Managing Change – How to take that positive first step!

A couple of weeks before my daughter’s recent wedding, I had to move my home office to a new room. It was my third such move in five years and was triggered by ongoing house renovations as well as the imminent arrival of overseas wedding guests.

I wouldn’t recommend moving office at the same time as preparing for a big event, but I didn’t have a choice on this occasion. I knew that by the time I would be closing the door of my new office to take time off for the wedding, I wouldn’t have had enough time to get used to my new environment.

And I did come back to work feeling a little disorientated. Being in a smaller, darker room with less of a view made the adjustment process slightly more challenging. Then, right on cue, I also started with a fluey cold that had been making its way round the family and lo and behold, I found myself feeling quite demotivated and frustrated during my first week back at work.

Of course, going back to work after the wedding may not have easy anyway as a wedding is probably one of the biggest and happiest events in a mother’s life. Despite feeling immensely proud and happy on the day, I had also shed a tear or two. Seeing 25 years flashing in front of my eyes at one point, I did find my happiness tinged with a little sadness.

This reminds me of the fact that change can have two different faces. Whereas a wedding is a fundamentally happy occasion, it can also be a powerful and symbolic reminder for a mother that her role is changing. Acknowledging the sense of loss (even if only minor) that comes with a changing situation makes it so much easier to let go and move on.

Health restored, I’ve accepted my new office (the lack of a view has its advantages!) and my motivation has returned. However, I can’t help thinking of all the people I know who are currently trying to adjust to much more serious changes, perhaps as a result of changing their jobs, having been promoted or even made redundant. Then there are those who are expanding or downsizing their businesses, or may have to give up as a result of the recession. I recall from my own experiences that the long-term impact of change can often mean much more than a simple change of environment or circumstances. Financial situations can change too and coping with changing work relationships can be really difficult, particularly when you see less of close friends and good colleagues, or fear you may lose them altogether.

My message to you, no matter what personal or professional change you may be faced with, is that it pays to be prepared for a little upheaval and to get ready to take that first step. Accepting this learning as part of your personal development will not only help you grow in the long run but in the short term, it will help you appreciate and welcome any new opportunities coming your way.

Ute Wieczorek-King is a Business/Career Coach, Trainer, Facilitator and host of Success Network meetings

Other top tips and articles can be found on the article page of the Success Network website

The power of having a strategy and the courage to use it

Over the last few weeks I have been tempted with pursuing a very interesting idea. In fact it has been a major and fun distraction away from business building activity. It is not until yesterday when my partner challenged me to remember our agreed strategy and asked how what I was planning to do fit in our agreed business plan that it finally dawned on me; I was barking up the wrong tree. I was planning to spend many hours on a project that at best would break even and would only return at best a few leads… Quite a wake up call!

 I was lucky to have:

- a clearly defined business plan

- a partner willing to challenge me

- the courage to understand a business plan is only useful if you are prepared to follow it

 In sharing these thoughts I hope I may help a few others challenge what they do in the light of what they want to achieve and have the courage to let go what does not fit in the plan.

 By the way I would welcome ideas, experiences, feedback on my postings, so thank you all in anticipation.

 Hélène created the FunShop to help those at crossroads personally or professionally find a sense of direction and increase in self confidence. www.thefunshopway.co.uk

Cluttering keywords for spiders could repell your readers

Incorporating keywords in your blog posts was one of the points I raised in my teleseminar on ‘Blogs aren’t scary, they’re fun!’ last May.

Keywords or key-phrases are particular words that are the most searched for in search engines. You can find them through websites such as Wordtracker, and including them in your blog posts helps raise your status in these search engines: they are, in fact, search engine spider food.

It’s good to include these, but make sure they are relevant to the subject as well as being ‘hot’ at that present moment.

I talked about including keywords or key-phrases into four places in your post:

• in the headline (because it later becomes the permalink or URL for that post)
• in the first paragraph (preferably in the first sentence so that both readers and spiders immediately ‘get’ the subject)
• in the middle (because that’s a place spiders look)
• in the final paragraph (another place spiders are programmed to search)

I was reading a post about article marketing the other day and I noticed how the author had incorporated his keywords into the post. He had followed the concept stated above to the letter. The final paragraph was exceptionally bad, as every sentence had the keyword either beginning it or at the end. The result was that it was incredibly boring to read, so much so that I clicked away.

