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Fix Your BusinessThank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have an opportunity to share with the audience about how I think they can best fix their business. One of the first things I want to do is to walk you through some questions. I want to know who was on this webinar. RUA sign hustler, working a full-time job, are you in your first year of business, are you in the first or third year of business, 3-5 years or are you a veteran and survive five years in business and you are looking for a little bit of guidance in how to take your business to the next level. I would love for you to fill out this poll so I know who is on the call and then we will leave it open for a couple of more minutes and I should say, one minute more and then we will have a good representation. I'm really excited to see so many 5-year plus veterans, it is like triple the number of all of the other groups and that is really cool. I see that there are about 600 or so of you that have dialed in and the rest of you can go ahead and fill out my survey. I've got a lot of seasoned veterans and that is great because this book in the content, Fix Your Business is for the existing folks that have been here slogging away and want a better way to do things. I will give it about 30 more seconds and then I will let you fill out this poll. I'm excited to see you on here, that 200 of you are seasoned veterans and you have the stripes and I'm sure the successes in the heart aches, to prove it. This is cool and thank you so much. I will move on from this poll and I appreciate the 400 or so of you that have participated. We have a really, really good number. Almost 42% of you are seasoned veterans. 10% are side Hustler's and maybe you will get ideas about how to push your business forward to make the transition. I have one more and I want to know, are you struggling in your business? Be honest because I really want to know if you are here to get relief or help. Most of you are and that is okay. Are you struggling because if you are, I have pain medicine for you and I'm so excited. I cannot wait to break down for you my system I've developed. I see about 400 or so if you have filled out my pole and I'm proud of the almost 100 of you who say you are not struggling. That is great and I still have an idea that might be of value to you. I see some of you -- I see some of you are saying you are not able to participate in the polling but I will leave it open for another 30 seconds . Overwhelmingly, most of you are saying that you are here because you need help and relief and that is good. As the SmallBizLady, my business is to stop small business failure and I'm so excited to have the opportunity to walk you through how to fix your business. I want to give you some of my credentials. I have been in business as of last week over 19 years and my nickname is the SmallBizLady and I'm considered America's number one small business expert. Why is that? I have 3 million entrepreneurs on recovery week in my specialty is start up businesses and to help people with business development and social media marketing. Forbes Magazine named me the number one small business entrepreneur and I published a blog called your own boss and I've published over 5000 articles in starting and growing a successful small business. Google SmallBizLady or Melinda Emerson and you will find everything you could possibly want to about various topics related to business. I also had previously published a book called, become your own boss in 12 months, an international bookseller and any book for how to become a social media midget. My new book came out on Tuesday, Fix Your Business and I have an amazing 12-year-old son named Joe Joe. He is my heart and I always have to throw that in. People don't realize that I am a professional single mom. If that is a source inspiration on this international will -- International Women's Day, I hope it is. Let me walk you through. I wrote the book fix your business because I have been getting letters in emails and direct messages from people who need help, people who are struggling to manage cash flow and people who have high churn in their business, they hire the wrong people, they hire people and they are not staying, or people that are getting punched in the face on yelp for customer service snafus and issues. I know you started this business because you are passionate about what it is you are doing. The profit center, I really want to give you some advice so that you can think through what you are doing with your business and move forward with intention about fixing it. I want you to close your eyes for a second and remember why you started your business. This is important for the veterans. So many have been in business five years or more. I want you to remember why you started this business. If you remember why you started the business, the next thing to think about is why you should still be in business. Is your reason for starting at the same as your reason for why it needs to go now, or have your reasons change? Have you changed? Has the market changed? The why you are in business is so essential to your business. So many of you might be in a position where your business stresses you out every day. There's a crisis that could befall you and you might want to stay home and pull the covers over your head and I know what that feels like because I've been in business so long and have had so many iterations and reinvention's. What I want you to know is this is a judgment free zone. No one has a business that is ever fixed. You are constantly