Roy's Blog: July 2019
July 29, 2019
How a small business can be better than their competitors
How a small business can be better than their competitors.
If you own or operate a small business, how much time do you spend developing your business strategy? If you’re like most small business owners, not much.
Every small business leader is busy working IN their business; they don’t necessarily spend enough time working ON their business.
I often hear “I don’t have time to plan, I’m too busy running my business”, or “Everything is so unpredictable these days I don’t see the point.” They are consumed by day-to-day priorities and crises and have little time and energy left to develop a strategy for their business.
In addition, developing a strategic plan is often viewed as an expensive, complicated and time consuming activity that is an interruption to the “normal” flow of business.
The truth is that every business needs a strategy; otherwise progress can’t be measured and success never achieved.
Building your strategy doesn’t have to be a complicated time consuming exercise; I have developed an approach that results in having your strategy in not more than three days, and you can begin executing it on the fourth.
To not have a plan is to aimlessly bump and grind along, accepting whatever performance you can deliver.
My strategic game plan — SGP — makes it easy for you to plot your future. It can be created in less than 2 days with your small business leadership team in an informal and fun setting.
It’s called a ‘game plan’ because the focus is to build a just about right direction that can be executed rather than waste time trying to create the perfect plan which looks good on paper but no more.
My process is based on discovering the answers to 3 questions; the answers define the strategy.
#1. Growth — HOW BIG do you want to be?
Do you want $1 million in revenue within 24 months or do you want to be more aggressive and go for $5 million?
Most planning processes end with financial results. They calculate the growth results of executing the strategic direction chosen.
My process starts with your growth intentions, and builds the strategy from HOW BIG you want to be. The reason is simple: more aggressive growth goals require a more aggressive — and risky — strategy, and more moderate growth goals need a more incremental — and less risky — strategy.
The traditional planning approach forgets that there is an extremely tight relationship between revenue growth and strategic intent; my strategic game plan doesn’t and that’s what makes my approach DiFFERENT than others.
#2. Customers — WHO do you want to SERVE?
You have a goal to grow revenue 25% annually over the next 36 months. The next question is where are you going to get it? Where are you going to invest your scarce resources of time and money?
You have a choice here; customers are not all created equal and you need to focus on those who have the potential of satisfying your growth goals and that leverage the core competencies of your business.
It boils down to selecting a group of customers who collectively have the potential to generate the revenue you have decided to go after.
To get the right answer to this question requires an intimate understanding of the various customers you serve. You can’t choose the customer group to generate the revenue you covet if you don’t understand the propensity of your various customer segments to buy from you — discover their secrets and success will follow.
#3. Competitors — HOW will you compete and WIN?
It would be nice if you were the only provider of products and services to the customer group you’ve chosen, but that’s not likely to be the case. There is likely to be healthy aggressive competitors targeting the same customers you want to target, so the challenge you face is to determine how you will differentiate your organization from all others you will be competing with.
Why should people choose your organization when they have other choices available? What makes your team special in view of the alternatives available?
If you can’t give your chosen customers relevant, compelling and unique reasons why they should buy from you and not your competitors then unfortunately you have no other option but to compete by offering lower prices than everyone else, which is rarely a viable long term strategy for a small business with limited economies of scale and scope.
HOW to WIN is intended to explore the competencies of your organization that you can exploit to gain a sustainable competitive advantage over others who compete with you for the customers you’ve chosen to serve — the WHO.
My method is to create the ONLY statement that defines precisely what you and only you provide the customers you are targeting.
SGP soundbite — The final step in my process is to integrate the answers to all three questions as the high level summary of the strategic intent you’ve chosen.
“We will (HOW BIG) by focusing our scarce resources on (WHO to SERVE). We will compete by (HOW to WIN).”
Here’s an example:
“We will grow sales revenue by 25% over the next 36 months by serving the needs of four seasons vacationers in Washington State. We will compete and win by being the only organization creating personalized experience packages that incorporate the many activities that Whistler has to offer.”
The traditional business planning process has its limitations for small business. It generally requires more time than the small business leader has to devote to the task, and it costs more than most small businesses are prepared to pay.
3 questions; 3 answers that will define an effective strategy for your small business because it recognizes the special challenges that small businesses face.
Give it a try.
Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series
- Posted 7.29.19 at 01:06 am by Roy Osing
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July 27, 2019
6 ways to build your digital brand on a small budget
People research businesses online before deciding to make purchases and therefore creating an appealing digital brand that stands out from competitors is crucial to your success. If you have a modest budget and are overwhelmed by the cost of marketing, don’t panic. It’s possible to build brand awareness and increase exposure without a lot of resources.
Here are six cost-effective marketing techniques that will help you grab and hold the attention of your online customers.
Share compelling human stories
In order to create long lasting relationships with your customers you have to declare what makes your brand different. People drive brands; separate yourself from the rest by revealing something special about your company.
Creating opportunities for more personal interactions with your customers will encourage a sense of trust. People generally feel trust as they get to know someone, and they do this by sharing stories. Other brands will seem like just a logo when your company shares stories that emphasize human elements like vulnerability, honesty and emotion.
Instagram is a great platform for storytelling. Use ‘Instagram Stories’ to share video narratives about why you started your business, testimonials from happy customers or behind-the-scenes footage of your team or product.
You can also try content related to your product. YETI, for example, is an outdoor sporting company whose series of videos highlight human stories with values that align with their company’s lifestyle goals.
Collect and distribute user-generated content (UCG)
Inexpensive and engaging content doesn’t always have to come from you. UCG can promote your business and drive brand awareness. There are many ways to invite UGC, contests are one of the simplest.
Designing an effective online contest is as easy:
1. Identify your goal: what type of content do you need? Customer videos? Photos? Tweets?
2. Pick a prize that is attractive enough to entice people to submit
3. Create a unique hashtag to monitor submissions and the conversation around your contest.
4. Promote your contest and clearly articulate the rules (I.E.: ‘mention the company name and hashtag to enter’)
5. Select the winners and share their submissions on your brand profile
Greeting card company Boomf, asks consumers to capture their loved ones’ reactions for a chance to win as well as be featured online. This means they have an endless stream of content without needing to invest a lot of resources.
Collaborate
Creating co-branded content is a low-cost way to establish a partnership with a new business and, a new audience. Collaborating with a partner allows you to share resources and expand your reach by accessing your partner’s followers while exposing a new audience to your brand.
Working with another company sets you apart from other brands by exemplifying your business’ sense of community, partnership and team-spirit: qualities not always associated with online brands. In addition, collaboration allows both parties to hone their strengths and get help with weaker points.
Vlog
Vlogging is like blogging but better because it features video. Videos resonate more than static photos because they involve action, visuals, sound and information delivered in a personal way.
Vlogs are an excellent way to deliver high quality recorded content that emphasizes your brand’s knowledge (a ‘buyer beware’ video, for example).
If you focus on specific and local information that directly affects your customers, your vlog will be more useful than the brand-next-door who delivers generic, international information. For example, an accountant might vlog about changes to state taxes that directly affect his clients.
Reuse content
Once you have successful content you can repurpose it by presenting it in a fresh new way. For example:
Articles: If you have content with multiple tips, you can repurpose those tips into separate vlog posts.
Infographic: Present information as an image by designing an infographic from your old content.
Video: Make an animated video with narration that mirrors the original.
Facebook post: present tips in individual Facebook posts. Create a call-to-action, driving your fans back to your website.
Twitter tweets: use key takeaways as new tweets, include your website URL and account within the 140 character limit.
Join online conversations
A great way to increase brand awareness is to add value to online conversations by offering your opinion, advice or thought-leadership. To further enhance your credibility within your industry, you can also create and share valuable, relevant content to industry groups on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc… If you can’t find a suitable group for your business, start your own!
While it might seem daunting, with these tips, and a little guidance from a digital branding service, you are ready to begin building a knockout digital brand (without breaking your bank).
— Natasha Ponomaroff is the Senior Marketing Director of Instasize – a content creating tool kit for anyone editing photos and online content on mobile. A weekly contributor on the site’s blog, Natasha tracks social media trends and updates the millions of “creatives” who are currently using Instasize to curate awesome online content. When she isn’t writing up the latest trend, Natasha is overseeing a team of 10 over at the Instasize HQ – ensuring that the marketing content on the app’s various social platforms is ready to go. Visit Natasha on LinkedIn
- Posted 7.27.19 at 04:04 am by Roy Osing
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July 26, 2019
6 incredible exercise tips for teens
Staying fit is very important to live a healthy life. You don’t have to spend hours in the gym or starving yourself to remain fit. Simple and regular exercises or any other physical activity can help you become fit and healthy. Regularity is essential. It’s advisable to add exercise in your daily routine.
