Announcements, Business Brainstorm, Wordpress
Over two years ago, my customers started asking me for a resource on creating their own websites. They wanted to know how to install WordPress, how to design something they were proud of, and maybe even how to code a little.
I stalled and stalled and stalled.
Until I realized that leveraging this skill of mine was one way to break out of the time-for-money crunch that drags down so many beginning business owners.
So I created my DIY website program.
The first time through it – creating the content, answering support questions, sharing ideas, discovering what I hadn’t anticipated – was extremely difficult. I almost didn’t run the program again. But overwhelming demand buoyed my confidence.
I launched it again and it went much better the second time. By that point 80 people had participated in the program and I started receiving very interesting feedback.
I heard that, while the program taught them all sort of new skills & brought back the thrill of a challenge, it was the fresh way of looking at their businesses that was the true value for them.
You see, in Website Kick Start, I focused on guiding participants through thinking about their business from the customer’s perspective. We spent time considering our websites from the visitor’s point of view. And that made all the difference.
Participants found clarity around their business decisions. They discovered new language to use in spreading their message. They created new ways to serve their customers right on site.
And that’s why people said things like…
This was definitely one of the best investments I made in my business and I love being able to go in and control my site design myself!
– Amy Kozak, jewelry designer
and
The skills to build it has taken up <--this--> much of my learning and the knowledge and new way of thinking about my business has taken up <------------------------this------------------------> much of my learning.
— Kathryn, CloudLoveBaby
In working with hundreds of business owners over the last few years, this has been one of my greatest lessons:
The greatest value you deliver is the solution that’s sitting below the surface of the problem you think you’re solving.
People wanted websites. What they needed was a new perspective on their businesses. They got both.
So the makeover?
This week Kick Start Labs launched Website Kick Start 2.0 (as well as a juicy membership program that’s FREE with purchase). The program was constantly updated during it’s 2 year life — but this time it needed reworked from the ground up.
Despite the success it had, I wanted to hone in on the value the program truly provided. I wanted to make getting the website part even easier and I wanted the business shift to be even more massive.
I know now that the experience of the program will be better for all involved, that the results will be even more massive, and that the program will spread from customer to customer.
That’s a pretty good feeling to have in your business.
What products do you have sitting on the shelf that could use a makeover to hone in on their true value? What products are you dreaming about that may have a deeper value than the surface problem you’re trying to solve?
Stick to your ribs value is your customer’s birthright. Give it to them.
— PS —
Want in on the all new Website Kick Start 2.0? I betcha do. Find out more about how to get a website that works for you and how to get every resource Kick Start Labs creates for a year… FREE: click here.
Art of Earning, Business Brainstorm, New Economy
Love scales.
– Danielle LaPorte
Last week, I stated that one reason women are earning less in the Creative Class is that women tend to think in relationships as opposed to scale.
This week, returning from the second annual World Domination Summit, I stand even more firm in this knowledge.
I don’t go to this event for the content. I go to talk to customers, friends, and mentors. And most of the women I talked to – my good friends included – worry about betraying their tribes and coming up short if they were to scale what they offer.
First, what do I mean by scale? Simply, scale is serving as many customers as possible with as little effort on behalf of your business as possible. Serving a group of customers through scale means that your business has an impact on people who you wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise.
Scaling leverages your gifts for the greatest good across the broadest channels.
I believe that most microbusinesses require a level of premium, unleveraged work. It could take the form of commission art, couture dresses, one on one coaching, or corporate speaking engagements. But most of those same businesses require a level of leverage to take their impact to scale. The two sides of the equation can and do work hand-in-hand.
One informs the other, improving both.
I woke up on Saturday thinking, “I need a little Danielle LaPorte.” Maybe you’ve had a similar experience? Luckily, I was in a position to remedy that thought. I plopped myself in a chapel pew at during her session.
She began her Q&A session with her brief observations on the conference so far. Her first was the simple but oh-so-delicious statement, “Love scales.” Ah yes, this is why I came. My entrepreneurial musings boiled down into a two word sound bite.
World Domination Summit is a beautiful example of how you can nurture relationships while leveraging your gifts & skills. Chris Guillebeau doesn’t have a relationship with each of the people who bought tickets – all within minutes of them going on sale. But, of course, many people feel like they have relationship with him.
More importantly, their connection to Chris makes connecting to the others at WDS much easier. It’s not the relationship with Chris that makes this event a success; it’s all the other relationships that are spawned by their implicit connection.
Yes, love scales at WDS. It scales at meet ups, conferences, and events. It scales at rock concerts, sidewalk sales, and yoga classes. Love even scales through ebooks, programs, and masterminds.
It’s the intention, process, and values that create the atmosphere that allows love to scale through a business. It’s not a business owner or her work with any individual client.
