This week in small business: Creative and practical advice for 2018
Creativity and thinking outside of the proverbial box is on display this week, especially in our curated collection of marketing articles. You’ll also find ways to beat your self-doubt and cope with the EU’s new data regulations. Leadership, management, and productivity In this USA Today article, Rhonda Abrams delivers seven solid rules for small business growth. Make sure you aren’t breaking any. At times we’re all riddled by self-doubt, so we can all use Ruth Umoh’s four ways to get our confidence back. Do you do ecommerce with Europeans (even if they aren’t located in Europe)? Then you better be ready for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Christopher Rence explains in this Digital River article. Rieva Lesonsky knows that boosting productivity is a perennial goal for small biz owners and in this piece she outlines five ways to improve. It’s right about now when our New Year’s resolutions start to go the way of fanny packs, so you should appreciate this article by the Entrepreneur staff on forming better habits. Kevin Kruse’s piece on Likable Media co-founder Carrie Kerpen is titled, Advice From The Boldest Women In Business. (It might also be the boldest title we’ve seen in a long time!) Marketing and sales Wow. Shutterstock analyzed billions of image searches to determine marketing design trends for 2018. Amanda Zantal-Wiener presents the overview in a striking infographic. Mike Jarrell zips through four tips that will give your ecommerce operation a kick in the pants. I think the first tip is powerful and easy to do. And while we’re on the topic of ecommerce, Zohar Gilad says that 72 percent of those sites fail on site search expectations. He tells you how to make sure you’re in the other 28 percent. Twitter seems to be the troubled child of the major social media platforms, but nonetheless it could be your best kept networking, marketing, and information secret, says Dakota Shane. Even a small business needs a digital marketing strategy and if you don’t believe it, hear what Ryan Kh has to say on the subject. Joshua Baez goes in-depth in his Heinze Marketing blog article titled, B2B IRL: A Scalable Content Marketing Strategy to Drive Long-Lasting Results. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation It’s something we all dream about: a $3-million, one-person business. Elaine Pofeldt tells how one stiletto-loving, corporate mom did it. Great marketing is no joke…or is it? In this article by Alex Yong, he talks with Billy Mann on how to use video humor as a marketing tool. Even if you’re essentially flat broke, Sujan Patel says you can start a business. He offers five options in this Entrepreneur article. And for more on business financing, look over Rohit Arora’s article on loan options. Need tips on how to pitch your business idea? Nina Zipkin reveals the secrets of the Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran. And if you want more from Nina, check out her 10 LinkedIn tips. Politics, government, and the economy Jonathan Bernstein does a good job demonstrating how our biases sway our views on the economy. It’s a good lesson to learn because business owners need to make decisions based on what is really happening in the economy with their political prejudices set...
read moreHow to fill your tanks to propel you through your day
Are you a morning person? I don’t think there’s any doubt that productive mornings are a recurring theme among the most successful individuals, so I always like to read recommendations about ways to squeeze the most productivity out of my mornings. That’s why Benjamin P. Hardy’s Medium article, 8 Things Every Person Should Do before 8 a.m., caught my attention. Hardy outlined his morning routine and it included one item I found especially interesting: Get inspired. Frankly, I don’t believe that inspiration is one of the things most people typically seek in the early morning hours. However, the more I considered his idea, the more I appreciated its importance. Inspiration is what fills our tanks. If you insist on operating without inspiration, every task you do can become brutally oppressive work. If you watch one of the physically exhaustive reality shows, like Survivor, you’ll often hear contestants say that they are doing it for their children, or their spouses. Their inspiration is the desire to set a good example or provide for their families. A guy on the National Geographic show, Life Below Zero – it follows the daily lives of people who live above the Arctic Circle in Alaska – once simply said, “Everyday I have to do something that benefits my wife and family.” We might discuss whether or not that qualifies as inspiration, but if you heard the tone of his voice, I think you would agree that it was. Yet inspiration can come in a wide range of forms, among them: Inspirational quotes, Biographies, Works of art, The desire for material gain, and An encouraging word from a friend, family member, or respected colleague, such as a coach or mentor. This list is far from exhaustive. I’m sure you’ve experienced all of these at different times in your life and you probably have some others that you would add to my short list. The danger is that “inspiration” is an intangible asset. Organizing your morning with a to-do list is tangible. Downloading the latest, greatest productivity apps is tangible. Discovering the sources of your greatest inspiration is more personal. But if we overlook this important human need, our lives – both personal and professional – become devoid of meaning. The biggest question we face as humans is the “why” question. Why are we here? What is our purpose? When you’re being powered by “inspiration” that question, starts to take care of itself. You have things that you know you must achieve. Sometimes when we are inspired by the greatness of others there is something inside ourselves that tells us that we can do it too. Sometimes being inspired by the beauty of art will flip a switch inside us that empowers us to strive for perfection and completion. Physics tell us that there’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Energy from an outside power source is always required to keep a machine running. For the human machine, that outside energy source is inspiration. Grab some inspiration every morning so you can power your way through your...
