Posted on Sunday, 29th November 2009 by Nikolas Severidt
Squeeze Theme Introduction from Unique Blog Designs on Vimeo.
A simple to use squeeze page creator that integrates easily with Word Press. You don’t need a ton of technical skills to use this program. They lay it out for you, which is very helpful. Has anyone used this yet? Any feedback or comments on it?
Tags: small business, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | Comments (0)
Posted on Friday, 27th November 2009 by Nikolas Severidt
via @mashable
Shared by Optimized Digital Media
The results are indicating that people are still very excited about the whole concept behind Google Wave but are having a difficult time using it. It is still in its “Preview” stage but once you have used it, you can see how beneficial it will eventually be. The thing that makes it difficult right now is that most people haven’t received invites, so it’s hard to find people to “wave” with. Overall, I think it will be a great tool for small businesses and people who need to collaborate on a regular basis. What are your thoughts on Google Wave? What are the pros/cons?
Posted in Social Media | Comments (0)
Posted on Thursday, 19th November 2009 by Dean Severidt
After spending five years with this nutritional company I felt like I needed to get back into veterinary medicine. I was in a new city, Jacksonville, Florida, and needed to make a decision to start a new practice from scratch or buy an existing one. As things would work I found two practices for sale close to where we lived. I decided to purchase them and possibly depending on how things went expand and start some more. I knew going into the practices that the previous owner had a bad reputation and this was something I would need to overcome.
I have always developed a culture of friendliness and taking great care of the client as well as the patient. I quickly found out that culture here was everything but that. Employees were mean to clients and didn’t care if they took good care of them or not. I had to make a quick decision to make some changes and I did. I immediately released the entire staff except for one technician that is still with me today, 9 years later. We brought in people that wanted to be part of our culture. So now I had two practices and two veterinarians and the other veterinarian was of the same culture as the old employees. You would think a professional would step it up but I learned a valuable lesson that education, smarts, and status has nothing do to with your attitude. That is your own and if it is bad it will always be bad if you don’t make a change. I had to let her go also and now I was running two practices at the same time. This is where leadership becomes very important because it can be very easy to get down and depressed when you are working this hard. As a leader you have to pick it up stay focused on the long term goal and make it happen.
Now after nine years I have two practices that are running very smoothly. They have grown from a little over $1 million in sales to over $4 million in sales. I have six veterinarians working with me and have a group of around 40 employees. We have a culture that everyone wishes they had. Right now anyone with a bad attitude would be so out of place they wouldn’t want to work at the clinic. Through all my experiences from childhood to now I have taken some inherent attributes and some learned attributes of leadership and turned them into a practice that I am very proud of. The practice supports many families including 2 of my sons who are married and have families, they both work for me but not as veterinarians, one is COO and the other is Vice President of Development. It supports my wife and my 2 children at home yet and I am only working a few days a week. This is a good example of how understanding a few principles and being willing to work hard you can develop into a leader and accomplish anything you want. Next time I will talk about the desire to be a leader and why that is such a necessary attribute.
Tags: dean severidt, growing business, Leadership, small business
Posted in Culture, Customer Service, Leadership | Comments (0)
Posted on Monday, 9th November 2009 by Justin Severidt
Do you ever feel like you are going through life with an anchor that is entrenched so deep in your being that you forget it is even there? This is the way many of us walk around all day and then we wonder, why does this success thing always allude me? Why is that guy successful, I am smarter than he is? Well, how do you change this and unleash the success you know you were destined for? I may not be able to tell you exactly the process that will propel you into the success that you are looking for, however, I can tell you what will not get you there. The answer may surprise you, but after going through the endless cycle of material on success I have finally come to the conclusion that most self help products simply don’t work!
At this point your probably thinking, who is this guy and how in the hell does he know what will work for me? Basically, I am just like anyone else, over the past ten or so years I have purchased countless books and products on how to be more successful, each one of them promising they have the answer that I had been looking for all along… each product was going to show me the shortest route to a happier, more enjoyable experience of life. While all of these product had some nice things to say and probably helped me in one way or another, none of these products ever really delivered on their promise. The reason being is that most products in the self help industry today do not work at the root cause of the anchor that holds us all back.
