Tag: Support

What is Work-Life Balance and How Do You Get It?

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According to an entry in Wikipedia “Work-Life Balance – is having enough time for work and enough to have a life, thus the work life balance. Related, though broader, terms include “lifestyle balance” and “life balance””.

As a society we tend to look at work as a Monday to Friday event and evenings and weekends belong to our personal time. This may be true for those employed in a traditional corporation, but for so many others, like those in manufacturing, health care, travelling, customer service, or other businesses that span the traditional 9-5 day this has never been the case. For business owners it is also quite different. Business meetings, conferences, trade shows, deadlines, and expectations from our clients can take our workday overtime into our personal lives.

My good friend Susanne Hemet was on my Power of Leadership Expert Call today talking about Burnout and how we can manage or avoid it. She described burnout as a “working in conflict with your core values”. (Listen to the entire recording “Battling Burnout with an Abundance Mindset” and sign up for all her tips).

In work-life balance it is not just avoiding burnout or reducing work so you have enough time for life, I believe it includes loving your work, having fun, being happy, and looking forward to your next day.

Tulips on a breakfast table

Balance is a term that means “to keep or put (something) in a steady position so that it does not fall” not necessarily that there is equal parts weighted equally. In your life to stay in balance to ensure you do not fall, like becoming sick, stressed, unhappy, depressed, or start losing your relationship or clients. To be in balance means you wake feeling excited for your day and you go to bed feeling satisfied for the day you just had.

I think there are 3 areas in your life that you need to manage to ensure you have this type of balance.

1. Working Time

During this time the best way to feel like you have accomplished what needs to get done is to know what had to get done. Have goals, create a daily to-do list and do something every day that takes you closer to your biggest goals.

For example:

If your biggest goal is to sell your business in 5 years, you should be creating concrete processes within your business, training procedures, and working on a long term marketing plan to ensure your sales will be where they need to be at sale time. To feel great at the end of each day there should be a component of some piece of this that can be touched (e.g. reviewed, tested, written, etc.)

If your biggest goal is to double your sales in three months, then do something every day to create more sales and track your money every day.

If your biggest goal is to complete your current project, know the project milestones and review your progress every day.

Finishing a day feeling accomplished is a great way to keep work time in you time for work.

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2. Personal Time

Your personal time is basically your home life work. Driving your kids to and from activities, house-keeping, laundry, property maintenance, dishes, or whatever you feel is the routine of keeping your home life outside in order outside of your work time. This is the time you take to pick up your prescriptions, go to the dentist, visit with your kids’ teachers, etc. This is personal work, and it is not the type your boss or clients are going to pay you for when you are doing it for yourself.

3. Downtime Time

This is the time where your body, mind, and soul get an opportunity for respite. Hanging with friends, hobbies, gardening, sports or just chilling with a glass of wine, and dinner with your family, downtime is where your life is filled up again so you can do all the things the rest of your life requires of you.

Know that if you are in alignment with your core values in your business you are likely to love what you do and be more likely to be happily energized by the work itself, but, unless your family and friends get to spend all the time with you too (at work too), you may end up very lonely, so look for downtime to help support all your relationships in your life.

Your Outcome

By completing what had to get done in your work each day you will have a huge sense of accomplishment that will allow you to enjoy the time you are not in work. If you spend your day doing personal errands instead of your work (e.g. doing laundry and dishes when you should be making sales calls), you will not feel successful and you will try to rebalance by completing work in a time you had initially set aside for your personal or down time. Now the dominoes start to fall because if you don’t get time to do your personal errands, then you will be working on your personal items when you should be finding time for your downtime (e.g. grocery shopping when you should be at the gym). When downtime is lost then you don’t have time to regenerate your energy or your spirit and that is when you really feel out of balance.

Stay focused on what needs to be done in all areas of your life, find accomplishment in each and you will find balance in all.

