Go Nuts for health
When reaching for a snack why not reach for a variety of raw nuts (lets skip the dry roasted, salted, honey covered, chocolate coated kind for now), they provide loads of energy and are full of good quality fats. Research has shown that a small handful of raw nuts (per day) can cut your chances of a heart attack by 50%, that’s amazing. Here are some wonderful facts about a couple of my favorite nuts.
Walnuts: Loaded with unsaturated (good) fat, vitamin E, walnuts can lower cholesterol, cancer, and boost your brainpower. They also offer protein, fiber, magnesium, manganese and copper. In addition, walnuts also contain ellagic acid – a flavonoid that has been shown to inhibit the growth of cancer cells.
Cashews: Load with heart-protective monounsaturated fats. Copper for energy production, bones and blood vessels. Cashews also help prevent gallstones and not to mention taste yummy.
So there you have it, why not throw a handful of nuts into your diet today. Keep smiling.
Under promise, Over deliver
Haven’t we all had the experience where we have made a purchase and been promised a delivery date and our purchase doesn’t arrive? Good or bad experience?
Is that the feeling you want your customers to have?
I am talking about the circumstance we can control by the way. Yep, sometimes things go wrong, but let’s not make a habit of it or let’s always improve.
So the solution?
Under promise and over deliver.
Think like the example above. How would it be if you promised to deliver your clients purchase on Friday, but you could call them late Wednesday afternoon to say that is arrived early and you could deliver it Thursday? Good or bad experience?
If you always keep that in mind – under promise, over deliver – you will find customers will love your business so therefore either buy again or refer your business to others – or both!
Have you got a great story of where you under promised and over delivered that created a great opportunity for you and your business? Share it here.
Gain more energy . . . eat less food
Here is a super easy way to gain more energy throughout your day, reduce the size of your meals. It is pretty common among the western world to eat 3 big meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Over the past decade it seems to be more like, little or no breakfast, lunch on the run and then a big heavy meal for dinner. We have it so back the front. Here are a couple of suggestions.
Breakfast or break-fast is the most important meal of the day, it kick’s starts your metabolism and gives you that all important energy to get your bodily systems working after their resting period to tackle the new day ahead. If you have trouble eating in the morning then get up 15 minutes earlier and go for a brisk walk, this will jump start your body’s functions and also stimulate your digestive systems. Many people don’t feel hungry in the morning because they stuffed themselves full of heavy food the night before (okay I have been guilty of this to) and then only moved from the couch to the bed. Your poor digestive system doesn’t stand a chance. Sluggish bowl movements anyone? Try to combine a good variety of carbohydrates, proteins and good fats for breakfast. Try cooking a nice omelette with vegies, along with a piece of multi-grain toast and freshly squeezed fruit juice, yummy.
Eat smaller servings, imagine your stomach is like a fuel tank on a car, I know I have been guilty of stuffing myself so full that fuel has been spilling out of the top (buffet anybody). This not only feels uncomfortable but puts your digestive system under a huge amount of stress. If you wonder why you feel sleepy after such an event it is because your body starts using all of your energy to digest the food that you can no longer think (or move for that matter). Picture this, if you throw little bits of fire wood on hot embers then they easily catch alight and it is simple to get a roaring fire going, what happens when you throw a huge log on hot embers, it takes all of the energy from the fire just to try and ignite the log and quite often never does. That is like your meal servings. Eat until your gas tank is feeling about half full then stop for a few minutes. You will be surprised to find that half full usually feels like 3 quarters full after a couple of minutes. Not only will you be taking care of your digestive system but you will also have more energy flowing through your body.
So down size your next meal and feel lighter and brighter for it, take care.
Your Hourly Rate
This exercise can often give you a shock, but trust me, once over the shock it will improve how you do business and time management.
Work out how much profit you are currently making per month. Then add up the hours you worked on or in your business for a month. Simply then divide the profit by hours worked to get your hourly rate.
