Category: Business Goals

Posted on May 27th, 2021

Don’t Miss These 5 Red Flags of Crappy Prospective Clients

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Business Growth
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Leadership
  • LinkedIn
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

Do you encounter crappy clients? If yes, welcome to the club.

That’s one ugly aspect of business hardly anyone ever talks about – the crappy clients! Forgive the foul language, but I’d rather be precise with my terms than polite. The term is a really good way to describe those clients who make your life difficult.

We see the glamorous lifestyle many entrepreneurs flaunt on social media. It’s all Lamborghinis and Teslas and enthusiasm everywhere. But that’s not an accurate picture of business. Business can be tough and ugly.

I’ve had my share of experiences with crappy clients in my journey as an entrepreneur in the last eight years. I’m sure you all can relate to this because you have also experienced it yourself.

What I learned is you need to recognize those crappy clients as soon as possible and let them go.

I’ve identified five red flags you need to look for when considering working with a client. Once you recognize these red flags, you can cut all ties, nip things in the bud – insert any idiom you wish here to stop your suffering – and never deal with them again.

These red flags are gold! If you see these, make sure to hit the road.

1. Disorganized clients

If a business or a person seems disorganized and can’t plan ahead, that’s a big NO for business!

What is a sign of a disorganized client?

If you encounter a prospective client that needs to get stuff done yesterday, that’s a red flag.

Some clients are notorious for doing this. They’re always late! For everything! They need to get things done now because they hadn’t planned any of it and are now scrambling. This haphazard approach would take them nowhere and would sink you too.

If you say yes to them, you will be caught in their chaos, and your business will suffer.

2. Disorganized business

That leads me to red flag #2 – disorganization in your client’s business.

What are the signs of a disorganized business?

The red flags are: lack of clear strategy, no clarity on the makeup of the team, not clear who is responsible for hiring, and lack of clarity about their operations.

Typically, this means they don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re involving you in the process of not knowing what they’re doing. At the end, it will all fall to pieces.

3. Not knowing the what, where, and how’s of the business

Red flag #3 is not knowing what’s going on in the company. It echoes point #2, but it reflects the state of disarray inside the business – not knowing where things are.

For example, a crappy client I just fired didn’t know where their Google Analytics was. Google Analytics should be an easy thing to set up and monitor on a regular basis. They didn’t even know if they had set up Google Analytics. In fact, nobody in the company knew. Not the marketing person, not even the leader of the company.

If you see the client has trouble answering the basic questions about their business, you have both flags #2 and #3.

4. Passing the responsibility on to another

Red flag #4 is passing the buck. By that, I mean when the client blames someone else for their failures. This is a very bad quality in businesses, and I see this all the time.

“Well, I don’t know about that because the person who set this up is no longer here, and they didn’t tell me about it.”

If you see this in a client, don’t engage.

The responsible person should have figured it out by then. It’s their responsibility to their business. Even if they outsourced or delegated the setup, they should have figured things out. It’s part of being an entrepreneur and doing your job well.

5. Beating up vendors!

Red flag #5 is being cheap toward and bad-mouthing those who help the business. In other words, beating up vendors. I hate that. That’s one of the most not just annoying but venomous things a company can do to its vendors.

Vendors help the company and the brand. And beating them up is one of the worst things clients can do. If they speak badly about the tools, platforms and other agencies they use, blaming them as described in red flag #4, you can bet they’ll do the same to you. Most likely, they’ll lowball you and not appreciate your work.

“Well, I don’t know… Am I really getting everything I need for what I paid?”

Don’t take that crap. Run the other way.

Listen to your gut

When choosing your clients, keep in mind the five red flags described in the article.

If you see any of them, stop engaging with the client. Bad clients can trigger negative thoughts about your worth and value.

If you feel your current or prospective client isn’t the right fit for you, don’t go through the rigmarole and the negativity. Avoid constantly thinking about this unfit client whose problems are keeping you up at night.

You may start feeling as if you were drained by a vampire, once you start losing your sleep and peace of mind. Crappy clients suck the life out of you. That may lead to you doubting yourself, thinking you’re not at your optimal speed and competency, even questioning whether or not you are cut out to be an entrepreneur.

You don’t need that in your business. You should be growing and looking for new clients.

 

You’re an entrepreneur, and you deserve getting back what you put into your business and your clients. Don’t let other people mess it over for you.

