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Small business coach Hannah McNamara from SME Academy (http://www.smeacademy.co.uk) in London talks about ways that you can use freelancers to do specialist work for you or take on some of the burden of your every day work.

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Transcript

Time or more accurately lack of it comes up all the time (excuse the pun) when I’m working with clients one on one.

They have great ambitions for their business but don’t have the time to do what it takes to make it happen. They’re too caught up in the day-to-day running of the business to think ahead and plan for the future. It’s often seen as quicker, easier and cheaper to do everything yourself rather than have to take on staff or get external help.

If this sounds familiar, rest assured you’re certainly not alone and I’ve been through it too.

I know what it’s like to want to feel in control of everything. To think that no one can do things the same way you can. And it’s true. No one can do it exactly the same as you. They might mess up. They might even do it better than you.

The point is, if you’re stressing out about the amount of day-to-day work you have to do, you’re not able to work on the important job of building your business. And it’s only going to get worse.

A flexible and affordable solution is to use the services of freelancers. You might have thought about using a freelance graphic designer for example, but what about a freelance personal assistant or webmaster? They can take on the administrative and technical roles in your business when you need them, and then when you don’t, well they are doing work for their other clients and they’re not on your payroll.

One place where you can find an international network of freelancers is Elance – you can find it at www.elance.com. It works a bit like eBay because freelancers bid to do work for you. I’ve used elance to find virtual assistants and freelance PAs, researchers, transcription services, data entry, audio editing, graphic design, webmaster services and many other services. Because on the whole I use people around the world, we use US dollars. This works out well on the exchange rate and there’s no tax to pay. Many of the people are home workers with low overheads so they can provide great value.

You do need to use a bit of common sense when looking for help on a site like this and check people out thoroughly before handing over work to them, but I’ve found that the benefits you gain from starting to delegate certainly outweigh the feeling of complete overwhelm and stress when you try to do everything yourself.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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Dr Patrick White from SME Academy explains how a little-known Japanese fishing technique can be applied to your business in a recession to improve results.

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Transcript

Hello. Today I would like to talk about:

‘Putting A Shark In Your Business’

You might think this is a really odd topic but I’m relating it to the recession that we are currently having; because one of the things I have learned, being old enough and having been through a few recessions is that it gives you an opportunity to really examine what is going on in your business and make some steps that will improve your business ready for the future.

I’d like to tell you a story that relates to this which I read not that long ago and it’s to do with a Japanese fishing fleet.

The Japanese, over recent times, had fished out all the fish around their own islands and therefore had to send their fleet much further afield to get the fish. Obviously they couldn’t keep the fish alive to get back to the market unless they did something about it.

So initially what they did was they put big freezers on their ships and froze the fish and then took it back to Japan.

However this presented a problem because the Japanese consumer noted that the fish did not taste as fresh as they were used to eating. So what were they to do about this?

So they took their fleet, took all the freezers off and replaced them with big tanks. When they caught the fish they would put the fish in the tanks, fin-to-fin, and let them wriggle around and try and keep them alive so when they got back to Japan they would have the fresh taste.

However after a while the fish stopped wriggling and would just go into a sort of state of frigidity. So when they got back to Japan the same problem happened; the local consumers in Japan said the fish still tasted like it wasn’t fresh. It still tasted like it had been frozen under the previous way of doing things.

So then someone came up with a bright idea of: “Why don’t we put a small shark in each tank? And the shark will swim around; he might eat a few fish but because the shark’s there the fish keep wriggling around.”

And when they got back to Japan it tasted still like fresh fish. So you’ve got to treat the recession like someone has put a shark in your business. And let it wriggle around until you find out ways to do things better and get the results you want.

Thank you. For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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Dr Patrick White from SME Academy explains how the principle behind providing your customers with fresh milk and boost business and differentiate you from your competitors.

Transcript:

Today I’d like to talk about the critical question – you may wonder what the question is. Well it’s quite simple; it is:

Why should customers deal with us?

You might have heard this term ‘Customer Value Proposition’ or ‘Unique Selling Point’ but it is very important in today’s world because we need to differentiate ourselves from our competitors because most products are now commoditised and most services are similar.

So we’ve got to try and make ourselves different and appear different to what our competitors are doing. How can we do this, you might ask. Well, it’s quite difficult but I’d like to talk about a little story which might illustrate the point.

When I first went into business I bought a hotel and the hotel was in a tourist town where there were lots of other hotels.

Having bought the business I suddenly discovered that all the hotels were charging about the same price, which is a problem in itself because the worst place you can be is in the middle because you’re neither at one end of the price spectrum or the other.

However, I thought: “How can I differentiate myself from the other hotels?”

The first thing I discovered was that in hotel directories the most expensive hotels are always listed first. You know the thing: 5 Star, 4 Star, 3 Star, 2 Star, ‘Bring your own tent’ type hotels.

So I figured that if I could make myself the most expensive I would be at the front end of the directory and more people would see me. This, you would think, is quite simple.

However, why would people come to me just because I’m the most expensive? I had to find other ways to differentiate myself from the other hotels in the town and so justify the premium I was charging over them.

Another thing I noticed was in most hotels when you book in they provide you with coffee and tea and they give you those little pottles of milk – you know, the UHT type ones?

Well my hotel was in Australia where milk was quite readily available and quite cheap and most Australians and other visitors that come to Australia do not actually like UHT milk.

So one of the things I hit on was that I would give every customer that stayed in my hotel fresh milk. So when you checked in we pulled out a jug of fresh milk. But that in itself was not enough; we had to add other things.

Another thing I noticed when I was booking into hotels was that people would give you your key, say: “Here’s your key; go to the third floor and it’s the second room on the right.”

And I would be there with my wife and children and be struggling with bags and everything trying to get up there. So one of the other things we did, once we had checked people in and poured the milk jug, we then took the people key in hand to their room helping them with their luggage and their children.

Another benefit of doing this was I could get into the room and check that the quality of the room was fine; that the cleaners hadn’t left anything there, that everything was in ship-shape.

So I would make a display of putting the milk in the fridge, checking the room, helping them settle in and then go back down to the reception.

What happened after this was that we got a reputation amongst a lot of people: “You should stay at this hotel because they actually give you fresh milk.”

So it was a very small thing. It cost me 40 cents to give fresh milk and got me a $20 premium on the price of the room. I had differentiated myself from the rest and therefore people started coming to me and often it was because of word-of-mouth.

What you’ve got to ask yourself in your business is:

“What can I do to differentiate myself from my competitors?”

- And then answer the question:

“Why would people come to me?”

Just saying: “We give good service, go the extra mile.” – Etc, etc doesn’t cut it because everybody does the same thing. Look into your business and find out what you can do uniquely that differentiates you from your competitor and then work on that strength and try and build more business.

Thank you.

For more video tips and articles go to: www.smeacademy.co.uk

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