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Have a dream? Get The Mindset of a Champion

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Yes, this is the new home of Business Performance Coaching of sbishere.com Thanks for visiting!

Are you or are you not, working on your dream?Why not? Could it be that you are caught in a ‘Performance Trap’?

The Performance Trap: “My self worth equals my performance plus the opinions of others.” (Dr. David Cook, The Mindset of a Champion via TSTN)

To obtain your freedom and extract yourself from ‘ Read more

Forget About Business Productivity – Focus on Business Effectiveness

Many entrepreneurs joke that perhaps they have ADD. For the record a lot of very successful entrepreneurs had ADD and they got a lot done.

Is ADD, a.k.a. AD/HD an Entrepreneurial Trait?

I Google’d AD/HD and Entrepreneur and ended up at the AD/HD website at about.com They have an interesting article, but one sentence got my attention… Read more

Avoid Getting Caught in the “Star Employee” Trap

No matter how long you have been in business you can easily get caught in this trap. If you do get caught in the “Star Employee” syndrome it could easily impair your judgement and set you and the new employee up for failure.

Relief and Gratitude

You are just so happy to have such a well qualified, capable employee that you find yourself continually impressed. Soon you begin to imagine how much this is going to make your life easier.

Soon you start to make a mental note of all the things you want to delegate to them or a future, more senior position. Be careful, their level of professionalism, knowledge, and potential is a powerful elixir that will cloud your judgment if you are not careful. Remember, the very qualities and behavior you are enjoying is the reason you hired them in the first place.

The fact that you have noticed these behaviors and qualities simply means that they have “met your expectations” – so far. Temper your enthusiasm with the brutal reality of answering the following question:

What specific, tangible results have they actually created?

You hire for character, integrity, and how they will fit into your team.

They earn their paycheck and keep their job based on Read more

How is your radar?

I had an amazing meeting with one of the web’s most brilliant and relatively unknown, creative thinkers, Reg Cheramy from web2.0central.com

Reg lives in Edmonton, the same city where I live but in a different part of town. Towards the end of our meeting he suggested that I purchase ceoradar.com which I did (thanks Reg).

Meaning to You

When you think of CEO Radar, what does it say to you? What meaning, feeling, or service/content would you expect to see on a website by that name?

Live Large!

Greg Balanko-Dickson

The Right Price: Develop a Market Price Strategy

If your price is too high, you may not be able to achieve adequate market share and lose important sales and profits. If your price is too low you may be leaving money on the table and you might not have enough profit to sustain your operations.

The purpose of this article is to outline an approach you can use to develop a Market Price Strategy and avoid killing a marketing or advertising campaign. Which is central to the overall development of a successful marketing strategy.

Price objections can kill your business. Generally, the less personal interaction you will have with a customer the more accurate you need to be about your pricing strategy. Before we get started lets review the Definition of Marketing. A process by which:

Information about a product or service designed to meet a need – real or otherwise – is presented or communicated to those who have the need. The process can take place in the spur of the moment or be planned. However, the goal is always the same. To get people to consider the merits of whatever is being marketed.

Remember, marketing is communicating the benefits of a product or service. If your price is too high or low, your prospects/customers may not take you seriously or dismiss your proposition outright. The entire purpose of marketing is to communicate and create a perception of value!

Choosing the correct price is essential to creating the right perception of value – this is where developing a market price strategy comes into the picture.

A Market Price Strategy is the art of balancing the role of price as a means to attracting customers and keeping customers. Read more

Business Model Mentoring Program

Six months, eight group coaching sessions, two one-on-one coaching sessions, access to my library of more than 400 tools and articles, and the opportunity to learn from six other non-competitive business owners like yourself. If you have been thinking that business could be better and are not sure where to begin this is the program for you. Very affordable!

Just five spots left for the Sizzlin’ Summer Mentoring Program, visit the program outline to learn more.

Applying for a Commercial Business Loan, New Business Loan

Applying for a new business loan need not be a unpleasant experience. By eliminating your limiting beliefs and preparing for the meeting in advance you have every reason to feel confident.