in motion and you have to think about yourself. You must constantly be evolving and you have to grow yourself to grow your business. At the end of the day, I love being an entrepreneur and I'm sure most of you do, too. The reason why, an entrepreneur, you can live how most people won't, so we can live how most people can't. When you start a business, there is a very real upfront struggle. There is a sacrifice. You have to recoil your lifestyle. You can't get a new car every two years anymore once you cut off your paycheck. There are so many things you have to sacrifice. When you figure out your niche target, your customer and you get your pricing right and start getting processes and systems in your business, your business will help you live your dream life and that is why we started businesses. If that's not happening in your business, I want to get you there, get you back there. This webinar today will be about giving you information so that you can start living on the upside and stop dreaded business dealings and breaking into hives when the payroll company calls for payroll. I want you to have things under control so that many of you probably would feel right now your business is running you instead of you running it. What I want for you is for that not to be the case anymore. What I want to walk you through is what I call SmallBizLady , the 12 P's on how to Fix Your Business, running a successful business. And in my book, Fix Your Business, each chapter is based on one of these P's. The first is preparation. Have to make a decision that you are going to be different in your business and it starts with your attitude and how you think about your business. If you are dreading or business you will have a bad day and if you are thinking about your business like I'm going to make a real difference, that will affect everything else about how your day runs. It starts with a decision. And the other thing, I've given you two options for how you can use my information. Either focus on tweaking the top 12 issues that you might have in your business, or, you can do a deep dive and focus on the top three issues in your business. Either way, my process that I will run you through is really designed to help you develop a turnaround plan for your business in 90 days. You have to follow it and do the homework and the worksheets at the end of each chapter. It's really, really important. The preparation is really about that, your attitude about the business and about identifying how you will approach this work. Will you focus on this or go through and tweak everything. You may just have a hot mess and that's okay because listen, the reason I am the SmallBizLady is because I've made all the expensive mistakes already and now I share this information so you don't have to. The reason why purpose is the second chapter in this program is because your purpose is really like your vision, your mission and your passion mashed into one thing. That is what your purposes and why you started this business and why you should still be running this business. At the end of the day, it is your leadership mindset that will make all the difference. What kind of leader are you in your business? Everybody and everything in your business churns off of you. Your company culture comes off you. What kind of leader are you? Are you a blame game or? Are you one of these people with a hair trigger because you are so stressed out and angry all the time? Are people scared to give you information? Or, do you use mistakes as teaching opportunities? Your leadership is critically important and is really about how you think about yourself in your business and how coachable you are, how flexible you are. These are the things that will be the undercurrent of the purpose for your business. I'm sure you didn't start your business to make money. I know there was something bigger than that and this is where all of that comes through. You have to have a vision and articulate your vision and you have to have passion. You have to love it. If you don't, your clients can tell you don't love it. If you do something just for money, people can tell. You have to make sure your passion is there, too. It is always good if you have a mission. For my mission, it is to end small business failure and that's why I'm doing it. That's why I wrote the book, Fix Your Business and that is why I am the SmallBizLady and that is why I write a blog. What is your mission? What drives you in your business and that is what you have to get back to if you've gotten to the point where everything is completely stressing you out. Remind yourself of your purpose. It is funny to me because every entrepreneur that I talked to wants to talk about people issues and how bad their people are or how many mistakes the young people make or how hard it is to manage millennials. Those things may be true, but let me tell you something -- you might be the biggest people problem in your business. Is your ego what is wrong with your business? How are you talking to your team? Do you even have a process for hiring people? Are you using job descriptions and looking at multiple candidates? Or, do you hire a warm body because you have an urgent need and then you just put someone in the seat? When you hire people, how do you train them? Are you just giving them the keys and saying good luck? Or, are you developing a 2-4 week program with documented processes and systems in it? Really, we have to teach our employees how to do it. When we do that, we know that they know what the expectations are. Sometimes, if you don't take the time to train people, you really