You can opt for running, join some sports team, swimming or doing a regular workout in the gym. Regular physical activities not only keep you fit and healthy but would also help you in feeling good about yourself and live a happier life.
As per Dr. James Kojan MD, Physical activities doesn’t mean that you have to be harsh with your body. You can always opt for some fun activities, like playing football, basketball, etc.
When we enter teenage, our body undergoes various physical and hormonal changes. It’s the stage in the life cycle which bridges the gap between childhood and adulthood. Most of the kids start deciding as per their own preference. It becomes more important for them to add regular exercise in their regime and follow a healthy lifestyle.
To get that perfect body shape, many teens start taking rigorous work out sessions or follow the exercise routines available online. Many times, these routines are not teenage friendly.
Being health cautious is very good. No matter whatever is your motto behind doing regular exercise, you should not ignore the safety factor. Below we have shared some exercise tips that would help you achieve your fitness goals.
Start with Fitness Goals
Setting a goal is very important. A goal would give teens an idea of what they want to achieve with exercise. Different teens have different fitness goals as far as exercise is concerned. Some want to add bulkiness to their body; some may want to reduce fat; others might want to increase their speed and flexibility, etc.
Once you have set your final goal, you may go for setting small sub-goals which would finally lead you to your main goal. It’s advisable to start with smaller and achievable goals. For example, running 2 km in a day or doing 10 push-ups, etc. This would not only increase your motivation level but would also help you in achieving your fitness goal without harming your body.
Always Think Positive While Exercising
It’s important to have a positive attitude while exercising. Positivity helps in keeping away the negative thoughts. One of the best and easy way to remain positive while exercising is to involve yourself in the physical activity that you like.
This may be swimming, playing any kind of sport, dancing, etc. Many people prefer company while exercising.
You can always invite your friends to play outdoor games with you, or you can also have your gym group. This would not only keep you active but would also help in doing exercise regularly. Another way to add positivity is by showing your friends and relatives how fit you are becoming day by day.
You can easily do this by updating your profile or posting your recent pics on social media. Likes and positive comments on your post would not only make you feel good about yourself but would act as a motivating factor to work harder and achieve your fitness goal.
Before Exercising Workout (Help Protect Against Injury)
Before you start to exercise, always go for a warmup. Stretching is advisable before going for a run, running on a treadmill for a few minutes before starting a workout in a gym are a few examples of easy warm-ups. These mild exercises warm up the body muscles and help in preventing injury during exercise sessions.
Stretching helps in increasing the flexibility of joints and muscles. Good trainers always recommend stretching after the completion of workout sessions, as it helps in relaxing muscles.
Stay Focused on Your Breathing
Breathing plays a very important role in exercise. It holds power to make or break your entire fitness regime. Whether be it any yoga posture or any other physical exercise, it’s important to know when you should breathe in or breathe out. Exertion part of any exercise is always accompanied by breathing out.
Revering breath may result in nausea and in extreme cases, fainting. Hence, having complete knowledge about the forms, postures, do’s and dont’s of the exercise is very important. If you are a beginner, it’s advisable to start your physical training under professional guidance.
Don’t Overdo It
Many a times teens stretch their body to extreme limits and end up with some kind of muscle injuries. Physical exercise is very important to remain active and fit. But you should be aware of where to draw the line.
Overtraining may harm your body. Just remember in the teen years, your body is still growing hence, excessive pressure may harm your body growth. These are the reasons that teen should avoid carrying heavy weights as it may result in disruption of growth plates.
Reward Yourself to Stay Motivated
One of the best and easiest way to motivate yourself to do regular exercise is through rewarding yourself. Set a goal for yourself, and once you achieve it, reward yourself. You may set a goal for 20 push-ups, and once you achieve it, you may reward yourself by buying a gift for yourself.
If you are planning to follow a regular exercise regime, you can always start with some basic exercises. This may be jumping ropes, climbing stairs, going on cycling with your friends, etc. The primary aim is that you should do some kind of physical activity daily for at least 15-20 min without stopping. Be healthy and live a healthy lifestyle.
— Jessica Ann has written many blogs across the spectrum, but specializes mainly in weight loss and dieting. With several years in the field, Jessica has been helping people get healthy and fit and is dedicated to providing information for those who need it.
- Posted 7.26.19 at 04:14 am by Roy Osing
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July 22, 2019
8 easy things you can do to make your day better
Bealach na Bà, Applecross, Scotland
8 easy things you can do to make your day better.
