Beth Goldstein, Edge Institute Branding, Business Growth, Business Planning, goal setting, Marketing, Sales, Uncategorized

Bloginar Weekly Lesson Eight: Working ON vs. IN Your Business

One of the biggest dangers for any business is to be too focused on the day-to-day activities (working IN the business) and not thinking about the big-picture, long-term strategy (working ON the business). Below are tips that you can use to ensure you’re working ON the business.

    1. Hold yourself accountable by creating a roadmap that has clear and measurable goals (SMART goals) with milestones and targets that you can continually evaluate progress against.
    2. Create a dashboard that shows all of the key business drivers that impact your business and keep it front and center – perhaps make it your screensaver (sorry dogs and kids) or a document that you review daily. This should also include benchmarks so you view changes (both positive and negative) over time.
    3. Create an advisory board that you commit to reporting to on a quarterly basis. During each meeting, work with them to review your achievement of the SMART goals that you’ve already identified along with the dashboard measures that you use to analyze progress. This should be comprised of respected colleagues who are familiar with your industry and who are also honest and forthright enough to hold you accountable.
    4. Conduct an annual business assessment. You can do this internally, with your board, or by hiring an outside expert who will give you a clear and objective view of your business to ensure you stay on track.
    5. Join a CEO group and commit to attending it regularly and consistently.
    6. Conduct an annual survey to ensure you’re benchmarking your performance each year and measuring positive progress as well as areas where you’ve fallen short of your target.
    7. Create incentives to celebrate with your team when benchmarks are met.
    8. Great ideas and growth come from all members of your team and should be openly praised, acknowledged and rewarded. If getting your team involved is an option… then allow them to work with you to grow your company.


Weekly Lesson Eight (Try this…)

Using the checklist above as a guide, write down two action steps that you can take to ensure you are working ON the business and not IN it.

Beth Goldstein, Edge Institute Branding, Business Growth, Business Planning, goal setting, Marketing, Sales, Uncategorized

Bloginar Weekly Lesson Seven: Personal vs. Business Goals

Separating your business goals and interests from your personal ones can be challenging. When you act on an opportunity and it’s good for one but not the other… this can cause great harm to your business and/or your personal life. A few months ago I was in a local jewelry store with my son. He needed to have his new watch resized (it was a present from his sister and he was excited to wear it). I knew it was a simple and quick request so we popped into a jewelry store that we had passed by many times before, but hadn’t been inside due to its poor location. The holiday spirit was not alive in this shop. When we entered this really tiny shop (so small you have to make an effort to overlook customers) the owner somehow managed to completely ignore our presence. It was rather awkward standing a few feet away from him and being totally ignored but he was with a customer (who was having some very expensive jewelry appraised) so we were patient.

After five very long and uncomfortable minutes he finally managed to look up and tell us he would be with us shortly. Lesson #1 – if your store is no wider than 10 x 10, at least say hello to entering prospects (Duh!)

When he finally allowed us to explain the reason for our visit, he had the audacity to tell us that he “didn’t feel like doing this today.” Seriously, you just can’t make up this stuff. He explained that since it was the day before Christmas (actually, it was two days before Christmas) that he was simply too busy. Was this a good business decision or one that he made based on his personal interests? He didn’t feel like working any more than necessary.

Honestly, how hard was it to help us with this simple project? Sure, it was only a $10 repair, but a $10 customer today can quite often be a $100 or $1,000 customer tomorrow. Large client projects rarely just land on your desk…. Success is about building relationships. However, he made it clear that we were NOT a priority of his (i.e., take your business elsewhere). I guess he’ll never know if we’re in the market for a 5-carat diamond pendant (his loss!)

How do you decide which opportunities have potential and which should be ignored because, erh, you’re not in the mood to follow up or it doesn’t fit into a personal objective? Answering this requires being very careful in your selection of opportunities to pursue. You have to look at each opportunity on its own merit but it must meet one key criteria – it must align with your business goals, in some shape or form. You don’t want to might miss a great business win but you don’t want to get too distracted on the road to success.

