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  • Are you part of the hype? Why letting go is the fastest way to move forward - It's interesting how many of us are shy or uncomfortable about acknowledging where we are in our business (or life) because we think we *should* be further along than we are or that we don't measure up. I've been noticing a trend with some of my "Get Acquainted" (a.k.a. "consult") calls: Entrepreneurs are frustrated that they're not achieving the level of success others perceive them to already have. Here's that line again. Entrepreneurs are frustrated that they're not achieving the level of success others perceive them to already have. Why do others perceive you to have success beyond where you are?
  • Are You Special or Just Another...? - When most of us get into business, we look around at what everyone else in our industry is doing. If we're a bookkeeper, we look around at other bookkeepers. If we're a life coach, we look around at other life coaches. If we're a financial planner, we look around at other financial planners. If we're a virtual assistant, we look around at other virtual assistants. And then we do what they do. I recently heard something by Dan Kennedy and he reminded us the dangers of doing what I just outlined.
  • Is your ezine going the way of the dinosaurs? - We all know why we should put out an ezine, after all, marketing gurus have forever told us "the money's in the list" and the list needs an ezine, but my question is "Why should anyone choose to get your ezine?" Let's take a look at things as they are today: -) Studies show that if you have an ezine, you're likely to have a blog and post regularly to it so readers can get your thoughts there. -) You're probably submitting your articles to article directories to further build your exposure and spread the word so readers can get your articles there. -) If you're staying current with marketing, you're out on social networks and are linking your articles and blog posts to each of those so readers can keep up with you there. WOW. . .
  • Why more clients may NOT be the missing piece of the puzzle - How many times have you thought "If only I had more clients, all my problems would be solved"? Most businesses - regardless of whether micro, small or corporate giants - have found themselves believing that all their business problems would be solved if they could just get more clients. True? While you're most likely squirming in your chair anxious to shout a resounding "YES!", chances are you know me well enough to know the answer is "It depends".
  • Where do you go from here? - Just yesterday I was talking with a new client who's invested thousands of dollars on programs, plans and info products and came to me asking "What should I do?" as she was so overwhelmed with all the options and wanted to get the *right* things done in order to achieve her goals.
  • Multiple Streams of Income -- Begin Your Journey - Have you ever seen the movie "Bridget Jones Diary"? There's a scene in it where Bridget notes that one of her friends had one hit song in the 1980s and realized that was more than enough to carry him through the 1990s and so didn't bother doing anything new. When you look at your business, have you TRULY set it up for success in the long term?
  • Social Currency: More Than Just a Fad - Included with the current social networking and Web 2.0 (think Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, MySpace, Plaxo, etc.) craze is a resurgence of the concept of "social currency". I first heard the concept of social currency described as the "whuffie" factor from Cory Doctorow several years ago. When cut down to its barest essence, I think of "social currency" as essentially the trust and personal connection you create with people (clients, prospects and the community in general) when you do things for the better good, or in service of others, without thinking of yourself first.
  • Target Fixation -- Is your goal killing your business? - There are very few television shows I watch with any regularity and NCIS is one of them -- whether it's the investigative plots themselves or Mark Harmon, I can't say for sure. :-) One episode discussed the concept of "target fixation" -- a concept where you are SO focused on your target that you fly right into it. In the entrepreneurial world, I attribute "target fixation" to being SO incredibly focused on your goal (your target) that you fail to see all the other opportunities around you.
  • 3 Reasons Your Prospects Aren't Buying From You - You've worked for months to create the perfect ebook. It includes the answer to every possible question your audience could have. You've created a sales page.

  • Are You Preventing Sales and Turning Away Customers? - A few days ago, my assistant was looking into toll free number services. After researching the websites of two companies, she called in frustration: - The websites were a jumble of confusing facts and figures. - When she called the companies, she got different answers from different people. I bet you've had this same experience with at least one company. Has anyone had this experience with you? In their struggle to get clients and customers quickly, many self-employed business owners make the same mistakes again and again and wonder why no one's calling. Here's a look at just a few of them: 1. Confusing marketing with sales.
