Is your business too small or too specialized to warrant the time and energy it takes to develop a brand? No! Brand building is essential for any business. A strong, positive brand is just as important for a 200-person technology company as it is for a 3-person retail shop.
One of my clients, Sean, is a chiropractor. When Sean started his business, he knew he had two branding challenges to overcome:
Every business has to be able to attract and satisfy customers predictably and consistently if it is going to thrive. One of the best ways to do this is to build a strong, positive brand in the minds of your target markets.
When people encounter your business, your products or your services they will either think negatively or positively about it depending on your brand. Ultimately, it is your brand that determines if people actually do business with you.
A good branding strategy takes time and attention to develop and implement in your business. You need to have a very good understanding of the purchase decision needs of your target markets and how your business meets or exceeds those customer expectations. You (and everyone else in your business) need a clear idea of what brand you are trying to establish in the marketplace so that you can look for any and all opportunities to reinforce that brand when dealing with customers. Your brand building efforts should also be tracked and quantified over time so that you can keep doing the things that strengthen your brand and identify the innovations that will improve the things that aren't working.
There are three basic steps you can take that will allow you to start building the right branding strategy for your business:
Sean worked through the three-step process outlined above and quickly started seeing the difference as his chiropractic business began to grow and gain a reputation. Through his research, he was able to articulate that people in his target market ultimately wanted quality health care and treatment that immediately helped them experience more functionality, a better quality of life, and less pain or side effects. He used that to create and document a Brand Objective Statement using a Dual Branding Strategy approach that pinpointed how his company specifically (and chiropractic medicine in general) would appeal to his target markets.
He then set about integrating his branding strategy into all of his business systems from advertising through sales and client fulfillment. After six months of operating with this new brand awareness he had quantifiable results that his efforts had paid off. He sent out a customer survey which helped confirm positive customer perceptions of his business. His internal meetings with staff helped confirm they were getting consistently positive feedback from customers. He measured a rise in clientele and client retention.
Additionally, he noticed that, since his brand was strong, his customers gave his business the benefit of the doubt when something did go wrong. His customers viewed mistakes and inconsistencies as merely temporary aberrations that the business would recover from quickly.
Interestingly, Toyota (as mentioned in point one above) is facing some brand setbacks right now. They’re experiencing a high volume of recalls for safety defects in certain vehicles. Do you think that this is going to permanently tarnish the Toyota brand? Do you think the company will be able to recover? Newsweek posted an interesting article on the topic that you might want to read.
flickr photo credit: planetc1
If you ever want to sell your business, you need a plan. Depending on the size of your business, proper strategic exit planning can take anywhere from 1 to 7 years to do right.
And, when you've maximized the value of your business and are ready to sell it, according to the US Small Business Administration, it can take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years to sell.
In this podcast, we tap the expertise of an exit planning expert: our friend, entrepreneur and author John Warrillow. Having built and sold four successful companies, John knows the secrets to creating a sellable business. John shares his own experiences and lessons learned, and talks about his new book, Built to Sell.
Podcast: Is Your Business Built to Sell?
For a limited time, get a $5.00 discount on John Warrillow's book, Built to Sell and a complimentary copy of "The Model for Selling Your Business" eBook.
In Built to Sell John shares with you:
John Warrillow is an entrepreneur, author and speaker. Throughout his career as an entrepreneur, John has started and exited four companies. Most recently he transformed Warrillow & Co. from a boutique consultancy into a recurring revenue model subscription business, which he sold to The Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ: EXBD) in 2008. He is the author of Built to Sell and Drilling for Gold and in 2008 was recognized by BtoB magazine’s “Who’s Who” list. builttosell.com
Almost every business owner wants more leads for their business. In fact, for many owners the need for a constant inflow of qualified leads often dominates their thinking. There are, however, many challenges to ensuring and maintaining that supply. And, in addition to the needs of today, growth objectives and profit goals will require increased revenue which must come from increased sales—which means more leads. So are there really “sure-fire” methods of lead generation? And, if so, what are they?
Truly successful lead generation must always be an integrated part of your marketing strategy. And this rests on having a comprehensive plan that takes into account the demographics and psychographics of your target market, as well as your positioning—the perception of your business and your product/services held by that target market. In other words, your lead generation efforts must be guided by who it is you are ideally trying to attract to your business and what it is you’re promising them.
