Are You Working on All the Wrong Things?

Have you ever gone through your list of things to do and looked for the easiest thing to knock out first? Have you ever been moody when you’ve looked through your tasks and said to yourself, “I don’t feel like doing that one, that one, or that one?” Do you have some items on your to do list that have been there for a while (like months)?

If so, you’re not alone. However, you may be working on all the wrong things. One of the top time management secrets that smart business owners implement is to prioritize their tasks in a very special way: by the highest payback, and not the biggest sense of urgency. The hard truth is we may not be able to get to every single thing we want to do, especially those of us who are creative business owners who have an idea every minute!

You may have a lot of them captured on your to do list, and some may still be swimming around in your head. One of the ways that you can choose your opportunities and slim down that ever-growing to do list is to understand the concept of return on investment. For each task, how much money could it bring you if you did it?

Some of the items that are not urgent but incredibly profitable are often the items we’re too exhausted to do once we complete all the required client and compliance work we need to do. The successful business owner will make time for those profitable but not urgent activities. In fact, they will do them first thing in the morning before checking their email or returning calls.

Here’s an exercise to try on your own to-do list. Assign a dollar value to each task on your list in terms of revenue potential or cost savings. If you got to that task, how much could it save you or make you? Then the fun starts.

Sort your to-do list by this new dollar value column you just added. Sort the highest payback tasks to the top and the lowest payback tasks on bottom. What’s jumping out at you on the top of your list that you’re not getting to? Can you find a time on your calendar to do it this week?

When we step back, become more proactive about insisting that we get a return on our time for what we’re doing, we can make a really huge difference in our bottom line. It’s as simple as assigning some values to the tasks on our to-do list, and then re-sorting them by that value. 

However you identify them, the goal is to bring to our attention the highest potential revenue opportunities so we can act on them. Even if you only get to one more per week than you are currently doing, you’ve made wonderful progress. It may take some discipline to resist tackling the urgent tasks. When we accomplish our urgent tasks, we feel needed. We love rushing to the rescue of clients that need us.

When we attempt our high-dollar tasks, it may be a little uncomfortable, even scary. So that’s why we avoid them. Prioritizing is something we all have to do, since we live in a world that competes for our limited time. Prioritizing by highest dollar return on investment is something the most successful business owners do, even if it feels a little uncomfortable in the process.

When we do the serious work of choosing what is really going to move our business forward, we will see the changes in our revenue. If we can help you with any of your high-payback tasks, let us know.

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4 Tips to Rev Up Your Referrals

The least expensive way for just about any business to get new business is through referrals. Yet many business owners simply wait for referrals to show up while shelling out big marketing dollars on other channels. One opportunity that many businesses have, then, is to become more proactive about getting referrals. The question is how to do that most effectively, and here are four tips for your consideration.

1. Spread the word.

Make sure all your clients know three things:

1. You are taking new business.
2. How to describe what you do.
3. What type of client you work best with.

It’s not enough to simply say, “We’re looking for more work.” Everyone is so busy that when you make a request that is too generic, it gets lost. Instead, be clear about what you want:

“Hi Ms. Client. I just wanted to let you know we are taking new customers. An ideal customer for us is a retail shop that has been in business in Phoenix for about five years. Do you know anybody like that who needs temporary staffing? We’d appreciate it if you let them know about us.”

You can get the word out through a simple email or a face-to-face conversation. I’ve also seen a line or two added to the signature portion of an email, on invoices, on feedback forms, in surveys, and more.

2. Make it routine.

At some point in your customer workflow process, create a step that clearly asks for referrals. It might be at the beginning or end of a project or sale, or after 30 days of working with a new client. The key is to make it routine. Here are some examples:

a. Ask the client for two referrals as part of the business contract. Let them know it’s a standard procedure. A dentist I know asks for three referrals as part of being a client of his. His clients know up front that providing referrals is part of the relationship.

b. Ask the client to provide a personally-written testimonial letter to send to five other leaders (peers) in the same industry, assuming you do a good job, of course.

c. Ask for referrals at the end of the engagement. Make this a routine, just like getting out the final invoice.

3. Provide incentives.

Let’s take a lesson from my auto mechanic, who handed me several referral cards when I offered to post a testimonial for him on a list I am part of. The referral card is a card that the referral source puts their name on and gives to a prospect. The prospect cashes it in and gets a discounted introductory service. The referrer gets a discount on their next visit. It’s common in many industries, and something similar may work in your industry too. Be creative and think about how you might adapt something like this to your company.

4. Show gratitude.

Be sure to immediately thank your customers and other individuals who refer business to you. (It’s surprising how often this is overlooked: I once sent $100,000 of business to someone who never acknowledged it.)

