34 Questions Help You Determine Your BQ - Business Quotient. WIll You Be the Next Elon Musk?

In case you haven't heard, starting and managing a small business is VERY HARD, takes an amazing array of skills, temperaments, and ... well, let's not spoil the test.

In the course of writing the 3rd edition of When Friday Isn't Payday: How to Plan, Start, Build, and Manage Your Small Business, it occurred to me that there might be a way to give prospective owners a sort of aptitude test. People like me who can't draw a stick figure should probably not go into graphic arts, even with all the fancy new tools. It turns out the same can be said for business aptitude. Some folks shouldn't go that direction.

Well, the test has another application. Do you know any business owners who are failing, barely getting by, and/or hate their life (or what's left of it after 70-hour weeks)? Me, too. So, the test is for them, as well. I know plenty of lawyers who gave it up because it just wasn't worth it.

Enough blab. Go here to take the test. You can tell us your score or make other comments about the test below.

The BQ Test

 

By the way, When Friday Isn't Payday: How to Plan, Start, Build, and Manage Your Small Business, is on sale during December. Paperback, normally $24.95, just $14.95. Kindle edition might be free if you are part of the Unlimited Club. If not free, you can get it for just 99¢. Normally $7.99

“I Hate Selling” and Two Other Reasons Why Small Business Owners Fail

 

How Can You Overcome The Three Primary Issues that Kill Small Businesses?

As my beautiful bride and I walked along Pacific Palisades Park in Santa Monica on a sun-drenched day, she wondered aloud about our upcoming wedding anniversary, “How would you feel about renting a hotel or small cottage for two nights. I’m thinking it needs to be close enough to the ocean where we can hear the waves. I’m really drawn to every part of coastal living right now. Don’t you think that would be a great way to go down memory lane regarding our time together.”

Toni is not a salesperson. The idea of spending even one moment in the business of selling products or services to others would be horrific to her. But the pitch above was masterful, and the close was artful. We all sell all the time. So why do business owners commonly say that they hate to sell?

I would propose that most don’t hate selling. They are perfectly happy to talk to someone about their product or service and see if there’s an opportunity to do business. It isn’t the act of selling that chills the soul. What many dread is the prospecting such as cold calling, selling to strangers who might say no, or following up on initial calls. When you call to ask for the decision the answer might be no or the calls and emails may not ever be returned. In other words, doing the hard things.

Number one on the list of why business owners fail…Nobody is selling. What about number two? It’s related. The owner doesn’t want to do the hard thing, so he or she hires it done. This might be hiring a salesperson, a sales rep agency, a social media lead generation company or any one of a number of ways to avoid the hard aspects of selling. Unfortunately, it is the rare owner who actually becomes expert in managing any of these resources.

You see, it is hard to sales manage others when you don’t know how to sell. It is hard to know which rep group to hire if you haven’t studied how rep groups work. It is hard to evaluate a social media agency if you don’t really get social media. You can spend a huge amount of money in an attempt to generate traffic, leads, or sales with little to show for the effort. Small businesses fail for lack of the necessary capital to overcome the reluctance of the owner to sell and the costs of the learning curve necessary to become proficient with alternative approaches.

If business owners hate to “sell,” they hate accounting even more. Most might not really hate accounting if they had ever taken a course or read a book about business accounting. Regardless of the reasons, most small businesses fail to set up good accounting systems, fail even harder at managing input into the systems they do establish, receive reporting from their accounting systems that is inadequate at best, and have no ability to analyze and make corrections in response to the reporting, because they don’t know how to read the reports.

The comparison here would be that your heart surgeon does surgery with no idea what is happening with your temperature, breathing, blood pressure, pulse, brain function, etc. The second reason that so many small businesses fail is due to the bookkeeping being inadequate. Why? Because the owner doesn’t want to do the hard things.

Hiring, managing, motivating, firing! These are hard things. The government doesn’t help owners love dealing with employees with its endless rules, laws, and meddling with the employer/employee relationship. So just after the owner says he hates selling, and hates accounting, the third verse is: “I hate HR.”

It goes without saying that this is just one more “hard thing” where the owner doesn’t want to take the time to develop expertise. There are countless resources available on how to hire, how to manage, how to motivate, and how to fire an employee. But the reality is that the small business who reaches the size that allows it to hire employees is commonly driven out of business by the bad hiring choices and the ineffectiveness of the employee (s) once hired.

