new blog 1

 I’ve been excited lately – very excited – about adding a new service to my list.  Suffice it to say that it has the potential of creating a very good situation for both me and the buyer. A win / win, as they say; and we’re all up for those! So I began spending a little time in my head, putting together scenarios for reaching and delivering my new service my current client base (always start at home first, unless there’s a very good reason not to do so). In effect, I was putting together my sales funnel. Note however, that I do this in my head FIRST – before ANY work is carried out. And no, of course I haven’t always done it this way. I also heard that ‘if you build it they will come,’ crap and wasted ample amounts of time and effort (and money too) putting together something that nobody wanted. I learned from that. Some things to remember when you next start working on your own big idea, is that YOU are your number 1 fan. Nobody else cares, or they care very little, at least ...

  Are you dealing with new and changing information constantly to keep abreast of your industry? Are you trying to replicate somebody else’s system, or various systems, and tweak them until the work for you? If this is you, then you’ve probably hit the information overload wall several times before today. I’m talking about that feeling of total overwhelm that grinds your thoughts to a halt; that feeling you get just when you thought you were getting the hang of things and then a new piece of information pops up and suddenly you convince yourself that you know very little about what you do, about where you’re going, and about the things you need to know. That’s information overload: the affliction of knowledge workers. How to cope with – and manage – your learning curve I heard something really clever in a pddcast recently. Clever and beautifully simple. Unfortunately, the speaker couldn’t recall the name of whoever came up with this idea, or at least whoever told it to him, but her...

 Last year I came across a small business owner in a big industry full of competition, and what he did took me completely by surprise and won him my custom hands down. This is a very important lesson for every business owner: one that you can’t afford to miss. So let me tell you what this man did that impressed me so much… Whatever your business, it’s likely that you have competition. And whilst competition is a good thing for the consumer, it makes things harder for the business owner. Especially the small business owner who is competing against big corporates. And so, with this in mind, one of the only ways to survive against the Giants is to distinguish yourself. And you do this by delivering excellence. But how do you outperform the big corporates? Well, on a global basis you probably have no chance (unless you really do have something unique that appeals to everybody, like iboprofen). Small business owners operating in a local market don’t have the resources that a big corpora...

  Let me start by saying I know I have used the American Z rather than the English S but that is because if you search for ‘personalisation’ you find a bunch of stuff not related to search engine optimisation. I want to explain this term so you can go off and do your own due diligence on how this ranking factor works. For now, when searching, you will have to use they keyword term personalization. So, what is personalization in SEO (search engine optimisation)? Personalization is a major factor in local search.  It has been since around 2011 (ish). I remember co-hosting a webinar and we were searching for different keyword results. Depending on where the person was based (we were based around the world) the results were different. It caused quite a bit of confusion at the time but that was an example of the beginning of personalization in SEO. The good news is, personalization in SEO is the main reason you no longer have to obsess about being number 1 in the search engines. Wh...

  Appearances are everything, even in business . If you are perceived to be an expert in your field, people will respect your opinion, you can charge more and you will be in more demand. Of course, you need to deliver excellently because that is the proof of all that you say about yourself. But even when you deliver an excellent service, appearances are important. Delivering excellently alone won’t help you get very far if you are failing in the appearance department. Imagine you have a huge garden badly in need of timing you are right home one day to find that it’s all trimmed and beautifully landscaped and you immediately demand to know who the skilled garderner behind this work is, so that you can hire him to tend to the upkeep of your gardens from now on. Upon your request, the gardener turns up and he turns out to be hideous, unkempt, smelly, and worse. What do you do? It’s very hard to overcome our natural instincts and reason with logic when we are repulsed in some way about...

 The Federal Trade Commission’s new ruling on the use of testimonials came into effect on the 1st Dec 09. If you use testimonials in your business, you need to read this. On 1st dec 2009 the rules that set out how you use testimonials in your business as a selling and advertising tool changed. Typically, most companies out there show their best testimonials to advertise and sell their products and services. It makes sense to do so, of course (why would you show complaints or anything less than your best feedback?) However, The Federal Trade Commission has decided that this is (or can create) misleading advertising. The problem is that  the testimonials don’t always reflect the average user experience.  For example, if you searched the Internet (before today) for an online course in Marketing, you’d probably find dozens of websites with fantastic testimonials plastered everywhere showing how people who took the course became very wealthy as a result. And here is where the ...

 A couple of posts ago I talked about information overload and how to cope with it, and whilst there are various ways to overload on the old ‘info’, this subject would not be complete without giving due credit to the single biggest facilitator of information overload in the digital age: e-mail. Notice that I didn’t say culprit. It’s much to easy to blame e-mail for wasting your time, but that’s otherwise known as a  shift of responsibility … and that attitude is not going to get you far in business or in life. E-mail can’t make you stop and read e-mail. Once we’ve taken responsibility for wasting time, we can actually take a look at ways to stop this from happening, or at least make it happen less often. Clear desk, clear mind A good friend of mine used to tell me that a clear desk produced a clear mind. He would clear his desk on a Friday afternoon before leaving the office, giving it a good wipe with some polisher and a cloth, and each Monday morning he would find a cle...

 In fact, everything boils down to time management: you’re either using your time wisely or you’re not. In business, being effective often starts by doing the things you need to do faster and better. This requires organisation: you have to be ale to organise yourself and your day effectively to get the most out of your time. Technology comes in handy here: there is a treasure-trove of tools that can automate repetitive tasks and even help you do those tasks that are unique (in other words, the ones you can’t automate) much faster than you otherwise would, whilst reducing the potential for error. Even if your field is manual-intensive, for instance if you’re a garden landscaper, you can – and must – use technology wherever you can to support and improve the tasks that you do. Always being on the lookout for tools that can help you organise your tasks will make you into a more effective time manager. Whatever business you’re in, you should adopt the mentality that there are better wa...

 In my own business experience –  and I’m sure in yours too  - not getting things down in writing is usually a costly mistake in terms of time and stress, and can also put a strain in your relationship with the client. Murphy’s Law is always going to be waiting in some corner ready to jump out at you when you least expect it and derail your best laid plans. This is inevitable. But knowing this gives you the edge: if this is something you can expect, then this is something you can plan for. As they say: forewarned is forearmed. So whilst there are things that may go wrong with a job or a project, sometimes things that are beyond your control, there are also things that you  can  do to help prevent failure at least in some areas. The more controls like these you put in place, the tighter the ship you’ll run. 1. What was said Whenever you meet with a client or a new prospect and any sort of agreement takes place between you, make sure you always e-mail your client ...

 When he was alive, my father used to be fond of re-telling me one particular story about his friend back in Spain. Angel, as he was called, worked in the building trade like so many southern immigrants who had come to Barcelona seeking to make their fortune. For a male growing up in the poverty-stricken parts of Southern Spain, working the fields from a very early age was a way of life.  But he was different… Or rather, he  did  something that made him different. What made Angel different from his peers was a small piece of paper. Angel guarded this piece of paper fiercely. He may have even fought to the death over it had anybody tried to take it off him. It was worth that much. Back in the days when money was cheap and work was plentiful, Angel had beautifully outmanoeuvred his landlord into an agreement that would last until the day he died. As it turns out, life wasn’t too kind to Angel. ill fortune struck and he lost his wife he himself did not enjoy the best of...