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53 articles by Hugh Stewart · showing 50

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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

How To Grow Your Business

Growing a business to be a powerhouse in its industry, or even building a business to be bigger and better, is a goal of many business owners. I believe that the future of niche (high-margin) business is going to be in creating a consistent, unique, and fantastic experience for customers. The brick-and-mortar or online businesses that are going to outdistance their competition and grow to exceptional levels of profitability are those that will consistently deliver a distinct experience for their customers.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

2 Considerations When You Begin to Outsource Projects

Many self-employed people believe they cannot afford to outsource. There are actually good, sound business reasons for outsourcing and delegating. Take an honest appraisal of what you are spending your time on: Are you working on things you do not like doing? Are you spending time on tasks that are not part of your Unique Ability? Are Outsourcing and delegating your resources better spent on other things? Have you gotten to a point where you simply can no longer do everything yourself?

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,550 views3.3/5 (3)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Business Debt – Making it Work For You

Posted by Hugh on May 23, 2011 · Leave a Comment The simple philosophy behind debt in business is – all business debt should somehow generate revenue. This is called performing debt. In order to manage debt, recognize that if debt is not producing, great care must be taken to remove it quickly or its existence must be extensively justified.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,231 views
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

The Power of Negative Thinking

Ed Strachar, creator of the Reading Genius® program, once said, "Positive thinking is better than negative thinking, but no thinking (just effective action) is better than positive thinking." Negative thinkingr Can negative thinking serve you? What if I told you that there is an incredible use for negative thinking in your life, if you knew how to use negative thinking more efficiently?

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,256 views5/5 (1)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Dealing With A Scarcity Mentality In Business

scar·ci·ty noun – insufficiency or shortness of supply; dearth. One belief among business owners is that they do not have enough money, time or resources. Common complaints are: “We don’t have enough money to be able to buy the help we need” “We don’t have enough time to do everything that needs to be done” “We don’t have enough knowledge, we don’t have enough team members, we don’t have enough employee engagement, we don’t have enough talent, etc.” What I discovered is that this particular position is a disposition. Often, it is not a real situation.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,603 views
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Talking Effectively To Direct Reports

Business owners sometimes struggle to communicate effectively with their direct reports. If you are fully engaged when communicating with direct reports, the information you receive will be better and clearer. Being fully engaged means giving the direct report space and time to communicate with you. Do not rush them.direct reports

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,887 views
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Maintaining Perspective in Firing an Employee

Firing someone is never easy. Being fired from a position is also never easy. It’s important that as you go through the firing process, that you maintain perspective that the person in front of you is a living, breathing, intelligent, capable human being. They just may not be working out for you. Evaluating employee performance.r

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

How To End a Business Partnership

One of the greatest mistakes business professionals can make when creating a partnership is to ignore the dissolution of a partnership. Why discuss partnership dissolution at the beginning of a partnership? Understand that partnership is like life; all things must come to an end. The better you can prepare for the end, the better for the partnership. Recognize that the dissolution of a partnership is not necessarily negative, because it can be a very positive thing. What are some of the things that can lead to partnership dissolution or what I call “The Business Divorce Conversation?”

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,570 views
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Best Business Advice

It is amazing how a business owner will gain a sense of confidence when there is unallocated cash in the business bank account. As business owners, very often if the business has money, we will try to find a way to spend it, whether we take more money for ourselves or spend it on the ‘must-haves’ for our business.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Are Your Business Systems Working?

Recently I was asked “how long do you allow a new system to run before recognizing that it is wrong?” Using a cost basis, your budget is kind of that litmus test. If you are going to just use a cost basis, the end of your budget should be the end of the game. I usually do not just use a cost basis, I look for the return basis.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Take Your Hobby to A Real Business

In June of 2011 my business life underwent a radical transformation. I sold a major business that was responsible for a majority of my income and my attention. After the sale of that business, I began to rethink my consulting business. I began consulting as a hobby or side business. Essentially, I helped friends and colleagues by advising them on how to create the types of systems and structures that I used to make my other businesses successful.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Raising Money for Your Business

Posted by Hugh on May 30, 2011 · Leave a Comment What do you do if you need to raise money for your business? For my business, we were able to raise money through privately offering stock legally in our company. This is something you can do if you are a registered security in the state of your residence. There is more to it: you will need to issue the stock, invite investors, educate them, have them subscribe, be legally protected, and be able to “legally pool” their money — because pooling money usually is not legal.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Delegation: What are your core competencies?

Do you know your core competencies as an entrepreneur? Do you know the core competencies of your team members/contractors? This will help you to know what to delegate. We have previously explored the importance of identifying your Unique Ability and core competencies, with the goal of both protecting and performing within your own Unique Ability and delegating everything you are not good at.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
2,276 views3.7/5 (3)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

DELEGATION: The Vital Role of Systems in Delegation

DELEGATION: The Vital Role of Systems in Delegation Posted by Hugh on January 31, 2011 · Leave a Comment Some entrepreneurs struggle with delegation because they have become accustomed to doing almost everything themselves, and some because they do not have a clear enough idea of exactly how they do what they do and the steps necessary to perform the necessary functions of their business.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,091 views3.5/5 (4)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Rituals and Fatigue are More Alike tha You Think

What can fatigue teach us about success? To answer that questio I have to tell you about one of my favorite subjects from engineering school, Fracture Mechanics. Fracture Mechanics is simply the science of how things break. What will cause a metal or metallic object to break or suffer fatigue faster – a huge one-time stressor or a lower level of ambient stress that cycles on and off over a certain period of time? Very often, a lower level of long-time oscillating stress will cause a bar of metal to fatigue or break much quicker.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,263 views3/5 (2)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Business Metrics – What Are Your Numbers?

