Tag Archives: business

Doing Business on a Budget

Posted on by
Reply

After working with a few small businesses for so many years, I couldn’t help but noticing all the funny little ways each one had of trimming the fat from their budgets. Everyone had their own little system in place to save pennies and it was fun to try incorporate those practices into the way I run my own business.

That’s not to say that I’m stingy when it comes to spending some coin on my business, but when it comes to running a small enterprise I think there will always be moments where we find ourselves tempted to cut costs in order to run as efficiently and simply as possible. Here are some of my favorite ways to do it.

Make it work for you. It’s more important that you identify your own needs for running your business, instead of trying to adhere to someone else’s vision of what your business should look like. Not everyone’s list will look the same. Other things that people deem essential might differ from yours: you might consider a second phone line crucial; and others might scoff at the thought of using anything but email as their prime form of communication.

It’s important to figure out what your bottom line is so you know much (or how little) you can get by with in order for your business to function. If that means foregoing the idea of an office, or a fancy luncheon every day, so be it. You’d be surprised at how refreshing it can be to simplify your routine.

Get creative. Most people dream of having their own home office, but not everyone can afford to make that dream a reality- and not just due to budget constraints. Time, space, lifestyle- each one of these things reflect when, where and how you conduct your business. I’ve seen people with home offices with all of the latest state-of-the-art tech equipment, and I’ve met people who have conducted their business at the dining table after clearing off the dinner dishes. It’s worth exploring alternative ways to make your office hours and office setting work for you– it may be just what you need to cut costs and find a more efficient way of working.

Be realistic. Just because your vision of owning your own business involves going out for a fancy latté every day, it’s a luxury that entrepreneurs can’t always afford. While it would be nice to reward ourselves for our hard work with things like fancy coffees, special office supplies, or a complete office makeover, those things aren’t always possible when you’re first starting out, or if you’re trying to keep your operations small. As soon as you adjust your expectations for a glamorous freelancing lifestyle, the more satisfied you’ll be with your budget-friendly work style.

Of course, there’s always room for compromise– upgrading your regular office coffee maker to a Keurig or even an espresso machine may still be cheaper in the long-term than buying a fancy latté everyday. Or maybe you use your local Starbucks at your office, and the price of coffee counts towards your “rent”, in which case there’s plenty of room to save money on leasehold improvements!

Cutting costs where possible can be a satisfying and even refreshing way of making sure your business is running as cheaply and efficiently as possible. We often convince ourselves we need the latest gadgets, or the most expensive suits to succeed when the truth is that success is often directly correlated with the amount of work we put into something.

A final note: even the most ruthless of budgets should include at least a little room to be generous to ourselves as entrepreneurs. Running a small business is more like a lifestyle than a job, and when we structure our lives around working all the time, it’s important to have a reminder that your work is more than just about paying the bills. You deserve to have some fun!

Even if that means indulging at Starbucks once in a while.

KBwB-BFlower-50

What are some of the creative ways you’ve come up with to save money while running your own business. Did you sacrifice an office? A phone line? How has this transformed the way you work? Send your stories to me at keepingbusyb@gmail.com or comment below.

Professional Development is Your Project

Posted on by
Reply

kbb_purple_notebook_yellow_pens

The problem with high school is that there’s a lot of people telling you what to do, where to be, and how you need to complete x,y and z in order to get your diploma.

Then in university or college you’ve got a little more freedom to decide how and when you do things, but you still have to meet the prerequisites to graduate, and do more schooling, or become a whatever and by then you’ll have totally figured out how to do things for yourself, right?

Unfortunately, I’ve found this isn’t always the case. Sure, each workplace has a certain set of rules you have to follow, and most jobs have a job description that you have to adhere to. But your job is just you job; your workplace is just where you work. That is, for now. Who helps you to decide when it’s time to move on? Who tells you what to do to gain upward mobility in your company? What the prerequisites for getting promotions? For changing careers? For scaling back?

For some, knowing that your career has the ability to head in whatever direction you want is really freeing. Others might be totally cool with finding a good position and sticking with it, providing it meets their lifestyle needs. If you’re one the latter, congratulations- it sounds like you’re already in the place that you need to be.

