Really, that’s it.

Why?

It’s the most important question to ask yourself about your business. It’s also the most important question to answer.

Why?

Simple – you have to know the reasons…the motivations…the rationelle for everything you do.

Nothing you do, say, create, experience, generate, design, produce, promote, develop or decide upon should go without you asking, “why!

So…why are you in business? Why do you market to the people you do? Why is your business not as successful as you want?

And…the next most important question…

What? What are you going to do about it?

Do you ask…and how do you answer these questions about your business?

(note: image from Yves* on Flickr)

Are you ready? Okay…

No matter how well developed your business is; no matter how many years you’ve been doing it, how many customers you’ve served, how much money you’re making – your business will forever be a work in progress.

I heard this years ago from a colleague and fluffed it off with the usual, “yeah, of course!” But I was missing the juice of it. Only recently have I gotten a clear understanding of what it means. And only recently have I taken a close look at how having an unfinished business is the secret to success.

Thomas J Watson, the one-time President of IBM, once said, “Whenever an individual or business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” In other words, progress is necessary for a business to attain success.

And what does progress mean? According to The New Oxford Dictionary progress is the, “advancement or development toward a better, more complete condition.”

From these ideas, it’s easy to see that successful business are always in progress. And how could they not be?

If you run a business, you likely know more today about who you are, what you do, who you serve and how you serve them then you did when you began. Hopefully, you’ve taken what you’ve learned and applied it to your business – changing what doesn’t work, or what’s incomplete, for methods that are.

You see, a business will always be in progress because everything always is. It’s simple, really. So the real question isn’t whether your business is in progress – because it is. The real question is whether you are honoring the progress in your business. Are you making changes and adjustments as you learn more? If not, why not?

Is your business a work in progress? How?

What’s one thing, today, you can do to advance your business toward a better, more complete condition?

How do you define success in your business? It’s a question I ask every client – and most of the prospects I ever speak with.

The interesting thing for me is how often the people I speak with don’t have a specific answer. Sure, we can come up with just about anything on the fly. Yet it’s not difficult to tell the difference between established, well-thought-through business goals and those that we sort of find when we need to talk about such things.

Having a way to measure the success of your business, however, is one of the most vital parts of running a business.

It doesn’t matter whether your business is selling products, providing services or selling ad space on your blog – it does you good to have a clear idea of your goals. And, hence, a clear definition of what success looks like for your business.

All my clients use the web in some form these days. So often I hear success measured in visits to their website or page rank in Google. Sure, those are measurable results. But I, as a business advisor, would never consider those to be metrics used to define success of your business.

Let’s think about it for a minute…

You can have a page rank of 6 in Google and get 1000 unique visitors a day to your website or blog. That’s good, right? And most of us would be happy with numbers like this, right? Heck, the way Google’s playing around with page rank these days, I’d be happy to get back to a 6.

Yet, your page rank doesn’t equal income. Nor do any of those visitors guarantee a dime of revenue. Sure, if your website is selling ad space, you might get bits of cash for impressions. And you may be able to get a little higher ad rates with traffic and page rank higher. But you’re certainly not going to make a living on that alone.

And so these aren’t very solid metrics to use for defining your business success. Don’t believe me, ask around and see. Personally, I know more than a dozen bloggers who have highly successful blogs – more successful than mine in terms of traffic, page rank, back links and Technorati rating – who aren’t making enough money to cover their monthly expenses, let alone turn a profit. A couple are good friends that I’m trying to help out.

The point is you want to define the success of your business based on what you’ve set it up to do – make money. That doesn’t mean that you only measure by your bank statement at month’s end or by your bottom line accounts receivable versus accounts payable. There’s more to it than that.

For instance, take whatever you’re doing currently to market your business and track responses from your marketing efforts. Let’s say that one of your goals is to spend some time commenting in forums to drive targeted traffic back to your site that you can convert into leads. It’s a clear goal and something that can be easily measured using basic website statistics. Measuring your success might look something like this:

You posted 50 times in the forum last month. From those posts, you got 41 referring links from the forum to your website. From those visitors 11 commented on a blog post (leaving their email address with you), 6 subscribed to your newsletter and 1 contacted you directly with a question. You can then decide whether those 50 forum posts were worth the effort (I’d say yes, depending on what the commenters and newsletter subscribers do over the next few months).

You see, the idea here is that you set metrics that relate to your business goals. The month of forum posts may or may not directly result in revenue that month. But it’s not always about revenue. To make money you need leads and so the work you did in the forum could have been about generating leads – which you did. Now you just have to create the next metric for converting those leads into paying clients.

Measuring your success isn’t difficult. It just takes a little strategy, planning and forethought. And on the web, tracking results is incredibly easy. You just have to know what you’re tracking – and why. Then you can adjust your efforts for the next round of lead generating activities. That’s how successful business owners use the web.

How are you measuring your business success on the web? Are you at all? If not, why not? Would it change if you had someone to help you (I know someone, personally)?

All-in-all, how do you know if you’re successful with your marketing efforts?

(note: image from victor_nuno on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

I’ve always been a do-it-yourselfer. I’ve taught myself a great many things by taking this attitude.

When I bought my first house, I completely gutted it – down to the timbers in most rooms. In other places, we removed and moved walls. For instance, I created a large, walk-in closet in our huge bedroom where there was once a little coat room.

When it came to moving plumbing, rerouting and adding electrical, drywall, replacing subfloor, moving my toilets and bathtub drains – I basically did it all. And in most cases, I took to each project never having done it before.

But at some point, you have to live in  your house. And that means it has to get done – as my wife might say, “be livable.”

For us that time came as we neared the birth of our first child. As the first trimester of my wife’s pregnancy led to the second, we had to make some choices. We’d remodel the kitchen later, for instance.

Well, two kids and four years later, the kitchen hadn’t been finished. Yet we wanted to redo the kitchen. It had been one of the main reasons we moved in the house – a huge dinning room adjacent to a tiny kitchen. The remodel was a no-brainer. So, as my wife was pregnant with our third, we made a strict timeline and went ahead with the remodel.

This time, the do-it-yourself Dawud gave way to the asking for help. I called in favors when it came to moving the plumbing and installing the cabinets and countertops. And I hired a contractor to do the electrical and new lighting. The demo (remove a wall, tear out old kitchen), drywall, flooring and painting I’d do myself. And in less than 8 weeks, we completed our kitchen – for the most part (there’s some odds and ends left to do).

What I learned in the process was something that I’ve seen many small business owners struggle with in their business – they don’t ask for help. They don’t seek people to help them with tasks in their business. Rather, they try to do everything themselves. This usually means one of a number of things happens: They either don’t grow very fast because they can only do so much work or their business goes backward because – well – they can’t do so much work.

But when you outsource tasks in your business, it supports your business in a number of ways. One, it frees up some of your time so that you can focus on the tasks in your business that need your specific attention – such as referral marketing or creating new products and services to sell. Two, it creates space for you to take on new projects because you have more time on your hands. Three, it allows you time to clean up the things that have gotten neglected in your business. Four, it starts the process of handing off even more tasks because once you can trust one person with managing a part of your business, you can trust others. And five, outsourcing lets you share your success with another person – helping them become more successful.

