Bill, I’ve Heard You Give Presentations Sharing Marketing Tips That A Business Of Any Size Can Find Useful. Can You Summarize Some Of Those Key Points?

The key to being successful is differentiation. What makes you different? Maybe you deliver your product or service faster, friendlier, or in some other customer-focused manner. If you don’t know what makes you different, ask your existing customers. Why do you do business with me? Ask a few of your customers and you will see some common threads. Once you know why your existing customers do business with you, then you have the specific reasons you need to talk about with prospects.

Gift Certificates Seem To Be One Of Your Favorite Marketing Techniques. How Do They Work For You?

When you give someone a “gift,” you are giving them something of value. Never give out coupons because, people treat coupons like trash and treat gift certificates as cash. The gift certificate should always be for a dollar amount and never a percentage off the regular price. Try to have as little fine print as possible; after all it is a gift. The amount of the gift certificate should the normal profit you would make on a first sale.

You Also Team With Other Business Owners To Cross-Promote. Give Us An Example Of That.

We have a business relationship with the Atlantic Club in Red Bank. They are a well-respected health club that charges $99 a month for membership. We give our customers a free month’s membership at the Atlantic Club. They give their members a $25 Red Bank Limo Gift Card. They key is to have a partner company who also serves the same customer base that you do. Both businesses benefit by offering their customers something of value. And both businesses acquire new customers who were referred by another business that the customer already knows and likes.

You Mentioned Some “Little Things” That You Do That Are Not Costly For You But Greatly Enhance Your Customer Satisfaction And Retention.

Well, there are two that we have found to be very effective. We call the first, “Your Express Pick up.” Imagine that you have just returned from a long trip, you then have to search for your driver in a crowded arrival area. Then after collecting your luggage you start the long journey to a car parked in a remote parking lot. Maybe it is a hot and humid New Jersey summer day. We offer “Your Express Pickup.” After you arrive and collect your luggage, you call a toll free number where you’ll speak to a live person expecting your call. You will be directed to the curb where your driver will pull up to you with the air conditioned car. Depending on the season, you will be offered a bottle of chilled water.

Second, imagine dragging yourself out of bed at 5:00 a.m. to make an early flight. The sun isn’t even up and you’re still half asleep by the time you get to the airport. We’ll give you a Dunkin Donuts Gift card for you to “enjoy your first cup of coffee on us” before you board your flight. So whatever business you are in, you should look for similar “little things” like this that will enhance your customers’ experience with your product or service. It is truly the little things that make the difference.

Many Businesses Are Making Heavy Use Of Social Media These Days. How Is This Part Of Your Marketing Strategy?

Red Bank Limo uses social media to build and maintain relationships.  Often, there are local events or travel-related topics that we share with our friends.  The more content we put out there, the more people will look for what we have to say. Social media helps keep us connected to our customers in a non-selling way and helps us keep in touch with customers who may not be thinking about Red Bank Limo on a daily basis.

We put videos on YouTube to strengthen our message and let people see that we are real people, which again helps to form a deeper relationship. Red Bank Limo is very community-focused and we talk about how people can help in the community, with an emphasis on local hunger & homeless initiatives.  Each year we give 5% of our December gross sales to three local organizations that support hunger and homeless programs. We talk about and encourage others to support these programs as well. Using social media strengthens our footprint as a local company.

Give Us An Example Of How You Use New Technology In Your Business.

When a customer wants to reach me, they want to reach me. In the past, if someone left me a voice message, I would have to dial into my voice mail to know that someone has called and what they want. But now I subscribe to a service that uses voice recognition to translate the voice message into text and then sends me an email, which I then instantly retrieve on my phone. So I can very quickly respond to the customer myself or have someone on my staff address the issue promptly.

We also offer a state of the art, real time reservation system for our customers who like to reserve on line. Our customers can also always speak with us directly if that is what they prefer. The choice is theirs.

Finally, You Stress That Trying To Compete On Price Can Be A Dangerous Proposition. Why Is That?

Think of the last time you bought something that was cheap. It fell apart in your hands and you ended up having to buy what you should have in the first place. In my business, there are heavy costs regarding safety. Some operators carry no insurance on their vehicles. If there is an accident, the customer has no protection. Or, in another situation, if the car doesn’t show up or is late a half hour, you may miss your flight, which could ruin your business trip or your much anticipated family vacation. So we choose to compete based on our differentiator, the quality of service we provide. You need to identify your differentiator and compete based on this as well.

Thank you, Bill. Certainly these ideas can be used by businesses of all shapes and sizes. See you on our next trip!

If I hear that one more time, I’m going to punch someone in their repetitive little mouth.

How many times and in how many ways have you heard the experts, gurus, and even those who are neither expert nor guru tell you that the key/secret/trick to a winning marketing plan is to create engaging content?

That the only way to master/rock/kill your marketing is to create engaging content?

How many blog posts insist that the single most effective way to rule the day on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, [insert marketing channel here] is to create engaging content?

At least it’s good advice, because just this morning I woke up and thought to myself, “I am going to spend every moment of the day trying to be as irrelevant and boring as I possibly can, so that all of my customers and prospects will ignore me!”

But I’m not about to tell you they’re wrong, either. If “content” is king then “engaging content” is a full-fledged deity. Instead, I’m going to give you the thing that is usually missing from the content equation, and that’s the what and the how.

If you can forgive my mini rant, let’s proceed!

What The Heck Is “Engaging Content” Anyway?

Let’s step away from the 21^st century marketing jargon and stop calling it “engaging” content for a moment. Instead let’s call it what it is.

Interesting. Exciting. Thoughtful. Sad (yes, sad). Scary. Funny.

There are many ways to describe what I will refer to from now on as good content but it can be summed up in one very simple concept: good (and thus “engaging”) content appeals to us emotionally.

Good content makes us feel.

In order to understand what engaging content is, you have to become a human being in the real world and forget what you think you know or what’s been browbeaten into you about “social media”. At the end of the day social media is people, so let’s start there.

And I want you to start by remembering what it’s like to talk with (“engage”) an actual human being.

I’m going to tell you two (short, I promise!) stories so we can get to the root of engaging.

Story 1: There was once a woman who lived in my neighborhood who loved to talk. If she so much as glimpsed another human being on the street, she’d waddle on over and start a long diatribe about what every other neighbor was doing, who was getting married, what was happening at the local high school, how many times someone’s car alarm went off last Tuesday and generally update everyone on everyone else’s doings.

This was neither gossipy nor malicious. She simply loved to talk.

My neighbor spent a lot of time creating content and giving everyone status updates! They never made their way into a comment box but that’s exactly what they were.

Do you know what else they were? Boring. Not engaging. I learned to recognize that waddle from six blocks away and suddenly remember I’d left a roast burning in the oven.

Story 2: I have a business colleague who occasionally shares his client horror stories with me. He’s in a super techie industry so most of what he does is over my head. But when he tells a story, instead of giving me a dull play-by-play, he emphasizes the absurdities and points out the silliness and makes fun of the banalities. I laugh, groan, shake my head and roll my eyes at just the right times even though I don’t always understand the nuances of his job.

Sorry for my colleague, but I almost wish he had more horrible clients. I could use the stories.

The difference between Mrs. Status Update and my storytelling colleague is that his stories appealed to me emotionally. They made me mad, they made me laugh, they surprised, disgusted and amused me.

There’s a reason that pharmaceutical commercials have lovely images of happy people in boats and hammocks. They’re not selling you drugs, they’re selling you a feeling. They’re selling you that lifestyle and that happiness. It’s why geckos talk to us about car insurance (amusing) and tire companies exploit chubby little babies (safety and that aw-how-cute touching feeling). We buy based on emotion. We react based on emotion. And we read, listen and engage based on emotion.

You don’t need to be a comedian or a writer or a brilliant storyteller to engage. You simply need to remember that there is another human being that wants to be engaged – not talked at, talked to or status-updated.

Make Me Happy. Make Me Sad. Piss Me Off. Just Don’t Bore Me.

Good content evokes an emotion. In order to do that, it has to be something that people can relate to.

If you think people can’t relate to your business or conversational style, remember my colleague who told a good story even though I had no idea what it was about. I certainly had no problem understanding Mrs. Status Update. I understood quite well what she meant as she detailed the minutia of whose son just took a trip to Spain and whose father needed a hip replacement. Snore.

The story is not in the details, it’s in the telling.

To engage people, take an otherwise ordinary detail and tell it in a way that amuses, annoys, challenges or gives your audience a reason to perk up their ears, so to speak.

Instead of: “Jimbob got married on Saturday,” how about, “Jimbob looked like a fat penguin at his wedding last week.”

That may not be the kindest thing to say but hey, if the flipper fits…

In spite of Mrs. Status Update, I’ve met very few truly boring people in my life. Some people are shy, some are reserved, some are awkward, but not too many are flat out boring. I bet this applies to you, too. I bet you’re not even a little boring. It’s up to you to find the energy within yourself so that you can share it with others.

I didn’t say it was going to be simple! If this comes naturally to you, great. If not, you’ll have to practice and work on your delivery. The best way to do that is to pretend you’re talking to a friend. How would you say something, describe something, ask something of a friend?

Start writing down snippets of your speech patterns and the phrases that pop into to your head, even if they have nothing to do with your business or social audience. You’ll start to get a feel for how you “engage” in real life and you can use that as inspiration to do more than simply status-update your audience to death.

Remember, take the ordinary and make it engaging by making it emotional. There are a lot of emotions to work with. You can make people laugh or grin, you can make them frown or scowl. You can intrigue or surprise them. You can annoy them if you really want to get a reaction. You can make them sad. You can give them hope. Make a nice long list of possibilities and then create your content around evoking one of them.

We’ve Got The ‘Engaging’ Part, Now How About The ‘Creating’ Part?

Now that I’ve hopefully removed some of the mystery surrounding the less-than-actionable advice to simply “create engaging content”, let’s talk about how to actually create.

Blog. Period.

Shall I assume that you have a blog? If not, getting one should be your number one priority. There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who are blogging, have always been blogging and barely know life without blogging; and the kind who would rather stick a hot poker in their eye than let the word blog cross their mind.

If you don’t have a blog, stop making this hard on yourself and just get one. If something like a WordPress blog is too much, at least get a Tumblr blog. It’s free, it’s simple and it requires almost zero effort beyond thinking up something to post and clicking “post”.

Yes, there is going to be some creating involved! But it doesn’t have to be complicated. I’m one of those people who can write for hours (as your bleeding eyes may attest if you last long enough…) but if that’s not you, then think in ones:

Write one paragraph. Answer one question. Tell one anecdote. Make one list of things you want people to know/do/remember/think about. In the interest of saving your eyeballs, I won’t go into the many possibilities here but I beg you to have a blog that you post to regularly – at least once per week. Write it, speak it, video it. Get your ideas, stories and words of wisdom out into the world. This will be a goldmine of content for you.

Mine Your Own Content

One excellent reason to have a blog is because a post is much more than the sum of its words. After you’ve shared your blog post with your audience you should start sharing it in pieces.

Every sentence, every bullet point, every snippet of wisdom that you write in a blog post is another bit of content that you can share with your audience.

Do you know what I’m going to do with that sentence tomorrow? I’m going to post it to Facebook and Twitter!

If you take the time to write a blog post that’s interesting and appeals to people as we’ve already talked about, then you can use every bit of that post to engage people.

Once you’ve built up a bit of a library, you should be re-posting your blogs to social channels and reusing some of your best quotes. Believe me, none of your 21,000 Twitter followers will remember that you posted the same quote today that you posted six months ago.

Create once, engage repeatedly!

Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle

One of the best ways to create content is simply to be observant. There are 2 things I’m never without; one is my cell phone and the other is a pen. Whether I’m at the grocery store, the movie theater, a client meeting, the dinner table – even when I’m in bed – I have someplace to record whatever thought or idea pops into my head.

Ideas are not cooperative things. They don’t come when you call, they show up when they’re least expected and they vanish without warning. Don’t fight it, use it.

I’ve gotten ideas from watching movies, listening to my clients, even drinking a cup of tea. Not every idea is groundbreaking and many aren’t even original. But I put my spin on them and voilà! Content.

Instead of wracking your brain trying to think of something interesting, clever, funny, touching or surprising, just watch, listen, and let the content create itself.

Copying someone’s blog post is bad form on the internet. Quoting something you heard someone say while you stood in line to pick up your dry cleaning is perfectly ok.

Start thinking like a content creator: next time you’re annoyed by a salesperson, bored at a movie, amused by a conversation, make notes and use those experiences to evoke the same emotion in others.

Gimme Eye Candy

Here’s another thing you’ve probably heard ad nauseum: photos increase engagement! That may be true, but unless you pilfer borrow them from the internet, can afford a stock photo account or are a whip with a camera, you may be frustrated by this advice.