Successful businesses are commonly those where the skills of the owner are so great that they overcome the barriers presented by failings in these three critical areas. For instance, you might have a retailer who is so good at merchandising and choice of location that the customers come and buy even if the sales staff is not that great.

You will see the outstanding lawyer or doctor whose reputation results in referrals and the accounting doesn’t matter, except that the company could be doing so much better if the collection of past due invoices was better.

Or you have the manufacturer who creates a product so compelling that inefficiencies in line and staff positions only reduce profit, they don’t kill the company.

As a consultant and a mastermind facilitator, I have seen hundreds of such companies; those that make it in spite of themselves, and those that fail for these very reasons. What I have seen is that owners who join a mastermind group quickly learn about the places where they are getting in their own way, failing to do the hard things, or on the verge of failure because of issues like the above.

When you surround yourself with peers who have unique business experience, skills, and education, you are going to have individuals within that cadre who will see right through your defenses and into the heart of the matter.

Those peers will care enough to spell it out. As an owner we rarely hear the truth. In fact, we rarely feel safe enough to speak the truth. But in a mastermind group we quickly see that the others in the room get it. They’ve experienced the same fears, roadblocks, regrets, and failings. They’ve been offered opportunities like the ones currently on your radar. They’ve made good and bad choices. They can speak with great authority because they’ve lived it. And they can speak honestly because they have no vested interest in the outcome.

If you live in Southern California and you’d be interested in joining a MasterMind group and enjoying the immense benefits of peer-to-peer learning and accountability, please contact Randy Kirk at 310-910-1848

Twitter for Small Business - What You May Not Know Could Help You

Your Tweets get found on Twitter by keywords - but not on Google

I do a lot of blogging for my clients. These blogs generally get over 10,000 page views per month. Most of those page views do NOT come from Google. They come from Twitter.

You see Google search (Bing, Yahoo, etc.) is totally clogged. The amount of content on the internet is doubling every year, and there is no end in sight. But the amount of content that can be consumed by the folks is not increasing at the same rate. This is making the competition for those eyeballs more and more expensive to acquire. Where I may have posted on a blog five years ago and seen that post on page one under some keywords I cared about. Not so today. Not without a lot of extra work or much more careful selection of the keywords. Even when successful, the readership will be less.

How do we business owners get better at reaching our clients online with that content. We need to find out how they are searching. And the search engines of the future may be more tied to social media than to the wide open spaces like Google.

Twitter's search engine only searches Tweets. If you search by a person or keyword or hashtag, it isn't going to give you results for YouTube or a website or a blog. Because not very many folks are paying attention yet, it is still possible to dominate Twitter search with a few good Tweets per day. These tweets can be linked to your blog, website, video, etc., and can contain a phone number or other ways to directly reach you.

In addition, many Twitter users have set up key word alerts that are always searching for certain words they care about. Commonly this would be their favorite sports team, their college, or their home town. If someone Tweets that there is a great party going on in Columbus Ohio, and you are alerted for Columbus, you'll find out about the party. Google has an alert system like this, but it is not nearly so popular as Twitters, because Twitters content is social and immediate.

Small business owners will find that in today's internet scramble to find new customers, the time and energy will be better spent on YouTube, blogging, Twitter, and Linkedin. If you'd like to be a part of that future, give me a call at 310-910-1848.

Classic Marketing Book Review - 1001 Ways to Reward Employees

Cover of 1001 Ways to Reward Employees

Motivating Employees Is About Way More than How Much You Pay Them

One of my favorite parts of business is building up employees.  I love the challenge of finding a "young" gem who is willing to learn and develop, then helping them to become all that they can be.  In my lifetime I have had the privilege, and it is truly that, of being that mentor hundreds of times. 

I learned early on that money can motivate, but that most folks are working for a bunch of reasons that have little to do with whether they are getting $20 or $22 an hour.  Some are working for money.  No doubt.  Some for benefits.  But most are working to feel a sense of accomplishment, belonging, respect, trust, progress. 

One way that employees can feel really fantastic about themselves is through rewards, praise, and public recognition.  "1001 Ways to Reward Employees" by Bob Nelson, is a great reference book to help you consider low cost or free ways to build your people up.  You can spend 20 or 30 minutes just skipping around through the text and you'll be stimulated to come up with your own variations.  It is like brainstorming, but with a book instead of a room full of people.  

