Tips and Tools – Page 136 – Business Plus Baby

June 20, 2015

Five Important Elements of Designing a Safe Nursery

Decorating a new nursery is exciting and fun. However, it also has to be a safe procedure. There are five important and practical things that you must always keep in mind in order to have a safe nursery.

The Sockets and Wiring

Most modern sockets today have an automatic shutter, which means that if a child sticks an object or their fingers into them, they will shut off automatically. However, you do need to know whether or not your sockets have that failsafe mechanism installed. Keep in mind that even safe sockets should be covered, though, as children may also stick actual plugs in there.

Do also think about your wiring. Make sure it is all in good order and not frayed or broken and keep loose wires to a minimum.

Finally, install a smoke alarm. Continue reading “Five Important Elements of Designing a Safe Nursery”

June 8, 2015

Why mumpreneurs are leaders

What springs to mind when you think of the word ‘leadership’? If its an image of a middle aged man in a suit running a huge corporation, then you’re only scratching the surface of leadership. In this post I’m going to explain how leadership goes way beyond executive leadership development. In fact leadership is something you will ‘do’ every day as a mum and probably as a mumpreneur, too.

First of all, the traditional picture of a leader sitting at the top of a hierarchy is no longer true. An effective leader is one who takes the opposite approach and looks at how she can best serve the people she leads, rather than how the people can serve her. Although this concept became more common from the 1970s onwards, the idea of a leadership being about service rather than being served goes way back to ancient times and philosophies.

Good leadership does involve making decisions and taking responsibility but it’s for the good of the people and the organisation, rather than for the status and personal gains of the leader. Good leaders are followed because people trust and respect them, rather than the skills they possess. Leadership is about behaviour first, skills second.

Many areas in your life and work will be a question of learning skills and applying them in a consistent way, but leadership is very different because it depends on your personal and emotional strengths, plus how you behave in any given situation. Often there are no right answers, and finding the best path depends on the experience and confidence of the leader.

If this is starting to sound familiar, then it’s because as a parent, you’re already a leader!

So what’s the difference between leadership and management?

According to BusinessBalls.com:

“This is a simple way to see how leadership is different to management:

Management is mostly about processes.
Leadership is mostly about behaviour.”

Management is about planning, organisation, measurable outcomes and communicating these to a team. Leadership includes these to some extent, but its focus is on the less tangible things like trust, inspiring others and decision-making.

If you’re a solo business owner you’re probably only managing yourself and your own workflow. But you’ll be a leader of your audience and your clients because they will want to trust you, to feel that you are able to make good decisions and to expect you to have integrity, commitment and courage.

And your children will look to you for these leadership qualities, too.

If that sounds a little daunting – and it shouldn’t because you’ve already had more practice than you realise! – how can you brush up your leadership skills? Well, that’s a big question for a short article, but here are some tips:

1. Be a good listener and communicator

Often the people around you will tell you what they want from you if you pay attention to them. That sounds easy, but when you’re busy it’s easy to not give people the attention they need to get the message across to you fully. Also pay attention to how you communicate back to them and how you might improve that.

2. It’s OK to make mistakes

If you’re not making any mistakes then you’re not trying enough new things! Just make sure you handle the mistake gracefully.

3. Have a great team around you

The best leaders aren’t intimidated being surrounded by smart, capable people. In fact, it pays to have some smarter than you! As we’ve seen above, leadership isn’t about technical or even management ability.

Which leadership skills do you already have?

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015

Six tips for planning an event

While it’s tempting to run an event online, nothing beats going out and meeting people face to face. Getting out of the office for a day can clear your mind, give you fresh ideas and enable you to network with others. And if you send your employees it’s a way that businesses can reward staff with employee rewards

That’s why live events will always be popular, however convenient and cost-effective the Internet may be! Here are some tips for planning your event.

Decide on the purpose of your event

Knowing the purpose of your event is essential for the rest of the planning process to fall into place. What do you plan to get from the event? And what’s in it for the people you want to attend?

Choose the right location

If your event is aimed at local people, then you may want to pick a location close to where they already live, work or gather together. If you have a national audience, then think about choosing a central location with good rail links and a range of accommodation choices nearby.