I have a solution.

Instead of spending money buying or endless time finding someone else’s photos, I want you to use two things that I bet 99% of us already have: your cell phone camera and that old shoebox of Polaroids you’ve been keeping on a closet shelf for “someday” when you get in the mood for scrapbooking.

Even if you don’t, I bet your mother has those somewhere. Find a family member older than 20 and drag out the box of photos.

Now start taking photos of your photos.

Here’s why this is the best advice you’ll hear all day:

1. Looking through your old photos is going to bring up a lot of emotions. If you’ve got your pen handy, you just cracked open a content-writing slot machine. If you can connect those thoughts and emotions to your audience and business, you’ve got engaging content. Take my Mother’s Day post for example. A photo of my mom in hot pink shorts brought on an entire lesson in marketing. People who speak to me perhaps three times a year wrote to let me know they had enjoyed that post. Find ways to make that idea work for you.
2. It’s personal, and people love personal. Posting stock photos and other shared photos is great, but posting real photos that can give your audience a glimpse into you is what’s going to make you stand out. According to a recent AdAge study, nearly 99% of a brand’s Facebook fans never engage. That means if you’ve got 100 fans, only one will ever like, share or comment on your posts. But we know better. As small businesses we can get dozens of interactions on any given post, even with only a few hundred fans, because we are not “brands”. We are people. And people talk to people. The more people-ish you can be the more engaging you’re going to be, and that’s all there is to it!

Forget ‘Creating Content’. Make It Come To You.

Along with the rest of the 987 million things you have to do in a day to keep your business running, you may be wondering where all this creating time is going to come from.

Here’s an idea: someone else.

There are two really easy ways to do this.

Mine The News

There’s so much information out there it’s hard to know when to shut the spigot off. In this case, just keep it running. Subscribe for email updates for every blog and news site you can find. Set up Google alerts on a subject that would interest your audience. (If you’ve followed my advice to create email filters then you can segment these into their own folders and deal with them stress-free.)

Set yourself up with an RSS reader and subscribe to blogs and other sites via their feeds. So few people use RSS but it’s one of the simplest ways to get content delivered to you and keep it organized and accessible. I use Google Reader, and since I use so many other Google services, I can be logged in and reading-ready any time.

If the only thing that’s keeping you from using RSS is that you don’t know how, then seriously let me know and I will personally help you get set up in about six seconds.

Once you’ve got other blogs and news at your disposal, start looking for nuggets of information there. Sometimes it’s sufficient to simply link to another site if it’s something you think your audience will enjoy. Sometimes you can add your own spin or commentary. Let the story lead and follow it where it goes.

Ask Your Audience

We’ve talked about this before but asking questions of your audience is a great way to engage AND get them to create the content.

Remember to follow the same “rules of engagement”, namely, make sure your questions appeal on an emotional level.

Someone I follow on Facebook recently asked, “What’s the scariest movie you ever saw?”

What makes that question so brilliant is that it doesn’t take three hours to write, is immediately relatable, and evokes the emotion of fear right in the question. I bet you wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she had dozens of responses.

That question might not be relevant to your business, but use the concept. What scares you the most about… [insert your thing here].

When you ask questions, ask where, when, would and should. Those are the ones that have been shown to get the most response, primarily because they require a short, simple answer that is immediately relevant to the person answering.

Should teachers be friends with their students on Facebook? (A recently hot topic!)

You can answer easily with one word and it evokes a pretty strong emotion in a lot of people.

On the other hand, avoid how and why questions. They might be interesting but they are not likely to get people to engage, because they require too much time to think about and answer.

How should schools handle social media policies for students and teachers?

Pft. I may have an opinion on that, but I sure don’t have time to formulate it right now!

You can see the difference in those two questions pretty easily, so be mindful when you write yours.

Asking what questions is open to debate. Studies have shown that they don’t get much engagement, but if you use the scary movie example, you can see that that’s not always the case. Use what questions carefully and make sure they’re easy to answer and… you guessed it… emotional.

You’ve Got The Ammo. Now Start Creating.

I hope that I’ve made this post a cliché-free zone for you today and that you’ll walk away with at least one good idea to try out.

Now do me a favor, and try that idea out. Right now! Instead of planning, thinking and wondering, I want you to start creating. When you’re done – whether it’s an essay, a paragraph or a single question – I’d love for you to send me a link so I can engage with you!

If you’ve been following along, I hope this series has inspired you to look up and see what you and your business can really be if you avoid some common pitfalls.

Today I want to talk about a problem that can creep in quietly, whether you’ve got a new business or have been running a successful one for a while. This problem can turn even successful businesses into heaps of smoldering ash. But if you’re attentive and willing to take action, you can escape the monster’s razor claws.

Fail Monster #4: Poor Management

This sounds like some humdrum corporate issue, doesn’t it? When you think of “management” do you think of guys in ties, cubicles and long “team meetings”?

Forget that.

This is no big-business boardroom problem. In fact, it’s probably easier for bigger companies to get away with lax policies and inattention. Lucky for them, their mistakes often get buried in red tape and bureaucracy.

Do you know what happens in a big company when one person gets off-track? Not a heck of a lot. Maybe someone else has to put in an extra five minutes to pick up the slack or the boss gets crabby for a few hours. Maybe there’s a big “team meeting” to talk about responsibility.

Do you know what happens in my business when someone gets off track? Entire projects get derailed, one missed deadline leads to a sliding schedule for every subsequent deadline, schedules start to get jammed, we find ourselves working on weekends and we lose money.

That’s right, every sliding deadline is lost revenue. In a small business there’s nobody to pick up the slack – just me. Just you. There’s nobody else to get up and make the donuts.

Unfortunately, as small businesses we tend to think that management has way too many syllables and is best left to those uncreative, business suit types. We’d rather think of ourselves as in-the-moment, nimble, adaptable. We get things done because we’re passionate about our work, not because we have a “job” with a bunch of business rules.

Yet management is what keeps the wheels spinning. Whether you have a 50-person operation or you’re a one-woman show, poor management could be costing you business and ultimately success.

Does the word “management” intimidate you or turn you off? Does it sound like something that’s above you, beyond you, perhaps too complicated or even unnecessary? Are you taking a “head in the sand” approach to setting up specific management policies and guidelines because you think things are running smoothly enough? Or maybe you just don’t know where to start?

The Management Monster’s Child: Freedom

I’m about to tell you something you aren’t going to want to hear, but hear it you must, if you want to succeed: freedom can kill your business dead.

Freedom can be the most terrible thing you have to deal with all day.

As a small business owner, entrepreneur or one of the myriad self-employed, I want you to consider the following and answer honestly:

It’s a gorgeous spring day after two weeks of rain (not far-fetched if you’re on the east coast these days!)  You’re sick of sitting at your desk and there’s a park calling your name. You want to go for a run, then maybe stop and have lunch under a tree. You look at your to-do list and wonder which deadlines you can push forward a few hours or a day.

On a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being “no sweat” and 10 being “it’s like fighting a pack of wild hyenas”) how easy is it to resist the call of freedom and stay focused on your job?

If you said anything less than 6, I commend you! For most of us, freedom is a double edged sword. It’s one of the beautiful perks of being our own bosses and also one of the greatest challenges.

We are free to use (or waste) our time however we want. We’re free to take (or turn away) work. We’re free to set (and ignore) policies. We’re free to run our business however we want, which means in the end we’re free to succeed – or fail – as we choose.

Part of being a good manager is recognizing that “freedom” does not mean “free-for-all”.

Do you “do what you want” because you’re the boss, even if projects or customers suffer? Is it hard to stick to schedules and rules because there’s nobody telling you what to do? Do you take yourself and your business seriously enough? How about too seriously, to the exclusion of everything else in your life?

The Weapons: Command And Control

Repeat after me: I am the boss.

As such, it’s your job to make the easy decisions and the hard decisions. It’s your job to keep the business running and to keep it running smoothly. Whether you’ve got minions under your command or you’re a soloperneur, you get to make the rules.

You must make the rules.

When the weather is nice, my husband and I like to golf. If you’re playing 18 holes and you’re as good as me (43 stokes per hole?) you need a couple of hours to play. So during the summer, we make a rule that our office hours are 10-5 instead of the typical 9-5, and when we feel like golfing we get out to the course by 6AM. That gives us the freedom to play and also lets us manage our business.

It may seem like a small thing, but you can imagine the disaster that might ensue if we simply took summer mornings to chill on the golf course while the phones rang off the hook and the deadlines slid a few hours each day.

The key to management is not to follow a specific rule or pattern – the key is to follow your rules and patterns. If you want to avoid chaos you must take control.

Manage Your Schedule

If you want to work around leisure time, a side job, family and kids, you can’t fly by the seat of your pants. By managing your schedule, you can include fun, family and work without pulling your hair out or making your clients lose theirs.

First, I want you to make a list of all the things that you need to include in your day. I don’t mean the little to-dos that change on a daily basis. I mean the “big picture” stuff. Kid time. Commute time. Planned events, meetings and phone calls.

Add to that the things you want to include. Beach time, a trip to the park or gym, a long, long nap.

Now start arranging those things into a schedule.

Plan around the things that aren’t flexible first. If you drop the kids off at school or summer camp and can’t be in the office or available to clients until 10, then don’t try to fight the 9-5 battle.

Plan the necessities next. If a weekly team meeting keeps you on track (it’s something we do here, even if it’s just my husband and me), block it off on your calendar as non-negotiable. It may seem negotiable – after all, you made it up – but if you think of it as optional then you’ll treat it as optional. I bet you a year’s worth of profits that if you schedule something without intent, you’ll never do it.

Everything you put on your calendar should be intentional and mandatory, including leisure time. It’s quite likely that something more important will pop up at 1PM than “take a half hour to work on tan”. But if you’ve scheduled in “work on tan”, then do it, damnit!

It may seem counterintuitive to think of leisure time as either scheduled or non-negotiable but if you plan it into your day like a project or a meeting, you can stop trying to squeeze it in between projects and meetings.

Scheduling your day is so important, especially if you’re the only one telling you what to do. Without a schedule and a sense of direction you can simply end up floating day to day, being tossed around by circumstance. You may get things done, but you’ll be less productive, less efficient and in all likelihood more stressed. In the end, that means more work for less money, which is not a path to success!

Until you get the hang of it, you should do this on a calendar and slot your time in hour-by-hour. Even after you get the hang of it, it doesn’t hurt to have a daily, weekly and monthly calendar of general time slots.

The more disciplined you can be about respecting all of your time – work and play – the more you’ll find that you can get things done, meet deadlines and still enjoy yourself without feeling constantly pressured.

And just imagine how fabulous you’ll feel the next time someone asks if you’re available for a phone call and you say, “Sorry, my calendar is full” because you have a date with a beach towel? Part of being successful goes beyond simply running a business. It’s also about maintaining balance and enjoying life while you do. Schedules don’t make themselves and there will always be “something else” that pops up.

Successful people plan their days and keep their schedules in balance.

Manage Your Time

If you run small business, your time almost certainly equates with money. You may sell your time in the form of consulting, coaching, or other services. You may indirectly sell your time by selling something you’ve spent time creating, like a book, artwork or other product. Or you may simply be investing your time in running day-to-day operations; things like bookkeeping, marketing and customer service.

Here are two examples of how time is tied directly to revenue.

First, if you’re a service provider and you bill for your time, you must know how long a task takes to complete. It’s all-too-common for someone to quote a project based on how much time they **think** it’s going to take, then repent when they’re long past that estimate.

This happens even in my business. A client will ask us to do something, we’ll tell them it’ll be an hour of work, and four hours later we’ve barely made a dent.

Sometimes this happens because we underestimate the amount of effort (and therefore time) required. Sometimes it happens because unforeseen problems or circumstances pop up. Either way, if we spend four hours on a project and bill for one, we have a problem.

If you bill for your time, it’s essential that you track and bill for it accordingly or you’ll be setting yourself up for failure no matter how good you are at what you do. You simply can’t succeed in business if you don’t make enough money to survive.

Here’s a second example: instead of time, you sell pink elephants. Whether you’ve created the pink elephants or not, you spend time on other tasks, such as customer service or simply the act of selling.

How much time do you spend on those things?

If it takes 4 hours to convince one person to buy a pink elephant, and 3 days of support afterwards, you have a pretty good idea of how much “time” that sale cost you. If a pink elephant is worth $3, I bet you’re not too happy about that. If it’s worth $30,000, you can probably live with it.

Only you can decide how much your efforts are worth and whether it’s paying off for you. But you must stop to consider if time spent equals money earned. If the answer is no, you need to take a hard look at where the problem lies; whether it’s in your rate, your process, your skills, your products or services, or simply the mismanagement of your on-task time. The sooner you can get to the bottom of the problem, the sooner you can adjust your course toward success.

