If you have employees, a big part of your job is motivating them to work. You might use the carrot and the stick approach (in which you dangle the carrot over their heads to tempt them to move forward)… or you just use the stick approach (in which you beat them senselessly until the do the work)!

Okay, so you don’t literally use a carrot and stick to tempt or the "beat-them-with-the-stick approach" for harsher motivation, but you do need to motivate them and plenty of motivation falls into those categories.

Let’s look at two jobs I held during high school as great illustrations of these two types of motivations in action:

The first job was at a gas station. The owner would berate his employees by cursing at them and asking, "are you stupid?". He made us beg for our paycheck. He took money away whenever he felt that we weren’t working the way we should be. I realize now he broke several labor laws (although at the time I didn’t know any better and just accepted it).

The second job I had was at a small franchise fast food restaurant. (Smaller than McDonalds). The owner encouraged us to have fun and didn’t mind if we sat down on the job as long as everything got done. He rewarded us a with performance bonuses. He held a contest (which I won: I got to see Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in concert!). He encouraged employees to connect after hours.

The difference is like night and day. And if I knew then what I know now, I’d have left that first job in a heartbeat. It’s not a surprise that the gas station owner churned through employees while the restaurant owner had loyal employees.

And my two part-time high school experiences illustrate (perhaps hyperbolically) the real world. We have those bosses that tempt us to succeed and we have those bosses that seem to beat us mercilessly if we fail.

You might have employees now or you might be thinking about hiring some soon. Regardless, now is the perfect time for you to think about employee motivation and develop personal policies and best practices to create a great working environment:

* Your employees earned their pay. Don’t make them work extra hard to get that money.
* Your employees don’t always feel bought into the company so they don’t always work as hard as they could. But if you pay them for performance, they could be more likely to feel "bought in" and thus will work harder for you.
* Your employees spend at least one-third of their days at your workplace. So make sure that it is a place that is enjoyable to be at, that feels like a community. Care about your employees. You don’t have to get really personal to still show them that they are important to you.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Small business owners have a lot to do and the relentless forward march of time can be stressful. It’s hard to get everything done that you’d like to get done. (Heck, it’s hard to get everything done that you need to get done). You schedule, you prioritize, you delegate, but it still is an overwhelming flood of work.

What you need is focus. Stop multitasking. There is a lot of pressure to multitask: To try to cover several projects at once. And, although this might work for some things, it doesn’t work as often as we’d like to think it works. Simply put, we’re not as good as we think we are.

When we multitask, we end up doing an inferior job on all of our projects, and potentially taking longer to do them. When we focus on one thing at a time, we can actually do a better job in a shorter time. To give a simple example: If you have 4 projects and you try to multitask them, you might end up taking 2 to 2 and a half hours to complete the work and each project will feel choppy and inferior. However, if you focus on each one individually, you can do a single project in only 20 to 25 minutes (for a total time of 1 hour and 20 minutes to 1 hour and 40 minutes) and end up with 4 well-done, cohesive projects at the end.

Part of the problem is that we can’t switch as easily from one thing to another. It takes a great amount of mental energy to switch. If you’re a consultant and you’re working on a business plan for a client and at the same time you’re coaching a client on how to get the most out of their staff, you’re demanding too much of yourself at once.

Instead, you can get more done in less time and complete it to a greater level of excellence when you focus on one thing at a time.

Here are some tips to help you do that:

* Batch similar projects together. Even if they are to different clients, if they are similar, you’ll do them faster and more effectively when you do them at the same time.

* Stop watching your email. Sometimes, having an auto-notification of email can feel convenient because it allows you to respond to people right away. But it is a big factor in us switching from one thing to another.

* If you need a period of concentration to finish a project, switch the phone to voicemail.

