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Transitions: Small Business Self Help

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!

Regular readers will know that I have been working on a number of projects here and at The Remote Control CEO.

I have also been crowd sourcing this idea over at Cambrian House, a Web 2.0 community for entrepreneurs to collaborate, cooperate and connect with one another as well as refine our ideas. Cambrian House is a pretty cool community. Each week they hold a competition and the one with the highest votes wins the competition.

Your help would be appreciated. You can help by visiting my idea page and voting according to your conscience (Five stars is the best). Perhaps you might be inspired to leave me a comment. I have 63 votes so far, the more the merrier. There you will find links to a brief strategic plan and an overview of the concept.

The competition ends Tuesday evening so if you could drop by and vote now, that would be super!

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

White Collar Baby Boomers Love Books!

Not only are Baby Boomers avid readers, they also make great great used booksellers too. This study comes from Abe Books, the worlds largest new, used, rare and out-of-print books. Abe books polled 1,949 booksellers from the US who sold through its network of Web sites as part of a global research project. Look at what the survey revealed (emphasis mine):

Online book-selling has only existed since the mid-1990s when Internet marketplaces like AbeBooks emerged and the research shows how the profession appeals to entrepreneurial ‘Silver Surfers’ eager to escape the 9-to-5 rat race. The poll also reveals that long working hours and knowledge of technology are key aspects of the job.

Key findings include:

• 79% are aged over 45 – more than half have a degree or a higher qualification;
• Most sellers had left white-collar careers to become booksellers – the most common previous professions were jobs in teaching, libraries, sales, and management;
• 11% work between 51 and 60 hours per week, and 9% are working more than 60 hours a week with the online cataloguing of books being the most time-consuming task;
• 25% will increase their online book inventory by between 10% and 25% in 2007;
• 21% plan to launch their own e-commerce website;
• Sellers acquire books through a large number of sources – many of which require time on the road – including library sales, estate sales, private sales, and auctions. 26% had traveled up to 100 miles to buy a book and 9% had gone abroad to buy books;
• Many sellers also sell through other online marketplaces and 74% had set up their Internet selling operation without outside IT assistance;
• 60% of sellers polled operate purely online – the others had bookstores or showrooms;
• 64% of the sellers offer mostly out-of-print books and most specialize in a number of genres – history, fiction and children’s books are the most common;
• 68% list falling book prices as their biggest fear for the future but 38% are also concerned that fewer young people are reading books now;
• Despite their long working hours, 33% read between five and 10 books per month.

“Hard work is the key to successfully selling secondhand books on the Web,” said Hannes Blum, CEO of AbeBooks.com. “Although this profession is relatively new, it requires dedication to build up an online inventory of books and considerable effort to find books ideal for the Internet. We’re seeing a commitment to put more used books for sale online – sellers already offer over 100 million books through AbeBooks so that could expand to 120 million by the end of 2008, which is great news for people who love buying used, rare and hard-to-find books.”

I have purchased out of print books and the quality of them are great and they are quite affordable.

Moved-Team Effectiveness: Thinking Inside the Box

I mistakenly posted this great article “Team Effectiveness: Thinking Inside the Box” here. But it should have been at Team Effectiveness: Thinking Inside the Box. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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

Want to Make Money Blogging? Learn From Others Mistakes

One of the great things about the value of blogging is how much we can learn from others. I have found I can learn as much from other peoples mistakes as well as from their successes. This is true today because my friend Michael at Better Blogging with Michael Martine has a great article on the topic of making money with blogging.

This is a great opportunity – The Story of How I Made Money Blogging but Jumped the Shark – to learn from his mistakes (which is similar to my own mistakes).

Michael shares four great tips:

1. Don’t mess around with your ad placement and channels too much. I don’t take a look at things for about 30 days, anymore, and then I reevaluate.
2. Don’t forget why people visit in the first place. Don’t make changes that take that reason away, or your visitors will go away.
3. Establish a clear, unwavering goal for the blog and stick to it.
4. Spend your time concentrating on producing quality content according to the goals of your blog, not over analyzing your ad network numbers or your traffic statistics package.

If you want to learn about the mistakes Michael made, check out his story or read a few of mistakes and what I learned.

I also have the opinion that The Click Economy is Vulnerable to Manipulation, and you can read more about My Own Blogging Story: Evolution and Personal Growth.

Thanks for being transparent Michael, great story and I love those tips.

Ginormous Blog Restructuring, Shift in Coaching Philosophy & My 10 Year Strategic Plan

You may have noticed that the site has been reorganized over the weekend.

This change represents the greatest shift in my philosophy, methodology, and approach to business development in the last 17 years.

Note: The image on the right will give you an overview of the Transitions Method and I will be writing a lot more about this soon.

Why the Big Change?

In September 2006, I set a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (aka BHAG) after reading a post over at my friend Rosa’s blog Talking Story. The BHAG I committed to was:

“Today I declare that my Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) of impacting the lives of 1,000,000 business owners before I leave terra firma.

That BHAG changed my life.

It is the first time in my life that I set and made a public commitment to a BHAG. I knew that publicly declaring my intention on Rosa’s blog and combining it with a BHAG would require a big change in my life and business. I have both embraced and resisted pursuing this ginormous goal – my way of admitting I became complacent and was procrastinating.