Eg. $4,000 profit for month
Average of 80 hours/week which = 320 hours/month
Hourly rate is $12.50 per hour.
Have you got a shock?
Do your team earn more than you without the risk or stress?
Would you make more packing shelves at the supermarket?
Now, don’t think I’m suggesting you quit your business. Although, you should stop and think about this. When I first did this when I owned my hair salon I was losing money. Kate and I worked out how many hair cuts I had done and worked out that my ‘free hair cuts’ were actually costing me $2,500 each! We had to laugh (a lot) otherwise I think I would have curled up and cried in the corner. It certainly changed how I did business.
So how do you use this information?
Firstly, what are you actually worth an hour?
I like to do this in reverse because I know most of you won’t actually value yourself highly enough by just asking that question. You may only put $20 per hour on your time – which is not enough as the business owner by the way!
How much profit would you like to make a month?
Then work out how many hours you would like to work on/in your business per week?
So if you’d like to make $10,000 profit per month and work 30 hours per week, then let’s work out your hourly rate.
$10,000 divided by 120 hours/month (30 hours/week x 4)
Your hourly rate is $83.33.
Would you pay someone $83.33 per hour to do your bookkeeping? No? Maybe time to outsource that. What about sorting out the warehouse or stock
inventory? No?
To make this work, you must start by replacing low hourly rate activities with higher hourly rate activities. For example, doing or working out a marketing campaign for your business. Two hours working on a marketing campaign could produce more than $166 of profit (2 hours at $83.33/hour). It could actually produce thousands of dollars.
You have to think, I just made $83.33 profit in that hour, so yes I could pay someone $20 for that same hour to do a low dollar/hour task and still have made $63.33 for that hour. It’s a bit like housekeeping. You could pay someone $55 for 2 hours of housekeeping so that you can spend 2 hours in a sales meeting making a sale of $5,000. Get the picture?
Basically, step up. Where ever possible, work as the owner, not the lowest paid employee!
Treat your feet and feel great
When was the last time you bought new exercise shoes? Now if you are still kicking around in your plain ankle high white Reebok boots we have a problem.
Exercise shoes (running, walking, cross trainers etc) are not meant to last forever, the mid sole is usually made out of an EVA foam (that’s why they feel good) which is filled with tiny holes, what happens is over time the mid sole gets compressed and losses much of it’s absorption properties.
Technology has come a long way in the past decade with shoes now containing, air soles, gel soles, wave soles and a list of numerous other things. These may help lengthen the life of the cushioning in the shoes and offer greater support and shock absorption for specific activities like running, tennis, netball etc.
When it comes to shoes I have 3 pieces of advice, firstly replace your sports shoes yearly (no longer than 18 months and less than 12 months if they are used a lot). Secondly, get a professional (Athletes Foot can do this) to size up your foot and suggest some shoes for your desired use. And last but not least, try both
feet on and go for as much of a walk as you can given your location (don’t start running out of the shop to test there comfort as you may attract more attention than you desire) and go with what feels best on your feet, not what looks best on your feet.
If you follow these steps not only will you be doing a great service to your feet but will also want to put your shoes on more often to do some exercise (of which I am 95% confident of). So you have nothing to lose, get out there and buy some new shoes.
What I work on first
I often get asked, what do I look at or do with a client when I first start with them to give their business a kick start.
Here’s my list that you can implement yourself to get your business moving.
1. Why are you doing this?
First, before anything, I align myself with my clients. Why this business? What do you want for your life? What do you want the business to give? What are your dreams and goals? Without knowing why, your business will not speed ahead. (You can lead yourself through this process with Kate in 100 Weeks to Success – click here)
2. Debtors
If you have outstanding debtors (money owed to you), call it in. For a little motivation, realise you are being an interest free loan to that debtor! It’s your money, so call it in. Large outstanding debtors can be a huge strain on cashflow. I find this the quickest and easiest way to get money in the door – especially as it is your money.
