Measurable Solutions for Business Management

Are you stressed?

2011-08-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

As a practice owner it can become quite easy to take on all of the responsibilities that go with running a practice. You can quickly find yourself shouldering the weight of a burden all your own, but then what about the wife? What about the kids? And what about the friends who you haven’t seen in months? Is it really possible to fully take in the beauty and vitality that this world has to offer while working 70+ hours a week?......

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The Executive Revitalization Course — Measurable Solutions

2011-04-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

Here Laren Hirst will tell you about how doing the Executive Revitalization Course at Measurable Solutions will help him get better control of his business.

Measurable Solutions View on Their Clients

2011-01-21T06:54:00.000-08:00

A client at Measurable Solutions is way more than a customer. A client for us is a fellow team member, someone for whom we feel deep respect and admiration.

Basically when someone signs up for our program each staff member in our company assumes responsibility for the client. We will utilize each skill available to us to help that client succeed. With that amount of commitment on our part, all we ask is that he or she has the same amount of willingness and determination to do their part.

A very typical comment from our clients while at Measurable Solutions for Executive Training is “I want to have in my practice exactly what you guys have here”. They refer to the level of productivity and the sense of well being and goodwill that emanates from every single staff member in our organization. We definitely practice what we teach…and it truly shows!

Where is your business failing?

2010-11-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

It can be very hard to pinpoint exactly where to put in your efforts to revert a downward trend in your business. Measurable Solutions has released a tool which will help to objectively analyze the current state of major areas in your business: The Business Viability Index. Using this tool will give you as a business owner a unique perspective of the overall growth (or lack thereof) in your business. There is no charge to get your index and you can read more about it following this link: www.fa-masterclass.com/bvi

Principles for Effective Leadership

2010-08-31T08:18:00.000-07:00

Whether you run a “one man show” or employ hundreds, the degree of success you will have as an executive depends on your knowledge, understanding, and application of basic management tools. Measurable Solutions’ “Executive Basics Course” is part of the executive training and contains eye-opening administrative truths and vital information for executive success.

Here is what a couple of our clients had to say about having gained the knowledge from this course.

“Prior to attending the Exec Basics course at Measurable Solutions, we were experiencing a lot of success in our practice. We were growing in patient visits, our executives were continuing to function more and more in their executive roles, and though we were extremely happy with how far we have come as a practice, we realized there were still some obstacles that were keeping us from achieving our ideal scene. We also felt that we were still missing something (as owners and executives) that was preventing us from achieving all that we had hoped for. Though we had a good idea of what our roles as executives looked like, we realized we were not where we wanted to be yet.

Completing the executive basics course fully opened our eyes as to EXACTLY what we needed to do to be fully functioning in our executive roles. It also gave us a clearer sense of our purpose as executives and taught us how to get our VPs fully up to speed in their roles. It has been about six weeks since we got back from the Exec Basics II course and since that time, we have been in a continuous growth cycle. In fact, since attending the course, we have hit several new “highest evers”, and our patient visits have shot up past 600 visits per week. It is truly amazing how getting everyone aligned with our purpose, and us fully functioning in our executive roles, has helped our organization. We have no doubts that the information we learned from the Executive Basics II course will help us in achieving our practice goals and ultimately, our ideal scene. Thanks, Measurable Solutions, for another tremendous course. Again, we are truly thankful for all your knowledge and help in growing our practice.”

-- C.E.

“The executive Basics Course pushed me to think about qualities a true leader has and where I am falling short. This was beneficial because I had to name areas to oimprove on and recognize where my strengths are. This course was showing me how to be a leader that has high standards for quality, but also for the people working for our clininc.

I can definitely become an effective leader and person if I keep these principles at the forefront.”

-- J.M.

Executive Training -- The Single Greatest Investment

2010-07-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

"Once we embarked on the journey of the management and executive training it was evident that our primary statistics got a bump each time we returned from Measurable Solutions. I kept wondering how in the world we would implement all of the technologies and each time we did, it went smoothly and we saw new growth happen. Our staff is communicating internally and externally at a much higher level which results in improved patient care and satisfaction.

I have also noticed a significant carryover into my personal life, as much of the methods of management apply to life in general. I am no longer stressed out about the practice and feel that I am much happier on a daily basis, and have a more focused purpose.

