1. Trust Your Team Delegation. Empowerment. Call it what you wish. You cant do everything by yourself. Hire the best people, train them well, then get out of their way.

2. Communicate You may know where your small business is heading, but if your employees dont, they cant help you get there. Make time to share with them on a daily basis.

3. Smash The Box Its a clichthink outside the box. What if there was no box? What could you do differently? Be innovativeand look for new ways to do everything you do better.

4. Ask Questions A good business philosophy to get to the root of an issue is to ask Why? seven times. Ask a lot of questionsto your customers, suppliers, employees and yourself.

5. Make It Easy Consider all the ways customers interact with your small business. Where are the barriers, and how can you remove them to enhance the customer experience?

6. Plan For Success A business plan isnt something you do before opening, then stick in a drawer and forget. Take time to update yours each yearfocusing on new opportunities.

7. Stand On A Chair In Dead Poets Society, students stand on their desks to get a different perspective. Do this at your small business location, and youll see lots of thingsfor the first time.

8. Follow The System Stick with your proven business practices...and show your employees how to do the same. Youll go farther faster.

9. Educate Make time on a regular basis to train your team. Theyll appreciate your investment in their personal and professional growth, and theyll be more productive for you.

10. Take Five Owning your own small business means taking on a lot of challenges and pressures. Make sure you step away occasionally and refresh. Youll be more energized when you return.

11. Get Close Step outside the walls of your office/location, and ground poundgetting to know your customers and staying involved in your community. It leads to geometric returns.

Copyright 2005 by Success Handler, LLC. All rights reserved.

David Handler

The Coach, David Handler, is the founder of Success Handler, LLC, and specializes in helping franchisees, franchisors and business leaders find clarity and take action. He understands the challenges of running a business, because he?s been there ? as a franchisee, franchisor, business owner, corporate leader and trainer. Much like sports coaches, his coaching will show you how to compete on a level playing field in your industry.

There are two ?I?s? in accountability ? You and Me! Together we will achieve your destiny.?

David worked with ABC Sports, ESPN and regional sports programmers HSE (now Fox Sports Southwest) and Raycom. He produced more than 700 live events, including NFL football, NCAA football and basketball, and Major League Baseball. Career highlights were broadcasting Nolan Ryan's 5,000th career strikeout and two of the 15 perfect games in MLB history (Mike Witt-1984 and Kenny Rogers-1994). The second earned a national Telly Award for best sports production and was nominated for an ESPY.

In 1988, David awoke in the middle of the night from a dream and wrote down four words: "Notre Dame, football, travel." Partnering with two lifelong friends, David helped Anthony Travel become the Official Travel Service of the University of Notre Dame, Disney's Wide World of Sports? complex and several other universities. Over one five-year period, Anthony Travel was named one of the 100 fastest growing privately held companies in Dallas on three occasions.

After selling his interest in the travel company in 1998, David joined the International Center for Entrepreneurial Development (ICED) - a family of franchises with nine brands and more than 1,000 locations around the world. As senior VP in charge of marketing, he developed creative programs that franchisees used to gain new customers and increase profits.

David founded Success Handler to utilize the skills gained during his 23-year business career in a coaching capacity with franchisees, franchisors and business owners.