What is success?

It’s always interesting to compare the words success with it’s perceived opposite – failure:

Success: the accomplishment of an aim or purpose

Failure: lack of success

source: New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition

Those definitions make sense, right? Failure is the opposite of success – would you not agree? But is it always true?

If you think of success as a destination – a place to arrive too – I can see that not arriving at that destination could be thought of as a failure. Yet framing success and failure this way leaves no room for growing and learning. And it leaves even less room for trusting the process.

So how can we learn and grow if we don’t try things; have experiences? I’m not so sure we really can. I mean, I can read books, watch videos and attend seminars and playing tennis. I could become a virtual encyclopedia of playing tennis. But all that knowledge means very little when I hit my first forehand out of the playing area.

You see, I’m a huge proponent of the process. The process is all those steps you take when you move from idea to action. It’s the experience of putting what you know – and don’t know – into play and seeing what happens. It’s the place where real growth happens.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” I couldn’t agree more.

Yet, somehow, in our modern life, we’ve seem to be overridden with ideas of perfection and doing it right (or not doing it wrong). We can’t fail. And we look poorly at people who do. We don’t see someone gaining valuable experiences toward success. Rather we see someone who failed. Heck, we don’t even acknowledge the bold and scary move of putting your ideas into action. Instead, we cower behind our false sense of safety; looking out to sea from the comfort of our park bench.

For me, success is about being in the game. It’s about not giving up. It’s about continuing to move toward the next step in the process – even if that next step is in a completely different direction.

About failure, Ben Franklin Thomas Edison said, “I haven’t failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

About success, Booker T. Washington said, “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as the obstacles which he has overcome.”

And about the process, Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

What do you say? What does success – and failure – mean to you?

Defining your target, or niche, market is very important to the success of your business.

If you know what you do, the next step is to know who you do it for. Even better is knowing what problems they face that you can help them solve through your products and services.

But what if your blog audience isn’t your target market

This is exactly what Liz asked me in our latest one2one conversation:

What advice would you give to a friend whose audience wasn’t his niche market group?

Boy, there are a lot of ways to go with this one.

First thing, celebrate that you have audience to begin with. Many web-based business struggle to get people to visit their site in the first place – let alone having an interested audience that interacts with you.

Next, take a look at your blog, website and marketing message. If you’ve been trying to reach your niche market and have ended up with a different audience, there’s a number of things to consider:

1. Perhaps you’ve not been found by your niche yet. It is possible, especially in the blogosphere, that you have a large audience of bloggers who just like you, your writing, your perspectives on things but that don’t need your services. The easy answer to this is you have to hang out where your niche market is hanging out.
2. Perhaps you’re a little off on who your niche is. It’s easy to go off track. As a business owner, you should periodically review your marketing message with who your targeting versus who’s responding. Often, it’s just a few tweaks that can get you back on track.
3. Perhaps you want to write for your niche, but are influenced by your traffic reports. It’s so easy to redirect your blog’s focus a bit because of traffic. It may feel great to write about off-niche topics that get you Dugg, that get large volumes of traffic or that generate lots of comments (I love it too) – just be sure to ask if your business needs are getting met.
4. Perhaps you don’t know your real niche yet. One big advantage to blogging is that you’ll be writing often on topics related to your business. This gives you ample opportunity to explore who it is you want to work with. You may find that what you thought was your niche market really isn’t.
5. Perhaps your niche isn’t your passion. When you blog daily on a topic, it can get old quickly. So watch yourself. See what you really have love for writing about. You may find that your niche market isn’t your true passion. If so, I’d suggest re-evaluating your niche market.
6. You could, simply, be in the wrong business. It does happen. You set out to start a business in a certain area only to find that the it doesn’t fit. Or maybe what you thought you could provide your niche, you really can’t do. Don’t dismay, simply take a look at whether you’re in the right business or not. You can always change what you’re doing.

These are some of the things I’d want to discuss if a friend – or if you – contacted me for help.

There are many facets that go into having a successful business. One is the way your feet are facing when you begin the journey. That’s why it’s often good to stop, pull out the map and take a look around before you end up lost.

So Liz, what would you suggest my friend do if they looked around and found themselves lost with their business?

Of course, the answer I give and the question I pose is not just for Liz.

What Liz and I have been discussing in our latest one2one conversation.

