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.

If you’re uncertain where to turn for help or if you’d like to discuss any of these in more detail as to how they relate to your business website, signup for a free 20-minute advisory session with me. Let me solve your problems for you.

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

But I’d say one question is asked more than any other – “how do I get (more) traffic to my website?”

So last fall I began mindmapping all the ways I could come up with to get more website traffic. My first goal was to reach 100 ways to get more visitors. I quickly, however, crossed that boundary into 147 ways. Then I stopped listing them and taught a couple of teleclasses from my list.

Some time in January, I picked the list back up and started adding to it. Soon, I was past 200 ways to get more traffic. And I settled on more than 220 different ways to get more website traffic. I’m sure the list will continue to grow, and I’ll definitely continue updating the materials I have.

So now I had this list of all these ways to get more website traffic – the next thought, “what should I do with it?”

Of course, being a blogger I know a list like this would make incredible link bait. I even began a post on the topic. But the more I thought about posting it, the more I felt that just giving it away for free would dilute it’s value. I thought about how many lists you can find in the blogosphere and how often those lists get hot for a couple of days, then dropped.

My business is about helping business owners find hidden profits in their business and exploit them. So I didn’t want something of such value that could help so many people, go to waste.

So I’ve decided to, once again, offer my traffic driving booklet as a teleclass – 220 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website.

What’s great about this format is that I can provide a booklet listing all my website traffic generating ideas AND make myself available to answer questions about how to use them. So that’s what we’re going to do.

Next Wednesday, July 1 1pm eastern/10am pacific I’ll lead a 60 minute teleclass for you that covers (some of) the materials in my booklet, 220 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website. Half the call I’ll speak on some of my most successful tips in the booklet and briefly on topics like qualifying traffic and tracking traffic sources. Then, the second half of the call is yours to ask me any questions you like about any of the methods I list in the booklet.

Let me be clear here, the 220 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website booklet is not just a list. I’ve included some tips in the beginning and have tips and commentary on every single traffic generation technique I cover. And you get to keep the booklet.

What’s more, I’ve also decided to include the mindmaps that helped me initially create, organize and structure the more than 50 pages that make up the booklet. So you’ll get the booklet and the mindmaps together.

Also, I’ll be recording the call and forwarding the a link to the recording so you can download it. So if you can’t make the live teleclass register anyhow and you’ll receive the booklet and the full 90-minute audio.

One last thing – since I want to give ample time for you to ask your questions about driving traffic to your site, I’m limiting the number of people on the call to 60. Once the sixtieth registration has been taken, I will close the program.

So let’s go over the details one more time:

• My 51 page booklet 220 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website & Increase Your Business, with tips and commentary for each method.
• A Mindmap summarizing each of the traffic driving methods – use as a resource when deciding which methods to use.
• A 60-minute LIVE teleclass with me, talking about how to find the right traffic for your business.
• Time for you to get your specific questions answered. There will be ample time to take your specific questions. And since conversation often leads to the most interesting teaching, the more questions, the merrier.
• I’ll record the teleclass and send you a link to download it in full.
• Click here to REGISTER NOW!

There was so much in the booklet that when I got it before the class, I was overwhelmed. But your calm voice and simple explanations took me from overwhelm to excitement. Can’t wait to launch my website.
- Gillian McDowell: Vancouver, BC

Here’s the details:

• Teleclass will be Wednesday, July 1 at 1pm eastern / 10am pacific U.S. time
• The teleclass is LIMITED TO 60 PEOPLE
• The cost is $97 SPECIAL SUMMER PRICE $69!
  
• If you can’t be on the teleclass you may register as one of the 60 and you’ll still receive the booklet, the mindmap and the full recording.
• I WILL NOT be releasing these materials as a product for purchase later on.
• Click here to REGISTER NOW!

Dawud, why haven’t you been teaching more often. I love your way of explaining complex ideas with simple language. The course and your enthusiasm helped me believe I could actually get more people to see my website. Thank you.
Karen Loveland: Seattle, WA

I’ve had more 300 people take this course. All have told me that they would have paid more knowing what they know now. And many are now using my suggestions to actually get more clients.

So if that’s the case, why would I lower the cost to $69? Just like the hundreds of others who have these materials, I know that you’ll get a huge benefit from taking this course. My clients constantly ask me for information about driving traffic to their website. So I’m simply making it easier for more people to get access to this all-important information. After all, no website traffic, no business.

Now, let’s get you registered before you lose your slot.

Now there’s two things left to do:

1. First, register to save your seat.
2. Second, tell 5 people who need to get more traffic to their websites. Send them an email, make a phone call, text message them, Tweet about it on Twitter, Write a blog post – however you can reach the people you want to help.

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

You’d probably agree with me that it’s certainly not wise to hurt your customers or potential customers. That seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?

But what about the people you work with or who work for you? Is it okay – is it appropriate – to hurt, abuse or cause your staff, peers or partners to suffer simply because they work with you?

