The Business Essentials

I am continuing my series on simple strategies for business optimization. Today we look at three strategies to strengthen your financial positions.

Key points:

1. Understanding what financial stability is
2. Three simple strategies are:
   1. Improve business performance
   2. Review key financial ratios monthly
   3. Assess your money mindsets
3. Make business planning a part of your operating framework

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Ep 7 - Pricing at the Net

Ep 25 - 5 Tips for Reviewing Financial Statements

I know that a lot of business planning is done around this time of the year, so I want to spend the next couple of weeks sharing simple strategies that you can implement to optimize your business performance as you go into the new year.

Key points:

1. Strategies are a high level plan to achieve goals and objectives
2. Strategies will center around financial, operational, customer and human resources
3. Operational strategy - improving quality of products and services
4. How to improve quality?

• Listen to your customers
• Fix the problem
• Measure the progress

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This is the time to start planning for the next year in business. If you wait until January, you are late. In this episode I share how my company plans for the new business year.

Key points:

1. Planning ahead improves your chances of success
2. Our business planning process in three phases:
   1. Assessment - a thorough deep dive into our internal and external business environment, including a key issues analysis.
   2. Build - create goals that align with our vision and cascade them down to objectives, strategies and tactics. The assessment phase helps us create the right goals and strategies to fit our unique business needs.
   3. Implementation - create an action plan with clear performance measures (KPIs and Matrix), ownership and accountability.

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This episode is a Coffee Chat Workshop hosted by Channer Consulting LLC. During this workshop I talk about goal setting in business and how to do it right. Goal setting is an important part of any business's success.

Key points:

1. What are business goals
2. Why goal setting is important in business
3. How to set business goals
4. Creating an action plan that translates your goals to action

Connect:

Today I am talking with Masami and she shares her entrepreneurial journey. She is a 2-time TEDx speaker, Amazon Best-selling author, winner of Sustainable Business Award and the founder of a global giving movement B1G1

Key points:

1. Highlight of business ventures prior to B1G1
2. Her Why
3. The challenges along the way
4. The business’s role in creating a united and sustainable world

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In today’s conversation we are talking about social media strategies that work. Our guest Philippa is a Certified Digital Marketing Coach with Channer Consulting, LLC which is designed and optimized to serve small business owners who value the state of their marketing efforts but lack the time, resources, or expertise to develop a solid marketing plan.

Key points:

1. The foundation of an effective social media strategy
   - A plan that is unique to your business
   - The resources to execute the plan
   - Keep the momentum
   - Monitor environmental changes
   - A clear call to action
2. Measuring performance of your social media efforts
3. Current social media trends

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Free monthly webinars, sign up is on the website

Ecommerce is a big deal right now and we are chatting with an expert to understand what it takes to strive in this space. In this episode, Chase Clymer shares how he helps clients grow their ecommerce businesses, from strategic design to development and marketing decisions.

Key points:

1. Standing out as an ecommerce entrepreneur
   
2. Niching down versus mass market and why?
   
3. Strategy insight -growing revenue by increasing cart size
   
4. Pre and post nurturing sequence advice for ecommerce businesses
   
5. A common challenge that ecommerce entrepreneurs face
   
6. Marketing tips and industry trends

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Website - https://electriceye.io/

In this episode, we have Maureen, who is the brand growth strategist behind some of America’s most beloved brands, like L'Oréal, Chobani, Dove, and Lays. She is taking her expertise to the small business world and helping clients create millions of dollars brands. She will be sharing all about product pricing models and retail readiness.

Key points:

1. Numbers run deep when in comes to choosing the right pricing model for your products
2. The different types of pricing strategies
3. How to position your product for retail or success in general
4. The 4P marketing mix - pricing, product, promotion, place
5. Big brands versus small brands, what is the difference?

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Mindset impacts our businesses and leadership performance; in this episode we dive into the mindset of successful business leaders with Shawna Schuh. She is a Master NLP Practitioner and she coaches leaders who want to improve results with people.

Key points:

1. Why mindset is an important part of being a successful leader
   
2. Some mindset traits of effective leader include being coachable, confidence, focus and action takers
   
3. Take action by asking “what is the next step”
   
4. Challenges of leadership transformation

Mentions:

A free Quiz to uncover Your Leadership Blindspot

Overview:

What are the key issues holding your business back from growth or success? How do you identify those issues so that they can be prioritized and addressed? That is exactly what I am sharing in today's episode. Every business has multiple challenges, but not all of them are key issues; identifying key issues in an integral part of moving forward in business.

