Let's Talk About Business

How To Value Your Business- Business quadrant

The cashflow quadrant shows the different methods by which income is generated. Various income generation methods require unique or particular technical skills, training courses and different types of people. And it's a useful tool that led entrepreneurial paths of ambitious people in the search for financial freedom

The cash quadrant is a very important characteristic of wealth.

E - employee

is here that most people earn their income (employment jobs).The employee sacrifices time, energy, skills and ideas to his employer in exchange for compensation.Employee income varies through the Commission, but when an employee ceases to work his income taxes.The lack of guaranteed income is the main problem in the E quadrant.The financial freedom of an employee depends on the employer.

S – Self-Employed

The self-employed do work, but for their own job. This quadrant includes restaurant owners, real estate agents, dentists and other industry workers. Many freelancers earn a lot, but like the employee, when they stop working, their income also increases. Self Employed people have much more than an employee, as a result, success usually means working hard and work longer.

B - Business owner

Those in Quadrant B have a cash production machine. Those in S may transition into B owners. For example, a carpenter could possess and work in his joinery business or his business owner could set up a carpentry shop and hire quality carpenters and a manager to run the business. The wealthiest individuals in the world generally own businesses. These include Microsoft's Bill Gates, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Tesla and SpaceX's Elon Musk.

I - Investors

Investors hold assets that generate income.This is the passive income quadrant.Investors in this quadrant have generally accumulated money earned in one or more of the other three quadrant, and let the money work and produce even more money for itself. There are thousands of avenues to deploy your money and make it work for you. This is the crescendo of financial freedom

How to value your business?

Valuation is the process of determining the “economic worth” of an asset or company under certain assumptions and limiting conditions and subject to the data available at the valuation date.

Business valuation is a process and a set of procedures used to estimate the economic value of an owner's interest in a business. Valuation is used by financial market participants to determine the price they are willing to pay or receive to affect a sale of a business.

The valuation strategy:-

Obtain an in-depth understanding of the business and its ownership interest.

Perform a thorough financial and qualitative analysis

Consider valuation adjustments

Reconcile indicated value(s) to arrive at a conclusion of value

Present the findings in a report

Building a Strong Business Relationship

When it comes to business and sales, building a strong relationship is critical. The stronger your relationship is with your customer, the more likely they will be to refer to your business.

Every day, make an attempt to build on the relationships you have with your customer. Don't just say hi as they walk in and goodbye as they leave.

The last thing you want to do is make your customer feel like a statistic.

Let them know that their business with you is appreciated. Talk to them, strike up a non-business conversation with them. It could involve just about anything, such as the weather, sports, a movie, pets, etc.

Non-business conversation puts your customer at ease and gets them talking. The more they talk to you, the more they will open up to you, opening the door for more sales opportunities. Or, you can keep it simple. For starters, get to know you customers by name, then address them by name. Say things such as, "how's it going today?" Or "how was your weekend?" Or "is there anything I can help you with today?" Make your presence known and felt.

Your customer wants to be appreciated, so take a few minutes of your time to show them that you care about them as a customer.

Another way to strengthen your relationship with your customer is to keep a

Rolodex handy with a list of all of your customers birthdays, anniversaries, and special events. Keep your eyes and ears open for when customers talk about upcoming events in their lives. Such as children's birthdays and graduations.

When the appropriate date approaches, send your customer a card, whether it is a holiday card, a birthday card, a graduation card, or a congratulatory card. Just send it.

Your customers will appreciate the fact that you remembered them on their special day. This will only strengthen the relationship you already have with them.

There are many reasons to build a strong relationship with your customer, but two of the reasons remain to be key:-

One main reason is that customers value and appreciate good customer service. They want the peace of mind of knowing that if something ever happened with their product or service, that they would have you to turn to as their go to person. This is extremely important because your customer will have this in mind when your competition moves in to take them away. And believe me, your competition will try to take them away. As long as you provide excellent customer service, your customer will stick with you. There is no substitute for excellent customer service. Customer service is the most important thing to a customer, even more important than fees'.

The second reason building relationships are so important is because of the referral process. A customer that is treated with respect and provided excellent customer service will most assuredly refer their family and friends to you. Why wouldn't they?

Your most important asset is your customer, so build and strengthen the foundations you have with them. By building strong relationships, you will be building your sales.