Our relationship with Measurable Solutions has been the single greatest investment we have made since opening our practice.”

-- K.C.

A Plan that Truly Moves Us Forward

2010-06-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

Measurable Solutions helps their clients with strategic planning for their practices. Here is what one of them had to say about this service.

"The strategic plan program was fantastic! We learned a great deal about how to analyze our situation and write a plan that truly moves us forward.
Jeff and Shaun were excellent leaders and teachers. They spent time with each practice and asked the right questions and offered sensible solutions to our issues. We are ready to return to our practice and move forward and kick butt in 2010!!"

-- F.D.

Executive Training at Measurable Solutions

2010-05-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

"The technology we learned on the New Patient Course was just the tip of the iceberg for us. Getting much better stability in knowing how to get the patients in the door, and to keep them coming, was awesome; but we now had to gain that type of control in all aspects of the business, so we could have control over it, and not it over us. We both then started taking the Executive Training Courses. With each course we took, and each piece of the technology that we applied, things started to get better and better. Whether you are like us and have many employees, or just a few; one of the greatest things that the technology gives you is the understanding of how to handle and solve employee related issues. Wow – what a fantastically huge help that is!!!!! And I think anyone owning his or her own business would agree.

The technology allowed us to see that not everyone we had working for us was out for the best interest of the company. We learned the exact tools to VERY EASILY spot these individuals and handle them. They may not always be the ones you think they are. Or you may think that you “can’t do with out them,” or “I will never find someone else to replace them.” But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The technology gives you the ability to find, hire and keep competent team players. It comes down to the question again, do you want them or your practice to control you, or do you want to have the control? The Executive Training gives you the ability to gain control. It gave us the tools and the confidence to appropriately handle employee issues, marketing, billing and collections, hiring, and best of all how to run our company and hardly have to be there.

Things were going fantastically better for the company and for my husband and I personally; however one more piece was missing. Measurable Solutions helped us to realize very early on that having a well-trained staff was key – and the only way that we would gain true freedom from the company. So, we took the next step and got our VP of Administration and VP of Production trained, and we are now getting our VP of Public Relations trained. We are also implementing an in-house course room, with our own staff members as the Supervisors, to get all of our other employees trained as well. These are our final and most important steps to complete. Once this is done we will be true LEADERS of the company, and gain the FREEDOM from the practice to realize our ideal scene in life.

We must credit the technology itself, as well as the tremendously competent and helpful staff at Measurable Solutions for continually encouraging us along the way. They enabled us to accomplish all that we have in just one and half years after attending the New Patient Course. Our patient visits went from around 250 per week, when we first started with Measurable Solutions, and now we are up to 600 per week. We have gained the tools to know how to properly higher willing and able employees, and how to train other staff members to competently handle the day-to-day operations, and to truly get that they are part of the team. The Executive Training that Measurable Solutions trains you on is the only technology that will enable you to realize YOUR ideal scene. After all, we all went to school to be the best Physical Therapists we could. We spent lot money to do that. We opened practices of our own to create our own individual ways of helping people in our communities. We didn’t do it so our practices could take over our lives, but somehow they did. And if you think that we had all the money in the world to take the step to get ourselves administratively trained -- that was not the case. At the time we signed up, our company was losing an average of $3,000 a week, simply due to poor management.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, and something can be done about it. We took the step to invest as much into our business as we did ourselves and it has paid off 1000 fold. We have a successful practice, with positive, willing and trained employees, and best of all, we have a life! We can actually leave the practice for weeks at a time now, and the stats seem to go up even more when we do. Our VP of Production, while one day reviewing the statistics looked at me and said, “I have no idea how you ran this company before implementing all this technology, because it works so well.” I said I didn’t know either."

-- L.G.

Making Planning Become Actuality

2010-03-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

A section of Measurable Solutions executive training teaches how you can make your planning become a reality. We asked a client his opinion after completing this step.

“The technology obtained from this course will prove valuable not only from a business perspective but on a home based perspective as well. Additionally, The course will help us in our business as we continue the process of policy deployment and program implementation. Fortunately I feel I have a much better understanding of why programs in the past have stopped or failed and never made it from planning to actuality.”

Aaron Munderloh
Highland Physical Therapy

Staff at Measurable Solutions Have a High Level of Confidence.

