As of yesterday, I’m back to working without the lovely Lisa and let me tell you: it felt really weird to cancel her e-mail account this morning. I guess a part of me hopes she’ll simply reappear at our co-working space out of thin air. But since that’s never going to happen, I’m thinking about hiring someone who’s talented at graphic design for +/- 20% to support me at least 1x a week.
Let me know if you know someone who know’s someone, preferably living in Switzerland!
Each time a new month kicks off, I try to block an afternoon of my time to write my invoices and create performance reports for my customers. Not only do I really enjoy the math to this, as well as getting back in touch with my customers, I also love calculating my own company’s performance report.
To do so, I use so called “key performance indicators” (KPIs) and calculate what my total revenue was, as well as my total costs and how many new vs. returning customers I had. This way, I can track how my business performed in one month and easily compare it with the performance from previous months. Another benefit is that I can calculate how profitable I was and what I need to do better next month (e.g. increase revenue, cut costs, etc.)!
Hope this gave you a little insight into what you can do to measure your company’s performance. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!
It’s so important to use your personal contacts, as well as events, to connect with others and talk about your business, especially when you’re just starting out. And while some may ask you for a business card and never get back to you, others will find it interesting to know what you do for a living and either get back to you one day or tell their friends and family about you in the meantime. So just keep that in mind and use every chance you get the next time you go somewhere!!!
Yesterday, I had the best chocolate cake ever! We went to an amazing little café (Kafi Franz), sat down with two cups of coffee and when I saw the cake, I simply couldn’t resist. Flourless chocolate cake <3. It was like chocolate mousse in the form of a cake. Let me tell you, I could talk about this chocolate cake for hours. But no worries, many other exciting things happened this week besides the super delicious chocolate cake!
First of all, it’s great to see our projects progress. Friday is normally our business call day when we take clients through the current status quo of their project and define next steps. This is super helpful to keep everybody updated and able to quickly respond to changes.
Next, we started with a website design project this week. It’s amazing how quickly you can create something from scratch with the help of a template! And it’s exciting to find out what you can change and how you can shuffle things around until you have found the perfect solution. Here, you can be truly creative and present different solutions to your clients and let them pick which one they like best.
Finally, I look forward to next week! As it’s the start of a new month, we’ll need to prepare bills and reports in order to deliver insights and help further optimize our customers’ online presence.
Working with Lisa on so many different projects from various locations over the past 2 weeks has made me feel especially grateful for the following 5 of her many traits:
Sure, one could argue that these are “small” things that don’t require special skills or talent but believe me – they make a BIG difference and continue to have a positive impact on how we work together!
It’s like there’s one thing in life that makes everything better. Chocolate! Haha-the words of a true chocoholic, huh? Sill, I’m convinced that everybody has their own favorite treat that makes them a little bit happier. And is there anything better than starting a day, precisely a Monday, with a treat you love? Continue reading “Chocolate Strategy”
Having Lisa support me at LA Preuss Consulting over the last 2 weeks has been such an incredible experience and I really appreciate working in a team again. Also, I’m super grateful for the fact that we don’t just work well together but constantly challenge one another’s ideas. FYI – we’ve decided to unite our brain power to create a fresh strategy for LA Preuss Consulting… Exciting times ahead!!!
This week has left me fascinated about all the possibilities digital marketing offers.
At Uni, we always talked about the importance of target group definition, segmentation and the setting of clear and measurable objectives. And yet, for projects, we would make up numbers out of thin air and our professors confirmed that without expensive market research, finding them out would be super difficult. But they were wrong! When you have a website and use the right analytical tools, it’s super easy! No need to make up numbers because, with these tools, you learn so much about the visitors and what they do on the website, essentially, providing you with incredible optimization opportunities.
We decided to go outside for bit of strategy-talk regarding LA Preuss Consulting’s business plan and were not only able to meet a grazing cow but had our first quick sales pitch in front of a neighboring business and hopefully soon-to-be customer…
As for my take-away of the day: creating a business plan and breaking it down into doable goals is great and can be very helpful for a business. Still, even the greatest ideas won’t get you anywhere if you’re not willing to implement them. And sometimes, doing so requires stepping outside your comfort zone, making phone calls and knocking on doors!
Lisa & I took part in a Google Analytics course today in Zurich where we had a look at the benefits of tracking website performance. Continue reading “Track Website Performance”
Life Of An Entrepreneur 101 