 

Credibility and Recognition Should Make You Smile

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A year ago I sat in my room, crying so hard I could hardly breathe. I felt like such a failure. I had gone to a local event where I was nominated for an award looking forward to the opportunity to win. I had worked so hard on my business development and I know I had done things that most business owners have never tired, created opportunities that most people would overlook, and step up my game to an uncomfortable level that made me stretch.

About 35 minutes into the program I realized I was not even one of the finalists. How could this be? Now this might seem petty, that I took this so hard, but that is where the learning opportunity came. Why would someone that always has it together, is strong and pulls people up to their greatness be falling apart because of a local award?

Why it Hurts

As Entrepreneurs we are often alone to do our work. When you are the CEO of your company you are responsible for all the outcomes, good and bad. We struggle to make everything work and often to have it perfect for the world, and our families, to judge us. Success is in how we are judged, or so it feels. But what I’ve learned is not about ignoring the judgement but instead ignoring the self-judgment. Someone recently said, “criticism only about two things – it is a reflection on the circumstance or a reflection of the person giving the criticism.”

I am the type of person that needs to feel ‘in control’ of my life. I need to be seen as competent and reliable. This is my personality type. These are great attributes, except when I am alone and struggling – when I don’t feel in control or competent. When I am not meeting my sales and I feel I have not been reliably doing my work.

The criticism was mine. It did not accurately reflect my skills or my circumstances; it was insight into my feeling of ‘lack’ and ‘failure’. I needed to view this event with different eyes, make a plan as to what needed to change and then implement so that I would not only be more successful but I would see myself differently. I needed less tears and more SMILES in my business and that is what I did.

Sandra Yancey and Barb Stuhlemmer

S – M – I – L – E – S

S – Sales

My number one failing was that I was not meeting my sales numbers. Why was I not meeting this value? Because, I had only set a year-end goal and no real plan or milestones to meet throughout the year. I would make one sale and be so proud I would take the next week off of my sales job. This was easy because I would busy myself with the hundred other things that had to get done, including networking, which I love.

You cannot do this. Doing the sales is one of the keys to building a strong, growing business. Every day there must be some work on sales.

M – My commitment to change

I have three steps to making change:

  • First you have to be aware that you need change. I was now keenly and painfully aware that I needed change. I could not go on in that state. No one wants to hire a Business Success Mentor that did not feel successful.
  • Secondly, you need to identify what needs to be changed. I had to spend time evaluating what made me so unhappy first, and then I had to identify what part of my business was the cause of that failing.
  • Third you have to make a plan to create the change. Just knowing what has to be changed and hoping it will change is not enough. You need to create the goal, tasks, and steps that will transition your current situation and habits into a more profitable process for your company. I had to hire someone to help me with this process and hold me accountable to implement the habit-changing actions. I need to always be thinking, ‘what am I doing today that will increase my bottom line’ and put that into my plans. Then I have to ask, ‘what am I doing next?’

I – Internal belief (you don’t need others to say so, you need to say so)

Many entrepreneurs are eager to jump in head-first and get started, even when they don’t have all the tools, resources, or time. Confidence that it can be done is rarely an issue. Confidence in one’s own value is. Like many entrepreneurs I needed to quiet my internal voice that said things like, “you don’t belong”, “who do you think you are”, and “you’re not good enough”. We all have this on some level, and my voice had become too loud. I had to stop listening.

I also sought help from someone that could see me for my greatness and still hold me for my frailties. They were able to identify what was holding me back and set me on a course that is likely unstoppable now. The confidence to be around amazing people and talk to them was never an issue, but now I have the confidence to feel like I belong there too.

L – Learn

I know first-hand what life is like when you decide you have learned enough and you refuse to do anything new. My father is a highly intelligent man, but when he was forced to retire, he never really took up anything new. Now, more than a decade later, he shrinks at the idea of doing anything new. His life has stopped moving forward and his vision for the future is very short term and shallow. It saddens me to see this amazing man act so scared and small.

