This past week was filled with trying something new almost every day. As a child, change was easy to me. I lived in 12 different homes (with my parents) before I was in 7th grade. In 2nd grade I went to three different schools. This week I had to reflect on the question "Is trying something new the same as change?". I love using Chat GPT for these type of questions. Yes, trying something new is related to change but not the same.

For the past few years we have been active in the community learning about the barriers that small business owners face in running their business.

​What we continued to see in all industries is the burden on small business owners to either do all their own back-office tasks and/or navigate multiple outsource entities in order to put together their back-office business solutions.

We are excited to launch My Back-Office Agency campaign providing four back-office functions that Faith, Owner, Goenner Consulting, LLC has over 20+ years of leading both in the public sector and her own entrepreneur journey.

We are now offering back-office business solutions of human resources, accounting, marketing and administration. ​​Outsourcing back-office functions allows business owners to streamline their operations, reduce overhead, and focus on core activities to increase revenue.

With a monthly membership, we will be providing small businesses with business solutions that are developed uniquely for each business' needs. 

Gold - Get all four back-office business solutions.
Silver - Get two (2) back-office business solutions.
​Bronze - Get one (1) back-office business solution.​

​Happy Friday! I'm writing today to the business owners and managers who are exhausted by their lack of employees; the ones they have aren't the best; their high-performers are most likely looking for a new job. The reality of having a dream team may be far from your thoughts, but today's reflections are a few encouragements that you can have a DREAM TEAM REALITY.

START WITH YOU
The leadership of your business starts with you. Your ability to find healthy ways to keep going will benefit everyone. You notice this doesn't doesn't say time for yourself, you don't have this. Look around your business right now, what makes you happy? Is there a genre of music you could play in your office? Is there a non-alcoholic beverage that you could have stocked for yourself? Can you listen to a motivating podcast during your day? Can you go for a walk at the top of the hour? Focus on yourself so that you are refreshed to lead everyday. As I write this, I am seeing a super busy business owner of a very successful coffee shop. Being busy is a good thing, right? Well, she definitely was short-staffed as she was preparing a catering order and helping the customers at the counter, but the space was so beautiful with great music and I noticed she was drinking a favorite non-alcoholic beverage that wasn't sold at her business. (Emphasis on non-alcoholic because I know most people do think about their favorite alcoholic beverage during stressful times.)

YOU AREN'T ALONE
As I went full-time consulting a few months ago, I had no idea the stories I would hear from small business and nonprofit leaders and be able to emphasize for how hard it is to lead your own business. Many employees and customers don't realize the pressure when the weight of the business is on you. You may feel alone in your organization, but you aren't alone. I know there is a community of other business leaders in your area. I hope there is a supportive Chamber of Commerce and opportunities to take a break with other business leaders. Take time each week to find a group of business leaders that you can connect with or better yet, start your own. It takes a village, even for your business.

Please call 988 if you or someone you know is in crisis or suicidal.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
This week I went to a education event around fraud in businesses and it was so disheartening to hear about how much is stolen from employees. Recently I heard a story of having to fire a very good employee because they were caught on camera stealing. Stealing something that had they asked they needed it, the employer would have most likely given it to them. So what does this have to do with employee engagement? If you don't know what your employees may be going through in their personal lives, you might want to find out. I don't mean going on the shop floor and asking them "Is everything ok at home?", but taking time to meet them and learn more about them on a consistent basis. Is your business to big for you to do this? I recently heard about Marketplace Chaplains and they have care partners to support your employees in their personal lives so they can keep being successful at work.

What did I miss in helping business owners and leaders keep going amidst the labor shortage, higher material costs and burn-out?

I'd love to hear your story, send me a LinkedIn message or email hello@goennerconsulting.com.
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Have a restful weekend and I appreciate you!

I can't believe how much information is thrown at small businesses. All the information is intended to be helpful but it becomes too much and difficult for anyone to make decisions. From social media strategies, financial resources, investor pitch competitions and government programs it all becomes a huge opportunity that requires analysis to determine what is right for your business. In the end, how to do you know what to do?