The ideas have been gleaned from 100's of interviews conducted with owners and managers of businesses, large and small.  Many won't apply to your situation at all.  Others will have you slapping your forehead wondering why you didn't already think of that. 

Years ago, I implemented an Employee of the Month program with a traveling trophy.  The employees voted, and the winner had a name plaque added to the trophy stand.  The winner also got to take the trophy home and keep it for the month, showing it off to his family and friends.  The result was stunning.  There was energy in the air for many months. 

Like anything else, that idea petered out.  We then gave managers company bucks.  They were able to dispense $5, $10, $20 to employees that they saw doing a great job, over and above, being a servant, or exhibiting initiative.  These company bucks could be exchanged for real items in a catalog we received for an advertising specialty company. 

Those were just two of dozens of methods we used over the years with line and staff.  Of course, sales people are another breed altogether when it comes to promotions, but I've covered that elsewhere. 

This book has been in print for 20 years, which might mean it is a hit.  Buy one for your desk.  Then use it often. 

101 Marketing Secrets

101Small Business Fundamentals That Could Easily Change Your Life

Following is the introduction to a book that I am writing online.  The first 40 chapters out of 101 are linked below.  By the time you've read those 40, I should have at least another 10 ready for you.  Subscribe so you are kept up to date.

 

The Top Ten Marketing Fundamentals According to the Serial Marketer

 

The Project

Several months ago I set out to create my seminal book up to this time.  In 1998 I updated When Friday Isn't Payday, a book that attempted to take a business owner or even a potential business owner through every phase of a start up or take over from the conception of the idea to the eventual sale or passing off to family or employees.

The book is available dirt cheap on Amazon used, or you can buy a brand spanking new copy for a little bit more money.  Heads up:  the internet portions are a bit outdated.  However, that means the other almost 300 pages are evergreen.  Warner Books believed in those 300 pages in 1993 and gave them new life in 2008.  Inc Magazine said it was one of the top three small business books published in 1993.  The new title is Running a 21st Century Small Business.  There are tons of reviews if you care to check it out.

In late 2011, I completed my 4th in a series of books for the bicycle industry, called Principles of Bicycle Retailing for the Internet Age.  There are only a few copies left at $50 each.  The content works for virtually any retailer.  You can buy that here.

Now I wanted to kick it up a notch.  I've started and owned or co-owned 33 businesses in a variety of industries.  But I don't want to bore you with all that.  If you're interested, check out my bio.  In the last five years I have worked with another 250 businesses for anywhere from a few months to the entire five years as a marketing consultant.  The die had been cast.

The seminal book is to be called something like 101 Marketing Fundamentals According to the Serial Entrepreneur.  The title is a work in progress, and if you are great at titles, give me your best idea in the comments.  I'll reward you with something if I use it.  No promises. It will be any more than a signed copy of the book.

Or books.  There is a chance I will release this as 5 books or 10 books.  Short eBooks covering various aspects of the marketing equations.  I have written 35 of the chapters and they are interspersed here in this blog.  I might take them down when I finish.  I might not.  Not sure.

I am in the process of rewriting the first ten chapters.  They are linked below.  Depending on what day you follow the links, you may get the first draft or the latest update.  But know this, it is all free, and no obligation.  I've been blessed in my life with great mentors and I'm happy to pass along any wisdom that I might have gained.  You may not think it is great wisdom.  Happy to have you express your opinion in the comments of any of these chapters.  I'm not nearly too old to learn.

So have at it.  Here are the first ten chapters.   And these are in order of importance.  After the first 10 chapters, the tend to fall in groups.

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The Top 10 Marketing Fundamentals According to the Serial Entrepreneur and Biz Book Author Randy Kirk

1.  Setting Goals Is The Number 1 Marketing Fundamental  by a Landslide  

2.  Strategies Are What Make Goals Come Alive
 
3.  Tactics Are the Third Leg in an effective Business Plan  

4.  What is Profit - How Do I Make More of That?

5.  Cost of Goods and Overhead Can Make or Break You  

6.  Nothing Happens Until Something Is Sold 

7.  Customer Service and the Ultimate Question  

8.  Business Reputation Online and Off  

9.  Hire, Train, and Motivate the Best People 

10.  The Quality Decision  

 

10 Marketing Secrets: How Do You Establish An Image For Your Small Business? Chapters 11-20

Let's all be honest.  We did not sit down when we started our small business and plan all the details of our image.  I have started 33 businesses, and I have not followed my own advice on this subject more than a few times.  You may have become very successful without paying attention to any, some, or all of the items on this list.  But I daresay that if you even scan over this list, you will agree that analyzing these items and proactively making decisions about the image issues listed will have a positive effect on your potential.

