Yet often the first marketing act by new business owners is to put up a sign like this one.

Why?

If I liked the business before you got there, now I’m worried that it won’t be nearly as good.

If I didn’t like it, a sign announcing your arrival won’t encourage me to try again. I’ve already moved on, remember?

Here’s a better idea: forget the sign. Tell me a new story instead.

I wrote this last year for Shawn Murphy’s Wake Up & Shake It Up series. The article is now part of an e-book from Achieved Strategies.

Here’s what it takes to create a business of value:

Think big; act small.

This is the best business strategy that I know. Sound easy? I’m sure it does. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Thinking big means aiming high. It means making a decision about what you believe in and what you will relentlessly pursue. Big thinkers understand that they must constantly innovate, not just because they think they can change the world (which they often do), but also because if they don’t the world will change them.

But thinking big is only part of the equation – the key to the solution is to act small. The alternative (acting big) is a recipe for disaster, and every year companies of all sizes make this mistake and ultimately fail (big).

The difference between big and small:

• Acting big means trying to be all things to all people; acting small means you stand for something and dominate a niche.
• Acting big means ignoring customers; acting small means that you are always close to the customer, regardless of your level in the organization.
• Acting big means that senior executives generate ideas without input from anyone else; companies that act small execute grassroots ideas from employees.
• Acting big means that you advertise as much as possible; acting small means finding alternative ways to connect like-minded customers to one another.
• Acting big means making decisions based upon ego and perception; acting small means you make decisions solely based upon what is best for the performance of the company.

Companies that think big and act small are hungry and have an insatiable desire to perform. It’s incredibly difficult to maintain this state of mind, which might explain why it’s so uncommon.

Then again, great leadership isn’t very common either. The same goes for great success.

It’s not a coincidence.

Do you handle change well?

When was the last time you pushed a project to an unexplored edge?

It’s easy to resist the thing that scares you. And it’s easy to be afraid of the idea, change or edge that you don’t understand.

No one cares about a blog if someone isn’t blogging. I haven’t done that in quite a while, which has turned this site into an inanimate object (for now).

It’s no different with anything else. Do you care about fish? Paint? Bicycles?

I’m fairly certain that my friend Mike doesn’t care about fish, but he loves fishing. Just like others have a passion for painting or bicycling.

My challenge – and yours – is to clean up grammar. To change what we do from a noun to a verb.

Do that, and people will care.

Belief in the mission matters. Do you believe in yours?

“No…” I smiled, wondering if she would persist.

“Would you like to become one?”

“Not really.” Then, of course, I got curious. “How many people say yes?”

“Almost no one,” she said. “But I’m supposed to ask.”

No surprise there. Loyalty programs, once something of a novelty, don’t actually work. Consumers are smart enough to know that they’ll wind up with too much SPAM and a weekly newsletter they don’t want to read. Yet companies love to push them.

Here’s the tip: real customer loyalty has nothing to do with a program. If the experience or product is great (think The Apple Store), then we’re in. That’s it – no discounts, freebies or plastic cards necessary.

Especially those placed on the lives you’ve touched.

If you can explain why we do what we do in fewer words, you win.

Shawn (@shawmu on Twitter) just launched the Wake Up and Shake It Up blog series. Need a push to think bigger than you have before? Here it is.

The first post, Big versus Small, went live this morning. I think you know the author – check it out.

“Yes, I’d like to ship that for you, but you can’t use that box.”

“That’s a good idea. I’d like to say yes, but this isn’t the time to try something different.”

Somewhere along the line, people were conditioned to say no. What would happen if everyone in the company had to look for a reason to say yes?

A company’s story can’t be about convenience, low-cost, premium-value, and great selection.

A politician can’t talk about lowering taxes, increasing services, attacking bureaucracy, and reducing the deficit.

A Little League coach can’t preach health and fitness to his team and then sneak a cigarette while the kids are running laps.

I realize that it’s hard to take a stand, to tell people what they don’t want to hear. But it does no good to change your story to suit your audience. Sooner or later people will figure out that you don’t stand for anything at all, which means you’ll be gone tomorrow.