Business metrics development is a huge portion of planning your operational design. Business metrics is simply the production numbers in your business that are important to you. What are production numbers? If you are a service-oriented business, that may be the number of phone calls to prospects needed to hit certain sales goals. If you know how much you charge in general to develop a solution for a customer, then you know how many customers you need to touch and talk to over a given period of time to be able to get a certain amount of money.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Creating a Partnership - Lessons from a Horror Story

Before creating a business partnership it is important to understand that it is like any other relationship; it is a marriage between individuals united in the same purpose and mission. And like any other relationship, if there is incompatibility in values or long-term vision or anything that can cause conflict, it will destroy the relationship.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Design a Dynamic Financial System

An important principle behind a dynamic financial system is tracking the money. Personally and in business, track the money. The better the tracking methods, the more accountability and the better records will be on hand to justify a stronger sale price on your business, if that is an appropriate exit strategy. As you build your business, if you wish it to be an asset, to pay and to be sold as an asset, being able to track the journey of money is vital. 1. Where did the money really go?

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Getting Paid From Your Business

Do you pay yourself or do you work for free? You may decide to work for free as you start a new business, spending time and energy without any compensation because the revenue is not there yet to support paying you a salary. This is an important consideration of the business, because it cannot go on indefinitely, and resolving when and how to start getting paid from a newly created venture can be more complicated than it may first appear.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,304 views3/5 (2)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Outsourcing Effectively – How to select the best for your project

I've written before on outsourcing and delegation,and I encouraged business owners to define their Unique Ability and hire others to do the rest. A powerful tool for finding a contractor is an online outsource platform called www.Elance.com. Elance is essentially a virtual marketplace that allows you to post projects and tasks for completion by contractors in a wide variety of skill areas.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,322 views3.7/5 (7)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS – EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS

People can be fickle customers; they may go where the deal is, if their primary mode of differentiating a product or service is price. For example, when you shop for everyday items at a grocery store that does not “wow” you, you may gladly go somewhere else if you can get the same goods at a better price. However, when there is a grocery store that you are in love with, you might find yourself justifying paying a higher price and continuing to shop there because there is something that makes it a wonderful experience. It might be because the staff knows you by name.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Business Operational Process

Where I see that entrepreneurs lose the most amount of money is when they ask the following question: What do I do next? If you are in the middle of any operational process and you do not know automatically what to do next, you have just lost money. When you hesitate, do not act, or do not act in accordance to a logical system within the business, you have potentially lost a client or the opportunity to earn more money.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Who is the perfect employee?

I’ve blogged about setting the stage for attracting and engaging the best employees – primarily understanding the company’s culture and business, designing the role and creating the flow and process. So who is the perfect employee? First off, what is meant by employee? When I use the word employee, I am referring to employees, virtual assistants, independent contractors, strategic vendors, and anyone else who is going to do an involved task for your business.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

The Only Two Things in the World You Control

I love being stuck in traffic. That is not a misprint, I love traffic. Because being stuck in traffic gives me stuck in traffic gives you time to thinkan opportunity to learn how to metabolize things that I cannot control. I see being in traffic as a gift. The world can be a very unpredictable place. You do not have control over many things. You do not control what people say, what they do, or how they feel. You do not control the traffic, the price of things or anyone else’s attitude. You only control two things in this world: 1. What you think about events and situations

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,379 views3/5 (1)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Schedule Your Business Emergencies

A major issue for most business owners is the ‘fire’ or emergency. This is a disruption in the normal routine or business process. Unfortunately, many businesses are plagued by consistent fires or emergencies. The entrepreneur or the management team is so busy working on these urgent fires they are unable to focus on the important aspects of the business. Most business people are not even aware there is a difference between things that are urgent and things that are important.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Firing Employees

Knowing when to fire someone is a necessary skill for any business owner. I became very good at firing employees because when I acquired one of my businesses it had 200% turnover. One of the things I realized very early in my entrepreneurial career is that the reasons for firing generally fall into one of three distinct categories. At play could either be a procedural issue, behavior issue, or misaligned intentions.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
1,377 views2/5 (1)
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Standard Operating Procedures

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are necessary and useful items for every business to have. An SOP is simply a written document that details all steps and activities of a process or procedure in your business. SOPs are very easy to write. The way you can make them so easy is to start with one or two sentences about the things that you care about. Start by observing your everyday business actions and write down what you already do in one or two sentences. Once you are done, you will find that you actually do things relatively frequently in your life and in your business.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