As Sandra Yancey says, “it is harder to act small”. When we act small we run on fear, we can never afford that next step, we have a vision that is stunted by ‘lack’.

If you want to continue to grow you must continue to know: Know more about yourself, your business, your competitors, your market, and the changing economy. Never stop learning!

E – Engage

With our heads down and our shoulder to the wheel, we forge forward to create more growth and profit in our business. The challenge with this is, somehow we forget to engage in our lives as we go. Life is not for the time when we finally “make it”, it is not when we hit the $100,000 mark, it is not for when our kids are old enough, our website is perfect, or we finally have our 60-second infomercial perfected. Life is a one-time showing of the best movie you will ever watch and if you miss it – there is not another showing for you! The great thing is you can jump in at any time and you will still enjoy the rest of the movie.

Life is a movie

So I found that I had forgotten about what I used to call fun: My hobbies, my laughter, my jokes, my friends. I was still seeing them, but I was not fully engaged in my life. Don’t forget to LIVE while you build – jump into your movie.

S – Support

Don’t do it alone. I could not have grown as much as I did over this past year if it were not for the incredible people I spend most of my time with. Find a mastermind group, network with positive, forward thinking people, hire a great coach, and keep your family updated so they can be your cheerleaders.

This year I was nominated again. I attended the event and I was one of the finalists. When the name of the winner was announced I could not have been happier, for the winner was one of my past clients and she is such an incredible business catalyst I was honoured to have been put in the same category as her. I have come a long way in one year and my sales are a good indicator of that change.

 

 

 

Why You Don’t Have Any Time

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Have you ever said, “I can’t do that I just don’t have time?” That may be true sometimes but if you find yourself saying this to every opportunity that comes your way then you, like many business owners, have fallen victim to your business. We start a business so we can become more prosperous, not so our business can take over our lives. If you have lost your lifestyle and your free time to your business then you need to start implementing some systems and strategies to make your business work harder for you.

I want to share with you three reasons I hear my clients talk about when they say they don’t have any time.

1. Stuck in a Rut

Ruts in the slush on the road create driving hazardsWhen we build a business we start by implementing what we know. When it works we keep it. The challenge is that as the economy, industry, world market, your client’s buying habits, and you change over time so should your business. Many business owners are still doing business the way they set it up in the beginning.

If you have not made any changes since you started your business you should start now. I’m not talking 10 years down the road, I’m talking about constantly evaluating change in your market and making small tweaks to your business. The business owner that is on top of change is more likely to be ahead of their competition and ready for the things their clients will want or need.

2. Dream Big without a Clear Plan

My clients are high-achievers with big ideas. Unfortunately a dream is only realistic when there is a plan, the research is done, and there is a clear understanding of market and the client.

I have a client that wants an eCommerce site. They have been dreaming of this for over a year and it always seems like something that is about to happen, but it never gets started. Why? Because when they look at all the parts without having a plan it feels absolutely overwhelming and too expensive.

Take a look as some of these components that they want to put in place for their business:

  • Need a website that can manage a shopping cart
  • Need a VA (Virtual Assistant)
  • Need a merchant account
  • Need a finished product to sell
  • Need to know What to order / What the client needs / What market to advertise to
  • Need marketing copy for all aspects of this

Each piece on its own is time-consuming and can be very costly, but if they had started a year ago implementing individual pieces, using free components until they were making more money, and only hiring people when it could save them time and money, then they would have their ecommerce site finished and generating money for their business.

Knowing what is required now and what can wait is the key. Having a plan you can follow will make it happen quicker. You can use affirmations all day if you want, but I recommend you follow up with a business plan and take action now to make it happen.

3. Undervalued Time and Products

This is a chronic issue with passionate business owners, especially those in the wellness industries, where their hearts are so big and ‘giving’ is a key personality trait. It is sometimes hard to just ask for the money. But I want to tell you that if you are not charging what you are worth then you are not doing anyone a favour. Let me explain why.