I think most of us meet somewhere in the middle (myself included). We crave the autonomy to make our own decisions about when, where and what we work at (exciting!); at the same time, we wish there was someone to guide us where we need to go otherwise how else do we find our way of getting there? (Scary!)

It’s kind of brutal, but it’s the truth: professional development is your project.

Don’t panic; it’s actually pretty liberating. Does it require a certain amount of discipline and motivation on your part? Totally. But you’re in change of when, where and how you want to develop yourself professionally.

The most exciting (and challenging) part is deciding the what:

  • What skills do you want to acquire?
  • Which skills do you want to improve?
  • What contacts do you want to make?
  • What experience do you want to gain?
  • What do you want to get certified in?
  • What do you want to learn?

Once you’ve figured out the what, the how comes so much easier: take a workshop, join a club, go back to school, audit a class, attend a conference, get a membership, volunteer, shadow a mentor.

And read, read, read: books related to finding your ideal career or better yet, find the biography of someone who has achieved success at what you want to do. Read magazines, newspapers, blogs and other industry publications to keep your knowledge current.

You may want to map out what of some of these steps look like on a long-term scale. What are some of your goals? What do you want to accomplish? Where do you want to go? Where do you want to end up?

Or maybe you’ve already found yourself in a good place career-wise and you’re looking to keep the momentum going. Your professional development projects might be more along the lines of expanding your target market, developing a new product, or re-branding your company.

It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to change it up, or hate challenging the status quo: professional development is definitely a project we have to take on ourselves. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. In a way careers can mimic- they can be ebb and flow and take us to destinations that we never thought were possible.

The beauty of it, is that you have the freedom to choose how you’ll navigate that flow, and hopefully you’ll end up somewhere wonderful.

At the very least, I hope you enjoy the ride.

KBwB-BFlower-50What are some of the professional skills that you’ve been working on? Share your trials and tribulations below, or email me at keepingbusyb@gmail.com.

For more advice on navigating careers and the workplace, click here.

Book Review: Jon Acuff on Loving Your Job Anyways

Posted on by
7

Do-Over-Cover-2

I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself the other day until I read Jon Acuff’s Do Over.

No, it didn’t make me feel better; at least, not at first. It made me bawl my eyes out.

Even though Do Over is the only business book to evoke such an emotional response from me, I didn’t enjoy it just for the catharsis it provided me. It’s a fresh perspective on why we work the kinds of jobs that we do, and the choices that we make in the workplace that can advance (or destroy) our careers.

Acuff argues that as a society we’re trained to find jobs instead of pursuing careers. Gone are the days when people found a “good job” and stayed in the same position for twenty-five years. Nowadays it’s common to switch careers up to three times throughout your working life.

So why this sudden shift?

Things like job security and health benefits are still important to most people. But in a world with a growing population and a fluctuating economy, these “good jobs” are fewer and far between. We’re living longer, too, and becoming more educated, so the competition for these jobs is higher. Many are forced to adopt a lower standard or accept a less than ideal position in order to remain employed.

Although much of Do Over is about giving your career a fresh start, what made it so poignant for me was the empathy Acuff expresses for his readers who feel frustrated and stuck in their current positions. And then he gives those readers a swift kick in the pants. It’s our attitudes that are the problem, he explains. No one ever got to exactly where they wanted without hard work and sacrifice. Sometimes it’s about making the best of an opportunity. Through befriending co-workers, finding mentors and developing new skills, you can take what you’ve learned in your current job and adapt it to any future situation, so you can finally start heading in the direction that you want to go.

Is it a challenge? Yes. Is it impossible? No.

And that’s kind of why the book got me in the feels- we’ve all been in situation where we feel stuck, bored or dissatisfied in our jobs. Yes, the purpose of a job is to make money, but there’s a lot to be said for enjoying yourself (even just a little) in the place where you spend most of your waking hours.

Don’t forget, there could be benefits to your job as well besides the money- a great relationship with your co-workers, a sense of autonomy, or a chance to be creative may be the reason you choose to stay in a position, or the reason why you chose a position in the first place.

Even if you’re not looking to make a major career change, I’d still recommend Do Over as a good read after a bad work day, or a bad work week, or if you’re simply just frustrated and in the mood for some wallowing. Acuff’s writing is snappy and humorous but at the end of the day it’s the catharsis I experienced after finishing it that makes Do Over such a good read.

