Napoleon Hill continues to be one of the most influential people of all time. His book, Think and Grow Rich, written in the early 1900’s focuses on the essentials to being successful. There are “subliminal” messages throughout the book and if you are where you need to be in life to get it, you will notice these signals & learn what the true meaning of “Rich” is.

I found this clip to be a piece you can spend 5 minutes and reflect about your true intent, refocus & then, of course, push forward toward your dreams! Enjoy!

Be Awesome!

Jeff Levin
Online Entrepreneur
Founder of GrowthPOD.com
The I Promote You. You Promote Me! Network

If this clip doesn’t light a fire in you, then I highly recommend you reconsider your decision to be in leadership - as a business owner.

This video is a clip from the movie “Any Given Sunday” where Al Pacino gives a speech to his beaten down, broken team to either come together and fight or die!

Are you willing to fight for the life of your business? Are you willing to die for your team?

Well, many in small business don’t feel like they have a team because most don’t have paid employees. However, their team are people even more near and dear to them. They are their wives, their husbands, their children, their brothers and sisters who all contribute in one way, shape or form, because they believe in you!

Do you believe in yourself enough to lay your life on the line for your business? If so, then this piece will resonate well with you. If not, I challenge your motives for being in business! Because if you aren’t willing to die for your cause, then why would anyone else want to take a chance on you? If you are not giving it your all and selling the others around you that they are in fact on the right path, on the right team, how do you expect them to give their life and devotion to YOUR cause!

As you’ll learn from the clip, you can turn your fate around by focusing on the “inches". Your fate good or bad, is 6 inches in front of you. That’s the difference between life or death! Take one wrong step and your life could end. Take one right step and your life will begin!

What are your 6 inches to success? We would love to be your support for helping you achieve your goals! After all, your life depends on it!

Good Luck!

Jeff Levin
Online Entrepreneur
Founder of GrowthPOD.com
The I Promote You. You Promote Me! Network

I recently watched this inspirational message from Michael Jordan that really sums up what it takes to be the BEST at what you do. I am a firm believer that you are either training to reach the top or you’re training to fail. Everything in between is an excuse for why you aren’t the BEST.

Every minute that goes by making excuses, is a minute where your competitors that LIVE to be the BEST are putting the finishing touches on their next marketing campaign at midnight or waking up in the wee morning hours to build knowledge and prepare for an awesome day of growth.

As a business leader you were born to change the world. It is your responsibility to give it your all to make a difference. Do you think Michael Jordan did it for the money? Or did he want to let the world know all about Michael Jordan and put his stamp on society as the BEST ever?

It’s amazing how when you focus your drive on bigger intentions, people want to be associated with you, they want their picture taken with you, they want to pay lots of money to come and see you, they want to be there just in case you do something legendary!

Are you driven to be legendary or are you like the majority of business leaders chasing money?

Make it your choice to draw the line in the sand and leave the excuses behind. Be the Best … Stop Making Excuses.

Jeff Levin
Founder, GrowthPOD.com
The I Promote You. You Promote Me! Network

by CJ Arditi

You may not be familiar with its formal name - the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 - but you’re almost certainly aware of its key outcome: a tax rebate. Now comes the big question: What should you do with it?

If you spend it, you will do your part to help stimulate the economy. But by investing the rebate, you could help speed your progress toward your long-term financial goals, such as a comfortable retirement.

Before we look at investment possibilities, let’s quickly go over the “nuts and bolts” of the plan:

How much? You can receive up to $600, if you’re filing as an individual, or $1,200, if you’re filing a joint return. Plus, you can get an additional $300 for each qualifying child. However, the size of your rebate will be reduced by $50 for every $1,000 you earn above adjusted gross income (AGI) limits ($75,000 for singles and $150,000 for married couples).

When? The IRS will begin mailing Stimulus Act rebate checks in May. If you’ve selected the “direct deposit” option for receiving your 2007 income tax refund, your Stimulus Act rebate will be placed in the same account that you’ve chosen for your refund.

Investment Choices

Here are a few possibilities for investing your rebate:

Traditional or Roth IRA - Suppose that you are a joint filer and did receive the full $1,200 rebate. If you put that $1,200 in an investment that earned a hypothetical 7 percent return, and that investment were placed in a traditional or Roth IRA, the money would grow to more than $9,000 in 30 years. (This figure does not include fees, commissions or expenses, all of which would reduce your investment returns.) Keep in mind that traditional IRA withdrawals are taxable, whereas a Roth IRA’s earnings have the potential to grow tax free, provided you don’t begin taking withdrawals until you’re at least 59-1/2 and you’ve had your account for at least five years.) All investments within these accounts do fluctuate in price, so it is possible to have more, less or the same amount when you sell your investments.
Section 529 savings plan - In a Section 529 college savings plan, you put money in a specific mix of investments. Section 529 plans are tax deductible in some states for residents who participate in their own state’s plan. All withdrawals will be free from federal income taxes if the money is used for a qualified college or graduate school expense of your child or grandchild. (Withdrawals for other reasons may be subject to federal, state and penalty taxes. Also, Section 529 distributions will appear as income on the child’s tax return, which could affect financial aid calculations.)

Emergency fund - It’s a good idea to put six to 12 months’ worth of living expenses in a liquid account for use as an “emergency fund.” Without such a fund, you might be forced to liquidate some of your long-term investments to pay for things such as a costly car repair or an unexpected medical bill.

A rebate like this one doesn’t come along every year - so put it to work for you. Someday, you may be glad you did.

CJ Arditi is a Financial Advisor for Edward Jones Investments. Please contact CJ at 914-962-2853

by Jim Reilly

Many times, the actions we take in life not only bring success but also teach us new, important ways of being in the world. For example, having a child teaches us to be more patient. Embarking on a new business venture may encourage us to become more courageous.

The power of disciplined focus is the secret of success. To focus means to bring your attention to the center, to concentrate on one thing intently in order to gain clarity. Teaching yourself to stay focused on one project, goal, or opportunity at a time will not only allow you to be more productive and effective, it can also challenge you to go more deeply into the task at hand and bring forth more creative insight and wisdom.

Many times we try to - cover all the bases, respond to every opportunity, or provide every possible service that someone might need, in the hopes of striking a deal, thus success. But the truth is, long-term and sustainable success often comes from the ability to stay focused on one project or one goal at a time.

To determine whether or not you may be having trouble focusing, answer the following questions:

1. Do you find yourself generating so many new ideas that you never get started on one?
2. Are you easily distracted during the day and feel as though you never get anything completed?
3. Does your brochure list so many products or services that it confuses potential customers?

Since we are creative beings, it makes sense that we would want to pursue many interests or travel several paths at once. But remember that when you expend your energy in several directions, you weaken the power behind one. Is there a project or goal that needs your devoted attention?

