Every now and then you get handed a slow week – usually the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, but sometimes you’ll get a quiet week other times during the year.  Maybe you’ve officially taken the whole week off – which is great!  However if you’re like most business owners, you’re ‘working’ this week, you’ve just planned it to be slow.

Slow doesn’t have to mean unproductive though – here are a few ideas of what to focus on to make sure it’s a great slow week and not just…well, slow!

Finish your planning

Planning is a four letter word for most entrepreneurs – it runs counter to your instincts…and for most of us it’s just not any fun.  But if you want to succeed, you need to at least go through a planning process.  It doesn’t have to be complicated – try this:

Identify your top 5 priorities for the next year…if you could get these 5 things done / achieved / etc. you’d make it a great year!

Identify at least 2 or 3 key targets you want to hit – usually one of them is revenue, but it could also be profits, number of new clients, some sort of quality metric.  The key is to make sure it’s something easy to measure and it’s a valid, important measure of your business success.

Finally – with the above in mind, identify the top 5 (or so) things you need to get done in the next 90 days.  What will move the ball forward?  What’s achievable?  Be specific and layout at least a framework of how you’ll do what you’d do.

Make a list of people to contact

Your long term success is also going to be driven by the company you keep…and if you don’t make time to stay in touch, you’ll lose out on a lot of opportunities. 

Make a top 20 list of business (and some personal) contacts who are likely to either refer you business or be a great contact for you in some other way.  Once you’ve got a good list, make a commitment to meet with someone on the list at least weekly.  Relationships only get built when you spend quality time with people.

Take a nap!

It’s a slow week, take some time and give yourself permission to relax a little bit.  Seriously…when was the last time you took a nap (and being sick doesn’t count).  You’ll be amazed at how good you’ll feel after a quality nap.

Clean off your desk

There have been tons of studies that prove that clutter on your desk, in your office causes stress…and with that stress you’re going to be a lot less productive.  Don’t believe me?  Try doing a great cleanup job on your desk…and let me know if you don’t feel way better about what you’re doing afterwards. 

My experience is that it’s like a weight coming off your shoulders…one that you didn’t know you were carrying!

Hang out with family and friends

This one’s obvious – the reason you planned a ‘slow’ week in the first place was to build in some time to relax, but if you’re like most business owners, life often gets in the way of your plans.  An important email comes in, you get some phone calls you have to handle, you just remembered a commitment that had to be done…before you know it the week’s up and you didn’t spend any time with those most important to you.

Don’t let that happen.  On your slow week…make sure you build in hard stops and walls for your business activities…and give yourself some quality time away.

What are the most important things you do on a slow week?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, especially if you’re just relaxing around this week!

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by Arvee5.0

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The continuing evolution of the internet has changed a lot of things – how people communicate (Facebook, Twitter), how they establish expertise (blogging, answering questions, wikis) and how business is done (online presence is mandatory now).

What’s really exciting is that social media and the internet has generated a lot of cool new businesses and business models.  Business models like Threadless – a t-shirt design studio that’s completely driven by fans and users in terms of what t-shirts get made and sold (and they’re selling millions of them!). Or Woot! – a deceptively simple site that sells 1 product per day until it sells out or runs out of time.  It’s popular enough to have turned into a phenomenon on it’s own.

The latest fresh business model that I’ve seen is Groupon (a combination of Group and Coupon).  They just made it to Kansas City earlier this week.

Groupon is a local based ‘deal’ site that offers 1 deal per day for your city.  Typically the deals are 50% off or even more…however there’s a catch.  The deal isn’t ‘on’ unless a minimum number of buyers sign up for the deal that day.  So if you see a deal you really like, it’s in your best interest to promote it out to your friends via all of the easily available social media channels.  (You have to love that built in viral component).

As a business owner, why would I do Groupon?

Overall it’s a fairly low risk situation – you get to decide what the cutoff is for your deal – if you feel like you need 50 buyers to make it worthwhile, you can set the cutoff at 50.  Once Groupon is more established (they only have 105 followers in KC right now on twitter @grouponKC, but I’m sure that will grow) – it will be a great way to get exposure to new potential customers.

Even more interesting – based on Groupon’s research, most customers spend 60% more than the value of the coupon and most participants are first time customers (I don’t know how they know this, but it’s interesting…).

Obviously you’re paying to advertise if you decide to sign up with Groupon, both with a discount and a cut to Groupon (they don’t say how much their cut is) but wouldn’t you generally rather give more of your advertising money to your new customers rather than some 3rd party?  Plus – let’s face it, old school advertising isn’t exactly knocking it out of the park these days in terms of effectiveness.

Don’t stop with Groupon!

Groupon only takes 1 deal per day – but there’s no reason why you can’t take the same idea and run your own variation of a groupon to drive in traffic or pick up new customers.  If you wanted to be more sophisticated, you could partner with a few other complimentary businesses (or maybe do it as a shopping center) and setup a page that’s a deal of the day / week and feature one of the partners and promote it via social media.

Or you could copy the Sprinkles model (high end cupcakes, coming to Kansas City soon) and offer daily freebies to visitors that are fans on Facebook or Twitter.

Obviously this works best with Business to Consumer types of businesses, but you’re only limited by your imagination!

What fresh business idea have you seen lately?  Will you particpate in Groupon?  Share your thoughts below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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