are going to struggle with keeping people. Because, people without direction -- it's like a rudderless boat. People go in any direction they want in the next thing, they are working on their own agenda instead of yours. You have to bring people in and share with them what their role is in the big picture of your business and then take time to train them. The longer you train them, the more likely it is they will stay with you and be with you at least a few years. If you don't invest time in them, you will have churn and it's really expensive to hire entry-level employees, let alone your seasoned key employees. You really have to think differently of how you bring people into your organization if you are seeing high churn or if you are seeing a long time employee suddenly quit. You've got to look how you demotivated that person. People leave people, people don't leave jobs. Why did that person decide they no longer wanted to deal with you? That is a hard thing, but I really want you to know that you're people problems might stem from you and your leadership and that is why your leadership mindset -- your leadership is so important. It permeates every other aspect of your business and that is not to say there aren't bad employees or that's not to say sometimes you've got the wrong employee in the wrong position. Really, it starts with how you plan before you bring on the employee and that is what makes the biggest difference. Now, the next P in the 12 P's of running a successful business is profit. Profit is how we keep SCORE in business and you have to mind your money with intention. Are you using financial statements to run things? Do you know what your balance sheet is, your P&L and your income statement is? You have to make sure your cash flow statement, it's really important, and sometimes we check our bank account every day and we think that is cash management. It really isn't. Someone may not have cashed a check and you think you have more money than you have. You need to make sure you are using up-to-date financial statements to make business dishes since -- business decisions and you should be pulling one together for each year. Don't be one of the business owners only talking to an accountant at tax time. It's extremely important that you know your numbers are ongoing and you know how much profit is in every sale because too often people do not price their products properly. What happens, it's easy to figure out what the hard costs are. You might know what your packaging, labor or shipping is but what about the indirect cost? What about the overhead and general and administrative cost and legal expenses? The percentage of those costs need to be factored into every single thing you sell, as well. Otherwise, you could make sales and not be making any money. How many of you are measuring profitability from one year to the next? Did you make more profit this year than last year? If not, do you know why? These are the kinds of things you want to be looking at in your business. Make sure that you understand. A lot of times, what I think happens is that people have a fear of math and they don't know what's going on in their business. But, that is not good enough. It's too easy to get an accounting professional to help you and if you don't know how to read financial statements, get your account and to teach you. Sometimes, with smaller businesses, starting out with a seasoned bookkeeper might be enough for you. I don't believe in getting a big time CPA firm if that is not really called for. Make sure you work with an accountant that is worked to eat -- that is used to working with small businesses and they take the time to teach you stuff. Use accounting software and if you have it, are you actually using it? Who is inputting the data monthly and who is doing the monthly really -- the monthly reconciliations with your bank statements? One thing I'm excited about with my book, Fix Your Business, I have guest experts interviewed at the end of every chapter and in my profit chapter I interview Mike McKellar Lake, the author of profit first. He talks about an amazing system to talk about a profit account for your business and his bottom line is no matter what you make or no matter what comes in, percentage of every check goes into the profit account and it needs to be something you can get access to. To many are not taking regular paychecks and if you have a profit account, you steal from yourself because your business needs money and guess what, you are an expense and you need to pay yourself on a regular basis and that is something I really harp on, trying to help you think through as you reinvent your business. You are a top line expense and can't keep skipping paychecks. If you are, something is wrong with your business Model and something is wrong with your pricing Model. That is how you need to think through how you reinvent your business. The next P in the 12 P's of running a successful business is processes. Too many of us are walking around with the business running in our head and that's not good. You can never hire people or delegate stuff and the other thing, as a business owner you should never spend your time doing 20 in our -- $20 an hour work. Make sure that smaller administrative tasks are documented so that people can do those tasks for you. How is shipping handled? How are products going in the box and how do they look? All of these things can be documented. Look at your routine tasks, monthly and annual tasks to figure out how you can document things that go on in your business. Then, the cool thing is you can see what can be automated. Is