Take Your Dream From Concept to Company

Every aspiring entrepreneur maintains a vision of what professional success looks and feels like for them. However, as tangible as it may be in mind, transforming that concept into reality presents challenges. “Essentially a vision is long term, or a fast-forward look at where you want to be,” says Dee Marshall, life coach and founder of Raise The Bar, a Newark, New Jersey-based coaching and consulting practice. “In order to make the vision a reality you have to begin with organizing your thoughts,” Marshall says. She recommends utilizing a vision board—images, pictures and affirmations of your dreams and desires compiled in a central location such as on a poster board or in a book—to help organize your thoughts into a visual concept. With pictures, words, and even actual objects, goals such as those you may have you’re your business can be literally brought to life. But what do you do after you’ve created the vision board and are ready to put action towards those aspirations?

Here, Marshall offers six ways to get your business off the ground: Put it on paper. Create a one page outline that includes a mission statement, vision statement and objectives. “If you can’t come up with a one-pager, then it could be an indication you are not ready for entrepreneurship,” warns Marshall. But even that shouldn’t deter you, because it is common to have difficulty writing down objectives and goals initially. It can also be a driving force when obtaining goals becomes challenging.

Apply SMART guidelines.

Specific: Vagueness leaves room for error. Being as precise as possible limits the chances of confusion in implementing your goals and objectives.

Measurable: Pursue goals that will offer you the ability to, at any point in the process, evaluate your effectiveness in actualizing them successfully.

Action-oriented: Shape your objectives around actions that will bring you closer to fulfilling your vision.

Results driven: Goals and objectives you focus on should provide concrete tangible outcomes.

Time bound: Attach and stick to a realistic deadline.

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Updating Business Plan

This first year of business has been outstanding for administrative partners. We've gained a book of diverse and dynamic clients and have cultivated and grown many strategic partnerships. Now its time revamp... just a little bit. This year has helped us understand our strengths, passions and we will continue to provide the same types of services, but on an even deeper level.

So... I have to update my business plan ALREADY.

I say this to say that many times you don't know where your business is going to end up. You may start with one vision, only to find that you can achieve much greater success than you first imagined. Along the way it is important to update your business plan. When you start a new path or level of service - update your business plan.

Your business plan is your pathway to success. Not to say that you can't deviate from it at all, but its primary goal is to keep you focuses on growing your business.

As we update, in some areas re-write the business plan for administrative partners, looked forward to a more in-depth level of service for our exisiting clients and an more valuable position in taking care of our new target markets.

As the Business Turns...

Is your business always evolving? When was the last time you looked at your business plan? Is it totally different now? Did you think you want to offer a specific service only to find out that it isn’t quite where you want to end up.

As business owners we may often find ourselves in that state of mind. This isn’t all bad because typically that innovative thinking and ability to create is what made us small business owners to begin with.

I believe I’m experiencing a metamorphosis of my business. Being an executive assistant is what I know, but acting more as productivity, efficiency consultant for my clients is what I enjoy more. Thinking about those years of basically running the operations for Vice Presidents for many years, I’m finding that the more in depth avenues of business is what I enjoy – perhaps that’s why I got a business degree – go figure. I enjoy helping them brainstorm for a new marketing tag lines, helping them put together a request for proposal, apply for government certifications and just basically anything that will improve the operations of their business, while they continue working on it.

Because of that I’m looking deeper into online business management services for my new, existing and future clients, who want to go beyond what they are doing but don’t have the time to give to doing to. I’m looking forward to sharing more about these plans in the next month or two.. in the meantime, I guess I had better update my business plan.

Who’s Your Target?

As administrative partners, llc moves into another year of business, it is time to rethink some of the effectiveness of certain areas of business. The most glaring detail at this time would be profiling and duplicating our best client. Identifying what makes him so great. Is it his concise and clear communication? Or the fact that he truly uses us as partners day-to-day and not just a task here and there meaning he really "gets" the whole partnership part of our mission statement. Whatever the reason, we love him and want all of our clients to grow up to be just like him. The dilemma lies in the clients that we've taken on but are far from fitting that ideal profile. While I'm happy to say I really sincerely like all of our clients, I can't say that all of their work styles fit within the ideal client/Virtual Business Manager situation for administrative partners, llc. The question then becomes – are they trainable? Do we even want to train them? Of course in the economy no one wants to lose a paying customer, but is it worth the time and frustration that comes with working with someone outside of our target. What does a small business do?

We've decided to truly profile our clients going forward. We want to work with small business owners, who want to help themselves; one who understand that there is a need to delegate tasks that take time away from the core service of providing for their clients. They need to understand and appreciate that they can't do it by themselves; nor should they try. They will focus on what they are good at – running their business. They will not micromanage. They will trust our ability to succeed. They will be clear about expectations and provide constructive feedback where applicable.

I'm looking forward to signing on many more ideal clients this coming year. With the new range of services we are planning to offer this year, these clients should not be hard to find.

Closing out 2008

It’s the last day of the year and my head is truly hurting recounting all the accounting, client tracking, project tracking and number crunching for 2008; combining that with all the goals and planning for 2009.

It all makes me remember that a business is much more than putting a sign on a door and charging for services; it’s about organization, planning, and growing in not only your customer base, but your offering and partnerships.

2009 is going to be a great year.