  • Strong Boundaries: The Cornerstone of Every Profitable Business - When was the last time a client called your cell phone after hours or sent you an email at 8pm and expected an answer by 9pm or didn't pay you per your agreement? Or a vendor or coach took a week to answer an email? If this is happening, it's time to either set, or reaffirm, your boundaries. What are boundaries? Personally, I like to think of "boundaries" as "the standards around which I manage my business". For example: * What are the hours you're *at* work and take phone calls? * What are the terms under which you accept payment, and won't work otherwise? * What happens when clients make an appointment and then don't show? Do you let them reschedule? * What is an acceptable way for others to speak/write to you? If they're frustrated, are you willing to be their punching bag?
  • What business are you REALLY in? - Many businesses spend thousands of dollars branding everything they do to create a familiarity with their prospects and customers and yet, sadly, miss the boat completely when it comes to their service. In the last week, I experienced each of the following: 1. A credit card company sent a replacement card -- two months after the original expired.
  • "Where's the cash? 7 SIMPLE and PROVEN steps you can easily take right now to get paid faster" - It's that time again. You send out invoices and sit and wait, and wait, and wait for your clients to pay you. Sometimes it's a matter of cash flow on their end, sometimes they are just too busy and forget and other times it's something little that they are unsure of, but haven't found the time to contact you. * Put terms on your invoices.
  • Do You Know YOUR *Why* For Publishing An Ezine? - I received the following question yesterday: "How do I get started publishing and marketing my ezine?" While the question is broad enough to warrant its own seminar, let's discuss the "How do I get started publishing?" question this week and the "marketing" of it next week. Before you start publishing an ezine or e-newsletter, you want to know your reason "why". WHY are you going to publish an ezine/e-newsletter?
  • Do You Suffer From Marketing Overwhelm? - It's Monday and you get an email indicating that writing an ezine is THE way to get new clients. You drop everything and start working on an email newsletter. It's Tuesday and your friend calls and says that he heard the best way to get publicity is pay-per-click. You drop everything and sign up for a Google Adwords account. It's Wednesday and you heard that someone made a million dollars selling info products.
  • Keeping Clients in a Down Economy: Is Giving or Taking Better for Your Bottom Line? - Times are tough. There's no doubt about it. That said, I had my best month ever in March and quarter 1 was my best quarter ever. In fact, I'm on target to surpass my 2008 revenue by June 30th. I don't tell you that to brag, I tell you so that you can learn from what I'm doing, which, by the way, is almost the exact opposite of what I'm seeing many others doing. Hmm. . .
  • 7 Steps to Writing Great Articles - As a business owner, do you find yourself needing to write more and more? You've probably heard that you should be writing articles to promote your business (and it is a great, no cost way to promote!), but may be leery of starting. Here are 7 tips to get you writing effective articles. 1. Select a good topic. There's no sense writing an article if no one wants to read it. Before you launch into an article, think about your target market and what their wants and needs are. If you're not sure, go hang out in some forums and see what they are discussing.
  • How to Develop a Professional Image - In this day of technology and the dreaded recordings, insuring that you maintain a professional image is crucial to business success. How you come across on the phone, through your website, on a plane or at a networking event directly impacts how others (read "potential clients") perceive you and your business. Especially if you ARE your business.
  • Autoresponders: What are they and how to use them - Many business owners are confused about what exactly an autoresponder is. . .and what it isn't.
  • The 3 Biggest Pricing Mistakes and How To Avoid Them - I was recently on a forum where several "time for money" service professionals and business owners were discussing their "rates". I immediately noticed that these smart, savvy business owners were falling into some pricing myth traps. Here are the three biggest pricing mistakes that I see being made by "time for money" small business owners: 1. Matching/Undercutting.
  • 3 Processes to Put Your Business on Automatic Pilot - I often talk about implementing systems in your business to keep everything running smoothly. Lots of people talk about systems and processes, but very few actually explain what that means. Last week, I was *out* of the office for 5-6 days recovering from surgery.