Hopefully we all know the answer to this question as well. That’s why I’m a bit perplexed this morning from an email I got yesterday. The email as interesting in that I was being blamed for giving someone’s former boss ‘carte blanche’ to be abusive. The writer of the email referred to my post Why Being Unreasonable Can Lead To Success.

In the article I propose that to build a successful business you need to be willing to drop conformity and strike out on your own path with your business. I compare running a business to my many backpacking trips where I’d hike on trail until I got a feel for where I was. Then, I’d get off trail and explore sights unseen by most. Here’s an excerpt:

…Be willing to cut your own path. At the very least, explore off trail. Don’t just be a follower who adapts his or her self to the conditions that already exist. Rather find your independence, become your own leader and make the conditions that surround you work for you and your business.

What I’m saying is own your business. What that means is be the person who makes the decisions. Use the knowledge you gather from any source – coaches, books, seminars, teleclasses, trainings, etc. Learning it. Then use it to cut your own path in business rather than just following along with what you’re taught.

So nowhere in the article am I referring to being abusive, unkind or impolite with anyone. If you’re not kind to the people you work with and for (clients & customers included) then you’re making a terrible mistake. Successful businesses are built on the foundation of sound, caring, mutually beneficial relationships. Relationships that are nurtured for the benefit of both people. From what I’ve witnessed again and again not nurturing relationships is business suicide.

Whenever I’m in a relationship with anyone, regardless of their position, I’m trying to remember that what comes out of them is from them. For the most part, the circumstances that cause any sort of reaction are irrelevant. What IS relevant is how we respond to the circumstances. Whenever someone does something we don’t like, we have a choice. The choice is to respond to them with cruelty or with kindness. And the is true in every situation in our business … and our lives.

So have you had these sort of experiences where a boss, a partner or a colleague is unkind or abusive? Or have you had clients like this? What have you done about it?

More over, what importance do you put on nurturing relationships in  your business? How is that importance viewed by others?

Let’s talk about it.

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

Think about it…you put up a few pages of text on a website and you have the potential for a business. People can view your site, read your copy and decide if they want to work with you. And blogs make it even more magical. You can easily write more content and your visitors can engage you and create conversation – increasing the possibilities that they might work with you.

Yet while the internet is magical, for many it provides false hope. So many business owners and service providers believe that simply having a website or blog alone will generate more clients. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Launching a blog or website – on its own – may not change your business at all.

This might seem odd to say, but it’s true. For your website to successfully promote your business, generate leads and help you get more clients, you need people to find it. You need people to use, to read the content and to engage you through it. Ultimately, you need people to visit your website that you have designed your services to help.

But before you roll your eyes with the usual, ‘of course,’ consider something – consider how! How will people find your website? More importantly, how will the ‘right’ people – the people you’re in business to serve – find your website? 

The simple answer is to reach beyond your website. What I mean is don’t rest on just having a website or publishing to a blog. Use them. Use them by thinking of website not as a destination that everyone should visit. Instead think of your website (and blog) as a hub for your business.

As a hub, you website should be thought of as a central part of your business marketing strategy. And just like the hub of a wheel needs spokes to work effectively, you need spokes off your business hub to make your website work effectively. The spokes? Your efforts. Your spokes are the things that you’re doing on the internet that lead back to your hub.

In other words, for your website hub, to be successful in promoting your business, you have to reach out beyond the hub with spokes out into the internet. And this can happen in any number of ways. You can utilize social media like Twitter or Facebook, publish articles to article banks like EzineArticles or interact with people in forums. Really, there are hundreds of ways to reach out beyond your website. I’m even doing a teleclass on the subject - 220 Ways to Reach Out With Your Website to Get More Traffic & Build Your Business.

What’s important, however, isn’t so much how you reach out beyond your website. What’s important is that you actually do it. In other words, for your website to produce more clients, you need to be doing things that engage people on the internet and bring them back to your hub. That’s what the spokes do – they lead back to the hub.

So what are the spokes to your business hub website? What are you doing each day to actively lead people back to your website?

Just as interesting, how are you using your website or blog as the hub for your business?

Let’s talk about it!

note: image from ***Karen on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Marketing your business is a really good idea, don’t get me wrong. However you choose to do it, marketing is a vital part of your business. As a matter of fact, marketing your services is something I teach my clients to do more effectively every day.

Yet I find that there’s a hole in the thinking that “all you need to do is effectively market your business.”

You also need to sell!

Now I know that for some marketing covers selling just as it covers distribution and delivery. Yet I so often see marketing gurus focusing all their time on the preliminary aspects of marketing – clarity of message, target audience, demographics, psychographics, methodology, etc. Seldom do I see marketing coaches get into the specifics of selling.

But more importantly, so seldom does the average business owner see selling as a part of marketing. More often than not, they believe that if they communicate their offer effectively that people will just buy their service. For instance, the majority of the service providers I’ve run into – either as prospects and clients or through a large network of friends, associates and partners I offer help or advice too – see the importance in communicating their offer. And they understand what systems they want in place once the prospects enters their funnel.

But what they seldom focus on is the conversion process – when the prospective client becomes an actual, paying client. That’s where selling comes in.