If you’re stuggling with the idea, or if it seems that it’ll cost too much, don’t let that stop you. You can manage how someone else completes tasks in your business. And managing takes far less time than doing. And consider the costs not on what you’re paying out versus your revenues. Rather, consider the costs in relation to how much more productive you can be in creating more revenues streams in your business. Paying someone $20 an hour to manage your email, for instance, is nothing when you can generate $50 or $80, $350 or more with that same hour.

Outsourcing is one of the keys to growing your business. So allow yourself a chance to ask for help. There are plenty of virtual assistants out there, for instance, that do all sorts of things – from general office work to executive resources to web and graphic design to marketing. Just find the one that best fits your needs.

And be sure you know when to ask for help.

As a small business owner, are you outsourcing in your business? If so, how’s it working out. And if not, why not…what stops you from asking for help?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from jen_maiser on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

I’m not just talking about time. Of course you’re investing time, right? If you’re not, then you’re likely not very successful.

But what about money? Are you investing money into your business?

Over the past decade, I’ve worked with hundreds of small and medium-size business owners. Some have been startups with funding while others have had large marketing and PR budgets.

But I’m not talking about those businesses. I’m talking about small business owners. I’m talking about corporate trainers, business and marketing coaches, personal development experts and other service providers. I’m talking about clients whose businesses are generating less than $150,000 per year. In other words – small businesses.

It’s been amazing to me how often small business clients aren’t willing to invest in their own business. Sure, they might buy productivity or marketing products or hire out projects like website design. But they seldom have a longer-term plan beyond the project scope. And seldom do they consider an ongoing marketing or promotion budget for the growth of their business.

What gives? How can you grow a business if you’re unwilling to promote it? How can you increase your revenue if you don’t invest some dollars into marketing? I’m not talking about thousands upon thousands of dollars each month. I’m talking a few hundred or thousand or whatever fits your budget.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s this – if you’re unwilling to invest in your own business, then why should anyone else? In other words, if you don’t spend money to promote your products or services, why should anyone spend money on them – if they can find you?

So, are you investing in your business? How? What’s your budget and how are you using it? And if you’re not, why not. Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from sash / slash on Flickr)

I was reading from Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching last night when I ran across an interesting quote:

He who knows others is wise;
He who knows himself is enlightened.

The passage made me stop and contemplate my own life. How well do I know myself? I went down that path for a bit of time; looking at my aspects and considering what I might be blind about.

Naturally, I soon turned to business. I thought about how much of marketing is focused on the consumer or the client. I wondered what I might learn about my business if I applied Lao-tzu’s words to marketing. So I rewrote the passage to say:

He who knows his customer is wise;
But he who knows his business is enlightened.

Then I started thinking about my clients, my colleagues, my friends, etc. How many of them really know what they do? I don’t mean can they explain their business in some marketing lingo that drives sales. I’m talking about do they understand what they REALLY do for their clients? What impact do they make?

For instance, I’m a web developer, a marketing coach, a business advisor and a strategist. I help my clients understand how to use the internet to reach their business goals. Pretty simple.

But if I think about the client’s I’ve worked with over the past year, it’s evident that I have a much broader and deeper impact on my client’s life than I first think about. While I certainly help them build their website, clarify their marketing message or build a campaign, I also help them create space in their lives for their business. As well, I help them overcome their fears and uncertainties about using the web, and I educate them in how to measure their success. What’s more, I teach them anything they really need or want to know about using the web to grow their business.

But it doesn’t stop there. Most of my clients and I also develop a strong bond; a working relationship that seems to increase their trust in themselves. They know, for instance, they’re not doing this alone in their process. I also freely share my idea, concepts, vision and excitement about their business – something that often motivates them to get the next bit of work done.

When I think about it, I do far more than just develop web-based businesses. I have an impact on my client’s lives. And I need to remember that in my business. Perhaps even explore that more and understand how I can express more of what I offer my clients. And maybe, just maybe, I can find more of the light in my business.

So what about you? How well do you know what you do? How much do you understand the impact you have on your clients or customers? How enlightened are you in your business?

The question: How do I know it’s time to redesign my website?

There’s many, many answers to this question. Yet, I’m going to share with you five of the biggies. And as you listen to this short audio clip (~8 minutes) see if your website has any of these symptoms.

So, does your website have some of (or many all of) these symptoms? If so, let’s do something about it. As I said in the recording I don’t use hard selling methods. What I do is tell you exactly what to do to solve your website and online business problems. If after that you want me to be the guy implements the solutions, I’m happy to talk about it. But what you’ll find with me is no hard selling techniques. So contact me right now and let’s setup a time to chat about how you can have a website that really can grow your business.

Or, you can check out my Group Web Design and Business Coaching Program (click now)

One note, I only work with people whose business is providing a service. I seldom work with bloggers who sell advertising or retailers who want an online store. My focus is helping coaches, consultants, alternative healers and such get more clients. So if you’re not in that category I may or may not be able to help you. 

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note: image from Esther Gibbons on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Most of the time the coaches give me answers that have to do with getting more traffic to my website, getting more people on my list or getting enough coaching clients. The interesting thing is even my other clients – healers, therapists, authors and other service providers – give me similar answers.

While it true that as a life coach you may need more traffic to your coaching website or you need more coaching clients in your practice, it may not be the most pressing problem in your coaching business. And often, getting more traffic to your coaching website isn’t.

But for most of my coaching clients, the most pressing problem can be elusive. This is because usually the most pressing problem in your business has nothing to do with your marketing or generating traffic to your coaching website. Rather it usually has to do with how you actually DO your business.

Think about it for a moment.

Let’s say I could triple the number of contacts you get from your coaching website in the next month (which is possible, by the way). What would happen? Could you actually manage having that many more potential coaching clients contacting you about your coaching services? How effectively would you be at converting these potential clients into actual coaching clients? Or would you end up dropping the ball on a whole bunch of your potential clients?

If you’re like most life coaches I’ve spoken with, you likely believe that more people contacting you means more coaching clients paying you.

Yet, that’s not always the case. More often than not, you need to prepare yourself, your business, your business processes and your coaching practice for this sort of growth. So you need to know how to deal with such a large influx of potentially new coaching clients. Which means to continue to have a successful coaching practice you must have solid systems in place to manage these sorts of situations.

Now how these systems get created is neither difficult nor overly complex. It’s simply a matter of knowing what your business problems are and what you need to do about them in order to grow your coaching practice. After that, you simply figure out how to adjust your already existing business practices to support the growth. But if you don’t make adjustments to how you do things, the growth you experience will likely not be significant and will almost certainly not be sustainable. So if you want to get more clients in your coaching practice, you must consider how you’ll handle not only the coaching sessions, but all the things that happen to gain that coaching client.

