Just a  quick thought for the day.

I had run across this manifesto a couple of months ago but I couldn’t remember who had done it.  It turns out it is from entrepreneur Steve Blank.

I don’t work with a lot of start ups but I do work with a lot of business who, after several years of business, still behave like they are a start up without the testing and analysis that allows them to move forward.  At some point your business has to grow up.  Find what your business can excel in, find out who loves what you do and start selling to them.

No matter what kind of business you are in, you have to find that repeatable and scalable model.   The Customer Manifesto gives some great tips to get your business on the right track.

Just remember that a start up is temporary.

Enjoy and let me know your thoughts.

It’s not because we’re selfish it’s that there are times in our business when we get really focused on ourselves.

Chip and Dan Heath talked about the “Curse of Knowledge” in their book about crafting a message that sticks with people.  The idea is that we get so wrapped up into what we know and what we care about that we assume that everyone knows the same things and feels the same way.

This was a personal lesson that I learned early on in my management career.  When I first became a leader of people, I was under the mistaken impression that everyone would think they way I thought I do things they way I do things.  What I realized is that we all look at the world through a different lens and that’s a good thing.

So back to the “Curse of Knowledge”.  This is the very thing that proves costly to us when we put together a business or put out a new product or service.  We assume that everyone wants what we want and would approach things the way we do.  Then they don’t.

When we are focused on our story we are not focused on our client’s story.  When we aren’t focused on our client’s story, it’s impossible for us to know what they truly want.

It’s important to understand and know what you stand for.  It’s equally as important to take what you stand for and gain a deep understanding of how that supports your client’s values.

Here are some questions to ask about your business.

What assumptions have you made about your client’s and what they value?  How have you gone about testing these assumptions?  How can you better discover what it is that your client’s value?

What’s your client’s story?  Do you know?

PS… We put together the 7 most important questions that you should ask about your business and how to find the answers.  Understanding your client’s values is one of those questions.   Check out the free course here.  

When was the last time you asked yourself that question?  That question is relevant for you, your business or any other organization you are involved in.  When I talk about standing for something, I am talking about taking a stand but what I am really talking about is clarity.

Having clarity, particularly as a new business owner, is critical.  Without clarity you lack the ability to properly position the way that you create value for the world and solve problems.  One asset that clarity gives you is the ability to differentiate yourself.

Whether you are a business owner or an employee of a company, you have to be able to differentiate yourself from others.

I work with a lot of service businesses that can easily get lost in the shuffle: Chiropractors, Dentists, Martial Arts Instructors, Fitness Instructors, etc.  For these businesses whether they know it or not, differentiation is all they have.  Lack of differentiation equals missing a key sales tool for their business.

What if you don’t fall into one of the categories above?  You still need to differentiate to stand out.

What’s the best way to stand out?

The first thing that you should do is articulate what you stand for  or what you stand against.  We did this recently with the creation of our manifesto on Total Experience Design.  We created it so that every business that worked with us knew what we stood for.

Take a look at your business.  Are you clear on what you stand for? A better question, is everyone else clear?  If you are a newer business, do you see where articulating this creates a lot of power for you and your business?  You are positioning yourself with a purpose.  You are being you.

This is why out of the box, done for you, solutions don’t get results for people. 

Do you know what you stand for?  How can you find out?  When it comes to clarity, you can’t spend too much time on gaining as much of it as you possibly can.  Add some action to the equation and you have a winning formula for success.

Check out a copy of our Total Experience Design Manifesto.  We welcome any comments on how what we stand for resonates with you.

The simple tactic you should use to market your  business?  Education.  Specifically, using the knowledge that you have in your area of expertise and sharing that with the people that are going to be interested in that knowledge.

What could be simpler than sharing knowledge that you are already an expert in?  Every marketing tactic that you will attempt in your business has some sort of a learning curve associated with it.  Educating has the shortest of learning curves.

Educating your clients is easier than ever with blog sites, youtube, podcasting, social media, etc.  You have several platforms to deliver your message.  It’s just a matter of choosing the platform that works best.

What holds you back?

Is it time?  Educating your customers is too important to not do it.  Successful people have time for what’s important.  Are you worried that it’s not relevant?  The research from Harvard Business Review shows that customers are engaged in conversation about your product/service whether you are part of the conversation or not.  Maybe your apprehensive because you are worried that your content won’t be good or you don’t know where to start?

Here are some specific things for you to do to help you get started.

1.  Think about the most commonly misunderstood areas about your product and service.  You know what those are.  You probably already have a list of about 5-10 areas in your head.  Use those question to get you started on topics.
2. If you are worried that your content isn’t going to be good, do it anyway.  Initially, your content will most likely suck.  The process for improving that is called practice and unless you are Allen Iverson, then practice is a good thing.

You have the ability to market your business easier than ever.  Utilizing the knowledge that already have about your product/service is simple and with a little practice will be an effective way to pull customers to your business.  Start educating your customers and let them know that you care about them.

At the end of your talk, 100 people take action on the book that you are offering them.

You take these 100 names and give them to your sales team who then tries to up-sell them into a higher ticket product that you offer.

15 of those people buy making your time spent at the event profitable.

You then proceed to ignore the other 85 people who had expressed some interest in what you do.

Those 85 people just hit a dead end in your business.

If you know anything about persuasion architecture then you know that there are certain people that pounce on opportunities without much thought.  You should try and sell a larger package to that person immediately because if you give them too much time, you will lose them. In fact I expect that this post will resonate with that type of buyer most.

But what about the rest of us?

The rest of the world wants to build a little bit more of a relationship.  I liken this to meeting someone at the bar for the first time.  When you meet them, do you immediately ask them to sleep with you?  If your answer was “yes” then you have bigger problems then marketing so stop reading now.  Most reasonable people would not take this approach.  They may start with simply buying someone a drink and getting to know them a little better.

Your business is no different.  You have to nurture your leads and bring them in closer to you and give them clarity of what it is that you do and how you can solve their problems or improve their lifestyle.

In the above speaking scenario, a great opportunity exists for business owners to drop those leads into an e-mail management service like iContact or Aweber and start to build a relationship with the people who don’t buy immediately.

Most small businesses miss that step.  They try one campaign for a group of people and when that doesn’t work they abandon those people and go out to pursue a different audience.  That wastes your business time and money.

In marketing you have a loyalty loop and a sales loop.  It’s important that the loops by seamless abd direct your potential customers to where they need to go next.  Inbound marketer, Hubspot, talks about using CRMs to help you close sales loops in your business and track results to see where your efforts are best served.

The moral of the story for your marketing efforts is to not leave your potential clients at dead ends of your sales processes.  It’s much easier to nurture the leads you have than to go out and constantly find new ones.

How can your business better nurture leads?  What’s worked for you?

“I am not sure what it is that you do.”

“My friend told me that I shouldn’t use your product or service.”

“I can get it cheaper somewhere else.”

As a business owner, you will occasionally hear statements like the ones above from the public.  This especially true if the business is newer.   Whether you want them to or not, your customers have concerns about your product/service during your relationship with them.

Now I know what you are thinking, how can I keep my customers from thinking like this?

You can’t.

But here’s what you can do. 

You can get out in front of the conversation and manage the conversations that your customers are having in their head.

How do you do that?

The first thing that you can do is compile a list like the one I have above and put together a list of the most commonly asked questions/concerns about your business.

You knew that right.  So now what do you do?  Most businesses address with the famous FAQ page on their site.  An FAQ page might get read by a methodical type person but that’s probably about it.  You don’t need to abandon a FAQ page but you can do more.  What about the rest of us?

This is where technology comes in.  The ability to post videos on Youtube as well as post written information through blog platforms like WordPress make creating targeted content, that addresses specific questions that your customers have, easier than ever to produce.

You know about blogging and you have no doubt watched many videos on Youtube.  What you haven’t done is mapped out a schedule for addressing some of the most frequent questions that your customers have about your business and then use tools like Youtube and WordPress to create the content.

Keep in mind that your customers no doubt have concerns that they aren’t sharing with you and your business.  You can’t stop them from thinking but you can put your content in front of them to help them see and think about your business in ways that you haven’t thought of before.

What could that look like for your business?

As I am writing this, I can’t help but think about my time in Corporate America.  The motto in our office was never admit you were wrong in your dealing with a client.  Apologies lead to lawsuits.  We would say bullshit things to clients like…”I’m sorry you feel this way….”  The goal was to always put the issue back on the customer.  It’s wasn’t us that had the problem it was the idiot client.

I’m sure many of you can relate to this on both sides.  It’s really a shame too because this issue is getting worse not better.  With the proliferation of lawsuits, everyone’s afraid to be a human being.

This presents both an issue and an opportunity for business owners.  The challenge comes from being surrounded by a bunch of people who refuse to take ownership.  The opportunity comes from being surrounded by these same people.

See the great news is that not accepting responsibility has become the norm and people are sick of it.  Want to surprise someone?  Own your mistakes.  Admit you are wrong.

Want to build a deep connection with your clients?  Apologize to them and mean it.   Doing this separates you from the droves of people who lack character and are only concerned about covering their ass.

In his book, The 5 Laws the Determine All Of Life’s Outcomes, Brett Harward talks about how we receive criticism from people.  Most of the time, we try and refract that criticism like a prism refracts light.  We take some of the criticism but rarely do we accept all of it.

Brett challenged himself to start taking in all of the criticism that he received from people and saw tons of opportunity to improve that didn’t exist before.  The best part about this is that you can really build connections with people when they see that you are willing to listen to what they have to say about your product/service.

We worry a lot about standing out from the crowd and getting people to know us.  The great news is that you don’t have to resort to Jersey Shore style buffoonery to stand out.  You just have to show people that you care about them.  Admitting you’re wrong when you make mistakes and apologizing for it is a great first step.

Before I get into the resources let me tell you about some recent inspiration that I received that help get me out of my rut.  I spent some time in Houston, TX recently working on my presentation skills.  During this time of listening and engaging with other speakers, it became abundantly clear that there were several areas of my brand and my business that I was flat out ignoring.  It felt like a punch in the stomach and I hadn’t even presented my material yet!

Going through this powerful learning experience it reminded me of a powerful lesson that helped me break out of my holding pattern in business.

The powerful resource centers around people.  More specifically, here are a few tips on using people to achieve breakthroughs in your business:

Tip #1-  Hire a coach or a mentor-  As much as you would like to think that you can look at yourself objectively,  desire in this case is not enough.  A blind spot is a blind spot.  Going to the speaking boot camp in Houston reminded me of this. You need to have professionals looking at what you are doing and giving you that objective instruction.

