Successful Blog

Tips on Building the Confidence to Grow Your Business

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By Phil Buckley

My first experience with small business owners was in the late 80s. I was an operations manager for Zack’ Famous Frozen Yogurt, a franchise chain experiencing massive growth. My role was to set up new stores and help franchisees manage them successfully.

I was inspired by each owner’s courage, determination and passion to win. They tackled challenges head-on and typically took a glass half-full approach to managing problems.

However, when presented with opportunities to change or expand their businesses, I noticed that many owners lacked the confidence to get to the next level. They were comfortable with what they knew, and uncomfortable with what they didn’t know. Often, they’d forgo opportunities without fully exploring the benefits because their personal uncertainty was stronger than their desire for greater success.

As my career progressed into business training and then change management, I observed that most leaders struggled with change. Their confidence was tested most when their operational experience didn’t help them assess and pursue new opportunities or manage challenges. In those circumstances, what had made them successful had little impact on their ability to manage well.

Over time, it became apparent to me that the key to managing change (offering new products, entering new markets, opening a new location, etc.) is confidence.

Here are three ways that small business owners (and any business leader for that matter) can build their confidence when they uncover big opportunities to grow their businesses:

Make a list of the skills you used when making past successful changes

Small business owners will benefit from taking stock of past accomplishments and the skills they used to achieve them. Listing them in writing will help you build a playbook on how to manage new opportunities – steps to take, advice to get, behaviors to demonstrate, etc. Studying your past successes will help you create a path towards your goal and identify the capabilities you need to get there.

Identify who you can call upon for help

Peer support is a key enabler of evolving a business. Wise small business leaders ask for help, especially when opportunities require a departure from their current business model. Learning about how similar situations were managed, both successfully and unsuccessfully, will provide practical guidance on what you need to do, what to watch out for and how to act.

Write a solid plan

Business plans help small business owners stay focused and manage time and resources productively. They provide a means against which to track progress and a working tool to adjust as new information becomes available. A wise person once said, “Create the plan, work the plan, change the plan.” A growth opportunity business plan provides a map to confidently navigate.

It can be difficult to manage and grow a small business. With the right skills, knowledge, advice and plan, the small business owner can take the next step on their businesses journey and reach the next level of personal success. Have confidence!

Author’s Bio: Phil Buckley is a senior change management professional with nearly twenty-five years of experience helping individuals, teams and organizations deliver change in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Phil writes about managing change at www.changewithconfidence.com. He is also author of Change with Confidence: Answers to the 50 Biggest Questions that keep Change Leaders Up at Night (Jossey-Bass), where he provides complete, actionable answers to the fifty burning questions that leaders routinely ask about how to manage change successfully. Follow him on Twitter @philbuckley01.

Book Review: Insightful Knowledge, by Stephen Monaco

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Book review: Insightful Knowledge: An Enlightened View of Social Media Strategy & Marketing By Stephen Monaco

“When it comes to creating a social media marketing strategy companies must get their head around a simple concept. The objective is not to excel at social media per se. The objective is to effectively utilize social media to help your business excel.” Stephen Monaco, Insightful Knowledge

Let me start this book review by stating that this is not a how-to book.

Insightful knowledge offers a foundation for anyone who aspires to be a “champion” for integrating social media with their marketing mix.

Valuable lessons, statistics, and examples abound in this high level look at social media strategy. Stephen Monaco’s roots in traditional marketing run deep, as he was one of the early pioneers in the tech industry.

The first third of the book is groundwork, carefully laying out how we arrived at this crazy point in time where the power has shifted from the big brands to the consumers. It’s necessary to absorb this history if you want any chance of leveraging the forces at work.

Who should read this book? I’d recommend it for anyone who needs to convince colleagues that social media will support their business strategy, for anyone who wants a coherent explanation of why social media is not a fad but a major shift, or for those who have just started putting together a social media strategy for their organization.

My only criticism is that the “voice” of the book is pretty dry and statistical, but it’s exactly the type of unemotional, hard-core information that will appeal if you’re trying to convince the C-suite to do something, so perhaps that’s a necessary evil.