What many don’t consider is that while there’s a process for marketing, there’s also a process for converting; for selling. And while there’s numerous, effective processes and methods for both marketing and for sales, neither make a successful business on their own. It’s hard to sell your services if you don’t draw prospective clients in through your marketing. Just as you’re not guaranteed a large number of prospects converting to clients without clearly knowing how you sell to them.

To drive the point home consider if I told you, “An effective marketing campaign should lead to increased sales and more clients.” Without a hitch, you’d agree, right? I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it – the better your marketing the more you sell and the more clients you have.

Well, effective marketing is like having a bus drop off thirsty people in your driveway. They’ve searched, they’ve found you and they’ve journeyed to your home because they trust you can satisfy their thirst. But just because they’re standing in your driveway doesn’t mean they’ll get to drink. Some will, sure. But many will just stand there waiting for some guidance. Selling is guiding those thirsty people to the well in your backyard, hoisting the bucket from the well, pouring them a cup of fresh water and handing to them to drink.

In other words, selling is a process as well. It’s the process of guiding the people your marketing brings to your business into becoming clients. So how you sell your business, how you convert your prospects, is something you need to consider in order to get more client, increase your business and generate more money.

So, how does your marketing process differ from your sales process? Does it? And if you’re getting people to engage your business, how could you more effectively sell to them?

Let’s hear your thoughts!

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

Now, three years later, she’s struggling to get enough clients. She seems to get just enough clients to keep afloat. However she’s not fully replaced what she made at her day job.

Yet, she’s self-employed. She runs her own business. Or does she?

That’s the question I asked Susan when she called me last week. She told me she wasn’t getting any new clients and that her leads have pretty much dried up. She’s committed to her business, but not sure how much longer she can run in the red since she’s financing her business with her credit cards.

I asked Susan, “So, if you had to think about it this way – are you employed or unemployed? In other words, are you working or not?”

At first she insisted that she was employed – self-employed at that. She has some clients. She just doesn’t have enough and she doesn’t know what to do.

So when I asked her why she wasn’t getting more leads she gave me the same tired answer that the media is banging away on – it must be the economy. She felt that “the economy was keeping people from contacting her and taking her programs.”

Of course the economy is adjusting itself from the overblown, over indulgent corporate abuses. That’s why we keep hearing about layoffs and buyouts. But in truth the economy isn’t affecting us small business owners too much, really. But that’s another story.

So I asked Susan to consider, just for a moment, what she might be doing differently if she was unemployed rather than self employed. Without even a breath she said, “Well, I’d be out there looking for a job.”

EXACTLY!

Getting out there to look for a job is exactly what she – or any of us – would do. We’d be reading ads, searching the web, making calls, scheduling meetings and following up appointments. But wait a minute…isn’t that what we would be doing with our business as well?

Another way to put it – isn’t that the same process we would go through in marketing out business? We’d promote our offer, generate new leads, schedule appointments, and followup with prospects. In other words – we’d be actively engaged in marketing and selling our products and services.

In short order, Susan got it. She remembers the days of looking for work. And she could see, almost immediately, that in having a business she always had to be looking for work. She always had to be generating new leads and working those leads into hiring her.

And that’s the truth with running a small business – you’re always looking for work. Remember, you’re only self-employed if you’re actually employed by your business.

Did you ever think the secret to succeeding in your business would be act as though your unemployed?

If so, what tactics are you finding the most successful in finding more clients? And if not, how do you think your business could improve – even grow – if you treated yourself as being unemployed?

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

Yet if you run a small, independent business, the economy has far less impact on your business than you think. So you’re likely not facing the doomsday that’s being talked about with every newscast and editorial.

Unless you believe you are. But remember, as a service provider, you have much more opportunity in these times than corporations do.

You see, all this talk about financial meltdowns, depressions, and layoffs are mostly affecting corporations – at least at this point. Sure, job losses and home foreclosures are bad things. I, for one, don’t want to see my friends and their families suffer. But there are millions of us out out here who aren’t working for corporations. And most of us aren’t serving corporations either. Our clients are other small business owners, other service providers and the like.

What this means is that you’re much less affected by what you’re hearing about on the news than the guy working for Ford or GM. As an independent business owner, your job is secure if you make it that way. Even if you’re, say, a corporate coach who’s working with large companies, you can still have a great deal of control over how successful your business is – and especially in troubled economic times like these.

The key is to first not get scared. Turn off the TV, stop listening to analysis on the radio and just pass by those articles in the newspaper. In other words – stop buying into all the titillating stories about how we’re heading for a depression worse than the 30’s. We may be – and I’m not saying don’t pay attention to what’s happening. Just stop listening to all the scare tactics that keep you from focusing on the growth of your business.

Everyone with half a business sense knows that it’s during an economic downturn that you have great potential to increase revenue and grow your business. But you have to have a strategy for doing so. And the strategy often means looking at your business, your customers and clients and your revenue model with fresh eyes. See the changing market for its benefits. For instance, there’s less money being loaned right now by banks – so don’t rely on borrowed money. And remember that a good portion of your competition does. Tighten your own belt a bit to stay out of debt – but don’t tighten your spending to the point of loosing business.

