So, what does S.M.A.R.T. stand for? Specific. Measurable. Attainable. Relevant. Timely. The inclusion of all of these concepts when establishing your goals should produce a goal which will yield very definitive results. Whether they are monetary in nature, procedural, or project specific, the ability to so completely define your objectives will significantly benefit your company over time.

Here are some thoughts to consider when setting your goals:

SPECIFIC: Your goal needs to be very clearly defined. In doing so, the objective needs to be as detailed as appropriate so that there is no question as to what needs to be accomplished.

MEASURABLE: There should be mechanism built into your goal that will enable you to measure the results.

ATTAINABLE: There needs to be an element of reality introduced into the goal setting process as it makes no sense to set goals which are beyond your reach. This is a very essential component as you should only be focusing on those goals that are possible to attain.

RELEVANT: The goal should make sense in context of the company’s strategic plans, mission statement and budget. Introducing a goal which doesn’t take these into account or runs contrary to them will only cause confusion, create additional and possibly unnecessary work and divert your focus.

TIME FRAME: The deadline or time schedule for attaining the goal needs to be established and should be realistic based on the amount of effort that will have to be invested.

An example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal which takes all of these concepts into consideration is as follows:

Increasing awareness of your company and its products/services by creating a presence on the social media   sites by spending 20 minutes per day for one month setting up profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, posting relevant business information (products, events, advice, or news) and building a network of at least 50 influential contacts on each site.

As you can see from the above example, each of the concepts has been taken into consideration when formulating the goal. In an effort to ensure that you are on the right track once your goal has been set, run it by a member of your team, an advisor or someone who’s opinion that is valued to ensure that the objective is explicitly clear, concise and complete. If this is not the case, it would be better to fine tune your goal so that you can stay focused and more productively tackle the tasks that need to be addressed.

If you have any comments or questions, please contact Stephanie Shalofsky at Stephanie@theorganizingzone.com.

All three strategies require you to leverage your social capital. What I mean by social capital is your relationships and networks. All of us have relationships and networks that can be leveraged to thrive in this economy and any economy for that matter. We can think about our networks in terms of concentric circles, your inner circle consists of the 8-10 people (friends, family, colleagues) you are closest to and support you 100%. No one enters this circle automatically-you invite them. The second circle is considered your advocates. These are the people who know you, will endorse you and speak on your behalf (colleagues, clients, friends). The third circle will represent your broad network of people-these are the business associations, community organizations, faith community, volunteer associations/groups, etc. The most outer circle is everyone in your database. The idea here is to build and develop your relationships so that they become your advocates.

There are two recent experiences that illustrate how advocates make a difference in building/growing your business that I will share. I have developed relationships with an EVP and SVP at a client firm and I had to present a proposal for two additional training programs to the CEO. These two individuals became my advocates for the programs, one took the time to prep the CEO prior to the presentation and “we” successfully closed the sale within 20 minutes. The other experience involves an individual working for a staffing company who I met as a result of his predecessor raving about my work (she was an advocate without me knowing at the time) and that I was a good contact for him. Over the past two years we have developed a relationship and a few months ago I was ready to launch a new business model for group coaching programs and decided to ask for his feedback and opinions. He thought the business idea was fantastic, on target and would definitely fill a current need with unemployed individuals. He has become my advocate for the program; he talks about the program with suitable candidates and is willing to do anything to help me be successful. Now that’s an advocate!

Relationships take time to build; they are the essence of what helps businesses thrive. Take time to build meaningful relationships, begin reconnecting with people, stay in touch with those who you already consider your advocates and start leveraging these relationships and thrive in any economy!

A resource I recommend is a book written by Wayne Baker, Achieving Success Through Social Capital

Comments and questions are always welcome to the author; you may contact Carol Heady at 845-226-8047 or carol@learningandperformance.net.

How?

First, it’s important to understand the legal phrase “work made for hire.” According to Copyright Law, if you employ or commission work on your behalf, the employer or the person who commissioned the work is deemed to be the author unless the parties agree otherwise. Meaning, if you hired your web designer to do work on your behalf, technically, you own the intellectual property unless agreed otherwise. Some web developers will work into the agreement that they own all rights to the site they built for you. This is why you should thoroughly review the web development agreement given to you! It is, however, acceptable to allow the developer to display your site for his portfolio, but that is a decision you should make. Still, this further warrants an agreement between you and your developer lest you’d like to embark on an expensive journey debating whether it really was a ‘work made for hire’.

