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How To Start a Side Hustle, Sell Products on Amazon by @XLConsultingGro

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by Elaine Slatter

Since March life has changed and so has shopping.  Shopping online has become so popular that it means there are plenty of opportunities for you to become an Amazon seller and make money by starting to sell products on Amazon.  You might start this as a side hustle, but it could become your full time job!

It doesn’t take very long to set up your Amazon Seller Account.  You will be ready to sell products on Amazon in no time. For Amazon U.S. Go to services.amazon.com, then click on one of the “Start selling” links.

There are two types of account available – individual seller or pro seller. The former cost $0 per month but you will be charged about $1 for each item you sell on Amazon. The Pro seller includes more features and charges $39.99 per month. You can choose the account type based on your business budget or as Amazon suggests, it depends on how many items you will be selling per month.

The best way to get started is by selling items that are popular but you are able to purchase at a deep discount.   Purchasing items and selling them to Amazon for resale is called Retail Arbitrage.   You buy the items and then ship them to an Amazon warehouse and let Amazon fulfil your order (FBA).  This means that your items will ship free to Amazon Prime customers as long as the order qualifies for free shipping.   Amazon is responsible for fulfilling the order and taking care of any returns.

There is an app for your phone that you can use to scan an item you are thinking of purchasing.  It will tell you how much it sells for on Amazon so you can calculate your profit before you spend your money buying an item.

Things to consider in calculating your profit margin

  • Shipping Costs to the Amazon Warehouse
  • Amazon Warehouse fees
  • Exchange Rate if you are selling in a country different than the one you are buying in.
  • Amazon seller fees

 

How to Sell Products on Amazon that are Your Own Branded Products

Once you have mastered retail arbitrage then you might want to consider purchasing items in bulk from overseas and shipping them to the Amazon warehouse to be fulfilled.  This way you are creating your own brand.  For this kind of selling you will need a lot more seed money.  You will need to pay for the product up front and minimum production runs.  If the items are purchased from Asia, for example, you have to take into account

  • Production time
  • On the Water/Air shipping time
  • Clearance at the port and shipping time to an Amazon warehouse

The total amount of time before your item is ready for sale in the Amazon warehouse could take up to 2-1/2 months.  Your money is therefore tied up for approximately 3 months.

It is definitely possible to have a 6 figure income selling on Amazon, if your products are popular, but the secret is doing your homework first to find out what products sell quickly on Amazon and what products you could sell to take advantage of a particular trend.

You Can Sell These Same Products On Other Platforms

Just because you sell your items on Amazon, it doesn’t exclude you from selling them in other places.   For example, you can also sell them on Facebook marketplaces, your own e-commerce website or on E-Bay.

 

Selling on Amazon Podcast

If you want to learn more about how to sell products on Amazon, listen to our podcast with Amazon Queen Bee, Janis Carmena.  She also has a free course for beginners.

In the podcast, Janis covers the following topics.

  • Can anyone sell on Amazon?
  • What things can you sell on Amazon?
  • What brands to you sell on Amazon?
  • How do you set up an Amazon store?
  • Will running my Amazon store take a lot of time?
  • How can I learn about selling on Amazon?

 

4 smart brand-building strategies for small businesses to connect with customers

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Every company begins as a start-up. Whether it be Amazon or Microsoft, every organization starts with limited resources and a vision. Some of these businesses go on to become giant conglomerates, contributing heavily to the country’s economy.

As per the Small Business Administration, there are 30.7 million small businesses in the US alone. These businesses employ a cumulative of 1.5 million people, and over 90 percent of the economic growth comes from small and medium-sized enterprises.

Yet, small businesses have to withstand a lot of obstacles on their way. One such challenge is building a strong brand. After all, without brand-building, regardless of how great your product is, you won’t be able to connect with customers and create a brand value.

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For instance, as per Contently, 61 percent of people prefer buying from businesses that have a unique brand voice. As per Forbes, consistent branding efforts across different channels have the power to boost revenue by 23 percent.

Due to the limited resources and financial constraints, branding for small businesses can be a challenge. However, this downside can be neutered with some smart tactics.

Here are some smart brand-building tactics that help small firms to connect with their customers.

 

  1. Develop a brand positioning

The first step to creating a strong brand is deciding where you wish to position yourself in mind and hearts of consumers. The art of ensuring that you connect with customers is to make your product relevant in their lives, and this is what brand positioning allows you to do.

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Let’s take Unilever’s popular beauty bar, Dove, as an example. Rather than focusing on the functional benefits of the product or selling it as a soap that cleans the dirt particles, the company positions it as a tool for empowering women.

Each of its communication is based around wanting consumers to feel confident, just the way they are. Their tagline, “Real Beauty,” and their marketing campaigns always follow this same theme.