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Posted on April 19th, 2021

Get A Team: How Mine Grew From 0 to 10 Employees

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Business Growth
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Leadership
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

So many entrepreneurs are solopreneurs. They don’t have a team. With this blog post, I hope to encourage you to consider getting a team. 

I’ll share my story. 

I recently hired a personal assistant to help me with the day-to-day things: my email, scheduling, and some of my social media. 

I already had a team of 10 people who took care of a lot of my business’ operations, but this personal assistant was more for the personal things that I needed help with items such as inbox management, scheduling and travel arrangements. 

Hiring my new personal assistant made me recall my experience in building the team I have now. 

I’ve had my business for seven years. Two years in, I started thinking I needed someone to help me. 

If you want to scale, you need to hire

Back when I made my first hire, I went to local colleges where I live in Denver and hired a couple of interns. One of them actually stayed with me for several years. 

In order to scale, move forward, gain more clients, free myself from having to do the day-to-day operations in my business, and most importantly, to be happy with what I do, I realized that I needed people who can help me with all of these projects. 

With all the background tasks taken care of, I can focus on the big picture: finding new clients, being the face of the company, business development, speaking engagements, strategy, new projects, and new businesses. 

For a proficient team, use a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

But to scale your team, you first need to train your team. And training requires a process.

I use a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) in my business so all tasks are documented and all new staff go through the SOP before working on any projects.

Our Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) posted in Trello. That’s also been a critical point in growing my team, because before I had standard operating procedures, I couldn’t really train people or do it very effectively.

A lot of entrepreneurs don’t have standard operating procedures, which makes it very difficult to train new hires. 

Without an SOP, you have to take time out of your schedule to individually train each and every new hire. With an SOP, it’s so easy to onboard someone. Everything’s spelled out in one cohesive source. They can get started immediately and just consult the SOP when they run into a question they need answered.  

Your SOP can be a document or a collection of videos and demos that serve as instructions for the new person to reference with regarding their new role or tasks.

SOPs are very useful when your team is growing, people leave or you have to hire a new person.

Be intentional about delegating

Delegating is not, “Oh, let’s delegate because I don’t really feel like doing stuff.” 

It’s more about what you want to do and how you want your day to look. This gives you insight on what to delegate. 

Ask yourself these questions:

  • What do you want to do?
  • Where do you want to take your business?
  • How can you make it all happen? 
  • And on which parts of that process do you want to personally focus?
  • What drains your energy?
  • Where do you see yourself, and also what are the things you wish you had more time for? 

That’s what it was for me. I decided that I don’t want to be doing the day-to-day operations of my business. I wanted to be doing more podcasts, strategic projects, and bringing in new clients. I wanted to focus on sales and business development. I wanted to do speaking engagements and creating content and courses. 

These are the tasks that I decided I wanted to do. This is how I wanted my day to look.

So if you want to scale, start with hiring a team!

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Posted on March 31st, 2021

The LinkedIn Strategy That Will Grow Your Business With Rhonda Sher

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Business Growth
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Leadership
  • LinkedIn
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

The advent of Linkedin allowed professionals the world over to network in a new way. LinkedIn offers unprecedented access to key decision-makers, movers and shakers, potential business partners, service providers and clients. You find someone you like on the platform, and if you want to get to know them, you connect with them and have a call. Sometimes that leads to you joining groups, getting speaking engagements, or invitations to join podcasts.

In one of my podcast episodes, I got the chance to talk with Rhonda Sher, a LinkedIn expert. She’s been helping entrepreneurs, professionals, and businesses create visibility, credibility, and profitability on LinkedIn. She is also the author of the book The ABC’s of LinkedIn, Get LinkedIn or Get Left Out. 

rhonda-sher-portraithttps://www.rhondasher.com/

Rhonda shared some of her proven LinkedIn strategies that can help you grow your business, and I am sharing them with you.

Professional banner

The banner on your LinkedIn profile is one of the first things people see. As you know, first impressions are everything. The banner is the blue space above the rest of your profile. Make sure your banner reflects your message and your brand. Using Canva.com, you can create a banner consistent with your brand.

jean-ginzburg's-linkedin-banner-and-headshothttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanginzburg/

Professional headshot

Your headshot is just as important as your banner. According to Rhonda, people are 16 times more likely to interact with you if you have a professional photo. Don’t be cute with your headshot, and don’t ignore it. A picture of your pet or an avatar will not make you look legitimate in the eyes of a potential client or business partner. Rhonda sees such profiles all the time. Some don’t have any picture at all — Make sure you are not one of them.