Manage Your Customers

You’ve scheduled your time. You’ve timed your projects. Everything is running smoothly. And then… bam! A customer shows up.

Even the best schedules and plans can be completely derailed by one uncooperative customer. One common problem we face in my business is planning a web project, getting into the whys and wherefores, setting the milestones, getting into production and then… waiting… and waiting… and waiting… as our client goes MIA for more reasons than I can count.

It’s not only frustrating, it’s damaging to our business. When we plan around a project, we not only block off time and occasionally turn away other work that we know we cannot do in the same timeframe, but we also forecast revenue based on those projects. When a client delays a project for days and even months past deadlines, it costs us something.

One way to manage waylaid clients is with a good contract. It may not seem friendly, but it may be necessary to build a clause into yours that states the consequences of delaying a project. A monetary penalty usually works. But if you’re going to do this, you must be prepared to enforce it.

Another, friendlier, option can be to add a “reward” clause into your contracts. Same effect packaged differently. Quietly give your client a project budget based on a horrible worst-case scenario. Then provide a discount incentive for helping you get the project done on your schedule. The incentive to “save” a few bucks may be enough to keep your client on track and if things do go off the rails, you’ve built in a delay fee.

Another important aspect to managing clients is to manage their expectations. If you want a successful business you need happy clients. And if you want happy clients, you need to be honest and up-front with them. That means being realistic about deadlines. Open about your invoicing policy. Clear about what you do and how you do it.

Instead of “trying to please”, actually do so. Don’t fall into the trap of telling someone you’ll have something done on their unrealistic schedule or within their unrealistic budget. Rarely does that result in a happy customer. If a customer comes to you in a panic and says that he absolutely needs his project done by 9AM tomorrow or a pack of wild monkeys will carry him off into the jungle, you may want to jump to his rescue. Don’t. Tell him with 100% honesty that the soonest you can deliver his project is next Tuesday, but you’ll be happy to drop it off at the base of the banana tree. Your client may grumble now, but he will thank you later.

Manage Your Process

Whenever we start a web development project, we go through a series of steps. Whether it’s a huge year-long endeavor or a small two-week project, we go through the same series of steps, scaled to the needs of the project.

Do you know what happens when we skip a step, or get lazy and “just do the project”?

We regret it.

The project goes longer than it needs to, is more time consuming than it should have been and turns out to me more stressful.

Everyone gets lazy. But if you want to be successful, you have to fight it. The smaller the project, the easier it is to jump in and do it because we’re so used to it, so sure of our competence. For the sake of my business I fight against this urge every single time.

I want you to do the same thing.

First, you need a process for doing your job. You may have more than one process. For example, we follow one process for web projects and another for setting up email campaigns.

Whatever you do, define on paper the steps that go into making your project a success. It doesn’t need to be a long or complicated process. In fact, it shouldn’t be long or complicated.

If you want to paint your living room, you might have a process that goes something like this: choose color, purchase paint, set down drop cloths, tape windows, paint, leave room for 24 hours.

You might be tempted to skip the drop cloths, especially if you’ve painted a dozen rooms before and never spilled a drop of paint. But if you do, there is so much potential to regret it that it’s simply not worth the extra five minutes you’d save.

Once you have a process that you can stick to (and don’t add unnecessary steps just for the sake of having a process!) then make it very clear to your clients what that process is. If you don’t insist that they stick to it, there’s no reason for them to do so. The process – and its effectiveness – is entirely up to you.

Stop Micromanaging

I once had a client who had to be involved with everything. He had to schedule the meetings and run the meetings. He had to plan the marketing, create the content, direct the creative, approve the results. He had to be there for every conversation and every phone call, copied on every email and involved in everything from deciding when to send the newsletter campaigns to how many reams of paper to order for the office printer.

Does it surprise you that he was a nervous wreck, that he never had time for anything but work, that he was never satisfied with anything and that things were perpetually three weeks behind schedule?

If you run a business, it’s your baby, and it can be hard to give up the reigns to someone else. You may feel that nobody cares about your child as much as you do. That nobody can do as good a job as you can.

You may even be right!

But that’s still no way to run a business.

For starters, you simply cannot do everything. You probably don’t have the skill set to do everything so you need to rely on other professionals who do.

You are also setting yourself up for burnout which will not only kill your business but can cause enough stress to kill you, too.

Don’t be that person!

At some point, you just have to let go. If you manage well, you don’t need to micromanage. On the other hand, if you’re not managing well, and you’re afraid at every turn that things might fall apart, then you’re going to feel compelled to grasp at and control everything.

Instead of being a micromanager, become a good manager. Keep your time and schedule under control, surround yourself with good people, trust in your process to keep projects and tasks moving smoothly and let the business work.

Whether you perceive it or not, you are a manager and you manage every single day. Even when you’re not working, you manage your time, your budget, your kids, your grocery list. Transfer that take-charge attitude to your business and watch it take off!

That’s me and mom, and judging by the colors and styles, somewhere around the late 80s.

In honor of Mother’s Day and mothers everywhere I wanted to do something a little bit fun that’s also a tribute to all those unappreciated lessons moms have to teach. My mother raised six of us – me plus five brothers – and somehow came out the other side still sane (though sometimes she may beg to differ). Mom taught us lessons big and small, but some of the most memorable were in the little momisms that mothers everywhere use every day.

We may not realize it at the time but something as simple as “wear your hat!” can have a long-lasting and significant impact on our lives. Heck, I still wear my hat. I bet sometimes you do, too.

So here are some eternal momisms and the takeaways that can help us be successful in business – and in life.

Momism 1: If You Say That Again, I’m Going To Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap

Alas, this was no idle threat in my house. I can tell you with great specificity the taste of Ivory soap, the quality of the bubbles, the texture of a bar ripped right from the wrapper.

At least my mother was hygienic about it. No soap out of the bathtub or kitchen sink went in our mouths, only fresh bars. Large, white, fresh bars. Yum.

I don’t remember exactly what I said that was egregious enough to warrant soap. I didn’t know the F-word until sometime around Junior High and as a kid the worst thing I could think to say in a fit of the reddest rage was “oh hell”. Whatever it was, I wasn’t supposed to say it. And clearly I did.

Lesson Learned

Reasons be damned (that word probably warranted soap, too), the lesson was simple: there are consequences.

You may not like them. You may not agree with them. But you can’t avoid them.

What This Has To Teach Us About Business And Marketing

Ever shoot off an email to a client in anger and live to regret it? Ever forget to answer someone’s customer service call and get a Twitter lashing about it the next day?

How about something mundane, like procrastinate on a project until it was past deadline? Or post a Facebook update slightly less than NSFW and neglect to “hide” it from your business connections?

We all make mistakes. Sometimes we do them unwittingly. Sometimes we should know better. Ultimately they all lead to consequences and we must be willing to bear them.

I don’t recall if begging, pleading and apologizing ever got me out of a tasty encounter with soap, but you can bet your booties that begging and pleading is not only unprofessional but will most likely not work with clients either.

Maybe a good old-fashioned apology will help mitigate disaster but wouldn’t it be better to think through our actions first and react second? Next time you’re feeling crabby about a client, ignored by a prospect, irritated by a co-worker or put out by an acquaintance, remember what mom has taught us, and before you go sending retaliatory/pointed/snarky emails/updates/tweets consider the consequences and have a cookie instead. It’s much better than soap.

Momism 2: Wait Until Your Father Gets Home

You’d think dad’s everywhere beat their kids with bamboo sticks on a daily basis the way this threat works.

I’m not sure why this was a threat except that dad certainly got us to listen. He did that stern dad-face and sent us to our rooms and we went. Mom could run around the house chasing us with a wooden spoon (for spanking, not for cooking…) and we wouldn’t go to our rooms. But one dark look from dad sent us running.

In fact, just the threat was enough to subdue us. We hoped, somehow, that our subsequent angelic behavior would make mom forget to tell dad after all. Dad didn’t carry a wooden spoon but hearing those words struck the fear of God into us. Every time.

Lesson Learned

There are bigger people than you who can beat you up if they want. But they don’t have to because you know better than to test their strength.

These are the people who have power.

What This Has To Teach Us About Business And Marketing

Have you ever had one of those clients who is so darn nice… and fun… and pleasant? And scares the crap out of you because you know if you ever cross him he’ll beat you up?

I don’t mean literally of course. But think about it. Some people exude power and it’s not because they wield big sticks or wooden spoons. It’s in a look, a sentence, the way they walk into a room.

Power is something you carry on the inside, not something you invent on the outside. Think of the people you admire who are the “powerhouses” of your industry, the ones who are a little bit intimidating because they’re smart, strong and serious about what they say. Think of the clients who you race to meet deadlines for because you don’t want to disappoint them.

These are the people who walk, speak and breathe confidence and authority. They’re the ones we want to be and the ones we want to please. Even without the reminders, it would behoove us to conduct ourselves at all times in a way that would be worthy of the people we admire. And for the sake of the poor wooden-spoon wielding moms of the world, promise yourself to treat everyone with the same respect!

Momism 3: If Your Friends Jumped Off A Bridge, Would You Do It Too?

Meant to combat peer pressure, as a kid it mostly made me wonder how much it would actually hurt and whether or not I’d die before a ship could pick me up out of the water.

I don’t think this worked as a deterrent as much as it indicated a close to the argument. It normally came after a lot of whining about how so-and-so was doing something much cooler than I was and why couldn’t I do it too? After reasoning and explanations failed, the bridge always made a showing. Sometimes it was a cliff. Mostly, though, a bridge.

And the real answer was, “Heck, yeah, I’d jump.”

Lesson Learned

Life is full of decisions and you’ve got to make them on your own. You can follow the crowd and relinquish your ability to think on your own, or you can choose.

Sometimes your choices aren’t popular.

What This Has To Teach Us About Business And Marketing

When it comes to marketing, there is always going to be some new and exciting direction to take. Think of… oh… just about everything that’s happened in the past five years or so. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram. We could knock ourselves out trying to keep up with and follow every trend.

Or we could stop and think it through.

How much is it going to hurt to jump off that Twitter bridge? How long until someone rescues me from drowning in Pinterest? Sure, “everyone is doing it”, but is it right for me? Is it right for you?

As kids we probably didn’t care how much it hurt to jump and we most certainly would’ve followed our friends into a dragon’s den if they asked. But we’re (hopefully!) smarter now and the stakes are higher. There are careers on the line. And reputations. And budgets.

Before we follow the crowd into the next trend, let’s stop and consider whether it’s a wise thing to do.

Momism 4: Be Careful Or Your Face Will Freeze Like That

In my world this usually came after one of us stuck our tongue out at another. As an adult I laugh at the simplicity of a kid thinking that “making faces” is about the worst thing you can do to someone. If only!

Mom never said that with any particular threat or force behind it. All things told it was a pretty innocuous statement, more of a throwaway comment she said with a sigh of exasperation. With six kids there was probably a lot of tongue-sticking.

And none of us ever thought our faces would really freeze that way. But we took the point, which was, “Seriously, could you cut that out already? It’s annoying and you look stupid.”

Lesson Learned

If you do something enough times it will start to define you. Eventually it may even become you.

What This Has To Teach Us About Business And Marketing

The way we behave is the way that we’re perceived and the way we build our lives and reputations.

If we say, do or think something enough times it becomes part of us, consciously or not. How many times have you told yourself, “I’ll never get this right” or “This meeting is going to stink”?

And how many times have you been right?

Probably a lot – because we generally fulfill our own expectations. If you walk into a room thinking you’re going to hate everyone in it, you probably will. If you “make faces” at people long enough, whether in your speech, body language or simply in your mind, that attitude will follow you everywhere.

So mom was right to some extent – your “face” does freeze like that.

Thanks to mom we have been rightfully admonished to check our behavior and be sure that we’re acting positively and appropriately. Next time you meet with a client, engage in a social group online, or just find yourself in a room full of people, ask yourself if you’re “stuck” in a behavior pattern that is blocking your success or if you’re approaching the situation with a smile.

Momism 5: Turn Off The TV And Go Play Outside

Along with “TV will rot your brain” and “You’re going to grow roots in that chair” mom was constantly pushing us out the door.

Sometimes it was to get a reprieve from us (one of my biggest “chores” as a kid was to take my brother outside to play for an hour) but mostly it was because she wanted us to get up, get some exercise, entertain ourselves, be creative and play.

I bet she never knew how easy she had it, with only a TV to contend with. Nowadays I bet even if kids do go “out to play” the iPad or cell phone goes with them. But back in prehistoric – I mean pre-internet – days the choice was between TV and sunshine.

