businesses to places we wish we weren’t. Then, for some reason we lose sight that we absolute control over our destiny. We forget that we can change whatever we want and all it takes is a little courage and faith in our abilities. Don’t let fear stop you from something better.

Transitioning a business to where you’d really like it to be, is not a revolution, but more an evolution. The reality is we have existing commitments to clients, staff and suppliers. Refocusing our business should be done gradually, unless of course there is a crisis. Doing so, gives you the chance to monitor each change you make to ensure they are impactful and taking you where you want the business and your life to go.

Don’t Overwhelm Your Organization

Alternatively, the revolutionary approach risks alienating employees and customers and potentially overwhelming your organization with changes that can’t be managed. Doing too much too fast can leave you worse off than before.

So, what if you could do it all over again? What do you wish your ideal business would look like? Write it down. Don’t let the fact that you don’t know how to do something stop you. You can learn how or find someone who does know and get the help you need.

The objective is to get started down the road to reinventing the business you really want and it all starts with the simple question – What if?

You may also enjoy Define Your Own Success

An interesting read Shoe Dog

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog.

 

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

As entrepreneurs, we all set goals. It’s a way to measure our progress. The biggest difference I have found between individuals is the size of the goals. Some people are just more ambitious than others. But the size of ones’ ambition is not a precursor to success.

“Without Goals

We Risk Drifting Aimlessly”

Goals are wonderful, they keep us moving forward. Much like a ships compass, goals give us a heading or a direction in which to sail, even when our destination is over the horizon. Goals give us focus, because without them, we risk drifting aimlessly.

 

One of the most common goals entrepreneurs have, is a million dollars! It could be a million dollars in sales, a million dollars in profit or a million dollars in wealth. Regardless of what anybody says, a million dollars is still a lot of money and damn hard to achieve. and the 1st million is the hardest. The million dollar goal was immortalized by The Barenaked Ladies hit “If I Had A Million Dollars”.

 

The problem with having such lofty goals is that, although achievable, they’re rarely short term, nor easily attained. When you think about it, if we were to measure our progress on a daily basis, most of us would become disillusioned very quickly. The painfully slow progress would be akin to watching a kettle boil.

Patience and Resilience

Most big goals require the compounding effects of time and effort to achieve. Having a healthy dose of patience and resilience usually doesn’t hurt. A major setback can easily destroy the will to continue our journey, turning a goal into another failed impossibility.

 

To avoid the goal crushing reality that are part of the entrepreneurial life, I use a simple formula or process to break down my loftier goals into a series of smaller more manageable objectives. Simply put, if the 1st million dollars is the hardest, it also stands to reason that the $10,000 is the hardest. Yet $10,000 feels much more achievable in the short term.

 

Intermediary Goals

Once we get to that 1st $10,000 under our belt, we can set our sights on the $20,000 mark, then $30,000 and so on, relishing in our achievements along the way. Before we know it, we’re hitting our 1st $100,000 and have settled in and marking off the mileposts of our smaller, yet more manageable, intermediary goals.

 

Whenever, I’m faced with a large seemingly insurmountable goal, I always try to remind myself of the adage on how to eat an elephant and that’s one bite at a time.

 

Celebrate Our Successes

I know this sounds simple and that’s because it is. By setting smaller more realistic short term goals it gives us the opportunity to celebrate our successes along the way. More importantly though, these shorter goals allow us to refine our methods so we can achieve the next one much faster than the previous one.

 

Setting smaller more numerous goals will give you a sense of progress. Success can then be measured in months versus years, if not decades. Because the 1st million is the hardest.

 

An interesting read Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini

 

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

 

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog.

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

When we first hang out our Small Business shingle, we outwardly exude confidence in our idea and our abilities that we will succeed. But if truth be told, we have absolutely no idea how the story will end. Will it be a fairy tale or a horror story?

Mouse in a maze

Throughout the planning stages, we have spent hours upon hours dreaming of the future we will create. We hope that this future will take us on an amazing and positive journey. Realistically though, this journey will not be in a straight line from A to B. It will not be simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another. Often, the entrepreneurial journey is more akin to mouse in a maze where it keeps running into dead ends in search of that elusive piece of cheese.

 

Of the many challenges we face is that success and failure can exist in the same day and frequently collide creating an emotional roller coaster. But true believers have the confidence that no matter what obstacles come their way, they’ll have the wherewithal either go through it, around it or over it to be successful.

 

Self-assurance

This confidence is not based on wishful thinking but is a feeling that resides deep within them. It’s a belief in themselves. A self-assurance, if you will, that lets them focus on the end goal that allows them to continuously move forward even if they don’t have all the answers. They know they’ll eventually figure it out.

 

Having that inner confidence is what sets the successful entrepreneur apart from the rest of the pack.

 

Recent book read Deep Work by Cal Newport

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

 

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog.

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

Profit, that elusive goal that frustrates many a business owners. To be sure, many businesses are just bad ideas that never should have been started in the first place. However, there are plenty of others that are well run with decent revenues but for some reason they aren’t as profitable as they should be.

