Small Business Connected

If you do any amount of business travel, you'll want to listen to this podcast.  With nearly a million flight miles between the two of us, we uncover travel tips and tricks (and hilarious stories) that could only come from experience.  In it, we discuss how to get the most out of business travel, how to maximize the value of your time, tips and hacks to make travel more enjoyable, and what to do when things go wrong.

In this podcast, Modern da Vinci expert and business owner Seth Sinclair talks about how difficult it is for small businesses to succeed, how anxiety and stress build when business plans don’t pan out as expected, and how financial and other pressures can lead business owners to give up.  He shares a personal and recent story about persisting through these challenges over a two-year period to finally achieve a foundation of success.

Consistently hiring A-players is one of the most challenging aspects of running a business. Far too often, our hiring process is either non-existent or hasn’t been given a lot of thought. Fletcher Wimbush from The Hire Talent is here to help us change that.   In this interview, Fletcher shows us (with over 30 years of experience) how hire and recruit top talent. We talked for nearly an hour, and discussed dozens of amazing insights any business owner can use consistently hire A-players. Use these tips to begin getting the right people on the bus and build a team that gets results.

Oh, the dreaded performance review process. You either hate it, or you hate it. Am I right? It’s not that you think they’re unnecessary… After all. Even if you don’t give performance reviews now, somewhere in the back of your mind, you know you should. It’s that they take time out of work, cause unnecessary stress, and don’t seem to be very effective at changing employee behavior. And isn’t changing behavior for the better the whole point? So, should we just ditch them all together? My answer to that is a resounding “NO!” When done properly, performance reviews can be a welcome source of feedback for your employees. They can lead to deeper discussions about responsibilities, career goals, and organizational improvements. So instead of throwing them out, let’s implement 3 simple tips to get them right.

If there's one thing that makes business owners anxious, it's networking. Some would describe it as difficult, others stressful. However, the importance of it cannot be understated. Business networking can lead to partnerships, sales, and future contacts that can help you (and you them) in unforeseen ways. It's a necessity for any business owner, and if you do it wrong, you'll miss countless opportunities.  So how does someone (like me) who is anxious about networking with other professionals push through?

Today we draw from the insanely popular business book, Blue Ocean Strategy, to help you create a unique value proposition that gets you out of those bloody competitive waters (where you struggle to get business) and instead sets you on a path towards a wide blue ocean full of customers who are ready and willing to pay for the unique products and services your company has to offer. If you are fighting your competition… If your customers don’t understand what is valuable about your offerings… We’ll use this simple methodology to find a set of values that truly differentiate your products and services. We’ll also help you see where you can create new value so your products and services are unique, sought after, and highly desirable.

You need your business to be successful. If your business fails, you won’t be able to earn a living and provide for yourself, your family, or your employees. If you don’t have money, you can’t buy food and shelter. And if you don’t have food and shelter, you die! Sound a little extreme? Maybe, but to a large extent, it’s true. Your business is your livelihood. You can always try to find another job if things go wrong, but that would mean your business failed. This is the pressure that many small business owners feel each day, and we’re here to help you change that feeling. Instead of worrying about what the future holds, we want to build your confidence in your business. We want to give you a clear path to achieving your goals. And what we’re about to cover in this post will give you exactly what you need to focus on to make that happen.

It's mind-boggling, isn't it? You have a great meeting with a potential customer. Your presentation is on point. You answer all their questions. And they show all the buying signs.  Before leaving, you end with a hearty handshake and promise to send more information.  Only when you do, they don't respond. You leave them a friendly voicemail. You shoot them another email. You remind them about your great meeting. And what do you get in return? Nothing. You follow up again. You ask them to call you back. You try anything to get them respond. And what do you get? Silence. At some point, you give up... figuring your prospect was never interested to begin with. Enough with them. On to the next client. Sound familiar? It's happened to me dozens of times.  Unfortunately, I learned later, I had left dozens of sales on the table.   There's good news, though. With one simple technique, you can drastically increase the number of silent prospects that return your calls. Case in point, when I implemented this technique, my response rate increased by over 60%!