Remember, that the bank wants to lend money, they really do. They are in the business of making new business loans. In fact banks love to make new business loans because businesses are very good customers and make a lot of money for them.

Supporting Documents Needed for a New Commercial Business Loan

Your bank will expect to see a complete business plan plus:

• financial projections including income statement, balance sheet, cash flow projections, your resume or bio.
• personal net worth statement (include a separate list of assets and liabilities if there are a lot of items).
• copy of your personal identification and social insurance number.
• copy of either your certificate of incorporation or DBA (doing business as trade-name) registration.
• list of personal bank accounts and credit references.
• list of company bank accounts and credit references (if any).

If you are applying for a new business loan for a business you have been operating, they will also want to see: Read more

New Business Loan 101, Commercial Business Loan

Getting a new business loan for a business is simple if you follow a few key points. It still is a little bit of work, but well worth the effort.

If you are looking for a new business loan, you are in one of three different situations:

• Start Up: you have a business idea or concept and you need a loan to help you get the business up and running.
• Established: you have been running for a little and up to now have been able to fund the business yourself. You have made some profits and the growth of the business gas put some strain on your cash flow. A new business loan will help you maintain your growth pattern, ease the financial pressure and allow you to invest in the business based on some ideas you have.
• Re-Financing: you have been running the business and now you find the debt load a little tough to handle. You are profitable but would like a longer term loan to consolidate your payables and perhaps relocate the business by purchasing a building.

New Business Loans 101

If you understand how a bank makes a business loan you will be able to better prepare and improve your chances on getting the financing you need and want. Read more

How Do Factoring Services Work?

A factor service discounts invoices or accounts receivables. It pays you before your normal payment terms and before the customer pays. Factoring is an alternative to a line of credit at a bank, and it can be an effective method of raising cash in a hurry.

There are different ways of managing the process, depending on the factoring company. Here are my observations:

1. They will review your business, invoices and may even do an audit.
2. If approved, they will provide you with instructions on how to do the invoicing.
3. You invoice your customers as usual.
4. You will send out a letter to your customers advising them you are using this service and that they should pay your invoice to the factoring company.
5. Depending on your arrangement, you can choose which invoices to factor. If you decide to use this method you will probably want to get a stamp made so you can indicate which invoices to pay to the factoring company.

Why use a factoring company?

If you are growing quickly, starved for cash and the banks will not lend you the cash — factoring is a way of getting the cash sitting in your accounts receivables into your hands. The cash can be helpful if you need to buy inventory or buy raw materials to build more goods for your growing business.

However, if you are using these funds to pay other bills, you may be in too much financial trouble for it to solve your problems. Also, if you have signed a loan agreement at a bank, it probably states that you need permission to use other forms of financing.

Improving Management Of Your Accounts Receivables

Your collection period for accounts receivables depends on four factors:

1. economic environment;
2. recession;
3. season of tight credit;
4. your credit policy.

There is only one item on the list you have total control over – your credit policy.. The general economic environment is beyond your control – concentrate on what you can control.

Important Decision

Before you consider completely revamping your credit policy you need to consider your company’s investment in accounts receivables — all credit you grant has an associated opportunity cost. Cash you have tied up in your accounts receivable is not available to be used elsewhere.

The most important decision you have to make is the amount and terms of the credit you choose to extend to your customers. There is a delicate balance to maintain.

The tighter your credit policy you will have less cash tied up in accounts receivable and fewer bad debts — however, this could also negatively affect your sales and reduce your profit levels.

Volatility Factors – Size & Number Of Accounts Read more

Team Effectiveness: Thinking Inside the Box

I wrote this article following a training I developed for a client and their team. I hope you enjoy this as much as they did.

Before we begin ‘Thinking Inside the Box’ lets first review what ‘Thinking Outside the Box’ means.

Thinking Outside the Box

What does it mean to ‘think outside the box’?