It is something a small business can and must do as well. Research your competitors and see how they have positioned themselves. The idea is to differentiate your offering from theirs.

Make sure to consider the customer’s perspective when deciding on your unique selling propositions and positioning.

 

  1. Design an impactful logo

A logo is one of the most basic yet significant elements of branding. Every company, regardless of its size, must invest in creating a quality logo. According to Pam Moore, it takes at least five impressions for customers to remember your brand. The brand’s logo facilitates this awareness process.

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Your logo must be present in all of your marketing communications, whether it be billboards, ads, or packaging. It helps in boosting brand recognition and thereby improves the chances of consumers connecting with your brand.

But, designing an impactful logo is not easy. You must relay your brand image and what you stand for via the logo. Therefore, it is imperative to have a clear idea of your brand values in mind when giving the brief to your logo design company.

A logo creates a distinct identity for a brand. Take Toyota as an example. It uses red as the primary color to reflect a sense of community while the use of silver and gray along with the curved edges of the design relay dependability, sleekness, and sophistication.

Understanding the various connotations of the logo, and designing elements will help you create a memorable and impactful logo for your brand.

 

  1. Reward your loyal customers

Did you know that as per HBR, boosting customer retention by 5 percent can help improve profits by up to 95 percent?

To create a strong brand, you must convert your loyal customers into advocates of your brand. It is not just a cost-effective way of building a brand but also helps in gaining more customers, as peer-review is considered to be much more reliable evidence of quality than paid content.

To cultivate loyalty among customers, begin by offering impeccable customer service. Dell is great at doing so. After the delivery of its products, Dell makes sure to call its customers to check if they are satisfied with it.

The more concerned you are as a brand about the customers, the more likely they are to be satisfied. You can take it further up a notch by rewarding your loyal customers. Have a loyalty program in place for this. Starbucks is famous for doing so.

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To leverage the loyalty program as a brand-building tactic, design a loyalty app, and launch special promotion campaigns for your loyal customers.

 

  1. Tell a story

How you choose to reflect on what your business does also matters. For instance, merely creating an “About Us” page and writing functional posts about your business won’t seal the deal.

To engage and connect with customers, you need to think outside the box. A great way to make sure that your audience remembers you is by using the power of storytelling. This tactic can be used in a variety of campaigns to better connect with customers.

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Airbnb is the master of storytelling. The company’s key messages center around local hospitality and community. Thereby, they connect with the customer’s desire to opt for local travel experiences.

For instance, in its New Year video for the year 2015, Airbnb told its story of how over 550,000 travelers will be spending the New Year Eve in their rentals. Such campaigns tug at the Fear-of-missing-out feeling prevalent among the masses.

Similarly, John Lewis’s Christmas ads are anticipated every year, for the same reason – because they tug at the heartstrings with their innovative storytelling ability.

 

Ending Remarks

It takes time to build a brand. The journey is much harder when you are a small business or a start-up who is just starting to find its feet.

However, the four tactics discussed in the blog can easily be implemented, regardless of the size of your business.

So, know your brand positioning and design your logo accordingly. Transform your customers into advocates by offering excellent customer service and use the power of storytelling to attract the masses. If you nail these four strategies, you are bound to leave a mark in your consumers’ hearts.

 

 

Looking to Start (or Grow) Your Business, Start Here! by @jillmcabe

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by Jill McAbe

The pandemic’s impact on the U.S. workforce has left an unprecedented 30 million wildly talented and ambitious Americans jobless. But amidst the uncertainty, there are many “accidental entrepreneurs” who have discovered a silver lining — the gig economy.

Oftentimes, a layoff leads people to take the leap into creating their own business, either because they have to in order to generate income or this is the push they’ve been so desperately waiting for. Severance or unemployment pay can also give them the runway to get income through the door while in the initial stages of starting a business.

However, there is a widespread gap of knowledge about how to efficiently build a business that sells talent and time keeping solo entrepreneurs from achieving their potential. There is so much noise about what to do that it’s confusing for anyone to figure out what should be done first, second, third, and so on.

Well-meaning practitioners and coaches will tell you that you need a brand strategy, content marketing, social media, funnels, client journey mapping, public relations, systemization, advertising, graphic design – the list goes on. In a way, they are right; you may need all these solutions at various stages in your growth. But there is an order of operations that will make each project more successful as it builds on the last.

When you do the right work at the wrong time, you risk not getting the benefit you hoped. You’ll end up spending time and money on things you didn’t need, and eventually, you’ll find yourself needing to circle back and do it again when the time is right for you.

When it comes to being immeasurably better with your time, one of the smartest things you can do is pick the right project at the right time. To do that you need to figure out just where you are on the Gig-Economy Career Ladder (GECL).