Workplace Wellness: Performance with a Purpose

When we talk about workplace health, from the perspective of employers. Workplace health includes, providing the conditions for personal development, and allowing individuals to become the best they can be, thanks to the opportunities available to them, in the workplace. When the employer says that - "If we give you everything you need, to do your job properly or if we keep your working environment safe, we are ensuring workplace health. When we talk about workplace health, from the perspective of the employees. We are talking about a function of emotional health, well-being and happiness, and in the workplace. So, when employees say that, we can take care of our physical health, it is much more a function of psychological and emotional health, and social health, than it is of physical health because good emotional health comes from working in a respectful place. When we talk about, good emotional health from an employee's perspective is about a place where we are essentially talking about, feeling respected, feeling valued, feeling emotionally comfortable, in the workplace, etc.

At the same time, it is imperative to understand the factors or elements that affect workplace health. The first one is organizational culture. Organizational culture refers to the social setup within an organization. Interpersonal relationships within an organization. The way of working, in an organization. The stories that propagate, the way of working, the hours. All of that constitutes the organizational culture of the systems, everything. What kind of system of rewards do you have in your organization? The other is the promotion. Health promotion programs, that are conducted by the organization, for its employees. And physical amenities. What you have. What you deal with. You know, your employee lounge, your gym, your places for a walk, etc. Then the flexibility of the workplace is another factor, The amount of control you have over your job. If you are a very rule-driven, instruction-driven person, then flexibility could confuse you. But, if you are an independent thinker. If you are, and you know, both have merits. We need very instruction-driven people, for very high-risk jobs. Because, unless things are done, with an enormous amount of precision, you just cannot do what you are required to do. The option is to be flexible with the workplace, either in terms of resources or time or contribution. But, over and above that, if there is some flexibility, that always helps is Communication. The Perceived ease of communication with superiors and subordinates. However, the most important factor is the management support which depends upon how much the organization supports you, in your attempts to grow, in your attempts to do, what you are required to perform. How much do they trust your integrity, is what management support means. How much do they support you, in terms of, training needs, or the personal goals, with the organizational goals, etc.

According to research, 28 percent of adults are not thriving in any element while just 19 are thriving in four or five elements employees with low well-being are the source of immense health care costs and lost productivity for organizations there are a few ways that organizations can invest in their employee's well-being and encourage participation in well-being programs first communicate clarify that well-being is an important organizational value second individualize let employees choose well-being activities that are best suited to their individual wellness goals and interests and third recognize understand that recognition reinforces your well-being efforts successful wellness programs focus on providing the tools resources and opportunities to develop and strengthen each of the five areas of total employee well-being understand that every person is different so your program needs to be tailored to meet employees needs interests and goals. In recent times, with the coming up of Covid-19, the world is learning new ways to live life and build community and work, which can increase feelings of frustration and stress.Organizations need to lead thinking about mental health by creating a supportive space for teams.Before Covid, nearly 60% of employees didn't tell anyone at work about their mental health.Many do not know what resources are available or are afraid to use them.

To conclude, organizations need to ensure their employees understand the mental health benefits and resources available. Be specific: phone numbers and websites. Reiterate organizational support. And lead by example through honest communication and compassion.

Communication- The Blood of Business

The communication expertise begins by being intentional about communication rather than treating it as an afterthought at the very end of a project or worse after communication problems happen to be proactive about communication we need to make it a habit to ask ourselves seven key questions when faced with any new project or initiative these seven questions reflect the variables that exist in every communication event so what's a communication event you could be making a sales call or presenting at a conference or simply chatting with friends over lunch maybe your company is about to make a major reorganization or maybe it's about to make a minor policy change. Every one of these situations involves communication and those seven variables are at work when we learn to manage these variables we increase the likelihood of communication success you get that sale your conference attendees understand your ideas clearly your friends will feel a more solid relationship with you to the extent that we ignore any of these seven variables we risk miscommunication the customer doesn't understand the value of the product and doesn't purchase your conference colleagues think what are you talking about and your friends well they're friends so they give you the benefit of the doubt but repeated miscommunication can leave even our closest loved ones feeling wounded or upset with us

• Who should receive this news?
• Who would be the best sender?
• What is the bottom line message?
• How the message might be interpreted
• Do we want or need feedback on the message?
• What is the best channel?
• How should time and sequence this message are any other context issues important

To understand these questions and their assessments in the business it is important to understand their framework and application in an organization