Typically ‘thinking outside the box’ meant that we were expected to change our thinking, paradigm, and expectations. This was often the result of attending a seminar, speech, or an employer who was trying to encourage innovation.

As a result, we think we need to create something totally new and in the process we forget, discount, or ignore what we already know and get caught up in the endless loop of what I call the Grass is Greener Syndrome and change for change sake. Which can prevent us from seeing the need to learn from our failures.

When we do not learn from our past failures we can easily miss seeing the obvious or worse, misidentify the problem, which creates a bigger mess.

Outside the box thinking can distract us from paying attention to the options and opportunities that are blatantly visible ‘inside the box’ that could dramatically improve our work, performance, and success.

Thinking Inside the Box: First Grasp the Context & Situation

Resist re-inventing the wheel because we can easily miss the obvious. Read more

IBM – Expanding the Innovation Horizon: Global CEO Study 2006 – United States

Nice to have IBM confirm that business model innovation is the new differentiator and can pay off.

These and other findings are in “Expanding the Innovation Horizon,” the 2006 IBM Global CEO Study reporting on the agenda of CEOs in the next few years.. with 765 chief executives from around the world… Among the 2006 study’s findings: * Business model innovation is becoming the new strategic differentiator. “The business model we choose will determine the success or failure of our strategy,” one study participant said. In contrast to the findings of the 2004 survey, innovation in the enterprise’s business model garnered nearly as much attention as innovation in a company’s core processes and functions. * Business model innovation can pay off. In the financial analysis for the study, companies that have grown their operating margins faster than their competitors were putting twice as much emphasis on business model innovation as underperformers. Via IBM – Expanding the Innovation Horizon: Global CEO Study 2006 – United States

Gaining a Foothold: Patience, Pesistence, and Commitment

In an entrepreneurial landscape where people write books with titles like Instant Income, Millionaire Mind, and You Will Make Money While You Sleep is the story of a husband and wife team that did it slowly.

“It takes a long time to gain a foothold. We worked for 3 years without a salary, and eight years until the company had a positive net worth.” That patience has paid off, thanks to calculated risk, trust, and a mother’s fabulous recipe. Via A Brownie Fairytale

It is a great story that illustrates how important a strong vision, long-term business plan, and belief in a product – the difference it makes to the success of business. I can just imagine telling their family that they have plans to build a business around Grandma’s brownie recipe, uh huh.

What would you have said to them? Would you have thought they were nuts? Think about it, how many brownies do you have to sell just to pay the bills?

What do you think makes the difference and allows someone to build a business around a brownie?

Aging Workforce: Asset, Liability or Succession Opportunity?

Manpower suggests that using specialized retention and recruiting strategies will allow you to target the single largest available workforce segment – those over age 50. If you are looking for people to staff our business and you are ignoring the 50+ worker you could be in for a tough ride.

Training programs – Mature workers are lifelong learners, and programs that build skills and increase employment opportunities will positively impact employee engagement.

Flexible scheduling options – Studies confirm that non-traditional schedules are one of the top priorities for older workers. Policies that offer part-time, flextime, job sharing, project work or generous time-off plans allow those in their retirement years to have ample time for work and personal pursuits.

Job redesigns – While mature employees want to work, many would elect to bring value to an organization in a different capacity. Whether it’s less travel, fewer responsibilities or a decrease in physical demands, consider job accommodations in order to retain the institutional knowledge and skills of the most experienced employees.

Targeted recruiting strategies – As with any hiring plan, employers should consider how to reach people in the demographics that meet their needs, and older workers are no exception. Look to professional organizations, company-sponsored alumni groups and online communities for possible candidates. Via Aging Workforce

I would want to see what I could do to take advantage of this large labor pool before their Business Dreams and Retirement Collide.

What do you think? Are you now or will you use any of these strategies?

