Whether you’re marketing your business, selling products, or promoting your skills and services, networking is one way to get your name known. The key is to build trust and working connections with your contacts. Every social event can be a chance to network if you play your (business) cards right!

Let’s start off with some easy tips:
Have a professional business card
This is not the place to get “gimmicky”. Keep your card face clean and your fonts clear. Stay away from black cards or glossy embossed fonts that wear off over time. Use high-quality stock paper, because your contact might want to write down some details about you on the back of your card. Your business card is part of the first impression you leave. So make sure that your card has all of your important details including:

• Your company name – as the heading
• Your name – of course
• Your title – underneath your name
• Pertinent Phone numbers – mobile number and direct line (no one wants to call the main office and go through hoops to reach you. So if you have a direct line, put that in the card)
• Your email address
• The company’s website

Don’t be a hard seller
The trick is to sell through your contacts, not sell to them. You have to build trust and rapport. Tell them who your are and what you do. Let them understand why you are passionate about your business. Be someone memorable – but for the right reasons. Don’t be someone who comes across as desperate. Remember to keep the conversations light and never go into ‘technicalities”. That is a surefire way to lose your audience.

Have a goal
Have a goal when you go into networking events. Come to events knowing what you want to get out of it. For example:

1. You want to be known – you want to introduce yourself as a player in the industry or you want to let people know about your product and services.
2. You want to be informed – you want to learn who the other key players are or what the competition is doing.
3. You want to be well connected – you want to make contact with the other players in your industry or line of work.

Start close to home
The first “network” you build will always be family and friends. They will always be happy to help spread the word about you and your business. But don’t slack off on professionalism just because these are people you’ve known all your life. Be prepared with your “elevator pitch [1]”. Let them see how your product/business/services can help. They should understand the value of your work and how they are placed to help you in growing your business.

Lastly, remember to be sincere and have fun. Have a strong handshake and don’t forget to make eye contact.

Do you have any networking tips of your own? Let us know in the comments. As always, stay humble and hustle hard!

References:
1 https://www.thebalance.com/writing-effective-elevator-pitch-2951691

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Are you still using Microsoft Office? Ever dream of breaking away from your reliance on the MS Office Suite? Do you really think you can go “All Google”?

I know, I know…trusty old Microsoft has been our go-to office productivity suite since the beginning of time. Back in the days when the only word processing app was MS Word and we all relied heavily on MS Excel for creating those helpful spreadsheets, there was only one company dominant in this space. I can even remember passing time by playing with MS Paint…yes, Microsoft Paint!

Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft Office is still king. However, times have changed and so have our technical requirements. We have to consider our business needs and how it will scale. The top two priorities when considering tech would be functionality and cost.

One of the biggest challenges that small to medium business owners face is adapting and keeping up with technology. A lot of offices are seriously attached at the hip with Microsoft Office Suite. But when you’re a start-up company or a small business – you can’t always immediately get IT staff on location to install software, fix installation problems, and troubleshoot existing tech. There’s also the problem of hardware – God forbid that your computer breaks down or gets stolen and you have to recover your info, reinstall, and relearn the software that has just been updated for the nth time.

Immediate Access
When you have cloud based productivity tools, you don’t have to worry about the downtime when you’re getting your machine installed or fixed. If or when your computer breaks down – you can immediately start working using another machine without having to wait for the faulty one to get fixed. You simply grab another machine and get back to work, picking up where you left off. You never lose access to your most valuable asset – information – specifically the information stored in your work files. Your documents will not be tied up to a machine, they can be ready in a jiffy from any device, from anywhere.

The pesky cycle of upgrades, patches, and updates.
If you have a different set-up from your co-workers, switching back and forth between different machines could be a huge hassle. If you’re doing this yourself, without the help of an IT professional – it could be a challenge to reinstall software and migrate files. There will be document versions and you have to contend with document incompatibilities. Switching to Google guarantees that you always have the latest version every time you refresh your browser. Plus, you never have to pay for the upgrade.

Still packs a punch.
Sure, Google Apps may not be as robust as the very formidable Microsoft Office Suite – but it’s NO lightweight and Google is still the industry leader in cloud at the moment. If your business isn’t heavy on design, then the basic layout features of Google Docs will do for preparing those reports, creating quotes and proposals, or formatting a price list. If you’re not using any of those advanced features of MS Excel, Google Sheets have a strong set of capabilities to help you with those spreadsheet requirements.

Another strong point and very important feature is collaboration, multiple people can work on the same document at the same time. When you use the desktop version of the MS Office Suite, you have to go back and forth with emails in order to collaborate on one document.

The price difference
Google Apps for Business costs $50 per user – for a whole year. If you want cloud – based convenience from the Microsoft Office Suite, it costs about $198 – that’s the subscription price per month.

This is just one of the options available for small to medium business owners. It’s up to you to decide if going “All Google” is right for your business. As always, stay humble, and hustle hard!

