Success Quote

“Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.”

Julie Andrews

March 31, 2009 | Filed Under Quotes | Leave a Comment 

Practical Business Building Tips – Top 7 Activities of Great Leaders

If you are serious about building your business you need to make sure your time, energy and attention are being spent on “the right stuff” for business.

With that notion in mind, here are the Top 7 Activities of Great Leaders

1. Setting the Vision… and checking that all your activities are leading to that end. Businesses that don’t have a clear vision are often just the place everyone shows up to keep busy. Create a vision that makes all that time, intelligence and effort worth it!

2. Inspiring Others… describing the vision to them and describing how their work fits into achieving the vision. We each get out of bed wanting to make a difference and we’ll put in 120% when we see an inspiring path!

3. Modeling what keeping the Vision in mind looks like… by starting every meeting with the Vision as your reference point to the issue on the table. This is just the first step to running a meeting that everyone feels was worth paying attention and solving issues.

4. Encouraging Others To Step Up… so that you can leverage the experience and intelligence of other people to build your business further, faster and easier than doing it all on your own. The more they do, the easier it will be for you to focus on finding paths to grow the business.

5. Challenging “the way things are done here”… to constantly invite new, more productive and more profitable options be brought into the planning and execution of your work.

6. Measuring what matters… and reporting the trends ensures that everyone keeps their eye on how their own work is achieving the goals that are important for the business.

7. Making “Leverage” the key…
The challenge for most business owners and entrepreneurs then is to be able to keep enough attention on activities that make a difference. Keep asking how to leverage everyone through putting systems in place so your work is done with excellence, no matter who is putting their attention and energy into it.

Bonus Tip –When you let people know that they are appreciated, they’re even more inspired to bring their best thinking to the table. Great leaders acknowledge each person and every team for their great thinking and effective work.

And one way to grow your business to the next level is to join the Business Accelerator TeleSeminar Club at http://www.TheBusinessAcceleratorClub.com – come on board and join for $200 savings the first month.

Come join me and like-minded business builders and learn all about how to run your current business ever easier, AND how to take your experience & expertise and turn it into – Programs, Products & Services Your Clients Are Hungry For – with all the how to’s set out for you.

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March 30, 2009 | Filed Under Leadership | Leave a Comment 

Success Quote

“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born
great, some achieve greatness, and some
have greatness thrust upon them.”

William Shakespeare

March 30, 2009 | Filed Under Quotes | Leave a Comment 

Success Quote

“Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.”

Julie Andrews

March 29, 2009 | Filed Under Quotes | Leave a Comment 

Practical Business Building Tips – How Many Of These 3 Marketing Mistakes Are You Making?

Business building is a marketing game – the greater your marketing focus (the number of ways you keep your message on the results your clients want) the greater all your results will be – results like products and services, prospects, customers, and profits.

The challenge for most business owners and entrepreneurs is to be able to keep enough focus on marketing and delivering clear solutions that makes a difference.

The 3 Most Common Mistakes People Make Over and Over Again.

Mistake 1 – Thinking it’s about you.
This one is really easy to do, especially since we each want to find a sweet spot in the market, but don’t know what to do with ourselves until we find it. Many people therefore tell their market all about themselves… rather than the solutions their buyer is seeking.

Sorry, but your buyer is not that interested in you. If they are, then they can read your succinct 2-paragraph profile in your marketing materials. The buyer is interested in what is in it for them.

Mistake 2 – Saying “Yes” to every request
Trying to be everything, to everyone, means that some people forget the vision they have for their business – the solution they want to bring to the world. They tell themselves it’s “just for right now” that they’ll take any customer request that comes along. Once their client gets a sample of their approach and the results they can produce, they’ll tell them about the Vision.

If you keep track over time you’ll see that transition never takes place. Your attention is diverted from doing the focused marketing you need to do to become know for your solution.

Mistake 3 – Talking yourself out of ‘Niche-ing”
This is the biggest trap most business owners and entrepreneurs fall in to. First the news media tells them about trends… that aren’t real. Then they hear of a program a competitor is offering… but never the true results. They even go to conferences where gurus tell them what to offer the market.

Most people never ask the true source of the answer: their customers, clients and prospects. If this is you, you’ll be spending tens of hours designing and marketing the wrong solutions to people who aren’t looking for them.

What to do instead – This is the part of business building that will set you apart from other entrepreneurs and professionals. Choose a specific topic in your niche – The more specific topic, the easier it will be to name mistakes that will get the attention of your prospect so they will see themselves in the mistakes. Now get out there and talk to your prospects face to face to test whether there are buyers for your solution. Let them tell you what they want solved.

And listen, really listen.

