You want to do good.  You really do!

But sometimes you don’t.  It happens to all of us.  We take on a project that doesn’t turn out well for whatever reason.

One of the most common and stressful causes of poor customer service is being too busy.  Slammed.  “In the weeds” as we used to call it when I waited tables in college.

You simply can’t give the client the attention they need.  It’s not possible because you have too many irons in the fire.

But here is what’s strange…
You can have the same problem if you aren’t busy enough.

The Gyro Shop Example

I like a good gyro.  Especially for lunch.

I even like saying the word “gyro.”  It makes me feel very international.

But the gyro shop around the corner from my house has troubles.  They take waaaaay too long to get my food ready.  I can’t wait 15 minutes for a gyro to go.

But here’s the weird thing.  It’s not because they are too busy.

It’s precisely the opposite.

Often, there is no one else in the gyro shop when I come in.  Just me and my single gyro order.

The problem is that they aren’t “in the groove.”

The “Groove” Explained

This “groove” is critical to your business.

It’s when you are firing on all cylinders. It’s when you are doing what you are good at, at a price point that supports your business, for a comfortable number of clients.

You’re not slammed, you’re busy.  And it feels good.

It feels good for you and your customers.   Because when you are in the groove, your customers get better service.

When you are busy (not slammed), you are much more focused on your work.  You are in motion.  You don’t have to “gear up” to get to work.

It’s methodical.

It’s hard to explain isn’t it?  But I bet you know what I mean.

Do me a favor.  Drop me a comment letting me know what you think about this topic.  Is there such a thing as “the groove?”

Image courtesy of wwny

There is a second way a business will fail.  And it is, perhaps, a more tragic way.

Even if you are swimming in cash — in fact — especially if you are swimming in cash, read on.  You’re not out of the woods yet.

Don’t kid yourself.  There IS more to life than money.

When your business begins to “take off” financially, is when this second type of business failure begins to rear its ugly head.

Here is the danger:  at about the same time you start lighting your cigar with $100 bills you realize that you have created a monster.

Begging For Your Cube Back

For some of us, and I would suspect a majority of us reading this blog post, we start a tiny business for the lifestyle it creates.

The freedom to go to a child’s Kindergarten graduation without asking for permission or take a few days off to go to Chicago to attend a hot conference.

You know —- the things you can’t easily do when you are punching a time clock.

But my guess is that you are disciplined.  You have your own time clock.  That’s why you have a successful business.  You don’t take much time off.  You don’t watch Judge Judy instead of knocking out a sales call or completing some client work.

But be careful —- there is a second way to fail.  You can let this business become such a “rat race” that you will wish for the friendly confines of that cubicle you hated so much.

Learning To Say No

Not just to the things you know are the wrong things.  But also to the things that are “kind of right.”

I’m not just talking about joining another networking group or attending another professional development event.  I’m talking about turning down customers.  Customers that aren’t the right fit for whatever reason.

You shouldn’t be reaching at this point.  You should be taking on what is in your wheelhouse, at a price point that makes sense for you — and turning down the rest.

You will need to focus on what is important.  I can’t tell you what that is. Only you know.

Is it your family?  Is it your health?  Is it your relationships with friends?

Clearly your business is important to you.  It wouldn’t be successful if it wasn’t.

But be prepared to start saying “no” more often.  Because if you aren’t prepared to say “no” — you will need to start…

Learning To Say Good Bye

Saying good bye is harder than saying no.

It may not feel that way at the outset but, if you’ve had to do this, you know what I am talking about.

When you don’t say no to someone or something at the outset.  You often have to say good bye later.  And it’s more painful.

Good bye to something that is a time suck.  Good bye to someone that is a money pit.

It Aint Easy

And I’m not pretending that it is.  Running a tiny business is tricky.

Time is a resource that cannot be replaced.  This is your life we are talking about.

But money is so critical that we often find ourselves ruled by it.

But I am one of those, and I think you are too, that believes we can have both.

Image courtesy of mikett

No question… Google is a powerhouse. It virtually holds a monopoly on search engine traffic in the U.S.

But search engines aren’t the only game in town.

This is a sad story. And it happens every time time Google updates the way it ranks websites.

On April 24th, Google introduced what it calls the “Penguin Update.”  This update targeted people building spammy websites with less than reputable SEO practices.