5 Steps Of Strategic Planning

I want to share with you one of the easiest ways I have learned to strategically plan for things in general. Whether it is a three-year forecast on my business or to plan a project effectively and successfully implement it to the end, I use these 5 simple steps. 1. State your goals 2. Create a time frame 3. State your results 4. Divide and conquer obstacles 5. Identify the people who will help you and by when

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Avoid Conflicts in Your Business Partnership

Are you considering a professional partnership? Or are you in the midst of a business partnership that is not going as well as you imagined? Partnerships allows a person to be able to have the flexibility to do what they are good at and share the ownership responsibility and investment with other partners who get to do what they are good at. For a successful partnership, first evaluate the long range goals and vision. Second, be aware of any potential conflicts and work towards minimizing them.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

How To Delegate and Outsource Your Business

If you are looking to make your business an asset, delegation and outsourcing is one of the most crucial pieces that you get to master as you come through your business creation career. Delegation and outsourcing is something that, if you are not good at it, you will probably never have a great systematized business. When you are delegating and outsourcing any particular project to an employee, to a contractor, or to anyone, here are steps for you to be able to get them successfully aligned with your project.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Overcoming Business Hurdles

One of the difficulties of creating business systems is that there is a learning curve. You will make mistakes, you will learn what does and does not work by trial and error, and you will lose both time and money. There are things that you can do that can help you minimize time and money lost to your business as you develop great systems for your business. I suggest finding a great coach or a mentor to help you.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Hiring the Right People for the Right Job

The concept of Context and Values has revolutionized our business for both in how we relate to our employees and our customers alike. It assists us to tap into understanding how someone frames their world, what they are afraid of, what they are excited about, and what they feel very confident about in themselves that will be deepened by working with us.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Hiring – Good Help Is Not Hard to Find

I hear the complaint that good help is hard to find. That has not been my experience. I find that good help is easy to select, Finding good employeesbecause once you identify who you are as a company and the type of environment your company offers, it becomes very easy to determine whether a potential employee is a good candidate to engage.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

How to Write Your Standard Operating Procedures

In the last two months, my blogs have focused more on the philosophy of operational systems. The next blog goes from philosophy to straight content. We are going to talk about actual systems, and so we are going to review just about every system that you need to be able to get through your business. Daily office operations Think about what makes your office run such as answering phones, dealing with mail, office supplies, faxes, etc. Development systemsr How do you develop products, packaging, and manufacture? Manufacturing and inventory systemsr

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Creating a Partnership Structure

When determining what type of business structure is necessary for your business partnership, one of the considerations needs to be how to protect yourself from the business and from your partners. People considering partnerships generally struggle with the type of entity they should create. Should they create an LLC, an S-Corporation, or Sole Proprietorship? Answer these questions with your professional advisor: What is the business doing that presents risk, what is your role, and what assets are you trying to protect?

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Rituals as the Path to Success

As a Business Coach one question that I am frequently asked is, “How do I become successful?” In order to understand success, it is important to study and become a student of successful systems. The most successful systems have been around a very long time. Some of the most successful systems I can think of reside in nature and are ancient, like flowers and trees.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Ways to do Small Business

One of the biggest differences between self-employed people or Mom-and-Pop businesses and big business owners is how they each view the cost of doing business. For simplicity sake, I will refer to self-employed people or Mom-and-Pop business models as “small business.”

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

How to Become Value Conscious

How do you, as a small business owner, go through the window and become more value-conscious and not cost-conscious? The challenge goes like this: The nature of your value in the marketplace has nothing to do with what you create, or what you do for your customer. It comes from a much deeper place. The question you get to ask yourself is, “Are you enough?” Are you worthy enough to be able to create something great, and pay for what it requires to make that happen?

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Money and Your Business

Accounts receivable is a fancy name for how much money your business is owed by your customers. First, make sure that you have professional customer invoicing. It is advisable to have quick, accurate, professional invoicing that is usually computer-generated. You will want to make sure that your customer understands the transaction’s meaning and that they understand exactly what they owe. It is also advisable that you send them something nice on their invoice. Sending messages through invoices is a great way to communicate with your customers on a consistent basis.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

Services or Systems Improvements?

The difference between a small business and those of a corporate or large business is evidenced in the how each viewBig businesss process improvement. Improving the process is how a business delivers a consistent customer experience. Regardless of the type of business, it is the interaction with the customers and delivery of the product/service that can indicate whether it is operating as a small business or a big business. A small business or Mom-and-Pop business focuses on service improvements and the big or corporate business focuses on systems improvement. What does that mean?

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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By Hugh StewartRecently published1 topic

How to select the best contractors for your project -4 Things to Consider

A powerful tool for finding a contractor is an online outsource platform called www.Elance.com. Elance is essentially a virtual marketplace that allows you to post projects and tasks for completion by contractors in a wide variety of skill areas. I have had great success outsourcing to Elance. They are not the only contractor-for-hire group online, but their interface, bidding process, communication, and billing systems work the best for me. Let me share with you some of the features of Elance that I enjoy.

Primary topic: Business Coach and Business Coaching
Business Coach and Business Coaching
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