Here are some other points it might be good to take into consideration if you wish to retain readership as well as spider interest:

• be aware that people skim read an article or post to see if it is relevant
• bullet points are a good way of highlighting elements
• keywords should be positioned also to catch the reader’s attention
• only the first 25% of an article is truly read before the reader decides it is worth continuing with or not
• small paragraphs also helps with the reader’s comprehension as well as attention span
• the average amount of time spent reading a blog post is 96 seconds
• therefore short and sweet posts fare better than long ones

Another keyword tip I picked up is that spiders cannot ’see’ punctuation, so if you have a key-phrase (keywords in a short sentence), you can add variance to your sentences by inserting full stops or commas in between if this helps maintain the interest value.

Don’t forget keywords should be also for your reader’s benefit as well as strategically placed for the search engine spiders, so don’t penalise your audience purely for search engine optimisation.

Think hard about your business name – it will make all the difference

I often respond to women business forums and one young entrepreneur was asking for advice on her babies’ clothes business. She had decided to call it ‘Blackberry Babes’ and wondered if it was a good name or not. This is my response:

I’m still a little confused why you need to use ‘blackberry’ – is there some underlying reason for this? I immediately thought of the hand-held electronic system. I certainly agree that ‘babies’ is better than ‘babes’.

I should take a good luck at the USP of your product. What is special about it? What does it have that your competitors haven’t? Does it use special fabrics, are the colours significant, does it cater for specific kinds of babies’ requirements, or what?

Then I would think about how it change the lives of the babies, or their mothers. Concentrate on that phenomenon when you do your marketing. For example, an ironing service shouldn’t talk about what they do, ie your ironing, but what their customers can do if their ironing is done by the company, ie free time with the family, weekends free from household chores, no more ironing piles towering on your washingmachine!

You should be describing ‘what’s in it for them’, not your product, because customers couldn’t care a tinker’s toot about you or your business, they only care about how it affects themselves.

What is so special about your babies clothes that marks it out as different from all the others, has a special element that makes the recipients lives better, and offers excellent value? Take these facts, work out your ‘keywords’ and create a name using them. For example, a courier service called ‘Fetch it now!’ – says exactly what’s on the tin.

Why this and not ‘blackberry’? ‘Blackberry’ doesn’t suggest to me baby clothing, it suggests to me more of food, or blackberry stains on sticky babies. If you are going to have a website for your company (hopefully an e-commerce one where mothers can buy on-line) by having a keyword rich name will not only make it easier for the search engine spiders to find your company, but easier for search engine users who type in those ‘keywords’ in their searches for baby clothes, not to mention the mothers who will understand exactly what you can do for them.

The result may be a little more boring than ‘Blackberry babes’ but if you want to survive on the internet, being cute and pretty won’t cut the chase.

Why should you use Optical Zoom rather than Digital Zoom?

 

Optical zoom uses the lens of the camera to bring the subject closer. Digital zoom uses software to enlarge an area of the image. It is similar to the crop tool in image editing software on the computer. If you go too far the image appears fuzzy and doesn’t print well.

When you zoom in using your camera, it will use Optical zoom first and then use Digital zoom. Most cameras will warn you when they are switching to digital zoom from optical zoom, or you can use the menu to turn it off.

 

Alison Crown loves photographing people.  You can see more of her work at www.alisoncrownphotography.co.uk 

or you can contact her as follows:  alison@alisoncrownphotography.co.uk 

Work 01628 673948 or Mobile 07931 238280

What is the difference between a website and a blog?

First, the similarities: websites and blogs both occupy a presence on the internet, use an URL or web address, need a host server to keep them online, contain information such as text content, pictures, links and keywords, and both benefit from search engine optimisation and can be tracked through Google Analytics.

But – here are some vital differences:

Blogs are designed to be self-editable. This means they are very easy to access (through a username and password) from any computer in the world, and require no web designer to make changes for you.

They are designed to be updated frequently and regularly – in fact, their programming attracts search engine spiders who are looking for new content all the time. This is very good for web optimisation which puts blogs higher up the search engines.

Unlike websites, blogs only update new material each time it is posted. Websites supersede old content, whereas blogs store previous entries as in a news-roll, each post dated accordingly and assigned it’s own URL for access at a later date.

Blogs are designed to encourage interactive communication between author and readers. Those who comment link back to their own sites, and this content is considered as new material by the internet spiders too. This is not available in websites, except through sign up forms, and then contributors cannot view afterwards what they have written.

