Chances are some of these power hour tasks may not even be on your to do list.  Sometimes it takes some brainstorming and being away from working “in” your business to develop the innovative ideas your need to move your business forward.

To make Power Hour the most effective, schedule it on your calendar on at least a weekly basis (a few times a week would be better).  The entire hour should be uninterrupted and free of phone calls, email, and current clients.

Power Hour should NOT include:

• Doing billable work for current clients.  This will bring in income, but it will not move your business forward like higher-payback ideas.
• Checking email.
• Answering unscheduled phone calls.
• Putting out fires.
• Routine marketing work, such as going to a networking meeting or creating a web site.
• Administrative work or work that falls into your overhead bucket.
• Supervising employees.

We all keep very busy in our businesses, and if we don’t take the time to occasionally stop and take stock, we often become distracted working on things that are urgent but not important.

The things you do in a Power Hour should be a little bit (if not a lot) scary to you.  In fact, that’s why we put them off.  But they’re the exact things that will allow our business to really take off when we make the time and face our trepidations.

Some of the things you can consider that would go into a Power Hour:

• Identifying power partners that you can make major deals with to bring in substantial contracts or clients.
• Developing new revenue stream ideas.
• Developing human performance skills such as speaking, writing, or negotiating.
• Working with a coach or doing homework a coach gives you.
• Doing a survey to see how you can look for new ideas for new service lines to serve your customers better.
• Going after leveraged reputation-building opportunities, such as speaking to 1,000 ideal prospects or appearing in the news media.

What can you do that is going to bring in a significant amount of business across a multiple number of clients?  If you think of some things, make a note right now.

Power Hour also brings perspective.  It allows you to slow down and examine all of the tasks on your list to see what may not make sense to do.  As your Power Hour ideas take root and produce revenue, you may very well be able to delete some items on your to-do list that are less profitable.  That will free you up so that you’re working less and making more.  In effect, you’ve just given yourself a raise by implementing Power Hour.

Try Power Hour for a month and see what happens in your business.  If you’re already doing some form of Power Hour, formalize it, expand it, and leverage it so that you’re benefiting even more.

Is there truly a way to find an extra hour each day?  Yes, there is, and here are five tips you can put in place to reduce the feeling of overwhelm, free up time, and feel more in control of your business.

1.    Get stuff done off prime time. 

Most people drive to work between 7 and 9 and come home between 4 and 6.  Save yourself 15-30 minutes per day or more by coming in before or after the rush.

Apply this same idea to your weekly errands or times when you need to stand in line.  Go to a restaurant a little early (or late) to avoid the busiest times.   Go to the grocery store during the week instead of on Saturday.

Doing this for 10-12 errands per week will save an hour a week or more.  Combine that with the time you’ll save in rush hour, and you could save as much as three hours a week using this idea.  Even if you can apply this idea to only one or two days a week, you’ll still be ahead of the game.

2.    Delegate clerical or personal tasks.

Make a list of all the tasks you are doing that a minimum wage earner could do, and hire a college student for a few hours a week.  You’ll benefit from systematizing the tasks you delegate – they will get done more efficiently – and you will have freed up a few hours a week once your worker is trained.

3.    Practice Power Hour.

Carve out one hour a day to complete the most profitable task for your business.  This might be making sales calls, meeting with a power partner, or designing a new service or product to offer clients.  It’s best if it’s the first hour in your day.  In any case, the time should be sacred, with no checking email, no answering the phone, and no texting.

Your business will really accelerate when you make Power Hour a regular practice.

4.    Check email and social media less often.

Turn off automatic send and receive in your Outlook or email application.  Instead, close (yes, close!) your email application for most of the day.  Check it only at 8am, noon, and 4pm. When you can break the addictive cycle, you will have fewer interruptions, be able to focus, and do higher quality work.

Likewise, if you need to spend time on social media, set a timer before you start.  When the bell rings, that’s it! Get back to work.

5.    Nail your time wasters. 

The only real way to determine where your primary time drains are is to track your time, minute by minute for a couple of days.  When you review the log, you’ll be able to see what’s going on and what you can do to prevent time from slipping through your fingers.