Can you describe the difference between teamwork and team building?  Do you know the three factors to creating an effective team building event? How do you apply vulnerability-based trust into your leadership and management goals to bring out the most productive, effective, and excited staff? These questions aren't for the feint of heart, and often take years to understand and execute.  Unless you're a Professional team builder like James Bennett of Firefly Events.  James runs a small business to build team productivity, camaraderie, and effectiveness through planned events and outings. His experience is incredibly deep, and the list of companies he's worked with is impressive, to say the least.  In our interview with James, we uncover some of his secrets to building strong teams, tips for dealing with toxic employees, and influential books that have helped businesses of all sizes develop an effective and energetic staff.

You know what's coming...  At the end of today, you'll either feel a sense of accomplishment, or like you've wasted another day.  It's not that you didn't work hard.  You answered emails. You took phone calls. You attended meetings. You made decisions.  But for some reason you got nothing done.  Well, that's not true. You got a lot of other people's work done, just not your own.  You've made little progress toward your goals. You've been running around solving other people's problems. You've been answering other people's questions, and spending time in other people's meetings. In other words, you've been working on urgent, but not important tasks.  There's a solution to this problem. A way to move closer to your goals every day.

If you’re heading into 2017 thinking about setting new plans and goals for your business, Modern da Vinci is here to help. In this brief video, we cover: 1. three big planning mistakes that you must avoid, and 2. the first step you should take to set the foundation for your planning process.   This is the first video in a series where we will lay out a specific approach for creating a simple, clear, and impactful plan to help you set (and reach) your goals in 2017. And beyond.

It’s no secret, you’re pressed for time. You wear multiple hats, share multiple responsibilities, and have more things to do than there are hours in the day. Maybe you’ve even committed to being more productive or focused in the new year. Superhuman productivity you say? I’ll take two helpings of that. After all, with so many demands on your time, being able to accomplish your goals while still saving time for family, self-improvement, and relaxation sounds like a dream. But where do we start? There are literally thousands of productivity tips and apps on the Internet… every one claiming to give you that dream. This isn’t “yet another productivity tip.” This is a way to organize your learning, clean up your computer, educate yourself using spare moments in your day (like driving), and literally read your news and articles twice as fast as you can today. Superhuman. Productivity. Let’s get focused. Let’s get productive. Let’s stop procrastinating. And let’s download an app to help.

Many small and medium-sized business owners kick the can down the road when it comes to financial planning. That’s understandable since business owners are preoccupied with short-term responsibilities and dealing with fires that inevitably pop up daily. Unfortunately, this leaves the business owner and his or her partners and family members exposed to tremendous risk. What happens if conditions change and the business fails? How will the business respond if a partner falls ill? What is the business exposed to as the market fluctuates? How can the business be financially responsible while offering competitive compensation and benefits to employees? In this interview, business finance expert Blake Fellows explains why it is essential for business owners to be proactive about setting goals, determining ranges for spending and saving, ensuring that foundational agreements are in place, and having specialized support in all aspects of financial planning.

When a conflict arises, most people have a default approach for how they handle the situation. Many of us are not conscious of our conflict style; we respond automatically without giving thought to the circumstances. This is significant in the context of negotiations. A negotiation is a type of conflict – a situation where your concerns and interests are not aligning with those of another person, and you are actively seeking a solution. Understanding your tendencies in responding to conflict, and how you may need to adjust them, will give you an advantage as you work through a negotiation. If you can assess each conflict and negotiation situationally, you can intentionally utilize the style that will be most beneficial to you.

So far in this series, we have explored several common mistakes that can harm negotiations as well as tactics you can employ to avoid negotiation pitfalls. This post is about re-framing the way we view negotiations, especially regarding how we look at the “other side” that we are negotiating with. The idea is to achieve a satisfactory result without damaging relationships.

Negotiations can be tough. They are often high pressure, high stakes situations with tight deadlines and demanding stakeholders. Opinions and interests can differ widely among parties, and strong emotions may come into play. When we are under this type of pressure, we often find ourselves stumped. Our thinking narrows and our creative muscles feel constrained. The Principled Negotiation Method defined in Getting to Yes suggests several strategies to counteract this. The premise is that “The key to wise decision making lies in selecting from a great number and variety of options.”