Blogs are created to help businesses to spread their expertise, explain what their business does in different ways, maintain a relationship with their visitors and customers, offer subscription services for regular contact, channel traffic back to relevant websites, and can be fed to other websites like social networking for a higher readership.

And another consideration to note: they are much cheaper to create and maintain!

How to make your marketing messages match the big boys

OK, so we don’t have the multi-million pound budgets the big corporates have to play with when it comes to marketing, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is the approach you take, using these three simple and common sense marketing techniques that shouldn’t cost the earth.

First, make your messages regular, repetitive and always upbeat. There are plenty of ways to achieve this: blogging is just one of them, and now with the rise of social networking, Twitter in particular, there are other media where we can bombard our followers (or potential customers) with carefully constructed marketing messages frequently posted to gain maximum effect.

The good thing about Twitter is that is you only use 140 characters (or 120 to leave enough room for, hopefully, retweets) so you have to think about what you are going to say before submitting it. This is a very good practice all marketers should adhere to. The same should apply when posting on your blog, or playing with Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites: keep it short, sharp and sweet, making it obvious what you’re talking about from the beginning, and be appropriate, relevant and newsworthy.

Second, turn your marketing around so you don’t mention the product or service directly, but how it will affect the customer, how they will feel, who it will change their lives for the better, what impact it will have. This is a concept most successful businesses employ, and it works! Customers aren’t interested in your product, they only care how it will affect them: will they get their money’s worth, will they look good, feel good, be the envy of their friends, raise their social status or whatever?

Third, be consistent with your marketing messages by creating a routine. OK, this is difficult for SMEs who may not have enough personnel to spend time on this, but try and make it part of your 40% a week marketing activities; I’m sure you can slot in a few tweets and calendarise a blog post now and again? It will pay dividends, as large successful businesses promote their new products at least 27 times, in the hope that their customers will see it between 7 and 9 times.

Frequent marketing tactics will eventually sink in: this is all part of building your relationships with your customers (which is what marketing is all about), either for immediate effect but definitely for the future. Remember, you don’t want them to forget you, or be seduced away by your competitors, do you?

Do you know your product?

Silly question; of course you do, so let me rephrase. Do you know the product you want to sell? or the product your customers want to buy? Isn’t that the same thing I hear muttered? Actually, no.

 Yes the product is the same, but unless you can understand its benefits (notice I did not say features) from the point of view of the person likely to purchase it, you will not be presenting it in a way that they find appealing.

Incidentally the way I understand the difference between features and benefits is as follows:

A feature is something the product has: what makes it what it is

A benefit is what makes a product valuable to me: how it makes my life easier for example 

As a consumer unless I find the latter attractive I am not even interested in finding out about the former.

 Hélène created the FunShop to help those at crossroads personally or professionally find a sense of direction and increase in self confidence. www.thefunshopway.co.uk

New business? Want a website? My advice is: don’t!

You’re an entrepreneur and you want to start up a business. Great.

The first reaction to getting a slot on the internet is to get a website. Wrong!

Why wrong? This is because websites are notoriously expensive things! How much cash do you have? I suggest you should have a good think before you go throwing it away on unnecessary, inappropriate, uncostworthy things such as a website.

But surely everybody needs a website, or they won’t be taken seriously by prospective customers?

Of course you need a presence on the internet – it’s a requisite requirement nowadays. But not a website. What you need is a blog, and a good grasp of social networking. That’s how you get yourself known on the web. Only when you’ve made it, got a load of followers, built up your list of contacts, made some money, then you can go ahead and get yourself a website. By then you will know exactly what you want it for, and will build it with a proper purpose.

The trouble is, so many people get themselves a website, and it just sits there, looking pretty, and doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. They haven’t got the money to update it, because unless they have built it themselves they will have to pay a fortune to their webmaster to make any changes.

Now, if you have a blog, that’s exactly what you can, and should, do. This is because blogs are self-editable; they thrive on new material because they are designed for it. They are also little web magnets for internet traffic, as the search engine spiders are programmed to visit blogs extremely frequently, just in case there is something new for them to ‘read’. If they like what they find, and there are lots of keywords and key-phrases that match up to what is ‘hot’ at that moment, then you can get really high in the search engines!