Choose the right venue

Choose the venue to suit the event. If you need a quiet, inspiring location with natural, healthy food then a plain, corporate-style venue isn’t going to be the right setting.

If keeping the ticket price down is a priority then you may want to pick a venue on a budget (although maybe you could cover some of the costs with sponsorship?). Be cautious about working on too tight a budget as the venue is an important part of the event and choosing the right venue could enable you to charge a higher ticket price.

Start promoting early

You can start promoting your course before you even have a venue booked! Use social media and your mailing list (if you don’t have a mailing list, start one now!) to create a buzz about the event long before the event happens. Once you do have a venue booked, sell tickets at a lower, early-bird price to keep building the buzz on the months running up to the event.

Choose the right speakers

Your speakers will both set the tone for the event and make your event attractive to those who want to attend, so give this some serious thought early in the planning process. Popular speakers are booked months ahead, which is another reason why you’ll want to hire an events speaker early on.

Have a plan B

Let’s face it, things can and do go wrong! Think through all the risks of running the event and have a plan B just in case the worst happens.

April 23, 2015April 23, 2015

How to get more done as a freelancer

Freelancing has lots of perks. You can work your own hours. You can pick and choose your projects and work with just those people you enjoy working with. You can take holidays and time off with a sick child without asking permission from the boss. You can even go to work in your pajamas!

However, all that freedom can get in the way too. Sometimes it can seriously distract you from getting the work done.

Productivity is the key. Freelance more, get more done for your clients and you’ll earn more money. Productivity doesn’t just mean working more – it means working smarter, too. So here are some tips to help you become a more productive freelancer:

1. Set yourself a fake deadline

Let’s say you have a deadline to design a logo and it’s due on the 15th. If you’re like many freelancers then you put it on your calendar for the 14th and you don’t think about that client or project until then. Fake the deadline and put it on your calendar for the 10th. You’ll deliver early and make the client happy. Even better, it leaves your diary free for more work between the 10th and the 15th!

2. Work in chunks of time

How do you schedule your work? Do you work some 10-hour days and not work other days at all? Chances are those 10-hour days are long and slow. It may actually take you twice as long to complete a project if you try to sit down and finish it all in one go.

Instead, work in short segments of time. While 20-30 segments may be best, experiment and see what works for you. When your time is up, take a break and do something else. Go take a walk, read a book, or do something that doesn’t require intense focus. Then return to your project feeling refreshed and ready to focus again.

3. Create a daily task list with your priorities at the top

Find a tool that works for you – paper and pen or scheduling software are both good. Personally, I just create a really simple list in Evernote.

Create a task list for the upcoming day. Put priority projects and tasks at the top of your list so you start the day making an impact. There are also handy smartphone applications (e.g. Evernote again!) that you can use to stay on track each day.

Then, get clear on your strengths and which tasks you really want to do. Identify your top challenges and create systems to overcome them. For example, if you are easily distracted by email, consider finding a virtual assistant to manage your business email. If you’re a procrastinator and save everything for the last minute, consider taking on more projects so you’re always busy and don’t have time to procrastinate.

Take a few minutes to sit down and document how you work at the moment. What makes sense? What encourages productivity and success? What’s getting in your way? Create systems to eliminate the challenges and finally create the freelance business you want.

Don’t miss a thing at Business Plus Baby! Click here to get my newsletter. I’ll also send you a copy of my e-book Running a business around a family: 9 steps to success.

April 9, 2015April 10, 2015

8 tips for increasing the revenue of your meeting rooms

If you have meeting rooms to hire, then it makes sense to make sure you make as much revenue from these rooms as you can while offering the best possible experience to your clients. Here are eight tips for increasing the revenue of your rooms:

1. Make sure your employees are happy

It’s important that your employees have a friendly and outgoing manner with your customers. If you make your employees happy by paying them fairly and recognising their achievements, they will want to be good ambassadors for your business. When your employees go above and beyond what’s on their job description, it leads to happier customers, repeat visits and for your customers to tell others about your venue. Continue reading “8 tips for increasing the revenue of your meeting rooms”