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.

Dollars Follow Value

The primary function of your business is to create value for the public through producing a good or service that people want/need.  Primary function 1a is to make money.  As a good friend of mine says, dollars follow value.  If you don’t create value, all the money in the world won’t help you.  If don’t believe that then ask all the lottery winners who go broke.

Here’s Where Business Owners Go Wrong

A large percentage of business owners that I work with focus on their value and then forget about their money.  They never look at their financials, except for tax purposes, and even if they did look at their financials, they wouldn’t understand what they are looking at.

While creating value in your  business is important, if you don’t manage your business finances, you will find yourself out of business sooner than later.  What’s one of the primary reasons that businesses fail?  Poor financial controls.

How To Manage Your Business Finances

First off, make a commitment to your business finances and get educated.  A great book to read is Financial Intelligence For Entrepreneurs.  This book gives you the ABCs on your finances in an easy to understand manner.

Get a professional involved.  Are you still doing your books?  If so, stop as soon as possible.  Having a pro, that knows your industry, doing your books may very well supplement your cost of hiring them.  Have regular meetings with your accounting team as well.  Don’t just meet with your tax advisor at the end of the year, meet with them on a regular basis to plan and forecast.

Set up a regular schedule to review financials.  This is part of creating the right habits in your business.  Keep your finger on the pulse of your financial health.  Reviewing your financials weekly is a great place to start and use the metrics as means to manage your business.

This isn’t about being greedy or to infer that you are a loser if money isn’t the most important thing in your life.  Here’s a news flash, money isn’t the most important thing to most people so this position is hardly unique.  Don’t use this position in a destructive manner and let it fool you into thinking that money isn’t important.  It is.

Even if you didn’t study business in college, you can still master the financials in your business.  Caring about value and making that your focus is great.  That value, however, does you no good if your business is broke and is forced to close.  Financial literacy in your business is a key part of a winning business.

1.  You can’t do it all yourself.  When you get good at planning, you realize that you need help and that there are some things in your business that you shouldn’t be doing.  Rather than focus on what you shouldn’t be doing, it’s better to look at your top five most important activities.  When you know what you absolutely should be doing, then you know what you shouldn’t be doing.

2.  Get your team involved.  Planning is easier when you get the power of feedback and collaboration.  The key is to have a team that is working with you and not against you.

3.  Use the right metrics.  There is a specific process for identifying and using metrics in your business.  Once you identify the right metrics, you can use them to get feedback on your business quicker and easier.

4. Take your high level vision and put it into ground level action.  You’re an entrepreneur, you think big.  Now how do you take the big vision and put it into manageable steps.  The planning process  will help you with that.

I cover these details in more depth in this week’s podcast so check it out, enjoy, like and comment.

The main reason is that you have become a rugged individualist and you don’t even realize it.  Instead of getting the freedom and upward potential that your business can offer, the reality is that you are overworked and overwhelmed.

There is a better way.  That better way starts with planning and great planning happens when business owners decide to build that plan with a team.

Planning is a task that not every business owner look forward to.  In fact, you may chuckle at your ability to put off planning as you are reading this.  The reality is that you can make planning for your business a whole lot easier if you use your second greatest asset in your business, your team.

Getting your team involved in the planning of your business is great way to get new ideas from your team.  It’s also a terrific way to build relationships with your team through enhanced communication.

The best part of getting your team involved in planning?  When you get your team involved in the plan it’s their plan too.  It’s not you, sitting in your ivory tower, passing down the objectives from on high.  Your team, or key players on your team, were there on the ground level helping you create the game plan and then participating in the building of that plan.

Why is getting your team involved important?

How often have you wondered why your team isn’t working on important tasks?  Have you ever thought that your team isn’t as engaged in the work that they do as you would like them to be?  Getting your team involved in some of the planning aspects of your business help to eliminate some of those issues.  Now your team has ownership in the plan.  It’s not your plan, it’s our plan.

If you have not done a great job of delegating objectives to your team, the good news is, it’s not too late.  Get your team together for a high level meeting and start talking about what you can do to be on the same page, working towards a common goal.  Set objectives in your business, start enjoying the results and get your life back.

