Small Business Revitalization Blog

Are you struggling with a target you have set, or finding you just aren’t making any progress on a project that’s important to your business success?  The bigger the dream, the harder it can be to get moving…  Here’s a few simple tips that will make today productive for you!

1. Keep a list of current projects and scan them daily… which ones require your attention?
2. For each project, break it down into doable bites (yes, this is where you eat the elephant one bite at a time).  Seriously, that little bit of planning at the start will make you and your business so much more productive!!
3. Set aside ‘project time’ when you work on the important parts of your business.
4. Commit to completing one ‘next step’ before you go onto another bright shiny new object… we all get tempted but the most successful business owners are those that actually complete their growth projects!
5. You can often do 5 – 10 simple ‘next steps’ within 30 minutes if you focus – what would it take to make progress on a number of projects today?

Your ‘next step’ can be as simple as a phone call, a web page for your project or responding to a client request.  You can make it more complex if you like, but mostly I find simple is best – it’s often easiest to do too!  (e.g. ‘learn about business finances’ is way too broad, but ‘choose three metrics to measure weekly in my business’ is a lot more manageable!)

For best results, mix a clear vision, some focused time and some very specific actions.  ‘What’s next?’ will soon become your favourite daily question!

Most importantly, if you really are stuck and don't even know what to do next, find someone to talk to!  Another brain in the equation often clears the path in moments... how many hours have you wasted so far?  (BTW, that's another good reason to have a business coach - you have advice and ideas on tap from an experienced business person!) How does it get better than that?

What are you going to commit to doing today that will move your most important project forward?  Share it below and let us know how you go at the end of the day!

Via Flickr: Intersection Consulting

Marketing guru Seth Godin has said ‘Content marketing is the only marketing left.’   New technologies mean traditional mass media is fast being overtaken by brands as publishers of content.  It’s easy to publish content online, but much more challenging to achieve tangible business results (like sales!)  Why?

As a business coach, I see a common marketing mistake that many small businesses make – they mistake participating in social media for actually having a content management strategy.  Here’s seven reasons why small business owners need to start with the strategy rather than the social media networks…

1. Activity (or busyness) in social media domains does not equate to goal achievement. It’s expensive to create content (time and/or money) – if your content distribution strategy isn’t clear you’re shooting blindly and wasting valuable resources.
2. Publishing is now marketing and marketing is now publishing. Your influence stems from your value.  Your value stems from your content and your relationships.
3. Until you answer the why… e.g. What are the informational needs of my customers?  What pain points can my brand address?  What brand story are we telling?... your strategy will be incoherent and won’t deliver results.  Relevance is key.  Listening is core to success.
4. Google already pushes Twitter updates through their organic search results and in February 2010 it was announced that Facebook Fan Page content is next – what keywords, key messages and topics will you be found for? The rules for being found by organic search are changing quickly!
5. Without a clear and relevant content marketing strategy, you’ll attract followers who are irrelevant to your business – there’s no point having 50,000 followers if they aren’t in your target audience.  How do you feed your ‘ideal client’ into your traffic generation strategy?  With content your ideal client needs!
6. Productivity – without a clear strategy, there will be no clarity about how all the pieces of your social media marketing connect together… which means it’s impossible to manage the distribution and flow of content in a meaningful way for your prospects and partners.
7. The answer to every question you have about online marketing of your business will come back to ‘it depends… on your content marketing strategy.’  Without one, your ship is rudderless.

Want to explore how to develop an effective content management strategy for your business?  Attend the Revive Coaching Playshop in Brisbane on 8 October 2010 - Book today.

What is your best strategy for managing content?  Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Via Flickr: Annie Mole

If you are publishing content on a blog, you need a strategy.  Without one you are shooting at moving targets and missing opportunities to hit the triple jackpot of being visible, valued and visionary! John Batelle, creator of Wired magazine recently stated that for brands to stay relevant and develop a true online experience for their customers, they must master the art of content creation.

Here are a few tips to take the mystery out of blogging... whether you are a technophobe, unable to string a sentance together or just completely confused... ;-) successful blogging is possible!

• Blogging technology:  If your website does not have its own inbuilt blogging system (many content management systems do) then it’s better to use www.Wordpress.org with your own domain name rather than other free software.  You can use sites like Facebook or a Ning site as an alternative however you cannot use your own domain name and you lack control over your content – far from ideal!
• Content marketing strategy:  It’s essential to have a clearly developed content marketing strategy… why, what, how… etc! Without a strategy you’ll waste a lot of time and resources.
• Valuable content: You should only blog if you have plenty of valuable content that your target audience would be interested in.  Contrary to some of the advice out there, writing inane dribble about nothing won’t do you any favors in the search engines or elsewhere!
• Writing alternatives:  It doesn’t matter if you can’t write – use audio / video / photos and put just a few words around each idea.  Or, record your ideas and have someone transcribe and edit them.
• Developing connections: Get over the idea of ‘I don’t know what to write’ by talking to people about their challenges in the area your business serves.  Write about the solutions to those challenges in a way that invites people to respect you and share your ideas with others.
• Meeting deadlines:  invite other related professionals to ‘guest blog’ on your blog on a monthly basis – gives you more great content and they’ll probably promote your blog to their followers.
• Promoting your content: ensure you promote your blog posts in other social forums – ‘build it and they will come’ is generally only true in the movies!!!  Your blog offers the core content, social media are the outposts that create visibility.