When you can use your time wisely, you’ll not only get more done, you’ll get the things done that matter to you.

Bookkeepers generally charge by the hour so the additional time it takes them to sort and categorize your paperwork will end up costing you more than if you’d spent a little time organizing your paperwork.

Also when a bookkeeper only looks at your paperwork once a year it can be difficult to answer questions about specific expenses when so much time has passed by.  This may mean missing out on an important business expense because you can’t give an adequate explanation for it.

Not only that, but most businesses typically must submit remittances to the government either monthly or quarterly.  If your information is kept in a box, this makes getting reports in on time that much more difficult.

Furthermore, business owners who use shoebox bookkeeping have no idea how they’re doing financially throughout the fiscal year.  They can’t tell if they’re spending too much or bringing in enough revenue to make a profit.  They tend to judge their finances by the balance in their bank account, which doesn’t take into account monies owed by them or to them.

So if you are a small business owner who is using a shoebox bookkeeping system, you really need to consider whether this is saving you money or whether it’s time to find yourself a freelance bookkeeper.

1. Free Marketing. Most article submission sites are free, yes you read right – FREE. By writing and submitting articles this will undoubtedly increase your website traffic and generate additional sales revenue while building your mailing list. You will gain massive exposure to the hundreds of thousands of visitors to article submission sites on a daily basis. By submitting your articles to the article submission sites, you will be reaching a large audience and reaching new prospects and creating additional website traffic that would have never found your website on its own.
2. Search Engine Optimization. Your article will contain a link to your website and we all know that the more incoming links your website has, the more importance search engines will attach to it and this will increase your site placement in those search engines, referred to as a back link. Another SEO secret, the higher your website ranks, the more credible the back link is to your site.
3. Build Your Mailing List. In your article it is important to include an Author Resource Box, including a short bio of you and your company and including a link to your website thereby gaining new readers in your target market.
4. Building Your Creditability as an Expert. It is so important that your articles contain content your readers will benefit from. By submitting more articles, over time you will boost your credibility and reputation as an expert in your field and begin the trust cycle with your readership.
5. Quick Results. As soon as you submit your article and it has been approved for publication, you will quickly start to see immediate results. Create a Google Alert on the title of your article, your company name, your name, and you will start to see alerts appearing in your inbox. With that being said, make sure you include your resource box with each submission as this is how to get readers to your site.

To make article marketing work for you, remember to:

• make sure your article is related to your target market and is relevant.
• make sure you use good quality, well written and original articles.
• remember that your article will be read by a human being, so make it a readable and interesting article.
• be patient as traffic and backlinks don’t appear overnight. Set up those Google Alerts once you started submitting the article to monitor those sites that are being picked up by the search engines.

So you see article marketing is easier than you think. It’s also important to learn as much as you can on how to create a great article marketing campaign.  Research and read everything you can on how to get the best results with all your article marketing efforts.

THSS can help you with your article marketing needs. If you wish to take this on yourself, be sure to check out our new eBook: Article Ease: Your One-Week Blueprint to Article Submissions.

Identity theft occurs when a thief uses your personal financial information without your permission to commit a crime or fraud. They may find and use your credit card number on a bill you have thrown out or a stray receipt. They may use a device to capture your card number when you use it. And they may even fill out a change of address card and divert your statements.

Between 500,000 and 700,000 individuals are seriously affected by identity theft in the United States each year. Some victims have spent a lot of money and time repairing their credit rating and financial status. Other individuals have been unable to purchase cars, houses, or other items when they needed them because of their “new” and unwelcome credit rating.

We recommend you do as many of the items below as possible to protect yourself.

• Protect Your Signature. Never publish your real signature on your web site, in an email signature file, or anywhere else publicly. If you throw out papers with your signature on it, shred them.
• Take Care with Financial Documents. Keep a shredder by every trash can where you throw out papers. Take a good look at every paper you throw out and shred every paper that has your Social Security number, credit card number, driver’s license number, or any other personal identifying number or information. This will reduce the risk of dumpster diving – where thieves go through your trash to find personal information.