2010-02-19T14:42:00.000-08:00

We asked a client his opinion about the staff at measurable solutions and here is his answer:

“The staff at Measurable Solutions sold me on two things. The first was that I got the feeling that they genuinely were concerned about how our practice was doing. They were not pushy with a “crush sell.” They had a real-life solution for whatever excuse I threw at them. They made us and our problems seem important to them. The second feeling that we received which sold us was their level of confidence. It wasn’t a level of cockiness, just an extremely successful “swagger” that was evident over the phone. They had made it work for other clinics in worse condition than ours, so they could easily address our situation and help us to grow”

Best Investment Ever Made

2010-02-09T09:40:00.000-08:00

"Our relationship with Measurable Solutions has done more than just help us grow our business. Prior to working with Measurable Solutions I was beginning to feel stale at work and not enjoying myself as much as I used to. The new focus on growth of the business as well as continuing to help patients become more pain-free and functional has helped to change my outlook on my life away from the office. Success breeds success. It is amazing how many other opportunities become available when the business is successful and your outlook is so positive. In my opinion, Measurable Solutions has been the best investment our practice as ever made. I can’t thank them enough."
-- KC

"Before starting with Measurable Solutions, I wanted to keep working with patients and did not see myself doing more administrative activities than patient care. With the knowledge and confidence that I received from Measurable Solutions, I am ready for 100% administrative duties and eliminate my patient care time. I am very excited about the growth that we have had and the potential growth for our business is limitless. Everything that we do with Measurable Solutions turns to gold."
-- DM

A Client Talks About Measurable Solutions Executive Training

2010-01-14T12:27:00.000-08:00

Lino Chuang talks about the executive training at Measurable Solutions.

The Executive Training helps us tremendously. It gives me understanding of how to run and organize my company and free up some of my time and teach me how to delegate some of my responsibilities to other people. It also helps my wife free up her time and we just follow the system and everything seems to fall into place. The stats go up and we are very pleased about it.

We met with very mild resistance from our staff when we started implementing our training. Then they saw that it was working and our statistics were going up. Our staff are getting bonuses, which they are very excited about. They are more motivated and working together as a team. It has turned the whole office around.

Measurable Solutions also offers a Seminar Series and we’ve attended the Billing & Collections Conference, Advanced Marketing Conference and the Hiring & Team Building Conference so far. These are tools that have also really helped us a lot.

The goal is to free up my time totally by next year. That is the goal. I want to be able to have the company run by itself and step away completely. We are already enrolled in a Measurable Solutions program to attain this.

I’d highly recommend this program if you want to have your practice grow and make enough income so that you don’t have to worry about money. This program will help you get out of the day-to-day chores and free up your time to enjoy your life. We have had a very quick return on our investment. It has been the best decision we’ve made.

Employee Talks About “Executive Training”.

2009-12-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

A lot of client’s testimonials refer to “Executive Training.” What in your opinion is the benefit of Executive Training?

Well, this is a big question so I’m going to give you a long answer.

In many instances, our clients feel at first that all of their problems would be solved if they had more new patients. As this barrier is completely obliterated (rather quickly I may add), the next problem to them may appear to be “too many” new patients. This is no joke, “too many new patients” can become the next barrier to the expansion of a practice.

The fact is that there is a very precise line-up of data necessary to run a successful business, plain and simple. Without all the principles in place, periods of growth can actually become a “problem” because one is not prepared to deliver.

Often we come across physical therapists who are working long, long hours and who believe that success is always accompanied by “high stress.” This is not true.

Measurable Solutions has the management and administrative technology that PT owners need to successfully control their practice, instead of experiencing the adverse effect of their practice controlling them.

As the practice expands, it becomes necessary to bring in other people and build a team. I have found that an all too common mistake owners make is assuming that everyone they hire is going to be the same type of worker they were.

A truly successful business is not just a group of individuals, it is a team. We teach our clients how to create a team and how to build an organization. It takes a group of organized people to deliver to the public, it is a team effort.

Any private practice owner has a very important function in addition to any clinical expertise; an owner has to know how to get others to do work on their own initiative.

The owner’s responsibility also includes planning for long term longevity of the business. This has to take into account the best utilization of current resources from the financial standpoint and staffing. When is the right time to hire more personnel? How do we get a new employee up and running with minimal waste of time and effort? We teach our clients how to make those decisions with great speed and accuracy.

