Coping With Stress

Running your own business can be one of the most satisfying things you will ever achieve. It can also be one of the most stressful activities to undertake.

You can be guaranteed not everything you set out to achieve will work, and not everything you meticulously plan will pan out the way it was supposed to. There will be nights when you lay awake worrying, or thinking about what needs to be done. There is little you can do to avoid those times, but you can minimize the effect that stress will have on you, your employees and your family.

The first thing you need to learn to do is to identify what is causing the stressful situation and accept it, rather than explaining it away by blaming someone else or trivializing the issue. It might be helpful to write down the occurrences in your diary or journal, that way you can also document what you did to deal with the stress.

Think about how you deal with stress and be aware of the damage that some coping mechanisms have on you and other people, such as drinking, sleeping patterns, withdrawal from family and friends, procrastination and particularly those angry outbursts. If that’s how you typically handle your stress then it’s time to look for some new methods.

Avoid stress. Easily said than done, but some situations are avoidable. It might be a particular person that causes it; maybe you can spend less time around that person. Reduce your to do list, by reviewing what’s important and dropping off things that you don’t need to do. If you have employee’s then DELEGATE! One of the more important things we can do in business is learning how to say no. You will be amazed at how the stress level drops when we start saying no to people.

If you can’t avoid the stress then avoid the situation that causes the stress. Communicate your feelings with those around you. Compromise, look for the middle ground. Assert yourself, tell people that you are too busy to have the conversation and most important, manage your time better. Plan ahead as far in advance as you can and then try to focus on the task in hand rather than what’s on that list.

Another method to minimize that stress is to change yourself. Look at the situation that’s causing the stress from a more positive point of view; look at the benefits you will get from dealing with the problem. Don’t forget the big picture; is this really going to matter in a month or a year? Try not to be a perfectionist. The standards we set for ourselves are sometimes unachievable, so be realistic, remember you are not a superhero.

You should also learn to accept that there are things and people in our life that we simply cannot change. You cannot control the world; that’s that superhero thing again. Sometimes we just have to let the situation roll off our backs. Again easier said than done, but if you can achieve that particular skill, life will get a whole lot easier to deal with.

Ensure that you take time out for relaxation and fun! As a business owner it’s very easy to get caught up in the moment, and before you know it a week has gone by, you haven’t seen your family; you are tired, grumpy and intolerant. It happens to everyone, but is so easily avoided by penciling in time throughout the week to relax; it will put what you are doing into perspective and remind you that there is more to life than work.

Lastly and most importantly, talk to someone about your stress. It might be your partner, a colleague, your accountant even your bank manager. If you need to, talk to your GP or get counseling, if the stress seems impossible to deal with.

We want you to grow old and successful not young and washed out!

Effective Planning and Organizing

Ever get to the end of a day and felt completely frustrated that you got nothing achieved of note?

It’s a problem that everyone will experience at some point, either in our daily lives or in our business life. For small business owners in particular, this can be an easy trap to fall into. We tend to get so caught up putting out fires or rushing off on a tangent that sometimes we overlook the important stuff that we need to get done.

Here’s how to avoid it.

The first and last fifteen minutes of everyday are the most important. You need to schedule this time for yourself and no one else. If you don’t use a day planner, PDA, or diary then start, go out and buy one right now. A simple daily diary is the easiest to use if you want to stay away from electronic gadgets, and usually the easiest thing to grab and open up also. If you do use a diary and find it too cumbersome to carry around, get a smaller notebook and transfer your daily events to it. However, I tend to find that smaller diaries or notebooks can get misplaced easily.

The order of business is simple. At the start of everyday, over a coffee or whatever gets the heart started, grab your diary, or whatever you might be using and starting writing. List all of the tasks that you need to do for the day. Don’t worry too much about the order you write these tasks in, because once you are done you are going to rank their importance from 1 (being critical) to 3 (nice to do, but not really important). You can spread your ranking from 1 to 100 if you want, but my suggestion is to keep it simple and use just 3 rankings.

Depending on what sort of business you run, you may or may not have employees. If you do you will want to delegate some of these tasks out, so if that’s the case you should write who is doing this job for you next to the appropriate item. Of course it goes without saying that you need to tell your employee’s what is expected and it’s also a very good idea to teach them these same planning and organizing methods.

Throughout the course of your day you will be completing various tasks and checking them off of your list, no doubt you will also be adding to your list as things come up. It’s vital that when you do add items, you don’t rush off on a tangent and try to complete them immediately. Add them, rank them, delegate them and then focus on those priorities, the number 1’s.

Now let us move on to the end of the day. It’s time to sit down with your diary and a nice cold beer, wine or other beverage and analyze how we went for the day. You might find you have more unticked items than what you started with, you might find you have none; either way is fine as long we have been completing our tasks in order of importance.

Now here’s the fun part. Open up tomorrow’s page and transfer all of today’s unfinished tasks. You might find that many of those tasks that were important this morning are not important now, some you may not want to transfer at all. Write the appropriate entries down; rank them, delegate them, close your book and go do something fun! Tomorrow when you start again, a lot of your day’s planning will be already done…congratulations.