Most recently, I asked Liz the question:

What do you feel is necessary to create an effective strategy to promote a business?Â

Okay, so I didn’t ask a light-weight question. I know that. Just like I know there’s no one right answer. That’s what makes the conversation interesting, if you ask me.

Liz’s answer was great, “…the way I get from strategy to execution is really to have a strategy, one in which outlines in detail what we are building.”

Which somewhat leads me to my answer to the same question – since Liz returned it to me.

For me, the key to strategy in promoting a business lies in clarity. Yeah, I know…you’ve heard enough about clarity. Yet, for me, it’s the foundational stones to creating, promoting and growing your business.

What’s always worked in my business is first to have as much clarity as you can around three points: who you are, what you do, and who you do it for. I’ve seen all my own success stem from clearly defining myself in these first three questions.

It’s taken some time, but I’ve learned not to slouch on these questions. Who I am is very important because I’m, personally, the foundation around my business so I need to know, clearly, what I bring to the table. What I do is far more than what I provide. It’s a look at what problem(s) can I solve for people. And who I do it for considers who are the people who have the problems that I can help them with.

Next I ask myself (and my clients) how: how do you do what you do. I can’t even begin to express how much my business changed when I took a long look at not just what it is I do, but how I do it. My eyes opened to things about my business that I never had considered. And I’ve watched this in many of my clients over the years.

Finally, I ask one final question: where can I find the people whose problems I have the solution too? Since I need to know where to promote my business I have to know where the people I can help are looking for help.

My goal is to get as much clarity around each of these questions as possible. And since I know I’m constantly learning, changing and growing I forget about getting it perfect and just get it clear.

From the clarity I gain through answering these five questions, I now have a light-weight strategy for promoting my business. A little polish on the message and a few decisions around how to reach my target audience, and I’m off to the races.

The key, is to keep everything clear. If I find something that isn’t clear, I stop and track back where it may have become unclear. Then I take the time to clarify that bit of cloudiness.

Which brings me to my next question I’m asking Liz (and you):

I’ve always seen you as having a great deal of clarity around your blogging and your business. What do you lean on to help you keep that clarity?

Please, join in the conversation – either below, in the comment box – or at Liz’s site.

In our latest one2one conversation, Liz asked me:

How important is strategy to your business? How does your strategy get built?

Great question, huh? I can’t wait to see how I answer it.

Often, I’ve heard Liz quote Steve Farber as saying, “Serve the people who love you with the services you love.” Well, that’s what I’ve been doing for more than a decade.

Loving what I do is literally the cornerstone that I’ve built my business upon. I can’t do it any other way. I have to love what I do first. Otherwise, I won’t be very effective in what I do.

What do I mean by love? Well, when I get out of bed in the morning, I’m excited to race down to my in-home office and get to work. It’s like being a kid every day all over again.

Sure there’s days that I’m not excited; days when owning my own business is a grind. What’s important is that the majority of the time, I’m excited to sit down behind my desk, flip on my computer and begin working for my clients. So I do what I do because I love what I do.

The second step is to strive to be the best in the world at what I do – which is help people utilize the web to grow their business. When I say best in the world, I’m not talking about being the best on earth – not even close. Rather, I want to be the best in your world.

In other words I want to do such an amazing job for you that you “fall in love with me“. Not in the literal sense. But that you fall in love with our work together and where it takes you and your business. And that’s what I strive for.

As a strategy, I think both love for your work and the talent to be the best in the world are equally necessary as a business foundation.

For instance, I’m a pretty good plumber, but I don’t love doing it. Likewise, I love basketball, but no one’s lining up to sign me to an NBA contract. Neither, then, are viable businesses for me. One I don’t love and the other I’m not good enough at.

It’s important to know that about yourself. What do you love and what are you really good at? For me, these questions are more than foundational – they’re also strategic:

By loving what I do I’ll work to do my best work for my clients, which will lead to their falling in love with me which, in turn, will lead to them talking about me to their friends and colleagues which will generate more business. And the cycle repeats in ever growing concentric circles.

That’s why blogging, social media, word-of-mouth marketing and relationship business work so well for me. I’ve been doing it for years inside and outside the internet. Perhaps I can help you, too.

What’s your strategy for growing your business? How are you using your blog to execute your strategy?

Now, my question to Liz – and to you, too:

What steps do you feel are important to take in order to move from strategy (plan) into execution (action)?