It is never too late.  You can start tomorrow.  Each of these items is linked to a blog post that gives the details for the headline. 


 11.   The Niche Your Company Occupies
 12.   The Branding of Your Company
 13.   The Territory Your Company Seeks to Sell Into
 14.   The Demographic of Your Client Base
 15.   The Expression of Your Personality as Projected onto Your Company
 16.   Your Logo, Colors, and Slogan and the Impression They Make
 17.   The Street View of Your Business
 18.   The Brands you Carry Effect Your Company Brand
 19.   Online Personality Commonly Doesn't Reflect Your Business
 20.   The Way You Answer the Phone Is Part of Marketing

 

Marketing Secrets Tutorials - Logistics Review - Key Stuff You Need to Properly Market Your Company in 2012.  Chapters 21 - 30

Marketing Secrets: The Fundamentals of Great Marketing

Take a quick test of your business leadership skills.  How do you come out on these four?

Thus far in our series of 101 Marketing Secrets from a Serial Entrepreneur, we have built the case for goals, strategies, tactics and seven of our top ten recommended logistical considerations. 

The seven logistical items we have covered thus far are linked below.  Are these elements controlling you or are you controlling them.  Are you proactively evaluating and planning for adequate provisions for the battle, or are you marching into war hoping you'll find ample supplies of critical materials, equipment, and other resources along the way?

21.  Having enough money matters!  A lot.
22.  Suppliers are more important than customers
23.  Lost our lease is more common that you think.  Facilities
24.  Employees are a necessary evil OR your key to long term success
25.  Time is relentless, unyielding, precious. Count it
26.  You and your employees have limited time and energy.  Plan accordingly
27.  Your family is a logistical consideration.  Unhappy families kill businesses
28.  If You Ain't Got No Axe, You Cain't Cut No Wood
29.  Empty Wagon or Museum? - Inventory Control
30.  Small Business Visibilty Has a Cost and a Benefit That Can be Measured

 

Referrals Beat Every Other Method as a Source for New Clients, and Excellent Quality Clients at That.  Chapters 31 -40

Chapter #31   I make my living helping small businesses figure out the best way to increase sales.   My services are much more necessary for helping with print, trade shows, packaging, new product development, blog, websites, videos, social media, and email than they are for the most effective tool in marketing for generating new business.  WOM - Word of Mouth.

However, I spend huge amounts of time convincing my clients to do the very things that will increase referrals.  You can read about them throughout this post and throughout this blog.

With #31 in the series we now move to building on that foundation with specific approaches to delivering phone calls, foot traffic, and online activity.  The goal will be to go from the most effective for the most businesses to the least effective.  Effectiveness would be defined as those things which provide the highest return on investment of time, energy, and cold, hard cash. 

There are certainly times when you will want to undertake marketing methods that have a low ROI, but still create absolutely certain results at appropriate times.  Sometimes the ROI is not easily identified, but can only be seen over a very long term.  For our purposes, we will look only at high, immediate, ROI as the criteria.

With that introduction, we return to the number one source of new business for almost any new business.  All the statistics show that at or above 50% of new customers are showing up at small businesses because of this factor.  My own conversations with 1000's of companies would show the same results.  Anywhere from 50% to almost 100% of new customers are derived from word of mouth (WOM).

The interesting thing about WOM is that most of the cost of traditional WOM is free.  WOM is most commonly driven by things like quality, customer service, and overall experience.  Achieving those three elements in a business may require the hiring of better people, training investment, use of better materials, and spending on fixtures and systems.  Almost anyone who has studied these kinds of business costs has come to the conclusion that the savings from scrap, obsolescence, rework, and lost customers alone pay for these expenses and more.  That they are also responsible for increasing sales and profits through WOM is basically icing on the cake.