If we do it in a disciplined manner, planning and organizing does not need to take a lot of time, but the time we save will be immeasurable.

Social Networking....where?

So you’ve set up your twitter and facebook accounts, now what?
Well here’s a list of links to many other sites that will enable you to network with potential customers, other business’s and generally just promote yourself.

twitter.com
facebook.com
hubpages.com
shetoldme.com
www.xomba.com
www.homebasedbusiness.com
www.tipdrop.com
www.delicious.com
www.dofollowdigg.com
www.redgage.com
www.yousaytoo.com
www.spicypage.com

There are many, many more out there and I will keep adding to this list after I have tried them out and given them my seal of approval.

Social Networking....how to not do it.

Never in the history of human kind has it been so easy to reach out and touch so many people virtually instantaneously.

Whether we are using twitter or face book or MySpace or just plain old email, as far as marketing your product or service goes, the world is at your fingertips. But how to do it effectively is the question, not how to get more people to follow me, because if you do it right then the world will come to you, do it wrong then you will just become another anonymous spammer.

First of all, do not set out to target numbers. Target your message. Get it right. Sit down with old fashioned pen and paper and list who you want to get your message to. That’s right, marketing 101, identify who you want to sell to and why.
Do not make your message generic. I am not generic and neither are any of the other millions using social networking. If you want to sell your product to teenagers, make sure your message targets them specifically. I would suggest actually talking to some real life people first, ask them what they think. Trends change quickly and you need to know what’s in and what’s not. Social networking is a commentary on real life, so don't discount the actual world, get out there and see for yourself, social network marketing should be used with real world marketing.

Do not overuse social networking. How to become a spammer in one easy lesson! Your message should not be overused, mix it up, get creative and above all ration its usage. If you bombard your target market with the same message over and over again you are going to alienate them and ruin your reputation extremely quickly.

The key to social marketing is remembering that it is a privilege if some decides to follow you. Don’t take those people for granted and treat them with respect. While social networking gives marketers a huge advantage that they have never had before, it gives the consumer an even bigger advantage as they now have the power to make you yesterday’s big thing with a simple click of the mouse.

Capital Raising For Small Business Owners

Depending on where you live, who you talk to and what newspaper you read, we are currently either in a recession, about to emerge from a recession or already out of it.

Regardless, the landscape has changed for small businesses and probably irrevocably.
Whereas in the past, going to your local bank and asking for a loan to start your business was usually a fairly easy process, nowadays, it’s unlikely that you will be looked upon favorably. Now, don’t get the wrong idea here. I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t ask, but what I am suggesting is that you need a contingency plan or your business idea will not get very far. Make sure you have a good, solid plan. Check out http://bbbcubed.com for more adice on how to plan.

Consider the following.

Do I actually need any money? Can I do it with savings and cutting my startup budgets? It will depend largely on the type of business you are starting or running. A retail business is going to need a fairly large chunk of capital, but a small home based business run from a computer doesn’t need much. Ask yourself, do I need those nice, shiny new business cards?
Can I raise money from my family? It’s a risky proposition, perhaps the riskiest. My advice is to make sure some kind of legal arrangement is made and above all, treat the financing the same as if it were from a lending institution. No matter how solid the arrangement is thought, are if your business fails, the strain that will be placed on family relationships will be considerable.
Will the government give me money? Check into federal, state and local organizations such as the US SBA.

Can I fund my start up costs through credit cards? If longer term loans are eluding you, then look at credit cards, but remember, treat any credit card borrowing as strictly short term. The high interest rates will likely cripple your business if you aren’t careful. They should be used as an absolute last resource!
Finally, make sure that you have exhausted your own personal resources! It’s your business and before you ask others to risk their money on it, you need to maximize your own financial interest. Have a yard sale. Sell some shares. Sell the second auto.

Most importantly, in this brave new, financially challenging world, you need to get creative and think outside the square.

Business Planning For Success

So does everyone out there with their own internet based business, or home based business have a plan?

Do you know where you will be in 12 months? 5 years?

So many people who go into business go in unprepared and planning is something that is done in the shower in the morning. The simple reality is, planning is vital for any business; small, medium or large. In the day to day organised chaos that is out working life, usually the last thing on out mind is what we need to do tomorrow that will benefit us in a year.

At the very least a plan helps us to refocus and reflect on what we have done well and what we could have done better.

I was talking to an associate a year or so ago who had just developed his own website. He was exhausted having spent many waking hours on building and developing this site, so I asked him. "What now?" His response was now that the hard work was done, he could relax a litle.

Needless to say his business is not longer and he is back selling realestate, his old job. His mistake? He had not planned to do any marketing, or even bothered to research how or who he was going to market to, he had no idea how he would support himself while his business was in the early stages. A fatal mistake.

So do you have a plan? If you do, when was the last time you pulled it out, sat down and read it? If you have no idea what i'm talking about then pop along to www.bbbcubed.com for some free advice, tips and a plan template.

Plan today for tomorrow and your business and life will go a whole lot more smoothly!