By the way, you have read Liz’s answer to my last question: what do you feel is an effective strategy to promote a business? Her answer is great.

Boy, that’s an exciting headline, huh? What could possibly be the most important thing you could be doing to market your coaching or consulting business?

Most marketing experts will tell you it’s clearly branding your business or creating your comprehensive marketing plan. Both those are certainly important.

But according to 19 year-old entrepreneur Ben Casnocha, founder of Comcate and author of My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley, the most important thing you can do when starting a business is “harbor a bias towards action.”
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Liz Strauss asked me, Dawud, “When I go to your blog I get the feeling there’s a back room behind your blog where you work. What work do you do there?”

And so kicked off our one2one conversation.

So what am I doing behind my blog?

When I’m not rubbing the swollen feet of my pregnant wife, chasing around my two young kids, or working on our kitchen remodel, I can usually be found parked behind my Mac Pro plugging away at work.

The work…of course, I design websites – for about a decade now. But more often I coach my clients to use their websites to grow their businesses. So you could say I’m a web designer – plus.

What I do is bring together knowledge of the internet, web coding, design and usability with the skills of a business coach, marketing strategist and just, plain overall problem solver. Basically, if you’d like to solve your business problems through the internet or take the next leap in your already successful business, I’m your guy.

The past year or so, I’ve been spending more and more time coaching and consulting with people on how to use social media (blogging, social networking, social bookmarking, etc) to expand their reach, grow the conversation and build a community around their business.

Liz, as you already know, I’m all about helping people. That’s truly what makes my heart sing. Thus, the way I see my business is that I help people uncover, develop and grow their dreams. Everyday that’s what I do with every client – step-by-step.

The truth is – I really love people. And I get such joy out of seeing people who are struggling begin to touch peace, happiness, beauty and love. Yes, I’m a sap too. But it’s literally what moves my being. For a while I helped people through alternative healing. Now, I guide my clients to similar outcomes through their business.

I could go on and on because I really love what I do. But I won’t. Why? Because I’d like to leave some space to hear from you…what do you do in the back room behind your blog?

And since this is a one2one conversation…to Liz (and you too…):

What’s one, core thing that makes your heart sing? Could be anything. But something that really blows your heart wide open.

If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear your answer too.

One thing I can say about myself is I don’t stand still much. It seems I’m always to understand more of what and why I think, feel and believe the way I do.

In my personal life, I don’t often rest on good enough. Instead, I strive to be a better man, a better husband, a better parent, a better son, a better friend, and a better neighbor. And in my spirituality, I constantly find myself working through issues that limit me from the deepest understandings of my soul and its relationship to my Creator.

In business, it’s much the same way. While I know quite a bit about business websites development, marketing strategy and copywriting, I still strive to learn more – always pushing my envelope.

It was just about a year ago that I decide to find out what blogging is all about. So I found out how to use RSS, got a reader and started watching blogs – learning as much as I could from the bloggers I enjoyed.

Now, I didn’t ‘need’ to blog. My business was doing great and I had more still to share with my clients. Yet, I wanted to know what blogging was all about. And soon, I discovered that blogging was, perhaps, the most powerful (or at least accessible) method for building interest in your business then anything yet created. And…you could do it on the cheap.

So I pushed. And now, I have a pretty successful blog myself, my business is thriving, and doors are opening all around me for expansion. To top it off, I’ve also made some amazing friendships and partnerships with bloggers that four or five months ago I didn’t know. Incredible, really.

So when my dear friend Adam Kayce tagged me a little while back asking me about my learning edge, it gave me a chance to think a bit about where I’ve been and where I’m heading.

In the meantime, I checked out the other folks that have been tagged on this meme like, Edward Mills, Ben Yoskovitz, Jean Browman, Daily Triathlete, Eve, Evelyn Rodriguez, Sue Melone, and the dear Colleen Wainwright from Communicatrix. They each wrote some great posts on where they’re stretching.

For me, I’ve read a fair amount. Though less than I used to with two kids under 4 years old. I read lots of blogs daily and manage a number of great phone conversations each week; constantly exploring how to better build my business (and my client’s) through blogging and social media.

I’ve learned a ton about using social media in the past year since watching blogs – and even more in the past six months since I’ve been blogging. And so now it’s time to push the envelope even wider.