You might be surprised at which papers have identifying information on them. You might need to shred mail that you don’t even want to open – for example, credit card applications. Please be careful to inspect all papers or just make a systematic rule to shred everything.

• Protect Your Records. Be careful who has access to your financial records, even in your own house. If you have lots of house guests, teenagers with numerous friends, or neighbors over all the time, you have a slight risk of exposure. Keep your papers all in one place, and if possible, lock them up for safekeeping and limited access to people you trust. Don’t forget about the papers you leave out on top of your desk or in a mail stack.
• Protect Your Computer. Do you have financial information on your computer? Password-protect your financial files, and keep your password in a private, safe place.
• Be Web Savvy. Use good judgment when entering credit cards on web sites of businesses you don’t know or when presenting your card to a business that looks questionable. This will reduce the risk of skimming, where thieves posing as merchants steal your card number as they enter it in their device.
•  Be Email Savvy. Never enter your credit card number in an email to someone. Never reply to an email that requests your personal information. If you think the email is real, go to your bank branch in person to check it out. This will reduce the risk of phishing, where the thief poses as a bank to get your information.
• Be Phone Savvy. If someone calls you and later asks for your personal information, be wary. It could be a setup, and it’s very easy to fall for. The caller will get you engaged in solving a big problem with your account and you could let your guard down. Don’t! If there’s a question in your mind about whether it’s real or not, call the business using the phone number on the back of the credit card or in the phone book.
• Be Discreet. Watch how you hold your credit card in a public place such as a line at the supermarket (cover the numbers). Don’t say your credit card number in public, and don’t repeat it on a cell phone. This is a low risk, but cell phone conversations are easily intercepted.
• Stay Vigilant with Statements. Make sure you receive your statements on a timely basis. If a statement is a few weeks late, follow up with the institution to find out why. Better yet, convert to online statements. This will avoid the risk of a thief changing your address and diverting the statements.
• Keep Track of Your Reports. Monitor your accounts, bank accounts, credit cards, and credit reports regularly.
• Spread the Word. Educate everyone in your household about these ideas so that they are fully implemented.

If you discover fraudulent activity on your accounts, there are four things to do immediately (time is of the essence):

• Place a fraud alert on your accounts.
• Close your affected accounts.
• File a police report.
• File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The FTC has more information on their web site to help protect you from becoming a victim of identity theft.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/consumers/defend.html

With us approaching the holiday season, it is a prime time for identity theft. By following the steps outlined above, you are placing those extra safeguards of protection needed to fight identity theft.

If you’re ready to rev it up for the fall of 2011, here are some fresh ideas to help you invigorate your fall sales.

Conduct a Client Survey

If you’re wondering how to discover the next big revenue blockbuster for your business, go to a wise source:  your clients.  Send a survey asking them what their current challenges are, what keeps them up at night, and what they could use help with.  Tools such as Constant Contact surveys or SurveyMonkey make sending surveys a snap these days.  You’ll gain valuable intelligence on where to focus your revenue development efforts so that you can serve your clients even better while increasing your income.

Ask for Referrals

The fastest and most cost-effective way to find new clients is by tapping into the network of current clients who are pleased with your work and know others who could use your services.  To make sure your clients know you are looking for more clients just like them, you might have to tell them!  They may not put two and two together like you think they should.  Prime the pump by creating a referral program and making it known you’re in the market for new clients.

Make Yourself Skillful

There’s nothing like adding new skills to your tool belt to help you increase your value in your client’s eyes.   Learn a new software package, design a new procedure, read a book, or take a training class that will give you ideas on how you can add value to and extend your current service or product line.  Once you’ve mastered it, you can train your team on what you’ve learned and make it a new offering which brings in more revenue.

Collect Testimonials

Collecting testimonials has multiple benefits.  First, you can use them on your promotional material so that new prospects can read about what it’s like to do business with you.  Second, you’ll learn something about what the client values by reading them.  And third, every communication you have with your clients increases “top-of-mind” awareness, making it more likely for the client to use more services or refer you.  That’s a triple win.

