Success
August 29, 2005
“Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.”
An Wang, Founder of Wang Laboratories
My Jillian’s Closet - Cindy Newman
August 28, 2005
This story is near and dear to my heart. My wonderful friend of fourteen years finally started her very own eBay Store. We’ve been talking for years about what she could do to do some “bigger things” for herself and her family. My beautiful friend is a single mom with five children, one who is completely handicapped. She’s been a single mom for as long as I’ve known her. She has done a wonderful job raising her children, often also working two or more jobs just to meet all their needs.
I’m always talking with Cindy about some new thing I’m doing in business and what potential or how successful the endeavor. So many times we have considered what could she do that just really fit her. A couple of years ago her children bought her a beautiful pair of glasses studded with Swarovski Crystals. She received so many compliments that the idea began to form in her mind that perhaps this was a product she could sell. Eventually she started researching, found the product plus so many more beautifully decorated items, watches, purses, flip flops all studded with Swarovski Crystals.
Cindy invested in some choice pieces of the product and opened up her eBay Store store inventory and a few auctions. At first she had auctions
closing without any sales. She was discouraged that she had spent this money and done all this work all for no sales. But then together we did some research on how to add key words in strategic locations within her eBay Store. Little by little she began to get traffic and then bids and finally purchases. I stopped by her home the other day and she was so excited to show me the sales that closed on auctions while she was sleeping! The look on her face was priceless.
You can check out her eBay Store by going direct to her website My Jillian’s Closet She has it set up so that the domain of www.MyJilliansCloset.com redirects with a special referral ID that allows her to save 75% of her closing fees to eBay. I think it’s wonderful that eBay rewards the eBay Store owner for advertising their own eBay Store.
If you’re looking to start an Internet business, an eBay Store is an excellent choice. There 175 million visitors to that amazing online mall. You might as well take advantage of it.
There’s a wonderful tool that you can use to research your ideas to see how much success you might have with the product or service you have in mind. This amazing tool is the Market Research Wizard.
All you need to do is type in three words describing the product you want to sell, and in minutes, The Market Research Wizard will Analyze and give you detailed information on:
- How much Demand there is on the ‘Net for that product
- How much Competition you will be up against
- What kind of Advertising others are using to sell that product
- Who your Competitors are
- How much they pay for Advertising
- eBay Auction listings and bids for your product
- The Keywords your competitors are using
- …and much more!
Then the Market Research Wizard will give you an easy to read Analysis on whether you should try to sell that product online, saving you hours and hours of manual research.
Domain Registration only $7.95 Hosting starting at $3.95 per month!
The Little Postcard that could
August 27, 2005
I’m not sure if this an example of the flaws of our postal service or if it is “delivering on the promise.”
After 50 years Mr Harry McGee’s postcard to his wife was finally delivered.
As the story goes Peter Symons, apparently the current resident of 1-1135 Davie St., Vancouver 5, B.C., Canada received a post card with a post mark of November 7, 1955 from Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Fla. bearing a pair of two cent stamps with the image of Thomas Jefferson. This post card was quick sweet note to Mrs McGee on the sender’s arrival at the Fontainebleau Hotel.
Who knows what could have happened to delay that post card from it’s destination for FIFTY YEARS! Yet, it finally made it at least to the address it was sent to.
You can read the story here at Comcast
I suppose that this doesn’t really have anything to do with your business, I just thought it was a cute and curious story that tickles the imagination. I’m a believer in stimulating one’s imagination for greater creativity.
My favorite tool to create and send postcards is Send Cards Get Business. You can completely customize both front and back of card or choose from over 7000 stock designs. Minimum order is 1 card. Select card and manage your data base online. Card goes out via U.S. Postal Service next Business Day. Cost of postcard is less than .50 cents, plus postage.
50 cent Marketing
August 25, 2005
What can you do with .50 cents? Not much of a marketing budget right? When you consider the cost of a 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″ postcard plus postage it makes .50 cent marketing possible. Postcards are the most pleasant “in your face” form of marketing that I can think of. I say “in your face” because a postcard carries your message out there in the open for all to see without opening any packaging. And if you message is graphically appealing it will probably at least get read. Here’s a couple of tips that you can use to get started:
Postcard Marketing Tip #1
Market with consistency.
