Vision Of Success

When you’re at a conference, it’s easy to fill up a notebook with a ton of good tips and ideas. The difficult part is going back through that notebook, and doing each great idea you came up with, and visiting all of the resources you found.

Today I spent some time going through some of the resources we came up with the last two weeks at our conferences. One in particular stood out. 

Akoha, a play it forward game, is a brand new company that’s taking the Internet by storm. The site is currently in beta and won’t be released until 2009, but they are accepting beta testers to start the process.

You receive a deck of cards with different missions:

• buy someone a cup of coffee
• give someone a book
• donate an hour of time

Once you’ve performed the action on the card, hand it over to the recipient for them to “play it forward”.

The cool part is with the card, you can log into the website and record your information. From there you can trace where the card has been, and how many times its “played forward”!

So I registered as a beta tester. Can’t wait to get my first card…

One of the best things about being online is the ability to take control. I’ve written about many websites in the past that allow you to be creative, and actually create your own product.

In August, Keds Studio uploaded a new division - Zazzle - that let’s users create their own shoe, using several Keds shoes as the platform. In just a matter of minutes, you can choose your favorite colors or designs for the entire shoe, inside and out. Then you can start in with the decorating. Upload photographs or graphics, and place them into your shoe design. In minutes, you can have an amazing pair of shoes that are uniquely your own.

Since their launch just a couple of months ago, more than 30,000 designs have been created. While the shoe does cost a bit more than what you would pay in the store, the concept and design is unique - put whatever you want on your shoe.

This is intriguing enough for most people. But I found one other thing that caught my eye - the ability to share your shoe design with others on the site. Save and upload your design to their gallery section, and you can earn money from any sales that occur from people buying your design.

Imagine a young designer with a ton of ideas, yet limited in the ability to show off her designs. She can head online, incorporate some of her thoughts into this system, and set up her own gallery o f shoes. With a little bit of social networking, she can soon be on her way to having her shoes noticed by some VIP’s.

Imagine the possibilities.

As marketers, our job is to sell our products and services (or the products and services of our customers.) How do we do that? By setting up a problem, and offering us as the solution.

But any time you have a problem, you have unhappiness. Something in your life isn’t right, or isn’t the best it could be, so you’re out searching for a way to make it better.

The more products and services available, the more unhappiness there must be, right?

As I was blogging today, I came across a great post by Seth Godin on happiness. He stated something that got me thinking.

“What you have doesn’t make you unhappy. What you want does.

And want is created by us, the marketers.”

One of the reasons I quit watching the news is because of all the negativity. I can get the news I need on world events through various sites online - why should I sit through a half hour of negativity?

So maybe the same holds true with marketing. What if we could change it around and sell not from the “want” but from the “growth” factor? Instead of selling to you because something’s missing in your life, what if something could help you grow?

hmmmm…

We don’t watch much tv in our house. In fact other than a few movies, it hasn’t been on at all the past three months.

But Friday night we turned it on to watch the Olympics, and we’ve watched each night over the weekend. There’s just something about watching people that put all they have into a four year training period (since the last Olympics, even though I know training is much longer than that) just to enter a race - and have the chance to win gold.

Watching Michael Phelps was truly breathtaking. We were all cheering and literally holding our breath as he won his first two gold medals. Not only is he relying on his own skill to capture gold, but also relying on those of his team mates in last night’s relay.

Ultimately it comes down to action. They’ve practiced, trained, raced and practiced some more.  They’ve devoted their lives to being the best they can be. But if they don’t take action in the end, they will lose the race and never make the history books.

The Olympics show us truly what is possible. Setting goals is mandatory: world record times, capturing 8 gold medals, etc. They see their goal, and imagine the goal is within reach. And for some it is.

And they stop at nothing to achieve it.

It’s much the same for us as entrepreneurs. We’ve made the break from a traditional “job” lifestyle. We’ve plunged in to taking our lifestyle and businesses to a place where most people will never go. Even most entrepreneurs never reach beyond a “job” - they never achieve what they truly could because they don’t reach beyond their comfort zone.

Push a little harder. Make a bigger goal. Step out of your comfort zone, and reach for the stars.

You may be truly amazed at what you achieve.

photo by IndianSumm

What if you had a ton of expertise in online search engine tactics, and wanted to change the way search is currently being performed online? You’d start a new search engine of course.

Enter Cuil.

Cuil, an old Irish word for knowledge, has just entered cyberspace, and is ready to compete with the big sites. With a ton of experience between the founding members, and $30 million in start up funding, it’ll be interesting to see how big they truly get.

