Does email have a strangle hold on your productivity?

Recently, I have been questioning my addiction to modern day communication.  I’ve always had the ideology of checking one’s email just three times a day;  once in the morning, once at lunchtime and once more before you finished for the day.

However, when I got my first iPhone more than two years ago, I was delighted that I could put my whole business in my back pocket and be in touch with everybody at every minute of the day.  The three times a day ideology was thrown out of the window as I convinced myself that it was fantastic to be able to check my emails whilst away from my office.

It certainly proved incredibly useful and increased my productivity to start with as I wasn’t tied to the upstairs PC.  I could be out at all day meetings or conferences and still feel in control over what was going on.

But over the last couple of years, email checking has crept in throughout the day.  First thing in the morning, often before even saying Good Morning to my OH lying next to me in bed.  Whilst standing in line at the local supermarket.  Whilst waiting for my children at the end of the school. Right through to last thing at night because … well, you just never know do you?

How has this added to my productivity?  Well, I am sure you’ve guessed it … it hasn’t!!

Earlier this week I attended my first Entrepreneur Circle event.  The topic of the morning was Implementation and after an hour or so it was easy to see that the big evil of the moment was most definitely …. email!  Because I was able to take some well deserved time out of my working week and have the space to think about how I could make some changes, I came up with several actions that I am determined to follow through with.

Because if I don’t, email will continue to be the strangle hold on my productivity.  And probably cut it off altogether!

Here’s what I plan to do and if any of these ideas can help you with your email addiction / problem / OCD (delete as appropiate!)

Email Folders and Inbox Rules

I already use a fair number of folders in my inbox but have realised that many of the rules are out of date.  Check which rules are working for you and if you find yourself moving the emails from the same person to a folder each and every day, then it’s time to set up an automatic Rule.  I love the one that you can tick “yes, ignore inbox”.

Switch off and Turn off email

It’s too easy to have email open all day and every day.  I don’t have the alert sound or pop-up appear each time a new message comes in;  I’m not that bad! (If you still do, then I believe you may have a serious problem!!).  But I have realised that email has been allowed to stay on far longer that I used to.  This is changing!

Check and Do

Have you ever found yourself checking your email, reading the emails and then clicking out to come back to it later?  What a waste of time!! I am now installing a policy of Check and Do.  If I am checking my emails, I will either delete, file or reply and file.

Action This Week Folder

What about emails that you need to take action on but you don’t want to spend 15 minutes sorting it out there and then?  This is something I used to a looooong time ago but have forgotten.  And it’s coming back!  For any emails that need you to do some admin or checking, then they are going in to the Action This Week folder.  And I’m taking action on them – yup, you’ve guessed it – this week!  For anything that can be delegated to one of my VA’s, then forward on with instructions.

Unsynch mail from my iPhone

Yes, you read this right! Email is NOT being connected to my iPhone.  I am fed up with checking, checking, checking.  It doesn’t have to be this way so I am removing all temptation and making email time a laptop job only.  I do feel a slight hot flush coming on even now (and I am only 2 hours in to this!!) but I am really interested to know how this affects my productivity and, more importantly, how I am around my family.

My 11 year old daughter was amazed when I told her that my new iPhone 4 was not going to be email friendly.  Shocked, almost!  So if this helps show her that you can live life with being digitally attached 24/7 then that’s one step in the right direction!

What about you?  Is email strangling your productivity?  And what are you going to do about it?

Get found on Google: reasons why your website is not be coming up in the search results

Hands up if your website is floating around in hyperspace, attracting no more than a few dozen clicks every month?

It’s easy to fall in to the trap of getting a website up and running, only to hold your head in despair because you are not getting the online traffic you thought you were going to get.

You are struggling to find enough clients from your face-to-face networking so using the internet has to give results; and fast! So why isn’t your website being found? And what can you do about getting found on Google?

Buying in SEO – search engine optimisation – expertise can be hideously expensive. And to budget for a few hundred pounds every month for Google Adwords is a waste of time if you don’t know what you are doing. But for a business owner like you, who is probably on a low cost marketing budget, there are certain steps you can take to make sure your website can get found by the right people online.

Take control of your website content

I’m not suggesting you start learning HTML and CSS and mess around with your own website coding, but once a site is set up for you, there really is no need to keep relying on your website designer to make every little adjustment and change to your website. I have met many small business owners who hate their website, complain that it does nothing for their business and yet don’t want to make any changes because of the expense of using their website designer to do it for them!