Having a vision, a why as well as values is an important first step to creating projects and starting businesses.  For visionary business owners who already think high level, this is the easy part.

However, when you start asking the question of what needs to be done and how they are to be done, this is where things start to get a little overwhelming.  Business owners are impatient, you want it done yesterday.  When you get impatient, you either wing it or, in some cases, you don’t do anything and all you have is a dream or a wish.

Ultimately, if you are going to be involved in high level activities, it makes sense to have a team that is also engaged in their Soul Purpose.  I find that this is such a simple fix for what ails most businesses or projects but business owners try to be the rugged individualist and take their high level vision to ground level themselves.  You don’t get your team involved because you are a terrible delegator.

If you don’t have a team and you are a solopreneur.  I would recommend doing a project balance sheet around your business idea.  If you are familiar with a balance sheet (if you are reading this then you are a business owner so I pray that you are), then you know that balance sheet contains assets, liabilities and resources. The same holds true for business and projects.

With your balance sheet, start with the positive.  What are the assets of the idea?  In other words, what are all the positive aspects of the idea.  This could include your passion, your abilities, etc.

Next is the liabilities?  What are the areas where you are not in a strong position with the idea?  This could include areas that you don’t know anything about, like building a website to areas where you don’t have a team to help you implement the idea.

Next is resources.  Do you use money as an excuse as to why you can’t do things?  Money is never the most important resource that you have available to you anyway.  More importantly is mental capital (your brain and your ideas) and relationship capital (your network). What are the resources that you have available to you to help you move the idea forward.

This simple assessment of where you are at in the initial stage of your business or project allow you to map out what needs to be done next and gives you a better idea of how you can do it, given the resources that are available to you.

High level thinkers need ground level strategies but don’t get hung up in the details.  Lay your cards on the table and then create a plan around what you do have to make your business or project work.   High level vision requires ground level action but ultimately leads your business to high level results.

Looking at your business from three different dimensions. Glasses not included.

If you’re reading this, you may not be much of a planner.  In fact, for most people setting plans and goals sucks.   So with that being said, thanks for reading this far.  Planning can be difficult as you sit and try and figure out what the right goals are and not make those goals feel arbitrary.  For you haters of planning, here are three simple questions to get you started.  Answer these and you are well on your way to having a plan that will make your year better.

These questions are questions that we ask ourselves and our clients frequently.  It’s also part of our Alignment Blueprint that we do with clients this time of year.

Here are the three questions.

What are you going to keep doing? 

It’s easy to focus on the negatives when we look at our lives but I want you to start this process off on a positive note.  This is the time where you look at what worked in your business during the past year.  What are those activities that added to your business in a big way and that you would be crazy to stop doing?

What are you going to start doing?

These aren’t to be confused with resolutions because this needs to be shit that you really need to start doing.  These are not things that you hope to do like go to the gym and piss people off who go to the gym all year and now can’t work out for a couple of months.  For instance, one thing we decided to focus on for this year was the market that our business operates in.  We realized that we need to build more relationships within our own community.  What are those things that are going to be essential for success this year.

What are you going to stop doing? 

This is one of the most important productivity questions that you can ask yourself.  We tend to get in our own way when we engage in activities that aren’t ultimately critical to business success.  Particularly at the stage of business that you are in.  You don’t have the luxury to waste time and effort.  Do you need to hire someone to handle  certain things?  Are you engaged in too many efforts and need to refocus on one goal?

So how are you going to make time to answer these questions?  This is a great activity to work through during your morning routine or power hour.  This exercise shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes of focused effort.  After you do the exercise, comment on this post and let me know some things that you are going to change for next year.  I am curious to hear what everyone came up with.

What’s the core of your business?  The core of your business consists of why you exist, where you are going and what your business values.  You may know the core of your business by another set of terms: Mission, Vision and Values.

When it comes to planning effectively.  You have to have clarity around your business.  Why make a plan if you don’t know where you’re going?  Why make a plan if you don’t know why you have a plan to begin with?  These questions seem simple enough yet we ignore them frequently.

