My Start Up Background

I have started a number of small businesses and, in fact, operate two right now. One of my earlier companies, a software company, was successfully sold.

I know many of the problems entrepreneurs face and where to find additional help.

Entrepreneurs – passionate and – knowledgeable

Entrepreneurs are typically passionate and very knowledgeable about some key aspect of their business. However, you face the problem that everything seems to have to be done at once.

I can help you sort this out and maintain a useful combination of strategic and tactical priorities.

Business modeling, financial planning, strategy, marketing

The areas that I most typically focus on is to develop a solid business model, cash flow models to manage and project the business and its growth, marketing, and the overall plans required to win supporters including funders.

Keeping your attention on the key issues

A key hurdle for every new business is keeping attention focused of what really needs to be done, what will really drive the business forward, and ignoring the noisy tumult all around.

Through regular business coaching sessions I can help you bring your business ideas to fruition. The road will still be bumpy and at times difficult, but I will help you find your way through.

]]> http://businesscoach.us.com/services/start-up-entrepreneur/feed/ 0 http://businesscoach.us.com/business-coaching/grea-questions-about-business-coaching/ http://businesscoach.us.com/business-coaching/grea-questions-about-business-coaching/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:13:02 +0000 Mark Orton http://businesscoach.us.com/?page_id=1593 Continue reading →]]>

• My coach yelled and screamed at me in high school, do I need that?

  Is business coaching touchy feely – therapeutic stuff?

  You don’t know anything about my business. I have been at this for xx years, how can you help me?

  How long before I see results?

  Do I need to meet with you every week?

  Am I signing up for a long contract?

  This must be expensive

  I’m not a business owner, just a manager, is this for me?

  What about start up businesses?

  Do you work with management teams?

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  My coach yelled and screamed at me in high school, do I need that?

  Business coaching is all about you and not about the coach. I will challenge with questions that will help you think more clearly and anew about your problems and opportunities. My coaching is successful when you state the best solution, then it is your solution not mine. I measure my success by how little I talk and how much you produce results.

  Is business coaching touchy feely – therapeutic stuff?

  Business coaching is about business, about getting the right things done. Sometimes this touches on the way in which you listen and communicate with people, or, your focus on facts and not emotions. But, always, our discussions are about your business results and how to improve them.

  You don’t know anything about my business. I have been at this for xx years, how can you help me?

  There is an element of truth in this. If you really need help with a specific technical issue, business coaching is not the solution.

  On the other hand, every business is about customers, products, services, employees, sales, profits, capital, marketing, sales, operations, product development, quality, and more of these basics. It only takes me an hour to ask enough questions to know the basic shape of your business, to provide me a platform to engage you in productive discussions of how to push you and your business forward.

  And, another key role for me is to help you establish the short list of tasks to work on each week to drive ahead. I provide the constant reminder of how day-to-day work connects with the big picture goals and the tactical accountability for getting the work done.

  How long before I see results?

  You will see results in your personal management approaches and skills within a few weeks. Business results typically take longer, three months is a good timeframe, though it depends on the cycle time of the business issues you are tackling.

  Do I need to meet with you every week?

  Most clients find it valuable to meet every week. It keeps up the pace of the work, makes for better, more immediate feedback on progress and problems, and maintains better self-accountability for the important future-building tasks. On the other hand, some clients find every other week to work fine. We just need to identify what works best for you.

  At the outset of a new relationship, I insist on at least three months of weekly meetings. This gives us the opportunity to really dig in and accomplish something important and useful. It also assures that I have a sound understanding of how you work and the important facts about how your business works.

  Finally, most clients really look forward to talking with me. I am the one person they speak with each week who will listen with interest to whatever they say, not be judgmental in anyway, and be supportive through good questioning and sound advice.

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  How effective is telephone or computer based coaching?

  I have been working via telephone and Skype for four years, after years of face-to-face consulting. To my initial surprise, I have found the telephone to be better in many ways than face-to-face meetings. When I sit down to talk with a pad of paper at the ready for notes, and my notes from earlier discussions, I am totally present and focused on the person on the other end of the line. I am listening to every word and, not being required to provide visual focus, I can process the conversation and think of different questions to reframe the issues or bring up new avenues to explore very consistently. I can hear the body language through the audible cues given during a conversation.