A mistake many business owners make with lead generation activities is to simply try different things with no real thought about who their ideal customers are, where they are, and how to best reach them. Random acts of lead generation produce random results—and a very questionable ROI.
Assuming you have effectively put together a strategic marketing plan and you know your ideal target market customer, what can you do right now to generate some solid, qualified leads?
Here are some tried-and-true methods for getting good leads quickly:
The real key to generating more leads is how well you know your most probable customers—your target market. This is why making lead generation a systemic part of your marketing is so important. However, even though continual research and quantification of data on your target market is essential, it’s also critical to avoid getting stalled by too much analysis and not enough action! It was the American General and military strategist George S. Patton, who said: “A good plan, violently executed today, is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” A good strategy supported by some effective tactics will result in the leads you need.
What lead generation activities do you rely on? What's worked for you in the past? Post a comment and tell us about it.
Advertising is Not Marketing
Tips to Drum Up Sales Now
Stop, Ask and Listen: Exploring the Links between Marketing and Client Fulfillment
When you use your personal credit card to buy business items, you instantly slash the amount of credit you have available to get the things you and your family need and want. If you’re like most people, you regard your credit cards as the financial cushion that will carry you through emergencies—such as an illness that makes it impossible to work, or catastrophic house repairs. It’s important to realize that wasting your credit on business expenses weakens your ability to use your personal credit as a safety net.
Still, many entrepreneurs ignore the dramatic consequences of this dangerous practice:
And, once their borrowing limits are maxed out … they persuade their spouses or other family members into using their credit to continue financing the business.
Be forewarned: if you convince your family members to finance your business, you’re just digging a deeper hole for your family to crawl out of. If your business fails your family could be wiped out financially.
Don’t ask family members to use their personal credit to invest in your business. Using your personal credit to pay for business expenses is a strategic error. And if it doesn’t make sense for you, the business owner, it makes even less sense for family members. Our advice: keep everyone’s personal credit strictly separated from your company’s corporate credit.
If you need help incorporating or building good business credit, click here for a complimentary business credit consultation and to obtain our free e-Book, "Unlimited Business Financing—Without a Personal Guarantee”—a step-by-step process for building a business credit asset.
We define business frustrations as a series of specific recurring events in your business over which you feel you have little or no control.
Every business has frustrations. From small "hiccups" that hinder the flow of work, to fatal flaws that can have a devastating impact on the bottom line, and everything in between.
As it is with every challenge you face, the question is really about how you deal with it. You can ignore the frustration all together; you can abdicate and hope that somebody else will take care of it; you can apply a quick band-aid fix… But all of those options would be doing yourself, your team, and your business a great disservice.
I'd like to share this story about Michelle who owns a printing and design business. Michelle was having trouble finding the time to develop systems and processes because of constant interruptions from clients. She was getting so many project status requests that she couldn’t focus on the strategic work she wanted to do. Michelle told me that she was feeling frustrated by the fact that her customers weren’t relying on her support staff. She hadn’t taken any proactive steps toward fixing this situation because she was afraid that her clients had gotten used to working with her and she didn't want to jeopardize the level of service they'd come to expect.
There are three ways people typically perceive business frustrations like the one Michelle was experiencing.
For Michelle, her first inclination was Outer-Directed. And that's typical, we all have a tendency to blame other people. But if you ask the right questions you can move through the blame game and focus instead on the system solution.
Finding the solution to a frustration begins by asking the right questions. The questions that will enable you to discover what the true, underlying business conditions are.
For Michelle, it boiled down to the fact that her clients went to her for answers because they were never told to do otherwise and her support staff did not have the systems in place to regularly contact clients. In short, there was no customer communication system in place.
With a System-Directed frustration identified, you have the clues you need to begin understanding the underlying business condition that is the cause of your frustration.This will eventually lead you to the solution—a system solution. What Michelle needed to do was work with her support staff to create the appropriate communication system for clients.
Now her clients receive introduction emails from their assigned Customer Service Representative at the beginning of each project along with regular status updates until the project is completed. They improved their email signatures and website contact information so that clients can be clear about who to contact for what.
The result? Michelle estimated that establishing this client communication process freed two hours of her time each day. Imagine that! Two hours she can now put to very good use working on her business. Her support staff now has clearly defined steps to take to ensure clients have an exceptional experience on each project. The positive results from this system implementation just keep coming. And it was all born from a frustration Michelle couldn’t see a solution to before!
