Retreat, reflect and refresh to profit in your small business in 2010

This post is coming to you from beautiful Port Stephens, about a two-hour drive north of Sydney, Australia and I take a week’s break here towards the end of every calendar year.
My time here has three main purposes:

1. To retreat -  to rest and recharge my batteries
2. To reflect on and review the previous year – both my successes and my failures
3. To refresh my plans for the coming year. This year my forward planning is especially important because I plan to launch two new businesses early in the year  - www.AgeWellZone.com and www.HubSiteBuilder.com

Why you want to retreat from your small business to boost your profits

The biggest challenge that most small business owners have is to stop the go go go and do do do routines that can become habitual ways of keeping us locked in to working in our business rather than on our business. That’s why it’s essential to retreat from your business from 3 to 7 days at least once a year to allow you to step back from the inside workings of your business and examine what has happened and what you want to happen from a more global perspective.

12 tips to set the right course for your small business profits for 2010

1. Retreat from your business for a few days to relax your mind, body and spirit
2. Review your values. Your values are your lifestyle priorities and preferences. How have your priorities changed from when you established your small business or when you set your last vision for your business? Remember that your values are your unique motivation code.
3. Review your vision for your small business. Are you close to fulfilling that vision? If yes, then it’s time to set yourself a new, expanded vision. If no, is your vision truly aligned to your values, do you have the right strategies in place to take you as directly as possible toward your vision, do you have the right people on board and in the right roles to support your strategies with optimum effectiveness and efficiency. Or have changes in market conditions caused your existing vision to be no longer viable?
4. Review your mission for your small business. Are you still as passionate to help your customers or clients in your unique way with your unique products or services as you were the day you started your business? If yes, do the people you have working in your business share your passion and do they have the right knowledge, attitude, skills and systems to support them in the day to day implementation of the mission of your business? If no, then it’s time to review your values, because what you value, in other words what’s important to you, is what will provide the fuel to drive your ongoing efforts in your business.
5. Review what worked well, especially in terms of sales and marketing, which provide your cash flow, the lifeblood of your business. Remember that your web marketing strategy needs to be a subset of your overall marketing strategy.
6. Analyze why those strategies worked so well and identify how you can replicate and expand on them in the coming year.
7. Review what did not work so well. Is your website optimized for high search engine ranking to make it easier for potential customers to find you?
8. Analyze why those strategies did not add to your small business profits and what you need to do in order to tweak or delete any unsuccessful strategies or tactics.
9. Take a good hard, realistic look at your customer service. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes – what’s your customer experience REALLY like, both when things go well and when they need to come back to because something went wrong with your product or service?
10. Review your own knowledge, skills attitudes and systems. Do you need to update your knowledge to stay current or even ahead of the pack in your field? Are you working as much as possible in your strengths? In other words doing what you do best, and outsourcing the rest? Are your relationship skills bringing out the best in the people who work with and for you – employees, customers, suppliers and others? Have you systematized your business wherever possible to make it easier to run independently of your time and attention and to make it easier to sell when it’s time to move on to the next phase of your life?
11. Identify, intensify and integrate the Commitment Nexus of your business to turn employees and customers alike into raving fans. Contact me for details of our next Commitment Nexus Workshop
12. Take a mini-retreat, perhaps one or two days, every quarter and conduct a mini review of where you’re at in relation to where you want your business to be. Again, use this time to step outside of your business, to analyze what is and what is not working, to recharge your batteries, and to refocus with renewed energy.

Here’s to Your Peak Performance and Profits in 2010,
Karyn Clarke

New Series: Maximize Your Small Business Profits

The single most significant action you can take on a daily basis to maximize your performance and profits is to stay in your strengths zone. Your business strengths zone is the equivalent of what some people call flow. When you are in a flow state (your peak performance zone) your focus, performance and productivity levels are all at their peak. In addition, at the end of your activity or work day you feel a healthy sense of satisfaction, rather than a sense of debilitating exhaustion.