 Change Up a Current Service or Product

Add a whole new service by changing something about your current service or product.   If you offer products or services a la carte, bundle some together and make a package offering.  Correspondingly, if you offer a package, break it down into smaller offerings.  If you offer services via the phone, offer them in person as well.  Join with a trusted partner to offer your products and theirs together in one packet.   Or subcontract with a vendor you trust to expand your offerings even more.  When you offer three options, a discount, regular, and premium version, your clients will have more choices to fit their changing budget.  You can also change up the packaging, add extras, subtract items, change the color, change the timing, and much more.

 Upgrade Your Marketing

Invest in your marketing skills and materials so that your company is more appealing to prospects.  Redo your website if you need to, or perhaps there’s a flyer you can design that you can hand out at networking meetings.  Learn how to write a great proposal and how to communicate well during a sales call.  Or learn how to use social media to engage and educate your prospects on what you do.  When your marketing materials are a notch higher, your business will be more attractive to higher quality prospects.

 Cross-Sell and Upsell to Current Clients

Your current client base is a gold mine of potential.  They already trust you and know you through the services you are currently offering.   It’s possible they may not know everything you do.  It’s your job to let them know about all the other services you offer.  When you do, you’re highly likely to do more business with them.

Try these seven ideas to fire up your fall sales.

The question is, are you winning? Are your clients winning? Or is there a balance?  Here are some tips to see if your business is out of balance, and if it is, how to get back in balance.

1.  Pay yourself first.

This might sound very basic, but it’s surprising how many small business owners will pay everyone else first and then have nothing left over for themselves.

A recent client of mine realized how much her employees and assistants were cutting into her business margins on one particular service line.  She cut back on her assistants’ time and employee hours, stopped doing some tasks that weren’t generating a return, and had more profit left over for her own paycheck.

The solution is to remember to always pay yourself first, literally, by cutting your payroll check or taking a regular draw from your business before you pay anyone else.

2.  Price your services carefully. 

Be sure that not only your costs and overhead are covered when you price, but that also a fair profit margin is left over for all your time and trouble.  Too many people are pricing for the short term in this economy.   Price for the long term, and emphasize the value you bring to your clients.

One example is to ask yourself whether you’ve made an adjustment for the higher gasoline rates.  If not, you’ve just given yourself a pay cut.  You probably wouldn’t work as an employee for someone else who gives you a pay cut; why tolerate it in your own business?

We can help you determine whether your pricing is adequately covering your expenses.  Check with us if you want help in this area.

3.  Maintain excellent time boundaries with clients.

If you charge by the hour, be sure you charge what you are worth.  It’s typical not to charge for learning curve time, and writing off some of that time is fair.  However, if you are constantly writing off time that you work on a client’s account, something is wrong.

Whenever you write off time that truly deserves to be billed, you are cheating your family out of your hard-earned money, taking time away from them, and spending your money and time on a customer instead.  You are also misleading the client, who will be expecting you to be cheap in the future.  I think we do this because we love pleasing our clients, but I think everyone would agree that family is where all of our true priorities lie.

This includes answering emails and phone calls for free and not writing down that time, giving bonus products, and other freebies.  It’s one thing to make a conscious decision to be competitive and consistent across all clients and another to be sloppy in our recordkeeping or to say yes when we really meant to say no but didn’t have the courage.   If you need help with setting up better time tracking or billing systems, give your us a call.

4.  Don’t try to do it all yourself. 

There’s power in numbers.  There are a couple of options when hiring a team to help you get everything done:

1. Delegate the tasks that you do that are worth the lowest hourly rate on the market.  For example, what are you doing that someone earning minimum wage could learn to do? This will free up your time for more strategic tasks or billable time.
2. Hire someone that you can receive at least a 4 to 1 return on salary.   Your employee then becomes a profit center for you that is billable.

In either case, you are maintaining the balance by freeing up time and/or generating additional revenue as you incur additional costs.