Here’s another way to look at the core of your business:

Vision-  Vision is the eyes of your business.  A proper vision allows you to see what’s coming and what’s next.  It allows you to properly gauge trouble on the horizon and to see where it is that your business needs to go.

Mission- Your mission is the heart of your business.  If your heart isn’t in it what keeps you fighting when things don’t go as planned which they often do.  Why do underdogs win against better opponents?  Heart.  Their why is bigger.  They want it more.  Your why needs to give you power and keep you going.  What do you stand for?  What are you against?

Values-  Values are the veins of your organization.  They carry life sustaining elements to and from the heart.  Values help you ensure that your mission isn’t compromised and that you stay on course with your vision.  Values help all of the different aspects of your business run as they should.

If you have started putting together objectives for next year then your business is off to a good start.  During the process take some time to revisit the core of your business.  Why do you do what you do?  Are the products and services that you offer that are out of alignment with that?  Has the direction of your business changed?  Make next year even more successful by making sure you ask some of these questions.

It all starts with the following statement.  “I don’t even know where to start.”

Have you ever made that statement?  It usually comes after you have taken stock of all that needs to completed in a project or in your business.  The solution for most?  Don’t do anything.

Usually Our Problems Are Much Simpler To Solve Than We Think

I learned a lesson about making the simple complex when I had a leak in my sink pipe in an old house that I had.  My solution for fixing the problem?  A large bowl.  It was a slow leak so I knew I wouldn’t have to empty the bowl that often.  The problem is that it’s kind of gross and it takes up valuable storage space.

After 6 months of this and the occasional comment by my wife, I decided to fix the leak.  Was it a long process? Did I have to consult the web for help?  Call in a professional?  Buy lots of tools?  None of the above.  It took me about 5 minutes to fix.  The pipes just weren’t aligned quite right and I just had to readjust them.

How We Let Perceived Complexity Win Out

I was so sure that the plumbing problem in my house was complex that I just assumed I couldn’t fix it.  Why did I do this?  Because I am not a plumber and have very little experience in plumbing.  The other thing is that I am not necessarily a real handy guy at least that’s what I tell myself.  The reality was that I was the complex variable not the leaky pipe.

How Your Story Fits In All This

When you don’t start something, complexity and fear of the unknown play a role.  What else plays a role? Our stories.  One thing that held me back from fixing my sink is the story that I tell about not being a handy person.  The more I tell this story, the more of a self fulfilling prophesy it becomes.  I am sure you can relate in some way to this.

What You Do Next

If you have a project that you currently haven’t started due to not knowing where to start. Ask yourself if it’s really the complexity of the project or some other story that you are telling yourself that is keeping you from getting started.

From there identify the ideal outcome of the project and then break the project up into little chunks so that you can start accumulating some small wins.  As you gain these wins, you will start gaining confidence that you can achieve the end result and things will snowball from there.

Don’t let uncertainty and stories keep you from getting projects done.  You just have to get started.  Once you’ve started, you are more than halfway there. When you keep yourself out of your own way, anything’s possible.

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?

OK seriously, you can’t just curl up in your house and do nothing all day.  Well I guess you could but if you are reading this, you are probably not the kind of person who would do that.  So back to getting things done, more specifically the easiest way to get things done.

I have a specific weakness in that at times I can burden myself with tasks that I keep in the back of mind.  I know these tasks need attention but I don’t make the effort to address these specific tasks.  Two primary things happen when I do this:

1. I get overwhelmed.
2. I forget to do things.

Time and space productivity changed my working life.  By taking tasks that occupied my mind and caused overwhelm, I was now able to clear these items out of my mind by designating a specific time that these tasks were going to be done at a later date.  If the task is worth remembering and can’t be handled immediately, it gets put on the calendar to be handled at a later time.

Issues with being overwhelmed…mostly solved.  (I say mostly because as a business owner I don’t know if I can completely stop this from happening but I have significantly reduced it.)