    32.    Creating Effective Word of Mouth (WOM) About Your Customer Service Edge
    33.    Experiential Marketing
    34.    Amazing Products and Services?  Grade Yours!    
    35.    Amazing Follow Up.  Are Your Customers Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
    36.    Stay in Touch to Create Maximum Word of Mouth
    37.    Equipping Your Clients to Recommend You Can Increase Word of Mouth
    38.    Find the Influencers in Your Community to Spread Word of Mouth
    39.    7 Ways to Thank Those Who Send You Business to Build WOM
    40.    Do you Cultivate Customers, Clients, or Fans?

Virtually every company I have ever discussed marketing with will tell me one minute that WOM is the number one source of new clients, but then assume that the future will depend on the internet or some other factor.  My first thought is always, "how do we capitalize on what is already working."

Obviously, Word of Mouth is no longer only the traditional case of one person telling another in a face-to-face or telephone conversation.  There is now an entire industry based on internet reviews and social media that has pushed WOM into something quite different.  I will go out on a limb however, and even offer you the chance to tell me I'm all wet.  Traditional WOM can provide all the potential that it always has.  And if the company is doing what it should to create traditional WOM, the online version will do quite well, thank you very much.  Online WOM or WOMM will be discussed in future chapters.

*****If you are finding this information valuable, please tell your friends and associates who own small businesses.  Tweet about it, Facebook it, Linkedin it, Google+ it, and Put it up on Pinterest.

Chapters 41 - 50 should be coming to you by the end of June.  Maybe sooner.  The basic idea of the next 10 chapter is "Going Big."  Sometimes we get caught up in small time thinking.  These are larger, more aggressive, and more visible types of marketing effort.  The rough chapter titles for this section are:

41  Call a Huge Amount of Attention to Your Company (event, contest, scavenger hunt)

42  Go Where Your Customers Go 

43   Join Something.  Anything.  Ok.  Almost Anything

44   Do Something Wild and Crazy  (price, delivery, hours)

45   Give Away Gold Bars  (or something else valuable)

46  Make Your Mom Proud.  Become a Local Celebrity  (top execs or employees, too)

47  Make Your Dad Proud.   Become a Noted Expert    (top execs or employees, too)

48.  Make Everybody Proud.  Write a Book

49  Start A New Community Event

50  New Products, New Services, New Displays, New Ideas, New Categories

Six Success Forces for Your Business

Our team created this post for another of our blogs.  It was such a big hit, I decided to share it here as well.

Success Forces, written by Joseph Sugarman back in the 80’s, is unfortunately out of print.  But if there is a way for you to get your hands on this book, you will greatly benefit from one of the most brilliant business minds of our time.  He achieved great success in the direct sales marketing business, selling millions of dollars worth of Blublocker Sunglasses, digital watches, and was even the pioneer of using the “800 number” to have customers call in to give their payment information.

Sugarman saw that every “force” he encountered in business could be learned from and utilized in a positive way.  Here are the main “forces” he pegged as key pillars in guiding his growth in business.

Always Be Honest  

Sugarman employed this principle by always telling the truth, no matter what embarrassing position he may be put in.  He explains that honesty is the best policy, even by acknowledging what might be the challenges of your particular product and finding a way to turn it into an opportunity.

Cherish Your Failures  

Failures are what most of us (especially in business) seem to avoid at all costs.  We see our successes as what we must focus on, so that we can repeat them.  However, Sugarman said in one of his talks that he was probably the one in the room who had failed the most.  He cherished his failures because he saw them as opportunities to create “success forces” for future possibilities.

Relish Your Problems  

Most of us look at problems as inconveniences or roadblocks keeping us from reaching the goals we desperately want to reach.  But Sugarman viewed them as opportunities to take a difficult situation and see what could be improved for the next time.  

Concentrate Your Powers  

Sugarman encourages you to focus on one particular aspect of your business that you need to improve.  The point is to not get sidetracked by other things that you need to improve on; otherwise, your attention is divided by too many things which ultimately prevent you from making any real change.  Focus on one aspect, one day at a time until you have mastered it.

Do It Differently 

This addresses the fact that many entrepreneurs are great at “copying” ideas from others, but Sugarman says that there will always be copycats.  The people you should be concerned about are those who are innovators, those who are taking steps to improve what is already a great product or service.  Be an innovator, he says; not a copycat.