So as a life coach, how do figure out what your most pressing business problems are?

The easiest way is through Reverse engineering. Start with the end result. Consider what challenges you’d face if you had double, or even triple, the number of people contacting you about your coaching services, for instance.

Another way to find your most pressing problems is think about the task in your coaching business that you least enjoy doing. It’s pretty likely that you’ll find some issues there. For instance, there was a timein my own business when invoicing my clients was a pain for me. Of course, it presented a huge problem for me that I dreaded doing the thing that got me paid. So I had to look at this and find a new way to invoice my clients – a way that would be easier and much less time-consuming. I found my invoicing solution and now I can invoice clients so quickly and easily that I rarely even think about it, let alone dread it.

So you want to look for the things that aren’t working in doing your business. Find the holes in your coaching practice and fill them. To fill those holes, start thinking in reverse and consider what you’re doing well, don’t enjoy or simply don’t know how to do. Start there. Consider all the steps along the way. Write it all down, turn it upside down and now you’ve got the outline for a plan. Focus on the issue closest to where you are now, and you likely have, at least one of, your most pressing business problem.

Plan your coaching practice for success

We so often tell our coaching clients to plan for success. Why couldn’t that mean imagine the success you want and work backward to where you are today? It’s a little secret – and it works!

What is the most pressing problem in your coaching practice? In your business? And what are you doing about it?

Let’s talk about it!

note: image from tashland on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Do a Google search for click here. What you’ll find is around 1.7 billion (yes billion) instances in Google’s database where website owners have used “click here” as linked text on their website. Let me guess, that includes you, right?

But click here is seldom the best option for linked text. Take a look at these two examples:

To find out more about how I can help you grow your business, click here.

or

Find out more about how I can help you grow your business.

Which link tells you, as the site’s visitor, where you’ll go when you click the link? Isn’t it clearer in the second example that the link will lead you to how I can help you grow your business?

This may seem like splitting hairs a bit. But really, it’s not. There are a number of reasons to use descriptive linked text rather than click here. Here’s a few:

• Clarity – Descriptive linked text makes it much clearer where the link will you while click here basically just offers the command – click here. There’s no real clarity of why you’d click here or where you’ll end up.
• Scannable – If you scan most website pages, the links will stand out. They’re usually colored and styled differently than the text around them. So when you use descriptive linked text your visitors can scan your page for where they’d like to go next. Click here simply doesn’t offer the same advantage.
• SEO – If you care the least bit about search engine optimization, and you should, adding keywords in the links is one method of optimizing your text for search engines. Think about the 1.7 billion instances on websites that are using click here. Is that really what they’re hoping to rank for?
• Usability – As a big fan of the ‘don’t make me think’ principle of website design, I don’t want my users to have to interpret, guess or consider where my links will lead them. And that’s exactly what click here does – forces my visitors to think.
• Accessibility – Remember, not all your visitors will be using beautiful, graphics browsers to view your site. Some will use braille, aural or text browsers. Think about how visitors that are blind or have reading disabilities will use your site. Asking them to ‘click here’ gives them no idea where they’re going to end up.
• Readability – Isn’t it simply nicer to read content where the links have been crafted into the content rather than breaking it up with the old click here?
• Printability - More people print out your web pages than you might realize. Click here just doesn’t mean anything on a printed page and often breaks up the flow of text.

That said, you can use whatever linking strategies you like. Sometimes you can get higher response rates by directing people to click on a link. I suggest, however, not making a habit out of it. Use terms like ‘click to continue’ or ‘read on’ sparingly and only when you really need too. Otherwise, let your visitors know where they’re heading when then select a link.

So, how are you using click here. And what’s your overall in content link strategy?

(note: image from ovizo0n on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

There are so many ways that coaches and holistic healers can get a website today.

You can go the ‘old fashioned’ route and have a website designer build a pages in HTML. You can use some of the pre-made services you’ll find on any number of hosts (though most of the designs look like they’re 10 years old). Or you can have your website created on one of the myriad of publishing platforms available today.

Of course my favorite publishing platform for coaches, healers and the other service providers I work with is WordPress. There’s others, of course. But having use other platforms I find WordPress to be the right combination of ease-of-use, expandability and power for my clients with their coaching and healing practices.

And since I’m constantly getting asked why I like WordPress so much as a platform and content management system for coaches and healers, let me offer a bunch of my reasons:

1. WordPress is free!
   That’s right, WordPress itself costs nothing. It’s open source code and protected under GPL licensing so that no one can directly sell WordPress (keep that in mind when you speak with your website designer). Now that doesn’t mean your designer shouldn’t get paid for their time – they should. And it should be clear that what you’re paying for isn’t WordPress, but the skills, time and support from your website designer.
2. Easy Editing
   Adding and editing your content in WordPress is a snap. Click a single button and WordPress creates a new page or blog post for your site. And the editor works in very similar way to Microsoft Word – take a look at this video. So with your coaching website on WordPress there’s no need to pay your web designer to do simple updates to you copy or even add new pages to your site. Huge time and cost savings.
3. Easily Add Audio/Video
   So many coaches and healers I work with today are using video and audio to promote their businesses. Well, WordPress makes incredibly easy to add either (or both) to your website. No more sweating through code trying to get that YouTube video on your site (if you even dare).
4. Easily Change Your Navigation Bar
   Your navigation bar is one of the most important parts of your website. Being able to add new links, change their names or reorder them has long time been reserved to coders. But with the most recent versions of WordPress you – the coach, healer or service professional – can have complete control over your navigation bar with a simple drag-and-drop feature. This is yet another way to that you have control over your site and can save tons of money in updating your site.
5. Small Learning Curve
   I keep talking about how easy using WordPress is to use. One of the reasons is because the learning curve is so small. Now I’m not talking about using all of WordPress. I’m simply speaking as a publishing platform and content management system. I usually teach my coaching clients how to create, publish and edit their first page in about 10 minutes. Pretty small learning curve for a huge capability.
6. Integrated website and Blog
   As I write this I keep watching myself want to write ‘the most important thing’ about WordPress. But you can’t really have more than one ‘most important’ thing. That said, having your website and your blog on the same domain name is vital. Not only does WordPress allow you to do so, it allows you to completely manage both the pages and the blog posts of your coaching website from one place.
7. No Limits on Size of Your Website
   Your coaching website on WordPress can be as small or large as you need it. There’s no limit to the number of pages or to blog posts. This site, for instance, has more than 500 posts and over 130 pages – and I haven’t written that much in the past couple of years. So your coaching website on WordPress can scale to handle whatever size site you need.
8. Integrates Easily with Social Media Sites
   People offering a service build their business on relationships. Nowhere on the web are relationships more accessible than social media. There are so many ways to get WordPress to work well with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +1 and a whole slew of social media sites that it would take many posts to explain even a bit of what the possibilities are. Just assume that your WordPress website will be able to do anything you’ve seen done already on the web – often very easily.
9. Plugins
   Plugins are add-ons to WordPress that give it expanded functionality. While at this moment I don’t know how many plugins there are, there must be thousands. Think of anything you want to do on your website – anything to better promote your coaching or healing practice – and there’s a really good chance there’s a plugin (or ten) already created to do it. Nearly all are plugins are free as well.
10. Themes
    Themes are basically designs in WordPress (though they can do more). The great news is there are thousands of free and paid themes available from a massive source of designers. Want something custom? That can be done too. Basically, if you see a design you like it can be built as a WordPress theme. As a matter of fact, I often rebuild existing coaching and healing websites as WordPress themes.
11. Security
    No system on the internet is hack proof. And WordPress has gone through some growing pains when it comes to security. Yet security in WordPress is excellent. You can even go the extra mile and make it even more secure through specific plugins and coding. I have a package I call the WordPress Security Protocol which  you’re welcome to ask me about.
12. Google Loves WordPress
    Google loves content and WordPress allows you easily publish what you want when you want it. Combine that with the clean code, a number of SEO features both built in and through plugins, and easy content submission through sitemaps and RSS and you have a powerful system for getting your coaching website found in search results.
13. Forever Expandable
    The same way there’s no limit to how many pages and posts your site can have, WordPress makes expanding your site incredibly easy. Want to add a membership or shopping cart to your coaching site? No need to a full redesign or even another ‘part’ to your website. WordPress, with a bit of coding and some choice plugins, can grow to whatever you need your site to do.
14. Lots and Lots of People Are Using WordPress
    If your coaching or healing site isn’t on WordPress chance are you know quite a few people whose are. Not only can they tell you about how great and easy WordPress is to use, but they can also show you around a little bit. And because WordPress is so widely used now, there’s very little chance of it ever going away.
15. Support
    Of course I support all my clients through one-on-one training and access to my large catalog of short, topic-specific video tutorials. But beyond me there’s tens of thousands of active WordPress users that you can likely find an answer to just about any question you have around your WordPress website.
16. BONUS: WordPress.tv
    This is a great site that has all sorts of professionally recorded video relating to WordPress. There’s even a great ‘How-to’ section that covers a number of topics.

