Well, are ya?

In the New Psychology of Achievement, Brian Tracy says, “If you knew you could achieve whatever you wanted and absolutely could not fail, what would you do?”

Well?

I hope your answer is that you would do something really big. You wouldn’t squander such an opportunity on doing something small, would you?

If you would do something small, then you probably don’t truly believe that you could not fail. This is likely the case because you harbor a strong fear of failure that over-shadows your growth plans. Thus, you purposely take small conservative actions to grow your business.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that the truth is exactly the opposite of Brian’s question. We know that whatever we do, we could fail. But knowing that, what will we actually do? Brian is trying to influence us to change our thinking about what we can achieve and how we feel about making mistakes.

Tom Peters is another expert who has something to say about not worrying about failure, but instead we should embrace it. Watch this short video to see what I mean.

Business Today – Too Much Talk, Too Little Do

Here’s the point I’m trying to make: Think Big. Don’t worry about whether you’re going to fail or not. If you make it, then you win big. If you don’t, you’re going to have a valuable lesson on your hands to learn from as you continue to think big.

As the new year roars in to February, think about what BIG goals you’re going to accomplish this year. What massive action are you going to take to be wildly successful and pummel your competition? You can do this!

If you want greater assurance of hitting your big goals and more this year, then consider joining The Growth Coach’s Strategic Mindset workshop series, which are all about helping you to focus and set some big goals to grow professionally and personally like never before. I’m now pulling together the next group that will kickoff on February 13th. There’s still time to be a part of this group. Let me know if you’d like to learn more.

Starring You

A recent email from the smarties at MarketingProfs informed me that:

the average user of online video watches more than 16 hours of video a month and YouTube videos are watched over 3 Billion times a day! This is astounding.

Video is rapidly becoming essential to modern marketing and you seriously need to think about how to get on board before the train is so far from the station that you’re feeling impossibly behind the curve.

Before we talk about how, let’s talk about what.

Here are some potential ways to use video for your business:

1. Instead of blogging, vlog. This is running a regular video blog. Perhaps the most famous one is Wine Library TV from Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crush It.  Gary did 1,000 episodes of this show and became very famous along the way in the internet economy and marketing world.
2. Run a retail store? Create a commercial every week that would be like a one-minute spot on TV. Feature specials, new arrivals, and an employee spotlight. Keep it light and lively so it’s fun to watch.
3. Are you a coach or consultant? Create regular videos that teach your audience.
4. Are you an artist? Shoot videos that show people how you create your art.
5. Are you a caterer? Show videos of certain signature dishes being made with your unique personality thrown in.
6. Are you a speaker? Record your presentations and edit snippets of them for posting on YouTube so you can get hired as a speaker more easily.
7. Add a video to every email newsletter you send out.

And the list goes on. There are many ways to use video to present yourself and your business in a positive way. I’ve been using ideas three, six and seven lately. Here’s an example:

3 Ways to Engage with Email Marketing

If you’re wondering if I’ve gotten business by using video, I absolutely have. I’ve heard a few times people say that they wanted to work with me after watching my videos.

The clients that are using video best to market their businesses are Aaron Parnell and Dave Crimmen, who both got the power of video a long time ago. Robert Brilliant, who shot the video shown above certainly uses video to market his business since he is in the business. David Neuendorff of 1MinuteReel edited the video above and also uses sample videos on his site.

In a future post we’ll talk about how you can create video on your own or with the help of a pro like Robert or David.

If you have questions right now, send me an email or leave a Comment.

Ever heard that phrase? What it’s alluding to is the discipline to tackle the most important item on your to-do list first thing in the morning. I say discipline because it won’t have much effect on your business if you just do it once. But, if you ‘eat that frog’ day after day you’ll see your productivity zoom and you’ll feel really good about yourself.

When you’re in business it’s typical to feel overwhelmed since there’s always so much to do. One way to feel better about your big task list is to divvy it up in to meaningful categories. The ones I recommend are commonly used:
1. Urgent & Important
2. Urgent & Not Important
3. Not Urgent & Not Important
4. Not Urgent and Important

I created a simple Task Prioritization Grid where you can split up your task list and drop each item in to an appropriate category. (I readily admit the doc’s not pretty. Hey, I’m a business coach.) It’s fairly easy to place items in the Urgent & Important category and that’s good because this is the quadrant you want to pay attention to. It’s where your frogs are hanging out.

Now you know what’s next. Eat that frog and start your day off productively and feel lighter from there on. The next morning, eat it again. If you find that you’re making appointments first thing in the morning and that’s causing you to skip eating the frog for days at a time since your day often starts having a life of its own after 10:00 am, then revisit your scheduling process.