Clean Your Desk  

Sugarman had an early experience of interviewing presidents of various companies his father did business with.  What stood out most to him was the fact that these companies were well organized at every level, but most importantly, it started from the president’s desk.  He admits that his own desk is messy and piled up all day long; but he adopted the discipline of cleaning off his desk at the end of every day and putting every item in its own place.  He even went as far as requiring his employees to do the same.  He recounts having had people write to him about this “force” saying that this one discipline changed their entire lives.

The last "success force" presents a challenge to all of us.  Whether you have a desk or area of your home, or even the desk top of your computer that you work from day in and day out, what would happen if you purposed to clean it at the end of your work day, every day for the next 30 days?  We'd love to hear the results of incorporating this simple discipline into your life.

You won't want to miss May Is National Bike Safety Month - How Will You Promote It? 

About Me
Passionate about seeing people, businesses and products become successful through consulting, writing, youtube, relationshipsGoogle profile to your circles.

Marketing in 2011 - The Brave New World Of Small Business Marketing

I can't find my Yellow Pages Book.  No idea where it is.  I used to take two newspapers and 10 magazines.  I worry about the young kids who are still trying for mag subscriptions door-to-door.  Remember commercials on TV.  Some still Tivo through the commercials.  Now I Hulu on my IPad.  The Airline Magazines don't get touched anymore as everyone turns on their mobile devices.  Amazon, Ebay, and other online retailers may not ever get all the retail business, but don't tell the bookstores that.

And what about the pace of change?  Who can keep up?  I can tell you that as a marketing professional, we spend hours per week just reading about the changes and the possible impact.  Facebook ads, Google Places, YouTube channels, the Google Panda change, Smart Phone effect.

Small business owners who do their own marketing are more foolish than the proverbial lawyer who handles his own legal matters.  At least the lawyer has training.  But the statistics tell the tail  Somewhere around half of all small local businesses do not have a website at all.  Another huge percentage of those who do have a website are not visible.  And the ones that aren't visible are probably so old and out of date they wouldn't convert visitors into action if they ever got anybody to show up.

Every stat I see says that YouTube and Email to a customer list represent the highest potential return on investment for any marketing that a small business might undertake.  Would you like to venture a guess as to the percent of lawyers, accountants, bakeries, and pet shops, much less restaurants and hotels have done anything with YouTube or even have an email list.

If you are reading this and you resemble these remarks, check out how we can help.  You can hire a $250,000 per year marketing executive and a full staff of marketing experts for just $750 a month.  We will keep up to date on what you need both online and off line, and we have the skills to provide you with the results you need to make the phone ring and the door swing.

Read the details of how we can help you with your small business marketing here or just call me now at 310-910-1848.  No receptionist.   No salesperson.  You'll talk to me.

Ten Reasons for Using YouTube for Local Small Business Internet Marketing

Yelp.com and CitySearch both maintain that having a YouTube video on their listing for your company doubles the likelihood that the visitor to your listing will take some kind of action. What their claim leaves out is that a poorly created video will not produce those kinds of results and might have a negative effect. On the other hand, there are dozens of other good reasons to create one of more YouTube videos for your local small business other than its effect on Yelp.com.

2. Not every business, but most, will generate more customer calls and decisions to shop if the client has a reason to trust you. The written word is good at this, because folks tend to trust what has been made permanent on paper or screen. But you can really increase trust by allowing your customers to hear and see your personal passion about your products and services through a video.

3. The internet is hungry for information. If your YouTube video has information that your client base is seeking, they will find the video to get that information.

4. YouTube has a search function. If you do a good job of Titling your video, creating a good description, and providing relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags, your potential customers will find you through the search mechanism on YouTube. They may also find you because you are related to other searches they do and videos they watch.

5. YouTube videos show up on Google Searches and other similar search engines. It is not uncommon for a thoughtfully keyworded YouTube Video to show up higher than your $5000 website.

6. By adding YouTube videos to your Google Maps Local Business Center listing, MerchantCircle listing, Yelp.com and others, you improve your ranking on those local search engines, and that helps to improve the ranking of your website.

7. You can add your YouTube video to your website as a URL link, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV-0VIHJCRk, or as an embed (see below). By putting the video on your website, you generate far more chances of it being seen. This is where you can really build trust and increase reasons for your customer to shop with you.