Postcard marketing is one of the most affordable – in fact, plain out cheapest – methods for reaching your target audience. It is so affordable that you can do it with consistency on a shoestring budget. As with any other form of marketing, postcard marketing requires consistency. Simply put, you have to send out postcards on a periodic basis to the same target audience. When small business owners ask me how often they should send out a postcard, I recommend every 6 to 8 weeks with consistency to the same recipients. This enables you to keep your name in front of the same people several times in one year. The more they see your name, the better the chance of them doing business with you.
Postcard Marketing Tip #2
Use postcards to market specific products to targeted markets.
If you have a broad product line, implement postcards into your marketing mix to reach targeted audiences that may be interested in specific products. Create a postcard focused on one or more items from a specific product line. Develop a database of potential and existing clients that have either displayed an interest in those specific products or that you have obtained from a company that specializes in developing mail lists. Once you have successfully established one target audience, start a second, third, and fourth one. Rotate your mail outs to ensure you adequately reach each audience with consistency to drive business.
My favorite tool to create and send postcards is Send Cards Get Business. You can completely customize both front and back of card or choose from over 7000 stock designs. Minimum order is 1 card. Select card and manage your data base online. Card goes out via U.S. Postal Service next Business Day. Cost of postcard is less than .50 cents, plus postage.
Home Disaster Recovery Plan
August 24, 2005
Imagine what would happen if your home office were destroyed by fire, tornado, hurricane or some other disaster? Not only would you and your family probably be out of a place to live, at least temporarily, but you might also be out of business. That could mean you’d have to start completely from scratch rebuilding and piecing things together to get your home and business up and running again.
Wouldn’t that be awful?
Imagine…
- no computer database to pull up names of customers and vendors
- no software to create product or fulfill orders
- no equipment to create or package product
- no product
- no client records
- nothing left of your current business
What a nightmarish thought!?
According to The Revere Group "40% of all businesses that suffer a disaster, and have no business continuity plan, never reopen; of the remainder, 40% fail within the next five years."
Contingency planning for unexpected loss is not something we think about very often, however, it is essential to the longevity of your company.
In the last several years, many large and mid-sized companies across the U.S. have created and implemented contingency plans that will allow them to protect the safety of their employees and resume their business as quickly as possible in the event of an emergency.
While these companies generally have reasonable financial resources to see them through, many "mom & pop" businesses do not.
Does your home business have the financial resources to start over without a plan?
I’ve found a solution that will at least help you recover quicker.
The Home Office Recovery Plan: the Disaster Preparedness Guide for Your Home Business, written by Patty Gale and Diana Ennen is an easy to use handbook that guides you through a well thought out workbook of questions and checklists, that, upon completion has helped you create your very own Home Office Recovery Plan. The authors have even thought of an automatic system to remind you that periodic updates need to be made to keep your plan current.
This is more than a generic catch-all plan, Patty and Diana even cover different types of disasters and preparedness requirements or recommendations for each - such as hurricanes/tornado and storms, earthquakes, even winter storms or power outages.
This well thought out plan not only covers disaster preparedness, but takes you through the steps of preparing a plan for business continuity, helping you plan the steps that you or someone will need to take for you to get your business up and running again as soon as possible.
The Home Office Recovery Plan: the Disaster Preparedness Guide for Your Home Business, is a valuable resource that could save your future. Don’t be caught without a plan, or with an incomplete plan. I urge you to plan ahead with this invaluable tool.
The authors of this book have made it so easy to prepare. Their book is easily downloaded from their website so you can get started on preparedness for your business without delay.
Complete Website in a Day - for a Newbie!
August 19, 2005
I just discovered the most amazing tool. This tool will allow an absolute novice to create and publish a complete website in just a few hours. In fact you could create a website a day if you’re trying to create an income with affiliate marketing.
This amazing tool is XSitePro
What impresses me most is that XSitePro allows you to create a website that is NOT just one of those amateur-looking, cookie-cutter, template-based websites — or one of those starter web pages that you get from web hosting companies for free. It’s an attention-grabbing, fully integrated website that has:
- Any number of webpages created in the exact layout you want.
- Every page on the website is search engine optimized to rank well with the search engines — and designed to bring you web traffic immediately.
- Sophisticated functionality, which includes automatically-generated footer menus, site maps, link pages, and other site enhancers.
- An eye-catching pop-in window that slides into your website visitor’s screen at exactly the moment you want your visitor to see it. Note: This pop-in window is undetected by pop-up blockers.