Blogging platforms such as WordPress.org and Squarespace.com allow you to take full control of your website content once the site has been set up for you. It really can be as easy as editing word documents before clicking that publish button to make the changes live on your website.

Many website designers who build websites on WordPress.org offer content management training as part of the package; a solution I highly recommend you explore.

Know exactly what your clients are searching for online

Being top of Google’s Page One for “life coaching” may sound impressive, but if your potential clients are looking for “tips on how to deal with redundancy” or “how to change careers”, then your “life coaching” keyword focus is going to get you diddly squat!

And if your visitor statistics are showing good figures for the “life coaching” keyword, make sure they are just other life coaches checking out the competition! How are those visitor rates converting to genuine interest in what you offer?

Keep your website content relevant

The more niche and focused you are on the content on your website, the more likely Google is going to give you higher search listings for certain keywords. Redundancy may be your niche area but if you try to cover all the bases such as graduate options, mid-life crisis and what to do after retirement, Google is going to get confused about what your website is all about.

This is a common problem that many of you will have with your website and it may be that you end up having two, three or more websites to promote the various services and products that you offer.

Overwhelming thought? Start with one area of your business first and get your website focused on this! Better to spend time refining your current website to specialise in just one area of your business and create additional websites over time as you see success in this strategy, than have a “one size fits all” website that is doing nothing for you!

Website page titles and descriptions

Did you know that Google will show your pages higher in the search listings if the titles of the pages and their description show exactly what you want to get found for?

If you had written a book about how to make career changes after redundancy and had not included this phrase in either the book title or description, then Waterstones is not going to know where to put your new book in its’ stores. It’s not going to get found!

Check each page title and description to see how well it matches the content on that page and the keywords you want to get found for.

Add content to your website

A five page website is OK. But five pages are not going to give Google much to refer to and bring you up in relevant searches. Google loves content and the more relevant content you have on your site, the more likely the right pages are going to appear on the right search listings.

Yup, that’s right; blogging is not just for those who love to write. Blogging is there for businesses that love to get found!

Avoid flash when building your website

Animations and fancy graphics may look lovely but if there’s no text, Google can’t read it and won’t put you in the search listings. A client of mine couldn’t understand why her website never came up in Google, even when she tried searching for her specific name. Her teenage son had beautifully designed her site but, as it was all built in flash, it was one big image. It was never going to come up in any search results because Google could not read it.

Are you telling anyone about your website?

It’s one thing to make sure Google will be able to show your website up in relevant search results, but to rely only on this is suicide. You have to take control over your website and make sure you have a marketing plan.

“Build it and they will come” is not a philosophy that you can afford to follow. You have to take responsibility and decide on an online – and offline! – plan on how you are going to attract the right clients to your website.

Remember to add “you”

A big mistake many small business owners make is to forget to add content about themselves. If someone wants to try to find you after meeting you at a networking event or has been recommended to speak to you but hasn’t got your phone number, you want to make sure your website comes up in a Google search of your name.

You are often the reason why your clients come to you, so you’ve got to make sure “you” are found easily on Google!

Want to discover more about your Googleablity?

Check out this month’s Web Tech Training Session – How To Manage Your Googleablity. Practical, no-nonsense advice on how to make sure you get found on Google!

Are you afraid of spamming?

Most small business owners who use email newsletters in their marketing don’t send enough emails!

I bet most of you who use email marketing stick to sending out a monthly newsletter, don’t you?  ”I don’t want to annoy my subscribers”, I hear you say.  But, here’s the problem.

An email newsletter that goes out once a month is, well, just 12 emails a year!  That’s right … only 12 emails a year!

But not enough time to write email newsletters!

Now if you came to me and explained that you struggle to find the time to write one email newsletter a month, let alone two, three or even four, then that’s another issue.  If you decide to embrace email marketing, then either make the time (coz you certainly won’t find it!) or delegate the setting up and scheduling to someone else, such as a virtual assistant.

But if you are worried about over emailing someone 12 times a year, then I’m afraid you may be wasting your time.

Your potential clients and customers need reminding.  They are all time-poor individuals who would love to have their problems solved by you.  But if you are not there reminding them – more than 12 times a year! – then I’m afraid they are just going to forget who you are.

