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A survey conducted by Flying Solo asked the question “What career/business advice would you give your 15-year old self?”  Whilst a lot of the advice was inspiring to read it was tinged with regret about missed opportunities and wasted time.  I am sure we have all uttered ‘in hindsight’ during conversation with friends and business colleagues so let’s look 10 years ahead and consider some sage advice from the future to give yourself.

1. Pull your finger out and learn a new skill: What you know now won’t get you to where you want to be. Just do it!
2. The world will be even more digital than you think: The new economy is no longer new and coming – it’s here and permanent. Make the effort to keep up with technology, don’t give up and leave it to the next generation.
3. Slow down and enjoy the journey: Before you know it your kids will be off backpacking, your mates will have dodgy hips and your business will be unrecognisable. Enjoy it while it lasts, you’ll remember these as golden years.
4. Keep it in perspective: You know all that guff you’re worried about today and will worry about for the next decade? You won’t even remember who or what it was all about when you reach that ‘age’, so don’t sweat the small stuff.
5. Keep being grateful: Life’s not fair, but you’re fortunate to have been dealt a nice hand – make the most of it and don’t take it for granted.
6. Don’t be afraid to open up and reveal a little bit more of yourself as you may attract more like minded people and repel the rest.
7. Give it a go….if it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to where you were.
8. Be confident and don’t over complicate things.
9. Make sure you include some time to have some fun along the way.

Edited extract courtesy Flying Solo 22/3/2012

To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.

Merry Chistmas and all the best for a prosperous and wonderful New Year.

Congratulations to the ten women who make up the Watercolour Sistas debut exhibition at Birrung Gallery, Sydney on the 18th November, 2010. The women come from diverse cultural backgrounds and attend art classes at Weave (The Shop) Women and Girls Centre located in inner city Waterloo. Weave endeavours to empower women to enhance their family, community and personal lives by offering support, advocacy, counselling, groups and education programs. The works in this debut exhibition demonstrate the power of shared artistic practice to transform personal experiences into strong and resilient individuals and communities. In early 2011 The Watercolour Sistas will set up home in the newly established Weave Arts Centre in Redfern.

http://trans.worldvision.com.au/birrung/

Xero is an online accounting system designed for small businesses. It’s simple, smart and secure. Xero embraces the power of the internet so that you or your bookeeper/accountant can access your financial data at any time. It provides the day-to-day book keeping functions required to run a business and gives you the tools to help meet all compliance needs.

Xero is available globally and can be customised to fit all local tax and business needs. For businesses based in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand there are additional localized taxation features available.

For detailed information of product offering see www.xero.com

Hosted By: Networking Coach & Small Business September 2010
02 Sep 2010 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM
The City Hotel, 347 Kent Street, Sydney, 2000

Nine of Sydney’s leading social media experts, each focusing on one core aspect, will share their knowledge and skills with small business owners over on 9 days in September. They will cover Social Media Strategy, Social Media Time Management, Promotions, Marketing, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Wordpress, Blogging and virtual business cards.

The Nine Days will cover the following aspects of Social Media:
· Easy techniques to get you started using social media immediately
· How to implement social media to drive leads to your business
· How to build your social network and extend your business network
· How you too can really make money, generate leads and connect with clients
· Foundation skills for running social media platforms, applications and wordpress blogs
· How to craft your facebook, LinkedIn and twitter profile to gain maximum impact
· How to attract and interact with friends and fans
· Promoting your business within today’s most popular social media applications
· The most effective uses of Twitter in your small business
· Review and build successful social media marketing campaigns for your business
· Filter social media contacts into meaningful and useful lists
· Creating an engaged and delighted following of customers and other fans

You can select specific days or benefit from the whole experience and receive a Business Social Media Challenge Endorsement as confirmation of your experience with nine of Australia’s leading Social Media experts.

Social Media Workshop Schedule in September includes:
Thursday 2nd – Fi Bendall, Leveraging social media for social advantage
Tuesday 7th – Helen Crozier, How to tame the time spent on Social Media
Thursday 9th – The Web Celeb, How to Flirt & Convert on Facebook
Tuesday 14th – Tony Cosentino, Running a Business website with WordPress
Thursday 16th – Steve Brossman, Video Marketing for Business
Tuesday 21st – Clodagh Higgins, Twitter Success for Business
Thursday 23rd – Raz Chorev, What is LinkedIn, and why you can’t ignore it anymore
Tuesday 28th – Kathie Melocco, Social Media Marketing Solutions
Thursday 30th – Sean Grobbelaar, Keeping Business Cards alive on Social media

Click here to Register
Sourced from Small Business NSW.