When helping business owners, one of the first places I look is their pricing model. Other than suggesting some adjustments, their pricing doesn’t appear to be the issue. Take a minute and checkout episode #47 Pricing For Profit for more insight into pricing.

A little probing into customers and marketing initiatives often uncovers a flaw in their sales and marketing activities – namely geography! The problem is rooted in the fact that these businesses are casting their nets too wide. As a result, they fail to generate critical mass for their services in a single geographic area. This is where the concept of clustering can help increase awareness for certain businesses and profits for most.

What is Clustering?

Clustering, is nothing more than grouping your service deliverables or offerings around key geographic areas. Clustering can be applied to many types of businesses and services.

Most major sales organizations have been using clustering for decades. Sales forces use clustering as a way of making the maximum sales calls with minimal travel time between each location. Most delivery companies do the same to generate the necessary efficiencies needed to stay competitive.

Although you would think the concept of clustering is common sense, it has been my experience that it’s not.

To better illustrate, the following are a couple of examples:

Clustering for Service Businesses

Consider the example of a service company. This could be anything from a landscaping business, to equipment repair or a roofing company. It’s not uncommon for many of these companies to be running all over the city, performing their services throughout the day.

For many this comes about because of their marketing and promotion activities. Countless businesses owners wrongly assume that they need to advertise to the widest possible group of customers in the largest geographic area. Often, they have been convinced that, for just a few dollars more, they can blanket the whole city or region instead of focusing on a tighter geographic area.

Appealing as that sounds, this shotgun approach can lead to huge inefficiencies as they now run around the city burning fuel and man hours going between jobs. When you consider that many service company use lawn signs to promote their companies, having many signs in a tight geographic area drives higher customer awareness of your company. As an added bonus, this may help your business development initiatives because people are familiar with your company name.

Granted, every city and business is different and focusing on just one area may not be feasible. However, clustering can still be effective in these situations by limiting your service to certain areas on specific days of the week. For instance, we work in the East end on Monday, South end on Tuesday and so on.
Clustering in this case, ultimately allows you to service more customers during a single day with a greater number of billable hours at reduced costs.

Clustering for Retail Businesses

Retail businesses can also benefit from clustering and save significant money in their advertising and promotions costs. The first thing you need to do is to understand where most of your customers are coming from. By simply collecting their postal or zip code, you’ll quickly see a pattern emerge from key geographic areas. One thing that may surprise you is that most of your customers aren’t coming from as far as you think.

A survey by Brightlocal found that the average time that people will spend in a car to travel to a business, ranges from 12-23 minutes. They have a wonderful infographic that depicts various types of businesses and the time people are willing to travel to them.

Graphic courtesy  of www.brightlocal.com

Driving Times to Local Businesses Infographic

In todays highly competitive environment, finding efficiencies in every part of your business is mandatory and can’t be left to chance.

So, if you want to increase your profits and the effectiveness of your promotions, you should consider the concept of clustering.

.

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog.

 

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

Every entrepreneur goes into business with a list of dreams, hopes and desires for their business and their life. Unfortunately, dreams require more than just hoping and praying for a successful outcome.

What we need to realize is that dreams are just the starting point of the entrepreneurial adventure. Dreams get us in the game, but to be successful in business requires being able to put all the pieces together in order to create a prosperous enterprise.

Those elements consist of:

Sales
Marketing
Operations
Administration
The thing is, most of us are only really good in one or, if we’re lucky, two of those areas.

Self Assessment

Each of those areas require a wide ranging set of skills, yet many entrepreneurs have no ideas what real strengths or weaknesses they possess. Putting our dreams aside for a few moments, we need to ask ourselves some questions. A little self evaluation, if you will.

• What skills do we really need for our business?
• Are our strengths aligned with the skills required for our type of business?
• Do we have the temperament to even be in business?

Find Your Strengths

Relying solely on our own answers, only gets us part of the way. We need to get a little more scientific, because we all think we’re exceptionally talented. However, if we can leverage our true strengths, our path to success becomes just a little bit easier.

Once we’ve done a self-evaluation, we need to follow it up with a formal personality profile to see if our reality aligns with our perceptions. There exists a number of profiling tools available at little or know cost such as Myers-Briggs or Disc. These are readily available on the internet. If you’ve never complete one, I encourage you to do so as soon as possible. They are insightful. Once completed, compare it to your self evaluation.

By knowing our strengths and weaknesses that get uncovered by these profiling questionnaires, provide you with a framework for your personal development. To thy own self be true.

You may also enjoy reading Limitations

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog.

 

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

I’m frequently asked how one goes about pricing their goods and services for profit. It sounds like a simple enough question, but in reality, it can very complex. Get it right and all should be well. Get it wrong and you’ll be constantly chasing revenue, if only to pay the bills.

