Help! My Business is Growing

Team meetings are an integral part of every business. They're a venue for your employees to bond, exchange ideas, and collaborate to help hit your business goals.

They also give you, the founder, a transparent platform to share news, updates, and plans about the business and your industry, and to give and receive feedback.

But sadly, not everyone is excited to attend team meetings. Many employees whine and gripe about how meetings are often boring, unnecessary ("this meeting could have been an email!"), and a black hole sucking their time and productivity into oblivion.

When done wrong, "bad meetings" can lead to feelings of isolation, lower employee morale, or even a big drop in sales.

So what do you need to do to get meetings right? What skills should you have as a leader, and what structure should be in place to ensure that you'll have productive team meetings that will motivate your team?

In this episode of Help! My Business Is Growing, our guest Danny Hadas breaks down the importance of team meetings and how to structure them to the benefit of your growing business.

We'll discuss how holding meetings will not only foster a sense of collaboration, teamwork, and camaraderie amongst your employees but also have a direct effect on your business finances as well.

Danny Hadas is an entrepreneur and former advisor to the world’s most iconic brands. He is also a #1 best-selling author, and his work has impacted millions of people across 500+ companies worldwide, including Disney, BMW, and AT&T. As the founder of The Emovation Project, Danny teaches service-based small businesses how to double their revenue without doubling their effort using Minimalist Leadership.

In this week's episode, we discuss:

03:03 What happens in businesses that don't have regular team meetings?

04:22 How often should you have team meetings?

06:40 How do you effectively communicate to your team that there will now be regular meetings so they see it as a good thing versus feeling micromanaged?

09:19 What is the best way to structure your team meetings? Is there an optimum or best time to hold them?

14:39 What is the second item or step on the meeting agenda once you're done revisiting the company brand, values, and mission?

16:43 Is it possible to overshare KPIs or financials?

18:57 What is the third item on the agenda now that you're done sharing KPIs and how the business is doing?

21:16 What happens if no one shares or contributes - how do you solve this issue?

22:53 After revisiting the vision/mission, sharing KPIs and wins and challenges, what should be the fourth and final item on your meeting agenda?

25:34 Can you break the rules of these four-step meeting items and change their order?

27:08 What's the best way to wrap up the meeting?

30:39 How do you structure meetings with a larger number of employees? Is a meeting with 100 people the same as 30 or 50?

33:56 For one-on-one meetings, how long and how often should they take place?

34:48 Should you follow the same structure of team meetings when conducting a one-on-one meeting?

36:20 What is one tangible step business owners can take this week to get closer to getting into the habit of having regular, efficient, and productive team meetings?

Resources:

Danny Hadas, Founder, and CEO of The Emovation Project:
https://www.emovationproject.com/

Kathy Svetina, Fractional CFO:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us
Blog post | How to Have Effective Meetings:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/post/how-to-have-effective-team-meetings

When running a business, you're busy keeping an eye on its finances, ensuring stable production, and implementing your sales and marketing campaigns for its continued growth. This approach makes complete fiscal sense, and it focuses on aspects of the business that will keep it healthy and sustainable.

But what about your Human Resources (HR)? Is it something you're also looking at and actively working on? Sadly, despite it being an essential and crucial foundational piece of any business, it often falls behind and is not prioritized.

HR is every person working for your company, and it is also the department that will manage them. It is payroll, benefits, compliance - and finding and keeping the right people. It will also have a lasting negative impact both operationally and financially on your business if you don't have a long-term HR strategy and don't set up the proper HR infrastructure.

So how do you develop an effective and scalable HR infrastructure for your growing business?

In this episode of Help! My Business Is Growing, our guest Milly Christmann and I take a very deep dive into the importance of establishing an HR infrastructure for the success of your business.

She'll discuss how having a comprehensive HR Infrastructure can help you attract and retain top talent, support your company's operational and financial plans and align resources to help you hit your business objectives.

Milly Christmann is a Fractional HR Leader and owner of Marathon Growth Management, a Human Resources consulting business that supports small to medium-sized businesses. Recognized for collaborating with leaders to achieve their business goals by unleashing the power of an engaged workforce, Milly uses process improvement, technology, and strong, passionate people skills to attract, develop, and retain top talent, driving change that matters.