Weekly Lesson Seven (Try this…)
Answer the following questions honestly. If you aren’t pleased with your response, think about what changes you need to make to improve the situation, for your benefit as well as the benefit of your company.

How tightly aligned are you business and personal goals?

Is what is best for the business NOT necessarily best for you? If so, what do you need to do to make this work?

Will your current role and personal goals need to change to get your business to the next stage of growth?
If yes, how will you handle this?

Are you willing to make the changes necessary to grow your firm?

Beth Goldstein, Edge Institute Branding, Business Growth, Business Planning, goal setting, Marketing, Sales

Bloginar Weekly Lesson Six: Stages of Growth: Success, Takeoff & Maturity

Last week’s lesson focused on the challenges business owners face in the early stages of growth. The famous psychologist, Abraham Maslow once said, “One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.” If you choose growth and your business is more established, you’re likely worrying less about daily survival, and the skills and expertise that you need are more focused on creating processes, systems and managing your team.

The Third Stage, based on The Five Stages of Small Business Growth article by Neil Churchill and Virginia Lewis, is known as the Success Stage. At this point you have proven that you are sustainable (at least for the short term) and have two key opportunities for your business. You can either decide that you want to “Sustain” the level of stability and profit that you have achieved (many mom-and-pop operations fall into this category and are happy to remain where they are) or you can choose a more solid “Growth” trajectory and exploit your achievements to expand even more dramatically.

The decision you make at this stage has a huge impact on how you run your business. The key challenge you face if you decide to sustain your success is that you need to manage your competition properly to ensure you can maintain market share, and you must be able to commit the time to invest in a solid, continued growth. However, if you choose the “Growth” path you must ensure that you have the money, the systems and the team in place to take your business to the next level. At this point the business becomes less about the owner and your personal goals. The quality and diversity of your team now becomes a key driver in your success. In addition, you must have the systems and controls in place to manage the team and the business and be comfortable and adept at delegation. This stage is a key turning point for many business owners.

The Fourth Stage is known as Take-off. At this stage you are off and running and you need key assets such as money, as well as a strong team that can manage a company that is now becoming more complex. You will need to delegate because as you grow the balancing act between growing too fast and running short on cash becomes quite tricky. It’s at this stage that the original team (sometimes even the founder) may slowly disappear, either voluntarily or by force to ensure the business can operate on its own.

Finally, the Maturity Stage is one where the organization looks quite different than it did when it first
launched. The main drivers of success are managing the systems for the business, ensuring the team is qualified and the business can maintain its position in the market. It’s important at this stage to avoid obsolescence by not being too bureaucratic in nature nor losing sight of your brand value and being undermined by disruptive innovators (those young Turks at the initial stages of business not bogged
down by rules and regulations).

Weekly Lesson Six (Try this…)
If you’re in the later stages of growth, you need to make decisions that impact your ability to separate your company’s goals from your personal goals, skills, interests and expertise. Consider the challenges below and if you are facing one of these, write down one action that you can take in the next two weeks to improve your situation.

The quality and diversity of the team are critical to success and we don’t have the right mix.
Action to Improve Situation:

We do not have a strategic plan in place or we have one but don’t use it regularly
Action to Improve Situation:


We do not have systems and controls to support, measure and manage our performance
Action to Improve Situation:

Beth Goldstein, Edge Institute Branding, Business Growth, Business Planning, goal setting, Marketing, Sales, Uncategorized

Bloginar Weekly Lesson Five: Stages of Growth Existence & Survival

In this week’s lesson, I am going to summarize the first two stages of business growth so you can better understand the drivers of success and how they impact your company. However, I recommend you read the timeless article, The Five Stages of Small Business Growth by Neil Churchill and Virginia Lewis, and carefully consider what stage your business is at, and most importantly, what the implications are for growth.