there AppSource software that can help you do those things cheaper, better or faster? Look at these things as you tighten up the system in your business because process is a way to add a lot more value to your business. Do you have a signature process? Do you have a patent worthy process in your business? These things added value to a business, long-term. Document your processes and systems and that becomes part of the intellectual capital in your business and that's another reason why it makes sense to document how specific things are done in your business. When you document how things are done, then you can see if there is technology tools that will help you get it done faster. The problem with productivity tools now, there are just too many and you don't know which is the right one. You have to be careful about buying technology based on where you sit right now. You always want to look at technology that can grow with you. When you look at technology using a CRM system, you look at technology for 3-5 years, not what you need today and there's nothing worse than exporting data from software you don't want to use to import into more software. You want to think through how this data will be used long-term and then look at technology you have and if it plays nice with the other technology. Does your email marketing system integrate with your CRM and does your accounting system integrate with your credit card company and your banking system? Can these things talk to you each other so you are not passing paper around? There is lots of things that you can do related to different pieces of software. There is an app for receipts and all this stuff, there is an app for everything but you have to make sure that all of your stuff talks well together in one thing we did for my book, Fix Your Business, is we created a website called Fix Your . Iran Ahmet -- I make recommendations for all the types of software you might need, office management, CRM software, email marketing software. If you go to Fix Your , I have recommendations and I will share with you, things you should think about in your business. The other thing, in this chapter in my book, Laura Stack is my expert for the productivity Pro and she makes great recommendations for software and things, as well. I want to take some of the guesswork wrote -- the guesswork out. You want to focus on finding the right tools that will save you time and money because we know that as business owners, our time is sometimes more valuable than money. Our time is money. You want to think through how you can develop tools that you can use anywhere you are and you want tools that your team can use, as well. These are things that I want you to think about for productivity, especially when you take time to document your processes. Just for a recap, because we are starting with this, we've done preparation and the second was purpose and third was -- anybody want to tell me? People, right? After people, we talked about profit and after profit, we talked about processes and now, number six is productivity. Now, I want to take you into these things that will take your business to the next level. With number seven, what we will talk about his performance. How does your business perform? In other words, what should you be measuring in your business? When is the last time you looked at Google Analytics? Do you know what your number one traffic referral sources are? Do you know which social media profiles you should spend most of your time on? Those top two drive the most traffic to your site and when was the last time you looked at your accounts receivable turnover ratio? How long does it take you to get checks from your clients? If you are in e-commerce, what is your magic hour online? What is the number one time of day when people buy from you? Do you know what your shopping cart abandonment rate is? There's tons of things you could measure in your business and I don't know how many of us out here are measuring stuff. You've got to. How many are buying Facebook ads or Google ads and you know your cost per click? Your cost per acquisition of a customer and your lead generation cost? You've got to measure all this stuff, so that you know how much it is costing you to run your business. Too often, we are doing marketing that we don't measure and that does not make sense. I want to make it urgent to you guys because I know if you measure something, you can improve it. If you are just spending money on Facebook ads and spending money, you really have to be clear about your goals, your budget, and your timeline for when you think you should see results. You should not hire anybody that can't give you that kind of information. It is critical that you are able to know how your business runs under the hood. We know your website is your number one sales system and you have to make sure that you know how those things are working. What is your email open rate? These are things you want to measure in your business and some of you measure them and some things you don't measure. These are things I want you to be thinking about as you are transitioning your business to be bigger and better. At the end of the day, I want you to have a business that works for you and I want you to have a business that allows you to live your dream life and that is what I want you to think about when you think about this. Number eight's product. What I mean by product, when is the last time you looked at your products and services? When you looked at them, did you think through whether or not your products and services are still relevant in the marketplace today? As a