What holds you back from leveraging your gifts & skills to create more wealth and impact more lives is thinking that your work can’t survive without you & your attention to the client. But that’s what’s really beautiful: you aren’t the important part of the work you’re doing.
Your process – when you discover it, learn it, codify it – is the important part of your work.
It’s your process, the love that you put in it, and the love that your clients generate through it that carries your work, allowing you to scale your business and harvest its riches. It’s the love that your customers discover through each other that carries your work out into the world in new & unexpected ways. It’s the love that is born in a movement of ideas that creates positive change that you yourself could not create on your own.
It’s therefore your duty – as well as a killer earning strategy – to leverage the love & scale your offers.
So tell me, what is your process and how could you utilize it to scale your business?
Business Brainstorm, New Economy
The fax machine is suffering a long, slow death. The proliferation of home scanners, digital signatures, and cloud computing make it obsolete for any office workers living in the 21st century.
Businesses that were based on making fax machines & their supplies have been forced to pivot, incorporate new products, and evolve with technology.
They’re not running ads, breathlessly trying to convince people that their fax machines are still worth buying.
Not everything that is made is worth being bought.
Click to tweet it!
We all make stuff. We write books, we produce videos, we cast silver, work wood, code apps.
What differentiates the stuff that people want to buy from the stuff that they don’t?
Need. Need and ideas.
What do people need from you?
What are you constantly being asked about?
What are you constantly offering to help with?
What needs, problem, discomforts do you see all around you?
What change – large or small – would you make in the world if you could?
What do you complain about regularly?
What do you think should be easier, faster, more connected, less unpredictable?
For as “advanced” a society as we have, there is still a mind numbing amount of need all around us. If you choose to make something just because you can, not because someone has need of it, you are closing the door on a big opportunity.
Sure, make you want to make. Just don’t expect it to sell if there is no need for it.
Remember that need comes in all colors. I need jewelry. I need espresso. I need an app that syncs my brainwaves from one device to another. Sure, they’re 1st world problems. But people in the 1st world want to buy plenty.
Don’t over think it when it comes to needs. Respond to (even mild) frustration.
The need fax machines once filled is being filled – better – by other devices & services. Now, the need isn’t just for the transfer of information. There’s an idea that collaboration & personal connection need to be a part of the way we exchange information.
What idea do you want to spread?
Jewelry should help you make a statement. We can redefine commerce for the 21st century. Our digital networks are connected to our human networks. Knitting & crochet can save the world. You can create your own bliss in digital business.
The most memorable and successful businesses today are making products out of ideas. Apple turns unconventional thinking, design, and ease of us into cult computing products. Toms turns the desire to put shoes on 3rd world feet into cult footwear in the 1st world. Lululemon turns active lifestyle into cult workout clothing.
Their ideas are a big part of what makes their products worth buying, at the prices they charge.
Their ideas turn their products into symbols of community, advocacy, and shared-purpose.
I believe that we all have ideas that we want to spread. I believe that we all have frustrations we wish to ease. I believe that we all see problems in our communities and among our friends & family that could use our impact.
Channel those ideas into products that fill needs.
PS Not ready to take your ideas to the world? No problem. There are hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs out there who need you. They need to you make what they design, write what they think, market what they sell, sell what they offer. Align yourself to a company or visionary with a shared purpose and you can use the skills you have without putting your ideas to the test quite yet.
PPS If your business is built on ideas & real needs, you’re in the right place. Make sure you’re subscribed (below) to receive insight & updates on thriving in 21st century business. You are the New Economy.
Business Brainstorm
The theme for this week has clearly been marketing! I’m releasing a digital workshop today, Marketing ReWired, click here to get the details on that. Or keep on reading!
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is waiting until the plan is written, the product is completed, or the website is designed to consider their “marketing.”
Marketing isn’t something that happens once the real work is done.
Considering your marketing, right from the beginning, helps you make decisions, conduct experiments, communicate with the right people, and set prices.
Imagine you’re buying a home. Of course, you want the right location, the necessary number of bathrooms & bedrooms, and a great kitchen. And of course, you make sure the furnace & plumbing are in working order.
But before you even purchase the home, you consider the resale value. How could you improve the layout? Update the details? Add outdoor living? What factors make the property likely to increase in value on its own? Location, location, location?
Buying a home is an investment not unlike starting a business or even developing a new product. While you’re understandably focused on your own immediate desires, you also want to consider where you’ll be in a year, 5 years, or 10 years. You’re looking down the line to make sure your investment is sound.
And that you’re truly prepared for the next phase of life or business.
The only time you don’t consider resale value, is when you don’t ever plan to sell.
The only time you shouldn’t consider marketing when you’re starting a business or building a new product, is when you don’t ever plan to sell.
Marketing isn’t about getting the word out, it’s about making sure you don’t have to.