A few days after the update a business owner submitted a scathing entry to Google’s Webmaster Forum:

“…you have effectively shut me down and put me out of business. Where I used to make 50-100$+ a day I now have not made a single dime in the past 3-4 days thanks to your spam update.

I am now scrambling to figure out how I am going to:
pay my daughters tuition
pay my car payment
pay my health insurance
pay my car insurance
pay rent
and all the utilities that go along with renting a house
not to mention putting food on the table.

I followed your good webmasters guidelines and done nothing spammy at all about my businesses and websites and I get shut down and put out like that.

SHAME ON YOU GOOGLE!”

I don’t know if this guy is telling the truth.  Heck, his name might be Spammy Spammington for all I know.

But I do know this.  Good people, using ethical business practices do get hurt when these updates occur.

This is why I preach that SEO is not a good stand-alone marketing strategy.  If all of your dollars are coming from any one tactic, you are on shaky ground my friend.

It’s like having all of your money invested in one stock.  Not smart.

Diversify.

Network off-line.  Become a better public speaker.  Find and connect with people in social media channels.  Use email marketing.

Build a business blog.

And, of course, use solid, white-hat SEO tactics.

Because the next time Google decides to update, it might be your paycheck that gets deleted.

Have you ever seen someone walking around with 80′s hair?  It’s tough to break the news to them that times have passed them by.

If you take a quick spin around the web, you won’t have to go far to find businesses that are living in the past.

And, contrary to an 80′s hairdo, an outdated website is a serious matter.  It’s a financial matter.

Why are 99% of the best Internet marketers on the earth using WordPress?

This video will show you why.

I shot this video about a year ago as a sales tool to educate website design prospects.  You will get the chance to see my old website at russhenneberry.com. It’s pretty horrid looking.   If you want to see the new version, head on over there.

Find out the 5 characteristics that every website platform needs — and WordPress has.

Watch this 8 minute video:

We live in an era of soundbites, 140-character status updates and headlines.

Rapid fire.  Like a game of Asteroids we blast through the crap to find the nuggets of information we want or need.

If you don’t want your communications to be separated into the crap pile, understand the difference between these two statements:

Keep Your Marketing Communications Out Of The Crap Pile

-AND-

How To Keep Your Marketing Communications Out Of The Crap Pile

The first stands on it’s own.  It’s a simple statement.  I read it and I move on.  “Ok, I’ll keep my marketing communications out of the crap pile.”

The second is a promise.  It is a call-to-action.  It promises that if you read the rest of the communication you will learn something.

Big difference.

So many of the email subject lines, social media status updates, sales page headlines we communicate can be improved simply by adding the words “how to.”

Browsing through my mail takes all of about 5 seconds.

Most of it goes straight to the trash.

But this letter stopped me cold.  It appeared to be personally written to me.  I’ve seen tricky handwritten fonts before on snail mail letters.  But this looked like it was truly handwritten.

So, I opened it.

And here is what I saw:

I consider myself to be of above average intelligence but I bought this for a few minutes.  Hook, line and sinker.

It’s SOOOO well done.  Right down to the smudge on the exclamation point.

Very tricky.  Very clever.

I read it carefully and was very impressed that my auto dealership would take the time to “review my file.”  It was so personal.

I truly considered calling and setting an appointment.

Then, I saw the S’s.  Look at all the S’s in the font.  They are all the same.

Look at all the periods.  They are out of place like someone was just jotting a note.  But they are all out of place.

Very tricky.  Very clever.

Honestly, if they would mix up the letters with variations of the font I think I would be on the phone with him now.

This raises two questions:

1. What would happen if the car salesman ACTUALLY took the time to review my file and write me a personal note?  No trickery, just real personal business.  Would it be worth his time?  Or is automation a requirement here?
2. Would you get angry if you received this sales letter?  I was intrigued by the marketing.  But I am weird.  I love clever marketing.  That being said, I do feel like they tried to deceive me and I doubt I will do business with them again.

I would love your thoughts.

In MBA school, they call them “barriers to entry.”

Anything that makes it harder for new businesses to enter your market and existing businesses to keep pace makes your moat wider.  More lethal to attempt to cross.  More daunting.

Here are some examples:

• A patent on an invention
• A $5 million investment in equipment
• A  print, radio and television ad campaign

Doing any of these things makes it harder for competitors to enter your market.  And puts pressure on the existing competition to keep up.