matter of fact, are they going to be relevant 3-5 years from now? Is what you do specialized enough? Do you have a niche audience that will stay with you and grow with you? Or, do you need to be thinking about a new niche to focus on, a new product line to bring out, new services to add on or services or products to stop selling because they are not selling like they used to? When is the last time you sat down and really looked at what you sell? And, is it special? We now know that competition is global and not within a 30-mile radius of where your business is located. Everybody buys everything online, especially Amazon. You need to make sure that if you recognize your products are not going to be relevant 3-5 years from now, what is your next move, and what will you do and how will you innovate inside your own business? You've got to watch your industry trends and make sure you are in a growing industry and not one that is shrinking. There is a lot to take into consideration as you are looking at what you sell. I mean, it's one thing to have had the hot Christmas toy two Christmases ago but you have to come up with something new. These are things you have to think through in your business. The next thing to think about is that after we look at what you sell, we've got to look at how you are selling it. That is where we get to your presents. What is your brand presence? Both online and off-line. I realize everybody's talking about social media and online advertising, and we live in a mobile world. But there is a big difference between having a business and having a brand. When you are a brand, people buy because of the brand and you have to make sure that you are a brand and that you are constantly doing things that reinforce the visibility of the brand and are consistent with your brand. Really, when you interact with customers, that is how you live up to your brand promise. So, I know a lot of you are very concerned about online reviews and how to handle online reviews. Let me tell you, a negative review is not necessarily a bad thing. A negative review is an opportunity for honest feedback and that is a gift. You really do want to think how you are building your brand and how you are following up with people. When it comes to those of you that have retail businesses that are getting reviewed, you need to respond to every review, not just the negative ones. If you respond to the negative ones, you need to respond in a way that does not make you look defensive and if you fix the problem, make sure you ask them to go back and follow up and talk about how you fixed it. It is really, really important for you to understand how your brand is being perceived at all times and that is from the person that answers the phone when someone calls to ask a question, how fast are you getting back to your online inquiries for information and how fast are you getting back to people on social media? All of these things have to do with your brand and sometimes if you have been in business for a while, you might need to update your logo with a brand refresh. You might need to make your colors snazzy. If you are online, you need to think about what your content strategy is and if it's time for new content. Listen, everybody responds to video more than anything else. Do you have video of your business or your customers using our products? Those are things that are killing right now, Facebook Live -- you need to make sure you have some kind of video component at least on the homepage after you follow-up with customers and fans to give them access. Everyone wants authenticity these days. You need to think how your business is portrayed. Who is talking to your customers and who follows up with them online? I know people are tempted to throw social media to the youngest person on staff but if they don't have institutional knowledge about your products and services, that could hurt your brand is much as help it. You really want to control the message. Someone else might do the daily push out but you want to be very careful about who was interacting with your customers. I have a team of people that do social media but nobody talks to my customers online but me. That's how I protect my brand and you have got to think through how you do that for your business. It is really important. Your brand presence is important. Your brand presence starts with your website. If your website sucks you shouldn't be doing anything in social media. The whole point is to drive traffic to your website, or it should be, if it isn't. If your website is old, make sure it looks good from a mobile device. This is a mobile first world, now and if you haven't updated your website in a long time, invest in it now and make sure it looks good online because it is really important that it looks good through all kinds of devices. The next thing, when you think about what you are selling your product for, and how you are going to have your selling presence, who will sell it for you? Do you have a sales process? Do you have a way to figure out how to hire sales people? It's no small thing if you are the main rainmaker in your business, it's no small thing to bring in someone to sell for you. You have to have a plan , just like you need one for anyone you would hire but particularly for sales. You have to think how you will divide up the territory and how you will compensate yourselves. Will you give them a commission or a base sales, will you keep a house account? What if they bring you an account you never had? Will you give them higher commission? You have to think them through. Do you have any sales funnels on your