Simple Steps to Effective Delegation Dealing with too many tasks? Too much stress? A long to-do list is a common problem for owners of creative agencies. Your cluttered desk filled with unfinished work, inbox with thousands of unread emails, and task manager full of overdue items is taking up too much mental space! It’s distracting. Then you start to procrastinate, lose focus, your productivity drops, stress increases. You’re spiraling into business owner burnout. It's time to take back control of your work! The one thing that you can do to ensure that you have the time and energy to complete your tasks is to get on top of your to-do list. How to do this is no secret, … [Read more...]
Small Business Articles on Performance Measures
Read small business articles from the Anchor Advisors team for best practices on building and improving your organization's performance measures. Go back to all Articles »
What Does a Successful Business Need? Long-Term Rules for Success
Sustaining Growth for the Long-Term. When you first started your creative agency, it was new and exciting. You built it up, created the systems that worked for you, and each new client added to your profits. Now, as your business is growing, you’ve found yourself asking how to create long-term success. How does a growing business maintain momentum? Is itinancial acumen? Great systems? Top-knotch People? State-of-the-art business premises? 12 Leadership rules for a successful business You want to know how to lead and sustain a successful business? I’ve put these rules together to help you. Focus on business strategy and getting the most out of your team In order to … [Read more...]
What Does a Successful Business Need? Long-Term Rules for Success
How to Sustain a Successful Business When you first started your creative agency, it was new and exciting. You built it up, created the systems that worked for you, and each new client added to your profits. Now, as your business is growing, you’ve found yourself asking how to create long-term success. How does a successful business maintain momentum? Financial acumen? Great systems? People? State-of-the-art business premises? A firm’s true success isn’t just based on what it does, but how it does it. Integral to this is how you lead your firm. Leadership is about transforming your strengths into competitive advantages for your company. It is also about knowing what … [Read more...]
Knowing your “stage of growth” to maximize your business success
When you’re deep in the day-to-day of your own business, you might be surprised to find that most B2B service businesses follow the same “lifecycle.” Including yours! Recognizing this is the first step toward reaching your next level of success. Because it means you can follow a blueprint of what other business owners before you have done to find their fortune. It begins with pinpointing exactly where your business is currently in the lifecycle of a business. In other words, what stage of growth your business is in. What are the stages of growth? There are four stages of growth that every business falls into: 1. Startup Phase 2. Growth Phase 3. Stabilization Phase … [Read more...]
“Is this your best work?”
I recently read a story about an editor who worked on a book manuscript. She finished editing it and turned it in to the publisher, who paid her the agreed-upon fee. Later she found out that the publisher chose not to publish the book and she was crestfallen. “All that work for nothing,” she said. But of course it wasn’t for nothing; she got paid her normal fee. So why was she so disappointed? I bet this very situation plays itself out in your business, too. Maybe you don’t publish books, but I’ll bet your team members write reports, develop presentations or proposals and turn them into you only to have you rewrite them, edit over them or not even use them. Yes, they get paid for that … [Read more...]
Why is my business growth stuck? Natural barriers to growth in the business lifecycle.
Just like children, businesses grow through predictable phases. We start life as baby startups, then progress to raging growth companies, before settling into a more stable “adult” phase. But as we cross each of those growth stages things change -- and if we don't change with them our growth can get stuck. Here’s my version of this story (based mainly on the growth of B2B service businesses). Baby startup Once upon a time, you had an idea. It wasn’t your first idea, you’ve had many business ideas, but this one came at a time when you were feeling particularly frustrated (or desperate) and needed a change. So you started working on your idea, and before you knew it, you were in business … [Read more...]
The key to organic business growth: Don’t let your business get stagnant
"What is the difference between a living thing and a dead thing? In the medical world, a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don't change, you die. It's that simple. It's that scary." - Leonard Sweet Let's face it. The last four or five years have not been boom years for small business. If your business is growing; well done. You are beating the averages. But for most businesses with 20 or fewer employees, while we are back to pre-recession levels, growth has been elusive. There are loads of reasons for this, many of which are beyond our control. But one of the strengths of being a small business is that we actually … [Read more...]
Top 5 Predictions for Small Business in 2015 (and how to prepare)
Based on the broad economic indicators 2015 is shaping up to be a terrific year for the US economy. The question is, for most business owners, "What will that mean for mybusiness?" A robust economy generally means that our customers have more money to spend, so our sales pipelines might start to really move again. But all that demand can also drive up our costs; and that can mean that we end up working harder to make the same money. While I don't have a crystal ball, I do have an opportunity to see inside a number of real businesses. Working from that angle, I've drawn some conclusions about where I see businesses going in 2015. Here they are: My 5 Bold Predictions for 2015: 1. More … [Read more...]
How do I know it’s time to hire?
One of the most agonizing decisions that a business owner has to make is deciding when to hire a new employee. It's a huge risk! You're bringing on additional salary, you have the cost and distraction of the search, there's training the new person... And what if they don't work out? It's a difficult process On the other hand, if you have work coming in and paying clients, that have given you their money, but you don't have enough people to service them, you have a different problem. You're risking disappointing customers, losing out on referrals and you end up spending your nights and weekends digging yourself out of that hole. So how do you know if it's time to hire a new employee … [Read more...]
Reality Check: What Is Social Media Doing For You?
When social marketing was first introduced, we all jumped onboard just because it was thing to do. We were told it would do great things for our businesses - but we didn't really know. It was giant experiment that brought about one of two results: Some businesses cashed in big time. Some businesses saw no or little return. If your businesses has seen a return - as in, you figured out a way to convert online relationships into actual business - kudos! Seriously, that is awesome! But if you haven't seen a return, it's time to regroup. Is your social strategy sound? Are you engaging in best practices? If so, and you aren't seeing a return, it's time to move on - apply those … [Read more...]