Author Archive
It’s important to be your own best customer
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have a business, are involved in commerce in any way, you have customers. Customers are the people who pay money for the products or services or combination of products and services that your business offers. [Even if you are involved in a barter-type commerce, each side of a barter or trade is the other's customer.]
This is not news to any of us with small or home-based businesses. Customers are the lifeblood of every business. Without paying customers, there is no commerce. All businesses need and rely on customers.
For instance:
- an automobile dealership: your customers are people who (1) purchase/lease cars/trucks from you, and (2) pay for the services that your dealership offers in car maintenance
- a grocery store: this one is obvious, isn’t it? Your customers are people who come in to purchase the goods that are for sale within the store
- a dentist: dentists are businesses also. Your customers are people who pay to have maintenance on their teeth
- the lady or gentleman who sells insurance, scrapbooking supplies, juice, cosmetics [and many more products] as independent distributors/contractors/consultants: your customers are people who buy your products and/or services
3 Websites you already know about
Posted by: | CommentsOr you might not…I don’t want to be presumptuous. I love discovering new-to-me things. When I received my laptop as a Valentine’s Day gift from my husband a few years ago, it virtually opened up the world. My local world is somewhat isolated by current necessities and I felt cutoff and frustrated. I had tried starting one little business after the other, but when you are tied to your home as caregiver for someone it limits what you can do. The laptop changed all that. I discovered new markets, new places to communicate and met many interesting people. In my business blog I’ve written that a few months ago I reassessed my own business and have found myself in the business I’ve always been meant for: art and writing.
In my forays into the world via the internet and in my desire to learn more about business and entrepreneurship, I run across fascinating websites. Just this week I have come across three that feature and spotlight women entrepreneurs…and these are all new-to-me. Also, as is the way with things sometimes, finding one led to the second which led to the third. I love the internet!
Business Stalled? A Killer Question
Posted by: | CommentsHalloween is a scary time of year. Ghosts, goblins, vampires and other creatures of the night stroll around making ugly faces and uttering growls and, like my dad used to do, they slap their shoe on the coffee table when you don’t expect it scaring the bejezzus out of you. Actually it was pretty funny because we kids could always see it coming and mom never could and she would jump a mile high.
October is also a bit scary because there are only two months left to the year and this year could prove to be a difficult one for retail businesses everywhere. I read in my newspaper’s business section this week that retailers will be stocking less for the holiday season so that they aren’t left with large inventories. Anne D’Innocenzio, AP Retail Writer’s story, “Recession-stung stores plan old-fashioned holidays,” kind of tells you that even the ‘big boys’ out there have to think creatively this year, hoping to lure in customers.
Reinvent Your Business
Posted by: | CommentsIn reading More magazine’s online version recently about their Reinvent Yourself feature I was struck by an idea: reinvent your business. I liked reading the articles that answer their questions: “…Have you turned your passion into a business or a nonprofit? Have you pursued a dream, nurtured an artistic talent, or mastered a new hobby?…”
I know a few women who have changed direction in midlife and admire their courage and enthusiasm. But what about those who like their business and don’t want to change careers or direction? I began to think of the term “complacency.” I like the Merriam-Webster definition: “…self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies….” It’s the “deficiencies” aspect that struck me. How many of us get so satisfied with our business, or with our current success, that we’re in danger of being complacent…of being blind to the deficiencies that might exist?
Let’s explore this by picturing our business as an office…four walls and a door. Those of us with an office go in and out daily and over time can begin to not see what is there. Have you ever noticed the phenomenon that at some point you no longer see the paintings hanging on your wall? If one were to be removed, you might not even notice its absence at first? That’s complacency and over-familiarity. I think we can see our businesses this way.
An observation about sales staff
Posted by: | CommentsI had lunch one time at a popular eatery in a nearby town. It was a place where on weekends, families and couples would have brunch or dinner; but on a weekday at lunch time, it was usually business people meeting.
On this particular day the restaurant was very crowded and I was quite lucky to get a table. My little table-for-two was positioned between two larger tables. One table had a couple who were eating with not much conversation. The other table had four gentlemen. It’s not my habit to eavesdrop on the conversations of others, but it was hard not to overhear due to the close proximity of our tables and the volume of the their voices.
After a little while it became clear that the fellow doing most of the talking was a salesman. The other three were prospective buyers or clients. The subject matter had to do with the computer software industry…I know this because my husband is a senior software engineer and I could recognize some of the phrases being spoken. I tried my best to keep my mind on my own affairs…I had dropped some paintings off earlier that were going to be in a show and I had some supplies that I needed to purchase after lunch – I had my own business to attend to. But my reverie kept being intruded upon by their discussion.