When you undercharge you cause two things to happen. People that do not value your skills jump in to take advantage of the low rates. You will be working with people that will likely not be your ideal client. The second thing that will happen as a result is you will eventually feel undervalued and you may become jaded. Working hard at your calling without pay is working on a hobby. You must get paid enough that you can not only cover your costs but you can make a profit. The next step is to increase your price as you become an expert.

My hair dressers start off as junior stylist and charge about $30-$35 / hour. Over the years their price increase as their skill increases, and I’m OK with that. They have worked hard and deserve to be seen and paid as the expert they are. You should too.

Remember:

  1. If you lose your passion for your calling you will go out of business.
  2. If you go out of business you cannot help the people that really need your services.

If you believe in your skill and your product, charge what it is worth so you can be around when your clients really need you.

Getting What You Need From Networking

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If you think networking is one-size-fits-all you would be wrong. All networking can be successful but not for the same reasons and not for all people. When evaluating networking I look for three key things: Family, Focus, & Fit.

Family

Family is what I feel is the most important. The key is, do you feel comfortable in the presence of these people? Are you welcomed, do you like them, will you be happy to be in this location with these people several times a month for years? Does the location feel like a place you would feel comfortable bringing your clients? It’s like choosing a home. You are going to spend a lot of time and money to work this networking group so you had better be sure these are the people you want to spend your time with.

Focus

Is this group focused on generating business to the same level you are? What is the focus of the group and what do you expect to get out of being with the group. In my first networking group I was focused on becoming a more confident, credible business owner. I surrounded myself with long-time, successful business owners and I got exactly what I was focused on. When I changed my focus to reaching a global market I had to change my networking group.

Fit

Does you networking group fit your needs? I have a great tool that I use to evaluate a lot of different types of decisions. When I was young and looking for a job I went to the HRSDC for resume training. The counselor took me through an evaluation and I have used it for every large decision I make, like going into business for myself. Let me share it with you for networking.

1. Start by listing your values

Make a list of the values that are so important to your life and your business that they must be the things that are not adversely affected by a bad choice. For networking I have these six values listed.

  • It cannot significantly affect my time with my children
  • Low travel time
  • Must be able to connect with my target market
  • Must be filled with business focused people
  • They must have access to a global community
  • I must have opportunities to speak to my target market through the network

2. List Your Networking Choices

Create a list of all the options you have available to you. Reduce the list to the three or four you really like. For my example I have Choice A, B, & C. I have put some of the details of these three choices for you to understand the outcome.

3. Create an Evaluation Matrix

I know it sounds ominous but it is really easy. Put your values across the top and your top 3 choices down the side. Now evaluate your selection based on how it affects your values. I used a scale of 0-4 where 0 is the worst choice of the three and 3 is the best choice of the three. A value of 4 was beyond my expectations.

Evaluation of Networking Matrix

Note that Choice B, even though it requires much more travel time, rates almost twice as high as Choice A and almost 3 times as high as Choice C. I now have a scale that tells me how aligned with my target values a networking group choice will be. This is really important if you don’t want to spend years trying to work a group that is just not in line with your needs.

If you want networking to help create business for you through successful marketing then you have to choose wisely. Find the family, know theirs and your focus, and make sure it is the right fit for your values. This way you will be more engaged to create the income you need in your business and you will enjoy doing it.

 

When I have No Money How Do I…

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It is a challenge to run a business and grow a business when there is not a lot of profit to go around. It makes it easy to have excuses for the things that have to be done in your business but don’t feel like a priority. If you find yourself saying things like:

  • I can’t go to that training
  • I cannot afford to get coaching or mentoring support
  • I don’t have the money to put pay for an ad
  • That networking is too expensive

Then I want you to just take note of what the value and priority is for you and your business and put it through this test.

1. Does it Make You Money Right Now?

Not everything that you throw money at will make you money. When times are tough then you have to look at everything for if it will make you money right now.