I am sure the producers of these products mean very well and genuinely want to help us become more successful in our lives. However, most of the authors are only writing books or giving seminars because they were successful themselves and they know the self help industry is an $11 billion a year industry. Whats missing though is that 99% of successful people are NOT consciously aware of what made them successful. As a result, we get a bunch of feel good talk about being more motivated and of course, thinking more positive thoughts. This may be fun to read and give us a temporary burst of enthusiasm, but after a few days the anchor digs in and brings us right back to where we started, searching for more answers on how to be more successful.
Now for the good news, you do not have to spend thousands of dollars to find the elusive secrets to success you have been looking for. In fact, going down that road will hinder your progress for the reasons outlined above. The secret is to look within and ask what is holding you back. If you are quiet long enough, the answer will be there. You just have to listen. The most overlooked aspect of personal growth is asking the right questions. We are programmed for seeking answers, which is why we are so fascinated by self development products in the first place. However, the answer is always going to come from within. Any self help author that has had success with his participants understands this and focuses his material on creative ways to getting participants to focus within themselves and allowing the answers they are really looking for to come into their awareness. The answers that emerge are ALWAYS perfect, but of course, never exactly same for any two participants.
Tags: growing business, self help myths, small business
Posted in Culture, Expanding Your Business, Leadership | Comments (0)
Posted on Saturday, 7th November 2009 by Nikolas Severidt
Keeping your brand consistent can be an extremely difficult challenge as your business starts to grow. I have come up with a few tips that has helped us to keep our brand consistent as we have grown over the years.
1. When outsourcing tasks and jobs, you have to make sure the people you hire line up with exactly what you have created and what you want to continue to create.
2. Don’t let a marketing company tell you they will handle your branding and social media campaign if they are not using it for their own business.
3. Get all of your employees on board and ask them if they know what the brand is, so they can let outside people know as well. This is how you convey your brand to your customers as well.
4. Put this as your number one priority, so it doesn’t get overlooked because after all that is why your customers continue to keep coming back to you over and over again.
Keeping your brand consistent can be a challenge but if it’s watched over it can be the difference in staying small and growing it big!
Tags: employees, facebook, nikolas-severidt, small business, small business success, Social Media
Posted in Creating Your Brand, Culture, Expanding Your Business, Social Media | Comments (2)
Posted on Thursday, 5th November 2009 by Dean Severidt
Upon graduating from college with a degree as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, I started to practice for the first time in a large animal practice. This meant farm calls and lots of afterhours work and very physical work. A few weeks into the practice I thought that this wasn’t for me and thought after a year I would look elsewhere. At the same time I met the owner’s daughter and this was reason enough to forget about leaving. A year later we were married and now 30 years later we have 4 children and 4 grandchildren. At this time the practice was changing and needed someone to do the small animal work which I took over and ran. I started this and the practice grew very rapidly in spite of me having very little knowledge of leadership.
I learned early on that veterinarians and I am sure any professional are thrown into a leadership role whether they want it or not. Employees and clients will look up to that person for everything. I grew tremendously during this time and learned a lot of what leadership is all about but still never thought of myself as a leader or really hadn’t heard a lot about it. People were looking to me to make decisions and clients were looking to me for answers. All of a sudden I went form a student, to an employee, and finally to someone that people were looking up to for answers and leadership. I took most of this as part of the job and tried to learn a little about leadership but spent most of time still trying to improve myself as a veterinarian. I learned that the more I led the more people looked to me for their leadership. As many people can do my ego started to get the best of me. I did some things that were not attributes of a leader because I let my ego take control of some of my actions. This is a warning I would give to everyone, stay grounded in what took you to this place and do not change. Humility is one of the greatest attributes of leadership and when you forget this, things will appear in your life that you didn’t plan on. Stay focused on the fact that leadership brings a lot of responsibility along with it, a lesson I had to learn with time.