Clear and concise headline

LinkedIn will default to giving you your job title in place of your headline. Instead, customize it, using the 220 allowed characters. Use the headline to attract the right prospects. In the headline, tell people what you do, whom you serve, and what problem you solve.

Clear contact information

If you don’t have clear contact information, how do you expect people to get in touch with you? Make sure you list your website, email address, and/or phone number. Not having any contact details is like going to a black-tie event in your running clothes. You are not dressed for the party, and you can’t connect with people the way you would in proper attire. 

Touch 10 people before 10 AM

One of the ways you can increase the efficiency of your time on LinkedIn is by employing Rhonda’s 10 before 10 method. Rhonda asks her clients to make a habit of engaging with at least 10 people before 10 AM. The results might surprise you. For instance, one of her clients gained a 30% increase in business because of this system.

LinkedIn is a platform for serving, not selling

To utilize LinkedIn effectively, first you need to understand what it’s for. It’s not a selling platform. It’s a networking platform, where you can connect with prospects so you can build relationships with them, eventually benefiting from those connections. To help her clients get the most out of the platform, Rhonda teaches them the 3Ps: present, prospect, and profit. It’s a simple system she shares with her clients to generate appointments, share content, interact with other people’s content, engage with prospects, foster connections and profit from them.

 

Connect with Rhonda Sher if you want to learn more about her LinkedIn trade secrets.

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Posted on March 22nd, 2021

Retire or Not Retire: That Is the Question

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Business Growth
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Leadership
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

For a long time, retirement has been regarded as the ultimate goal of a person’s work life. You work so you can retire in comfort. Typically, that would involve a pension and maybe a golden watch from the company you worked for. That is not my situation or the situation of many modern workers. When I think of retirement, I begin to puzzle. At what age? For what reason?

How? Where?

What are the reasons you would want to retire? I came up with these three:

  1. You don’t want to work anymore
  2. You are of age when working is hard
  3. You want to do what you have always wanted to do but postponed till retirement

I’ve tried on these reasons for size and realized that none of them fit me. What about you?

Read on, and let me know how you think of yourself at the typical retirement age and what you would want for yourself.

Reason #1: You don’t want to work anymore

Being an entrepreneur, I cannot wrap my head around the traditional views on retirement. I can’t imagine myself not doing what I love because I turn 65. How would that work? At 64, I am happy to be running a business, helping other entrepreneurs, and at 65, I would stop enjoying it? It doesn’t make sense to me that the age – a number – would dictate when I would stop working.

If you are not enjoying what you are doing, why are you doing it in the first place? It’s not for nothing people keep repeating this quote, attributed to Mark Twain: “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

If you don’t want to stop doing what you love just because you hit a certain age, what else may make you want to retire?

Reason #2: You are of age when working is hard

The age of 65 has long been regarded as the retirement age. I am sure governments had very good reasons for establishing it. The fact that we do age and our capacity to perform diminishes with age has to be accounted for. But here is where I turn to people such as Dr. David Sinclair for a different perspective. His book Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To is a hot commodity these days. It challenges the notion that by 65 most of us walk around with broken bodies and dull minds. Peter Diamandis’ conference Abundance 360 highlights the same message – we are living longer and healthier lives. If that’s the case, why would we not work longer, enjoying doing what we are doing?

By 65, you will have amassed incredible experience; you are still full of energy and vigor; and now you are wise too. I think it would be amazing to see what we can be when we are at the top of our game and still have a long way to go before we feel the need to slow down, whatever our mission.

Once you address the question of needing to retire at 65 because of old age or poor health, since neither may be true for you, what’s left?

Reason #3: You get to do what you always wanted but couldn’t

The final argument is you want to retire so you can finally do the things you want to do! Let me ask you this, then: why are you putting off doing all the things you want to do??? I want to travel now. And I do (minus the COVID situation, of course). If you want to take up a hobby, why wait? What’s stopping you from pursuing the things you want to do? True, maybe you don’t have the time to do everything you want to do right this moment, but if you plan it out over the course of some years, surely you can manage to have the experiences you crave to have before you hit 65.

The question is not whether or not you have the time. The question is how to make it work today.

