Business Ownership

3 Business Lessons from Leonardo Da Vinci

There are many lessons that business owners can learn from artists, particularly an amazing artist like Leonardo Da Vinci. Here are three lessons from Leonardo Da Vinci that we should all be applying to our business.

1: Get Perspective

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

This is so true in business. We are focused on the day to day activities and rarely do we step back and look at our business. Only then can we really see what is working and what isn’t working. Perhaps you’ve been focused on a product/service or marketing strategy that isn’t generating the results you want. If you step back and look at it in a bigger context your might discover modifications you can make or you might determine that now is time to make a major change. Take a few steps back from the day to day and look at your business, what do you see?

2: Simplify

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

In today’s technology driven world is it very easy to complicate our business, to add layers that consume time and energy. Recently I was making a purchase in a store that has been in business for over 50 years. The sales woman had to calculate the price by hand, write the order by hand, then I assume someone is going to have to enter it into a computer to be sent to the manufacturer. There were stacks of paper everywhere. Changing their process and adding a computer based pricing and invoicing system would greatly simplify their business. How can you simplify your business? What would the results be?

3: Take Control

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

There are two types of people who go into business. Those who are truly driven by the passion of business, by making a success of something, of anything! They go out and make things happen. Then there are the rest of us who go into business because we have a passion for something that we love to do. For example many people step into coaching because they have a passion to help people see their own potential but get hung up on how to run a successful business.

We need to:

Learn from those driven by working on a business.
Get out and make things happen.
Take control of our businesses.

What will do you do this week to get perceptive, simplify and make something happen in your business?

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Do You Have a “Back to School” Plan for Your Business?

By Heather Cameron 11 Comments

For those of us who live north of the equator, summer is nearly over, kids are heading back to school, business events are starting to ramp up again, and life is getting back to “normal”. I don’t know about you, but I always feel like September is the start of something new. It’s time to ramp up your business, plan and get results.

There are only 4 months left in the year! I know, where, oh where did the time go?

Have you developed your “game plan” with specific goals and actions for the last third of the year? If you have, that’s fantastic. If you haven’t, then now is the time to get yourself ready to get “back to business”.

Book It!

I recommend booking “planning” blocks in your agenda so that you’re ready to go and create results as soon as the school bell rings. It’s a great way to create momentum now so that you can hit the ground running.

Many entrepreneurs are so busy “doing” that they put planning on the back burner. They stay focused on the “now” and you might be saying, “I don’t have time to plan!” I know from my own experience that when I sit down and make a plan with specific goals, objectives, and accountability measures, I accomplish more and create positive momentum and energy that take my business to the next level.

Just Do It!

Review Year to Date Plan

Are you on track to meet your goals?
- If not, what is getting in the way?
- If yes, what must you do to ensure you reach or exceed those goals?
What’s your best business success this year?
Where do most of your revenue come from?
Where do you see opportunities for your business to:
- Grow sales
- Wow your customers
- Make improvements

Plan and Set Your Goals for the last third of the year

What’s your revenue target? What’s your stretch target?
What mix of products, services or programs do you need to reach that target? Do the math!
What are your 3 top priorities? How will you focus on them each week/day?

Define Your Strategies

What’s your marketing strategy?
What’s your social media/digital marketing strategy?
What do you need to develop/create/update, if anything?
What’s your communications strategy (both to existing clients and new prospects)?
Who are the partners that will help you succeed?
What systems do you need in place?
Who is your support?

Create Specific Actions

How much time will you spend on each activity?
How many people do you need to contact?
What program or service will you launch and/or deliver? What’s your timeline?
What events will you attend?
What are your 30, 90, and 120-day actions and goals?

Knowing and being on top of your top 3 priorities and having systems in place to deal with day-to-day activities creates an amazing feeling of empowerment and positive momentum in your business.

What will you do to get “Back To Business“, please share your thoughts below.