Take An ACTION Challenge…

During the next week pick a project or goal and devote your focused energy to it every day. Choose a preplanned amount of time, schedule it in your diary, and challenge yourself to stay on purpose. You might decide to use this focused time for something related to self care, writing an article, guiding the team, or marketing your business. Simply shut the door, turn off the ringer on the phone, post a Do Not Disturb sign, or do whatever it takes to keep your attention and action focused on what is important.

Each time you are tempted to sway toward something else, bring your attention back to the present. When your mind starts to wander, remind yourself to stay focused by using a simple mantra like: “I do complete work.” Using this mantra will help you build your “focus muscle". Once you get better at staying focused, you will not only be less tempted by distractions, you will be more engaged.

This week I will focus my attention on: ______________________________

Jim

Jim Reilly is a business coach and seminar presenter with ActionCOACH Business Coaching, the world’s #1 coaching firm. For more information on Jim’s upcoming events or to lean how Jim can help your team, call Jim at 845-628-7887 or visit www.action6steps.com.

by Annie Johnson

Would you like to increase the number and quality of referrals you get? Building relationships is the key. It starts with your relationship with your advocates and continues through building a relationship with referred customers.

It’s like a courtship. You ask your friends to introduce you to single people they know because you know your friends know you and who might be compatible with you. They tell the other person about you and you about the other person. You may talk on the phone or via email to begin the process of getting to know each other. You arrange to meet, hopefully with your mutual friend there, too.

At this point, do you ask them to marry you?

Typically in referrals, that’s exactly what people do! That’s the point where most people ask for the sale. Although it takes more time to build a relationship first, it is more effective and productive in the long run.

Courting Referrals

#1 Train Your Advocate.
As in dating, you ask people who already know you and have done business with you to become your advocate and refer others to you. It might not occur to them.

Take them out for coffee or lunch and explain what you’d like them to do for you. Start with appreciating what a good customer/associate they are. Then ask if they would be willing to be your advocate. Tell them what you would like them to do:

· Be aware when someone else mentions a need for your kind of product or service. (Some people are good at this, but many need to be “trained” to watch for and respond to expressed needs. Talking about his may help you both to cross-refer.)

· Suggest that person might like to meet you and give the reasons why. (Explain what part of your business lends itself to referrals and what kind of customers could use your product or service.)

· Give that person your contact information and ask if you can contact them and how. (You want that person to have your contact information, but don’t rely on them to call you. Have the advocate find out the best way for you to contact them—and assure them that you won’t give them a hard sell.)

· Tell you about the referral as soon as possible. (Encourage your advocate to get back to you immediately. The other person has a need and will probably act on finding a solution. The sooner you know about it, the more likely you will be considered.)

· Set up a time when all three parties can get together, at least by phone. (This is like the blind date. It always goes better if the mutual acquaintance is there when you meet.)

Explain what you will do when he or she contacts you about a referral, which is to act promptly to arrange to meet with the referred customer.

#2 Begin Building a New Relationship.
Make it easy for your advocate to help you get in touch with the person referred. Take the lead in planning how you’re going to do that.

Learn all you can about the situation in which the advocate and potential customer talked about you. What is the specific need the referred person expressed that made the advocate think of you? What’s the timing? How would that person like to be contacted? Ask the advocate to introduce you.

When you meet, be interested in the other person. Refer to the conversation with your advocate only as a way of establishing a mutual connection. Look for other connections like a Chamber of Commerce, a sport or music, or a philanthropic organization, whatever might generate a conversation that helps you get to know more about each other.

Ask about their business. Be interested in what you can do for them. Remember you’re in the courting phase. If you can establish a connection, arrange to talk later—possibly about how you can meet the need expressed to the advocate. Ask how they would like this to happen.

Follow up on all your commitments. Send a thank you note or email.

#3 Thank Your Advocate.
Have you ever referred someone to a colleague and then wondered what happened? Don’t let your advocates hang out like that. Tell them how the referral turned out and thank them for giving it to you. Make this a good experience for your advocates and they will be more likely to continue recommending you.

-Thanks to Dan Wilkewitz of RealPro Real Estate & Mortgage 970.231.3714 for the concept of thinking of the referral process as similar to courting.
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Annie Johnson, owner of AA Limos, has built the company on a reputation for !st Class* Customer Service. *!st Class = astonishingly high quality. Show your out of town visitors how important they are – have a limousine pick them up. Call 970-587-9299 or 866-587-9299 (toll free) for reservations.

by Gina Nieves

This month I show you where to place the keywords.

This is part four of an article series on the Building Blocks of Search Engine Success. If you want to read the first three articles, you can read them on my blog.

To recap, the building blocks of search engine success are:

1. Build a website that is search engine friendly. That means search engines can find your website and capture the content on your site.

2. Identify what search terms people use to find your product or service and ultimately your website.

3. Identify reputable websites that can link to your website.

4. Analyze results and revisit the first three building blocks.

I should note that this article may contain some website building language that is unfamiliar to you. If you are unfamiliar with these terms, contact a professional developer to add your keywords.

Keyword Placement

You will have search engine success if you follow all of the tips I shared in the previous three articles.

Focus

Focus on no more than three keywords for each page of your website. If you have 15 keywords it is very difficult to place all of the keywords in the areas I list below. For example, if you sell office supplies and copy machines, you want a page just for your copy machines. On that page you optimize your copy machine keywords only.

Title Tags

The most important location to place the keywords is within your title tag. The words in your title tag tell the search engines what your website is about. I recommend placing your most important keywords in your title tag. Avoid using a title tag such as “About Us". No one is going to type “About Us” into Google when searching for your product.

Here is a sample title tag from my website. I use “Website Design, Internet Marketing, Graphic Design - Putnam…".

Now let’s put it to the test. Go to http://www.google.com/ and search for “website design Putnam County". I rank first on the first page. Now try “Internet Marketing Putnam County". If you notice my page follows all of the elements of search engine friendly design as well.

Header Tags

The header tags are the headlines on your website. Use the h1 and h2 tags when adding headlines to your website. You should try to have a header tag on each page of your website.

Let’s take a test drive by visiting my services page. In the services section of my website I use “Custom Web Design” as a header tag. Now search for “custom web design Putnam county” in Google. My website is on the first page. Not only is the site on the first page but if you look at my results in Google the words “Custom Web Design” is in bold.

Avoid the mistake made by many professional web developers and customers. To enhance the website, all of the headers are a beautiful graphic. I have had, and continue to have, customers that order me to use graphic headers because they believe the look is the most important aspect of the website. It is not…the most important aspect of a website is growing your business.

Body Text

The body text is the text people read on your website. Use your keywords throughout your text; however, make sure it reads well. Readers should enjoy your website and it should look natural. I recommend hiring a professional copywriter if you have a lot of content on your website.

There are more important factors to keyword placement than the areas listed in this article. I have listed the most important factors.