Tip #2- Get out of your circle- You can’t achieve breakthroughs in your business and life if you are around the same people day in and day out.  It’s not that your circle of influence is bad.  It’s just that nothing is changing.  Breaking out allows you to find new people with new ideas and expands your network.

Tip #3- Get out there- Start exposing yourself to new content and information.  There is so much great content out there and so many smart people, I promise that if you start looking today, you won’t run out of people to meet and content to experience.

Tip #4- Build a better relationship with yourself- This may sound a little counterintuitive but many times we don’t spend enough quality time with ourselves. When was the last time that you spent quiet time with yourself?   Here’s what I do during this quiet time.   There’s literally a gold mine right between your ears.  It’s time to start mining it.

Stuck in a holding pattern in your business or life?  Try the above tips and gain that additional perspective that you didn’t even know you needed.

PS… Speaking of perspective.  This is why we created the My Business World coaching club.  Connect with business owners and content that is fresh and relevant every single month.  Talk to you later.

“My business isn’t growing.”

Have you ever complained about the above scenarios in your business?  I know I have.  There’s a funny thing about the above statements.  The funny thing is the above statements are about ourselves.

What’s funny about that?

We don’t create a business for ourselves.

This is where I also have an issue with personal branding.  While I do think that you need to build notoriety in your particular field, what gets lost in the process is that you are in business to help other people.

Thus the title of this post.  Do something worthy of being noticed.  Doing does not consist of being interviewed on a big TV show or radio program.  It doesn’t consist of you getting your picture taken with Donald Trump.  It’s not about how many followers that you have on Twitter or fans on Facebook.

Greatness=Execution

The great ones can execute or as Seth Godin put it they “ship”.  They create value.  They look at what they can do to improve the world.  Constantly.

I talked about branding a while ago and how true branding happens from the inside out.  People focus a lot on their brand, whether it be personal or business.  They seem to forget that their brands are tied to actions.  I believe the saying is that you can polish a turd but in the end, it’s still a turd.

** Editors Note- The Mythbusters from the Discovery Channel actually did confirm that you could indeed polish a turd.

In essence you can look the part but still not deliver what people are expecting.

If you have complained about your business not growing or struggling, then it’s time to ask yourself what you can do for others to create the value that will get you noticed.  Your business is not about you.  How are you going to do something worthy of being noticed?

Because of the difficulty that businesses have breaking a new product into a new industry, there has been a lot of experimenting with different business models to see what works.  One of the most popular business models, particularly for tech services has been the Freemium Model.

From Freemium.org:  The term freemium is coined using two powerful words ‘Free’ and ‘Premium’. It describes a business model where in you give away a core product for free and then generate revenue by selling premium products to a small percentage of free users.

Freemium came about to help new businesses with new technology, break down the barriers to business entry.  By offering their service for free to users, the hope is that people will love the service, upgrade when they need to and tell other people about it.

This helps these new tech businesses establish some legitimacy in the market and give them the ability to raise further capital to push the project forward.

There are several popular companies that have used this model with varying success:  Pandora, Evernote and Dropbox to name a few.  I use Dropbox which is essentially a file sharing service.  I get started using Dropbox when I owned a branding and design firm.  The service allowed us to more easily share large files with each other on projects.  True to the model, eventually we out grew our free service and had to pay for a premium model.

So what does this have to do with business owners who don’t operate primarily on the web?  The idea is that when you are getting started, no matter what industry you are in, what are some ways that you can establish legitimacy through “free”.

I am going to share some ideas in the next few days on different ways that newer businesses can leverage “free” to get established in their business.  In the meantime, think of ways that you can create value for people in a way that helps to move your business forward.

How have you used “free” to establish legitimacy for your business?

The topic was, what do you do with your Soul Purpose once you have an idea on what it is that you can do to create value in the world.

Chris is a unique financial coach in that he focuses on an individuals ability to create value in the world which then leads them to the ability to create more wealth.

On our call last week, I gave four points that I feel are critical to getting started:

1. Self Understanding-  Knowing what your skills are and how you can match those skills up with problems that need to be solved or value that needs to be created.

2. Build a Rep-  Are you getting out and letting the world know who you are and what you are exceptional at?

3. Understanding Your End Game-  Where do you want to go?  It doesn’t have to be perfect but do you have an idea?

4. Create Products and Services- Once you have the above things in place and while you have been doing the above things, hopefully you discovered ways to create products and services for your following.

You can listen to the rest of the call below.  As always, let me know what platform building questions I can answer for you.

That time is in the morning.  When I talk about creating a morning routine for productivity, creativity is one of the benefits to doing this.  It’s not just me who feels this way either.

I hit up my tweeps on Twitter and asked them when they are most creative and every person responded that their creative time was in the morning.  Some people said that morning is best even though they aren’t morning people.

It makes sense that creativity comes easiest during this time.  You are most likely well rested.  You don’t have any distractions and it’s quiet.  This is a perfect time to dive in and solve problems and create.

This creativity could come in the form of:

• solving a problem for your business
• making a video
• recording a podcast
• outlining a presentation
• writing a blog post or working on a book

I don’t want to say that you can’t do these things in the evening or afternoon but think about it.  In the evening you are spending time with your family.  You could be distracted because of your bad day at the office.  Most importantly you are probably tired.

Back to my comment earlier about moments of inspiration that hit at any time.  It’s important to carry around a journal with you as much as possible this way when you get an idea you can write it down immediately.  When you have good ideas, you always think that because they are so good that you will remember them and then you don’t.  Once your ideas are in a journal you can then revisit them during your creative time.

Do you have a morning routine that you are using to be creative?  If you don’t, what’s keeping you from doing it?  Get up tomorrow an hour earlier than usual and start doing the things that you have always dreamed about doing.

How often do you ask yourself the above question?  For most business owners who have enough to worry about.  Their website is often a forgotten tool specifically if you don’t rely on e-commerce to drive your business.

I interview Richard Swart of Aspen Web Services late last year about what business owners can do to improve their website and make money from their website efforts.

Richard gave me his 8 Deadly sins of website design. (I also recording this as a podcast which you can listen to below.)

Sin #1: Confusing Graphics-  We look at a website as a graphical piece but sometimes we forget that it needs to be functional.  Too many cute graphics and displays can have the opposite effect.

Sin #2: Overwhelming People With Content- You only have a short amount of time to get someone’s attention.  Giving them too much content on your home page can turn people off who are overwhelmed with what they are seeing.

Sin #3: Too Many Choices-  Follow me on Twitter.  Like me on Facebook.  Sign up for my newsletter.  What do I do?  I see this a ton with websites where they have 10 things they want you to do on their home page.

Sin #4: Being Rude- People who are visiting your website are guests and should be treating accordingly.  Make sure they know what to do and how to navigate your website.

Sin #5: Lying To People-  Most small business owners aren’t trying to purposely deceive people but sometimes it happens unintentionally.  There are also times where it is intentional.  Just make sure that when people click on a link that they get what they are expecting.

Sin #6: Not Providing Enough Reassurance-  You need to reassure your visitors that they came to the right place.  Make sure they understand what you do and how you can help them right away.  Testimonials are also a great tool here as well.

Sin #7: Invasion of Privacy-  When you are collecting information from people get what you need and no more.  Asking for too much info and people start getting leery.

Sin #8: Ignore Your Customer- So your customer signs up for a newsletter or buys a book from you and then you never talk to them again.  Once your client engages with you.  Engage back and build a relationship not a one sell stand.

Your website for your small business can be a money generator, credibility builder and an engagement tool.  Take a look at your website and see if you are committing any of the deadly sins of website design.

Lyrics from the Theme From Mahogany

If you have shopped at a grocery store or if your mom is a music fan, you have probably heard the above song by Diana Ross.  Me?  I’m not ashamed to admit that I am a R&B junkie and I love Diana Ross and many other artists from that era.  You probably didn’t come here to hear me wax poetic about 70′s R&B but I do want to talk about the business lesson from the above tune.

Bear with me as I set a little bit of context.  The movie Mahogany is about a woman who rises up from poverty to become world famous fashion designer.  In the midst of her success there becomes the realization that she has left true love behind.  The movie makes love and career an either/or proposition and the wonder for what might have been sets in for Diana’s character.  I don’t necessarily agree with the premise entirely but let me tell you what I do agree with and the lesson that exists for your business.

The first thing is that when you set business targets for yourself, you need to consider your values as part of that process.  The reality is that some people do value love over their careers and that’s OK.  These love relationships may include God, your spouse or partner, your kids, your siblings, etc.  You just need to be clear about that at the beginning.  For example if you truly love your family, it may not make sense to have a business that requires you to be away from them constantly.  This may present a conflict in your values.  Once you get to a certain point in your career or business, it’s hard to turn back.

The second lesson is the question the song asks about which is do you know where you are going to?  The second question is why.  Defining your end result is important but knowing why makes it complete.  Take Diana Ross’ character in Mahogany.  She struggled in poverty and was then driven to success to escape that poverty.  It seems reasonable but sometimes we do what we think is right without ever considering what we truly want.  Many of the business owners I work with want to grow their business.  When I ask them why they want to do that or what that would help them achieve, they think I am crazy for asking.  That is, until they realize that there is a lot to growing their business that they hadn’t considered.  There are a lot of by-products to an expanding business that start to infringe on your personal life.  Make sure you think about that.

Do you know where you are going?  Do you know why?  Think about your business, your career or your life.  Why are you doing what you are doing?  What is your product or service truly supposed to help people achieve?  What does it look like in 5 years?  These are the questions I want you to spend some time with today.  Please weigh in on these questions on this post as well.  Would love to hear your comments.

“Jerry Maguire”

That mission statement got him fired.  Around the time that the movie Jerry Maguire came out, mission statements were all the rage in business.  Everyone had to have one and they were laden with corporate buzz terms like synergy, mission –critical and integration just to name a few.

It got so ridiculous that the creators for the cartoon strip Dilbert actually had a mission statement generator that created these buzzword heavy statements in a way that made it embarrassing for the companies who had a mission statement like this.

For those that are unfamiliar and for context, here are my definitions of mission, vision and values:

Vision-  Answers the question, where are you going?

Mission- Answers the question, why do I exist?

Core Values- Concepts that provide direction for decision making and behavior within your organization.

When people like the Dilbert creators started making fun of mission statements then you started to see the backlash against using these concepts in business and you started hearing things like: “Why defining mission, vision and values are a waste of time.” Or “Why mission, vision and values doesn’t work.”

I disagree with statements about mission, vision and values being a waste of time as well as that they are useless to an organization.  What makes mission, visions and values an asset or a liability to an organization is the intention behind it.  What I mean by that is are you just throwing it out there because you feel you need to or did you put some serious thought behind it?