Send your referral sources a nice card or letter with every referral. If they are a significant source of business for you, periodically treat them to a country club lunch, send them a gift certificate, or make a donation in their name to a favorite charity.

When you can boost your referrals, your revenue will go up while your marketing costs stay low. Try these four tips to rev up your referrals in your business.

8 Smart Steps to Fiscal Responsibility

As our businesses grow and our schedules fill with serving clients, it’s easy to overlook how our personal financial needs might have changed. Here are eight best-practice tips of millionaire business owners and how they personally protect their wealth.

1. Move your money from banks to brokerage accounts.

Instead of having their money tied up at banks, most affluent individuals hold brokerage accounts at investment companies. The advantage is that you can more easily invest excess cash in fairly low-risk interest- or dividend-bearing investments such as bonds. I’ve even seen multi-millionaire use their brokerage accounts as checking accounts.

The bottom line is your money should always be working for you. Make sure you don’t have huge amounts of cash lying around earning no interest. It’s harder these days to get a good interest rate, but not impossible, and every little bit helps.

2. Protect yourself with insurance.

I suspect everyone reading this has the requisite auto and homeowner’s insurance. The question is, are you fully covered for every contingency that could happen, and if not, are you willing to shoulder the risk? Just a few of the types of policies to consider include:

1. Personal: home, auto, health, disability, dental, life, umbrella, and many more.
2. Business: property and casualty, business services liability, director’s and officer’s liability, worker’s compensation, business interruption, auto, non-owned auto if you have employees driving for you using their own cars, health insurance for workers, life insurance for officers, and many more.

I recommend meeting with an insurance professional who can perform a risk audit to make sure you are aware of any coverage holes, especially if your business has grown significantly or your needs have changed.

3. Keep more of what you make.

There’s nothing wrong with paying the least amount of taxes that are legally required. The fourth quarter is when to make most of your tax-saving moves, so don’t wait until March or April when it could be too late.

Make sure you have a great tax adviser, and reach out to them at least once a quarter for ideas on how to keep more of what you make.

4. Hire slow, fire fast.

You’ve probably heard it before, but it’s more important than ever. It’s a good idea to run extensive background checks on all new hires (and current employees as well if you haven’t done so). A criminal background check is essential, and I’d recommend running employment verification, social security number match, education verification, and social media search (one of my most recent customer service applicants was tweeting lots of four-letter words with a known gang leader).

If your state laws allow it, I recommend running a credit check too. Risk of fraud becomes real when three things are present: 1- opportunity due to poor cash controls (which is more common in small businesses), 2- dire need, which has grown exponentially lately as life savings have been depleted and borrowing has increased, and 3- rationalization in the employee’s mind. You can really only control number one, but with a credit check and where it’s allowed by law, you can see if number two is present. Be careful, though; in many states, it’s illegal to make hiring decisions based on credit checks if the person won’t directly be handling money.

5. Create a bright future.

Pay your future self out of the earnings you make today. Set up a retirement plan so that you can maximize deductions and ensure a comfortable future for yourself.

6. Make it easy on your heirs.

It’s never a good time to think about what will happen after you’re gone. But especially if you run a business, you’ll want to not only have a succession plan in place, you’ll want to make sure someone knows enough about your operations to be able to slip in to do an orderly shutdown, a sale, or continue operations. Something as simple as not knowing your passwords and pins or where all of your accounts or contracts are can wreak havoc on your grieving loved ones, not to mention business operations.

If your personal will is not up to date and your circumstances have changed, then it’s time to revisit documents such as your medical instructions, organ donation wishes, burial preferences, and the like. Gruesome, yes. But imagine these two scenarios: 1- your grieving family and they don’t have a clue where anything is, what to do next, what you wanted, and the confusion that exacerbates the grief, and scenario 2- your grieving family who has a clear checklist of where everything is, who to call for help, what to do next, and exactly what your wishes were in these emotional times. Which one would you wish on your loved ones?

7. Pay attention to your numbers.

I hear it over and over again: the people who become millionaires are clearly on top of their operational numbers. They know their business by the numbers, inside and out.

A good accountant can help you develop the systems and reports you need to stay close to your numbers like the millionaires do. Let us know how we can help you with this.

8. Pay it forward.

When you’ve been successful, you can decide if you want to support causes that are near to your heart. This might mean helping people in need that you can relate to, volunteering, or simply providing a big tip to wait staff. People who are highly successful often create their own foundations and nonprofit organizations so that they can become champions of causes they believe strongly about.

How did you measure up on the eight tips to fiscal responsibility? If you know you have some work to do, mark it on your calendar, break it down into small manageable steps, and get started on building or protecting your financial prosperity. If we can help in any way, please feel free to call us.