  • Top 5 Tools For Insuring Your Marketing Plan Attracts Clients - In order to insure that your pipeline doesn't dry up as existing clients take vacations or move on, you want to overfill your marketing funnel in order to create a waiting list of people who want to work with you. Before we discuss which strategies should have a prominent place in your marketing action plan, you'll want to have a few items in your marketing toolkit: 1. Write out your USP. Your Unique Selling Proposition tells prospects what makes you different.
  • Marketing Your Business -- The Line Between Effective and Annoying - In marketing your business, there's a line *out there* between what's effective for your ideal clients and what's just plain annoying. That line is different for every one of your ideal clients and for every business owner (even in the same industry). I recently heard a very successful business owner say "These days you have to market your heart out and I'm going to hammer my list with. . ." and the name of the latest program. While I agree that you do need to market your business, and do so effectively, I completely disagree with "hammering" people, even knowing the business owner above meant it in the sense of sending tons of promotional emails.
  • 4 Ways to Build Your Ezine List Without Spending a Dime - There are thousands of ways to build your ezine, subscriber, mailing list. . .some expensive and many not. Today I want to cover the Top 4 ways I built my list. Each of the following items can be done without spending a dime. 1. Public Speaking Public speaking is the quickest and easiest way for you to quickly build a list of raving fans. Contact your local Chamber of Commerce or BNI chapter (or any other organization which makes sense for your industry) and offer to give a 30 minute talk on your industry. This is NOT a sales pitch! It's an educational talk - your only goal is to educate. During your speech, hold a drawing for a f'ree gift (local gift certificate, an hour of your time, etc.) and collect names for your list (just remember to tell them that "everyone wins" a subscription to your newsletter). 2.
  • Get Real and Make Things Happen - I remember, as I'm sure you do, my parents telling me how much easier we had it than they did (after all, they probably had to walk 5 miles up hill in the snow, BOTH ways, just to get to school). :-) Given that my Dad grew up in a small town in Italy where electricity came from a car battery, I always believed them.
  • Strategic Implementation: A direct path to your goals - While sitting outside writing the other day, I noticed a couple of finches near my birdfeeders.
  • How To Handle Your Newsletter Unsubscribes - In the beginning, when you're writing your newsletter and repurposing your articles in order to continuously grow your list, things are great. You go to bed, wake up and find you have new ezine subscribers. It's a wonderful feeling (almost as good as waking up to find you've sold some products). Then comes the day when you put your heart and soul into your newsletter article, hit SEND and get a notice indicating that someone's unsubscribed. The most common question I hear from my clients is "What did I do wrong?" immediately followed by "Maybe I should stop publishing my newsletter since no one likes it." In learning how to handle your newsletter unsubscribes, you must first realize: 1. Typically, you did nothing wrong. 2.
  • Wine Glasses: Wine Glasses, Since Time Immemorial to Fishs Eddy - Every one knows that French are very romantic,some times I wonder what makes them so? is it the beautiful French women, predominantly Mediterranean climate or some thing else? I think I have found my answer in the French wines, which are renowned for their superior quality. And since wine is considered good for heart and heart in turn is related to romance, so by applying some associative logic we can conclude that a good wine plays a vital role in romance.
  • Are You Client Friendly? - There was a teleseminar I was interested in attending last week (promoted in a colleague's e-newsletter) and so I dutifully clicked the "register here" link. That link took me to another web page (after 3 tries), which gave me another description of the same teleseminar and asked me to "register here". I clicked that second link and it brought me to yet a third page which asked me to, you guessed it, "click here to register". Enough is enough! Even though the teleseminar is something I'm interested in and, as an added benefit, it's f'ree, it's just not worth the hassle of TRYING to sign up. I gave up at the third registration link. So I have to ask you, are you "client friendly" - that is, are you easy to do business with?
  • What have you done? - Do you remember the day you worked for a company -- large or small, it doesn't matter -- and dreamed of owning your own business? "I will be *the boss*", you thought. "I will come and go as I please and make my own hours", you thought. "I will be able to spend more time with my friends and family", you thought. "I will have plenty of money to do what I want", you thought.
