Archive for the ‘Change’ Category

Hiring Help

You want to grow, and you’ve raised your prices (or don’t want to or can’t). You need to hire help.

I am a big proponent of outsourcing everything you can to other companies, before you make the leap to actually hire someone to work for you. I’ll explain why below, but first, let’s look at the steps you need to take to get another company to help.

Here Are The Steps

1. Make a list of all the tasks in your business that you hate. These are the first tasks you need to get help with. The more time you spend on things you hate, the less time you spend on what you love to do, and are good at. In our perfect world, you figure out a way to spend 90% of your time doing the things you’re best at, and outsource or hire employees to handle the rest.
2. Now that you have this list, are there things on it that other companies could do for you? For many business owners, this list contains the words “bookkeeping” and “administrative tasks.” Luckily for us, there are thousands of other small businesses whose business it is to do this work so you don’t have to. Talk to your accountant for bookkeeper and ask around about virtual assistants. There are many other solo entrepreneurs whose sole business it is to do the bookkeeping and the administrative tasks for people who don’t like them, so those people can focus on doing the tasks they enjoy, like serving customers.
3. Need someone to help with your monthly newsletter? A person to clean your office? Someone to enter your new networking contacts into your database, or send out your postcards? Or even an independent sales representative to help you get in front of more potential clients? Get outside help first.
4. Talk to your other business friends to get recommendations of people/companies to talk to. Because you already have the list of the tasks you hate, you can share it with the people you might hire to help you. Get an estimate from them about how much they’d charge to help. If you don’t know anyone using outside help, try Elance, or the International Association of Virtual Assistants.
5. Look at your revenue and spending. Enter these new expenses into your forecast and see what your new bottom line looks like. Can you afford help now? If the answer is no, how much more revenue do you need to generate to get help? Open a savings account and start saving a little money each month toward the goal of hiring someone to help you.
6. If the answer is yes, you can afford to get help, write a contract (or at least a letter of engagement) with the people you’re hiring. Get specific about the tasks and how and when you want them done. Put in a review process so you both know how and when to talk to each other to make sure things are going the way you want. Say how long you want this relationship to last—maybe you only want it to go for three months so you can re-evaluate.
7. Take the plunge!

Why You Should Try Hiring A Company First, Before You Hire Employees

The point of getting your first outside help from other companies is that the commitment to them is not as strong as it is to someone you hire as an actual employee. You can experiment with them and try different companies or different working arrangements, and God Forbid, if something happens to your cash flow, you can more easily let them go if you have to. Hiring other companies to help you will also give you practice in hiring (and possibly firing), so if the time comes that you need an employee you’ll have some experience.

Have you hired a company to help you? Tell me about it below.

Tags: Change, Outsourcing

What Blocks You From Doing Your Marketing?

In the last post I talked about what blocks people from doing their marketing. The fear that comes up over and over is this:

If I do my marketing regularly and well, I’ll attract too much business, and end up working seven days a week. My service level will drop off, everyone will get mad at me, I’ll lose a bunch of customers and be back where I started, except worse off because a lot of people will be mad who weren’t mad before.

Three Alternatives

Of course there is another alternative to this scenario. Three, actually. Raise prices, start a waiting list, or hire people to help. This week we’re going to talk about raising prices.

This option frequently scares people. It’s also not right for everyone. There are scenarios where you can’t raise your prices; and perhaps even if you could, you wouldn’t want to. That’s up to you to decide; but before you reject this idea out of hand, read on.

Raising Prices

If you absolutely love doing the primary work of your business and you don’t want to delegate any of that to someone else, and you don’t want to supervise employees, raising your prices is a good option.

How Do I Do It?

Here’s what to do. First, delegate everything you don’t enjoy or aren’t good at (bookkeeping and administrative work being two possible candidates). You can hire other companies or other solo entrepreneurs to do this work for you so you don’t have to directly employ anyone. Independent bookkeepers, virtual assistants, organizers, and lots of other kinds of administrative support people abound. Talk to your business friends about who they use and take the plunge. This should begin to free up some of your time.

If You Are The Spiritual Type

Next, if you are the spiritual type, read this blog post by Mark Silver about setting prices using your heart.

If this idea makes you scoff or cringe, read this blog post anyway. It contains some very practical advice about how to price.

If Your Are the Analytical Type

If you can’t stomach the spiritual approach, research your competition on line, even risking calling some people in your same business outside your competitive area and asking them what they charge.

Now Do It

Then raise your prices. Don’t go crazy, obviously, but I’m guessing that in your research, or in doing Mark’s method, you found that your prices were too low in the first place. Some customers may leave, but you’ll have less business at a higher price, which should give you some breathing room.

By the way, this is the law of supply and demand. Things in greater demand (non-stop plane flights, homes in good school districts) cost more. For some reason, we think this law doesn’t apply to us in small business. But it does. If you are great at what you do, your perfect clients want what you do, and you are communicating to them regularly about how you can help them, you’ll earn more business than you can handle. The demand will exceed the supply. One way you can respond to this is by raising your prices.

Got comments? Post them here.

Tags: Fear, Marketing, Pricing, Success

CHANGE HAPPENS

My life has changed profoundly in the last month. I moved my home and office, which together put me at the DefCon Five level of stress–right under graduating from college without a job in the middle of a deep recession.

This amount of change, even if it’s all good, produces intense disorientation in the brain. There’s a physiological reason for this feeling.

When you do anything repeatedly, your brain cells physically line up to facilitate doing that thing. The cells make it easier and faster for you to do it. This is true if whether you’re setting aside 90 minutes every morning to do your marketing activities or shooting heroin. Your brain doesn’t care. (Well, it probably cares right before you die of an overdose, if you’ve decided to make using heroin the habit that your brain is facilitating for you.) But in general, it doesn’t care. Your brain cells’ job is to make the things you do over and over, easier to do each time.

Why the brain rebels

Addiction and Grace by Gerald May offers a detailed and fascinating explanation of brain physiology and changes that result from giving up an addiction. Few changes are more radical than kicking drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.

When you stop doing something you’ve done for a long time, your brain rebels. It sends SOS alerts like, “Hey, this is wrong. What are you doing? Where are we? Why did you do that? We haven’t done that before. This feels weird.”

Your brain rebels even when the change you’ve made is positive. In my case, the changes are positive. And yet I still carry this vague sense of unease, as if something’s wrong and I’m not sure what.

What does this mean for business?

When you change something, especially something big, such as marketing program or a product line, even if all evidence says the change is beneficial, you’ll still feel a sense of unease. This is your brain on change.

For people who rely on their intuition, the vague sense of unease can mislead you into thinking you’ve made the wrong change, when all you’re experiencing is change malaise.

There is enough fear and resistance to go around already. Knowing a bit about the workings of your brain can help you weather some of the feelings that arise when you make changes. We have to make changes in our businesses all the time or the market leaves us behind. At least now you know why your brain objects to change, even when it’s great for you and your customers.

The solution is patience

As so many other problems in life, the solution to fear and unease is patience. Practice your new change as much as you can, so you can retrain your brain cells as fast as possible. Be patient with your poor old brain. Remember, she’s had the rug pulled out from under her.

Have you weathered any big (or small) changes lately, that have rocked your world, or at least given you a vague sense of unease, even if the change is good? Leave a comment below.

Tags: Addiction, Change, Fear, Resistance