5.  Get a life outside work.

Unfortunately, our society is perfectly designed to promote workaholism.  With devices we can access 24 /7, some of us can’t resist peeking to see what emails and text messages  have come in even though it’s off hours.

Leave work behind during the evenings and weekends (or take time off regularly).  Everyone needs to re-charge with social events, hobbies, and interests outside of work.  You’ll be refreshed, well-rounded, and more creatively able to do your best work when you are serving clients.

Do any of these five tips speak to you about getting your business back in balance?  If so, take the step toward making some changes.  When you do, you’ll start to feel more in control, less burned out, and back in balance.

When a small business first opens, the entrepreneur is thankful to take anyone who breathes and pays their bill. Once the business fills with customers, the owner can afford to get more particular. They can take a look at what type of clients they like to serve best, as well as the type of clients they best serve.

Through targeted marketing, small business owners can begin to attract the type of clients they prefer. That’s when defining your niche comes in handy. But it also saves time in your business.

“Same Old, Same Old” Equals Time Savings

When you serve a niche, you will see the same client challenges over and over again. You can create a systematic process that can be followed for your clients when your clients are more homogeneous.

As you become good at identifying the challenges of your niche clients, you can anticipate the needs of your clients much better and more accurately. There is less breadth to learn. You can take the time you save to learn about solutions for your homogeneous clients that are far deeper and far more effective.

Depth, not Breadth

As an example, a small business that serves hospitals, physician practices, and drug stores with their pharmaceutical products will have three learning curves instead of one. They’ll grow faster if they discover which client type is more profitable for them, let’s say, hospitals, and target more hospitals in the marketplace. If they can generate the same amount of revenue with 20 hospitals as they could the mix of three types of clients, their production and marketing costs will be much lower.

There are even more benefits to developing your niche. When you implement this deeper knowledge that you’ve learned from serving multiple clients that are alike, your client testimonials will be glowing. You will develop a reputation faster within the niche than you would in the general world. Your referrals will speed up.

Developing a niche not only saves you marketing and sales dollars, it also creates economies of scale within your staff. They have less to learn and will surpass their learning curves faster, which enables them to serve your clients sooner and better.

Have I piqued your interest about niches? Are you convinced there are riches in niches?

Riches in Niches

Let’s list some of the ways a niche can be defined.

• Industry: Your niche might be by industry, as in construction, health care, or technology. The more recession-proof your industry is, the better.
• Service/Product: A niche could be by service or product, as in tax planning, women’s shoes, or dog grooming.
• Geography: You can also narrow your offerings by geography.
• Customer Type: Another way to niche is by customer, such as hospitals, psychiatric practices, or retirement homes.
• Combination: You can mix and match for power niche-ing, as in nurses’ shoes, hotels that cater to traveling rock bands, or nonprofit teen programs.

Is Your Business Already Niched?

To get a hint of how your business might already be developing a niche, review your customer list and look for commonalities among your current client base. Look for type of customer, industry, geography, product/service, and even gender to see if you spot a trend. Group similar clients together to see how much revenue as a percentage of total sales each type is bringing in.

Once you identify that you have several of the same type of clients, you can benefit from productivity gains by standardizing the way those accounts are served.

Finding a niche allows you to work smarter, not harder, and keep more of what you make in your business.

Please take some time during this summer to prepare your Emergency Disaster Plan. To help you get started, here are some things to think about:

• Off-site backup: Do you have an off-site back up of your computer files? There are several companies offering this service such as Mozy, SOS Online Backup, Carbonite, DropBox and even Intuit (as mentioned in last month’s newsletter).
• Legal documents: Be sure your important legal documents such as Passport, Will and Living Will, Business Succession Plan and Incorporation Papers are either stored in a fireproof filing cabinet, safe or safe deposit box at your bank.
• Insurance Policies: When was the last time you reviewed your insurance coverage? Do you have adequate coverage? Does your homeowner’s policy cover your business equipment? Most homeowner policies do not and require you to purchase supplemental insurance for business equipment. Schedule time to speak with your insurance agent to be sure you are adequately insured.
• Inventory of your personal possessions as well as your business equipment: Take photos of your household possessions and home office equipment. Insurance companies will also require serial numbers in order for easier processing of any claims. To make this process easier, there is software specifically for recording your home inventory. You can find them by searching for home inventory software online.
• Software Licenses: In case of a fire and your computer is destroyed, what about your software? As we all know, software can get quite expensive if we have to repurchase lost programs. Document all the software on your computer including the version and serial number. This may be a good project for you to give to your son or daughter while home on their summer break.
• Financial information and filed tax returns: These documents are also just as important as your legal papers and should be stored in fireproof cabinets or a safe as well as making sure your computerized accounting program is backed up on a regular basis and stored off-site.
• Emergency Supplies Kit: Be sure to put together your Emergency Supply Kit which should include at least a 3-day supply of bottled water, canned, non-perishable food, a battery operated radio, flashlight and extra batteries, first aid kit, manual can opener, needed prescription medications, cash and any special needs items.

FEMA has a very informative website (Ready.gov) including a sample emergency plan, computer inventory form and an emergency supplies checklist in helping you prepare for a disaster. Also check with your state’s Office of Emergency Management. They offer assistance specific to the emergencies that may strike your area as well as resources and emergency contact phone numbers.

It may be a large undertaking now, but if disaster strikes, it will be well worth the time and effort you put into it. Insurance claims will process faster as well as you getting your business back up and running.

When you open up QuickBooks for Mac you will see the interface is a bit different, but fortunately, Intuit has made some robust upgrades since 2009, and 2011 has some really great new features. For example, one nice benefit of working in the same platform is that QuickBooks for Mac integrates nicely with your Address Book, MobileMe, iCal and even iChat. You are able to synchronize your contacts in Address Book, add reminders to iCal, see other users iChat status, launch a chat if you have a question on a transaction and even back up to MobileMe.

Listed below are some of the major features of QuickBooks for Mac 2011. We know you will find them easy to use and beneficial in managing your business using QuickBooks.

• Multiuser Mode. This is a new feature to 2011 so if you have one user working on invoicing, you can now have another user working on payroll or vendor payments.
• Tracking Mileage. You can now record your business mileage in QuickBooks so that the mileage can be charged back to your clients at invoicing time. Before you begin, you will need to add your vehicle information into QB (using the Lists menu). Once your vehicle has been entered, choose Company – Enter Mileage and record the data, being sure to add the Customer: Job so that it will be charged back. One last setting will need to be updated – the IRS Mileage Rate, and you need to input that data under Company – Mileage Rate. Beginning July 1, 2011, the IRS mileage rate for business travel is now .555.
• Layout Designer. Layout Design allows you to customize your forms to give them the professional and distinct look of your business using your logo, background graphics or other images to the templates . You also have the option to change the default fonts. The forms that can be customized include your invoices, sales receipts, credit memos, estimates, purchase orders and customer statements.
• Find Transactions Faster. You have the ability to sort your account registers by Date, Type, Number or Amount (largest to smallest), Order Entered or Cleared Status, which makes finding transactions faster.
• Report Export. You have the option of exporting your financial report data to either Numbers or Microsoft Excel.
• Online Banking. QuickBooks 2011 allows you to set up online banking thereby allowing you to match downloaded transactions for easier data entry.
• Company Snapshot. The Company Snapshot is just how it reads . It provides you with a quick snapshot using graphs so you can easily see your income and expense trends, your top customers, which customers owe you money and vendors that need to be paid all in one snapshot. This page is easily customizable with the drag and drop feature.

Besides visiting the QuickBooks Help area if you have any questions, there is another great resource called Little Square. Little Square is the city centre to the QuickBooks for Mac world. You will find advice from accountants, the QuickBooks for Mac team and other QuickBooks users.

You can see how easy it can be to master Quickbooks for your Mac. Always remember too that if you need someone to help you do it, consider hiring a bookkeeping virtual assistant. They can not only get you set-up quickly but maintain your bookkeeping for years to come.