Oh yeah, and let me clear one more thing out of the way – your WordPress website DOES NOT need to look like a blog. As I said above, anything that can be done in web design can be done on a WordPress website.

WordPress rocks! It really does. And here’s my bottom line statement on how it can serve you: If you can’t currently edit your own website’s content, then you should move your website to WordPress. There are many options for doing so – each of which we can discuss in a short, no-pressure phone call. Remember, in moving your site to WordPress you can:

• Keep your existing design the way it is – we just make it a WordPress theme and show you how to use it.
• Keep part of your existing design and make those updates you’ve been wanting to make as we turn your site into a WordPress theme.
• Get a completely different website design with features and functions you never had before.
• Any other combination you can think of.

Just get in touch with me to talk about how WordPress can help you specifically. I take calls from people everyday who pick my brain and get their questions answered. As I said, no pressure – just help, advice and guidance.

The list of why you should be using WordPress for your coaching, holistic healing or professional service website could go on. But WordPress only matters if you’re using it. So find out how you – and your business – can benefit from this amazing publishing platform.

And if you’re using WordPress already for your site, tell me what you love (and don’t love) in the comment box.

(note: image from Lincolnian (Brian) on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Think about it. If you run a small business, where do you usually put the majority of your focus? Marketing? generating revenue? Your work with you clients? Things like this?

So often the question you have about your small business deal with how or what, right? You know – how do I generate more revenue or what do I need to do to get more from my marketing? Aren’t these the questions you most often find yourself asking?

The answers to these questions are often lengthy, require learning or have many steps required to see results. So much so that we then find ourselves lost in the jungle of what to do next. So we can learn about what and understand how, but one question – the most important business question – remains unanswered. And without answering that question, it’s difficult to truly succeed.

The question…why?

In your small business, you need to know ‘why.’ And you need to know ‘why’ about everything. And I do mean everything.

Of course, perhaps the first most important part of asking why is asking why you’re in business in the first place. While this may seem elementary, it’s of vital importance. It’s difficult to evaluate where your business is heading if you’re not clear why you’re in business in the first place. Find that out why you’re in business will help you align all the parts of your business behind a united goal. Not knowing why, in turn, often means a splintered business model where not all your business processes point in the same direction.

One note, there’s no wrong or right answer to why you’re in business. It’s only important to know why you’ve started and continue to run your small business. The goal isn’t right or wrong, it’s clarity of purpose and understanding.

This is why asking ‘why’ should  penetrate every single aspect of your small business. In other words, you should be asking it about everything. “Why did I choose to sell this product?” “Why do I answer the phone that way?” “Why am I not closing more deals?” “Why are people hiring me?” And on, and on…

Ultimately why is the foundational question about your business. No other question really matters too much until you understand why. And if you look at most small businesses that are failing most often you’ll find that they’re not clear about why they’re in business in the first place. And if, by some chance, they do know why they’re in business, their lack of success provide a window into what they’re not asking why about in their business.

Take it out of the context of running a small business for a moment and think about being a parent. If you’ve had three year-old kids, you know that the only word that ever comes out from their little lips is, “WHY!?!?” Why, why, why, why, why? There’s no end to their questions. The reason for this is that developmentally they’ve reach a place where they being to see that the world has structure and order and they want to understand it. So they ask why about everything so that they can – no, not annoy their parents and other adults. They ask why about everything so they can – LEARN! And that’s why you want to ask why about every part of your small business – to learn.

So use ‘why’ as a chance to awaken your understandings of your business. Ask yourself ‘why’ you do what you do the way you do it. Ask yourself why your customers buy from you. Ask yourself why you’ve generated less revenue this month than last. Ask yourself why – incessantly. Doing so will help understand the motivation and goals behind how you run your business. And when you understand what lies beneath, you can make better decision about marketing, positioning, pricing, etc.

Do you ask ‘why’ in your business? If not, why not?

And if you do ask ‘why’ about your business what new understandings has it led you too? What insights have you gained? And how has understanding why you do what you do changed your business?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Amish Shah on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

But I know there are some people who read my blog regularly who don’t have any experience with WordPress. Perhaps they’ve heard of it and have no idea what it is. Maybe they’ve even used it but haven’t really understood how powerful it can. And yet I know there are others who haven’t heard of WordPress at all.

So I’m going to share a few short screencasts I’ve made over the past year to introduce some of the most powerful user features in WordPress and show you why you want to consider using it for your next website.

Now, just so we’re clear, this set of screencasts are meant for website owners who are running a business and who want and need to manage their websites themselves without having to deal with code. So these videos are made not for the coder or web developer – there’s plenty of that stuff. These videos are for coaches, healers and anyone else who has a service-based business so you can see what’s possible with a WordPress website.