And whether we liked it or not, she made us have fun, damnit!

Lesson Learned

There are many things that will demand our attention. But it’s important to take a break and have some fun.

What This Has To Teach Us About Business And Marketing

We need to remind ourselves that all work and no play will make us grow roots into our chairs and our eyes go square. Otherwise, it will suck the productivity and creativity out of us.

If you’re busy marketing your business online, you’re always “on”. You’re always connected, probably sleep with your cell phone, check your email at least once a week at 2AM and answer tweets faster than phone calls.

Being so “engaged” may be good for business but it’s bad for your brain. You need time off. You need time to play and to recharge.

It’s as hard today to turn off the computer as it was to turn off the TV when we were 5. But it’s even more important. Take time away from your business and away from marketing. Do something purely fun. Enjoy the sun.

Mom knew what she was talking about, didn’t she? I hope you’ve enjoyed these lessons and I bet you’ve thought of a few momisms of your own. Will you tell me one of your favorites in the comments below?

And while you’re at it, make sure you thank your mom. Happy Mother’s day to all!

If you’re like me, you want to know, “What are the pros doing?” Where “the pros” are people who spend an inestimable amount of time studying and experimenting, paving the way for the rest of us to follow “best practices”.

But sometimes the research and subsequent advice is downright confounding and if you’re a busy small business owner or marketer trying to keep “deal with Facebook” to under 6 hours a day of your precious and dwindling time, you probably wish someone would just tell you what to do.

If that sounds a bit like you, you’re in luck. I’ve read, reviewed, analyzed and parsed enough data on Facebook to compose a small encyclopedia. I’ve even done some testing of my own, and where I lack in the scientific method I make up for it in opinion. (Check out my prior post if you want a recap of all the new Facebook timeline features with screen shot goodness.)

So if you’re looking for a “what the heck should I do now” starting point without the need to read or write an encyclopedia of your own, here’s one for you. And I’ll start it by saying this…

Marketing Is What You Make It

On the plus side, we’ve got best practices. On the down side, there are no marketing rules. There is no perfect number of times per day to post on Facebook, no formula for composing a winning status or story.

But uncertainty is what makes marketing work. Imagine if there was a formula – then all your efforts would be just another bit of flotsam in an endless sea of more-of-the-same (and the process would be pretty boring, too). The beauty of “no answers” is that you get to decide what you want to do, how you want to do it and what works – for you.

So here’s what I want you to do after you read this: go try something. Don’t take my word for it. Approach your marketing with all the uniqueness that is you and your business. Start by learning but continue by adapting. Secrets, tips, best practices or not, that’s the best advice I can give you.

Great, So What About This Facebook Thing?

All right, I promised you a place to start and here it is: be skeptical of studies. That’s not entirely actionable and won’t help you compose a winning status update but bear with me for a moment. In fact, bear with Search Engine Watch who put it rather succinctly in a recent article about the effect of the new timeline on fan engagement.

I’ll give you the 10-seconds: depending on the study you read, it’s increased engagement by 14%, increased engagement by 46%, increased engagement by 190% or… wait for it… decreased engagement anywhere from 11-17%.

If timeline hadn’t yet been released, I’d probably read those numbers selectively and decide that I really, really, really wanted timeline. Just having timeline is enough to increase fan engagement, and whether it’s by 14% or 46% that’s still more. Right?

Sort of. Having timeline doesn’t increase fan engagement any more than having a website increases sales or having a Twitter account improves customer service.

It’s not what you have, but what you do with what you have.

So what could account for the huge differences in those engagement numbers? In my completely unscientific opinion, I’d say it’s what those brands are doing with their timelines that makes a difference.

The first step on your path to Facebook marketing success is to take the studies with a grain – or half a cup – of salt and understand that the proof is not in their numbers. The proof is in your numbers.

So How Do You Improve Your Numbers?

Marketing is about getting noticed. It’s about making your company, your products and your services stand apart from a billion others that fit in the same category.

Since timeline isn’t going to do the work for you, you’ve got to be creative about how you use it.

Studies – and vast experience – have shown that people engage with visual content more. Think of the outrageous growth of and attraction to Pinterest. That’s also why you see so many “photos” on Facebook now, many of which are little more than a funny, inspirational or motivational quote. But instead of putting that quote into the status box as text, people have started posting them as “pictures”.

Here’s what I’ve found: posting interesting quotes always got attention. They’re easy to Like and Share. Posting interesting quotes as pictures gets even more attention. Heck, throw a cute cat in and you’ve pretty much got your secret to Facebook success right there.

Try it. Next time you want to post a quote that you found particularly entertaining or encouraging, post it as a picture instead. Even if all you can do is write it in red marker on a piece of printer paper and snap a picture with your cell phone camera, try it. See if it grabs a few more Likes or Shares than before. Beyond quotes, post photos often and if you can make them personal – about you and/or your business, all the better.

Why this matters on timeline: photos make the page more visually interesting and easier to scan. Given its current two-column layout, something not entirely natural when it comes to readability, the easier you can make it to scan your page, the more likely people will be to do just that.

More On The Numbers Game

What hasn’t changed with timeline is that people will still see your updates in their news feeds, and that’s still the best place to meet them if you want to engage them.

Asking questions is another way to do that. And your questions don’t necessarily have to do with your business. I’ve seen many brand pages do this to great effect. Remember, Facebook is more playground than conference room, so you have to think about how to entertain your fans, too.

If I asked you, “What’s the first movie you ever saw on a date?” Could you answer it? Would you enjoy answering it? Might you think of some story that went along with it, good or bad? You’d do all that without any more than a quick question prompt.

On the other hand, if I asked, “How do you use social media to promote your business?” You might need a lot more time to think about it.

The point is that you occasionally need to step out from behind the serious, literal stuff and get to the fun stuff.

Try it. Come up with a couple of “just for fun” questions that you can ask your fans. Try either a direct question or a “fill in the blank” approach. Not because they’re of earth shattering importance. Not because they will give you deep insight into your fans’ consumer behavior. But because they will prompt a nearly instinctive and instant response. That means more engagement, better numbers, better EdgeRank, and a higher probability that more people will see more of your content more of the time.

Why this matters on timeline: when you’ve got people responding to your posts, it’s very evident on your timeline and provides some of the much needed social proof that lets people know hey, this is a pretty popular page, I should check it out.

Engaging With Change

Everything you do on your timeline is passed to your fans’ news feeds in the form of something like “so-and-so-just updated their profile picture”.

If there’s a reason to update your timeline, this is it, and there’s a potential double-bonus here.

First, your activity is passed into the news feed, which means you’re in front of people again. Not only that but you’re demonstrating change, which is what keeps things interesting. Second, it may inspire people to revisit your timeline.

Do this with care and purpose. If you change your profile picture every day your fans may just think you’re having an identity crisis. But if you set a schedule and do it every few weeks or months, you’ve got built in content and change right there.

Try it. Update your cover photo or profile picture. Add a milestone. Add to your photo albums. All these things will be noticed. See whether it brings people back to your page. See whether engagement numbers go up when you do this.

Why this matters on timeline: people are interested in content that’s part of your overall brand story. Photos and milestones are exactly that and give you the opportunity to build a presence beyond a simple status update. We already know that photos are a draw, but milestones can also give people a reason to visit and engage. Since Facebook condenses activity on your timeline, you can avoid expecting people to make the effort to scroll… wait… scroll… as previous content loads… and instead give them new “old” content via milestones that appear right in their news feed. Just because it appears in chronological order on your timeline doesn’t mean that’s how you have to post it! Go back and fill in spots at intervals.

The 850-Pixel Elephant In The Room: The Cover Photo

Facebook has laid out some pretty specific rules about what you can’t do in your cover photo. All those guidelines can be summed up in one short sentence: don’t use your cover photo as an ad.

Now that you know what not to do, how about some ideas for photos you can use?

I want you to remember what I said about studies, because in two completely (seemingly) opposing studies, it’s been shown that (1) people spend the most time looking at your cover photo and (2) people ignore your cover photo completely.

Oddly, I can buy both of those conclusions. In my unscientific opinion, I bet it’s the “big brands” that get ignored the most, since we’re bombarded by their advertising every day and everywhere. I also bet that it’s the small businesses and personal brands that get the most attention because those are the ones we’re motivated to learn about, those whose “stories” we are more likely to connect with personally. You don’t need to spend a lot of time fixating on Pizza Hut’s cover photo to “get it”. But if you visited the page of a local florist or small business, there’s probably something to discover.

What this means to you is that you need to think about how you can use the cover photo to tell something about you and your business.

Try it. Choose photos that represent you and your business. The eye-tracking study I referenced showed that faces and logos got the most eyeball time. Spend less time designing and more time finding photos that you can swap out with small effort. I was all for designing – bringing your cover photo together with your profile picture and apps – until about five minutes after I’d designed half a dozen client pages, Facebook changed the dimensions and everything broke. Unless you’re a designer or have time to do it and do it again as necessary, stick to things that give you the most bang for your buck, which is the photo itself.

Why this matters on timeline: As far as I can tell, the cover photo is timeline. Yeah, yeah, pins and highlights and milestones, oh my! But at the end of the day, in whatever study you read, you’ll find that (1) some people didn’t understand the timeline itself, (2) some people didn’t notice the apps, (3) many people didn’t know there’s a tiny arrow that means there are MORE apps, (3) Some people didn’t bother to scroll, (4) some people didn’t bother to scroll too far, (5) some people read the left column, (6) some people read the right column, (6) almost nobody noticed the ads… but…

Everyone noticed the cover photo. And they noticed it first. Not hard to believe right? It is the biggest and first thing on the page. Make it count.

As For The Rest Of The Story…

In the old “Wall” paradigm, the general consensus was that less than 1% of the people who Liked your page ever revisited it. Rather, they simply got your updates in their news feeds.

The jury’s still out on whether timeline itself is enough of a reason for people to revisit your page once they’ve Liked it. You could start by asking yourself: are you more likely to revisit a fan page now than you were in the past? Ask ten of your friends. Now you have a study.

So without any data, contradictory or otherwise, the best we can do is guess, test and try again. Here are a couple of additional suggestions for using timeline without spending half your life worrying about timeline.

1. Apps. People may or may not notice your apps, but for many of us, apps are where the action is. It’s where we get people to download our ebooks and sign up for our newsletters. Use your apps effectively by creating a custom image and a custom name. You don’t need to be a designer to do this. Remember the red marker and printer paper? A quick sketch or call to action can be enough to get attention. And remember, you can link people directly to an app page, so use those links in your status updates to direct people to the good stuff.
2. Likes. Remember social proof? If your page doesn’t have very many Likes, it pays to hide that app under the vastly ignored “more” arrow. If you’re proud of those Likes, by all means put them front and center. They can contribute to encouraging even more.
3. Pins. People tend to miss “pinned” content and it makes no difference to people seeing your content in their news feeds. As yet, I don’t see a compelling reason for taking time to do this. But don’t listen to me. Try it!
4. Highlights. Same goes for highlights, unless it’s a big, gorgeous photo and it’s relatively close to the top of your timeline. People won’t scroll that far and even when they do, much of your previous content won’t be visible until someone scrolls and asks to “see more”.
5. Content. Beyond switching up your cover photos, take a “set it and forget it” approach. Timeline doesn’t change the fundamentals of good marketing. You must find a way to reach your customers. Pay attention to your content and to getting people to engage. Engagement leads to better social proof and better EdgeRank which leads to your content being Liked, Shared and viewed that much more, which can lead to awareness of your brand, trust and eventually sales.

I hope you feel confident that you can make timeline work for you and your business. Remember, its just a tool. What you do with it is up to you. Be smart by trying out a “good idea” – heck, try out a bad idea once in a while, too! – and seeing if it works for you. If you’ve asked 27 “fun” questions and been ignored every time, maybe that’s not the best route. But if people love your little penned quotes, pen away!

Tell me… are you doing anything differently on timeline than you did on Facebook before it existed? Let me know what’s worked for you!

One of my all-time favorite advertising quotes comes from Hugh MacLeod, who once said, “If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face.”  If you’ve ever had the urge to reach through the speakers of your radio and clean the clock of the announcer of an automotive radio commercial, raise your hand.  Me too.

But alas, this ear poison has taught me some valuable lessons about marketing content and strategy, and motivated me to do better.  Here are five of those lessons.

1. If you follow the leader, you’ll never become one.

For years, automotive advertising on radio and TV was dominated by screaming announcers.  Why was this approach so popular?  Because everyone else was doing it, so it must be the best way to do it.

Fortunately, the screamers have become almost obsolete.  Unfortunately, at least on tri-state area radio, screamers have been replaced by dealership owners or general managers who are now the stars of their commercials.  Why?  They followed the leader.  I remember one prominent auto dealer who started this approach about 12 years ago and now has one of the most successful dealerships in the country.  I used to occasionally help him with his commercials.

