The Mistake of Multitasking

Being able to juggle several tasks and multi task is a skill that may or may not prove to be an asset for business professionals. Job descriptions in every level of an organization routinely mention the need for an employee that can work on several projects concurrently usually within a dynamically changing work environment. 

But is multitasking an effective and efficient way to accomplish entrepreneurial tasks?

Type in "the argument against multitasking" in your Google search box, and you will find that several professionals in diverse industries believe multitasking to be a hindrance. The argument seems to be growing in popularity that accomplishing tasks in a sequential manner is far more efficient than attempting to do many at once. 

Perhaps this is the point of the old childhood exercise of patting ones head while rubbing their stomach at the same time. In this exercise, it is easy to see that doing both actions causes one action to be slowed, or stopped altogether. 

The mistake in multitasking is assuming that the same quality of work provided for each project will be the same. Even while completing several projects, it is important to focus on one project at a time so that attention to small details is not compromised. The quality of work is far more important than quantity, especially in service based industries where customer satisfaction is directly related to return business and referrals.

Imagine walking into your local supermarket and having the cashier check out your groceries and someone else's at the same time. This would cause many problems from a customer perspective:

• Customer will not receive the same attention they would have without competing for the cashiers service
• Customer is more likely to be annoyed by the above fact alone; but add the increasing possibility of double scans or money errors and the customer could become irate
• Customers with an agenda to steal would have more opportunity to do so

The issues from the company perspective would include:

• Slowed productivity in the store
• Higher rate of complaints from annoyed customers
• Higher rate of errors in handling cash and resolving customer concerns

As entrepreneurs, multitasking can spell disaster. When working on several projects, it is better to develop a schedule where one project will be worked on at certain times before moving on to another. Scheduling the day so that each project has a time slot with small goals or objectives will produce better quality work allowing the brain to focus on a particular issue. Focusing is difficult to achieve when the mind is attempting to process several requests at the same time.

Even if duties cannot be completed in the time allotted, working in sequence saves time, increases quality, and reduces possibility of mistakes and stress. Just as computers slow when too many requests are sent at once, so does the brain take longer to process requests when bombarded by too many at once. 

Do you disagree or have an experience you can share about multitasking and its effect on your business?

ChrissyBiz Solutions provides clients with customized, results-driven web marketing strategies. Our primary business writing duties include: article marketing,  search engine optimized web copy, blog content, social media, press releases, and newsletters  designed to drive traffic to your website and influence buyers decisions when purchasing products and services.

Contact ChrissyBiz today to discuss the impact that web marketing copy can have on your business.

What Can You Learn From Your Competitor?

Learning from the competition is an advantage to any business in any industry. Doing a little research on their background and studying their habits will net more knowledge than most two year college degrees. Let's look at Google and Yahoo for an example. Yahoo! dominated the search engine and web presence industry for a long while. But when Google came on the scene, they provided everything that Yahoo! had not noticed was in demand. They also recognized avenues to produce revenue that had been overlooked.

Here are a few tactics businesses can use to turn their competitors into educators:

• Study how effectively they reach their target market and the strengths of their approach to meeting customers needs
• Perform a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis on their product or service 
• Stay abreast of press coverage and their community involvement, donations, and charitable causes and overall attitude towards social responsibility
• Set a goal to learn not criticize, being objective and implementing strategy that will yield results
• Read their blogs and social media sites to glean any helpful advice they may offer
• Take a step back from the business mindset long enough to be a consumer and assess room for improvement
• Make a list of why a customer would choose your competitor over you
• What does the competitor supply that the market demands?
• What does the competitor lack that the market demands?
• What processes could your business benefit from?
• Look at price -- would adjusting prices cause customers to perceive more value from your company or feel overcharged?
• What type of overhead could be cut out from company expenses?

