Picture by javierCit0

Have you ever had a situation where you needed to coordinate with a group of people and something came up at the last minute?

Maybe you were meeting a group somewhere and the plans changed at the last minute.

Maybe you’re the coach for the kids soccer team and the game gets canceled an hour before the game starts – yes the other parents are supposed to check the website or their email, but you know at least 1/2 of them won’t.

Maybe you’ve got a group of employees that are all working on an urgent project and something new comes up and they need to hear about it right away.  Sure you could email, text or IM them, but sometimes they need to hear what you’re saying!

You need to ShoutNow – a new voice messaging application that lets you send a voice message out to a group, quickly, easily and cheaply.

ShoutNow is a service that was launched a few weeks ago by Dan Melton (and others).  Dan is the owner of npTLabs, a technology start-up company that’s doing a lot of cool things.  (He’s also a client of mine that’s a lot of fun to work with!).

However the ShoutNow story is really compelling – Dan went to Indianapolis recently for a Startup Weekend.  The idea is to get a diverse group of people in a room, let them work together and come up with a new business idea…and implement it!  Dan’s team won the competition with ShoutNow and they’re moving forward to launch it beyond it’s current beta phase.

They’ve already had several thousand calls placed through the service (without any issues) and they just got a great write-up in Mashable in a story on Voice Messaging for Groups. 

They’ll be adding more functionality as they go, but the service is up and running now – check it out and give a try at shoutnow.com.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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The stockings were hung from the fireplace with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas would soon be there.

To my friends, family, clients and readers from all over – Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

2008 has been a challenging year, but there’s good reason to hope that betters days are in the future and we’ve certainly all had plenty of opportunities to learn and grow – and really isn’t that the point?  Enjoy some time with family and friends, relax, recharge and get ready for what’s sure to be an exciting 2009.

Best Wishes to all…and to all a good night!

Shawn Kinkade

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I was just on a great call with Verne Milot, Owner of Growth Associates and a colleague of mine through the Professional Business Coaches Alliance (PBCA).

Verne was doing a presentation on how to grow a professional services business and shared some of his personal experiences when he was just getting started a few years ago.

Although he covered a lot of great stuff, one of the things that really stood out to me (in a Made To Stick kind of way) was a quick story he told about a Tiger.

It’s been said that if you meet a Tiger in the jungle and you can calmly and confidently look it in the eye, the Tiger will move on and not attack you, unsure whether you are a fellow predator or prey.  However if you show fear, avert your eyes or stumble…you are going to be eaten!

Of course the point of this is that if you want to succeed with a prospective client, then you need to be not only displaying confidence and competence, but that confidence should be fundamental – in other words, you really need to believe in yourself.

I’m sensing a common theme…

As I was writing this post, I realized that it overlaps with a few other things that I’ve written on here – almost a year ago I wrote about the Secret Ingredient to Success being confidence.

I think it also ties into the importance of being yourself, only dealing with the truth and really being Transparent when it comes to what you do and how you do it.  Confidence – real confidence comes from really having a solid foundation and playing on your strengths.

Not only will an approach of confidently being yourself, understanding how you can help people and a belief in what you do (and what your product can do) really help you when you’re selling to people, it’s also a lot more fun!

We didn’t spend a lot of time on this topic with Verne, but the obvious question is ‘How do I build up my confidence?’.    Here are some quick thoughts that we tossed around:

1.  Know what you want to do.

Have a clear picture of what you’re offering, what your product or service looks like – keep it simple and be able to confidently and easily describe that to other people.

2.  Play off of your strengths

More than likely you are really good a several things – presumably that’s a big reason why you do what you do.  Take an inventory of those strengths (do this on a regular basis and get feedback from other people) and develop your product or service talking points especially around those strengths.  Don’t ignore the other parts, but lead where your highest level of comfort is and everything else will become easier.

3.  Work on regularly getting feedback

Ask your clients what’s working (and what’s not).  Knowing that you have satisfied clients that really like what you do is a great thing!  Not only is it a confidence booster, but those testimonials (did I mention you should get that feedback in writing?) are a great way to share success with prospective clients.

4.  Have fun – don’t take it too seriously

Finally, it’s important to really try and enjoy yourself.  There are lots and lots of prospective clients out there.  If things don’t go well with one of them, learn what you can from it and then move on.  If you’re enjoying what you do, that will come across to people more powerfully than almost anything else you can do.