Remember, marketing is only one part promotion. True marketing considers your business’ purpose, people, and positioning too. It lays a foundation for decision-making. It turns products into viral phenomena. It puts more money in your pocket.
Want to incorporate marketing into your business, ideas, and products from day 1? Start by rewiring your marketing brain. Grab my brand new digital workshop, Marketing ReWired, for just $25.
Business Brainstorm
Yesterday, I posted an interview with Stephanie Alford. She’s quadrupled her mailing list in 2 months, earned her first 5-figure month, and launched 2 incredibly successful continuity programs. All without formal marketing training, digital products, or premium coaching programs.
In fact, Stephanie isn’t a coach or business guru.
Stephanie dyes yarn.
In my opinion, Stephanie’s success comes largely from the fact that she stopped trying to get the word out about her business and started positioning herself for success. She embraced the true meaning of marketing: delivering the best products to the best people at the best time. She shifted her relationship with her customers from one of salesperson to trusted leader.
Stephanie empowered herself and her customers.
Marketing isn’t all about getting the word out. Promotion is only one very small part of marketing. In order for marketing to be effective & engaging, you need to consider 4 P’s: purpose, people, position, and promotion.
Let’s take a look at how Stephanie used the 4 P’s jump start her business.
Purpose
Stephanie truly believes that knitting & crochet are shortcuts to world peace. Why? Knitting & crochet beg us to slow down, get grounded in a tactile way, and connect with each other as human beings.
A great example of this was how Stephanie’s temporary tattoos shifted the entire atmosphere of her retail booth at a recent show. Instead of seeing just one more place to buy yarn or just another dyer hawking her wares, people came into her booth to get a tattoo. They ended up talking to each other in line, connecting with people they would have never connected with outside this unique opportunity.
Now Stephanie’s business doesn’t just represent one more way to get their yarn fix, it represents fun, friendship, and purposeful interaction. That’s an experience that won’t soon be forgotten!
What could you do to create a greater focus on the purpose of your business?
People
Stephanie gets out & interacts with her customers regularly by attending retail & trade shows. One behavior she identified was that her potential customers would come into her both, eye the yarn, and exclaim, “But I don’t know what to do with it!” because Stephanie makes multi-colored yarn.
So instead of despairing, she educated. Stephanie put together an ebook that would teach her customers how to use hand-dyed yarn (it was edited by amazing business manager – she can edit yours too). That book – meant for education – turned into a sales tool!
It also lead to peer-to-peer sharing, meaning her work was seen by many more people than her product alone would attract. Knowing what her people needed and creating a professional tool to fill that need lead to a viral success!
How are your customers behaving that hinder sales? How could you change this behavior?
Position
Stephanie found even more success by plopping her business right in the middle of a major trend. In this case, it was mini-skeins. People wanted more, more, more and Stephanie was happy to position her products to be able to accommodate!
She created a continuity program (think yarn of the month club) that brings her a steady stream of income while giving her the opportunity to serve her customers in the best way possible. It’s not the type of offer everyone would want to make, but that’s the beauty of it!
Stephanie positioned herself in a unique way that benefitted her customers (and herself!).
How could you position your business outside the “usual” offers in your niche? How could you capitalize on a current trend?
Promotion
Stephanie doesn’t spend a lot of time on social media promoting her products. She doesn’t spend a lot of time blogging. She doesn’t spend a lot of money on advertising. She’s not too bothered by public relations.
Stephanie grounds her business in her purpose, people, and position so that every action she takes or idea she executes has the potential to bring in business. Her “promotion” happens on its own. Her marketing has a life of its own.
Now Stephanie is free to do what she loves.
How would your business be different if promotion was a passive task?
That’s how marketing should be. It’s much more about knowing your priorities & values on the inside of your business than it is about pushing them on the people outside of your business. If you center your day-to-day operations and your creative sparks around your purpose, people, and position, you’ll discover more & more ways that promotion can take care of itself.
Ready to focus on purpose-, people-, and position-driven marketing? Ready to stop getting the word out and start creating your own success? Check out my Marketing ReWired digital workshop.
Business Brainstorm
Marketing is a quiet, excited whisper.
Marketing is an ear lent in service of a secret.
Marketing is a note passed between friends.
Shouting is for people who don’t know what they’re saying. I know, I’ve shouted plenty.
Shouting is bullying, coercion, lies.
Marketing foments movements, motivates action.
Marketing is showing up when needed.
Shouting is for a showdown.
Marketing is a humble offering.
Marketing is not advertising. It’s not the extra decibels that are needed to grab attention when the tv show takes a break.
Marketing is a conscious effort to discover & communicate the place where your customer’s acute needs & deepest desires meet your greatest strengths.
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I know you want more on getting the word out about your business. This Friday, I’m releasing a digital workshop on rewiring your marketing mind. It’s small but powerful. Stay tuned.