So now on to forgetting things.  Damn I hate spacing something off and my wife really likes it when I do it too.  My clients don’t get too pleased about either and my guess is your clients don’t either.  Having a system for productivity solves your forgetfulness issues.  Creating the time and space to tackle the issues ensures that you know when, where and how you are going to approach every to-do that you have.  When you have that down and you are committed, your project is as good as done.

A common approach that we subconsciously have is to try and tackle everything that is on our plates today.  We don’t allow ourselves to be realistic with our to-dos.  Scheduling time and space for tasks is easy to do and makes getting things done easier than any other system that you have used.  So get scheduling and get simple.

How do you get things done?

As I have been sharing my online system for productivity, the hub for a lot of what you do online is available on your smartphone.  Tools like Evernote, your online calendars, e-mail etc.  all have apps made for smartphone access.  This is all great stuff.

The key to any effective system for productivity is to have a centralized hub to keep things efficient and easy to manage.  Smartphones certainly make this possibly.

Another advantage to a smartphone is the ability to utilize social media.  Unless your business is social media, you are probably struggling with the balance of when to use social media platforms and how often to use them.  You’re a busy person.  Busy people have to be careful with how they use their time.  Your phone can be a great tool for being social while you are killing time.

I was recently getting my car serviced at the dealership and as I waited an hour longer than I was told I would need to (which is how my particular dealership insists on doing business), I used the time to engage with people on social media.  It was great to build some connections and interact with great people sharing great content.

Remember when I said smartphones were dangerous?

Well they are if you don’t use your power for good.  Despite all the convenience of the hub that a smartphone can be, it’s also the very thing that kills your productivity in the following ways:

• As a tool for interruption.  Trust me, you don’t need to look at it every 30 seconds.
• As a tool that prevents you from being present in the moment.  Are you hanging with your kids and your phone?  If you are stop it right now.
• Keeps us engaged in busy work.  Our e-mail inbox is not nearly as important as we think it is.  Neither is Twitter or Facebook.

For all the good that smartphones can do for our business productivity, it can also be bad.  Be smart with your smartphone and enjoy better productivity habits.

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.

As you drive home you feel I little sick to your stomach because you just realized something.  You forgot to work on that project that you thought about at the coffee shop.

The problem with this scenario is sometimes we forget things and we don’t remember them for a few days or maybe even a couple of weeks.  The one thing you don’t want is for your client to remind you to get something done.  That’s  never a good thing.

Business owners are busy.

We manage multiple projects with multiple clients.

We balance working on our clients work with the work that needs to be done on our own business.

It’s easy to forget tasks no matter how important they are. Everyone is susceptible to it.

This is why I started carrying around a capture tool to ensure that I immediately capture to-dos that came to my mind.  It used to be a little notebook.  Now I use the online tool Evernote.

With Evernote I can capture photos, notes, etc.  I can tag notes, organize them, share them etc.  Most importantly I have an app on my Droid that allows me to do this with a tool that I always have on me, my phone.

At the end of each day I organize my notes and handle simple to-dos immediately and handle bigger to-dos by creating time and space in my calendar to work on at a later date.

Since I implemented this system three years ago, I have found that the productivity and service that I offer my clients has improved dramatically.  The best part about it is that it’s simple and keeps me from being branded as the unreliable entrepreneur who’s terrible at following through.

Implementing a capture tool into your daily productivity is a simple way to ensure that you capture great ideas and important to-dos right on the spot.  What other tools do you use to help you remember important items?

If talent is overrated, is passion overrated too? Do we overstate what role passion plays in our success? That is a question that keeps coming to mind as I think about passion.  My initial thought is that you can’t be successful without having some desire behind what you are doing.

An example from my own life is running.  I ran cross country in high school and was also able to compete in college as well.  If you asked me if I liked running, I would probably tell you that I like it but I don’t love it.  Running in college allowed me to compete in running at a high level.  How was I able to do that without loving it?  Competition.