The Complacency Trap

I became comfortable (and lazy) with my business. Read more

You have everything you need to succeed in business! Yes, That Means You!

You might be thinking – you do not even know me, my history, or who I am!? How can you possibly claim such a bold statement?

Yes, we each look, act, and think differently. I can say this because I know myself and in truth we are not that much different. I know you can succeed because you were born with the very innate abilities, capabilities, capacity, and power to succeed. Yes.

You can have, be, and do anything.

Right this moment – I know that you know – how to succeed because you have been successful before. You have manifested or created something you wanted – from thin air. Read more

What’s Your Greatest Business Challenge?

This has truly been interesting to watch how the results of the survey change over time.

Today I checked and found the results had shifted since July 16th. Hat tip to Mark Smallwood from Eversmall who linked to the July 16th results.

It’s not too late to take my survey and help shape the direction of my writing and content development for this website. Thanks!

What’s Your Greatest Business Challenge?

	Advertising
	Life Balance
	Get New Customers
	Admin & Bookkeeping
	Finding Staff
	Being Profitable

 

skip to results

How Experience, Expertise Lead Me Astray, How I Recovered

People think because I am a business coach that I am immune from distractions, missteps, and mistakes. Not true, not at all.

I am just like every other entrepreneur who is easily enthralled with my own success. I am just as vulnerable to the same false confidence, bloated ego, and the trap of self-satisfaction.

As a result I started ‘doing’ before ‘being’ – i.e. getting clear about what I wanted to create and what I would experience as a result of achieving my vision. I was victim of my own self-induced fog.

The Antidote to Clearing the Fog

There is one thing that always makes a substantial difference in recovering from my own self-induced fog – clarifying and developing a clear vision.

My experience is that I cannot build what I cannot see. Starting, building, and growing a business is all about making something from nothing – manifesting abundance out of thin air. Read more

Master the Transitions

I have been a busy boy working on my business transformation project. I have identified six phases in the Life Cycle of a Business and 30 Transitions that business owners need to make between start up and retirement. I wrote about it:

Whether you are starting a business, building revenues, coping with growth, fortifying your business structure, or exiting and retiring – with the right information, at the right point in time, and a plan of action – you will be able to accelerate the development of your business and results. Via The Remote Control CEO

Sneak Peek

Here is a sneak peek at part of the menu and how I am organizing the content on my Business Transitions Member site (click the image on the right).

I have also reflected this new thinking on The Remote Control CEO.

If I created a content site that allowed you to zero in on the ‘transition’ you need to make and provide access to information, tools, and resources to help make that transition – is that something you would be interested in subscribing to?

What do you think?

Business Life Cycle: Six Phases, 30 Transitions

When I started my business 17 years ago my goal was to help business people while providing for my family. The focus was to get up and running and start making money immediately. I had no experience owning, running a business, and was oblivious to the many transitions I would need to navigate.

I simply put my head down, worked hard, and paid attention to the results. I was constantly learning and adjusting my approach. I worked hard but my weakness was that I had no plan, no process, and no road map to guide my journey.

No Small Business Road Map When I Started

Small business resources were few and far between. An entrepreneurial career was not supported like it is now. There were no entrepreneurial training colleges, and most of the information that was available focused on big business so I would have to sort this out myself.

I chose to work and make money instead of attending college or university. I dedicated myself to transforming every weaknesses into a strength.

Limited financial resources dictated that if I was to prevail I had to learn my way out of my business problems. I mastered the art of thinking on my feet, studying human behavior, and adjusting my approach.

Master the Transitions

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

Survey Results: What’s Your Greatest Business Challenge?

I wanted to let you know the results of my latest survey, What’s Your Greatest Business Challenge?

 

If you have not had a chance to vote, take the survey and you will be able to see how your vote impacts the overall results.

What’s Your Greatest Business Challenge?

	Advertising
	Life Balance
	Get New Customers
	Admin & Bookkeeping
	Finding Staff
	Being Profitable

 

A Revised Title for My Next Book

What a great way to start the day, as a result of appearing on Be Happy Dammit Sirius talk show I finally came up with a sub-title for my next book:

The Remote Control CEO: How Irrepressible Entrepreneurs Transform Their Business and Life

What do you think?

Joyful Jubilant Learning: Live from New York, It’s JJLN

Got Sirius Satellite Radio? If so, check out the Karen Salmansohn show Be Happy Dammit 8 AM until 9 AM (Eastern time) Monday July 16th on Ch. 114

Live on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 114 from 8 AM until 9 AM (Eastern time) on Monday July 16th Benjamin Bach, Phil Gerbyshak, EM Sky and Steve Sherlock, and yours truly will join host Karen Salmansohn on the the Be Happy, Dammit! show for what is sure to be a fast and furious 60 minutes of conversation.

Can’t catch it live? Don’t worry, check out the Be Happy Dammit archives, especially this great show with Keith Ferrazzi, and soon, you’ll see the JJLN show there too! We’ll be talking about all things learning, and no doubt learn a thing or two from Karen! Hope you can hear us soon! Via Joyful Jubilant Learning: Live from New York, It’s JJLN

This will be fun, check it out!

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