During the First Stage, referred to as Existence or known as the Startup Phase, it is common that the owner/founder does it all. If there are no other members of the team, then it is critical that the founder be able to manage every function of the business from sales to operations and product development. Cash is tight at this stage and there’s a tight alignment of business and personal goals. The key challenges the business faces include:

    • Identifying and obtaining customers
    • Delivering your product or service
    • Ensuring cash flow
    • Determining if you can even expand from this initial launch stage

Managing a team, doing heavy strategic planning or implementing sophisticated systems are usually not critical, as you are in true launch mode.

The Second Stage is referred to as Survival. In many ways this stage isn’t that much different than the first stage since you are still heavily reliant upon the owner and perhaps now a small team to do all of the work. There continues to be a delicate balance between revenues and expenses with cash flow challenges impacting your growth. The owner and the business are still tightly integrated and you likely don’t have too many sophisticated systems in place to manage the business. This begins to change at the next stage.

The skills required to lead through each of the different stages of business are really quite different. At every stage, being able to recognize opportunities (getting “lucky breaks”) is critical, and what you might consider to be a lucky opportunity at one stage will seem different in another, since the ability to seize the opportunity will vary at each of these stages. That’s why it’s critical to recognize the different strengths and capabilities needed such as:

    • Developing a superior product/service offering
    • Selling the product
    • Juggling and controlling multiple tasks

Weekly Lesson Five (Try this…)
If you’re in the early stages of growth, you need to make important decisions about the future of your company and your skills, interest and expertise. Consider the challenges below and if you are facing one of these, write down one action that you can take in the next two weeks to improve your situation.

As the owner, I struggle to delegate activities and responsibilities.
Action to Improve Situation:

Our business is constantly struggling with cash flow challenges.
Action to Improve Situation:

My business and personal goals are intertwined.
Action to Improve Situation:

Beth Goldstein, Edge Institute Branding, Business Growth, Business Planning, Marketing, Sales

Bloginar Weekly Lesson Four: The Entrepreneurial Moat

Growth is challenging for all businesses, and of course the challenges you face tend to be quite different depending upon the stage your company is at. If you’re a new, emerging company, then you might be struggling on a day-to-day basis with concerns about driving enough cash into the business and paying your vendors (and employees) on time. You’re probably hoping that you get a lucky break that helps take you to the next stage. You’re wearing a multitude of hats and working non-stop to keep all the balls in the air.

However, as you grow and the business becomes more stable (and you get better at recognizing these lucky opportunities), your concerns will likely begin to take another form. You will always be thinking about driving revenue (that never goes away), but you should also be concerned now about how to control and manage the growth that you’re experiencing. Sounds like a “good problem,” right? Sure, it’s better than the alternative, yet significant growth can be just as big a problem as not growing quickly enough or getting off the ground. Why? Because if you don’t or cannot manage your growth, you can face serious cash flow challenges, unhappy customers or a loss of control over your company’s destiny. It is possible to grow too fast and not be able to sustain or manage what you have created, which can lead to serious consequences.

There’s a classic article written about this very topic, published in the Harvard Business Review back in 1983 entitled: The Five Stages of Small Business Growth by Neil Churchill and Virginia Lewis. This is required reading for many of my entrepreneurs because the article, while almost 30 years old, contains lessons that haven’t changed, even as the nature of many companies, the marketplace and various industry sectors have all evolved tremendously in the same time period (e.g., the Internet, social and mobile

The Entrepreneurial Moat
I’ve often referred to these five stages as the Entrepreneurial Moat because there’s an enormous LEAP that has to be made going from the early stages of a business to the later stages of success and take-off. Business owners must become leaders of their organization or step aside to allow the organization to develop its own personality. A disconnect between personal goals and business goals can be a challenge for many entrepreneurs, and many have to choose either to learn the skills of running a very different organization than the one they started, or leave the organization because they simply love the early, startup phase that has fewer people, systems and processes and they can keep their hands in all aspects of the business.

Weekly Lesson Four (Try this…)
Here’s an important self-evaluation to determine the critical challenges that impact you at various stages of growth that you are in.