When I started networking 9 years ago I did it to build credibility and to increase my business prowess. I knew in the long run it was going to create value and clients for my business but I also knew that this focus was not going to make me money right now.

The challenge with this is that you still “MUST” market your business in some way. Just because it costs you money, and you don’t have it, does not mean you cannot continue to connect with your potential clients.

2. Do You Have A Plan?

If you decide that paying for training or a magazine ad will have a return for your business then don’t just jump in and pay, make a plan.

Call to Action

  • Decide how long it will take for you to make money back on your investment. Keep it short term.
  • Decide what else you will need to ensure that you can manage the project (people support, time, additional resources, or more contacts, etc.).).
  • Do the research to see the past success of what you are investing in. If you are an optometrist and having a direct connection to the oral surgeons will immediately get you more clients because 2-3 clients a month need this support, then start networking with the surgeons and advertise your connection for additional client attraction.
  • What is your call-to-action? Be very clear in your plan as to what you expect to create with this investment and ensure you have a call-to-action for your potential clients to take advantage. You cannot make more money if you don’t invite more people to purchase from you.

3. Do You Have Time to Implement and Make the Changes?

Whether you are taking an industry upgrade course to stay certified, working with a business coach, investing in social media, or attending a new association monthly meeting, YOU and your time will be the payment. Are you going to have the time needed to really invest at a level that will create strong relationships and encourage people to purchase from you now?

Sometimes it’s not the money that stops business owners from doing what has to be done, it is often the time. Remember, if you are working on your client projects and you have no time to do the marketing required to grow your business, when you are finished with your client you will have no money. This is not the mindset of an entrepreneur. Step bravely into your entrepreneurship and look for the solutions that will continually help your business grow.

 

What Should You Be Doing?

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I often start training going through an exercise to help people look at what they have built in their business, what their responsibilities are in their business, and then to determine what they really want to be doing in their business. Often times there are large gaps between what people build and what they really want to do. It is also the reason why they are challenged to find more time to create something new or grow their business.

What should you be doing in your business? Well if growing a business is your goal you must be doing more than just looking for work and then doing the work. If this is your business model you will find it difficult to hire someone, create new products, make changes when your industry or the economy changes, etc. To be able to overcome challenges and make change you have to see well beyond that obstacle to a future where you are only doing the piece of your business that you want to be doing and someone else is looking after the rest.

The key to this is to start by knowing what you want to do. Follow these three steps to get started in that transition from everything to that one key focus.

Your Current Responsibilities

Know what you are currently doing in your business. What are the positions in your company and which ones are your responsibilities? You need to know who is currently looking after all the key roles in your business. If you are new or a solo-preneur most, if not all of the positions are yours. Remember, you have to include the responsibility of managing your marketing, which embodies website, networking, printing, advertising, branding, social media, etc. Now look at your administration, operations, finances, sales, customer support, etc. Each of these has several roles and they are all yours.

Did you start this business to be a bookkeeper? Unless your business is bookkeeping then likely not.

Know What You Want

Identify what you really want to be doing in your business. In a perfect day when everything is running exactly right in your business and you only have to look after one piece of that, what piece are you managing? Customer support, sales, product expert, manager, CEO, marketing… What one position do you want to hold in the business?

Go back to your list of roles you currently have and circle the one (no more than 3) position that will be yours when the business has reached its sales goals.

feet on scale

Start Losing Some Weight

“Weight” of the world that is. Start by identifying the two positions you absolutely hate. It is likely that you are not an expert at them or that you do not do them well because of your lack of enthusiasm for those roles. You will only be doing your business a benefit by finding a way to hand them off.

At this point I get a lot of complaints like, “I can’t afford to hire someone right now.” That might be true, but know that you don’t have to hire a full-time employee to get rid of some of the chores your small business is generating. Try looking for a contractor to come in once a week, month, or quarter to get these couple of challenging positions off your plate.