After 15 years of veterinary medicine I was open to another opportunity and life took me in a completely different direction. This is where I learned most of my leadership skills. I will talk about this next time and how I was all of a sudden thrown into a role of leadership to a large group of people and all of a sudden was standing in front of large groups speaking, something I had never done before. I had grown a practice from around $100,000 to over $700,000 through my leadership and now I would really learn about leadership and take my skills to a whole new level.
Tags: dean severidt, Leadership, small business
Posted in Creating Your Brand, Culture, Expanding Your Business, Leadership | Comments (0)
Posted on Wednesday, 28th October 2009 by Nikolas Severidt
In order to employ the best small business management techniques, you must understand what the most common managing styles are. Once they have been identified, you can comprehend what kind of small business manager you are and how it affects your business. The first is called autocratic. This is when you as the manager make every decision. It is considered militaristic. The benefits are that tasks get completed quickly, but the cost is a generally low level of worker satisfaction and a high rate of employee turn-over. This can create a great amount of stress for both you and your employees, so this tactic is not the most desirable in most situations.
The next small business management style is called paternalistic. The manager makes most or all of the decisions, but there is more of a focus on the needs of the workers. This style earned its name because it is similar to what you might picture a parent being like. The benefits are that the employees feel taken care of, but the downside is that employees often will not care for the business. They have little at risk and feel uninvolved because they are treated more like underlings instead of equals.
Another is known as democratic. This kind of small business management style is when the manager seeks input from the whole team and may sometimes literally vote on decisions to be made. When beneficial decisions are made, employees feel involved and important. The drawback is that sometimes a manager may tend to play favorites and neglect certain members of the staff. Also, decisions can take longer to make than is necessary.
The final form of small business management is called passive. This is when the manager in effect abandons their position of responsibility and gives it all to the employees. Taken to an extreme, this is not effective business management, but when done moderately, it can be called delegation. The benefit is that employees are given the chance to step up and enter leadership roles. The cost is that if accountability is spread too thin between too many people, the result is often a number of false starts and miscommunications. Most managers exude a combination of these management styles depending on the situation. Try to identify when you are employing different styles and if it is the best for the situation you are in.
Posted in Creating Your Brand, Culture, Expanding Your Business, Leadership | Comments (2)
Posted on Monday, 26th October 2009 by Justin Severidt
Do you ever feel like you are going through life with an anchor that is entrenched so deep in your being that you forget it is even there? This is the way many of us walk around all day and then we wonder, why does this success thing always allude me? Why is that guy successful, I am smarter than he is? Well, how do you change thisand unleash the success you know you were destined for? I may not be able to tell you exactly the process that will propel you into the success that you are looking for, however, I can tell you what will not get you there. The answer may surprise you, but after going through the endless cycle of material on success I have finally come to the conclusion that most self help products simply don’t work!
At this point your probably thinking, who is this guy and how in the hell does he know what will work for me? Basically, I am just like anyone else, over the past ten or so years I have purchased countless books and products on how to be more successful, each one of them promising they have the answer that I had been looking for all along… each product was going to show me the shortest route to a happier, more enjoyable experience of life. While all of these product had some nice things to say and probably helped me in one way or another, none of these products ever really delivered on their promise. The reason being is that most products in the self help industry today do not work at the root cause of the anchor that holds us all back.
I am sure the producers of these products meant very well and genuinely want to help us become more successful in our lives. However, most of the authors are only writing books or giving seminars because they were successful themselves and they know the self help industry is an $11 billion a year industry. Whats missing though is that 99% of successful people are NOT consciously aware of what made them successful. As a result, we get a bunch of feel good talk about being more motivated and of course, thinking more positive thoughts. This may be fun to read and give us a temporary burst of enthusiasm, but after a few days the anchor digs in and brings us right back to where we started, searching for more answers on how to be more successful.
Now for the good news, you do not have to spend thousands of dollars to find the elusive secrets to success you have been looking for. In fact, going down that road will hinder your progress for the reasons outlined above. The secret is to look within and ask what is holding you back. If you are quiet long enough, the answer will be there. You just have to listen. The most overlooked aspect of personal growth is asking the right questions. We are programmed for seeking answers, which is why we are so fascinated by self development products in the first place. However, the answer is always going to come from within. Any self help author that has had success with his participants understands this and focuses his material on creative ways to getting participants to focus within themselves and allowing the answers they are really looking for to come into their awareness. The answers that emerge are ALWAYS perfect, but of course, never exactly same for any two participants.
