Joe Dudley Jr.

With $800 billion in stimulus money on the table, there’s no reason why you can’t take advantage of this opportunity. If you’re in construction, green technologies, renewable energies and health care now is the time to start planning.

So, how do you get your hands on a little stimulus money? I’m so glad you asked.

Just follow these four steps:

My friend Susan pays her cable bill online religiously. Recently, she opted to go with another cable company but they didn’t offer online bill pay. Since she’s “going green” and doesn’t write checks anymore, not having that service almost sent her back to her old cable company. Are your products and services up to date with the way your customers do business? Is it convenient for your customers to purchase your products and services? Take a look at the following list and challenge yourself to find out if your business is meeting the basic technological needs of your customers and your daily operations.

In college, during a football game, we would walk up the stands looking for the “party section”. These people knew how to get the party started! Whether it was “the wave” or the best section chants, this was the section to be in if you wanted excitement. We dare not set foot in the section that was secretly designated for “The Parents”. Everyone knew that if you sat in the “parents section”, your chances of having a blast were instantly cut by 60%. As an entrepreneur, finding a business that fits your personality is the same as choosing the “party section” at a football game. You can be yourself and have a ball. Choosing the wrong business, or one that doesn’t fit your entrepreneurial personality, will secure your seat in the “parents section.” You’ll be doomed to engage in daily activities that’ll keep you from being your best self. What a bummer!

Finding the right people for your company is the difference between your business being 50% effective to being a whopping 90% effective. That margin should be enough motivation to move you to start your very own “star search” today! To stay in sync with your expenses, you don’t have to employ everyone or even anyone as a full-time employee. Depending on the size of your organization, part-time and virtual help is a viable option. Regardless of status, you need to find the right people to help make your business a success. Finding them early in the game equals success for you. To be effective in staffing, follow these five steps:

To master the art of marketing communications, you must first be an excellent student of human psychology. You need to know your customer inside and out. What makes them tick, what are their hot buttons and how can you further motivate and excite them about moving toward your cash register. If you are a small business, you may be out of your league if you follow the big business advertising and marketing model. Check out these low-cost grassroots marketing ways to get consumers excited about what you have to offer.

Have you ever recorded yourself speaking, played it back and discovered that your voice sounds different from the way you envisioned? What a let down to find out you don’t have that big Barry White voice after all, right? Many business owners follow that same strategy by moving forward with a business they thought would fit their style and personality. In many cases, it’s a disaster in the making. A guy by the name of Larry Page grew up in what he describes as a “messy house” cluttered with computers and Popular Science magazines.

Diving into a business without a full understanding of your financial objective is a death sentence. Cash flow management is often overlooked and misunderstood. Yet achieving positive cash flow should be your #1 objective to make your business a success. Positive cash flow is when you have more money coming in than going out and you have cash left over. Your business can then pay for itself eliminating the need to borrow more money for daily operations. Below is a list of good cash flow management habits:

Remember when Jerry Springer showed us his dance moves on Dancing with the Stars? Wasn’t he simply much better at inciting fights on daytime television? He counted steps and gyrated back and forth like his life depended on it. He moved about as natural as a fish out of water. Dancing is a bit different from business. But, even in the business world, sometimes we move at a pace that is not our own.

A common problem entrepreneurs face with staffing is being unable or unwilling to properly train their employees. It’s easy to get caught up with the day-to-day duties & fall short of giving your staff the proper training on how to do their job. However, that’s a costly mistake & your company’s survival could depend on it. Even if you’re getting your staff at a really good rate, you are still paying them too much if they are clueless about how to do what’s expected of them. Below are four steps that can help you give your staff a proper introduction.

Finding the right people for your company is the difference between your business being 50% effective to being a whopping 90% effective. That margin should be enough motivation to move you to start your very own “star search” today! To stay in sync with your expenses, you don’t have to employ everyone or even anyone as a full-time employee. Depending on the size of your organization, part-time and virtual help is a viable option. Regardless of status, you need to find the right people to help make your business a success. Finding them early in the game equals success for you. To be effective in staffing, follow these five steps:

Great marketing always leads to sales. Customers know your company, what it stands for and prefer to buy what you are selling over your competitors. Weak marketing leads to poor sales. You are waiting for the phone to ring, praying that someone will buy from you today. You are frustrated why customers aren’t choosing you to solve their problems when you know that you have the best solution in town. Sometimes, you wonder whether anybody knows you are still in business.

When I turned 10 years old, I received permission from my parents to go selling products door-to-door for our family company. I greeted customers and had the opportunity to persuade them about the value of Fuller and Dudley products. Not only was I selling the products to customers, but I was also marketing the products. Those who didn’t purchase from me at that time were more inclined to purchase my products when I knocked on their door two weeks later. From this young experience (and others), I've learned that in the first three years of running your business, 50% of your time should be dedicated to marketing and sales, until you get to positive cash flow. Not only should you develop an effective marketing strategy, you should also develop a comfortable selling approach for your business.

I know for many of you sales can be a scary experience. The fear of rejection stops us cold in our tracks. Making cold calls to strangers feels so uncomfortable. You feel like you have to become this fake person to attempt to convince prospects to do business with you. I’m also sure that marketing can sound like a foreign language with words like CPI, target markets, segmentation and lead generation. In your mind you’re saying, “Normal people don’t speak this way. Help!” Let me try to simplify the key steps you should take to become an effective marketing and sales leader for your business. When you follow my time-tested marketing strategy, you can build sales and revenue for your business without the constant fear of making cold calls.

Make no mistake about it. There’s a system to running a successful system. And you need it. Accept this answer, and you are headed towards great things. The Seven Systems of Highly Effective Businesses is a strategy for organizational effectiveness that gives you, the entrepreneur, a roadmap to success. There are many things in life that follow strategies to succeed. Business is no exception. The Seven Systems of Highly Effective Businesses is necessary because it includes all the pieces necessary to ensure that your business is running the right way. It allows you to build a business team, equipped with talented people that will help make sure you are performing effectively in every area of business that counts.

Offering products and services is the number one reason the consumer will spend money with you. How your product is created and how your service is delivered is the key focus in this strategy. To offer consistent quality and outstanding performance be sure to be clear on the following key points. Is your pricing in line with the market? – One way to lose a customer is to have over-priced products and services. In today’s economy, you had better count on the fact that customers are price shopping. Sometimes higher pricing is warranted, but not often. Be sure that you are aware of how much the competitors are charging for identical items.