Tag: business success

Categories
Entrepreneurs

3 Signs Your Website Has Been Attacked by Monsters!

Yes Virginia, there are monsters.

 

As I’m sure you’re intimately aware (probably more aware than you’d like to be) things go wrong in businesses.

 

Lots of things. Lots of times.

 

(And sometimes it even feels like all the things all of the time.)

 

Now if you’ve experienced something going wrong in your biz, you may have reached out for a solution or an answer to what’s going on. And depending on who you asked, you probably heard anything from “You have mindset blocks getting in your way” to “You simply don’t know a certain strategy or tactic.”

 

And I’m here to tell you it’s NONE of those things. If something is going wrong in your biz, it may very well mean there is a monster lurking about — haunting your biz, sabotaging your success, and just plain wreaking havoc.

 

Worse, there are lots and lots of different monsters that attack all sorts of different areas in your biz. And they can strike any time, any place. And since no one is talking about these sneaky, slimy, creepy creatures, they are allowed to grow and fester unchecked, attacking unsuspecting entrepreneurs at will.

 

But there is hope! You see, I am Michele PW Monster Hunter (yes you may know of me as Michele PW, Your $Ka-Ching!$ Marketing Strategist, but today I am Michele PW Monster Hunter).

 

And today I want to shine a light on these dastardly fellows so you can start to recognize when you are under attack from monsters, and then take the proper steps to banish them for good.

 

The monster I want to talk about today is called the Website Killer. He’s a bit shy, so he’s pretty hard to spot, but here are 3 signs that you are being haunted by the Website Killer:

 

1. You are embarrassed by your website. This may manifest itself as not wanting to give out your website URL, or if you do, you find yourself giving all sorts of qualifiers like “Oh I need to redo it,” or “I have one of those ‘bad’ websites,” or “It’s old and I just haven’t had time to work on it.”

 

You may also find you’re putting off launching a product or program, or approaching potential joint venture or affiliate partners, or lining up teleclasses or doing other visibility strategies like getting yourself out there on Facebook, or posting videos – because you don’t want ANYONE to see your website. And the fact that your other marketing strategies have ground to a halt niggles you constantly — you KNOW you’re losing valuable money-making and promotional opportunities, yet you just can’t bring yourself to give out your website URL because the idea that your ideal clients are looking at it makes you break out into a cold sweat.

 

(And the reason this is happening is because the Website Killer gives off a foul stench. So when he’s hiding in the shadows of your site, even though you can’t see him, you can certainly sense his presence and you end up feeling all sorts of website shame.)

 

2. You’ve moved beyond website shame into website hatred. You can’t stand your site. Every time you think about it, you can feel your insides clench up. Argh! Worse, maybe you have even spent a ton of money on your site and it makes you sick, because you know you need to spend MORE time or money to fix it. (You may even have a few Website Killer monsters haunting your site — they do travel in packs and the more you have hiding in your site, the worse you feel about it.)

 

3. Your website isn’t doing anything for you. No leads, no customers, no sales — no nothing. Worse, you’re not even sure what you’re doing wrong. (What you don’t realize is that Website Killer monster hiding in the shadows is scaring away all your ideal prospects!)

 

So if any of these signs feel familiar, there is hope. The first step to banishing him for good is being aware he exists, and figuring out if he’s haunting your site. So take a good look at 1-3 above, and decide if your URL needs an exorcism!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Sales & Marketing

What Ducks Can Teach You About Branding and Business Success

Of all the mascots I would expect a high-end luxury hotel to have, the lowly mallard duck is certainly not one of them. And yet, that was what greeted me when I stepped into the Peabody Orlando Hotel.

There is an actual story behind the ducks (which is printed on the napkins) but the reality is the story is less interesting than how the hotel has built a brand around ducks.

First, you have the “March of the Ducks” — at 11 am the ducks “march” (or more accurately waddle) on a red carpet to spend the day in a luxurious fountain. This fountain is located in the middle of the hotel and is actually quite a nice place to get a little work done or enjoy a coffee and cupcake (while watching the ducks splash around).  At 5 pm they then “march” (waddle) back to their Duck Palace to enjoy a duck dinner and a “quiet evening” together.

Now the fact they make this an event — with marching music, a red carpet and an actual Duck Master (which is trademarked — yes if you were thinking about hiring a Duck Master for your own Duck March you would be out of luck) is one thing. But the ducks are also front and center to their branding.

There are ducks on the carpet, duck soaps in the rooms, drinks named after ducks, ducks embroidered on the staff’s clothes — the list goes on and on. It’s all quite tastefully done and the ducks are elegantly and subtly woven throughout the hotel’s brand and image.

Now the real question is, of course, is it worth it? Only the Peabody knows for sure but from the outside it certainly appears like it is.

