You CAN Take a Vacation

“You find that you have peace of mind and can enjoy yourself…when you know that it was a one hundred percent effort that you gave – win or lose.” – Gordie Howe, Four-Time Stanley Cup Champion

Summer is almost here and everyone’s thoughts turn to the possibility of taking a vacation. The kids are out of school, the weather is nice, and the beach is calling. Many business owners and managers, however, feel guilty about taking time for themselves, especially in an uncertain economy.

This year, we started a new business, and took on a host of new responsibilities and challenges. Coincidentally, I have had more opportunities for vacation travel than ever before. Special events and family gatherings just seemed to all fall together, and I didn’t want to miss any of it. But how do you justify stepping away from a business that is operating at such a crucial juncture?

Get in tune with your calendar. I looked months in advance, and planned for how much time I would need to accomplish tasks. I estimated how much time I would need for each project, and made sure I had them done before I left town. I analyzed which ones could be put off until after I got back. I left nothing to guesswork.

Prepare your boss for your absence. I left detailed comments and notes on what would be happening while I was gone, along with any actions I needed him to take to keep things moving forward.

Be accessible for important deadlines. My boss has been very flexible with my vacation schedule. In return, I am making myself available to handle some important projects while I am on the road. The trick here is to really prioritize what is important. We have a few monthly deadlines cast in stone. I plan on handling only those projects by taking a few hours of my vacation near a computer.

Let go of guilt! Vacations are a time for you to relax and get inspired. Your family time should be as big a priority as your business time. The two must compliment each other or why are you in business in the first place? If I plan carefully for my absence, I can better enjoy my time away, and return to work a more productive and creative employee, ready to get back on the playing field.

Are you ready to win?

Create a Traffic-Driving Budget

"I found out that if you are going to win games, you had better be ready to adapt."
~ Scotty Bowman, retired NHL coach, holds the record for most wins in league history


Everybody who has a website wants more visitors, and if you peruse the Internet, there are thousands of gigabytes of articles telling how to gain just that. But with all that information out there, how do you begin? What approach is best to get the new eyeballs to see your site?

The Traffic-Driving Budget
It takes a lot of time to implement strategies that drive web traffic, and time is not something most people have. So instead, you need to come up with a traffic driving budget that is going to create the greatest return for the most time you can invest. To create your budget you:

1. Familiarize yourself with the best practices for increasing site traffic
Start by asking people who have a successful website, or searching online for blogs to talk about SEO (search engine optimization) or website marketing. You can also hire a web consultant who can give you a few hours of time to discuss your site and your audience and they can help you determine what best practices would be optimum.

2. Choose 6 techniques that you have seen evidence of effectiveness
There is a lot to choose from. If you don't narrow it down, it will become overwhelming. So choose the 6 strategies that sound best to you. You might choose one or two that sound easy, since easy=quick success=motivation to do more. You might choose the ones that are easy to delegate since you don't have the time to implement or supervise.

3. Create a 6-month calendar, implementing one new strategy each month
Look at your strategies and come up with a logic for organizing them. One may be more successful if implemented after another, so save it for month 4 or 5. One might be really easy, so perhaps use it for month one to kickstart the project and get into the habit.

4. Create a weekly calendar, scheduling in time to implement your strategy
Determine how many hours a week will be required to implement the task for that month. Will you be doing it or delegating it to a staff member? Put it in your calendar, or the staff persons' calendar, and commit to setting the time aside.

5. Honor your commitment
It takes time and commitment to sucessfully implment an online marketing campaign. Honor your commitment as you would any other business meeting. Just know that following through is the only way to get the results.

Get a Basic "Web Traffic Driving Budget"!
Listen to Bonnie Landau and Ralph White on Consulting2Win Radio
Wednesday, May 17, 2009 at 11 am to noon
Bonnie will share details for a basic 6-month, step-by-step strategy for increasing your site traffic that you or your staff members can easily implement.

Are You Ready To Win?

The High Performance Team

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”
-Babe Ruth

When it comes to building a high performance team for your business, it helps to think in sports terms. Sports teams are the perfect model for productive businesses – they have rules, goals, the proper equipment, players and coaches.

Anything that is present in a sports game can and should be present in your business. When someone goes out of bounds, the play is over. When someone violates a rule, there is a penalty. When the players are well-coached, well-trained and working together, they will move the ball down the field and score points. The longer and better they work together, the more often they will win.

So how do you use this analogy to build your winning team? Take a look at your business just like it were a team for your favorite sport. Let’s say it’s baseball. Do you have enough players on the field? If not, you need to hire more. Are they the right players? Are they trained to play baseball or tennis? If you’re playing baseball, you need baseball players. Are they getting the coaching they need? Do they have the right equipment? Baseball players don’t need tennis racquets, they need bats. Employees need the right resources to help them produce results. Don’t spend money on a new copier if you really need a new website.

Assessing your company like it is a sports team helps you identify what’s missing, what’s keeping your business from winning. Do you have the right people in the right jobs? Do you have a deep enough bench? Are you coaching them to win or just to get by? Are you giving everyone some playing time? Employees who feel their jobs don’t contribute to the win will not give you their best effort on the field. You need the right players, in the right positions, with the right coach.

Start thinking today about what might be missing in your team playbook. Could your team use some extra coaching? Give us a call and we’ll show you how to turn your players into champions in the world of business.

Are you ready to win?