Is business email writing hurting your personal and corporate marketing efforts and brand image? Email writing is one of the easiest ways to unintentionally destroy your brand reputation. Are you looking to mainstream your communications and make effective business email writing a part of your success?

Your staff’s email writing skills may be hurting their relationships with co-workers, customers and suppliers; and this means lost revenue for your business. Email messages account for approximately 90% of business communication in today’s society; much more than by telephone or face to face. Email has revolutionised how we do business because it is so convenient, and every email can be saved and used as a follow-up.

Your Risk
Why does writing email carry a high degree of risk?
Face & body expressions are important elements of understanding communication, and neither are present in a written message.
Every email you write will create either a positive or negative impression of you or your company.
It is easy to slide into “task mode” forget you are writing to a real person as you quickly “bang out” one email after another.
And there are more reasons - how many times have you received an email that:
Was not meant for you
Was a long block of text with no obvious purpose
Includes ‘text talk’ or ‘text chat’ abbreviations (like IMO [In my opinion])
Left you feeling you or your company were being attacked
Answered one of your questions - even though you asked three questions
Contained only part of the necessary information to make a decision, resulting in three or more emails to get all of the relevant information
Had a subject that was FYI or Hi… or was left blank
Was the wrong ‘canned’ response
When business email are unclear or contain errors, the individual and the company’s reputation is compromised. Worse; when emails are hostile (most often by mistake), important business relationships may be damaged.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Whether writing to one person or marketing to thousands, writing email can be done with confidence, speed and clarity - and you don’t have to be a copywriter to communicate effectively.

Your Competitive Advantage
The competitive advantages of smart, strategic, short, well written email for both the individual and the company are:
Respect for the individual’s and company’s brand
Improved customer service
Enhanced customer relationships
Decreased time spent in project management and problem resolution
Improved individual / department / company efficiencies which all impact ROI
This list can go on and on
Are your relationships, your marketing efforts and your brand being unnecessarily compromised?

Could email writing get worse? Yes it can!
The demand for fast communication is now being impacted by our experience with text messages (that include ‘text talk’ or ‘text chat’ abbreviations), Twitter, Facebook and MSN – all of them communication styles that demand shortcuts. But their style is not appropriate in most business email.

Could email writing get better? Yes it can!
It is possible to write email messages that focus on what you mean (intend), and get the results you need.
The effective email writing tips you need to focus on delivering polished email messages with confidence, speed and accuracy are as follows. Eliminate wordiness and improve clarity
Eliminate errors and other mistakes that damage your credibility
Deliver the intended message that will get the information or action you require – the first time
Check the tone to make sure that the tone is not abrupt or will offend the reader
Represent both the person and the organization in a highly professional manner

There are courses that teach email writing tips and with guided practice can save time, money and business relationships. If you need some help to learn how to do this then contact your local College or Google this topic as there are many on-line courses available.

Edited Source: Bruce Mayhew Consulting, 2009

When conducting compliance reviews for SME’s I use this process to identify any issues that may be placing a business at risk in regards to the many legislative areas that govern employment in Australia.  This is a large area - we are dealing with laws in industrial relations, Health and Safety, Discrimination, Equal Employment Opportunity, Independent Contractors and the list could go on.For SME’s remaining compliant in an ever changing legislative environment can be very resource intensive and time consuming when you don’t know the rules!  The most common problem is a lack of appropriate and up to date employment agreements.  These agreements must describe the current employment relationship and are essential for establishing the expectations of both parties in their relationship.

In Australia, a common excuse for not having agreements is that the employee is employed under an award and that is sufficient. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

An award covers the minimum standards for employment.  It does not contain any clauses for the protection of the business, nor does it assist in the maintenance of standards within the business.  It is designed to protect the employee not the employer.

Another major reason for having employment and contractor agreements is for the protection of your business. Clauses should be inserted regarding things like confidentiality, the protection of intellectual property, protection of client lists and employees responsibility to obey company policy.  These and other clauses are essential protections for your company and are definitely not contained in an award.  

For SME’s who have employes’ covered by an award should be aware that The Fair Work Act became effective in January 2010. The following is a link to the Best Practice guide.

http://www.fwo.gov.au/Best-Practice-Guides/Pages/Small-business-and-the-Fair-Work-Act.aspx

Are you laying awake at night feeling overwhelmed with work priorities and not achieving results? 