First off, remember where the Peabody Orlando is — it’s in Orlando competing against Disney World (who knows a thing or 2 about branding themselves) Universal Studios and other theme-oriented attractions. Without the ducks, the Peabody would be a very nice, high-end hotel that would be like every other very nice, high-end hotel. With the ducks, now you have your own attraction. Now you have something to talk about.  Now you have something your kids might want to see almost as much as Mickey Mouse.

 

(Now there is another Peabody, complete with ducks, in Atlanta as well. The Atlanta Peabody certainly wouldn’t be in competition with Mickey and company, but I suspect there’s enough other competition with high-end hotels and history that the ducks earn their keep there as well.)

One of the main ways you can successfully market yourself to an affluent clientele is to provide an experience. People like experiences. It gives them something to talk about (or write ezine articles about). And if you wrap an experience inside your brand, you just transformed yourself from a “good” business to something extraordinary. And extraordinary is what gets people to notice, to “take a chance on” if nothing else to witness that experience for themselves.

So, for you, what can you do to create an experience for your clients? And is this something that can be woven into your branding strategy? (And if you can make it unexpected or off-the-wall even better.) Or maybe it was an accident you overlooked at the time — with the ducks Mr. Peabody came back from hunting and was enjoying some Jack Daniels with a friend, when they decided it would be a nifty idea to put the duck decoys in the fountain. Well everyone loved the decoys floating around so now we have actual ducks in the fountain. (See what I mean about how lame that story is? But no matter, the point is they saw an opportunity and seized it — do you have any of those “happy accidents” in your own business you can capitalize on?)

Remember the point of a good brand is to make yourself memorable to your ideal clients. And a great way to make yourself very memorable is to wrap your brand around an experience.

 

Categories
Success Attitude

What My Zumba Instructor Can Teach You About Your Biz

I admit it. I’m addicted to Zumba.

But it didn’t happen right away. For a year I flitted in and out of classes, not really clicking with it but since I kept hearing from my friends how much they loved it I kept trying it.

And then I ended up in a class with a woman named Tiger. And I was hooked.

Tiger was born to teach Zumba. Her passion and love for it are infectious plus she’s an excellent teacher (in fact she’s been honored at a statewide level she’s such a fabulous teacher.) Her classes are packed, and her teaching methods and style has influenced all the Zumba instructors at the YMCA.

But, it wasn’t always this way. In fact, she almost got fired after her very first class.

In that class, she started with 18 students. By the time the class was half over she had 9. But the time class ended it was down to 6. And the next day her boss asked Tiger to come to her office.

Her boss told her she had been flooded with complaints about Tiger.

* Too much hips

* Too Latino

* Too sexy

* Too loud

(I’m unclear what they actually thought Zumba was all about since that’s pretty much the definition of Zumba but whatever.)

Her boss told Tiger she couldn’t teach anymore unless she toned it down. So she went home and said to her husband “They won’t let me teach because they think I’m too sexy.”

Her husband answered “Oh they’re a bunch of old white women, they don’t get it.”

“I have to tone it down if I want to teach,” Tiger said.

“You don’t change a thing,” her husband said. “You teach it the way you want to. And if they don’t like it, we’ll find a place that does.”

So Tiger went back to her boss and begged to be given another chance. “Will you change?” her boss asked.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Tiger said, fingers crossed behind her back.

And of course she didn’t change a thing. Her next class she taught it exactly the way she had taught the first one. But this time she had younger students who loved it and told her boss. So her boss finally gave her a class of her own to teach. It was the smallest class the Y ever had — about 6 students. In 3 months it was up to 40.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

So there are a lot of things to take away from this story, but the one I want to talk about today is the idea of ideal clients.

As successful Tiger is as a Zumba instructor, in front of the wrong crowd (i.e. the opposite of her ideal clients) she was a complete failure. Once she found her ideal clients everything fell into place.

And that’s why knowing your ideal clients is so crucial to the success of your business, and why trying to market to everyone leads to spinning your wheels. Because not everyone is going to become your customer (it honestly doesn’t matter how good you are or how much they need what you’re selling, they just aren’t). And all you do is dilute your message when you try to talk to everyone instead of just to your ideal clients.

And even if you end up getting your non-ideal clients in your business, those are the ones who will be harder to please, who will be more likely to complain you’re just “too sexy.” And at the end of the day, ask yourself: Are those the people you really want to be serving in your business?

Because chances are you’ll probably be a lot happier if you have a business filled with clients who love how sexy you are.

Categories
Entrepreneurs Success Attitude

The Value of Being “Second” — 3 Reasons Why Your Biz Might be Better Off Not Being First

There’s a lot of value around being first in your business. The first person to come up with a hot product or service tends to reap a huge amount of rewards in the process.

However, being first isn’t always all that and a bag of chips. In fact, there are times when being second to the party puts you in a better position than being first. Below are 3 reasons to celebrate being second:

1. You know there is a market for what you’re selling.

The one thing no one talks about in the “quest to be first” is the fact that lots of times, the person who is first falls flat on their face. Sure we all want to be Apple with the next iPod. But what about all those businesses who came up with some brand-spanking new gadget and didn’t sell a thing?