The spamming dilemma

Back to this spamming dilemma.  If you were to send out an email once a day, then yes;  your subscribers will probably be unsubscribing in their droves and probably report you for inappropriate emails too.  But one person’s spam is another person’s essential reading.  If you are sending your subscribers valued content along with your promotions and events, then keep sending them great stuff.

An email has such a short life span that once received, it is either read and actioned on … or deleted.  It’s not like a letter or postcard mailed out which can hang around on someone’s fridge door as a reminder.  An email is usually gone as quickly as it is sent.

Once someone has had enough of you, they will unsubscribe.  They don’t want to buy anything from you, so why would you want to keep sending them stuff.  But for the people who would love to read more of your stuff but sometimes (and quite often!) don’t have the time to read more of your stuff, keep sending more of that stuff to them.

Be there at the right time

I promise you that, one day, they will take the time to read it. And that’s usually the day they’ve made a decision to have their problems solved by you.  If your email doesn’t arrive, how are they going to remember you?

Quick example: I ran a Web Tech phone-in clinic last week.  Recording available to members, but free to attend to anyone on my newsletter list.  The people who showed up on the day where the ones who responded to my “Last chance” reminder.  And boy where they pleased they made the effort to show up because the session was a fantastic.  They all agreed that if I hadn’t sent out that one last reminder they would have missed out.  And I would have given them a poor service!

Yes, I got un-subscribers from that last email, but the ones who responded where pretty pleased I had sent it. They read and actioned it … there and then.

Don’t be afraid of spamming

Of course, measure your successes and if you over-send you will notice your subscriber numbers dwindle.  But for goodness sake, think beyond a monthly newsletter!  12 times a year is not enough.

Photo Credit: Arnold | Inuyaki

How healthy is your office?

Have you found yourself avoiding your office?

Piles of paperwork piled high under your desk waiting for someone to file it all away.  Receipts cluttering up the desk, with sad looking post-it notes reminding you of your most urgent tasks.

Dust on the book shelves, filling in the spaces between the business cards you’ve shoved up there until you find the time to do “something” with them.

My office at home is in the upstairs bedroom. Pokey, with a window looking out on our neighbours wall;  it’s a room I have got in the habit of chucking stuff in there, whilst I hurriedly make my way downstairs to work from the downstairs office.  The problem with the downstairs office is that there no place to leave my clutter … sorry, my important documents, so I seem to be in an endless cycle of clearing up after myself and temporarily losing important scribbles and to-do’s.

And with my OH working from home more and more, we play the “who’s having the downstairs’ desk?” dance most mornings.

Time for a clear out.  I’ve just spent the past hour chucking out papers, filing client folders away, organising electrical wires and plugs under the desk and sweeping up dust balls big enough to stuff a couple of pillows!

An unhealthy office can lead to an unhealthy business.  So, if you’ve been avoiding your office for the past few weeks (or even months!!) … or even got fed up with working off the dining room table or kitchen counter, now is the time to clear up and make your working space healthy.

I’ve even got myself a sunflower looking at me from across my desk now.  Ah, peace and health at last

How to make a book launch rock!

There’s nothing like introducing a new product to the market infront of 150 hungry customers!

And if there is one thing that Dee Blick is fantastic at it is bringing together an amazing group of people to launch her second marketing book.  The queue to wait for her to sign her book was loooong!  And I don’t believe one person left that venue without at least one copy of her book tucked under their arms.

Dee came to me last summer to ask me to contribute to the chapter on online marketing. I was delighted to be her social media expert and provide advice on setting up LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  It’s rather lovely having my name in print (at last!!).  My kids were actually quite impressed when I showed them the book at breakfast.  Not a bad reaction from an 11 and 9 year old who were still buzzing from their sports day the day before.

Making a book launch look easy

Dee made the book launch look easy though.  It was almost as if she clicked her fingers and poof! the event happened.  The energy in the room was electric and it was fantastic to meet some old and new contacts.

But I can bet that a lot of blood, sweat and tears went in behind the scenes.  And it’s this commitment to the cause that makes things happen.  It’s no good wishing and dreaming of turning up to events like this and hoping it will all come good.