Gina Nieves is the owner of MarkNet Group Web Design. Gina has been providing web design and Internet marketing services since 1998. Gina strongly believes in using your website to fuel the growth of your company. For more information, visit her on the web at www.marknetgroup.com.

by Thom Torode

It’s often far easier to rest where you are than to push yourself to the next level. But complacency leads to mediocrity…which almost always leads to disaster. So, if this is true, how can you keep yourself responsive, resourceful, and recharged in this competitive business environment?

There are seven tactics that when implemented and sustained, will make a difference:

1. Practice self-discipline versus self-indulgence. Self-indulgence is thinking about how you feel at a given moment, then deciding what action, if any, to take and worrying about the consequences later. Self-discipline is thinking first about the consequences, then taking appropriate action, and feeling great about your decision. See it this way:

§ self-discipline = think consequences
take action & feel great
§ self-indulgence = think feelings
take action & suffer consequences

2.Remember the difference you make in people’s lives. The real measure of your success is the difference that you’re making in the lives of others. By positioning and promoting yourself as someone who can make a difference, you will reach more people.

3. Avoid negative self-talk. Resist the temptation to tell yourself all the things you’re doing wrong and all the things you need to improve on. Remember Willie Nelson’s great tune, “Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative and Don’t Mess with Mr. In Between.”

4. Listen to one motivational or inspirational message each week. Without recharging yourself, it’s impossible to charge others. Whether this message comes from a religious affiliation or simply from motivational tapes or messages, (like Excellence magazine) it is vital to realize that by renewing yourself, only then can you renew others.

5. Read books by and for successful people. It is said that the average sales person reads only one book each year. That’s why they’re average. The importance of reading is that it not only develops your logic and understanding, but it also develops your verbal skills and gives you exposure to new ideas that you can use to build your business and your relationships.

6. Focus on your long-term vision versus the short-term circumstances. Take the time to review your goals weekly so that you’re focused on the long-term. Remember, if you’re focused on creating the future, you won’t spend time mourning the past.

7. Manage yourself wisely. Recharge and renew yourself and then put in enough effort to get where you want to be, not just enough to justify where you are now.

Thom Torode is President and Managing Director of Action Business Coaching & Development, Inc. They are part of the international franchise of ActionCOACH Business Coaching. If you would like help moving your business to the next level, Thom is offering a limited number of complimentary coaching sessions for those business owners who are passionate about their businesses. He can be reached at 862-219-6890.

by Marty Smith

Are you “investing” your time working ON your business or “spending” it working IN your business?

The challenge I find a lot of Business Owners face today is that they are so busy working in their business that they cannot see the full potential of their business. So many times I look at a business and think the owner is doing well, only to discover on talking to them, that they are not even earning as much, (when their income is converted to an hourly rate), as their top employees.

A while ago, we had a client who owned a commercial cleaning business. This client used to work each week doing the cleaning himself. When asked how much would it cost to employ someone to do the cleaning he was doing, he replied “about $600 per week”. He was then asked how much extra business he could generate if he spent this same time in a week looking for new customers. He said he could generate about $5000 worth of new business in a week.

It’s obvious, looking from an outsider’s perspective that the logical thing for the owner to do is employ a cleaner to work in the business so that the owner can work on the business.

How much mundane work are you doing that could often be completed by a teenager after school? Think about your business. How much work do you do that could be done by a junior or a casual, or maybe even a semi-retired person?

What are your opportunity costs? What value do you place on your time? How much extra business could you generate if you employed someone to do the day-to-day work?

What would it mean to your customers and your business if you were “freed up” to follow-up enquires that haven’t been chased up, socializing with customers, encouraging them to come back, or phoning existing customers to see if there is anything they require? The bottom line is you could be spending time on vital sales and marketing, but you’re bogged down doing the day-to-day, time-consuming, physical work that someone else could be doing.

How much time do you spend developing new marketing strategies, analyzing Measure & Test results, instigating relationships with other businesses and the host of other necessary activities that make the difference between a successful business and an average business?

There are a lot of things that a Business Owner needs to get done in an average day. Successful Business Owners are those that do the things that are important in maximizing profit rather than concentrating on the “urgent problems” that arise every day.

Use professional advisors to help you in areas you aren’t an expert. Get yourself a competent accountant and hire a bookkeeper, these sorts of people will save you time and money.

For example, if you were to invest in a Real Estate Development, you would take it for granted that you needed to hire the services of a Project Manager to advise you or to co-ordinate the Architect, Draughtsman, Town Planner, Finance Manager, Construction Manager, Marketing Manager, Sales Manager, etc.

When we get involved in business, most of us do so with little or no assistance at all. Yet “a business” as an investment can and does, when well managed, out perform every other type of investment.

Take the challenge and look at your business as an investment. Look for a return on your invested capital as well as an hourly rate of pay in excess of your top employees.

Review what happened last year, analyse the results you achieved, see what adjustments you need to make to obtain the results you require, plan next year and look at what assistance you require to obtain the desired result.

Remember above all else, time spent working on your business is far more important than time spent working in it.

Marty Smith is an ActionCOACH Business Coach. To learn more about Marty visit www.actioncoach.com/martysmith.

by Pamela Muldoon

Do you know the numbers in your business? To get your business on a growth fast track, the first place to start is where you are right now. Like any plan, to get to your end destination, you have to know where you are starting from. Understanding basic numbers in your business does not have to be an overwhelming process.

With the “5 Ways” model you can begin to breakdown important numbers in your business today. Numbers that will allow you to make informed decisions on what activities to focus on for continued growth in your business. Let’s recap how the activity vs. result formula works:

5 Ways To Grow Any Business:

1. Number of Leads: the total number of potential buyers that you contacted or that have contacted you in the past year.

2. Conversion Rate: The percentage of people from your leads who bought your product or service.

Number of Leads x Conversion Rate (activities) = Number of Customers (result)

3. Number of Transactions: The average number of times your customers buy from you over a 12 month period.

4. Average $$ Sale: The average amount purchased by your customers; add up your total sales and divide by the number of sales.

Transactions x Average $$$ Sale (activities) = Revenue (result)

5. Profit Margin: This is the percentage of each and every sale that’s profit. In other words, if you sold something for $100 and $25 was profit, then you’ve got a twenty-five percent margin.

Revenue x Margins = Profit

Number Of Transactions: The third activity of this formula is Number of Transactions.

You’ve probably heard the statistics: It costs six to seven times more to get a new customer than it does to sell to an old one. How often do your customers buy from you? What is the lifetime worth of each customer to your business?

