Small Business Minute By Greg Weatherdon

I like to define entrepreneurs into one of two categories, they are either a hunter or gatherer. A hunter is someone who’s business requires them to go out every day and find new customers. Whereas a gatherer is much like a farmer who continuously harvests business from an established base of existing customers. The best businesses do both. Of course, all entrepreneurs start out as hunters. They must, because they don’t have an existing customer base from which to harvest. Survival in the early days requires hunting every day, otherwise they won’t be in business very long. Neglected Opportun… Read More

Many entrepreneurs’ struggles can be traced to their inability to bring focus to their business. It is said that if you try to be great at everything, you’ll end up being good at nothing. I like to use the example of sunlight to explain the power of focus. The Power of Focus Most day our world is full of sunlight and even on the hottest of days there’s little risk of it setting anything on fire. But take that same sunlight and let it pass through a magnifying glass held at just the right angle and within seconds you can create a flame. Then, if properly stoked, it can become a raging inferno. T… Read More

What if, you could start your business all over again? What would you do differently? What do you like or dislike about your current business? What would you change? Why Mess With A Good Thing? These sound like simple questions and that’s because they are. As entrepreneurs, we seem to get ourselves trapped into doing things one way. And why wouldn’t we, if it’s brought us some success? Why mess with a good thing, right? Not necessarily. One of the problems is that the longer we’re in business, the harder it is to make changes. We’ve managed to survive and maybe even consider ourselves successful or … Read More

As entrepreneurs, we all set goals. It’s a way to measure our progress. The biggest difference I have found between individuals is the size of the goals. Some people are just more ambitious than others. But the size of ones’ ambition is not a precursor to success. “Without Goals We Risk Drifting Aimlessly” Goals are wonderful, they keep us moving forward. Much like a ships compass, goals give us a heading or a direction in which to sail, even when our destination is over the horizon. Goals give us focus, because without them, we risk drifting aimlessly. One of the most common goals en… Read More

When we first hang out our Small Business shingle, we outwardly exude confidence in our idea and our abilities that we will succeed. But if truth be told, we have absolutely no idea how the story will end. Will it be a fairy tale or a horror story? Mouse in a maze Throughout the planning stages, we have spent hours upon hours dreaming of the future we will create. We hope that this future will take us on an amazing and positive journey. Realistically though, this journey will not be in a straight line from A to B. It will not be simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another. Often, the entrepreneur… Read More

Profit, that elusive goal that frustrates many a business owners. To be sure, many businesses are just bad ideas that never should have been started in the first place. However, there are plenty of others that are well run with decent revenues but for some reason they aren’t as profitable as they should be.   When helping business owners, one of the first places I look is their pricing model. Other than suggesting some adjustments, their pricing doesn’t appear to be the issue. Take a minute and checkout episode #47 Pricing For Profit for more insight into pricing.   A little probing in… Read More

Every entrepreneur goes into business with a list of dreams, hopes and desires for their business and their life. Unfortunately, dreams require more than just hoping and praying for a successful outcome.   What we need to realize is that dreams are just the starting point of the entrepreneurial adventure. Dreams get us in the game, but to be successful in business requires being able to put all the pieces together in order to create a prosperous enterprise.       Those elements consist of: Sales Marketing Operations Administration The thing is, most of us are only really … Read More

I’m frequently asked how one goes about pricing their goods and services for profit. It sounds like a simple enough question, but in reality, it can very complex. Get it right and all should be well. Get it wrong and you’ll be constantly chasing revenue, if only to pay the bills.   Now if your product is a “me too”, you don’t have a lot of flexibility, as the existing products have already established the pricing parameters and therefore you must compete accordingly. Raising your price becomes almost impossible. The only way to improve your profitability is either to reduce costs or add real … Read More

Far too often I come across entrepreneurs who can’t seem to launch their new business, product, service or even a new strategy. They are constantly tweaking it, in an attempt to make it better or even perfect the final offering. What they fail to realize is that they’re wasting valuable learning time by not being in the market. Regardless of when they finally do launch, chances are they are going to need to make adjustments anyways once they receive customer feedback, so why wait? “Far too often I come across smart people who create wonderful solutions for problems that don&… Read More

There’s a lot of time and energy wasted by small businesses on the whole concept of brand building and little on reputation. So much of this noise can be traced back to the explosion of Social Media and if the truth be told, that’s all most of it is, noise. To be honest branding any kind of service business has always been a challenge and is best suited to products. The exception to this is when a service business reaches a size and scope that no longer qualifies it as a small business. The primary factor is that most small businesses have difficulty defining what business they’re a… Read More