- Easy maintenance — Whenever you make any change, all of the pages on your website are automatically updated to reflect the change. You no longer have to do the tedious task of manually implementing the change on all your webpages one by one.
All of this and you don’t have to key in one line of code!
XSitePro will absolutely revolutionize the way I do business. Forget Frontpage and Dreamweaver. This is soooo easy to use. Your XSitePro generated website could be indexed by the search engines and generating income in just 4 or 5 days! What if you put up multiple sites on multiple topics? Sound too good to be true? If you can fill in the blanks you can have a professionally built, search engine hungry website.
This product has a 100% money back guarantee. The guarantee is simple. If, after previewing XSitePro for 365 days (yes, one whole year - or at any time within the year), you feel it is not worth at least 10 times its purchase price in terms of present and future profits, Paul Smithson, the developer will be more than happy to refund every cent of your money.
If you are disappointed in the results you’ve been getting so far with the way you’ve been doing things, laboriously building your website(s) - getting frustrated when you have to make changes - wishing your site could be more professional looking - STOP and try XSitePro With a 365 day money back guarantee you can’t really go wrong unless you don’t use it.
I know this sounds like one big commercial, but I am so impressed with this product!
I am going to put my money where my mouth is and put this software to the test. Over the next few days I am going to research and build some sites, publish them and see how long before I get results.
"I’ve always been the opposite of a paranoid. I operate as if everyone is part of a plot to enhance my well-being." — Stan Dale
Home Based Business & Home Life
August 17, 2005
I have a client that I’ve recently started coaching who wants to start a business. She has a great product and great idea for the delivery of the product. She’s been testing the product to see if it’s market worthy. The problem is that she can’t seem to get out of this phase of her start up. She just keeps sampling the product with potential customers and talking about how she’s going to get her business started soon. She went out and bought shelves and containers for the raw materials and has gotten herself pretty well organized, but she has no plan in place for how she intends to market this product to the public.
Whenever we talk she acknowledges that the next step is for her to put together a business plan so she has everything all laid out as to how she will produce the product and take it to market. She keeps telling me that she has no time. In reviewing her time management and priorities it seems that she is still determined to do everything herself. She wants to operate this business from her home yet she refuses to set regular business hours.
My client is a very hard working woman and dearly loves her family, and she won’t set aside any time to focus on her business. She proudly describes all that she does in a given day, including working a part time job mostly for mental stimulation.
Several years ago, when I was still getting established in business, I searched for the most successful business woman I knew in town and asked her to be my mentor. The woman I chose was a very successful realtor who was about 30 years my senior. She had raised her family quite successfully while building her real estate business. I was impressed that she had a well rounded family life as well as an extremely successful career as a realtor. The most important thing that she impressed on my mind was this:
Don’t do anything in your business that doesn’t directly make you money, that you can pay someone a reasonable hourly wage to do for you, so that you can be freed up to do whatever it is that brings your business money.
With that information I hired an office manager to operate the entire order processing and fulfillment side of my business so that I could focus on sales. Believe me this was not an easy thing to do. I went through a dozen or so employees that couldn’t keep up with the pace and accuracy my business required. But at last I found someone who ran my office like it was her own. Just having her made me so much money! I was finally freed up to sell, sell, sell. I used to sell all day long and do the order processing and bookkeeping at night. I literally worked day and night.
Not only did I hire an office manager, but I also hired someone to clean my house. It was so nice to finally not worry about my messy house when I got done with work. I had more time to spend with my family instead of working or cleaning.
Don’t underestimate this aspect of your small business management. Put your business time in perspective and only do what makes you the most money and hire or contract out the rest. I tell you from experience that it is well worth the investment of time and money to replace yourself.
Be wise and set a time limit on the hours you will spend on your business. Don’t let "urgent" things like laundry keep you from your business during business hours, and not from your family after hours. Also, don’t let your small business responsibilites invade your personal life. Walk away and the end of the business day, knowing that your work will till be there tomorrow.
Blogging for Business
August 16, 2005
I’ve been a small business owner for a long time, over 23 years. I’ve been on the Internet with one of my businesses (GiveAways Plus or The Small Business Guru ) since 1999. I’ve been ahead of many of my competition in the Ad Specialty Industry using the Internet to build my business. But along came blogs, RSS feeds and pod casting and I feel like I got lost in the rush of technology. Initially I grasped the power of blogging a few years ago but I just couldn’t put my hands on good information to get me started on what to do to get started. I couldn’t figure out how to customize the design and make it look and feel the way I wanted the blog to represent me.