  Sometimes we need to talk about financial management issues or other document based topics, then, we can turn to our computer screens and refer directly to the facts in question. Some clients keep detailed notes and create an agenda for every meeting. I print this out in advance and I let the client manage our meeting as they see fit. Other clients come to the meetings with topics that are pressing on them that day. For them, I have to be sure that I bring up the tasks from the previous session so that we close the loop on their progress.

  Am I signing up for a long contract?

  No. My contract with you includes a clear statement that either party can cancel the engagement on a one week notice.

  This must be expensive

  Most clients budget $350 to $500 per month. This means that business coaching that will produce significant results, measured in sales dollars, increased profitability, more customers, and a more productive, happier you, the business owner or manager, costs on a par with your CPA. So, when you think of adding a new senior manager to your staff, this looks outrageously inexpensive.

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  I’m not a business owner, just a manager, is this for me?

  If you manage people, have a budget, and are responsible for results, business coaching can help you be more effective.

  What about start up businesses?

  I work with start ups regularly. In fact I have a discounted rate for start ups. Go to this page for more about how I work with startup companies.

  Do you work with management teams?

  Yes. This is where a Skype videoconference works really well. Unlike working with individuals, I do need to see everyone so that i can effectively manage the group and keep everyone involved.

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Unhappy prospects or customers are an opportunity to display your real value and win a fan for life.

Here is the story from the owner of a start up yoga studio in New York City.

A neighborhood person began to say negative things about the studio on Twitter. Challenges about the pricing being too high and a lack of community involvement in the new studio. A PR person working with the studio’s owner responded and engaged the disgruntled neighborhood person. This lead to the owner becoming engaged and an exchange of emails that clarified the concerns and the facts of what the studio was really doing. The neighborhood person also received feedback from others about the competitive pricing for yoga in NYC. All of this lead to an invitation from the owner for the neighborhood person to come by for tea and attend a Saturday evening potluck party at the studio.

The neighborhood person responded with a 745 word blog entry that recited all of her concerns and the email responses by the owner. This blog postings closes with this:^[[1]]

you should note that B…… & Y…..’s instructors are all members of our Inwood and Washington Heights communities – which warms my heart to no end.  so, go to B…. & Y….. this weekend, take a free class, congratulate M….. and wish her much success. don’t forget to take advantage of their special packages before they end.

no matter what, the most important thing for me is community, and we need support our friends and neighbors in all of their endeavors.

maybe we will see you there… the potluck on Saturday night sounds like lots of fun!

The owner of the yoga studio told me that this neighbor came to the potluck and has signed up for classes.

There are many lessons to be noted.

Pay attention to what is being said about you on the Web

First, in the world of instant social media, you must pay attention to what is being said about you on the Web. When negative comments are made, you need to engage them immediately with positive fact-based responses. Find out more about the person and engage them. Every company no matter how small or large needs to have a process in place to regularly follow the chatter on the web. Follow Twitter, Facebook, local Yahoo Groups, and other places on the web where your customers and prospects hang out. Set up a Google Alert to automatically track comments about you and your business.

Greet every unhappy prospect or client as an opportunity to excel

Second, greet every unhappy prospect or client as an opportunity to excel. Be responsive, do not be defensive, ask and listen for the reasons for the unhappiness. Take action to fix or correct these problems or misperceptions. More often than not you will win that person over and make them a fan for life.

Silent, perhaps unhappy, customers who leave and never return

Third, what process do you have to find the silent, perhaps unhappy, customers who leave and never return? Do you follow up with clients who use your services once or twice and then never see again? Remember, you have already put the effort into attracting these customers. You have a relationship with them. They know what you do, where you are, how much it cost, but, for some reason they have chosen not to return. Most people will not complain or explain why, unless you ask.  Put a process in place to ask those silent customers who don’t come back. You will be surprised by the results and learn a lot about how your business is perceived.

1. names occluded by me

A coaching session always starts with whatever is most pressing for you at the moment. “What’s going on today?”