Nobody seems to grasp the concept that looking and sounding just like your competition is a bad thing in marketing… and just about anything else.  You can’t always be first, but you can always be unique.  And that’s a major step towards becoming the leader.

2. Your marketing should reinforce and enhance your brand, not feed negative stereotypes.

This is what I never understood about the screamers.  Fair or not, car salespeople have a reputation for being pushy and dishonest.  Is there anything that sounds more pushy or dishonest than a screaming radio or TV commercial?  I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been motivated to spend thousands of dollars on a car (or any other product) because someone yelled at me to do so.

Now, the owners and GMs are behind the mic.  Some can pull off an authentic and engaging delivery, but most can’t, especially when they’re using the same tired clichés and lame offers that the screaming announcers used to spew at us.  Many even mock each other, which comes off as petty.

Lack of trust is a major hurdle to overcome for most auto dealers, and both of these approaches do nothing but feed the stereotype of a sleazy salesperson. You may have other stereotypes in your industry so don’t feed into them like a sleazy car salesman.

3. Never mislead or insult the consumer’s intelligence.

We know an offer that says something like “Model X as low as $15,000” – when Model X retails for $25,000 – refers to one vehicle that nobody else wants.  We know you’re using this to get us in the door so you can try to sell us a more expensive vehicle.  Do you think we’re that stupid?

Another dealership is promising $6,000 however you want it (check, gift card, yada yada) when you buy a certain model.  Does anyone believe they’re walking out of a dealership with a new car and a check for $6,000 with no strings attached?

I heard a New Jersey luxury auto dealership’s commercial on a New York sports station.  It said that driving this particular luxury brand is like hitting a grand slam in the ninth inning.  Really?  Not that I can afford a luxury vehicle, but if I really want to experience that feeling, I’ll go to fantasy camp.  I’m a big fan of using metaphors to drive a point home, but forcing a silly sports metaphor because you’re on a sports station will get more eye rolls than car shoppers.  Sports fans, drivers of luxury vehicles and even your customers know better.

4. Using multiple calls-to-action isn’t just bad strategy.  It sounds dumb.

I’ve discussed in a previous blog, The Anatomy Of A Call-To-Action, how multiple calls-to-action delay response because someone has to make a choice before they act.  But in the case of automotive advertising, this is just common sense.  I don’t have the stats, but I’m guessing not too many vehicles are sold over the phone or online.  If the goal is to get people to the dealership, why waste valuable time in your commercial with your phone number or website?  If I want to research your dealership online, I can find it, and the only times in my life that I’ve every called an auto dealership were after I bought a car. Find out what your customer needs and deliver a message that is direct and specific.

5. Disclaimers and fine print should just say, “Everything else you see or hear is crap.”

If your offer requires a 10-second disclaimer voiced by a speed reader or 15 lines of fine print to make it legit – yes, I saw a national automotive TV commercial a few days ago with 15 lines of fine print – perhaps a more transparent, straightforward offer is in order.  For a brief time, some dealerships put the disclaimer at the beginning of the commercial so it would sound like it was part of the preceding commercial, which is deliberately shady and even more insulting to my intelligence.

Price is definitely a factor when shopping for a car, but numbers are easily manipulated, and one Hyundai dealership can’t sell a new Hyundai for any less than another Hyundai dealership or offer any more incentives.  The best way for an auto dealer or any company to earn someone’s business is to earn their trust first.  Be honest and straightforward, both in your marketing and in person, and people will be much more likely to plunk down $20,000-plus for a new car. The same goes for your customers.

Note: I intentionally left out the names of the dealerships whose advertising I was referring to because they could very well be perfectly reputable establishments, and I don’t believe in publicly tearing down local businesses.  It’s just unfortunate that their advertising sucks and probably doesn’t do them justice.

So let’s assume you’re not afraid to fail – or to succeed as the case may be – and your path to glory is clear. That doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods. There are oh so many ways to sabotage an otherwise good thing, so join me as we smoke out a few more Fail Monsters and figure out how to exterminate them.

Fail Monster #3: Lack Of Vision

Not vision as in “get new glasses” but vision for your company, where you’re going and what you want to achieve. This is a sneaky little problem because it can manifest even when we think we know what we’re doing.

Many times, we may think we have a pretty good handle on the projects and products going in and out our doors, but we miss the forest for the trees. We get mired in the daily tasks and the things that keep the gears of business churning but we don’t have a “big picture” sense of direction. What do we really want? Where are we going? What’s the point of all this “stuff” we’re doing?

These days I meet a lot of people who have either lost a job or are tired of “the job” and opt for trail blazing self-employment. The problem starts when these people jump into business without a plan.

To be honest, that’s pretty much how my business started. At the time I got married in March of 1997, I had a job and my husband had a job. By December of 1997 my husband was out of work and we were sitting on the floor eating takeout in front of the Christmas tree, pondering my lack of dental and optical, wondering, “Now what?” The wondering led to dreaming and the dreaming led to our company. We had a few connections, we didn’t have kids to support and either way the rent wasn’t getting paid, so if we were going to go down, we were going to do it on our terms.

At the time our vision was, “Make money. Survive.” We didn’t start with a business plan and a three-point strategy. We didn’t start with a 5-year outlook or a workflow diagram or an org chart.  We just started. And efforts be praised, we’re still here to talk about it today. But I often look back and wistfully ponder how much easier the road might have been if we’d only known what we were doing, what we wanted and where we were going.

My company didn’t survive and grow because we continued not knowing, but because at some point we stopped and thought, “Holy crap, we have no idea what we’re doing!” And we learned and we thought real hard about it and we established our vision and made some real plans that could guide our way on the path to success.

Perhaps I can help you do the same now. If you have the luxury of putting your vision together before taking the plunge, lucky you. Take advantage of the opportunity! If you’re among the jumpers like me, take a moment to step back and look at the forest. It’s the only way ahead.

Do you have a clear vision for your business? Or are you “winging it” and waiting for something to happen? If I asked, “Where do you see your business in a year?” Could you answer it clearly?

The Vision Monster’s Child: Complacency

Here’s a trap that’s easy to fall into: thinking what you’re doing is “good enough”. Hey, it’s paying the bills. You’re surviving. You don’t need to examine your vision, your methods or your plans because you’re coasting along and everything is ok.

If you coast, you may not find your business tanking but you will eventually notice its subtle slide toward mediocrity and irrelevance.

Successful people are constantly checking themselves against their vision, constantly revising and adapting to changes in the economy, the market and their customers’ needs and expectations. Successful people don’t lose sight of the prize and don’t assume that just because everything is “going ok” that it will stay that way.

Think for a moment about what you want for yourself and your company. Are you actively pursuing and refining your vision, or are you merely engaged in business as usual? Are you spending as much time working on your business as you spend working in it?

The Weapons: Design And Diligence

Whether you’re just starting out or have been in business for years you must create – or recreate – a vision for your company. “I want to run a business” isn’t good enough. You need to know what you want to achieve, what success looks like at any given point in time. And your grand vision should be made up of smaller frames within the big picture, because nothing is quite as overwhelming (and detrimental to success) as starting out and aiming to be an award winning, multimillion dollar company and simply going straight for the gold.

Remember, success is a journey. Take it a step at a time and create a vision of where you see yourself and your company along the way.

Ask the tough questions now to avoid the disappointments and pitfalls later. Never settle for “good enough” because if the world isn’t static, your success isn’t either. You must constantly reevaluate and refine your vision so that it’s both realistic and grand, specific but malleable.

Define Your Vision

Remember our friend, the pen? Take it out and start writing. I want you to create a vision for your company that includes all the wheres, whys and hows you can think of. What goals do you want to achieve? Who’s with you when you achieve them? Where do you see your company in a year, five, ten? How (generally speaking) do you plan to get there? What’s your job? (You’re not just there to look pretty and come up with visions, you know.)

This is not the place where you outline how many newsletters you plan to send and whether you’re going to tackle video or print brochures. It’s where you imagine the great things you’re going to achieve so you can attend to the details later. This is where you get to create the story that you plan to write. That’s right, I want you to write the story before it happens. Visualize the path, visualize your achievements.

Tap into your personal feelings of success and forget about what you’ve been told it’s supposed to look like, forget about what other people think, and imagine the possibilities. If your vision is to be an award-winning company, create that scenario and the steps that led you to it. Was it your incredible innovation? Superb customer service? Dedication to charitable causes? Write it in the present tense to make it real and immediate.

Define Your Values

Part of establishing a vision for your company is defining your values. What does your company stand for? What’s the face that you want to present to customers and the world?

It helps to think of your company as a person and give it a personality. Is it warm? Is it idealistic? Does it stand for tradition, progress, eternal youth, aged wisdom?

I bet your parents probably taught you the old maxim: if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. That’s not a bad attitude to adopt for your business. Don’t sway in whatever direction the wind blows. Decide who you are – who your company is – and stand by it.

Sometimes you hear people talk about the “culture” of a company. The culture springs from the vision and values. It’s essentially the lifestyle of the organization. A company culture isn’t built in a day. It evolves when its founders have a clear vision and have established a set of values and behaviors that inform everything you – and your employees – do.

This is too important to leave to chance. Decide early “who” you want your company to be and how you want it to reflect your values.

As your business progresses you may find yourself revising your vision or switching up your products and services. That’s fine – and probably necessary, as the world changes – but your core values and how you approach people and projects should remain rooted in the values you hold dear.

Define Your Focus

If you’d asked me what our services were when we first started our business, I would’ve said, “Whatever pays the bills.” If you’d asked us who our clients were, we’d have told you, “Whoever pays the bills.”

We didn’t have a lot of focus except on, well, the bills. It’s how many small businesses get started, but to succeed you have to get past that thinking.

Find the intersection of what you want to do and what you can do well and focus your energies on that. Resist the temptation to take on jobs you’re either not comfortable with, don’t feel you have the right skillset for, or don’t want to do but feel compelled to take for the money.

When our business stalled early on, we were working hard, putting all our energies, time and passion into it. So why were we trying so damn hard and making less and less progress? Focus.

We realized we had to figure out what we really wanted to do and what would make us money. So we started saying no to work and actually narrowed our services. We focused on the things we knew we could do well, enjoyably and with a financial payoff at the end.

It may seem counterintuitive to do less and expect to get more out of it, but it works. Define your specialty and define your niche. Instead of working for “everyone”, figure out who your ideal client is and seek them out. Instead of doing “everything”, figure out what makes you the most money and what you love doing and look for those jobs.

It’s hard to resist that paycheck, believe me, I know. But to grow and succeed you must develop a laser focus. Your business isn’t a catchall. The more specific you can get about your target customers and services, the more likely you’ll be to hit the sweet spot of success. Otherwise you’ll be stuck taking whatever comes your way, slave to the whims of circumstance.

Define Your Special Sauce

You are not a unique snowflake. People like you are a dime a dozen. I bet a lot of people do what you do and they’re probably pretty good at it, too. In a pinch, your clients could fire you and find another like you tomorrow. Same goes for me.

So what makes you so special? That’s what you have to figure out. In a competitive market where there are very few really unique ideas (and even those get copied in about five minutes), you have to define the thing about you that makes you… you.

You must think past platitudes and clichés. Do not tell me you provide the highest quality work. Do not tell me you care about your customers and focus on their needs. Do not tell me anything I’ve heard a million times before in a million mission statements around the world.

Figure out what makes you and your company tick and find a way to stand on that. The truth is it may not be an entirely unique idea, but you need to find a way to make it yours. If customer satisfaction really is you thing, you’ve got to be creative in your execution. I can’t tell you how to do that. It can only come from knowing yourself, your company, your values and your vision inside and out.

Don’t Confuse Passion With Profit

It’s really great to talk about dreams and vision, but let’s face it folks, unless you’re making money, it’s not really a business, is it?

Lots of us have passion but not all of us can turn it into a business. At some point you must be practical and make sure that you’re meeting goals, growing and, in fact, sustaining an actual business. Otherwise, call it a hobby and find a job.

Successful people let their passion guide their vision and their direction, but they do not let it become it. Remember, your ultimate goal is to make money because without it there will be no business to support your passion, drive your vision and keep you moving.

When the idealist in you takes control, you have to beat it into submission with practical goals and targets. Passion doesn’t guarantee success. Heck, nothing does. But hard work in the real and often unglamorous world will get you closer every time.

Now that we’re three “fails” in, what do you think of my vision for this series? Are you enjoying these articles and finding them useful, or do you wish I’d get eaten by the monster, already? Share your thoughts so I can continue providing you with content you really want to read – that’s my  vision!