Number of Transactions is when you go through your current customer database and track how often each one buys from you in a 12 month timeframe. Some may only have bought from you once, perhaps others numerous times. The idea is to get the average so you have a place from which to gauge your current customer activity. This will allow you to decide how and where you can increase this activity amongst your current customer base. As an ActionCOACH Business Coach, I have over 50 different strategies that focus solely on increasing current customer activity for my clients to choose from. Here is a sample:

Underpromise and Overdeliver: This one may sound pretty simple, but underpromising can be a bit tricky. It means you need to be willing to create some modesty in your marketing. For example, if you tell your customers it will be in stock on Wednesday, get it on Tuesday, and call them on Monday afternoon to let them know it will be in early. Always do a little more than they expect. If you do as you promise, you will probably get them to return another time; if you go above and beyond the expectation you will have customers for life.

Inform Customers of Your Entire Range of Products/Services: Oftentimes, your customers only buy from you for one specific reason. Don’t assume that your customers know all of the products or services you offer simply because they have purchased one from you. They already trust you and your main product. Be sure to educate your clients regularly on the range of products and services you offer.

Socialize With Clients: Show you customers how much you value and appreciate them by inviting them out to dinner or have a client appreciation party at your home or special location. Make friends with your customers. Spend time with them away from the work environment. This will create a special bond that goes beyond business and consumer. People find it hard to change businesses after they’ve come to know the owner personally.

Send Out A Newsletter: This is a great tool to stay in consistent contact with current and future customers. Be sure to provide value to those receiving your newsletter. If you include enough good information, people will read, and more importantly, they will buy. A great e-magazine tool is GrowthPOD, which uses your current network of strategic business partners to reach thousands of people each month. Check out www.growthpod.com to learn more.

These are just a few of the strategies you could use to increase your customer transactions. The key is to find one or two that you are not currently using and try them out. But remember….Test & Measure your results! To understand which strategies work best for you and your business, you must be tracking the outcome of each strategy! And if it’s working, then keep doing it! Commit to working smarter this year, not harder. Grow your business, one strategy at a time!
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Pamela Muldoon is a Business & Executive Coach with ActionCOACH Business Coaching, the World’s #1 Business Coaching Firm.

Learn more about how the 5 Ways can change your business. Contact Pamela for your Complimentary Coaching Session by calling 763-670-7238 or go to www.actioncoach.com/pamelamuldoon.

Want to launch your own e-magazine? Go to www.growthpod.com for details.

by Ingar Grev

Instead of working on their businesses, most owners are trapped working in their businesses, slaving away and grinding it out. Instead of working on tomorrow, they are preoccupied with working in today. They end up majoring in minor things. They worry about office supplies instead of office processes. They focus on accounting details instead of holding their employees accountable. They worry about the company’s vision plan instead of planning the company’s vision. They react with short-term, short-lived fixes instead of proactively creating long-term solutions. They fixate on their mail, email, or cell phone calls instead of communicating their expectations to their key managers or employees. They obsess with doing things right instead of doing the right things. They do the wrong type of work really well. They are chasing their tails!

Are you trapped in the body and mind of a doer instead of a leader? Be honest, do you fall into the routine of doing the work of an employee or technician instead of the work of an owner or leader? Do you neglect such areas as vision creation, strategic planning, establishing priorities and goals, organizational design, business system development, profit improvement, team development, employee accountability, etc?

Odds are, you were probably a successful technician that caught the entrepreneurial bug several years ago and bought, inherited or started a business related to your technical skills. You are too comfortable with and good at handling such details. Such expertise, unfortunately, has a strong tendency to suck you into the nooks and crannies of the business. For you, the technical day-to-day guts of the business are addictive and tough to escape. Sadly, a technician’s mindset and mode of operation are insufficient for running a business. These technical assets can be real liabilities and traps for an owner trying to be more proactive and strategic.

For example, maybe you were a gifted house painter that thought, “I can start a painting business on my own”. From the get go, you probably functioned in a technical capacity and never grew your leadership capacity or the business systems. You worried about selling and performing painting jobs. You probably didn’t worry about how to design and build a painting business with you as CEO. Rather, you dove in, got busy being busy, and started functioning as a painter, chief salesperson, estimator, bookkeeper, materials supplier, quality control supervisor, etc.

Consequently, you function as a jack-of-all-trades painter that also happens to own a house painting company. You are more technician than leader. Instead of focusing on the business of painting, you focus on the technical work of painting. You probably spend far too much time painting or micromanaging your other painters and not enough time painting your company’s future. Because of your technical comfort zone, you are trapped doing the work of a painter, not the strategic work of a leader.

Here are a few more examples to drive home the point. Being a good computer programmer and running a successful programming business are two different roles and worlds. Writing code is technical and tactical work. Just because you know how to do the daily technical work of programming, for example, doesn’t mean you know how to design, build and manage a business that does the work of programming. Programming code has not prepared you for the key functions of a business – selling, marketing, client service, finance, leadership, business systems, people management, etc. Technical experience is insufficient background for running a business.

Similarly, if your background is selling, finance or production, your bias will get you buried in the selling, financial and production details of the business. You must escape your technical conditioning! Hire others to handle such matters, if necessary.

Business ownership is all about strategic leadership, not technical doer-ship. Few owners understand and appreciate such critical distinctions. Tragically, owners mistake a technician’s orientation for that of an entrepreneur’s. They mistake busy-being-busy activity for accomplishment. They confuse hard work for intelligent work. They have a technician’s addiction to detail work. Sadly, they work and think like employees instead of owners. They do the wrong type of work. They fail to grasp that running a business is strategic, entrepreneurial, visionary, and requires strong leadership.

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Ingar Grev is a columnist for the Washington Business Journal and is the Owner & CEO of The Growth Coach® of Northern Virginia & Washington, DC. For contact information, or to learn more about The Growth Coach®’s guaranteed Strategic Mindset® Process, visit www.TheDCGrowthCoach.com.

by Dominic DesMarais

“It is in the fixed budget but I need to reduce the expense.”

This is the most common theme among business owners I meet with and help. They created a budget with fixed expenses such as building leases, mortgages, equipment leases, operating income loans, and other long term business financing that fit into their budget when they created it. Then, a business slow down or a cash crunch no longer allows the payment to fit comfortably in the budget. Even a business expansion can create this as a business owner wants to change the priorities of the business’ cash flow.

This challenge comes down to two choices.

The first choice is to eliminate the payment. This can be done by selling the asset behind the loan, or buying out a lease if need be. Selling an asset is usually not a quick fix. It takes time to list or advertise the asset, find a buyer, and sell it. This is why a loan on a fixed asset always should be included in your fixed budget versus your variable. The other consideration is how important is that asset to your business and the repercussions of not having that asset available anymore.

A lease on equipment usually has a buyout agreement. This is a negotiable item and should be negotiated with fervor to achieve the best outcome financially. Office space leases are very negotiable and I would strongly recommend involving a commercial real estate professional to negotiate that. The best part is the owner of building pays the leasing agent for working on your behalf. Even if your lease is not up, it is a great time to renegotiate if your payment no longer meets your budgeting plan.