You’ve got to set goals, create a very strong vision, learn how to collaborate … or bully people in to working with you with your contagious energy!  But the key to Dee’s success, as far as I can see, is that she not afraid of self-publicising herself.  Her belief in herself as a great marketer (and a great business owner) is second to none.

And she’s not afraid to get her own clients along to share their experiences with her!  She didn’t need to tell the world how good she was last night.  She had several people stand up in front of the audience, and share their own thoughts about why they think Dee is top quality.  Nothing quite beats a bit of personal recommendation!

One very successful book launch!

So if there is one person you want to learn from when it comes to book launches, I would highly recommend you start with getting a copy of her book – The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book … if only to read my rather excellent chapter on social media marketing <wink>

Time does not equal money. The first step to creating products.

How to create products: the first step

There is a flurry of entrepreneurial activity at my children’s school at the moment. They have all been given £10 and have been challenged to turn that £10 note in to profit.

It’s really interesting to see the creativity and initiative coming from them all. The headmaster has told us parents that it is the children’s projects and not an “Easter Bonnet Parade”. We have been warned off from helping out!

There’s a group set up as a shoeshine shop every morning in the car park. That worked really well until another team decided to do the same thing and they started undercutting each other!

Another couple of boys are playing statues – just like the ones you see in busy tourist spots such as The Embankment in London.

There are other groups creating products such as bird boxes to sell, buying smelly rubbers to re-sell at a profit, selling ice creams and cakes (always a winner for after school hunger!).

Problem in selling time

But the problem with a lot of the businesses they’ve set up is that they are not sustainable. They are basically selling their time for money. If the shoeshine boys don’t show up one morning, they are not making money. If the car wash team decides not to wash cars, they are not making money.

And it’s the same problem that many of you have. As coaches, consultants, trainers, designers, it’s very easy to be caught in the trap of selling yourself by the hour. When you come to the holidays or a dried up pipeline, your cash flow disappears.

It’s not easy moving away from the time = money business model.  Deciding how to create products – and where to start – is tough.  Don’t get fooled by all the 6-figure-business-in-6-weeks home study courses that are plentiful on the internet.  Creating a business around products can’t be done one weekend with a sprinkle of fairy dust and blissful hope.

But you can start by questioning your business model and look for opportunities where you can start to create products.

Create products – keep it simple!

Can you write out the process that you work with your clients and create a simple “how-to” guide?  This can be one of the simplest step to take to create products.  It can be as basic as a PDF document that is delivered via email when someone buys via a PayPal link.

Are there opportunities to offer group workshops? I know a workshop is still selling your time but offering what you do to a group means you are able to package your skills and increase your day rate often by 10 fold. Plus running live workshops are a great first step to creating online programmes and DVDs to sell from your website at a later date.

I met some fantastic VA’s at a recent conference who had started offering short, practical two hour workshops to clients about the topics they helped clients with, such as WordPress and Email Marketing.  It was working really well for them. (And it’s where I started too!)

What about creating a series of how-to videos? It could be you talking to the camera or over a powerpoint presentation which you deliver as a 7 part course delivered each day by email.

The possibilities are endless.  But I do know that coming up with the ideas on what products to create is only half the battle.

Putting the ideas in to action is the other half. And it’s this half that seems to put most of you off from coming up (and committing to!) with the ideas to make money while you sleep.

Technical set-up is NOT your job

Technical set up should not be done by you.  You have skills in other areas – such as coming up with the idea of which product to create first.  The actual creating and set up – the videoing, the PayPal set up, the email marketing system sort out, the landing page – can be done with the right support – I promise you!

And if you feel you need help with finding the right support – usually in the form of a good Virtual Assistant – then do check out my quick and easy “How to Hire a VA” course.  It will show exactly what you need to do to get one hired.

The secret in getting this right is in the delegating and outsourcing of the set-up of products to someone who knows exactly what to do. This is NOT your job!

Create products – the first step for YOU to take

Start with the first half first. What do your clients want to see you do?

What products do your clients right here and now want to see you create?

(This is a really important step to take – don’t skip it!!)

If you don’t know the answer to that, ask them!! And then once you’ve got the idea, then commit to making your product happen … remembering to outsource and buy in the expertise to get you through the technical set up.

What about my kids? Are they creating products?