I ranting now, I know. But the thing to realize is that during a repressed economy like the one we’re facing now there are tons of opportunities – if you choose to see them. Be bold in looking for them. Be bold in taking them on. And be bold in knowing that you have a chance to grow your business while many others are shrinking.

Just be smart. This is not a time to overextend your business. And it’s not a time to take risks that bet the farm like you may have in the past when a loan could bail you out. Be smart – meaning evaluate everything you’re doing in your business. Look for places your can be more productive and more efficient. Look at your costs and make sure you’re getting a return on what you’re spending.

And more than anything, evaluate your market. Not only yours, but others as well. Begin thinking of your business from the point of view of your audience. What are they likely dealing with in these times? How can your business help them get through? Look for opportunities inside the problems people are facing. And attach your business solutions to those problems. Then get out there and let people know that you can help them solve the problems they face.

In other words…define and refine your niche market and how you’re positioned to the people in your niche market. Be bold, yet be smart. Find the new opportunities and be bold in claiming them. Yet be smart in how you go about it. Think it, plan it, do it and measure your results. Then do it again. And you’ll find your business growing – while others fade.

How are you dealing with this economic crisis? What will you do if it gets worse? Are you positioning your business to take advantage of the downturn? How?

Let’s talk about it…

And if you need help clarifying your niche, positioning yourself effectively, or figuring out how to grow your business right now, then you’re welcome to a free consultation with me where we can talk about how to solve the problems you’re facing in your business.

(note: image from fabiogis50 AWAY TILL 2/11 on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Let’s talk about it

I work with business owners all the time who aren’t sure about what they want, what they’re doing or where they’re going. Nothing wrong with that at all. After all, unless your expertise is in small business development or marketing, there’s little reason to think you’d have a solid understanding of how to structure and grow a business.

Yet one thing that thatseems to set successful small business owners apart from those who aren’t is their mindset.

Business is all about creating your space in the market place – in your niche market, that is – and working hard to inform people how what you sell can help them. The thing is, if you’re wishy-washy you’ll get wishy-washy responses. Just as if you’re pointed, certain and clear in what you offer your clients, your clients will often be clear and pointed in what they want from you.

That’s why being uncertain about how you’re positioned within your niche market leads to uncertain, and often lackluster, results. Little focus means little results. And what other positioning in your niche market is there than being considered the best in your market space? Do you hear any of your clients say, “I’m working with Dawud because he’s the 12th best business advisor in his field?” Of course not. People always want to feel they’re working with the best. And usually they are – the best for them.

So I’ve never understood having a business unless your intent was to be the best in a market space. And that means that you set out from the beginning to dominate the market. It doesn’t always mean you reach your goal, of course, of being the top-dog in a niche market. But that’s not the point.

The point is your mindset. Do you go after the people who can serve in your niche market or do you sit back and let them come to you? Do you work hard to develop relationships that help establish your expertise and grow your business or do you sort of stay within your comfortable group of peers who will never be clients? And do you set out to be the best in your highly specific, targeted niche market or do you reserve yourself to having a business that doesn’t create the lifestyle you want?

It’s all in the mindset. Set out to be seen as the best in your niche market and you will be – at least by those who you bring into your business. And that means you have to dominate your niche. How else can you grow and maintain a successful business?

As Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” So what we believe is what we end up creating.

Love to hear your thoughts on how you’re dominating your niche market? Or are you at all trying to dominate your niche? And if not, why not?

Let’s talk about it.

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

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)

As a blogger, you learn pretty quick how to look at your traffic stats. You see that your traffic goes up the days you write and down the days you don’t. You look at your referring sites regularly to see where all the traffic is coming from and spend more time on the sites that are driving you the most traffic. And hitting the motherload of website traffic is getting to the front page of Digg, Reddit or del.icio.us.

But do your traffic stats mislead you? Is your goal just to get gobs and gobs of traffic to your website?

Maybe it is. If you’re blogging for fun, to make a few bucks on the side or using your blog to sell ad space and affiliate products, it may just be about generating as much traffic as you can.

But if you own a business where you only get paid when you’re clients are buying your service, having tons of traffic may completely mislead you.

Website traffic is great, don’t get me wrong. And it’s certainly an important part of your business strategy on the web. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be teaching a teleclass called 147 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website (it’s on Nov 25, and I believe there’s still seats left).

Yet you want to be careful about evaluating the health of your web marketing by only looking at how many visitors and page views your site is getting. You need to also compare your overall traffic stats with stats on solid lead generation, prospecting, conversion and sales.

You can do this pretty simply by tracking all contacts people make with you through your site in a specific period of time – say, a month. An RSS subscription and a comment is a contact. You could consider those soft leads. A newsletter signup is a firmer lead, because now your visitor has given you something of theirs – so track that. And obviously phone calls, emails and form submissions from your website are solid leads also, so track the number of those each month.