website? What if someone downloads something free. Do they never hear from you again or do they become part of an E nail -- email nurture campaign that we call a sales funnel? What are all the ways you attract customers and then how do you close them? What is your conversion ratio? The things you need to be measuring in your business, you certainly need to be measuring your clothes ratios and you need to measure how often people come to your website and do you close them as a customer? Or are they just grazing, they stay on your website for half a minute and they read your blog post and leave? You have to have enough honey to attract the bees, but you have to keep the bees and make them by. You have to look at all the different things you are doing at the end of the day, the sales are the lifeblood that keeps your business alive and it's very important that you have an organized sales process for your business. I'm excited about this chapter in my book, Fix Your Business, because I interviewed about a big program and there is the queen of sales training in this country, and Barbara was willing to allow me to interview her so I could feature her at the end of my book and she gives major knowledge about prospecting and how to think about your customers and how often you should contact them and it's really, really terrific. I want to highlight that because prospecting is extremely, extremely important. The next thing I want to talk to you about is planning. The beautiful thing about Fix Your Business is talking about planning and at the end of the 10 chapters you will have enough information once you go through Chapter 11 to have a new strategic plan for your business and that's what it is about. You have to plan for success because it won't just happen to you. It's really important that you think through how you will execute these things that you need to pay more attention to in your business and it is very, very important for you to think through the plan. I have exercises at the end of every chapter. I have action steps that you will need to fill out and some of the homework will be quick and some will take time. When you get to Chapter 11, you will feel the victory because if you did all your homework, you will come away with thinking through your new strategic plan and how you execute it and that is what it comes down to. You have to set aside the time and give yourself 30-45 minutes every day or give yourself four hours every week, but we are all business owners and if you don't set aside the time, you will never do this and you will keep feeling stressed out and that is what I don't want. That is what I want, for you to build a system that works better for you and for your life. The last chapter in my book is perseverance and the reason I talk about perseverance is because listen, it's hard to run a business. It is hard to be a business owner and the thing that I want for you is for you to stay strong enough, long enough and your business, to win. We know that technology is changing. Innovation is changing things and international competition is real. You have to stay ready and stay on top of your industry and constantly think what your customers need before they even know they need it. I interviewed a successful government contractor, Twyla Garrett, and she talks about what the process was like and after selling a multimillion dollar business, how do you do that and how do you feel about that? It really was enlightening to understand all of these different phases you go through as you think what you want your business to be like when you grow up. Some of you may want to leave your business to your family or children and some may want to sell one day. All of that is okay but if you don't tighten up all of these things that we have talked about, you are never going to get there because if you don't have documented processes, your business isn't even worth anything. If you have a business that can't run without you, what is it worth? Nothing. That's why these things are so important. If we could just reach out, we started with preparation, the second chapter, purpose. The third thing was people. The fourth was profit. The next was processes and then productivity. Switched over to what will take your business to the next level, performance. Your products and services, what are you selling? Should you be selling that? We looked at your brand presence. Then, we looked at prospects, what is your sales process? Then we looked at planning. We all know you have to plan for success because it won't just happen to you. Then, perseverance. You have to stay tough. It is rough. On any given day, any of the things in your business could clothesline on you. I'm excited for what this information will do for you in your business. I'm the SmallBizLady and you know I love to give away free stuff. All of you that have this, I want you to text FYB2018 to this number, 2800. text FYB2018 to 72000 and I will give you a video on the 10 things you should stop doing now in your business. We've been talking about of the whole time. My new book is out, it's out on Amazon, in e-book and regular book form. If you want an autographed copy, go to my website and get it or go to Fix Your . I have all these great resources and tools for you to figure out technology tips you need for your business. It's FYB2018 and text it to 72000 to get the free course and I will go back to that slide. I've seen people asking for the text code. It is FYB2018 and send that to 72000. Now, here is the thing I want you to know. There is a lot here, a lot of information that we just went through in a really