What do you do when you face the Tiger?  Share your thoughts here, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

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photo by geckoam 

The clock’s running down
The team’s losing ground
To the opposing defense
The young quarterback
Waits for the snap
When suddenly it all starts to make sense

He’s got all kinds of time
He’s got all kinds of time

- Fountains of Wayne, All Kinds Of Time

Although the song is about football, the idea that things are coming at you fast (trying to tackle you) also applies to owning your own business.

You’ve got clients / customers asking for help…you’ve got people asking you for money…you know you’ve got to pull together a marketing plan, a strategic plan, something to make 2009 better than 2008. 

You’ve got employees that don’t show up – or do show up, but don’t do what they’re supposed to do.  You’ve got a family that would like to spend some quality time with you.  You’ve got prospects that want to buy from you, but you haven’t had the time to follow-up with them.

You’re being bombarded and everything is just moving too fast!

Make it slow down

A lot of people that are put under pressure react the wrong way.  They put their head down and try to do more…or they reach sort of a breaking point and just let stuff start hitting the floor.

The trick is to make everything around you slow down.  Get into the ‘zone’.

Once you get control, then things become easy. 

Have you ever watched someone that’s an expert at their trade, when they are really in their element?  Have you seen fry cooks in a restaurant kitchen during a dinner rush?  It can be an amazing thing.  To an outside observer, it looks like chaos, but everything is prepared as ordered and delivered in a timely way.  They are in the zone and things seem slow to them.

The question is what can YOU do to get things to slow down?

Develop your expertise…!

When you develop expertise, everything becomes easier.  Developing that expertise requires practice, training, and a constant evaluation of how you’re doing and what you could be doing to get better.

It’s not just about doing the same thing over and over.  Granted, whatever you spend lots of time on, you will likely get better at, just through repetition…but you can get a lot better a lot faster if you apply more focus and intent.

Imagine 5 guys on a basketball team and all they do is open scrimmage, just playing the game.  Assuming they have some leadership on the team, they will get better over time, but they will be light years behind a team of similar talent that has a coach that can give them candid feedback, take them through drills and exercises to help them see things in a different way (zone vs. man to man) and help develop their individual skills.

Practice is a big part of it, but practicing and improving in the right way is how to really develop.

Take a deep breath!

This is going to sound goofy, but I promise if you give it a try you will see positive results!

You can learn a lot from watching Scrubs (the TV show).  I was watching an episode the other night and JD was feeling especially stressed.  He knew what to do, he knew how to do it, but everything was moving too fast, it was too loud and his lack of focus and composure was shaking his confidence.

The recommendation to solve his problem…when ever he could feel the stress coming on, was to stop…slowly take in a deep breath and slowly let it back out.

It turns out Deep Breathing, done correctly has a lot of benefits, including reducing stress and helping you focus.  There’s a good post on Zen Habits about taking 6 seconds to relax that will give you some more background on this.

Have a plan!  (One that makes sense and is achievable)

Part of the reason that a lot of people feel overwhelmed and lost is because they are lost…(big help isn’t it?).  Either they don’t have a long term plan (or set of plans) or the one they have is invalid, out of date, or just not useful.  Either way, they’re likely just shooting from the hip and reacting to whatever happens.

You may be trying to do too much too soon.  Assuming that you can expand your operation to two new locations when you’ve never expanded before is likely asking for trouble.

Maybe you’re going in the wrong direction altogether.  Putting a lot of energy and money into a product that doesn’t have great margins or long term sustainability isn’t going to work.

However if you have a clear idea of what you want to do and how you might achieve that, then at least you’ve got a fighting chance.  As new things come up, if it’s not in your plan, then either say no or take some time and reevaluate the plan.

You should be planning and reevaluating that plan at least once a quarter.

Get some help!

Last point – how likely is it that you’re spending time as a business owner doing something that isn’t a strength of yours, something that you don’t enjoy but because you want to save money or you just don’t trust anyone else, you do it anyway.

If you’re like most business owners I know, it’s pretty likely that you’ve got at least 1 thing that falls into this category and it’s likely you’ve got several.

If you’re not a whiz at and enjoy doing your bookkeeping or accounting, find someone to do it (I have a recommendation for a good CPA if you’re looking for one).

If marketing or sales aren’t really your thing, consider finding a way to get some help.  Maybe it’s a freelancer, or a part time resource – something that will allow you to free up your time so you can start working on the big picture (which is really something that no one else can do for you).