Key Lessons for Aspiring Social Media Champions

  • Obsess about your customers’ needs, and shift your thinking from sales to marketing
  • Look for ways that social media can enhance all areas of your business, not just marketing
  • Be methodical about creating a social media strategy, but leave room for tactical adjustments
  • Put listening at the top of your list, and use what you learn to serve customers better
  • Pay attention to which tactics are resulting in conversions, however you define conversion
  • Don’t be afraid to experiment, iterate on your plan continually
  • Don’t ever lose sight of your business goals, and make sure your social media efforts always tie back to your Key Performance Indicators.

If you’re looking for a compelling case for including social media in your business strategy, pick up this insightful book and start taking notes.

Disclosure: I received a free digital copy of the book for review purposes, however, this did not in any way impact the content of my review, which represents my own honest opinion.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Book Review: Born to Blog, by Mark W. Schaefer and Stanford A. Smith

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Were you “born to blog?”

Born to Blog came along at a critical point for me. Last week, I was seriously considering shuttering my own blog, weighed down by a perceived lack of traffic, unclear purpose, and minimal comments.

But then I picked up this book, and read:

“It takes time to find your voice, to connect with your audience, to learn how to appropriately build and promote your blog, and to write in a manner that connects with busy readers.”

It was the little bit of encouragement I needed to hear at that moment, and now instead of throwing in the towel, I’m going to refocus and keep going.

Born to Blog is a pithy little book co-written by two blogging powerhouses–Stanford Smith of Pushing Social and Mark Schaefer of {grow} blog. It’s written in a similar easy-to-grasp style as Schaefer’s previous hit, The Tao of Twitter.

You’ll find tips on the why and the how of blogging, both for business and pleasure. It’s a fun read, formatted with stories from both Mark and Stanford, and punctuated by “take action” highlights.

I strongly recommend it for blogging beginners as well as blogging veterans who want a quick refresher.

Key takeaways:

  • Let your business blog be an adventure story for your potential customers. Bring them along on your journey.
  • Start with the “minimum viable blog,” the content and platform that will get you to your goals the fastest.
  • Seek out the passionate learners to be your potential blog contributors.
  • “A blog’s strength flows from reader respect and trust.” Be honest and transparent if you’re planning to monetize the blog.
  • Invest time in analyzing and evaluating what is going right and what’s going wrong so that you can do course correction.
  • Personal blogs are different from business blogs; they need a different approach and strategy.
  • You never know when your words are having an impact!

Were you born to blog?

Note: I was not given a review copy of this book; my review is unsolicited and from the heart.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

5 Myths About Writing an E-Book

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By Ovetta Sampson

“Yes, of course I can do that!”

The words of affirmation flew out of my mouth faster than the reality that I had no idea how to do it hit my brain. I was close to sealing the deal to write a book for a client. She’d provide the brilliance; I’d wrap it up in lovely words. We’d sell books. But she also wanted to publish an e-book. I had never done that before. But I said yes anyway. I mean, it couldn’t be that difficult to publish an e-book? I mean you just send your Microsoft Word document to the ether and it comes out whispering on your Kindle right?

Yeah. Not right. It took me longer to find a credible answer on e-book publishing than it did to write the book. I asked on LinkedIn, I asked people I knew in the business, I even asked established publishing houses, everyone had a different answer and no one convinced me they had it down. The reason is they don’t. But you will. Read on.

Myth #1: I Need to Write a Book to Make Money

Do you know how many books you’d have to sell to get on the coveted New York Times’ Bestseller List? Industry insider estimate 20,000. Think about it. At $26.55, the average price for a hardcover nonfiction book sold in 2011, you’d gross $531,000. But you’d have to give at least a 1/3 of that to your distributor or publisher, take another 15 percent or your agent or publicist, maybe another 10 percent for marketing, and you’re down to less than half your sales at $221,220. That’s nothing to sneeze at but nothing to retire on either. No wonder people are self-publishing. But do you really think you can sell 20,000 copies of your book? If you think so here are some sobering facts from Steven Piersanti, president of Berrett-Koehler Publisher:

  • The average U.S. nonfiction book sells less than 250 copies per year
  • The average U.S. nonfiction book sells less than 3,000 copies over a lifetime
  • Competition is increasing—in 2003 the U.S. published 300,000 books. In 2011 that number was THREE MILLION!