So, let’s get started…

Using WordPress to Create, Update and Edit Your Website’s Content

Being able to publish and edit your own content whenever you want is a vital part of having a successful business website. And with WordPress you can do so without having to know a lick of code or hire a webmaster to do it for you. This saves you huge amounts of money and time. And streamlines you opportunities to make money. Watch how easy it is to edit your own content in WordPress:

Easily Manage and Update Your Navigation Bar

There were ways with systems before WordPress to edit your own content. But there’s almost never been an easy way to put control over your website’s navigation bar before WordPress 3.0. Take a look at how easy you can add, move and rename your nav buttons:

Change Your Design Whenever You Want

You can see from the two videos above that WordPress gives you incredible power over your website without having to know a lick of code. Well, it gets even better. The last feature I want to show you is how easy it is to to change your design using WordPress.

Now you still may want or need to hire someone (I can recommend somebody) to set WordPress up the way you want it with all the features and create for you a custom visual design that brands your business. But once your site is in WordPress, changing designs is as easy a the click of button. Watch…

As I said, you may still want to work with a web designer to get your site initially setup in WordPress or build our customized website design. You may even want to hire someone to create your next design or modify one of the thousands of existing WordPress themes for you. The bottom line of why this is so, as I say, ‘game changing’ is because you’re using WordPress the cost and development time of a redesign is cut greatly. I can’t give you specifics as price will depend on your needs and your developers skills and offer (for instance, I merge website design with business coaching so my clients learn how to use their websites to meet their business goals).

As you can see, WordPress opens the web to you in ways that just weren’t possible just a couple years ago – at least for those who don’t know how to code websites. That’s why I say that every website needs to be in a system like WordPress.

So if you’re website isn’t in WordPress or if you’re about to have your first website built, let’s have a short conversation about how to get you using WordPress. Feel free to contact me and we can discuss your specific needs.

What sort of questions does this bring up for you?

What website do you have that you’d like to move to WordPress?

note: WordPress is open source software licensed under GPL. It is open to the public to freely use and modify and it is never for sale – meaning no one can charge you a license fee for using WordPress. Setup, design, customization, etc – yes. But to charge you for WordPress is against the license.

note: image from Nahh on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

I’ve heard so many web-based small business owners do their best to avoid using the word advertise that I’ve begun to wonder why. I’ve worked with enough clients offline to know that it’s not small business owners in general. Offline businesses use advertising constantly to get the word out about their business.

But it seems different for online small businesses. Somehow it seems that the word advertise is unclean or dishonest or something. While I haven’t quite put my finger on it, it is obvious that online small business tend to look at advertising differently. They often don’t consider placing ads – even Google Adwords.

This strikes me as odd because a few, well-placed advertisements can often drive far more than business than their cost.

But the more interesting thing is watching how web-based small business owners avoid using the term altogether. Sure, they talk about marketing, but rarely about advertising. Why do you think that is?

Yet advertising is simply a part of marketing. The best, simple, explanation of the difference between marketing and advertising was written by Rick Cockrum some time back.

“Marketing is the sum of the activities you perform to get the word out about your business and attract the customers you want. Advertising is one marketing activity. It usually entails publishing paid announcements about your business. At our theatre we advertise in the local paper weekly. Our marketing consists of a website, word of mouth from our customers (our best marketing), involvement in local activities, public service functions, involvement with local business groups, (etc)… . You can see that advertising, while important, is only a small part of marketing.”

Rick goes on to suggest that you should “use both.”

I fully agree. I’m a huge – I mean huge – proponent of word-of-mouth marketing and client referrals. Yet it can be difficult to grow a successful business just by word-of-mouth. I’m not saying it can’t be done. Heck, I did it myself. But I know that the right ads in the right places can speed up the growth process immensely.

And advertisements work. No doubt about it. Otherwise Pepsi, McDonalds, Ford and every other company in the world wouldn’t spend the money on it. Even spam email works. And that’s basically what spam is – a paid advertisement sent to your inbox. What makes it spam is that you’ve not given the sender permission to email you about their product. Yet spam must work otherwise no one would be paying spammers to send their messages.

Advertising, for good or bad, simply works. That’s not the question.

The question? Is adverstising working for your business? If so, how; what sort of results have you gotten? If not, why not; what have you tried and how did it turn out?

And if you’ve not tried paid advertising on the web, why not? What keeps you from jumping in?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Pink Ponk on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Obviously, the advertising industry picked up on blogs and social media pretty early on and revenue streams based on advertising has matured quite rapidly. And like with anything on the web, the internet marketing crowd, with their usual approach, moved into the social media space.

But for the most part businesses that offer services are only beginning to scratch the surface of how to use social media to create a space in the market and grow their business. And with the constant growth and massive potential blogging and social networking provide, it’s pretty obvious that social marketing is anything but a fad.

Just think about it for a moment. What’s one constant of marketing – that people will forever be looking for ways to solve the problems they face. Getting married and want to find the perfect wedding planner? You can likely find her (or him) blogging. Traveling for the first time to Fort Collins, Colorado? You’ll probably want to comfortable hotel. Want to increase your business profits 50% over the next 12 months? There’s a business advisor (who I happen to know personally) who can likely help you do it (just give him a call or shoot him an email).

You see, publishing to a blog can establish your expertise in the area you’re an expert in. Your blog serves as a platform for sharing what you know. And when you share what you know with the people who need what you know, you’re creating a space for yourself in the market.

But the blog lets you go even further. Better than creating a market, your blog lets you create a community. Through conversations in the comment box and an open line of communication, your blog, and hence your business service, can become vitally important to your reader’s success. In other words, you can find your own niche within the market.

And here I’m talking only about blogging. Add in relationships in Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Combine that with all the social bookmarking and social sharing sites that allow for the spread of your excellent content and what you have is an entire social marketing platform based in conversation and relationship.

You see, it’s relationship that drive the market. Always has and it always will. Things got a little sidetracked as we moved from the quaint neighborhood drugstore and small-town lumber yard to the CVS and Home Depot monopolies. We gained price savings, but what we lost was the relationship.

Social media is bringing back the relationship into business. This is one of the reasons why I feel social media has exploded. Consumers can once again have control over the marketplace by choosing who they want to be in relationship with. And it’s why I strong feel that social marketing is not at all a fad. It’s here to stay. It’ll evolve, just as the internet always does. But the web based on individual control and relationship-driven services will continue to prosper.

The the only question remains is how are you using social media to increase your business? And if you’re not, why not( Maybe a call to that business growth advisor I spoke of would be a good idea)?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from kalandrakas on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Think about how often you’ve heard someone say, “why would I want to blog? I don’t care about what someone at for breakfast.”

What’s often missed in statements like this is that blogging isn’t just about sharing your personal life. It’s also about sharing your business.

Unlike a traditional, static website however, a blog – or as I like to call it a personal publishing system – gives you the opportunity to connect directly with other people. People who may be in your target audience. Or peers and others who gain something from reading your posts.

But a blog is more than another medium for connecting with people in your target audience and peers. It also provides a platform to engage in conversation. Those conversations can lead to relationships. And those relationships can lead to increased business.

The key is the relationship. And blogging makes the relationship possible with more people, in more places and at more times than any other platform yet created.