And the other side of the coin is to get into social networking. The beauty of the web is that you can link and ‘feed’ all your blog content into social networking, so a lot more people can start reading about exactly what your business does – as long as you have written about it. And blogs are the place to write about your business: frequently, easily and regularly.

Don’t hide under a bushel – reach out and network. Tell the world about what you do. If people like what they read, you can start to make friends, contacts, business, liaisons, strategic alliances or whatever, all on the internet, through a relatively inexpensive blog – not by wasting your money on a website!

And does it work? There are plenty of businesses who are extremely successful today and have all started with just a blog, even before social networking got off the ground. Blogs are the beginnings of social networking, it’s just that the interactive side of the web (Web2.0) has developed a bit more recently…

7 Top Twitter Tips for Proper Use

Twitter is one of my all-time favorite places to market my business, Shoestring Marketing. In addition, I encourage every small business owner to jump head-first into Twitter in order to develop strong business relationships and find new customers and clients.

However, one complaint that I often hear from my own clients is that Twitter is intimidating, confusing and even a waste of valuable time. I want to put these complaints to rest once and for all, so I have compiled 7 Golden Twitter Rules that, if you follow, will catapult your business to the top of your industry in no time at all!

1) You Must Have a Profile Picture. If you are going to use social media as a marketing tool, take the time to find a picture of yourself for your profiles. Social medai marketing is about interactions and building relationships. People want to “see” that there is a real person behind your business.

2) Go Ahead And Brag! Obviously you know that you shouldn’t jump on Twitter and start shouting “Check out my product…it’s really the best one in the world!”  However, offering value to other Tweeters is one of the highlights of Twitter. So, go ahead and let people know about a blog you posted, an article you wrote or a webinar that you will be hosting.

There are only so many Tweets in which you can tell your followers what you are having for dinner until people start to unfollow you. YAWN.

3) Autofollow Those Who Follow You.  I have an app from www.Tweetlater.com that allows me to automatically follow everyone who follows me. I then get to know whom I am following through their Tweets. If I think they are annoying, I unfollow them.  But, how in the world can I make a decision to follow someone based on a 140-word profile?  For all I know, this person could be the next Faulkner with some of the most profound Tweets known to mankind.

I truly believe that it is in good taste to follow everyone who follows you and then unfollow those who you just don’t groove with.

4) Interact With Your Followers. Twitter is truly about building relationships with others. You need to answer questions, make comments and interact with your followers. I believe that if you are not able to interact with your followers, you shouldn’t be using Twitter as a marketing tool.

By the way, if you ever @ me, I will always interact with you! I love meeting and talking with new Twitterers!

5) Don’t Obsess About Those Who Unfollow You.  First of all, you do not have time to monitor and keep tabs on everyone who is unfollowing you. Second, you really shouldn’t care who unfollows you. If someone doesn’t like your Tweets, then they SHOULD unfollow you. You are not on Twitter to make sure that everything you say appeals to every single person. You are on Twitter to connect with new and interesting people. (Of course, if you find that dozens of people unfollow you every day, then you will need to reflect on what you are Tweeting.)

6) Your Tweets Do Not Always Need To Be Witty and Profound.  Obviously, in the ideal world this would be the case. But, the last time I checked, most people on Twitter are not professional writers, bloggers or word-smiths. They are just regular people making connections. Of course, you should strive to add value and interact with people. But, don’t worry so much that every Tweet is a witty comedy sketch. Just be yourself and have fun!

7) Always Remember That Twitter Is About Common Sense. When you first become involved on Twitter, you will encounter all sorts of different people. There will be Twitter newbies, Twitter veterans and Twitter know-it-alls. Don’t let the know-it-alls scare you. To succeed on Twitter, you simply need to interact with others, ask and answer questions and be nice! Don’t worry so much about “the rules.”   Twitter is an amazing and powerful marketing tool. However, believe it or not, besides spamming and other illicit behaviors, Twitter is mainly about using common sense.  Interact, be nice, ask questions, listen, and add value.  And of course, just be yourself and have a little fun!

Guest post by Jessica Swanson, ‘The Shoestring Marketer’, who has helped entrepreneurs, all over the world, explode their businesses using cutting-edge, proven, NO-COST internet marketing strategies. To receive your FREE Marketing Kit,  which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you, learn the exact techniques for marketing their businesses for NO-COST, visit: www.ShoestringMarketingKit.com

Why should you get in closer for portrait photos?