Ignite Your Market Challenge: Reflect

By Heather Cameron 29 Comments

The Ignite Your Market Weekly Challenge’s goal is to create simple but powerful actions that you can do each week that will help you:

Identify your market and opportunities.
Connect with your client and prospects.
Ignite your markets and your businesses

THIS WEEK’S IGNITE YOUR MARKET CHALLENGE: REFLECT!

Business owners often focused on what we need to do, what we haven’t done, and what isn’t working. From my experience business owners rarely take a moment and look back at what they’ve accomplished except at the end of the year.

I strongly believe that business owners need to look back at what they’ve accomplished every 90 days, at the end of each quarter of their year. We need to do “mini” reviews and plan every 90 days to stay on track and be on top of our business success.

This week’s challenge is to do just that.

Look back at what you’ve accomplished as a business owner in the last 90 days and celebrate your success. List your 5 biggest accomplishments, they could be tangible accomplishments, such as signed on a big new client, launching a new product or service or growing your traffic. Or they can be intangible accomplishments; for example, I was working with a client this week who had a huge shift in perspective about herself as a business owner. It was a realization that will change her business moving forward, it isn’t measurable yet; however, it will change how she makes every decision about her business.

Allow yourself a moment to be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Acknowledge what it took to accomplish them and what can you take from each as your move forward in your business.

This exercise is particularly important for those who are struggling in their business or not seeing the results they want. Be proud of the fact that you’re on the journey of working for yourself. Be proud of each step you take.

The challenge this week is to look back over the last 90 days (1st quarter of the year) and identify your 5 biggest accomplishments and celebrate them.

Please share one or two of your accomplishments below. Let’s celebrate together!

Ignite Your Market Challenge: Schedule Your Rocks

By Heather Cameron 41 Comments

The Ignite Your Market Weekly Challenge’s goal is to create simple but powerful actions that you can do each week that will help you:

Identify your market and opportunities.
Connect with your client and prospects.
Ignite your markets and your businesses.

THIS WEEK’S IGNITE YOUR MARKET CHALLENGE: SCHEDULE THE BIG ROCKS

Many small business owners and solopreneur are challenged to schedule their days to be truly productive. It is so easy to become distracted by emails, social media and day-to-day operation of our businesses. We focus on the perceived “urgent” work which holds us back from moving our businesses forward.

One of the most powerful productivity habits that I know was first captured by Steven Covey in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That is Schedule the Rocks First!

The basic idea of Covey’s “Schedule the Rocks First!” concept is to think of your day as a large glass vase. If you fill your vase/day with little pebbles and tiny grains of sands (emails, social media, and reactive tasks) there is no room left for the Rocks (high priority tasks that move your business forward). It is almost impossible to squeeze Rocks into your vase once it is full of pebbles and sand.

What if you put the Rocks in first? What happens when you add the pebbles and the sand? What happens is that that pebbles and the sand start to fill in the spaces between the rocks and low and behold everything fits in the vase.

From personal experience, I’ve had weeks where I’ve focused on the pebbles and the sand and I haven’t had time for the Rocks. At the end of those weeks, I feel frustrated because I’m not achieving the results in my business that I know I can. I’ve also had weeks where I not only schedule the Rocks first, I also stick to my schedule, and those are the weeks that I create momentum in my business and I start to see the results I want.

This week’s Ignite Your Market Challenge is to schedule 1 to 2 Rocks per day that will move your business forward.

What business goals do you want to focus on that will really move your business forward? Pick 1 or 2 to work on this week, schedule time each day to work on them and stick to it. Use the Power Hour process to get the most out of your time.

Weekly Spark: Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer…

By Heather Cameron 7 Comments

It is the 1^st week of August, can you believe it? Have you been enjoying your lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer? Outdoor concerts, lakes and pools, camping and/or cocktails on a patio?

It is amazing how fast time flies by and how easy it is to lessen your focus on your business during the summer fun. So many distractions, and I don’t know about you, but the heat slows me down.