So making money should not be your motivation to publish a book. Spreading brand awareness, though, is a good return on your investment.

Myth #2: All You Need is a Word Document

By far this is the No.1 fallacy I heard when investigating e-book publishing. Everyone said, “All you need is a Word document.” While it’s true that the publishing world is firmly ensconced in Microsoft Word and e-book distributors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble accept Word docs to create digital books, a Word doc is by far the beginning step not the end. But why?

To put it simply: a print book is created by imagery. An e-book is created by code. In printing you take an image of your written text as designed and reproduce it. In a digital book, you take your text and use code to manipulate it so that it flows and changes to fit the e-reader. A printed book is static. An e-book is flexible.

Read this if you want to know what exactly what happens during the conversion, but otherwise take my word for it. Publishing an e-book is not even remotely the same as sending your Word doc to a printer and having your book typeset at a printing house.

Myth #3: I Can Do It All Myself

If you want a crappy e-book you can upload a Word doc and be done with it. But if you want an e-book that looks professional and can gain respect, you need to have your text doc converted to a major digital publishing language namely: MOBI, for Amazon or E-PUB for everyone else. You can get all the dirty details of conversion in Guy Kawasaki’s new book APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish Your Book. It is by far one of the most comprehensive books on self-publishing I’ve ever read. He also gives step-by-step instructions on how he took his book digital as it was designed with InDesign.

But here’s what you need to know: If you want all the bells and whistles found on e-readers such as navigation, searchable text, clear graphics and tables, hyperlinks, you need special code or formatting, much like HTML for a website. Author service providers can offer you this service. There are several including:

  • Smashwords (free but takes a cut of royalties)
  • BookBaby, charges an up-front fee but offers you 100% of the royalties
  • CreateSpace, owned by Amazon, very aggressive in marketing but print-on-demand is great if you want a real-live book as well as a digital one.

There are tons more. Prices for these companies range from as little as $100 to north of $4,000. For my project I paid $100 for e-book conversion to both MOBI and E-PUB and formatting from the Indian-based SunTec Digital, (Hi Rahul!) and had my client sign up for Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program to distribute the book. The book, It Takes Work to Be Happy, came out fantastic and looks fabulous on my iPad.

Myth #4: I Don’t Need an Editor I’m a DIYer

While there are plenty of tasks you can complete when you self-publish, I mean it is called self-publishing; editing is not one of them. No matter how great of a writer you are, if you want your book to be taken seriously by your audience, the media, clients and even your mother, you need a good copyeditor. I’m not just saying that because I am one.

What’s the first thing you think about when you get an e-mail with a misspelling? Nigerian fraud right? Ever read a Facebook post with someone using “there” for “their?” Makes you cringe doesn’t it? I was contemplating dating a guy but his Facebook posts were so riddled with misspelling and errors I just stayed away.

Communication replete with incorrect spelling, bad grammar, and faulty sentence structure signals carelessness. Correcting those mistakes is about more than pleasing English teachers. It’s about putting your best foot forward. And at just $35 an hour (the average copyediting cost) isn’t your first book worth that kind of attention? Hire a copyeditor this is non-negotiable. Then you won’t be like the losing Mitt Romney whose campaign asked supporters to “Stand with Mitt,” for “A Better Amerca!”

Myth #5: I’ll Write It Then Market It

Nope! Market it as you create it! It’s the only way to rise above the din. In the past authors went to big publishing houses for marketing chops. But thanks to social media and the ‘Net you don’t have to. Still, you’ve got to be Barnum and Bailey to get rich in the Obama era.

Guy in his book APE, notice I keep mentioning it, yeah, you need to read it, gives a crash course on marketing and self-promotion. You can also check out his practical advice reading this Q&A I did with him about marketing for startups. Guy likens publishing an e-book to beginning a startup.

Because even he, an established author, Penguin is one of his publishers, with millions of social media followers, even he spent more than a year promoting his self-published book before it was even written.