 

Basecamp

Businesses do one of two things: they solve a problem, or they fulfill a desire. You have developed a skill that you enjoy and sell it to fulfill a need or desire, but your business is inconsistent. It demands too many hours from you, or you cannot step away from it and keep money coming in. If this is the case, then congratulations; on the GECL, you’ve made it to basecamp. The great thing about being at basecamp is that it means you are ready to leverage everything you have learned about yourself, your industry, and your clients, and turn it into your ideal business.

 

Exploration

The easiest way to think about the exploration phase of a business is to think of research and development. The exploration phase is where you take ideas and test them and see if they have merit before dumping all sorts of cash or time into them only to find out they’re not going to work out. Projects to focus on during the exploration phase include:

  1. Identify a target market you can predictably find and that you want to serve
  2. Develop a proprietary solution for a problem your target market will pay to solve
  3. Confirm that your target market will pay you to solve their problem
  4. Test your sales process and solution delivery
  5. Refine your marketing and sales until you can predict your sales volume
  6. Refine your marketing, sales, and solution delivery to ensure worthwhile profit

The things you are looking to prove in the exploration phase are that you have a target market that you can reach and who will buy from you, that you have a solution at a price that is profitable for you to sell, and that you have marketing or advertising channels that lead to a predictable volume of traffic and eventual sales conversions.

 

Exploitation

Once the viability of your idea is proven, you can advance to the exploitation phase. The types of activities that are the focus of this phase have to do with efficiency and expansion. Because you’ve locked down your service or product, you will finally be able to streamline your operations with tried-and-true standard operating procedures (SOPs). It makes sense that you will be positioned to create standards once what you sell is standardized. Standardizing your processes is a key to becoming the owner of a system that makes money with or without you. The exploitation phase is also where you pick up a megaphone and tell everyone what you do through activities including marketing, advertising, and public relations. The types of projects that you focus on during the exploit phase are:

  1. Clarify a business vision, mission, strategy, and structure
  2. Create standard operating procedures for marketing, advertising, sales, solution delivery, legal, and administration
  3. Continuously improve all your standard operating procedures
  4. Outsource everything you can
  5. Manage your systems, not your people
  6. Enjoy your newfound free time (or start the explore phase for another solution!)

 

You are better off going through the exploration phase five or ten times than jumping to the exploitation phase before you’re truly ready. Once you have successfully explored an opportunity, you can move to exploiting it very quickly.

 

 

Jill McAbe is a Business Coach, High-Performance Expert and the #1 Amazon-Best Selling Author of It’s Go Time: The ALL-IN System For Unstoppable Success in Business and Life. By focusing on success-skills that are grounded in the contemporary sciences, Jill helps talented creatives, coaches, and professionals design and build purposeful, six and seven figure service-based businesses that work on-or-offline. Jill carries a Master of Arts in Leadership from Royal Roads University, is a faculty member of York University’s Schulich Executive Education Centre and is a Top Teacher on the global career-skills platform, Skillshare.

How to Stand Out As a Solopreneur by @DONNAAMOS

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by Donna Amos | Featured Contributor 

Building a business as a solopreneur can be fun, yet overwhelming. The most important job you have is working to stand out among the competition. This requires the right amount of focus so that you are continuously working toward more leads and sales inside your business. Here are tips that will help you build a larger business year over year.

Stay Consistent

Stick to the plan you’ve laid out for your business. Get ready for being challenged on your journey and understand that a business owner’s path is never a continuous upward climb. You’ll encounter difficulties and challenges on your way to the top. There will be times when it feels as though nothing is working. That’s when you need to be consistent in your effort to identify what works and what doesn’t. Course correct and continue onward from there.

Develop New Skills

Work hard to develop new skills that help build your business. For example, you need to become good at the following skills as a business owner:

  • Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Copywriting
  • Content creation
  • Networking
  • Consistency

You’ll discover that your business profits will increase the more you broaden your skillset.

Attend Networking Events

When things return to somewhat normal then get back out there. Attend local events to meet and network with future customers. Use your Chamber of Commerce to find out about the various events happening in your local area. Many virtual events are available now. Check out Meetups and begin building your network. Practice your what you do dialogue and get it down to 30 seconds: who do you help, what is the problem you help them with and what are the results after working with you.

Would you rather build your business entirely online? Try the hundreds of Twitter chats that occur each day. As your Twitter account grows, start your own chat and get conversations going that eventually end up with bringing new customers on board.

Use Testimonials Effectively

Nothing stands out better to potential customers than seeing what your current customers say about you. Testimonials are social proof in a world where people need to see that others are happy with your product or service. Get creative in the beginning by capturing screenshots of nice comments customers have made on Facebook or Instagram. Ask those people if you can show their headshot and comment as a testimonial to others.