For more information about Jason’s online project management software, visit Project Manager.com.

Please join me in welcoming Jason – we’re lucky to have him. His first article is the perfect primer for project management. I hope that you find it useful.

- Ed McLaughlin

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As a Project Manager, you need to manage people, money, suppliers, equipment—the list is never ending. The trick is to be focused. Set yourself 5 personal goals to achieve. If you can meet these simple goals for each project, then you will achieve total success. So read on, to learn…

The 5 Goals of a Project Manager

These goals are generic to all industries and all types of projects. Regardless of your level of experience in project management, set these 5 goals for every project you manage.

Goal 1: To finish on time

This is the oldest but trickiest goal in the book. It’s the most difficult because the requirements often change during the project and the schedule was probably optimistic in the first place.

To succeed, you need to manage your scope very carefully. Implement a change control process so that any changes to the scope are properly managed.

Always keep your plan up to date, recording actual vs. planned progress. Identify any deviations from plan and fix them quickly.

Goal 2: To finish under budget

To make sure that your project costs don’t spiral, you need to set a project budget at the start to compare against. Include in this budget, all of the types of project costs that will accrue, whether they are to do with people, equipment, suppliers or materials. Then work out how much each task in your plan is going to cost to complete and track any deviations from this plan.

Make sure that if you over-spend on some tasks, that you under-spend on others. In this way, you can control your spend and deliver under budget.

Goal 3: To meet the requirements

The goal here is to meet the requirements that were set for the project at the start. Whether the requirements were to install a new IT system, build a bridge or implement new processes, your project needs to produce solutions which meet these requirements 100%.

The trick here is to make sure that you have a detailed enough set of requirements at the beginning. If they are ambiguous in any way, then what was initially seen as a small piece of work could become huge, taking up valuable time and resources to complete.

Goal 4: To keep customers happy

You could finish your project on time, under budget and have met 100% of the requirements—but still have unhappy customers. This is usually because their expectations have changed since the project started and have not been properly managed.

To ensure that your project sponsor, customer and other stakeholders are happy at the end of your project, you need to manage their expectations carefully. Make sure you always keep them properly informed of progress. “Keep it real” by giving them a crystal clear view of progress to date. Let them voice their concerns or ideas regularly. Tell them upfront when you can’t deliver on time, or when a change needs to be made. Openness and honesty are always the best tools for setting customer expectations.

Goal 5: To ensure a happy team

If you can do all of this with a happy team, then you’ll be more than willing to do it all again for the next project. And that’s how your staff will feel also. Staff satisfaction is critical to your project’s success.

So keep your team happy by rewarding and recognizing them for their successes. Assign them work that complements their strengths and conduct team building exercises to boost morale. With a happy motivated team, you can achieve anything!

And there you have it. The 5 goals you need to set yourself for every project.

Of course, you should always work smart to achieve these goals more easily.

Time.

Sound too simple? I’d probably agree – if not for the fact that using time well is incredibly difficult.

Perhaps this story will help you to change your perspective on time. Imagine that your bank credits you with $86,400 every morning. You don’t have to pay this money back, but there’s a catch – every night, the bank deletes any balance remaining in the account. So if you fail to use any portion of the money during the day, you lose it forever. In this scenario, would you be certain to withdraw every cent? Sure you would.

Every day, we receive a similar credit – 86,400 seconds of time. As with the imaginary bank, failure to use any portion of the daily deposit is your loss. So the question is this: how much value do you place on the time you have remaining today?

Every second of time is valuable. If that seems like an overstatement, you should talk with a person who just avoided a car accident. It’s quite possible that the difference between life and death came down to a single second (or less).

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is unknown.
Today is a gift.

Don’t waste it.

“That will never work.”

“It’s never been done before.”

“Don’t bother – we already tried that once.”

“Nice idea, but can you prove that it will work?”

“We can’t sell that to senior management.”

We aren’t taught to question things that are familiar to us. Which reminds me of an experiment that can be done with five monkeys.

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.  Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.  Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.  As soon as he touches the stairs, spray the other four monkeys with cold water.  After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result – the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.

