Small Business Big Profit » nickrs

Writing Workshop - Spring 2009

nickrs — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:06:54 +0000

This is a 3 month programme designed to help you create written output that supports your work and reinforces your professional experience and skill set.

The programme starts with a three day Residential Workshop and then moves to support with the development of your manuscript.

Each programme is limited to around 12 participants, all of whom meet at the residential launch for each Workshop within the series.

The next programmes start with residential events being held in:
February
April
For more information email nick@smallbusinessbigprofit.co.uk with details of the book plan that you are seeking to develop.

Focus Tip 10. Keep redesigning the business.

nickrs — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:00:52 +0000

Nick’s Ten Top Tips for a Healthy Business.
Starting and developing a focussed holistic business can bring you great rewards in many areas. This can mean money and profit, peace of mind, a secure income stream, the opportunity for self-improvement, perhaps the creation of a legacy to hand on. To get things moving in your favour consider the following pointers and judge for yourself the progress you are making or the progress you might begin to achieve through putting some or all of these into place.

10. Get Back to the Drawing Board
Whether your business is six months or sixty months old do what successful entrepreneurs and business planners always recommend - Revisit your Goals and Game Plans on a regular basis.

Refuel the Vision. Have your original Purpose re-ignited with passion and desire.

Identify specific routes for improvement of your business. But set time aside now to check your progress in one month from today

Nick Sturgeon is a small business owner who has benefitted from the experiences of success, failure and financial recovery. The author of the book nick@smallbusinessbigprofit.co.uk

Focus Tip 9. Be coachable.

nickrs — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:00:04 +0000

Nick’s Ten Top Tips for a Healthy Business.
Starting and developing a focussed and holistic business can bring you great rewards in many areas. This can mean money and profit, peace of mind, a secure income stream, the opportunity for self-improvement, perhaps the creation of a legacy to hand on. To get things moving in your favour consider the following pointers and judge for yourself the progress you are making or the progress you might begin to achieve through putting some or all of these into place.

9. Have a Coach and Mentor
Athletes, business leaders and other achievers build and develop a relationship with a person who can help them to see greater self potential.

Your Coach can work to help you set new targets and break new records for your business.

With support and in confidence you can make times to discuss your progress and overcome the obstacles which have been holding you back.

Be coachable. Be willing to learn old methods in a different way.

What can you unlearn if it makes your life and business easier and more enjoyable?

Join us again oon for more thinking-time tips.

Nick Sturgeon is a small business owner who has benefitted from the experiences of success, failure and financial recovery. The author of the book “Small Business BIG Profit” published by FT Prentice Hall, Nick writes and speaks from the heart to audiences about Risk, Reward and the Power of Personal Enterprise. nick@smallbusinessbigprofit.co.uk

Focus Tips 8. Leave a trail.

nickrs — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:00:10 +0000

Nick’s Ten Top Tips for a Healthy Business.

Starting and developing a focussed holistic business can bring you great rewards in many areas. This can mean money and profit, peace of mind, a secure income stream, the opportunity for self-improvement, perhaps the creation of a legacy to hand on. To get things moving in your favour consider the following pointers and judge for yourself the progress you are making or the progress you might begin to achieve through putting some or all of these into place.

1. Set Your Purpose

From today take some time and put effort into writing down the reasons that you want to have a healthy business. What will your good venture create for you in terms of the ways you see the benefits. Will it bring in more money, greater joy, a sense of fulfilment? Why would you want to do this?

2. Create a Compelling Vision

Imagine the scene – you have a successful business right now. Describe it to yourself. Can you see how it all works so smoothly? Look at the way people are coming to your for treatment, for support, for access to your skills and wisdom. See where you work from and the environment you have built for yourself to offer your best to your clients. Visualise the results of your successful, healthy practice and hold this picture strong in your mind each day as you work to turn it into a reality.

3. Have Great Product or Service

Now that you know what you want to create around you be clear that what you will offer is good. If it is a service around wellness or health then ensure that you have developed the greatest treatment. If you are putting together a product or an item that people buy from you, take a close look at its packaging, brand image, and overall feel. Can you provide the service in a better way than you are now? If you don’t feel you can improve it then ask the opinion of others you trust. Always work to enhance the quality of your offering and your clients will always be pleased to give you feedback.

4. Create a Supportive Network

You may be in business on your own, but you do not have to be alone in business. Identify a group of individuals with whom you have some common interest, respect and the potential for self-teaching. Get together for an hour and brainstorm ways you can each receive support from one another. Hold the group to a workable size, perhaps as many as twelve or as few as six. Meet regularly and make sure that you contribute. Givers always gain.