Now I want to bring together the parts of social media – social bookmarking (e.g. del.icio.us, ma.ganolia), social networking (e.g. Linkedin, MyBlogLog, Facebook), social recommendation (e.g. Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape) and social content (YouTube, Flickr) – together into a program that will help service-based business owners grow their businesses sustainably and with authenticity.

I’m using social networks more and more – learning everything I can about how they work and how they can aid business growth. I’ve read 15 books on blogging. Most were pretty useless – though I got something out of Clear Blogging, Publish & Prosper, and What No One Ever Tells you About Blogging and Podcasting and Naked Conversations. And, as I’ve written about, I absolutely loved Lorelle’s Blogging Tips.

I’ve also read a few books on on social media and social marketing such as Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing, Mark Hughes’ Buzz Marketing, and, of course, Seth Godin’s books and the Cluetrain Manifesto. And I’ve got Ben McConnell’s books, Citizen Marketers & Creating Customer Evangelists, along with Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media coming from Amazon.

As for blogs I regularly read ProBlogger, Copyblogger, David Armano, Lee Odden, Chris Garrett, Andy Beard and the guys at Pronet Advertising – along with a search responses I find daily in my reader.

In thinking about using social media – social bookmarketing, social networking, etc – who do you read and how has it helped you utilize these services to grow your business?Â

And to David, Char, Gayla, Stuart, Dave, Dylan, Randa and Chris I’d like to know what you’re current learning edge is. Find out more about this meme at Adam’s site.

Let’s face it, people do business with people – not with businesses. A business owner may like, want and need something that a marketing coach, for instance, offers. But the single biggest reason they hire the firm is because of the people they meet, talk to and build relationships with.

Why?

Well, people want to be in relationships. They want to feel connected to the people they work with. In some way, at least, the business owner wants to trust that the marketing coach really cares about them, their business and helping them solve their problems.

Sure there are other things business owners look for before they sign a check – like competence, professionalism, knowledge, previous results, etc. But ultimately, the relationship will be one of trust.

The New Oxford American Dictionary lists trust as: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone.

Think about it…aren’t these the qualities you want in your business relationships? So do your clients. So how can you build greater trust with your target audience?

• David Airey’s 5 Easy Steps to Building Trust Online
• Naive by Design’s How to Build Trust Online
• Susan West’s Building Trust is Key to Business Success
• Greg Balanko-Dickson’s Business Blogging Strategy: Build Trust and Rapport
• Marius Wlassak’s Earning Customer Trust Online
• Paul Sarvadi’s Building Profitability by Building Trust
• Shonnie Lavender’s Building Trust With Your Business Blog
• Beautify’s Building Trust in Your Business Relationships – 10 Steps
• Michelle Howe’s Earning Customer Trust Online

Here’s some examples of how others are building greater trust with their audience. How do you?

No, really! I’m going to be writing for eMoms at Home. That’s right. Wendy has asked me if I’d share my insights and open coversations around being a work-at-home eDad. Of course I said, “yes!”

Most of you know already that I’m married and have two young kids – with a third on the way. And if you’ve been reading a while, you’ll may remember that my ultimate goal is:

To aid people, from every walk of life and every faith, to open the door to the truth of their existence. Not to my beliefs or existence, but to find it within themselves and authentically live their truth in their daily life. (read full post)

Sometimes I get into deeper issues here like the deeper wisdom behind things, our life’s perspective or your contribution to the world. But mainly we discuss social media, web-based business development, website design and marketing. And I definitely hope I’ve helped you.

Rarely, however, do I write about being a solopreneur eDad, who has to deal with all the ups and downs of working from a home office. There are times, like the story of my three-year-old daughter helping me with a coding bug. But those have been few and far between.

Now, with eMoms, I’m going to have the opportunity not only to share more of my business knowledge, but also write and discuss what it’s like to be a work-from-home dad parent. On eMoms, I hope to help eParents live a slightly better, richer and more rewarding life – in any way I can.

I’m quite excited about this opportunity. And I hope you join in the conversations over at eMoms. It ought to be fun and, hopefully, informative.

And no worries. I’ll still be writing here, at dmiracle.com, as often, or even more, then before. I love my blog. And I love all of you who read and join in the conversations here. Thanks.

I saw this quote this morning over on Doc Searl’s blog:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

Great quote, is it not?
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