Back to my kids’ school and what my children are up to. My daughter is, well, doing something typical of an 11-year-old child! As a group they are tying teachers to trees and then charging their friends 50p for a 3 second squirt of foam at them! Think I’ve got some business lessons to teach her!

My 9YO son, on the other hand, has bought four chickens with another boy and are now selling “farm fresh” eggs to the teachers. As they only have a few weeks left of school to sell the eggs (do the sums – each chicken lays only one egg a day doesn’t give them a huge return), they plan to sell the chickens “point of lay” for twice the money they bought for (still less than half that the Surrey housewives will pay normally for their Egloo Chickens!)

My favourite story so far was that he decided that the children selling cookies needed to buy his eggs so they could bake more cookies. Hopefully this a sign of greater things to come!

A little about me …

I don’t often share much stuff about me on this blog.  Most of the articles here are focused on sharing marketing advice and tips for your business.  But it’s probably nice to show a little about me from time to time.

Heather Bestel, from Mum’s Got a Business, published this interview with me yesterday on her blog, so hope you enjoy

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I’m delighted to introduce you to a lady I met soon after I came online in 2007 and it was lovely to find a mum who had left the corporate world to spend quality time with her children. She certainly walks her talk. I also love her catch phrase ~ it’s something I’ve had to learn the hard way.

Name: Karen Skidmore

Brief description: Practical, no-nonsense marketing advice for small business owners specialising in web tech stuff such as blogs, email newsletters and social media. Making the complicated simple!

How many children do you have? Daughter aged 11 and son aged 9

Where do you live? On the Surrey/Hampshire borders in the UK

PC or Mac? Both! Plus my iPhone. Couldn’t be without it.

Tell us about your business:  I work with self-employed professionals and service based businesses who struggle to find enough clients. I show them how to “set and forget” their marketing and make easier for their clients to buy from them so they attract the right clients constantly and consistently throughout the year.

Some of my clients work on a 1-2-1 basis with me but many subscribe to my Web Tech Club which gives marketing advice for technophobic business owners. www.WebTechClub.com

What motivated you to start up your own business? To create a flexible career around my children. Once my daughter started school, I left my corporate 3 day a week job so that I could work during term times and be around at home during the school holidays. I think I look forward to the school holidays more than my two children, especially as I have been able to create a 12 month a year business whilst working just 9 months.

What’s been your biggest challenge in business? Listening to my target audience and creating products and programmes that they want – not what I think they need.

How have you overcome it? Not beating myself up when I make mistakes and learning from them so I can be better the next time round. Fortunately my 11 years in corporate sales gave me a pretty thick skin and as you get older, I think it’s easier to shrug off stuff that goes wrong.

And there’s nothing quite like having to go pick up the kids from school and work out year 6 maths homework to put it all in to perspective

What’s been your proudest business moment? There’s been quite a few really. I was pretty chuffed to find myself working closely with Surrey University in 2005 and 2006 where I was given funding to run my own business enterprise programmes specifically for women. More than 300 women came on my courses over those two years, and it really helped raise my profile in the local business community.

I also set up a women’s networking group at the same time and was running four events every month for about three years. Hard work but very rewarding.

And then I was pleased that I was able to shake off the “women-only” tag when I stopped running the networking events and focus my marketing on helping specific businesses and, in more recent years, with their web tech marketing. I suppose I have proved you can evolve and develop your business focus depending on what is wanted in the market place. Listen to your audience!

What’s your catchphrase or favourite quote? Completion not perfection

What do you do to relax or nurture yourself? Switching off the weekends is a must for me. I could work 7 days a week if I let myself so it’s great to log-off and take on my second business – the family taxi service!

I love to read. And yes, paper books. Despite my tech geek image, I do love good old fashioned books. Have become a regular at our local library.

What was the last treat you bought for yourself? My MacBook Pro. I am a huge Apple fan – love my iPhone – so I had been yearning for a mac to have all to myself. No children are allowed near it! It’s mine, all mine.

Favourite colour: Purple

Favourite flowers: Depends on the season, but I always love having white lilies in the house.

What one piece of advice would you like to give to a new business owners? Remember why you started up in business. When you get faced with making tough decisions or have a crap week, then remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing. I only ever wanted to run a part-time business and as different people have pushed me this way and that, tempting me with propositions I have been able to say “thanks but no thanks”. It’s why I like to work with local businesses and stay out of London as much as possible ;o) Can’t stand the commute – not after 11 years of corporate.