Personally and professionally I’ve created dozens of great relationships with readers, bloggers, business owners and peers that have lead to everything from direct business opportunities to referral business to partnerships. Blogging opened for me opportunities that I just didn’t have with my static website.

Now, through the comment box, through email, through linking, and through many of the social services like Twitter or Facebook, I have the chance to meet interesting people from all over the world. People who share my interests. Some become colleagues or friends. Others become clients. But all have come through social media…through blogging.

Blogging (aka social media) is making my business more visible in more ways than I could have imagined. But how is it serving you? How is your blog selling your business? What works, what hasn’t? And what would you recommend as a ‘have to do’ for new business bloggers?

(note: image from Paul Van Metre on Flickr)

Your business website should effectively represent your brand while providing ways for your leads to easily engage you. All roads in your business should lead back to your website, making it the pivot point for all your marketing. And you want to treat your website that way.

Furthermore, having a website opens the possibility to not just market to your leads, but to create a powerful touch point for engaging your audience in conversation and building relationships with your prospects and clients.

So if you want a successful business, and I believe you do, it only make sense to create a website that fuels the growth of your business.

Yet, as a small business owner, it can be easy – or tempting – to get in the way of your own marketing. You may take shortcuts with your business website. These shortcuts can become mistakes that undermine your business goals and turn your website from golden egg to fried omelet.

The sad thing is that you may not know your making these mistakes and undermining your business website.

So let’s look at 8 common, and often critical, mistakes I see everyday with small business websites:

Mistake #1: No Clear Objectives for Your Business Website

The very first thing you should do when you plan your business website is define its purpose. What objectives do you want your website to achieve? In other words, what do you want our visitors to see, to read and to do. To do is the most important set of objectives so you want your website objectives to be action oriented. Do you want them to sign up on your list, get your RSS feed, buy a product or take a survey? Any of these can be objectives. Just make sure your objectives are clearly defined.

One more thing on objectives: if you have more than one objective for your website, you want to put them in order of importance. Then, make sure you primary objective is the most visible and easy to find on your site. Your secondary objective should take its appropriate place behind the primary…and so on.

Mistake #2: No Strategies For Reaching Your Business Objectives

Once you know the objectives of your website you want to create strategies around how you’re going to accomplish these objectives. Strategy gets into how you’re going to do what you’re setting out to do with our business website. The more thought out and researched your strategies, the more likely your marketing and your website, overall, will be successful. From a strategy comes our plan of action, which gets us into tactics.

Mistake #3: No Tactics to Achieve Your Business Objectives

If you’re like most people, you’re pretty good at thinking about what you want to do with your business website. Often, where the trouble begins is when you have go from thought to action. That’s where tactics come in.

Tactics are the actionable steps you’ll be taking to achieve your business objectives. Your tactics are, flat out, a task list of what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Think of your tactics as being the implementation of your strategy. It’s how you’re going to do what you think.

Mistake #4: No Targeted Metrics to Measure Your Progress

One great thing about the internet is that if it happens on your business website, you can measure it. Which means, you can find out amazing detail about how your visitors as seeing, reading and using your website. So the only question is are you recording that information?

What’s sad is that I see so many small business owners who aren’t even looking at their most basic website statistics. Yet, it’s so much easier to know how effectively your building your list, for instance, if you know how much traffic you’re getting. And from knowing that, you can make a plan for increasing you list signups.

There’s no way else to put it, it’s a mistake if you’re not recording your website statistics and looking at them with some regularity (not daily). And it’s a further mistake if you don’t take the time to learn how to interpret your website statistics because they will tell you what’s working and what’s not working on your website.

Yet, it’s important to go one step beyond just your basic traffic stats. You want to also consider how you’re going to measure the effectiveness of your strategy and tactics so you can see how well you’re achieving your objectives. In other words, you want a solid system of metrics – even a simple one – so you can evaluate your marketing and make it work better.

Mistake #5: No Integrated Marketing Plan

So often I see small business owners thinking of their website as one part of their marketing and their offline marketing as being another part. Don’t make this mistake. Integrate the two. Communicate your offline promotions online. And even more effective, use your offline marketing to drive people to your business website. This works great when you can make an offer on your website that your offline audience wants. As I said above, your business website should be the hub of you marketing – not just online, but all your marketing.

Mistake #6: No Focus on the Value of Your Offer

I’m asked to evaluate a lot of websites for whether they’re business ready. One of the most common mistakes I see is small business owners not focusing on or effectively communicating the value of their service. Too often, the focus is on either the cost of service or the ‘unique approach we use that makes us different than everyone else.’ Yet, this just confuses the prospect because either they don’t care about the approach or they have to consider what they’re getting for the cost. In other words, they have to figure out the value themselves.

Don’t make your prospects figure out for themselves the value of the services you provide. Tell them about it. Show them what they get, what they can expect and how you will help them solve their problems. And offer testimonials of people who you’ve helped so that they can see the social proof in your offer.

Mistake #7: No Action Plan for Your Visitors

We said earlier that your website should have clearly defined objectives. Once you’ve identified what your objectives are, it’s likely they require an action by your visitors for you to achieve. So tell them to take the action. Make it exceptionally clear that if they’ve gotten this far in your website, that ‘this is the action step you want to take next.’ Could be a list signup, a free report, a set of articles – doesn’t matter (as long as it’s toward your business objectives). Just be sure you’re hyper-clear about what action steps you want your visitors to take.

Mistake #8: No Balance Between Design & Marketing Message

Having been a website designer for well over a decade, I’ve dealt with this one a lot. Often, business owners become too concerned over the visual look of their website and it gets out of balance with the purpose of their site – which is a marketing tool to promote and sell their products and services.

That’s not to say that a website shouldn’t be visually appealing – it should. For instance, I’ve had dozens of people contact me just to let me know how much they like the design of my site. Yet your website design shouldn’t get in the way of your marketing message and business objectives. It should provide a professional, attractive frame for your all-important content.

Ideally, your design will be something people see initially and get a good impression of you from. Then, as they begin to read your copy, it should fade into the background. So think of your website design not as a paramount piece of the marketing puzzle but as a frame for your marketing message. And remember, that you want to consider your business objectives in any website design.

So these are the 8 most critical mistake I see everyday in working with clients on growing their business and on developing their web presence. There are more, of course. But I’ve found these to be the biggest and most important 8 to correct.

Does your website make any of these mistakes? If so, which ones? And what will you do about it?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from iampeas on Flickr, some rights reserved)

Sounds sort of crazy, huh? No one in their right mind would ever conceive building a neighborhood or developing a community that wasn’t linked with ways to get in and out. In essence, without houses being connected by sidewalks and streets, there would be no community all – just a bunch of unreachable, free-standing (and empty) homes.

Well, if your website isn’t developing a community around it, then you’re not thinking too differently than the subdivision developer who doesn’t build streets. And if you’re not building community around your website, then it’s likely your business is suffering online.