Are you struggling to meet financial demands and reporting deadlines with your bank or the ATO?

Or are you venturing into this exciting new decade, filled with optimism for what Is achievable and lies ahead?

Breese Dynamics will liberate entrepreneurs from their paperwork nightmares.

Most small businesses and entrepreneurs are passionate about what they do, though often get buried in the details of running the business and need help. As a small Business Consultant and Results Coach I can help you develop strategies to create business success whilst letting you concentrate on what you do best.

Should you have any concerns that your business may be in trouble, you are not alone.  The most common challenges facing SME’s today are cash flow issues; misappropriation of financial data; declining sales; rising costs; issues with the ATO and perhaps personal assets at risk. 

Having worked with many differing businesses here and in the UK, Breese Dynamics can help you to recover and prosper. 

Services offered

v      Business Health Check – check accuracy and reliability of your accounting data, reconciliation of accounts    including Tax & Payroll liabilities, independent assessment of bookkeepers work, ensure compliance issues are being met and review policy and procedures documentation.

v      Business Strategy – review and provide assistance with Business Plans, Strategy and Risk Assessment

v      Business Process Re-engineering – review and assess areas for improvement/change.

v      Management Reporting – preparation of financial reports, budgets and cash flow analysis.

v      Human Resources – staff recruitment and management, employee contracts, staff assessments and reviews.

 v      Professional Training - guidance in implementation of MYOB, Xero and other SME based packages including staff training.

 v      Coaching/Mentoring – using the principles on NLP and other management disciplines we can provide values assessment, mission, structure and sales and customer service training

 v      Project & Event Management - develop, implement and manage financial software projects and organisation and risk management of events

Please do contact me at jules@breesedynamics.com or call 0447 574 586 if you feel I can help you in any way.

One of the most crucial elements in creating or receiving the highest quality work is having a successful relationship with those you work, collaborate, and share with. As technology and communications continue to evolve, more and more people are moving to the online world to get work done. However, many of the timeless tips that were once used offline still apply, albeit slightly differently so please check out these tips to have and maintain a successful working relationship online.

Build a Human Relationship: Considering that most people conducting work online spend most of their time behind a computer screen, it’s easy to forget that those on the other side of the network are human just like you. Be sure to spend some time building a relationship with those that you work, online or off. For ex: when exchanging messages, it doesn’t hurt to add a friendly greeting or ask how the other is feeling for the day. You will be surprised at how much a simple “thank you” can affect attitudes as well as your business.

And this one goes for employers: Give your provider the trust and freedom they need to complete job tasks. The people that you work with are the experts in their respective fields and have the credentials to prove it – it’s the reason why you hired them in the first place. Remember, over-micromanagement is almost always counterproductive for both parties involved.

Set Up Office Hours:  Just like any other brick and mortar business or office, both the provider and employer need to have a standard set of office hours that they can be consistently reached. Having this will not only help facilitate smoother communication on jobs in progress but will also allow you to rest a bit easier at night knowing that the other is just a phone call/chat or message away.  Whilst global communication is very easy these days and is across many time zones, just be sure that there is a set time that both parties are aware of.  Do also express to those you work your preferred method of communication,  be it chat, Skype, webcam, email, or phone. I personally still love calling colleagues on the phone and hearing their voice regardless of if it’s business or personal, but the choice is yours.

Stay In The Loop: Setting up checkpoints/milestones is a great way to establish a timeframe for the work to be completed. Think of it as a general map that will provide guidance and set up appropriate expectations for both employers and providers.  Also ensure that those you work with are in the loop with what’s going on in real time. Setting up succinct, consistently-placed communications or meetings to go over what was accomplished and what’s on tap for the following week is a no-brainer.  However you choose to get the point across is up to you, but the main takeaway is that the success rate of the job largely depends on both parties staying on the same page.  Additionally, a good way to manage any project is by using documents such as Action or Project Plans, Non-Disclosure Agreements, Change Order Agreements, and Contracts. These documents will protect both parties in case there is any sort of dispute.

Know Your Tools: Take time to familiarise yourself with tools that are available for you to utilise online. There are many such as integrated real-time chat, message boards, video chat, online collaboration suites, IM, or even standard email, spend some time researching what tools will help boost your productivity when working with others online.

Edited extract, source: elance.com