This process, the Key Frustrations Process, is a client favorite and is really about the essential skill of systemic thinking. It helps you look at problems and frustrations strategically to pinpoint gaps in your systems and processes that a new system or set of systems can solve. When you engage in this process with your team (you should include them!) you end up creating a powerful culture of strategic thinkers looking for ways to solve problems and improve business operations instead of an endless cycle of blame and discouragement.
How have you turned business frustrations into opportunities for systems development or improvement?
Time is just another word for life.
—Michael Gerber
Time management is a skill that a lot of us struggle with. Even with the best intentions and the latest technological gadget that is supposed to streamline your work and improve efficiency, how often have you left work planning all the things you need to do in the morning because you didn’t get to them today? Busy business owners are just that: busy!
At E-Myth, we make a very clear distinction between the strategic and tactical work. Strategic work is the work you do to define the results you are there to produce. Tactical work is the work you do to produce the results strategic work has defined. When you think about your day, what percentage of your time do you spend in each area? Where is the greater value for your business?
Even if you know that you need to focus on strategy, how do you carve out time in your day for strategic work when you’re just trying to stay on top of the technical work you have to do? It’s a question we hear all the time from our clients. It doesn’t matter if you’re a retail store owner, a doctor, an IT professional or a contractor; everybody, it seems, is fighting the clock.
That’s why we dedicate a whole process in our Mastery Impact! coaching program solely on time management. With the intention of freeing yourself from the technical work, in this process we take a look at how you’re spending your time to accurately determine how much of your time is spent on productive activities that directly contribute to the results you want, and how much of your time is spent unproductively. This is a revealing process, and we usually identify areas for improvement very quickly.
Another thing we explore in our Time Management process is what we call “Time Bandits.” You know, those pesky "time stealers" and distractions that take attention away from strategic work—email, a talkative vendor, the telephone, your mother-in-law, broken office equipment… The list goes on.
Finding the discipline to eliminate Time Bandits is an important part of getting to the strategic work you need to do. Below are five Time Bandit Busters (there are 25 more in our process) that might instigate a change in how you approach time management.
Building a successful business requires the ability to see the big picture while immersed in the details, the hundreds of decisions and activities that command your attention from minute to minute, day to day. Imagine the impact it will have if you can effectively establish priorities and focus your attention so your everyday decision-making becomes aligned with your big-picture vision. Eliminate the Time Bandits that take your focus away from the strategic work of the business and you will begin to work on your business rather than in it.
How to Eat an Elephant
Strategic Work: One Step at a Time
Delegation vs. Abdication
Delegate, Rejuvenate & Create
Any tips you want to share with other business owners about managing time? What has worked for you? What hasn't? Post a comment and tell us about it.
The importance of effective communication for managers and business owners can’t be overemphasized. Clear and effective communication from management increases efficiency, satisfies customers and improves quality 
throughout the organization.
Let’s define what we mean by “effective” from both the employee & management perspective. Our interest here is in how information, ideas and caring flow from management to employee and also how employee concerns are transmitted from employee to manager. Remember communication must be a two-way street to truly be effective.
As owners and managers we must communicate the company vision and objectives to each employee, along with our expectations for their particular position and role in reaching our vision. In the E-Myth management model, we do this through the strategic objective, organizational strategy and position contracts. For important agreements, getting it down in writing is often the difference between effective communication and communication that misses the mark between the person delivering the message and the receiver. Don’t shy away from the written word. The E-Myth system of management along with effective delegation and regulation, relies on written interchanges to make certain that both parties understand what is being communicated.
Effective communication is most easily achieved in an organization that has a clear structure and systematic ways to communicate. Again, let me re-emphasize, don’t be afraid of implementing written systems when they provide the most effective method of making certain both the sender and receiver acknowledge the same message or agreement. Nothing puts the team, or a manager and employee, on the same page as a written statement.
Consistent communication between an employee and their manager is fundamental to establishing an open, trusting culture. Company meetings, department meetings, and one-on-one employee development meetings all serve this end. While “management-by-walking-around” has its place and advantages, there really is no better way to ensure effective communication than scheduling regular meetings between managers and individual employees. This regular meeting is a commitment management makes to always address any issue that arises and it gives the employee the opportunity to ask questions, express concerns or seek mentoring and support.