Filling the frame entirely with your subject will make a dramatic difference. Photo by www.alisoncrownphotography.co.uk

Almost any image will look better if you step closer to your subject. Filling the frame entirely with your subject will make a dramatic difference. Alternatively use the Optical or Digital Zoom of your camera to get a close up shot.

When photographing people fill the frame with their FACE only – particularly if they are smiling or pensive. With a clutter-free background, there’s less to draw the eye away from the main subject of your photo.

If you can’t get close enough when you’re taking the shot, you can zoom in later using photo editing software – crop out everything except the subject’s face and see what a difference it makes.

When using the viewfinder for close shots, be careful of Parallax error. Because the viewfinder is above the camera’s lens, placing the subject in the centre of the viewfinder may mean it is not centred for the lens; therefore the final image may be off-centre. Most digital cameras now come with an inbuilt LCD screen.   This is very usefel as it shows you what the lens sees – rather than the viewfinder.

Alison Crown loves photographing people.  You can see more of her work at www.alisoncrownphotography.co.uk 

or you can contact her as follows:  alison@alisoncrownphotography.co.uk 

Work 01628 673948 or Mobile 07931 238280

You don’t buy gifts with yourself in mind, do you?

When you choose a present for a friend, I hope you don’t choose it because you really like it?

When you choose the colour, you don’t choose your favourite and not your friend’s?

When you choose the size, you don’t see if it fits yourself, do you?

Think about these facts and compare them to how you treat your customers.

Long ago, when I was creating my totally unsuccessful wedding stationery, I was making stuff that I liked – what I would have chosen for my wedding stationery. Unfortunately I did not think whether it was anything that anybody else would have preferred. OK, I thought about the kind of card it was on, the matching envelopes, the accompanying reception stationery like place cards and favour-boxes, I even tried to consider what colours where fashionable and how much brides were prepared to pay (grossly undervalued as I was not creating them in bulk [thankfully] so I made a BIG loss), but I didn’t understand the way brides thought, where they got their ideas from, what really was in fashion, what their friends were using, what was already in the shops and catalogues.

The moral of this blog is: you must truely understand your customer. Get inside their heads, find out what makes them tick, look at the world through their eyes – and the way to do this is by asking questions. Only your customers know what they want. You must get outside of this naturally selfish trait we humans have, and start being Mother Theresas in the marketing world – consider others before yourself. Strip away any preconceptions you have, and reform your marketing strategy totally from your customers’ point of view.

Then do something about it. Action the reactions – change and adapt your business, products or services according to your market research. I met a market researcher who told me she had saved one particular company tens of thousands of pounds because she had found out what their customers were really thinking, and it was totally the opposite of their new advertising campaign. A big shock, but also a big wake-up call – and now their new adverts are spot on, with the inevitable results.

Ask questions > analyse the results > action the reaction = success in business!

Getting paid- Are you asking the right questions?

It feels so good when after months of hard work, relationship building and negotiation the large order finally arrives, we are keen to get on with the job and leave the paperwork for later. Leaving the details for later can have serious consquences when it comes to obtaining payment.

The new client obviously likes your product or service and although any genuine business owner/director will be happy to provide information we don’t ask.

A spokesperson for the British Chambers of Commerce commented in the wake of the Barclays Local Business annual Late Payments Report, which suggested that small and medium-sized firms in the UK are owed more than £10 billion on any given day and suggested to ask for payment in advance but in reality this is not always possible.

So if you are one of those businesses who have to give credit in order to stay competitive don’t feel embarrassed to ask the new client for

* the exact name and legal status (watch out for franchises with many different legal entities or Jo Bloggs trading as B Smith)
* the customer’s headed paper to verify the company details
* what the ordering process is and who authorises purchase orders
* find out the billing address and trading address
* ask for references from other suppliers or run a credit check, as a minimum check companies house (which is free)

It might feel like additional time spent on administration but it will pay off later on when it comes to payment, trust me!

If you still feel uncomfortable asking the questions above think of credit to a new customer like lending him money- would you lend money to a total stranger?

Rita Adams established A.R.M. Credit Control in 2004, the business provides credit control services to small medium sized businesses as well as large organisations.

Do you know who you are talking to?

Everyone can benefit from the product/service you offer. That may be true, but if you try to talk to everyone when you advertise, you talk to no-one. Just select the group of individuals who are likely to purchase more of what you have to offer and exclusively talk to them in their own language.