Our goal is to enable our clients to achieve levels of productivity and well-being that spread out into a top quality of life for themselves, their patients, their staff and even ultimately the communities where they live.

Our courses are administered in a very well thought out sequence whereby the clients learn exactly how to expand a clinic from its most basic foundation on up while allowing the owners to truly enjoy the fruits of their work because they have the time and wherewithal to give attention to their families and their personal goals.

Our idea of a successful client is one who is reaching his or her full professional potential and as a result experiences the freedom to create and win to the fullest in all areas of his life.

A Barrier to an Expanding Practice

2009-11-13T08:45:00.000-08:00

THE AVERAGE PT IN PRIVATE PRACTICE SPENDS LESS THAN ½ HOUR A WEEK ACTIVELY MARKETING THE PRACTICE.

I thought that doing a good job as a clinician and perfecting that skill by going to continuing education, delivering continuing education courses and working to get more letters after my name would do the trick. Nothing changed in terms of volume until I realized THAT DOING A GOOD JOB AS A CLINICIAN IS NOT A MARKETING PLAN!

When you look at whether or not you really have a marketing plan to expand your practice and the only thing you can think of is WORK OF MOUTH, you honestly do not have a marketing plan.

feel free to explore more facts about Physical Therapy Marketing at Measurable Solutions website.

Voice of a Measurable Solutions employee.

2009-10-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

Measurable Solutions asked one of their employees: What made you choose this profession?

"I’ve always wanted to help…because I seemed to have a ‘knack’ for doing so. Even as a small child I somehow knew what my parents should do differently in order to get along better with each other. I realized as I got older that helping people was almost a selfish thing because I experienced such personal satisfaction in observing people improve conditions in their lives. I realized that good things do happen to good people only if they know what to do. If they don’t, oftentimes their true potential is not reached and I think that’s really a shame.

I find nothing more rewarding than providing someone with tools they can use to create situations in their business that they thought they could only “dream of”. The transformations in our clients’ lives seem quite magical in that improvements appear literally overnight."

All About Getting Results

2009-10-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

Our motto at Measurable Solutions, as our clients know, is “Results! No excuses.” Our staff have been trained to the highest standards and have years of experience so they know and can walk the walk and talk the talk.
Our technical staff are some of the best on the planet. Why is this? For a simple reason. We train them to a level of perfection that exists nowhere else and with experience on top of that, they reach a level of competence that exists nowhere else in any other consulting company.

When hiring a consulting firm, you must first ask them, are they successful? You know, are they practicing what they preach? Here at Measurable Solutions, we practice what we preach and it shows in our statistics. We measure all aspects of our business and I can tell you this: our statistics have continued to go up since the beginning and continue on with highest-evers month after month after month.

This competence shows up in every aspect of Measurable Solutions, all the way from the front desk to our scheduling personnel, to our technical delivery staff — all the way across the boards. We get our clients moving fast because we care about them a lot. We care about them so much we want them to get the results they deserve in a very short period of time – not in terms of years. We’re talking in terms of months. You know, quite often I hear people – they have the “five year plan.” They have this five year plan to get to where they would feel that they have met their goals. Well, we have clients who are achieving that in months. That might seem a little outrageous, but it is true. The proof is in the pudding.

Our delivery staff is here for one purpose, and that is to get the knowledge we have exported over to you, so that you can demonstrate it in your practice and see the results. We have clients coming in to Measurable Solutions that handle in a few days what has earlier taken others years and years to try to figure out. And they still haven’t figured it out. This is no exaggeration. People come here and they get things handled fast. They get know-how fast and they go back and put it to use in real life and get real results that are evidenced by their statistics soaring, just as ours have soared.

I encourage you to avail yourself of Measurable Solutions’ services. Here exists an administrative technology that will enable you to reach your goals faster than you ever thought possible and beyond that. So book yourself a reservation to sunny Clearwater, Florida to meet Measurable Solutions. My staff will ensure you get the results you need to get you really flying in your practice.

Beating the Competition

2008-06-20T08:59:00.001-07:00

One of the first steps is knowing how to play the game. A lot of you are very good at selling the product or service that you represent – you’ve gone to college, invested money and time on being expert on getting that hat completely on. However, now that you are business owners, you also have a multitude of hats in your business, some of you have so many hats that you wear that they are stacked up to the ceiling.