The second choice is to refinance or reorganize the payments on your long term debt. This is the option where a professional financier will be of assistance. We ask for the following items:

Three Years Personal Tax Returns with all Schedules including W2’s and 1099’s

Three Years Corporate Tax Returns with all Schedules

Last Year’s and current Profit and Loss Statement

Last Year’s and current Balance Sheet for Operating Business

List and Description of all Equipment of the Business

Pictures and Description of the Lot and Building

With this information (free of charge), an analysis of your cash flow and possible financing can take place. With new longer amortization loans such as 30 years available, cash flow can be improved or take cash out of equity in your business and apply that towards expansion or other business needs. It is recommended that if you have a number of loans, you take the opportunity to visit this yearly.

Coming next month – examples of how cash flow can be improved.

Call Dominic at 612-247-8322 or visit www.yourcommercialfinance.com for more information.

by Candice Bennett

How well do you know your customer? Do you know who they are? Do you know what motivates them? Do you know how they make decisions? Do you understand why they choose your company over the competition? Do you know why they come back to you over time or why they don’t? Do you know why potential customers choose your competitors instead of your company? Segmentation studies and customer satisfaction tracking studies are two types of studies that might help your company better understand its customer.

Segmentation Studies

Segmentation studies are large quantitative studies conducted either over the telephone or online. These type of surveys generally have sample sizes of at least 600 respondents, and sometimes as many as 5,000. The main purpose of these surveys is to ask respondents a battery of demographic, behavioral and attitudinal questions.

Demographic questions can include questions such as gender, age, geographic area, education, income and marital status.

Behavioral questions can be quite varied. Respondents can be asked about how frequently they use a service or product. They can be asked how they use a product or service. They can be asked where they get information about certain types of products or services (for example, are they getting their information from magazines, the Internet, television or word of mouth). They can be asked about how much they usually spend on certain types of products or services, or how much they expect to spend. These questions can run the gamut but will help the researcher better place a value on a particular consumer when it comes to deciding on which potential customers should be targeted and which ones should not.

Attitudinal questions tend to be a battery of statements where respondents are asked whether or not they agree. These inquiries can help understand customer motivations. For example, it might be important for a packaged goods company to know if their likely purchaser cares about protecting the environment. It might be important for a restaurant chain to know if their customer lets their children decide where they eat.

With this wealth of data collected from a segmentation survey, statisticians can then use a variety of tools at their disposal to develop different types of customer segmentations. Why is this useful? It can help companies determine which segments of customers and potential customers have the most value for their business—either because they are likely to spend the most money, use the product or service most frequently, or are most likely to influence others to use the product or service. Prioritizing the customer base can then help companies decide how to spend their marketing dollars most effectively. For example, if a company sells pink hand tools, like screwdrivers and hammers, that are also smaller in size and designed to fit a woman’s hand, maybe the company should choose publications that women read and keep, rather than in men’s do-it-yourself magazines.

Customer Satisfaction Tracking Studies

Customer satisfaction tracking studies are also important for just about any company. Tracking studies are surveys that use the same questions and the same methodology over a period of time. The objective is to quantify a variety of measures against an initial benchmark so that a company can make certain that decisions they are making about their product and service offerings are keeping their customers satisfied.

It’s important when conducting tracking studies to keep the survey itself consistent. Key measures being tracked should be asked the exact same way every time. Also, it’s very important to make sure that the same type of people takes the survey over time. For example, a packaged goods company that wants to measure satisfaction for its floor cleaner should not conduct a tracking study where they talk to only women in March who clean their house once a week and then talk to both men and women in November who clean their house only once every two months. These are different groups of people and their responses from March to November most likely will be different, simply because the population surveyed is very different, rather than because opinion about the cleaning product has changed in six months. Just like any type of scientific method, you want to try and control for as many variables as possible in order to determine what is really impacting change, if even there is any.

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Candice Bennett is the owner of Candice Bennett & Associates. Visit www.candicebennett.com to learn more.

by Pat Weber

In my thirty years of selling my sales have never had a downturn during a recession. Have I ever HAD a downturn ever? Of course! I’d be lying if I told you anything else. But really, never during a recession. As a matter of fact I STARTED my business during a downturn in the early 1990s. Remember the Savings and Loan crisis in America? I didn’t really connect that with what that would mean to starting a business. It just never occurred to me that the timing would be wrong. So my first 18 months, built momentum to my first year on my own grossing $60,000.

Now it’s 2008 and there’s recession - the R word - talk again.

I’m telling you, if you are in sales, it doesn’t have to negatively affect you. It’s really up to you. You can choose to be a thermostat of sales results, not a thermometer. A thermometer measures temperature – like you finding your sales go up in a good economy or down in a downturn. A thermostat controls the temperature in your home – like you deciding to take some actions to regulate your own sales results.

If your thermostat wasn’t working in your home or office, you wouldn’t be uncomfortable with its ups and downs would you? Wouldn’t you do something to either repair it or replace it?

There are seven things I’ve found that top producers do during a recession that don’t have them falling victim to all the chatter. At least seven things to regulate your thermostat.

First, Step away from the talk. Any negative talk about this is going to pull you right into the vortex of a downward spiral. Take actions that get you away from the gloom and doom.

Second, Flex more muscles. Now is the best time to look at all the ways you get prospects – and start revving up the way that works best for you. Speaking in public, referrals, networking. What is it for you?

Three, Be renewed: relationships, resize, repeat, repackage. What avenues can you renew?

Four, Invest in yourself. NOW is not the time to have your head in the sand or turn the other way about new ideas and professional development. Research bears out: top producers invest more in themselves than the average, by about $5,000 a year.

Five, Treat yourself. There is so much truth in that clichéd expression, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” Strategy – like resize, repeat, repackage, and tactics along with them, are important now. Stop from your constant doing and make time for some planning.

Six, Take a more global perspective. Weather is different all over the world. What is the size of your sales world that you could pay attention to a larger, smaller or different territory?

Seven, Follow up like your life depends on it – because it may!

Sign up to receive a FREE Report, FREE ezine and FREE Teleclasses from Pat Weber - America’s Sales Accelerator Coach, specializing in Introverts and Shy people at http://www.prostrategies.com/

By CJ Arditi

If you own a small business, you’ve got a lot to think about: attracting customers, holding down expenses, keeping up with trends and competitors - the list goes on and on. In short, you do everything possible to make sure your business can support your family. But if you want to keep the business in the family after you’re gone, you’ll need to prepare a strategy - and the sooner you start, the better.

Of course, you could simply transfer your business to family members through the use of a will. However, the value of your business could help contribute to a considerable estate tax burden for your heirs. (The future of estate taxes is unclear. In 2010, the estate tax is scheduled to disappear -for one year only. Unless Congress changes the laws before then, in 2011 the exemption amount - the amount you can pass to your heirs, free of estate taxes - will revert to $1 million, with a maximum estate tax rate of 55 percent.)