3. Payment Terms
If you are finding cashflow issues or you are continually having difficulty with debtors, what are your payment terms. Maybe you can ask for 50% upfront (start with brand new clients first if this feels difficult). Change 30 day accounts to 14 day accounts. Tip: Put a due date rather than pay in 30 days. You will have more success of payments on time and it is also easier to call and let them know it is overdue. Pay in 30 days is a little uncertain because it 30 days since you sent it or since they received it or since service completed. It can be turned or twisted around whereas an actual date is a defined time.
4. Profit and Loss Percentages
Work out all of your expenses as a percentage of your income/turnover. Then look for the 1%’s. That is how we could reduce expenses by 1%. Say, how could we reduce our petty cash from 3% to 2% or wages from 22% to 21%. If you do this to 10 expenses, that’s 10% more profit for you.
5. Obvious, no brainer, easy fixes
Things that seem common sense to fix. Make the time and do them. For example – cleaning, signage, phone answering training, get a bookkeeper, stop wasteful spending, petty cash, stock inventory, stock clearance, etc. They are probably all floating around in your head, so just write a list and do them.
6. Roles and Responsibilities
Are the right people in the right roles? Check out the organisational chart video in business basics (click here). Don’t underestimate this. By simply changing people to work in their strengths can impact the business massively – in a good way – plus everyone is happier.
7. Time
Where are you spending your time or should we say, not maximising your time? What can you delegate, outsource or ditch? You will need to create some time to build your business.
8. Three Things
Ask yourself and your team, ‘What are the 3 things you haven’t done that you know you should have done?’ No matter how big or small, now is the time to do them.
9. Look to your database
It is six times cheaper to get an existing client to buy again than to get a new client to buy. When was the last time you made a special offer to your existing or previous clients? This can bring in cashflow – fast!
10. Delivery and Distribution
Is your product or service going out right, on time, first time, every time? If not, what are the major flaws we can fix right now? Doesn’t have to be totally perfect, can work on that, but what are the obvious problems to get it heaps better fast.
So if you don’t know where to start, this will give you a list to work from. The most important thing is to get started.
Good luck!
Power of working with others
As I was talking with Quang from Wealth in Life Financial Planning, it dawned on me that to work interdependently can create a much bigger win:win than I had first realised.
By introducing the community to more alliances and having them input value back, each and every one could also set the vision to serve 100 healthy, enlightened, millionaires giving us a focus of each alliance. Sourcing 10 alliances who can help 10.
Financial planners, business coaches, solicitors, bank managers, accountants, networkers, all sourcing common people with extraordinary vision. Our goal of $50,000 per month in tithing is just 10 great alliances away.
A community focus is so much more leverage than each of us trying to independently get results. Interdependence makes sense as we all need to increase our awareness in all these fields to achieve sustainable results. Wow!
Growth and Vision
When you create a new vision to stretch yourself you automatically set in motion a series of events. It is these events that will ultimately give you the results in life.
I love to set big goals that include others because it develops the leader in me. None of us are born leaders, there are skills and values that you acquire when you gain experience actually leading others.
Set a goal and move in the direction of the goal and if you turn around and no one is following it shows that you have some growth to do as a leader. Never set a goal and never set out to achieve it and you do not achieve any growth. You cannot fail, you simply will discover things that work for you as a leader and things that don’t.
Leader comes from a Spanish word and means to go first into battle. Many leaders are hiding behind others and are afraid of failure. When I set a new goal, I am excited at the opportunity to achieve my goal 70% of the time and afraid 30% of looking like a fool.
In the fearful times I remind myself that no one really cares about me at all. I work out my exit strategies and risk vs cost assessment. For example, I put 10 hours into a project and $500. It takes me 2 hours to generate $500 so the most I can lose is 12 hours of my time – 1 day.
What I might gain however could be ….. and I work out the best case scenario.
10 leads at 30% conversion rate is 3 customers at $2500 = $7500 for 1 days work – $500 cost = $7000 profit plus the learnings.