* If you’re prone to get off onto rabbit trails about stuff, or if you’re the kind of person who will instantly hit the web if a thought suddenly jumps into your mind (even if it isn’t related to the topic at hand), keep a piece of paper on hand to list any thoughts or ideas you have. Rather than pursuing them, write them down. Then later, when you have a moment, you can get back to them but they won’t pull your attention away from your work.

* Make sure you have eaten, drank plenty of water, are in relatively good health, and get plenty of rest. Busy entrepreneurs can be hard on their own bodies and not eating right or not getting adequate rest can make it harder for you to focus.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

There are a lot of differing statistics but most people can agree on the overall truth: Many (perhaps most?) small businesses fail within the first two years. I don’t know what the actual number is but it’s high. And with today’s economy forcing more people to consider self-employment because they can’t find work, that statistic could potentially worsen.

Now, there are a lot of reasons for small business failure. I want to talk about just one reason in this blog but I want to make the disclaimer that I don’t believe this is the only reason, nor is it necessarily the biggest reason. But I do believe that this can have a huge impact on small business success. The reason is this: Some business owners believe that everything has to be perfect before they can open for business.

So here’s what happens: They spend resources perfecting their business, they spend resources perfecting their product or service, they spend time perfecting their website. They’ve spent all this money and time and effort and haven’t even sold anything!

Businesses need to accept imperfection and embrace ambiguity. Business owners need to feel comfortable with not knowing everything. They need to bring their product to market at a point where it can be delivered confidently, but with still enough "wiggle room" to make changes as the market demands. The same goes for the business plan and the website and everything else.

Here are two case studies, both true (with some details altered for privacy) that demonstrate this necessity:

Trudy wants to import clothes from South America into North America. She finds stylish clothes at a great price and brings them in. But they sit in a warehouse while she tweaks her website and has brochures revised over and over again. She believes that everything needs to be perfect first. I’ve advised her to get out there and sell her clothes right now. Her market will tell her what they want, how they want her to communicate, and how her website should function. In fact, in her particular wholesaling niche, a website is secondary to the face-to-face contact she needs to be making. But those clothes remain in the warehouse, and have been there for four years, while she perfects her website and business cards.

Jason was in sales five years ago but hated his job and his boss and quit. He had a good design eye and a little bit of experience so he decided to get into freelance marketing. Cobbling together a really small portfolio, he went out into the marketplace and started pitching his services. No one bought in the first week so he made a few changes and pitched again. No one bought in the second week so he made some changes and pitched again. In the third week he acquired his first customers. Five years later, he runs a busy marketing consultancy that still embraces ambiguity.

Now, I’m sure to get some blog readers who will disagree, perhaps mentioning that ambiguity in the tech industry and in pharmaceuticals can be dangerous and costly. That is true: in some industries, for some products or services, or to some markets, a completed approach is required. But those are the exceptions.

Most businesses, most of the time, particularly if they are just starting out, should embrace ambiguity and allow the market to guide them.

Contemporary VA

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I love roller coasters but my sister does not. When we were kids, and our parents took us to the amusement part, we were both drawn to what seemed to be the thrill-a-second rides: the twisting and loops and shouts of glee from the riders. Once on the ride, strapped in, and click-click-clicking up that first hill for the first looooong drop, we each had very different expectations of the ride. It was over too soon for me. I could have kept going; it wasn’t over soon enough for my sister.

Business is a roller coaster, too. At the amusement park, some under-qualified high school student earning minimum wage decided when the ride was over. But in business, few business owners give any thought to when and how the ride should end. Instead, they’re still sweating anxiously over that first click-click-click of the big hill.

Your business’ exit strategy needs to be considered before you even start your business. Or, if it’s already started, it’s worth taking time to think about it now. The reason is, each exit strategy will influence the various choices you make in your business. Will you invest in this piece of equipment or that piece of equipment? Will you market with this methodology or that methodology? What combination of employees and family members and outsourcing will you use in your business?