Join Facebook or LinkedIn Groups

Take the time to build a reputation as an expert inside LinkedIn or Facebook groups. Don’t overtly promote and sell in these groups. Instead, offer tips and expertise that show that you’re there to help others. Do the following inside these groups:

  • Contribute to the threads
  • Answer questions
  • Engage with other members

You’ll soon be an expert authority in that community. Opportunities to do business will arise when others in need of your help start reaching out to you personally.

Stay In Contact With Customers

Use snail mail or email to stay in contact with former and existing customers. Nothing stands out more in today’s world than a simple thank you. Thank them for being a customer and ask how you might help going forward. Mention any special offers you have at this time, as well.

Consider a quick video message using a tool such as Loom. Send a thank you note in the mail. Anything you do to personally connect with customers will go a long way in gaining their business again and again.

Create a Facebook Business Page

Create a Facebook page and become active on it. You can get comments, reviews and messages from leads and customers on your page. Use various forms of content to connect with prospects, such as:

  • Videos
  • Quotes
  • Mini-articles
  • Ads

Use Facebook Live to periodically get yourself in front of followers. More people will show up for these sessions as your number of followers grows because Facebook notifies them when you start a new Live session. Use your Facebook Live sessions to:

  • Provide helpful tips
  • Inform leads about sales and promotions
  • Use it as a selling webinar

Use Instagram Effectively

Stand out on Instagram by using images effectively. Make sure your profile is completely filled out with a link back to your most important URL. Use a high-quality profile picture and research hashtags that are relevant for your business.

Use stories to engage with your fans. Post excellent images on a daily basis with the correct hashtags so your core target market can find you. Convert your account to a business profile after reaching 10,000 followers so that you can add links to the stories that you post. This will increase the amount of traffic over to your email opt-in landing pages.

Stand Out With YouTube Marketing

People are increasingly consuming video content online. Start a YouTube channel and publish weekly video content to it. This is one of the most effective ways to stand out as a solopreneur if you work at your channel consistently. Your subscriber base will grow steadily if you post great tips and ideas and encourage viewers to subscribe.

YouTube videos will help your website search engine rankings improve as well. The reason is that you can embed your videos on your site’s pages. As your visitors watch these videos, Google notices that they’re on your site for a longer amount of time. This is one of the metrics that helps improve your overall search rankings.

Don’t forget to optimize your videos for quality rankings in the YouTube search engine. Optimize by using:

  • An attractive video thumbnail
  • Detailed descriptions
  • Keywords
  • Linking to other relevant resources

Stand Out With Your Website

One of the best ways to gain customers inside your small business is getting good at attracting prospects who are further along the buying cycle. Some people are online searching for general information around your topic and niche. Others have done their research already and are now just about ready to buy.

You want to create content on your website that attracts both types of people. However, the more you can attract the people who are ready to buy, the more effective your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts will become.

Your website will stand out well if you focus on putting out excellent content that informs and educates. Do keyword research and find keywords that have the following words in them:

  • Buy
  • Review
  • Top
  • Comparison
  • Price

These terms indicate that your visitor is looking for the best company to buy from. If your content gets found in the search engines for those types of terms, then you will notice an increase in the quality of your site’s visitors from a purchasing standpoint.

Don’t forget to also create “how-to” content to capture visitors just starting down their research path. You’ll have the ability to capture them as leads and nurture them into buying from you later.

Use Email Marketing Intelligently

Your ultimate goal to stand out as a business owner should be to build an email marketing list. An email list allows you to market to your prospects over time until they trust you enough to buy your products or services. Work hard to place strategic ways for people to become email subscribers on your website and social media channels.

Send out weekly or bi-weekly newsletters that provide helpful content for your subscribers. Educate them and help make their lives better. Link them to your new blog articles or social media posts. Send them to your latest YouTube video. Ask yourself how you can best nurture them along so they come to trust you enough to buy from you.

If you take the time to build a large email newsletter list over time, then you will discover that you can often create revenue on demand by sending out the right offer or discount at the appropriate time.

Standing out as a solopreneur isn’t as difficult as you might think it is. Yes, the marketing world is a noisy one with many business owners trying to get their messages out. Your job is to use the above tips in a way that resonates well with your target market. Teach them something valuable first. They will notice that you’re different from your competitors and will buy from you.

 

How to Create a Reopen Plan by @DrRKayGreen

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by Dr. R. Kay Green | Featured Contributor

As the shelter-in-place laws begin to easy, many business owners are looking toward their future. But nothing is going to be the same, and opening up business will not be as simple as going back to business as usual. No matter the industry, changes are going to have to be made, and care will have to be taken when reopening business.

Here are five things to consider while creating your reopen plan.

Know the laws in your state.