Then, you want to follow through with how each of those interactions develop. Do any of your commenters, for instance, contact you directly about your services? Do they then convert into paying clients? The same goes for your newsletter list, phone calls, email and form submissions – any of the ways that people can contact you directly. Do these generate sales?

If they do, it means your website traffic is serving your business. If not, then you need to make some adjustments as to who you’re targeting in your blog posts. For instance, let’s say you’re a life coach and you’re using your blog to promote your coaching services. Inevitably some of your readers will be other life coaches – that’s actually a good thing. But a good portion of your readers need to be potential clients as well. If you’re only getting other life coaches to read you blog, it’s unlikely you’re going to convert many clients. This means, you’d want to look at how you can adjust your content and your promotional efforts to reach your market, rather than your peers.

Generating huge amounts of traffic can be compared to creating a massive newsletter list. If you have a business, it doesn’t really matter how many people you have on your list. What matters is how many of the people on your list will buy your services.

So, how are you using your blog to promote your business? Is it working? If so, why. And if no, what’s one thing you can change to make it work better?

And maybe the most interesting question of all…are you currently, or have you in the past, been too focused on generating as much traffic as you can without really caring about how it affects your bottom line?

Let’s talk about it.

And if you would like to find more ways to generate traffic – specifically traffic that increase your bottom line, take a look at my upcoming teleclass: 147 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website.

(note: image from c0ntr0 on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

But I’d say one question is asked more than any other – “how do I get (more) traffic to my website?”

Since I seem to seldom lack for ideas, I thought I’d start writing them down. Next thing I knew I had a list of nearly 100 ways to drive traffic to your website. Since all of these are things I’ve done at one time or another I knew they worked.

But I didn’t stop there. I started brainstorming even more ways to drive traffic. Then I had a few close colleagues take a look at my list and they added a few. Now the list is over 180 viable methods for driving traffic to your website.

So what do I do with this, I thought?

First thing I did was start crafting a blog post so I could share it with everyone. And the post was almost finished until I realized just giving away my hard work diluted its value. Think about how many lists about anything you just read and toss. Yet I want people to get real help with their businesses and websites. So it helps neither of us to just add this to the stacks of useless lists forgotten in the soup of the internet.

So I’ve decided to turn my traffic driving booklet into a teleclass – 97 147 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website.

What’s great about this format is that I can provide a booklet listing all my website traffic generating ideas AND make myself available to answer questions about how to use them. So that’s what we’re going to do.

Next Tuesday, November 25th (second showing – Tuesday, December 16) at 3pm I’ll lead a 90 minute teleclass for you that covers (some of) the materials in my booklet, 97 147 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website. Half the call I’ll speak on some of my most successful tips in the booklet and briefly on topics like qualifying traffic and tracking traffic sources. Then, the second half of the call is yours to ask me any questions you like about any of the methods I list in the booklet.

Let me be clear here, the 97 147 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website booklet is not just a list. I’ve included some tips in the beginning and have tips and commentary on every single traffic generation technique I cover. And you get to keep the booklet.

Also, I’ll be recording the call and forwarding the a link to the recording so you can download it. So if you can’t make the live teleclass register anyhow and you’ll receive the booklet and the full 90-minute audio.

One last thing – since I want to give ample time for you to ask your questions about driving traffic to your site, I’m limiting the number of people on the call to 60. Once the sixtieth registration has been taken, I will close the program. And for the record – I will NOT sell these course materials as a product in the future. This is teleclass-only access.

So let’s go over the details one more time:

• My newly finished booklet 97 147 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website, with tips and commentary for each method.
• A 90-minute LIVE teleclass with me, interviewed by niche marketing expert Jim Pearson.
• Time for you to get your specific questions answered. Jim will ask me a number of questions, and we’ll be sure to give ample time to take your specific ones as well. The more questions, the merrier.
• I’ll record the teleclass and send you a link to download it in full.

Here’s the details:

• Teleclass will be Tuesday, December 16th at 3pm eastern U.S. time (second showing available)
  
• The teleclass is LIMITED TO 60 PEOPLE
• The cost is $97
• If you can’t be on the teleclass you may register as one of the 60 and you’ll receive the booklet and the full recording.
• I DO NOT plan on releasing this as a product for purchase later on.

Now there’s two things left to do:

1. First, register to save your seat.
2. Second, tell 5 people who need to get more traffic to their websites. Send them an email, make a phone call, text message them, Tweet about it on Twitter, Write a blog post – however you can reach the people you want to help.

(note: image from masochismtango 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)

But just knowing about the term niche marketing doesn’t mean you know what niche marketing really is. Or how it applies to your business.

Most service-based business professionals I work with and talk to have some idea of niche market. Often, they think of it as the group of people their business serves or the market they target their services for. And while it’s true that your market is who you sell your products and services too, it doesn’t mean you’re selling to a niche market.