Preparation is essential to effective negotiation. If you wish to reach a fair and satisfactory deal, you need to enter the negotiation with a clear understanding of your interests, options, comparative data, and objective criteria. One of the most important data points to consider is your “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement”. This serves as your “Plan B” to the negotiation. In other words, it is the best option you have and the one you will live with should you leave the negotiation without an agreement. If you don’t know your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, you may end up taking a deal that is worse than your backup option, or you may walk away from a deal that is better than your backup option. In this podcast, we will give you some simple steps to create your best alternative to a negotiated agreement and use an example to drive the point home.

Negotiation is a back-and-forth communication that is designed to reach an agreement among parties that have both shared and differing interests. We all deal with negotiating each day, whether on simple matters like what to eat for dinner to complex decisions involving high stakes business matters with multiple parties. The purpose of negotiations is to produce wise agreements as efficiently as possible while maintaining or strengthening relationships. In this brief podcast, we specifically look at what “Interests” are, and what it means to focus on interests (not positions) to get better results from your negotiations.

In this interview with Salomon Paredes of E2 Outlook, we uncover some hidden truths about why website development and social media management is difficult, and discuss the purpose of each for small business owners.

Glen Hellman is a business expert and strategist that writes and presents on the topic of “How To Pitch to the Reptilian Brain.”  It’s an approach grounded in neuroscience that is designed to influence others and move them to action.  In this interview, Glen shares his insights on how to use these principles to sharpen your business’s sales pitch and how they can improve your leadership and business in general.

You have a tremendous, untapped advantage as a small business. Something that even the biggest companies can't compete with. Something that will inspire loyalty, productivity, and pride in every one of your employees. It’s called the “big picture.” Whether it’s your purpose statement, a larger project goal, or a combination of both, the big picture is the reason your employees head into work every morning. In this podcast, we’ll uncover why sharing the big picture is so powerful and give you strategies on how you can do this with your team.

Having a strategy is vital for any small business. A strategy defines your plan for moving from where you are today to where you want your business to be in the future. On a more tactical level, having a clearly articulated business strategy is essential to being able to prioritize, build consensus, make decisions, and assess progress toward your goals. Unfortunately, the “classic” approach to strategic planning doesn’t work very well for small businesses. The traditional methods found in textbooks are designed for large organizations. Small businesses don’t need the same kind of plan that a large corporation does, and they certainly don’t need the types of plans that global corporations produce. Using the wrong methods for strategic planning can cause a lot of frustration for small business owners as well as wasted time, effort, and resources. So then, what is the right amount of strategic planning for a small business? What should you focus on? Who should be involved? What should the final plan look like? How much planning is too much? This post will give owners of small businesses a simple and effective process for performing strategic planning by taking a look at some common issues small businesses run into with strategic planning, the most important elements of planning that small business should focus on, and concrete steps to tackling strategic planning the right way.

In this interview with Brian Roberts, founder and CEO of Croix Connect, we explore two things that often hold small businesses back from growing and what business owners can do to overcome them.  Brian shares his substantial experience as a business advisor, coach, and Vistage CEO Peer Advisory Group Chair to offer insights on how essential it is for business owners to embrace trust and delegation.

Have your past marketing efforts fallen on deaf ears? Have your previous advertisements cost you way too much for far too little gain? You’re not alone. This is a common problem nearly every small business faces. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Growing your business is hard. If you could find just one additional customer today, I know you’d call it a win. So let’s figure out how to do that, and let’s do it quick. Let’s get to the root of the problem nearly every small business has: finding their customers, adding new customers, and ultimately growing their business.

In this interview with Barbara Stankowski, President and CEO of AMTIS, Inc., we discuss what it takes to get a business started, the real-life challenges of what it takes to grow, the meaning of persistence and resilience, and why it’s so important to invest in developing your people.

In this interview with Chris Hatala from Games Done Legit, we dismiss some long-held beliefs that video games cannot be taken seriously, uncover ways video games can help businesses build teams, and learn how to translate gaming events into better leadership and business growth.

In the words of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, “great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.” He’s right. No matter how much talent, hard work, and determination individuals can offer, teamwork is required to achieve results. But if teams are essential to success, why do so many leaders and organizations spend little to no time working on them?  Why do they leave team development to chance? The goal of this post is to provide leaders and managers with a specific strategy for assessing the teams they have today.  We’ll provide a framework to evaluate teams across critical the aspects of Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Results.  In each of these areas, we offer context and questions to help leaders determine if their teams are healthy or if they need some urgent help.  We also suggest specific steps you can take in each area to turn things around.

