They say a good mechanic is worth their weight in gold. Well, what’s the person who manages the gold worth?

When it comes to Accounting 101 for most entrepreneurs like myself, who are focused on product development, marketing, customer support and a million other essential parts of their business, one of the first lessons they learn is to out-task the bookkeeping.

Sure, some business owners will prefer to handle the books to avoid extra costs or questions of trust. But often, the accounting is one of the first tasks that gets contracted out.

How do you choose an accountant? When I brought in someone to handle the business finances, I looked for someone with a reputation for trust and competence. But I also look for a specialist or firm that can handle the work as the business grows. Transitioning between bookkeepers or accountants can potentially lead to continuity issues.

By hiring a firm or in-house specialist who understands your business from the beginning, there are more opportunities for this expert to not just balance the books, but provide proactive solutions for saving or making money.

I really love Fast Company. I started reading the magazine back in the early 2000s and now read their daily brief which is filled with great stories about people building business. Recently they have been launching a bunch of online initiatives that I feel are tremendously valuable in regards to managing email, meetings, and your schedule. Here is a recent one that makes a lot of sense about how to avoid ‘the busy trap’. I had a colleague that used to be so busy with things, but wouldn’t get anything accomplished. When I’d ask her what she’d be working on, she’d start listing off things, but none of them relevant to her business. Enjoy this video and see if you can catch yourself in any of the descriptions:

I gave a talk a week ago in Seattle to the Women’s Political Caucus. One of the women in the group asked me how to handle challenging situations. Everything from politically charged situations through to politics in the workplace. I shared with her that in order to dominate in these two arenas, you need to ‘control timing’ and ‘know your end game’. Time is what has the biggest impact on a challenging situation. You need to control the pace at which something rolls out and consider if moving quickly or slowly serves your best purposes and focus on what is most important to you. Here’s what i would recommend as a step-by-step process:

1. Look at the situation from outside your experience. Objectively what is happening?
2. What are the selfish interests of all parties involved?
3. Does is make sense for you to draw it out, or deal with it quickly and get it off your plate?
4. What is the one thing you need to have happen to make it a ‘win’ for you?
5. Focus on getting that ‘win’ and match the tempo of your efforts to support that ‘win’.
6. Measure and manage the process and adjust accordingly.

I see people rushing into things that they should be walking into slowly and people dragging their feet on things they could deal with quickly, but instead decide to drag it out. You can’t control how people will act, but you can control interaction. I’ll be doing more ‘business case’ posts in upcoming submission so show you the practical application to this.

Best,

Chris.

www.GhostCEO.com

There is nothing worse than:

1) Losing an important file

2) Needing an important file and forgetting it.

I was using mobile me (mac) but not a big fan of the interface. A friend of mine suggested a service called, “Drop Box”. It’s a great online storage service that allows you to not only keep files online, but share them with others (on a permission based model). The basic 2GB is free, but if you have a tonne of stuff (like me), you might want to opt for the 50GB offering ($100/year). You can buy an external hard drive for the cost of a sandwich these days (WD 500GB drive: $99), but you have to carry it, manage it, risk losing it. With Drop Box, all files are available on any computer (PC or Mac) that is connected to the Internet. This has allowed me to travel without a laptop (taboo you say?), and as long as there was a Kinkos (or friendly person’s office/home) I was able to access all necessary files.

Losing files or not having them with you is for chumps. And I just noticed that DropBox has a iphone/ipod app so you can acccess almost anywhere. Do it, and never worry about missing a file again. Check it out at: www.dropbox.com

Cheers,

C/

A colleague of mine and I were chatting about a contact we have in common. This woman pumps out blog posts, twitter feeds, and other social media ‘conversations’ that she farms out to her assistant. Normally these are ‘borrowed’ or ‘modeled on something else and are off brand and too much. I myself am an inconsistent blogger. I blog on chrisflett.com about once a week. Sometimes more if I have something to say, sometimes not if I don’t have anything to share.

If you are trying to have an ‘authentic’ conversation with your market, you might want it to be… authentic. Spamming people with useless analogies that can’t be applied is a form of white noise online. I get the whole ghost writing thing for people that can’t write, but if you can…do. If you can’t…get the heck out of the way. Moyra, the founder of Magnify and founder of SheTeam, suggests (and I agree) that you need to use an honest voice when talking online. When you are using social media, whatever it is, I’d encourage you that it is better to post once a week with something you want to share of value, rather than every day and hoping that someone gives a shit. If you want to be authentic, act authentic. If you want to be transparent, quit having someone else do your writing for you.

