Author: moderncareers

  • How To Grow Your Business

    It's your business...so you can choose the filling!
    It's your business…so you can choose the filling!

    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…!

  • Find A Friend First

    This image is called '1,000 Friends'. Who is your next friend going to be?
    This image is called '1,000 Friends'. Who is your next friend going to be?

    Taking heed of my own advice from last week, to think about people, I invited a business contact out to lunch. Nothing unusual in that you may think, but this time I decided to have a ‘no agenda’ agenda, instead of going into it with a firm business related outcome in mind.

    It’s tempting to think of a business lunch as ‘productive time’ and therefore we need to have some structure to it perhaps, or something businessy to discuss, or have an issue we need to resolve. These are all well and good, but can ignore the fact that because people-buy-people there are times when we need to remove our commercial hat and just be ‘a people’.

    Heading into my lunch I decided that I would keep my notepad in my pocket, not have six questions that needed answering and instead just aim to make a friend.

    Making a friend first is a good way to do business. As we build a friendship our levels of trust increase and we tend to share more information. Which of course can lead us to reveal new options for working together.

    And given that business is based on trust, who would you rather do business with – a friend or a stranger?

    So, next time you go for a business meeting how about having a ‘no agenda’ agenda and trust the process of interaction to deliver something interesting?

    My lunch was great, I found a friend and it was useful to be reminded that we don’t need to force the pace all the time.

    Lunch anyone?

    …We can get a high-chair for Crow; he’s really quite well mannered in most restaurants.