Are you always the first one into the office for your business? Why? You don't need to be.

Hey there,

Starting the business day is another of those processes we all too often take for granted. We don't really think about how to do it. We just turn up, switch a few things on, and dive into our day.

But what if you did stop and think about it? What if you designed the way your business day starts on purpose?

What if you designed it to maximise the chances of a good day for your clients, your team and yourself?

What if you designed it so it doesn't always have to be you that kicks everything off?

That's what this newsletter is about - designing the way your business starts it's day on purpose. To do that we need to cover:

• What does it mean for your business to be 'Open for Business'?
• When does your business need to be 'Open for Business'?
• Who should do the work of 'Opening for Business'?

Whether clients physically come to you for your services, or you deliver to them remotely, and even asynchronously, it might seem pretty obvious what 'Open for Business' means.

But literally or metaphorically flipping a sign from 'Closed' to 'Open' and unlocking the door, doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to serve clients.

In generic terms, what's the least you need to be ready to serve clients or customers?

• Someone and/or something needs to be available to serve them.
• Your product or service needs to be available for them to buy or use.
• Your space needs to be attractive and safe for them to enter.
• Everything you and your team might need to deliver the service must be in place, up and running.

A couple of examples might help:

Example 1 - our virtual office service:

Someone and/or something needs to be available to serve customers or clients.

• People to answer the phones

Your product or service needs to be available for them to buy or use.

• Phone numbers for our clients' clients to call. We had a bank of them we gave out to clients.

The space needs to be attractive and safe for them to enter.

• A way of answering calls that was customised to each client, so that for their client, it felt like they were speaking to the client's team.

Everything you and your team might need to deliver the service must be in place, up and running.

• Any out-of-hours messages were listend to, logged and acted on.
• Phone lines and handsets for calls to come in and out.
• Specialist call logging software so that our team knew who was calling, could record messages and send a report to the client at the end of each working day. Plus Email software for sending the reports.
• A workstation for each team member, with a computer, access to the call logging software, email and internet, and our shared drives.
• A server to run the specialist software and shared drives on.

Example 2 - an indie seaside gift shop:

Someone and/or something needs to be available to serve customers or clients.

• At least one person to serve customers who come in.

Your product or service needs to be available for them to buy or use.

• Stock ready to sell - priced and on display.

Your space needs to be attractive and safe for them to enter.

• A clean, tidy and enticing shop with room to display products and where people can move around safely and comfortably.

Everything you and your team might need to deliver the service must be in place, up and running.

• A way to take card and cash payments
• Some space to store spare stock and a way for whoever is there to re-stock displays
• An A-board they put outside to let people know they are open.

Example 3: Their online gift shop:

Someone and/or something needs to be available to serve customers or clients.

• An attractive, working e-commerce website, accurately listing all available products
• At least one person to pick, pack and despatch online orders.

Your product or service needs to be available for them to buy or use.

• Stock available to pick, pack and despatch.

Your space needs to be attractive and safe for them to enter.

• An attractive, working e-commerce website, accurately listing all available products

Everything you and your team might need to deliver the service must be in place, up and running.

• A space to store stock and packing materials, plus space to pack and despatch products.
• Stock managment software for keeping track of stock. Plus courier software for sending parcels.
• For some specialist products, additional equipment to produce the product, e.g. a t-shirt printing press. Plus someone trained to use it.

Create your own 'Open for Business Checklist'

Now you've got the idea, it's time to start working on your own 'Open for Business' process.

To help you, I've created a simple 'Open for Business' checklist spreadsheet for you to copy and download. As you work through this Newsletter, fill in your copy of the spreadsheet to create our own unique checklist. This checklist is an example of what I call a 'Prop' - a thing that a person in your business needs to be able to properly play their Role for your business.

Ready?

Step 1: think through what it means to be 'Open for Business'.

Think about your own business. What does it mean for your clients, to be 'Open for Business'?

• Who or what is the minimum that needs to be available to serve them?
• What's the minimum that needs to be available for them to buy?
• What's the minimum that needs to happen to make the space attractive and safe for them to enter?
• What's the minimum that needs to in place, up and running in order for you and your team to be able to deliver?

Somewhere, list the minimum items in each of the above categories that must be in place every morning for your business to be truly ready to serve your clients.

Now, for each item on this list answer these questions:

• How will you know it's in place?
  • Write down how you will check. It's the checking that becomes the task for your 'Open For Business' checklist.
    • Give it a name in the 'Task' column - e.g. 'check phones'.
    • Then put how you do the check into the 'How to do it' column. For example, we would check that the phones were working by picking up a handset and listening for a dial tone. We would check the internet by powering up a computer and checking we access out own website.
    • Estimate the amount of time it will take to check each item on the list. Assume it's all going to work as expected. The aim is for the checklist to be reasonably quick to do. We're talking minutes here. Add this to the 'How long it should take' column.
• What happens if something on the list isn't in place?
  • If you can continue to serve customers or clients without this thing in place, remove it from the list.
  • Otherwise, what will you do?
    • Can you fix it yourself? If so, write down brief instructions.
    • Who do you call? Write down contact details.
    • Who needs to know? Write down who to notify.
    • How will you notify them? Write down brief instructions.
  • Write down what to do in the 'What to do if it fails' column of your spreadsheet. If the instructions are more than a sentence or so long, write them up in a separate document and put a link to the document in the 'What to do if it fails' column.