When business owners are intentional about their mission, vision and value creation process it creates inspiration because it is from the heart and in many cases is a team effort.  Some of the most admired companies today are doing this.  Companies like Apple and Zappos for instance.  Having leaders that can communicate mission, vision and values is essential for them to maintain relevance.

Just like anything else mission, vision and values are only valuable if you use them in your organization.  To illustrate my point, take a car for instance.  A car has no value if it just sits in your driveway.  The value is in driving it.

Jerry Maguire turned his initial failure into an inspired success.  Take a look at your companies’ road map.  Where are you going?  Why are you going there?  How do you want to get there?  Answer these questions for a truly focused and inspired business.

Do you have a mission, vision and values success story?

I want to spend time on blogging today because it’s the area of social proof where you, the business owner, have the most control over getting your message out there.  If you are a business owner and you are not blogging, you are missing one of the best ways to show people your skills, thoughts and talents.

A couple of years ago, I asked business owners a simple question; “have you joined the conversation yet?”.  At the time of that post I had seen a stat that suggested that 44% of business owners still didn’t have a website.   Business owners neglect of the online tools that they had at their disposal was alarming to me.  Especially because they were missing out on a key way to establish social proof for their business.

Blogging can help you establish your platform and make you a better business owner in the following ways:

1. Clarity-  I have been to several business conferences with emerging business owners.  The one issue that most newer business owners have is a lack of clarity.  They don’t know what they want their business to be or what it should be in the first couple of years especially.  This is understandable.  Writing helps you figure that out much faster.
2. Content for your business-  Want to write a book?  Blogging can be a great way to start the writing process in a manner that doesn’t feel overwhelming.  Having relevant content available to the public is a great way for people to learn about your business and find you.  It’s also a great jump for creating other content like books, videos, podcasts, seminars, etc.
3. Show your skills-  Do you have unique insight into a certain field?  Do you have extensive knowledge in  specific area?  If so, the best way to share this info is to write it in a blog post.  A blog can be like a dynamic business card.  When people ask about you, you can talk with about what you do and also direct them to your blog for more information.

I heard the question asked recently, “Can I Blog For Success?”.  Indeed you can.  If you are looking  to quickly build a platform for your business, blogging should be a big part of what you do.  So now my question to you is, do you have a blog?  If so, are you contributing to it regularly?  Sit down and put together a content schedule and get blogging ASAP.

I have talked about the numerous benefits of writing as a business owner.  There’s the benefit of writing for clarity as well as utilizing blogging as a bootstrap marketing tool.  Ultimately, blogging is a great tool for building intimacy with your clients that create lifetime relationships.

This post is going to be chalk full of links and tips that will help you set up a blog coming from someone who has been doing it for over two years now.

Step 1- Set up an account with wordpress.org.  Here’s the resource that WordPress provides to get you started.  At this point I have a lot of business owners ask me why I don’t want them to use a free service like wordpress.com or blogger.  While these services are easier, there are some downsides to be aware.  I won’t get into these here but I did write a post on why you should self host your blog that you can check out.

Step 2- You need to find a domain name (if you don’t already have one) as well as a hosting service.  I use Hostmonster or Hostgator for hosting.  These plans are great for starting out and they are easy to access and use.  They use a program called Simple Scripts that makes installing WordPress on your host simple to do.

Step 3- Once you have WordPress installed and ready to go, now it’s time to look for a theme for your blog.  The theme is basically the design.

There are free themes at:

WordPress as well as a number a free WordPress theme sites.

There are also a lot of places to get premium themes.  A couple I have used in the past are:

Woo Themes and Studiopress.

Just like a lot of things in life you get what you pay for.  Free themes can be great but aren’t as good looking as premium themes.

Step 4- Once you have a theme in place you can start looking for different plugins to enhance the user experience of your blog.

Here’s a great resource on the top plugins for WordPress.  There are tons of enhancements that are easy to install and make your site look that much more professional.  These enhancements include ways to connect to social media and podcast as well as installing contact forms.

The great thing about plugins is that there are tons of videos to allow you to view installation tips in case you are stuck on something and not sure how to proceed.

The best thing about all of these steps is that you can use WordPress as your primary site platform or you can mask the design of your current site and add a WordPress blog as a tab on your current site.

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The Key Is Ease of Use:

One of the most frustrating aspects of web development in the past for business owners has been making changes to your site in a timely manner.  With a platform like WordPress (see above) editing and creating new content is easy because of the use of a WYSIWYG editor.  WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get”.  It really is a straightforward tool for creating web content.

If you have been putting off creating a blog because of fear of it being too complicated.  Don’t worry about that.  These are all things that you can do for yourself and begin creating content immediately.  This is one of the best ways to engage with clients and build credibility for your platform.  If you need any help, leave a comment and I would be happy to help as well.  Happy blogging.

I am not going to sit here and tell you that blogging should be the most important part of your business (unless it is your business).  I will say that there are ways to make creating blog content easier.  One of those things is by creating a blog schedule to create content with.

What got me thinking about this was a recent post from Lisa Barone on Small Biz Trends.  She was talking about content creation myths and she brought up the fact that business owners are publishers and that we should create a schedule for ourselves.  It got me thinking about how I handle content creation and how most business owners handle the process.

So I have 3 simple steps to help you create content for your business:

Step 1:  Do just what Lisa talked about and set up a schedule.  In business, I think it’s important to set up certain rhythms for your business.  Content creation time should be set up on a regular schedule.

Step 2: Create time and space.  You can’t accomplish content creation if you don’t create the time and space to work on it.  This piece is critical.  Ignoring this dooms you to failure because other things will always be more important.

Step 3: Create an end game.  What do you want to accomplish with content creation? What topics are relevant to your business?  How else could you use the content?  For books?  Videos? Make sure you know what the next steps are with your content creation.

Want to create more content for your business?  Do you have a blog that is neglected?  Take these simple steps and put a plan into practice for your business.

I was in a board meeting for a company that I work with about six months ago and one of the gentleman in the board, Rick Sapio, called this simple statement a “Catalyzing Statement”.  He gave a few examples of catalyzing statements:

Fed Ex – When It Absolutely Positively Has To Be There Overnight—
Microsoft Bill Gates – I pitcture a world with a PC on every desktop and in every home – 1975
President Kennedy – We will put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the century.

A great statement of clarity for your business allows you to communicate effectively with your internal team as well as any outside partners.   This tool comes in handy when you are looking for mentoring help, talking to your clients and building a team.  If you can’t describe what it is that you do to a prospective job applicant.  Unless they are desperate, how likely are they to accept your job?

Look at how a simple statement like the one that Zappos has around creating the best customer service possible.  Zappos made it their mission to create great customer service, their employees got behind and deliver it every day to their customers.  This is how a great statement works.

The statement has to stir some emotion in your team and to the people outside of your organization.  If you can get people behind what your business is about on an emotional level.  Look out.  Lots of businesses function in the same manner within their industry what often sets them apart are the emotions that hearing the name of the company evokes.

Your business has to back up your big, hairy, audacious goal.  If you say you stand for something big then stand for it completely.  No shortcuts.  no days off.  Your company must breath it each and every day.

How does your business look?  Is it clear what value you deliver?  Does it inspire passion?  These are the questions you need to ask yourself and your team.  This is also a great way to interact with your client base and get their input as well.   Once you have the feedback in place then go out and create that simple sentence that can drive your business to success.

What is values based decision making?

Values based decision making is based upon having a set of principles that you stand for as an individual and as a business that help guide the decisions you make personally and professionally.

How does values based decision making help you?

Focus- How many entrepreneurs do you know that seem to have their hands in everything but don’t ever seem to master anything?  I know I have been guilty of this and I know plenty of people who struggle in this area.  Having values articulated for your business gives you the ability to say “no” to more things so you can say “yes” to the right ones.

Time-  When you lack focus, your time management suffers.  Do you have a hard time completing tasks?  Do you miss deadlines or fail to do what you are supposed to do.  Values based decisions making in your business allows you to identify and spend your time on those core activities in your business.

More Production-  Want to create maximum value?  Values based decision making helps to make you a more productive person by structuring the activities you do around your passions and wants.  In the book, Unique Ability, they make a distinction between what you are very good at and what you are exceptional at.  Do you know the difference?  Aligning with values helps you be exceptional which then allows you to create more value in less time.

Personal- Is family a personal core value of yours?  If it is, how does travel and working long hours affect that and ultimately affect your ability to create value in your business.  This is not a knock against people who spend time away from your families but if you have values identified and you stand true to them, you will ensure that you don’t have to compromise your personal values.

When you are aligned with values, you are putting yourself in a position to really affect the world in a positive way by being the most productive person that you can be.   If you haven’t done so, take some time and brain storm what those values may be personally and professionally.

How has values based decision making helped you in the past?

PS… Rick Sapio joined us on our membership, 5 Tracks of Wealth to talk about values based decision making.  You can watch the clip here.

PSS…If you want to listen to the podcast click the play button below.

There are 4 areas where I think having a platform makes your work life easier.  Those areas are clarity, empowerment, satisfying wants and business ownership.  By having a developed platform, you have a great understanding of the things that you can do to create the most value whether you work for yourself or someone else.

In case you missed it and aren’t quite sure what a platform is.  Here’s my last post on what a platform is.  Now on to the areas where having a platform makes your life easier.

Clarity: Ever worked in a job or even owned a business and  the whole time you wondered what the hell you were even doing there?  I am pretty sure we all have.  The reason we do this a lot of times is desperation.

This desperation stems from not fully understanding what we bring to the table so we hold onto we we have thinking that we will just have to make it work.  When you have clarity behind how you create value and what activities you will engage in to create that value then you have opened up the doors to being an asset to your company or your own business.

Empowerment: In the case above where I talked about seeing lay offs in your firm and getting stuck picking up the pieces, you are now able to make more intelligent decisions around how to handle this.

If you see that the firm is not moving in the right direction, you can leave because you understand how you can bring value.  On the flip side, when you know how you create value and you understand the companies strategic objectives, you can then focus your work on those activities that bring the most value to your company. Which brings me to my next point.

Satisfying Wants: In reality, your boss or your clients want someone who can figure things out on their own.  They have more work to do because of layoffs too.  They don’t have time for hand holding. Managers and other leaders need/want people who can work autonomously and get things done.  Understanding your platform allows you to work with less supervision.

Create a Business On The Side: Hugh Macleod says to not quit your day job.  Having a platform allows you to have a creative outlet for your talent.  You don’t have to quit your day job but you do need to understand that any job will never fully engage your ability completely.  It’s good to have something going on the side that allows you to do that.   That’s where your platform comes in handy to paint the picture of what that looks like.

