This list of suggestions on how to deal with the competition as an entrepreneur wound up skewing heavily towards suggestions that really just said, over and over again, the other guys in your industry aren't competition — they're an opportunity to find partners, to grow your business and to create a bigger industries. It's all about cooperation these days, not grinding the competition under your heel.
Women Grow Business asked a variety of women entrepreneurs what our ideas of independence are, and the answers are pretty clear. Thursday Bram of Hyper Modern Consulting: “The ability to not be stuck when a problem comes up — to have the resources to handle anything that comes along. The alternative is needing to go to different people for help any time the slightest thing goes wrong.”
Alexandra Williams of Fun and Fit: “I make enough money to support my boys and myself if necessary.”
Liz Scherer of Digital Copy, LLC: “The ability to sustain, maintain and evolve on one’s own terms.”
Jill Foster of Live Your Talk: “Definitions of success, failure, and financial strength are up to me to set and abide by.”
Jennifer Wilbur of Rockstar Communications: “The ability to flourish – and fail – at what you determine is most important to you, on your schedule.”
Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks: “Independence is not having to rely on anyone for your own destiny.”
Michele Price of Social Media for Smart People: “Independence means I have ALL that I need on every level of my life, physical, mental, intellectual, and spiritual so that I am performing at my peak, bringing my full contribution to the world, and receiving complete abundance in return.”
Ann Bingley Gallops of Open Spaces Feng Shui: “Independence means thinking as big as I dare, making my own decisions, and taking responsibility for the outcomes.”
Joanna Pineda of the Matrix Group: “Independence means being able to shape my company culture and solutions offerings for clients as we see fit. It means creating trouble whenever it makes sense.” Read more at womengrowbusiness.com |
A: Review Major Mistakes with Mentors
We have to address mistakes in the moment and it's hard to learn while operating in crisis mode. But taking the time to talk through the situation after the fact, especially with someone with a little more experience with such things, can be the best way to still make a mistake into a learning experience. - Thursday Bram, founder of Hyper Modern Consulting Read more at leapyear-hiscox.tv |
I identify with just about anything anyone says about working too much — I'm well aware that my approach to work routinely borders on addiction. But at the same time I've been feeling like I'm paddling in circles lately — I spend just as much time staring at the computer, but I'm not actually doing the work in a lot of ways.
This phrase just resonated, though: Colleen Wainwright is asking why she's not even getting to the work of working too much.
The simple truth is that work is my drug of choice. Screwing around with email and other pseudo-work is like drinking a mild cup of tea when I'm really jonesing for the biggest, meanest energy drink on the shelf. And, if I'm going to be an addict, I might as well get full bang for my buck. Okay. I get why I work too much. What I didn’t get, because I couldn’t make it fit, is why I couldn’t get to the work of working too much. I mean, seriously—if I love work so freakin’ much, why am I screwing around in Facebook? Why am I checking my email for the 57th time, hoping against hope that it holds some horrific fire that must be put out NOW? (Or, barring that, a really, really important and necessary special offer that must be acted upon immediately?) Read more at www.communicatrix.com |
I routinely tell people that I don't consider myself a feminist — more because I don't need a philosophy or political stance to tell myself or anyone else that I'm equal to anyone else in the room.
But here's the thing: there are plenty of communities that, by their nature, aren't inclusive. A lack of inclusivity menas that you're going to scare off anyone not exactly like you. In open source, that usually means educated, technically inclined and (more often than not) male.
I'm the only woman in the room more often than I'd like to think about. I know that I've been included as the entire diversity in a group, packaged into one body.
