How to Improve Small Business: 30+ Smart Tips
7:23 PMIf you’re serious about to Improve Small Business (Yours), you need amazing content.
The great news about writing for your business? You’re already the
expert! While writing engaging content isn’t easy (most business owners
aren’t professional writers, after all), it’s one skill worth
developing.
1. Be a more efficient time manager by using the rule of two. Focus
on the two most important tasks in your day, and you’ll become more
productive.
2. Start a filing system and toss everything you don’t need. Eliminating will make it easier to locate the important papers.
3. To Improve Small Business limit your work-starting routine to 15 minutes. That is, don’t
spend more than 15 minutes getting coffee, settling in, reading e-mails,
checking messages, or looking at newspapers. You are often at your
freshest and most productive at the beginning of the day.
4. Write two to-do lists. The first should contain everything that
you need to get done soon. It should be a comprehensive list of short-,
medium-, and long-term projects and work, and you should constantly
adjust it. The second to-do list should be what you can reasonably
expect to get done today, and today only.
5. To Improve Small Business take a few moments to assess the day’s emotional challenges.
Almost as important as your to-do list is a “be prepared for” list.
Inventory the tough phone calls, boring meetings, challenging customers,
frustrating red tape, infuriating rush-hour drives, droning detail
work, and other challenges you may face.
Focus on quality, not quantity
- Producing mass quantities of poorly written content won’t help anyone and can hurt your business’s reputation.
- Focus on a few ideas that deliver real, actionable value to your readers. You are incorporating your call to action into your writing… right?
6. Visualize your day. Try starting each day by closing your eyes for 10 or 20 seconds and visualizing how you want it to go.
7. Schedule some reading time. There’s not a job that doesn’t require at least some reading, be it about the company, the industry, the marketplace, the economy, the price of tomatoes, etc.
8. To Improve Small Business; Keep essentials nearby. Stock up on the following: low-fat granola bars; bottled water; bags of slow-dissolving mints or candy (helps prevent needless snacking); supplements, including a multivitamin, B-complex, C and E vitamins, and echinacea (good for when cold season hits or you forget to take vitamins at home); tissues, and family photos.
9. Embrace the number one truth about stress: Only you create it. Take some deep breaths. Make a list of everything that needs to get done. It will help you to organize your day.
10. Every night before bed, take five minutes to look over the day ahead. This brief look into the future will help you feel more prepared in the morning.
11. Take on just one new activity at a time. When you try to master too many new activities at once, you can easily feel overwhelmed.
12. Carry a small notebook with you everywhere. This is your “worry” journal. When you feel stressed, whip it out and scribble down everything on your mind at that minute.
13. Take breaks throughout the day. It will help clear your mind and relieve pressure. Something as simple as going to the water cooler for a drink may do the trick.
14. If you are always running late, sit down with a pencil and paper and see how you are actually allotting your time. Adjusting your schedule can improve your time management skills, thus causing you to be on time.
15. Don’t stew. Instead, take it out on a small ball you keep in your desk. Squeeze it, throw it in the air, or even take it outside and bounce, throw and catch it until you feel better.
Know your audience
- Speak their language, know their terms and don’t bog them down in lingo.
- Address their biggest problems and offer creative solutions.
- Take a look at your top 10 percent of customers. What can you write to attract more of them? Create a persona around the type of person (and business) you want to attract and write as if you were talking directly to them.
17. To Improve Small Business, On a daily action list, categorize tasks: those that need immediate attention (you had better do them yourself), those that can be delegated, and those that can be put off. To avoid procrastination, tackle the toughest jobs first, breaking them into smaller, less daunting components.
18. Free up time for the things you really want to do by simplifying your life. Let go of activities that don’t contribute to your goals.
19. Reduce the waste—and frustration—of everyday delays. Wherever you go, take reading material or a portable music player. Then when you have to wait, you can make good use of or enjoy the time.
20. Set aside a half-hour toward the end of the day to worry. Psychologist Roland Nathan believes that having a formal worrying time cuts down the amount of worrying you do.
21. Be patient. Said one mom and wife: “I wanted everything done my way. I was unwilling to let go of any part of it until it was perfect. So I’ve had to learn to slow down. After a few years, I finally get it: Nothing happens overnight.”
22. Make a point of sharing your knowledge with young professionals as well as high-level executives. Both will remember you for your time and consideration.
23. Keep abreast of trends in your industry by joining professional associations, attending conferences, and reading newsletters and magazines. Take classes and attend training to learn from others in your field.
Communicate without email
Reduce the deluge of email by collaborating with team members, vendors and customers in Shared Notebooks. Colleagues can easily mark up documents and images to reduce confusion and streamline conversations. You’ll see all updates via the Activity Stream.24. Make networking with others in your field a priority. Schedule some time to meet for coffee or lunch or keep in touch via email and social networks.
25. Learn the importance of giving yourself pep talks, and keep the voice in your head positive. Stay focused, and be willing to work as hard as you need to.
26. Try to challenge yourself in new ways. Seek out complex work and new ideas to avoid boredom and repetition.
27. Take care of your health. Schedule that physical exam you’ve been putting off and make sure you get exercise and take care of any personal issues that are troubling you.
28. Keep positive. Hold the big picture in your sights. What’s gloomy for one can be a gold mine for another.
29. Reinvent. Create new products or services—or reconfigure old ones. Implement solutions that are valuable to your key customers.
30. Don’t do it alone! Get support from family, friends, coaches, and fellow entrepreneurs.
Determine what you want to be known for
- Complete this sentence: “I’m the expert in ____________.”
- Your writing should follow this theme.
- Ask your peers or customers what they feel you are the “go to” person for.
Help Your Customers: “Focus on helping people, and the business will follow. If you are providing added value to your customers and helping them out, it will inevitably provide cash to finance your growth.”
Open a Line of Credit: “Banks are lending! Establish a relationship with your bank and open a line of credit. It can do wonders for your purchasing power, and the rates being offered now are some of the lowest they’ve ever been.”
Automate Marketing: “For a cheaper but still very effective solution, take a look at Infusionsoft. We have many clients who use it to automate following up with customers ”
Get a second set of eyes
- To Improve Small Business, Everybody needs an editor. Everybody. This is especially true when you’re first starting out. Ask a friend or a trusted colleague for five minutes of their time. You’ll be glad you did.
Build Strategic Partnerships: “A company is only as small as it projects itself to be. By developing strategic relationships and outsourcing non-core competences to industry partners, small companies can maximize efficiency and create value. Play off your partners’ expertise and offer services that are unique. Clients don’t need to know you are running your operations from a coffee shop as long as you deliver the goods.”
Narrow Your Target Market
Focus in business is everything, but doing so is often hard for small businesses owners who worry that narrowing down their target market will leave them with very few customers left to go after. But going after a specific slice of the market is a great way to get customers to notice you among the fray of companies competing for their business.The easiest way to do this is to…
Professional development: No matter what category your business happens to fall in, one thing is necessary in order for you to provide your customers extreme value: to make the commitment to continuously learn and study what's “hot” in your field.
If you spend an hour a day to learn about and research your field, you will instantly start to set yourself apart from your competition. Those hours begin to add up quickly and before you know it, you’ve entered an elite category.
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