About: Charly Leetham

Website: http://askcharlyleetham.com/

Profile: Charly Leetham is an Online Business Implementation Expert and Small Business Coach. She is dedicated to bringing useful and free information to new small businesses to aid in their success. With many years experience in managing business for employers and herself, Charly shares her many experiences and insights with readers.

Success is Predictable

One success model I was immediately drawn to upon reading the book was Predictable Success by Les McKeown. Predictable Success (and his second book The Synergist) is one of those books that as you’re reading, you’re nodding your head, thinking yes that’s where I’m at, and oh that’s what I do.

Not only have I been a big fan of Les McKeown’s work from afar, but his quarterly Predictable Success workshop happened to fall the day before another conference I was attending started. Perfect!

Unlike other workshops I’ve been to, there was no workbook. Basically the two books are the workshop material – Predictable Success and The Synergist.

The workshop was a great refresher on the model, and its components. But it also cemented the concepts further through examples and attendee discussion. I was in mind heaven working through the concepts! The link between the personality styles – visionary, operator, processor and synergist – and the stages on the Predictable Success growth model were covered at length.

And it was through this discussion I really grasped what my business needed to do to move forward to Predictable Success, and what type of team members I required to get there. I now also understand better the Predictable Success stage that is best for long-term clients, and the one that is best as a short-term option.

The best thing about this model is you don’t have to learn the concepts and mould yourself to it. It is based on many years of observations and fact, which means you fit somewhere in the model and work your way to Predictable Success.

One of the homework items I was set before attending the workshop was the Predictable Success quiz 1 and quiz 2. Something I forgot to do (oops!). Les works through your profile in the workshop, so it’s in your best interests to get this done. Even for those not attending, the quiz gives you such an insight into your business and your personality style, I highly recommend you do it.

I know I will continue to reread both Predictable Success and The Synergist as “workbooks”, but also highlight and tag substantially. And I will regularly retake the quiz to see if my Synergistic skills are improving.

If you haven’t read either of the books I highly recommend both. You can get them here:

And if you do plan on attending Les’s workshop, read the books (and do the quizzes) beforehand.

 

Related posts:

1. Plan Your Resources For Success
2. Don’t just speak and run
3. Up-selling and Cross-selling

Numbers Are Life » Business Growth

Analysis Paralysis, Or Just Plain Fear?

Are you experiencing Analysis Paralysis or avoidance issues in your business? This is something that I have seen with many businesses – you can get so involved with analyzing everything, that you forget you are in business to achieve something – like making money and helping your clients.

Of course, you could just be avoiding doing something – and that has the same impact as analysis paralysis.

Analysis Paralyisis occurs when you become obsessed with knowing EVERYTHING there is to know about something. When you get caught in this trap, you spend all your time analysing, and no time doing – and this is not healthy. Read more

Business Planning For 2010

Given we are in December, I thought it a great time to look at what planning we, as business people, will be undertaking over the next month or so to get ready for 2010.

Are you going to do any planning? Do you take time out from your ‘day to day’ tasks to review your business at all? If not, WHY NOT?

Planning is key to business success! The one phenomenon I have observed in my business (and techie) career is that when we don’t take time out to look ahead and actually see where we’ve pointed our ship, we will often find a iceberg to hit.

I know that the term Strategic Planning can seem scary – but really, all it means is to develop a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Read more

Email Marketing: Subscribing To A List!

I am a Linked In Open Networker – this basically means that I accept most connection requests and will archive a request rather than hit it with an “I Don’t Know”. I have made some interesting contacts but I am surprised to see how many of my new contacts automatically subscribe me to their mailing lists. Not the Linked In contact lists, but their own mailing lists through services Aweber, Getresponse, Constant Contact and the like.

As someone who has built a solid Email Marketing database (and experienced some interesting situations along the way) and also consults with Small Businesses to develop and implement an Email Marketing campaign, I find this practice to be counter-productive and a possible breach of the CAN-Spam laws. Read more

Business Building With Children In Hand!