Competition was the driving force behind my desire to run.  I stumbled upon running almost accidentally.  Growing up I competed in soccer, football, baseball and basketball.  Hell I even bowled in a league in junior high.  Running was never in the mix except for as a compliment to the other sports that required quite a bit of running like soccer (sorry to my European friends who are reading this by not calling it football J)

Some friends talked me into running in high school and it turns out that I liked it and, more importantly, I was good at it.  Not only did running allow me to scratch my competitive itch but it also allowed me to scratch another itch that I have which is winning.  We won two state championships while I was there and we didn’t lose a meet in our conference for almost three years.

So what does this have to do with passion and your business?

You don’t have to love coffee to run a coffee shop.  You don’t have to love plumbing to run a plumbing business.  Do you think that if you ask a plumber if he/she is passionate about toilets that they would say “Yes!”.  I don’t think they would.

What a plumber would tell you is that they like solving problems and helping people.  They like being independent, etc.  This is the same feeling I have about running.  I don’t love running but I do love competing and winning.  Running supported those desires.

Don’t be too narrow focused when looking for a business opportunity that you want to get behind.  The other thing is don’t just look at what the  business is, look at all the by-products that may exist around the business that may support your passion.

I don’t think that passion is overrated but I do think that we limit what our passion can be and look like for us professionally.

Do you agree?  Has this been true in your own life?  I would love to hear your story.

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.

Before I get into where to start, let me briefly touch on the ineffective practices that plague business owners in completing their business objectives and their other projects.  Maybe one of these approaches resonates with you.

The first ineffective practice is taking all of the pieces that are needed to complete a project or to run a business and start working on these particular items without any regard for the other pieces of the project and with no specific flow of getting things done.  The other lacking component is a clear vision.  I call this the shotgun approach where you just spray some effort to see what happens.

The second ineffective practice is to start a process and work on it all the while hoping for a specific outcome to  emerge from your efforts.  I call this “The Field of Dreams”.  You know, if you build it, they will come.  Except for they don’t come and you just wasted time, money and effort on it.  Using “The Secret” won’t help you here either.

Those two scenarios sound ridiculous but I see a project or business run like this all of the time.  This is because most business owners don’t think in terms of process flow they think in terms of ideas.

So what’s the solution?

I have to thank my daughter for recently reminding of this particular rule that comes from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits and we reintroduced to me through a book I read with my daughter often which is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Kids.  The habit is start with the end in mind.

Before we start any project or business.  We always think about what we want to achieve by doing and what do we want the end user to achieve.  Sometimes this is a collaborative process.  In fact we don’t like to assume that we know what people want so we ask.  We also love to get feedback from our team as well as they always have great insight into how we can make the project or business idea better.

Once we have a decent idea of what we want to achieve then we move to the start and look at all of the steps that are needed to complete the project as well as resources that are needed such as timeframe, people and money.

At this point we are also looking at what we know we don’t know and deciding how to address specific known blind spots for our team.

Creating a step-by-step process really is a challenge for business owners as they typically don’t like details.  This is where you should have people on your team who think in steps and also like details.  You need both the visionary and detail person on your team.

Ultimately, knowing where you want to go doesn’t guarantee that you will get there but it does provide a better roadmap for what is possible and gives you the ability to track your progress along the way.

How do you approach your business processes?

The question is what influences your decisions?  Is it money?  Fame?  Family?  Ego? What is it?  Ask yourself honestly what drives your decision making process.

Chances are you have an internal mechanism inside of you that helps guide your decisions.  For now, we will call it your “gut”.  How do we take that internal mechanism and create something external that not only guides your decisions as a business owner but also guides your team’s decision’s as well.  Welcome to values based decision making.

Values based decision making is a process of creating a set of standards with which to filter important life and business decisions.  You may have a set of values personally and professionally and hopefully they are congruent with each other.

Let’s say that you are in a meeting and you are presented with an “opportunity”.  You’re “gut” may tell you to jump on the opportunity.  There’s a time and place for making “gut” decisions but you shouldn’t make it a habit of making decisions that way.  Having a set of values  in place for your business will allow you to discern if the opportunity will truly fit within your organization’s mission.

