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Want to grow your business but don’t have a lot of money? There is one secret which, if learned, can turbo-charge your business:
SEO, yep, search engine optimization.
I know, I can hear you now: “Yo, dude, get a clue. SEO is hard. It’s impossible. Its for the big boys. It takes forever.”
Yes, it will take some work, but no, it most certainly is not impossible. Top businesses, large and small alike, learn about SEO and have figured out the puzzle. Every time you Google something, you can bet that those Page One clicks go to sites where folks have mastered SEO.
What one man can do, another can do. If they did it, so can you. It is not an unusual business idea at all, but it is a powerful one. SEO is the trend in small business.
Who hasn’t gotten fired? I sure have. In fact, it was getting fired that finally propelled me into the life of entrepreneurship that I always dreamed of.
And the truth is - I was a lousy employee.
But what amazes me is how many small business owners become bad bosses. Not to their employees - small business owners usually try and treat their employees right (not always, but mostly) - but to THEMSELVES.
It’s summertime, and the living should be easy. Top small businesses know that. But too many of us can’t figure out how to get away, worried as we are that the shop or office will fall into ruin without us. I say - get over yourself!
If you are going to be the boss, be a good one. And if you are a not a good one, I say Fire Your Boss and become a better one, especially to yourself.
Here’s how to get away, even if you are the only person at your business.
1. Delegate: Hire a temp, or a virtual assistant. I believe the employees are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the wisdom you have inside! Give them a sense of pride.
I have a pal who is a great business speaker - witty, poignent, good stories, the whole shebang. Now, this is not true for many small business speakers. Too many are self-important, or long-winded, or boring. Not good if you want to be a business speaker!
But what my friend does, and why it is an unusual business idea anyone can emulate, is that he mocks himself. Right up front. First thing.
I saw him speak recently. Here’s how he started: “Thank you. I know, you are expecting a top-notch motivational speaker! A guy who will pump you up! Someone with pithy sayings and adrenaline to spare!
Sorry, you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m not that guy.”
Everyone cracked up. Of course he went on to say that, as a small business speaker, his job was more important than to simply make us feel good. His job as a business speaker was to help us succeed in our businesses, learn something new, etc. He had us in the palm of his hand, right from the start.
Not only did he make his speech about the customer (the audience) and not himself, but he was self-effacing, and that, I suggest, is the real lesson.
People love humor, and they like when people do not take themselves too seriously. Yet far too many small business people do just that.
I say, lighten up. Have fun. Crack a joke, and better yet, one at your own expense. It’s sort of like golf (not that I should be giving anyone golf lessons!) - but one of the few things I have learned is that the harder you try, the worse you do (btw, notice how self-effacing works?)
Take it from my friend, the master business speaker - laugh at yourself and everyone will laugh with you (and want to do business with you.)
A final tip: I regularly receive a great e-newsletter that teaches how to use humor effectively, especially in business and speaking. Called Humor Power Tips, it is interesting, and of course, funny.
BTW, I am pretty darned good speaker if I do say so (and modest and self-effacing too!) If you need a business speaker for your next event, shoot me an email! sstrauss@mrallbiz.com
How do you become a top small business, the best small business?
There are many answers to the puzzle: It could be that you have great customer service, or offer a good product at a fair price, or are convinent, or less expensive. But I say the best small business, the unusual small business, does this:
It is great at something.
We have a housekeeper whom we love. We have recommended her to many friends. Why? She is great at what she does. Not good, great. She cleans more thoroughly than any housekeeper we have ever had previously.
Not surprisingly, she’s very busy and successful.
What do you do that is great?
If it is something people want, the chances that you will be in business a long time are equally great. People hire you because they need something. They could go to many other places. You will keep those people around if you do what it is they want, that ting they hired you for, better than anyone else.
Be the best at what you do. It’s unusual, because it’s rare.
If Barack Obama were a small business, when this whole thing began, he would have been a hip Silicon Valley start-up: Lacking adequate funding, but with a killer app and a devoted management team.
And Hillary? When this began, she would have been no start-up; rather, she would have been the IBM, the Ford Motor Company, the United Airlines in the race - the big institutional brand with all the advantages, not lacking money, but slow and plodding too.
So how did the small but hot start-up beat the big business, the Wal-Mart, if you will?
The same way any small business beats a big-box — by playing to your strength and not competing with theirs.
Big competitors usually can beat you on price, so don’t play in that sandbox. Play in yours. Play to your strengths. What are those? You know
Service
Friendliness
Personal attention
Attention to detail
If you do that, any small business can beat the big box - not at their game, but at yours.
