Business Consulting

While it is often exciting to be an entrepreneur, we sometimes forget to be successful in any business; we must be prepared to wash the dishes. I found myself in the unique position several times of reviewing business opportunities with both young and seasoned entrepreneurs. These are people that have exciting ideas in exciting times and carry with them a great deal of energy that can translate into success.

One of the first things that I offer as advice to any entrepreneur or business owner, is to take the time to think about how it is that they would feel about being a dishwasher.

My father once explained to me that the most successful restaurant owners and successful managers of restaurants have often spent time in the kitchen, on the line themselves preparing food cooking and even washing the dishes.

In considering this advice, I offer you the following thoughts. When you think of creating a successful business, the first thing you’ll need to consider is the actual infrastructure of the business,  how will this business operate, what role and how well will that be defined. This is what often leads me to think of the dishwasher.  Take the most successful restaurant anywhere in the world and that restaurant will be traditionally be defined by the number of seats, the quality of food and level of service.   Although, if the restaurant only has 60 seats and 80 dishes on any given busy night, they would be lost without the dishwasher.

The Smart business owner or entrepreneur quickly realizes that it is important to understand his/her business and every aspect of the business. To have respect for every role and function that that business or service has. This is why I mention the dishwasher. When you think of a business, in this case a restaurant, we often overlook the importance of others or in this case the dishwasher. When a consumer walks through a restaurant door it has always been emphasized how important it is to have the first experience with the restaurant be its finest,  it is often overlooked that all of this is made possible by the “dishwasher”.   Imagine how a restaurant would function if it had no dishes.  If everyone in the business thought that they were better than being the dishwasher.  If they thought that the dishwasher was insignificant and unimportant to the success of the business. In such a case,  the business would fail. Surely the chef could not cook the steak, prepare the chicken Cordon Bleu or serve his famous French onion soup without dishes. One could even argue that he would not even be able to cook if someone did not clean and prepare the utensils.

So it is my advice to any small business owner or would-be entrepreneur that you consider the importance of the dishwasher not just in the structure of your business but in how it is that you may be called upon to serve that function to develop the success of your business. No business owner or entrepreneur, at least not the successful ones, develops a business based on great ideas and money alone. The true success of every entrepreneur and small business owner is the sweat, tears and hard work that they are willing to put into their own business. At this very moment there is an extremely successful business owner somewhere in the world scrubbing the toilet because there is no one else to scrub the toilet, and while you may believe your above scrubbing toilets, that business owner who provides for his family, sends his child to Harvard, or uses that first business and that first toilet to build the next multimillion dollar business.  Their success began with the concept that a great idea and funding will not be enough to be successful.

So a word of caution to all you would-be business owners, entrepreneurs, inventors and silver tongues. When someone talks about America being based on the hard work of its citizens, they are talking about an economy built, sustained and developed by small business owners. This is a experience, endeavor and honor that is not always white sandy beaches, luxurious vacations, or penthouse apartments. It is a rite of passage, a part of the American dream, that if you are willing to work hard, invest yourself, your time, your pride, you may be rewarded with all that you put in.  America will always need its “dishwashers”.

If you’re not ready to be the dishwasher, I urge you to reconsider starting or running a business, organization or campaign.

Is your business successful? You might think your are successful because you have a certain number of customers or have made a certain amount of money. But studies show that money does not buy happiness. In fact, a complicated set of factors contribute to each individual’s sense of success and happiness. Here are two unique ways to determine if your business is truly successful or not.

Does Your Business Line Up With Your Core Values?

In order to answer this question, you need to define what your core values are. Your core values should include what is important to you, not what is important to your business. Having a business that contradicts your core values is one way to ensure frustration, burnout and an unclear plan.

Core values can be anything that you believe is truly important. Some examples are integrity, education, self-reliance and health. Choose what resonates with you, not what you think others want to hear, what is trendy or what sounds right.

Once you have chosen one or more core values, assess how well your business lines up with these values at least once per year. Is your business furthering these values? If not, how can you change the business so that it aligns with your core values? Creating a business that is a reflection of your core values is a true sign of success.

What is Your Ideal Day?

Write down a realistic description of your ideal day. What are you doing from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep? Compare this list to what you actually do in a typical day. How well does it match up? If your ideal day closely corresponds to your actual day, you have a successful business on your hands. If not, take a look at which areas of your day don’t match. What changes can you make to change your actual day into an ideal day? Consider outsourcing unpleasant tasks or taking a chance on an initiative that could propel your business to the next level. Remember that a successful business brings personal happiness in addition to financial success.