Planning, Startups, Stories: The Essential ‘Why They Buy’

Tim Berry asks some great questions and my favorite is the last line about strategy:

Whether you’re planning for a start-up or to grow an existing business, start with buyer motivation. Why do they buy from you? What do you do better, or at least different, from your competition? How can you build that difference into strategy? Via Planning, Startups, Stories: The Essential ‘Why They Buy’

Answering these questions will be a journey and could take you awhile to answer, keep at it.

I have been working at it for 9 years and I feel like I am just starting to sort it out for myself. It is much easier doing it for my clients than myself.

Sizzlin’ Summer Mentoring Program

Summer of 2007 will be sizzlin’ for a select group of entrepreneurs and business owners. Why you ask? I am holding a summer mentoring program designed to help you start your business, grow/expand, or increase your results and profitability.

What’s Included in the Mentoring Program

This program will be part coaching, consulting, and training designed to help you get on the fast track. Based on the needs of the group I will develop group training sessions, I could see covering topics such as Business Models, Business Planning, and Sales Systems. When I mentor you, you get:

1. Greg’s Coaching: My 100% commitment to you achieving your goals.
2. Group Meetings: audio/video meetings with the frequency, dates, and time mutually agreed upon by the group. This guarantees that you will be able to fit them into your busy schedule.
3. One-on-One Coaching: whether by email, Skype, or phone you will have unprecedented access to ask questions and get the support you need.
4. Action Tools Library: everyone will get access to my Action Tools Library, which currently stands at more than 370 documents, articles, and templates.
5. Private Mentoring Workspace:
6. Ideas, Tips, and Observations: throughout the entire process I will be spitting out ideas, tips, and observations to help you make money, fast track a project, refine your approach, and develop new skills.
7. 3 + 3 Mentoring: the program will begin in July and the group and one-on-one mentoring will continue for 90 days from our start date. Then for another 90 days I will continue to mentor you via email or in the the groups private workspace. That’s six months (3 + 3 = 6) of mentoring, coaching, and training.
8. Meet Some Great Entrepreneurs: one of the greatest things is you will get to know six other entrepreneurs just like yourself. This gives you the opportunity to learn from their experiences, challenges, and make a new friend.

Why is Greg Doing This?
Read more

The Remote Control CEO Sustained Coaching Program

This is the only professional coaching program I know of that will help you to make the transition from working daily in your business to operate your business by Remote Control.

Making the transition to operate your business ‘Hands Free’ can vary greatly depending on your current business situation, number of years you have been in business, and Read more

The Transition

What Does it Take to Transition from Solo Entrepreneur to Remote Control CEO?

I have been thinking a lot about this question as I have been living my own experiment in becoming a Remote Control CEO while here in Hawaii.I have also been working with clients who are working at making the transition to Remote Control CEO and decided to share my observations, learning’s, and overall big picture.

You might be a coach, consultant, or trainer asking the same questions:

• How do I get off the consulting and coaching money treadmill?”
• How do I create value in the marketplace without having to be personally involved?
• How can I create a passive revenue stream?

Beyond The Money Treadmill

Whether you are starting a second act business, planning a mini retirement, or just need a break from the business treadmill to make the transition from solo-entrepreneur to Remote Control CEO you will need to deal with a number of issues. Not the least is how to make money without involving your time, effort, and energy everyday.

Up to now you are probably the only person who has ever generated revenue for your business and delivered your services to your clients. The fundamental assumption in becoming a Remote Control CEO is that you must find a way to create value in the marketplace without your personal involvement on a continual basis.

Yet you are not ready to quit working entirely but need to find a way to get off the “services treadmill” and find a way to make money without always having to trade your time for money. In order for that to happen you need to shift from the Time for Money Business Model to one that is more sustainable.

Making the Transition to a Sustainable Business Model

The fundamental flaw in trading time for money business model that every coach, consultant, and trainer deals with is when you do not work your income stops. When you get your marketing perfected or word gets out in the marketplace of the great value you deliver – you end up on the treadmill of trading time for money.