The first step to any reopening plan is to make sure you are compliant with any laws in your state. Make sure you stay up-to-date on any shelter in place laws, but also keep an eye on things like recommended building capacity. You may not be able to fill a restaurant to full occupancy, for example. This may affect your time table.

Of course, for many, these laws are changing every day. Make sure you keep your finger on the pulse and be prepared to change and update your plan as new information becomes available.

Consider any logistical challenges.

Some businesses will have more difficulties than others operating in this post-COVID environment. Will your prices have to go up to compensate for the lowered occupancy? Is it feasible for you to test temperatures at the door? These are the questions you should be asking yourself to ensure the smoothest transition.

Some “best practices” might simply not be possible or beneficial for your business. Take the time to consider these carefully and make sure you have the best possible plan for you.

Get serious about cleaning.

As day-to-day work resumes, it is important not to let safety measures go lax. It is incredibly important for all of your employees to understand that regular cleaning is imperative. You should be purchasing masks for them, and consider investing in additional safety measures such as barriers in front of registers to ensure both their safety and the safety of your clientele, for example.

Ultimately, though, it will be the responsibility of your employees to keep things clean and safe, even when work life starts to pick up again. Make sure they understand that this is in their best interest as well as the best interest of your clients.

Consider the little things.

While talking about reopening seems easy in theory, in practice there could be things you had not accounted for. For example, consider the size of your bathrooms and the space between stalls. Can people easily move around while safely social distancing? Or what about your parking lot? How filled does it get, and what does foot traffic look like.

These are things that are easy to overlook, but can create challenges in the long run. Think of your business from a very analytical perspective and try to catch these things before they actually become problems.

Be prepared to take it slow.

As difficult as it might be to hear, these past few months have marked a dramatic shift for everyone, and we will not be able to return to normal overnight. Even as you open your business, consider taking it in phases—for example, having employees come into office in “shifts” and have them work remote on off days.

But even while you are taking it slow, there are things you can do to take advantage of time. If your employees are not going to be working the same number of hours, for example, now is a good time to invest in training, to empower them to make the most of their time.ournal, College View, Business New Hampshire Magazine, Bay State Banner, Reader’s Circle, North Dallas Gazette, Harlem News, Top News Today, One News Page, NE Informer, Women in Business PR News, Consumer News Today, Women PR News, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Daily Herald, The Miami Herald, and Book News Articles.

 

Why CRO is a Must for Your Small Business by Kurt Phillip of @ConverticaOu

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by Kurt Phillip

Your website exists to push your brand, whether that’s through subscriptions to your course, customer email acquisition, or direct purchases of a product. To make the most of it, you need a strategy that leads new website visitors from your landing page to checkout, so that few people click away.

This is where CRO comes in. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of fine-tuning your website to create the highest number of conversions possible. What this conversion looks like is entirely up to you, and depends on what your end goals are. Regardless, CRO is a lucrative process; services like Convertica help businesses increase sales in ways they didn’t think were possible through CRO.

Below, we’ve compiled four reasons why CRO is a must for small business owners in the digital arena.

 

1) Your Site Takes on a Greater Purpose

When you implement CRO conversion tactics, your website is no longer just an indicator of your brand’s existence. Instead, it’s a fully optimized sales website where every single visitor is encouraged to subscribe or make a purchase. You will achieve increased conversion rates through a variety of tactics which all differ based on what your goals are.

 

2) It’s the Most Efficient Way to Use Your Budget

If you’re a small business, that means you probably have tried digital marketing on your own in the past with lackluster results. However, creating a Facebook page for your company and sharing it with friends doesn’t compare to how intricate CRO tactics are. CRO leads to increased conversions, which means more sales. In turn, you’ll have a more flexible budget that you can use to expand your brand or put it back into your company.

 

3) Larger Customer Base

More conversions means more visitors to your site. You’ll develop a larger network of supporters, who will then share your business with others.

Word of mouth marketing is an incredibly powerful way for a business to improve its client base. More purchases = more people talking about your brand, which means more site visitors. These visitors are then converted via your expert CRO techniques, and the cycle just continues. It’s a win-win.

 

4) Increases Specific Customer Targeting

The primary goal of CRO is to hone in on your target audience and then convert them using techniques you’re confident they’ll respond to. You create these tactics via analytics, which show helpful information about your audience, such as:

  • Age range
  • Location
  • Gender
  • Bounce rate (how long they spend on any one page on your site)

Customers like to purchase or subscribe to brands that they have a connection with. CRO prioritizes connection with your audience. You’ll have a website designed to specifically target people who are most likely to buy your products.

 

CRO is the Future

As the world of e-Commerce expands, so does the demand for new ways to capture your audience. More brands are waking up to the benefits of CRO, which means competition is only getting more fierce. Step up your digital brand today, and watch the benefits unfold.

