15 Habits To Grow Your Business By

I recently started doing business development with a semi-conductor company. Talking with them and learning about their business culture has been a positive experience. As you grow your business here are 15 things you should practice to stay effective and maintain relationships.

1. Be sincere to your customers and the people around you. If someone asks you a question, stop working immediately and answer the question. Whatever you are now doing is not as important as you think. Your thoughtfulness to other people is much more important in the long run.

2. Be honest. If you have mistakenly done or said something wrong, have the courage to correct it as soon as you notice. People will respect you more for this.

3. Be Punctual. Personal discipline, including punctuality, is the key to a good and trustable organization.

4. Keep all promises without fail.

5. Respond and act quickly. Do not leave any phone calls and emails unanswered. If you do not have an answer right away then respond and let people know you received the question and when you will have an answer.

6. Use receiver-oriented communication. Read all outgoing messages carefully (as if you were going to receive it) and answer questions one by one. Do you understand everything? If you don’t then the receiver wont either. Communicate your intentions with words which are clear and easily understood.

7. Follow up until you get an answer. Your eagerness is key to getting peoples attention and support. If people don’t move do not use this as an excuse. Keep pushing until they move

8. Do not overlook any ‘to-do’ items.

9. Be sensitive to customer needs and communicate them clearly to all people concerned.Customers are the lifeblood of a company. Never forget this.

10. Do not believe in e-mail alone. Verbal and face-to-face interaction will prevent a lot of communication problems. Make sure everything is clearly understood for both sides

11. Excuses do not take you anywhere. Deep thinking and appropriate actions will solve most problems.

12. Don’t just be a window passing information, thinking and appropriate actions will solve most problems.a. What is the customer saying? The data from HQ? People make mistakes. Catch these by thinking all the time. Get to the root cause of the intention.

13. Think about a problem before asking others. If you need help, ask but after you have thought about it. Bring a proposed solution / idea to the table. Don’t get in the habit of being handed answers.

14. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste others time either.

15. Learn actively, think deep, work hard, and be professional

Business Trips for Biz Dev

Being in business development has its perks. I get to travel all over the world, meet tons of people, break bread at restaurants without knowing what I’m ordering, and experience different cultures in places I would probably never end up on my own. When else would I sit down to a plate of horse sashimi in Oyama, or drive from Koln to Brussels for breakfast to have Belgian waffles in Belgium? Probably never. Even if I were to travel to these places for vacation I would never get to see some of these places without being with the people that live there. As I prepare to leave for Shanghai and complain about the 15 hours in a plane, I cant help to think how lucky I am to have these opportunities.

As I accrue frequent flier miles faster than my coin jar fills with foreign currency I have learned a few tricks to help me deal with traveling and dealing with jet lag. Here are a few things that work for me:

Stay awake flying west and sleep flying east. As stupid as this sounds it actually helps me out a lot. Staying awake while flying west sets you up to land, get to your hotel, and pass out from the long trip so you are ready to rock the next day. Most flights to Japan from the States end up landed in the evening (Japan time). Sleeping flying east sets you up to land bright and early (about 8 or 9am) and enjoy your day with out feeling burned out from being up for 30 hours straight. Same rules apply for coming back to the states.

Books, Journals and Ipods will save your life. It is hard to sit still for 1 hour let alone 15 so you need to find a way to pass the time. Sitting there being a waste of space is simply not an option for me, so I pack an Ipod or two full of music and my Iphone full of movies for the trip. I like to bring a book or two as well, usually something about marketing, a technical journal or IEEE’s Spectrum. I also enjoy reading Fast Company and Inc.

Charge you Ipod/Iphone with your laptop on the plane. If you have had your Ipod die halfway to your destination you know it sucks, but you can solve this problem by pulling out your laptop, turning the monitor off and using its USB port to charge your gadgets enough to finish your trip.

NWA 747s are the worst. Take an Airbus 330 if you can, the seats are far nicer and they are new.

Network on the plane. Meet people. I have made several friends on flights that I talk to on a regular basis. I have even created great business opportunities while on the way to create great business opportunities.

This last year has been amazing. Over the past 365 days I have gone from engineering to program management to business development, and started a new company. As I keep learning, growing and building my skill set, I jump on any chance I get to go new places and meet new people. You would not belive the ideas you get when you see how people do things on the other side of the world.

Forming A New LLC

For the past few weeks I have been debating how I should structure my new company (LLC, S Corp, or C Corp). I quickly narrowed my choices down to LLC and S Corp, eventually settling on LLC, for simplicity of formation, pass through taxation and the less formal business structure of a LLC. Here are a few steps to getting your company set up as a limited liability company.

1) Name Your Company
Assuming you already know what you want your company to do, you need a name that is not already registered.

2) Get the Right Paperwork.
You dont need use an expensive service to file your paperwork. You simply need to navigate to your state government’s web page and get the correct paperwork, Articles of Organization. In Michigan you need to get your hands on Form 700 Articles of Organization from the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth

3) File your paperwork
Now that you have your forms it is time to fill them out, put them in an envelope with a check to cover the processing fees ($50 in MI) and Mail them to the address on the form. It will take about 5 business days to get your paperwork back unless you have them expedited.

4) File for a Tax ID Number

5) Create an Operating Agreement
Much like corporate bylaws, an operating agreement lays out the rules of how the company is to be run and how ownership interest is to be divided amongst members of the LLC. LLCs do not have shares of stock like corporations.

6) Business Plan
Create a business plan and keep it up to date. This living document will help you stay focused on the goals and vision of your company. Include business cases, cash flow models, competitive data, marketing plans, growth and sales forecasts. Create your own plan that helps you sort out your ideas of what your company is and what it can be.

After that, work your face off. Work on developing ideas, developing new business and creating relationships with your employees, customers and vendors that will let your company grow for years to come.