Read More In This Series

Sabotaging Success Part 1: How ‘Fear Of Failure’ Will Wreck Your Business And Crush Your Dreams (Unless You Take Action Now)

Sabotaging Success Part 2: The Paradox Of Wanting Success But Avoiding It… Because You’re Not Really Sure What You’ll Do When You Get There

And now your new site is up and running, ready for the world to see so you can start raking in those millions.

But is it any good?

That’s a tough question to ask after the fact, but it’s an important one if you want a successful website. Why not ask it now, with this checklist in hand? I’m about to give you some important points to consider when it comes to building a good website, and some ideas for how to improve yours if you’re repenting a little late.

There’s a whole lot here to digest, but nobody said building a good website was easy! So give yours the once-over and use this checklist as your guide.

Layout

When my company builds websites, we start with the layout first. It saves a lot of “moving things around” later. Imagine you’re rearranging your living room furniture. You could walk in and start hauling sofas and bookshelves around, or you could sit down with a piece of paper and measure the walls and sketch out the places your furniture might fit and look best.

But what if you’ve already hauled the sofa? Well, it’s time to stand back and survey the room.

1. Do you have clearly defined content areas? You wouldn’t push your sofa, TV, cabinets and shelves up against each other in the middle of the room. And you shouldn’t cram your website stuff together, either.

You should be able to see “white space” around the elements on your page.

White space is what you’re looking at right now, between the sentences on this page.

White space means there isn’t a giant block of junk stuck together making your head hurt when you look at it.

If you can’t see spaces or imagine drawing lines between content areas, you need to rearrange the pieces. When people look at a web page, their eyes need to be able to rest. Space lets the eyes rest. Spaces between the header and the text, between the content and the sidebar, between the 22 things crammed in the footer.

One of the biggest “new guy” website mistakes is thinking that every square pixel on the page needs something on it.

Repeat after me: empty space is good. Empty space will help me get MORE customers and make MORE sales because people won’t be so overwhelmed by “stuff” and leave my site.

Survey your layout and open up the space if you have to, make the page longer if you have to, use the “delete” key liberally if you have to. Just let it breathe.

2. Do your content areas have a purpose? Why did you cram 22 things into the footer? Why do you have 4 sidebar sections?

“New guy” mistake #2 is picking a template (or theme) and then filling in the spaces. Lots of templates come with a footer with three widget areas or a big image space on the home page.

With nothing much to do with those spaces and probably no plan to begin with, many people just start cramming stuff in.

Remember when you moved into your first apartment or house? You had all this empty room, so you started filling it. You probably didn’t need 6 chairs and 12 candles and two dozen throw pillows, but there was space. You had to use it.

Same thing happens with websites. When your template gives you three sections on a page, you stick something in them.

Repeat after me: everything on my page must have a reason to be there.

Avoid the cram approach by thinking about how you can use space to get your message across or add something interesting, useful or valuable to your visitors. Break out your services into sections, move your social icons into a different and more useful space, create a space for inspirational quotes or daily tips. Choose content that has purpose and fills a need, not a space.

3. Are your important content areas strategically located? If you put your sofa facing the wall and your TV facing the opposite direction, it may look great in the room but it’s not going to be very effective when you want to catch an episode of Mad Men.

“New guy” mistake 3: put stuff where it fits or looks cool without consideration for whether it works.

If your newsletter signup is at the bottom of the page or your social icons are buried somewhere in that darn footer, that’s probably not the most effective use of space.

Decide what the primary function of a page is and put content related to it in an immediately visible and obvious place. If you don’t care much whether people join your newsletter list, then go ahead and put the signup box at the bottom of your page. Otherwise move it to the top and make sure it’s big and bold.

Repeat after me: Every page on my site has a goal. Content that helps me reach that goal must be prominent.

Your page needs a hierarchical structure so the most important stuff is top, front and center and the “other” stuff gets relegated to the bottom. That’s why you find Privacy Policies in small print at the bottom. Unless you really, really, really want someone to read your privacy policy instead of joining your list, structure your page to put the best stuff up front.

Branding

With all the talk about “personal branding” these days, too many business owners make the mistake of thinking that a big photo of themselves on top of their site constitutes a brand. This might work if you’re a blogger with good hair, but not if you’re running a business.

Yes, I know, businesses need a “face”, a personal touch, a real story. Tell it in the “About” section.

What your company needs is a brand. Whether you have an expensive logo designed by a professional or nothing more than a company name, use it wisely.

4. Have you defined a color palette? So you don’t have a 25-page, $5,000 branding guideline. That’s not free reign to use every color under the rainbow at whim. Choose a color palette that represents your business and stick to it.

“New guy” mistake… oh heck, who’s counting… is using a yellow banner today and a green one in six months and maybe a red-white-and-blue one in July. That doesn’t say brand. That says schizo.

Here’s a good tool: Adobe Kuler. Hit the “Create” button and you can plug in a color you like and it will give you complimentary colors, shades of colors, analogous colors. Instead of studying color theory you can pick out a pretty good palette of colors that are meant to work together.

Once you have a color palette, keep the hex values of the colors you’ve chosen. That’s the alphanumeric value that defines the exact shade of a color so that no matter who builds your site or what program they use, the color will always be exactly the same. If you can enter a hex value into your website builder or if you have the option and ability to edit CSS, this ensures a consistent look.

Repeat after me: my website is not an art project.

Headers, footers, backgrounds, headings, links – anything on the page that’s a color should fit in the same palette.

5. Have you picked a font? Please, oh please, god, don’t let it be Comic Sans. Everyone loves the Comic Sans font, and I can’t explain why, but the result is that it’s become the red-headed stepchild of fonts. Promise me you will avoid it no matter how cute or quirky you think it is.

Google has a ton of free web fonts for you to choose from. If Ariel is just too boring for you, find something that fits the brand image you want to portray.

Repeat after me: I will choose one font. I will use one font.

“New guy” mistake 43: using a different font for headers, text, sidebars, quotes. It makes a page messy and disjointed. You may not consciously look at a site and think, my heavens; they’re using four different fonts! But subconsciously, psychologically, you’ll have a sense of disharmony.

If you want to create a good user experience, pick a font. Just one. And when you do, make sure it’s big enough to read. Anything less than 12 points can be tough on the eyes. It would be terrible to lose business because your prospect got a headache from squinting.

6. Do you have a style? Part of your brand is an overall style. It’s a bit ethereal, but you recognize style when you see it. Stark. Corporate. “Artsy”. Elegant. Modern. Victorian.

Even if you know nothing about websites or brand, I bet if I said the word “Contemporary” you’d get an entirely different mental image than if I said “Retro”.

What’s your brand’s “style”? This will speak to a great degree about your goals and values. If you’re a modern tree-hugging company your style will be different than a traditional corporate company.

“New guy” mistake umpthennnt: grabbing snippets of styles from other websites because they’re cool. Some clipart here, a scroll there, a little bit of retro-modern somewhere else. You’ll end up looking like you’re in the midst of an identity crisis.

Repeat after me: I will not “borrow” design ideas from other websites no matter how cool they are.

In fact, I need you to stop looking at other people’s websites for inspiration entirely. Look to your company, instead. If you have a vision, a set of values, a goal, let that inform your style. Choose it, stick to it.

Content

Ah, content. So vital to any marketing, yet so neglected. If your idea of “content” is “have an About Us page”, you’ve got some homework to do. All the perfect fonts in the world can’t make up for poor content.

Some bad content is a side effect of too much space. You know how when you moved into that big house with four rooms and you had no furniture? Who could afford to fill a whole house? So maybe you got some hand-me-downs or shopped at flea markets and discount stores to fill the space.

If your website is filled with what amounts to Ikea content, it’s time to get out your keyboard. (No offense to Ikea owners, trust me, I spent many hours with the dratted, cursed hex wrench. Makes you that much happier to upgrade to furniture that’s already glued together.)

7. Did you proofread? This is so elementary that it requires repeating: did you proofread? I mean really, really proofread? And then get someone else to proofread?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written a blog post, proofread it, proofread it again, and then gotten an email the next day, inevitably from my father who keeps me on the straight and narrow… “Second paragraph. It’s ‘the’, not ‘teh’.”

Maybe forgivable in a blog post (I hope?) where we crank out multitudes of paragraphs in a short time without the luxury of passing a post off to multiple proofreaders. But on your business website perfection is a must.

New guy mistake something-or-other is thinking (a) it doesn’t matter or (b) it’s somehow cute or endearing to be “real”.

You cannot underestimate the damaging power of even one misspelling, let alone more than one, let alone misspellings coupled with poor grammar or punctuation.

Repeat after me: I will only publish something on my site after at least two people have thoroughly read and corrected it.

You must have a smart friend somewhere who knows the difference between their and there, so get them to help you make sure your website meets basic spelling and grammar standards.

8. Do you say what you do? A shocking number of websites still fail the simple “what am I?” test. If you can’t go to your home page and understand in five seconds or less what your company does, it’s time for some clarity.

In fact, anyone coming to your site for the first time should be able to land on any page and have a pretty good sense of what you’re about.

New guy mistake #97 is thinking you need to be clever, interesting and “catchy” instead of direct. Unique turns of phrase or eccentric photos are doing you no favors if they leave people with a sense of… “huh?”

Repeat after me: the attention span of my prospects is about the same as a two-year-old child. I will make my website easy enough for a two-year-old to figure out.

State what you do, clearly, and first. Make it short and sweet in plain English. Don’t use the word “synergy”. Ever.

9. Is your photography good? Not just that outsized headshot of you on top of the page but every photo should be clear and web-optimized.

If you’re going to use an outsized photo of yourself, please make sure it’s not blurry and pixelated. And please don’t Photoshop out the background so your headshot is hovering in mid-air with an “I Photoshopped out the background” halo around it.

Even if your website is DIY, leave Photoshop to the pros unless you’re an ace with a mask and the pen tool. If you said, “the what?” to either of those, that’s a pretty good indication you should leave the photo alone.

“New guy” mistake 803 is grabbing the nearest photo of yourself and then enlarging it to fit in a space you don’t know what to do with. Here’s a photo tip: you cannot make a photo bigger than it is if you want to retain the quality. You can reduce the size, but if all you have is a 100 x 100 pixel photo, don’t try to fit it into the 500 pixel space in your header. It’s going to be a blurry mess.

When you use any photography on your site it should be sized properly before it goes onto your website. Some DIY tools let you resize a photo once you’ve dropped it into place. Avoid this. If you want your photo smaller, crop it or resize it in a photo editing program so it fits exactly before you drop it into your website. Otherwise your file sizes can be too big and negatively affect download time, site speed and even search performance.

When you output a photo, you should also “save for web” which lets you reduce the file size – as long as you can retain the quality – to get the smallest, most efficient size possible.

Repeat after me: I will never use a stock photo of a man in a business suit. Photography represents my company, values and brand as much as colors, fonts and copy.

And please, purchase your stock photography so you can use it without the watermarks.

Optimization

It’s great that you have a website, but wouldn’t it be better if people could find it? For that you have to pay attention to the less obvious and sometimes invisible bits of a website. Although SEO is an entire study by itself, there are some fundamentals that you can and absolutely should pay attention to.

10. Are your page titles relevant and unique? Each page of your site should have a page title with keywords that are relevant to the page. Whatever the subject of your page, choose 1-2 keywords and use those as near to the beginning of the title as possible.

“New guy” mistake 901 and 902 is either not putting in page titles at all, so you end up with the default and rather useless “Untitled” or putting in page titles that are literally the name of the page. “About My Company” may be true, but that is helpful to neither search engines nor people.

Repeat after me: the only reason someone will click on a link to my site in search engines is if the title tells them something about my page that they want to know.

Here’s a quick title tip: keep titles relatively short. Google truncates titles after about 60-70 characters so if your key point is beyond that, searchers won’t see it.

11. Have you included page descriptions? These are sometimes used as the description in search engines so use them to give searchers more information about your site and to give search engines more keywords to hook into.

“New guy” mistake eleventy billion is to ignore descriptions altogether. You can ignore them, but you’ll be missing an opportunity, so take the time to write them.

Repeat after me: I will not cram my page descriptions with keywords.

Descriptions should be written in sentence format, or close to it. Repeating keywords or variations of them is not helpful and probably won’t inspire anyone to click your link.

Here’s another quick tip: Google truncates descriptions after about 130-150 characters. You can make them longer, but try to stay close to that range and make sure that even if they do get truncated, your important points and keywords can still be read.

12. Are you using keywords on your pages? You might want to crack out the old Google keyword tool and see what people are really searching for when it comes to your products or services. Sometimes it’s not what you think. Here’s a post about how to pick those keywords.