8. You can add your YouTube video to your blog, your facebook, you can Tweet about it, and you can socially bookmark the original video, the article on your blog, and the facebook entry. All of these increase the chances of the video being seen, and also benefit your activities on these other web tools.

9. Daily Motion and other video depositories similar to YouTube may pick up your video and add it to their listings. But if you don't want to wait and see if they do so, you can upload the same video to each one, or you can use an aggregator to put the video up on numerous of these sites all at once.

10. A single YouTube video that we did for a client for less than $300 resulted in the sale of a $6000 bicycle. This is just one of many such examples. The best part is that the YouTube video is listed on page one of a Google search for Specialized Transition and is going to still be selling bicycles for this client a year from now.

You can create your own YouTube video. But I caution you that it needs to be thoughtfully created, edited, superscripted, titled, keyworded, described, and uploaded. Please take a look of one we did recently for an apartment management company on this page. We can do a video like this for you for $300. If you are not located within driving distance of our headquarters, you may need to send us some raw footage or we can work from pictures and create a slide show with voice over.

Give us a call. We can dramatically impact your business with a single YouTube Video

The Top 10 Great Qualities of the Entrepreneur that Cause the Most Problems

Category: Entrepreneurs, Small Business, Home Office (AA3)

Originally Submitted on 10/11/96.

It's easy to criticize an entrepreneur, especially if you're married to one, work for one or are coaching/consulting one. Entrepreneurs, like any pioneer, have their own set of (always evolving) rules and strategies. Many entrepreneurs are successful in spite of themselves. The key in working well, and enjoying, entrepreneurs is to fully understand their weaknesses, because these are often their biggest strengths, although YOU may not think so! Here is a list of weakness and the strengths that they "are."

1. Can't focus, lots of ideas, runs in circles.

If the entrepreneur could focus, they'd be a bookkeeper (no offense to bookkeepers; I was a CPA for years). The entrepreneur's currency is ideas, often a flood of ideas. This is good. Encourage MORE ideas, don't try to pin them down. When they feel your support in challenging them to come up with more and BETTER ideas, the flow is restored and they'll find the one to really NATURALLY focus on. Really. The reason they can't focus is that they haven't yet flushed out all of the half-baked ones.

2. Not good with details.

Duh. Why should they be. Sure, it would be great if they would focus on details, and in fact, many entrepreneurial-types fail or have lots of stress (think ValuJet's CEO), specifically because they won't or cannot sweat the details. But given many won't deal with details well, suggest they give up even trying. Sure, this may create a mess, but challenge the entrepreneur to solve the mess as if the mess was a new business! That'll get 'em thinking! (Entrepreneurs are like kids; it's good to divert them.)

3. Feel odd, different, alone, strange.

Entrepreneurs are simply wired differently and they SHOULD feel this way, because it's TRUE and there is nothing wrong with it at all. In fact, if you can help the entrepreneur to relish their unique, contrary, leading edge ways, you'll help them feel better about themselves (their different-ness), which will increase the flow of ideas and success. Educate the entrepreneur to understand not just themselves as individuals but to understand about the species called Homo entrepreneurs.

4. Good at starting business, bad at running them.

This is very true of many entrepreneurs, but you know, many entrepreneurs think that they have an obligation to run their businesses and become a great manager. 90% will never be great managers; they shouldn't even try -- too much stress on everyone! The solution: Help the entrepreneur to set a "sell date" right now, so they know they're getting out and when! This relieves some of the pressure and also forces the enterpreneur to create a sell-able company vs one that is just a monument to their ego (and I mean this lovingly). It's essential that you and the entrepreneur get that there's no reason an entrepreneur can't start and sell 25 businesses. Selling is not failure; it's good business and lets the entrepreneur play instead of being saddled with responsibilities that they just don't want, but feel that they should have. Help the entrepreneur to "get" that they'd really rather NOT run their business and that they prefer to start new ones. This will turn a perceived weakness into a profitable strength.

