I’m currently taking the shotgun approach to networking.  I haven’t yet found that really productive niche or two, so instead I’m going to pretty much any event that I can within a 20 mile radius.  It’s pretty tiring, but I think it will pay off in the long run (and I’m meeting a lot of great people…!).

Here’s a partial list of my networking activities just in the last week or so:

• Principal Connections :  This is one of my favorite networking events that I’ve found to date.  It’s once a month at a nice restaurant (Bonefish) and has some restrictions on attendance to keep the group focused.  You should check it out.
• American Club Association – team meeting :  The ACA is the latest organization that I’ve joined and I actually think it has the most potential.  I have a team that meets twice a month and I can join several other clubs – I’m starting the entrepreneurs club on Friday. Read More…

I was brainstorming what to write about today and I ended up being inspired by several things, so rather than limit the goodness I thought I would share them all.

First up was a good article by Wendy Marx blogging for Fast Company on Personal Branding:  Personal Branding Steps  The point of the article is an example on how you can use online branding, blogging and social networking to promote a non-technical business (in this case Real Estate).

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 There are a lot of good quotes out there about planning.  I was thinking about some next steps for my business and thought I’d do a quick search for quotes to get inspired.  Here are few that caught my eye:

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow”

Proverb Quote

I’m sure I’ve seen this one or one like it attributed to a real person, but it certainly sums up one of the key risks that hit most planning activities…overplanning! 

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I’ve previously mentioned the Business Effectiveness Analysis that we offer to clients (in the last newsletter).  If I do say so myself, it’s a pretty powerful tool that provides an industry benchmark comparison and  ’what if?’ scenarios to preview your businesses’ future financial performance and answer questions like these:

• Do we have enough cash flow for next year to make my loan payments?
• How do we compare to others in my industry on critical financial measures?
• How much will it improve my cash position to collect receivables faster?
• What would be the impact if we improved inventory turns by 10 days?
• What changes could we make to increase profitability and growth?
• If we increase sales by 5%, what does this mean to the bottom line? Cash flow?

I thought it might be useful to share an example of how this analysis can have a significant impact on your business.

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I’m on a newsletter list for The Simple Truths which is an online company that specializes in inspirational books and CDs for the workplace.  The owner, Mac Anderson, was previously the founder for Successories and has taken a similar approach with books and movies that was so successful with motivational prints.

They have a great article (part of a chapter from one of their books) that focuses on the intangibles that makes the difference between customer service and a fantastic customer experience! 

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