First, who were the receivers or the people who heard the news did the right people get the message in your situation one of the leading communication problems is assuming that everyone who needs to get a message actually got that message when we take the time to identify each party who should receive a message we'll avoid this common problem

Second, who is the sender of the message was the sender the best person for the job why or why not

Third, what was the intended message did people get enough but not too much information did they know what they were supposed to do in response to the message

Fourth, how was the message interpreted do you think that you and all of the other receivers heard the message in the same way did it mean the same thing to all of you did the sender clarify any aspects of the message that might have caused confusion or emotional upset getting senders and receivers to align their thinking is one of the most challenging aspects of communication

Fifth, How did the message get from the sender to the receiver or what was the channel of communication was it an email a one-on-one a large group meeting maybe a notice on your intranet or a blurb in the newsletter what would have been the best way to get the message from point A to point B.

Sixth question is about feedback were receivers asked to share their thoughts on the message if people did give feedback did anyone respond to the feedback or was communication pretty much one way feedback allows us to make sure that the message was received and understood the way that we had hoped finally

Downward communication:- Messages that flow from the top levels of management to the employees throughout the company downward communication is most common but can become distorted if passed through too many people remember the childhood game called telephone one person would whisper something to the next person in the circle who would then whisper it to the next and so on the last person in the circle would say aloud what she heard which was never what the first player had originally said the game was fun and made us all laugh but in business it's not funny try to communicate directly to as many receivers as possible upward communication allows management to learn about problems that only frontline people are privy to when channels are in place for employees to be heard by their leadership they feel more valued upward communication is notorious though for being skewed toward the positive no one wants to give the boss bad news and no one wants to confess when things aren't going well.

Upward messages:- tend to suffer from a positivist bias you can use opinion surveys Q&A sessions advisory boards Ombudsman hotlines suggestion boxes skip level interviews anything you can think of to encourage upward honest communication in your company horizontal communication is often overlooked yet that dreaded silo mentality begins to grow when departments or units see themselves as independent actors rather than part of a collective system if we can notice a lack of lateral communication you can initiate conversations with people at our level in other departments consider a once-a-week coffee or even just a quick drop by to chat about current projects powerful collaborations often begin as simple conversations. one more group to consider who might be an unintended audience: emails are so easy to forward as communicators. we want our message to be received by the intended audience and we need to be aware of unintended audiences so think carefully about who could end up here in your message. It is important to understand that senders of your message should be influential to the receivers. But the real question is what makes a person influential and a good candidate for sending messages people generally influence us if they have some kind of power in our eyes and that power falls into three categories

Legitimate power:- happens when people comply with a request because the sender has a certain title or position, By fulfilling senior or boss request in a company because the employees respect the position and have to demonstrate that respect through compliance

Reward power:- refers to behavior motivated because a sender can reward you in some way you follow up quickly with a request from a potential client because he has the power to reward you with new business or just the opposite coercive power happens when a sender can punish you in some way or take away good things in life you follow up quickly with an existing client because he has the power to take his business elsewhere.

Referent power:- is influenced that happens as a result of credibility if someone else could more effectively pass the torch focus on your purpose and if enlisting someone else to be a spokesperson of your idea would help give the idea wings go for it tap into the influence that will work.

Once we understand and identify who should hear our message we must remember that these people will interpret our message to understand its meaning see the lines drawn through the heads of the senders and receivers. These little lines remind us that no listener is an empty vessel awaiting our message rather people have mental filters. We all have notions, assumptions , biases good and bad. Our unique way of seeing the world is that your receivers have their own perspectives about you and your message. These mental filters can skew how our message is heard and understood.

Important communication question to our process is what is the bottom line message. We've identified our purpose so we know the core idea but we have all of these different receivers with different ways of interpreting the same message so we must learn to focus and frame the idea carefully.