I am a small business owner and as a small business consultant I have been following relevant entities that support small businesses. My Facebook feed is full of trainings, software and other items that claim to drive customers and crack-the-code of limitations. What good is this if you don't have a solid business launched yet? So how does someone get their a solid business launched? One step-at-a-time.

I recently joined a Facebook group of women small business owners. It was a fantastic group, but a bit too large for my comfort. What I loved about the group is women were showing their websites and/or sharing their business vision and were getting feedback. Not just "looks good" or "needs improvement", but tangible feedback with changes to make it better. I also saw many other small businesses offering to help them. This is the type of small business community that will help entrepreneurs be successful.

This may be a bit off our topic for today's topic, but I have to challenge small businesses to shop at small businesses. I recently heard a small business ordering printing from an online company instead of ordering from their local print shop. Lets shop local even when we see we can save a few bucks online.

​Back to the topic, here are the three must-have's every small business owner needs. The rest will organically fall into place as you build your business with your expertise and vision.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE
You will not operate your business successfully without an accountant, an attorney and insurance companies. The landscape is changing and you must make sure that you have the professional expertise to navigate your finances, legal matters and insurance. The accountant will help you with payroll, taxes, budget, accounts payable, accounts receivable and other financial matters. Your attorney will help you with establishing your business, contracts and/or other legal matters your business encounters. You may need one or more insurance companies that will handle your business liability insurance, cyber insurance, medical insurance and other voluntary benefit insurances. Make sure you shop around and are comfortable with the professionals and/companies you will be working with. When you encounter a situation you will want someone that makes you feel safe, heard and supported.

MARKETING EXPERTISE
It is hard for me, even as a small business owner with marketing expertise, to see how much time we spend in marketing when we could be working on our business. I understand starting out the budget is limited but as you obtain traction invest in marketing expertise. Another way to talk about marketing is your brand. Being able to have a cohesive online and print messaging will build loyalty to your products and/or services. What do I do? I am still doing my own online marketing, but I use my locally owned Minuteman Press for all promo and print materials (double-sided business cards, pens, notebooks, clothing and more).

BUSINESS PEER COMMUNITY
In a previous article I talked about the importance of community. This community can be a chamber, a mastermind group, a local entrepreneur group or one that you put together for your own needs. What this community will do is allow you to talk and have others understand what you are saying. Most people who are employees don't ever understand what the decisions and/or challenges their employer faces. You will also bring your expertise to be able to support other small businesses. You are not lonely at the top.
Thanks for reading, I hope you got something out of this and I would love to hear your thoughts. Have a great weekend.

 Have you ever had a job where there wasn't any training? I have. Once I had a job and didn't get told where the bathroom was. It felt weird to ask, "Where is the restroom?". It was at that time that I told myself I would NEVER have anyone on-board without some basics for them to have the best first day ever. Here are three reasons why training matters in your small business or nonprofit.

ON-BOARDING CONSISTENCY
On-boarding should be a formal process to convey the values and culture of the organization. Each employee should be provided the same information so that they all have the same grounding as they enter the organization. Employees are deciding if this will be a good fit from the beginning. Many employees may have left a organization and/or job they loved, but you offered them a promotion or opportunity they were seeking. Make sure you are able to meet them where they are at and start to build community so they want to stay. Through the consistent on-boarding practice employees will have a sense of stability and safety to learn their own role in the organization.

COMPLIANCE IS IMPORTANT
Yep, employees can bad talk all the orientation required to start a new position, but your organization is on the line that your employees know what is expected and are compliant. Compliance is HIPAA, OSHA and many more government mandated compliance. The new compliance that your employees need to know about cybersecurity and their role in reducing it at your organization. Make sure your have annual training that refreshes your employees of all expectations you have around sexual harassment, discrimination and other items that may be grounds for termination if found the employees aren't compliant.

EMPLOYEES CAN DO THEIR BEST 
Individuals learn differently, written, hands-on or oral. Make sure your training offers different modalities so that your employees will have an opportunity to use their learning strengths. In the tight workforce right now, I know the burden that training can put on managers. Managers should think through how to scale up the training to get employees going but also have balance with their responsibilities and getting the new employee up and going. If your processes aren't written down, this is your first step. Have employees write what they do so you will always have a position "handbook". Make sure you know where this is saved and/or periodically get a copy of it. Back to my on-boarding where there was no training, I survived and I learned to do my job networking with resources and making mistakes. I know that this wasn't efficient and I also know that not everyone would have worked through it. Commit to train your employees with the basics and then support them to success.