Once you have that information, use those keywords on your site pages, in the copy, in the headings, in the image ALT tags and in the links. But be careful not to overdo it. Google is getting especially uppity lately about “over optimization”. If you read your copy and a particular word or phrase sticks out because you’ve used it 432 times, cut down on its usage.

There is a point of diminishing return on keyword usage. Not enough and your site won’t be relevant for that word. Too much and your site will be snubbed as over-optimized. Here’s a post on some strategic places to use keywords.

“New guy” mistake all-too-common-and-a-half is not using keywords strategically at all. I’ve had many conversations with many people who say, “I want my site to be found on Google for keyword ABC.” And yet keyword ABC is nowhere to be found on their site.

If a keyword is used either infrequently or not at all, even pixies with magic fairy dust won’t get your site on Google for it.

Repeat after me: every page of my site is an opportunity to optimize for a different keyword.

You don’t need to use the same word on every page in every conceivable place on your site. Choose keywords that relate to the specific content of a page and include them on a page-by-page basis.

The Little Big Things

There are some details that are easy to take for granted or overlook altogether. I’ll make this easy for you and give you the short list of “must-dos” if you want your website to be any good.

13. Make sure your links work. Obvious? Maybe, but have you taken the time to click on every single one to be sure?

14. Make sure your contact form works. Confirm that your required fields are required and if someone doesn’t fill them out correctly, your error messages are clear. Make sure your submit button does, in fact, submit the form to you, and the user knows this, either by seeing a “thank you” message or by getting a confirmation email.

15. Install analytics. Even if you have no idea what to do with them, one day you will, and you’ll be glad you’ve been accumulating data. Google analytics is free and easy to use. Here’s a post on what to do with analytics if you’re just getting started.

16. Get Webmaster tools working. You may not know what to do with these either, but start right by putting them in place and you won’t regret it later.

17. Set up canonicalization. A very big word, but a very simple and important concept: whether you type in www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com or www.YoUrSiTe.com they should all resolve to one single name. It doesn’t matter which iteration you choose but you must choose one. For example, if you try to type in a variation of this site’s domain in your browser, you will see that every single time it goes right back to www.websearchsocial.com. This is important for search engines.

18. Set up “friendly” page names. By default, some programs will name your page with an ID, so you’ll see a string of strange letters, numbers or symbols in your URL string. On this site, we’ve changed that so it defaults to the post title. This is important for search, too, and will make your links look a whole lot more legitimate – and useful – to the end user.

19. Make it mobile friendly. This may be as simple as using the right plugin or as challenging as rethinking your layout altogether, but with mobile usage skyrocketing, it makes sense that your site is accessible on more than a desktop computer. Here are some tips for making your website mobile friendly.

Deep breath!

How did you do? Did you check your website against these tips and find places to improve? If you’ve done everything perfectly without my help, maybe it’s time to become a web developer!

There’s a lot to building a good website, and more than even I could fit into one post. But I hope I’ve helped point you in the right direction.

Got questions? Want to know if something you’ve done is “good”? Ask away! I’d love to help.

“What?!” You may be thinking. “No way! I totally want to succeed!”

Ah, but does that mean you’re not, somewhere in your deepest darkest unacknowledged mind, afraid of it, even in some tiny way?

I venture to say yes. Here’s why.

Fail Monster #2: Fear Of Success

Many of us are in touch with the more obvious fear of failing, the “what ifs” that keep us awake at night. But we don’t generally think about the other “what if”: what if I succeed?

We may have grand visions of confetti falling on our heads and presidents putting medals on our necks. We may plan the boats and cars and vacation homes we’re going to buy with all that money. But beyond dreaming, how often do we face the reality of success?

The reality may not be as pretty or as glamorous. The reality is that you don’t get successful and just stay there. You have to work to stay there. I bet part of your celebrity-loving brain knows that, and wonders if maybe being successful will be hard. Maybe people will start to expect things of you. Maybe it’s not all dream homes and confetti, but work.

Worse, what if you reach your goal and find it’s not as exciting as you thought? What if you get there and feel sort of let down, bored, not quite as “successful” as you thought you’d feel?

And so subtly, we sabotage ourselves, just shy of our goals, afraid of what will happen when we get there. We coast along, “doing pretty well” because success is a little too scary. We redefine success to mean “wherever we are now that isn’t too hard or challenging”.

Before I started my marketing and consulting business, that was me in some ways, too. I know I gave you a big story last time about how paranoid I am of failure, and that still remains my biggest challenge. But fear of success has reared its foul little head, too.

If you’re running a business I bet you can relate to being afraid to fail and afraid to succeed at the same time. I won’t make you admit it; but I know I’m not the only neurotic one. A bevy of thriving mental health professionals across the planet are a pretty good indication of that.

For me, growing up in middle-class suburban America, I was taught that life follows a particular pattern. You go to school, you graduate, you get a job with optical and dental benefits and a good pension, you get married, you have 2.5 kids, buy a house and… well, that’s success.

I got so far as “get a job” and “get married”, fanfare and all. When I stopped short of having kids, people started to look at me funny. And then when I quit my “job” and ventured into business on my own, you can imagine the eyebrows that raised. To this day people will insist I should have gotten a “job with benefits”.

But along the way I wasn’t exactly flying high with defiance. I was scared, I felt guilty, I hesitated and tried not to disrupt the delicate balance of “life as it’s supposed to be”. It wasn’t all freedom and joy, believe me. Part of me sat back and planned the conversation I’d have with my old school director, asking for my job back so things could “get back to normal”.

Could this be you? Are you challenging the status quo and secretly hoping that it might not work out, so you can “get back to normal”, too? Is the idea of succeeding a little overwhelming?

The Success Monster’s Child: Mediocrity

When you were a kid, did you dream of mediocrity? Did you think, “I want to be the best just-about-average person I can be!” Heck no, you wanted to be a rock star. You wanted to bring the house down and have cheering crowds and screaming fans and you wanted that electric guitar to be wrecked at your feet.

Then we grew up, and now how many of us are happy just to be able to pay the bills? How many of us are satisfied with a mortgage and a dog? Or how many of us are not quite?

We don’t define mediocrity as fear, but that’s what it is. It’s us giving up on our goals and dreams and deciding we’re ok with what is. It’s us afraid of looking beyond, daring the gods of “enough” and saying “I’m going to be better!” Because that could be hard, and that could disrupt our orderly lives.

Think about this for a moment. Are you truly satisfied with what you’ve achieved or are you settling for “just enough” because you’re afraid of added expectations, increased scrutiny, of alienating people who can’t understand why you’re not happy with “everything you have”? Is there part of you that wants more?

The Weapons: Desire and Determination

In a lot of ways fear of success is worse than fear of failure because it’s tied up in other aspects of our life, such as how we live, who our friends are and what we’ve been taught to expect. If we fail, we may feel bad or look bad but if we succeed… that opens up a whole other can of worms, like jealousy, responsibility and expectation.

If you’ve ever played the lottery I bet you know what I mean. You dream of those millions, and when you don’t win, you comfort yourself by thinking you’re better off, because if you’d won, your brother would be all over you about paying your parents’ mortgage, your best friend would suddenly need a loan and you’d probably discover 26 “cousins” you never knew you had who all have various sob stories. I bet you’d even feel guilty that there are still hungry people in Uganda.

Isn’t it just easier to be mediocre?

Here’s another truism: I can’t help you overcome this fear, either. Nor can your mentor, best friend or partner. You have to want to succeed and you have to want it more than you want to settle for whatever version of success you’ve redefined for yourself right now.

Being satisfied with what you have is perfectly ok, as long as you’ve reached your version of success and you are truly satisfied. But if there’s something more that’s always nagged at you, then pull it out of hiding, dust it off and acknowledge wanting it all over again. It’s the only way you can achieve it.

Define Your Dream

Much as I asked you to do before, I want you to sit down and think about what defines your success. I want you to imagine yourself as the rock star you once wanted to be and create a vision of that for yourself now.

Think about what you really want: to be a bestselling author? To be one of the top 5 wedding photographers on the East Coast? Voted “best new startup” in a well-known business magazine?

Maybe you’ve defined success as simply getting published and earning 500 raving fans. That may not be bestseller status, but it’s your dream. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not advocating “always wanting more” and “never being satisfied with what you have”. I’m only asking you to decide what you want, whatever it is.

Identify Your Fears

Here we go making lists again. First I want you to make a list of all the things that keep you from reaching your goals. Are you afraid of the demands it will put on your time? Are you concerned about how your spouse or friends will feel about it? Do you think you’re not worthy?

Then I want you to divide that into the rational and irrational. It’s quite rational to worry about how success will affect your time. Success can keep you busy! But it is not rational or useful to worry that you aren’t worth it. You must focus on the “practical” fears and ignore the rest.

Once you’re in your right mind, do the same exercise we did last time and divide that list into 2 more: things you can control and things you can’t. If you become a bestselling author, you’ll probably end up with raving bands of groupies who want a second breakout novel. You can’t control that. But you can control how you deal with it – namely, whether you intend to write another or how you’ll let them down gently.

Be reasonable about your lists and acknowledge the fact that there are some things you won’t be able to control – and some you will. Yes, even success has consequences.

Plan For The Consequences

It may be in increased expectations, more attention from admirers, or the loss of friends who don’t believe in your path. But if you want to succeed, you must acknowledge and plan for the possibilities. Success isn’t all rainbows and roses. Instead of fearing that, face it and plan for it. As a leader in your industry you may well find your schedule packed with speaking engagements. Consider the impact that will have on your lifestyle and those around you and plan accordingly.

If you know there’s no way that you could leave your 2.5 kids and dog behind as you tour the country, then be ready to say no, or be prepared to find creative alternatives like interviews via webcam. There are always opportunities and possibilities if you open your eyes.

Many times our fear is sustained by the unknown. If you know yours, face it, and turn it into a practical exercise in dealing with reality instead of some horrible, ethereal dread, you will find your path a bit clearer.

Ignore The Naysayers

I mean really ignore. I mean don’t entertain, for one second, the possibility that someone who tells you that you should simply be “grateful for what you have” is right. If you let those people get hold of so much as one brain cell, you’ll get sucked into doubt.

Nobody knows what’s right for you except you. People will “mean well”. They’ll try to tell you things for your own good, offer to help you learn from their mistakes.

Don’t quit your job – you need a retirement plan.

Forget art/writing/music, the market is saturated and there’s no money in it.

“Take it from me”, owning your own business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

People will try really hard to be helpful and tell you all the ways that what you want isn’t what you think it is/isn’t what you really want/isn’t going to make you happy.

Pft. Don’t try to convince them. Don’t try to persuade them. You can’t. And it doesn’t matter, because they don’t define your success.

Recognize Your Worth

I’m not going to give you the “you’re totally worth it” pep talk. If you need me to remind you that feelings of lack of worth are pointless and untrue then you have bigger problems than a fear of success and should probably get a therapist.

Rather, what I want to do is remind you to recognize what you’ve accomplished. When you’re reaching for a larger goal it’s easy to forget all you’ve achieved along the way. It’s important to recognize the things you’ve learned, the mistakes you’ve fixed and the people you’ve inspired. Not every achievement has to be world-changing.

Grownups go to great lengths to praise kids for every little breath – every discovery, every clever word, every stick figure drawing is wonderful. How many of you post photos of your kids on Facebook doing something soooo cute or quote something they said in your status update because it was soooo brilliant? And how many of you are just as willing to dismiss your own achievements? Start treating yourself like you’d treat a kid – praise every discovery, every clever idea, every stick figure drawing. In short, be as kind to yourself as you would be to someone else!

Focus On The Journey

There is no finish line labeled “success”. There is only the journey. Remember when you used to wish you were grown up? Because that would be good, that would be freedom, that’s when life really got going. Then you got a little grown up and wanted something beyond. And you wished you were 21 because then you’d really be grown up and totally free and that would be when things got going. Then you turned 21 and still wanted something beyond. Then you thought, if only you were married/living abroad/had a nice car/had a house/weren’t married/didn’t have a mortgage/had a job/could quit your job…

You know what I’m talking about.

There is no perfect place where all your dreams will come true. There is only now. And even if you do reach your dreams, chances are you won’t find perfection there either. But that’s not what we’re trying to achieve, is it?

Instead of confusing perfection with success, focus on what your success looks like and then pay attention and enjoy the journey. Success isn’t at the end of the journey – success is  the journey.

You can combat your fear of success by enjoying and acknowledging every small success along the way to your bigger goal. And once you get there, whether it’s everything you wanted or not all it’s cracked up to be, you must realize that the journey is not over. It’s just time to start on a different path.

What have you achieved on your journey? Take a moment to show yourself a little appreciation and tell me about it in the comments.