Rank your agreement with the following statements: 1 is strongly disagree and 5 is strongly agree

Business Stage Challenge Your Score____________
1. The owner delegates most activities 1 2 3 4 5
2. Cash flow is not a constant issue 1 2 3 4 5
3. Aligning business and personal goals is not a challenge 1 2 3 4 5
4. The quality and diversity of the team are critical to success 1 2 3 4 5
5. We have a strategic plan in place and use it regularly 1 2 3 4 5
6. We have systems and controls to measure and manage performance 1 2 3 4 5

Your total maximum score is a 30. If your score is below 15 you are likely at the early stage of your business either in existence or survival. If you score is over 15 then you have likely reached a stage of success where business is taking off. However, if you score low and your business is advanced then you are likely experiencing growth challenges. Below note any concerns you have. The next two lessons focus on important drivers of success at different stages.
1.

2.

3.

Beth Goldstein, Edge Institute Business Growth, Business Planning, goal setting, Marketing, Sales

Bloginar Weekly Lesson Three: SMART Goals

Does Having a Specific Plan Really Help A Business Owner Succeed?
There are very interesting research findings that show the importance of clearly articulating your goals, and how this relatively simple act impacts business success rates. PDMA (Product Development and Management Association) Research conducted a study to evaluate the impact between clarity of ideas and success, and found the following:

Low or poor clarity of goals/ideas resulted in 23% of businesses achieving success while a whopping 85% of businesses achieved success when they were very clear/articulate about their goals/ideas.

When you use words to express your ideas and vision, they have a significantly higher chance of becoming realized.

My Father Always Told Me Not to Mumble
Since articulating your goals is clearly a method of preparing your mind to achieve them, why is goal setting so difficult for entrepreneurs and business owners? I constantly find myself having to beg, plead and cajole the entrepreneurs in my seminars and workshops to write down their goals in a specific, measurable and actionable way. I recognize that this seemingly simple articulation is hard work, but why do so many people who are genuinely working hard at their businesses fail to do a very good job of actually completing this task? Can you relate? Why isn’t it obvious that the pure act of defining clear goals helps increase the chances of success? When you put your goals in writing and see what you want to achieve, clarity emerges that can make all the difference in the world. Yet many people seem to prefer to spend their time focused on the day-to-day activities of their business and do not define their big picture. I want to help you improve your chances of success and eliminate the process of simply hoping that you’ll get lucky.

Therefore, setting SMART Goals is a great place to start. This week’s lesson focuses on writing down your number 1 most important business goal for the next six months – right now, before you have the chance to get involved with some part of your business that is calling you. There’s always going to be another distraction for your attention, always. Remember, if you don’t articulate (and write down) your goals, then your chances of successfully achieving them are rather slim.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of SMART goals, here’s a brief primer:
S: Specific. While this seems obvious, it’s usually overlooked. Make sure your goal is very clear and concise so anybody reading it can not only understand it but not misinterpret what you hope to achieve
M: Measurable: If you can’t measure a goal, you can’t manage toward achieving it. Set a benchmark that you hope to achieve and improve over time
A: Actionable or Achievable: Is this a goal that you can actually achieve or is it so far ‘out there’ that your chances of success are slim? Remember, this isn’t a goal that looks good for somebody else but one that you can truly accomplish in a realistic period of time
R: Realistic: Realistic is similar to Achievable except the difference is that while you might be able to achieve this goal given all the resources needed, it may be totally unrealistic in terms of your overall business goals or the resources that you need (time, money, people) simply aren’t available.
T: Time-based: Time-based always seems to be the simplest aspect of goal-setting, yet one that people simply forget about. Set a framework with deadlines that make sense given your business model and resources.

Weekly Lesson Three (Try this…)

Let’s Jump Right In… Describe Your Top SMART Goal
This week’s lesson is an exercise to help you improve your SMART goal setting skills (trust me, this appears to be much easier to do than it really is).