How much money have you spent becoming the CEO of your business? The majority of the time when a business owner comes to Measurable Solutions, this is the first investment they have made in becoming a little bit more proficient as a CEO.

What does this have to do with beating the competition? Everything! I use to work with dentists in the mid ‘80s in Seattle, Washington in a building in the middle of downtown. There were 80 separate dental offices in that building. When a dentist retired and moved out of the building, a brand new dentist would move into that office. Do you know what? The dentists in the bigger practices would come around and take that guy under his arm and mentor him and show him how to get new patients and show him how to do a better job and show him how to be a much faster success than they were.

Now, what if you had that in this profession? Usually, when a new business moves in across the street from an existing business, that existing business says “Oh my gosh, what am I to do? This competition is going to be robbing customers from me before you know it.”

However, there are more than enough customers to go around so what is all the worry and drama concerning existing or potential competition?

The problem is this: your community, your referral sources and even your customers don’t truly know what you do; they don’t know what kind of results you get.

I’ve told business owners this datum with regard to competition when they come in as a new Measurable Solutions’ client. They look at me kind of cross-eyed but, after a while of learning how to expand their practice and gain more control over the business, they come to me and say, “Jeff you were right – there isn’t any such thing as competition. That’s just a bunch of hooey.” They are now equipped to win the game and know that there is really no competition to beat.

Ask the Owner!

2008-04-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

Originally Shaun and I looked at just setting up an “Ask Shaun Kirk” link on his blog but then we realized that when we decided to become partners we did so because both of us brought something to the table that they other needed.

Shaun had first hand experience in being a private practice owner and I had experience in not only starting business ventures and expanding them to stellar levels but also in finance. Between the two of us we had the bases covered when we started Measurable Solutions in my carriage house (garage).

So I too have a link where you can feel free to ask me any questions you may have about your business.

Both Shaun and I are looking forward to receiving your questions and I will be posting those I receive on my blog with my answer if it is something I feel will benefit the group.

Jeff

What Lies Keep You From Expanding Your Business?

2008-04-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

As co-founder of Measurable Solutions, I have been delivering our introductory marketing course for a few years now. During this time we’ve had several hundred business owners come through our facility: some are large and some are small. What is interesting is that I notice there are certain characteristics that all of them have in common to some degree, and I’d like to make them known to you in case perhaps you haven’t recognized any of them in yourself or in your own business.

Commonly, a business owner has many things that take his or her attention away from the actual expansion of the organization. The first thing to recognize is that the attention is taken away from the expansion of the organization – until that is realized none of the other barriers will be in view. It’s not necessarily that business owners want a large facility or multiple facilities, or their name in lights or a shrine built to them, it’s just what we commonly find is what most people want is the ability to run their business from a distance. And many people are in business for two years or twenty years, and they have not been able to achieve that goal. There are some of you that have, and that’s fantastic.

We find that in the area of expanding a business stably there are a lot of reasons why this problem has never been addressed. These are what I call the lies that keep you from expanding your business.

One common lie that I find quite interesting is the number of business owners who come into our company and state that they do practically nothing to expand their business as if they are proud of it, in some bizarre way. I certainly expect that all of us should be doing good work, and if you aren’t at least achieving that end goal of delivering an exchangeable product to your customers, you should just quit and do something else. But assuming that everybody is delivering an exchangeable product and their business standards are high, I’m always shocked to hear that a large number of owners do nothing at all to expand their business. I usually hear things like, “Our customers know who we are and they keep coming back — word of mouth has gotten us this far so I see no reason to change and we have been marketing our business this way for years.” What’s usually underneath all that is they don’t know what to do to market promote and expand their business so they do nothing and hope that their products and customer service will somehow keep the numbers going up.

Another lie that we hear very often as a reason for not expanding the business is being overwhelmed. Now, it is an interesting thing that whenever you propose a solution to anyone who is overwhelmed already with things to do or problems in life, they won’t implement it. I mean you could be leading them straight to the fountain of youth, but they would deny it and go in an opposite direction. I find commonly that overwhelm is nothing more than an inability to recognize the important things from the unimportant things. This is easily resolved but not until overwhelm at the top is handled. Once the owner can take a moment to really look at what is going on in the business he can see what is important and what is not important. Obviously this is a very important point to address and handle.

