Taking advantage of opportunities

I went to speak to a group of relatively new business owners yesterday, who were lovely by the way and made me feel very welcome. We were talking about building your reputation in your field and they asked me what I'd done to do this. While I was talking to them, I realised that what I'd done was to take advantage of opportunities.

I said to them that we start each day with a blank page and it's up to us how we fill it. I could choose to sit working at my desk each day or I could choose, as I did to go out there, volunteer for things, get involved, build my contacts and take advantage of all the opportunities that are out there.

Let me give you an example - one of my contacts runs start-ups courses for women in schools, which is a relatively new scheme that she has successfully got of the ground. This morning on BBC breakfast news, they were saying that they were looking for schools who were doing something unique and unusual - I would be seizing this opportunity by the throat and contacting BBC telling them about what I was doing.

Another example, a couple of months ago, Steve Wright on BBC Radio 2 (seems to be a bit of a pattern here doesn't there) mentioned his 'business idea of the day' - I don't think he intended to carry this on, but I emailed him loads of business ideas of the day that he could use. Ok, nothing came of it, but you never know...

So, my challenge to you is to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way and go and see what happens. You never know what might come up.

Strange time of year

One of the things you need to think about when you're starting a business is seasonality - in other words when will the busiest times of your business be and when will the quietest times be?

November can be a pretty strange time of year. If you provide an advice or consultancy service to people, November could be a quiet time. Many people are trying to cram in as much as possible before Christmas and may delay taking up your services until the New Year.

If on the other hand, you provide a service to the general public such as hairdressing, November could be busy as people will want to look their best before Christmas or get everything sorted out before then.

What about January? Well, January for us is very busy. It's a time of year for new plans, resolutions so anyone who in an advice or consultancy service should be pretty busy. Having said that, for a lot of people, January is a time to consolidate - remember it's only 3 months to go to the end of the financial year, which may prevent people from buying.

And then you've got bank holidays, school holidays, summer and rainy days to contend with. Write down when you're likely to be busy in your business and when you're likely to be quieter - knowing this information will enable you to predict these trends and plan ahead for them.

The joys of networking

I went to a networking event today - The Friday Business Club in Stratford. It was one of those events that on a Friday afternoon I had a great deal of trouble justifying why I should go to it. I had a pile of stuff that I should have been doing, but I also knew that as not many networking events happen in July and August, maybe I should go to it.

So, I made the decision and I was so glad that I went. Not only was the event really good, but I met some really interesting people too.

It did make me think on my way up, that this is a dilema that small business owners face all the time - do you go to a networking event or do you do the work you're being paid to do? It's a tough one, but I do think it's a good idea to get out into the big wide world occassionally and see what's going on.

See my article on networking by clicking http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Make-Networking-Work-For-You&id=579125.