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Entrepreneur - Do You Have What It Takes?
What is an Entrepreneur? I ask many people this question and it's funny how many people think they are one but always seem to give a very vague definition. The most common answer is a person that starts his or her own business. The meaning of this article is to digg alittle deeper into that question and hopefully by the end you will know exactly if you have what it takes to be an Entrepreneur.An entrepreneur (a loanword from French introduced and first defined by an Irish economist named Richard Cantillon) is a person who undertakes and operates a new enterprise or venture and assumes some accountability for the inherent risks. Entrepreneurship is often difficult, as many new ventures fail. In the context of the creation of for-profit enterprises, entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Definiti

gy, using a customer creation system, pursuing a relationship selling strategy, introducing a win-win fee strategy, and developing next-level strategies for current clients.

Orderly Conduct

This is the hard part for most law firms...making marketing happen is a function of carving out the time from precious billable hours - not an easy task! However, you can do it, especially if you take a disciplined and orderly approach to staying on track. This means you have to…

How to Create Trust
People buy from you, offer help, and grant rewards based on trust. Here are ways to increase your success by creating trust. While we do most of these things, missing even one of them can ruin it all.Be Dependable* Deliver what you promise and promise only what you can deliver. Report delays immediately.* Be on time. Leave early for appointments. Set realistic deadlines allowing for the unexpected.* Show courtesy by returning phone calls.* Be predictable. Use self control: anger repels and scares others.Listen* Show interest and respect by paying attention to what the other person is saying.* Ask questions. Then make it easy to answer them.* Accept the other person's ideas as valid, even if you disagree. Avoid listening through filters of

First in a series of three articles

Regardless of your law firm’s focus – criminal, civil, corporate, family, business, etc. – the greatest challenge most small to mid-size firms face is the lack of a strategic and disciplined approach to business development. Relying on referrals does not a strategy make! And waiting to get serious about marketing until that major case is wrapped up is way too late.

Whether you’re frustrated with past marketing efforts that have been expensive, time-consuming, and haven’t paid off…or you think you can’t afford to take a sophisticated, results-driven approach to business development like the big firms do, guess again. While your firm may not have its own in-house marketing expert on staff or the generous marketing budgets that the larger firms enjoy, you can systematically and affordably attract more clients than you ever thought possible. It just takes a thoughtful strategy that leverages the laws of marketing, and an ordered approach to stay on track.

Laws of Marketing

First and foremost, marketing is NOT about brochures, websites, advertising or cold calls. These things may or may not be tools that make sense for your firm, once you’ve leveraged the laws of marketing.

There are two basic laws of marketing1 that must be mastered by professional service providers who want to stop wasting time and money on ineffective marketing efforts. They are:

1. Build your base (carefully craft your message)

2. Reach out to your market (build and nurture relationships)

Here’s a quick look at what each of these laws requires…

Build Your Base. This law means spending thoughtful time defining your firm’s niche, developing language that grabs your prospects’ attention, articulating what makes your firm stand out from other firms offering the same services, demonstrating your value, and illustrating your firm’s authority to deliver better than all other choices.

Unfortunately, 90% of professional service firms ignore the law of “build your base” and rush to communicate about their firm without a carefully articulated message. This leaves your target audience unconvinced or, at best, confused about how your firm can serve them better than all others vying for their attention. Invest a little time in building your firm’s base, and you’ll be ahead of most of your competitors.

Reach Out to Your Market. This law involves developing and implementing a system of strategies to build and sustain relationships with your target market and current clients. They are executed both offline and online. They are done systematically and repeatedly. They work in synergy to create an unstoppable buzz and attraction to your firm that takes on a desirable life of its own, once you’ve put them in place. These strategies include things like networking, direct outreach (personal or mass mail), PR, articles and speaking, keep-in-touch systems, using technology to attract, develop, and retain relationships; tapping centers of influence, developing joint ventures, launching a client relationship strategy, using a customer creation system, pursuing a relationship selling strategy, introducing a win-win fee strategy, and developing next-level strategies for current clients.

Orderly Conduct

Saying One Thing, Doing Another...
This week I was asked to speak at an internal conference for a bank. The subject was how to build a great customer experience. However, the reality was somewhat different to the title. I sat listening to speaker after speaker - all coming along with the same message “how can we stuff more products into our clients and achieve our targets”.As I sat there I started to think, why do people say one thing and do another? Do they really think people are that stupid that they cannot see the conflict between the words and the actions? So, as the speakers droned on and on about product X and revenue Y, I thought “what are the tell tale signs that show if your company is really customer focussed?”. I took the opportunity to make some notes…….When I visit companies, they take great pains to tell me how cus

that the larger firms enjoy, you can systematically and affordably attract more clients than you ever thought possible. It just takes a thoughtful strategy that leverages the laws of marketing, and an ordered approach to stay on track.