Does performance matter post pandemic? It should. As a leader during the pandemic, I was leading a team of 23 employees virtually through the pandemic and the unrest in Minnesota. I had to shift old ways of thinking about performance to ensure our employees felt safe and were given the flexibility to get their job accomplished. This meant that hours of work weren't only 8:00 am - 4:30 pm and we came together as a team to support each other to ensure our stakeholders had what they needed to do their jobs.

We are now in 2023 and with the workforce gaps, I know it is easy to let performance slip, especially on the employees that have stayed with the company through the ups and downs of the past few years. If you don't have a performance management system, I am going to encourage you to have one. If you have a performance management system, but have put it on the bottom of the TO DO list, I am going to encourage you to set aside time to launch it again. If you have maintained your performance management system through the ups and downs, kudos to you!

Here are the three reasons why I am encouraging all businesses including small businesses and nonprofits to have a performance management system.

RETAIN HIGH PERFORMERS 
There is nothing worse to be a high performer on a team where there are no written expectations and mediocre is the highest praise. What I mean is the lowest denominator of an employee should not be the standard so that there is no recognition for people who go the extra mile. There should be some core expectations that all employees MUST comply with to maintain their good standing. So many times in my career employees may be having issues with performance but there wasn't a good infrastructure to determine where were the barriers so the performance wasn't improved. Others who were able to perform would then not be given recognition for their work outcomes. A good performance management system will solve both scenarios of the performance issues being resolved and the high performer obtaining recognition.

MAINTAIN PRODUCT / SERVICE QUALITY
When performance management isn't valued at a company it will start to show with the level of service and/or product quality. Recently I heard a story about the quality of a auto mechanic shop that used to be top-notch, but had slowly declined. When the customer identified that their battery had died on the road and there were visual signs the battery wasn't good, but their recent service check said it was ok, they wanted to know if the mechanic had seen the problem. Instead of empathy for the car owner, the manager told the car owner this wasn't their issue. The car owner should have known their battery was old. When I heard this story I wondered if the manager was frustrated by not being able to maintain a level of performance with their mechanics. The long-term customer is considering taking their business somewhere else because this has broken their trust with this company's leadership and performance. A good performance management system would allow management to identify performance issues that are directly impacting product / service quality by utilizing customer feedback and/or peer feedback.

SUCCESSION PLANNING
Turnover is hard on an organization both from a change management and financial prospective. Many organizations haven't built a culture where people can grow within the organization because of other priorities on the business. Without a good performance management system you can't identify which employees need coaching and which ones aren't going to work out. However, when you have an organization that has been able to identify performance issues and work to resolve them, you will start to have your employees wanting to stay around longer. Employees may find themselves in seasons where they aren't performing at their best maybe due to personal life issues, but when they know their company has the tools and resources to help them through the season, they will build loyalty. A performance management system will also identify areas where employees are performing well and this could open up growth opportunities within the organization. When they become managers, they will be able to lead like they were led. 

So what is a good performance management system that I have been talking about? Is a system that allows both managers and employees to set goals, schedule periodic check-ins to review goals, obtain coaching opportunities, have an established basis for termination and an overall performance metric each year for bonuses and/or other benefits.

With our entrepreneurial spirit and passion to see businesses and organizations successful, we are ready to work for you. For leadership positions you need to have back-filled, teams you need to get engaged, complex problems you need to solve and innovative solutions to be implemented, let’s get started. #yourvisionpossible
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Contact us today at faithgoenner@gmail.com or 612-819-7441

We are inviting you to show your support for a one-of-a-kind virtual marketspace for Handmade in Minnesota with Love products and services.

Would you please register at this link to let vendors know you would like to meet them and purchase handmade Minnesota products and services on Saturday, March 20, 2021.

Please share this event and invite your favorite Minnesota entrepreneurs.