We all know that when animals go hunting, they always go after the weakest, sickest ones first. It’s just easier to catch your prey when it’s under the weather and feeling sluggish. But what happens when the hunter gets sick?

The hunter goes hungry, unless they’ve prepared for this day. As it happens, I did get sick for a few days at the beginning of the month and it brought into sharp focus how important it is for entrepreneurs to take care of themselves.

I’m probably better off than most entrepreneurs in that one of the focuses of my businesses is consulting with people about how to develop systems to stay organized so they can achieve more balance in their lives. I don’t work 20-hour days and am aware when I’m pushing my mental and physical limits because I take my own advice. As such I tend not to get as burnt out as my fellow entrepreneurial colleagues. I almost never get sick.

But when I did get sick, it was really bad. I got a sore throat so awful I couldn’t sleep at night, and of course I couldn’t focus on my work the next day. Even after I was diagnosed with a sinus problem and got antibiotics, I was still miserable for a few days as my body recovered.

Of course, I couldn’t do any actual work during that time. For many business owners who try to do everything themselves, this could be a disaster.

Fortunately, I could see by noon on the first day that I would be in for some downtime. This is where all of the systems I’d worked hard at developing kicked in to save the day. Thanks to my up-to-date planner and email systems, I was able to quickly get in touch with my clients I needed to do reschedule. As well, I already out-task a significant amount of administrative work, so that would carry on despite my being stuck sniffling on the couch. I was free to rest up and not worry about my business and just focus on getting healthy.

Now I’m feeling better and back in business. My appointments are on track and even though I missed about a week of work, catching up won’t be so hard.

Could you say the same if you had to take off a week from your business? How about two weeks? What would happen to your clients? If you haven’t got systems in place to cover for downtime, now is the time to get started, while you’re still healthy.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

When I ask new entrepreneurs about their target market, I’m no longer surprised when I hear their answer. Far too often, it’s “everyone! Our product/service is needed by everyone. That’s why this business is such a sure thing!”

I can understand why their enthusiasm gets the better of their business sense. For plenty of businesses, the product or service can seem (at first) like everyone would want it. Restaurants are a classic example of this – everyone needs to eat, so how can a restaurant go wrong?

Of course, restaurants have some of the highest failure rates of any new venture. Everyone does need to eat, but getting the right combination of tasty food, great service, location, price, décor and a hundred other considerations just right is not an easy task. Most importantly, restaurants seem to do well when they target people with specific tastes. When was the last time you heard someone say “let’s go to that Chinese-Italian-Irish pub restaurant down the street! I hear it’s got something for everyone!”

In my own business, I learned early on to target specific markets. Of course, everyone needs systems to organize their lives, boost productivity and get better work-life balance. But who’s going to hire me to teach them how to achieve these things?

After doing my research, I recognized that some of my biggest customers would be people who were moving or downsizing their homes, as well as offices that needed to reduce clutter and improve productivity of their employees. Also, successful professionals who were being held back in some ways by bad habits and procrastination could also use my services.

After catering to these target markets, I also adjusted my services to that target market to offer both organization consulting and speaking engagements for companies and organizations that perhaps wanted a one-day workshop or training session. This has led to success and many happy clients.

Whether you’re hunting in the forest or running a business, you have to know where to direct your limited ammunition. Understand your target market before you start your business and keep re-evaluating to ensure you’re not missing opportunities in other markets.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

This month’s She-Team theme has been about channeling your passion for business. But this theme is also connected with other topics we’ve covered in past months. I mean, passion is so important to running a business that you can’t avoid talking about it!

Looking back over She-Team articles from the past year, I’ve picked out some of my favorites that tie into this theme:

Shake It or Go Down. Fiona Walsh looks at channeling your negative passion (ie. Frustration) into a positive business outcome.

Find Your Inspiration. Liz Gaige stresses the importance of loving what you do.

I’m Feeling a Pitter Patter in My Heart. Chris Flett talks about falling back in love with doing business development.

Scheduled Profitability. A few of my own suggestions for scheduling your business tasks to handle them while you’ve still got the energy.

