One of my favorite best practices to share with small businesses is that you can do so much more (in many cases) by leveraging alternative options to hiring resources to get things done. In this ever-changing marketplace, you can outsource or delegate simple and complex challenges or functions in to achieve greater success faster.  

When you us alternatives to hiring employees, you have greater flexibility to get help when you need it and save money when you don’t.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

I was reading Russell Brunson's book 30-Days and it discussed the very issue of what would you do if you were back to square one with no product, no list no traffic, no reputation and no funnel...in the next 30-Days? And, no matter what happens in our businesses we can all [...]

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

What is executive presence? Who are the top leaders that have leveraged their presence to lead and influence others? Inside this episode, I’ll show you how you can grow your Executive Presence NOW.

Small business leaders spend countless hours working on the business, working in the business and managing the people that get the work done on a daily basis. Let me share with you what you can do to make your juggling act much easier AND increase the overall productivity and effectiveness or your business.

Planning is an essential skill for any successful leader. Up-level your game by putting some “Power Planning” principles into action. You’ll discover a few simple tactics that you can put in place to help you and your team plan more effectively.

Find out what hiring mistakes you should avoid, and 5 strategies that you can implement to make better hiring decisions with candidates that really want to work in your small business. 

Discover the essential capabilities that outstanding leaders possess which makes them effective and influential. You’ll learn the core categories of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and what you can do to increase your EI to the next level.

Most managers have had to deal with toxic employees at one point or another in their career. Difficult employees are typically poor performers and their toxic attitudes can impact the productivity of their co-workers and the overall organization. Let me share a few strategies that you can use to address situations just like this. 

To gain more credibility, respect and influence among your clients, colleagues and employees you need to improve what you communicate and how you come across to others. Inside this episode, we’ll talk about a few strategies that you can use to connect with people more effectively.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Recently, I watched an MSNBC Small Business focused segment where the CEO of Edible Arrangements shared the best practice for inspiring employees. He recommends that we write down the process or exact steps you use to achieve results in your business and then use that process to train your team like crazy.  

You know I love “process”, and that’s why it’s one of the 5 P’s of Business Success. When your employees on your team know how things work or exactly what’s expected of them, it’s much easier for people to do the work.

Do you get the jitters sometimes when you’re at a networking event or connecting with someone and you have to introduce yourself or explain what you do?  

Or what about when people start asking additional questions regarding your products and services…is it a challenge for you? I sometimes feel anxiety when sharing information about my business too!  

And what I had to start doing is crafting some of the key messages about myself, my business and the clients that I serve, in order to feel more comfortable and confident.

As a leaders, you have (or need to grow) your expertise in managing teams and your business. We want you to focus on, develop and become known for your small business leadership edge. It's that special skill that helps you lead, effectively manage and still build a successful business. 

One of my clients, Sam, is extremely effective at establishing business systems and finding experts for key areas of his business. His small business leadership edge is his ability to create or leverage automted systems that help him grow and expand no matter what people resources come in or out of his business.

For you to get a good hold of what your edge is, you must first understand the difference between leaders and managers. 

People often confuse the terms leadership and management as if they are the same, but they are not. However, there are difinitely areas where both roles overlap.

A manager focuses on how you do things:  

• Planning and budgeting
• Organizing and staffing
• Coaches and develops teams
• Controlling and problem solving
• Holds people accountable and leads by example
• Helps connect employees day-to-day activities with the big picture

Whereas a successful leaders focuses on:  

• Establishing the strategic direction of erganization tand high-level strategies
• Empowers and motivates their people
• Establishes the business model to take care of the people, profits and the business
• Aligns people to move in the same direction
• Effectively communicates and collaborates
• Creates and demonstrates the vision, mission, values

Sometimes you’ll find effective managers that are also leaders and there are also great leaders that are NOT good managers. As a small business owner we must learn to do both. 

There is no magic formula to do a better job of managing your time to get more done in your business. But you can try to find a few key strategies that you can use on a consistent basis to get more done and get better results.  

Today, I want to share with you my favorite strategies to help me stay on track. 

For example, if you go offsite to a client for the same simple tasks…perhaps creating a video or screen shots to walk them through how to solve simple issues, could be a solution. Not only could you handle that issue over the phone, it also frees you up to support more clients on a consistent basis.  

As we say in Small Business Football Marketing, it takes 100 yards to get up the football field to market and make touchdowns in your business.  

Each of us has to establish that know, like, respect and trust relationship for people to want to buy from you.  

And a few of the easiest and fastest ways to build trusted relationships that turn into sales would be to attend networking events or through referrals.

But you still have to follow through, connect and convert that potential contact or prospect into a buying client or referral opportunity.  

With our minimal resources, as entrepreneurs, we have the powerful opportunity to leverage tools or systems to maintain a connection and build credible relationships that can ultimate turn into BIG BUCKS!

The globalization of today’s marketplace has shifted what employers expect of employees and what makes an employee a top performer. It’s difficult to keep up with the increasing demands and still stand out. Evaluating your career and looking for ways to remain competitive, in a time where professionals are competing with job seekers worldwide, can be challenging. Here are some simple ways you can improve your skills and become a more valuable asset to any organization.

Nearly 75% of employers’ nationwide rate teamwork and collaboration as very important (University of Oregon Workplace Study). In fact in that very same study, 73% of the business leaders indicated that the soft skills (interpersonal skills) were more important than job related skills.  

It’s no coincidence that top performers have the ability to work well with teams and include ideas from others to get things done. To improve your skills in these areas try: 

• Ask your manager if there is any training offered by the company.
• Find related books or articles to help expand your skill set, such as John Maxwell’s 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork.
• Use each on-the-job engagement with others as an opportunity to grow your skills in this area and take some time to get to know the people that you work with to better to improve working relations.  

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is “the ability to manage one’s own emotions and perceive another person's feeling.” Although a great value has been placed on a high intellectual intelligence (IQ), a higher level of a person's emotional intelligence is being more widely supported. In fact, Daniel Goleman, the expert that popularized Emotional Intelligence has found that EQ is just as important to career success as IQ. According to the University of Consulting Alliance, Goleman found 67% of all abilities that contribute to professional success are related to EI.

The Center for Creative Leadership did a study that showed managers sited 3 core reasons for employee job failure:

• Difficulty in handling change
• Inability to work well in a team environment
• Poor interpersonal relations

EI can be summarized into five core elements; including:

• Self-awareness: our ability to perceive our emotions and understand our tendencies to act in certain ways in given situations
• Self regulation: our ability to understand the emotions of other people (what others are thinking and feeling
• Motivation: our ability to use awareness of our emotions to stay flexible and direct our behavior positively and constructively
• Empathy: our ability to use our awareness of our own emotions and emotions of others, putting yourself in someone else's shoes, to manage interactions successfully.
• Social skills: ability to adapt to change, diplomatically resolve disagreements including increased negotiative skills and learning to read people's verbal and non-vebal cues.