KBwB-BFlower-50

Psst- wanna see which books have previously graced my bookshelves? Click here. Want even more fun reading recommendations? I’ve got some for you here. Don’t forget to find me on Goodreads so we can snoop each other’s bookshelves and dish about our favourites.

When You Just Need a Sounding Board

Posted on by
Reply

KBB_birdseed_heart

Everyone needs at least one important person in their professional lives that has nothing to do with your boss, your co-workers, or your employees. Whether you’re the person who runs meetings or the person who cleans up after them, we all as professional people need a sounding board to get us through our professional crises and challenges.

Swapping work horror stories over margaritas with friends may be a fun way to unwind and let loose all of that nasty stuff that you’ve been holding in all week, like how tired you are of hearing your co-worker swoon over her new boyfriend, or how poorly-dressed the new supervisor was last Thursday.

Having someone to act as a sounding board for you is a more meaningful experience than that. It’s useful to be able to gossip (and depending on your relationship with your sounding board there may be some sniping involved). But more importantly, your sounding board is someone you should be able to go to in times of real difficulty; someone who knows you well enough to understand how you operate and which professional goals mean the most to you. They can help provide an objective perspective on your own unique challenges at work while keeping your personal and professional well-being in mind.

This person may be a trusted friend, a former colleague, or an acquaintance met through work connections. Maybe it’s a friend of yours that has similar career goals, or a relative who may have experience in your particular field. Whatever your relationship is to your sounding board, they ultimately should be someone you trust and ultimately someone whose opinion you respect. Ideally, your sounding board should be drawn from your pool of acquaintances outside of your own workplace (if you have one). Work relationships run the risk of going south quickly if sensitive or potentially harmful information is shared. Open communication between you and your sounding board is key; it’s important that you choose a sounding board with whom you can be candid, and who can return your candor in a constructive way.

A mentor may be someone with whom you share a working relationship, or hope to someday; a sounding board is someone with whom you can maintain a somewhat professional distance. You never want your own personal feelings or opinions to get in the way of a potential client or partnership. A sounding board is someone who will understand that you are not the sum of what you do to make money and that your career is not necessarily based on the current job you have.

I’m lucky enough to have a couple of different sounding boards in my life- people who I can rant to, people who can give me guidance when I’m feeling stuck, even people who are willing to look at my work with a fresh pair of eyes when I’m feeling like my brain is made of mush.

Choose your sounding boards carefully and you can find yourself in one of the best relationships you’ve experienced in your working career.  I know I have and as I continue to dream and grow (and mostly dream) my business, I hope to meet many more.

KBwB-BFlower-50Do you have a sounding board in your life? Give them a shout-out below, or if you’ve got a special story to share, email it to me at keepingbusyb@gmail.com and I may decide to include it in a future post (with you and your sounding board’s permission, of course).

I look at careers and working life a little differently than the rest- probably because I spend most of my life working and then reading books that are about working. To see where I get some of my inspiration, click here to read some of my business book reviews. If you’re looking for more ways to balance your professional life, I write a lot about doing business here.

 

The Greatest Marketing Campaign There Never Was

Posted on by
Reply

KBB_yellow_mums

This little springtime marketing story is actually borrowed from a long-term client of mine. She has a large, beautiful garden that requires a lot of love and care, and it’s a huge time commitment for someone like her who is not only a professor; she also runs a small business in her free time. (You can tell why she and I get along well!) To help things run smoothly she employs a gardener to help with the general garden maintenance.

She told me this story about how a few years before I joined her company, she had found a beautiful chrysanthemum plant that had been left on her porch, along with a card wishing her happy spring. Obviously, she was touched at the gift but there was one problem- the card that arrived with the plant hadn’t been signed.

My client has a good relationship with many of her neighbors on the street so she asked around, thinking that one of them had dropped off the plant as a neighborly gift. It was a nice idea, but no such luck: none of them had left the plant, and no one had received a similar gift either.

It was spring and getting to be that time of year when the ground was warm enough to start cleaning up the yard. Normally the local gardening company she had employed for years would contact her to arrange a date for the annual clean-up. However, a few weeks went by and she had yet to hear from them, so my client took initiative and called them herself, hoping that they hadn’t gone out of business.