The benefit to you will be more time to focus on getting more clients so you have the money to hire out more of what you do not love to do, PLUS you can spend more time becoming a credible expert at what you do love doing.

I like to say, “We don’t hire ‘ho-hum’ abilities”, so go out and become the best you can be at the thing you really want to spend your time on and watch your business grow.

Growing in a Partnership

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This topic came to me as a result of a question I got for my BLITZ Entrepreneur Club Q&A call this month and I thought I would share it with you too.

The Question

My client asked, “I have a partner in my business. I am really excited to do new things and have more products to sell but my partner doesn’t want to change or invest. What should I do?

The Answer

A partnership is like a marriage. You started out madly in-love with your business idea, excited to create something new together, and happy to have found the person that will share this adventure with you. As you, your partner, and your business grows and changes there is always the chance that you will not grow in the same direction. Here are three steps you should start with to help evaluate where you started, what you have, and where you are going, before you make a decision as to your partnership.

Handshake

 Agreement

Start by looking back at your initial partnership agreement. By revisiting where you initially thought you were going with your business you may discover the spark that lead your partner into the business in the first place.

  • Did you state roles and responsibilities? What were your roles and responsibilities when you started? Are you still in charge of those responsibilities?

If your partner never had a clear idea of where they fit in the business or they are still doing the same mundane things then boredom or frustration may have replaced excitement for your partner, who now may not see her role as important or valuable.

Business Successes

Look at your original business plan, particularly the cash flow section and compare it to your current business plan. You want to get an idea of what you have built and where it is going.

  • Identify the successes you have had in your business. What is in your near future – Growth or Decline? What are you forecasting for the next year?

You want a clear picture of what you expect your business future to look like if nothing changes. This way you will have better insight into what your partner is holding on to or hoping for.

Know Your Goals

Write out what it is that you hope to see happen in the business. Identify what is different from your initial partnership agreement and what is different from your business plan.

  • You need to know what it is that you want.

If it is significantly different than what you agreed on creating with your partner, knowing this will give you insight into why your partner is not ‘on-board’ with your direction.

Talk and Decide

You need to start a dialogue of change. Go over the information you have gathered. Get your partner to voice their concerns and their goals. Find out what would make them really happy and excited again in the business.

Maybe the forecast of the business shows that at your current rate you will not survive another 6 months. Maybe you are not happy with your initial partnership and you need a change from it. Maybe you need to rewrite your agreement or your business plan. OR Maybe you need to be doing something completely different and separate from your partner.

You will need to use this conversation to identify all the opportunities and options available to you and your partner and then you have to make a decision on what action you will take.

One thing I know for sure is that if you are not both moving in the same direction, with purpose, your business will suffer, so take the time to get re-aligned. You may need to hire a mediator to help you review the information together and come to an understanding for the future of your business.

How Prepare for Growth: Creating a Procedure

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When I am teaching my clients about business process, we always come to the part where I get them to evaluate where they are spending their time. We are looking for the things they do over-and-over again for clients and then I get them to create a procedure outlining the steps of this process. Each time I do this I get the same response from just about everyone in the room…

Man frustrated by doing procedures

Writing procedures is not easy for many and not fun for most, but it is a key to great business if you are thinking of growing your company. So to help you with this, I would like to give you my top three points on making this task easier in your business.

1. Do It

The best time to write a procedure is while you are going through a process.  Take note of everything you do, including the directories you save files to, naming conventions, phone numbers, people’s names, times of day, etc. Whatever you may think as obvious may not be to the next person that tries to follow your instructions.

2. Record It

If you hate writing the steps then I always suggest recording what you are doing when you are doing it. Get yourself a small recording device that will create a standard file type (like mp3). You can then have it transcribed. Use the transcription to create the step-by-step procedure.