Second, invest the time required to negotiate a detailed website development agreement. Your relationship will start out very well. Promises will be made, dreams built, profits quoted. Although the relationship with your web developer is ideally long term and mutually beneficial…what if it eventually sours? As hesitant as you would potentially be to consider a prenuptial agreement prior to a marriage, the same forethought should be dedicated to this relationship - my advice is to get things down on paper. Get your exit plan in place, just in case. This plan should include ownership of the website, domain name and all the code that constitutes your site and most important, know the username and password to get into your hosting account. More on that below:

Third, try to register your own domain name and source your own hosting. Even if you ultimately choose to go with your developer’s hosting recommendation, register yourself. At any given time, you should be able to log into your webhosting, if only because you can. Do not allow your potential lack of tech knowledge to put you in the position of unwittingly handing over your business’ keys to your web developer!

What should the document include? These agreements are not standard. You could be signing your rights away. Here are the elements of an agreement that you should look out for:

• If there are definitions, make sure that the definitions are industry standard.
• Beware of the term ‘proprietary’ or ‘third party’. Developers can sometimes utilize a specific technology tool to develop your site, and while the developer has a license to legally use that software, you do not. Passing the license to you is an additional cost. Certainly the developer wants to deliver a final product to you in the most cost effective manner, so he will often not pass along that license, and ultimately you get stuck with having to purchase a costly license so your website can work properly.
• Be specific in your scope of work. Clearly outline what you want done for your website and how you want it to work like number of pages, flash, links, etc. The final quote presented by the developer should be based on a specific scope of work, to minimize surprises. Note to website developers: don’t assume the business owner understands the extent of work involved or the timeframe required to complete it. This needs to be clear.
• The domain name should be owned by you as well as any intellectual property derived from it.
• You as the business owner should retain all rights to the code.
• The website developer should clearly state if he is using his own proprietary software. The business owner should negotiate to have a non exclusive perpetual license to the software.
• Most importantly, you should be able to walk away from your developer with your code in hand. Having another developer reverse engineer the code can be very costly and in most cases, you’ll have to scrap your site and start all over again.

If it’s too late…and you find yourself in the situation referred to at the beginning of the article, you can certainly argue that you retain the rights to your site, but as someone who has seen relationships go bad, this is not a case that you’d like to start litigating. You could be jeopardizing your site - at best, your site would lie dormant until the issues are resolved. Another lengthy solution is entering into an agreement after the fact, almost like a post nuptial agreement. But, let me tell you, it is not easy to negotiate between parties that don’t want to have anything to do with each other.

A last thought….even though it may be uncomfortable to “demand” a carefully thought out agreement with your selected web developing vendor, as they say with prenups, “better to be mortified for a month than regretful forever!”

Here are some points to consider:

Consolidate Functions. Regardless of the amount of space that you have in your office, you probably don’t have room for a printer, scanner and fax machine in addition to your computer. You may want to consider purchasing an all-in-one machine that will provide all 3 functions and take up one third of the space. While you may or may not need the scanner and fax if you are just starting out, you will probably need at least one of them in the near future. In addition, with only one piece of equipment to connect to your computer, there is a higher probability that it can be positioned close to your desk thus increasing your productivity by eliminating the distractions that will be encountered on those frequent walks across the room to pick up the documents waiting for you on the printer.

Desktop or Laptop. The amount of space on and around your desk should be considered when determining the type of computer to purchase. If you have set up your office in the corner of your living room, every square inch needs to be utilized in the most effective way possible. It doesn’t necessarily mean that small space equals laptop. It does, however, mean that the habits of the person occupying the space need to be taken into consideration when making this type of purchase. For example, if you like to have the files for projects that are currently being worked on in plain sight, then you will need more desk space for these files and have less room for a computer.

Software. As a new business owner, you need to assess how you will use a particular software program to tackle a task and determine the amount of time the program will take to address the task. In some cases, you can use a program like Excel, which is already installed on most computers when purchased, to do the job of a more specialized program. For example, financial data could be tracked in a spreadsheet instead of in an accounting software program as formulas can be inserted to perform the necessary calculations and the data can be manipulated as needed. However, when choosing a program to address a specific task, it is essential that the software selected will organize your data in the most efficient manner while making the most productive use of your time.