Which posts were your favorite ones about channeling your passion for business (from this month or before)? Leave a comment and let us know.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

I’m always inspired by business success stories, but to tell you the truth, stories about business failures can be very instructive. One common problem that a lot of entrepreneurs seem to have is staying focused on what’s important. You have to follow your passion, but channel your efforts to where it’s needed.

I came across this story the other day of Internet startup Kiko, that offered an online calendar. After the owner called it a day and sold all of his assets on eBay. He followed up that dramatic action with a few thoughts about what went wrong and lessons learned:

Stay Focused. Most entrepreneurs have lots of ideas. Often times, many of them may be really good. I don’t know about you, but my favorite part about startups is talking about new products and new business ideas. If you’re a creative person, it’s very easy to get side-tracked on side ideas when you really should be working on your main one. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad. We did this a lot with Kiko, and it caused many delays in getting the product out the door.

I also found his advice about work-life balance close to my heart. I’ve often written about the importance of organizing your space, but seeing what happens when things aren’t optimized can be a wake-up call:

Make an environment where you will be productive. Working from home can be convenient, but often times will be much less productive than a separate space. Also its a good idea to have separate spaces so you’ll have some work/life balance.

Passion will get you started and help you get through rough periods, but the lesson here is to channel that energy to the business needs of the time.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

I’ve often talked about the importance of outsourcing tasks that you can’t do on your own to make sure you have time to focus on what you love about your business. But how do you do that? Many business owners have only a basic understanding of best practices when it comes to hiring good people.

A little while back, I got some great tips in this area from Vertical Bridge Corporate Consulting managing partner Sandra Reder. She had these ideas for how to conduct an effective hiring process:

1. Placing the advertisement on various job boards, website and possibly in print media

2. Receiving resumes (these days it can be anywhere from 75 to 150 resumes for one position)

3. Screening resumes to the job description and short-listing the suitable candidates

 4. Pre-qualifying calls to the short-listed candidates to see how they communicate, as well as to confirm some basic details about them

5. Possibly doing a more in-depth pre-screen on the phone to find out more about their past work experience before bringing them in for face-to-face interviews

My good friends at Clear HR Consulting also had some good advice about hiring, particularly in developing job descriptions and matching qualifications to your requirements, in one of their recent newsletters. I really liked this bit:

 Be specific about the qualifications, skills and experience required.

 * Consider requirements for education, work experience, technical skills and soft skills.

* Be specific about what qualifications the successful candidate must have. One of the biggest job description mistakes is listing vague & non-specific qualifications.

* Specify to what degree the candidate needs to possess the skills you require. For instance, if you need someone who needs to be able to do heavy lifting, specify the weight they need to be able to comfortably lift.

 * Include the level of education that needs to have been attained (e.g. grade 12, undergraduate degree in Science, P. Eng).

 * For “soft” skills that you require (e.g. organizational skills, communication skills), specify how strong their skills need to be or what they need to apply their skills towards. For example, “Good communication skills” can be improved by saying “Proven communication skills resolving customer complaints”.

 Remember, channeling your passion for business isn’t just about focusing your own activities. Hiring right and delegating will let you out-task certain responsibilities while you can concentrate on your own area of interest.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

With all of the effort we put into our businesses, we sometimes lose sight of the ultimate goal. That’s not the case for Shannon Bahrke, an American Olympic freestyle skiing athlete heading to Vancouver, who has channeled her passions for business and sports to get her to her goal.

Shannon’s story really inspired me. As with many of our Canadian athletes, getting funding for equipment and attendance at competitions is not easy. But for Shannon, missing out on her Olympic dream was not an option. So she started a business:

“She started the Silver Bean Coffee company, which has six blends, including her signature D-Spin blend. The 2002 silver medalist employs other skiers in Salt Lake City and donates a portion of her revenue to athletes on the U.S. team.

“It’s not yet turning a profit but I’ve been able to pay for travel to World Cups, two training camps and massage therapy,” she said. “People may define you by the medals you win but I’ve always wanted my own business. This is the other side of me.”

As a result of her entrepreneurial spirit, she’ll have the opportunity to compete for gold. The lesson for the rest of us? Owning a business doesn’t just offer the chance of padding your bank account. You can use your revenue to chase down your dreams.