Want to develop an effective content management strategy for your business?  Attend the Revive Coaching Playshop in Brisbane on 8 October 2010 - Book today!

What is your biggest challenge with blogging?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

At a recent business coaching gig for the KBN Ashgrove Network I talked about blogging.  So many business owners think they ‘should’ blog but in truth have no idea of where to start, why they are doing it or how to have their blog generate results.  

Some of the reasons you could choose to blog include:  

• Your clients will ‘get you’:  the less formal nature of blogging makes you a ‘real’ person in their eyes – who do people ultimately buy from?  People they have relationships with! Authentic communication beats a static website any day.
• You can create a forum for engagement with potential clients and others in your industry via ‘comments’.
• It is the foundation of your social media strategy. You have 100% control over your content… no-one can remove it or change it except you.
• Google rankings: regular blog posts create great link bait and encourage Google to search your site for fresh content more often.

There are many reasons to blog, but none of those matter if you can’t find a way to do it that works for you! In tomorrow’s post, we’ll explore some simple strategies that take the stress and confusion out of blogging.

Want to explore how to develop an effective content management strategy for your business?  Attend the Revive Coaching Playshop in Brisbane on 8 October 2010 - Book today.

What is your biggest challenge with blogging?  Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

The recent global financial crisis has seen an increase in advice to employees to ‘make yourself indispensable’.  A useful strategy for the employee maybe, but not always ideal for a smart small businesses! 

Those same high performers have the capacity to hold your business hostage to their demands!  So how do you have high performing team members without making them indispensable?

1. Create a culture of high performance so that the ‘average’ level of performance is higher than expected in most businesses.
2. Create an environment and a culture that offers your people incentive to stay and to perform at their best, without them feeling like they need to instigate the ‘power crazy’ aspects of being indispensable.
3. Work with your team’s strengths – the person being ‘everything to everybody’ needs direction and support in working towards specific targets that benefit the business.  Just because someone can, doesn’t mean they should!!
4. Have awareness of people who are implementing the ‘indispensable strategy’ – they may not always be the ones you want to keep should the going get tough…  (look for strong performance in their core job role, or move them to a more suitable role if you start to see previously undiscovered talents!!)
5. Don’t be tempted to rely on the people making themselves indispensable – you are compounding the problem and teaching them to become a bottleneck.  Encourage good delegation practices (starting with you!!) and ensure that those not performing at the higher levels know they need to step up – allow the bar to be raised!!

What do you think?  Have you ever been held hostage by an employee who thought they were indispensable?  What did you do to alleviate the risk to your business?  How did you harness their enthusiasm and commitment to the business without creating other problems?  Share your ideas here!

Stefan Sagmeister offers an inspirational perspective on the creative benefits of sabbaticals...


Personally, anytime I'm too tired, stuck or can't think, the best thing I can do is go and do or be something completely different to what I've been doing.

Half an hour in the hammock, taking the dog for a walk or cooking something delicious will reboot my brain and allow what I require to flow with ease. A whole weekend of being creative in all sorts of ways ensures that I can work at lightspeed during the week.

Whenever we have too much to do the solution is often in doing nothing or doing something different! What are the infinite possibilities of seeing your challenge differently?

What do you think? Please share your comments then go enjoy yourself!!

This morning I put in a new set of contact lenses and oddly found myself still with blurry eyesight.  After some rearranging of lenses and vision checking, I discovered that I had put the same prescription into both eyes – given the difference in vision between each eye, the ‘blindness’ was considerable.  Not so bad, except that in working out how this had come to pass, I realized I’d been walking around like this for the past two weeks as well!

Which brings me to today’s business coaching question…how often are we one-eyed without noticing it?  Here’s three things you can do to stop being one-eyed in your business and your life…

1. When you are doing something habitual, stop and ask yourself why you do it… is there a good reason or is it just a habit?
2. Take a couple of your systems that everyone ‘knows’ and actually write down the steps – are you really following the system or are there loose approximations of it throughout your business which aren't really working?
3. When someone throws a wedgie into your universe, do you dismiss it instantly or actually explore the possibilities?

What could you change if you stopped to ask these questions?  Would you be and do more of what’s invaluable and less of what’s valueless?

There must be something in the air at the moment – I’ve received at least 4 calls in the past week from people in various stages of distress, overwhelm and anxiety about what they are doing with their life, what their real purpose is and why their job or business isn’t working as they imagined.  The last question in each case was…‘can you help me feel better?’