So of course I had to play. Yes, I’m number one under Lori Osterberg, and most of my other big sites are there too. But I did have to do some submitting for some of my smaller sites, and if you’re a current client, you’ve been submitted as well. 

So is it better than Google and Yahoo? Well considering it’s just days old, it’s still hard to say. Cover your bases, and stay tuned.

Looking for an interesting graphic to make your blog posts a little less white? Why not make a word cloud from Wordle.

Simply type in words that you want included. Or submit your URL from your blog or website. Wordle will take over and make an interesting word cloud for you.

From there you can turn your words horizontal, vertical, or mix it all up. Change the colors, and you’re ready to go. 

I was reading my June 2008 copy of Internet Retailer over the weekend. One of their articles was on reaching out and connecting with consumers in many different ways. The opportunities I’m sure will continue to grow. But even now, it’s time to think about who your customer is and how they prefer to reach out to you - not the other way around.

Their results showed that:

38 percent of businesses surveyed would be interested in using sites where consumers have the ability to tell manufacturers what they want

30 percent would be interested in having online shopping communities to combine buying power

22 percent are interested in having mobile phones to place orders and arrange deliveries

14 percent are interested in using social networks where shoppers share trends

The interesting thing that was also raised is while U.S. consumers show interest in these areas, China and Spain lead the way with wanting to use technology to its greatest advantage.

Many of the businesses profiled in this particular trade publication are multi-million dollar enterprises. They have a lot of resources to try many different things. Yet as a small business, you can follow in their footsteps.

What are you doing to reach out to your customers? If you only think of your clients on a local level, how can you start using different technologies to increase your market share?

It’s writing day for me today. As a part of writing day, I usually spend an hour or so surfing my favorite blogs and sites just to see what other people are saying.

I ran across a great blog post by The Wealthy Blogger that asked the question, “Paper or Electronic Planners?”

I’ve been using a Palm for years, and Andrew and I use it to sync our calendars together so one of us is always around for our daughter (to play chauffeur.) But this article opened up my eyes to realize how manual I still am.

On my desk I have a binder that’s filled with pages for me to track my daily and weekly tasks. I also have a section for long term goals and strategies, and have it all in order with dividers.

I also have a stack of sticky notes, and I use a ton of them each week. Some ideas are quick things I check into and toss. Others I stick to my planner pages, depending on their relevance.

I used to use the Franklin system, and loved having everything in one place. It was nice to carry around all of my information, and have it be in one place. I knew right where everything was, and was actually very to-the-point with the way I wrote.

Hmmm… this post made me think. Maybe I’ll have to reconsider the way I organize my information. As an Internet marketer people expect you to be on the top of technology. But isn’t the real purpose just to be on the top of organization?

photo source QualityC

We’re in a recession - there’s no way you grow your business by selling high end products to consumers, right?

Last night my daughter and I went to Michaels craft store. We always enjoy looking through the different departments and finding interesting crafts to do for a very low cost. But something was different this time.

Instead of their normal dollar bins in the front section, they were replacing them with shelves of Martha Stewart Crafts. If you’ve ever priced Martha Stewart Crafts, you know they are anything but inexpensive (relative to other craft supplies).

So in this time of cutting back, why is Michaels investing in such a high end craft product?

Even in times of cutting back, savings, or recession, people still like high quality products. And instead of investing in vacations or high priced ticket items, many are choosing to remain close to home, and having fun with things in their area.

So why not spend some money and create a high quality scrapbook of last years vacation?

Keep these 3 things in mind through the rest of 2008:

1. You don’t have to lower your prices to sell more. Sometimes you may even benefit from raising your prices - and finding the perfect niche to sell to.

2. How can you work with other complementary businesses to sell more products? Martha Stewart does this well, and is always connecting up with great companies to market her products through.

3. Don’t look at the market as a whole and concentrate on what your peers are saying. Focus on what you know best, and develop your own customer base that loves what you do. There’s always someone in every spectrum of the market - do what you do best and your target market will follow.

Have you ever gone into a bookstore, looking for a book that isn’t on their shelves? You inquire at the information desk, and they say they can order it for you.

At that point you have two choices: order from the bookstore and come back in a week to pick it up; or head home and order it online and wait for it to arrive in your mail.

What if you could have it on the spot? I found an article about a bookseller that’s doing just that. Blackwell’s is offering print-on-demand books while customers wait with their newest innovation - the Espresso Book Machine (EBM).

The machine currently prints 40 pages per minute, but this is expected to double  later this year. Which means you can have an average business title in under five minutes.

How cool is that?

This isn’t meant to take over what a bookstore is currently offering - it will merely complement it by offering more titles than a bookstore can offer.

I can’t wait until we see this technology here…