I plan how to invest the $7000 – 30% tax.
I picture my reward. Here I put all my attention on variations of the reward.
$0 -$2000 (eg. trip to Sydney to see Wicked, Lunch at Darling Harbour and sightseeing tour Sydney. Stay at 3 stay hotel.)
$2000 – $4000
$4000 – $7000
$7000 +
What you give attention to you give power to. Ensure that when you set your next goal you aim higher than you have ever aimed before so you can ensure growth.
Enjoy.
Kate
Test and Measure
If you asked any of my ‘one to one’ mentoring clients, they will tell you that my two favourite words and most commonly used words are ‘Test and Measure’.
Why? Well, when I owned my own businesses, Kate (who was my Business Coach) taught me that I needed to ‘Test and Measure’. The analytical side of me took this on and ran with it. I discovered that I loved to analyse data.
All too often, Business Owners forget to check on what they are doing to see if it is working or not. This is what Test and Measure is all about. Take marketing as an example. Don’t do up a flyer and then print off 1000 of them and post them out and hope that your turnover and profit of your business will increase and if it does just think it must have been because of the flyer. This may seem OK in the short term, but in the long term this could spell disaster.
Being in business is about making profit – I doubt that you think you do what you do just for the fun of it, even if you weren’t making any money. If you’re not making money you won’t be in that business for very long.
So you must spend your money wisely. I love to invest in property. So what do I need to do? Well, I certainly don’t go and buy the first house I see for whatever price the agent tells me the seller wants for it. Firstly, I look at where I want to buy. Then I research what houses are selling for in the area and what standard they are at. I also look to see what the rental market is like in the area – will I find a tenant and how much will they pay? I also look to see if the area is growing – will my property go up in value. Then I start to look at properties. My property investing mentor says that you need to look at 100 properties to make offers to buy on ten. Just three of those offers will be accepted and you will end up buying one. Does it stop there? No. I then have to monitor how much rent comes in and out, what repairs need to be done, what else is selling in the area – and this is after buying the house. Why do I go to this effort? Because the work I do could make me thousands of dollars over the time I own the property – even more than thousands, hundreds of thousands.
So why is it that Business Owners don’t do the same before they do marketing? If you do your marketing well, it has the potential to bring into your business thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars over the next few years.
This is what I suggest. If we go back to the flyer example, instead of printing up 1000 and sending them all out, why not just try a small batch first – maybe 10 to 50. If you send out 50 and get 5 buyers or clients (depending on what you are offering) then your conversion rate is 10%. It would be about right to assume that when you send out 1000 after the ‘test’ run, you should get about 100 clients. If you have no responses from the 50, then it would be safe to say you won’t get many more if you send out 1000. BUT, you didn’t have to waste the money and time on sending out 1000 to get a result of 0, you only sent out 50. Alternatively, you may need to send a second batch of 50, to find that you will average say 10 clients from 100 – again 10% conversion rate, but you had to do a bigger batch.
At least if you again don’t get any clients you still have saved sending out 900 potentially wasted flyers.
This is the ‘Test’ of Test and Measure. Test a small amount first. If it doesn’t work then you can try again and see if you can fine tune the piece you are working on. I had one client that was very pleased to have ‘tested’ first – when they got a result of 0 responses from their 50 flyers, they went back to the drawing board on the flyer and realized that they had forgotten to put their phone number on the flyer. With that small change they increased their conversion rate from 0 to 13%.
It was a much cheaper mistake on 50 rather than 1000 flyers!
The ‘Measure’ section is then knowing what the response to that marketing piece was. This is why you should ask every new client – “How did you first hear about us?” and then have a simple tally where your team can record where your clients found out about you. If you have 20 new clients in a week and 10 came from a referral, 5 from your signage (walking by) and 5 from your advertisement in the newspaper, can you easily see where you should invest your marketing dollars? Without measuring, how do you know if something is working or not? Kate has always told me that business is a game. Just remember that in a game you need to keep score so you know if you are winning or not!