Consultants. All businesses, whether newly created or well established, need to align themselves with vendors who can be trusted to be the expert when needed. Keeping the consultant’s contact information readily available (filed with your other key business contacts information and not buried in a pile of business cards) will prove to be beneficial when a question or issue arises. Being able to distinguish between those situations where you can fix the problem yourself from those where it is best to call in the expert is key.

It is always important to consider the best use of your time when making these decisions.

All Those Cables. As it seems like each new piece of equipment comes with at least 2-3 cords, it doesn’t take much before you have a bunch of wires crisscrossing your space. These cables can be quite the hazard and really need to be contained with either ties or covers. In addition, labeling the cords during the containment process makes it easier to disconnect and remove a piece of equipment when it is no longer needed.

Competitor’s Terms

The big question that presents itself is whether you should use your competitor’s trademark as keywords to promote your site.  For example, if you’re selling Hershey’s® chocolates, should you use Godiva® as one of your keywords in an attempt to redirect an audience searching for Godiva®, to ultimately purchase your Hershey’s®?  While this may seem like a shrewd and creatively crafty move (which all entrepreneurs need to make use of from time to time); I take a conservative approach and advise against it.  Use of another’s trademarks as your keyword can be potential infringement.  After all, you are using their trademark for your commercial advantage.  Although it can be an attractive option, if you sail this course you may be landing yourself in legal trouble.

Case law to date has gone back and forth on this issue of whether it is fair use - or a likelihood of confusion - turning primarily on traffic diversion from the trademark holder’s site, and whether it can be confusing to the consumer as well as whether the keyword is considered ‘use in commerce’.

On the opposite side, as a trademark holder, it is your responsibility to monitor your trademark. This can be done through monitoring services, or you can search for your trademark on search engines consistently to see what comes up.  An easy way to do this is set up an Alert for your trademark to see how your mark is being used in commerce.  It is not as exhaustive as a monitoring service, but it’s a good (and low cost!) start.

If you suspect that a competitor is using your mark as a keyword, you should aggressively defend your mark.  Your first course of action is to send a cease and desist to the ‘infringer’ and if that fails, search engines have policies for removing infringing material.

Ultimately, whether use of another’s trademark as a keyword for your website is considered infringement is still not clear cut.    If you do decide to use someone else’s trademark as your keyword, proceed with caution.  You may be putting yourself in a position to defend yourself against a cease and desist as well as a lawsuit.  What is certain is that the lawsuits will keep coming because interestingly enough, trademark holders get very touchy when you try to use their mark for your advantage.

In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton led a team of 27 men into the Antarctic, only to have a tragedy hit, with the sinking of their ship. He has been called “the greatest leader that ever came on God’s earth, bar none” for saving the lives of the twenty-seven men shipwrecked with him on an Antarctic ice floe. For almost two years, he led his team through a grueling ordeal. In the end, everyone got home alive and despite the hardships, they actually had a pretty good time.

After teaching this workshop for over 5 years, I still to this day have my own AHA moments. I often look at the obstacles in my own life and compare them to what he had to face. My AHA this week was that yes, I have my share of ups and downs, but I do not have to face them cold, wet and hungry. I can lift my head up every day, stand tall, smile, laugh and give hugs.

In other words I can rise to the occasion. It is not what happens to me, but how I respond to what happens that determines the quality of my life. Life is powerful, but your thoughts about life are even more powerful, and happiness is not the absence of problems. Happiness is a way of being, and I choose happiness.

Thank you Sir Ernest Shackleton, for providing the inspiration I need on a daily basis.

The system that you adopt need not be overly complicated….in fact, the simpler, the better. If not, the tendency will be to constantly postpone making new entries and filing the corresponding documentation. While it is always a good idea to seek input from your financial advisors when establishing a system for tracking your expenses, the following suggestions will provide you with a good foundation for developing a system that should work for both you and your accountant.

Some tips to consider when establishing your system are as follows:

What to do with all those RECEIPTS?

While it may be very tempting to just toss receipts on your desk and ignore them, some action is required to contain them. If not, the pile will continue to grow and spill over onto the floor. Since many receipts are typically small pieces of paper, they are easily lost. The best approach is to establish a place in your office for collecting receipts. Once you have settled on the location, then it is essential to choose an appropriate vehicle for collecting this paper. For example, an envelope in the vertical file on your desk may be the solution. Or possibly a decorative storage box on your file cabinet might be better suited to your situation.