Fancy featuring as one of Heather’s amazing mums? Drop Heather an email over on her contact page and she’ll be in touch. And remember to drop by every Monday to welcome our latest profiled mum.  Check out Heather’s blog at www.mumsgotabusiness.com/blog

Are your tech tools stifling your business?

Do you change your business to suit your tech tools? Or your tech tools to your business?

As you start to embrace technology within your business – whether it’s a new email marketing system or web based accounting package – it’s easy to feel unsure about whether you are making the right decision.

Perhaps you have a website built on flash by your teenage son. It’s looks beautiful – and it didn’t cost you anything apart from a month’s worth of washing when he was back from Uni – but it can’t be found on Google (Flash can’t be viewed by search engines, hence its inability to get found!).

Perhaps you are feeling pretty chuffed with your free shopping cart system. You’ve not shelled out any cash, but you are getting frustrated with setting up your new workshop. You’ve now delayed the date three times because you can’t the system do what you want it to.

Sticking with the wrong tools?

How many tech systems are you sticking with just because you haven’t got the time, energy or mental capacity to work out if there is a better system out there?

Is it better to keep using the same systems and just fit your business around them? Better the devil and all that, especially when you are not paying out much for them. But when certain tools and systems are stifling our creativity and growth, then surely it is time to change.

Email marketing systems are one of those tech tools that it is easy for a small business to out grow. When I first started using email newsletters in my business in 2004, I went with Constant Contact. It was – and still is – a great newsletter system. But even with the recently added new features, it still isn’t an email marketing system to support selling products and programmes online. It misses the power of a decent autoresponder system.

Autoresponders are my number one recommended web tech marketing tool. They allow you to put your online relationship building in to turbo drive. So when I started using 1ShoppingCart for my workshop and ebook selling, I was able to start building a set-and-forget marketing system. But I loved Constant Contact’s email newsletters so much that I stuck with them and ran both systems side by side for more than 18 months.

When enough is enough

Cracks started to appear. It wasn’t a surprise. I was running my email campaigns on one system and starting to build my customer list on another. When someone unsubscribed on one system, I had to manually check that they were taken off the other! Duh!

Finally I took one of the leaps of faith, sucked in my breath and got it sorted. Delegating the project to a Virtual Assistant was the key to success.

5 years later and the change of email marketing system happens again. Not part of my big plan, but this time it was 1ShoppingCart that was stifling my business. No matter how hard I tried to understand why, 1ShoppingCart refused to work their recurring payments with PayPal. One off payments, not a problem. But monthly recurring payments for my Web Tech Club membership site, nope!

I came up with a sticking plaster (Completion NOT perfection!). Send new members directly to PayPal. It worked beautifully with Wishlist Member (the WordPress membership plugin that I use), but my VA still had to manually add new members to 1ShoppingCart to get the system to work. I could have stuck with it. No one seems to notice this sticking plaster. But I knew it could be better. I knew people wanted to use their credit cards, rather than just their PayPal accounts. And even though I could do this with PayPal Website Payments Pro, it still wouldn’t work with 1ShoppingCart.

Plus my other big problem was that I couldn’t use the 1ShoppingCart affiliate programme. Without the orders coming through the system, affiliates would have no way of the system allocating their recommended members to their account. And when you have person after person asking you how to sign up to your affiliate programme because they love your product so much, it can get you down when you have to admit you can’t offer one!

Turning away business because your systems can’t offer it?

So here where these web tech tools were, helping me run my business. But stifling it all the same. It had to change.

I could have gone down the merchant account route, but after an awful experience of trying to get Worldpay to work with 1ShoppingCart the previous year, it was 1ShoppingCart that had to go. My tried and tested shopping cart system that I had recommended to my clients for the past 5 years was on it’s way out.

I’ve ended up with Premium Web Cart and Aweber (PWC doesn’t offer an email marketing system so you have to set up a system such as Aweber along side). The system is still not fully set up, but finally my affiliate programme can be launched very soon.
It’s not easy. I am not advocating changing your email marketing systems – or any other web tech tool – just for the sake of it. But if you are “making do” just because you haven’t got the time, energy or mental capacity to change it, make the time, energy or mental capacity to do it.

I know I may well be giving you a huge project to think of here. However, what would be the difference to your business this time next year, if you did change one of your web tech tools?