5. Make Money work for You

You can provide great service and support, but ensure that you are being paid for this. Look at the rates for your own work. Are they above the market level? Are you undercharging? Position your pricing to be on the positive side of desirable and understand that in the eyes of your clients cheap pricing often implies to them ‘cheap product’. Take care to increase your pricing regularly. When I started my own business a wise friend said “Always charge at least 20% more than you feel comfortable with and you will be about right.” Great advice indeed.

6. Market Yourself Always

You may think that your service is the same as provided by another small business. You may have the identical training and qualifications, but you can never be the same people. Take time to craft information that links your ‘story’ with the product or service you are offering. Given the chance people will frequently buy the offering that comes with a more unique wrapping or storyline. What is your story? Identify it because it makes you so special in the eyes of your clients.

8. Leave a Trail
If I meet you today will I ever hear from you again?

Remember that it takes me a few reminders to actually buy from you.

When you put effort into your business cards or your compliment slip, do you encourage me to stay in touch in return for some goodies and some benefits I want to have?

Do you let me have a Fact Sheet, an email Newsletter, an Invite to your next Public Event?

Make me feel special and provide me with good quality reasons to think of you often.

Take active steps to ensure I can find you and spend more money with you.

Join us again soon for more thinking-time tips.

Focus Tips 7. Building tomorrow today.

nickrs — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:00:18 +0000

7. Act Today to Build Tomorrow
Right now you need to be creating the venture or the healthy practice you would like to have tomorrow.

You will not get there unless you put aside procrastination and work on what you want it to be.

Don’t allow yourself to be overcome with the effort. Instead work consistently to do those things which will allow you to achieve.

Remember that successful people get there by doing the things unsuccessful people are unwilling to do. What have you been resisting or putting off?

Join us again soon for more thinking-time tips.

Focus Tips 6. Market yourself always

nickrs — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 08:00:25 +0000

6. Market Yourself Always
You may think that your service is the same as provided by another small business. You may have the identical training and qualifications, but you can never be the same people.

Take time to craft information that links your ‘story’ with the product or service you are offering.

Given the chance people will frequently buy the offering that comes with a more unique wrapping or storyline.

What is your story? How do you tell it otr share it with others?

Identify it because it makes you so special in the eyes of your clients.

Join us again soon for more thinking-time tips.

Business network or Business community?

nickrs — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:48:02 +0000

Last night I spoke with a group of 38 small business owners at a local event we held in the grounds of a beautiful, rural business park. Half of the room were people I knew and had worked with before, helping them with low-cost high-impact marketing. The others were a collection of recent readers of newsletter and blog material and who had come to learn more.

We started with refreshments and some food so that people could meet and mingle, introduce them selves and learn more about each other. Then we had four speakers sharing different ideas on the themes of Cracking the Credit Crunch. So we had Iain Buchan from Direct Cash Flow Solutions sharing about the need for a credit control system within your business. Nic Taylor from Patro Chartered Accountants treated us to some brilliant insights on effective treatment of your business tax burden, and Carol from Yorkshire Business Services hosted a talk about the importance of being part of your business community.

To what extent was the evening about networking, versus building a sense of community? For me as part of the hosting team it was a fine line, but I have to veer towards the community aspect. It is relatively easy to network if this means saying hello and exchangeing contact details, and thinking to yourself “Will they buy my goods?” However, this is a very one sided argument and is unlikely to lead to any new business being written on either side.

The community perspective however is much more all embracing and suggests that there is a scope and potential for each of us to consider the person we speak with, wanting us to actually make a real connection that is about being in contact on an ongoing basis rather than for the few minutes we stand before each other.

When you attend such an event are you listening for the broader community that you reach though the person who speaks with you and you with them? Are you just there for yourself? Is it possible that in being there for the broader business community first and foremost, you could actually be there for yourself anyway? I think so. Try it.

Do something you love …

nickrs — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:51:35 +0000

Many of us get locked into a routine of traveling to and from work in order to do something we dislike or even despise. We buy ourselves travel tickets or pick up transport costs in order to get to this place, where we are often surrounded by people we care little for, and produce output we may have no connection with or little pride in. There is more to life than this.

You know that you have talents. It is just that you are often the very last person on the planet who will acknowledge that you have them, cautious and in denial as you can sometimes be. Hobbies, intellectual skills, passionate interest, technical curiosity or just a willingness to learn a new skill set. It does not matter what the skill set or special ability is so much as you being willing to spot it and acknowledge it for what it is - the seed of a new potential.

Consider that there are people making a living from every single possible profession and occupation, and many of them do very well. If in doubt pick up a commercial phone directory or look at a Local Pages website showing you the businesses in your own area. From Antiques to Zoology people are making a living or a decent income for themselves in areas they enjoy.

Through the expression of ourselves in our work, we also find connection to others. Maybe you achieve this through your job networks, or perhaps though the people you meet via the place you work and the associations you can make indirectly.