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March 28, 2009 | Filed Under Marketing | Leave a Comment 

Small Business Marketing – How to Write 100 Articles in 100 Days

Felicia Slattery, Keith Goodrun and Jeff Herring put out a challenge to the world of internet marketing folks. They’re calling it “100Articles100Days” and created a support system for all of us participants amping up our marketing. Well this morning I figured out a couple of keys to keep myself on track and meet my HAHD goals:

1 – Be a dedicated writer
Dedication can come in many forms for us small business folks. Over time I’ve learned I’m verbally freshest first thing in the morning and I am learning to protect and use that! If I log in to ‘clear out’ emails… it’s hours before I get back to it and my time is *poof* gone

2 – Be systematic
In the past I’ve had streams of articles in files. Here’s a new approach I’m using: setting up a single document with all the articles inside and a number before the title so I know where I am and I don’t have to try to remember the titles I gave articles, nor the dates I wrote them

3 – Be structured
Rather than lists of “what I’ll write, one of these days” I’m setting up a 7-day schedule (or perhaps I ought to call it 7-topic schedule) with my top 7 topics in rotation AND presetting the upcoming slots for 7-14 articles so that if I find a remark in one article is actually a topic for another one I can go pop the language in there and have my starter all ready

4 – Be simple
Many folks get stuck in the “I don’t have time to write” mindset. Frankly, this started out as a quick email – 100 words typically for all of us. I hit a roll and it’s now probably 400 words. All in about 17 minutes, without a game plan and little mental chatter – just writing away!

5 – Be aware
Imagine: Here I am typing away a quick blog comment, and presto – here’s the material for an article. At first it seemed ‘off topic’ for my own audience, yet it’ll make a great blog post and with a few tweaks I’ll be turning it into an article!

Honestly, I love article writing for all the ways I can see my own experience become helpful information for others. When you read the sentences above for the first time, what might not be apparent is that it started as a quickie message to everyone on the HAHD challenge. Once I wrote number 4 I realized I could edit this blog post and turn it into an article so I went through to soften all the “I”s in the article, added a couple of key words, etc. While I didn’t eliminate all of them, it is softer than the first pass.

Now I’m going to grab all of this, pop it into my blog and re-edit it a bit more and presto: more than 350 words – done! Fresh marketing for my own small business!

THANKS Jeff, Felicia and Keith
Linda -!

March 24, 2009 | Filed Under Marketing | Leave a Comment 

Practical Business Building Tips – How Many Of These 3 Marketing Mistakes Are You Making?

© 2009 Linda Feinholz

Business building is a marketing game – the greater your marketing focus (the number of ways you keep your message on the results your clients want) the greater all your results will be – results like products and services, prospects, customers, and profits.

The challenge for most business owners and entrepreneurs is to be able to keep enough focus on marketing and delivering clear solutions that makes a difference.

The 3 Most Common Mistakes People Make Over and Over Again.

Mistake 1 – Thinking it’s about you.
This one is really easy to do, especially since we each want to find a sweet spot in the market, but don’t know what to do with ourselves until we find it. Many people therefore tell their market all about themselves… rather than the solutions their buyer is seeking.

Sorry, but your buyer is not that interested in you. If they are, then they can read your succinct 2-paragraph profile in your marketing materials. The buyer is interested in what is in it for them.

Mistake 2 – Saying “Yes” to every request
Trying to be everything, to everyone, means that some people forget the vision they have for their business – the solution they want to bring to the world. They tell themselves it’s “just for right now” that they’ll take any customer request that comes along. Once their client gets a sample of their approach and the results they can produce, they’ll tell them about the Vision.

If you keep track over time you’ll see that transition never takes place. Your attention is diverted from doing the focused marketing you need to do to become know for your solution.

Mistake 3 – Talking yourself out of ‘Niche-ing”
This is the biggest trap most business owners and entrepreneurs fall in to. First the news media tells them about trends… that aren’t real. Then they hear of a program a competitor is offering… but never the true results. They even go to conferences where gurus tell them what to offer the market.

Most people never ask the true source of the answer: their customers, clients and prospects. If this is you, you’ll be spending tens of hours designing and marketing the wrong solutions to people who aren’t looking for them.

What to do instead – This is the part of business building that will set you apart from other entrepreneurs and professionals. Choose a specific topic in your niche – The more specific topic, the easier it will be to name mistakes that will get the attention of your prospect so they will see themselves in the mistakes. Now get out there and talk to your prospects face to face to test whether there are buyers for your solution. Let them tell you what they want solved.

And listen, really listen.

And now I’d like to invite you to get your Free Instant Access to a series of videos on strategies that grow your business further, faster, easier when you visit www.businessacceleratorbonus.com

You’ll receive more than 45 minutes of leading edge strategies for leveraging your time and energy to run your business easier, so you can use your experience to create new low cost, highly profitable streams of income.

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March 16, 2009 | Filed Under Marketing | Leave a Comment