Once you get on the treadmill of trading your time for money it is difficult to get off because your income comes to a screeching halt. Pretty scary because you do not want to work forever or at least you want to be able to pick and choose when you want to work – at least that would be a good place to start. Which would make more time available so you can to begin moving toward a more sustainable business model.

To make the transition there are a few things that you need to convert and modify so that you open up some of new time and energy.

1) Eliminate the Noise

Most solo entrepreneurs experience a certain amount of noise in their practice. What qualifies as ‘noise’? It is all the interference, racket, or projects that call for your attention. Many of these things are of our own creation.

In my own case, the noise in my life is created through blogging (writing, answering emails etc.), special projects I take on for my clients, and the large variety of podcasts and blogs I read.

• What are the activities you current indulge that could be eliminated without affecting your income and yet open up time on your calendar?
• Who can you talk with who will provide you with realistic feedback to help you identify time wasting activities?
• Where can you go or what can you do to retreat (i.e. vacation) to a place where you will experience a substantial shift in your routine, get in touch with your soul, or experience silence that it creates a new perspective?

2) Understand How You Currently Add Value

Right now the primary way you add value to your customer is through the services you provide. You might have a book or two that you sell but the primary source of income is from the coaching, consulting or training you personally provide.

In order to make the transition and become a Remote Control CEO you first need to identify what specifically it is that creates value, from the customers’ perspective.

• What is it that the customer is really buying when they do business with you?
• What is it that the customers ‘appreciate’?
• What do customers experience as a result of doing business with you? What is different, what changes and how specifically does the change occur?

3) Practice Intellectual Honesty, Apply Logic, Check Assumptions

I have long said that, “The great journey in business is to know yourself well enough that your business and personal life are in alignment.”? which means that business owners need to practice ‘Intellectual Honesty’. As Nelson Fabian says:

“A leader has to have, for instance, a healthy measure of integrity in order to inspire others to follow. Leaders also tend to have a capacity for reflection and a sense of self-awareness. This capacity enables leaders to periodically take stock of their standing, the way in which they are perceived, and the impact that they are having. In addition, it gives them a heightened clarity about what their personal concept of leadership is.” – Journal article by Nelson Fabian; Journal of Environmental Health, Vol. 67, 2004.

Intellectual honesty must extend into every area of the business and in every way holding oneself to a high level of accountability. This includes developing an intellectually honest, logically valid, and reasonably attainable business plan.

All of this requires keeping your thoughts and beliefs relative and in alignment with valid evidence and questioning your own assumptions, not just applying and acting on your assumptions.

4) Business Model Needs to Change

As a solo entrepreneur the main value you bring to the market is “answers” – in one way or another everything you do that creates ‘value’ for your customer is connected to providing them with “answers” in one form or another. Answers to the questions and challenges that haunt them and prevent them from moving forward.

So the big question is, “How do you still provide the ‘answers’ the market wants from you and your company but do it without an ongoing investment of “time, effort, and energy?”

You have to wean your business off of the “trade time for money business model” and generate more cash flow from sources that do not require your ongoing personal investment of “time, effort, and energy”.

5) Create a Business Plan to Prepare for the Remote Control CEO Phase

The need for a business plan should be self-apparent. Just in case, here are my reasons why I think a business plan is especially important. The biggest shift that a solo-entrepreneur that wants to become a Remote Control CEO is to make is adjust the business model.

Changing your business model is like making a major design change to your home or business. It is like converting your Ranch Style home (single story) to a three floor split level. That type of a major design shift requires considerable consideration, rethinking, and planning – the same is true of your business – major shifts in your business model benefit from a thorough business plan.

This is especially true as a solo-entrepreneur. The daily demands of serving clients, maintaining consistent cash flow, and managing your own administration leaves little time to invest in working on making the transition to a Remote Control CEO business model.

6) Escape the ‘Rock Star Syndrome’

One of the most subtle traps that coaches, consultants, and trainers get tangled in is what I call the Rock Star Syndrome. People fall in love with one idea or concept and some notoriety often follows.