Soon enough, any monkey that tries to climb the stairs will be stopped by the others.

Now, turn off the cold water.  Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.  The newcomer will see the banana and try to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him.  After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original monkeys and replace it with a new one.  The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked.  And the previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Continue the process – replace the third monkey with a new one, then the fourth, then fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. But most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs – or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Regardless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know, that’s the way it’s always been done around here.

Companies all over the world repeat this experiment every day with their own people. What about yours? Or do you promote a culture that is eternally curious about why they do what they do?

While I agree that it matters who you know, that doesn’t mean the goal should be to have thousands of online friends. Quantity alone doesn’t mean that you’re truly connected.

Here’s a thought: make your network smaller. Then take that network and focus on making it tighter. Do this by reaching out to people more frequently (about them, not you) and connecting them to others.

This approach takes time, but it’s the best way I know to build a real network.

Now the opposite is true. With less revenue, the company started showing signs of financial strain. So the CEO and other senior managers made some very quick decisions. Those decisions were made with limited information, and they backfired. Now the company is in serious trouble.

The main rule of decision making: as soon as you have a reasonable amount of information, decide what to do. Any more or less could be catastrophic.

At first, it is difficult to wrap your arms around the magnitude of that loss. But what bothers me most is how quickly they folded. After all, this was the first women’s professional soccer league in the world. The owners should have expected success to take time.

ESPN began in 1979, but didn’t turn a profit until 1985 (six years). Turner Broadcasting Systems lost money during its first twelve years of operation. Robert Murdoch expanded into the U.S. market in 1973, but wasn’t profitable until 1983 (ten years). Airbus? They took twenty years.

The list goes on. What concerns me is that I regularly talk with entrepreneurs who think that the only way to win is by front-loading their idea with lots of cash and staff. The reality is that even if you have a great product, the smart thing to do is operate with as little money as possible. Had the WUSA done that, they might still be around today.

I’m not suggesting that you stop thinking big. Keep doing that. Just act small.

A lot of people think that we overextend ourselves. “Slow down,” we’re told. “Take a breath every once in a while. You can’t run at the extremes all of the time.”

We disagree. The days of moving slow are over. Look at the leaders of yesterday – battered, bruised, and frozen in fear. Running at the extremes is now an important component of winning.

How fast do you run?

Too many in business have the same attitude.

That’s a problem. It’s a problem because although it looks like we’re starting to emerge from the recession, we’re not out of the woods yet. So the stop-loss efforts made by many (job cuts, salary reductions, training program elimination) have accomplished little more than buy time. Yet time is running out, and there are still fundamental business challenges that need to be addressed.

Crying for help – as many are doing – isn’t going to solve anything.

You can improve your business a number of different ways. But before you do anything else, make sure you have the right attitude. Because no one is going to carry you to safety.

Of course not. But we will need to make changes if we expect this year to be better than the last.

Start by ignoring the negative news. Research after the economic downturn of the 1990′s found that those exposed to excessive negative news reports had lower levels of motivation and engagement than those who ignored the news entirely.* Remember, sometimes media folks will overreact to something in order to make a point.

Second, redirect your energy on new ideas. Fortunately, Seth Godin compiled a (free) ebook that will help you get started. “What Matters Now” was written by more than seventy big thinkers – contributors include Guy Kawasaki, Gary Vaynerchuk, Hugh MacLeod, Dave Ramsey – the list goes on.

To download, click on the ebook cover above. Or simply go here.

Some of the ideas will apply to you; others will not. But each one will get you to think, and hopefully lead to even bigger ideas when you discuss what you’ve read with others.

Here’s to a great 2010!

* I made this up. See what I mean about making a point?

It’s not what you think. What terrifies me is how people approach networking these days. In an age where the masses no longer exist and individualism is king, many still network as if it were a contest to see who gets the most business cards by the end of the night.

Part of the problem is nomenclature. Networking isn’t an event, it’s a process.

If you consider it too much trouble to build a network the right way, then it’s probably too much trouble to do business the right way as well. At least that’s how it looks from my perspective.