Now if your product is a “me too”, you don’t have a lot of flexibility, as the existing products have already established the pricing parameters and therefore you must compete accordingly. Raising your price becomes almost impossible. The only way to improve your profitability is either to reduce costs or add real value for which your customers are willing to pay a premium.

First Mover Advantage

Moving to higher quality or higher value allows you to break free of the commodity pricing, but with potential trade-offs. Chances are you’ll reduce the number of customers but add much higher profits on every sale.

Conversely, if you have a unique product or service, you can leverage the “first mover advantage” and command higher prices. This is because there is no opportunity for your customers to do any comparison pricing, because you’re the only one.

I leveraged this “first mover advantage” when I started the Marketing Resource Group. I expected to maintain my higher margins until such time as competitors caught on to what I was doing. Once that happened, I fully expected to reduce my margins, but that never happened and I maintained my premium pricing and margins.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of businesses, especially new businesses, are not sufficiently unique to enjoy unlimited pricing power. So how do you establish an initial price formula for that new product or service?

A Formula

What I have found to be an effective jumping off point is to use the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 formula. This formula simply breaks down your costs into fixed and variable and then add the profit element. In practice, it would look something like this:

Fixed Costs                 $1 (33%)
Variable Costs            $1 (33%)
Profit Margin             $1 (33%)
_____________________
Selling Price               $3

Is this a definitive formula? Absolutely not! But it does give you a wonderful starting point to establish your initial pricing target. In reality, many businesses have higher fixed or variable costs, in those cases, the fixed and variable costs shouldn’t exceed 2/3rd in order to protect your profit margin.

I’m sure there are many more complex pricing theorem out there, but this has worked me and my clients in helping to establish some pricing parameters. It forces you to identify all the actual costs that go into your product or service. Once these costs are identified, you can then layer on your expected profit margin starting with a 1/3.

Adjust Your Profits

By using this simple formula, you will actually be able to see how much profit you expect to make. This is of particular value when you end up in a competitive situation and need to be a little more aggressive in your pricing. Chances are you can’t adjust your cost base, but you can adjust your profit. Seeing how much or how little profit you’ll make on a given proposal, let’s you decide whether it’s worth doing as you’ll no longer be guessing at how much, if any profit you’ll make.

Over time, you will build up enough information on this new product or service to be able to refine or develop your own formula. In the meantime, this Pricing For Profit formula takes out some of the guesswork.

You may also like Revenue Without Profit Is Pointless

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

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Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

Far too often I come across entrepreneurs who can’t seem to launch their new business, product, service or even a new strategy. They are constantly tweaking it, in an attempt to make it better or even perfect the final offering.

What they fail to realize is that they’re wasting valuable learning time by not being in the market. Regardless of when they finally do launch, chances are they are going to need to make adjustments anyways once they receive customer feedback, so why wait?

“Far too often I come across smart people who create wonderful solutions for problems that don’t really exist.”

If you have a working prototype or framework for your service, my advice is get to market as soon as you can. By waiting you could be wasting valuable resources on developing features or benefits that no one cares about. Far too often I come across smart people who create wonderful solutions for problems that don’t really exist. It’s better to find that out sooner rather than later. 

Going to market as soon as possible with the minimum acceptable product or service will get you that all important feedback from the initial clients or presentations That way you can now focus your efforts on things that really do matter to the customer and not what you think matters.

So, if you’re wondering when to launch, do it now, because you can always make it better later.

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

There’s a lot of time and energy wasted by small businesses on the whole concept of brand building and little on reputation. So much of this noise can be traced back to the explosion of Social Media and if the truth be told, that’s all most of it is, noise.

To be honest branding any kind of service business has always been a challenge and is best suited to products. The exception to this is when a service business reaches a size and scope that no longer qualifies it as a small business. The primary factor is that most small businesses have difficulty defining what business they’re actually in and any attempt to develop a brand is a lesson in futility.

Personal Relationships

Think about how you react to certain businesses. There are many large organizations whereby you don’t have a personal relationship with anyone, yet you have come to trust their products or services. That’s because they have consistently lived up to or exceeded your expectation and you’re more likely to try a new offering from them. 

Contrast that now with a small business. Typically, you’ve met the owner and/or received a referral from someone who has. The distance from the top of the organization to you, is very short. It’s a personal relationship, their reputation.

What most successful entrepreneurs focus on is not creating a brand but of creating a great experience for their customers. Doing so, has built a reputation that is far more powerful than any manufactured brand.

Delivering a consistent service that customer are willing to tell their friends about is something that can’t be created. It has to be earned and is far more enduring and profitable as people will be willing to be put on a waiting list in order to deal with a company with a good reputation. For those who aren’t willing, they are probably not our target anyways.

The Smaller The Company, The Less Your Brand Matters-It’s About Your Reputation

Focusing on your reputation is a far better use of your time and effort than trying to create a brand. By simply making sure you treat the customer fairly, do what you say you’re going to do and fix any problems immediately. Doing so, goes a long way to building a great reputation. 

I don’t know about you but I would much prefer to deal with a small business that has a great reputation over a great brand.

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

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Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.