Tag Archives: opportunities

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Your Business: Get the View From 30,000 Feet

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If you operate a business, you know all too well that your work is never done. There is always a problem to solve, reports to run and statistics to analyze, emails to send, a customer to speak with (remember to take a break every now and again!). Along with the hands-on, task oriented items on your to-do list, there is another responsibility that business owners have, one that’s seldom discussed but is nevertheless a must-do—to think about the business entity and figure out how to make it grow and thrive.

Thinking about your company—where it is now, where it was a year go and where you’d like it to be in 12-24 months—demonstrates the difference between being a leader, who embodies the vision of the entity and a manager, who implements goals that enable the vision to be realized. Freelance solopreneurs must wear both hats—the manager, who prioritizes efficiency and gets things done and the forward-thinking leader, who engages in big picture thinking to contemplate the state of the business and looks to connect the dots between problems and their impact, recognize potential opportunities and plan for the future.

Ulyses Osuna, founder of the sizzling hot PR and personal branding firm Influencer Press https://influencerpress.com/ and protégé of marketing rock star Neil Patel, founder of both Kissmetrics and Crazy Egg https://www.crazyegg.com/ , recommends that business owners/leaders regularly examine your organization to assess what’s happening now and what might happen in the future. To effectively steward your business entity, it is critical that business leaders regularly devote time to think about your organization and observe how it functions in real time. Factors you may examine to supply relevant insights may include:

  • marketplace conditions, including the competitive landscape
  • how the company delivers its products and services
  • perceptions of the customer experience, including customer service, that the company presents
  • top-line and bottom-line sales revenues
  • the inbound marketing conversion rate
  • plans for growth and expansion

For companies large and small, including Freelance Consultants, Osuna feels that devoting an hour or two each week to studying the organization is needed to see and interpret the big picture view from 30,000 feet. Business leaders must do more than grind it out just to stay on top of (admittedly important) day-to-day responsibilities and keep things in motion. Remember what inspired you to create your entity; you want it to be all it can be. To maximize your organization’s potential, first get a warts-and-all understanding of where it is now, so you can recognize growth and expansion opportunities and decide how to prepare the company to pursue those opportunities. Neglect your business leader due diligence and fail to conduct frequent check-ins with the organization you created and you’ll eventually find yourself at the helm of a rudderless ship, tangled in the weeds, as you work hard but remain stuck and unable to achieve worthy goals that were once attainable.

Osuna says he gives his clients thought-provoking, sometimes edgy, questions to answer and you (and your team, if applicable) can do the same. It’s OK to address just a question or two in your brainstorming sessions, so long as you take a deep dive and keep it real. Osuna urges you to move forward and execute quickly when you have an ah-ha moment and discover something that might move the needle—do research thoroughly and plan carefully—because good ideas deserve immediate follow-up.

BTW, Freelance solopreneurs who doubt the wisdom of asking themselves questions and then answering themselves can refer to Consulting Drucker: Principles and Lessons from the World’s Leading Consultant, written by William Cohen, PhD (September 2018), to confirm that Osuna’s brainstorming method can produce useful results. Cohen’s book examines the influence that business consultant, educator and author Peter Drucker (1909-2005), who is known as the father of modern business management, has had on business practices. Cohen and his research team found that asking yourself questions and responding to them as if you are a separate entity, can produce credible answers. Your brain will supply answers, or attempt to, making the practice beneficial for a single individual to contemplate questions that require objective and big picture thinking.

Cohen at al. theorize that the primary reason for this phenomenon is that oftentimes, the facts needed to answer questions and resolve problems are already stored in your memory, even if some information cannot be easily accessed. Asking yourself questions, treating your brain as a separate entity and allowing it to find potentially useful answers, can eliminate many of the biases that may otherwise block you from identifying effective solutions. There is a limit to the phenomenon, however— if you are under a great deal of stress, or the problem is either too big or the situation is too demanding, the brain may not function well enough to identify a workable solution to the question or problem, even when you frame the query as if addressing someone other than yourself.

