What’s the expiration date on ‘Fake it until you make it’?
We’ve all heard the advice to “Fake it until you make it,” haven’t we? It’s usually not bad advice as far as it goes, but that little word “until” puts a time limit on it. In other words, how long is it okay to fake it? If you ask some people, they will candidly tell you that they’ve been faking it all their lives. And sometimes it feels that way for almost everyone. It brings to mind an old George Burns one-liner: “Sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” But let’s go a little deeper. Entrepreneurs and small business owners are often pursuing projects and doing tasks in which they have little or no experience. They are learning as they go along and I think it’s fair to say that when you’re still in the learning mode, much of what you’re doing is faking it. And, the best way to fake it is to copy what others are doing or have done. When you see something that’s working for someone else, it’s worth trying yourself. This is one important path to learning; instead of learning from a text book, you can learn from observing and replicating the actions of others. This is a time-honored practice and nothing to feel bad about. We all know Pablo Picasso’s artwork. When you consider it today, you probably think about its shocking originality. He was at the bleeding edge of several new styles of painting in the last century, including, of course, cubism. But in his youth, Picasso produced paintings in which he copied the masters who went before him. Works like Portrait of Aunt Pepa, First Communion, and The Altar Boy, could have been created in the studios of any number of old masters. At some point, however, to achieve true greatness, Picasso had to start producing original art, paintings that would be immediately identifiable as having come from the hand of Pablo Picasso. Failing to do that would have severely limited his success. The same principles apply to your career as a small business owner. It is perfectly normal and expected to copy what other people have done or are even doing right now. I would point out the fact that there aren’t very many commercial products or services that are truly new. After all, we had social networks before Facebook – Remember Friendster and MySpace? – and we had MP3 players before the iPod. Here’s the danger: Many small business owners become content with copying what others are doing and never venture beyond those boundaries. Therefore, they impose a limit on their ability to succeed. If you are going to copy others, you must be aware of what you are doing and always be working toward finding your own voice, finding your own twist on your product or service, and finding your own way to run your company. Where are you at in your evolution from being a clone of others to being your own person? Has your faking it gone beyond its expiration date? If you’ve seen your sales flatten, maybe you don’t need to pull new prospects into your sales funnel as much as you need to inject some originality into your small business. Make your brand stand out. Now that you know what...
read moreA sneaky way to get expert tips and learn about business systems for free
I look at and review a lot of apps and services trying to find the best ones to recommend to you. But a slightly different view of scanning these websites occurred to me the other day and I thought it might be useful to you as well. I was looking at the IFTTT (IF this, then that) website, which I had scanned quite a long time ago. In its early days, it didn’t make much of an impression on me, but it’s grown up quite well. Before I go further, let me quickly explain what IFTTT does. This site allows you to create little apps – like macros – that often link up two web-based services. For example, a simple IFTTT app would be IF it’s going to rain today THEN send me an email. The site provides a relatively easy interface for assembling these little apps. Today, when you go to the site, you immediately start scrolling down a lot of “pre-built” IFTTT apps that you can use immediately, with no need to piece them together yourself. And it was scrolling through these samples that this thought hit me: These are all examples of things that are possible to do, and I might need some of them. Then I took this thought one step further: Whenever you review the features of an online service, you are learning about things that can be done and they could be things that you should be doing. Another way to put that is like this: See the features described in a service as a kind of “tutorial” on what you should be doing. Let me give you an example. There’s a good marketing automation SaaS called Drip. Here’s a screen shot of part of the site’s homepage: You can see that it has a workflow defined here. Let me turn some of the information on this workflow into questions for you: Send drip campaigns: Do you have any email drip campaigns written? Do you have more than one? What should they look like? Define your goals: What would be your goals in these campaigns? Can you start with small goals and move to larger goals? Get your timing just right with delays: Where would you start your timing? Would sending an email every day be right, or too frequent? Perform actions based on subscriber criteria: What kind of different criteria would fit your subscribers? Do you have different actions to take for different kinds of clients or prospects? If not, maybe you haven’t segmented well enough. Further down on their features page they talk about three types of targeted emails: Drip campaigns, Broadcasts, and One-offs. Do you know the difference? Do you use each of these? I’m not pushing you to sign up for Drip; I’m using it as an example of what you can learn by carefully studying the services provided by various companies. When you review the features and functions provided by an online service, turn them into questions for yourself. Use them as paths to do more or do things smarter than you currently do. As you do this, you may find ways to accomplish those things yourself. And, I might also mention, you could discover that you can use IFTTT to cobble together some of the functions various...