Losing critical employees can be a huge source of concern for any business owner. Whether your star employees quit or simply go on vacation, business continuity is a must. This article reviews a simple method for maintaining and sharing your best employees’ expertise.   In addition to removing “single points of failure” in your organization, this process can be used to onboard new hires and create a transition plan for employees moving from one set of responsibilities to another. Your employees can feel free to go on vacation while, at the same time, be in a position to delegate their complex work to promising employees and receive different perspectives on new creative ways to solve problems.

The best employees have qualities that are hard to quantify. They have the skills and experience, the motivation to be their best, the drive to help the company succeed, the aptitude to learn new skills, and character to lead the charter for which they were hired. These are the employees that make a difference in your organization. They solve the unsolvable problems, they jump in and help where help is needed, and they are instrumental in helping drive new business. How do you consistently hire people who do great work every day, who make your company successful, who look for ways to grow and expand themselves and your organization? In this article, we share with you hiring secrets and types of interview questions top companies use to recruit the best people for their business.

You know a good leader when you see one. You also know a bad leader when you see one. But can you spot the specific behaviors and characteristics that set them apart? Can you make an honest assessment of yourself to identify your own leadership strengths and weaknesses? In this post we look at 20 different leadership behaviors and skills such as Accountability, Relationships, Communication, Conflict Management, Emotional Intelligence, Listening, Motivation, and Trust to show how an Absent Leader (one who is in a leadership position but asserts no actual leadership), a Fake Leader (one who superficially looks and acts like a leader but has very poor leadership skills), and a Real Leader (one who demonstrates a balance of thoughtfulness and action, candor and respect, direction and listing, vision and steadiness, and empathy with accountability while getting good results) shows up. This framework will help you understand how to diagnose other’s basic leadership style and skills, evaluate your own leadership strengths and weaknesses, and learn the behaviors effective leaders use to get results from their staff.

Sometimes they sneak up on us. Other times we put off dealing with them and they loom in the background. You might make it a week or two without encountering one, but no one can avoid them for long. They can cause anxiety, anger, frustration, and leave your stomach in knots. I’m not talking about the spiders in your garage or the overdue bills on your desk. I’m talking about uncomfortable and potentially messy “people problems.” You know them well. You’re bound to encounter them because, as humans, we know that disagreement, differing perspectives, conflict, and issues are inevitable. Here are just a few “fun” examples that you might relate to:

I’m going to use two words that will quickly turn you away. Your first reaction will be to click the back button in an attempt to forget about this article and search for greener pastures. But you mustn’t. You mustn’t leave because these two words are going to be the root of your success. If used correctly, these two words are going to help you discover your niche, find your ideal customers, increase sales, grow your business, and crush your competition. We’re going to use these two words to make your company stronger. Stronger from within (through a clear understanding of your customers, their buying power, and their problems) and from without (through increased presence, better customer targeting, and growth into new business areas). Ready to hear them?

What do historical legends such as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Abraham Lincoln have in common with modern day magnates Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, and J.K. Rowling? The obvious answers are fame and success. But there is a more powerful answer that might surprise you. They all experienced painful, demoralizing failure on their journeys to the top. The kind of failure that would derail many people from going forward and pursuing their goals and dreams. Had they succumbed to these failures, they easily could have faded into anonymity. Their incredible contributions to science, history, sports, business, and literature may have been lost. This raises in an important question - what is it that fuels people who are wildly successful and separates them from others? Are they ultra-talented? Do they have access to special resources that the rest of us don’t have? Are they just lucky?

Deep down you’re excited. You’re excited that your new idea is going to sell. You’re excited that your new product will be met with fanfare, enthusiasm, and will win the hearts and minds (and wallets) of an entire market. I know this feeling. I’ve had this feeling many times before. Not just the first time I developed a new product idea. But the second, third, fourth, twentieth time and beyond. Despite having my early product development activities fail many times, I rarely considered that my next would share the same fate. Blinded by excitement over each great idea, I kept trying. And so will you. As entrepreneurs and business owners, we have to keep trying. Innovate or die… or so they say. But stop and think for a moment. How can we innovate so blindly with so much at stake? How can we thoughtlessly build that “next great product” when so many businesses around us create products that fail? How can we justify the cost and time it takes to build a new idea into reality based solely on our excitement?