  • Article Marketing Repurposing Strategy - Creating Information Products - We all know the importance of keeping in touch with our ideal clients and prospects via frequent AND informative content. But that doesn't mean your articles, a.k.a. "informative content", should be relegated to your hard drive forevermore. Article Marketing Strategy: Creating Information Products When you're getting ready to create your first information product or, if you're feeling a little stuck, I recommend you start with something simple. . . mini-guides! Take one of your most popular articles and create a step-by-step mini-guide around it where you teach your ideal clients something that they've already expressed an interest in learning. A mini-guide can be as short as 10 pages - size isn't important here, quality of information is.
  • 7 Simple Ways to Consistently Build Your Ezine List - One of the most popular questions I'm asked is "HOW do I build my ezine list?" or "How do I get more people to sign up for my ezine list?" There is NO magic pill to building your ezine list!
  • Giving Back - Have you ever noticed that people get incredibly happy whenever you unexpectedly think of them or do something for them? It doesn't matter if it's related to your business or personal life. Take Oprah Winfrey for example. At a live event a few years ago, she mentioned how she loves to purchase makeup whenever it's "Clinique Bonus Time" as she gets a gift.
  • Article Marketing Repurposing Strategy -- and it's NOT posting articles online - Repurposing - the art of doing something once and using it in other ways - is one of the most effective and efficient systems you can create within your business. Before your eyes glaze over with the thought that this is yet another article telling you to market your newsletter articles online, read on. In addition to marketing to article directories, you can repurpose your articles by using one of my favorite marketing strategies: Article Marketing Strategy: Teleseminars Take any article and turn it into a 60-minute teleseminar -- simply add a "welcome" and "introduction to the topic", go through your main points, add a "closing" and leaving some time for Q&A. In doing this, you'll want to cover no more than 3 main points (5 if they are short) in order to keep your call to 60 minutes.
  • Does Your Elevator Speech Pass the Goldfish Test? - Hello! How are you? So what do you do? The clock has started. I've just met you and within those first several seconds have formed an opinion of your success, your income, your education, etc. Studies show that the average American has a nine second attention span (about the same as a goldfish) and, in reality, doesn't care what you do or who you are. It's not that we're horrible people, we just don't have the time. We're too busy thinking about everything we need to do: our jobs, the bills piling up on the kitchen table, our parents' health, what's for dinner, who's picking the children up after school, the holidays are coming, etc. But since we're polite, we ask and we try to listen.
  • 7 Tips to Writing Great Articles Which Showcase Your Expertise - As a business owner, do you find yourself needing to write more and more? You've probably heard that you should be writing articles to promote your business (and it is a great, no cost way to showcase your expertise), but may be leery of starting. Here are 7 tips to get you writing effective articles. 1. Select a good topic. There's no sense writing an article if no one wants to read it. Before you launch into an article, think about your target market and what their wants and needs are - what keeps them awake at 3am? If you're not sure, go hang out in some forums and see what they are discussing.
  • Teleseminars: The How and The Why - Teleseminars -- presentations via telephone -- are the fastest way to build your ezine list as you share knowledge with those in your target audience. Before we jump into the "how", let's discuss the different types of teleseminars and why each is a valuable service you can offer. 1. Free teleseminars.
  • What EXACTLY are "processes and systems"? - Several years ago, I purchased a "system" geared towards getting new clients -- it was very comprehensive and well-written. Until I got to the last chapter on setting up processes and systems for marketing. There was a chapter title page, followed by blank drawings asking you to fill in what YOUR processes and systems were. I laughed and then laughed even harder (it was that or cry)...if I had my own processes and systems, I wouldn't have spent several hundred dollars and purchased the system to get them! When people hear that I'm an expert in establishing processes and systems which result in more clients for small business owners, they immediately get a glazed look. After all, what EXACTLY are processes and systems?
  • Marketing Overwhelm: A Curable Disease - It's Monday and you get an email indicating that writing an ezine is THE way to get new clients. You drop everything and start working on an email newsletter.