So, other than bequeathing your business to family members, how else might you transfer it? You can choose any of several alternatives. Let’s look at two of them.

Buy-sell agreements
Suppose you have a child who has shown a great aptitude for your business. You’d be delighted if your child took it over when you were gone, but there’s one problem: Your child can’t afford to buy you out.

To help your child purchase the company, you might want to establish a buy-sell agreement - a legally binding contract stipulating that, upon your death, the business will be sold to your child, at an established price. To fund the sale of the business, you take out an insurance policy on your life, with your child as a beneficiary. You could choose term insurance, which will be fairly inexpensive, but you also might want to consider “whole life,” which has higher premiums but offers the potential to build increasing cash value.

Family limited partnerships
You could also transfer ownership of your business through a family limited partnership. Here’s how it works: Well before you retire, you decide to transfer interests in your business to a family limited partnership, creating general partnership shares and limited partnership shares. You hold on to the general partnership shares and give the limited shares to your child. At this point, you are still responsible for managing the company. And, at the same time, you are reducing your family’s estate tax liability because you are removing assets (the limited partnership shares) from your estate. Furthermore, for gift tax purposes, you’ll get a “discount” on the value of the limited partnership shares because, as “noncontrolling” interests, they are theoretically worth less to the recipients.

When you die, only the value of your ownership interest will be included in your taxable estate. And your child can then take formal responsibility for running the business.

Get professional help
Both a buy-sell agreement and a family limited partnership are considerably more complex than described here, so you will need to work with an estate-planning attorney before you launch either of these arrangements. Your attorney can also advise you on other business-succession alternatives. Start your preparations soon. Even if you are many years from retirement, it’s nice to know you - and your family - will be ready.

CJ Arditi is a Financial Advisor for Edward Jones Investments.

By Jeff Levin

Have you ever experienced the power of a cooperative marketing opportunity? If you haven’t, you will decide to make this a major part of your marketing mix by the end of this article, … if you’re interested in long term success in business!

Cooperative Marketing is when…

A Bank offer’s a live Golf Swing Analysis to it’s customers from a local golf instruction school in their lobby.
A CPA arranges a series of FREE Business Workshops from a local Business Coach for their clients.
A Wedding Photographer gives their wonderful clients a FREE wedding shower cake from a local cake designer.

These are just some of the many different methods of arranging one of the easiest and most effective ways of growing a referral based business. Why is that so?

Well if you’ve ever analyzed any of the fastest growing business models that have ever existed, you will always notice that the creator has established a product, service or business opportunity where everybody wins.

As can be seen in the examples above, the Bank, CPA, and Wedding Photographer win, because they now have a way to continue to add value to their client relations that doesn’t cost them anything. The company presenting the business opportunity (Golf Instructor, Business Coach, Cake Designer) wins because it now has an extremely warm & targeted opportunity to be in front of the host company’s clients, and the client (now a prospect of yours) wins by receiving a gift & an opportunity to add value to their business or their lives!

Imagine if you had 3 other businesses that were excited to promote your business to the very clients you spend most of your time & money trying to reach - cold! How would your business look? Excellent. The secret to making this happen for you is written in bold above…

To make this situation really work - it has to be a Win. Win. Win Scenario!

Your alliance must win. Their clients must win. For you to win.

Cooperative Marketing really levels the playing field for small business to compete right along side large companies. Large companies spend a great deal of their own money promoting their business, because then can! If you are like most small businesses, you lack that capital, but what you do not lack is the human capital, the relationships that, if used correctly, can deliver far better results in the communities you have a vested interest in, than your corporate counterparts.

So let’s really bring the power of cooperative marketing into perspective….

Think about how you go above and beyond the call of duty for your clients. Now, think about how your current alliances do the very same to service their clients. So, what if you purposely arranged opportunities with the other high quality businesses in your area to promote each other in a way that your clients can appreciate & interpret it as additional value being invested in the relationship that you’ve worked hard to establish? Teaming up with one business is great! Teaming up with 20 is better! Using a great cooperative marketing strategy can deliver an equivalent effect to distributing 20,000 bulk mailers in your area, with far better results.

The most difficult part of taking advantage of this extremely effective strategy is finding companies that will allow you to have access to their database.

To do this easily, visit http://www.growthpod.com/ and get started by teaming up with your current referral partners.

There are Traditional methods of cooperative marketing available too.

Follow these steps to work towards landing a successful cooperative marketing opportunity:

1. Choose a business you wish to “cross market” to their database.

2. Explain to the business that you would like to give them something to give, with no obligation to their clients as a sign of customer appreciation.

3. If they choose to move forward, it is critical to take as much work out of the process as possible for the host company. Your offer must go out from the host company on their letterhead and signed by the host company.

4. To make it easy for them to say yes, offer to do all of the envelope stuffing and pay for the postage. If they are ok with you having a copy of their database, offer to take care of all of the administrative tasks, leaving them with absolutely nothing to do.

5. Another great way is to offer to do the same for them, with your database.

Action Plan: Make it a Point to have a minimum of one cooperative marketing campaign in action every month & watch the momentum in your business grow!

Be Outstanding!

Jeff Levin, Online Entrepreneur
Founder of GrowthPOD.com - The I Promote You. You Promote Me! Network

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Jeff Levin is the founder of GrowthPOD.com & a pioneer in online cooperative marketing. Visit http://www.growthpod.com/ to learn more.

by Ron Zasadzinski

I get asked this question frequently. The answer is - almost nothing! That is, if you want your web site to be ranked number one for an obscure search term like “low cost oscillosprockets". (Try a search for that phrase…)

There are number of major issues to consider. Search engine rankings are dependent on the search phrase used, and on how much competition there is for that phrase. By competition, I mean how many other web sites are using that term somewhere in their site.

So if you want to be #1 for “low cost oscillosprockets", we can pretty much guarantee success because there is zero competition. The problem is, there are also zero people searching for that term so being #1 isn’t going to do you any good.

On the other side of the coin, if you want to be ranked #1 for “furniture stores", forget about it. Whereas “oscillosprocket” is used on exactly one web site on the entire World Wide Web, there are seven billion web sites which use the term “furniture store". This is just one reason why no SEO firm worth their salt will promise you #1 for any meaningful phrase. Search engine rankings for competitive phrases are a lot like a school of salmon swimming upstream. There is much you can do to compete, but even if you do everything right it’s quite a challenge to be the first fish to reach the spawning grounds. (One important technique is to find a smaller school of fish. More on that shortly.)

So… “How much does it cost to be #1 in Google?” Turns out, it’s the wrong question to be asking.