There’s a number of ways to define niche marketing or niche marketing. Wikipedia defines it as a focused, targetable portion (or subset) of a larger market. The New Oxford Dictionary defines niche as a specialized but profitable corner of the market. Personally (and professionally) I think of niche market from a point of problem/solution. So for me, I find my niche market in identifying a highly specific problem or set of problems that my service solves in a highly specific way.

A comment in a recent blog post gives me an interesting example to play with here. On my recent post, Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of The Econimic Crisis, I spoke to how highly niched small businesses will be affected much less during turbulent economic times. One commenter, who identified themselves as CSS Gallery (obviously not their name), made the comment that “One niche market that is growing considerably is SEO.”

As with all comments, I deeply appreciate the thought and sharing. And it’s true that SEO is a growing market. But SEO, in and of itself, is not a niche. SEO is a market. And being a market, you can find all types of focused, targetable portions of the SEO market. So if you’re in SEO, your working in a highly unspecific market and with a little effort you could discover the niche market you best serve within the overall SEO market.

For instance, let’s say you’re an SEO specialist. You’ve worked with a lot of different types of companies in a number of different markets. But you have a perpensity toward graphic designers. You’ve worked with a number of graphic designers and understand the market a bit. You’ve even had some success at getting rankings for the graphic designers you’ve worked with. You could decide that your niche is in SEO for graphics designers. That would be a subset (niche) within a market (SEO).

But you can go further – and I recommend it. You can look at SEO for graphic designers as a market itself. Now I’ve said it’s a niche – and it is a niche of the seach engine optimization market. But you can also find niches within doing SEO for graphic designers. Let’s say, for instance, your SEO track record showed that you got great results working with graphic designers who create logos. You could further niche yourself by providing SEO services for logo designers. And you can go even further with this (and I suggest you do) by defining what type of logo designers you specialize in working with.

You see, the goal is to find the most specific niche you can and market to it. That’s how you can dominate a market. The more specific you are in your defining your niche, the more your marketing message (and SEO, by the way) can target that niche’s specific needs. That way when the logo designer is looking for SEO and finds you, they’ll feel as though you’re speaking right to their needs. And when they see that you specialize at working with their type of business, wouldn’t it only make sense that they’d contact you?

The key to niche marketing is to find a real niche. By real niche, I mean the subset of the market you serve. Sometimes it’ll be the subset of the subset of the market you serve – and so on. The goal here, though, is that you’re speaking only to the specific people whose specific problems your services can solve. Find them and you’ve found your niche.

Are you marketing to a specific niche within a market? Or are you still marketing to everyone?

And if you do have a niche, how have you defined it? And in defining it, how has it changed your business.

Let’s talk about it.

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

Things are so bad here in Michigan, the state with the worst economy in the nation, that General Motors is talking about buying Chrysler – the Big Three become the Big Two.

So are these such terrible time economically? For some, yes. For others, and I’m not talking about the extremely wealthy, no. But that’s not how it’s being talked about. If you just pay attention to all the Henny Pennys writing for newspapers, magazine and the web and listen to their banter on TV and radio, our economic sky is falling.

Now I’m not going to say that the U.S. economy is all good and well. Truthfully, it hasn’t been for at least two, maybe three or four, decades. At least since the early 70’s we’ve been loaning out our future and falsely inflating our economy. Just look at how housing prices and the cost of goods has risen since 1980. All this goes to say that we are, collectively, in an economic crisis here in the U.S.

But does that mean you are facing an economic crisis? Is your business suffering in the same way that Lehman Brothers or Washington Mutual Bank have? I don’t think so. These institutions are part of the reason the economy is where it is. You, on the other hand, are the reason there’s some soundness in the economy.

You see, small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy now. Can we compete with Walmart, Ford or Pepsi – no. But we don’t need to either.

I have a number of close friends that work for large corporations. Most of them are scared they’ll loose their job because of the economic conditions. But the other side of the coin is that I have a large number friends who are self-employed or own small businesses who are doing quite well – and plan to continue that way.

The difference? When you work for a large corporation you’re at the whim of Board and Shareholder decisions. These companies need to make huge sums of money to meet their massive expenses – including your salary and benefits. Ultimately, you have almost no control over any part of that how the company chooses to use it’s resources.

It’s in economic times like these that the small business owner and those who are self-employed have an advantage. The first advantage is that your revenue needs and the size of your expenses are much, much smaller than large corporations. Second, and perhaps most importantly, you have the flexibility to change strategies to fit the economic times. And third, you have direct control over the decisions and direction of your company.