short time. It I do not want you to quote -- to get overwhelmed by it. You can fix it now or fix it when you can. Promise me that you will fix it. That is what I need. I want you to have a business that allows you to live your dream life and the things to think about out of this workshop, my book is not out on audio, yet. It will be in a couple of months. It is not out, yet. I want you to decide if you are ready to Fix Your Business. It is a decision you have to make in the second thing, think about why you are still in business. Why did you start it and why are you still in business and then examine the role your own ego plays and possibly sabotaging your business because that is very real, very, very real and then I want you to review your brand online and off-line because your website may be having challenges, and you have to review your systems. What can you automate when you think through the things you do on a routine or repetitive basis. I want you to think about this in your business and as I said earlier, I am the SmallBizLady and my name is Melinda Emerson. Please follow me on Twitter. I host a live tweet chat every Wednesday night on Twitter where answer questions. My website is six seed as your own . Connect with me on LinkedIn and Google. I love getting recommendations from people who have been in my webinars. By all means like my SmallBizLady page on Facebook. With that, I turn it back over to Alexa and we will take some questions. It's available on Kindle. If you look on Amazon, it is available on Kindle as well as hard copy Alexa, back to you. Sounds good. Thank you so much. We will begin the Q&A portion of our webinar and I will be reading the chat questions that have been coming in from participants. We will address as many as we can. Let's jump into these questions, Melinda. Her first one is from a shell. Michelle said they are a new business, just under one-year-old and they have no prior business experience. She said these suggestions are great, but it can be overwhelming. How do you suggest prioritizing what to do first in which of these recommendations is most important for a new business to focus on first? I would say if I look at this from a new business, I would say I focus on profit, processes and prospecting. You've got to focus on really getting clear about what your business model is in your profit model. I also think you've got to look at your processes as soon as you can and document routine processes in your business and then you've got to look how to generate sales. Your new business has sales being everything. You need to figure out how many blog posts you will write and what kind of offers you will make. I don't know if you are a regional business or a professional service business but you have to be out there beating leather to make sure you generate sales. Those are the things I would focus on. The next is from Charmaine. She would like to know how long it should take to truly be profitable? They've been in business for 10 months. Typically, it takes 18-24 months for a small business to breakeven. Profitability might be after that, so I would look probably year three or four for real profitability. Okay. Next question from Sherry. What suggestions do you have for marketing a service through LinkedIn? If you are marketing a service business and depending on decision makers, LinkedIn is the right place. You've got to leverage your network on LinkedIn but I like the feature on LinkedIn where you can answer questions that people have. Also, there is gold in the LinkedIn groups. You have to look for the top ones and see if they can be visible. I think that is helpful in LinkedIn now lets people post videos. A great way to get visibility is to post videos answering questions. Less is more. Two minutes or more is what you need to be doing if you are doing LinkedIn video. Okay. Next from Paul and he would like to know how to measure inefficiencies with the relationship to the seventh P. You have to look at the things you are spending money on and look against a budget. If you know you will spend a certain amount of money on shipping or labor or materials, you can look at it against your budget . I would look monthly or quarterly to see who is going over budget because that's how you can nail down the stuff related to your operations. Look at shipping, packaging, look at vendors and see if you can get deals by ordering in bulk or are there competitors where you can order with a competitor for the same materials to get a better rate? Those are some things I would look at for operation things to measure. Okay. Next, elves and would like to know if you could advise -- Elvin would like advice on a CRM system. The first two that come to mind is Zoho CRM and I would also look at insightly. It may be a good starter CRM to use. You have to watch out that it plays with other software and integrates with your email. I would look at those two for starters. Question is from Carla. Carla thought several businesses would be in mind and she wants to start off with a parent company and with the other businesses listed underneath that parent company. Do you have suggestions on how she should establish her LLC? Given the new Trump tax reform, you want to talk to a tax professional about whether or not you want to be an LLC. The rules have become very different for LLCs versus S Corp. Senate might be more advantageous to be a S court. I am not a lawyer or accountant. You need to talk to a professional to set those things up. Next is from Heather. Heather said she owns a small cable construction company , which is a production-based pay and she's having a hard time hiring people. Heather would like to know how to turn the employee's pay into W-2s instead of 1099s, in hopes of better incentives for people who want to come to work. It's not just about going from 1099 to W-2. You have to think of there's a benefits plan to make working for you enticing? You've got to think if you will provide health insurance or pay for 50% of the health insurance and they pay 50%. Are you hiring part-time or full-time? You have to find out what the people you want to hire need and figure it out before and give it to them. If you can't, you might take out a loan so you can. That could make all the difference in the world. I wouldn't hire anyone that you couldn't generate three times what you need for your business. You need to figure out how essential they will be. It's no small thing to bring on full-time employees. Next is from Ted. Melinda, do you have or do you know of a dashboard you could recommend for measuring performance? Is there a commercial product, or do you make your own? I don't, off the top of my head. I don't know of a complete dashboard for performance because it crosses so many different things. I think there's probably some people that could help you develop a custom one but it sounds expensive. I don't have a good answer for that because there's so many different functions in a business that you can measure. At the end of the day, and a vendor that works for you should give you a monthly report so you have something to look at, whether your CRM company, your social media company, they should give you monthly reports so you can figure out how to develop a CRM or custom dashboard for yourself. The next question is from Bill. Bill wants to know when you know you might be ready to franchise your business? Well, you have to be in business, I believe, 2-3 years and have all of your systems documented and you really have to have a system that works that could be turnkey. My suggestion is that you hire a franchise consultant to give you the honest assessment of whether your business can be franchised. There's people out there that do that work that will help you determine if your business can be franchised, but it will help you get your franchise people getting that stuff together and you can generate your first franchise customers. I would say you should ask an independent franchise consultant if your process is tight enough and clean enough that it could be a turnkey business for someone else. All right. The next question is from Marion. She said she has been in business for almost two years, now, but can't get home with a paycheck. What could she possibly be doing wrong? First of all, it's very common for people to not take a paycheck for the first two years in business. Please stop beating yourself up, okay? What I want you to do is look at pricing and make sure you are charging enough. Don't be afraid to charge what you are worth and then figure out what you could be doing more of to generate more business. Could you sell more or get a line of people to sell to? There has to be a way to bring in more money. It's very common. It takes 12-18 months or even 24 months for a small business to breakeven, let alone your corporate salary. It's very common what you are going through. Melinda we have time for one last question. The next question is from Lydia and she like to know how you determine the focus area or areas in your strategic planning for a business providing multiple services? I don't think it is about the services you provide, it's about how your business operates. You've got to look, my 12 P's are preparation, productivity, performance, products and services -- presence -- your sales prospects in planning and perseverance. You really have to look how your business operates. It may be part of your business, maybe you should stop offering so much stuff and focus on what's most profitable and what you enjoy doing. If you are an Army of one, a small Army, you've got to figure what makes the most sense, is it sensible for you to do all of those things? Okay. Those are all the questions that we have time for today. If we did not have a chance to address your question, we encourage you to connect with a SCORE mentor. Mentors can be found online or in a chapter near you and can help you apply these strategies that have been presented today. Also, if you're interested in becoming a SCORE mentor, you can access further information and apply online. I will post a couple of links in the chat box and as a reminder, the link to the recording of this session and the presentation slide deck will be sent in a postevent email and we will send that later today. Be on the lookout. On behalf of SCORE, I'd like to thank you all for taking the time out of your day to attend this webinar session and I'd like to give a very big thank you to Melinda Emerson for presenting. Melinda, thank you so much. It is my pleasure and I completely forgot to mention that I will be going on tour with SCORE around the country and we will start off on April 2nd in New York City and I will be going to Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta and I'm also going to Miami, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. I'm very excited to partner with SCORE chapters around the country to bring you even more information for how to Fix Your Business, starting in April. Fantastic. We hope you can join us next Thursday for the three ways to boost your bottom line. It's being presented by Justin Crane. Thanks again everyone, and take care. [ Event concluded ] ................
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