Write down your number 1 most important business goal for the next six months

Now confirm that it satisfies the standards of SMART goal setting. If not, jot notes below to improve it:
• Specific

• Measurable

• Actionable/Achievable

• Realistic

• Time-Based

Beth Goldstein, Edge Institute Branding, Business Growth, Business Planning, goal setting, Marketing, Sales

Bloginar Weekly Lesson One: What is Luck and Does it Matter?

Attracting lucky opportunities and being smart are definitely connected. A significant number of successful small business owners say that thriving in business, including surviving the recent recession, has meant getting smart about making their own luck. It’s simply not enough to work hard, you have to work smart and perform key growth activities that impact your business’ success.

What do you think about the role of luck as it relates to the fate of YOUR business? In the process of writing this book, I asked many entrepreneurs, business owners and managers, students (past and current) and colleagues to share their perspectives on luck and what it means to their and their companies’ successes. My conclusion is: luck is not as much about the situation as your approach, attitude and reaction to the situation – basically your passion for what you’re doing, your planning, and most importantly, perseverance combined with a willingness to do anything (within reason) to realize your dreams. One of the respondents to the survey I launched on the role of lucky in business shared that, Luck is the rounding error that either goes your way, or not, after you’ve done your hard work and preparation.

If you look carefully at events that appear to be lucky, you will discover that almost all of them (when reverse-engineered) exist at the junction where good planning, passion and perseverance meet opportunities that warrant them. If you’re not prepared for events that favor your company and don’t have an opportunistic outlook, then the likelihood of your missing these breaks is pretty high.

The Roman philosopher Seneca said Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Think about times when you’ve been planning and preparing for quite a while, and suddenly an opportunity seems to come out of nowhere. Is this luck? Or is it simply that your planning and perseverance finally encountered the right opportunity? Would you have recognized the opportunity if you hadn’t been doing all the hard work that lead to this event? Probably not!

Understanding the role of these lucky or unlucky opportunities in your business is critical because:
• Individuals who claim their success is due to luck are usually not giving themselves enough credit for the positive activities and plans they have undertaken that allowed them to seize the opportunity. If you don’t recognize how you’ve empowered your own luck, you are less likely to continue those very activities that are critical to your success.
• Folks who think they are simply unlucky and therefore will not be successful regardless of what they do, cede control over their situation. This is really dangerous because these business owners seal their fate by assuming they can’t take positive steps to prepare themselves for unforeseen events (both good and bad). By assuming they won’t get lucky breaks, they stop looking for those opportunities that can change their business.

So how do you prepare yourself for opportunities and maximize your chances of success? I have found – and show in the book and this Bloginar – that perseverance, commitment and confidence combined with having a solid roadmap are the main criteria for business success. Luck happens when you have positioned yourself to be on the watch for the right opportunities.

Weekly Lesson One (Try this…)

Are you translating your vision onto paper and then into reality? This gives you the greatest chance of driving profit and revenue into your business.

1. Write down the most important business goal for your company to achieve in the next 12 months.

Now, review the statements below and provide a score for each.

A “1” means that you strongly disagree and a “5” means that you strongly agree.

1. Strongly Disagree – 2. Disagree – 3. Neutral – 4. Agree – 5. Strongly Agree

How strongly do you agree with the statements below?

1. I have a clear vision for how I want my company to be positioned in the next 3-5 years
1 2 3 4 5

2. I regularly communicate my vision to my employees, so they all understand and share my vision
1 2 3 4 5

3. I have a written business plan that I share with my key employees
1 2 3 4 5

4. I use a dashboard regularly to track the performance of my business against my goals
1 2 3 4 5

5. I spend at least 20% of my work week working ON my business versus IN my business
1 2 3 4 5

6. The key employees in my company are empowered to make important operational and customer-driven decisions without me
1 2 3 4 5

Your total maximum score is a 30. How did you do? If you’re not happy with your score, below list 3 actions you can take to improve your business’ chances of achieving this critical goal.
1.

2.

3.