Cheers,

C/

This week, I want you to think about that ‘tool’ that you have that you may or may not listen to. It’s your intuition (or if a guy, ‘your gut’). When I saw this photo I thought that babies naturally can hold their breathe when put in water. Then over time, they start to hear about how dangerous water is, how easy it is to drown, why they should stay away from the deep end. Babies don’t naturally swim (unless of course they are Ninjas), but they do hold their breathe. That’s a big piece. In business, you know deep down if a client is a right fit for you or not. If a partner is going to do what they promise or come up with excuses. If your staff are going to commit to the project or if they are just counting down the clock. Your intuition is an important tool in your business arsenal because it connects you with your inner voice. It’s the voice that says, “I don’t know about this….” This week, I want you to listen to what your gut is telling you about business. Do you know you can be bigger, but aren’t? Are there conversations that you know you need to have, but haven’t? Are there steps you have committed to but for some reason you aren’t taking them?

I’ve been running a class at the University of British Columbia called “Campus CEO”. We have about 40 gals in the class whom I’m teaching the ins and outs of running a business. They are an impressive bunch and a handful are competing for five presentation spots on May 11th. Those that are chosen to present have the chance of winning $10K worth of goodies to start their businesses. What I keep on drilling into them in the sessions is: “Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Deploying the idea takes character and I’m going to ‘gut check’ you during the presentation to see what it tells me.” Anyone can learn business, but they can’t learn commitment and hard work. Over the past few years, I’ve partnered with individuals in great business models, but my gut told me that there would be some lackluster performance when we got into it. I have been right every time (or my gut has). You know deep down if something is going to work out or not. Go back to basics and rather than trying to learn something new, start listening to the voice in your stomach that tells you when something is gold, or should be avoided.

You may or may not be familiar with the term “cloud computing”. The basic definition is that you use software that is hosted online, rather than on your computer. Not only do you not have to drag a computer with you (any Internet connected computer will do), but you don’t have to worry about data loss like you would if you misplaced your computer. I’ve been using google docs for about two years. It had most of the features of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but missing some of the user friendly features that make Office such a powerhouse. Leave it to Google to each Microsoft’s lunch. They have added real-time collaboration to their online offering, added the creature comfort pieces that were previously missing, oh….and it’s FREE. Check it out today. We run almost all the Ghost CEO back end off it. Here’s a video on the new offering. Make your tools work for you and learn to travel light with cloud computing.
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I’ve been happily blogging for three different sites (this one, hanging pig, and chrisflett.com). I’ve been using a piece of software recommended to me called Ecto and it allows you to manage multiple blogs within one application. It is really a powerful tool and I’ve been using it since last summer. For the last month, I’ve been getting the odd comment that people missed my posts. I thought to myself, “go and have a look at the sites I write for.” Finally after the 20th time hearing this, I went to the sites and my posts were…gone! Damn, it must be the frigging blogs, or maybe the hosts, or maybe…I’m a dumb ass. I opened up Ecto and realized that as I was playing with the settings on my flight home from the West Indies, I had clicked something that held all my posts in draft format until I released them. This wasn’t a software error. It was a human error and more times than not, we mess up our tools, not the other way around. I always laughed when you called tech support and they asked you to first check if the computer was plugged in. I guess in most cases it isn’t or they wouldn’t ask.

Moral to the story, you can use any tool you want, but it is up to you to make sure that it is doing what you want it to by checking in periodically to make sure you are getting the results you are expecting. Don’t assume. You’ll look like a dumb ass. I know.

I came across this great video on Fast Company. This is something I’ve been doing for years. They call it ‘eating the frog first’. I call it ‘ripping off the Band-Aid”. Either way, good information on how to tackle the most important task of the day…first.

Best,

Chris.

www.ghostceo.com

I’ve been working within business marketing & sales for almost 20 years. My first enterprise (a micro landscaping business) was hugely successful because I focused in on hunting a niche market. Rather than offering lawn mowing to everyone in my neighbourhood, I instead went to seniors living in trailer parks who either didn’t have the equipment or weren’t able to do their own yard work. They depended on their lazy grand kids to do the work wasn’t likely.  As you can imagine, getting a teenager to get their parents to load the equipment from home into the car, take it to Grandmas, unload it, do the work, and bring it back home was a stretch. For $10 bucks a week I mowed, whipper-snipped, took out their garbage, and swept their carport. Not a lot of money, not a lot of work (yards were 10×10), and the market talked to one another. I could have just as easily decided to work for ‘anyone who had a lawn’, but my results would have been spread over a large market and my efforts would have been too spread out.

I see business owners target ‘everyone’ and not understand ‘why they aren’t busy’. It’s because they haven’t targeted niche markets to get known within. They will work for everyone, which makes them less easy to ‘place’ by the market. They aren’t specialists. They are ‘generalists’ and generalists compete on one thing…cost. Specialists can deliver customized solutions, with customized tools, and charge a top dollar because their clients get a customized solution. Not that hard to understand, but time and time again, I hear professionals stumble when I ask them who they service. Take time this week to get clear on who you service, how you service them, what makes you different to every other provider, and why you can state that you are different. Sight your target and you’ll hit your mark.

C/

www.GhostCEO.com