Laws of Marketing

There are two basic laws of marketing1 that must be mastered by professional service providers who want to stop wasting time and money on ineffective marketing efforts. They are:

1. Build your base (carefully craft your message)

2. Reach out to your market (build and nurture relationships)

Here’s a quick look at what each of these laws requires…

Orderly Conduct

KPI Traffic Lights - 3 Ways to Highlight the Real Signals in Your Performance Measures
Traffic lights – the decoration de rigueur for performance dashboards and reports. Have you gotten more carried away with the decoration, than with the rigueur? Take a look at these four common approaches to traffic lights, and see if you’ve got some room for improvement.Approach 1: % difference from month to monthWhen this month is 10% worse than last month, the traffic light turns red. When it’s 5% worse than last month, the traffic light turns amber. When it’s 10% better than last month, the traffic light turns green. Obviously, this approach works for time periods other than a month, and for cut-offs other than 10% and 5%.Such traffic lights encourage us, usually, to ask questions like “what caused such a big difference?” In turn, such questions encourage us, usually, to find some way

Here’s a quick look at what each of these laws requires…

Orderly Conduct

Small Businesses
Freedom, flexibility, and financial control. Those three ideas sound pretty attractive. More than 23 million Americans think so. They’re the people who have created independent businesses. These entrepreneurs have chosen to design a life as well as make a living. You’ll find them working in offices, studios, lofts, homes, garages, even outdoors, across our nation, from the largest urban centers to demote rural settings. They are bursting with dreams and ideas waiting to be expressed. Passionate about their work, they committed to creating a better life for themselves, their families and their communities.Independent workers embrace the challenges and responsibilities of charting their future. In exchange, they find their lives filled with excitement and personal satisfaction. Good things come in sma

base, and you’ll be ahead of most of your competitors.

Orderly Conduct

Job Interviews - Six Blunders to Avoid
Everyone needs good interview question and answer advice. But just as important, you need to know what other interview mistakes to avoid. Based on my own 30 years of experience as a Hiring Manager, plus talking with many of my peers over the years, here are the most common interview blunders.These blunders will definitely turn off any Hiring Manager and very likely knock you out of further consideration. Please take them to heart and avoid them at all costs.Talking Too MuchMost of the Hiring Managers I know, myself included, put this high on the list of candidate turn-offs during the interview question and answer session. As a general rule, you should talk no more than half the time and one third of the time is best. Take your cues from what the Hiring Manager says an

gy, using a customer creation system, pursuing a relationship selling strategy, introducing a win-win fee strategy, and developing next-level strategies for current clients.

Orderly Conduct

Get focused. Schedule a meeting with key decision-makers in your firm to discuss making a commitment to marketing. You don’t have to make any major decisions at this first meeting, except determine how much time you can commit weekly to your firm’s marketing efforts. Start small (2 hours per person) and put it in your schedules. Then schedule your next marketing meeting to discuss the results of your homework, the attached Are You Ready for a TurningPointe? marketing assessment!

Get organized. Use the results of the marketing assessment to stimulate discussion about where to start. At this point, if you’ve not done market strategy and planning before, call in an expert. It’ll save you lots of time in the end, since you’ll START with a strategic marketing plan that makes sense for your firm and is realistic to implement.

Some basics to consider when developing your plan include:

• Keep it simple; don’t take on too much at once. Spread out your deadlines.

• Identify a mix of short-term, easily implemented goals and longer-term, harder-to-implement goals. Build in some quick “wins” for an immediate return on your investment.

• Prioritize but be flexible; be willing to change dates or put things on hold when other marketing priorities make sense (which means you don’t stop, you just shift).

• Identify the obstacles (people, time, money, lack of expertise, etc.) that could derail you and plan tasks for how to overcome them.

• Plan for how to make marketing a reward, not a punishment. Build in rewards for people who take time from billable hours to market.

Stay on track. At a minimum, guard one hour every week for a status check on your marketing plan – even if you’re a solo practitioner, that means making an appointment with yourself! The mere act of focused thinking or discussion about marketing every week will make an enormous difference in your ability to attract more clients.

Once you have a smart plan in place that’s realistic (see Get Organized, above), all you have to do is focus on taking one step at a time, then another, and another. Each small marketing task builds momentum and before you know it, you’ve implemented a major goal. The key is to keep moving…or if you stop, get restarted. It also helps to have “accountability” to an outside party, who keeps you on track through regular telephone and in-person coaching sessions.

The Defense Rests

So your practice has a stellar track record of client victories, you do good work that you care about, and you know your contribution makes a positive difference in the lives of your clients. What if you could reach more clients than you ever thought possible with all that you offer?

Apply the laws of marketing through an ordered plan of action that keeps you on track, and you will. Case closed.

References

1 Middleton, R. Laws of Marketing TeleClass. Action Plan Marketing, Inc. 2003.

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The catering industry is a $6 billion business, and it is expected to grow in the future. Given this, it can be expected that there are a lot of employment opportunities in the catering industry. The good new is these opportunities are open to almost all age groups, especially to those who are looking for part time work. This includes college students and homemakers who are looking for extra income. In addition, the high turn over in the catering industry assures people that there are plenty of jobs to go around. Among the jobs that are available include chefs, cooks, wait staff and food preparation workers.

Mike Filsaime isn't just another Internet marketing prodigy, he believes in sharing what he has learned and allowing other people to benefit from it as well.

Information technology processes are considered as assets in business and should be managed and protected through ITAM systems.

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