Step 2) Think through when your business needs to be 'Open'?

To be truly ready to serve clients everything necessary to be able to serve them must be in place before the first customer arrives or calls.

Which in turn means that someone has to be there to get them done. And since you're not in the game of stealing time from your team, you need to pay them from the moment they have to be present to do all this.

From your partially completed checklist, add up all the time it takes to get ready for business, so you can allow for it in the working day.

You can do this 2 ways - pay for the extra time before opening hours, or change your opening hours to suit the length of time it takes to get properly ready.

For example, our virtual office kept the usual office hours, so everything needed to be ready for 9am and available until 5:30pm. That meant at least one person came in at 8:30am to open up, and at least one person stayed until 6pm to close up.

On the other hand, the indie seaside gift shop could shorten it's opening hours to suit the behaviour of its clientele. Their customers were holiday makers and day-trippers, who got up late, and were ready for their tea by 4pm. So their seaside shop opens at 11am and closes at 4pm. That means one person can run the shop from 10:30am to 4:30pm.

How you handle this is entirely up to you, depending on how you want to work, how your team wants to work, and the expectations of your clients.

But don't automatically assume that clients will object to shorter hours. If you explain why your hours are the way they are - to ensure a more reliable service for them, and a happier, more engaged team - they are very likely to accept a change. And if they don't maybe you aren't right for them anyway.

So, decide: when does your working day start and end?

• Put these times in the 'Our working day starts at:' and 'Our working day ends at:' fields of the spreadsheet.

And what are your opening hours for Clients?

• Put these time in the 'We open for Clients at:' and 'We close for Clients at:' fields of the spreadsheet.

Step 3) Think through who can do the work of 'Opening for Business'

I'm betting that at the moment, you are the person who's first in in the morning. And if anyone is checking off your list of things that need to be ready to serve clients, it's you.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

Now you've written down what needs to happen to get ready to open, other people can do it instead of you.

All you need to decide now is who.

Here are the questions to ask yourself:

• Should one Role Open for Business every day? If so, which Role?
  • Could it be whoever arrives first?
  • Could people who play that Role take it in turns?
  • Could you have a rota?
• Or, could you split the list? Do some of the tasks fit with certain Roles rather than others?
  • For example, one of my clients split their list into 2 parts: an initial basic 'Open Up', and a more comprehensive 'Open the Office'.
  • For them, 'Open Up' consisted of simply, unlocking the front door, turning off the alarm, opening the blinds in reception and if necessary, putting the heating on. So that whoever arrived next know someone was in. 'Open Up' was done by whoever arrived first in the morning, regardless of whether they were the boss or the apprentice.
  • 'Open the Office' took much more effort as it involved testing the phones, internet etc.; setting up the reception area and meeting room; loading printers; filling the drinks cabinet and generally making sure the office wasn't just 'open', but the 'stage', set to welcome a client into their wonderful world. This part of opening for business fitted perfectly with one particular Role, so that was who took responsibility for it.

Whatever you decide, put the Role name into the 'Responsible Role' column of the spreadsheet next to each item on your list.

Finally, if your list has ended up being really long, here's another idea to think about:

• Could any of the tasks be done at the end of the day, rather than at the beginning?
  • If so, split your list into two: 'Open for Business' and 'Close for Business', and spread the tasks between the two sheets. We'll finish off 'Close for Business' next time.

One more thing:

Now you've got the minimum sorted, think about this:

Is there anything else that it would be useful to do at the beginning of the day, to get everyone well set up for the rest of it?

Maybe a quick stand-up meeting with the whole team?

• It could be as simple as a quick review of yesterday - What went well? What could we have done better?
• Or an opportunity to catch everyone up on each others' clients?
• Or a chance to highlight something that is making the job really difficult?
• Or a chance to let everyone know the business as a whole is doing?
• Or chance to celebrate an achievement?

Whatever you decide, add it to your list of 'Open for Business' tasks, with the time it takes, and a Responsible Role of 'everyone'.

That’s it.

Here’s what you learned today:

• You can design the way your start your business day on purpose, to maximise the chances of a good day for your clients, your team and yourself.
• When you open for business isn't written in stone. You can choose whatever works for you, your team and your clients. Just remember that if you expect your team to be there before you open and after you close, they need to be paid.
• When you capture this as a simple checklist, you can get other people to do it instead of you. That doesn't have to mean offloading it all onto one person, you can be creative about sharing the load by taking turns, or splitting responsibilities across Roles.

And once you've done all this, you've smashed down yet another barrier to taking that first short break from your business.

Go on, start creating your own unique 'Open for Business Checklist' today.

Let me know how you get on.

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Thanks for reading!

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