 

 

Kurt Philip is the founder and CEO of Convertica, a done-for-you conversion rate optimization agency. You can get the Convertica team to audit your site for FREE. Visit convertica.org for details.

 

 

 

 

 

Mistakes to Avoid as a New Entrepreneur

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by Jessica Peters

If you have an entrepreneurial mindset and are looking to launch your own business, it’s important that you possess the right skills and tools to increase the chances of your company becoming a success. No successful entrepreneur has got to where they are now without hard work, patience, and perseverance, so here are some common mistakes that you should avoid before launching your brand.

Not Setting Attainable Goals

For your startup to move in the right direction, it’s crucial that you lay out goals that are attainable. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of pushing themselves too hard and creating unrealistic goals. While it’s important to aim high, if you don’t set both short and long-term goals, it can be easy to lose track and focus on how to get your idea off the ground. Once you identify the specific steps needed to succeed, you face a greater chance of your business becoming a success.

Not Thinking About Marketing

If you’re new to the business world, relying on word of mouth and free PR will only get you so far. To draw consumers in, it’s essential that you use the right marketing strategies. The vast majority of startups will need to invest their time and money in marketing, including SEO, paid advertising, and content marketing. If you aren’t sure which strategy will work best, conducting research into your competitors to establish how they market their brand can help. It’s important that you create a USP (unique selling point) to compete and differentiate yourself.

Financial Mismanagement

If you aren’t managing your finances, it’s likely that your startup will fall at the first hurdle. Whether you are on a tight budget or you have money to spend, it’s vital that you know where every dollar is being spent in your business. To make things easier, hiring a financial advisor may be the best course of action. Having a professional by your side can help you avoid financial blunders and ensure your operation runs smoothly.

Not Taking Time for Yourself

As an entrepreneur, it’s only natural that you will have the drive to succeed. To get your startup off to a good start, it’s important that you put your full energy and concentration into your brand. While you may want to spend every waking hour on your business, if you don’t take time out away from your enterprise, this can have a negative impact on your mental and physical health. If you’re the type of person who is constantly on their phone taking calls and chasing emails, it may be wise to put down the tech and give yourself a break. Getting enough sleep, following a balanced diet, and making exercise a priority can all contribute towards keeping your health and wellbeing in check.

Focusing on Growth Only

Your company won’t be able to expand if your strategies aren’t dynamic. To be a successful entrepreneur, you will need to think in numerous directions when making decisions. If you are heavily focused on business growth only, rather than the quality of your services, this will have an impact on your business operation. Finding a balance between quality and growth is key for success in the business world.

Building a company from scratch is no easy feat. As an entrepreneur, there will be many obstacles and mistakes you will face and make along the way. However, it’s how you deal with the situation which will keep your operation running. To win a competitive edge over your rivals, you need to be aware of some of the fatal mistakes that entrepreneurs make which can damage your business.

 

Jessica Peters is a freelance writer from Melbourne who blogs about health and fitness. Jessica is an avid traveler and regularly crosses the globe to learn about other cultures while blogging from her laptop.

 

 

 

 

Strategies to Stay Motivated During COVID-19 by @JenniferKemComm

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by Jennifer Kem

COVID-19 is impacting the individual and collective experiences of communities around the globe. With many Shelter-in-Place or Stay-at-Home orders being practiced, some are celebrating the permission to be a little more introverted, while others long for the illimitable social structure built into an office ecosystem. Some express gratitude for the constancy of their income, while others fear and mourn the great financial losses imminent if not already present. One pattern, however, that I am finding so many have in common during this global pandemic regardless of if they’re in a position of pain or privilege is a lack of motivation.

Motivation acts as the initiator of minute daily tasks such as getting out of bed every morning and brushing your teeth, to hustling your team of children out the door, to innovating new protocols in your business’ operations to ensure client attention and retention. It can often be threatened in times of stress. So, as the rhythms and routines that keep us so connected to the consistency, community, and creative efforts that literally and figuratively keep us moving are strained during the pandemic, so many of us are feeling lost, lethargic, and lazy.

As a serial entrepreneur and brand futurist, I strongly believe that we must not only creatively work to maintain stability during the pandemic, but also begin to ponder what post-pandemic growth will be available to us at the end of this challenging time. Therefore, if we want to not just survive this, but thrive through it and after, it is imperative that we stay motivated. Below are three strategies that I’m certain will help to light a fire under you to keep you stretching instead of stagnant in this time of limitation: one, find an accountability partner; two, research brand models; and three, deepen your emotional intelligence.

