• Predictability of service.
• Customer service mentality from everyone in the company.
• Professional sales and marketing systems.
• Organization and efficiency in operations.
• Sleekness and style of office, equipment and processes.
• A committed mission and passion.
• A desire to bring value and the lowest possible cost.
• A desire to get better tomorrow than they are today.
• Convenience of doing business.
• A focus on giving back and not on keeping more.

These are in no particular order, but they are all important when I evaluate patronizing a business.

I don’t like to eat fast food, even though my lack of will power leads me there a little more often than I would like. When I am on the road or in a different area of town, I usually opt for McDonalds. Why McDonalds? Why not Burger King, Arby’s, A&W, Hardees, Rally’s, or a million other restaurants? Well the reason I choose McDonalds is because their franchise model seems to me to be the most duplicatable and therefore the most predictable. If I go into a McDonalds in Louisville or stop at one off of I-65 on the way to Atlanta; the service, the cleanliness and the food is very similar and very predictable. Sure there are exceptions, but I find that is not the case with the more loosely organized franchise restaurants. When too much autonomy happens in the restaurant business, you see a line wrapped all the way around a restaurant even though they are not nearly as busy as McDonalds during lunch. You get a burger on a stale piece of bread with wilted lettuce. You get home and your food is not in the bag. You get a flat coke. You get a pain in the neck. I have never sent a plate back at a restaurant, so I am not hard to please when it comes to food. When systems are documented and tested, the franchise owner doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. He just follows the system. Sure McDonalds has changed the systems that Ray Kroc put in place some years ago, but the point is that they have a system, they teach a system and they follow a system. When a problem arises they fix the system. How does this apply to your small business, practice, non profit or home business? Are your services predictable? I know mine need some work from time to time.

To start with:

37 Signals products- Highrise-Basecamp-Backpack- Now we can share pages and update them with task lists, notes, pictures and files. We can organize the info and act on it seamlessly.

Copilot- now I can sit at my computer and fix yours by actually taking over your mouse and looking at your screen. This happens with a simple link I send you and takes 30 seconds to download.

Apeer- Now we could share and edit documents, videos and photos in a live environment. This is not sharing- it’s better.

Gotomeeting- we can conduct live webinars or meetings from the comfort of our own offices. I can train you or your staff to work better, and use their stuff better.

These are just a few. Their are so many new ones each day I have trouble keeping up. Somebody has to sift the tools and show you how they make your business work better.

1. Start a blog- I have used google eblogger but I like Word Press better. Don’t know how to get going- call me- it’s a service I offer.
2. Start reading and commenting on a select few blogs that you really like. This will get your name or business name circulating on the Google organic search results.
3. Start an email newsletter. There are plenty of good programs and if you preplanned your content it is something you can keep up with. Pick a frequency- I suggest weekly but monthly would be OK as well.
4. Create a Facebook page. I have one but it’s not at all customized or tweaked. Remember this is a process and Rome wasn’t built in a day.
5. Get a Twitter account (it’s free just like Facebook) and start telling the world- What you’re doing? You’ll be surprised how many people will begin to follow you or your business based on the content of your tweets. Tweets are the short two line entries you make when you answer the question- What are you doing?
6. Post reguraly on Twitter and on your blog. Make it a habit at certain times of the day or the week.
7. Set up a profile on LinkedIn. It’s a site for professional business networking. Every little bit helps.
8. Use Youtube, Vimeo and Flickr to host your videos and pictures that you’d like to share- in an effort to promote your business of course.
9. Try as hard as possibly to do all these things consistently without sacraficing time or attention from the things that really bring in the cash flow.

It has been almost a year since I formed Simplified Solutions LLC. The first few months were filled with admin, legal, accounting and organizational tasks. The next several months were spent crafting my identity, my solutions/services, my focus and my business plan. In a perfect world these would have been done before I dashed into hope. You could write a book on all the lessons one learns in the first year of starting a business. I probably should. The last several months since the spring have been very productive. Organizing jobs are going well, and I’m starting to see my niche in this vast marketplace of information, services, ideas and products. I have learned about some tools to avoid- some to use, and as my friend and associate Aaron Marshal says- which tools to put the gas on. Now that I’ve researched and implemented many of these tools I’ll be introducing them all in big ways this fall.

This practicalorganizing.com blog and my bryceraley.com blog are completely updated in WordPress and they make it so easy to add content to your website or blog.

I’m reworking my main website and I have sales pages coming for all our services.

Hopefully this will be more simplified as we wrap up 2008 and launch into 2009.