Every decision will impact and will be impacted by your exit strategies. That’s why it is essential that you think about them now. Here are a few common exit strategies and what they mean for your business:

• You want to build a business and sell it to someone else and then go on to building another business. This is a classic entrepreneurial/serial start-up move and the business owner who does this will want to build primarily for the short-term. They’ll want to create an attention-getting flash. Of course he or she will think about the long-term benefits for the business and make decisions that can help the business survive, but their primary goal is to create and demonstrate a business with a lot of value and a lot of potential for more.

• You want to build a business to pass on to your children. Parents who want to create opportunities for their children will choose longer-term strategies so that they sacrifice some revenue and profits today in favor of a longer timeline to success. It’s not so much about creating flash, it’s about building a very solid base. A lot of resources may be reinvested in the business in order to give it that good base. And the family should be brought on board as soon as possible to start learning the ropes.

• You want to earn enough to simply close down your business and retire or do something else. In these cases, there is less emphasis on building equity into the business. The business needs to be streamlined to create maximum efficiency, which can lead to greater profitability. Any investments into equipment need to be considered in light of the ability to dispose of them without any hassle – either by selling them, giving them away easily, or discarding them without a lot of cost. The owner will want to make sure that, by the time retirement arrives, they have little or no equity in the business; that it’s all in cash.

These are not the only exit strategies, but they are among the most common. And many other exit strategies are permutations of these.

Business owners who spend time thinking about their exit strategies will want to consider more than one. For example, perhaps they want to build a business for their children, but what if their children don’t want to work there? Then selling the business and cashing out might be the second choice to consider.

Your business can feel like a rollercoaster. Fortunately, the one who decides when (and how) the ride ends is you!

Contemporary VA

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People.  Yes, it’s pretty much that simple.

Starting and managing a small business, or any business, doesn’t have to be rocket science.  It’s simply a matter of creating a team, with each person contributing their knowledge and expertise which will combine with everyone else’s to be your vehicle to success.

And a team doesn’t have to break your budget.  A team can be as small as two people or as large as ten or a hundred people. Dealing with many small business owners, and large business owners, that’s the one thing I hear again and again -  "I couldn’t do it all myself".  Technically, there are those few that may be able to do it all themselves, but for the larger part of the business population, they brought in someone to either handle the tasks they simply didn’t need to be bogged down with because it hindered their ability to focus on the bigger tasks at hand in growing the business; or, to handle the things that they simply didn’t have the expertise in.

No matter what your business, what point you are at in your business, how much you do or don’t know, or how much or how little help you need – you simply need "people".  (Reminds me of that commercial "I’ve got people!")

You might need someone to bounce ideas off of – this can alone can make such a tremendous difference.  You might need someone to hand off your administrative tasks to.  You might need someone to do your marketing for you.  You might need someone to handle your books.  Maybe you need someone to handle customer support, do research, or any number of other tasks running a business requires. 

Can you really do all of these things yourself, efficiently and effectively?  I suppose it’s possible, again, for a few but surely they don’t sleep or their business takes ten times as long to take even the smallest step forward.

Many very successful businesses started with just two to a few people getting it off the ground, each contributing in their area of knoweldge.  These days, with the ability for many people to contribute to a business from their own home or office, many businesses are starting out with the owner and one Virtual Assistant. 

Costs are cut because there is no overhead, no paid breaks and lunches, no benefits or any of the extra benefits an "employee" would drain out of your pocket.  You pay for the work they actually do and that’s it. 

Even multi-million dollar businesses are using VAs these days. A VA can do all of the tasks above and anything else you need done, from writing to assisting with your website and so much more.  You can have them do as little or as much work as you need or can afford. 

The benefits of a VA to any size business are immeasurable. You can get started with a VA for any task you need and you can easily stay within your budget by working with your VA to determine what they can accomplish for you within your budget.  Maybe they work two hours per week for you; maybe they work 40 hours a week for you – it’s TOTALLY up to you.

All you need is "people".

Karen J. for Contemporary VA