Which often happens when your reputation is widely known in a specific industry, you write a book that successfully captures the imagination of your audience, or people are referred to you from people who know you and your work or people read your book and then call you to get more information your coaching or consulting.

Picking the low hanging fruit, is easy to do, but after someone harvests the main crop there is no more low hanging fruit plus it is very difficult to develop a sustainable business around picking up ‘low hanging fruit’ as it is unpredictable.

7) Train a Stable of Consultants or Develop a Range of Products

As a solo-entrepreneur you have two choices either develop a stable of consultants/coaches and train them to do what you do or develop a full range of products to educate, train, and support customers using a self-study approach.

Training and developing a stable of employees to do what you do is a lot of work and so is writing and creating a series of new products. The downside of the product approach is until you actually have products to sell nothing changes.

Hiring employees, even those with considerable experience requires a lot of training, educating, and development before they begin to contribute profits. If they do not work out, you have to start all over again and have lost time and momentum.

Selling your own products takes time to develop a respectable level of income to replace your consulting, training, or coaching work. I like this approach the best because provides the most control and at the end of the day you still own the rights to your products. Plus it allows you to make slow and steady progress without assuming the extra liabilities that come with hiring employees.

E-Learning is still in its infancy and continues to grow as the technology improves. I think it holds a lot of promise for a solo-entrepreneur who wants to make money with less of an ongoing time commitment.

Baby Boomer Retirement Trend – Entrepreneur 2.0?

If you are 50+ and born between 1946-1964 and an active entrepreneur you are being called a Entre-Boomer and in a piece titled Going Your Own Way Entre-Boomers are discovering the world of entrepreneurship just as they are about to enter their retirement years.

Why the Strong Interest in Entrepreneurship?

Because many Boomers think that selling their experience via consulting as their best path through the entrepreneurship maze.

A 2005 Merrill Lynch survey found that the unpredictable cost of illness and health-care is by far boomers’ biggest fear. They are about three times as worried about a major illness (48 percent), their ability to pay for health-care (53 percent), or winding up in a nursing home (48 percent) as about dying (17 percent).

A Free Agent

There is no doubt that becoming a “free agent” and selling your services creates cash flow it is not a business model that will create wealth for most seniors. However, if you buy a business and then build an exit strategy it might be just the ticket to help you earn some extra income. Another option is to continue to operate a healthy business well into retirement.

In addition, a CGC analysis of government data shows that those 55 to 64 and older represent one of the fastest-growing groups of self-employed workers. Some 1.8 million American workers ages 55 to 64 are self-employed outside of agriculture, up 29 percent from 2000, according to the Labor Department. The number of do-it-your-selfers 65 and older has grown 18 percent to 756,000. And boomers 45 to 54 years old make up more than a quarter of the nation’s 9.6 million self-employed. Overall, boomers and older entrepreneurs now account for 54 percent of self-employed workers, up from 48.5 percent in 2000. Via Going Your Own Way

So if you have been thinking about making your hobby a business or your business into a hobby or just want to take a stab at the entrepreneurial game you are in good company.

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs Making an Impact

Hugh Hefner may not be a Baby Boomer but USA Today thinks he is the poster boy for aging entrepreneurs. So why are baby boomers seeking self-employment at a time when they are supposed to be slowing down and enjoying life? According to USA Today it is because of:

• Corporate Layoffs: they would rather take the risk of owning a business rather than get forced into the job market after age 50.
• Shifting Values: they want more flexible schedules to spend time with aging parents or on hobbies while easing into retirement.
• Aging Population: The number of Americans age 50 and up will soar by 31 million by 2020, to 118 million, the Census Bureau predicts.
• Innovative Technology: Many start-ups by older entrepreneurs are one-person ventures in home offices with a dizzying array of technology that didn’t exist or was too pricey 20 years ago.
• Business Savvy: entering their 50s, leverage management skills and retirement benefits to invest in start-ups.

I am a baby boomer myself and enjoy coaching baby boomers who want to start or buy a business.

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