One caveat with getting help…this has to be controlled delegation, not abdication.  It’s your business and if you want it to work, you need to make sure you understand and have a way to measure success for whatever it is that you’re handing off.

What’s your idea?

There are lots of ways to get into the zone – what works for you or what have you seen other people do?  I’d love to hear ideas and suggestions – share them down below!

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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There’s an old management adage – “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. 

This can be overstated (and make things way too complicated sometimes), but in general it’s hard to make improvements, in fact it’s even hard to know how you’re doing if you’re not measuring some key things.

As an example, one of the points that came up in discussion in a peer group advisory board meeting this morning was an issue that several people were having about not knowing how they were spending their time or how much time a lot of their activities were taking.

Can you handle adding more customers into your pipeline?  How much time do you spend getting them sold?  How much time do you spend actually providing your product or service?  Are you using your time productively?  Could you prioritize your time and increase your productivity?

If you’re like a lot of people, the answer to the above questions is…”I don’t know…!”

Time to start tracking…time

You are really busy.

The last thing you need is another hassle – something like keeping track of your every minute.

However, if you don’t start dealing with facts you’re never going to be able to improve things.  Depending on your business, it may be most important to know what the breakdown of your time is in big basic chunks…delivery, marketing, sales and admin or messing around as an example.

Or you may need to identify key repeatable activities that are part of your process and start measuring those.  Examples would be:  Time spent doing proposals, time training new clients to use your service, time spent creating on-boarding materials.

Anyway you slice it, it would be extremely compelling to know how much time you (or your staff) spends on certain tasks and how that trends.

Enter the time tracking tools

This isn’t a comprehensive list, but more of a suggestion list of some places to start.  The key criteria is something that’s inexpensive / free, easy to use, intuitively organized and ideally capable of generating some meaningful reports.

Option 1:  Go Old School with a spreadsheet!

This could either be Microsoft Excel or Google Docs (Google might get the edge here because you and your staff could access it online from anywhere and share a single sheet easily).  Unfortunately even though the price is right with this option (free), it’s going to be clunky and getting the information back out in a meaningful will either take a lot of up front work or may not be practical.

Option 2:  Stand alone web based Time Tracking tools

There are lots of options in this space, but I found a couple that I thought looked interesting.

The first one is Paymo TimeTracker, which offers a free plan that supports up to 3 users.  I haven’t used this, but I think I may need to give it a whirl.  The look and feel and the functionality look great – very clean, easy to use and even if you upgrade to the commercial version, the price is right.

The other option that I found that looks worthwhile is Harvest.  It also looks intuitive and although they don’t have a free option, they do have a free trial.  The cost after the trial is higher than I would expect, but it still may be worth checking out.

Note – late edit.  Based on the comments (the power of web 2.0 in action), I would also suggest checking out TSheets - there’s a lot of functionality there, including some great integration with mobile devices and invoicing software.  They have a free version (without reporting) and free trials with paid versions so you can check it out.

Option 3:  Time Tracking as part of Project Management tools!

Finally, you could choose to track your time as part of a bigger initiative to actively manage projects / customers.  I’m considering using this model as a way to track activities and ‘homework’ to do items with clients.  It can also be really effective if you have a larger project that might span more than one provider (i.e. creating a website and complimenting marketing materials from different vendors).

There are also many vendors that share this space, here are 2 that I’ve heard good things about:

The first one is Basecamp from 37Signals.  They describe this as their ‘flagship’ product and it really does have a lot of great functionality.  The only real drawback for the purposes of this discussion is that you have to get the Plus level plan if you want to get the time tracking module, which is expensive for a smaller business.  Especially if you’re not actively running a lot of ‘client’ projects.

The other option I would recommend is Zoho Projects.  Zoho hasn’t been around quite as long as 37Signals, but they seem to do a lot of things well.  It looks like a very good solution, you can try it out on 1 project totally for free and even the expanded version with 10 projects is only $12/month, quite a bit cheaper than Basecamp.

Start Tracking that time

Whatever option appeals to you, make it a point to start tracking your time starting in 2009.  Use it as input to decide where to focus your systemization and automation efforts and also use it to figure out what your really cost effective, high value activities are.

Do you have any experience with tracking time as a small business owner?  Share your thoughts here, I’d love to hear them.

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