So how does your business stack up? If you find that you are monetarily successful but not happy with the direction of your business, it’s time to stop and plan. Think of what truly defines your core values and happiness, and make small and steady changes to ensure that your business is a bona fide success.

Have you considered hiring a virtual assistant? Virtual assistants are widely used to help with simple, repetitive tasks that are easily processed via email. Hiring a virtual assistant is a great way for your business to free up valuable time that can be better spent on other, more important tasks. Here are some of the key benefits of virtual assistants.

Low Cost Labor

Virtual assistants often provide labor at rates well below the salary that you would have to pay an in-person assistant. This is because virtual assistants are often located in developing countries such as India or the Philippines, where wage rates are below minimum wage in the United States. Even if you end up with a virtual assistant that is located in the United States, you will avoid the cost of benefits and office supplies that accompany a full-time employee.

The rate that you secure will vary by website and by provider. Some websites allow you to negotiate rates, and it is possible to find virtual assistants for as little as $2 per hour. Keep in mind, however, that the cheapest virtual assistants are often not of the highest quality. One of the most reputable websites, AskSunday.com, provides rates that range from $13.50-$14.00 per hour.

Off-Peak Hours

Virtual assistants can provide around-the-clock service. When you leave the office, you can email a task to your assistant and have it in your inbox the next morning. Of course, the time that your assistant is available to work depends on the assistant’s physical location. If you want your assistant to work primarily during your workday, look for someone in your same geographic region. If you want someone to work while you are off the clock, look for someone on the opposite side of the globe. You can even find teams of assistants that will provide service twenty-four hours per day.

Streamlined Hiring

Hiring a full-time employee takes a lot of time and resources. You must post a job ad, interview, hire the correct person, and spend weeks or months training them. Hiring a virtual assistant is a much quicker and less painful process. There are a variety of websites that simply the process, such as AskSunday.com, oDesk.com and eLance.com. These websites allow you to search for a virtual assistant, interview candidates and process payment. The hiring process can be done in a few hours or a few days, depending on how specific your hiring needs are.

For many business owners, a virtual assistant is an excellent way to free up time spent on repetitive tasks and to focus on the more important issues. If you are spending a lot of time on small tasks, try out a virtual assistant to see if you can increase your businesses productivity.

When you embark on this new adventure called internet visibility, or internet presence, and you are a thorough individual you immediately come across offers upon offers of e-books, lectures, webimanrs, clubs and everything else, to help you understand how to use the internet to advertise your business.

You spend time and money downloading, reading, participating in group discussions, and you learn a whole lot of new things, but when you look back at your business, you think “Gosh, I’ve spent so much time learning how to do advertise it, I don’t have time to take care of my business”.

There is a lot to learn, and if your objective is to make money by opening websites with information only and have links and link backs to sites that do sell something, you are being used as a recruiting agent. And you get finder’s fee. But to be visible with information only site, you have to learn some more and you have to add content, all the time.

It is amazing, the amount of information you need to absorb to be knowledgeable about the internet, and there are so many people advertising the “how to” classes that you know they have turned it into their full time profession. They are not doing, they are teaching.

Of course there are the scams, that give you very little for your money or those who enlist you in a pyramid type business where the objective is to bring more participants, not sell a product or a service. In these tough economic times, people are looking to reinvent themselves in a new area, and the internet filled up with useless, one page sites.

Visibility on the internet is very important to your business, but so is doing what you do best, providing a product or a service.

You will hear about press releases, social networks, articles, blogging, email newsletters, videos, expert question sites and viral marketing, but to do what those people are writing about and recommending will take all of your waking hours.

When you have a small business, with a store front, you spend a little money on keeping the front clean, re painting, re carpeting, and you spend a little more to reach new customers to enrich the circle of repeat customers. Same goes for the internet and internet commerce. You have to put some money into the upkeep of your business to make it grow. And the competition is not only local anymore, it’s global.

But so is the reward.

Your best bet is to save time on research into an unfamiliar subject and hand it over to the experts. You will have the information without having to learn how to get it, you’ll have people that make a living by staying updated on the latest trends and markets and you can see your business take off.

One of those companies is the Puglisi Consulting Group (http://puglisiconsulting.com/), and it has the experience in website solutions, linguistics, public policy, Business solutions higher education and life couching. Through their specialty arm Visibility Acceleration (http://www.visibilityacceleration.com/) can tailor a campaign for your needs.

You either spend that time and money on learning something you don’t want to know, or you pay the experts to do it for you right, the first time.