Communication one can rely on with regularity along with a commitment to transparency is the kind of communication that builds trust between manager and employee. Transparent communication is open, honest and objective and allows for disagreement. Being a good manager requires that you balance the individual employee’s concerns and requirements with the overall needs of the business, and sometimes means making tough decisions. Transparency when the seas are rough is even more important than when there is clear sailing.
Effective communication has two phases; the transmission phase and the feedback phase. The transmission is the sending of a message, either verbally or written, phone, in person, e-mail or letter; and the second is the feedback phase or the acknowledgment that the original message was received and understood, or a restatement of the original message to make sure that it was correctly interpreted, or a request for more information. Getting this acknowledgment back is an important part of communication since we can’t consider it effective unless we know it’s been received and understood.
Individual perceptions play a large part in the understanding of our communications. Body language plays an important role in getting our point across. Our body language may either be congruent or incongruent with the verbal message; something we want to be aware of during our face-to-face interchanges.
When asked to define communication, most of us say talking, writing or body language. But listening is equally important; especially when confronting difficult issues. Recognizing the importance of listening and making it a part of your culture improves communication considerably. Everyone can learn the art of active listening. The key to listening effectively is relaxed attention. Listen with your whole body, maintain eye contact and give verbal and non-verbal cues that you’re right with the speaker. Do your best not to interrupt.
If half of the equation in communication is active listening, the other half is expressing what you think, feel, or want in a true and non-defensive way. Be clear about what you want and what you are willing to give. Use “I statements.”
Employee surveys consistently demonstrate that ineffective communication results in poor employee morale which causes increased turnover and absenteeism, dissatisfied customers from poor customer service, higher product defect rates, lack of focus on business objectives, and stifled innovation.
Employees will put in that extra effort to create a high performance environment when they are kept informed openly and honestly on all aspects of their job and the business and they feel that they are being listened to with empathy.
A culture that places an emphasis on effective communication instills its value in each employee and provides tools and training to elevate everyone’s abilities. Fostering two-way communication gives employees adequate opportunity to ask questions, discuss and express their own ideas. Feedback loops, sharing best practices and having an open channel for ideas, innovations and suggestion for improvement ensure that employees and managers work together to achieve success. Effective communication is like cash in the bank and it helps grow your business like compound interest.
The Managerial Perspective
Accountability: Defining Work Relationships that Work
The Best Employee Retention System
What communication challenges have you faced in your business? How have you overcome them? Post a comment and tell us about it.
A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.
Ara Parseghian, Notre Dame Football Coach
In many ways, business coaching is at the heart of what we do at E-Myth Worldwide. But the question often arises as to why a business owner would need a coaching relationship and how to make the most of it. It is important to realize that coaching works best for people who are successful at what they do and are ready to go to the next level in their business. And, much like a sports coach, a business coach works with you to develop the skills and abilities that are already within you.
Coaching involves a number of different qualities that are not always employed with consulting. For example, in sports, a coach will help you understand not only how to do something, but why it is important or necessary. A coach will guide you, provide feedback and insight, while holding you accountable to the goals and objectives you have agreed to accomplish. A coach will facilitate your progress and work alongside you to help you achieve your vision.
Consultants, on the other hand, typically engage in an analysis of a particular problem, issue, or project while providing recommendations and suggested courses of action. While their role is usually advisory in nature, they will often perform specific work for a client. Their focus is generally on what needs to be done and not the why and how of the processes involved. Although some may disagree, it can be said generally that a consultant offers a fish, while a coach helps teach one to fish for themselves.
There are also significant and instrumental roles to be played by family, friends, and mentors in the life of a small business owner. Motivational materials, books, and seminars are useful as well. But as critical as these individuals and resources may be in the success of the business owner, none of them can fill the role that a coach can have in helping that business owner achieve his or her vision.
Here’s a real-life tale of one our clients: Rick's dad was a plumber, and Rick grew up working in his dad's business. Then one day Rick decided that, since he's a plumber and has lived in and observed the plumbing business all of his life, it was only reasonable that he establish a business of his own. And so he did.
Rick is a terrific plumber, but he found that while he could clear clogged pipes and repair broken toilets, he did not know very much about such things as how to hire and manage employees, use an income statement or financial balance sheet, or even develop marketing strategies to attract new customers. His dad had some good advice to give, and Rick’s wife tried to help with the books, but as his business grew he began to find himself working more and more hours and yet never getting a handle on the “business” of running the business!