Let’s say the opportunity is an outside sales floor that would really be able to boost the sales of your business.  Let’s say this sales floor has a reputation for closing leads extremely hard and aggressively.  Increasing sales for your business is a good thing right?  What if one of your company values is treating clients with respect or to have a high level of customer service?  Is this opportunity the right fit?  Probably not.

Values let you discern between opportunities and distractions.  The idea may be a good one…for somebody else.

What does your company value?  When was the last time you made a decision based on your personal or professional values?  If you have ever found yourself chasing dollars in your business doing things that you know you shouldn’t be doing, it’s time to create a set of values for your business so that you can use your time effectively and serve the market as you were meant to.

How have you used values to make decisions?

“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.

The Use Of Our Socially Networked Society

The book had 470 contributors in 45 countries.  While there were 9 core contributors on the book they had influence from all over the planet.

Traditional Publishing Not Needed

When you look at how beautifully this book is put together, you can’t believe that it didn’t come about through a typical publishing channel.  This book was financed and put out independently.

The Content is So Relevant For Business Owners

Beyond the fact that this book is one of the most stylishly laid out books that I have ever seen.  The content is so relevant for business owners who are looking at starting new trends and exploring new territories of their business.

The book centers around the business model canvas which is pictured above.  This is where your new business model starts.

You explore the different types of business models that exist, how to analyze them and put them into practice.

If you have a business and you are always looking out at what’s next on the horizon then this is a book you should keep in your library for reference.

If you don’t have the book.  Get it right now here.

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.

The minute that you say the word “strategic” to business owners, either their eyes start glazing over or they think that anything else you are going to say is some variation of business buzz words that they don’t care about.  I get that.  However when it comes to having strategic objectives for your business, it’s important that have these clearly defined and that you and your team are working towards these objectives.

So what are strategic objectives?

I define strategic objectives as simply the framework that your business creates to highlight the most critical tasks in your business.  There should be a handful of these so that you can stay focused.

Why are strategic objectives important?

We have an epidemic of time wasting in our work culture because of all of the tools that we have that are supposed to help us do things more efficiently.  E-mail, smart phones, social media, search engines are here to make our lives easier but can also be time killers if we don’t manage them properly.   In the book Fake Work, the authors discuss the inability of the average employee to align their work with the most important tasks in their company.  There is also too many leaders who aren’t communicating these properly if at all.

A great way for a small business owner to assess whether or not their work is aligned is in the area of marketing.  How often have you gone to a networking event and met tons of potentially great relationships and then failed to call any of them?  What about putting together a marketing plan and initiating it?  If you are not doing these things you are probably neglecting critical areas of your business.

When our teams are properly aligned with strategic objectives.  We have teams that are focused on the work that truly makes the company better and the business prospers as a result.  You also get an engaged team who is truly excited about the work they do.

What are the roadblocks to aligning with strategic objectives?

One the biggest roadblocks is getting caught up in non essentials.  Particularly e-mail.  We tend to think that we need to respond to every interruption that comes our way and we don’t.

Another roadblock is not clearly defining an end game for your business.  Do you have a mission, vision and values?  Do you have strategic objectives laid out for you and your team?  If not then you aren’t going to be as effective.

The end game for your business

When your team is focused on the most critical areas of success for your business, then you are positioning your business for a great possibility of success.  Having objectives is not enough, you must align your team to be working towards them.  This will result in better innovation, better service, better clients and a better overall team and business.

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?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shame when long time local businesses fail.  You feel like a piece of your town/city dies with it.  As tragic as this is, businesses need to adapt themselves to a changing business landscape.  It’s not enough to just put up a storefront and run a few ads in the paper and on local TV and think that people will flock to your store.

Today, consumers can buy from retailers all over the country.  Geography isn’t nearly as important as it used to be.  So how do business owners take advantage of this?  One of the first things to do if your business is struggling in tough times is take a step back and look at your business from a 30,000 ft.  viewpoint.  Where is there waste?  Are there product lines that you have been thinking about adding but haven’t?  Are there dead product lines that you just need to kill?  Are there employees that need to be fired?