Don’t take my word for it; just look around and, for example, try to guess to whom major brands of cola advertise. Notice the different message/language when they talk of the regular or light version of the product.
 
Do you know who are you talking to? Who are they; male/female, young/mature?  Where do they go? How do they communicate with others? What do they do? What do they like?…

The more clearly you can  answer those questions and the more you can have a visual representation of who you are talking to, the better you will be able to communicate with them exclusively. And when you do, others will start to buy your product/service too.

How can you draw attention to the subject in a photo?

An example of ’shallow’ depth of field – where the person is in focus and the background is blurry.

www.alisoncrownphotography.co.uk

There are many ways to make something stand out in a photo but one very useful thing in portraiture is using a shallow depth of field – where the person is in focus and the rest is blurry.
Depth of field is determined by the amount of subject matter that remains in focus both in front of and behind what you are focusing on.
For example, in a portrait, if your subject and the background are both in sharp focus, then that image would have a “long” depth of field.
In order to control depth of field in your image, you must use the manual settings on your camera – it would be very difficult to achieve this effect in automatic.
When dealing with f-stops, small apertures are the higher numbers and large apertures are the smaller number (sounds confusing I know but you will soon get used to it).
Just remember this: the smaller the aperture, the more depth of field you will get. So, if you want as much of your image in focus as possible, use the higher numbers (smaller apertures like f/16 or even f/22).
However, if you want a blurry background, use the lower numbers (larger apertures like f/4 or f/2.8
Once you have your aperture set, you will need to set your shutter speed. With a digital camera you can usually see your image right away and make the necessary adjustments to the shutter speed or aperture.

Alison Crown loves photographing people.  You can see more of her work at www.alisoncrownphotography.co.uk 

or you can contact her as follows:  alison@alisoncrownphotography.co.uk 

Work 01628 673948 or Mobile 07931 238280

Always provide a focus

Went to my first networking meeting today for a month (since I had got ill with Bell’s Palsy). There I met an interesting lady who taught golf, at home as well as at the golf course.

I asked her how did she market her business. (I always do that to see if they know what they are talking about – there’s nothing worse than trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.) She mentioned that she did do advertising in magazines in the past, but had given it up because it was a waste of money.

Probing a little further I found out that the magazines that fared the worst were the national golfing magazines, whereas the adverts that did achieve a result were from the monthlies that are pushed through letterboxes. I asked her what did the ads say, and found that the contents was generally publicising the business and what it offered to customers.

I asked her if her ads had a purpose, an aim, an end goal. I explained that general adverts weren’t going to do as well as ones with a focus, something that led towards an event, a special course or whatever, and that there should also be an incentive, like 10% off when you present this advert or coupon, and a time to achieve this by, for example the actual day of the event or advance bookings to get £5 off the price.

Three simple things to include in your advertising: a purpose, an incentive and a time to achieve it by. General ads don’t grab the customers’ attention, don’t play with their wants or needs, don’t pander to their greed, and don’t command an action to ‘get something for nothing’ by a certain date.  Think about these facts the next time you write your ads or leaflets…

A Top Tip for ‘Business Mums’ Working from Home

I felt really inspired recently, after meeting ex Dragon’s Den Rachel Elnaugh who lost her company Red Letter Days a few years ago. Since recovering from the traumatic experience she founded a new business, helping other entrepreneurs to grow their business and to avoid the mistakes she made.

She is not only an inspirational entrepreneur, but a successful mum of 5 (!) children. I am full of admiration as having raised three children whilst running a business, I do know of the challenges!

One of them of course is finding the time to do everything we need to do, especially when the office is at home. Very few women I know adjust to working at home seamlessly, and are able to maintain the boundaries between work, family and play (is there is any play I hear you ask?)

Working from home may be a desirable option for many reasons, but in practice women often find their workload increasing by the day. It’s never been truer that there’s so much to do yet so little time to do it. Rachel was telling us for example that when her business took off almost unexpectedly after what seemed like a long time, she found herself working hands on, answering two phones for days on end.

Not everyone is good at both the entrepreneurial part of business, AND the ‘doing’ part, ie dealing with the boring day to day stuff. Women often rush from the school run to meetings and from one networking lunch to another whilst fire fighting in between. This usually results in not having the time to check the bigger picture.