5. Chaos reigns in the company.

This is fairly common, for several reasons. First, the entrepreneur LIKES chaos and is unlikely to attract or be able to hire a manager that is cross-platform: able to both manage the people/operations and ALSO be able to put up with the personality or constant flow of ideas and changes that the entrepreneur is likely to have. A solution is to design the company so that it can afford the chaos and the financial stress that chaos usually brings. A second solution is to educate the entrepreneur and staff that chaos CAN be good business and not to worry about it. Another solution is to ask the entrepreneur to solve the chaos problem by thinking of it as a foundering business that the entrepreneur has purchased. His/her job: Turn it into a profit center! This will get the juices flowing. Another solution is to help the entrepreneur to create fully automated and foolproof systems, usually managed by outside contractors or vendors who are not IN the business day to day. This works well, because it forces the employees/owner to use the systems, which are mostly computer based. Boys will be boys and it's better to save them from themselves sometimes! Systems do this. Remember: Creation IS messy! It shouldn't have to be, but often is.

6. They fail. And fail again.

This one's tricky if you look at the failing business as a problem or as a reflection on the entrepreneur's ability and strengths. In this case, their weaknesses were bigger than their strengths and the business failed. But, just like a kid has to fall a couple of times when learning to ride a bike, so do entrepreneurs fail as they learn how to be successful. Remember, it's the SPARK that the entrepreneur has that is the REAL source of profitability. It's just that there is often a learning curve as the entrepreneur learns to compensate for his/her weaknesses by delegating, outsourcing, maturing, and learning new skills. The Spark usually wins in the end. Note: Just like you can't really tell much to an adolescent because "they know it all," you often can't tell much to an entrepreneur because they DO know it all! Don't try to parent the entrepreneur; you'll lose. Just love them and be there when they fail. That helps them learn faster.

7. They exaggerate and are too optimistic.

This is good! Encourage the entrepreneur to exaggerate as much they want to. This is a reverse way to get them to tell the truth. It works. Exaggeration and pipe dreaming are as important to the entrepreneur as faith and believing are to Christians and other religions. It just comes along with the lifestyle. It's part and parcel. It's hard to have one without the other. Entrepreneurs are so out in front of the rest of us that they NEED to exaggerate how well things are going, in order to keep the faith -- hey it's lonely out in front (or in left field, depending on how savvy the entrepreneur is!). Exaggeration, pipe dreaming and denial are the tools and comforts of the trade of entrepreneurism. Sure, many entrepreneurs grow through this, but don't try to take away their blankie until they're ready. They need it.

8. Always at the edge financially.

This one's a toughie, because of the "unnecessary" stress it can cause to the entrepreneur, the business, employees, families. What I've sought to do is to educate the entrepreneur who is always at the edge that there is an emotional dilemma that they are trying to heal, via their business. The psychological source of this "always at the edge" may be an addiction to adrenaline, the pleasure/high of "pulling it off" at the last minute, or the high that victory brings, the need to be better than everyone else/compensate and even the inability to establish a reserve of cash and time so that they function without this stress. In my own case, I pushed so hard that I was always just barely making it, even though sales kept growing significantly. When I learned that this was because of self esteem (technically, a "havingness level" problem -- meaning that I couldn't let myself "have" what I was earning), I was able to make a couple of minor changes and establish such a healthy reserve that I am set for life (and can play with projects such as these Top Ten Lists!). The traps the entrepreneur will fall into is to increase their lifestyle just as quickly as their company grows. Mistake. But, back to why being at the edge financially is such a strength. It's because the entrepreneur has proven, time and time again, that they are resourceful, can survive and bounce back from adversity. This is GREAT! Now, direct the entrepreneur to direct this energy into creating a healthy savings account instead of leveraging so much, and you'll have a successful entrepreneur.

9. Family of the entrepreneur suffers.

Another toughie. You didn't just marry a man/woman or a businessman/woman. You married an ENTREPRENEUR! And he/she didn't come with instructions, warning labels or antidotes. Oops! If entrepreneurial genes were find-able in the DNA, they'd be considered a strong, strong drug. Reality aside, it's best that you develop your own strong interests and let your husband/wife do their own thing. You'll always be #2 (well, maybe #1 and a half). You can have a great marriage if you get this.

10. Sales dip.

Sales dip because the entrepreneur has turned over some or all of the sales function to others. Take this as an invitation for the entrepreneur to get back to selling, where they usually shine.

About the Submitter
This piece was originally submitted by Thomas J. Leonard, Infopreneur, who can be reached at thomas@thomasleonard.com, or visited on the web. The original source is: Top Ten Creation Call, October 1996.

Small Business
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Business Stratgies
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