Jul 31

Running your business: Document to Differentiate, the Mac Way!

5 Marketing, Business No Comments »

I just gave this morning a very short Keynote presentation to Creative Connections about how to differentiate your business from others. In fact, of what I’m about to tell you only three people had heard about what I had talked about:

A Document to Differentiate Your Business.

How this came about was I was in a discussion with a number of vendors such as graphic artists, editors, etc about my upcoming books about using Mac in business and we all kept going back over and over what both sides were trying to say and accomplish. Each of us, both me as the customer and them as the vendors has responsibilities as well as inputs and requirements to get whatever job was needed to be done. My frustration was in dealing with understanding what each vendor needed from me, what I would receive from them, and the results that I would get back.

So here’s the answer for you as an entrepreneur.

Create a document on how you work!

Here are the elements that you’ll need:

  • Define your ideal customer – not the one that is anyone that comes to you, but specifically the type of customer that you want to work with.
  • Define the process – here is where things can get muddy for creative types, the process nearly always does not change, the various inputs and outputs do. Define each step from the time the customer contacts you until you finally get paid.
  • Define what the customer wants – here is where you’ll go back and forth over what the customer wants and may require multiple iterations to get the final idea down.
  • Define what you need – what do you specifically need from your customer in order to get their job done
  • Define the scope or time – here you need to set a time frame for each step as well as the complete project time needed to do the project. If your customer balks about the time, do a “FEDEX” on them saying it’ll cost more to get it done quicker to do a quality job. Keep in mind that it’s the value you bring to the hour, not necessarily the hours you put in.

There are more details, but you get the idea, so how can a Mac help out?

iLife and iWork ’09, using audio, video, and desktop publishing you can create any number of types of documents that will give your customer the education they’ll need of you and your business.

Watch for my up coming book that will go into more details on why this document can reduce your workload getting new customers and getting only those customers that you want to work with.

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Jul 30

Meet me at a Meetup: Creative Connections Jul 31st, Denver

5 Marketing, Business, Entrepreneur, Small Business, Startups, Tips, Tools No Comments »

Hi all,

If you’d like to meet me I’ll be attend the Meetup group Creative Connections tomorrow at 9 AM and give a short talk about improving your marketing for entrepreneurs and start ups. As the marketing for this meeting says:

“The #1 priority for nearly all small businesses is getting new customers. But do you know that by changing the way you market and handle your customer you can make more money? We’ll be working as a group on creating a small marketing piece that will be sure to get better qualified and educated customers, create better communications with your customers about your business, reduce your workload to concentrate on what you do best, and to set the stage for more marketing results. So come prepared to walk out with an Action Plan of increasing your business going forward.”

I look forward to meeting you, we’ll have fun for sure.

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Dec 20

Process: Output, outcomes, and capabilities!

Business, Thoughts No Comments »

As one who is working on getting my own business up and going in this down time you hear a lot about goals that we’re to set. However, having worked for a number of organizations in my life I always come across both managers (who don’t get it), leaders (who are the ones that get it), and others that have a misunderstanding of what each of the above terms in the title mean.

When you look at trying to accomplish something there is always the basic assumption that a certain process is to be followed in order do accomplish something. So here are some basic definitions

Outcomes: a goal to be achieved
Output: that amount that is defined by a process that is clearly defined
Capability: that step by step process to achieve a certain result, regardless of any outside influence

How can we understand this principle, by way of a math formula

1 + 1 + 1+ 1 = 4

The output, or result, is “4″ and the process capability is the “1 + 1 + 1+ 1″ and here’s where it gets dicey. Our outcomes is to be “10″ and that’s what we want.

Most technicians look at only the “1 + 1 + 1+ 1″ while only managers look at the “4″ and needing to get to “10″ with neither of them seeing both the process and the results at the same time.

Where managers and technicians, versus leaders and leader technicians, miss out is not seeing HOW things get done and don’t see the complete picture of both parts. This normally involves understanding how much time and money is needed to get the job done. Out of touch managers only see the results, out of touch technicians only see the process, and since managers define the process that technicians are to follow, fail to change the process to achieve the outcome of the amount of “10,” in essence, handcuffing technicians to only producing the same amount of “4″ until it changes.

Outcomes, or goals, are where the delta, or difference, is between what you can achieve and where you want to be. Because of the formula you’ll either need to change the process, i.e. personally growing yourself or how the process is designed, or change the goals or outcomes that you want to achieve.

As an example, it was never thought that man could break the four minute mile run, but break it we did. We also thought we’d never break the sound barrier, but we did. However, I don’t think man will ever break the sound barrier running, the process capability of a human without the aid of a machine makes it impossible.

Good employees and leaders see both at the same time and BOTH work to achieve the desired results.

Redefine the process and you can redefine the output to achieve new and improved results. Have a Happy New Year and see what you can change in order to achieve new results.

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