In this week's episode, we discuss:

03:48 What are the signs that it's time to plan and implement an HR infrastructure in your business?

06:29 What does a "people plan" look like in planning and growth for your business?

14:50 Should you start thinking about having a dedicated HR professional on your staff when you hit the 50+ employee mark, or is a fractional HR service or an outsourced provider enough to help you manage?

18:25 How are business owners not maximizing their payroll company to its total capacity. What are some examples, and what does this look like?

22:12 What is the scope of a Fractional CHR professional's role in your business? Are they able to provide leadership coaching and advise the CEO on change management?

25:21 What about smaller businesses with less than 50 employees? What HR structure should they implement? Do they need it for compliance and beyond? What is that process like in their space?

30:29 What is one tangible step business owners can take this week to get closer to having an efficient and effective HR structure?

Resources:

Milly Christmann, Fractional HR Leader and Founder of Marathon Growth Management:
https://www.marathongrowthmgt.com/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/milly-christmann-mba-sphr
Email:
milly@marathongrowthmgt.com
Contact Number:
(949) 202-7258

Kathy Svetina, Fractional CFO:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/
Blog post | How to Develop an Effective and Scalable HR Infrastructure
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/post/how-to-develop-an-effective-and-scalable-hr-infrastructure

Many businesses struggle to craft and deliver the right message for their target audience. Unfortunately, this struggle also has a very real impact on the financial health of a company. Poor messaging will not just confuse and possibly alienate the intended audience, but it is also equivalent to wasting money on a lot of marketing tactics that won’t work.

Clear and strong messaging that will engage customers to listen, trust - and try - a brand is crucial to the growth of the business. It can spell the difference between success - connecting with new customers, finding investors, attracting strategic partners, and the right team members - and failure to earn revenues and turn a profit.

So how can businesses harness the power of clarity and create messages that can effectively rise above the marketing clutter and reach their target audience?

In this episode of Help! My Business Is Growing, our guest Orly Zeewy unravels the "mysteries" of why (and how) creating a clear message that can help grow your business.

Orly, an author, keynote speaker, educator, and brand architect shares her experiences and insights on building the DNA of startup brands and creating messaging that helps founders cut through the noise and scale in months, not years.

In this week's episode, we discuss:

02:12 Why do a lot of businesses struggle (and waste money) getting effective marketing right?

07:21 What are the main differences between traditional and "lean marketing"?

11:19 How the idea of building and joining a community, a traditional aspect of the B2C space, has now entered the B2B space as well.

13:07 Is there a process - separate from the marketing exercise of coming up with the ideal customer persona - that helps companies define the ideal customer?

21:28 Insights about gated content

25:24 How to build relationships with potential strategic partners

29:08 Strategic partnerships as a brand extension

32:20 Tips on how to determine pricing within the sphere of clear messaging

36:02 What is the next tangible step that business owners and founders can take to get closer to crafting a clear and tight message that will resonate with their market?

Resources:

Orly Zeewy, Author, Keynote Speaker, Educator, and Brand Architect:
https://zeewy.com/

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/orlyzeewy
Orly's Book | Ready, Launch, Brand: The Lean Marketing Guide for Startups
https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Launch-Brand-Marketing-Startups/dp/0367466627
Other Books Mentioned:
David Aaker | Building Strong Brands
https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Brands-David-Aaker/dp/002900151X

Kathy Svetina, Fractional CFO:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/
Blog Post | Grow Your Business With Clear Messaging
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/post/grow-your-business-with-clear-messaging

As the owner of a growing business, you're probably extremely busy, juggling to complete all the tasks and projects you currently have underway.

To avoid unnecessary heartache and stress, using a proper project management system can help you stay on top of everything that needs to be done.

It allows you to conceptualize, outline and implement the steps to take, down to the last detail if you want to, to ensure that all the pieces you and your team are currently juggling fall into the right places.