  • The Most Common Client Objections and How to Deal With Them - "A desire can overcome all objections and obstacles." -- Anonymous Think about the above quote for a second. When you want, I mean REALLY want something, you can almost always rationalize getting it. You find a way to overcome that nagging little voice whose job it is to object and throw up obstacles. I want you to view objections as a good thing. Yes, seriously! If your prospects have objections, it means they are considering hiring you or purchasing your product.
  • Creating Results, Not Resolutions in 2009 - Every year millions of us diligently work on our New Year's Goals or Resolutions, determined that this year will be *THE* year, somehow different from all the rest which preceded it. We labor over writing the goals, create Vision Boards, and start the year bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (like children on Christmas morning when they see a tree loaded with presents). And yet within a week, maybe two or three, reality sets in. We're the same people we were before midnight on January 1st and, likely have the same habits. . .good and bad. So how do we create results and not simply resolutions? The answer is simple. . .
  • The Return of the Cocktail Party and Charming Cocktail Party Invitations - A cocktail party is meant to be short and sweet. Inviting your friends over for cocktails should be a two hour chance to catch up and unwind. You and your guests can get together for just a short time; reconnect and then still have most of the evening to yourself.
  • Are you paving cow paths or creating super highways? - I've noticed a trend with my clients: they're either struggling to make low 6 figures (say up to $200,000) or they're at the million dollar mark and beyond. Why the marked difference in revenue? In focusing on the struggling 6-figure entrepreneur, the answers are as simple as they are complex: 1.
  • Social Networking: Easy Peasy Lead Generation - Everywhere you look, people are talking about Web 2.0, social networking, Twitter, Facebook, Tweetdeck or Twhirl, to name a few. There's even a whole new Twitcabulary: tweets, tweeples, retweets, twitpics, etc. which can make things seem a lot more complicated. Here's the skinny on social networking. . . Social networking using sites like Twitter and Facebook are an AMAZING way to build relationships, connect with others and yes, even generate leads. My friend, mutual client and Mastermind buddy Nancy Marmolejo is phenomenal at social networking and building relationships online. I highly recommend you follow her and read her blog in order to both learn a ton and have great fun! 5 simple ways to make lead generation "easy peasy" by combining social marketing with things you're already doing (gotta love that repurposing!). 1.
  • Which is Better: Direct Mail, Teleseminars or Webinars? - With every new technology, comes groups of users who immediately want to dispense with the old. Now that webinars are becoming mainstream, I've had a few clients ask which is better to use in their business: old-fashioned direct mail, teleseminars or webinars? Before I answer the question, let's first discuss the definition of each: Direct Mail consist of postcards, flyers, mailings done to your prospects -- anything they receive in their mailbox.
  • Productivity Buster: Mistaking Activity for Accomplishment - A former client recently contacted me about working together again and, in asking a few questions about what she's been up to, etc., I realized that for all the work she's been doing (and she works a lot), she hasn't been "done-ing" anything.
  • RSS and Aggregators: So Easy A Caveman Could Use Them - According to Wikipedia, "RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. Consumers of RSS content use special browsers called "aggregators" to watch for new content in dozens or even hundreds of web feeds.
  • Are you a "Dynamic Dan", "Opportunistic Oliver" or "Scared Susie"? - The book "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard is a 98-page look at the various ways that we react to change.
  • MySpace -- 5 Reasons It's Not Just for Teenagers Anymore - It was not so long ago when I was watching my nephews eagerly upload their MySpace pictures and create their profiles. All the rave with teenagers and music bands, MySpace has become so much more!
  • 5 Questions You MUST Ask Before Joining a High Level Coaching Program - The latest rage among internet or online-focused businesses is the high level (over $10,000/year) coaching or mentoring program frequently referred to as "Gold", "Platinum" or "Diamond" programs - it seems that almost everyone has their version of one. These can be amazing programs. I fully believe in them based on the below and have participated in several (do the math here) over the past few years and am in one now. I've seen, and had, huge and amazing leaps made and I've seen people on the verge of bankruptcy and everything in between as a result of joining these programs.

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