A day came when he realized that, just as he invested his time and energy in learning his trade, he also needed to learn how to run a business. He knew that he needed to develop skills and acquire new skills to be an effective business owner, but he was reluctant to seek help. Fortunately, Rick had a friend—the owner of a successful hardware store—who offered some insightful advice and directed him to E-Myth Worldwide.
Armed with a clear vision of where he wanted to go with his business, and assured that he could indeed develop the skills he needed to successfully lead and build his business, Rick soon found that his business coach became an essential guide for navigating the path to business success and achieving his objectives. Along the way he also discovered that his relationship with his coach enabled him to see himself in ways he hadn’t before, and to find his proper role as a business leader and entrepreneur. Rick the plumber with a plumbing business became Rick the business owner who also happened to be a terrific plumber!
What Rick and others like him have discovered through the coaching relationship is the need for what we call “dual-vision” and the value of a coach’s objective viewpoint and feedback. This dual-vision involves the art of keeping focused on the present and the needs of today, while always keeping the goal lying ahead clearly in view. The overriding value of the business coach is his or her ability to provide the critical objectivity to the business owner. This objectivity is supported with feedback and input to assist in that business owner’s progress.
Another aspect of the coach/business owner relationship that cannot be overlooked is the accountability that is provided. There is tremendous value in sharing one’s goals and objectives with another and then striving to accomplish them. In a very real way it becomes a partnership wherein the business owner is accountable to himself and his coach to fulfill his obligations, and the coach is accountable for facilitating the business owner’s experience along the way.
No one person has all the answers to the challenges faced in life or in business. But everyone can benefit from the insights, knowledge, and perspective of another. This is especially true for business owners who want to move beyond the place they find themselves today. Having a vision for your business is essential and getting the help you need to achieve that vision is priceless. Or, in the words of Tom Landry:
Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it.
How has you and your business benefited from having a business coach? What is it about having a coach that is valuable for you?
Learn to lead your business in a way that supports your life objectives and create a business that works for you without your constant involvement in the daily operations. We can show you how. Business owners, contact us today for a complimentary business consultation to learn more.
Flickr photo credit: Markfive
Great leadership requires the ability to control what is in your power to control, to give people clarity, direction, and a sense of security, to chart a course and set goals your employees believe are attainable. As we begin a new year, it is your job as the business leader to set and communicate expectations for the year ahead. From strategic initiatives to marketing campaigns, from new positions to new product lines, your company is waiting for you to clearly set the goals for the new year.
It also falls on your shoulders right now to make sure that your financial house is in order, that you understand thoroughly where you are today, how you got there, and have a plan moving forward.
We’re all eagerly anticipating good things from the year ahead. But hoping is one thing, preparing is another. Here are three financial objectives you really need to have in order to start the first quarter off right:
A budget is developed from past trends and future predictions, and is a forecast of your income statement. It emphasizes profit and the path you intend to take to generate that profit. In addition to planning how you will operate in the near future, your budget is also a control device. It helps assure that proper measurement and evaluation procedures are established throughout the company. It provides a plan so that everyone knows where the business is going and what you expect by way of performance. It also gives you a way to measure that performance.
Need help developing a budget? The E-Myth Online program has extensive information, worksheets and examples that will help you with budgeting and much more.
Determine Your Financial Goals - A big part of your budgeting process revolves around the financial goals you’ve set for the year ahead. Where do you want and need your business to be at the end of the year?
The main purpose of creating a budget is to plan the monetary results you're going to achieve during the coming year, and then ensure that you realize those results. Rather than wait until the end of the year to see what happened, track your progress monthly and make adjustments as the year progresses. This dramatically increases the likelihood that you will, indeed, accomplish what you've set out to do.
If you haven’t already, it’s time to set annual goals (either revenue/profit or both). You can then break these goals into a series of twelve monthly goals for short-term strategy and monitoring. Remember that these are first-pass goals that will be refined as you grow your business.
Some business owners are leery of sharing financial information with their employees while others believe in total transparency. Ultimately, how much you share is a personal decision. It’s up to you to decide what you’re comfortable with. At the very least, we recommend you share enough information so that your employees understand the overall financial health of the business.
