Dewell Marketing

Dan Kennedy – The Marketing Strategist

Many small business owners at least know the name Dan Kennedy. For years, he has been one of the leading teachers of marketing strategies, especially those that are “out of the box”. I won’t go into his bio here. You can google him and read his story any number of places.

I ran across Dan years ago as I was learning about direct marketing and again recently in his foreword to Bill Glazer’s book “Outrageous Marketing”.

But what brought me back to him today was a short article in a newsletter from my local chapter of the Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle in which Dan talked about efficiency and effectiveness. And how we, as small business owners, need to take some time to “chill out”, time to think, time to get away from our businesses.

Don’t Sacrifice Effectiveness for “Efficiency”

What does that have to do with time to think? One example is the modern business person’s need to be connected to their customers, vendors and colleagues, all the time. On the surface, it may seem like a good idea to be instantly available to deal with customer issues. Or to be able to deal with an internal problem right away. We think doing so makes us efficient.

But under the surface lies this dangerous trend: you don’t feel you can ever have time for yourself. You feel that if you are not connected, you are out of control, or at least somehow not in control. What you are not in control of is your life!

It may seem counter-intuitive to take “time out” when you think you don’t have enough hours in the day already. And that is exactly what that is: counter-intuitive. You think you are being efficient, but what is actually happening is that your are being ineffective.

Multi-Tasking Doesn’t Mean You’re More Effective

Take the cell phone for example. How many times have you been rushing to a meeting or to catch a flight while you are talking with someone on your phone? Here you are rushing someplace, dodging people and baggage carts, straining to hear over the noise of unintelligible flight announcements, waiting impatiently for your 5th Latte, and trying to make yourself heard over a connection that is so bad because 10 million other people are doing the same thing you are at the same time, and the circuits are overloaded.

Don’t kid yourself; you are neither efficient nor effective. And unbeknownst to most people in that situation, you are devaluing the whole transaction by not having the courtesy or professionalism to find a quiet place to sit and focus on your customer, giving them your full, undivided attention.

You think they don’t know you are squeezing them in between 10 other things you have your mind on. And if you get another call, do you put them on hold for a minute, because now they are now no longer your number one priority. Think they don’t know? They know!

You think they are impressed because you are so busy and have so many calls? Get real – they are insulted. They don’t give a damn about how busy you are. It doesn’t make you anymore important in their eyes. In fact, they will start to wonder if you will have the time to do the job well, if they do give you the contract. They may be thinking you will have all these “busy” excuses for why you can’t get the job done on time or correctly.

Time management is critical for Small Business Owners!

Small business owners don’t have the luxury of delegating their workload to a whole staff of people. Often it is them and a spouse or another family member or one or two employees. The owner has the bulk of the work squarely on their own shoulders. Sound familiar?

Is it really counter-intuitive to understand that you, of all people, must manage your time more effectively? And this is where what Dan Kennedy calls “recovery time” comes in. This is the quiet time you must set aside to think and re-focus; re-gain perspective; detach from the day-to-day and think longer term. This is also the time to kick back and talk about things that have nothing to do with business.

Then you can re-engage your business with a fresh perspective and a clear head. Then you start to focus on the quality of what you do, not the quantity. You may start to see that you have to re-gain control over technology and use it to be effective; not use it to drive you up the wall.

NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS

That’s the title of a book by Dan Kennedy. He describes it this way, ”I lay out a compelling case for taking new, stronger control over both technology and time, and re-organizing your management of both, to heighten your effectiveness and to enhance your resiliency.”

Are You a Small Business Entrepreneur?

Entrepreneur: “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” (Webster’s New Explorer College Dictionary)
That’s what you are. Give yourself the time to do it well and effectively. Not only will your business benefit, but so will your life!

One way to gain both efficiency and effectiveness in this hyper-competitive, challenging economy is to maximize how you use your business website. We offer a free website analysis to help give small business owners some ideas of how you can do this.