This week’s tip is stolen from Andrew and Pete of Atomic. (Sorry guys but I can return it any time you like).
They are amongst my favourite marketing people and almost bounce out of the screen on their videos. But, like all of us, they have their bad days and shared how they coped with a particularly stressful period.
They each wrote down every single stressor that they could think of; even the little things. They then worked out one way of improving each of the items on their list. They didn’t try to make everything go away with a magic wand, but just went with one small improvement for each problem.
For more information on Atomic Marketing have a look at their new website
https://becomeatomic.com/
Trading through the tough times
Some businesses were founded during a recession:
Disney, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Hudson Business Accountants and Advisers.
No matter how bad things are, we all have to do the right things in order to produce the best possible results:
- Build robust internal systems for maximum efficiency
- Recruit a service focused team to be the friendly human interface between these systems and clients
- Be clear on who our ideal customers are and focus our marketing accordingly
- Have consistent marketing and sales systems rather than relying on good luck
- Nurture our clients through the early days and reward loyalty
- Look after ourselves in order to look after everyone and everything else in the business (it’s why I write so much about self care)
- Look after our team (whether employees, subcontractors or outsourced) so that they will look after our business
- Get your pricing right
If you can manage through the tough times you will be a roaring success in the good times.
How to balance working on and in your business
Small business owners usually do a mixture of working on and in their business. It’s very easy to get sucked into working IN your business to generate profits and income today but it is also essential to work ON your business to grow and generate future profits.
So how do we get the balance right?
I use a default diary to try and ensure that I get a good balance at the planning stage.
Monday: ON catch up on admin, clear my inbox, follow up leads.
Tuesday: IN Write, rehearse and record webinars and talks for the speaking and training parts of my business.
Wednesday: IN Minerva Accountants work.
Thursday: ON/IN Marketing and content writing for myself and third parties as I write content and articles for fintechs and accountants.
Friday: IN/ON Individual and group coaching for my various online programmes and then my own business development time, implementing ideas from books, webinars and conferences that I have attended.
Of course, in the real world, it isn’t easy to stick to this but having it in my diary in the first place means that I am more likely to move my work slots around than to cancel them completely.
On a Friday afternoon I like to plan out any remaining work in my diary so that I can hit the ground running on a Monday morning.
How do you structure your week?
Retirement planning
No matter what age you are it is still worth thinking about how you will save for your retirement. And I don’t just mean saving your teeth.
There are 3 main ways that your business can fund your retirement:
1. Increase value of business for sale
If you have a valuable business this can be sold at the point of retirement to fund your new lifestyle. Your business value will increase if it is highly systemised and not dependent on you.
2. Systemise your business for residual income
If your business is highly systemised you can step out of it or just reduce your hours and still have a generous income. Whilst we often coach accountants and business owners who want to sell up, two of them have been so pleased with the process that they have actually decided not to sell yet as the revamped business operates so smoothly and takes less of their time. It’s a bit like doing up your house for sale and then deciding that you like it so much that you won’t move after all.
3. Increase profits to invest elsewhere
Some businesses have limited sale value as they will always be dependent on the expertise of the owner. In this case it makes more sense to increase your profits to invest elsewhere. Your company can pay into a third party pension scheme or SIPP very tax efficiently or you may prefer to take your profits out now, pay the tax and invest in property.
Whichever way you choose to fund or retirement, and whether you use us to help you to improve your business or not, please remember to take care of your teeth.
Speaking for business
As you probably know I speak professionally, and so I often get asked for tips on how people can improve their speaking.
Please see my article on basic Zoom meetings. Get your camera angle, lights and sound all set up even for normal meetings.
For speaking on webinars rather than just meetings:
- I speak professionally after years of practice and training from the Professional Speaking Association! (The speaker’s equivalent of ICAEW). If you want to run a professional event hire a professional speaker, just as you would use a professional accountant.
- I don’t use a script so, after writing the talk, I set aside a whole day or more for rehearsing in the week before the event.
- Any slides should enhance your event. If you’re just going to read from your slides then you’re not adding any value.
- I have crib notes on my keyboard for any facts I might forget but they need to be big enough to read without my glasses!
- As I’m talking about my own subject matter I can tweak the talk as I go to adapt to timing (often needed when other speakers overrun). In an event where I can see my audience I can even adapt the content to spend more time on a topic where they look engaged and skip over anything that is of less interest to them.
- DO NOT OVER RUN as it is rude to other speakers and the event organiser. If you’re organising events please be clear on how long the actual talk should be and whether introductions and questions need to be included in this time.
- If I’m MCing an event I hold cue cards in my hand (or on my keyboard) but I still try to rehearse introductions beforehand so that I can look at the camera/audience as much as possible.
- Use a professional MC for your events. They will ensure that everything runs to time even if you have less experienced speakers.
- Have a dedicated person to look after your AV.
- Ensure that you have a diverse mix of speakers. If anybody needs help with this then feel free to contact me as I know hundreds of speakers who cover a range of topics.