Feedback: Let's start with focus, our first task is to identify the bottom line message what is the one thing your audience must remember when they walk away from your meeting or after they read your memo how can you tell if your communication has a core message a great self check is to share your intended message with a friend or a colleague and ask the question what do you think is the most important takeaway from this speech or email or slide deck if your friend didn't get your bottom line message go back and simplify focus more on the key idea and repeat it more often focusing on one key idea which is challenging as there is so much we need to communicate but it's better to successfully communicate one idea then to unsuccessfully attempt to communicate a bunch of ideas. Therefore the key is to focus your message on a particular idea which is framed for our intended audience. By considering the audience's knowledge level, possible reactions and reason for listening, frame your message to align with the unique needs of your listeners when we present to executives. The other important aspect is the feedback of the original message which appears to be a one-way communication and turns it into two-way communication. There are dangers with one-way communication one of those dangers is misunderstanding a manager tells an employee to do a certain task but then rushes off to a meeting the employee without a chance to clarify misunderstands the task does it wrong and creates all sorts of problems another danger with one-way communication is low morale a team is told they have to move to a new location and are given no input into the decision they feel unvalued and morale sinks market alignment can go haywire when companies rely on one-way communication to customers a company could decide to offer a new product without getting feedback from its consumer base millions of research and development dollars later the project gets scrapped because customers aren't interested you want to build opportunities for feedback into your organizational communication process to avoid these dangers but there are dangers in seeking feedback as well feedback takes time feedback is dangerous if we ask for input but have no intention of addressing concerns or using the shared ideas morale sinks even lower if leadership pretends to be listening but then isn't really responsive.

Thus there are potential dangers of feedback. It can slow things down and it creates an expectation that the feedback will be responded to but at the end of the day the benefits far outweigh any potential drawbacks. Internal feedback can be just as beneficial as customer feedback. The benefits of feedback are undeniable as it improves the organizational communication in companies with two-way communication making it a habit when planning your communication efforts to build in that feedback loop.

Message:- is our vehicle to communication. The channel is the road we choose. We begin our choice by exploring the richness of each communication whether it is the media available to us or the richness which is measured by a channel that supports immediate feedback, provides verbal and nonverbal cues and has a personal focus.

There are several factors to be considered in our channel choice need for permanence makes a written document actually better than a face to face speed and cost also need to be part of our decision and finally affect your leadership team once your Department to know what an outstanding job they did on a project last week which channel would have the better effect a mass email to everyone on the team or a personal handwritten thank-you note to each team member if you need to communicate the seriousness of a new policy are you better off posting a message on a bulletin board or attending a staff meeting to talk about it. Channel makes a difference considering richness, permanence, speed, cost and effect so we've made an intelligent and informed decision when selecting our channel or highway for the message but we may still encounter a few roadblocks in our path.

To understand how a network works in a company, imagine a situation where a HR director needs to communicate a time-sensitive change in the benefits package to all employees the message starts with a face-to-face visit to the vice president's who are in turn to tell departmental directors who in turn are to tell unit supervisors who in turn tell their staff good plan unless one of those directors also had ten other messages to communicate to her supervisors who were now on overload and another director communicated the message but two of the supervisors were on vacation so didn't pass the message along to their staff some staff members don't have a reporting line to any of those vice presidents

Communication is all one-way and when some employees have heard the message and others haven't the rumor mill kicks in as it inevitably will, when people experience a communication vacuum the grapevine which is the rumor mill is fascinating. it's an informal network of communication that often moves faster than the formal channels but isn't always as accurate rumors and misinformation can spread rapid-fire hence that great line a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still lacing up its boots we can't dictate an order to stop using the grapevine rather we can attempt to limit its damaging effects by sharing a wealth of information in the formal channels when people aren't thirsty for information they're less inclined to participate in rumor spreading concede that the rumor mill exists attempt to understand its nuances and use it when appropriate to supplement the slower formal channels meetings are a channel that we rely on heavily in the workplace more.

The next aspect of communication is to improve the efficiency of the meeting by making minor adjustment to your agenda to improve the efficiency of your meetings most agendas look something like this strategy realignment quarterly sales regional marketing plans suggest that you add an objective to each agenda item like this determine the next steps for strategy realignment report quarterly sales brainstorm regional marketing plans people prepare and interact differently if they are listening to brainstorming about or acting on deciding on an issue let them know in advance what mental space to be in as they enter the meeting then add a time frame to each agenda item the time frames allow people to gauge how much sharing is appropriate. If we reach the end of the allotted time and the team has not finished that item you can simply ask do we want to continue this discussion and eliminate some other agenda item or can we in the next two minutes wrap this up teams frequently realize that they are belaboring a point and will choose to wrap up and move on suddenly naysayer are ready for a vote people full of conversation are ready to be quiet and you move on.

Therefore, these different business segments play an important role in developing and in the growth of a business where communication becomes the life blood of a business.