Month: January 2012

Categories
Entrepreneurs

It Takes Two: Positive Partnering for Greater Business Success

Article Contributed by Dr. Joey Faucette

When I made a New Year’s resolution a few years ago to start exercising regularly, I did pretty well at first, going often and really enjoying the time and feeling better. After a while though I noticed my enthusiasm waning. I had more excuses not to go and I let them get in the way.

I knew I needed a partner—someone to hold me accountable, committed to our mutual success, and who brings out the best in me. Our younger daughter became my partner. She helped me push away from my desk and get up and do what I intended.

We business owners often try to go it alone and do pretty well at first. After a while though, for a variety of reasons, we find more excuses not to do what we should.

Who is your partner? Who is someone with whom you can conceive positive outcomes in your business?

Here are the three key characteristics your partner must have for you to get to where you want to be in your business.

Accountability

A rubber band has a shape of its own which isn’t very useful. It just lays there in the palm of your hand without any obvious use. Put a little pressure on it, it changes shape, and suddenly becomes very usable for a variety of purposes.

Accountability is the pressure your partner puts on you to move beyond your current business practices to ones that are more purposeful. You shift your shape toward more productivity and conceive more positively how your business can grow.

Mutual Benefit

I bought a bird feeder that promised to be squirrel proof. A counterweight system closed the gate on the bird seed slots when a heavy squirrel sat on the perch. It worked…until one day I watched as a squirrel ate eagerly from the perch while another squirrel sat on the counterweight. Then they switched places.

Now if squirrels can Work Positive for mutual benefit, we can find a partner with whom we can enjoy a similar relationship.

Insure that your partner is committed to your mutual success.

Brings Out the Best

When you are around some people, you look brighter, act sharper, and move more effectively to get things done. You just sense that you’re at your best.

Who brings out the best in you? Whether it’s offering you words of encouragement, or helping you assess accurately a situation, or doing some heavy lifting, your partner must be that person with whom you reach higher, accomplish more, and achieve greatness.

Regardless of how talented or skilled you are as a business professional, you develop personally and grow your business professionally more effectively and efficiently when you remember that it takes two to positively partner for greater success!

Conceive your business for positive profits and productivity starting today!

About the Author:

Best-selling author, speaker, and coach Dr. Joey Faucette shares how all of us working together create a more positive world this week. Adapted from his #1 Amazon best-seller, Work Positive in a Negative World.

Categories
Recommendations

Entrepreneur Intervention: Triumphs & Failures of Entrepreneurs

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At a time when economic uncertainty and unemployment numbers fill the headlines, we all need something to lift us up. That is what this book is about. The Financial Bin has accumulated the stories of 28 remarkable individuals. These entrepreneurs share their triumphs and failures with you as you embark on a quest to figure out your own life. Maybe you just lost your job. Maybe you just graduated college with no job prospects and massive student loan debt. Maybe you feel it is time to be your own boss. Whatever your reason, Entrepreneur Intervention can help you along the way. Open your mind and allow yourself to be inspired by true success.

Categories
Branding

Fresh Ideas For Your Brand (That Won’t Freak Your Clients Out)

Article Contributed by Erin Ferree

Now, that sounds just like exactly what you need to get your business fired up and moving along! But then reality creeps in…

There’s the pressure of creating a fresh, interesting and new idea. You can’t just reach into a magic hat and pull that perfect idea out. Sitting and waiting around for that genius to strike doesn’t seem action-oriented enough for you. You’re ready to get started on what’s next… but you need the idea to begin with, plus the insurance and assurance that it’s a good one.

Then there’s the danger of introducing fresh ideas into your brand. You’ve worked long and hard to build your brand and nurture your fans and clients. So, naturally, you’re worried that you’ll come up with an idea that’s fresh, exciting, new and different, pour your heart and soul into developing it, and do all the incredible work behind getting that idea out into the world… and after all of that, your clients and fans won’t like it.

That they might freak out. What if they don’t like the idea you worked so hard on? Wouldn’t it be terrible if clients who were going to hire you decide, based on your new idea, not to?

Or, worse yet, that your chatty, happy and engaged clients and fans clam up, withdraw and become uninterested and disengaged. Clearly the opposite of what you’re looking for, and a sure sign that you’re on the wrong track.

Why are new ideas so tricky?

Introducing new ideas takes a special mix of ingenuity, bravery and finesse.

Here’s how they work together:

The ingenuity to generate an idea – OK, this is more like “a bunch of new ideas”… so you can have the freedom to create a bucket full of many less-fantastic ideas on the way to one fresh, new, interesting idea. And then you need the foresight, common sense and client-understanding to sort out the good from the not-so-good ideas.

The bravery to launch that idea and incorporate it into your brand and marketing. After all, your brand is precious and you’ve worked hard to build it. Launching a new thing can be both exciting and scary – exciting because you’re proud of your new idea and can see the possibility in it, and scary because you’re not quite sure how your clients and contacts will react to it. You can cut down on the scariness by selecting a few of your clients and unveiling the idea early, to see how they feel about it and what questions they have. That way, you can fine-tune your idea with their input, to make it make the most sense and impact possible.

The finesse to introduce the idea to your clients in a way that doesn’t freak them out. This is the part that takes the most discipline. You have to roll out your idea in a way that brings your clients along with you and your excitement over it – instead of making them slam on the brakes. That means keeping them comfortable before, during and after your launch – and letting them know whether this is a whole new direction or if you’re still offering the things they’ve gotten used to.