A lot of people are setting up online courses so I’m hosting a webinar on Tuesday 20th October to share how I create and host our coaching programmes on Thinkific.
Working from home – the long game
As some parts of the country are in local lockdown and we’ve all been encouraged to work from home again we need to get set up properly for working from home.
For 7 months now businesses have been making excuses for poor service and blaming working from home. Frankly, apart from a few badly hit sectors, if you haven’t adapted by now then it sounds a bit hollow. (If you want ideas on how to adapt then watch Hudson Business Advice’s old ‘One for All’ Covid videos or book onto their 30 day Makeover course starting 1 November – see www.hudsonbusiness.co.uk for further information).
Employers still expecting their team to work from their premises need to have a pretty good risk assessment, and some types of business may also be called upon to explain WHY they can’t mitigate risks by working from home.
Make it easier to work from home with:
- VOIP phone system for external calls or an alternative method of contacting the team. I have a VOIP phone but I also use Answer It answering service to take messages or redirect calls.
- Paperless systems. Even the smallest businesses can store information in the cloud for free or cheaply. Where possible send out information electronically to minimise the number of people touching a document. I use the business version of Onedrive.
- Online signatures for contracts, accounts etc. I use Signable and Accountancy Manager for the two sides of my business.
- Internal communications for managing work. Invest in a workflow system. I use Trello, Active Campaign and Accountancy Manager for the different aspects of my businesses
- Informal internal communications such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
There are plenty of other cheap or free ways to run your business from home now that we have time to catch our breath and plan.
Is free really free?
When we say that something is free we usually mean that no money changes hands. But hopefully there is an exchange of value. For instance, I hope that these tips help you and/or your business is some way.
Salesmen often use the phrase “what have you got to lose?” when they try to book some of our time for a chat or a software demo. Well, actually, I will be losing time and for any business owner time is a precious commodity. (Thanks for taking the time to ready this, by the way).
Or perhaps we exchange our contact information for a free webinar. Yes, we too see interest in our free webinars as a legitimate business reason to think you might be interested in the paid advice that we provide as well as further webinars. It’s why we always include an Unsubscribe button in our newsletters in case you really aren’t interested.
There’s also the opportunity cost of watching a webinar when you could be spending time earning money elsewhere, so I need to be pretty certain that those webinars will prove to be a good investment of your time once you’ve signed up. It’s also why we make a donation of 1 day’s education to a Kenyan girl as a thank you to those of you who turn up.
So, next time you offer something “free” as part of your marketing, make sure that there is some value being exchanged.
What is decision fatigue? (part 2)
Decision fatigue is the exhaustion that comes with making constant decisions. My tip this week is to remove some more of the smaller decisions in your life, so here are some ideas for deciding what to eat AND trying to keep it healthy(ish).
I really admire those people who spend a day each weekend bulk cooking for the whole week. Although I love cooking I’m not that organised.
- Plan your meals a week ahead so that you don’t end up ordering a takeaway or snacking on junk just because you’re hungry and can’t decide what to eat.
- Cook double quantities and freeze half for a busy day.
- Order a veg box. You just have to cook what turns up, whether you like it or not. If anybody has any recipes for courgettes where you can’t taste the courgettes then please send them to me. It’s not just the veg box but the only things I have growing in my garden are tomatoes and … courgettes.
- Order a fruit box. Healthy snacks! Also pots of dried fruit and bowls of homemade popcorn instead of crisps for those who prefer something savoury.
- ‘Hello Fresh’ and similar meal boxes. Choose them in a matter of minutes ready for the following week. It’s great for trying new things and they come with brilliant instructions so the teens are able to cook a meal without input from me.
Give it a try and let me know how you get on.
What is decision fatigue?
Decision fatigue is the exhaustion that comes with making constant decisions. My tip this week is to remove some of the smaller decisions in your life so here are some ideas for deciding what to wear.
I’d like to think that I simplified my wardrobe long before Steve Jobs or Barack Obama but I don’t know when they started to wear their ‘uniform’ rather than spending time deciding what to wear each day.
- The simplest thing is to limit your wardrobe to one main colour so that you need fewer changes to match outfits. You may have noticed that I’m almost always wearing blue with black footwear.
- I also wear branded polo shirts and jeans for normal work days. They’re as comfortable as a t-shirt so can be worn when working from home but the collar makes them slightly smarter. Choose something that matches your business image.
- These days I follow a 333 clothes system where I choose 33 items of clothing (excluding underwear and sports kit) to last me 3 months. Any seasonal clothes get stored in a box in the loft. I’m pleasantly surprised that I haven’t needed to cheat yet but you set your own rules.
Give it a try and let me know how you get on.
My confession about cash
In spite of doing all the right accounting entries and knowing how to do a cashflow forecast, like many small business owners, I still use my bank account to manage my cash.
My business model is pretty simple and I bank with one of the challenger banks that make it very easy to have savings spaces for everything; tax, VAT, buffer to cover overheads, next dividend etc.
Often it’s the simple systems that work best so let’s focus on practical solutions.