3. Offload It

Teach someone else how to do it and then get them to write the procedure so they can teach others. If any process in your business is only known by one person then your company cannot survive growing pains when that one person cannot perform that task. I have had clients with this challenge and it was devastating to their work and time management to try and do their own work and guess at someone else’s work responsibilities.

Bonus – Test It

If you want to know whether the procedure is written well then the best thing you can do is give it to someone else to try and perform. Ask someone with general knowledge about your business, but without specific knowledge of the task, to go through the procedure and see if they can replicate the quality of the outcome to a fairly high degree. I’m not suggesting that this procedure should replace training, but it should be a great guide for someone in your company to perform a new task if the need is required.

 

Don’t Be ‘Ho Hum’

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It is true that it is unlikely that you are the only person in the world doing what you do. If fact, there are likely hundreds of people if not tens-of-thousands of people, depending on the industry you are in. So when I tell that you need to work towards being ‘the best’ at what you do how does that make you feel?

Crowd Of sheered sheep

Here are a few different responses I have had:

  • I am very good at what I do
  • I am an expert at my _____ (craft or skill)
  • I’ve been doing this for years

All of these are great, but when I say, ‘be the best’ I mean at your business and what you do very well, and that is more difficult. As Michael E. Gerber has pointed out in his E-Myth books, we often start a business because we are really good at something, we have a skill, and we become the technician of the business, but not the best business owner.

Here are three things you can do be become the best business owner you can become:

1. Learn the Business Side of Your Business

Read books, take classes, coach with an expert, look for amazing entrepreneurs that you can mentor with or spend time with, and don’t ever stop. Business is a lifelong learning experience.

2. Focus on What You Do Best

If it is early in your business you will be the person that does most of the jobs in your business, but you have to be focused on what that is going to be as your business grows. Do you want to be the person that buys the office supplies, does the work for the client, or oversees the day-to-day work?

Where will you fit into your company when it is bigger? Ask yourself this question now so you can always be focused on which piece of the pie is yours so you can be the best at it. You do not want to be ho-hum at a hundred things, you want to be the best at 1 or 2. Focus on your goal to be the best at whichever part of the business you see yourself doing in the future.

3. Hire the Best People

Whether you are hiring full time employees or a contractor for a short project, hire people that will be focused on the same quality results you want to give your customers. Take a look at McDonald’s if you want a great example of consistent customer experience and then recognize that it took thousands of people, all trained with the same values and goals to meet that consistency everywhere around the globe.

Be The Best

Don’t think that being the best technician is enough. We don’t buy ‘ho hum’ and your clients want the full experience. The best business is not just a great electrician, it is a great quote experience, friendly billing, customer service when something is not quite right and follow up. Getting that all right means you have systems within your business that runs the day-to-day and people that are as committed to your customers great experience the same way you are.

 

What to Do When Technology Fails

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Does your business rely on technology? Mine does. When technology fails so can your business. Here are three tips to try and sidestep technology issues and if you cannot then how to deal with the outcome.

Redundancy is The Key

I do this in three ways…

Backup

If you have information that your business cannot run without then you must have a backup. Get a specialist to install backup software or a full backup system for your business. Some businesses core value is in the information they develop. Don’t lose your business because you did not have an extra Tara-bite of storage or a backup.

Double-up

If you are performing a service that uses a technology, like a laptop, phone, or car, you have to have an alternative to use if your initial technology breaks down. When I call into a teleconference I have two business lines that I make the call with when my VA cannot be on the call. This way I ensure that if one lines loses connection (and it happens) I will not lose the call.

Two Versions

Have you ever had a power failure and found that you could not do your business? If you know how to get your work done manually then having a power failure does not stop you. When I am giving online training I keep a printed copy of the ideas I want to share and the key point I want to cover. Having a handwritten list of my to-do list ensure I can get through much of what I have to do if my internet is down.

There are obviously some things that you cannot do if there is no electricity or other technology is down, but there are some things that can get complete if you are prepared. Don’t let technological issues stop you from creating an amazing experience for your clients.