Need a little more inspiration? Here’s the short film that helps explain the concept. Do you use another method to ensure you get the most important work done every day? Please share it with me.

In the past I used a service called GOOG 411, which allowed me to call in and get the phone number for any business. This helped a lot when I was looking for restaurants to make a reservation or get driving directions.

Well, Google killed that free service to my utter disappointment. The good news is that they offer an alternative that just might be better.

You can text Google at 466453 and make an information request such as “Weather Burlingame, CA” (no quotes needed). What I got back when I did this was the current weather and a two-day forecast. Nifty!

After that I texted Quote ORCL and got the latest closing price for Oracle stock. Convenient!

Lastly, I texted “The Growth Coach Burlingame, CA” and got back my address and phone number. I’m sure it helps that I have an updated Google Places listing. Superb!

Add Google Texting to your address book and start using it for all sorts of information. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface as to how useful this free service can be. Let me know what new ways you find to use it.

Speaking for business is often a serious matter. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t want to connect with our audiences. Indeed, for any presentation connecting with your listener is very important if you want to be persuasive.

There are a few ways to connect with your audience, and one of them is humor. Using humor isn’t the easiest thing to do when you’re nervous about presenting. So, this tip is for those of you who’ve gotten accustomed to speaking and find your presentations are a little dry.

Before I share with you one of my favorite techniques, let’s start with a few don’ts. First, don’t use a joke. It is an advanced technique to use jokes in public speeches. There are a few pitfalls with this tactic:
- Some in your audience may have heard it already
- Some may find it offensive for some reason
- It’s just not funny the way you tell it

Next, don’t try to be funny right at the beginning of your speech. Get the audience warmed up and liking you first. Then, they’re more likely to want to laugh at something you say. There are many better ways to grab the audience’s attention at the beginning, e.g., use a stimulating question.

Lastly, don’t try to be funny all the way through your speech. This is very difficult and, unless you’re an entertainer, this shouldn’t be your goal. Most likely you want to inform and persuade, which will require more than non-stop humor.

All right, we’re through with the don’ts. Avoid those and you’ll be in a better position to succeed with your speech. Humor, used sparingly, and being genuine can bond you with your audience quickly. One key thing we want to do as speakers is not to seem better than our audience. If they see that you have flaws and aren’t perfect, they’re more likely to connect with you.

This is where self-deprecating humor can come in. I like to use this type of humor as I find it fairly easy and it puts me on a level plain with my audience. Also, it’s a sure bet you won’t offend anyone by making fun of yourself. Want to see an example? Click on the link below and watch the short video to see how I make fun of myself and get a laugh out of the audience.

Is Your Life in Balance?

After this humorous moment the room I felt more connected with the audience and the speech proceeded even more smoothly for me. If you’d like to improve the way you present publicly, you might like to attend my next Getting Started with Public Speaking event on August 12th. This class is ideal for beginners to lower intermediate speakers.

When you look at this article you can’t help but look at the picture, right? And as you look at it, you are probably thinking something positive is going on because of the lady’s smile and two thumbs up. That’s the power of pictures.

This post is intended to encourage you to make the leap to regularly using images that evoke feelings wherever you have words about your business.

We’re talking blog posts, newsletter articles, web pages, brochures, PowerPoint slides, and so forth. Don’t just rely on words alone to captivate and move your reader. You’ll lose against your counterpart that’s using rich imagery in combination with the words.

Two recent events reinforced this idea in my mind. The first event was related to advertising on Facebook. I have a client who’s dipping his toe in the water on Facebook ads. We were disappointed to find that his first ad, which ran for nearly a month had received no clicks. None. So, he didn’t pay anything since we set his campaign as a pay per click. But, that didn’t make us feel good about the campaign.

The original ad featured his company logo as the image. In a webinar I attended on Facebook ads the experts at Facebook advised to avoid using your company logo unless it’s very recognizable. My client’s logo is not well known. (Interested in the webinar? Go to Facebook’s Marketing Page on Facebook and click on the Facebook Live tab to find the May 11 webinar replay).

So, we picked the image above and used that along with some slightly adjusted copy. The good news is that the ad started getting clicks. I really doubt it was just the revised copy that caused the change.

The next event was listening to a webinar on blogging from Jay Baer, a new favorite online marketing guru of mine. If you’re looking for a guru to follow, go with Jay. Anyway, Jay said that he ALWAYS uses meaningful images as part of his blogs and articles. Nuff said.

I often get asked where I get my images. I use 123RF. They have more than 9.5 million in their inventory, charge as little as $1 a pic, and you can use the one you buy over and over. Simple and inexpensive.

Now it does take time to find just the right image. I sometimes spend 10 – 15 minutes finding one picture for one PowerPoint slide or a newsletter article. But i think it’s worth it because the right picture really supports your writing. It’s worth the effort. Start using the power of images going forward and you’ll see the results of your marketing improve.