Web tech tools can make us more productive and increase our marketing power, but when certain tech tools stifle our business, then surely its time to invest and change.

How to make your clients feel good about themselves!

WARNING! Girly blog post coming up!  If you really can’t read about muffin tops and mum-tums, click away now!

Once again, I was faced with the old age dilemma.  I had a full wardrobe but no idea what to wear.

On Saturday night I was invited to a summer party and I had plans to wear one of my maxi dresses.  BUT … the weather turned cold and being stuck in a marque shivering was not one way I wanted to spend my evening.  So, to change the outfit.

Arrghhhhggghhh! Dilema!

I had to go to my local village with my kids to get some errands done – the usual birthday presents for friends, vegetable weekend top up and shoes to be re-heeled – so perhaps I could dash in one of the shops and find something.  Could I really find a pair of white linen trousers that would allow me to feel dressed up, but warm?

Now, East is a shop I rarely venture in to.  It reminds me of where I could be shopping in about 10 years time.  There are always lovely tunics (perfect for those bat-wings!) and structured dresses (extra support comes in handy as the years go by!) but I just felt at the age of 41, East was more of a 50+ target audience.

I still love to swan around Top Shop and Primark, but to be honest, it gets rather depressing having to go for size 16 tops just so you can pull them over your head without ripping the seams.

But as there are limited retail outlets on offer to me on this Saturday afternoon, I decide to take the plunge and dash in East in Haslemere with my 2 kids.  Plenty of white linen trousers! Thank Goodness!  But what would they look like on?

I automatically go for hunting for sizes 12 and 14.  It’s what I need to try on to make sure my mum-tum has plenty of room to be tucked in!  But when the shop assistant took one look at me and said “Oh, no.  You are not a 12 in here.  Most definitely a 10″, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Thank you”, I said.  ”That’s a lovely compliment, but I really do need a 12 or a 14 so I don’t display my muffin roll for all to see.”

She ignored me, went off to find a size 10 for me to try on – which I did, almost to prove her wrong.

Oh my, how wrong I was!  These size 10 white linen trousers where a perfect fit and I found myself strutting out across the shop floor exclaiming how wonderful it was to be wearing a size 10 again.

Did I buy them?  Absolutely!

Where they really a size 10, or just made with a bit of extra room and labelled as size 10 to make me feel good?  I really didn’t care.  I felt very good about myself!

So what’s this got to do with your business and your clients?  I am not expecting you to go out and lie or produce products and services that are misrepresented.  But to produce something that makes your clients feel really good about themselves … now that’s something special!

It’s the feeling that your clients get when they buy something from you that makes them come back for more and more.  Yes, your widgets do what they say they do.  Yes, you are able to help your clients get the results that they want.  But how do your clients actually FEEL about those widgets and results?

Make your clients feel good and you are on to a true winner.

And East may well have got another long term customer!

How to stop faffing and turn your BIG plans in to results

It’s the little daily stuff that makes it all happen!

Thinking big is good! You’ve got to have a plan. But starting the week paper shuffling, email faffing and hiding in Twitter is not going to crack it.

And a big problem many of you seem to have (me too!) is being able to break down the BIG plan in to little daily stuff.

Let me give you some examples:

“ Get blogging” becomes “Write and publish a blog article every Wednesday” (yes, I am sure you know that the more you blog, the more effective your blogging will be, but if you don’t commit to one every week, then it ain’t going happen!)

“Do more in LinkedIn” becomes “Invite 5 new connections on LinkedIn every Monday morning” (yup, you could be doing more, but hey – let’s start with something do-able!)

“Do newsletter” becomes “Write and send out your email newsletter every third Thursday” (OK, so once a week or fortnight is more effective, but if it is all too much you will only end up in overwhelm and that won’t do any good, will it?)

“Follow up on new networking contacts” becomes “Phone 3 people up on a Tuesday morning” (what phone?? Is that allowed in this new world of social networking?! – Duh! Yes!)

“Fill pipeline” becomes “Make a plan to meet one new person for coffee every fortnight” (Surely you could more, but hey one a fortnight is better because you are DOING it!)

Need me to go on?

It’s too easy to think BIG and then give yourselves HUGE plans … that never seem to happen.

It’s the little daily stuff that makes it all happen.

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