Conclusion

Once I ran through these three reasons for retirement, I saw that I am not planning on retiring at all. It’s true that life happens, and perhaps I will not be as healthy at 65 as I think I ought to be. But that only ups the stakes for the need to experience life now. By the time I get to that age, it might be too late. Today is all we have, and I don’t want to miss out on all it has to offer because I decided to wait till retirement

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Posted on December 10th, 2020

Being An Entrepreneur is A Marathon, Not A Sprint

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Business Growth
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

Becoming a successful entrepreneur is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires a lot of endurance to reach your goals. 

If you treat the process like a sprint or like you’re only in it for the short term, you may end up losing in the long run. Sprinting is a lot different from running a marathon. 

The process and experience of training and running a marathon is much longer. You do a sprint in 10, or 20 to 30 seconds. It’s much faster. You put all your energy and effort into that just that short timespan. 

With a marathon, there are potentially many pauses and breaks. You have to stop and rest. You have to hydrate–you actually stop or slow down for water. You may even slow down enough to eat something because you can’t run 26 miles without having a piece of nutrition to fuel your body. 

There are points when you speed up, and then there are points when you have to slow down or stop.  

Business has spurts of growth and endurance

As entrepreneurs, we will have spurts of excitement with projects that we push forward, to which we give all our energy. 

After each project or campaign is done, we slow down. We take a break because it’s not sustainable to be running all the time. 

It’s not sustainable for your physical health or your mental state

Sometimes you have to slow down or stop

Sometimes you have to slow down or even stop.

This can be really hard to do sometimes, when you’re in the middle of a project or you have a big, demanding client. You want to accomplish everything or as much as you possibly can. 

But as the saying goes, “you have to take 1 step back to take 2 steps forward.”

And there are a number of ways on how you can slow down:

Yoga 

I’ve also been practicing restorative yoga. It’s more like stretching and holding poses for several minutes versus the regular Vinyasa yoga which we’re all familiar with. The stretching really helps me because I do a lot of running and outdoor activities. 

Meditation

I’ve also been trying to meditate every day for just 10 minutes. It allows me to think of my goals, to look at the big picture. Visualization is another piece of this practice. Where do I see myself? What do I want to accomplish?

Getting out in nature

I love hiking, biking, snowboarding and snowshoeing. Ever since moving to Colorado, it’s become a way for me to de-stress, re-energize, and get back into it!

 

These are just templates of what you can do. These tools have helped me center myself to be a better entrepreneur, a better manager, a better leader, and a better person, overall.

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Posted on December 3rd, 2020

Abundance vs Scarcity Mindset

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

How’s your mindset? Tactics and strategies are very important when it comes to growing your business, and my content is full of them. I find that most entrepreneurs focus on the strategies and tactics, the marketing, occupying the digital space, posting on social media, but not very much on their mindset. 

And I have encountered, and spoken to, and worked with over a thousand entrepreneurs at this point in my business so I speak from a place of experience.

Most of us grew up with a mindset of scarcity

I’ve been in business for nearly a decade, and I’ve found that one’s mindset is a critical factor, and it requires a critical paradigm shift to experience growth.

Taking a step back here, most of us have come from the corporate world. Most of us probably didn’t grow up in a very affluent society, or a very affluent community. Some of us might have, but I certainly did not, and I can definitely relate to that. My parents didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up. 

It isn’t uncommon that we then have a certain mindset growing up in a middle-class community, and just going to middle-class school, living in a middle-class neighborhood. There is nothing wrong with that, absolutely nothing.

But typically our mindsets are around the practices of the middle class. They’re not about abundance, they’re not about massive amounts of growth. They are just about getting a job, getting by, going into the corporate world.

That’s just how we were taught by our parents’ generation. Entrepreneurship wasn’t big for our parents’ generations, and so the mindset that they had was one that they passed along to us. And we, of course, adopted that mindset, and we are now living with it.

So what we inherited is not the mindset of abundance. And I will readily admit the fact that I used to do just that. I used to have a scarcity mindset myself because that’s how I grew up. 

Like I said, my parents didn’t have a lot of money. We were middle class, and my parents would always say, “Hey, get a job. Earn a steady paycheck. Have a steady income. Don’t rock the boat. Just get things done, and live the middle-class life.” 

I think for our parents’ generation that was the dream. For our generation, our dreams are much bigger. 