 

FIND AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER

An accountability partner can be anyone from a good friend who needs something else to do, a coach, a superior, or a mentor who you can communicate your goals and check-in with weekly to keep you on track. This person will serve as an anchor. Seek people who are managing competently, but honestly during this time. Someone who acknowledges the severity of the situation, as well as stays solution-focused on strategies to move through it. If you don’t have an overly available friend or boss who are modeling this form of honest and qualified leadership, then look to sources like LinkedIn’s Career Advice program, which connects you to leaders in your industry willing to volunteer their time to offer experiential knowledge to help you to succeed. Score is another great organization that connects professionals to mentors to keep them motivated.

RESEARCH BRAND MODELS

People aren’t the only inspiring resources that we can connect to in times of energetic drought. Brands can also serve as bustling and beautiful archetypes that can encourage renewed attention and action. Make a list of brands that you admire because they are modeling resilience, courage, and connection during the pandemic. Ask yourself: What do you like about what they’re doing? How can you borrow those skills to show up as a more competent, curious, and impactful person in this time of crisis?

DEEPEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

All instances of suffering can either be used to bring out the worst or the best in us. The choice is each of ours to make. There are a lot of people creating free content right now: offering self-care services like donation-based yoga programs, online tutorials that teach viewers anything from crocheting summer socks to mindfulness exercises. There is also a plethora of articles being published with updates about COVID-19 and how to cope from individual, business, and communal perspectives. The risk here is information and content creation overload, but the opportunity is far greater. Find the tools that speak to you and create a schedule that integrates physical, mental, emotional, and social expressions to keep all of your important faculties engaged. At the end of the day, you are your best life strategist. How can you live your fullest life during COVID-19 and set yourself up to succeed when this season is over?

 

Regardless of how COVID-19 is impacting you, your family, your business, or your community during this time, it’s imperative that you keep your energy levels high, your focus fixated on hope, and your goals aligned with the success that you want to create in the future. Finding an accountability partner, researching brand models, and deepening your emotional intelligence serve as three ways to keep your internal fire lit, your heart centered, and your mind open while so many other things are shut down. Shelter-in-place doesn’t mean to stop seeking and it certainly doesn’t mean to stop serving, it simply means that we must do both differently. I invite you to be endlessly creative during this crisis for your benefit and the continued and conscious improvement of the human collective.

 

 

Jennifer “Jen” Kem is a San Francisco Bay Area-based branding and marketing expert who gets entrepreneurs seen, heard, and paid – for being themselves. She’s the creator of the Master Brand Method: a framework to develop powerful brand archetypes that win customers’ hearts. She has provided digital strategy coaching for emerging entrepreneurs, celebrity brands like Oprah Winfrey Network, and major corporations including Verizon. Recently, she launched her legacy project, Femmefluence, a platform to increase women’s affluence and influence. To date, her proudest creations are her three children.

3 Ways Small Businesses Can Provide Comfort to Customers During COVID-19 by @DeborahSweeney

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In April, I was able to catch a Salesforce webinar on stories of resilience that was co-hosted by Mark Cuban. During the webinar, a listener wrote in to ask his advice for marketing and messaging during this time. His response was simple and transparent: at this specific moment, small businesses need to connect more than sell.

Behind every sale a small business makes is a customer. Right now, that customer is scared or at least a bit worried about something during COVID-19. Small businesses can provide comfort to their customers that go beyond making a purchase from their storefront. Here are a few ways you can get begin spreading kindness as quickly as today.

Add a handwritten note to orders.

Small business owners are currently working from home and have adjusted their daily routines accordingly to safety/shelter in place structure. As we take the time to make healthy lunches and add meditation to our schedules, how about setting aside 20 minutes to hand write thank you notes?

Put aside 20 minutes daily (if not more) to write physical thank you notes to customers. Not sure what to write? Keep it simple. Write a few sentences thanking them for shopping with you. Talk about how much you love to use the product they purchased or where the inspiration to create it came from. If you’re artistic, add an illustration to the note.

Encourage shoppers to stay connected by including your contact information, including social media handles, website link, and where they may sign up to receive a company newsletter, at the bottom of the card. Customers will be surprised and delighted to see a thoughtful thank you note included with their order.

Engage on social media.

Most individuals spend roughly 90 minutes on social media apps. Our amount of screen time has likely increased significantly during COVID-19. As customers and potential customers scroll through their Instagram and Twitter dashboards, your business has plenty of opportunities at hand for how it may engage and connect on social.

  • Repost content. Share the love by spreading it on your social accounts. Fill Instagram Stories with image reposts from customers excited to receive their new products. Retweet tweets from customers about positive interactions with your business.
  • Respond to comments. Whether these comments are made as a private message or publicly to your social media page, write back in a timely manner to thank customers for their kind words or address any potential issues or concerns.
  • Follow customers. Depending on the platform, follow your loyal customers back. They’ll be thrilled to see their favorite small business follows them!

Take a phone call together.