Your platform is a driving force to an simpler work life.  Once you understand it the possibilities are endless.

building your platform

You need a platform that makes it easy to turn your insight into a movement. ~ Seth Godin from the book Linchpin

There’s a new world of work that exists in today’s marketplace. I call it the New Work Revolution. This new world of work starts with understanding and building a platform for yourself that you can work from to create maximum value in the marketplace. What is a platform and is your career built on one that is solid enough?

The reason having a platform is becoming so important is that the work environment is changing. The way we create products in the United States has changed as I am sure it has in other nations with similar economies. Unemployment hovers around 9-10% and the jobs that are being created by the government are not the kinds of jobs that the average American is looking to fill.

With a changing work environment how can we change the way that people see us and the way that we create value for others. It starts with building the right platform for yourself. It doesn’t matter if you work for someone else or if you are a business owner, you need a platform either way.

A work platform consists of your passions, purpose, core values, mission, etc. The main message of your platform is who are you and how do you create value in the marketplace.

Your platform drives everything you do and guides your decision making. The individuals who are creating massive value in the world have established their platforms before they have started spreading their message.  This is a must if you are going to stand firm in your convictions as having a platform means a lot of times that you are taking a stand.  Taking a stand means that many people will not agree with your opinion on the matter.  Standing strong, in this case, means having the ability to understand fully what you are doing and why.

Work has changed.  In his book Linchpin, Seth Godin also says that the days of getting paid well to be told what to do at work are ending.  Positioning yourself with a platform to create value will allow you to navigate this landscape confidently and effectively.

What’s your platform?

PS… If you are looking to build a platform for yourself, we have created our coaching club specifically for those individuals who want to change the way that they create value in the market.  Check out our coaching club to get started in the discussion and to access our platform building tools.

If you tell certain people that they can do what they love to do and still get paid doing it, those people would tell you that you are crazy or dumb or both.  I have personally received my share of raised eyebrows and chuckles at the notion.  In fact, you might be doing that right now!

We discount our passions because it is not seen as work.  Work is hard.  Work sucks.  Work shouldn’t be fun and if it is you’re doing it wrong.  These are some of the conversations that have been created around work.  The ironic thing is that the most successful people in this world are passionate about what they do.  They live and breath their work.

One way to help us embrace our passion is to uncover our purpose.  God put you here for a reason.  What is it?  How were you meant to create value in this world?  There are some great tools that you can utilize that are cost effective and can tell you a lot about yourself.  Check out my simple tools for identifying talent here.

When you know your purpose you are able to more confidently identify what areas you are passionate in and be confident that what you are doing is the right thing for you and for others.

Another tool to help you develop your passion and purpose is a system that I use called a power hour.   There is a lot to be said for spending some time alone and reflecting on what you truly bring to the table.  Utilizing a power hour allows you that time in the morning before you do anything else to focus on you.  When was the last time you did that?  My guess is that it’s been too long.

There’s no reason that your life and particularly your work life can’t be filled and driven with passion.   Finding and channeling this passion will allow you to do the greatest good for others.   Don’t discount your ability to do that.

From a mindset standpoint there are three main culprits that inhibit our success.  Those inhibitors are fear, stories and complexity.

Fear is the most recognizable for us because it is immediate and more tangible than other mindset issues.  We fear failure and in a peculiar way we fear success as well.  The dichotomy between the two fears is mystifying and in some parts cruel.  On the one hand we don’t want to be rejected so we fear putting ourselves out there.  On the other hand what if we are accepted?  Then what happens.  Now I am scared because I am out in the open and exposed to criticism and scrutiny.

This reminds me of the high school guy who wants to ask a girl out but worries that she will say no.  Then when he gets the nerve to ask and she says yes, it doesn’t get rid of the fear it just shifts to a set of new concerns.  What if I am not interesting?  What if she thinks I am a bad kisser?  What if she laughs at my car?

Deeper than fear lies a much harder obstacle to spot and overcome.  That obstacle is the stories that we create for our lives that if you were to really examine them just aren’t true.  These stories are created by negative experiences that happen in our past that we then take on and use it to define us.

If you were an unpopular nerd in high school, you may still be holding onto some of the conversations around that experience and they may still be holding you back.  You may think that people generally don’t like you.  You may think that you aren’t suited to stand out or that you are not special.  The reality is that when we step back and take a look at these stories, we realize that they aren’t true for us today and we need to release their hold on us.

Another issue that keeps us from taking action is the complexity that we create in our minds about a certain project.  This happens to me when it comes to fixing things around my house.  Recently I had a situation where my kitchen sink was leaking.  It leaked for a few months and my solutions was to put a flower vase underneath the leak and empty it once a week.  (This was not a favored move by my better half.)

The reason why I didn’t fix it is that I had told myself that I don’t know anything about plumbing and therefore would be unable to fix this problem.  The reality was that when I finally dove in and looked at the problem, it was not nearly as hard as I made it out to be and was able to fix the problem in about 20 minutes time.  I let the complexity get in the way of my taking action and in retrospect this was foolish.  I wasted tons of time and worry with my band aid solution of the flower vase.

These are the mind set issues that keep us from doing the things we know we should be doing to achieve greater success.  Take a look at these issues and ask yourself which of these applies to you.  It really comes down to how bad you want it?  Most of us wait until something bad happens before we make a positive change.  Is that going to be your story too?

Used Courtesy of Morganz http://www.sxc.hu/profile/marganz

Everyone has a different style when it comes to generating ideas and creating.  Developing new ideas and creating new possibilities is a driving force behind today’s economy.   Knowing that creating and leveraging ideas is important, what keeps us from doing it?

The biggest obstacle for creating starts with our mindset.  How often do you hear; “I’m not good at that.” or “I never have any good ideas.”  The truth is that we have lots of good ideas, we just don’t have a process for filtering those ideas.

This brings me to what process we should use for innovating and creating in the marketplace.  There’s a lot of conflicting information out there about what works best.  For every article you hear on the power of brainstorming, you see another article on why brainstorming doesn’t work.

An important aspect of creation is obviously people.  We know that we, as individuals, need to be involved in the process of creating/innovating but when do we get other people involved in our creation process?

Creating in solitude definitely has it’s value.  Zen Habits recently called solitude the #1 habit of highly creative people.   I talk a lot in this blog about having a morning ritual that focuses in mind, body and spirit.  This is a great time for quiet and to create.

Working in a communal setting was listed by Zen Habits as the #2 habit of highly creative people.  Working in a group is where I think you take an idea that you have put together and bounce it off the right people to really refine the idea.  I know I have had many instances where I have come together with my team and we end of with something even more incredible than when it was first conceived.

Use both a solo and team approach to creation and innovating.  A challenge that we face is creating the time and space in our lives for solitude.  This is why I suggest doing this type of an activity first thing in the morning to limit the distractions. Then use your work from your solo time and bring your best ideas to a group or to people that you enjoy collaborating with.

There are going to be some disciplines where it makes more sense to work solo vs. working in a group.  Other times the opposite is true.

Innovating and creating is about people and the best innovators make time to create in their own space and also know when to get together and refine their ideas with people they trust.

What’s your creation process?

Ever had that happen to you in business?  Not the sex but the doubt if you were really as good as you thought you were.

This is where testimonials/client feedback can be useful.  In many cases, we are scared to ask for feedback on how we are doing as we are afraid of the answer.  As if the client not telling us personally somehow means that it’s not real.

Client feedback/testimonials are great for a couple of reasons.

The first is obviously that you gain insight into how you are doing from a service standpoint.  Do you suck at getting back to people?  You’re clients will tell you?  Do your clients feel like you don’t listen to them?  They will tell you that to.  (This time you need to make sure you listen.)

The second reason is that getting client feedback gives you the opportunity to see why your clients chose your product/service.  The best part about this is that a lot of times it’s not for the reasons that you think it is.  As a creator of products/services, it’s virtually impossible to look at your work from the end user perspective.  I don’t care how intuitive you are. Client feedback/testimonials allow you to see from the client’s perspective which in turn allows you to speak their language when communicating with them.

At the end of American Pie 2, Jim realizes that through feedback from past relationships (the girl from band camp), what he actually wants wasn’t the foreign exchange student after all.  He wouldn’t have seen that had he not asked for the feedback and for better or for worse, there would have been no American Wedding.

What next steps are you missing from your business because you aren’t talking with your clients?  What breakthroughs have you had as a result of talking with your clients?

We are all too content with the generic phrases such as; “This product/service was great, really informative!”

What does that really tell a customer about your product/service?  You guessed it, nothing.

When we look at testimonials, we want to see authenticity.  We want to feel like the person talking about a product/service is a human being.  That sounds pretty straight forward right?  What can we do as business owners to make our testimonials more authentic?

A technique that I recently learned about and have employed with success was from Sean D’Souza.  Sean has a book called The Brain Audit that talks about how to create compelling messages as a writer and takes you through a specific process.  In that book, Sean touched on testimonials and how to avoid making crappy testimonials.  I am not going to get into his entire testimonial process.  You can visit his site for more info on that.  The testimonial process has one specific step that really brings the humanity back into your testimonial.

This specific step is actually the first step in the testimonial process.  The step deals with asking your client right off the bat, what specific concerns or issues did they have with getting engaged in your product/service.  In other words, were they worried about spending the money?  Do they a really busy schedule and didn’t feel they had time?  Had they used similar services in the past with less than stellar results?

As business owners, we focus a lot on the potential outcomes from using our product/service but not enough on the psychology behind why they would or would not buy.

We decided to employ this specific step into our own testimonial process for an event that we do.  People fly in from all over the country to participate so we knew there were sacrifices involved, we were just ignorant as to what those sacrifices were specifically.  In that event, we learned that some of our clients are worried about leaving their kids.  One of our clients is currently taking care of their elderly parents and really had a hard time breaking free from that for a couple of day.  Another client was worried about a trip that was taking them out of the country and some deadlines coming up in their business.

On the surface we have some really authentic testimonials for our workshop which is cool.  The real benefits, however, go much deeper than that.  We connected with our clients through that process on a much deeper level.  We see them with different eyes, that are more compassionate and more understanding.  That’s really cool.

If you have a testimonial process, ask yourself one question.  Does it bring out the human side of your product/service?  Do your testimonials feel like they were written by human beings?  If not, how can you change that?  If you aren’t getting testimonials, implement a system to start getting them.  Your business and, more importantly, your clients will be better for it.

Frequently when someones puts together content, they put it together in a manner in which they like to process content without regard to the end user.

This bring me to the topic of psychographics.