read moreOuch! Only 1/3 of sales time is spent selling! How to fix the problem
What if you owned an auto repair garage and your mechanics only spent about 1/3 of their working hours actually fixing cars for your customers? It would be an intolerable situation, wouldn’t it? That’s essentially what a Hubspot survey discovered when it inquired about the ways sales professionals spend their time. On average, they devote only 34 percent of the time to actually selling. Here’s the breakdown the Hubspot survey revealed: When presented with information like this, one of the first things a leader needs to do is ask the question, “Which of these tasks can be systemized, farmed out, or automated?” Consider the impact to your bottom line if you could increase the percentage of time sales professionals spend selling by 25 to 50 percent? Let me give you one quick example. Our average sales pro spends 12 percent of the work day scheduling meetings. However, with apps – many free, such as Calendly – scheduling meetings with customers and prospects can be automated. I don’t think it’s too outrageous to suggest that adopting an app to handle some of the meeting scheduling could cut that 12 percent by as much as one half. Prospecting is often ripe for systemization, which can then be turned over to a virtual assistant. For example, I know someone who is targeting sales to health clubs. He has developed a system to search Facebook to identify his best prospects and it usually reveals their contact information as well. An overseas virtual assistant is able to “work” his system, pull together lists of prospects, and make the initial contact with them. Thanks to the good work that Hubspot did with sales professionals, we have this snapshot of how sales professionals spend their time and many of you can use it as a basis to examine your own salesforce. However, a similar survey could be conducted for virtually any job within your organization. Make this year a time to rethink or eliminate the ancillary tasks that suck the productivity out of your organization. If early indications are good, this should be a profitable year for many businesses, therefore it should be a good year to invest on automation and experiment with virtual assistants and other...
read moreCan you balance these two opposing requirements for business success?
Are you a fan of the KISS – keep it simple, stupid – approach to life and business? I love it when situations, challenges, or problems can be boiled down to the proverbial brass tacks and as I was recently reading an article written by AP and USA Today small business writer, Rhonda Abrams, I think she hit on two principles that are yardsticks for measuring your ability to achieve notable success in your business. Or if you’re a prospective entrepreneur, if you can’t operate within these two principles, you might want to consider a different career path or strategy. Her article was headlined 7 rules for small biz growth and the two rules I want to highlight are these: Take care of your bread-and-butter business first, and Don’t bet all your money on one horse. These two business principles are multifaceted and as you can easily see, they pull you in opposite directions. The first point I want you to consider is your ability to hold two opposing goals in your mind and operate on both of them at the same time. You might quickly jump to the conclusion that, yes, you can pursue both your core business and expanding into different areas at the same time, but I urge you to think a little more deeply. Will you end up merely going through the motions on one while your heart is fully invested in the other? I’ve heard a lot of people I respect say something to the effect that you can’t have more than one priority and I also know that our productivity goes way down when we multi-task. Further, experts like Shep Hyken will tell you horror stories about companies that drifted out of their “lane.” This is all to say that finding and “training” another “horse” to ride – to use Abrams’ language – is not easy: But it’s necessary. As I’ve wrote elsewhere on these pages, I think we’re in a special economic era right now and the surveys prove it. Small business optimism is at an all-time high. A growing economy combined with tax reform should keep the optimism high for the medium term. This means that the coming months are the ideal time to place a few bets on other horses. These pro-business growth conditions, when they are gone, might not come back for a long time. Let’s discuss some ways you can find other horses to ride: Expand your customer list. If you’re overly dependent on a handful of legacy customers, get creative about adding names to your list. Expanding your geographic reach is, of course, one way to do this. If you’re hyper local, go statewide; if you’re statewide, go national; if you’re national, go global; if you’re local, go ecommerce; or if you’re soley ecommerce, devise a brick-and-mortar strategy. Also, some of the following points can expand your customer base. Acquire a related company. Perhaps the easiest way to expand into a neighboring state is to buy a company there. This acquisition can be a company like yours, a supplier, or a related industry. Amazon’s profits come from its web services, not its retail sales. I believe that as they developed their fantastic ecommerce system they realized that they had created an incredible Internet infrastructure, so why not...