How Your Strengths Strengthen Your Small Business Profits

Your strengths are what you do best – most easily, most enjoyably and most efficiently, and therefore will lead to the most profit for your small business. Your strengths come from your natural talents. Your natural talents become strengths only when you have invested time and energy into increasing your knowledge, skills and experience to grow your natural talents into strengths. If you’re not yet 100% sure of what your natural talents are, you can identify your personal talent code here.

Once you have identified what your natural talents are, you owe it to yourself and your business profits to develop those talents into strengths, and to avoid working in your areas of weakness, where you are by definition less productive, less efficient and therefore less profitable. This is the secret to working on your business rather than working in your business.

So how do you avoid your weaknesses and stay in your strengths zone, your peak performance zone?

Outsource Your Weaknesses To Maximize Your Small Business Profits

If you’re anything like I am you will have a million and one business ideas in any given day, and cannot possibly implement them all. My solution to that dilemma is to outsource the tasks and systems that are time and energy draining for me.

When I first realized that I needed to delegate or outsource in order to become more profitable, I procrastinated for some time, putting the process into the too hard basket. I knew that I didn’t want any in-house employees, as I wanted the freedom to work from anywhere in the world, be it my local coffee shop or while visiting relatives in Japan.

The obvious solution was to engage virtual employees to do the work that was outside my strengths zone, but I really felt that it seemed very complicated and inefficient to engage people on a contract or project basis from sites like guru.com or elance.com. The challenge I have with that method is that every time you engage someone for a new project you also begin a new relationship, waste valuable time and energy educating your new contractor about your standards, expectations and professional requirements.

Then along came Tyrone Shum, almost in my own backyard in Sydney. Tyrone introduced me to his Mass Outsource System, and suddenly the cloud of confusion and uncertainty was lifted, replaced by clarity and confidence. Not only is Tyrone’s system amazingly effective and efficient in helping you to grow your small business profits, he actually gives away 10 FREE videos that outline his system in incredible detail.

Since linking up with Tyrone I am so much more motivated, focused and energized, simply because I now have the time and energy that I previously only dreamed about. Time and energy not only to expand my businesses and increase their profitability, but also time and freedom to actually have a life outside of my work. For the first time I feel that I truly am able to win at work.

Small Business Profits Resources Mentioned In This Post:

1. MyTalentCode.com
2. OutsourceTools.com

Can You Turn A Favorite Hobby Into A Profitable Small Business?

I have been asked this question many times, and the answer is … it depends.

Your small business profits depend on your performance, and achieving peak performance depends on your ability to engage your key natural talents and then to develop them into strengths.

You also want to align your business strategy to your core purpose and to your core values. Exactly how you do this is the core of our live and online workshops.

A note of caution …. while interests (hobbies) and strengths are related, there’s danger in believing that an interest can turn into a full time career. For some people it may, and for others it will only ever be a relaxing and enjoyable hobby.

To work out the difference you need to have a clear understanding of what your key natural talents are, and how they combine with what you value. You can identify your natural talents at http://www.MyTalentCode.com and your values at http://www.MyMotivationCode.com

Those two dimensions (talent and values) must be aligned for you to maintain motivation and achieve peak performance and productivity, which will in turn lead to profits in your small business if your business strategy also meets your market’s needs and wants, and your offers are communicated clearly to your target market.