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Hurray! You’ve just been promoted. Congratulations! Now go out and celebrate. GIve yourself a pat on the back and a well deserved night out. On Monday, you’ll be facing a whole new ballgame once you get back to work.

It’s not Monday yet but over the weekend, a dawning realization comes over you. The team that you will be managing is your former team – a team composed of your lunch mates and drinking buddies. You have an easygoing, friendly relationship with these guys. But now, well… you’re kind of the bad guy. While you’re really not the bad guy and do not want to be seen as the bad guy, you know you’re going to have to make some hard and unpopular decision for the sake of the business. But you also have more than few good ideas to share. How are you going to get them to take your lead? The answer is: very carefully.

Give yourself a timeline:

Do not expect to start a project  in the next 30 days. Ease into it and don’t start changing things right out of the gate. You must use this time to reframe yourself as the leader. You have to make sure to set boundaries. You should keep your relationship strictly business. Starting with limiting those karaoke nights and those bar hopping soirees. You should conduct yourself more professionally anyway, so drunken singing will really ruin  your reputation here. Working lunches are fine – use them to  catch up  and nurture your relationship with your friends and forge new allies.

Earned it:

I’m sure if you ask anybody, they’ll say they saw your promotion coming. I’m sure you expected it to,  having worked so hard to get to where you are now. I’m sure you deserve it. And unless, you’re the child of the company owner, everybody knows you’re a top performer and that you’re the most deserving candidate for that promotion.

And you did earn the promotion. Now it’s time to gently remind everyone why you got promoted in the first place. While being a manager is new, there are parts of this job that you know so well, like the process, the people, the numbers. Nobody knows about the accounts more than you do. You have the credibility to lead! Show them how much you know and you’ll silence even the critics. Your knowledge and skills are what got you this promotion in the first place. Now is NOT the time to be shy about  being the subject matter expert or the expert in your field. People follow those who know what they’re doing.  You’ve got this!

That small room called acceptance:

You must accept that your relationship with your colleagues will change. There will sometimes be resistance and probably resentment, especially if you were competing for the same position. But you have to believe that you have been chosen because you are the most qualified person for the job. Know that if you choose to delegate tasks, you can still count on these very same people to perform, not for you, but with you. Make sure though that you are fair and not just pick the best projects and assign them to friends. Give others a chance to prove themselves, too.

Congratulations again on your promotion! These steps are more like guidelines because, as we all know, everyone has a different managerial style. So, have you ever been managed by a friend?  Have you managed people you deem as friends? Are you ready to take the lead?

Written by Jaie O.- The Help

The very wise Aristotle once said that “He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.”  A lot has been said about this old adage. There are many interpolations offering advice on how one can be a truly effective leader. It kind of plays along the lines of “learn the rules first before you break them”. Only, the more appropriate analogy is to “learn the rules first and improve on them” To be an effective leader, not only must you learn the rules – know how they work to your advantage!

Sounds like an illegal wall street scam right? Actually, NO. It is a basic aphorism that many powerful leaders ascribe to. In reality, there is a lot of truth to it. It is how effective leaders become stalwarts in their industries. Let us take a look at some steps bosses take from being a good leader to being a better one.

From being a doer to being a mover

Good followers are doers. They are task driven and they concentrate on end results. Better leaders learned how to channel people’s energy into finishing tasks and projects and get good results. Now, effective leader on the other hand, channel their energy in motivating people to have a goal for themselves. They challenge their employees into creating career goals. They coax employees to work towards a goals for themselves which they inherently want to achieve not just for the company but because they are empowered. Effective leaders are the right kind of pushy. They challenge employees to bring their best ideas to the table. This means that effective leaders have to be sensitive to their employees strengths and weaknesses.

Own up

Nobody is perfect. An effective leader owns up to his or her mistakes. They don’t pass the blame on to someone else. The buck stops with them. No one wants to work for a fault finder or a nitpicker. People need to know they have job security and won’t lose their job simply because of a minor mistake. Effective leaders make their employees feel that they have room to grow.

Perfect pairing

Great followers are most attuned to their strengths and weaknesses. They know which projects play up their strengths, which ones to take the lead on, and which ones to play supporting cast to. As a an effective leader, the master the art of pairing the right skill to the right task. This can only be gained by getting to know their people by spending time learning their strengths and what motivates them.

The beacon of light

Employees must know that they are not being just herded into a fock or supervised the way toddlers are supervised in day care. They must know that they are in the company of achievers. Effective leaders have to let their employees know that they are in very capable hands. To do this, they must earn the respect of their employees. As long as their employees know that they have laudable work accomplishment, moral integrity and a strong work ethic, leaders stand as someone who has the credibility to lead. Effective leaders are an example that employees too can achieve their goals. Great leaders make their employees  feel that they have something tangible to strive for and they will be more than willing to deliver.

Are you taking steps to being an effective leader?

Written by Jaie O.- The Help