Many entrepreneurs, including business consultants, PR executives, and real estate professionals, are accustomed to taking calls and meetings with clients. We may not be able to physically meet with customers during this time, but that doesn’t mean we are unable to connect over the phone. Pick up the phone and call clients with whom you have developed a rapport together.

What’s a good icebreaker to open with for this kind of call? Why not start by asking, “How are you doing?” It’s an ordinary question that has an extraordinary impact. Clients, established and brand new alike, are ready to talk. They want to highlight professional and personal aspects of life that are going well, ask for help where they need it, and update you with news on major changes or trends in and out of the industry.

Use this time to have a heartfelt, open conversation. This is one of the greatest opportunities you have to connect on a transparent level. Your kindness and understanding will pay back incredible dividends into the business. Make the time for a long, candid chat. It will pay off in the long term — and is absolutely worth it.

 

Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation.com which provides online legal filing services for entrepreneurs and businesses, startup bundles that include corporation and LLC formation, registered agent services, DBAs, and trademark and copyright filing services. You can find MyCorporation on Twitter at @MyCorporation.

Considering a Business Pivot? Here are the 5 “P’s” you must Ponder before you Pounce by @Inspireonthego

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by Marleen Fairchild

 

Considering a Business Pivot? Here are the 5 “P’s” you must Ponder before you Pounce:

1. Passion equals Payment

Here are two P’s for the price of one. Change is often hard on most of us. So, if you’re truly considering a pivot in your business, it should be to get closer to the daily activities and subject matter you’re most passionate about. Consumers don’t pay for lukewarm information. Our hyper-informative society requires cutting edge research, insider exclusives, and poignant strategies that will get right to the point on what they need to know. To deliver these golden nuggets, time and time again, you have to be constantly and rigorously seeking out and developing this type of information to deliver to your audience/customer. Therefore, you must be passionate and engaged before you expect to charge for your expertise.

 

2. Pray

Not many people write this down in their business plan, but it is an often-understated necessity to business preparation and survival. Most entrepreneurs are very familiar with the term faith and speak candidly about their dependence on God to see them through situations that appear insurmountable from a business standpoint. Ask around, it will not take long to find an entrepreneur who lists faith as a catalyst for taking a leap into the unknown with only a hope and a prayer.

 

3. Pick a date

Procrastination is a terrible “P” to be plagued with. It has killed more dreams than can be counted. If you don’t set a date to when you will make a move, then someday will never come. One of the benefits of formal education is that a student is given clear guidelines as to when things are due. These declarative deadlines provide the incremental gauges needed to determine how much work needs to be done and by when so that the final product is ready by the deadline. The business world may not offer as clear of deadlines but you have to put them in place if you ever determine to make anything happen. It will not happen otherwise. Pick a date, then stick to it. Extensions in the real world are costly and don’t come easy, so don’t give yourself an out when the date arrives.

 

4. Purpose-driven

It never fails that at some point you will be deterred by some obstacle or hardship to making this move. You had better have a clearly defined purpose or motivator that will get you over that hump. Being ill-prepared here has sent many entrepreneurs back to indeed.com. This venture is not easy and is laden with grunt work. You may be saying to yourself today that you will do whatever it takes to get things done. I firmly believe that you will. However, you may not be ready for the immobility of an elderly parent to embellish your schedule, or the misbehavior of a child to trigger parent-teacher conferences or mandatory corrective action, or the layoff of a spouse that makes you question whether now is the right time to pursue this. Your pursuit will be challenged, and you need to be ready for it with enough purpose-fueled arsenal to get you through it.

 

5. Push and Press

Think about the last 10 minutes on the elliptical or the last mile in the marathon. You have given everything you have and you see the finish line in sight. Willpower may be faint and scarce. Support may be waning. The quarter is ending on a low note. The sales have all fallen through. Every potential lead has said no. The Holidays are ensuing. You have done all the research you can and you stand at the precipice unable to see the next clear step. Questions grip you. You know you have passion for this. You have prayed and have taken a leap of faith. You have set the date and you know why you are doing this with a strong and sure purpose. Now push on and press in. There is no time to think here. You have been diligent and reserved. There is no more to do, but to do it. Dig in and just move. Go. Grow. Push. Press. Pivot.

 

 

 

About Marleen Fairchild: After receiving her Bachelor and Master degrees in Communications from Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Los Angeles, Marleen made the decision to relocate to Las Vegas.

After successfully navigating her relocation to Las Vegas in 2015, Marleen found her passion in helping others smoothly traverse the logistical challenges of relocating to, and from, Las Vegas, Nevada, as a Realtor.

Marleen’s an avid reader, blogger and coffee enthusiast. She’s a member at Southern Hills Baptist Church, where she serves at the Coffee Shop, and can be found working from her laptop at odd hours in local coffee shops around the city.