Let’s take a step back for a minute. The real goal with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to make your business more successful by driving more qualified visitors to your web site over time. Being #1 for any particular phrase is a lot less important than getting more prospective customers to view your products and services, and ultimately, to buy them.

I can’t emphasize that enough. If your web site is selling products or services, your goal should be to increase profits, not to have any particular rank for any particular search phrase.

So how do you add another comma at the bottom of your balance sheet? You start by optimizing your web site for a range of search phrases, not just one. When my company provides SEO services, we spend quite a bit of time researching keyword phrases using on-line tools we subscribe to, as well as checking out your competitors’ web sites. In consultation with you, we will come up with a list of highly effective keywords. Some will be obvious and popular, but will have substantial competition. The best phrases will be less obvious, are being used by real searchers every day, and won’t have a lot of competing sites (here’s your smaller school of fish). We can compete well for these phrases, and optimizing for a number of them will bring more traffic to your web site.

Will you be number #1 for some of those phrases? It still doesn’t matter. Really. Even if you are ranked #1, you probably won’t be for long. Search engine rankings change every day. For example, over just a three week period on the MSN search engine in January 2008, my company ranked 2nd, then 1st, then 3rd for the search phrase “web site design fort collins". In Google we were ranked 3d, then 5th, then 6th in the same time frame.

Does this concern me? Not at all. Results are what matter. In that time frame we had three times as many inquiries for our services as the same period a year ago. Search Engine Optimization is like the stock market. If you watch it on a daily basis you’ll drive yourself crazy. If you keep the long term goal in mind, put in effort on a regular, steady basis, you will get excellent long term results.

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Ron is the owner of CodeGeek.net, a Fort Collins, Colorado web design agency serving clients across the United States. Simple or fancy, we do web sites right.

by Melissa Clary, CPA

Every time you file your income taxes do you fear the IRS knocking on your door? Do you break out in a cold sweat when you receive a letter in the mail from the Internal Revenue Service? Relax - the examination rate of individual returns in 2006 was just under 1 percent. Your risk of audit is very low.

However there are ways you can avoid an audit, by knowing what the IRS is looking at.Almost all income tax returns are processed by IRS computers. These computers are programmed to flag anything out of the ordinary, returns that fall out of the statistical norms. When a return is flagged, an IRS employee will review the return to determine if there’s an actual need for an audit. If a return is flagged it doesn’t guarantee you’ll be audited, but the IRS will probably take a closer look at your return. Below is a list of some items that are considered red flags.

1) Unreported income —all of your interest, dividends, and miscellaneous income must be reported on your return. Everyone who sends you a 1099 also sends a copy to the IRS.

2) Low or drastic changes in income— if your reported income is lower than others in your same profession or your income decreases, this can indicate that you’re underreporting your income.

3) High itemized deductions —anything drastically different from average is likely to bring your return to the attention of the IRS. For example, large charitable donations are a red flag. If the average person in your income bracket donates about $1000 to charity and you claim $5000 you’re going to increase the odds of an audit. Be wary of taking too large of a deduction for non-cash donations. It’s hard to value these items and you must keep an accurate list and value of everything donated.

4) Incomplete or sloppy returns — math errors and missing information will draw attention. If the IRS computer can’t make sense of what you’ve filed, a human will go through the return to find the mistake. This is a good reason to file your return electronically, because the computers will help you catch your errors.

5) Disagreements between State and Federal returns —make sure that your information matches on both your State and Federal returns.

6) Round numbers — it’s unlikely that your dividend income was exactly $500, or that your mortgage interest deduction was $10,000. Too many round numbers on a return indicate that the information was made up.

7) Self-employment income — Filing a Schedule C isn’t a guarantee that you’ll be audited, but they are the highest audited business return when compared to other business returns. If you file a Schedule C that continually shows a loss and you have a regular job this is a flag for an audit because the IRS will begin to wonder if there is a profit motive and if not they may view it as a hobby and disallow the losses.

8) Home offices — taking the office in home deduction is always an item that can be scrutinized by the IRS. There are rigid rules to qualify for an office in home deduction, so make sure you are following them and that you qualify to take the deduction.

9) Family members on the payroll —there’s nothing wrong with employing family members as long as they’re actually working. Don’t pay family members just to get money out of the business.

10) Unlikely business deductions —don’t deduct televisions if they don’t serve a legitimate purpose.

11) Excessive entertainment deductions — having excessive meal and entertainment expenses will always be challenged by the IRS. Make sure to keep those receipts as to who you were with and what you discussed. You need to have some conversation related to business to qualify it as business related. Remember honesty is your best defense against an audit. Don’t try to cheat the system by underreporting your income or inflating your deductions. Use a professional tax preparer. They will inform you as to what is allowed. Also, don’t forget to save your receipts and review your return to make sure that everything is correct.

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Melissa Clary, CPA is a partner of the Colorado-based C.P.A. Firm Kruger & Clary. For details on their firms services visit http://www.krugercpas.com/

By Anne Alexander

Questions are one of the most powerful tools we can use in growing our business and ourselves. Here are 13 questions that if you know or can get the answers to, will skyrocket your business success:

1. How many different forms of advertising do you do? (Different media: Newspapers, Magazines, Yellow Pages, Radio, TV, etc.)

2. What are the response rates of each of the ads you run? (Number of calls, visits, enquiries from each ad)

3. What is the conversion percentage of each of the ads? (Number of leads that actually buy)

4. What is cost of acquiring a lead from each of the media you use? (An ad costs $1,000; you generate 100 leads. Lead acquisition cost is $10 per lead.)

5. What are your conversion costs for each ad? (How much does it cost you to turn a lead into a paying customer - i.e., commissions, contracts, paperwork processing, time spent, lost opportunity costs, etc. Be sure to calculate ALL time spent in the sales process regardless of whether you convert a lead or not. Time spent with a prospect that doesn’t convert still has to be accounted for.)

6. What is your customer acquisition cost? (How much does it cost for you to create a customer? This includes lead acquisition costs plus conversion costs. So you add up ALL costs associated with generating a lead and converting it into a sale… from ALL sources. Then divide the number of new customers you have into that amount.)

7. What is your Initial Customer Value? (How much money do your customers spend with you the first time they buy?)

8. What is the average Repeat Purchase Value?

9. On average, how many times do they buy from you in one year?

10. On average, how many years do your customers stay with you before moving on or no longer needing what you sell?

11. What do you say or do on a repeated basis that produces a predictable and quantifiable number of referrals? (You say or do something 10 times and it can produces 6, 7, or 8 referrals.)

12. What is your conversion rate of those referred leads?

13. What percentage of your business comes from new business; current customers; referrals?

As you can see, this is important information that you should know. If you do know it, then hats off to you, because you’re in the top 5% of all business owners!

If you don’t know it, you can see how it would make a significant difference to the profitability of your business.

