Be Careful What You Wish For in Business Growth

I’d often heard that old admonition “Be careful what you wish for,” but I’d never paid much attention to it – until recently.

 When I first started Office Support 911, my virtual assistant service, back in 2006, I was pretty green about running my own business in general. I figured that I would simply hang my shingle and the customers would just start pouring in.

 That didn’t happen. The cobwebs were starting to grow around my desk (and my phone) so I did all the usual marketing things like joining my local board of trade, advertising in local newspapers, printing up business cards and social networking like crazy.

 I also used to wish that someone would just notice me and let me prove to them that I was really good at what I did. I was waiting for that big break – that one golden opportunity to break into the virtual assistant business in a big way.

 Little could I foresee that that day would eventually come.

 I had also read that most small businesses fail in the first five years due to lack of capital, lack of good management, lack of foresight and perhaps just a lack of tenacity. But I wasn’t worried about that stuff. I figured that I would just cross each bridge as I came to it.

 A very wise loved one—also a business owner—kept telling me, “Karen, if you don’t plan for expansion, your business is going to grow and you won’t be prepared to deal with it. Be careful what you wish for in terms of business success because if you don’t have the structure in place before that success hits you, you’ll be scrambling to catch up. You’ll burn out trying to do it all by yourself as one individual.”

 Luckily, I listened to him and started thinking ahead. While I had originally wished for a certain degree of success, I really hadn’t given much thought as to how I would actually execute and handle the amount of business that started coming my way.

 Some of the lessons I learned were:

• One person can only do so much in one day. Working 24/7 is a prime opportunity for you to experience burnout.
• You need to have a good work/life balance. Your ‘real’ life is just as important as your business success. We are not robots.
• Well before you hit that ‘burnout’ point, you need to start thinking about what tasks you can delegate, which means letting go of the reins a little bit.
• You also need to invest some time in training your protégés. It’s time well spent if you find the right ones.
• For a business to grow successfully, one needs to plan for the expansion that they originally wished for.

 I would love to hear more lessons learned from other small business owners. How did you deal with that business growth you had wished for?

Please feel free to share your wisdom and tips here with others!

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Web-Based Business

I don’t normally promote products and/or services on my blog, but this is a new book that I am very excited about. It’s called The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Web-Based Business by Steve Slaunwhite.

Many new entrepreneurs don’t know where to begin in terms of best practices in getting their business off the ground when starting an ‘online’ business versus a brick-and-mortar business.

Barnes and Noble describes this new book as follows:

“The web-based basics!

“Aspiring web entrepreneurs will find here everything they need to know about starting and running their own small-scale online business. Whether they intend to sell goods, services, subscriptions, or advertising, this book provides them with the specific nuts and bolts of planning, designing, build­ing, hosting, marketing, and operating their online businesses.”

The price is right for this new must-have book. Most major stores such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble are selling it online for under $20. The actual bookstore price will vary, depending on where you buy it. 

Check it out at Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/nl7s8o

What I also liked about this book is that Steve Slaunwhite really drilled down to the basics here. He did not talk to people as if they already had extensive internet savvy. He talked to them as if they were starting from scratch, which is what I really liked. The book is easy to understand and follow, and contains a slew of invaluable information for newbies who are just starting their internet businesses.

How to Ensure Your Article Will Get Published

As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you probably have a wealth of knowledge to share with your prospective clients. Writing articles is a great way to introduce your services and expertise to the masses. It also has to be done in the right way in order to be effective (or even to gain approval for publication on the majority of article directories).

Annoying Telephone Calls? Complain About Them Online!

As a business owner or entrepreneur, the last thing you need during your busy day is to be interrupted by scam artists who work via telephone. They often don’t call in using 800 (or private) numbers, so it can be hard to tell whether picking up the phone will lead to a potential business opportunity or not.

Some Nifty Free Tools to Manage Your Online Business

 

I’ve come across a few very handy (and free) tools that can help quite a bit in managing one’s online business, especially when you are just starting out and have little, if any, money to spend on extras.

 

Of course, if you are really busy—and congratulations if you are—you will likely seek the help of a qualified virtual assistant (VA) to handle a variety of tasks for you, but that doesn’t mean you also have to purchase a lot of expensive software programs or services right away…