Early in my writing and marketing career, I gave very little thought to how an end user would like to process information.  I thought there was a one size fits all technique that worked.

That changed for me when I attended a course titled Book Publishing 2.0 about a year and a half ago where I was first introduced to the topic of psychographics.  At the time I went to the course, I knew I wanted to get more serious about my writing  but wasn’t sure the best way to get started.  I learned a lot in the course but the most important information for me was in learning about the Myers Briggs Typology test and how understanding that test could make me a more engaging writer.

If you aren’t familiar with The Myers Briggs test, it basically breaks us down into 16 different personality types that describe how we use perception and judgment in our decision making. You can read more about the test here.

The class that I took broke these types up into 4 personas which are competitive, spontaneous, methodical and humanistic.

Yesterday I talked about how your content is presented and how it looks is very important to readers.

This is especially true with regards to personas.  Some people want bullet points.  Some people don’t mind paragraphs of information.  Some people want pictures and visuals.  Some people prefer text.

So what does this have to do with creating great content?

When it comes to creating your information, it’s important to consider all of the personas.

Take headlines as an example.  The reason that people use the word simple in their headlines is because there is a certain group of people (spontaneous) that gravitate towards that word.  If you used the words, step-by-step or how-to, that may appeal more towards another group (methodicals).

The body of your content is just as important.  I mentioned the use of bullet points before because this is a great way to present material to a spontaneous or competitive person who doesn’t want to be bombarded with tons of details.  A methodical likes to see things presented in a step by step manner.  For humanists?  You need to make sure that you tell a story or use some kind of emotional connection with your reader.

We spend a lot if time talking about presenting good content and not enough about how to present that good content effectively.

You will not cater to each persona in one article but you can create different articles on the same subject that is presented in a different manner or pick certain days to write to a  different persona for your business.

Writing to personas takes some getting used to at first but once you get the hang of doing it you will find that more people gravitate towards your content.

So how do we create content that readers/clients want?

Today we are going to start with how your material is presented from a look and feel standpoint.

I ran across on article from the Search Engine Blog that got me thinking about this.  The article is titled, SEO 101 – part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content.

We often get so caught up into the different tricks that we can employ to get people to our site that we often forget about the most important aspect, which is having content that readers want and presenting it to them in a way that engages them.

The point of the Search Engine Guide article that I want to most talk about is just in the simple layout of your blog.  If you do nothing else, start there.

How much thought are you putting into your headlines?

Headlines are a good place to start because it’s typically the first thing that someone sees.  Headline should be something compelling that draws people in.   Without a compelling headline, many readers may not take the time to even look at your article.  There are several different approaches to writing a headline that you can use.  Copyblogger gives you some examples of different headlines that you can read about on their blog.

Beyond the headline, take a look at how your material is presented.  Is it presented in a clean, easy to process manner?  There is not one way to present your content that will please every reader (we will talk more about this in a couple of days).  You can start with utilizing pictures to enhance the readability of blogs.  The use of white space is also very important.  There are a lot of articles out there that seem to just steam roll the reader with their content and for most it’s too overwhelming and they don’t read it.

Relevant links in your article are also important in your posts.  You should try and link back to past relevant content as much as possible.  Linking to other people’s content is a great way to enhance the readability of your content as well.

Take a look at your content and ask in what ways can your content be enhanced to increase your readability.  Pay attention to what other sites are doing that you like to read as well.  Looking at your content layout is a simple place to start.

As a business owner, there is nothing wrong with making your life easier.  God knows we all need as much simplicity as possible.  In the world of SEO, doing it right isn’t always simple and easy.  There’s a lot involved in the process.  There’s research, copy writing, linking, ad campaigns, blogging, articles, relationship building and so on.

This process tends to get in a lot of business owners way and they end up cutting corners in the process by hiring someone who promises quick and easy results.  In other cases I see business owners trying to do SEO themselves and they end  up only doing the process half way.

This scenario reminds me of one of Chris Rock’s HBO comedy specials where he talks about men and how men have a hard time committing.  He spotlights the illusion that men have with something new, that looks good and illustrates a significant difference between what a new woman (I am rephrasing this because this is a family blog!) brings to the table vs. a man’s current woman.  He talks about how your new woman can’t cook or even read but your current woman takes care of you when you are sick, cooks and basically is everything that you really need but you just can’t get past the myth of something new, exciting and fast.

SEO reminds me of that Chris Rock special.  It’s not easy for a small business to get their SEO campaign off the ground.  There’s work and planning involved in your SEO strategy up front and that’s the easy part.  From there, your SEO strategy takes long term commitment to do it right.

SEO done right for most small businesses isn’t sexy.  You have to commit to it if it’s really going to work.  Commitment means creating copy on an ongoing basis, linking to your keywords, building online relationships, using social media and analyzing your efforts and making adjustments.  None of this is typically attractive for a small business owner.

Plain and simple, SEO takes work.  I wouldn’t trust anyone who tells you otherwise.  The great news is that the pay off for your business can be significant in terms of revenue and exposure.  Don’t be the business owner that Chris Rock says can’t commit.  Put together a SEO plan that not only looks good but can cook too.

The reason for this comes in different forms:

• I don’t have any money
• I hate technology
• I don’t have time

And so on and so forth.

By not having a website established for your business, you are  missing out on some valuable resources for your business.  This post was inspired by a great post by Lisa Barone titled Why Your Small Business Needs a Website in 2010.

So here are a few of the things that you are missing out on by not having a website:

1.  Differentiation-  This is such an important part of building a business platform.  Take the branding and marketing disciplines for instance.  There are tons of people who have blogs and are experts in this field.  The difference is that each expert has differentiated themselves with how they are communicating with people.  They do this through content, personality, how content is presented and also by their niche.

2. Credibility-  I have had clients say to me that they don’t trust working a particular firm or individual because they couldn’t find them when they Googled them.  I have said in the past that your web presence is today’s store front.   Most people use the internet for verification.  If you don’t have a web presence, it’s seen as  a lack of professionalism.

3. Platform for your content-  When you have a site you can host your audios, videos and written content.  This content can be free podcasts, blog posts, articles, white papers, user guides, video blogs etc.  Your content can and should also include the content you are selling.

4. Being social-  In case you missed it (and if you don’t have a website, this is a legit statement) there is a whole social world that exists online.  This comes in the form of social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter etc.) and blogging.  You can also start building a following through the building of lists as well as give yourself the ability to create your own social network if you so desire.  Regular and meaningful communication with your following is essential to building a great relationship through online channels.

5. Save money-  You want to qualify clients and reduce the amount of wasted time on people who don’t want or can’t afford what you have? A website is a great way to qualify your potential clients.  Are you tired of trading time for dollars in your business? Automate some of your revenue streams with online outlets.

These are 5 pretty darn good reasons to have a website.  Also, if you have a website and you are not doing one of these 5 things as effective as you could be, start putting a plan in place to correct this.

Websites are cheaper and easier than ever before to set up and maintain.  The only thing standing in your way is most likely you.

Communication is the key.  Are you sharing?  Is your content good?  Do you consistently update? Do you respond in a timely manner?  Do you actively engage your community and build new relationships?  Are you looking for ways to build great relationships with your clients?

These are all good questions to ask yourself to assess where you are at with regards to your online relationship building.  Building relationships in person is a much easier task than building them in a virtual setting.  Virtual relationships take extra work and extra thought.  For a business owner it come down to one thing, helping people win.

Search Engine Guide has a post that I think is great in breaking down the philosophy of successful online relationship building.  The post shares the following quote from Pete Vossler:

People are insecure; give them confidence.
People want to feel special; compliment them.
People desire a better tomorrow; show them hope.
People need to be understood; listen to them.
People are selfish; speak to their needs first.
People are emotionally low; encourage them.
People want to be associated with success; help them win.

I think that all of these points are important but the last point about helping people win really stuck out to me.  In reality, building relationships is about getting creating value for others.  I doesn’t have to come in the form of money.  It can come in the form of feelings for instance.

When you create an online presence for your business, you are creating a platform to help a wider range of people be successful than you could be having just a local presence.  There is a lot of power in that but we tend to take it for granted in today’s day and age.

We take it for granted by not having an online presence at all by thinking that the web is over-saturated and that we can’t provide anything new to the space.  We take it for granted by not creating content on a regular basis or by failing to create new content at all.

There are several great examples of businesses interacting with their community and creating some positive results:

• Dogfish Head Brewery Craft Ales-  (I always like to spot light a beer company doing it right.)  They have built their business on giving their customers what they want.  Sam Calagione, president and founder says this about using social media with his business: “Social media has leveled the playing field…We can have intimate conversations with customers.”
• Mashable had a recent article that talks about businesses using social media right.  They give several examples of what companies are doing to engage their people.
• Houlihan’s restaurant was recently featured in a recent edition of Fast Company for their efforts in using social media to increase profitability.  The restaurant change went ahead and built their own social media outlet to communicate with their clients.

You don’t have to do something exactly like the examples above but at the very least, they should give you some great ideas.

To be a good neighbor on the web, we have to be willing to create good content at a consistent level and not take our relationships for granted.  It’s also about going out and actively looking to create new relationships as well. We have to keep in mind that the reason our businesses have an online presence is to create value in the marketplace and help people win.

Is your online presence doing that?

Courtesy of Thadz http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=profile&l=thadz

One of the reasons for business failure, particularly for retail outlets, is having their business in a poor location.  This same principle is true for your online business presence as well.

There are several things that you can do to make sure that your business shows up in the good neighborhood.  (By the good neighborhood, I mean that it is highly visible on the web.)

Before you do anything else, with regards to your web presence for your small business, get clear on what it is that you want and need from a web strategy.  This is the area where success or failure is determined.  If you know what you want, you are looking good.  If you don’t, you’re in trouble.

When it comes to making your website visible, SEO is a great place to start.  In fact, doesn’t it seem like everyone is a so-called “SEO expert” these days?  If you want some solid SEO advice here’s Evan Carmichael’s 2009 list of top SEO blogs.  That’s my advice on getting started in this arena, get educated.

Another complimentary tool for your website is having a blog.  The particular type of blog I am talking about is not the typical business owner blog.  You know, the one where you get really excited for a couple of months and blog every day, burn out and never post to it again.  I am talking about the kind of blog where you post to it on a consistent basis with compelling and relevant content.

Speaking of content, that is really a huge key with building your website in a good neighborhood.  The better your content.  The more visitors you will have to your site and the more visible your site will be in search engines.

Getting your site in a good neighborhood doesn’t happen overnight.  It takes diligence on the part of the site owner as well as planning.  Be consistent with your content, strive to create great and relevant content and get your site out to as many channels as possible.