Fortunately, and thanks to recent advances in workplace technology, there are tools and apps that can give even the most stellar project managers a helping hand.

But finding the right one is crucial to your success. While a good tool can increase productivity and motivate your teams, a bad one can also slow down progress and waste time and resources.

In this episode of Help! My Business Is Growing, our guest Meagan Beltekoglu unlocks how you can take advantage and harness the power of productivity tools to ensure the continued growth of your business.

Meagan, a Certified Director of Operations and Vetted ClickUp Consultant and expert, shares her love for breaking big visions down into focused, manageable projects and tasks using her favorite productivity tool - ClickUp!

In this week's episode, we discuss:
03:57 What are the common issues, struggles, or tipping points for businesses to decide to use a project management tool?

07:32 What are some of the other project management tools available and how do they compare to ClickUp?

09:11 What are some of the challenges when using Asana?

12:19 Why become a ClickUp specialist? Is it the company values, budget, and features?

17:11 What is the easiest way to implement ClickUp and what are the common mistakes businesses make when trying to implement it?

20:09 What are some examples of how ClickUp's custom fields and views can increase productivity, enhance team workflows, and more?

22:38 Are there other ClickUp "must-use" features that can prove to be extra valuable to project managers and businesses?

24:57 What is the ClickUp "Task Location" feature and how to set it up.

26:40 What are some real-life examples of how ClickUp has transformed business operations in a positive way and with positive results?

34:09 A shortlist of other helpful productivity and project management-related applications for growing businesses.

38:40 What is the next tangible step that business owners and founders can take today to get them closer to or as-near a perfect state of project management in their business?

Resources:
Meagan Beltekoglu, Certified Director of Operations and Vetted ClickUp Consultant:
https://www.newleafdigital.net/

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/newleafdigital
Other Project Management Tools:
ClickUp
https://clickup.com/

Asana
https://asana.com/

Trello
https://trello.com/en

Jira
https://jira.atlassian.com/

Miro
https://miro.com/

Freedom.to
https://freedom.to/

Kathy Svetina, Fractional CFO:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/
Blog post | How to Find the Right Project Management Tool:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/post/how-to-find-the-right-project-management-tool

Even if you think of taxes (both planning and paying them) as a "necessary evil," you can also make them work for you. Taking the time to plan your taxes and incorporating advanced tax strategies is a practical way to help your business save money.

In this episode of Help! My Business Is Growing, Tax Planning Expert and CPA Ronica Brown share how you can dig deep into the tax code and find a gold mine of methods to save on your taxes.

Ronica is a CPA, tax planning expert, speaker, and owner of RBA Tax Advisors. She helps organizations of various sizes rethink their tax strategies and reduce taxes by 30% by focusing on strategic tax planning. She is also a wife and mother and is passionate about gardening and cooking.

In this week's episode, we discuss:

2:10 How is a CPA specializing in advanced tax strategies different from regular CPAs that business owners are used to working with?

04:24 How would you find a CPA that provides advanced tax strategies and who can support the current stage your growing company is in?

07:18 What is the process of determining how to maximize tax credits based on a company's financial statements such as a P&L and balance sheet?

15:17 When is the right time to move from an LLC to an S, or even a C Corp?

17:09 What are some of the advanced tax strategies that have made a dent in people's tax bills?

19:02 How can business owners find strategic partnerships that give them a tax advantage?

24:12 What does the IRS look for in case you do get audited? What are some of the documentation you need to have if you end up hiring your child as a tax strategy to prove that they are actually doing things in the business?

27:10 What can business owners and founders do today that will take them closer to having a sound tax strategy in place?

Resources:

Ronica Brown, CPA, Tax Planning Expert, RBA Tax Advisors:
https://rbataxadvisors.com/

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronicabrowncpataxandacounting

Subscribe to Ronica's channel:
https://youtube.com/channel/UCapjVwFkaQhyvyWQBu3s8CQ
Kathy Svetina, Fractional CFO:
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/
Blog post | Advanced Tax Strategies For A Growing Business
https://www.newcastlefinance.us/post/advanced-tax-strategies-for-a-growing-business