Hobbies and Your Talent Code™

While interests, hobbies and strengths are related, there’s danger in believing that an interest can turn into a full time career. For some people it may, and for others it will only ever be a relaxing and enjoyable hobby. Here are 10 reasons why …

1. When you engage in a favorite pastime or hobby, you are motivated by the desire for relaxation or pleasure.
2. In hobbies there are usually no tight time frames or standards (other than self imposed ones).
3. The parts of your brain used for your leisure/hobby skills (creative mode) are different from the parts of your brain used for professional productivity (work modes) – that’s why hobbies are relaxing. They literally give your brain a break from work!
4. You can only achieve peak performance when you have a match between the level of challenge involved in a task and your level of skill – high challenge / low skill leads to frustration and inefficiency.
5. You will achieve a very high level of skill (expert status) only through the intense application of time and energy to building your knowledge and skill levels of your natural talents until they become real strengths – worthy of 9/10 or even 10/10!
6. You could apply that same level of intensity to a skill set that is not based on your natural talents, and after years you may still rank only a 6/10 or 7/10, even though you really enjoy using that skill.
7. If you love what you are doing in your hobby and you would rate at 6/10 or 7/10, that’s a pretty good indicator that you should stick to it as a hobby – high pleasure, low pressure!
8. If on the other hand you have a hobby in which your skill levels are 9/10 or 10/10, you lose track of time when you engage in that hobby, AND you still produce excellent results even under pressure, then that hobby may have the potential to become a profitable business for you with the right small business training. You are now motivated by a desire for productivity and profits.
   
9. You can get started by identifying your natural talents at http://www.MyTalentCode.com and your values at http://www.MyMotivationCode.com
10. In the meantime, your hobbies are important for refreshing and energizing your brain,  so enjoy  your hobby, strengthen your knowledge and skills, check out if your hobby matches your your key natural talents and you will end up with either a new career or continue to enjoy your very satisfying hobby!

What REALLY Motivates You When You Engage in Your Hobby?

To summarize the message of this article and to answer for yourself the question “Can I Turn My Hobby Into A Profitable Small Business?” you must honestly look at your key natural talents, and I’ve pointed you to a tool for doing that http://www.MyTalentCode.com

You also want to be really clear about your motivation for engaging in your hobby. Your motivation comes from your values – what’s important to you – and I’ll address that in more detail in my next post, where I will unpack the power of values alignment for maintaining motivation and achieving your professional or small business goals. One thing I can tell you in advance is this:

• All truly successful people know what their values are, and have the skills to live them!

If you are a manager or small business owner seeking to maximize your profits and the performance of the people you manage, without burning them out, here’s an enlightening video that demonstrates the mismatch between what Science knows and what Business does, between the carrot and stick approach and the value of really knowing your personal Motivation Code™ …

Dan Pink on TED Video – 18 Minutes

Backed by solid scientific evidence Dan Pink identified 3 core elements of what really motivates us – autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy
Pink defines autonomy as ‘the urge to direct our own lives’. He revealed evidence proving that self direction creates more engagement in workers for all but the most mechanical of tasks, and that attempts at external motivation work only in a limited range of circumstances involving non cognitive tasks.

In our one day workshop ‘Win at Work 101 - The Art & Science Of Peak Performance & Profits’  we reveal to you exactly what you must do to achieve autonomy by personalizing your peak performance and profits strategy.

Mastery
He defined mastery as ‘the desire to get better and better at something that matters.’ Our proprietary course ‘Win at Work 101 - The Art & Science Of Peak Performance & Profits’ reveals the secret to cracking your personal Talent Code™ and leveraging it to turn your key natural talents into strengths, plus we reveal how to apply those strengths to what matters most to you in your profession or business. 

Purpose
Pink defines purpose as ‘a yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.’ In ‘Win at Work 101 - The Art & Science Of Peak Performance & Profits’ we show you exactly how to match your personal Talent Code™ to your unique Motivation Code™ to discover and apply your core purpose through our proprietary values alignment process.

‘Win at Work 101 - The Art & Science Of Peak Performance & Profits’
This breakthrough small business peak performance and profits training and development is available in two formats:

1. Online home study. Find out more and register at www.WinAtWorkCourse.com
2. Live, interactive workshop. Contact our office for the date and location of our next live event:

• Email [workshop@leadercoach.com.au]
• International Phone:  +61 2 9686 4257
• Australia Local Call:   1300 15 6768

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