Key points:

1. Understanding what key issues are
   
2. es areHow to analyze your business’s key issues
   
3. Review you successes and failures, financial ratios, performance and environment
   
4. Prioritizing high impact issues
   

Connect:

My approach as a small business strategist has always been to look at best practices amongst successful companies and adapt to the small business environment. One of the things that I do not see enough of is a performance measure process within small businesses. It is such a huge part of business growth and success, and it should be at the core of every business’s operations. In this episode, I am sharing a simple performance measure process that you can adapt to fit your business’s needs.

Key points:

1. Clear goals and objectives
2. Outline strategies
3. Identify KPIs
4. Review meetings
5. Recognition

Mentions:

Ep5: Strategic Planning

Ep15: The Right Way to do Business

In this episode I am talking with Shane Pounder of FLIPP. His unique experience in engineering, lean six sigma and operations have strengthened his role as the VP of Operations and Marketing at Flipp.com. Our conversation is centered around how FLIPP navigated the changes in consumer behavior during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Key points:

1. Capacity building journey of FLIPP from start up to present
   
2. Stages on consumer behavior changes during COVID-19
   
3. How the FLIPP maneuvered through the crisis
   
4. Always find a way to add value to your customer
   

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In this episode I am talking with Kelly Goss about small business productivity. Kelly is an expert in productivity and she helps small and medium-sized businesses achieve their productivity goals, save time, reduce costs and stay agile as they grow.

Key points:

1. Increase productivity and save money
   
2. Why and how to streamline and automate your business
   
3. Overcoming the challenge of streamlining your business
   
4. Case studies of client projects
   

Mentions:

In this episode I am talking with Crista Grasso, also known as the “Business Optimizer. Our conversation is around getting off the hustle hamster wheel and accelerating your business growth while doing less. Crista walks us through her Lean Out Method which is designed to simplify business success.

Key points:

1. Clarity and next level vision
   
2. Lean out method - context, clarity, commitment, Kaizen
   
3. Defining and implementing the plan by working smarter
   
4. Engage you team with routine check up meetings
   
5. Commitment to achieving goals by being focused, flexible and adaptable in order to achieve the results.
   
6. Kaizen - continuous reflection and improvement
   

Mentions:

Podcast - The Lean Out Your Business Podcast

Website - https://www.leanoutmethod.com/

In this episode we are talking with Jeff Chastain about the leadership skills necessary for growth. He unpacks the roadblocks that hinder businesses from growing and how we can overcome them. Jeff is sharing all the insights from his experience in helping his clients to overcome the logjam and grow in an efficient and scalable way.

Key points:

1. Understanding leadership in a startup versus leadership in a growth oriented business
   
2. Growth starts with clear focus and direction from leadership
   
3. How to effectively communicate company priorities
   
4. Effective delegation of duties
   
5. How to horn these leadership skill
   

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Podcast: Building to Scale by Admentus Inc.

Sound processes are fundamental to growing a business but oftentimes implementing these processes don’t always go as planned. After working on numerous process improvement projects, I have a formula for successful implementation that works every time. In this episode, I am sharing the exact formula I use to get the job done.

Key points:

1. Documentation
   
2. Communication
   
3. Training
   
4. Consistency
   
5. Update

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The business environment is constantly changing and we have to approach business planning with agility in order to be sustainable. In this episode, I share five steps to adapting your current strategic plan to an agile strategic plan.

Key points:

1. Having more frequent review meetings
   
2. Constantly assess your business environment to identify changes that may affect your business
   
3. Adapting goals and strategies to respond to changes
   
4. Changing your performance measure approach
   
5. Overall mindset change
   

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FB/IG - @thebessentials

In this episode Bill shares a lot of insight into his business acquisition journey. Bill acquired three companies in the space of one year and there is so much to unpack about his experience. We cover everything from scouting for businesses to due diligence to financing options and we look at the pros and cons of business acquisition.

Key Points:

1. Ways to scout for small business acquisition opportunities include business broker listing and referrals
   
2. Three things to look at when doing due diligence -  the cost structure, the customer concentration and the business success factor
   
3. Creating ways to finance for your acquisition includes seller financing and balloon financing.
   
4. Some pros and cons of business acquisition
   

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