You get the point, leave no stone left unturned.

Another consistent factor with small businesses that have failed in the past couple of years is their stubborn refusal to get active on the web.  With customers moving more and more towards making purchases on the web and engaging with each other and the places that they do business with, if you don’t have a website for your business, you have no chance to make those sales or get people engaged in your business.  Social media is another avenue to explore although not critical but what about creating online content about your particular niche?  Most small businesses that fail don’t engage in online content creation and their business ultimately suffers for it.

We are a social society today.  We want to engage with the businesses that we patronize.  We get excited when a business engages us online through Twitter or a blog post.  Old school businesses like Jolley’s have a hard time with this concept.  They see conversing with people online as a waste of time.  Seth Godin refers to emotional capital in his most recent book Linchpin and how emotional capital is the way that we separate ourselves from other businesses and people.  The key is finding your voice and your platform for delivering your message in a manner that works for you.

In times when your business is struggling it’s time to take hard look at where your business is at currently and how well it is positioned to do business in the current  landscape.  Don’t hold onto antiquated business practices and keep an open mind about what the future holds.  Business is constantly changing and evolving.  A Taoist principle that comes to mind when I think about this topic is that of keeping yourself formless like water so that you can overcome the different obstacles that arise because you haven’t attached yourself to any particular way.  The government isn’t going to help you do that.  Smart, flexible business owners do that for themselves.

The fact is that BP Oil had a breakdown in their process and equipment which led to the current situation that we are currently in. If you want more on the spill details go  here.

Companies are run by people and people make mistakes.  It’s how you deal with the mistake that matters.  Two big problems are evident in the aftermath with regards to BP’s reaction to the spill.

Problem #1- Lack of Preparedness

All businesses need to have contingency plans in place for when the unexpected happens.  BP Oil seemed to have no idea what they were going to do in the event that something like this happened.  In fact they have gone so far as to ask the public for ideas and suggestions.  I don’t necessarily have a problem with admitting that you don’t have an answer.  I do have a problem with you not having any answer at all.

Pride is a huge factor in this.  There has been  heated discussion betweens oil and environmental regarding the true safety of offshore drilling.  This seems to have clouded the vision of oil in that they seemed to be so focused on showing that offshore drilling could work that no one stopped and asked, “What if it goes wrong?”

You have to prepare your business for problems that can arise through technology, people etc.  This is especially true when you are dealing with something as fragile as our ecosystem.  Let’s face it, most of us don’t have to worry about these types of explosive issues in our business but we still need to be prepared.

Problem #2- Treating Your Customers/Public Like They Are Idiots

There has been a lot of double talk and finger pointing in this situation about whose fault the spill is.  BP Oil, if you are listening, I have news for you.  We don’t give a shit whose fault it is.   Crisis situations demand leadership.  Leaders don’t pass the buck they own the situation and fix it.  So what if the equipment was not specifically yours.   You don’t send an e-mail to your customers telling them they are idiots and then blame it on HP because they are the ones that made the computer that the e-mail was sent from.

My favorite part of this whole fiasco is BP reaction to their plummeting stock price.  BP says: They are “Not aware of any reason for share price movement.”  Thanks to The Daily Show for hipping me to that ridiculous press release.  BP must think that their investors are complete morons.

I worked in corporate life for almost a decade and this is one of the biggest problems with the corporate structure.  Typically the leadership is severely disconnected to the public.  It shows in the way they communicate with us in such a “cover my ass”, political manner.

If you are running a business, what can you learn from this?  First, be prepared for things that go wrong in your business and own your mistakes.  The second is to treat your clients and the public like they are humans and speak to them in a manner that is authentic.  No one is insulated from the public anymore.

A great example of how to respond to a mistake, granted on a much smaller scale, was given by baseball umpire Jim Joyce who made the wrong call that cost a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers a perfect game.  See how he owned his mistake here.  Jim owned the call as soon as he knew he got it wrong and make no mistake about it, he was sincere in his apology.  It’s time for BP to take note and stop giving business a bad name.

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.