We will explore these problems or opportunities. Lots of questions will be asked to work towards a complete understanding of what is at hand. After all, the most important step in any problem solving is to accurately define the problem. Then, you can move on to asking how to tackle the issues. At this point the conversation may turn back to high performance principles and practices that we have already talked about or, perhaps, something new will have to be introduced. Further questioning and discussion will develop a tactical list of actions to be taken.

You can expect that the coaching session will be challenging, stimulating, energizing, and supportive. Remember, my only concern is your success.

During coaching sessions we will regularly examine what your personal and organizational long-term strategies and objectives are. This provides  background that supports a continuing winnowing or issues so that we can focus your energies on the most important issues and opportunities. It is critical that we know that our work is moving you and your company towards long term objectives. Business coaching is about significant results on both the personal and company levels.

At some point during our conversation, we will review the results of the previous session’s tasks. What happened? Success? Obstacles? Do you need to re-calibrate? Change paths?

Usually towards the end of a session you will state the one or two tasks that you will undertake over the next week or so that will respond to the issues discussed. We always check in to be sure that these tasks are clearly defined, measurable results have been determined (how do we know what success looks like?), and a deadline is set.

The podcast is 6 minutes 34 seconds long.

Just this morning I was speaking with a manager about efforts to refocus a business on new services and the difficulty of dragging along the old, tried-and-true services that still have a customer base and generate revenues. Drucker had quite a bit to say about this problem of the past. In the chapter titled, First Things First, he wrote, “Systematic sloughing off of the old is the one and only way to force the new.” And, “Yesterday’s successes ….. always linger on long beyond the productive life.”

Drucker wrote in the same chapter, “It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve the problem — which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.” This seems like quite a provocation to most managers. After all, managers and management are all about problem solving. Or so we seem all to think. But, from Drucker’s perspective, problems are always about the past. This is very clear from his notion that solving problems only reestablishes the status of the past, some sort of guarantee that we can reproduce the results of the past. Whereas, opportunities are about the future.  The future is where customers in the real world are, not in the past. Drucker sees the world as continually evolving and requiring new solutions to new problems, always defined by customers.

So, then, back to where I started. One of the hardest things for any manager to do is to look away from the products and services of the past. These may very well still be producing revenues and profits, though analysis and planning are telling them that future customers and revenues must come from elsewhere.

One of the reasons managers answer so many questions from their staff and others in the company is that they fear that if they don’t, then really important issues and opportunities may be addressed incorrectly or sub optimally.

A key to getting out of the round of endless questions while still being involved in important ones, is to set some boundaries, some limits.

This might sound like this: “I want you to develop three solutions before you come to ask me a question. Ask your colleagues for help if you get stuck. But, in the case of the following critical customer, Immense Big Machines, Inc., I want to be informed of any issues involving delay or cost overruns in Project XZY.”

With the right boundaries set around your new rule, you can still be assured of being involved where you need to be.

Finally, to make your staff and others in the company comfortable about taking responsibility for solving problems and answering their own questions, you need to have environment in which mistakes are expected and dealt with positively. Remember, if you are not making mistakes, you are doubtless doing very little and learning not at all. Mistakes need to be analyzed and the lessons learned. Perhaps the only rule about mistakes is that they should not be repeated.

Note that this skill, “Don’t Answer That Question!” is a great precursor to grasping the opportunities for controlling your time. More discussion about this in my entry: Seizing Your Time – the first step in time management.

First things first – most meetings should not take place.

Any meeting that is about the status of, or problems with, a regular business process or activity is an indicator that you should solve the process problem. Good processes provide status indicators that can be seen by whomever needs to know, without a meeting. Recurrent problems should be eliminated, not treated as a moment for management to rush in to save the day. If you are in charge of, or have influence over a process that is producing meetings, then take those meetings as a directive for you to get to work on fixing the process.

Now is a good point to note that meetings don’t just take place in conference rooms. When a person in your department stops you in the hallway, or props themselves up outside your doorway, and says, “Can we talk about the Big Bonanza Project?”, you are about to have a meeting. When there is a flurry or emails and instant messages about a project, customer, or whatever, you are having a meeting.

Beware of meetings that you as a manger generate. Ask yourself whether your meetings fall into the categories noted above. Be disciplined about any meeting where the key outcome is to “keep you in the loop”.