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4 Basic Elements of Great Storytelling Knowing how to craft an origin story is a fundamental skill for entrepreneurs.

Everyone has a personal story to tell. Some people are just better than others at telling those stories.

Learning to craft and share an origin story is a valuable communication skill that every entrepreneur and small business should strive to sharpen. Storytelling skills will help you differentiate your idea or the products and services you sell.

An origin story means exactly what it says–it reveals the origin of an idea. Where I live, in Silicon Valley, the most famous origin story started in a garage. It goes like this:

In 1976, two friends started a computer company. One person was a brilliant engineer, and the other had a passion for marketing and design. Together, the two Steves (Jobs and Wozniak) created Apple in the garage of the house where Jobs lived with his parents. Together, they revolutionized the industry and made computers easy to use for the average person. In 1985, Jobs was kicked out of his own company after a failed boardroom coup. He returned triumphantly a decade later to save the company from bankruptcy and turn around its fortunes. In January 2022, the brand founded by two guys in a garage became the first U.S. company to reach a market value of $3 trillion.

The preceding paragraph is a short origin story of about 100 words. It contains four elements that origin stories should offer: structure, characters, conflict, and resolution.

Structure

An origin story is just that–a story. And stories, according to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, should have a beginning, middle, and end. Aristotle’s advice still holds 2,300 years later.

The beginning of a story establishes the setting and the characters. The middle contains hurdles or conflict, and the ending resolves the conflict.

Characters

An origin story captures the company’s values, mission, strategy, and purpose. Those are abstract concepts that need to be fleshed out.

We see ourselves in other people’s stories. The key word is “people.” Abstract ideas can be embedded in a good origin story, but real people should be the ones who carry the message. If those people challenge the status quo in some way, they’re even more compelling to follow.

Conflict

I went to a screening of the Aaron Sorkin movie on Steve Jobs. Sorkin, a famed screenwriter, was there to explain the premise, and his was to focus on the tension between Jobs and the Apple board. Every great story is about “intention and obstacle,” Sorkin says. In other words, a character wants something and something gets in the way.

Overcoming hurdles is an essential ingredient in storytelling to keep listeners riveted to the narrative.

Resolution

A story must end. But how? With closure and, in most cases, a happily-ever-after. After a character struggles and overcomes daunting odds, audiences are relieved that the person finds what they’re looking for–or at least is transformed by the experience.

In a business origin story, the ending simply wraps up the story with a solution to the problem or a resolution to the conflict.

I’ve been a full-time CEO communication coach for nearly two decades, and I can confidently say that investors, the media, and the public all crave an origin story. But they don’t want to hear just any story. Instead, they want a compelling story that pulls them along on the journey and inspires them at the end.

3 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Improve Their Delegation Skills

Doing everything when you’re a scrappy startup owner can feel glamorous and exciting. So can jumping out of an airplane. But you shouldn’t leap without a parachute—and you shouldn’t lead without accepting the value of learning to delegate.

Now, you may find delegation challenging. Maybe you’ve just always been a hands-on person and can’t stand the idea of losing a grip on the creation process. Perhaps you tried to delegate once and ended up with disastrous results. Regardless, you’re only hampering the growth of your company by trying to handle everything.

Even if you can do one particular task better than others, your time could be more valuable elsewhere. Enter strategic delegation. While you don’t want to take a knee-jerk approach and shuffle off all your tasks, it’s also not ideal to just dole out a couple of easy assignments and call it a day.

To help you become a master of delegation, start with these three strategies. The first will get you mentally prepared to say goodbye to some of your to-do items. The second and third will allow you to maintain just enough control—without devolving into a micromanager—to be able to sleep at night.

1. Believe that you can’t and shouldn’t do it all.

The idea that you’re not superhuman is a tough pill to swallow, particularly if you have a lone wolf working style. Your ambitious entrepreneurial brain will push back against the notion that you can’t be a hyper-productive army of one. But if you take on too many responsibilities and push yourself too hard, you’ll only end up burning out, which 52% of professionals have already experienced, according to an Indeed survey.

How can you adapt to the reality that your business won’t immediately crumble if your hands aren’t in everything? Start by dividing tasks into “A” and “B” categories. An A-level activity is best done by you or another executive, while B-level activities can be completed by others without any ill effect. Don’t forget that some tasks can be separated into smaller pieces and partially delegated.

Now, take all your B-level activities off your plate by delegating them to specific employees or even independent contractors. For example, you might need to speak with your biggest clients on the phone every month. Do you need to set up those appointments yourself, or could someone else do it for you? Even if you spend only one hour a month texting and emailing clients to set up check-ins, that’s an hour you can devote to more A-level activities that would benefit more from your attention.

Still feeling a bit queasy at the nation of handing over responsibilities, particularly to newer, untested team members? Ask yourself this question: Would you feel more comfortable and confident if you knew your employees were going to act exactly as you would? The answer is probably “yes,” which points to the need for improved process documents like standard operating procedures.

You can construct as many standard operating procedures as you want for repeated or even one-off procedures. For example, many human resources departments have procedure checklists for onboarding workers. The benefit of checklists is that anyone can follow them. This maintains a high degree of consistency and standardization, which is essential for a strong new-hire experience and your peace of mind. Just about anything you plan to delegate could be documented as a standard procedure.

If you’re looking for inspiration for setting up your standard operating procedures, know that you aren’t expected to reinvent the wheel. Some software platforms feature SOP creation templates. On the other hand, you could always take a more do-it-yourself approach and customize your documentation based on your and your employees’ learning styles. Anything from a recorded instructional video to a step-by-step “how-to” guide can be valuable. Once you have your SOPs in place, you can feel less concerned when delegating.

