The Endorphin Difference: What Makes Endorphin Advisors Unique and Effective?
In this new video, Erik Bunaes from Endorphin Advisors discusses the philosophy of Endorphin Advisors and how our unique, consultative and coaching-oriented approach to management consulting has brought new energy, confidence, clarity and success to our clients.
For more information about Endorphin Advisors, please see the following venues:
Web Site: http://www.EndorphinAdvisors.com
Endorphin Blog: http://blog.EndorphinAdvisors.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EndorphinAdvisors
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/companies/endorphin-advisors
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/endorphin1995
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ebunaes
Thank you for your time and support.
Erik Bunaes
Endorphin Advisors
Small Businesses Are Small For A Reason – It Could Be Professional Negligence
I have worked with – and interacted with even more – small businesses over my consulting career. Often, I am inspired, impressed and occasionally totally blown away by the talent of many of the small businesses and their owners. These professionals and work-a-day folks alike are all trying to live their dream, make a living, compete on their own or build a company out of a hobby or skill they have seen in themselves and enjoy.
I’d like to talk today about the businesses and business owners that do not fit into this group. Today I’d like to talk about the business owners that I have seen, met and worked with that are small for a reason. Perhaps they are small for many reasons.
Let’s not ruminate today on specific businesses, business owners or examples. Let’s try and learn something from our experiences and observations, so that the business owners and professionals out there trying to survive, grow and build lasting businesses and companies can learn from – and hopefully avoid – some prevailing mistakes made by small business owners.
Briefly, here are some of our top observations preventing small business owners from successfully building larger businesses:
1. Failure to understand the selling process, and prepare for the selling cycle.
2. Not understanding the importance of the lifetime value of a customer.
3. Allowing ego to override requirements of bringing onboard talented help (whether full-time, part-time or outside consulting services).
4. Allowing ego also to prevent business owner from seeking help, in new ideas, capital, etc.
5. Negligence in defining and communicating a clear vision and purpose for the organization and its employees.
6. Ill-defined target customers
7. Failure to follow through on efforts to build and promote their brand effectively at all times.
I’ll come back to explaining my thinking in future blog posts, however, I will make the following comments.
It is surprising how business owners who are staking their livelihoods, careers and sometimes their dreams on their businesses fail to follow through on building up the brand of their business. This is often true even for experienced business owners, and it is often clear to even the business owner themselves.
In fact, if there was a court of law for small business owners where observers could walk in and tell a judge that the business owner knows or has an idea what to do, but that they are not doing it and know it, we’d have business owners being convicted of negligence.
Now I am not talking about legality here. I am talking about just plain failure to act on what is known – or good ideas that you are aware of – in detriment to your own business. I’m clearly stretching and distorting the term negligence here, but it is congruent enough to meet our needs in this situation.
Don’t be negligent with your business. Act on what you know and see and hear and learn.
Perhaps we will single out some particularly horrific examples of grossly negligent business owners as case studies in future posts.
In the meantime, thank you for your continued interest and support.
Erik Bunaes
Endorphin Advisors
5/9/10.
Get Your Complimentary “Six Month Marketing Action Plan” Today!
Download this valuable, comprehensive workbook by signing up for our monthly email news “The Endorphin Rush.”
Just visit our web site (www.EndorphinAdvisors.com) and enter your email address in the sign up box on our home page. You will receive an email confirmation with a link to your complimentary copy of “The Six Month Action Plan.”
Here is an excerpt from “The Six Month Action Plan”:
In the everyday crunch of business, sometimes it is difficult to take a step back for a high-level view of a marketing strategy. We put it off until tomorrow, a quiet time or until after we put out one last fire.
In the Six Month Marketing Action Plan we have consolidated into a very short, clear workbook a multi-step action plan to guide you along the thought path of creating or refining a marketing plan.
This action plan is designed for the specific needs of small and medium sized businesses as well as individual professionals and entrepreneurs that need to increase their own sales and business development outreach.
This workbook guides you through the fundamental steps of effectively marketing your products or services by:
1. Defining a clearly targeted audience
2. Understanding the alternative choices offered by your competition
3. Creating a compelling message which communicates your offerings benefits
4. Developing a strong demand-generating offer to get your target market to try your product or service.
This workbook also provides an opportunity to define and document your goals for the upcoming six month marketing period.
Then, we give you a month to month action plan to follow to keep you on track toward your goals, as well as a way to gauge and measure your success in your efforts.
Visit www.EndorphinAdvisors.com now and enter your email address for your complimentary copy of “The Six Month Action Plan.”
As always, thank you for your interest and support.
Strategic Business Advisor? Who Needs a Coach (or Advisor)?
Some of The Smartest Folks Around Use Strategic Advisors or Executive Coaches. What Can a Professional Advisor or Coach Do For You?
If we think of this from an athlete’s point of view, top athletes have a host of coaches. From Derek Jeter of the NY Yankees to 7-time Tour De France champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, from Olympic gold medalist and two-time World Cup overall champion alpine skier Lyndey Vonn to football quarterback Brett Favre. They all have coaches. Strength coaches, skills coaches, nutrition coaches, business advisors, agents and even media coaches.
