by Wendy Burge
It used to be that if you wanted to start up a business a lot of planning was necessary to get the lending institution to finance the location, the over-head expenses as well employees, and the money to develop a marketing profile. This valuable process allowed businesses to establish an overall blueprint of their projected revenue and used it as a benchmark to mark their growth. Because there was a high amount of accountability to the lending institutions involved in the seed funding of their businesses the practicalities of this planning was essential.
Nowadays, with a bit of ingenuity and time someone can start up a business with little relative cost involved in location, over-head expense, or for employees. All they really need is a computer and internet access. This has opened up new opportunities for solo-professionals, service providers, and even product-based businesses to work ‘virtually’– leveraged by help of the internet. The value of this model has been the freedom to allow more people to look at the option of becoming a small business entrepreneur and to step into the ownership role without having to develop huge strategy planning, funding or extra support from employees. The basis of this business model is focused on the lifestyle-flexibility being built into the structure.
Although this has been a true gift by offering more people the opportunity to run their own businesses without all the costly over-head, a lifestyle business model must be adopted to set the benchmark for obtaining constant growth and profitability with the focus on flexibility and the needs of the owner.
Investing in a business and marketing coach who works to develop a system exclusively serving you and your business can be the best strategy in designing a custom fit blueprint and structure to create a lifestyle business model. The objective focus of an outside source–such as a small business and marketing coach-is to specialize in this ability to build a bridge between personal happiness and professional success with strategies to support three areas primary to the overall business structure.
Market Position
It is common practice, initially, for young, small businesses to cater to the needs of their clients. As with any venture there is an excitement to see a profitable transaction as quickly as possible after start-up. While it is important to offer good client and customer services, it can also be taxing on a small business to adapt to each specific need of their client. Additionally, it makes it difficult to clearly direct the right clients to your door if there is no clear distinction as to what makes your business different although offering similar services or products to that of your competitors. By clearly creating a targeted customer niche, small businesses can hone in on who they serve best easily and more effectively, especially now with the help of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. This market position then allows them to dictate how each product and service offered fits into their “marketing funnel” of how best to serve the niche and remain profitable.
Additionally it is much easier to attract the right kind of clients, those ready and willing to use your service, because every offer provided by your business is created to support the success and happiness of your clients. Case in point, a hairstylist who creates a small shop out of their home would be more successful declaring a market position based on their specialty let’s say, long-hair styling and care; cut, colour, and conditioning. By targeting this specific type of client to work with they are more successful in attracting that client which allows them to specialize and offer service just to that niche with whom they enjoy working with rather than just handing out business cards with the word “hairstylist for women.”
System Leverage
The largest challenge for small business owners is to not get easily overwhelmed by the amount of operational and administration duties necessary in maintaining their business. They spend more time working in their business than on its growth plans. Developing systemized plans which create an “office bible” of how every task necessary is performed becomes critical for a number of reasons. First it creates consistency in the daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly actions necessary to operate the business and provide the best client experience. Second, it provides insight into areas where delegation of a task would better be served by outsourcing it to a virtual team member or employee. Third, this allows the business owner to focus more on higher pay-off and profitable activities in their business-which they usually prefer to do anyway.
Systemizing a lifestyle business further provides long-term business strategies by leveraging web-base software, marketing automation tools, and social network media which then allow a more flexible “built to go” business that can be operated from home or on travel without a lot of complication or disruption.
Money Making Activities
Traditionally, most people were employees before they stepped into the world of entrepreneurism. It was common for them to have a salary component or sales target which meant there was consistency in income on a biweekly basis. Unfortunately, this comfortable flow of money coming-in takes strategy to “turn on” again when they go into business for themselves. The reality hits that there are only ’24 hours’ in a day in which to handle all aspects to the administration and operation, including networking, service, and sales, within the business so focusing on higher pay-off money making tasks is essential to turning on their money tap. A business clearly needs creative ways to generate revenue with the limited time an entrepreneur usually has then. Selling a service on a client to client basis may be beneficial at first, but it’s virtually impossible to generate high revenues that way. Let’s say that you are a massage therapist or specialized service provider where time is a factor in the transaction with the client.
Assessing how to develop packages, cross-promotions, and ‘up-sells’ will be but a few of the ways to leverage more money in the time you have with clients. Additionally, it may be that your services or products can be repackaged and sold as information products or digital training courses in order to reach a larger audience online through specialized websites. Again, these are only a few of the multitude of ways to generate additional income streams online which would allow a small business to leverage time by being ‘open 24 hours a day’ on the internet to people around the world now who may find their information beneficial.
The focus on money making activities falls into the idea of a ‘marketing funnel’ as well because it gives small business owners the ability to capitalize on creating better service offers and products to meet the needs of their clients. It’s a known fact that when a customer has a good experience with a business, their lifetime value to that business has a huge impact on the growth of the business because it is easier to re-sell to existing, happier clients than it is to convince new, potential clients to do business with you–(but then again that is why you create your targeted niche market!).
The success of any business is based on its planning, marketing, and ability to take effective action for growth. If your lifestyle based business is starting to become “the job you never wanted”, then it’s time to take action and hire a business and marketing coach to restructure your business for success.
© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Conscious Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com