The list of questions below are written to help you successfully launch weekly or monthly business brainstorming sessions for your entity by focusing on three business functions that Drucker identified as vital: attraction of prospects, customer conversation rate and delivery of products or services. You can choose other questions to ponder, depending on your circumstances, and address them at your own pace. You may take on only two or three per week/month but devote an hour or two in each session to think about your business entity, it’s challenges and potential.

  1. Which systems improvements will make doing business easier, more efficient and/or less expensive?
  2. Which media outlets would best showcase the company and brand and has the company/or I been featured in one or more in the past 12 months?
  3. If I was able to hire one (or more) employees whose salary would be paid by a grant and cost me nothing, in what capacity would it make sense for the person(s) to work and would s/he work?
  4. Do my products/ services optimally fulfill the needs and aspirations of my customers? Should I add an upgrade or a simplified version or should I develop a new service or offer a new product?
  5. If I was given a no-strings gift of $300,000 to exclusively spend on the business, what would I spend it on?
  6. What do customers value most about the company? Where do customers feel the company falls short?
  7. Does the content produced for the company showcase me as a thought leader? In what categories have I (or can I) establish authority? This could involve guest articles, interviews, or speaking engagements.
  8. What do you want the company to look like in one year, two years, or five years?
  9. How do I provide solutions that solve client problems or achieve client goals?
  10. If I could do it over again, would I create this business in the way I have done—what, if anything, might change?
  11. What are the most common objection that prospects give to your sales pitch and what might be the best response?
  12. What is the biggest priority that the company faces now?

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: The Thinker created in 1904 by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) on display at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA 2016 exhibit, “Rodin: Transforming Sculpture.” 

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SWOT Your Brand

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Freelance consultants and small business owners rise and fall on the marketplace perception of their brand, also known as one’s professional reputation.  As a result, the brand/reputation merits ongoing enhancement, promotion and monitoring as a component of a strategy designed to support new business acquisition and encourage repeat business—in essence, the strategy you implement to build and maintain a good client list.  The brand can be reviewed and evaluated in several ways, one of which is through the prism of the gold standard of strategic planning, the SWOT Analysis.

Every year, self-employed professionals will benefit from examining the viability of their brand, to become aware of what actions and behaviors enhance the brand and what might undermine that precious resource.  Using the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats metrics will reveal this information.

Strengths: Professional expertise, competitive advantages, prestigious or lucrative clients, referral sources, valued business practices, strategic partnerships, educational or professional credentials, financial resources, influential relationships. This element is internal, within your control.

  • How can you leverage your resources to upgrade the types of clients you work with?
  • How can you persuade inactive clients to call you back for more project work and stimulate repeat business?
  • How can you obtain more billable hours?
  • How can you persuade clients to hire you for more complex and therefore more lucrative projects?

Weaknesses: Whatever undermines your brand, the opposite of your strengths, gaps in what or who you know, or deficiencies in the value that you bring to clients.  This element is internal, within your control.

  • Which of your gaps has the most negative impact on the business?
  • Which of your impactful detriments appear to be quickly, easily, or inexpensively remedied?
  • What can you do to shore up those handicaps and minimize your liabilities—are there business practices that you can modify, professional credentials you can earn, relationships you can successfully cultivate?

Opportunities: Conditions that favor the attainment of goals and objectives. This element is external and beyond your control, yet you may be able to position yourself to gain from the benefits created by its presence.  Good information about business conditions in your marketplace helps the Freelance consultant to objectively evaluate and envision the potential of short-term and long-term benefits and what must be done to earn the pay-off.

  • What new developments can you possibly take advantage of to bring money and prestige to your business?
  • Do you see financial reward in offering an additional service or product?
  • Is there a good client you should be able to successfully pursue and sign, or a lapsed client who, with some outreach, could be willing to reactivate?
  • Is there a developing niche market that you can pivot into, with some uncomplicated adjustments?

Threats: Conditions likely to damage the brand, or your ability to acquire clients and generate sufficient billable hours. This element is external and beyond your control, yet you may be able to position yourself to escape or minimize the catastrophe caused by its presence.  This category requires the immediate attention of you and your team, since it carries the potential to end, or seriously cripple, your brand and business.

