Successful Blog

Thanks to Week 378 SOBs

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muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

Purple SOB Button Original SOB Button Red SOB Button Purple and Blue SOB Button
and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 377 SOBs

by

muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

Purple SOB Button Original SOB Button Red SOB Button Purple and Blue SOB Button
and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 376 SOBs

by

muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

Purple SOB Button Original SOB Button Red SOB Button Purple and Blue SOB Button
and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Do You Want to Work for Yourself in 2013?

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By Peter Grant

If you’ve been contemplating running your own business but think that the economic climate means you can’t start it yet, think again. The financial slowdown has made it difficult for some businesses, yes, but if you can find a niche to work in, you could make a real success of your fledgling business.

Many people who want to work for themselves start out by opening a franchise business. Running a franchise can help to provide the support you need because you aren’t thrown in at the deep end but rather, are given support by the franchisor. By running a franchise, you essentially buy the rights to trade under a certain brand and use its logo and other intellectual property. Here’re some tips to take on board if you want to start your own business.

Thinking like a businessperson

There are so many franchises available that you can afford to think about what really interests you and what you think you’d be good at. How could your personality help you to run a business? With any business venture, you’ll need to have strong motivation and enjoy meeting people and giving them good service. This is, after all, what makes your customers want to return to you again in the future.

Choosing a franchise

Think about the experience you have and how you could best lend this to a franchise. If you’ve worked in a restaurant before and helped to manage the business, you could think about running a food franchise. Or, if you enjoy graphic design and have good attention to detail, you could contemplate running a print franchise.

Make sure the franchise you choose offers support. Contact existing franchisees and ask them what they think about the franchisor. Use this feedback to help you in weighing up the risks and benefits of each particular franchise you’re interested in.

Your business plan

The very nature of a franchise means you’ll get much more support than if you were going it alone in a start-up. You will need to write a business plan though, to give yourself direction. Your franchisor and any finance lenders you meet with may want to check this.

Start by describing your business and the service you are going to offer. Mention the competition you believe you’ll face in your area and how you will navigate around this to be successful and one step ahead of them. Include a conservative estimate of what you expect to make in your first, second and third year of operation.

How to anticipate your customers

Whatever service or product you want to offer, and however unique you think it is, potential customers won’t come near you unless you can persuade them why they need your product – and why they should choose you over a competitor. You need to focus on unique selling points, or USPs. Which USPs do you think you can offer, and how will these benefit your customers? You might find it easier to come up with USPs by thinking first about the lives of your customers. For busy mums who work full time, can you offer a delivery service in the evening to suit them? Can you do a quick turnaround? Think about what convenience you can offer your customers, including a competitive price.

Money, money, money

One question that will certainly need answering before you jump into a franchise is – how are you going to fund it? While it is certainly significantly cheaper to start a franchise than your own stand-alone business, you will need some funds up front.

If you’re thinking of getting finance to get the franchise going, banks are usually quite positive about lending to franchisees because there is much less risk involved.

Regarding the everyday running of your franchise, remember to set yourself a budget for everything – from phone providers to stationery providers – and stick to it. For a healthy cash flow, make sure your customers pay on time. You can encourage this by asking them to pay a deposit or signing a contract.

Advertising your franchise

Thankfully for franchisees, marketing isn’t as tough as it could be. Due to the awareness of the brand you’re joining already being in the public arena, you’ve got half the battle won.

Don’t forget though that people will still need to know your particular branch of the franchise exists, so it’s often a good idea to focus on your local market, demonstrating local knowledge.

Make sure the area you want to open up in has a market for your business, otherwise it’ll be an uphill battle from the offset for you to win customers.

You can advertise in a number of ways, and don’t underestimate business cards for networking – keep them on you at all times. Doing a little market research could be very helpful too, giving you an insight into what makes your customers tick and what they think about your competitors.

Legal stuff

As you’re running a business, you’ll be able to access your customers’ details so you must be careful with them – and make sure your staff are too. Train them consistently and make sure they check details each time a customer contacts you. Consistency helps to reassure customers and will also help you build a great reputation.

Author’s Bio: Peter Grant is a franchisee at Minuteman Press International, a printing franchise operating throughout the US, Canada, UK and Australia. Minuteman Press provides a wide variety of printing services, from full color printing to graphic design. Minuteman Press has been voted #1 within the printing industry for 2012 – its 20th time overall. Visit http://www.shop.minutemanpress.com for more information.

Did You Picture a Successful 2012 for Your Company’s Employees?

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With Christmas in the rear view mirror, many thoughts now turn to New Year’s Eve and the New Year that will be here in less than a week.

For many small business owners, that also means looking back at the past 12 months and determining what worked, what maybe did not work, and what needs to be done over the next 12 months to make 2013 an even better year for one’s company.

As noted last time, how did you treat your customers over these last 12 months?