Every day we get up — a good thing btw — and our day begins.
Most of us have a plan for the day. It might be a formal schedule of events and appointments with a timetable or it may simply be a vague idea of what we might do depending on circumstances and how we feel as the day progresses.
Regardless of the precision and granularity of our daily outlook, there are ways to make it more gratifying and rewarding so that we can look back over what we’ve done and say “WOW! what a great day! I can’t believe what I got done.”
Here are 8 ideas to harvest everything possible from your vertical 12 hours or so.
1. Focus. Focus. Focus.
Focus on every task; pretend that every single thing you do is the ONLY thing you will do. Laser like attention with no distractions will enable you to achieve the maximum amount possible with the best results.
Beware of multitasking; it’s a great way to avoid getting anything done. Flitting from one task to another may make you feel like you are making progress, but when you look back on your day you’ll find that YES you were busy, but NO you weren’t productive.
2. Squeeze every last morsel
Squeeze every bit of value from each task you perform during the day. This is an issue of superficiality versus thoroughness; shallow versus deep.
The best days ever are when you mine as much benefit from each task as you can. Rather than cut lunch prematurely short with a friend or associate, for example, take that extra 15 minutes to finish your conversation and enjoy the relationship.
And instead of rushing through a project to deliver the minimum expected, take extra time to create something different which might surprise the intended recipient.
3. Break away from your routine
Look for an opportunity to break away from how you normally do things and entertain yourself with an unplanned surprise.
We are all creatures of habit and tend to repeat past behaviour particularly when it has yielded good results. The problem is, you can get bored with yourself when you conform to past thinking and practices — mix it up and get more out of a moment. It will really boost your energy level and make you happier.
I did this constantly in the many presentations I gave on my BE DiFFERENT or be dead work. I would always change something, like the stories I would use to make a point or the language I would use to describe one of my concepts. I did it for myself so I would enjoy what I was doing. And staying fresh myself was an almost certain guarantee that my audience would be entertained.
4. Stop juggling!
Don’t take on too much. A daily plan with 10 things to do will likely fail. I’m a fan of selecting not more than three tasks to take on; having too many balls in the air can be deadly with little being accomplished on any particular task.
When your funnel for the day is too full, you may sweat a lot but your achievement level is low.
And under no circumstance brainstorm on anything, as the result will be an agenda chockablock full that tends to be frustrating with the consequence that your day underwhelms rather than excites you.
5. Have a beer
Your beer could actually be a beer if you have the luxury of having few obligations or it could be a “beer-like” relaxation moment — you should plan them onto your day — where you step back and take a deep breath before moving on.
Charging through your day without having a ‘beer moment’ will not only leave you exhausted and unfulfilled today, it will also leave you completely unprepared emotionally and physically for your next day.
6. Plan for the unexpected
Target to finish an hour early; if you’re an hour late you’ll be right on time. Remember that each day will have it’s fair share of unexpected events; unpredictable things that will require you to deviate from your plan.
To accommodate this daily dynamic you need to build capacity into your day so that you can respond and maintain your momentum.
What you don’t need is to be up against the clock. This stress will be THE deterrent to achieving joy from your day.
My approach is to be done by mid-afternoon. If I am, GREAT! I earned some beer moments; if not, I still have time to finish what I started.
7. Don’t clutter your evenings
Don’t fill your evenings with much; it puts too much stress on your day. It’s noon and you’ve hit a roadblock that will take more time than you’ve expected so panic — and unhappiness — kicks in.
You will never successfully complete the task if you’re stressing about the dinner engagement you have arranged with a client, for example. As a matter of fact you will probably screw that appointment as well.
So balance your day with your evening if you want to get the most out of both.
8. Be crazy
Do something outrageous during your day. Off the wall! This achieves two things: one, it is an amazing source of energy, and two, it surprises people around you and gives them a (hopefully positive) different perspective of who you are.
Doing what is not a normal dimension of your persona is a renaissance for your day; it’s an injection of adrenaline that feeds your creative juices and has an amazing impact on the balance of your day.
Again, this is all about intervening on yourself; finding a way to break the normal trend you assume to surprise yourself. Breaking your norms will definitely enhance how you feel about your day.
Having a good day doesn’t have to be a formidable task. If you try a few of these ways to brighten one of your days, I guarantee you will be able to put together a run of them in no time at all.
Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series
- Posted 7.22.19 at 04:37 am by Roy Osing
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