For growth, we need to shift to a mindset of abundance

Because our dreams are bigger, the mindset of our parents’ generation doesn’t fit. 

But because it’s what we grew up with, we need to consciously take action to change our thought processes. I want to share a little story with you that illustrates how the change in my mindset has occurred.

In March 2020, I bought some land up in the mountains of Colorado. 

Now, I live in Denver. It’s always been my dream to buy land and build a house in the mountains of Colorado.

I finally found a piece of land that I really liked. And it was the right price. 

I bought this land with cash–not with financing or through a mortgage. At one point, I had to wire the title company tens of thousands of dollars to cover the land. 

Tens of thousands of dollars went out of my savings account. Naturally, I started thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of money. This is a big chunk of my savings that I’ve been putting away for the last several years.” 

I was very excited about the land and the house, but at the same time, my mind was going, “That’s a big chunk of change.” 

The scarcity mindset started to brush up against me, but I decided, “No. This is not the way I want to view things. I have to think about it in terms of abundance.”

  • First of all, I’m deploying my capital. 
  • Secondly, I’m following my dreams. My dream has been to buy land in the mountains of Colorado, so that’s following my dreams.
  • I can earn back the money. I believe in my capabilities to do that. Yes, I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on land in the mountains, but I have no problem earning that money again.

And that’s how millionaires and billionaires think. They think with abundance. 

They don’t think, “Oh, I just spent a bunch of money! Where am I going to get the money to replace that?” 

Instead, they think, “That made me happy. And it’s no problem to earn it back. I’m spending money because that’s just a part of consumerism and a part of deploying my capital. But it will be easy for me to get more. There are infinite amounts of money out there, and there are always opportunities to get more.”

It’s absolutely true. 

What’s your mindset like? 

I encourage you to ask yourself this question. 

Where is your mindset now? When you need to spend or invest money, are you still thinking in the scarcity mindset framework? Or are you thinking big!. 

Check your own mindset. You might not be aware of it. Once you discover it, change it. Shift to an abundance mindset. It will give you confidence in pursuing your dreams and goals.

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Posted on March 20th, 2020

Mentors Are Essential For Your Business Success

  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Entrepreneur
  • Social Media

Do you have a current frustration in your business, or a goal that remains out of reach? Perhaps it’s time to get a mentor. A fresh perspective might surprise you, and you might be stunned at how simple the solution can be. You just needed an objective point of view to discover it! 

I started my business about seven years ago and I used to doubt myself a lot. I used to think that I wasn’t good enough to do this business. 

I knew there were a lot of people out there who were doing a much better job than me. Oh, I had many qualifications, but other people were just much better at what I was doing. 

Does that sound familiar? 

A lot of it comes from social media, right? You see these people who are crushing it and standing in front of Lamborghinisshowing the results of their seemingly obvious success. It’s a mixture of feeling intimidated, envious and frustrated, and you begin to ask why you aren’t at that level of success yet? 

That transfers into your business, where you start comparing yourself to them.  

Your self-doubt and envy also bleeds into the operational aspects of doing your business: you feel like you’re not worth what you charge. 

You might think of charging less perhaps in a bid to attract more clients. Or maybe simply because you think you’re not at the level deserving of your previous higher rate. 

That’s insane. 

Mentors help you keep things straight

And by straight, I mean with regard to your mindset and motivation, not just the right and efficient way of taking your business toward success. 

When you just keep wallowing in self-doubt, it affects your business decisions (like lowering your rate!). Your business will suffer and you won’t make the revenue you want or need for financial growth. 

In turn, that will make you feel even more worthless. 


Step out of that vicious cycle. Find good mentors. 

Type of mentors

There are a couple of types of mentors: distance mentors and personal mentors. 

Distance mentors can be someone like Gary Vaynerchuk or Rand Fishkin– a celebrity or expert, maybe a micro-influencer in your niche. It can be anyone helpful, really, who speaks of your challenges and ways to solve them, but doesn’t have a direct relationship with you.

Personal mentors are coaches who support you directly. You have a one-on-one relationship with them, and they coach you through your blind spots while also helping you with your mindset.

It’s always so important to have good mentors. I often see entrepreneurs struggle with this, many failing to utilize one all-together. 

The fact is you need the right mentors to support you. Successfully building and running any business enterprise is a hard job, a lonely job. Mentors can help with your business processes and more importantly, your mindset, keeping you encouraged and motivated to keep you moving forward.

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