In the 80′s we had telephones, the mail, fax machines, and face to face. All that has changed now. The ways to communicate with another person have exploded . The old ways still work, but now we have email, instant messages, texting, Twitter, Skype and so on. Wow, it can be overwhelming to consider what ways one should use.

Here’s what I recommend, have about 10 different ways you feel comfortable with so you’re not hitting people the same old way. Email may be your favorite way to contact someone, but what if the other party gets too much email already? In that case your email’s likely to be ignored.

What you can do alternatively is to send them a Facebook or LinkedIn message, or maybe a text. Indeed, they might prefer one of these methods. The fact is they’re more likely to respond if you communicate with them the way they prefer.

So, then, what if the other party likes social networking as a way of staying in touch and you don’t do that? Well, you could pick it up just to communicate with them. For the right person it might be worth it. You don’t have to become a full-blown social networker, but just a casual user for the right times.

Now we’ve only talked about 1to1 communication. What about mass communication? Email marketing and Facebook are great for that. Prefer direct mail? I like SendOutCards, which allows me to send a lot of personalized real cards all at once – very useful and a blend of modern and old fashioned methods.

I’ll just mention one more method here and that’s BLD marketing. What’s that you say? It’s breakfast, lunch and dinner, of course. Many deals are closed during meals. I make it a point to take out all my clients to lunch as often as possible. They really appreciate it and we have a chance to get to know each other better without the clock running. I like to meet prospects over meals or coffee, too. People are generally looser when they’re in a social atmosphere. The conversation seems to flow more naturally than in a quiet office. If you’re not using BLD marketing, then maybe you should read Keith Ferrazzi’s now classic book on the subject, Never Eat Alone.

The last point I’ll make is that there is what I call ‘disruptive communication’. What I mean by that is you get a message to someone in an unexpected way and that disrupts them and makes them take notice. For example, you stop by their office and leave a note and, if allowed, small gift. That will get their attention more than an email. Facebook messages can be disruptive, too, since few people get many of these. Texts are disruptive and are being used more and more for marketing purposes. Use a form of disruptive communication when you’re having trouble breaking through to someone. Don’t just keep sending emails.

If you’d like the handout I used for this talk as a checklist to see just how many communication methods you’ve got in your quiver and what you might want to add, just email me and I’ll send it over to you. And if you have a favorite disruptive form of communication I’d like to hear about it. Please comment below.

Okay, I’m going to get a little technical with you here. Google Analytics is a free software that you install behind the scenes on your website to get a ton of data on the visitor traffic.

A typical report will tell you:
- How many visitors have hit your site in a given period
- What percentage of visitors are new versus repeat
- Where your traffic is coming from, e.g., Google, Facebook
- What percentage is coming from referral sources like Google versus direct input, which would be your URL
- How long visitors are staying on your site
- What pages they’re looking at
- What words they used to find your site
- What part of the country or world they’re coming from

This is just a sampling of the data you can get from Google Analytics. It can also be combined with Google Adwords campaign to give you great data about how well your advertising efforts are working.

With Google Analytics I’m able to understand how my site is doing from month to month in terms of traffic. I can tell how my traffic spikes after I’ve done a lot of public speaking or released blogs through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.What I’ve found is that most of my traffic comes from Google and from people entering my URL right in to a search engine. Since I’m not getting much traffic from Bing or Yahoo, then I know that I either need to focus most of my energy on Google, or figure out why I’m not getting a lot of traffic from the other search engines and work on improving optimization for them.

Another key stat is how long people are staying on my site. On average people will remain on my site for two and a half minutes. I feel pretty good about that. However, I’m also seeing that a good percentage of my visitors are bouncing from my site, which means they stay for just a few seconds and leave. This tells me they didn’t find what they were looking for. I can look to see what keyword searches are bringing people to my site to learn whether my site is relevant for those searches.

Here’s an example of this. I did a blog comparing Costco and Target stores in terms of customer focus. It’s an educational blog for small business owners. Unfortunately this blog comes up a lot for people searching for Costco or Target. They click on the link to my blog, then immediately leave since they aren’t a small business owner. Google Analytics helps me understand this sort of phenomena on my site. As you dig in to the reports you’ll learn some fascinating truths about your site.

Bottom line, it’s an amazing package that every business should have on their website. If you don’t have it, then learn more and determine how to install it on your site. I can refer you to a resource who can install it for you if you’re not sure how to get it done.

If you would like to go through your first report together after you’ve had it installed for 30 days, feel free to let me know and we’ll set up a time to do that.

The bottom line is this: You need to be aware of what’s happening with your website and you will not know unless you get this software installed and activated.