Once you have a place to collect the receipts, it is necessary to establish a schedule for entering the information into your tracking system and filing the receipts. The frequency for addressing both tasks will be dependent upon the volume of paperwork collected during the course of a month. Hence, this may be a task that needs to be done weekly or monthly but at a very minimum should be done monthly.

How best to TRACK your expenses?

Before neatly filing away your pile of receipts, it is imperative to create a method for keeping track of your monthly expenses. The volume of information to be tracked will dictate the best method to be utilized. From the most simplistic to more complex, the choices include ledger paper and pencil, an excel spreadsheet or an accounting software package. It is probably best to start with the spreadsheet approach as the information can be easily tallied and manipulated. If you are unsure as to which method is best for your business, this is a good time to discuss the options with your accountant.

Regardless of the method selected, your expenses should be recorded each month. The information that you will want to track should include date of expense, vendor, amount, description of item/service purchased and method of payment. While the amount of time required to enter each month’s data is not significant in the big picture, the amount of time required to enter an entire year’s data at one time will be. So if you don’t address this task at regular intervals during the course of the year, you will have to dedicate a few day’s worth of time at the end of the year, in all probability when you can least afford it, to get your financial data in order.

Where to FILE all those receipts?

During your first year or two in business, an accordion folder should provide ample space for storing all of your receipts. They work well because they are self contained and do not take much space. In most cases, it is best to use an alphabetic filing system as it will facilitate retrievable at a later date. Most files come with the pre-printed labels just for this purpose.

If you have a lot of small cash register-size receipts from a specific supplier, you may want to set up an envelope with the supplier’s name clearly noted on it for them and place it in the appropriate slot in the folder. This will ensure that none of the receipts gets lost or mixed in with other papers in that same slot.

The only receipts which should not be filed immediately are those from your credit cards. These should be held until the monthly bill is received. At that time, the receipts should be collected and attached to the bill prior to payment and filing.

While the alternative to setting up a system for tracking/filing your receipts may be collecting all your receipts in a shopping bag and letting your accountant sort them out at his/her hourly rate, this definitely isn’t money well spent when you could have easily set up as system for addressing this issue yourself.

This very interesting story hit home for me. I can’t begin to tell you the number of people who come to me near tears about their experience with sub par web designers/developer. This made me wonder if people really understand what goes into a successful website?

The keyword here is successful. No man or woman in this case is an island and when it comes to developing a website. I am nothing without my team. I believe there is a recipe for creating a successful website and it is unlikely for any one person to be an expert at all of the items needed to make a successful website. In case you’re wondering the key ingredients are: design, development, web copy and marketing. If you are missing any one of these elements you may find your website lacking the success you had imagined.

But the element most closely related to my narrative above is development. The development of your website is the programming or the code - this is what makes your website function. Thankfully, poor code will not cave in your roof, but it can cost you sales and cost you money in web updates if done improperly. Someone who understands how to be a good programmer means that they test their work across multiple web browsers to ensure the site looks and functions the same for all users. A good programmer is someone who writes well-organized, clean code and uses web styles to make universal changes quickly and efficiently. The main support beam of your website is the coding done by your developer.

How do you know if you have a good developer? Just like you should interview contractors even if they are referred, you should do the following:

• Research their work.
• Ask to talk to present and former clients.
• When discussing the work with former clients, ask if they found any of their programming to be problematic.
• How long did it take to fix errors?
• Do you feel a personal comfort level? Ask their references if they feel comfortable with their relationship.
• What is their testing phase like? (If they don’t have one run the other way!)
• Ask what causes a fluctuation in the pricing?
• Inquire about your growth and if you ever decide to hire an in-house developer, will there be a problem? (This question usually shakes people up a bit, but what you are looking at is a developer who is afraid to share. This should give you a bit of a red flag.)

Some people ask - who owns the code? This question is a bit of a tough one because it is really not an easy question to answer. You may get an answer that is more confusing than the question. Instead, you may want to ask if the project you are engaging them for is a “work for hire” or will they be using any proprietary applications that may require future licensing fees. If the web application is expensive to develop, be sure there is a licensing buy out option.

Hopefully reading this blog has made you a smarter consumer when it comes to hiring a web developer.

I am going to suggest that you focus on inspiring personal success. Whatever you focus your thoughts and energy on you will get more of. So why not spend your energy and thought on being successful in times of challenge and uncertainty and guarantee yourself a positive outcome.

There are seven actions you can take that will inspire personal success that translates to business success and it costs you zero dollars and very little time.