Do you know of any Canadian Olympic athletes who have funded their way to their Olympic dream? I’d love to read more stories like this. Leave a comment.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

Do you find that when you get into the ‘right’ type of project, you lose track of time and have tunnel vision? This is the passion piece that is too rare for most professionals. If you are staring at the clock, you are doing the wrong type of work. If you are procrastinating, not getting to things you’ve agreed to, or dragging your feet, you are doing the wrong stuff. Take some time this week to find your passion in business and then look at how you can do the work you love and enjoy tasks that you get lost in.

Cheers,

Chris.

www.GhostCEO.com

If you haven’t already revisited your work schedule for the new year, it’s time. Particularly for those colleagues and clients of mine who work from home, keeping a realistic schedule is an absolutely essential habit.

One of the big benefits of being your own boss is the ability to set your own calendar. But there is a downside. My friend mentioned the other day, “I’m spending about twice as much time working now as I did when I was working for someone else! I still love what I’m doing, but I have less time to spend with friends or family or work on my non-business, just-for-fun projects”.

Setting a more rational schedule that will allow you to put more balance into your life and work will mean taking advantage of existing habits you have.

For instance, if you are a night owl who does their best work in the evening, then try to schedule at least some of your business efforts for that time, even after others have gone to bed. Obviously, this won’t work for cold-calls and other business functions that often work better early in the morning, but a lot of technical services, planning, communications, accounting or administrative functions can be done at night – just as long as you’ve got the energy then.

Of course, if you’re an early riser, consider getting into your work before everyone else is up. The rule is basically that you want to be arranging your schedule around the times when you are most productive according to your own unique body clock.

For home-based businesses, this will necessitate instituting some hard rules and boundaries around entering your “office”. If this is unrealistic for your living arrangement (eg. your home office is the well-trafficked living room), you might consider investing in some shared office space, or even working from the local coffee shop with your laptop and Blackberry as your means of production.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

As entrepreneurs, we have to be lifelong learners. But we don’t all have time to go back to school. Well, there’s so much information out there that if you know how to organize it, you can still benefit hugely – and so can your business.

There’s a great line from Goodwill Hunting where Matt Damon says “You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you coulda’ picked up for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.” Well, now you don’t even have to go to the library.

 To organize streams of information, you can use Google applications like Reader and Alerts. These have been around for years, but I’m still surprised to find many of my colleagues have never heard of them. Once you have a Google account, you can filter streams of data from news and blog sites to easily scan headlines in categories that you set up. For instance, I have a category for many of my local Vancouver-based business colleagues that I’m in touch with, so whenever one of them publishes an article on their website, I see it. Just Of course, you can do the same thing through your web browser, but I find the Reader format seems to work for me.I also have a Google Alert that creates a feed for “small business tips”, so anytime anyone in the world writes about this, I can check the latest tips.

If you have a mobile device like an iPhone or other MP3 player, you can also listen to audio podcasts with all kinds of great information. For example, the iTunes University site offers free lectures from many great institutions including Harvard and Oxford. Imagine listening to an Ivy League lecture once a day, perhaps on your commute or while you’re at the gym, on just about any topic you could mention – for free.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

A friend of mine was complaining to me recently about the amount of messages he has to respond to lately. Between emails, text messages and tweets, he felt a little overwhelmed. Not only that, he was beginning to resent some of the message-senders. “Doesn’t anyone just pick up a phone anymore?” he said. “I’ve been using that technology all my life and it works just fine. Besides, I actually like hearing the voice on the other end”.

Instant messaging over the Internet is a convenient tool – perhaps a little too convenient. It’s fast, plus you have a record of the communication that you can instantly refer back to if necessary. But for those facing a bit of messaging burnout, perhaps now is a good time to rethink certain situations when you could call instead of email.

1. Do you know for a fact that the person you’re calling (customer, colleague, partner) prefers talking on the phone? In that case, your decision is made for you. Give them what they want.

2. Would phoning give you more of a chance to “catch up?” When you only correspond electronically, the details of life and work can get ignored. After a while, it adds up to the point that you become pretty much disconnected from the person.

3. Is it a special occasion like a holiday or a business anniversary? On these occasions, I find voice works way better for re-establishing that rapport.

Your voice can be a powerful business tool. People tend to remember conversations better than individual emails. For staying connected in 2010, I recommend calling more. At the very least, it will make your Mom happy.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca