Imagine this is you. You awake one morning to discover your small business has hit the big time, firing on all cylinders and demand for what you do seems to never end. How do you personally respond to the growing needs for your services?

Do you have the right team assembled? Are your policies, procedures and systems baked fully?  Do you have the right technology solutions in place allowing you to scale? If you did it right, you understand that running a successful business starts on the first day you open the doors.

Here is another candid question for you.  Do you see your business as a success? Or better yet, how do you envision your future?

My own personal journey continues its evolution from the early days of IT Matters to now sharing how to run a successful IT business around the globe with Ulistic. Throughout this time, I have learned one or two critical lessons along the way allowing my business to continue without too many hiccups.  We can’t prevent every speed bump from happening, but speed bumps can be a blessing in disguise forcing us to slow down just a bit.

Here are a few suggestions I have:

• Get the right corporate structure in place from day one.  Many small business owners start out as a sole proprietorship because it is easy and cheap.  This ease of entry into the business world will become more costly as you grow.  Consider setting up your business correctly by incorporating from day one.  The right structure will allow you to shield yourself from creditors and provide a foundation to share dividends easily.
• Build your advisory team from the start.  You must have the following people on your team.  A great accountant is worth their weight in gold, saving you thousands in unnecessary taxes and can help you navigate the business minefield with ease.  An amazing corporate attorney is a must; doing things right from day one will save you many hassles as you move forward.  Who else should be on your team will depend on your business.  Mentors, peers, partners and consultants are available to support your growth.
• Get the right technology advice from the start.  Don’t sell yourself short here.  IT firms are a dime a dozen, but finding the right IT advice and technology professional for your business can be compared to finding a needle in a haystack.  Find a technology advisor who understands your business and the specific challenges you face.  Research IT professionals who work with other firms like yours.  The right technology consultant will know more about the role IT plays in your success versus a generalist who just knows how to fix computers.
• Understand the numbers.  Many business owners are groping around in the dark thinking they have a profitable business.  For some, that is so far from the reality.  Understand your numbers from the minute you open the doors.  Get QuickBooks or some other accounting solution and pay very close attention to the numbers and make immediate adjustments when needed.  Many great businesses fail simply from a lack of basic understanding of the numbers.

Over the past ten years I have learned way too many lessons.  The above items are simply just a few; there are many more that I just don’t have time to focus on in this short blog post.  The last tip I will leave you with is when you think you know everything about your business, stop and look around.  There are so many more lessons to learn.  Continue to challenge yourself each day, relax and have fun.

This post is brought to you by American Express Canada. Check out their new Amex for Business Canada Facebook Pagefor the latest news, information and resources for Canadian small business owners.

As part of my ongoing relationship with American Express, I followed their recent “Take Off with American Express” contest and wanted to profile the winner, Trish Duncan.

Who do you call in Toronto when you have a leaky roof?  Up until yesterday, I would turn to Google or the Yellow Pages to find a roofing company when repairs would be needed for my suburban GTA home.  But as of today, I would reach out to Toronto roof repair company “Fixer on the Roof”.

By visiting their website and viewing their video content on Facebook, I recently learned how Trish Duncan and her team of Toronto roofers help folks like me around the GTA when we have leaky roofs. Leaky roofs can cause huge problems for homeowners at the most unexpected times.  What I appreciate about Trish and the team is that they recognize that when her clients call, it’s usually due to an emergency and her services are needed immediately.

Fixer on the Roof states in their video that by leveraging leading technology found in smartphones such as video, IM and email, this eliminates guess work and also allows their clients to stay at work while the teams at Fixer on the Roof get the job done.  This allows busy professionals to stay focused without a disruption to their daily routine.

Trish recently won the “Take off with American Express” contest, a contest for small business owners from all over Canada.  This contest focused on business growth and also showcased the vibrancy of our small business market here in Canada.

Each small business owner was asked to submit their 150-word entry on how they plan to take their business to the next level.  One thing for sure, small business is healthy and alive in Canada.  AMEX received hundreds of entries from coast-to-coast.

Trish was selected from these applicants by a panel of American Express and Facebook representatives, and the five finalists were then unleashed to the Canadian public for their voting on the Amex for Business Facebook Page.

From what I saw of the contest, everyone did an awesome job.  But as Kevin O’Leary says “Business is Business” and there can only be one winner.

On December 19, Trish was awarded her $10,000 cheque and also was fortunate to sit down with Facebook Canada, for a 1-on-1 social media marketing discussion.  That was priceless, and the ideas Trish picked up from Facebook will be executed on immediately, I am sure.

Congrats to everyone who took part in this great promotion.  It is promising to see our community here in Canada remaining strong and entrepreneurs remaining passionate about service and helping out Canadians everywhere.

In today’s competitive market, business owners are forced to deal with rising costs while trying to maintain the best prices for their customers. How you operate your small businesses is essential not only to running a highly profitable company, but to maintaining a competitive edge in the industry.

It is crucial that business owners like myself find ways to streamline operations while continuing to meet the increasing demands of our clients, but how? This is the million dollar question many small businesses face. On one hand there is pressure from our clients to provide the best price possible, while at the same time, the costs of day-to-day operations continue to rise.

Strike a Balance

One way of managing the pressure that comes with being a business owner is working smarter and learning how to run your business more efficiently. In our everyday operations, we must look for new and innovative ways to deliver the same product or service. For example, in the Canadian Information Technology (IT) community, my business Ulistic coaches small business IT firms on effective ways to market, sell and run a successful IT firm. We saw a significant improvement in the business when we turned to automation and streamlining service delivery in order to maximize operational efficiencies.

Business automation software could be an answer for many small businesses. With Ulistic, we use ConnectWise to help us all be on the same frequency. Many of my clients also rely on this tool to maximize their operational effectiveness and provide an increased level of service to their clients. It is software automation tools like ConnectWise that lay the foundation for many businesses, my own included, to maximize the overall everyday operations of our businesses.

Avoid Spreading Resources Too Thin

I work with many small businesses across the country, and another alarming trend I have noticed is overlapping or duplicating of efforts and responsibilities. Even with checking, double checking and, even in some instances, triple checking to ensure duplication doesn’t occur, overlapping is harmful to the bottom line of your business. It also has a negative impact on morale and the smooth operations of your business.

My own personal experience came out of one of my own companies. Our CFO simply did not trust our systems to ensure accuracy with our billing process. This distrust of technology and our process meant that we needed additional staff to carry this burden. Not only did it increase our expenses related to bookkeeping and accounting, staff also questioned the amount of people required when they were asked to run lean and mean. This gets me thinking about the importance of systems and processes.

Create Consistency

When I work with my technology clients, one of the immediate areas we focus on is systems and processes. Systems and processes are crucial to streamlining your business to operational success. When a small business simplifies employees’ systems, processes and workflows, we immediately see an impact in customer service, projects are streamlined and even profitability goes up. Without systems and process, how can end goals be reached and financial targets hit? Many businesses will see an immediate turn upwards just by implementing basic systems and processes and then making sure everyone follows them.

A great example of having effective systems and processes in place would be your local hamburger franchise or your favourite café that is on every street corner. These franchises or corporate stores have set systems and processes in place that ensure the customer gets the same experience every visit. Processes prevent your staff from doing what they want; it keeps the experience consistent every time.

These are just a couple of very basic tips to aid in the improvement of your business operations. It is hard to provide you with the secret sauce to success through a blog post like this. However, I can share with confidence that if you put some very simple processes, procedures and systems in place and make sure your staff follows them, you will have a good start in the right direction. While it might be a little harder to implement with your team, it is doable and well worth the effort.

When you have the right systems in place, your staff is fully aware and entirely bought in on your vision as the owner of the business; and when the right systems are in place, only then can you monitor and measure your overall effectiveness through a business automation tool. Use your automation software to continuously adjust the dials and improve the process.

Keep in mind, your mileage will vary and your entire company must buy in with all operational changes to make sure everyone is moving towards the same end goal. You need to have a basic operations strategy and plan in place. Without one, how can you ever hope to meet the needs of your clients?

This post is brought to you by American Express Canada. Check out their new Amex for Business Canada Facebook page for the latest news, information and resources for Canadian small business owners.

“Cash is King” was one of the first lessons I learned from a mentor early on in my life as an entrepreneur.  “Never underestimate the importance of having a cash reserve in the bank”, he said. What Arlin Sorensen meant when he took me aside was too make sure that we kept a cash reserve on hand for a rainy day — just like Mom always tried to teach me. Did I listen to him or my mother? Sometimes.  But I still needed to cut my teeth and learn the hard lesson of having money in the bank for myself.

During the economic meltdown in 2009, it was hard, if not impossible, for the small business owner to acquire the needed capital or credit in order to stay afloat.  Who survived?  Don’t look at me; I struggled throughout the entire financial catastrophe during the tail end of the new millennium.  But I did look around to see who continued to run successful businesses, while many of us were simply trying to stop the bleeding.

The businesses that survived understood the importance of cash flow and continued to serve their clients, fulfill orders, pay for goods and services and weather the storm while those of us who ignored the warning signs scraped to get by.

Going through tough financial times, I look at my business differently now.  Like many business owners, I have come to understand the importance of having liquid cash in my bank account or somewhere close by that is readily available, just in case.  Credit is helpful too, but healthy cash flow is a must in order for your small business to thrive.

Here are some easy ways to help preserve cash flow in your business:

• Invest in assets that appreciate and lease those items that depreciate.  As a technology provider, I am always sharing the benefits of leasing IT equipment versus purchasing. There is no sense in investing $50,000 of hard-earned cash into office furniture or any other asset that loses value when it will be worth next to nothing in five or so years.  Leasing technology or any other form of equipment offers you a monthly payment instead of paying upfront for the goods and services.  Plus, leasing has some very attractive tax benefits.  One of the top leasing firms in Canada is London, Ontario’s Catalyst Financial Partners. You can check them out at http://www.catalystfc.com.
• Keep your receivables under control.  I am shocked to see how many small business owners continue to extend credit in the form of 120-day receivables with their clients.  You are not the bank and no small business deserves to be kept at bay for any length of time for monies owed to them.  Get a grip on your receivables now.
• Move to the cloud.  The average small business doesn’t need to invest their business savings into a bunch of IT equipment that never gets used to its fullest capacity.  My small business is 100% in the cloud — from our email services, telephone systems and even our customer relationship management software.  What does that mean?  Simply put, that means that all the software and applications we use are accessed and shared over the Internet.  The cloud allows you to keep up to date with the latest technology and pay a low monthly fee for it.  Many of your IT systems today can be moved online and out of your office.

As a business owner, you can be the most innovative entrepreneur, have the most stellar rolodex and provide a customer experience that’s the talk of the town; but if you don’t know how to manage your cash flow – you don’t have a business.

“This post is brought to you by American Express Canada. Check out their new Amex for Business Canada Page here and stay tuned to catch the finalist stories in the Take Off with American Express contest.”

October is our month to celebrate small business in Canada.   Canada was built on the hard work of our small businesses and they are the heart of the Canadian economy.  Working in the Canadian small business community as an IT consultant for the past 16 years, I have known this for a very long time.  When I was on the Advisory Council for Tech Select, an industry group of small business focused technology professionals, we determined that 97% of the businesses in Canada would fit into the small business category.  We also determined that definition of small business varies with whom you speak with, but many of our members served small businesses from 5 to 100 employees.

Chambers of Commerce across Canada will recognize and reward many small businesses during the month of October.  One of these is a Calgary IT support firm called XCEL Professional Services which is owned by my good friend, Colin Knox.  His small business in Calgary specializes in providing IT support throughout the small businesses in Calgary.  He has been named as one of Calgary’s Emerging Enterprises of the Year.  However, this is just one example. There are many XCEL’s across Canada that we need to recognize and celebrate.  Good Luck Colin and every business out there making a difference.

What does Small Business mean to me?

This gets me thinking about the small businesses I have been involved with.  They range from a couple of passionate entrepreneurs with a simple idea to scores of hard working teams expanding their reach to all corners of the globe.  The Canadian small business market is alive and well and continues to make a name for itself in communities across the world.

For me personally, I am working on small business number three.  After successfully building and selling my first IT service firm, I then helped a second grow from Red Deer to Calgary. Now consulting with other IT firms and small businesses globally from our office in St. Catharines, Ontario, I continue to have a soft spot for small business in Canada.

What else has the Canadian small business community done for me?  Many of my clients, colleagues and partners have also become personal friends.  I have a network of great mentors and trusted advisors who help guide me and even those I serve each day.  It is this reason why I continue to get out of bed in the morning; being of service to my friends and seeing them achieve levels of success with a little help and guidance from my team.

Celebrate Small Business in Canada

Over the course of the month, there are a number of events and a heavy focus within the media, recognizing the exciting achievements of small business owners and entrepreneurs – many of whom put their life savings on the line to pursue their dreams and make a better life.

A quick online search will help you find local events in your area.  However, I thought I would showcase a few events happening across Canada highlighting the achievements of small business:

• Oct 17 – Calgary Chamber of Commerce Business awards, this annual event rewards two businesses in Calgary with the presentation of the RBC Small Business of the Year Award
• Oct 17 – Smart Business, Small Business: An SBA Speaker Session, this will be in celebration of BDC’s Small Business Week theme “Power up your business. Invest. INNOVATE. Grow.” with two very special speakers.
• Oct 18 – Enterprise Toronto is hosting a small business forum at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
• Oct 19 – Burlington Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Breakfast with Robert Deluce, President of Porter Airlines.

The timing is perfect to get out during October and celebrate the success of the small business community.

Where can you turn?

There are many resources available to small business owners when it comes to growing, supporting and maintaining a healthy and profitable small business.  One of the latest resources is the Amex for Business Canada Facebook Page which allows small business owners to hear from business leaders, receive the latest industry news and connect with the small business community. They have a contest going on right now where they are rewarding one small business owner with a $10,000 cash prize and social marketing consultation with Facebook Canada. Check out their page here and see how your business can soar to new heights.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

“Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”

“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“Almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path.”

Image: Apple

If I had one major complaint about my summer it is this…I allowed myself to be shaken from my day-to-day routine.

It really shook at the core of my foundation and changed my business.  Perhaps close to being completely burned out.

It got me thinking about what is important?  Sure, many of you will say family, church, self…whatever!  But what is truly the most important part of your life?

I have been through many of the stages.  Money, you accumulation of wealth – very important part of my life.  Home – having a nice house where it is comfortable to do what I need to do….how about survival?

I think one of the most important parts of a person’s life is SURVIVAL!  How do we survive each day?

It has me thinking!

If we can survive, doesn’t everything else simply fall into place?

Thinking….

BELL cuts off SMTP relay to thousands of customers!  But Montreal’s ZEROSPAM steps in to help firms who are impacted by this latest move by one of Canada’s largest Telcos.

I received this note today from my friend David Poellhuber, Canada’s top email security expert and Chief Canadian Spaminator.

ZEROSPAM offers 30% rebate to Hypertec customers being cut off SMTP relay.

Simply said we want to help customers who might be stuck with both a spam proplem and a gatweay problem as a result of Hypertec’s recent decision.  We offer a 30% year one reduction on our manage email security service which includes outbound filtering and gateway.

Just call 514-527-3232×204 or hop on to www.zerospam.ca/trial and have your Hypertec bill ready. We will activate your account in minutes.

Email fluidity and security is our ultimate mission.

D. Poellhuber
COO – ZEROSPAM

I recommend you chat with David and his team today, they are one of our best kept secrets in protecting Canadian business.

I write for one of the leading outsourced help desk blogs every couple of weeks.  This week I was inspired by many of today’s youth.  Yes, this is an article for most of the lazy ass teenagers who are out there today.

You see I can be a little more edgy on my blog versus when I write for others.

My article was about having a work ethic problem with IT firms.  Not because we are lazy in the technology world, because the great firms are overworked and have no idea where to start let along finish.  Read my article here - http://msphelpdesk.com/services/is-your-msp-suffering-from-a-work-ethic-problem/

As I look around at many of the youth today I see an alarming trend occurring.  Maybe it was this way as well when I was younger.  But, perhaps I see things differently in my 40′s.  Many (not all) of the teen population in Canada are struggling and many of struggles are directly related to the GOYA issue facing today’s world.  BTW, GOYA stands for GET OFF YOUR ASS.

Yes, many just expect the phone to ring and people to find them.  This is the key separator in the business world and for those teens looking for a job or something to occupy their time.  You can’t sleep in until noon and expect great things to happen.  There is a reason the work day starts at 8 AM in many locations across Canada.

I don’t want this to sound like a rant…because it is not.  But think of it as a wake up call for many of you.  Want great things to occur in your life and business.  Go after them and avoid the GOYA problem.

Just some friendly advice

Stuart