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Why Entrepreneurs should be active:

To many, entrepreneurs appear to live the dream life. They make their own rules, set their own hours, and appear totally in control of their lives. We all admire their passion, diligence, creativity, and drive. However, what many don’t see is the enormous sacrifices entrepreneurs make. Especially serious is the potential damage they do their physical and mental health. Owning a business means long hours, unrelenting movement, and serious mind-bending stress. It is not surprising that many entrepreneurs usually work themselves into early graves. Depression, anxiety, heart disease, insomnia, and addiction are just some of the ailments that frequently plague entrepreneurs.  We all know that we should take better care of ourselves, but for many, the opportunity cost of a couple hours of exercise is too great. Ambitious business owners believe that every waking hour should be spent tirelessly building the business.

It’s important to remember that adequate exercise and rest will definitely not doom your success. Instead, a healthy and active lifestyle is a necessary and rewarding investment. An entrepreneur’s health is perhaps his greatest asset. If he is unwell, he cannot perform his best and his business will suffer. In just a few hours, you can boost your mood, relieve stress, and ensure better sleep. You will feel and perform so much better. You need to temporarily remove yourself from the constant grind of being an entrepreneur and spend some time on yourself. To be successful, you need to be energetic, alert, and focused. Ultimately the goal is to achieve a better “work/life balance” and live a happier, healthier life.

3 Traits of a Great CEO

Organized

If you have ever been in the cockpit of an airplane, you know that the many tools a pilot needs are clearly and meticulously arranged. The speedometer, altimeter, and GPS are right in front of him, exactly where they need to be. A pilot knows precisely what he has to do and when he has to do it. If things ever go awry, he can rely on this system of organization.  A CEO, as the “pilot” of his company, needs the employ the same system of organization. If your instruments (financial statements, marketing reports, etc,) are missing or miscalculated, you can’t make the right decisions. In addition, your time, your most precious resource, should be spent on the important stuff, especially when it is getting hectic.  When things inevitably go wrong, you can trust that your system of organization will help you solve the problem.

“CEOs too, like great generals, need to inspire their “troops.””

Walks the Walk, Talks the Talk

One of the reasons George Washington was so revered by his soldiers was because he would fearless lead them into battle. Unlike other generals, he was on the front lines, leading the charge. CEOs too, like great generals, need to inspire their “troops.” They need to model the work ethic, attitude, and passion they hope to see in their employees. If the boss demands his workers should be responsible and diligent, he needs to model that behavior. Nothing inspires people like seeing their leader working just as hard, if not harder, than them. Not only will this yield inspiration, but respect as well. When your employees see how invested you are in the enterprise’s success, they will undoubtedly gain respect for you. When you actually “walk the walk” you become a much more effective leader.

Responds Well to Criticism

As many CEOs know too well, you can never be perfect. You constantly have to make decisions and any decision you make will inevitably be criticized. A big mistake is never listening to complaints and detractions. Too often, we take criticism to personally. John Wooden, the legendary college basketball coach, taught that “You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one“ The best CEOs listen to their detractors and reanalyze their decisions. You should not bend to the will of anyone, but instead realize you are not infallible. Take criticism, especially constructive criticism, as an opportunity to better yourself and the decisions you make. This way, you will constantly grow and improve.

Frequently Asked Questions: What's Handlr's Pricing?

We frequently get asked the question of, “What’s your pricing?” And we realized that this is something that needs a little bit of explanation. So, we decided to expand this conversation into a blog post where many other entrepreneurs in search of a business management software probably have the same question as well. Also, we want to open up the dialogue with our audience about their thoughts and opinions on this --please feel free to leave comments on this blog post at the end of your reading, we’d love to hear your feedback!

Handlr For Businesses

Our Handlr Partners have complete access to the entire platform for free. Seriously! Businesses can apply, receive an invitation code from us, fill out their company profile/information, and voila! Businesses can manage their team members’ schedules, manage customers, see reports, invoices, and more. To paint a detailed portrait of the whole process, the free version means that you can create appointments in your schedule, and whoever is assigned to the job will get a notification on the Handlr Team App (given that they’ve downloaded this on their smartphone) that they’ve been scheduled for an appointment. The team member can get directions to the job, check-in to the service, check-out when completed (business and customer gets notified of this), and the business gets paid instantly. It’s a beautiful thing.

