Here are this week’s links to a few good stories we found and selected. We feel they might add valuable insights and perspectives for small to midsize businesses.
When I first entered the business world, I used a Day-Timer to help keep my day organized.
I also took note of payphones when I was traveling, and I (of course) remembered to keep my map book handy. OK, so I’m dating myself—thankfully, I have changed the way I keep myself organized over the years. As such, I found 3 Effective Apps To Help Small Business Owners Stay Organized interesting. For those interested in learning a better way to organize, Any.do, Evernote, and Wunderlist might be worth exploring.
If you own a small business, you likely have some notion of a five-year plan.
When our company first started more than 27 years ago, my five-year vision was to survive. Once our business model proved worthy, the optics changed dramatically; now, more than a generation later, the five-year look forward is consistent with what it has been for a while: to grow and improve. My guess is most small business owners feel the same way. According to Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead, I am likely correct—however, astoundingly, a surprising number of current entrepreneurs think otherwise. In 41% of Entrepreneurs Will Leave Their Small Business Behind in 5 Years, Pickard-Whitehead points out that 52% of those who expect to move on will sell their business, 20% will leave it to family members, 18% will close, and 10% simply don’t know what they’ll do. While these numbers seemed remarkable to me at first, I have to take into account that there are two types of entrepreneurs. The first one starts a business, grows it, and make a lifetime commitment to make it better. The rest are “serial” entrepreneurs, which today might be more of the rule than the exception.
Lastly, carving a work-life balance has always been a problem for me. My guess is this holds true for any business leader reading this post.
So what should be done to address it? Julie Baldwin Davis has more than a few ideas in her article, 11 Business Leaders Share How They Strike Work-Life Balance. I would like to point out a favorite suggestion, but I found a strong case for nearly all of them.