As some small business owners have discovered, this last year meant gaining some and losing a few customers. The ultimate question many of them will be left asking, what could they have done better to cement these relationships with the very people that keep them in business?

While business owners will agree that customers are a vital part to staying in business, employees prove just as important if not more a key component to keeping the doors open. Without quality workers to keep things running smoothly, a business owner can see their dreams go down in flames rather quickly.

Along with reviewing what you did for your customers this year, take a few minutes at this time and review what you did for your employees.

Among the items to look at:

* Making sure their needs were met – From the little things like benefits to making sure they had all the tools necessary to complete their jobs (see below), did you meet their needs? While many small business owners have had to scale back on benefits due to the economy, others still continue to offer things like health insurance, 401(k)’s and more. If you are not offering these, can you change that in 2013?

* Setting the scene – Whether you operate out of a spacious office or one the size of your home living room, what were the conditions your employees had to work under during the last 12 months? Did you make the office environment as comfortable as possible, making sure simple things like office space, lighting, ventilation, safety etc. were in place? Office workers tend to thrive in environments that are both comfortable and secure. If they are currently working under strenuous conditions, there is a good chance that their work performance suffered at times. What do you need to change in 2013?

* Taking time to reflect – While the goal of any company is to be as productive as possible, did you recognize your workers during the year? Such occasions can be things as simple as office happy hours, a party from time to time, birthday celebrations, awards for a job well done etc. If you offer a year-end party, did you record the last 12 months and show off all the success via things like an office video or blurb photo album? By reminding employees of all the successful things they did over this last year, you not only make them feel better about their efforts, but you also give them reminders of what can be accomplished. Lastly, videos and photos of the office team working together, solving customer issues, and celebrating office milestones (birthdays, anniversaries and more) helps make for a more unified staff;

* Staff improvement – Finally, you always hear coaches and many athletes talking about there is always room for improvement with their teams. The same holds true in the workplace, especially when you run a small business with a small number of employees. As noted a moment ago, everyone there is part of a team, a unit that must function as one for the entire company to succeed. While you run the company and have the final call, get input from your workers on the company’s efforts these last 12 months. From the administrative assistant on up to your top employee, everyone’s feedback counts.

As you get set to run your business into 2013, always remember that without your dedicated employees, you could be hanging a permanently “closed” sign on the front door.

Photo credit: blog.parago.com

About the author: Dave Thomas covers small business topics for a variety of websites, including www.verybestsoftware.net.

 

 

 

Building An Anti-Fragile Website

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by James Ellis

What’s the opposite of fragile? Robust? Strong? Wrong. Those words imply the ability to survive change. Fragile means the inability to survive change, so the opposite would be something that actually gets better with change. It’s not robust, it’s antifragile.

Bend, Don’t Break

Based on an argument by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his new book Antifragile, we should be looking for things, processes and ideas that are antifragile, things that actually get better the more you beat up on them. They learn to bend instead of break, and actually become stronger at the bend.

This twistedly simple idea sounds impossible. How can we build web sites and tools that actually get better the more they fail?

It seems impossible. The code structure that controls all of our web creations is very fragile, as anyone who forgot to include that trailing slash in a div tag can tell you. A single missed keystroke can be the difference between slick and useful and a mound of bit-based junk.

Create Antifragile Systems

So how do we build antifragile web sites? I propose that it’s not the sites that need to be antifragile, but the systems we place around them that we should focus on.

Here’s an example. You build a web site. Do you have some completed procedures to test your code before you launch? Is there a committee that looks at every word and every image and analyzes each page? These are processes that work to make sure that the site doesn’t break on launch. These processes are necessary, but they drag out the launch process, sometimes doubling or even tripling development times. And because of these processes, you and your business feel confident that anything you launch is pretty much bulletproof.

Until something changes. A new browser, new audience, new business requirements, unforeseen product launches, new digital channels, whatever it is, change is coming. You built a site designed to withstand 2012 pressures, but 2013 is right around the corner.

So instead of building a perfect site for the now, you build a great site for now, but you build a process that learns from the failures that always follow? Spend less of your resources on quality assurance, and more on post-launch testing and learning. Because you are anticipating and looking for failures, you will be the first to spot new trends and ideas. Because you are learning how to fix these new failures, you are becoming a smarter development house. Because you are not pretending that the future isn’t coming, you will be the first to succeed within it.

Your website is inherently fragile. It will break. No amount of thought, time, brains or energy can keep you from building a future-proof site. Can’t. Be. Done. Changing your process from 100% proactive-focused into something that can react to inevitable changes better completely revolutionizes your web development strategy and makes you better long term.

Because what have you made antifragile? Your entire web development business. The more failures you see, the faster you can address them and the better you become. You will get better the more you fail. And since failure is inevitable, this means you will inevitably become better at web development.

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is a digital strategist, mad scientist, lover, fighter, drummer and blogger living in Chicago. You can reach out to him or just argue with his premise at saltlab.com.