Apparently a lot of small business owners are not familiar with ‘The Cloud’ – at least when it comes to Cloud Computing as a technology solution for their business.  According to a recent survey (May of 2011) done by the Small Business Authority, only 29% of small business owners are familiar with the term Cloud Computing.

Only 29%!  There’s a huge opportunity right now, both for qualified vendors who can supply great cloud based solutions, but more importantly for small business owners who can leverage Cloud based technology to cut costs and do more with less!

What is Cloud Computing?  In a nutshell, it’s the ability to interact with data or applications that are centrally hosted on the internet (or in ‘the cloud’).  The reality is that you’re likely dealing with a lot of cloud based stuff today and you didn’t know it – when you get a movie from Netflix Instant Streaming, you’re pulling down data / content from the cloud.  It’s available in a lot of different ways (your computer, an iPad, your TV etc.) but it’s all tied back to your account.

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photo by Ernst Vikne

Sometimes the hardest part of this whole business thing is getting them to move!  Have you ever had the situation where you’ve had good meetings with potential prospective clients…and then you wait?

They know who you are.  They know what you do.  They need what you do, but for some reason they don’t move and you end up waiting for something to happen!

I’ve got a couple of clients facing this very situation – they’ve put a lot of time and effort into marketing, they’re getting initial meetings with what looks to be the right kind of people (qualified and in need) but things are moving slowly…or really not moving at all!

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photo by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

Undoubtedly you’re familiar with Archimedes famous quote:

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

If you’ve studied any physics, then you know Archimedes is talking about the concept of leverage, which essentially means that through the proper use of tools you can do a lot more than you could through straight brute force methods.

It’s an important concept in physics and baseline for a lot of engineering principles, but for a small business owner, it can likely mean the difference between long term success or exhaustion and failure!

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  photo by dimnikolov

Being a business owner often feels like being in a race…only it’s a race that never ends and it seems like you have to keep running harder just to keep up as you go!

The one thing that most business owners fantasize about, maybe even more than having more money, is having more time!  Think about an average week for you – how much time did you have to just sit and kick back without your mind racing, or the phone ringing?  Staring at a list of 100 things not getting done doesn’t count!

Imagine if you could find a way to free up 1 hour of your week while still getting the same amount of things done?  What about 10 hours a week?  What would you do with the extra time?

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Almost everyone goes through some sort of planning and goal setting exercise during the year.  We’re now 2/3 of the way through this year and although it’s a little early to get serious about finalizing next year’s goals, it’s not too early to start thinking about it.

With that in mind, I challenged one of my Peer Group Advisory Boards with a few questions to make them think a bit.  The general idea is you sometimes need to shake your thinking up in order to get clear.  It’s rough to just jump into ‘What’s your goal for next year’ – and if those goals don’t line up with an accurate picture of your values and what you really want, you’re going to be wasting your time. 

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