  One of the simplest ways to increase your sales closing ratio is by simply following up with your prospects in a timely manner. All too often I encounter entrepreneurs who lament at how difficult business is or that they just don’t get sales even though they are pitching and quoting. Digging a little deeper quickly uncovers one of the main reasons for their poor sales performance, they don’t follow up. It is estimated that 85% of sales contacts are never followed up. When I enquire as to why they don’t follow up, I usually get the same answer- “I don’t want to bother them or come across as pushy… Read More

Successful people are always on the lookout for ways to improve themselves and their businesses. Unfortunately, with the advent of Social Media, there are now an overwhelming number of so called experts promoting the latest and greatest way to take you and or your business to the next level. Scream Loud Enough I get the sense that they believe that if they scream loud enough or post frequently enough, people will automatically assume that they are experts. Rarely however, have these denizens of success achieved the level of achievement they proclaim that you can attain. Just because they say … Read More

No one likes doing hard stuff. It’s far easier and requires far less motivation to do the things we like. Great concert pianists produce wonderful music in what appears to be an effortless manner. Top ranked Olympians appear to have superhuman abilities and successful entrepreneurs have an air of quiet self-confidence. What We Don’t See The one thing all these individuals have in common, is that they put in the time and effort required to develop and refine their skills. What we don’t see is the hours upon hours, year in, year out that the pianist has spent practicing at the keyboard. Nor … Read More

Why would anyone want to be an entrepreneur? Why would you want to have to constantly worry about getting business, hiring employees, making payroll, covering rent, dealing with grumpy customers, finding customers, firing customers, firing people, sending out invoices, collecting payment, marketing, fixing the computer, quoting on jobs, preparing presentations, working too hard, sleeping too little, meeting with lawyers, meeting with accountants, explaining to bankers, being rejected, losing customers, out guessing the competition, managing your time, trying to be creative… Read More

Sitting down with a cup coffee, you look at your financials and you realize your annual projections are not unfolding quite like you planned. Revenue is down, expenses are up and profitability is just a flicker on your Profit and Loss statements. You know that the longer you wait, the harder it will be to make up the shortfall. It’s time to step up your game and maybe even get outside your comfort zone and do some business development. Because you know that if you don’t act now, things are just going to get worse. “You already have a relationship with them, take advantage of it!” So here a… Read More

A very common trait of successful entrepreneurs is that many don’t have rear view mirrors. By that I mean, they rarely dwell on the past mistakes. They know their future lies ahead and not behind. The past is the past and mistakes happen. “Once distilled, they let it go and move on…” That’s not to say they pretend they never made a mistake, to the contrary. They acknowledge their mistake, analyze what went wrong and distill those learnings, notice I say learnings, into usable information. Once distilled, they let it go and move on because they understand that theirs is a journ… Read More

I have a simple saying that I live by, and that is “Look as good as you sound”! We constantly tell people how great our product or services are but do we support that statement with a professional image? People tell me all the time that it’s not that important and I call that a cop out!  It’s about respect! “Image is that common thread that runs through your organization” Business is difficult enough and we need every advantage possible to change the odds in our favour and image is relatively easy to elevate. Image to me can be best summed up as that common thread that runs throughout your … Read More

Whether we chose to admit it or not, every entrepreneur has limitations and failure to acknowledge them can become an anchor that limits our success. “Unfortunately, most of us never seem to shake our start-up attitude” Granted, during the start-up years we must do everything to get our enterprise off the ground and there are many things that we aren’t very good at. Fortunately, we only have to be good enough at our limitations until such time as we can hire people that are better at them. Unfortunately, most of us never seem to shake our start-up attitude, even though we’re not star… Read More

If you’re to believe everything you hear or read about innovation, you would be justified in thinking that innovation is an area best left to the big companies, but that would be wrong. “Don’t let the status quo be the reason you don’t try something new” If truth be told, every company, regardless of size, has the opportunity to innovate. Although small innovations never make headlines, they never the less can make a dramatic impact within your company, and frankly that’s all that really matters. What you need to understand is that most successful innovation comes from either bor… Read More

Everyone one of us needs to be motivated and inspired occasionally. Although successful entrepreneurs are inherently self motivated but none the less they still look for opportunities to keep themselves in the right frame of mind. Being inspired or motivated is only half the required elements to achievement. The other half is action. “Being motivated and inspired has little or no value if you don’t put anything into action.” The biggest difference between successful and struggling entrepreneurs is action. Being motivated and inspired has little or no value if you don’t put … Read More