This is the point where business owners get curious about sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  What are the best social media outlets for your business.  That’s really up to you and your clients to decide.  You can look for networks that are favored by your industry, you can look at what your clients are using, you can look at what networks may be the most appropriate for your business.

Here’s a breakdown of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn:

Twitter:  I have said this before but when I first signed up for Twitter, it seemed ridiculous to me.  I just didn’t get it.  I really think that Twitter doesn’t make sense until you start expanding your network with people who are really using it. The main complaint that I get from small business owners about Twitter revolves around this same lack of understanding that  I had.

What’s great about Twitter is that it gives you access to a whole group of people that you would typically not have access to.  It’s a great opportunity to meet new people, run across great ideas and share your own great ideas.

I will avoid getting on a soap box about how to best use Twitter or any other social networking platform for that matter.  I am certainly not a social media expert but I do use it on a daily basis.  What I will do is share how I use Twitter so that it works for me.

The first thing I do with Twitter is use it to update my followers on information that is relevant to small business owners.  Typically I do this by sharing other people’s content that I run across on a daily basis.  The second thing I do is use to expand the reach of my own information that I create.  Beyond content, I use Twitter as a connection tool.  I am not so much of a conversationalist on Twitter itself but I do try to set up 1-2 calls/meetings a week with people that I connect with on Twitter.

The connection aspect has been a great way to find mentors as well as create synergies with people to move my business forward.  One word of caution about Twitter, be careful what you say, you don’t want to have this happen to you.

Facebook:  For me Facebook is more of a friendship site.  I don’t link my Twitter account to it and I don’t really pursue a lot of business there.  However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t use Facebook for business.

I have made great professional connections through Facebook.  I have also seen business owners really use the fan page function of Facebook to get communicate and share with their clientele on a regular basis.

Alex Mandossian has done a great job with this through his Productivity Strategies platform.  They post content regularly and seem to have created an active and engaged following through their fan page.  You can certainly pick up some tips for how Alex has structured his page to get ideas for your own business.

LinkedIn:  LinkedIn is the more buttoned up and professional of the major social networking sites.  LinkedIn provides a lot of unique features for its users.

One of my favorite features is the ability to recommend people in your network.  This is a great way to share with others the great things that people in your network are doing.  I also enjoy the question and answer feature that allows you to weigh in on questions that other LinkedIn users have about various topics.  You can also integrate Slide Share into your profile which is a great tool for my graphic and web design business.   As a business owner there is plenty to like about LinkedIn.

Those are the 3 main sites that I use regularly.  It’s up to you determine what networks are best for you and how much time and effort you want to put into using them.  To get past the social media is dumb and a waste of time issue that a lot if us business owners have, it takes jumping in and giving them a try so that we can see how to make these networks work effectively for our business.

This may come as a surprise to some.  I know it surprises me at times.  It feels like Facebook and Twitter are littered with entrepreneurs, MLM participants and work from home experts.  While there may be a high percentage of people using social media whose business is primarily online, there are many brick and mortar type businesses that still don’t want to consider utilizing social media.

When you dig a little deeper, you come to realize that it’s not shocking that small business owners feel like social media is dumb and a waste of time.  The most telling sign is the fact that roughly half of small business owners don’t have a website for their business.  If they don’t have a website, why would they blog, set up an account on Twitter or do anything else online?

Because I didn’t quickly embrace social media myself, I would like to offer my tips on how to maximize social media for the small business owners who feel like social media is dumb and also a waste of time.

What You Should Do: Set up a website.

Setting up a nice website can be very inexpensive and if you wanted to take a little time to learn, you could set up the site yourself. A feature of your site should be a blog.  Once you have your blog in place, you should set a schedule with regards to how often you will post and what content you will write about.  Don’t worry if you are not a writer, I wasn’t either (and depending on who you talk to, I am still not).

Why you should do it:  Build credibility for yourself and your business.

If you want to know what I think about small business, you don’t have to ask me, you can just read my blog.  The same goes for any small business owner.  Do you want to assert yourself as an expert?  Share your knowledge of your field.  Do you want people to be able to find you on the web?  Create content that can be found?  Do you want to drive traffic to your site?  Give people a reason to come to your site and keep coming.  Do you want to have a more intimate relationship with your clients?  Communicate with them on a regular basis.  Share your thoughts, your fears, your vision.

Today’s client looks to the web to determine how credible you are in the marketplace today.  If they can’t find you then they may worry and decide not to do business with you.  Having a web presence not only solves that issue for you but opens up a whole new set of doors for your business as well.

Don’t get caught up into the time issue or the fact that you may not have a lot of writing experience.  I feel like when it comes to sharing your thoughts, the main thing is to be authentic and as long as you do that, readers will resonate with what you are saying.  If you don’t have a web presence and a blog, ask yourself why you don’t ( beyond because you think that it is dumb and a waste of time) and then ask yourself what you need to do to get a web presence in place.   In part 2 of this post I will talk more about other social media platforms and what you can do to maximize your experience with them.

Guideline #1: Be Consistent

Let me say first that I love entrepreneurs and their spirit for jumping into things and running with them.  Let me also say that entrepreneurs have a hard time following through sometimes and it kills their credibility.  Social media is one of those areas where I see small business owners half ass it all the time.

When I work with a new client, I will typically start the relationship by looking at their online presence and what current channels they are using to promote their business. One of the first things I will at is their website.  Once I am at their website, I will poke around a little bit to get a feel for what they are about.  When I look at the blog section of their site a common scenario is to see a couple of weeks of heavy posting and then no further posts for seven months.

This is the same scenario you will see for other social media vehicles like Facebook, Twitter etc.  A small business owner will create an account and maybe have a short burst of activity but then you see the tell tale signs of an inactive user.  Those signs include a vacant avatar for their profile.  They don’t respond to any form of communication through those tools.  Last, you will also see the account virtually dormant for a long period of time.

The one piece of advice for consistency is this.  Figure out what best works for you and follow a schedule.  If it’s blogging once a week, then blog once a week.

Guideline #2: Be Careful What You Say

For all intents and purposes, we will call this the Larry Johnson rule going forward.  Larry Johnson is a NFL running back who got himself fired from the Kansas City Chiefs this past fall for using Twitter to call out his coach and topped that off by using a gay slur to a Twitter heckler.  See more about the meltdown here.  Reportedly, the meltdown cost him $213,000.  His actions also hurt  his reputation and possibly hastened the end of his NFL career.

The rule of thumb here is that once you put it out there, it’s out there and you can’t take it back.  Econsultancy posted some great guidelines that include some ways to avoid saying or doing something you will regret on social media.

Guideline #3:  Don’t try to do it all.

There are hundreds of social media outlets that you can utilize to communicate with a group of like minded people.  There are also several different ways that you can communicate with these groups (in writing, podcasting, video etc.)  One of the mistakes that small business owners make with social media is trying to do it all.  Let’s face it.  There are probably several different outlets that make sense for you to get your message out but you can only do what you can handle effectively.

If you can, hire someone to help you with social media.  If you are the one in charge, then it’s time to handle social media wisely.  Find out what your customer would most value and where they spend their time and then figure out which of those outlets you can commit your time to.  It’s all OK to consider your strengths as the business owner to determine which outlets you would be best at using.

As small business owner you are busy.  You have to be intentional with everything that you do especially if you don’t have a huge team to help you run things.  Social media is a great way to communicate to the public and bring your current clients and potential clients closer to you.  It takes some focused direction on the part of the small business owner to ensure that their social media efforts provide value to the public as well as to the business.

What are your guideline for effective use of social media?

The web has given everyone the ability to offer free value because of the fact that it is cheaper for people to do business via the web than ever before.  Chris Anderson from Wired magazine even wrote a book this year on the subject suggesting that free is the new economic model for today.  Whether you agree with that or not, you can’t argue with the fact that a growing tactic that virtually all marketers use today is the giveaway or the free offer.

These offers aren’t completely free as there are times where you need to give your name and e-mail address to receive the bonus offer so you are giving something to them in exchange for their product.  The reason why businesses do this is simple, they are so convinced that you will enjoy their product or service that they are willing to let you test it out as they are confident that you will enjoy it.  Some people worry about giving away their content for fear that people wont buy but typically if people love what you are doing and it creates value for them, they will pay you.

I had this experience awhile back with Market Samurai which is a SEO keyword research tool.  I was looking for a good keyword research tool and someone suggested that I check it out.  To try it for a period of time, all I had to do was give them my name and e-mail.  After I signed up, they made it really easy to use their tools by sending a series of videos that explained why their tool was different and how to maximize my efforts.  Their training efforts got me up to speed much quicker and allowed me to really appreciate the tool for what it could do.  In the end, I liked the product so much that I bought it when my trial was over.  This is in large part due to the fact that they created so much value for me during the free trial process.

The great part about this technique is that you can use it online or offline and achieve similar results.  I have worked with several businesses who have given their consulting away free to a limited amount of people to get them talking about the experience and the value that was created for them.  This can be a great way to show people what you can do and build the trust for your business that you are looking  for.

Some words of caution about giving away free services.  Just because you are giving them away doesn’t mean that you can diminish the level of service that you are giving that person.  Have you ever had a coach tell you that you play how you practice?  I was a ballroom dancer in college and would sometimes fall victim to the myth that I could always mark the routines in practice and then somehow magically turn it on when it was time for a  performance. The reality was that my performance always suffered when I fell victim to this line of thinking.

You must treat every client as if they were a paying client regardless if they are paying or not.

If you don’t do this, you run the risk of ruining the very reputation that you are trying to build.  I have seen way too many businesses fall victim to the mentality that if a client is not a paying client then they don’t care as much as a paying client does.  This is simply not true.

Free value is a great way to show people what you can do.  If you are having trouble getting people to trust that you can deliver in your area of expertise, stop telling them that you can do it, offer to show them.  In the end, if you are as good as you say you are then you will be well on your way to improving your reputation in your field and who knows you may even get some paying clients out of it.

Because we don’t have a boss to get on us and keep us on track, it’s critical that you stay engaged in your business goals and keep your self upbeat.  Here are a few things that I do to help keep me on track.

1. Talking with other business owners-  What keeps me pumped up is sharing ideas with like minded people.  This is why I try and make it a point to meet with business  partners and owners as frequently as possible.  I especially like to be involved with mastermind groups where I am meeting new people.

2. Read great books and blogs-  I keep on eye on certain blogs and books that are really good.  Check out my recommended reading section for books that I like.  As for blogs there are tons of great business blogs out there.