There is no doubt about it, starting a business is a daunting thing – but starting a business when you have toddlers in hand in even more daunting.

The sheer idea of trying to break your time down into manageable chunks so that you can look after your little ones during the day and create a successful business is mind boggling for many – but without a doubt, Moms (and Dads) all over the world are doing it.

My children are now teenagers, but I remember the challenges we faced trying to run our businesses when they were little – balancing the need for some pretty long hours at times, with spending time with the kids and allowing time for ourselves. Sometimes we weren’t so succesful about it, soemtimes we were. Read more

Closing The Sale…Tips to overcome the hangups

Closing the sale is an art and possibly one of the biggest ‘hang ups’ for budding business and sales people, copywriters and more…  but why and what can you (or we) do about it?

Let’s look at why Closing the Sale can be a challenge for some… I believe it’s the fear of rejection that makes Closing a Sale a challenge for most. We all want to be liked, and if we ask someone to ‘buy’ what we’re selling and the prospect says no, then we feel that they are rejecting us personally.

Really, nothing can be further from the truth – our prospect is not really rejecting us personally, they are just rejecting our product or service – AT THE MOMENT.  However as most Sales or Business People are passionate about their product, it can be difficult to differentiate the ‘no’ for the product or service from a ‘no, I don’t like you’…. Read more

Cold Calling Tips For Entrepreneurs

I was recently asked by a reader of my newsletter about what they should consider when Cold Calling on businesses.  I thought I would share my answer here.

The one thing that I would like you to consider, is that when you Cold Call – whilst your goal is to create life-long customers, the purpose of a Cold Call is to take Suspects to Qualified Prospects. What I mean, is that when you Cold Call on someone, you SUSPECT they could use what you’re selling, but you’re not certain.  After you’ve called on them and discussed what your product can do, you will know if the Suspect is really a fit for your product or not. Once you have a qualified prospect, you then focus on converting them to a customer, and then to a life long customer. Read more

Manage To Own – Franchise Training and Bakers Delight

Sponsored by Nuffnang

Starting a small business can be very, very daunting. There is a lot of information that a Small Business Owner needs to have, including but not limited to, personnel management, financial management, stock ordering and OH&S requirements, as well as having sufficient capital to fund the business through the start up and lean times.

Certainly, most first time business owners will not have a fraction of the skills they need to run a business and there really is no substitute for the learning that occurs with experience however, that learning often comes at a high price.

A JOB is a safe option and some of the bigger companies, retail or food service chains, have a complete managerial program for their staff. They will train you to become a manager – so that you learn the system, you breathe the system – and then they let you loose to manage the system.

Unfortunately, for small business owners this option really doesn’t exist – it is highly unusual for anyone to provide you with on the job training for your business. The Small Business owner is required to invest (often heavily) in their business and deal with what comes – without having a support framework to turn to. Read more

What Is Your Financial Fitness Like?

Do you really know the connection between a healthy, mind body and wallet?  Larissa Zimmerman from National Financial Fitness does and she shares that with Connie and Charly from Stretch Your Mind And Body on their weekly talk show.

Larissa provides financial education for individuals and businesses – to help them gain control of their life.  Larissa promotes, and lives, the concept that when you get your mindset right around your financial situation, your health and wealth follows. Read more

Reclaiming Your Power In Business

Have you lost your power in business? No, I don’t mean “are you weak in business”…. Listening to Jenny Leather, a Melbourne born and bred Mother of 3, on the Stretch Your Mind And Body Talk today, I wondered how many of us have let go of our power, or put our power in the hands of others.

Jenny is a successful property investor who found that the old adage “It’s easy to make your first million, it’s not so easy to keep it” is true.

When Jenny and husband first experienced wealth generation, they handed the management of that money over to someone else. This was not necessarily the best thing to do – and Jenny shared that it was like handing over you power to someone else. Read more

Next Page »