Being self-employed or running a small business gives you advantages just not possible for larger corporations. Hence, if you’re smart, you can actually grow your business in times like these. Here’s a few suggestions on how:

• Redefine and refine your niche market
  Even in great economic times, refining your niche can be the key to a lackluster business and an explosive one. Get clear on what problems you really solve for people with your products and services and make sure you’re offering them to the people who KNOW they want them.
• Position yourself correctly
  Positioning is simple – what does your market believe you do. You can have the best products and services in the world and have a niche all to yourself. But if you can’t clearly communicate to that niche what you can actually do for them, in ways they understand and want, then you’ll likely find yourself struggling.
• Spend less money and more time on marketing
  If you need to cut back on expenses, consider reducing your ad dollars. But only do this if you have a plan to replace what you’re spending in dollars with what you’ll be spending in time. For instance, word-of-mouth marketing is far more powerful than any ad, and can cost very little. Start with your current and past customers.
• Look for opportunities
  There are opportunities for business all around you. By opening your mind – along with your eyes and ears – to new possibilities, you can reach into new markets or segments of your niche in ways that can make your more successful. Remember, being small, you can often turn on a dime.
• Ask for referrals
  I mentioned above that word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing you’ll ever use. So massage it along a bit by asking your most satisfied customer to refer you other people they know you can help. A good start is to ‘coach’ them a bit in how to share their story of working with you to the friends and colleagues they feel could benefit from working with you.
• Give something away for free
  I don’t mean give away your services, I mean create something of value – a report, a workbook, an audio series, etc – and pass it around. It’s a great way to find yourself in front of new people who your materials can help. And if you knock their socks off with what’s giving for free you’ll have them thinking, “If (s)he gives that much for free, what will I get when I’m paying them?”
• Get some help
  Sometimes the best money you’ll ever spend is contracting with someone who can help you make your business more solvent in times like these. Often a fresh perspective from someone who can help guide your ship can make all the difference between success and closing.

These are but a few ideas for growing your small business in tough economic times. Just remember, there are other folks out there that are doing just fine too. Some of them are looking for your solution to their problem. They just don’t know it yet. Help them learn it.

But please, don’t get lost in the media storm of fear. What they’re mostly talking about is corporations. Sure, it trickles down to all of us at some point. Yet it’s possible to come out ahead when times get tough. The biggest thing you need to do is tighten up the reigns a bit and focus on even greater clarity. And if you’re like most don’t expect to do it alone. Get help.

So tell me, how is the economy affecting your business? Is it hurting or helping – and why do you think it’s the case? More importantly, what do are you doing about it?

Let’s talk…

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

Just the idea of it makes your stomach turn a bit. It seems dishonest and dirty. And you’ve convinced yourself that it’s pretty much unnecessary to sell. Somehow you can get more clients and customers without having to deal with all that selling stuff.

But how? How do you encourage more clients and customers to buy your products and services without selling to them? How can you grow your practice, increase your revenue and grow your small business and be apprehensive to selling what you produce and offer in your small business?

Perhaps you don’t have to be apprehensive to selling. After all, you’re selling all the time.

That’s right. You’re selling all the time. As a matter of fact selling is second nature to you. How do I know this? Because you’re a person. You’re a person with ideas, thoughts and opinions. And this is what you sell all the time without even realizing it.

Think about it. Why do you share your knowledge? Why do you offer your opinions? Isn’t it because you have something to share or add to a situation or conversation? And when you do so you’re selling. You’re selling your ideas, your opinions, your perspectives. And you’re doing it all the time. I’m doing it right now.

So if that’s the case, why do you think it’s so easy to sell your ideas in a conversation while it’s difficult to sell your offerings to your prospects?

I think it has to do with money. Often, when you’re engaged in a conversation and you’re sharing your perspective on a topic there’s no money involved. Now there may be other currencies such as what people think of you, but something changes when money is involved. Why do you think that is?

So do you think selling would be easier if money wasn’t a part of it?

If so, I say, then, don’t make it a part of how you engage with your prospects. Make the conversations about them – their problems and how you can help them solve them. Make money the just part of the agreement if they’re a good fit for you.

In other words, take the pressure off to feel as though you need to justify what you charge for your offer. The price only really matters if you’ve illustrated to them that your products and services can help them. Otherwise, price is moot.

Don’t you think?

How do you feel about selling in your business? What have you done to overcome it?

And what else do you think stops the natural flow of selling other than money?

I’d love to hear about it.

(note: image from Lorna87 on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

If Mr. Shaw is correct (and I think he is) then all progress – hence all success – happens when you adapt your surrounding conditions to meet your specific situation.

Think about what that means in your business.

So often, small business professionals get caught up in playing follow the leader. They find some system or program – some marketing philosophy or method for copy writing – and they follow blindly. They think that because this method has worked for others, that it’ll be great for them.

What they don’t see is that when we’re always a follower we’re always at the whims of the what’s around us. And when the marketing plan doesn’t work for them they either figure they’ve not learned enough or that they can’t learn it at all. So they either spend more time as a follower or they quit.

But successful business – whether you’re a coach, consultant, therapist, widget maker, etc – isn’t found in following the leader or conforming to the masses. Successful businesses are built out of stepping out of line and finding your own path.

I liken building a successful small business to hiking, which I’ve done plenty of in my short life. Sure, you can follow the trail that’s been cut and see some great scenery. It’s easy, just walk and let the trail be your guide. Or you can decide to bushwhack; getting off trail and taking a risk. It’s when I’ve gone off trail that I’ve discovered the most serene mountain lakes, amazing meadows full of blooming flowers, glaciers hanging off unimaginable cliffs and easy access to ridge lines that lead to breathless views – none of which I would have seen if I’d remained on the trail.