And many of them don’t go to a distant work place in order to be successful. Tens of thousands of people work from home doing something that pays its way. This may be via email, a web page, a mail-order operation, broking deals by telephone, or liaising between people wanting their skills. It does not matter what they do so much as it matters that they do something.

Identify your own skills and passions and look to create a revenue for yourself that you can build from home, or that you can sell with confidence to a prospective employer who would rather have excited and motivated people on their staff team.

In encouraging you to explore the enjoyment of your work, I also want you to get closer to that place of attaining financial freedom. This is the freedom that you have when you never omit doing something for lack of money and that you never do anything that you don’t want simply to get the money that is being offered.

If I put this another way, financial freedom is putting money to work for you instead of you having to work for money. In order to make your own financial success it will help you greatly to build yourself a prosperity mindset, a prosperity consciousness. This means that you can operate successfully and easily in the material world whether you have money or not. This is what a prosperity consciousness does for you.

A simple exercise to identifying work that can be enjoyable and which can sometimes lead to a new self-employed career was shared with me by my friend and mentor Jim Leonard. You simply take a piece of paper and a pen and spend a few minutes writing down your ten favourite pleasures.

This is the simplest of exercises and yet it can be worth enormous value to you in terms of both fun, and money!

First, write down the ten things you most enjoy doing.

Next, have a look at these ten activities and underline the one which you enjoy most of all – and the one which you are the most willing to receive money for doing!

Now, looking at that same list and at the very favourite activity which you have chosen from among the ten, work out how you can provide a service with that activity. Write down ten ways in which you can receive money from providing this service.

Choose one that you enjoy and have a go at it for a few weeks. Once you have developed money from the idea move onto another manifestation of money with a different idea or service. You will then find it is very easy to produce money when you want it. Once you can produce money at a sufficient rate for your needs, you will begin to develop the ability to create funds flowing in while you are asleep, or when money is the last thing on your mind.

Finally, understand that developing and creating worthwhile work is one of the highest callings you can follow.

Blessings, Nick

Focus Tips - 5. Make Money Work for You

nickrs — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:00:30 +0000

5. Make Money work for You

You can provide great service and support, but ensure that you are being paid for this.

Look at the rates for your own work.

Are they above the market level? Are you undercharging?

Position your pricing to be on the positive side of desirable and understand that in the eyes of your clients cheap pricing often implies to them ‘cheap product’.

Take care to increase your pricing regularly. When I started my own business a wise friend said “Always charge at least 20% more than you feel comfortable with and you will be about right.” Great advice indeed.

Join us again soon for more thinking-time tips.

Nick Sturgeon is a small business owner who has benefitted from the experiences of success, failure and financial recovery. The author of “Small Business BIG Profit” published by FT Prentice Hall, Nick writes and speaks from the heart to audiences about Risk, Reward and the Power of Personal Enterprise. nick@smallbusinessbigprofit.co.uk

Letting go to become more effective

nickrs — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:42:14 +0000

You have just one life and this comprises thousands of single days.

How you use your time is something written about in a hundred books. Lots of people are efficient at “time management” but are dreadfully ineffective personally. Time management is not the answer and it never has been.

You need to decide what you are looking to do each day and have a plan for this the night before. Make a simple list of the things ahead of you. This is easy enough. Then prioritize them according to your values and what is important to you. It is this step that takes the thoughtfulness, but which then gives you a list of tasks and activities that will make you effective in a powerful way.

Effectiveness means cutting through the everyday “stuff” that turns up in your diary and in-box, and getting on with what matters to you and what will really make a difference for you.

My friend and neighbour Simon is a complete wizard at dealing with paperwork and email. I invited him in to help me take back control of my desk. Not only did we go through a tonne of papers, files, letters, magazines, articles, bills, and emails, but we threw so much of it away that I was amazed.

We did the same with the contents of my filing cabinets and ended up getting money in for the office furniture and storage that was no longer needed. I had been hanging on to information in case I might one day need it.

I was rather scared at throwing out all this “stuff” I had accumulated. Guess what he said to me?

“If it was really important, the people who sent it can let you have another version and most of them could even send it to you electronically and do away with the mass of paper.”

What you will be doing from this moment on is a result of choosing where you focus your attention. I dislike the phrase “attention management” and suggest instead you just get on with it.

Instead of being driven by the time-bound calendar approach consider assessing what needs to be done on the basis of your values, your choices, and the things that make your life the exciting journey it is for you.

Measure your effectiveness by whether you are moving forward with the projects of importance to you. If not, trim out some of the unnecessary ’stuff.’

Blessings, Nick

Nick is an Author and an Information Publisher. Please forward this blog to a friend.
His books are available from www.amazon.com and from www.lulu.com

You can find details of his subscribe for Event / Seminar News and updates.
Email nick@smallbusinessbigprofit.co.uk
The Non-Fiction Writing Retreat takes place in November each year on the Yorkshire Coast.