In every case, I made a few simple suggestions that we can all employ when the need arises… we all have these moments, it’s what you do with them that counts!!

1. Remember that ‘this too shall pass’ – but only if you do or be something different to what you have been doing or being! 
2. Get really clear about what you most truly desire… write down everything that’s important to you and what you want to do before you die.  Look for the patterns and the things that make you go ‘zing’… then you can start to live your life meaningfully, rather than just getting through your days!
3. Take a few deep breaths, sit quietly and ask whether this anxiety and overwhelm is really yours?  How often do we ‘buy’ the second-hand opinions of those well-meaning friends and family we know and love, and accept these ideas as real when we may actually want to do something completely different?  What if you returned all these ideas to these people, in kindness, and then started to ask questions about what you really would prefer to choose… would your life look different?

If you'd like some more strategies for getting yourself and your business on track, would the February Revive Playshop contribute more than you can imagine?  If you want more prosperity and productivity then it's for you.  Book today - it's on in Brisbane on Feb 15th...  Who knows, investing 3 hours to set yourself up for 2010 could be the most productive action you take all year!!

Getting through your to-do list can be challenging for many reasons, not least of which is your clients ‘getting in the way’.  Don’t hear me wrongly here – clients are the priority… but how do you successfully balance your client requirements with your business requirements?  Here’s three quick tips which can help!

1.    Use Parkinson’s Law
Ever noticed that whatever you have to do expands to fill the time available? Parkinson was the genius who discovered that! So, if you only have 30 minutes between client sessions and it’s hard to get into the flow of your tasks in a short amount of time, what can you do?

a)    Chunk bigger  tasks into small ‘doable’ bites and put a short time-frame against each.
b)    Keep a list of small ‘to do’ jobs that only take a few minutes each.
c)    Set yourself at least 5 tasks to be completed within your 30 minute window – go hard and fast!

2.    Use Your Power Hour
Most people have a time of day when they are really productive.  Set aside a Power Hour each day where you can focus on what’s most important in your business.  It is the small things that make the biggest difference!

This is your project and planning time.  It’s the time when you do the things that are essential for your business to be successful.  Know each week what you need to accomplish in your daily ‘power hour’ to make your business really work for you… it may be building your profile, calling prospects, developing new programs, fixing your website… whatever will bring the money in the door is what you need to focus on!

3.    Never Underestimate the Power of Delegating
So many business owners are unwilling to delegate – if you haven’t got time or you aren’t getting to what’s important, consider whether someone else can do these tasks more efficiently.  Outsourcing can be extremely effective when you find the right people to share your workload with.  A little bit of time invested in developing a good system upfront means maximum productivity down the track!

Want more phenomenal ideas on getting productive for 2010?  You need the Revive Business Coaching February Playshop - If you can make it to Brisbane on February 15th book here!

A few years ago Singapore introduced a tradition where you can go down to Marina Bay and write your new year resolutions onto a big white plastic ball which is floated on the water along with the desires of thousands of other people.  We were there just before NYE 2010 and got amongst it with the locals… the energy was vibrant and expansive but I did wonder how many people would take action... So here’s some ideas on having BALLS and getting productive!

B is for BRAVE (and big!)… I saw people write the most extraordinary things – both positive and negative.  How much ballast do you give your positive and negative ideas?  This year, would you be brave enough to focus your energy and efforts on big, bold ideas that can change the world, or at least your life?

A is for ASKING…  One of the most phenomenal truths in this world is the simplicity of ‘Ask and you will receive’.  When you want to be more productive and you want to achieve more, try asking for help and then being willing to receive it!  Does it really matter if it’s not perfect and you don’t do it all yourself? What are you really asking for? Get a big white ball and write on it…float it in your bathtub… you may discover new solutions by changing your point of view!

L is for LUSCIOUSNESS…  Do your ideas inspire you, make others desire them and draw you into making them real?  If you want instant productivity then lusciousness is like the moth to the flame… Thousands of people play with Singapore’s white balls because it inspires them…  What projects can you create  that inspire lusciousness… in yourself and others?  

L is for LIVING… How often is your life wasted because you are living someone else’s life or dream?  What would it take for you to really live your own precious life?  When you start living your life and stop living for everyone else, you achieve infinitely more and maybe you’ll receive more fabulous surprises!  Are these BALLS yours or someone else’s?  It’s up to you to choose!

S is for SURPRISES…  When you use your balls, you’re going to receive magnificent surprises from unexpected quarters. Doors will open, people will appear, and possibilities will arrive. Instead of ‘I can’t’… start asking “What if I could…..?”  Who knows where your balls will end up!!  As long your balls are in the air, you are productive… what would it take to float some new balls in 2010?

So, 2010 is the time to get your BALLS out and play… playing is much more productive than working smarter – just ask any child!  Well… what did you think I meant?

If you want more fun-filled ideas on how to be more productive, book into the REVIVE Business Coaching February Playshop –