The reason is people want to belong. They want to find like-minded people with similar interests to connect with. They want to associate with other people who are in similar situations. In other words…they want community.

Nowhere is this more evident today then in the explosion of social media on the internet. What do you think the 500 billion people are doing on Facebook? And what are all these ‘tweets’ on Twitter about? Why are people using these sites in record numbers?

Because these sites allow people to connect with other people. In some cases, people with similar interest. In others, people they can learn from. And in still other cases people who can help them solve their problems – whether they’re personal, professional, health or business and so on.

Everyday the internet becomes more and more of a space for social engagement. And so should your website. Your website needs  to evolve with the changes toward a social internet or you’ll quickly watch it fall behind. Right now, this moment, sites that are socially oriented are building communities and, through those communities, growing their business. Sites that are not community-oriented are merely becoming placeholders for outdated and uninteresting content. Sorry, it’s just the fact of the matter. People don’t just want to read, they want to feel they’re connected to something. That something could (should) be you, your website, your business, etc.

So what does all this mean for you?

Basically you need to engage your target audience where they are! And right now, they’re on social media sites connecting with other people (read: other service providers).

You need to develop a website where you can engage your audience – and them you. You need to develop a web-based marketing plan where you’re actively engaging real-life people through these social spaces using these social tools. And you need to remember that business happens most easily, most often from relationships. A community, remember, is just a group of relationships – nothing more really.

As for the tools – Twitter, Facebook, Biznik, LinkedIn, etc – forget about all the hullaballoo and fancy marketing tactics. You don’t need to know any of that stuff. All you need are to know can be summed up in these two words: Listen and Engage! Listen to what people who have similar interests as you are talking about. And then, engage them in conversations. From conversations you build relationships. String together a bunch of relationships and you have a community.

Listen and engage! Listen and engage! Listen and engage. That’s it. Do this and it will change your business, your understanding of the internet and bring you into relationships with people who you have a natural affinity to. Listen…and…engage!

How are you using social media and your website to engage potential clients?

Are you listening to what they’re talking about? If so, how….if not, why not?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Luke Chan on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

If you have a website, it serves one purpose – to sell something

Whether you’re selling goods and services or ideas and opinions – websites are about selling. If you have an offer, you want people to buy it. If you like something, you want people to try it. If you believe something, you want people to believe it too. And if you know something, you want other people to know it as well.

It doesn’t really matter how you slice it, the point of a website is to sell something. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a website? To display pretty pictures for everyone to see? Of course not. Websites are about selling because as people, we’re selling all the time. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

You see, selling is merely an exchange of something that’s valuable to someone. That’s it. Selling is nothing more than an exchange. It’s nothing to avoid, be concerned about or even fear. We’re selling all the time. I’m selling you my opinion right now. And if it has value, you’ll buy it and make it part of yours.

I think where selling gets a bad wrap is when we remember those annoying little experiences when someone was trying to pressure us into something we didn’t want. You know what I mean. The appliance salesman who really doesn’t get that sales is about relationship rather than the next commission to be made. Or the car salesman who follows you around the lot when you just want to look around. In these cases it’s pretty obvious that some sales people just don’t understand that selling is a natural, human process. They try too hard, really. And from our experiences with these sort of people, we feel icky about selling.

But there’s no need to fell bad about selling. As I said, we’re selling our ideas, our thoughts, our beliefs and our opinions all the time. So really, selling is as natural as having a conversation. And it’s through conversation that we go about selling –

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even on our websites. We use the conversation on our websites to develop relationships with people who may want to buy what we offer (e.g. what we’re selling). That’s the entire point of having a website.

So here’s some pointers I’ve put together to help you with selling on your website – and in your business as a whole. Use these suggestions and don’t be afraid to see yourself selling what you know, think or believe. Embrace it and find a new freedom in giving what you have of value to people who value what you know.

1. Don’t try to sell. If someone’s contacting you, they have some level of interest already. Find out what their want or need is first. Then, give them the information they need to make a choice. On your website, identify their problems and help them see that you can help them solve them.
2. Engage people. One of the most important aspects of selling is engagement. You want to engage your prospective clients and customers fully. Use your website to meet people where they are and engage them in conversation. Stay in the conversation as it organically moves toward a transaction. Not all will, but if you engage more people will buy than not because you’re showing them you care.
3. Care damn it! Really care about the people who you engage and who visit your website. Caring is the single most important aspect of selling. Listen to what they want, be empathetic about where they are and just give a crap about them as people. They’ll know the difference.
4. Be authentic. Selling is a natural as having a conversation. But we don’t often approach it that way. All you need to do is be yourself. People will naturally gravitate toward you when you’re real with yourself and with them. And forget all the sales techniques and just be a person trying to help people. You’ll refine how as you go.
5. Be transparent. Be a real person being real with people. Read that again! If you don’t know something, be honest about it. There’s nothing wrong with finding out the answer and getting back to someone. People will be pleased when you say you don’t know. More importantly, it will build trust with them.
6. Know what you’re selling. Clarity in what you’re selling is so, so important. If you don’t know, you certainly can’t share it and if you can’t share it you can’t sell it. So find out everything you can about what you’re selling. See it from different angles and approaches.
7. Know why you’re selling it. So often overlooked is this question of why. But you must know the answer. Is it just to make money? Or are you wanting to make meaning and a difference in people’s lives? If your product or service is about helping people, then know it and sell it that way.
8. Know who you’re selling too. This is so often missed…you’ve got to know who you’re selling too. Not the person so much, as their need, their likes, their dislikes. That means, listen. Listen to what their need is first. Get as much information as you can about what they believe they need.
9. Match your solution to their problem. If you listen well, people will tell you exactly what problem they’re trying to solve and specifically why they called you to solve it. At that point you merely need to match your ability to solve their problem to the problem they believe they need solved. Don’t change or reframe their problem for them , reframe your solution.
10. Remember, it’s okay to sell. Selling isn’t a dirty thing. Remember what I’ve said above, we’re selling all the time – our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, etc. So selling is natural. The oddities come in when money’s involved. And there’s nothing wrong with selling what you have to someone who needs it and making money, even a lot of money, from it. It’s just an exchange.

Now, don’t treat this like every other blog post

Really, I mean that. Don’t just read this post, leave a comment and then go on to the next thing to do. Use what I’ve given you here. Sit down with it and look over your website, your marketing, and how you convert your prospective clients. Refine your sales process. And if you don’t have a sales process, create one. Honestly, it will make a massive difference in how you do business.

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I’ll even make the 10 key points here into a PDF for you to download. Just click the icon at the right and you’ll download the 10 keys here right away. No email address or opt-in of any sort. All I ask is if you find value, share it with your friends:

• Retweet this post on Twitter
• Post it on Facebook
• Vote it up on Biznik

Remember, selling isn’t a scary thing and it’s not a bad thing. Selling is a natural part of being a human being. So embrace it. You can sell with integrity and give your more people the chance to be helped through your products and services.