How to attack the business doldrums
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s nearly mid-October and we’ve all been shuffling along in our various business activities for 3/4 of the year. The economy has been rough and the need to stay competitive, innovative and fresh has never been stronger or more important. Staying competitive depends, in part, on being able to think (a) one step ahead, (b) outside the box and (c) unpredictably. But that’s not easy to do: staying innovative and fresh. The doldrums can set in because of :
- stress: too much pressure to produce solutions
- boredom: doing the same thing day-in-day-out
- burn-out: your brain gets fried like an over-cooked egg and you just can’t think up anything more that’s new
- plateau: we all hit them…nothing’s intrinsically wrong, so there seems to be nothing to fix or improve
The doldrums are:
- periods of listlessness
- calms and inactivity
- stagnation or slump
Human life is characterized by constant change. Our physical bodies change on every level constantly: we’re always getting older for instance. Every day is a new day replete with its own challenges and opportunities. Getting stuck in the doldrums can cause a business to wither and die. There has to be a way to combat the doldrums and populate our business with fresh thinking…creative thinking…leaps of logic and infusions of intuitive action. How?
Learn something new everyday
Posted by: | CommentsThere is a cliche that says you should learn something new every day; well, I’m not convinced that’s actually possible, but every once in while something new-to-you comes along. If you keep your antenna active, you’ll pick up on some really cool stuff. Now whether everything will help you in your business…who knows. I came across something new yesterday when I read my weekly email alert from SocialMediaToday.com’s blog - they call themselves “…The Web’s Best Thinkers on Social Media and Web 2.0….” There are great posts at Social Media Today that often hold helpful and useful information that even I, a home-based business person, can use.
Yesterday one of the highlighted articles was, “If you create online content, Google’s SideWiki just changed your world, and I got intrigued. The article, by Mack Collier, used Seth Godin’s blog as an example of those bloggers who do not allow comments to be made on their posts. Oh, you can “favorite” Godin’s posts on various social media like Digg or Facebook, but you can’t leave a comment. Collier demonstrated that Google’s newest application, SideWiki, can change that. This interesting application lets you open a skinny column on the side of any web page you’re currently looking at and leave a comment – and read the comments of others. This looked pretty fascinating to me, so I installed it. It’s simple and easy and free of any cost. I’ve already utilized it twice since adding it yesterday.
Continuous Improvement – Read Great Blogs
Posted by: | CommentsStaying on top of the curve in business takes dedication. It takes a willingness to be flexible, adaptable and learn new ways of doing things. No matter what your business might be, information is key. Information pertinent to your particular industry, customers, marketplace, products, delivery systems…there are many areas that change with changes in technology, economy and human nature.
One way to stay on top of things is to read. Read the news of the day. Read journals and other publications specific to your business. Read about your competitors. Read about innovations and new ideas. Read about what the rest of the world is up to. The outlets for information are many:
- print newspapers and news magazines
- online versions of newspapers and news magazines
- radio and television
- online radio and television
- industry publication and trade journals
- books and magazines – both print and online
- blogs
Blogs. What interesting and unique children of the internet they are. They are at once informative, educational, entertaining, irreverent, personal and commercial. There are millions of them spread over blogging platforms and written by people from everywhere about everything. Pingdom, in their blog in January of this year, gave a list of the top 100 blogs and blogging platforms. The top 5 blogging platforms/services they listed:
Leadership is important role for the solo business owner
Posted by: | CommentsHaving a business for which you are the owner, sole decision-maker and worker bee can sometimes seem unwieldy. Often it seems to be too many things to do and not enough time to do them. How can anyone be successful in a solo venture? I believe the key is to know the importance of the role of leadership. Every organization – whether a one-person business or a mega-global conglomerate – shares common structure and I believe that one pitfall the solo business falls into is that of only managing and not leading.
What does leadership bring to an organization?
- Vision – the leader in the organization holds the dream, protects the dream, polishes the dream and keeps it alive. Most single person businesses began with someone who had a dream “of” something: a dream of making a difference; of providing a service or product where a need existed; of giving of their expertise and experience that both would benefit themselves financially but also give to clients and customers. Without vision, there cannot be direction. You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t have a destination in mind.
Lessons taken from big business for the benefit of small business
Posted by: | CommentsI love reading the morning newspaper. The actual get-your-fingers-covered-with-newsprint paper newspaper. I rue the day when it is just too financially unacceptable for the Fourth Estate to continue rolling the presses. I try to avoid my newspaper’s new “Morning Edition” because all too often it is filled with death and disaster news. I don’t want to fill my brain with this kind of info at the beginning of my day. I peruse the living section, see what movie reviews are available, look at the local entertainment calendar – today I learned that this weekend in my community there will be over 30 bands in my downtown celebrating everything “guitar.” I think I’ll go…it’s free. I always read over the business section. My own business is small – I am a home-based business owner – but you never know when you’ll run across some “big time” biz news that could affect your decisions or effect your business directly.
Yesterday was coverage of Apple Corp.’s big meeting that welcomed co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs to the stage. What interested me the most about the article was the fact that the meeting did not unveil some magnificently whiz-bang new product to the marketplace. Rather, as the article reads in my newspaper [online the article was updated],