When I sat down with business guru and CNBC star Carol Roth and asked how she promoted her New York Times best-selling book The Entrepreneur Equation the answer was simple—she did a yearlong marketing plan. That’s before she wrote a word. Yeah, you can buy her doll here!

Bottom line: When you think of writing a book is when you should create a social media profile for it, tell everyone you know, start soliciting pre-sale e-mails, and bug your local book seller and plant seeds on book-centered websites and groups. Don’t wait until it’s done, besides opening your mouth will give you a reason to actually write it.

Look, publishing is pigeonholed into a paradox. Book sales are dropping just as technology is allowing more people to publish. It’s not enough to have a good book; you need to have a well-designed, well-edited, well-marketed book to rise above the din. So Write. Revise. Format. Market. and Sell!

Author’s Bio: Ovetta Sampson is a freelance digital writer for BlueSodaPromo, a promotional marketing company based in the Chicago area. BSP offers an amazing selection of eco-friendly tote bags and thousands of stress relievers. An avid triathlete, she still finds time to run her own content marketing firm and blog.

Five Delegation Thinking Traps that Trip Almost Everyone Who Wants to Scale Up

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Scaling Up Requires Pushing Down Lower-Level Tasks

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In the companies I worked with and for, product development schedules were cyclical, with seriously tight deadlines at certain times of the year and a more relaxing pace when those deadline had been achieved. To even out this ebb and flow of deliverables, we would hire freelancers, off-sire staff, and development groups. Even the most entry-level full-time people were managing and influencing the performance of someone else.

The ability to influence another person’s performance in positive ways affected how quickly employees could grow in their individual roles. The ones who scaled up most quickly were the ones who understood that to take on higher-level tasks, they would have to delegate effectively the lower level tasks that they’d already mastered. They delegated well.

Those who couldn’t scale were often tripped up by five thinking traps.

  • We wait too long to get help. The thinking trap is I have to keep my eye on the ball, bite the bullet and get this done. When finally we look up, we still have three weeks worth of work to do and only 1 week to get it done. That thinking risks your reputation and the quality of the work. Solution: Track the time it takes to do one unit of work. Do the math to see how many units you can in a normal day and lower your that projection by 20% — to allow for the unforeseen problem or new project that comes your way. Asking someone to help when you start gives that person time to have a learning curve on the project.
  • We think can’t afford the training time. The thinking trap is It will take too much time to teach someone else. That thinking is a great way to stay stuck. Think you’ll have more time 3 days, 3 months, or 3 years from now? Solution: Take a look at what’s currently on your desk. What the work any intelligent person can do? Do it now and in three weeks the person you delegate to will be taking things off your desk.
  • We hand over the work too fast — without clearly communicating the scope of the task, expectations, or its importance. The thinking trap is A qualified person will know how to do this. A qualified person can’t know what we don’t tell. Solution: Carve out more time than you need to explain how the piece you’re delegating fits within the bigger project and to let the person know that you’re counting on him or her to do it well. Have the person do a small chunk and review it early to catch any miscommunication.
  • We keep doing the work even after we’ve assigned it someone else. The thinking trap is It’s faster if I correct this myself. We have to hand over accountability with the work. If we constantly rewrite and correct their work, the people we delegate to will figure out that no matter what they send we’ll be changing it. Solution: Clearly define and communicate the specifications of the work. Check the work against those specs. Send back the mistakes and missteps for correction. For example, when you hire a professional inputter, take your hands off the keyboard. Check for errors, but let the person make the corrections.
  • We think different is wrong. The thinking trap is I need to check and change this work because this person doesn’t have the ___ (dedication, experience, expertise…) It’s delegation critical to understand the difference between wrong and different. Someone else might do the work differently than you, but that difference may not make it wrong. Before you mark a correction, ask yourself Is this truly wrong or just different from how I might do or say it?.

Learning to delegate well is critical to growth. Anything we do ourselves limits the time we have to get to higher-level tasks. Want to scale up? Avoid these five thinking traps and you’ll be better equipped to recognize great candidates who can contribute to your success.