But you know me.  And I know you.

We aren’t patenting inventions and running million dollar ad campaigns.  And we sure as heckfire aren’t investing $5 million in equipment (although I did buy a schnazzy new Epson printer the other day from Office Depot, does that count?)

Nope.  Tiny business owners have to be smarter about digging our moats.

Here are three ways to dig a moat that will be difficult, if not impossible to cross:

1. Acquire New Skills

Whether you acquire it yourself, hire or outsource it, acquiring a new skill (that is marketable) adds a few crocodiles to your moat.  Acquiring skills takes time, patience, intelligence and perseverance.  And, with the Internet at our fingertips, it doesn’t necessarily cost money.

2. Create more content

Creating content for the web is an investment.  You chip away at it.  It takes time to start seeing a return and this leads to frustration.  A frustration that most people can’t overcome.  Each time you publish, the moat gets a little wider.  Each time a competitor throws in the towel, your position in the market becomes more firmly entrenched.

3. Forge new relationships

Relationships take time to grow.  You don’t created trusted partnerships with people overnight.  Each time you meet with the right people for coffee.  Attend a cocktail party or help out at a chartiy event… the moat gets wider.

Notice what all of these have in common?  Time, not money.

Don’t wait.  Start digging.

You are one of the lucky ones.

The big corporations are trying to act small in social media.

You don’t have to act.  You are small.  In fact, you are tiny.

You don’t have to write a 60-page Social Media Policy manual.  You don’t need to hold meetings about your social media strategy.

For you, social media is easy.

Here’s why:

For you, social media is no different than attending networking events.

• If someone complained to you about your product or service at a networking event what would you do?
• If someone wanted to hire you at a networking event what would you do?
• If someone praised your product or service at a networking event what would you do?
• If someone asked you what your favorite restaurant was at a networking event what would you do?
• If someone asked if you had kids at a networking event what would you do?
• If someone told you a joke at a networking event, what would you do?
• If someone wanted to see pictures of your 40th birthday party at a networking event, what would you do?
• If someone wanted to know if you knew a good plumber at a networking event, what would you do?
• If someone at a networking event needed help with a problem and you knew the solution, what would you do?

In other words, be human in social media.  Be yourself.

Besides being yourself, you should consider what goals you are trying to achieve when communicating.  Just as you wouldn’t walk attend a networking event without some business reason behind it.

Here are some reasons to be using social media:

Ok.  It’s logical and all and I (among others) have been preaching it for several years.

But I had never seen a stat on this before.

70% of purchases are at the RFP stage before a sales person is called in.

That, according to UBM TechWeb.

In other words, before a buyer lets you know they are going to buy, they have already done all the research they need to do.

I don’t care if you are a B2C company that doesn’t even know what an RFP is,  (Request for Proposal, by the way)  this should change the way you view your marketing and sales process.

Why?  Because two things are happening:

1. Researching a sale is done online, not with a sales person
2. Your online content needs to be answering a lot of questions or you won’t even be in the conversation when the purchase takes place.

Even if that statistic is only 1/2 right, this is a staggering statistic.

If you haven’t bought in to the idea of creating a content strategy that considers the content that a buyer needs at all stages of the buying cycle, this statistic should seal the deal.

If you are not doing this, you likely don’t really understand how Google works.

Google knows a lot about you.  And they are learning more and more each time you search.

They have a pretty good idea about things like:

• What kind of car you are thinking about buying
• What illnesses you have
• Whether you are a dog or a cat person

Now, with their introduction of Google +, a Facebook competitor, they are adding a social layer.  This includeds information like:

• Are you married?  If so, to whom?
• What is your favorite Thai restaurant?
• Who are you friends with?  And who are they friends with?

They also have a pretty good idea of where you are.

Here is the point… Google takes what they know about you and customizes your experience.

Here is why it’s important… You need to understand how Google works if you want to get the marketing benefit.

Here is what I suggest you do… Use two web browsers (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Safari.)  One that is logged into your Google account, the other that is never logged in to a Google account.

Most of what Google knows about you is based on you being logged into your Google account.

Do some searches on your keywords and just generally experiment with using Google while switching back and forth between the two browsers.  You will be amazed.

It won’t be perfect, but using a “Google Free” browser and a browser that is logged into Google when you are surfing the web will begin to give you a real understanding of how Google truly works.