Continue reading on Examiner.com 

ChrissyBiz Solutions provides clients with customized, results-driven web marketing strategies. Our primary business writing duties include: article marketing,  search engine optimized web copy, blog content, social media, press releases, and newsletters  designed to drive traffic to your website and influence buyers decisions when purchasing products and services.

Contact ChrissyBiz today to discuss the impact that web marketing copy can have on your business.

Seeds and Dreams: Parallel Processes, Similar Results

Have you ever thought about how wonderful a small seed really is? Think about it for a moment. You can take something very small, plant it in the ground, give it water, and it will grow millions of times larger than it's original size. Let's examine what the seed that grows into a tree can teach us about the dream that becomes reality:

1. The size of the seed is irrelevant: Diverse plants and trees across the planet all begin with seeds. While not all seeds are the same size, none of the seeds are the same size as the finished product. Seeds are so small they can be easily lost, trampled, and thrown away. Similarly, when you conceive a vision, have a goal or dream, it begins small, and it is easy to lose if not careful. You can share your vision with the wrong people and throw your seed away because they could not see what you see. Instead of planting it, you shared it -- prematurely nonetheless. You might share it with close friends or family members that eventually trample all over it and discourage you to the point of quitting. Seeds and dreams are the similar: small, fragile, easily destroyed, but also potentially great, larger than you could ever imagine, and able to produce more seed. 

2. Soil is very important: Preparation for the ground in which you plant your seed is very important and will determine the success or failure of your seed. You can plant prime seed in dry, infertile soil, and it will not bring forth what it is supposed to. Instead, you have planted perfectly good seed into bad ground. Position yourself and prepare so that your seed is planted into good ground. Don't be the man or woman with the greatest idea and poorest execution skills. You will need to prepare in advance for the success of your crop. Do you expect your vision to come to fruition? Or is it just a great conversation starter at business functions? You have to be serious and being serious requires turning over the soil before you plant the seed, and making sure the ground is capable of producing fruit. Timing, resources, and your attitude might be the soil in which you can plant your dream -- if they are not right, how can you expect the seed to take root and grow?
3. Cultivate the seed: Beside the initial preparation, watering the seed and making sure it has enough sunlight will be determining factors in the seeds success. Gathering the funding and support for your dream is very important to bringing it to pass. However, without proper attention after the seed is in the ground, it will not produce what you want. It may take root and actually spring up into something, but not what you envisioned. When you get your business off the ground and your first clients have began to applaud you for your expertise, continue to work hard. Do not allow complacency to stunt the growth of your dream or rob you of its full potential. The entire process weeds out the dreamers from the go-getters, the talkers from the doers. Soon, you will see that small seed bloom into something that everyone can see. You never have to share your seed in the beginning because if you stay the course, all will see it grow.

4. Get rid of the weeds: There will be thorns, weeds, and days you water the seed too much or give it too little sun. Mistakes happen, but you must pull up the weeds and thorns immediately. Anyone in your life that chokes your dream or vision and leaves you feeling drained or lifeless must be removed immediately if your seed is to see full growth. Don't be surprised when they come and don't waste much time wondering why they are there or their purpose -- pluck them and throw them away. Your seed is in jeopardy the longer you allow them to stay near the seed. In fact, they could be stealing essential nutrients from your seed! Prepping the soil and the daily cultivating will mean nothing if you allow the weeds to stay. A decision must be made: whether you will continue to grow a dream or will waste time on thorns. They cannot dwell together very long. One will thrive, one will barely survive. Sometimes they can do a great job of blending in, but the careful planter can easily determine the real from the fake. 

5. Allow it to grow and mature: There will come a time when your dream and vision has been monitored, pruned, and cultivated to the point it appears to be growing without any of your help at all, but be careful. No matter how large or great the dream has become, it is never completely "out of the woods" from destruction. The good news is that maintaining your dream and vision may be slightly easier than planting, growing, and cultivating it. Not because you have become an expert but because you have experience. Regardless, do not allow your experience to make you feel immune to the real threats that still remain. While your dream is no longer a seed and easily trampled, it is now large and impossible to hide. The threat of trampling or not seeing the seed grow is no longer there, but now that all can see it, new threats emerge. While the weeds can no longer come and choke it, it can still be axed. Use wisdom in keeping the dream, reminding yourself of the work involved in bringing it to fruition.