Read More In This Series

Sabotaging Success Part 1: How ‘Fear Of Failure’ Will Wreck Your Business And Crush Your Dreams (Unless You Take Action Now)

Sabotaging Success Part 3: How Jumping Into Business Without Knowing Where You’re Headed Is A Recipe For Failure (And What To Do About It)

The problem with success is that it’s defined differently for everyone, and there are as many paths to get there as there are people walking them.

But there are some pretty surefire ways to fail, and those are the things I want to talk about, because success is hard. You’ve got to work to achieve it. But failure is pretty simple, and the Fail Monster can sneak up on you when you’re not looking and suck you down into an abyss of… well, failure.

And so, to arms, fellow marketers and business folks! I want you to be on the lookout for these wily beasts and fight them off the moment they rear their ugly little heads. In  the next few posts in this series I’ll help you recognize them and share some ideas for what to do when they threaten.

Fail Monster #1: Fear Of Failure

One of the biggest barriers to your success is the fear that you just won’t make it there. You might fall short. You might totally mess up along the way. You might… gasp!… make mistakes and feel sort of stupid.

I’ve struggled with this Monster since birth. When I was a kid, I did well in school. I was praised repeatedly for being “smart” and for getting good grades. Instead of driving me to succeed, it had the opposite effect; it made me totally afraid to get a bad grade.

Other kids may well have been driven to succeed, but I was driven to hope and pray that nobody would ask me to “do well” again, just in case I couldn’t.

I struggle with the same fear to this day. There are times when I purposefully avoid something because I may not know how to do it. I could look stupid doing it. I could do it wrong. Someone else might hate it, someone else might disapprove. Many times this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m afraid that I can’t, and so I can’t. I fail because I’ve set myself up to fail – because I expect to fail.

How about you? Do you have moments in your career where you’re simply too afraid to try something new or different? When you resist change because you think you might get it wrong?

The Failure Monster’s Child: Hesitation

Sometimes fear isn’t stark. It doesn’t make your heart beat faster or induce you to pull your hair out in anxiety. Sometimes you may not realize that fear is what’s keeping you back.

This subtle fear comes in the guise of hesitation. You may put something off, delay a project, wait to join a conversation, stand back and watch for a while to see what happens.

We overthink, we worry, we muse. We do this to our own detriment because we can’t succeed if we can’t get off center. This type of fear keeps us mired in the “what ifs”. What if I paint the room the wrong color? What if I say something dumb on Twitter? And so we stop and wait, thinking that one day when we know how to do it right, when we’re sure we’ll get it right, then we’ll give it a shot.

Think about it for a moment. Is there something in your life that you’re putting off, waiting to do, because you “need more time” or “want to know more”? How long have you been waiting?

The Weapons: Conviction And Courage

Now that I’ve admitted to be being completely neurotic, let me assure you that neither I, nor you if you can relate, are destined to fail. The Monster may bare its nasty fangs but I have weapons, and so do you.

The only way to combat this particular monster is to reach within to your own store of strength and conviction. I can’t help you. Your best friend/husband/wife/mother/boss can’t help you. No amount of praise can help you.

As grown-ups we have much more ethereal fears than simply failing an eighth grade math test. What if I don’t make enough money? What if my client hates my idea? What if I sound dumb? What if nobody cheers for me?

The truth in business is that you may not make enough money, your client may very well hate your ideas and even fire you! Sometimes you might even sound like a moron.

Courage means that you move ahead in spite of all that. You must choose to succeed. You will be afraid but you will go on anyway, with the knowledge that you can, no matter what the little voice says, no matter what the setbacks, no matter how hard the road.

The only way to succeed is to acknowledge the fear and the hesitation and move on in spite of it.

The simplest way to guarantee failure is to give in – and wait until you and everything around you – is perfect. 

Define Your Success

To wage war with this Monster, you must start with a definition of success and don’t waver from it for a second. That may mean money, it may mean recognition, it may mean something as grand as helping others combat hunger and poverty, or as simple as publishing a book.

Whatever your marker for success is, write it down. Keep it in a gorgeous leather journal or on half a dozen sticky notes on the refrigerator, I don’t care. Make it real and definitive. This is your drive, your motivation.

Whenever fear or doubt creeps in, I want you to visualize your success and imagine yourself at the very pinnacle of it. Recognize yourself as that successful person in your vision. Use this beautiful vision as your inspiration and know that you will get there, as long as you get moving.

Define Your Fear

Instead of some vague fear of failing, I want you to pinpoint exactly what you’re afraid of. Is it a general fear of looking dumb in front of people you want to impress? Is it a more specific fear that you won’t be able to make enough money to support your family?

Write down everything you’re afraid of. Then divide them into two groups: things you can control and things you can’t.

If you’re afraid of giving a keynote speech because it might rain that day and ruin your hair, well, that’s something you’re just going to have to forget about. You can’t control the weather and though we may try to tame it, hair can have a mind of its own. That is completely outside your area of control.

If you’re afraid of your joke falling flat, you can exert some control over that by practicing and making sure you’ve got the delivery nailed.

Recognizing that things can go wrong but that you can’t control them all can relieve you of some of the pressure to be perfect. And preparing for the rest can give you a sense of confidence about your task – and ultimate journey – ahead.

Take One Step

Whenever you think you “can’t” or are “waiting” for the moon to be perfect, I want you to pull out your definition and take one small step toward it. If you want to write a novel, you have to start with the first sentence.

In his book Rework, Jason Fried tells about Ben Saunders, a record-holder for marathon Arctic journeys, who had so many cold miles and months ahead of him that all he could do was focus on getting to the next bit of ice. If he’d spent that time dwelling on the challenge and possible failure of the expedition he may never have achieved his fame.

I want you to focus on whatever you next bit of ice is. You don’t need to know everything or be ready for anything to simply take one step ahead. Appreciate every single step along the way as an achievement.

Be A Negative Nancy

Pull out your list of fears again and focus on those that are within your circle of control. I want you to further divide them into rational and irrational fears. If you’re afraid you’ll walk up to the podium and the audience will immediately nod off, that sounds like an irrational fear. It’s just flotsam your brain is throwing in your way. Ignore it.

A rational fear may be walking onto stage and forgetting your opening line. So before you do that, I want you to take your rational fears and imagine the worst thing that could happen.

Often the worst thing that could happen is a lot less traumatic than we think. In Ben Saunder’s case, I imagine the worst thing that could have happened is he could have frozen to death in the middle of the North Pole. That’s a pretty serious consequence! But for most of us, the worst thing that could happen is we’ll sound silly, make a gaffe, miss a deadline.

There are two benefits to being a Negative Nancy. The first is that it can help you realize that your fears are not life-threatening. You can then approach a task rationally, and even though you may not be able to squash the fear, you’ll still be braver than you were.

The second is that if there is a dire consequence to failure, it will help you plan and attend to the details necessary to improve your odds of success. I bet if Ben never imagined freezing to death, he wouldn’t have brought that extra pair of wooly socks, and maybe those socks made all the difference.

If you’re afraid of forgetting your opening line, imagine yourself forgetting it and what you’d do. Imagine yourself starting halfway through a sentence and circling back, or winging your opening altogether. The point is that imagining a worst-case-scenario can help you plan for it as best as you can. That alone can be enough to get you moving again.

Be careful though – don’t let planning become obsessing or take the place of acting. At some point, you must know that you’ve planned as much as you can, and it’s time to do.

Learn The Easy Way

If you have a mentor, a coach or just a really good reading list, learn the lessons, processes and methods that others who have gone before you – and probably failed a time or two – have to teach.

There is no magical well of confidence that successful people tap into. Many great people are where they are today not because they weren’t afraid to fail, but because they weren’t afraid to get back up. The difference between successful people and those who spend their lives watching and waiting is that successful people persevere in spite of doubt. Take what they have to teach and use it, let it guide and inspire you.

This is how I learned much of what I know about marketing today. I paid close attention to what worked for other people. I took courses, I read books. I piggybacked on ideas that people smarter than me had to share. This isn’t cheating, it’s just being smart. I didn’t invent the idea of time-tracking but you’d better believe that when I learned how useful it could be, I started doing it! I didn’t uncover the secrets of a successful Facebook page but you’d better believe that when I saw what was working for leaders in the industry, I adopted their methods.

Learn, adopt, adapt. That’s your mantra.

Learn The Hard Way

If you can jump off a cliff and land on a comfy cushion, great. But if you land on a plot of cracked cement, get yourself stitched back up and jump again. Remember how many times you fell off your bike or got hit in the head with a ball as a kid before you learned to ride or catch? I bet you cried, but I bet you got back up and did it again, and eventually you succeeded.

When I was about 9 or 10, I really wanted to be able to do a back-bend. That’s the trick you see a gymnast do so effortlessly, where she bends over backwards and touches her hands to the floor in a perfect arch. I vividly remember the first time I tried, standing in front of the TV in my grandmother’s living room, watching someone do it on the screen in front of me. I bent over backwards, put my hands out… and fell smack on my skull. Holy crap did that hurt.

Next time I tried, I did it with a pillow behind me.

I’d like to tell you how many times I fell on my skull but when you get hit on the head that many times, you cease to be able to think straight, let alone count. Perhaps a wiser move would have been to take a class or get a coach, but at that particular moment I was determined to do it.

And so I did. Not only that, but I learned to get back up again into a standing position afterwards. Not that day, but some day after a whole lot of skull cracking.

Now, I’m not going to tell you I am a gymnast of any sort today. But I never wanted to be a gymnast. I simply wanted to do that damn back-bend. Nobody encouraged me. Nobody patted me on the head and said “good job!” Nobody even knew I could do it. But I did, and that defined my success.

I’ve learned a lot about my business this way, too. “Trial by fire” we call it as grownups. It hurt, but in the end I learned. And you will, too.

Embrace Your Failure

So you’ve made a mistake, broken something (hopefully not your skull) or sounded like a complete imbecile. Dissect it and figure out what went wrong. Did you leave out an important step? Did you ignore a detail? Did you not know enough and now have more information in your arsenal?

I want you to stop fearing failure and be grateful for it. Look at it like a hurdle in a relay race. Maybe you tripped over it and fell on your face, but that’s one hurdle behind you that you won’t be tripping over again.

Of course, that means you must learn. If you keep tripping over the same hurdle again and again, clearly you’re doing something wrong! At that point, bench yourself until you can figure out why you’re making the same mistake repeatedly instead of aiming for the next mistake up ahead.

Don’t Be A Politician

In a lot of cases, we’re more afraid of looking or sounding stupid than of actually being stupid. This fear of failing publicly keeps many of us back. Take my school grades – I was terrified to fail because so many people were watching. But I didn’t hesitate to fall on my head in a back-bend because that was for an audience of me.

I want you to avoid the impulse to always come out looking and smelling like a rose. How many times have you watched politicians in an interview try to backpedal and talk around things they simply refuse to admit? Just once I want one of them to step out and say, “Yup, that was a picture of me naked on the internet. Pretty stupid, right?”

If and when you fail or make a mistake, I want you to acknowledge it, own it, and then figure out what you’re going to do to get back on track.

“Wow, I totally messed that up.”

“Boy, I shouldn’t have done that.”

You can’t learn otherwise and learning is the only way to combat both failure and the fear of it. So next time you say something stupid, miss a deadline, botch a meeting, screw up a client account, I want you to admit it, determine what went wrong and plan to fix it.

Know That You Are Going To Fail

Here’s something you must know: you will fail. Few and far between are those who simply wake up one day enmeshed in success. They have their one brilliant idea, get rich, take a long vacation and spend the rest of their lives telling other people the “secret” to doing it just like they did.

Forget those people.

You are going to have to work. You are going to get things wrong. You are going to get fired! Heck, I’ve been fired, I’ve lost business and money and time and energy. Yet here I am, not doing so badly after all.

Starting out knowing that somewhere along the way you’re going to make mistakes and fail is what’s going to get you over your fear. Insisting that you can, will, or want to be perfect is what’s going to hold you back.

Success is a journey, littered with crappy stuff along the way. And you can be so much more than you think, if you’d just get out of your own way, look your fear in the eye and then step on its ugly little head. So whether you’re afraid of the icky little failures along the way or the big “I’ll never be able to do this” failure, it’s time to acknowledge, plan and conquer. Only you can do that, and only if you start right now.

Tell me now, what’s keeping you back? What’s standing in the way of working toward your goal or dream? Share your thoughts in the comments and let’s have a conversation… or are you too afraid, hm???

Read More In This Series

Sabotaging Success Part 2: The Paradox Of Wanting Success But Avoiding It… Because You’re Not Really Sure What You’ll Do When You Get There

Sabotaging Success Part 3: How Jumping Into Business Without Knowing Where You’re Headed Is A Recipe For Failure (And What To Do About It)