Coaching & Mentoring
News: Online Marketer Sydney 2011 – Day 5 Photos: Speaker’s Dinner & SMX Elite
The final instalment!
Photo highlights from Day 5 of the Sydney Online Marketer conference – the International Speakers’ Dinner and SMX Elite, both held at the historic Qstation, in Manly.
Many thanks to Barry, Lisa and Paula for their support and energy over the 5 days, and to all the speakers and fellow attendees for making it such a hugely fun and valuable learning experience.
News: Online Marketer Sydney 2011 – Day 3 Photos: eMetrics, SMX & Bootcamp
Whew – photo highlights from the *big* day: eMetrics Day 2 upstairs; SMX day one downstairs; plus Bootcamp running all day in the Expo hall. Oh, and the expo hall, too.
Advice: Critical thinking 101: identifying the real problem
Identifying ‘problem areas’ in your own business is probably quite easy: just ask where your staff are having problems, or find out where your customers are either making complaints, or dropping off the face of the earth.
The bad news is that while identifying ‘work areas’ is pretty easy, coming up with sensible solutions is usually the hard part: both because we very rarely identify the true source of the problem, nor do we absolutely set out to fix it – more often, a quick patch and a smooth over does the trick. Not good.
With a series of critical thinking questions, first mooted by no less than Socrates himself, somewhere prior to 400BC – I can at least help you define your problems with a little more clarity, and begin to rule in and rule out some simple solutions.
Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:
Advice News: Epoch: the end of one era – the start of the next
This month marks a major shift in my business life: I’m changing from a solo consultant to joining the full-time workforce. Yes, I’ve been seduced by the Dark Side. They have cookies.
Rebusiness, Andrew Ballard, and this blog will still remain, however from here on in, I’ll be a little more selective in the clients and projects I take on out of ‘work’.
I thought that after 11 years of business in this mode, I’d go back through my archives and tease out some revealing insights from my records, to give you a brief glimpse into the life of a solo consultant.
So sit back, relax, and help me unravel some of the deepest and darkest secrets (??) of the solo entrepreneur. I’ll bring the cookies.
Advice: Mind the gap
I’ve been out and about some local businesses in the past couple of weeks, gathering support for advertising for a cookbook fundraiser for my kids’ school.
Almost all businesses I’ve approached have expressed interest in the project – yet the thing I’ve been struck by is the yawning gulf between those businesses who could instantly identify that a) this was or wasn’t their target market, and b) that the price point was or wasn’t within their marketing budget.
The fact that the majority of businesses couldn’t identify two of their fundamental business metrics (target market/marketing budget) is more than a little scary.
With secure knowledge of these two fundamentals, you can quickly rule in or out the opportunity. In an effort to try to get to this easy-to-decide method of ruling opportunities in or out, let’s take a moment to explore market share, and see if we can close the knowledge gap just a little bit!
Advice: Good, fast, cheap: pick any two.
I’m sure it started as an MBA-level diagram at either Harvard or Yale, but I first saw it on a t-shirt of all things – a triangle with the words ‘Good’, ‘Fast’, ‘Cheap’ at the corners, and the phrase ‘Pick any 2′ underneath.
It’s an intriguing proposition that not only holds up pretty darn well under scrutiny, but also gives us in the world of business a chance to pause for a minute, and figure out where we are on the diagram – and where we’d like to be.
Thinking it through, there’s three obvious combinations, and a few other less obvious possibilities. Let me walk you through them, and try to find out where you sit…
Advice: What Happens When You Die?
Don’t panic – I’m not talking medical nor theological here – I’m talking purely about you and your business. If you were looking for the medical or theological aspects, try Wikipedia.org, Google, or even progressbaroflife.com.
The phrase ‘what happens if you die’ is one that I’ve heard a lot in my business. To date, I think every major client has asked me that question at some point in our partnerships. While it’s kinda nice that your clients are enquiring about your long-term health and your ability to cross the road without getting hit by a bus, they actually have a point – what would happen to their business if I dropped off the planet – and what would happen to *my* business, and my family, if I wasn’t around?
Lots of things to talk about, namely: chain of command; systems and processes; and the concepts of proprietary vs open source. Still here? Good. No-one’s getting any younger!
Advice: Management Styles 101
Managers and business owners, gather round. Not sure if you realised, but we all fall into some pretty set routines with our ways of working. Some of the tasks we do can’t be changed, and we’re literally wearing paths in our carpet. Other things we do are varied from day to day – never the same.
To quote some Monty Python, “we’re all individuals” – and yet, we’ve already been ‘classified’ as to the types of managers we are. Management theories list at least four basic styles of management, plus a compliment of industry-specific styles.
What’s important about the following list of management styles is not so much in identifying which style sounds the most like you, but in looking at the other styles, to see if there could be benefits to you, your staff, and your business.
Advice: Why don’t we push the envelope?
A tricky question this time around – why, with the best of intentions, do we stick with what we know, rather than trying to expand the horizons of our business? There’s nothing wrong with a quick recharge of the batteries, or doing a little bit of navel gazing before ploughing onwards and upwards… But if you’re not exactly firing on all cylinders, how to you get back into gear again?
Advice: Bowing to a higher authority
I’d suggest that as an individual, we don’t need to be able to amass 100% of the skills we need all by ourselves – in fact, we simply can’t – and that apart from the odd moments of epiphany, we gain our skills and experience by absorbing information from other rich sources – our own stable of mentors. So – who are my own ‘rich sources’ of pure gold? Who are my mentors? Let me introduce you to a couple…