You may wonder how to find great delegation candidates, especially if you have little or no budget to begin. Look to the people around you — those who want experience in what you do. Talk to local colleges to find interns. Ask your friends. Finding the people to delegate to isn’t nearly as hard as learning to delegate well. It will also be easier to attract temporary help, the best VA, or volunteer interns, when you know exactly what the job specs are and how to communicate your needs. the people we delegate to will be more interested in making the same great choices we would make.

What else do you find critical to scaling up?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

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The Book List: Social Media Geek-to-Geek and Launch: How to Prepel Your Business…

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The Book List: a weekly series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, aka The Author’s Cheerleader and I work with authors & writers to help them with their online book promotion and marketing. As part of my job I read a lot of books (I love to read anyway!). The books in The Book List series will cover a range of topics such as social media, product development, marketing, blogging, business, organization, career building, finance, networking, writing, self development, and inspiration.

‘Social Media Geek-to-Geek’ by Rick & Kathy Schmidt Jamison

“Social Media Geek-to-Geek is a great resource for technologists who use social media to communicate and share real-time information. In our business environment, where transparency and relevancy rules, it’s the perfect time to equip geeks alike to join the conversation and have fun!”
Michael Brito, VP, Social Media, Edelman Digital

“A fresh view, based on up-to-date marketing experience, and particularly welcome at a time when the ground rules are changing so quickly.”
Andrew Betts, Technical Sales & Marketing Consultant, Iconda Solutions

In Social Media Geek-to-Geek, authors Rick Jamison and Kathy Schmidt Jamison explore the increasingly vital role that social media plays in technology marketing efforts. They lucidly share how you, in a tech marketing strategy, analysis or implementation role, can harness its energy for your company. Peppered with actionable wisdom from start to finish, this enlightening book kicks off by highlighting a truism that is often overlooked–the fact that social media has been made possible purely by geek innovation.

Geeks have created this unique, powerful medium of communication just as they have created and enabled every digitally-based form of creative expression that makes social media interesting, engaging and popular.

Entertaining and informative, the authors of Social Media Geek-to-Geek very rightly point out that there is no rulebook or manual or IT department for social media. But the incisive and handy volume they have put together surely comes close to filling that gap.

About Rick:
By day, Rick Jamison is disguised as a mild-mannered corporate communications contractor. But at sundown, he reveals his real superpowers as author and cartoonist. Part illustrator, part subject clarifier, and part Big
Business underbelly tickler, his words and cartoons enlighten, enliven, enrich, entertain—and, from time to time, even educate.

About Kathy:
Kathy Schmidt Jamison is a blogger, photographer, and humorist. She is Director of Strategic Communications at Synopsys where she’s privileged to work directly for and with one of the finest übergeeks on
the planet, Chairman and CEO, Dr. Aart de Geus.

You can purchase your copy of ‘Social Geek-to-Geek’ either at Synopsis Press or on Amazon.

‘Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition’ by Michael Stelzner

“Launch is your road map to success in an ever-changing world.” Guy Kawasaki, author of Enchantment –from book

“What Stelzner shares here is proven! He’s already built a community that propelled his brand not only beyond the competition, but ahead of an entire industry.” Brian Solis, author of Engage! –From book

About the Book
If you’ve been let down by the undelivered promises of marketing, this book is for you. Launch reveals a new way to grow your business that involves focusing on the needs of others, giving gifts, working with outsiders, and restraining your marketing messages. These principles are precisely the opposite of traditional marketing. Yet they work. And they are the future. If you follow the formula outlined in this book, you can attract countless customers and prospects, resulting in amazing business growth.

This book will show you how to:

Create highly sharable content that meets people’s needs
Identify and work with outside experts, many of whom will gladly promote your content
Attract and retain raving fans that will help your business grow
Creatively market and sell to people who will gladly purchase your products and services

Launch isn’t like other marketing books. Rather than making keen observations about others who’ve achieved success, the ideas and principles in this book were developed, refined, and practiced by the author to great success.

About Michael:
Michael Stelzner is the founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com (one of the world’s largest business blogs), author of the books “Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition” and “Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged.” Michael is also the man behind large summits, such as Social Media Success Summit.

Twitter: http://Twitter.com/mike_stelzner
Facebook: http://Facebook.com/smexaminer

You can purchase your copy of ‘Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition’ on Amazon.