Some of my favorite blogs in no particular order:

• Brand Strategy Insider-  This blog is dedicated to branding and marketing from a more scientific approach
• Zen Habits- Tips to simplify your life.
• BNet-  Great resource to a lot of different business aspects from sales and marketing to management and business technology.
• Small Business Trends-  Great business advice.  They always have articles that get me excited about business.
• TED-  All around great information about a variety of topics.  I love their videos on cutting edge information.

There are also great business magazines such as FastCompany, Inc. and Entrepreneur.

3. Networking on social media sites-  If you are having trouble with getting motivated then go out and make a great connection on Twitter with someone that you never would have met otherwise.  Making new connections makes me feel like I have deepened my network and my reach.

4. Get a mentor-  A great mentor can help you recognize what you are not seeing because they use a 30,000 ft view of the situation vs your ground level viewpoint.  A mentor or coach doesn’t just teach you new things but sometimes helps you uncover what is already there.

5. Spiritual exercise- No matter how you choose to do this, making sure that you are consistent with this area is critical for me.  This could be through meditation, prayer, reading, etc.  Making sure that I stay humble and grateful for the things that I do have and not worry about the things that I lack.

There’s my list of top resources for entrepreneurial inspiration.

What’s on your list?

The reason that this post resonated with me right now is that I feel that I have personally been in violation of the one goal rule.  I took a step back and looked at some of the different ventures that I am involved in and wondered to myself how I had gotten in the position that I currently stood.  I realized that if you aren’t careful, it’s really easy to overload yourself with projects and ventures as an entrepreneur.

This brings me to the topic of one goal.  Success stories begin with this concept.  You hear of people and organizations who are successful because they have that laser focus on one goal that they want to achieve.  You don’t hear of people like Bill Gates or Lance Armstrong being successful at multiple things at the same time.  They may have success in one arena and then once they have gotten as far as they can (or want to) with that arena, they move onto something else.

Entrepreneurs have a hard time with staying focused on one goal typically because of money.  We figure sometimes that the more things that we are involved with, the more of a chance we will have at stumbling upon success.  The problem with the many irons in the fire mentality is that it never works out to the kind of financial and business success that we are looking for in the first place.  In the end we master nothing and then end up starting over.

There is a lot of power in one goal for the simple fact that it’s simple.  One goal allows us to avoid over-complicating our lives and gives us the space to focus on that one goal that we feel is most important.  The power ultimately lies in our ability to master that goal that we have and when we master something, we are able to create the highest potential value in the marketplace for our clients.

What’s your one goal?

The first point that Michael makes in the video is that your small business should be focused on growth.  He states that if your business is not concerned with growing, then you should shut it down.  In the talk, he also gives 2 essential ingredients for your business: Is it scalable? and Is it transformational?

One way to kill a good product is to have a poorly thought out delivery method for that product.  I have experienced this personally.  When you have a time intensive delivery process, hiring more people as you get bigger doesn’t solve the scalability issue.  It’s important to think about your delivery method at the beginning of your business.  The more automatic that you can make yoru business in the beginning the better.

Transformational business really comes down to creating value in the marketplace.  How are you changing lives with your product or service?  Or are you just selling stuff (Michael uses a different word in the video) just to sell stuff and make money.  Business can be tough and many business owners reach a point of rock bottom where they feel like their world is caving in on them.  The one thing that pulls business owners out of this is the belief in what they are doing and the passion behind it.  You can only have that if you are looking to transform the market with your idea.

These are things that we all know to some extent but don’t always follow but if we are going to thrive in an uncertain economies the above mentioned ingredients of Michael Gerber will keep our businesses moving forward and more importantly make our business relevant as well.

What are your essential ingredients?

People complain about bad customer service all the time. Walmart is a company that I commonly hear complaints about but people still shop there even though the best way to protest poor customer service is to stop shopping at the place that sucks at service. I actually think that sometimes the person at Walmart who is “helping” me actually hates me but Walmart can get away with this because of their size and market share. You, my small business friend, can’t afford to give your clients the “Walmart” service.

One particular experience I had with great customer service took me by surprise because it was in the fast food industry. I used to commute from Denver to Colorado Springs and would take the E470 toll road to and from my house in Thornton. I would stop by a Chick-Fil-A right off of Parker road in Denver to get my breakfast chicken sandwich fix at 6:00am. The first time I stopped there the kid that was helping me was so friendly that I thought he was mocking me. I considered getting out of the car and asking him what his problem was.

How sad is that the fast food industry has come to that? After stopping at the Chick-Fil-A a few more times, I realized that that was how they rolled. They gave fast, friendly service every day and I was impressed.

That’s what your business needs. Fast, effective service every day. For the businesses just starting out here’s a great guide to customer service. #1 on the list of rules for great customer service is answering your phone.  #2 is also a big one, don’t make promises unless you plan on keeping them.  If you could just be great at these two points your business would be way ahead of others in the customer service game.

Treating your customers great is a big source for generating more customers for your business.  It allows you to get testimonials for your marketing as well as referrals.  Any client who has a great experience can’t wait to share that with someone else, it’s up to you to give them the opportunity to share their great experience about your business.  It’s important to tap into this and provide the structure for how your business can make your client experience great.

How have you been able to give yoru clients great service?  What other tips would you give?

I just read a great Q&A on the subject of inexpensive marketing this morning.  In the interview, Sylvia Browder, Project Director, Business Coach, and Consultant with the Women’s Business Center, she talks about 6 methods that business owners can use to market their business.  Among the online tools she recommended were: press release as well as various online platforms such as blogging, social media, newsletters, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and e-mail marketing.  These are all easy and inexpensive tools that your business can use right away that are all available online.

Sylvia also mentions managing your marketing progress effectively through the putting together of a business plan.  This will ensure that your marketing efforts are more focused and specific.

The above are strategies that you can utilize.  Small Biz Bee has come up with some specific tools to help you implement some of these strategies.  These tools range from tools that I discussed yesterday, like WordPress, to tools for tracking traffic to your sites, staying up on what people are saying about you and the competition as well as tools for managing some of your social media platforms more effectively.   If you are looking for a better way to manage your client information and manage your business, there are tools for that too.  The best thing, the tools are all easy to set up and don’t cost a lot of money (if any) to implement.

Small business owner’s number one complaint is that they don’t have time for certain online strategies or they can’t afford them.  The above mentioned tools and strategies help you to overcome those issues in your business and market your business like a pro…with a small budget.

What other tools do you think are great for small business marketing?  Drop your knowledge on us.

You may be thinking that trust has always been important and I think to a certain extent that it has.  In today’s information society with tons of information at people’s fingertips in a matter of seconds, your reputation needs to be solid.   In the past it was much easier to fake certain things and not worry about every little customer issue that you had because chances are, very few people would hear about it.

Beyond your reputation, the other reason I feel that trust is so important is due to the change of society from an idealist perspective to a civic perspective.  Look at the following points made by Roy Williams from Wizard Academy and see if you recognize this happening.

• Authenticity is essential:  People today want authenticity in the interactions that they encounter that means being “real” about your product.  Roy states; When selling, remember: If you don’t admit the downside, they won’t believe the upside.
• A Horizontal Connectedness- Look for people to belong to something versus standing on their own.  You will see a rise in many civic organizations.
• Word-of-Mouth is the new Mass Media: For reasons stated above this is important.  People have access to each other more than ever.  If you aren’t bringing your best foot forward, people will hear about it.

The above list all point to trust.  If you aren’t authentic, people will be able to read it and therefore will not do business with you.  The more you establish yourself as unreliable and untrustworthy the more people will avoid working with you and the more you will receive negative reactions from the public about what your product/service can offer to the marketplace.  So what can we do to keep this from happening?

Stephen M.R. Covey recently wrote a great book on the topic of trust titled, The Speed of Trust.  In an interview, Stephen talks about what organizations can do to establish trust.  Some of his tips are to share information openly, tolerate mistakes and turn them into learning experiences, people talk straight and confront real issues and transparency is a practiced value.  Do you see a trend here?

The only way  your organization will be able to create value in the marketplace is through the building of trust, inside your organization as well as outside to the public.  In order to do that, trust must be placed at a premium and your processes should be geared toward building that trust for your business to have true and lasting value.

What experiences have you had good or bad with regards to trust in your organization?  Do you agree with the new civic landscape?  I would love to hear about your examples in the real world.

Despite all the benefits of self hosting your blog, people are still reluctant to do it.  I think the main reason is that even though technology advances, our mind sets are stuck in the past.   This has historically been true.  Today’s issue is the state of print newspapers (RIP).  In the past it was records over tapes or digital music over CDs.  We have a hard time advancing technologically and the same is true with setting up a web site.  It’s just not as difficult as it used to be, yet we assume that it is.

Sites like wordpress.org and others have made it so easy to do it but it’s just like everything else.  To learn it, you need to jump in and do it.  No one is naturally inclined to work with technology.  These habits are learned and in the end it is true that some end up enjoying working with technology more than others but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do it.

So why go through the trouble of self hosting your blog.  Here are my top 5:

1. Control:

Janet Jackson is all over this one.  Control is a huge reason particularly for business owners.  You don’t want to create content that you can’t control.  When you use a free hosting service, you are giving up control.  Why are you giving up control?

The first reason is that if you want to move your blog to a different service or URL, you can’t take the content with you.  The content stays there.  I suppose you could try and copy and past every post that you have created onto your new site but if you have been blogging for an extended period of time, that exercise would take forever.  You are basically starting all over again which kills months and years of hard work.

The second issue of concern is that if a free site doesn’t approve of your content, you will get shut down.  Do a search and you will find stories of individuals who have visited their blog only to find a message like this waiting for them.  Also, another question to ask is, what if your blog service shuts down?  What will you do then?

2. Customization and Functionality

With a self hosted blog, you have much more flexibility with your blog.  You have more theme options, with a service like wordpress.org, you have access to plug ins that enhance your site.  You can add buttons, capture pages etc to your site.  The more you can customize your site, the more likely you are to create a better user experience for your readers.

3.  Branding

Despite what you read in some circles, branding is still important.  A self hosted blog means a customized domain name as well as the ability to create a look and feel for your blog that is consistent with other material you use for your business.

4. Advertising

Of course your blog is to provide great content from your readers.  If they want to work with you or purchase from you, it’s also nice to be able to present your products and services as well.  Most free hosted blogs are shut down due to spam violations.  When you run your blog, you don’t have to worry about that.

You are also able to run any affiliate campaigns or adwords campaigns freely as well.  From as SEO standpoint, you are able to modify your blog to optimize it for search.  These are all essential pieces if you want your blog to assist your business in generating revenue.