The same is true with your business. Be willing to cut your own path. At the very least, explore off trail. Don’t just be a follower who adapts his or her self to the conditions that already exist. Rather find your independence, become your own leader and make the conditions that surround you work for you and your business.

How can this be pragmatic? Don’t just settle for following someone else’s marketing plan. Learn it, adapt it to your business – rather than your business to it – and leverage what you learn to generate more business. If you’re learning copy writing, don’t just learn the formula. Instead, learn the formula and then figure out how you can adapt it to your specific way of communicating and to your specific business model.

In other words, own it. Own what you learn by making it part of you and adapting it to how you work best. Learn it, adapt it, own it! And be as unreasonable as your business success allows.

So what can  you do today to be a little unreasonable; to go off trail or to adapt your surroundings to your business?

And if you’re unsure, consider how you’re allowing your surroundings to dictate how you do your business – and share it in the comment box.

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from mutbka 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)

Well my friend and fellow blogger, Joanna Young, is back! Where’d she go? Well, first she moved her blog from TypePad to WordPress – a move that I fully support and applaud her for. Then, she took a week off from writing to move into her new home. Can you imagine….not blogging for a whole week? I recently did it a couple of times and it wasn’t that bad – though I did miss writing.

I had the pleasure of meeting Joanna at SOBCon08 in Chicago last May and she’s even more lovely in person than she is on her blog. And what makes meeting her special is that she, and Chris Garrett, hopped a plane across the pond to be with us at SOBCon. And I only had to drive 3 hours from my home outside Ann Arbor.

Anyhow, I just wanted to welcome my friend back and thank her for some of my favorite blog posts. Here’s a few to check out:

• Kiss Excessive Words Goodbye
• 10 Outstanding Definitions Of Powerful Writing
• 7 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Ask Your Readers Questions: Part V Of Purposeful Questions
  • The entire Purposeful Questions series I loved. Here’s the rest:
  • Part I: How To Ask Purposeful Questions
  • Part II: Creating The Space To Ask Questions
  • Part III: The Purpose That’s Driving Your Question
  • Part IV: Asking Questions For A Change
• Do You Think You Can Tell? Powerful Questions That Wake Us Up
• 27 Secrets To Writing Like Hemingway

When you have a moment, take a stop by. Read some of her latest writings. And drop her a line to say hi and welcome back.

And, oh yeah, remember to grab her feed.

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

Certainly you can approach your business as though it’s a set of skills you learn and then implement. Yet I’ve found, for myself at least, that running my business like this has no life. You can create success and make tons of money, but what’s the end game?

For me, having my own business is about living life. I utilize my business to aid me in creating the lifestyle I want. My life is not, however, my business just as my business is not my life. What my business gets me is an opportunity to live the life that I – and my family – want. And for us, that’s the end game.

So I tend to approach business as being from part of my lifestyle. Which means I bring everything I know into my business. Certainly that includes marketing strategy, business development, and sales. Yet it also means I look at business with an eye toward spirituality, life purpose and philosophy.

Now I don’t see spirituality and philosophy as being something to push through business – as many are doing today. Their approach is to create spirituality in business – and that’s fine for them. It’s simply not how I approach my own business.

My approach is take the teachings, the lessons and the knowledge I’ve gained studying philosophy or practicing spirituality and live them inside my business. So words such as integrity or honesty have meaning to me in my business not because they seem like ways to gain an advantage over the competition or generate more sales. Rather, applying these concepts in my own inner life is the foundation in which my business is built. For me, it can be no other way.

So often, when I look to solve a business problem for myself or a client or I want to make some part of my business model better, I turn to philosophy and spiritual teachings. And just this past weekend I opened again, for the first time in years, Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. And the first passage I read included:

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Now, of course, Sun-Tzu’s writing about military strategy in The Art of War. But the book really presents a complete philosophy for managing conflicts and winning clear victories. For instance, Sun-Tzu writes, “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.“

So consider the gem I rediscovered in considering strategy and tactics. What Sun-Tzu offers is so fundamental that there is no debate that can deem his words untrue.

If we go off and just implement our ideas without forethought or planning, we end up failing. Sure, we may gain some success in the short term, but in the long run we’ll either find out selves in a cul-de-sac or out of steam.

And if we spend so much time on planning and trying to forsee all the pitfalls and possible road bumps along the way, we may move forward, but the pace will be painfully slow. So slow that we could find ourselves questioning whether we belong doing our business or not.

There is a fine balance between planning and implementation. The two dance together in a healthy, sustainable business model. You want to be planning and visioning for the future, and at the same time you want to be implementing your plan so that your business can build some momentum and so you can learn what in your strategy works or not. Then, you will grow at a pace that’s sustainable.

How are you managing and balancing your strategies with your tactics? And what have you learned from it?

And perhaps as interesting…do you use the wisdom of those who came before us to help you gain perspectives in  your business? If so, how?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from jocuristrategice.ro/)

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)