When you bring ingenuity, bravery and finesse along on your quest for new ideas, you’ll find yourself creating the kind of innovative, interesting and engaging ideas that keep your clients coming back for more.

About the Author:

Erin Ferree is a branding coach, design genius and strategic thinker. She’s been told that her right-brain, left-brain combination of creativity and logic is hard to come by… and that it’s what small business owners need to be successful. She loves connecting the dots between passion and profit, mixing strategy and inspiration and shaking things up.

She deeply enjoys working with entrepreneurs who want to help more people and look good doing it. Who want all of their branding and marketing to make sense and speak to their ideal clients. And who want an open, honest, inviting brand with integrity – instead of using icky, pushy, sleazy marketing tactics and trickery.

She’s branded over 450 small businesses in the last 10 years. She’s been published in so many books and periodicals that she stopped counting. She’s shared stages with some awesome people – like Michele PW, Linda Hollander, Lisa Cherney, Sheri McConnell and Kelly O’neil.

In the rare moments when she’s not obsessing about branding or design, she can be found hugging her corgi-dog Stanley, going for long walks, cooking improvisationally, or throwing parties so her friends can enjoy them.

Learn more at http://brandstyledesign.com

Categories
Branding

Catch Attention with Personalised Stationary

If you help to run a company or work for an organisation then you will know just how important it is to create the right sort of image for your company and the importance of promotion and creation of interest. One key element in creating the right sort of image is making sure that you look professional even down to things like the company stationary items. Having personalised or bespoke stationary can really help to create a good image around a company or organisation.

Your work may involve meeting various clients or important visitors face to face for discussions or meetings and you will know that impressions are very important in these sorts of situations. Creating the right sort of impression can be helped through the use of custom folders and ring binders. Having a company name or logo on a file can add a little more importance and promote an even more professional image. It is possible to have custom ring binders with your company name and logo printed on it and you can then use these for meetings and other important events to increase exposure of your company name and brand. It may be the case that you send out various pieces of promotional literature or brochures to prospective clients and customers. If this is the case then these can be sent in personalised folders which bear the company logo or have the company name clearly printed on them. If you are trying to increase the interest in you or your products then every little bit of promotion can help to achieve this. Customised presentation folders and wallets can help to increase the interest and can attract attention more than a plain folder would.

If you send out promotional brochures in folders with a company name and logo on them to people then not only are they more eye-catching for that person but there is a chance that other people may be more likely to see them and take notice of them. Any increased attention to your company name or brand is likely to be good news and might lead to further interest from people who were not your original clients. As a name and brand means so much in terms of advertising it definitely pays to have your company name seen as much as possible by as many people as possible. Like the majority of people, if you see a folder or information pack that has an eye-catching name or logo on it then you are more likely to pick it up and read it than if it is a plain and unbranded folder.

Customised and personalised stationary is a useful tool to use when you are promoting a company and attempting to increase interest or to create a more professional looking image for the company. Brand identity can be crucial for making sure your business is a success and so it is essential that you promote it through the use of the company name and logo wherever it is possible to do so including on files and folders.

Categories
Sales & Marketing

3 Steps to Crafting Your 2012 Marketing Plan

There’s no question you can start and grow a business without a marketing plan. However, I can tell you from personal experience, if you’re feeling stuck and can’t get to the next level, it’s probably because you never took the time to put a marketing plan together.

Having a marketing plan really is the key to growing and sustaining a successful, profitable business. Otherwise all you’re doing is winging it, and winging it only takes you so far.

So if you’re ready to craft your 2012 marketing plan but you’re not sure where to start, read on — I’m going to walk you through 3 steps to get you there.

1. Start with the end goal. If you don’t know where you’re going, then you really don’t need a plan. (And it’s impossible to plan without knowing where you want to end up anyway.)

It’s probably easiest to start with the money. How much do you want to make in 2012? Write that down. You probably also want to divide it up into monthly or quarterly goals so you know how much you need to make each month or quarter to reach that goal.

Now figure out how you’re going to make that monthly or quarterly figure. How many of your products/programs/books/service packages do you need to sell to hit that number? Write all that down too.

2. Put the big blocks in place. In order to meet your quotas are you going to need to do some launches? Put those in first. Or is there something else you need to do to get clients or customers? (Attend networking events, host teleclass, etc.) Make sure those are all accounted for before you do anything else.

Once you’ve put in the big blocks, take a moment and eyeball your calendar. Is it packed with launch after launch? Or do you have hardly anything in there? Check that it’s balanced — you want to have enough launches or big marketing events in there to generate some visibility and momentum for your business but you don’t want so many you feel exhausted and overwhelmed just looking at your calendar.

3. Fill in the details. Marketing is a dance — a dance between promoting and giving. Creating and building relationships then harvesting those relationships. You need to make sure you have all both things covered. (And if you’re wondering what I mean by marketing activities that create and build relationships, I’m talking about doing things like an ezine or answering people’s question on Facebook — content-rich activities that don’t obviously lead to a promotion.)

You may also want to take the time to actually fill in the actual launch steps. When are you doing the preview call? When do you want the emails to go out? When are you going to have all the copy written?

The more specific plan, the easier it’s going to be to execute. Not only will you know exactly what you’re supposed be doing at all times but your team will be able to help you a lot easier.