Years ago, I read a story about entrepreneurs knowing when it was time to give up. One of the stories was from a guy who created a picture frame that “talked” — I can’t remember if you could create your own audio but I do remember he had these pictures of famous events, like Neil Armstrong on the moon, and you pressed a button and heard a recording of Neil talking about one giant leap for mankind.

Everyone who saw it loved the concept. But no one loved it enough to buy them. He said he stayed in business a good couple years past when he should have quit and lost thousands more because people kept telling him what a cool concept that was even though it apparently wasn’t “cool” enough to actually purchase.

So here we have a story about someone who was first with this cool concept and no one bought it. Because there wasn’t a market for it. And that in a nutshell is why it can be scary to be first, because you have no idea if what you’re selling is something people actually want to buy. (Or at least want to buy at that moment of time — there are also stories of entrepreneurs who had the right idea at the wrong time — 10 years later the idea is big hit but not when they came up with it.)

Now, if you’re second, then you can celebrate because you know there’s a market for what you’re offering. In fact, I would go as far to say if there’s competition for what you want to offer that’s a good thing because then you know for sure there’s a market for it.

2. You can improve upon what the “first” already did.

Google wasn’t the first search engine out there. Zappos wasn’t the first to sell shoes online. But now both of them are the two-ton gorilla in the room. They looked at what the other “firsts” were doing — both right and wrong, and improved upon it.

And not only does this mean improving on the product or service it also means improving on the marketing.

If you are second you’re in a fabulous position to analyze what the “first” did and see how you can improve it to solidify your position in the marketplace. And if you do this right, you may have your own opportunity to be “first” — and reap the benefits without taking as much of the risks, which I cover in the next reason.

3. You have the opportunity to put your unique spin on whatever is “first” — which could make it “first.”

Let’s take coaches. Coaches have been around, well, probably for as long as there were people. I suspect when we were all cavemen we had coaches teaching us better ways to run away from saber tooth tigers and selecting the right berry to gather. But coaches as an entrepreneur industry is a relatively new thing. And the new twists on coaching also can make it feel first, even though the field of coaching is not new.

How this could work in your own business: See what you offer in your business that’s a “second” — is there a way you can put your own stamp on it (maybe combine with something else or approach it with a fresh angle) that could give you the security of knowing there’s a market while also letting you be “first” with your own twist? This is the secret to standing out in a crowded marketplace so don’t rush into this. Play around with some ideas and test them out to see what you come up with.

Categories
Success Attitude

3 Tips to Get You Out of Overwhelm

One of the biggest issues I hear from entrepreneurs is how much they struggle with overwhelm. Unfortunately there’s no easy answer to get you out of overwhelm completely, but if you start making a habit of the below 3 tips, chances are your life is going to get a lot easier.

 

1.  Get very clear on exactly what you personally should be doing. Look I get it. For years I had a very busy feast-or-famine freelance copywriting business. I know what it’s like to go at your business alone and just how many tasks you’re trying to squeeze into your days.

 

But the reality is there are only so many hours a day. And there are so many things you can do in one day. And if you’re not clear on the top activities you should be doing, you can quickly find yourself spending hours on tasks that other people should really be doing (or maybe even things that don’t need to get done at all).

 

Now once you’re clear on what you should and shouldn’t be doing, what do you do with the tasks you shouldn’t be doing but still need to be done? Well that’s where tip #2 comes in.

 

2. Surround yourself with a team that supports you because they do the tasks you shouldn’t be doing. It’s not just enough to build a team if that team isn’t actually taking things off your plate. The entire point is to have a team that frees you up to focus on your highest-payoff activities.

 

Now what do you do when you can’t afford a team? Well, what I always say is start small. Maybe 10 hours a month for bookkeeping or to start scheduling appointments. And then you make sure you take those 10 hours and do something that brings you income.

 

However, for this to work, you need to really make sure you do devote 10 hours to revenue-generating activities, which leads me to my third tip.

 

3. Set and maintain boundaries. This is probably the biggest tip of all. From my experience, entrepreneurs who are suffer the least from overwhelm are also the best at setting boundaries.

 

So what do I mean by setting and maintaining boundaries? Here’s a partial list:

 

* If you’ve committed to 10 hours a month of revenue-generating activities to pay for your monthly bookkeeper, then you spend that time doing revenue-generating activities.

* You allow your team to do their work and support you — YOU don’t start doing their work because it’s “easier” than delegating

* You work during those times you designated as working time, and you don’t work during those times you have other plans. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t get up early in the morning or stay up late to finish a project — what this means is you discipline yourself to work when you’re supposed to (and don’t allow distractions to keep you from getting your work done) and don’t work when you should be doing something else — for instance skipping your workout class or cancelling girl’s night out or not showing up for your child’s soccer game.

 

This one is probably the hardest to do but if you can master it, it will do wonders to helping you get out of overwhelm.