So what can you do to make the most of August and prepare yourself for when business picks up in September?

1) Schedule your work time to take advantage of the summer weather. Start a bit earlier, take the afternoon off and work a few hours in the evening. Reward yourself for working hard 4 days a week and plan long weekends. When you are off from work, be off from work; take a break from emails and social media and enjoy yourself. Leave the guilt behind.

2) Work on your business. Summer can be a slow period and it is easy to slow down ourselves. However summer is a great opportunity to work on your business plans and do those jobs you’ve been putting off.

3) Set 1 to 3 major goals. What are those things that you want to get done in the next month that will really set you up for success for the remainder of the year? Write them down and make sure that you work on each one for at least an hour each “working” day.

4) Learn. Summer is a great time to commit yourself to learning one new thing that will help your business. It can be a formal or informal, for example a course on how to leverage LinkedIn or researching the best way to advertise on Facebook through blogs and articles online.

5) Catch up. The odds are if you are experiencing a slowdown in the summer, so are others. Summer is a great time to catch up with clients and contacts over an iced coffee or a drink on a nice patio. It is a great way to enjoy the weather and rekindle relationships or finally get together with that new contact that you met several months ago.

One of the best things about being self employed is the flexibility to set our own schedules. One of the worst things about being self employed is the flexibility to set our own schedules – particularly in the summer. It would be great if we could take off 2 months in the summer and everything would be good to go at the beginning of September. Unfortunately that isn’t reality; we still need to move our businesses forward.

These 5 tips will hopefully help you enjoy the Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer and still move your business forward.

Don’t Let the Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer shut down your business! Please share bellow how you are managing the summer slowdown.

For those who may not know the song, Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer by Nat King Cole, here it is:

Weekly Spark: Why Should You Care About Joint Ventures?

By Heather Cameron 18 Comments

Last week’s Weekly Spark was about Joint Ventures, the best marketing strategy I know to grow your business by significantly increasing your market reach.

I received great feedback on the value of Joint Ventures, but there is still resistance to the idea.

So what is the true purpose of a Joint Venture (JV)?

It is to team up with another person(s) or business to expand your business influence and create more powerful results for both parties. It is as simple, and as complex, as that.

No matter how big your list of potential clients is, it can always be bigger. Aren’t we all looking for new opportunities to sell our products and/or services to new people?

JVs can exist between any types of business. There are some great JVs between businesses that have the same client base, but different services or products. For example in the real estate industry, many JV relationships exist between real estate agents, home inspectors, mortgage brokers, cleaners and movers. It is a win-win for everyone.

In the coaching and consulting world, JVs not only exist between people with different services and products, they also exist between people who provide the same services. I’ve been asked to JV on several projects where the demand was for more people then the company could provide on their own.

In the online community, you’ll often see people partner together to create information programs, like virtual summits. In a virtual summit, 10 to 20 people come together to provide valuable information on a topic. Each speaker promotes the summit to their own list; as a result, each speaker is being introduced to the other speakers’ lists. All you have to do is look at the math – if each speaker has 500 people on their list then everyone will be promoted to 5,000 to 10,000 people.services. I’ve been asked to JV on several projects where the demand was for more people then the company could provide on their own.

Generally, JV partners are looking for some equity in the relationship. For example, if you promote someone’s product to your client base and they buy that product, it is reasonable to assume that you’ll receive some sort of referral/affiliate fee. Or you could keep it simple and agree “if you promote my service, I’ll promote yours”.

I was coaching a client recently who was very resistant to JVs. They believed that they couldn’t give up their profit to someone else. They couldn’t get to the place where they realized that without the JV partner they’d never have been exposed to those potential clients.

On the other hand, another client just implemented a referral program and loves the results. “Easy money, high quality clients – now the trick is to keep up with the demand.”

How can you create win-win JVs in your business? Who are potential Joint Venture partners for you? Who else has the same client base as you but provides a different product or service? Please share your comments below.