read moreBlockchain, Bitcoin basics and their place in the future of your business
The other day on Fox Business, Charles Payne noted how the Long Island Iced Tea Corporation changed its name to include the word “blockchain” – it’s now The Long Blockchain Corporation – and its stock price tripled overnight. Such is the power of blockchain. Okay, I’m kidding about the “power” of blockchain; what was demonstrated here was the weakness of investors’ minds. However, there are three things every business owner (and investor) should note here: Names can be deceiving. The ice tea company hadn’t fundamentally changed anything about its operation when it changed its name. They were still brewing tea. Blockchain technology has created a lot of buzz. This is because it’s essentially a computer network database system that is impervious to hackers. Blockchain technology does – or at least will – have practical applications for businesses of all sizes. Blockchain is getting well more than its 15 minutes of fame because it’s the data backbone of Bitcoin. It is secure because the entire array of Bitcoin computers across the globe has a copy of every transaction. Imagine the old days of keeping accounting ledgers in large books, ala Bob Cratchit working for Ebenezer Scrooge. Now imagine 100s of Bob Cratchits around the world instantaneously entering identical transactions. Further, these transactions can only be entered using a private secret code or key. Every computer on the network has to agree on the transaction and its results. These transactions, by the way, are grouped together in blocks and ordered (by time) like your kids would create a choo-choo train out of blocks. The coolest technology comes in at this point; A mathematical question must be solved to place a block in the chain and it isn’t easy. One computer would be too slow, but with many computers testing different solutions at the same time, it takes about 10 minutes to get a solution, according to what I’ve heard. In any case, the important thing to understand is that blockchain is a secure system, its weakness is in that it’s not scalable…at least not yet (people are working on it). Startups are busy brainstorming and developing applications that utilize blockchain technology. (Harold Stark has a good rundown on several blockchain startups in this Forbes article.) Businesses of all sizes will eventually benefit from its robust security. I expect you’ll soon see apps and cloud services available in areas where money, inventory, data, and contracts are involved, such as: Payments Financial markets (any marketplace really) Insurance Healthcare Record keeping Shipping and receiving Peer-to-peer exchanges If you look at this list, you’ll notice that there is an underlying similarity between most of them and it’s most obvious with my last entry. Anytime you have dealings between two individuals, two companies, or individuals and companies, blockchain could be part of the infrastructure that handles the process. After all, that’s really what’s happening when today’s cryptocurrencies are being bought and sold. I have no idea if the recent incredible increase in the value of Bitcoins represents a bubble or is an indicator of its long-term value – or even if cryptocurrencies are here to stay. I’ll let the market figure that out. However, creative entrepreneurs and technology experts will certainly find some great ways to use blockchain in coming months and years. I’m sure that...
read moreThis week in small businesses: Experts from all corners of business offer advice
A wide range of voices is heard from in this week’s collection of curated content. Eight members of the Forbes Business Development Council as well as seven members of the Young Entrepreneurs Council are among the contributors of advice. Leadership, management, and productivity Laura Emily Dunn covers topics from work-life balance to current career challenges when she talks to Erica Ruliffson Schultz, the executive New Relic VP of worldwide sales responsible for driving the company’s go-to-market strategy globally. Lara Galloway bills these 10 productivity tips as being for the overwhelmed entrepreneur, but I think any business leader can benefit from them. Seven members of the Young Entrepreneur Council offer their keys to success in today’s challenging business world. In this short YouTube video, Jason Swenk answers the question “Should I let my full-time staff freelance on their own time?” and discusses what safety measures to put in place. Marketing and sales We cover three great strategies for increasing sales – discounts, deals, and advance access – in this recent Success Tip. In this Forbes article, Joe Escobedo profiles Julia McCoy and how she attracted $4 million in client revenue through content marketing. Are you up to speed on the five important 2018 social media trends as outlined by Xavier Selman? Elevation Advertising’s director of digital strategy, Shade Wilson, offers five ways to kickstart your marketing plan. How much are you spending on SEO? You might find a way to save a few bucks by perusing Maria Jones’ article, 3 Smart Tactics to Make Your SEO Less Expensive. Eight members of the Forbes Business Development Council give us ways to measure sales team success and bean counting isn’t one of them. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Want startup success? Adopting some of the habits of highly successful founders as chronicled by Brian Wallace is a good place to start. Matt Monday’s piece is titled The Hidden Steps to Startup Success, but since publishing this, I guess they are hidden no more. If you’re itching to start an Internet-based business this year, Manish Dudharejia offers three ideas in this article. Politics, government, and the economy In How Degree Inflation Weakens The Economy, Preston Cooper, discusses the growth of and problems resulting from demanding college degrees for positions that don’t really require...
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