One way to do this is to make sure that everyone in your business is aware of the financial implications of their respective positions. People who have no financial information can’t be held accountable for managing financial performance. They have to know the financial dynamics of the positions they hold before they can make positive changes. This can be a tricky topic, and we have an entire process in our Mastery Impact! coaching program dedicated to bringing financial awareness and accountability to employees at all levels of your organization. The bottom line is that the more that managers and workers become aware of their impact beyond their own positions, the greater their appreciation of their roles within the business and the greater their positive impact can be.
How your business does in Quarter 1 sets the tempo for the entire year. Make sure that you set the right tempo for the year ahead with clear direction, a realistic budget and the support of your team. Here's to your success!
Have you set your financial goals and budget for Q1 and beyond? Post a comment below and tell us about your challenges and triumphs.
Practicing Financial Leadership
Company Culture: A Game Worth Playing
Your Cash Management System
Need help controlling the cash flow in your business? At our Six Steps to Maximize Cash Flow virtual seminar, an E-Myth Business Coach will help you identify and maximize the cash in your business. We’ll offer tips you’ve probably never even considered…
Allocating time for developing systems is a difficult task for busy business owners. If you’re familiar with our blog, or any of the E-Myth books, you understand the value of developing systems. But adding more work to your already extremely busy schedule can leave you feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. Even with a regular chunk of time allocated to systems development and improvement, it can be difficult for even the most savvy business owners to create and develop systems.
There’s a variety of ways you can approach systematization, and different businesses require different systems. Some systems are common to all businesses, although even these have variations on a common theme. For example, an income statement is an information system common to all businesses, but there are countless ways to prepare and present even this most common of information systems.
Our first recommendation is to get an E-Myth Business Coach. Our coaches are uniquely qualified to help you implement the systems essential to business success. You may also want to attend the Creating Your Business System virtual seminar which will help you begin the process of creating a systems-dependent, business. But here are a few tips to get you started right now.
Believe it or not, your systems development starts with a system. You need a system for developing systems in your business. While that may sound a bit trite, this is where so many people get tripped up. The reason you want systems in the first place is to produce order, structure and predictability. You want to approach your systems development in the same way… with a Systems Strategy.
A Systems Strategy will save you valuable time and reduce the frustration and stress of system development. In our coaching programs, we use E-Myth’s proprietary Seven Centers of Management Attention™ model as the basis for developing your Systems Strategy. This model demonstrates the integrative nature of any business. It contains the three essential business disciplines, Money, Management, and Marketing, and the three essential business processes, Client Fulfillment, Lead Generation, Lead Conversion, and finally Leadership at the center of the model.
If you use the Seven Centers of Management Attention model to guide your systems identification and development efforts, you’ll have a holistic or “360-degree” view of your business. It gives you the ability to consider the business as a whole, and then you can break it down to look at the major divisions of business activity. The Marketing Center is your marketing system; the Money Center is your financial system; and so on. Each of the Seven Centers may break into smaller component systems, which may break into still smaller systems, just like the root system of the tree.
The benefit of using the Seven Centers model is that it allows you to approach systems development with structure. You can look at this model and visually identify where you need to focus your attention to begin developing your systems and best practices. You might take a look at this and recognize that the area of Lead Conversion is where your business needs the most attention right now. Then you can create a plan that will guide your systems development efforts in that area. Viola! You have your first system and it’s in an area that really matters.
Start with the “big picture” of your business as a whole, and work your way through systems, subsystems, and sub-subsystems until you decide that further systemization is an exercise in the trivial.
If nothing’s jumping out at you, try examining each Center, and then ask: “What systems do I need for Money?” or “What systems do I need for Lead Conversion?” In this way, you will uncover the systems that will support each Center and ultimately, the systems that will lead to increased efficiencies and greater results.
One question we hear a lot is: how much is too much? Just think about it practically: you will certainly need a system for recruiting and hiring employees, for example, but you almost certainly will not need a system for sorting paper clips by size and color.
And remember, creating systems in your business is a team effort. As the business owner, it is your responsibility to lead systems development in your business. This means you set the stage for development, define the strategy for systems development and then involve your staff. Many times they are the ones working the systems on a day-to-day basis. Do not get caught up in all of the systems work. Involve your most important key players.
How have you implemented systems in your business? Have you used the Seven Centers of Management Attention model to become a systems-dependent business? What does your business look like now that it is systematized? Post a comment and tell us about it, we love to hear your stories.
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