Developing and implementing a strategy of protective action, for example a brand facelift or a pivot into more hospitable business turf, is absolutely necessary for survival, but inclined to be time-consuming and difficult to bring about.  Staying abreast of what is happening in the industries that you usually serve and the viability or priorities of your largest clients, will give you the resources of time and good information and prepare you to react and regroup.

  • Has a well-connected and aggressive competitor appeared on the scene, ready to eat your market share and client list by way of a better known brand, more influential relationships, a bigger marketing budget, or other game-changing competitive advantages? If that is the case, then do everything possible to offer superior customer service, assert your expertise, step up your networking, enhance your thought-leader credentials and nurture your client relationships (holiday cards really do matter).
  • Will some new technology soon render your services obsolete? If so, what skills do you possess, or what can you learn, that will allow you to successfully repackage your skills, reconfigure your brand and continue to appeal to clients who already like your work?
  • Has an important contact left his/her organization, leaving you at the mercy of the new  decision-maker, who has his/her own friends to hire? Or has there been a merger that resulted in the downgrading of the influence of your chief contact, who may lose the ability to green-light projects that you manage? If your client contact has moved on, absolutely take that person to lunch or coffee and do what you can to make the professional relationship portable.  If your contact has lost his/her influence, ask to meet the replacement, who may employ you at least for the next project if one comes up quickly (but may boot you out for all others, unfortunately).

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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Getting and Giving Advice: Who to Ask, Frame the Question

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We’re back with more thoughts and suggestions regarding how to navigate the matter of business advice, giving or receiving.  Previous posts have explored how to effectively give advice and the importance of using tact when advice is offered.  In this post, we’ll examine how to obtain business advice for ourselves.  As you might guess, it’s a delicate process.

Getting and Giving Advice: Skill Set

Getting and Giving Advice: Tact

First, if you are in need of advice, then there is either a problem or an opportunity that you must address (or ignore).  You are concerned and maybe even scared.  You are stressed and making decisions when stressed is seldom a good idea.  Stress impairs judgment and therefore increases the potential for an undesirable outcome.  Nevertheless, you recognize that another perspective could help you to sort things out. Who are you going to trust?

Yes, trust is a big factor when seeking advice. You must trust that person’s expertise and since confidentiality is likely involved, you must feel confident in the person’s ethics and practice of discretion.  You do not want someone who is unqualified to give the advice and neither do you want your private affairs indiscriminately shared.

Let’s start by helping you to identify a good advice prospect.  You may know more than one person who appears to own the experience and expertise that should make him/ her a good candidate,  but who should you approach?  Here are guidelines to assist your decision.

First, avoid asking someone who has competitive advantages that are significantly beyond your reach. If the person is prone to unusually good luck, or has a wealthy and influential family or spouse, then do not ask the individual for advice.  S/he may have built a highly profitable business, but because fate smiles on all of his/her endeavors,  s/he has faced no real obstacles.  Such persons cannot solve problems, because they’ve never had the need to do so.  They’ve never borne the consequences of either bad luck or their mistakes.

Second, look a little more at how the prospect has garnered  success.  Whether it was a fast climb to the top or slow, someone who has taken an unusual path has probably encountered an array of unexpected obstacles and opportunities that had to be conquered or exploited along the way.  Of necessity, that person has challenged assumptions, rethought the status quo and has the courage to move forward  when more conventional types might hesitate. As a result, that person has learned to be quite resourceful and could have real wisdom to share with you.

Next, confirm your advice prospect’s expertise in your area of need.  Just because someone has climbed the corporate ladder or built a million dollar plus company does not mean that the person is an expert in all disciplines.  A talent for strategy development is probably a strong point across the board,  but most people are strongest in either finance, operations, sales or marketing. Further, it’s been my observation that the intelligence possessed by computer geeks is very deep and very narrow, rendering them useful for IT questions only.  I would be reluctant to trust many of them to go the grocery store to buy bread and milk in a snowstorm.