Sometimes I hear another lie that holds a business down, “I don’t want to be too busy.” Now, I can understand how if you were the only one in your business and it got busier, that you personally would be busier. But in the most successful businesses that I am familiar with, the owner doesn’t work more hours, he or she works less. The staff doesn’t necessarily work more hours, they just don’t have any downtime. It’s run efficiently, its run smarter. When someone tells me that they don’t want to be too busy, what they are telling me is they are already overwhelmed. And what is interesting, is if you take your production volume from where it is presently, and cut it in half, just cut it in half right now, would you work half time? Or would you work frantically full time plus try to figure out what you could do to get the numbers back up to where they are right now? My guess is that you would be working frantically. Now, if you knew exactly what to do, and what are the vital steps that you must take in order to turn that thing around, then you have executive prowess. If you work 60 hours a week and you are not able to get your stats into a higher range and increase the volume in your organization, then it’s likely you are doing either things that shouldn’t be done or you’re doing trivial functions that quite honestly don’t expand your business. The most difficult thing to spot is what are the most important and vital steps to take. I usually don’t hear a business owner tell me that “my numbers dropped by one half, and I’m working about 60 hours a week doing trivial stuff that doesn’t work, but I’m going in there and I’m giving it my all nevertheless.” Most owners consider that they are doing exactly what is necessary to boom the business. But if the stats are not rising, they are not doing the vital and correct steps. Plain and simple.

Expanding your organization is not as complicated as you may think. It doesn’t have to cause more time, trouble, or stress, but there are vital steps that must be taken to make that happen. And a little bit of time is necessary on the part of the owner, to step away from day-to-day production to an executive responsibility to make that happen. Those who have done that successfully look back and wonder what took them so long to make the decision and take on the viewpoint of an owner.

The business is supposed to enhance your life in some way. You decided to go out on your own, because you wanted to be your own boss. I think what you ought to do is to consider doing it professionally. Be a professional executive and a professional owner. Take on both and do them both well because you may have your own goals that you would like to obtain as a business owner, personal and financial. But it is the responsibility of the owner to take care of his or her staff, so whatever you need to make financially or you have as a goal that would make you happy, you better double or triple it, because it isn’t going to be enough to take care of your staff and provide what those individuals would like to achieve working with and working for you. Your goal needs to be bigger.

If you have a successful business that is doing well and is taking good care of you financially, but you still feel stressed because you have to think about it or worry about it or fret about it, or you have to show up every day to see how things are going, then what you need to do is to improve the skill of those staff who actually run the organization day to day as executives so that they can run it for you. That is really how you get distance from your organization. Have a competent team who knows how to get things done and can make the practice grow in your absence. We can help you. We do it every day. It’s very simple, it is not complicated. The only decision that has to be made is that there is a desire and a willingness to go into action on the part of the owner to expand his or her organization. We take it from there.

How to Take Effective Action to Generate New Business

2008-03-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

Over the years I have heard tales of woe and success from around the country concerning business owners and their efforts to generate new business. Their solutions have been many and varied but in their mantra of reasons “why” they are not increasing the volume of their business is a common thread which winds throughout all inaction in that area.

Why wouldn’t someone take effective action to generate new business? Is it that some of us feel we just can’t squeeze another free minute out of our already jammed days? Or is it that over our years in business we have achieved a level of success large or small, which we have settled into and from that vantagepoint we cannot recognize that there may be solutions, which work that we haven’t tried?

Some business owners are amazingly creative in their efforts. But they may also have stacked up failures or their successes have been hit or miss because they lack a basic understanding of what it is that actually produces a result in the Public relations and marketing arena. Their mantra then becomes “I’ve tried it all, what else is there to do? There is no real solution.”

How many of us have gone out on marketing calls, have had what seemed like a great “meeting” only to never hear from them again? How many of us have experienced the up and down roller coaster of generating new business and then, from the increase in business which winds us up with us directly on the day-to-day production lines, seen our new business again wane? We can sometimes feel like we’re riding a wave, a wave over which we have no control.

There is a solution, which works. A simple solution that involves taking the time to put together a realistic plan for the future that encompasses not just the actions needed to drive in new business but also the actions needed to ensure that you can deliver what has been promised.