ChrissyBiz Solutions provides clients with customized, results-driven web marketing strategies. Our primary business writing duties include: article marketing,  search engine optimized web copy, blog content, social media, press releases, and newsletters  designed to drive traffic to your website and influence buyers decisions when purchasing products and services.

Contact ChrissyBiz today to discuss the impact that web marketing copy can have on your business.

Brainstorm, Extract the Details and Execute

How many times have you heard others say "I was going to do this" or "I wish I had done that?" Not just business people, all people. I believe that one of the dividing lines between those who realize their dreams versus those who just have a dream is procrastination, also known as the arch enemy of success. 

Not one person on this planet is void of some type of gift or ability, yet majority will settle for dreaming instead of putting in the time and effort necessary to achieve the dream. As a business owner, when you are interested in streamlining processes or improving your product or service, a simple formula to use is Brainstorm, Extract the details, then Execute! This also works for the planning process before you start your business, or begin to bring your vision to fruition.

Brainstorm

Take time and allow your brain to think about the issue at hand. Do you need to improve your product or service? Are you consistently receiving negative feedback from your customers? How can you bring your dream to life and start your business?

Be sure that you have identified the correct issue, and not mistakenly narrowed down a symptom to a bigger issue. Brainstorming will allow you to assess everything surrounding the issue. Rambling to a co-worker or jotting down notes on a pad might help in this process. The goal is to allow your mind to focus on nothing else but the issue at hand, whether it's your dream, your vision, or anything else you need to address in your business. 

Extract the Details

This is where you begin to organize all of the information your brain just poured out. The brainstorm can leave you with much more than you need, but extracting the details will allow you to stay on task. If you were brainstorming ways to have a shorter turn-a-round on orders placed on your website, you may have thought of pricing the USPS, UPS, and FedEx based on the sizes of your product. Perhaps you realize that hiring a part time courier 3 times a week will really make a difference, and you need to look into hiring someone. This is an easy way to get sidetracked away from the original issue and leave it unsolved. Yes, hiring someone is crucial and related, however, you must continue on in extracting all of the other details you uncovered to make your process run smoother. It might include: setting a cut-off time for deliveries, creating a filter in your website email to make sure no orders are accidentally placed in the spam folder like before, and instead of forwarding emails, setting a calendar reminder on your mobile device to check it every 4 hours. 

It is really easy to get carried away with one side of the solution if you are not careful. In the example above, all of the solutions gathered will ultimately reach your goal, but hiring the courier and the details that go along with that can easily cause you to stop short of solving the entire problem. By the way, hiring a courier might require it's very own brainstorming session -- might be cheaper to have USPS pick up the orders with their flat rate shipping service when you work out the details. 

Execute

You know the problem and you know the steps you need to take, but don't stop there. This is where many stop. Just knowing the problem is solved is a big burden off their shoulders, but unless the action is executed, the problem remains. Take every detail included in the problems solution (as many have several steps involved) and begin to mark them off the "to-do" list. Do not give yourself any room to rest until every solution is implemented. Taking the example above, the solution would include: posting the new cut off time for deliveries on the website; creating rules in your email and checking spam folders at least twice daily; stop forwarding emails from domain email and manually checking it as often as necessary.

ChrissyBiz Solutions provides clients with customized, results-driven web marketing strategies. Our primary business writing duties include: article marketing,  search engine optimized web copy, blog content, social media, press releases, and newsletters  designed to drive traffic to your website and influence buyers decisions when purchasing products and services.

Contact ChrissyBiz today to discuss the impact that web marketing copy can have on your business.