Now, let’s consider the right way to ask for the advice.  As the late management guru Peter Drucker noted,  one will not find the fight answer unless the right question is asked.  Advice experts recommend that you NOT ask your prospect what you should do in your situation,  because s/he may get insulted if you decide to ignore their advice and follow another route.  Instead, ask if s/he has ever faced a situation like yours and if so, what did s/he do or say in response?

WRONG: “I feel that a big wholesaler is being unfair about the payment terms extended to me. What should I do”?

RIGHT:     ” Have you ever dealt with a big wholesaler who you felt was unfair about the payment terms extended to you? Were you able to do anything about it”?

Finally, you need access to your preferred advice candidate. It’s preferable to approach someone you are already acquainted with and that is the best reason for taking the time to establish business and social relationships.  The person who can most effectively guide you might be in the gym with you,  or at church, or at the lunch table at a symposium. Asking for detailed advice from someone you’ve just shaken hands with is awkward.

Ask your advice question, beginning with your clarifying question to verify expertise, in person if possible.  Your specific advice question can be asked in a follow-up telephone call if there is no time to address it on the spot, or if privacy is an issue.  Good luck!

Thanks for reading,

Kim

 

 

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Four Rs for the Holidays

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Freelance consultants usually have to grapple with downtime that is imposed upon us during the Christmas holiday season.  After the first week in December,  it can be impossible to drag a project to the starting gate.  Clients will either shift into party mode or year-end mode and concentrate on wrapping up their own projects before December 25.  Unless the client is facing a January deadline ( thank goodness I’ve got one of those this year,  even if the project is miniscule),  they will put the brakes on things until after the first week in January and there isn’t a blessed thing we can do about it.

But time is our most precious resource,  unrecoverable when wasted.  So the question is,  how do Freelancers make hay during the Holidays?  In fact,  there is no reason that the Holiday season should be less than productive for your consultancy.  I offer here a few suggestions of activities that will pave the way to a stronger and more satisfying New Year:

Reflect

Use the Holiday season downtime to reflect on the events of the year,  professional and personal.  How do you feel about how things turned out? Did you recognize good opportunities?  Did you have the moxie to create still more opportunities? Were you able to overcome obstacles,  or dodge adversity?  Did you achieve you financial goals? Did you pick up any good clients?  Did you get repeat business? Did you enter into any good relationships?

Take an inventory of your year.  Make a list of what you consider to have been your major accomplishments of 2012.  What fell into place for you,  what ambitious plans did you initiate and carry out? How did you reward yourself for your achievements? How did those achievements impact how you feel about yourself and your abilities? Look for patterns of behavior that put you on the path to either success or frustration.  Find the lessons and make note of what you must and must not do again in the future.

Reposition

Once you’ve taken stock and accounted for successes and missteps,  you will be ready to incorporate the wisdom into repositioning yourself,  or otherwise refining and polishing your image.  While you’re at it,  take an objective look at your website,  your LinkedIn page and other social media and  your printed marketing collaterals.  Recite your standard elevator pitch out loud and listen to how it sounds.  If someone walked up to you and gave you that spiel,  what would be your reaction?

Do your marketing materials and elevator pitch address the concerns of your clients and prospects as we approach 2013 and the Fiscal Cliff? Are you relevant? Maybe it’s time to tweak and present you and your skills in a way that will remind clients that your value proposition remains valuable.

Reconnect

The Holidays can be the perfect time to arrange to cross paths with prospects and former clients with whom you would like to forge or renew relationships and get them thinking about ways to do business with you.   If you read last week’s post,  you may have already sent greeting cards to former clients.  There may still be time to make the rounds of selected late season parties,  where you might get an introduction to a prospect you’ve been trying to meet since first quarter.  Check the websites of the more selective networking organizations and see where you might roll the dice.  Even if you don’t meet The One,  you might meet Another One,  who might be less elusive and ultimately more valuable to your bottom line.