The steps, roughly, can be said to be:

1. Determine what needs to be produced in each area of your company over the next six months in order to meet the goals you set for your business this year.

2. Starting with the areas that handle the actions necessary to drive business into your company, work out a plan that meet the target.

3. Now you need to work out how this much new business will be serviced. This may include the addition of new personnel, more space, and more equipment.

Once the above is done, ensure that all of the plans align with each other and that based on the data to hand they will result in meeting the targets you have set. Now as the owner all you need to do is simply ensure that each step of the plans are executed completely and on time.

How to Increase Productivity in Your Business

2008-02-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

Do you keep a “to-do list” on what you wish to accomplish each day? There may have been a point in time where you did this quite routinely, and perhaps it has dropped out. Most people will make a list of things they wish to accomplish in the morning and by the end of the day they didn’t get one thing off the list done. Sometimes this becomes so bad that many business owners decide not to even keep a daily to-do list anymore and just walk into the office and wait till the first employee gives them an order of what they need, and the owner does it for them. This is a backwards way of thinking.

The simplicity of placing a couple of targets on a to-do list and making that your known goal and overcoming whatever those not unknowable obstacles are in order to achieve that end, would make you more happy. Simply speaking, if you got your to-do list done each day, how would you feel at the end of the day? Would you feel good or bad? Likely good. Accomplishing any target or any goal that you set out to do will make you happy.

Too often there are a variety of different barriers that get in the way of achieving one’s goal. The unfortunate thing is we tend to put attention on the things that stop us, and not attention on things that allow us to win. Look at today. What are the problems that you are trying to handle outside of the basic production for the day? It’s likely that these problems do not have any impact on your expansion even if you never handled them at all.

Sometimes it is important to recognize the barriers that are in front of you that keep you from achieving your goal and just ignore them. Sometimes the best thing that you can do is nothing while carrying forward towards reaching your known goal. Let’s take a look at how simple this can be accomplished. Let’s say you walk into your office on Monday morning, and you look at how production occurred the prior week, and you have an immediate staff meeting, for say 30 minutes, and you say, with confidence that “we are going to get our production up by 10% before the end of the week.” And then you pose the question to the group: “what can each of you do?” Insist they actually give you an answer to this problem. And then write it down on your to-do list -- those steps that your staff said they could do to get your statistics up by 10% that week. And those would be your known sub-goals toward the overall goal of a rise of production by 10%. And then you overcome whatever obstacles are in the way of achieving those goals until you accomplish the end result you are searching for. Certainly you do this fairly routinely. Most business owners do this or if they don’t, they should be.

This inability or difficulty in getting things done transcends from the owner to the staff. If you give your staff random orders without any recognition of what is important and what’s not, the staff member will take the unimportant to be equal to the vital task. So it is key for you to delegate towards expansion.
By simply delegating toward expansion, putting together a real list of actions to take each day that will result in expansion and completing what is on the list you will increase the productivity of your business. It is that simple.

What do most Business Owners Have in Common?

2008-02-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

Over the years I have dealt with all types and sizes of businesses. I have seen all types and sizes of problems as well as quite a variety of solutions that emerge to resolve them. Throughout my experiences in consulting various companies and working to unravel the difficulties they sometimes encounter a very basic common denominator is always present. That common denominator is the inability to confront or perceive what is really
going on.

Now, there can be a number of ways that that common denominator manifests itself. It can be an owner or manager who is unable to face staff so turns a blind eye to what may be happening in the various areas. It might be that there is too much “wishful thinking” going on because confronting what the “dangerous” scene really is unpalatable. It may also be something as simple as not being able to perceive because one has no information in an area such as statistics that reflect the production and viability of the company.

Most businesses to some degree or another use statistics. Few however use them to measure the individual production of each staff member or areas of the practice. It can seem like a formidable task but it doesn’t have to be if one has a basic understanding of organization and what products are really important to its survival.

If an individual staff knows what it is he or she is supposed to produce and it can be measured then it is not difficult to assign him a statistic that will reflect
his production.

One of the first steps in solving the common denominator is being able to measure one’s production so that one can confront and “see”.

This is an amazing step for most people as it puts them into a position where they can now be in charge of what happens in their own practice as, for the first time, they can actually “see what’s happening.”