As a leader, you are expected to have answers. Whether it’s a team member asking how to get a project back on track, a customer asking for more service, or a boss demanding better results, there is pressure to provide quick, definitive responses.  The drive to find the “right answer” and to do so expeditiously may be well intentioned but comes with considerable risk. What if your response fails to address the issue you are trying to solve? Or more importantly, what if you are spending all of your time and energy finding an answer to the wrong question? Taking a step back from a problem and further assessing it through questioning can provide powerful insight. In addition to helping re-frame a problem and sharpen focus, asking powerful questions can foster breakthrough thinking and yield many critical benefits.

Listening is the foundation for developing lasting relationships, building trust, preventing conflict, and influencing others. When you really listen, you show the other person that you care what they think and that they are worthy of your full attention. No one is going to be a perfect listener 100% of the time and shedding old listening habits isn’t always easy. However, it’s entirely possible to improve your listening skills using the approach outlined herein.

Unlike children who implicitly accept new information without questioning its relevance, adults challenge education and seek knowledge related to areas applicable to their future. They understand that if they need to learn something, it’s their responsibility to find the information and skills they need Fundamentally, it is helpful to reflect on the underlying process by which adults learn. Doing so will shed light on the struggles that often accompany personal growth and professional development. In turn, our understanding can help build a new perspective on gauging progress.

So many of our ideas are built on the thoughts and insights of others. But no matter where they come from, not all ideas stick. Not all ideas generate revenue or increase market share. The ones that do succeed are the ones that solve specific customer problems. If you’re spending all your time innovating and not listening, it’s just a matter of time before you’re no longer relevant. In fact, if you haven't asked yourself with the last six months what has changed about your customers, your markets, and your industry, you’ve taken your first step towards innovating solutions that nobody needs.  Don’t get caught in the innovation trap. Listen first. Create and innovate later.

Feedback is one of the most helpful and important things we all need to learn, grow, and improve. Furthermore, delivering skillful feedback can serve you well in all aspects of life. And yet in working with businesses and coaching clients, I hear time and time again how uncomfortable people are with the idea of giving feedback.  I see the negative consequences of organizations and teams who avoid feedback – conflict, frustration, and stagnation. If giving great feedback is an important skill for business leadership and performance, what is it that makes people so apprehensive about it?  Let’s break it down and then look at some simple strategies for delivering effective feedback. "Business man hand" image by kev-shine is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Today is the day... the day before elections when you realize you'll need to exercise your right as a free citizen in a representative democracy. Have you researched your candidates? Have you aligned your businesses needs with the values, record, and public statements of your choice representative? Listen to this podcast before you head to the ballot box. We'll take a focused look at voting and how it applies to your business. We'll review some things to look for in a candidate that could affect your company and provide an excellent resource for researching candidates in your district.

Keeping a discovery journal creates a desire to grow both personally and professionally while helping us become aware of blind spots in our knowledge. It inspires us to learn and find meaningful answers in our own lives. Without asking questions, we will get by just fine. But if we do, and if we make every effort to seek answers, our sense of wonder will grow strong, our experiences will take on more meaning, and we may find ourselves living a richer life.

This post is for anyone who wants to get ahead; who wants to stop reacting to life; who wants to stop floating through life day by day, hoping for the best. It's for anyone with much to accomplish and little time to do it. This post is for anyone who wants to focus and thrive, yet finds himself distracted and unsure of what to do next. The most successful people in the world have a plan. Not just a plan for big projects, but a plan for the little periods of time that they know will add up in the long run. When you are done reading this post, you will know how to develop a plan tonight that will guide you tomorrow. You will be able extract maximum value out of each and every hour of your day. Your plan will guide you when distracted and, in the early hours of the morning when your willpower is low and it’s difficult to think, it will provide you with a goal to kickstart your day and accomplish something while the rest of the world is still waking up. Creating your plan will not be complicated... it is as simple as filling out an index card.

We create excuses to avoid discomfort. Our excuses overpower our motivations and goals. And when the weight is heavy or the run long, our goals fly out the window. We need a deeper, more driving, more motivating voice to overpower those excuses. Once we've found that voice, it can help us far beyond exercise.