Tags: Leadership, pursuit of happiness, small business success
Posted in Culture, Expanding Your Business, Leadership | Comments (0)
Posted on Sunday, 25th October 2009 by Dean Severidt
We have been talking about the development of leadership and whether it is inherent or learned and developed. I have been describing my life experiences and how I had an inherent ability and also developed my skills as I became more familiar with leadership and its importance to the business world and my life in general.
After graduation from High School I got my first job that was not on the farm and was not related to agriculture. I was hired to work in a paint factory. I remember my first day on the job at the end of the day we had 2 tons of paint on the elevator and the whistle blew to stop work, went off. Everyone except me and the foreman left. I continued to unload the paint thinking that was what was expected from me. I took a lot of criticism from the other workers as they left the building but thought I was doing the right thing. Soon after this I found myself getting all the easy jobs and never doing the dirty or so called nasty jobs that others were given. One morning we came to work and someone had left a valve open and 3000 gallons of oil based red barn paint had spilled out on the floor. The factory was shut down and everyone cleaned up the mess except me. The foreman and I loaded trucks with paint. At this time I didn’t realize it but I had shown leadership skills and others were picking up on it. A few weeks later the CEO called me in his office and asked me if I played golf and when I said yes he and I played every Wednesday afternoon for the rest of the summer. He told me that he had heard about me on the floor and wanted to spend some time with me to teach me more about the business. I didn’t know at this time but this was my first lesson in leadership and what it involved. Just because I had some inherent characteristics of leadership in me someone took me by the hand and taught me the skills and attributes of leadership that I could start to develop on my own.
The end of the summer I took off for college and went to a church school to be a minister in a school that was 8 hours from home. As I said earlier I wanted to be a veterinarian but being told I wasn’t smart enough and everyone telling me I needed to be a minister I went that route. I had absolutely no desire to be a minister and early on started partying a lot and doing things that would make it very obvious that was not the way I was going to go. Thank goodness I kept my grades up and after a year I transferred to Iowa State University to start in the pre vet program. Nest time I will talk about my experiences in pre vet and vet school and my leadership or lack of leadership as I went into a professional school.
Tags: dreams, Leadership, small business
Posted in Culture, Customer Service, Expanding Your Business, Leadership | Comments (0)
Posted on Tuesday, 20th October 2009 by Nikolas Severidt
For any pursuit you make in life, you need the necessary skills and drives to be successful in your endeavors. If you are hoping to be a manager of a small business, you must obviously possess at least basic small business management skills. If you are not sure what it takes to be a manager or whether or not you have any natural talent at it, you can always learn exactly what good management entails and hone your skills accordingly. Why is it so important to develop the right talents and habits as a manager? Because if you want to engage your employees, have satisfaction in your business and encourage success, you must have the vision and desire and proceed with necessary action.
Some basic small business management skills include attributes like being an organized planner, a problem solver and a strong leader. A manager must be able to direct, measure and report on a daily basis. If you have the right vision for your business, you will proceed with your business relations as if you were the manager of a huge corporation. If that is where you hope your business to someday take you, you must be prepared to face it with that frame of mind.
Obviously a high level of responsibility and motivation fit into the category of having the drive to succeed as a small business manager. If you lose your desire, everything else will fail. The vision you have will not be enough alone without a deep and driving desire to succeed. This is where small business management can fail, and it happens quite frequently. The vast majority of small businesses fail within the first year they are established and many more within the following five years. This is largely due to the fact that managing a business is hard, and when the going gets tough, unmotivated people give up. Do not let that be you!
The last thing you must do when working in small business management is take action. Certainly things will not always go as smoothly as you would like, and when you hit bumps, do not ignore them! Sometimes you must take a step back, get out of your comfort zone and see what problems need to be solved. A business cannot run itself when it is first created, but with the right vision, desire and action, you can reach your business goals!
Posted in Creating Your Brand, Culture, Customer Service, Expanding Your Business, Leadership | Comments (5)