Why not have advisors and coaches for what is likely one of the top two or three priorities in your life, next to your family? That is, your career. It may be wise to think of your career as if you were a professional athlete. Get coaching, practice and drill skills, learn new skills, strategize and role play for big meetings, presentations or sales calls, learn new approaches to your business or career.
If you are a business owner or experienced professional, you know how many different skill sets you need. These include:
1. Practicing and continuing to develop your particular skill, service or product
2. Creating new marketing strategies, products and services
3. Marketing your business
4. Building new customer relationships and maintain existing relationships
5. Hiring, motivating and managing employees
6. Hiring outside vendors
7. Managing the financial, accounting and tax side of your business.
8. Envisioning, purchasing (or building) and managing complex technology.
9. Keeping up with federal, state and local regulations.
That’s just a start.
Do you honestly excel at all of these, and can you with a busy work schedule maintain and manage all of these on your own?
As a business owner or entrepreneur, you have no choice. You must manage and excel at all of these skills, and more. Even as a professional or an employee working at a company, you must excel at one or more of these areas, too.
Who do you talk to for help in managing your work (as an owner, entrepreneur, executive or career professional)?
If you think that having a strategic advisor or executive coach on your side might benefit you, give us a call and let’s talk about it and how we have helped others.
Business Workshop – Turning Numbers Into Valuable Information
Turning Numbers Into Valuable Information
Projections – A basic guide to the business practice every business owner needs for profitable decision-making
Date & Time: Monday March 15, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm.
Location:
BZHIVE Coworking
80 Mark Drive
San Rafael, CA 94903
http://www.bzhive.com
415-251-6454
Financial spreadsheets with rows and rows of numbers make most people’s eyes glaze right over. Most people would rather hit themselves in the head with a hammer than open an Excel spreadsheet.
However, business owners and entrepreneurs need their businesses to generate enough money to pay the bills to stay in business. To keep on top of how a business is performing – and to make the best decisions for moving forward – it is essential to have a clear picture of how much money you are spending and how much you are bringing in.
You have the numbers, so let’s turn those into valuable information to answer important questions: When can I hire more staff? When can I buy an office (or just get an office)? When can I afford to buy that piece of equipment? How much can I spend on marketing next month?
In this introductory course, we’ll help business owners, entrepreneurs, managers and independent professionals use the numbers they have to make the best possible decisions. We promise, no jargon and no acronyms!
In this course, we’ll teach you:
1. What are financial projections?
2. Why are they important?
3. How can projections help you?
4. 5 key elements of projections
5. How to develop a basic model for your business (and give you a sample)
This workshop includes practical application strategies that you can implement right away, the Endorphin Advisors PowerPlan™ Financial Projection template, plus a bonus 30-minute, one-on-one coaching session.
Workshop developed & presented by Erik Bunaes, Principal, Endorphin Advisors. For more information about Endorphin Advisors, please visit www.EndorphinAdvisors.com and http://blog.endorphinadvisors.com.
Business Workshop – Build a Roadmap for Explosive Growth
Build a Roadmap & Playbook for Explosive Growth
A business planning process to dominate your competition
Date & Time: Monday March 8, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm.
Location:
BZHIVE Coworking
80 Mark Drive
San Rafael, CA 94903
http://www.bzhive.com
415-251-6454
“The plan is useless, but planning is essential.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander of Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States
Find out what you need to know now to perform a powerful business planning process that paints a picture of your vision and focuses your energy, efforts and your team on the essential work ahead.
This course is designed for business owners, entrepreneurs and managers interested in learning more about the process of building a business plan that empowers them to build strong, sustainable businesses that can compete with anybody in their field.
This information is applicable for start-ups, new ventures, solopreneurs, business owners and managers.
This workshop includes practical application strategies that you can implement right away, the Endorphin Advisors PowerPlan™ Business Plan template, plus a bonus 30-minute, one-on-one coaching session.
Workshop developed & presented by Erik Bunaes, Principal, Endorphin Advisors. For more information about Endorphin Advisors, please visit www.EndorphinAdvisors.com and http://blog.endorphinadvisors.com.
Tell us your “Good Players Play Hurt” story
We want to hear your inspiring stories of leadership, survival and triumph.
There are so many forgotten or untold stories of determination, perseverance, bravery and triumph and we would like to remember the people and stories that display tremendous human spirit, that inspire us and that just plain surprise us.
In many cases, these are the stories of normal, every day people doing what they love, or just trying to get by. I personally love to hear such stories, and am inspired by normal people doing great things. And, I am committed to memorializing the everyday heros amongst us.
Please tell us your stories, or stories that you have witnessed. In particular, we are interested in hearing stories from every day life along with events in sports, business, catastrophe and combat.
There is no limit as to how many stories you can tell us, however, we will only post stories that include your name, email addres and the city and state where you live.
Please include as much concrete detail as possible, as we are more interested in real stories than fantasy. As they say “truth is stranger than fiction.” (yes, I was an English major).
(Note: To add your story, please make sure you are on the right page by clicking on the title of this article above (i.e. “Tell us your “Good Players Play Hurt” story”). The “Leave A Reply” form will appear for your use.)
I thank you in advance for your time, your memories and for sharing your stories.
Sincerely,
Erik Bunaes
Endorphin Advisors
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