Even when just leading a small one woman band, it is important to allow yourself some time to think! So why not block a little time in your diary right now? Stepping back will help you to see whether you need to….

• invest more time into personal and professional development so you are always ‘on the ball’
• spend more time working ‘on’ the business, to ensure your business ‘map’ is the right one
• learn to become more effective at ‘doing’ the right stuff, the right way?

What helps me make the most of my own ‘Big Picture’ time, is leaving my office for a couple of hours! I like to sit in a cafe or a hotel lounge with a big sheet of paper in front of me and some coloured pens. Whether I use a mindmap, draw or make lists, I always find capturing my thoughts and assessing my plans very motivating!

Here’s wishing you a productive and successful summer!

Tip provided by Ute Wieczorek-King, Business/Career Coach, Trainer, Facilitator and host of Success Network meetings

Other tips and articles can be found on the article page of the Success Network website

Never give up on marketing

I read somewhere that small businesses really ought to spend 40% of their time doing marketing if they want to survive. 40%! That’s quite a lot of time, but if you think about it, alot of what you do would be already considered as marketing without you really knowing it.

Take time to write down all the marketing activities you already do, and I expect you’ll be surprised. Certainly contributing to a blog is one of them. Writing your newsletter, answering questions from clients, writing a sales letter, updating your website, writing the words to advertise your next promotion, getting new literature printed, networking, thinking of a new elevator pitch – I could go on and on.

Next, split up these tasks into their respective areas. By reducing them down to their bare elements they become less oppressive and more manageable. Concentrate on the areas you enjoy doing the most, and see if you can farm out the horrible ones to someone who does enjoy doing them or knows more about it.

Set up a marketing system – calendarise your tactics ahead, focusing on next week/month quarter/even a year. Work out how they will be achieved systematically and automatically, planning in advance so that nothing is missed out and you know exactly what the end goal is. In fact, why not work backwards from the end product? This method will certainly sort out the time factors much more easily for you.

Try new marketing methods – there may be new ones you haven’t thought of that might make a big difference. Do lots of research and ask others who may already be doing it before you take on any large projects, but certainly dabbling won’t do you any harm. It’s always good to keep in the know.

And don’t forget to keep asking questions to make sure you are on the right track. Find out where your target market is hanging out, what they need and want, and what solutions will be the best thing for them. Be able to adapt your business accordingly – you must keep up with changes.

And remember, marketing is not a quick fix. It does take time, as usually it works within cycles. It can take anything from four months plus for a marketing cycle to come round again, thus producing results, so don’t get dispondent if nothing seems to be working immediately. A watched kettle never boils.

Aim with the end in mind

My mother publishes books about Brighton, and her company is a non-profit organisation which she trades from her home. As a self-taught publisher, she relies on her many years of art and design techniques, and yet with her advancing years she produces excellent books as well as managing her own website and blog.

One thing she has to be aware of is the current economic situation. In the past she could price her books according to its content, and there were no restrictions in size, length or capacity. Nowadays she has had to plan her books from the finished product, that is, work backwards so that she starts with the end in mind, making sure there are the correct number of pages, photographs, chapters, etc on the correct size of page to fit in with the printer’s requirements, who are also cutting back on costs to achieve the desired result. People won’t spend abundantly any more, so a fixed retail price of under £10 is set, and the contents, paper quality, presentation and final finish have to be budgeted accordingly to fit.

As a result my poor mother was greeted with a last minute request from her printers to reduce the sizes of her pages so that they would fit ’six up’, a term which means how he lays out the pages within his large pieces of paper to reduce costs. Now my mother, being self-taught on QuarkXPress only a couple of years ago, didn’t relish a massive change to her book layout in less than 24 hours, so had to call on technical support to help her sort out this problem. She did it with five minutes to spare – goodness knows what her blood pressure was like!

Do you work with the end in mind? It is certainly I will have to do when I restart my business in the autumn. Previously I have been winging it, and it has certainly contributed to my increased stress levels resulting in my Bell’s Palsy. Now I will concentrate on one project at a time, planning it to the enth degree, totally completing every stage and transferring it to full automation on the net. That is a sure-fire way to cope with any project to make it both successful and profitable.

Rosie’s Rainbow Fund Choir perform at TVBWG’s 20th Anniversary

Rosie’s Rainbow Fund Choir  – www.alisoncrownphotography.co.uk