better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

Three Questions For A Healthy Business

27 March 2011

I’ve been having a tidy up this weekend. In fact ‘tidy up’ doesn’t really do it justice, given that I’ve relocated my office office back into my home office, stripped the home office shelves bare, thrown away old documents and mobile phone cables, sorted out my archive in the loft, thrown away more old bits of tat and then re-populated the office shelves, so that they look clean and organised and purposeful.

There’s a bit of fine tuning to do, but I have to say that a Spring clean and general change around was well overdue. Ratty and Moley would be proud, and no doubt would whip up a sumptuous picnic to celebrate.

Out of all this dusty, yet rewarding, activity three lessons emerge…lessons which I’ve been reminding myself of this weekend. They are:

1. Nothing is forever. I’ve really enjoyed having a shared office space and now, having written two books there and sorted out my ILM accreditation, it’s time to move on. Change is good – I’m on the road a lot more again and don’t need to have two desks!

2. Build income streams before expenditure streams. I was debating whether to find another office space, when a colleague of mine pointed out that it’s easy to accumulate costs and that good business requires you to make money before you spend it. (How many people do you know who run their business the other way round?) So, I’ve moved my office rent budget for the year ahead into my marketing budget, which is a better use of resouces and frees me up to boost the spend on book four.

3. Be decisive. When you move: move. When you’re throwing things away: throw stuff away. It’s amazing how tempting it’s been to dither, or to hang on to bits of paper….yet if I’ve not touched it in 6 years, do I really need it? So, I’ve been decisive and have moved everything home, have been ruthless with the waste and have kept asking myself: ‘What am I keeping this for?’

It’s been a great weekend. And leaves me with three questions for you to think about this week:

1) Where could you make a big change to your business expenditure and reinvest the money into something more useful to you?

2) What do you need to be decisive about this week?

3) What are you keeping all that clutter for exactly…???

Have a good week. I’m off to nick some of Ratty’s potted ham, potted shrimp, jellied lobster, farmhouse cheese, cold chicken, cold tongue, cold pork, pickles, crusty loaf, biscuits, apple juice, scones, butter, strawberry jam and thick cream. He may be a fictional rat, but he does whip up dastardly delicious comestibles.

Tags: questioning, tip

How To Grow Your Business

20 March 2011

The message in this post is simple: You need to delegate in order to grow.

Easy to say…but hard to achieve perhaps?

I was munching a cheesy toasted sandwich this week with my friend Julie from JobHop.co.uk which is a cool site for people who want to make a move with their career, or for employers who want to find people. I’m not an affiliate, but I like what she does so am happy to give you the link.

Anyway, we were talking about how to grow a business and she reminded me about the need to delegate – in fact what really struck me was that this is the second time this year I’ve heard the same phrase.

After I’d heard the words in January from Andie, one of my co-Directors at Centred Development, I decided to delegate a chunk of the PR work for Job Hunting 3.0. So, I rang my marketing colleague and delegated six writing tasks to him. He drafted the pieces and I polished them, instead of me thinking about drafting them. Progress was made and some of this work helped to propel the book up into the top 5,000 on Amazon, which has delighted the publisher. (Sub 10k gets you lunch, sub 5k gets you a knife and fork to eat it with).

Would this have been achieved without me delegating the work? Probably not…it would still be sitting on my list of things that ‘I will definitely get done tomorrow’. Or maybe the day after.

As you think about the week ahead, ask yourself what you need to delegate in order to grow a bit? I’ve been surprised how little bits of help all add up over time, so a good place to start is any simple task that you just never seem to get round to doing and which you need completed.

Remember: If you really want to grow your business, delegate tasks to people, so that you have more time to do those things which will take you forwards. These include selling, product development, marketing work, meeting contacts, networking and following up enquiries.

And if you have any brie-filled toasted sandwiches that need eating, you’re welcome to ask for my help…!

Tags: business, tip