Creativity isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. In business, creativity is a way of life. Creativity is also an internal process; it has to grow from within. I believe that each one of us has the ability to be very creative if we open both our minds and hearts to the process.

To continually develop your own creativity, you have to understand and work on the following:

• Intuition:  Each of us has experienced “intuition” in some facet of our lives. Unfortunately, business has always been taught as a “science” instead of an “art” and a rigid structure is most often recommended. We can define intuition as ”a direct knowing without conscious reasoning”. I have heard of and met many successful business owners who were guided by their intuition. Allow your intuition to work; it may be one of your best assets.
• Will  is your character (the ability to carry on after the mood has left you) to implement and to integrate you innovative ideas into your business plan.
• Joy: Creativity usually brings a degree of “joy”. Working on a creative idea and implementing it most often is accomplished with a new level of enthusiasm.  Joy also helps balance your life and work becomes an energy- building process.
• Strength: Strength helps you to understand and to process the risks that often come with creativity.  Creativity often takes a business owner “out of the conventional operating box” and helps in evaluating and taking on the necessary risk found in a person’s strength.
• Compassion: Compassion in this sense means a “loving kindness” first for yourself and then others.  Compassion helps you to nurture your own ability and to recognize it in others.

If you aren’t reorganizing, pretty substantially, once every six to twelve months, you’re probably out of step with the times.

Tom Peters

Nick Petra          Let Strategic Duck help you implement your intuition.

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• Getting new clients
  • Ask for referrals
  • Make your follow-up calls engaging
  • Practice your telephone technique so that a face to face meeting results.
  • Have a set client interview process; tell your compelling story and stress the benefits.
  • Ask the right  questions
  • Learn the “art of listening”
  • Focus on things that are under your control
  • Don’t focus on  the economy or world problems
    • Stay out of the political arena
    • Concentrate on your products and services and how they have helped others
    • Speak like a business owner
    • Develop traits that trusted advisors have in common
      • Like your customer
      • Be consistent
      • Don’t force things
      • Don’t get over emotional
      • Tell the truth, don’t pull punches
      • Long term relationships are more important than a current issue
      • Be a real person
      • Remember everything you say
      • Trust must be earned and deserved

Trust requires you to show that you care and that the interests of your clients are as important to you as your own interests.

Worrying about what’s right is always more important than worrying about who’s right

Nick J. Petra         nick@strategicduck.com       

Until a small business has the income base established to focus on growth, staff and management, I use a two-step method in setting up an initial, simple,  management process. By implementing this two-step process, a small business owner can afford to spend the majority of the time implementing marketing procedures.  My initial management focus is on the following:

• Systems: This means that the products or services you market are ready to be delivered to a consumer.  They are “shelf ready”; in other words, if someone calls for a product or service, you can reach out and deliver it in a short period of time. An owner has to know where everything is; that includes products as well as services.  In the area of services, the key services that are offered have to become “shelf ready” so that a package containing the necessary material to explain the service as well as to “contract” the service  are bundled and waiting. Part of our coaching process spends time in this area.
• Time Management: A lack of systems in a business usually takes up most of an owner’s time. The second is procrastination, usually in the form of “paper shuffling” or other “busy” time. The best way to overcome a lack of time is to establish a daily and weekly time management system. This system is established over a week’s period of time during which hourly time records are kept. From these records, a daily and weekly time schedule is developed and implemented.  Attention is given to a definite “work day” start and end time; and unless a product or service is being bought, the schedule has to be maintained as planned. Because running a small business has many aspects and is always subject to chance, we review this time management system every two months and make necessary adjustment.

Businesses seldom fail because they try to accomplish too much – they fail because they don’t try to accomplish enough.

Nick Petra        Give us a call for a free evaluation. We can work on both the local level in person and through technology to offer remote business planning and coaching. nick@strategicduck.com

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• First rule was to select a low-cost business. We set a budget of $1500 for start up capital.
• The next step was to select a low risk business as well as a “learning” business.
• Knowing that this first business may not  be the  one that  they would eventually be their full time work, we carefully  created a realistic “business type” list that met their criteria.
  • Buying items from garage sales and re-selling them at swap meets
  • Car detailing
  • Vacation home care (short term home care while owners are on vacation; water plants, take care of pets, etc.)
  • The list they created ended up with a total of 7 possibilities.
  • A time analysis was then completed on each possibility. It was important that the time required to operate the new business would not take away from their full time jobs. The list was then cut down to a total of 3.
  • Our next meeting will be used to develop a simplified Value Based Strategic Focus Plan for each of the 3 businesses under consideration.
  • We have set a goal of April 16, 2012 to have all our “Ducks in a Row” and  open the business.

I am so very proud of these clients. Only in their early twenties, they will be spending their free time “learning”, through experience, the basics for growing a business. I will be meeting with them every two weeks until the business has been operating for 6 months. Coaching is an important part of their future success,  and we will have monthly meetings for the foreseeable future.

The journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single phone call.

Confucius Bell

Nick Petra               I’ll be waiting for your call to start you on your way to success!  nick@strategicduck.com

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In today’s marketplace, satisfying a customer is no longer enough.  If all your customers are merely satisfied, they will shop anywhere for similar products or service. We all expect to be satisfied when we purchase something.  When shopping at a department store, I expect satisfying service. That does not mean that I will only shop at that one department store, nor does it mean that I will tell everyone I know about how great the service was. In most cases, the service provided meets the buyer’s expectations (which are not usually very high).

There is another type of customer care, one that results in a loyal customer instead of a satisfied customer. Loyal customers will “fight before they switch” and they will work hard, on your behalf, to send you new buyers. Tom  Peters  wrote ( in The Pursuit of WOW)  that 70% of lost customers hit the road not because of price or quality issues but  because they didn’t like the human side of doing business with the prior provider of the product or service.”

Jeffry Gitomer said that the three factors needed to create loyal customers are:

• Get Real includes: putting yourself in your customers’ shoes; dropping the fake mask of “professionalism” and speaking from the “heart”.
• Get Friendly, starting with the smile on the face that answers the phone or greets a customer.  Having a desire to serve and really care about others by doing more listening instead of talking.
• Create a WOW: A few of the  words that best describe a WOW: manners, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, real, compelling, truthful, helpful, funny, understanding, confident, patient, and friendly.
• I add a fourth; communication and follow up: is your follow up carefully planned and does it show that you care? Does it encompass  the first three points above?

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.

Og Mandino

Nick Petra             Let’s  get together and work on creating Loyal Customers

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