1. Keep track of your accomplishments. Take the time to write down your accomplishments regularly. Whether it’s acquiring a new client, launching a new product, reaching a monthly sales target/goal, or completing a professional development program. Glance back at these from time to time-they will inspire you to new heights.
2. Identify and acknowledge your strengths/talents. Quite often we focus on our weaknesses and that doesn’t allow us do what we do best. Simply making a list of words or phrases (at least 10) that describe your attributes and talents will keep your focus on what you do well and why people do business with you. If you get stuck ask a friend or colleague to give you five words that describe your attributes.
3. Leverage your strengths. Your strengths are your assets; this is a time to leverage your assets. After doing the above exercise, ask yourself how can I leverage these attributes? What can I do more of that leverages my strengths? You current and prospective clients will be more attracted to you. This will have a positive impact on your business.
4. Make your personal avocation your vocation. In other words, do what you love to do. If you are unhappy at what you are doing, or aren’t feeling a sense of satisfaction, stop doing it. You might shutter at the thought of starting a new or different business in a time of less certainty but continuing to be miserable doesn’t lead to greater success.
5. Think and act abundantly. The law of abundance. There are plenty of clients for everyone. If you are not practicing the law of abundance, start now. If you believe there isn’t enough to go around there won’t be. Be abundant in your thoughts, and in your actions and you will have a more abundant business.
6. Be generous. Be generous to yourself and others. Acknowledge your successes as well as the success of others. Offer an extra bit of advice or guidance unsolicited, reassess your fee structure and consider adjustments that match the current climate (without de-valuing your services) prospective clients will appreciate it and become your advocates. The more generous we are the more we receive in return.
7. Accentuate the positive. Be mindful of your actions and accentuate the positive.

Comments and questions are always welcome to the author; you may contact Carol Heady at 845-226-8047 or carol@learningandperformance.net.

So, what do I mean by strategic alliance? A strategic alliance is a relationship that is formed to increase visibility and generate new business in a more cost effective and efficient manner. These relationships can be as formal or informal as you want. My suggestion is to start exploring these opportunities on an informal basis. It will keep it cost effective and efficient for both parties. For the purposes of this article I will focus on non-competitive alliances, they are easier to start and maintain.

The value of strategic alliances
Here are five key benefits:

1. A proven system to generate new business
2. Exponential growth in revenue
3. Increased visibility in shared markets
4. More cost effective and efficient approach to growing business, sales, and client base
5. Low cost/low risk

Finding the right alliance
There are two steps to designing your blueprint for a successful alliance. The first being assessing your Readiness Factors, and step two is identifying the “Right” alliance. I have developed a tool to help business owners to assess their Readiness Factors, which include Assets, Desire to Collaborate, Readiness to Think Big, and Building Relationships. This assessment will tell you how ready you are to begin designing your blueprint for a successful alliance.

Step two is identifying the “Right” alliance. This is where the fun begins. You want to establish the Who, What, Where, and How to find the strategic alliance. The Who and What involve identifying your current and target markets and what non-competing businesses share those markets, how visible are you in those markets, establish the goal of your alliance (is it to increase sales, is it to grow your client list, is it to introduce a new product or service), I always suggest start with who you know. Where to look: a few suggestions include focus on non-competing businesses that are selling to the same businesses or individuals, a business that has a large subscriber base (newsletter/publication) that you can contribute to by writing an article or a business that has a website that your prospects might visit and determine how each of you can leverage content, or joint packaging of non-competing products to clients, and/or discounts on a product or service to your clients. The alliance must create an exchange of value. For example a dog groomer and an electric fence company for pets creates a discount program for when each of their services are sold to shared market (prospects/clients). Both companies are selling to the same prospect, each have a client base to share, the products and services compliment one another, and this is a very cost effective and efficient way to increase sales. So How do you approach your potential alliance partner? There six things to remember: start with someone you know, present your idea and be willing to collaborate, assess your assets, determine if there is an exchange of value (win-win for both businesses), evaluate mutual readiness (refer to readiness factors), and establish your agreement or arrangement (this doesn’t have to be a formal contract unless you both agree it’s the best approach).

Creating strategic alliances is an investment in time, but from personal experience you can expect a the return on that investment in more revenue, new and better business ideas, stronger market presence, better business relationships, and will help maintain a forward momentum in your business.

Comments and questions are always welcome to the author; you may contact Carol Heady at 845-226-8047 or carol@learningandperformance.net.