Finally, someone who I respect has made a very easy to understand tool that I can use to get me started and on track with this vital tool for my business. I have to give credit for making every step so easy to understand with step by step instructions to follow. John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, has written a super easy to follow step by step guide to getting started with blogging your business. His digital publication, Blog Lightning , describes such a thorough process for getting started you could actually get your blog started and promoted all in one day.
Being a mom of three children and a small business owner with lots of deadlines and responsibility, It took me about two days to get my blog set up, designed and promoted. Now all that’s left is posting.
In future posts I will cover how blogging can be used for different types of businesses for Lead Generation for small business owners.
I am preparing for a Teleseminar on Blogging for Small Business Promotion. I’d like to hear from you on the subject. In fact, I am gathering questions for this event so that I can prepare comprehensive content that covers the most relevant topics that you want answers to. Please submit questions here. Listen in, I may use your question.
Today’s Resource:
Make the Impossible Happen
August 11, 2005
“Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. They make the impossible happen.”
– Robert Jarvik
Case in Point: Jiffy Lube
August 9, 2005
Today I had to have the oil changed in my van. This is an experience that I truely dread. For years I’ve been very loyal to my dealer where I purchased my vehicle, but I just don’t like being at the dealership for an hour sitting in the waiting room. Many times in the past the dealership has even kept my car all day because they used to squeeze oil changes in between more serious car repair jobs. The dealer thoughtfully provided a taxi gratis back to my office, but I was without a car for most of the day. For most people that might not be a problem, but I’m in sales and that means I have to wipe my schedule free of any outside appointments just to have my oil changed.
Recently someone recommended that I take my car to Jiffy Lube, and, if I waited until Tuesday I’d get a special price. So today being Tuesday, I planned to head on over to Jiffy Lube. All day long I was so busy that I didn’t make it out of the office until after 5 pm. I called Jiffy Lube to see if they were open. I was pleasantly surprised to hear they were open until 7 pm. With my nine year old daughter in the van I headed over to Jiffy Lube.
When I arrived there was a small line. There were two cars in the bay and one vehicle waiting in both lines (there were only two bays). I thought to myself, “oh no, this is gonna take an hour.” I really didn’t want to wait, but I didn’t want to come back and do this later either. Just as I was contemplating whether to wait it out, I was greeted by one of the many attendants that were buzzing around working. The attendant told me that the car in the bay was nearly done and that with the vehicle ahead of me it would be approximately a 15 minute wait before my vehicle was started. I was invited to wait in the waiting room or to stay in the van, my choice. I chose to wait in my van because I had a cassette that I was listening to.
I’m not sure it was even a full 15 minutes before my van was in the service bay. My van was immediatly “converged upon” by several techs each doing something. One of the techs came to me at the driver’s side window and asked me if I would step out of the van for a few moments to go over to his computer so he could process my order. He entered my name, address, phone number and other pertinant information regarding my vehicle into the computer (this is the foundation for all their future business with me - they now have all my contact information and know about my vehicle.)
After all my information was entered into the computer, the tech flipped from screen to screen recommended other services and explaining why they are necessary for my vehicle and how much each one cost. During this time one of the several techs that were working on my van brought over my air filter that filters the air my family and I breath inside the van. Ugh it was disgusting. It was also a clear demonstration of why I needed one of the services he had just offered me.
There were services that he recommended that I passed on, but he didn’t pressure me at all. He noted in my account which services they performed and which ones they did not. Finally he printed out a receipt for the two services I ordered, noting which ones I did not order.
By the time I was done with this very brief conversation over at the computer, my van was done. Oil and air filter changed. Oh, and I almost forgot, they also vacuumed out my van while I was giving them my contact information and paying for my service!
I was in and out so fast I could hardly believe it. It was wonderful. I didn’t have to be without a vehicle all day, and I was treated pleasantly.
I will definitely go there again.
Now, what kind of experience are you giving your customer? Jiffy Lube won my loyalty with their customer intuitive systems. Somehow Jiffy Lube understood what I needed and gave it to me. I needed to be able to bring my vehicle in and leave quickly. I even needed to come in after work and not be without my van all day. And by the way, Jiffy Lube’s price wasn’t really any lower than my dealer. So price was not cut to earn my business. They simply delivered on a great system.
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