When asked why they hadn’t called her to schedule a date, the manager of the company responded, “Didn’t you get our card?”

“What card?” my client asked.

“The card we left with the plant on your porch.”

My client and her gardener had a good laugh once my client explained to her that they hadn’t signed the card, and the gardener admitted that it was a honest mistake to assume that my client would have known that the flowers had come from their company.

It’s a funny story but also a great lesson about making sure you’ve got all of the details of your marketing campaign managed before you execute it. The initial idea is great: for the price of leaving a glossy, impersonal calling card to drum up repeat business, the business owners chose instead to leave a unique, personalized gift as a way of thanking previous customers. But without leaving a call-to-action or a means of contacting them (let alone identify who they were), customers were left wondering whether or not they still had a gardener and whether or not they had a secret admirer on their hands.

The moral of the story? Great ideas are the way to getting people’s attention and standing out from the competition, but they’re not worth executing if you don’t get all of the details down first.

But maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe they just got carried away with all of the beauty of spring. Who could blame them?

KBwB-BFlower-50Do you have a marketing fail that you’d like to share about something that happened to a friend of yours that was most definitely not you? (Wink, wink). Comment below or send me an email at keepingbusyb@gmail.com. I promise I won’t name names.

For other thoughts about marketing and running a small business, click here. I’m constantly full of new stories to share!

Take Control of Your Life with a Command Central Binder

Posted on by
2

KBB_colorful_calendar_even_closelierHonest-to-goodness, one of the best organizing strategies that I have used in my life has been the implementation of what’s commonly known among the organizing bloggers as the “Command Central Binder”. It has become one of the most important tools in my workflow system and if I didn’t swear by it, I wouldn’t be sharing mine with y’all today.

I have to give credit where credit is due: this is not an original idea. The idea of a Command Central binder was first introduced to me when I started receiving the Simplify 101 newsletter. (I don’t know anyone who works there I swear! I just troll the Internet for organizing resources because I have a serious addiction to that kind of thing.)

The reason why the Command Central binder is so useful that it is a collection tool designed to allow you more control over the various aspects of your life by keeping all information relevant to you stored in one convenient place. At first I struggled with the idea of creating one because it seemed to be geared towards the busy mother looking to manage multiple schedules, papers, records, tasks and other important information in a place that was at her fingertips. And it is that. But it’s also so much more.

I took the concept one step further and realized I could take the basic principles behind the Command Central binder and adopt them to my own workflow needs. I have a section for all of my to-do lists involving some of the personal and professional projects that I’m working on right now and another section that contains my monthly budget and all of my financial worksheets. The sections don’t have to be strictly utilitarian, either. There’s a section in mine that’s simply for all of books I want to read (the ones that aren’t already logged on my Goodreads profile) and yet another section that tracks future projects and wish lists that I’ve appropriately labeled “Wishin’ and Hopin’”

The key to a making a Command Central binder that works for you is to personalize it as much as you possibly can. It took me of years of tweaking my formula to arrive at the sections that worked for me but because I don’t have children I instead used my Command Central binder as a place to keep track of anything that has to do with my personal and professional well-being and growth. Some of the sections included are the ones I’ve described above; there are a few others as well. I’ll spare you the gory details.

Anything that you need to refer to on a constant basis goes here. Any tools to help your routines, schedules and workflow management belong here as well. Use some of my examples or create your own. Consider including: calendars, school lunch menus, extra-curricular and volunteer schedules, account information and passwords, contacts, chore charts, pantry inventories, budgets, wish lists, to-do lists, membership information, someday/maybe tasks…the list is virtually endless. Once you’ve figured out which pieces of information are most relevant to you, make sure they’re organized in a way that’s easy to use. Refer back to your Command Central binder and revise often to meet your changing needs. I hope you find yours as useful as I’ve found mine.

KBwB-Flower-50

Have you adopted a Command Central binder into your organizing system? Comment below and share what worked for you. Or drop me a line at keepingbusyb@gmail.com and I’ll try to include it an upcoming post. Still looking for other ways to get organized? Click here to read more about some of the methods I’ve found useful.