14
Creative Ways to Keep Your Business Alive, Expand Your Career & Keep
Your Sanity
By Brian Norris, ©2001
1. Don't work harder, work smarter. Working an extra job is a short-term solution at best. Instead, focus on your passions. What would you love to do even you DIDN'T get paid to do it? Examine your current skill set and maximize your talents by focusing on a specialty. Or, step-back and take a larger perspective. Are your skills applicable to another industry? Are they transferable to an entirely different career?
While you're at it be sure sure you have resources like credit card terminals to keep your business as efficient and up to date as possible. Taking credit cards makes business sense, because customers value convenience. It also brings an added air of credibility to your business, and makes accounting easier so that you don't become a prisoner to your company's financial records.
2. Update your business plan to include a three-month, six-month and one-year plan of attack. The only thing we can be certain of is that things change. Embrace the change and use it to move you outside your previous comfort zones. Just because "we've always done it this way or that way" won't work anymore.
3. Turn your products in services and your services into products. Look for ways to create secondary or tertiary income by developing new revenue channels. Can you repackage yourself as a product? What would you look like on the shelf at your local supermarket? Can you offer additional components of service when your buyers own your products (guarantees, consultations, memberships, coaching, Tele-seminars, exclusive access to information)?
4. Refocus your business. Get rid of the items that weren't selling all that well, were returned most often or had the lowest profit margins. Instead, refocus your energies on those products or services that define who you are, and those which you are able to produce or deliver consistently.
5. When mailing, use clear envelopes so that recipients can see clearly inside. Better still, when mailing to someone where no relationship exists, go with a postcard, un-enveloped brochure or newsletter.
6. Use this time as an opportunity to catch up on your skills. Spend the day at the library or Barnes & Nobles reading the newest books that relate to your industry or teach you effective marketing, leadership, communication skills. Invest in videos, tapes and CDs that contain the knowledge you need to avoid becoming a fossil.
Attend seminars or get coaching on specific skills to make you more viable. Many of the people who have lost their jobs were slated for termination before the 11th. Recent events only provided the catalyst. What are you doing to make yourself irreplaceable?
7. Update your marketing material. Is your business the same as it was a year ago? Is the image you're currently conveying consistent with your business cards, letterhead, brochure and web site?
Always under-promise and over-deliver. And don't give in to the temptation to rape your customers and oversell them once they've invested in your products or services.
Instead, take the long-term approach by asking yourself how to get them to buy from you eight more times. It's too much work to constantly look for first-time customers. Instead, work on cultivating the relationship you have with each existing buyer.
8. Write. Share your insights, tips and strategies with the media, your customers and your employees. Keep a journal and paper on hand at all times to capture those million-dollar ideas before they disappear.
9. Treat your spirit to "a day at the spa." Massages are wonderful and very inexpensive when you consider the positive benefits of massage. Go for a long walk, reintroduce yourself to your faith's scriptures, Reacquaint yourself to the sound of silence. Turn off the computer, the TV and the radio.
Don't read the newspapers. Just spend time alone with yourself and your thoughts. In that silence, begin to converse with the Creator and meditate on the answers and suggestions that the Creator gives you. You will be impressed by the ideas that bubble up if you spend some time away from the constant assault of noise.
10. Spend more time with your family. There are always opportunities to earn money elsewhere. And the piles on your desk will still be there in the morning. Use this as an excuse to finally start working normal business hours. At 5pm, go home to your family and talk to them, eat with them and laugh with them. Have your employees do the same. Don't let them take their work home with them.
11. Go to a 35 hour work week for everyone (that means you too). Or, ask employees if they'd like to work four 10 hour shifts instead so that everyone can have Fridays off too (and save money on all the costs associated with keeping your business open each day).
12. Don't buy stuff you don't need. In the world of retail wait for that must-have accessory to go on sale (they usually do).
Negotiate with your suppliers. Support American businesses whose products and services are excellent. Even if it means spending a few dollars more for something, buy it here.
Get a smaller, more fuel-efficient car. Use your ceiling fans. Open the windows on breezy days. The less dependency we have on the nation's who sell us oil the easier it is to make the right decisions and impose economic measures rather than military ones.
Despite what some marketers want to you believe, patriotism and capitalism are not synonymous. Instead of buying another flag to put on your car or T-shirt, teach a person to read, spend time at an assisted living facility with someone who needs you to just listen to them. Facilitate a neighborhood or community potluck meal.
Work with the mentally or physically challenged. Help a homeless person find a job. Give blood. Nurture your family. Call your parents or estranged children or siblings and say I love you. Then, demonstrate that love in all you do.
13. Make a conscious choice to make the upcoming season a spiritual one. Mend strained relationships. Rent videos or DVDs. Have dinner together … with the TV turned off. Send greeting cards by email. Or buy one card and laminate it. Then send it, signed with dry erase markers to friends an family, who in turn erase your message and return it to you inscribed with a new one.
Forgo the need for surprise and ask those who you normally give gifts to what they really need. Make a gift by hand. Give your employees the gift of flextime.
14. Make a conscious decision to stay prosperous. To recall the words of Jabez, ask the Creator to bless you, expand your territory, and keep you from evil. Be a shining example of faith and passion in action. Let your love for humanity and the conviction of your inherent gifts shine in every action and interaction you make.
Brian Norris is a professional speaker and author of Escape Life Sucks Syndrome. You can reach Brian by emailing info@BrianNorris.com or calling 414-688-8252.