How comfortable are you with selling? What’s your own sales process?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from darma communications on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

It’s just the nature of creating something – specifically creating something that involves other people. And if you’re selling anything – ad space, products, services, etc – you’re creating something for other people.

So when you find out you’re marketing isn’t working like you thought or that your great idea isn’t seen as such a great idea by the people in your market – what do you do?

When the sales slow down and the bills aren’t getting paid – what do you do?

And on those days that you have no motivation, no real desire to grind away at making your business work – what do you?

In other words, what keeps you going?

For me, personally, it’s my vision. Certainly it’s the goals I want to achieve, that’s part of it. But it’s not all of it.

What keeps me going is wanting to live the lifestyle I want – to have a flexible schedule and to be able to work from the hotel while my family is enjoying the beach. Or the ability to work a 3 day work week (3 long days, mind you). Or the opportunity to work at night in the summer so that I can spend the days with my wife and kids. Or taking 4 day weekends to go camping. Or taking a day off so my wife can rest when she’s sick. And the list goes on. For me, as I said, I want flexibility – having the flexibility in my schedule and my location that allows me to do more of what I want when I want.

But I don’t just want to talk about my lifestyle or dream about it – I want to actually live it. And living it means actually taking the time when it’s available. It means being active and spending gobs of time with my kids. Ultimately it means balancing work with life.

You see, I don’t want a life where I’m bogged down by my work. If I did, I could go out and work for any corporation, put in less effort and allow someone else to dictate my lifestyle. Sure, I want – and do – make a nice living. But I don’t want my pursuit of money to become more important than what’s most important to me – quality time with my family, hiking, my spiritual practice, etc. All these things I put above making money.

BUT, I still focus on making money – as a means to the ends I wish to live by. So I work in my business to make money solely so I can have the lifestyle I want. And that’s what keeps me going on the days when it’s just not so easy or comfortable to work for myself.

So that’s me. How about you, what keeps you going when it’s less than easy?

(note: image from Potatojunkie on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

If it’s the latter, there are steps you can take to help you go from business duress to business success.

Last week I introduced 4 simple questions to help you start and grow your business. They are the same 4 questions I use with my clients every day. They’re purposefully simple. Yet behind their simplicity lies all the depth and detail you need to create a successful business. Answer these questions fully and you’ll be on your way.

So let’s review what the four questions are:

1. Who you are?
2. What you do?
3. Who you do it for?
4. Why do you do it?

Pretty simple, huh? Now answer them. Get our a piece of paper and write down your answer for each question. Go ahead. I’ve got time to wait for you while you do so.

Now, take a look at your answers and see what you’ve written. Is there a question you couldn’t easily answer? Is there a question that you couldn’t answer clearly at all? Be honest with yourself – your prospective clients will.

Now, let’s go a little deeper. Each of the four questions has layers – layers of detail, layers of information, and layers of complexity. Let’s break it down a bit:

Who You Are…?

First, as a human being. What are you talents, your gifts and your passions? What are your shortcomings? What areas of your life could you use some help with? What areas of your life do you want to hide from? How do each of these questions translate to your business?

For instance, if you believe you’re not a good writer, it’s good to know that so that you can do something about it. Perhaps you hire a copy editor or take a copy writing course. Either way, you need to know where your strengths and weaknesses are so you can either utilize them or get help.

Once you identify who you are as a person, as I mentioned above, you want to know how you – as a person – translate to a business owners. Are you organized? Do you use systems? Do you outsource any of your tasks? Do people tend to feel comfortable with you? Do you have any issues with selling (read: Hate Selling, Well You’re Doing It All The Time)? What knowledge do you have of using your website or social media to promote your business? How effective is your marketing strategy? The list goes on, really.

Ideally, you want to be asking yourself how you are with every aspect of owning, running, promoting and evaluating your business. And don’t worry if you don’t know something or have large gaps in your abilities. All you have to do is ask for help.

What You Do…?

The primary answer here, of course, has to do with what you do for a living. In other words, what are you in business to do?

But it goes deeper than that. You want to also consider what your service actually is and does. Meaning, you want to consider your business offerings from the stand point of what problems they solve for the people in your target audience. In essence, you’re not just providing a service but providing a way to solve problems in people’s lives.

For instance, let’s say you’re a life coach who helps women through career change. Your offer is likely so much more than just a career coach. You may have a background you can call on that gives you a market advantage. You may have gone through a career transition yourself. You may be able to provide emotional or psychological support in a different way than your peers. Whatever the offer you make, just be certain that you’re bringing your full self, with your complete background into play here. Just remember, what you do includes what you have done.

Who Do You Do It For…?

As with the previous question, this one helps you focus more precisely on what you actually have to offer. In this case, it’s not about the offer itself, but who you’re offering it to.

Who do you do it for asks you to go deeper than demographics. You don’t just serve, for instance, women between 45 & 60 who are looking for a second career. You want to narrow your focus down to a specific type of client who fits perfectly into your specific set of abilities.

And you want to think of what problems the people in your target audience are facing. What sort of stopping points are they hitting as they are, for instance, going through a career change? Speak directly to those in your marketing.

Ideally, who you do it for is one person. Just remember that there are 100′s if not 1000′s of that one person out there waiting to find you and your service. Make it easy on them by identifying exactly who you help.

Why Do You Do It…?

Ultimately, this may be the most important question of all to ask yourself. After years of working with hundreds of clients on their websites and coaching them on increasing their business, I’ve found that the most successful business people make meaning.

While making meaning may not be, in the short term, the more important than knowing what you do and who you do it for, eventually it will be. That’s because as business owners, we need to make meaning. It may sound airy-fairy, but it’s true. I’ve seen it with dozens of clients who are successful in one area but burn out because the business they made successful isn’t making the meaning they want in the world.

So your business, to be successful, needs to make meaning. And it needs to make meaning to one person – you. It doesn’t really matter what I think or anyone else. What matter is that your business makes meaning to you. In other words, you are contributing something important to you to the world.

Do you know what that is? Do you know what impact you have on the people you touch? Do you know how your offer is making meaning in the world? Take it deeper…

The key to a successful business is clarity

To create, grow and maintain a successful business you need one thing more than any other – and it’s not even talent. You need clarity! Clarity with your business will set you free from the confusion most small business owners face.

So why don’t more life coaches, holistic practitioners and other service-based business owners take the time to find clarity?

Lots of reasons, really. The biggest one is likely fear of something. Fear of hard work. Fear of not being able to do it. Fear of being boxed in by a vision and plan. Fear of putting in the effort to get clarity only to find that you have none. All these, and more, get in the way of you finding clarity and, hence, stop you from growing a successful business.

But you know the neat thing? You don’t have to get that complex. Fear is a complex thing. Fear is what makes the process bigger than it needs to be. All you have to do is begin by answer the three questions – who you are, what you do and who you do it for. That’s it. These are the seeds you need to plant, then nurture, so they can germinate and grow into a living, thriving business.

And let me know how it goes…

How well can you answer the 4 questions in your business?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from mikecogh on Flickr,  some rights reserved)