How much do you measure? As much as possible. Don’t get too ridiculous, because sometimes it will take you more effort to measure than what the results will tell you, but you should definitely measure a few things.
Say for the flyer example, I would measure:
How many did I send out?
How much did it cost me to print and send out?
How many were returned? (then I know how many actually reached someone – you always get a few returned due to change of address or the person has moved)
How many enquired from the flyer?
How many services/products were sold because of the flyer?
How many of these services/products were sold to new clients?
What was the average dollar sale for each of these services?
How much profit did I make from this campaign (Income less cost of send out and cost of service/product/labour)?
Then, if possible, I would aim to also measure:
How many referrals did I get from the people who took up this offer?
How many times did these same clients return?
How much did they spend on average on their return visits?
Firstly you want to know if the campaign made a profit. Some marketing campaigns may just break even or even cost you some money. Often it is not until the second or third visit from a client that you actually make money in some businesses (varies depending on business or what you are selling). I always aimed to find a way that my campaign at least didn’t cost me anything and if possible, made me money from the clients first visit. You also want to know what these clients will be worth to you for the years to come. If I said you needed to pay me $30 for a new client, but that client would spend on average $50 per visit and they would come in at least another 8 times – this means they would spend about $400 over the time they were a client with you – how often would you pay me $30? If you didn’t say every day of the week and even twice each day then you haven’t got the point.
You spend $30 to get the client, but you then make $400 from them. It’s worth it, right? That is why you test and measure. If you know this figure wouldn’t you then know if it was worth doing that campaign again or not. Plus, if you then knew that every third one of these clients would refer someone who would also spend $400 over 8 visits, that would just add to the benefit of doing that marketing again.
Test and Measure is not just for marketing. Test and Measure how you answer the phone, how you talk to clients, how you do a service, how to place products on your shelves, your Profit and Loss each month, your team members and how they perform. Test and Measure everything you can – just make sure you keep the numbers somewhere central for review and remember, don’t go into analysis paralysis. Don’t over analyse the numbers or stop everything to only test and measure – keep working on the other things too.
Keep your Test and Measuring as simple as possible because otherwise you and your team will not do it. What is measured will improve and that is exactly what I’ve found when the team have to fill in their own personal results each day. It makes them aware of where they need to concentrate on improving their performance – without us having to use the ‘big stick’ and tell them. Amazingly, the owner will also improve their performance and the results of the business if they have some simple test and measured results that they also analyse each day. These items are called Key Performance Indicators (or KPI’s). These are the indicators that will tell you how your business is running. But more on that later.
Thoughts or comments?
R.O.L.E. (Increasing your energy)
I was recently listening to an interview with a lady named Susan Burnstein who introduced me to the concept of R.O.L.E or Return On Life Energy.
What Susan was talking about was Energy Gains versus Energy Drains.
It’s an interesting concept and one that I believe we can all benefit from in our day to day lives. One of the most common things I hear is “I wish I had more energy”. I put it to you that we all have access to the same amount of energy but many of us are allowing it to be drained away, thus leaving us with the feeling of wanting more.
When you get the opportunity take a moment to think about the things that give you energy and those things that drain your energy. If you can, really feel into where in the body you feel the energy gain or drain. Not wanting to make light of what people have to do in their lives, but why would you continue doing the things that are draining your energy.
Now I am not saying you can just stop doing all of those things that drain your energy but I do believe there is probably certain things you could give up and replacing them with things that give you more energy. The incredible thing is the more time you spend doing the things that give you energy, not only do you become more productive but you increased energy then seems to create even more energy, pretty neat right.
So to gain more energy start focusing and doing those things which crate energy and avoid those things, people, environments that drain your energy. Allow yourself access to the abundance of energy that is available, if only we stop interfering with the power source.
Go out and create and amazing life, full of energy and abundance.
Take care.