As I always say – the good news about working from home is that you see your kids a lot. The bad news is . . . you see your kids a lot!
People like to work from home for many reasons - the commute is hard to beat (especially with gas prices today), working in your jammies can be nice, and knocking off at 2:00 for a round of gold ain’t half bad either.
The hard part is finding a balance between work and home, and the key to this is to “fire your kids” - that is, they have to learn that when you are working from home, you are still at work. Of course this is easier with older children, but then again, they have to learn sometime.
Create some hours, set up some rules, and then expect everyone to live by them . . . even you!
Although American Idol got plenty wrong this year, at least the right guy won, at least the singing was good. Thankfully, no Taylor Hicks this year.
So why the ratings decline?
Because American Idol made a mistake we should all avoid - they got greedy. There were simply too many commercials, too much product placement, too much selling.
Here’s an unusual business idea: Stop selling!
The best salespeople are those that help more than they sell. The worst are more committed to selling than to you. Idol became the latter; more interested in selling Coke and Fords than in creating a great TV show and serving their customers.
Remember what your business is - its the service business, not the selling business.
Sick of getting voicemail when you call a business?? Here is a roster of toll-free phone numbers of major businesses and how to reach an actual person: www.GetHuman.com
Let’s say you sell products for dog owners. Sure, you could advertise in some expensive pet magazine, but not only may the results be iffy, they will surely be expensive too.
Consider this alternative: Research the most popular dog / pet websites. Find one or two that you really like and which also seems to target your desired dog-owner demographic. Then look at their e-newsletters; many of the big sites offer more than one.
Then buy ad space in that e-newsletter.
E-newsletters are highly targeted and you will thereby be reaching only those people who are most likely to buy what you are selling. Moreover, as the number of people you will be reaching will be far less than with that newspaper, you can expect to pay a fraction of the cost.
Yet you just may get better results!
E-newsletter advertising works and is affordable because you are selling only to a self-selected group interested in what you have to offer. These folks have opted-in and probably look forward to getting the e-newsletter.
Bonus feature: Because you will be associated with this site, you earn extra credibility.
More and more lately I find myself saying, “I feel like I do email for a living” - and not in a good way.
Death by email is not a pleasant experience.
Now I am not here to say email is evil or even bad. It’s great. Really, it is, I swear. I mean that! Well, mostly, I guess.
But I recall the time when I was about 10 years old and taking a walk with my sweet grandfather. He always used to counsel me, “Moderation in all things Stevie. Too much of anything is bad for you.”
Thinking I had him that day, I said, “But you can’t have too much milk, right Pop?” “Yes,” he said, “even too much milk is bad for you.”
I am not alone when I say that for many of us, we are full to the brim with the milk that is e-mail. Too much of it is a bad thing.
So what do you do, how do you handle the never-ending avalanche of email? Here are four solutions:
1. Declare e-mail bankruptcy. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, and certainly an understandable one, albeit pretty bold as well. The idea here is that when your inbox gets so full that you either are looking at emails that have been sitting there for, say, a year, or there are so many unopened and unanswered emails that you just can’t see a way out, you simply delete them all and start over.
If you choose this fairly radical solution, it is good form to at least send out a mass email, letting people know what you are doing and asking them to re-send their email if it is truly important.
2. Schedule it. Emails that I get that are important enough to answer but not urgent enough that they need an immediate response will sit in my inbox for up to a week, when I then sit down for a few hours and catch up.
An alternate solution is to mostly leave your inbox off – a wild thought, I know – and then treat email like regular mail. How often do you get regular mail? Once a day, right? Well, that’s the idea here. Once a day, open up your email and have at it. Then turn it off again.
3. Use a 4-hour workweek method. I previously mentioned Timothy Ferris’ great book, The 4 Hour Workweek and I want to again share two of his ideas here:
• Use an autoresponder. Set up your email to respond to every incoming message with an answer like, “Thanks for writing. I am busy with work right now and will get back to you as soon as I am able. If this is urgent or pressing, please call me. Thanks.” People who know you well enough to call might, and everyone else will have to wait – just like in the good ‘ol days before email!
• Outsource it. One of the main ways Ferris was able to stay productive yet substantially reduce his workload was by outsourcing any task he personally didn’t have to handle, like email. Yes, it will take a while to train someone to know what you need to see and what you don’t, but it may just be worth it.
4. Use the phone. Personally, one of the things I like best about e-mail, being a writer and all, is that it allows me to craft exactly the message I want to send. That said, there is plenty of value, and time to be saved, by doing more business by phone and asking people to do the same with you.
How many times have you gotten into an extended email exchange which could have been handled much more effectively with a 2 minute phone call?
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