read moreThe sure way to win the SEO war: Name recognition
Here’s a dirty little secret about search engine optimization: All smart business owners are doing it. This means that as you’re trying to improve your SEO, your biggest competitors are doing the same thing. The competition for keywords is extraordinary (you probably know this already). This is why it’s important to work hard and discover some long-tail keywords where the competition isn’t quite so intense. But even then, achieving an unqualified win via SEO is very, very difficult. However, there is one search term on which you should be able to “kill it.” I’m talking about the name of your business. Let me use a major national brand as an example. In the screenshot below are the top five organic search terms that get users to the CitiMortgage website: Note that there are no generic search terms – like “home mortgage” – on that list. The Citi group, of course, has millions of dollars to spend on marketing and branding, but you will find the same thing to be true with successful local brands: People search for them by name. If you’re Smith and Sons Locksmith in Anytown, USA, you don’t want to be caught fighting a cage match with all the other locksmiths for keywords like Best locksmith anytown Locksmiths in anytown Anytown car locksmiths Security system installers anytown No, you want prospects to go straight to their computers or mobile devices and enter “Smith and Sons Locksmith.” That automatically puts you first in a Google search and – if you’ve claimed your Google local listing – brings up your hours, phone number, address, map, and customer reviews. The challenge then becomes how to establish your name recognition throughout your community. When your business depends on local customers and clients, there are two general ways to accomplish this level of name recognition, or branding: Paid advertisements, and Aggressive public relations campaigns. You should budget for both of these to the best of your financial ability! Advertising can be anything from spots on the local radio stations to newspaper ads, to online geo-targeted ads. Frankly, for local businesses, getting your vehicles “wrapped” or renting billboard space can be extremely cost-effective ways to get your name in front of your potential customers. Finally, don’t overlook direct mail to the neighborhoods where your best prospects live. For a successful local public relations campaign, always be on the lookout for a way to get your name in front of prospects. Sponsor a local youth soccer team. Set up a stand at street fairs. Send press releases to all the local media whenever you do something noteworthy, such as sponsor a scholarship. Hand out business cards with a special offer on the back. Hold local seminars and share your expertise. Going back to my locksmith example, a business like that might teach people how to conduct a home security “checkup.” Enter contests and publicize the awards you win. Whether you call this name recognition, brand recognition, or brand name recognition, it’s very valuable to your business. When you can get people to search directly for your small business, you have truly put yourself in a position to be the leader in your local community....
read more5 Ways to Get More Hours in the Day
There’s one commodity that always seems to be in short supply, with no way to get more of it. I’m talking about time. I don’t think I’ve met a small business owner yet who didn’t say something like, “There just aren’t enough hours in the day!” As far as I can tell there are only two ways to give you more productive hours each day: Slow the rotation of the earth, or Learn how to delegate better. Scientists tell me that slowing the rotation of the earth would have grave consequences, so that really only leaves us with becoming better at delegating. Here are five categories of tasks you should start delegating ASAP: Tasks that have been systemized or are routine. When you develop systems to accomplish tasks in your small business, it gives you the ability to more easily plug people into those roles. By the way, you should systemize even routine tasks. In fact, it’s often more important to hone the systems you use for tasks you do all the time. Making them more efficient will have a great impact on your business. Also, developing systems is the first step toward automation. Tasks that aren’t your strength. Wise small business owners know their weaknesses and also recognize the strengths of others. When people on your team are better at a task than you are, give them the job and then get out of their way. You get back some of your hours during the day and overall your business will run more smoothly and profitably. Tasks that will boost sales now. You should be providing the long-term vision and direction for your business. If there are a few tasks that can be accomplished quickly and will yield an immediate boost to your sales, get someone on those tasks STAT! Tasks that will help employees grow. This is really a “twofer.” Take something away from yourself and give it to someone who you believe has good growth potential. This frees up more of your time and eventually sets up your small business to almost “run itself.” If you put the pieces in place that will make your business self-sustaining, you can soon start thinking about your next venture. Tasks you tend to put off. These can be tasks you don’t like, or don’t view as important enough to take you away from other duties. When you’re trying to enjoy a barbecue on the patio and there are gnats buzzing around, it becomes less enjoyable, doesn’t it? It’s the same thing with those little tasks that you know you should do, but keep putting off until the proverbial “tomorrow.” Getting rid of them gets you out from under that cloud. You’ll be re-energized. Also, there may be others in your small business who need you to complete those pesky tasks before they can continue with their work, so delegating them to someone who will “clear the boards” may yield bigger results than expected. We know that small business owners typically put in 55 hour work weeks and honestly that’s not good for your health and in the long term not good for the health of your business. Renew your commitment to delegate better this year....
read moreThis week in small business: Future entrepreneurs, 10% entrepreneurs, and Donald Trump…
It looks like a lot of people are thinking about entrepreneurship right now. I’m especially heartened by the fact that some of them are working on ways to teach our youth about being a successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation One tech entrepreneur sees coding as a way for underprivileged young men and women to achieve their dreams. And in the bigger picture, all parents should take time to bring out the entrepreneurial skills in their children. If you’re a little afraid of jumping into your startup idea full time, read this article on the “10% entrepreneur.” Related to this is this piece on going from intrapreneur to entrepreneur. Are you guilty of these five mistakes entrepreneurs commonly make? Marketing and sales They’ve been with us for 10 years, but right now it’s beginning to look like podcasts are the new blogs. Love him or hate him, Donald Trump can teach all of us a few things about marketing and branding. Here are nine proven strategies. Big data can be daunting for a small business. Carol Roth gives you eight steps for harnessing it. Matt Roche, CEO of Extole, makes the case that peer-to-peer marketing is more powerful than influencer marketing. Are you out there doing it all on your own? If so, you’ll appreciate these five content marketing tips for solopreneurs. Anyone who markets to moms needs to read this article on how Facebook may be the key to reaching your demographic. Leadership, management, and productivity Need to expand? Consider financing the project with the SBA. Check out these productivity tips for anyone who works from home. Politics, government, and the economy Good news for small business owners: Two surveys show that the U.S. economy is building...
read more