Karen Skidmore's Kick-Ass Blog | CanDoCanBe

Feeling overwhelmed and don't know what to do?

Whether you are in the very early stages of starting a new business or have been going for many years and have begun to want to move your business forward a notch or two, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

I know as it is an emotion that I often feel myself – I call it my “rabbit in headlights” look!

It’s important to keep everything as simple as possible during these times.  Start with the end in mind and when you have decided what your “big picture” is, then break this down in to smaller time chunks, for example 3 months, 6 months and 9 months.

Think of it as creating a time line of events and these can become your shorter term goals.  Once you are clear on your 3 month goal, now is the time to brainstorm and come up with a list of simple steps to take and activities to do that will take you on your journey.

Do your customers have the Amazon experience?

Last night was my “How to Automate Your Marketing” teleclass and boy, did we pack a lot in.  We looked at each stage of the marketing cycle and how you could use different web-based marketing tools to automate each part of your customer experience.

One email I received this morning giving me some feedback from last night, commented on how well Amazon up-sell you: “I went into Amazon yesterday to buy the copywriting book you recommended & ended up buying 2 others bring the total to about £20, instead of the £8 total for just one. It's very clever what they do, because I don't feel I've been ripped off, I just feel I've had a great buying experience.”

I have always admired Amazon’s wonderful buying experience and I do exactly the same thing.  Go in for one book and come out with a library.

But back to your business.  You may not have the marketing budgets and system development tools that Amazon may have, but how can you replicate the “great buying experience” that they offer.  With a few easy to send auto-responders, a simple shopping cart and efficient on line payment service, your business could have your customers loving to spend money with you ,too.

Get in touch if you want to know how – I’m taking a break for the summer holidays but will be back working 1–2–1 with clients again in September.

Asking for referrals: Ask "who do you know" not "do you know"

You all know that asking for business referrals is good thing, don’t you?  But how to go about asking for them can be an entirely different kettle of fish.

One of the most simplest, yet most effective, ways of increasing the number of referrals from existing clients is to stop asking:

“Do you know of anyone who may be interested in what I offer?”

and start asking:

“Who do you know who may be interested in what I offer?”

The simple change of emphasis on the word “who” opens the person’s mind up and they start searching for an answer.  “Do you know” is a classic closed question which only gives you two answers:  yes or no.

“Who do you” is an open question which allows the person to think about an answer. 

And if they can’t think of anyone at the time, there is a greater chance of them thinking of a name at a later date. 

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For more practical and simple ways of marketing your home business, grab your copy of my marketing guide:  The CanDoCanBe Marketing Manual for Home Businesses.  More than 50 copies sold over the last few months!

Do you judge a book by it's digital cover?

When creating your own information products, such as e-books and downloadable reports, it is really important to present it in a “physical form”.  Even if you are delivering your product digitally, having an image of what it is you are selling helps create value.

Up until now, I have been using a great do-it-yourself piece of software called E-Cover Generator which creates 3D graphics of book covers, CV covers and newsletters.  It was fun, little tool that only cost $40 or so. 

But recently I was recommended to speak to Yvonne Tagbo, who works as a graphic designer from home, and she has been creating some great 3D digital images at very affordable prices.  (You can see an example of her work here on this post that I use for my “Create an Email Newsletter in Just 30 Days!” home study programme.)

If you are creating your own info-products, then check out Yvonne’s website http://www.ecovercreative.com/

Computer crash and no back-up

It’s every home business owner’s nightmare!  A crashed computer with no back-up. 

A horror story perhaps, but it’s a reality check for the majority of us.  I know that I didn’t use to bother with backing up.  It just took too long and it was an admin chore that I often just forgot about.

I was fortunate.  It was someone else’s computer crash that got me in to action and I now have an automatic online back-up every time I shut my computer down.  I use a guy called Dan Adler who set it all up for me over the phone within the hour and a small monthly fee gives me a daily back-up.

It may be that your ISP provides online back-up so check out BT broadband or who ever you use and see how much and how easy it is to set up. 

But whatever, you do, just make sure you BACK UP!!

Feast or Famine: How do you avoid the business highs and lows?

When you first start up a home business and become self-employed, you have an empty diary and all the time in the world to get working on your marketing plan.

After all, if you haven't got any clients or customers, what else are you going to spend your time on?
 
Then your marketing starts to work, your leads turn in to paying customers and your time is taken up with delivering the business.  Marketing takes a back seat and you think "Whey hey, I've cracked this one!"

But, then over time your projects come to an end and your customers have bought all they want to buy.
 
Help!  The work is drying up and you are suddenly kicked backed in to a marketing frenzy.
 
Marketing is often one of the first things to drop off someone's to-do-list when business gets busy.  As your inbox starts to build up and your phone constantly rings, it just makes it impossible to find the time to follow your marketing plan. 

And I think this is where a lot of the challenges lie with starting and growing a new business from home.  I remember being told about "the feast and the famine" that would inevitable happen when I became self-employed.  It's one of those stories that once you hear it, you start to believe it.  And of course, you more you believe it, you more you live it's story.
 
But, I think the feast and famine is an urban myth! 

Recommended website solutions for home businesses

“I'm just about to sort out websites/email etc and wondered if you have a particular online company you recommend? I don't need e-commerce and have looked at some artist photographer template sites but if you have one you have tried and tested I would rather go on recommendation?”

Answered this question for someone today and thought some of you may like the answer too

Personally I would go with a blog rather than a website – definitely the way to go.

Either use typepad as a hosted blogging platform or use wordpress.com and host it yourself.  Hosting it yourself is more powerful for SEO (search engine optimisation) but if you don’t want to faff around with uploading files to your web host, then typepad is brilliant. 

I run my blog here on typepad and my new email newsletter site on wordpress www.HowtodoEmailNewsletters.com.

If you do just want a basic template website then you can’t really go wrong with www.mrsite.co.uk.

Webhosting – I would recommend www.1and1.co.uk

I’ve also got a great audio download on low cost websites if you are interested – www.kick-assteleforums.com/lowcostwebsites.php

The market research that's bad for business

When you are starting up your own business from home and deciding on a particular niche or speciality to focus on (always a good thing to do, BTW!), one of the traps that many people fall in to is searching on the internet for people who do what you want to do already.

Now, of course it’s important to check out your competition.  It can be a useful yard-stick to help you understand price ranges, services to offer and products that sell well.

BUT when that internet searching becomes endless hours of finding more and more websites, all seemingly to be offering a bigger and better service/product that you could even dream about – then STOP!

Worrying about your competition at such an early stage can be damaging to your confidence levels.  In today’s market place it is highly unlikely to “discover” a niche.  You should be more worried that no one is doing what you want to be doing because it generally means there is no demand – but that’s a lesson for another blog posting!