Relax

By all means,  unwind and enjoy yourself.  Spend quality time with family and friends,  but earmark some time to be alone as well.  Dolce far niente,  as the Italians say—it’s nice to do nothing,  as least once in a while and we owe that to ourselves.  Catch up on sleep,  schedule a massage or facial if you’ve got the budget.  Downtime is important as a way to reduce stress and recharge our batteries,  which has a positive effect on our resilience and creativity.  When January rolls around,  you will be ready to take it on in style.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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Man Up and Lead! Part II

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Now on to the opportunities.  Finding these lovely gems is often random.  We must train ourselves to recognize them,  for they are not necessarily sitting beneath a neon sign. Usually they are more like truffles,  hiding under certain trees and available only under certain conditions.

Once we figure out how to recognize opportunities,  the next step (very important!) is to learn how to maximize them.  This step will  involve both courage and creativity. You may have to take a calculated risk.  So many people mishandle or outright squander golden opportunities because they lack the vision,  the foresight and the guts to play a good hand for all it’s worth.

While you’re hanging out and doing business as usual,  it is vital to always be on the lookout for the gems.  It is likewise vital to prepare your organization to receive them, because fortune favors the prepared.   So what might that entail?

As we all know,  it usually takes money to make money.  So ideally, have at least a modest cash or credit reserve on hand that will allow you to pay an expense related to serendipitous good fortune.  As always,  network to cultivate and maintain good relationships,  since who you know (and who knows you) is essential to the process.

The arts organization of which I spoke last week will hold a big splashy event in September 2010.  They will repeat the template of an event that was done in 2005, with great success.  Despite the weakened economy, I feel confident that the September event is a good opportunity that will both make new friends for the organization and bring in $10,000 + in revenue.

Then there is the other opportunity,  one that was brought to us by our board chairwoman.  She told us of a charming documentary film made in 2008 that tells the story of a NYC postal worker and his librarian wife who built a world class art collection on their very limited budget. The board chair proposed that we show the film in Spring 2010 to act as a lead-in to our September event.  The event would be free,  to reward current supporters and attract new prospects.  The board loved it and I took the lead on finding a venue,  preferably free or cheap.

On a whim,  I emailed an acquaintance who is a former trustee at a local museum.  Would they donate space to a small nonprofit?  She agreed to make a call on my behalf and give me a contact name.  To my great delight,  I obtained donated screening space and, the sweetest gift of all,  a museum curator to both introduce the film and do a Q & A session at the end.  Hot damn,  I hit the jackpot!!

Alas,  there was a little catch.  We must pony up for a few related costs:  projectionist fee, ushers,  security,  clean-up crew, etc.  To accept this offer,  the organization must pay about $1400.

I emailed the board chair and gave her the good news / bad news scenario.  What to do,  I lamented? Perhaps I should keep looking.   She agreed.  But when the sun rose again,  I caught myself.  I emailed the board chair and told her that we must accept this game changing offer.  It was much too good to refuse.

However,  all this transpired before news of the $60,000 hole in the bankbook was revealed.   Our chairwoman went from being cautiously positive to near total opposition. I understood her fear,  but knew that we could not succumb to it.  The ED (who I feel concealed our money woes and exacerbated our problem) was totally negative—but he is always a wet blanket!

Especially in light of the cash crunch,  the organization needs to quickly raise its profile to both energize current donors and attract new and bigger check writers.  To show the film in a venue that is merely serviceable adds no value.  Our golden opportunity would be squandered due to shortsightedness and fear.

Halleluia, I am thrilled to report that the board gave the museum proposal a ringing endorsement.  One person even recommended that we go farther out on a limb, as he phrased it, and host a small pre-film reception. The board voted to spend $5000 on the event.  The board chair gave her blessing and the ED came around.  Hurrah!!

The lesson of this tale is no doubt obvious to you, dear Reader.  Practicality and caution are useful traits;  but one must not allow them to morh into fear and paralysis.  As steward of the business,  one must develop both the acumen to  recognize opportunities  worth pursuing and the courage to utilize same.  We must understand not only what we can afford to do,  but also what we cannot afford to NOT do.  We’ve got to man up and lead!

Thanks for reading,
Kim