5. Knowledge

This is an often overlooked component that I will be talking about more in the coming weeks but I ran across a great piece that included this aspect as a benefit here.  Setting up your own site and learning how to maintain will give you a tremendous amount of confidence in working with technology going forward.  The more you understand the architecture of a site, the more you can see how it can be used as a tool to benefit your business as well as your clients.

There’s my top 5.  What else would you add to this list as reasons to self host your blog?  What are the reason that you don’t currently self host?  Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

It seems like I have been getting tons of questions about blogging lately and a lot of it is coming from inside my own house.  My wife has a business and she started blogging a while back on free hosting blog service.  She hadn’t really added content consistently but she wanted to start doing it more and asked me what I thought she should do.  I told her she should redo her blog and self host her blog if she was really going to get serious about it and use it as a business tool.  My wife was very hesitant to do this.

It wasn’t because she couldn’t do it.  It really boils down to wanting to do it.  When you don’t enjoy something, in this case technology, it’s extremely painful to do it.  Unfortunately as a business owner there are things that we have to do that we don’t like.  To make a long story short, I helped my wife set up her blog and got it up and running.  The funniest part of the process was looking at the glazed over look in her eyes as I walked her through the process.  In the end she is appreciative of the customization that is available to her on her new site.

We often try and cut corners on things especially when we don’t like doing them.  Sometimes cutting a corner makes sense but it’s important to think your decision through and assess the long term consequences of today’s actions.  Blogging is no exception.  It has become an important tool for small business owners to build their platform on and should not be taken lightly.

I have already talked about why mission, vision and values are important to your business.  They really are the foundation for everything that you do and your results are no different.

Many small business owners wander ahead with their business without understanding the fundamental questions about their business.  Questions such as: Why do I exist?  Where do I want to go?  What’s most important to my business?  Knowing these questions will then allow you to create the results that will make the answers to the aforementioned questions a reality for your business.

To be sure, your business can have success without having solid clarity behind it…in the short term.  Businesses who have success without defining mission, vision and values do one of two things.  They either realize that to sustain the success, they are going to need to understand their business better because they aren’t sure why they were successful or they end up failing because they can’t duplicate the success in the long term.

Business can even have success without defining results…also in the short term.  The reason businesses don’t define results is due to the lack of clarity or for other reasons that I will discuss later this week. Having success without defined results or an understanding of why results happened is the most dangerous kind of success because at that point you have grown your business which means more liabilities and more customers to answer to.  Not having a plan in place to manage your results then becomes suicide for your organization.

What’s the first step?  Get results defined for yoru business but before you do that make sure that you understand why your business exists in the first place and where you want it to go.  The long term success of your business is counting on it.

Despite the stain that certain companies have brought on businesses in general, there are a lot of companies that are still doing it right and core values are at the front of what they are doing.  Two examples of this are Starbucks and Zappos.

Before I get started talking about Starbucks, I will say that while I do go to Starbucks on occasion, I am more likely to buy coffee at a gas station.  I didn’t want anyone to accuse me of being a blind fan.  With that being said, Starbucks has built a specific niche in local markets as well as being a national presence.  When you visit their website you can look at the Starbucks mission.  They lay it out as just a mission statement but within that statement are their core values.  Their values range from using the highest quality coffee to their commitment to the communities that they do business in.  When you visit their stores, you get a sense of that commitment to their values.

If you watched the Celebrity Apprentice last season, you saw Zappos and CEO Tony Hsieh featured prominently in an episode where the apprentices had to come up with a comic book character that Zappos could use in their marketing.  In that episode Tony said that Zappos’s core values were customer service and having fun.  Actually at Zappos.com they have 10 core values that govern their organization and have even done a video with employees talking about these core values.   Anyone who has worked with or purchased from Zappos will tell you that they practice what they preach.

Core values guide how you do business, how you treat people, identify what you stand for and provide your organization with additional clarity among other things.  It’s important to not get core values confused with strategies, organizational practices and products or services that you provide.  When used effectively, core values are the veins that run throughout your organization and can act as a guide for better decision making in your organization.

How does your organization use core values?  What other roles do core values play in an organization that I missed?

When your organization has a clearly defined vision, you have answered the fundamental question of “Where am I going?”.   When you have this set, everyone in your organization knows where the business is going and can use this to guide their decision making.  By using a vision effectively, you can also better dictate the culture that you want to create in your organization.

As far as building your organization goes, vision allows you to better see what players that you need on the team to make your vision a reality.  It also lets you figure out what qualities that these new players need as well.  In the end, you have a better quality team and a more efficient team.

Another benefit to understanding your vision is in your communication to the public.  Your marketing will be more effective because you better understand what channels work for your business and what message is right for your client base.  Business owners network better when they can communicate more clearly with other people they meet at events.  Ever talked with someone about their venture and walked away having no clue what they do?  Don’t worry about it, chances are they aren’t sure either.  Last, but not least, vision helps you to communicate your business through a business plan which can lead to potential funding for your business in the future.

A couple of words of caution about vision:

The first word of caution is that vision is no different than anything else.  If you don’t take care of it and cultivate it properly, it will die.  There are too many businesses that pay vision lip service and then watch as it has no impact on their business.

The second is the fact that vision is an ongoing process and is constantly evolving.  Make sure that you take the time to review this so that the only time you go off course is because you planned it.

If you don’t have a vision in place for your business then spend some time and work on this now.  If you have a vision, how is it working for your organization?  Where does it help you?  Where does it hinder you?

Social Media

Social media is getting so much love in the media right now that it makes me wonder if the next thing in communication isn’t coming soon.  News outlets like CNN and ESPN are using Twitter frequently in their news stories to ask what their viewers think.  There are numerous social  media outlets to choose from; Twitter, Facebook, Friend Feed, MySpace just to name a few.

If you have a specific strategy behind how and why you will use social media, then I say by all means start using it.  If you don’t have a strategy, social media will be a huge waste of time for you.  Retention for Twitter is very low because people sign up and have no idea what to do next.  I am not big on telling someone how they can or can’t use social media but there are some things that you should do in your set up to make sure that you are appealing to the community.  About a year ago Chris Brogan wrote a post on etiquette  for social media among other things.  It’s the best post I have seen on the subject and I highly recommend that you give it a look.

Social media can be a great way to build relationships that you wouldn’t normally have built, promote your content (and others people’s content), and build a following.

Teleseminars

About 2 months ago, I finally did my first teleseminar.  Alex Mandossian had introduced me to the medium when I was working for someone else a couple of years ago.  Despite going through his teleseminar secrets course, it took me a while to finally get started doing these events.  As Alex likes to say, teleseminars are great because you can do them anywhere and they are a more intimate medium of communicating with your client base.

There are a few things that you can do to make sure that you get the most out of your teleseminar.  Make sure that you have a detailed outline for your call.  Be careful what service you use for your call line.  A free service may fit your needs in the beginning but you may quickly outgrow that.  Always transcribe your teleseminars and look for ways that your call events can be repurposed for other types of products in the future.

Alex Mandossian says your first teleseminar will always be the worst.  In my first teleseminar, I accidentally dropped off the call in the middle of it.  Luckily I was doing it with a business partner and it was while he was talking but that was definitely a disaster.

Free Recorded Lines

Free recorded messages are a great non intrusive way to deliver information about your business and why someone would want to do business with you.  I learned about this from listening to Joe Polish and Tim Paulson’s program Piranha Marketing.

A free recorded line is typically a toll free number that people can call where they can listen to a message about the business that they are interested in.  If the person likes what they hear, they can leave a message to have someone call them back.  This is also a tool that you can use for new clients to introduce them to a new product or service that they just bought from you.

Joe Polish even gives a list of the vendors that he uses to set this up.  I personally use the first option that Joe lists and have been using it for over a year and have been very happy with it.  The best part about it is it’s only about $30/month and is really easy to use.

All of these media vehicles are easy to set up and don’t cost very much money at all.  In fact, most of this stuff you can do for free.  This is what bootstrapping is all about.  If you are not using these services in your business, take a look at how they might fit within your business and start putting them into practice.  The more media tools you are using the faster you will build a solid platform for your business.

With the free fall of the publishing industry, I am strictly talking about online mediums for producing content. (Which ironically if you use online methods properly will lead you to be able to more easily create hard copy content if you so desire.) Specifically there are 3 primary online content vehicles: newsletters, blogs and e-books.

A newsletter is a really simple medium to produce as an added bonus for current clients or as a way to start building a relationship with a prospective client.  The key is to give great content and do it on a consistent basis.  Your time frame can be monthly, bi-weekly, weekly or daily.  It really doesn’t matter how often you do it as long as you are consistent.  A big mistake that business owners make with newsletters is  putting their newsletters out sporadically.  As far as length it doesn’t have to be long.  It can be just a couple of articles that provide good content.   There are plenty of templates available to produce your newsletter too.   If you use a contact management system like aWeber or iContact,  they have several templates that you can choose from to put together your newsletter.  Putting together and managing a newsletter is pretty simple.

Blogging is a little more time consuming. To be an effective blogger, you need to provide content on a more frequent basis.  I have heard 2-3 posts/week is a good number for blogging.  Once your are more established you can probably blog less frequently and even have other bloggers provide content for your site.  The key is getting your blog set up and committing to providing regular content.  Business owners really struggle to do this mainly because they aren’t always sold on how important it is and they don’t always manage their time well.  You posts don’t need to be very long, 300-500 words is great.  Another point to make about blogging is that if you are serious about building traffic and a following, you need to set up your own hosting for your blog that contains a unique URL.  If you are blogging for more than just the fun of it, services like wordpress.com and Blogger will not serve you as well. For more on why should host your own blog click here.

Last, but not least, it seems that every event that I go to, 95% of the people that I meet are either writing a book or want to write a book.  E-books are a great way to get your idea to the masses without dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars to publish a hard copy.  Having worked on a NY times best selling book project, I know that publishing your book through traditional channels is not only expensive but oftentimes unnecessary for building your platform.  Setting aside time to write a book is always the challenge.  Because of this your blog is a great tool for helping you organize the content of your book and it just takes a simple blog post each day to have your book ready to organize and put together within six month’s time.  Once you have your book complete, there are tons of channels available to distribute it to the masses.

These are just some of the main avenues for written content.  You can also provide content through press releases, white papers, landing pages etc.  Just find the vehicles that work best for you and start writing.  Writing, like anything else, takes practice.  The more you write the better you will get at it.  Not only will you also gain greater clarity personally and in your business, you may also discover that somewhere inside the deepest recesses of your being lies a tiny writer just waiting to come out.  Hey, it happened to me.

How have you seen success with writing in today’s market?  If you don’t write, what holds you back?