Handlr for Customers

Let’s say your customers contact you directly to book an appointment with your business. Well, that gets pretty hard to manage when your business is expanding, and before the day is over you have hundreds of booking requests in your inbox, texts, voicemails and other channels of communications you have. By becoming a Handlr Partner, your customers can book you through our Handlr App. And we charge a 15% service cost that customers pay for the convenience. There’s more in it for them. Your customers can instantly chat within the app with you, and the assigned employee about their booking. The team member can send photos and updates about the service to your customer in real-time. And the customer can trust your business that the job is getting done with Handlr’s GPS tracking. They can also book other services on the app as well. For instance, if you’re a dog walking business, your customers can book a Private Dog Walk with you, and also find a local dog groomer on the app as well. We onboard complementary business so both businesses swap customers and your company grows.

We’ve had businesses that choose to have their customers pay for the 15% cost, or, some of our other Handlr Partners cut their prices back a tad and absorb the cost. There’s no right or wrong way of approaching this, just whatever works best for your business model.

The Takeaways

Handlr is free to use for businesses and that includes the entire dashboard log-in with 100% access to all the business management tools, and team member Handlr app. When customers book you through the app, the customer gets charged a 15% fee of your service price and they get to easily book you and many other services on Handlr.

If you are interested in seeing Handlr’s magic in action, schedule a demo with a rep, or apply to be a Handlr Partner here.

For any questions, feel free to email us at hello@myhandlr.com or leave a comment below.

Let’s Take Customer Relationships Back to the Basics...

Blake Warren

We recently talked about tips for successfully utilizing a CRM (Read it here), something you’re probably already using as a business owner. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is typically a software that helps your business keep track of… what exactly? Well, obviously things like phone numbers, addresses, lead status, purchase history, etc. But what do these things embody? It’s in the name; a CRM is a Management tool for Customer Relationships. So let’s discuss Customer Relationships, that you can better understand how to foster and keep those very things you need a CRM for. Google the words “customer relationships” and you’ll be met with a dizzying amount of articles, books, DVD’s, Podcasts and videos promising the newest techniques, software and guides to CRM. It can be daunting to say the least. Let’s take a step back and look at the basics of customer relationships.

Stay Relatable

As a consumer, would you rather do business with a personable company than the corporate machine of a big business? Of course you would. Having personality disarms your customers, they will be more likely to trust your recommendations. Don’t try to deceive your customers, are you a small company trying to get your foot in the door? Show it. Working out of your moms garage? Show it. Customers will be further compelled to give you their business if they can see you as a peer.

Understand what makes your product or service desirable.

It’s impossible to be relatable if you don’t have a true understanding of what drives your customers. It’s easy to think about your business concept from the wrong shoes. As a business owner you may have no problem coming up with reasons for making your product or offering your service. But you need to spend a lot of time looking at it from the perspective of potential customers. What are the real reasons they might be purchasing your product? What real-life circumstances lead them to booking your service? This is an easy exercise to shrug off, “Of course I know why people want what i’m selling”. But the more you explore this practice, the more you discover about your customers and how to serve them.

Take a look at the customer experience from start to finish.

Even if you simply sell an online product, what is the experience of the purchasing process like for your customers? How do you handle inquiries, returns, confirmations, packaging? Everything, no matter how small adds to the customer experience. Obviously this entails much more for a service-based business and should be treated as such. Every aspect of the process should be scrutinized until the customer experience is perfected.

Be Honest

The biggest downside of the countless books, products and techniques that you’ll find when researching this subject is that through all the fluff, we’ve been taught to do anything but be honest with our customers. We’re told to follow a call sheet, distract our customers with special offers, or avoid gripes they may have with our product or service using fancy techniques. The reality is, your customers will appreciate your honesty more than you may know. Calling up a customer and asking for feedback, apologizing for a mistake or simply telling them how much you appreciate their business can take you farther than any call-sheet or internet technique.