So here's my opinion: want to make sure that you're working on a project with some diversity? Don't insulate yourself. Be as inclusive as possible. Thinking in those terms means that you aren't just going to get ladies in the room (and, oh! think of the benefits, like better insights on marketing to people other than your clones!). You're going to get different skill sets, different ethnicities, different everything. And in today's world, you need as many viewpoints as you can get. On the modern web, where far-flung strangers collaborate on things like authoring an encyclopedia and overthrowing abusive governments, it's still too hard for most people to contribute to open source projects. It's ironic, too, because open source collaboration was happening on the internet way before tools like Facebook, wikis, Twitter, and Google Docs existed. It's not for lack of tools, it's because of broken culture Read more at smarterware.org |
I've watched my dad do this more times than I can count. It doesn't matter how you explain it — he doesn't believe that you can really go directly to any website. Keep Older Users in Mind
A problem that is not uncommon among older users is that they don’t actually type domain names into their browsers and go directly to the site. Rather, they’ll type yourname.com into a search engine and then click through to your website. If you can make that process any easier on your users, it’s important to do so. That includes making sure that your website ranks first in search engine results for its name, as well as picking a very easy to remember domain name. |
I'd like to think that my sites not only look professional but look trustworthy, but that's just me. Your Website’s First Impression
The first impression anyone will get from your website is whether or not it looks professional. If it looks like you had someone’s kid code up some HTML in the nineties and haven’t updated your website since, your visitors are going to bounce immediately. But if your website is professional and up to date, visitors will give you a little longer to convince them that you can help.
Beyond basic appearance, you need to show your customers right off the bat that you can help them with whatever problem sent them to the search engine to find a solution. That solution must be immediately obvious. No matter what your business’ story or selling points may be, you have to get that solution in front of prospective customers first.
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The average website designer doesn't think in terms of whether or not a site is trustworthy — she thinks in terms of whether it will convert buyers or be optimized for search engines. But, at the end of the day, a trustworthy site will make a world of difference.
If a visitor feels that a site can be trusted, he'll stay longer, feel more comfortable about buying through the site and generally be more willing to do whatever it is you want him to do. | Contact information: Make it easy for your customers to contact you, not just by offering online communication tools, but also by posting your business’ phone number and address prominently. Even if you’d prefer communication goes through your website, your customers need the reassurance that they can pick up the phone and speak with you immediately.
About page: Having a basic about page isn’t enough. After all, any scammer can throw together an about page and post it. Your about page needs to go deep, describing the people behind the business and including photos.
Privacy policy: Explain exactly how a customer’s information will be used and stored before you ever ask them to put in a credit card number. Your policy can be fairly short, but just the fact that you have such a policy can be reassuring to a customer.
Testimonials: The more testimonials you can offer (preferably linked back to the site or the social media profile of the person who said it), the more comfortable your customers will be. Of course, you may not want to bombard a customer with more than a few testimonials upfront, but offering a page full of good comments about you is reasonable.
Search results: Check out what comes up when your business’ name is typed into a search engine. Make sure that everything in the first couple of pages of results is positive. Take note of what appears in the autocomplete drop down menus on search engines like Google — you don’t want words like ‘scam’ showing up associated with your own business.Read more at www.walkertek.com |
The names behind Tumblr's Egypt page have some incredible journalistic credentials, which makes the fact that the page is truly news curation on a higher level even more interesting.
Ramit Sethi used his own blog to create a case study on what truly happens when you ask your readers to take action — such as leaving comments. There's a certain sense among bloggers that you need a call to action on every item you write. But Sethi's case study shows that just by asking, you eliminate a large percentage of your readers.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing. You are, for what it's worth, weeding out those readers less likely to take other actions (such as making a purchase). You may not have realized it, but the 2 posts earlier this week were a psychology case study.
In the first post, I told you what I’d be giving you this year: free material on hustling, including how to find a better job, earn more money, and take action. The number of comments: 180.
In the second post, I wrote about challenging un-tested assumptions, and asked people to leave a comment with how they were going to specifically test their assumptions within 48 hours. Number of comments: 57.
When you ask people to take action, you will dramatically eliminate a huge percentage of people. This is why people leave hundreds of comments talking about how excited they are to have free content wash over them, but when you ask people to take action, a fraction of the people respond. Same as in the email I sent out to people who subscribed to my list.
In other words, everyone gets excited when you tell them what you are going to do for them…BECAUSE I DIDN’T ASK THEM TO DO ANYTHING. When I do, people get a lot quieter.
And the same is true of people who take action.
I can tell you, to the dollar, that certain users (the ones who leave comments or subscribe to my email list to receive more content or do XYZ action) are FAR more likely to take action and succeed. We measure it carefully.
This is also why grocery stores who charge even a few cents per plastic bag see a 95% decrease in customer use of plastic bags. Using small barriers strategically works astonishingly well. |
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