3. Monitor your delegated tasks with some help from technology.

Just because you delegate an activity doesn’t mean you won’t want to keep tabs on its progress. Nevertheless, you won’t get far if you ask someone to perform a task and then spend all your time looking over the person’s shoulder. You’ll not only waste any returns you would have gotten, but you’ll also probably disempower your employee. That’s hardly a wise move, given that U.S. employees say one of the biggest reasons for leaving their last jobs was that they didn’t feel trusted and valued by their managers and organizations.

The workaround for this is as close as your tech stack. Plenty of systems exist that will allow you to monitor your employees’ individual and collective work. For instance, project management software can enable you to know at a glance whether anything’s been done on a task that you delegated last week. You don’t have to bother anyone to log into your account and, if all goes well, to put your mind to ease.

With that said, try not to get into vendor overload. As Jennifer Sun, CEO of compliance software company StarCompliance, explains, too many portals can make it hard to get a comprehensive understanding of what’s happening. In her experience, overbaking your efforts “results in tremendous duplication and a wastefulness that runs counter to the benefits of using a vendor in the first place.” Sun suggests streamlining your technologies into a single system to avoid turning your delegation dreams into a nightmare.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhettpower/2022/04/03/3-ways-entrepreneurs-can-improve-their-delegation-skills/?sh=4e308f004bcc

7 Online Business Ideas for Practical Content Entrepreneurs

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already been brainstorming online business ideas — and for good reason.

We’re living in a time of heightened financial fear, and I’m sure many of you are struggling with insecurities about employment, as the pandemic and automation are pushing people out of the workforce.

More so, we’re seeing inflation rates skyrocket and wages aren’t adjusting in proportion. These are scary times, indeed.

This is why it’s more important than ever for you to start developing methods to generate your own income. You can’t depend on a “steady job” anymore (there’s no such thing).

You need to get out there into the marketplace, sharpen your content marketing and copywriting skills, and create an online business for yourself. It’s a necessity.

How to come up with online business ideas

Ready to get to work?

One of the most common pitfalls for new content entrepreneurs is that they don’t know how to come up with online business ideas.

It’s not enough to say you want to start a business, you must also have a plan.

In this article, I’m going to share seven online business ideas, and I’ll detail the pros and cons of each method to help you shape your plan.

Let’s start with …

The two types of online businesses

Although specific methods and strategies can vary, there are only two core types of online businesses.

They are:

Selling a service
Selling a product

Any online business idea will fall into one of these two categories.

First, we’ll begin with freelance services.

1. Freelancing

Freelancing is one of the best online business ideas.

Offering a service doesn’t require you build a fancy website, invest money into marketing, or raise capital to build your product.

As a freelancer, your first and only priority is to get a client. At most, you need a laptop, some storyselling skills, and a willingness to get started.

Now, there are ways you can approach freelancing to maximize your chances of success. Let’s look at three critical steps.

Step #1: Decide on the exact services you provide

Everyone has skills, and you have plenty to offer the market.

Are you creating a writing business? Starting an accounting firm? Are you a killer photographer or a whiz at social media marketing?

Decide on the services you’ll offer, and create a plan for how you’ll present these services.

It’s tempting to want to create packages and productized services (and I highly recommend you do at some point), but in the beginning you want to take on all of the business you can to gain the most experience.

Over time, your reputation will build and your referral business will start generating bigger profits.

At this point, you can start to charge more for your creative work and be more selective about the clients you want to work with — as well as possibly say goodbye to a current client you might have outgrown.

Step #2: Build a brand for your online business idea

Once you have a few jobs under your belt, it’s critical that you begin marketing your services.

The biggest mistake freelancers make is that they sit back and wait for business to come to them. You have to actively get out there and market yourself to get new clients faster:

Create a website
Generate awareness through business blogging and social media
Demonstrate how your services can benefit your target prospects

Step #3: Transition to building an agency

Freelancing is great, but it can only get you so far.

Eventually, you’ll have more business than you can effectively serve. The last thing you want is unhappy clients and it’s very common for freelancers to get in over their heads.

That’s why you want to be actively replacing yourself as you grow.

For some of you reviewing the different types of online business ideas, staying small and flexible is what you want.

You want to work with a few clients and do freelance work on the side. If that’s your goal, then great! I support you.

But for those of you who plan to transition from a freelancer to an agency owner (with employees, departments, payroll, etc.), I suggest you plan for this transition right from the beginning.

To summarize, freelancing is the perfect online business idea to get you started, because it doesn’t require any upfront costs and it’s profitable as soon as you get your first client.

But as is the case with any service business, it won’t have the same scalability as other online business ideas.

2. Paid newsletter

I love paid newsletters, and I think they’re one of the best options to get started.

Paid newsletters are great because they’re straightforward. They’re one of the only online business ideas that don’t have a separation between the content you create to market the product and the product itself.

In freelancing, or SaaS products, or even membership communities, the content you create is used to grow awareness to a product or service. But with newsletters, the content itself is the product.

This makes it much easier for you to stay focused on your writing. You can put your full focus on creating the best newsletter possible without having to get into the weeds with other management tasks.

One of the most exciting aspects of starting a paid newsletter is the monthly recurring revenue, or MRR.

Any online business idea that monetizes with MRR is worth considering because consistent cash flow will generate.

This is especially attractive because a paid newsletter can be highly profitable and engaging. There are plenty of examples of people making six figures or more without needing to hire a single employee.

Source : https://copyblogger.com/online-business-ideas/