In fact, many business owners who start getting the answers to these questions and using that data find that they can increase their net profits anywhere from 25% to 500%. (Yes, it’s true.)

You can’t afford to delay on starting to answer these questions. They are the thirteen questions that can change the course of your business and your life.

Anne Alexander, president of Authentic Alternatives, Inc., based in Fort Collins, CO. For more about Anne, visit http://www.authentic-alternatives.com.

by Jim Reilly

It would help if we were able to understand the way people behave towards each other. Understanding this would make life much easier, especially when it comes to interacting in a social and business environment.

In the 1920’s, Dr. William Marsden, a Psychologist, designed a system called the DISC Personality Profile. The DISC system places people into one of four different categories:

D - Dominant

I - Influential

S - Steady

C - Compliant

The DISC Personality Profile is a personality analysis that can be used to predict the behavior of individuals when they work on their own or with others. However, there are limitations…people seldom have just one personality. Everyone is dominant in one personality type but another may be close.

Read through the characteristics of the various personality types and you will start to learn how people can be expected to behave when you interact with them.

High D’s like to be in control…they like to be on top and give the orders. High D’s like to be innovative pioneers, have active minds and like to be stimulated. At times quality can start to drop, especially it they are involved with many activities at the same time. Typical high D’s do not like to get immersed in details…so, a good area to focus on is to have a checking system in place and set aside time to track performance.

High I’s like to have fun, are outgoing and very friendly. Typically they are good motivators and team leaders. To manage a high I, you need to win them over and be their friend. Keep in mind that the High I have great people skills and to get in the game, you need to be very sincere…never fake! Typically the high I (like the High D) does not like to dig into details and they can improve by being more task oriented.

High S’s are steady people and don’t like to be rushed. When everyone else is stressing out, they are calm. They like to think things over, thus avoiding quick decisions. The high S can plan things which is a great support for the high D. The high S can improve by changing their ways with respect to time…make quicker decisions and don’t look back!

High C’s have a tendency to collect data, facts and figures. Another perspective is that they like to do things very well, if not perfectly. The high C likes to work on their own and they often view their standards as much higher than any. The high C will want the high I to be less friendly and more task oriented, while the high I will think opposite. One area for the high C to work on is to be more confident in their approach to decision making and not fear arriving at a wrong decision.

Making sense out of this…

The DISC profile can give you a good indication of people’s behavioral styles at work. Why not help your team by helping them have a better understanding of their own personality style, as well as the prospects and customers they are interacting with. Give some thought on how this can help improve customer satisfaction and retention which in turn could be a major contribution to the revenue stream of your business?

Jim Reilly is a business coach and seminar presenter with ActionCOACH Business Coaching, the world’s #1 coaching firm. For more information on Jim’s upcoming events or to lean how Jim can help your team, visit www.actioncoach.com/jimreilly or email jimreilly@actioncoach.com

by Ron Zasadzinski

Maintaining your own web site can be easy with the right tools. By maintenance, I mean having the ability to update the content of your web site, including text and pictures. As a web site owner, there are a number of options available to you.


Adobe Contribute

This incredible off-the-shelf software is so easy to use, you won’t believe it. If your web site is comprised of static HTML files as many small and medium sized sites are, this could be the perfect choice for your web site maintenance. Adobe Contribute allows you to edit text and add or delete images from your web site. It is so easy to use that within 10 minutes I was able to demonstrate it to my most computer-phobic client and he understood its basic functions.

Contribute also has advanced functions that provide rollback capability - if you edit a page and it doesn’t look right you can “rollback” to one of several previous versions of the page. Contribute can be used to create new pages on your web site by copying existing pages too. The software costs about $170 from Adobe, and in many cases we can set it up to work with existing web sites including those designed by other agencies.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

Building your web site around a Content Management System is another way for web site owners to update their own content. With a CMS, the content of your web site resides in a database rather than in static HTML files. The design and layout of your site will need to be coded specifically to work with the particular CMS chosen. When someone visits your web page, the content for that page is pulled out of the database and inserted into the layout.

When updating your site with a CMS, you’ll log into an administrative part of your web site that allows you to edit the contents of the database.

For large web sites this is just about the only way to go so that site-wide design and content changes can be managed efficiently. For small and medium sized web sites, a CMS can be effective. There are a number of tradeoffs to consider. Once your site is set up with a particular CMS, you are pretty much tied to it - moving your web site to a different Content Management System can be fairly involved. In some cases the content can be migrated, but in almost all cases the design will need to be recoded to work with the new CMS.

It is important to consider how easy the CMS interface is to use. They range from simple to complex. None are as easy to use as Adobe Contribute which doesn’t store information in a database at all, it lets you edit your web pages directly.

When a CMS is the chosen solution, we strongly recommend going with an open source CMS. There are many excellent systems available. Wordpress (which is Blogging software but can be used to manage a web site as well), Joomla, Drupal, and Web Site Baker are popular and have varying capabilities.

Going with a widely used, open source CMS means that if you have a falling out with your web developer, another developer can jump right in. Also, open source Content Management Systems can be moved from one web site hosting company to another.

If your developer employs a custom CMS for you, you are almost certainly going to be tied to that developer and unable to have anyone else work on the site, or to move the site at all. If it ever needed to be moved you’ll probably be redesigning the whole thing from scratch.

Hiring out your updates

One other option to consider is having your web developer make the web site updates for you. This can be the best option if you are busy and have challenges finding the time to update your web site, or if your company is looking to outsource your website maintenance. The important factors here are finding a web development company that has good communication skills, can respond quickly to your requests, and has discounted rates for ongoing web site maintenance.

CodeGeek.net meets all three requirements, and we maintain web sites for a number of companies, both large and small. We are able to respond quickly because we have a number of team members whose dedicated job is just making web site updates. Our web site maintenance rates are also significantly discounted from our regular web site development rates. It’s our way of saying thank you to our many loyal customers.

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Ron is the owner of CodeGeek.net, a Fort Collins, Colorado web design agency serving clients across the United States. Simple or fancy, we do web sites right.

by Anne Alexander

Jan Carlzon, former president and CEO of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and author of an interesting book called Moments Of Truth, wrote something that every single business of whatever size needs to pay attention to:

“Last year, each of our 10 million customers came in contact with approximately five SAS employees, and this contact lasted an average of 15 seconds each time. Thus, SAS is ‘created’ 50 million times a year, 15 seconds at a time.

“These 50 million “moments of truth” are the moments that ultimately determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company. They are the moments when we must prove to our customers that SAS is their best alternative.

“… We have to place responsibility for ideas, decisions, and actions with the people who are SAS during those 15 seconds: ticket agents, flight attendants, baggage handlers, and all the other frontline employees.”

To paraphrase Mr. Carlzon…

Your business is ‘created’ with every contact you have with a customer or prospect, sometimes only 15 seconds at a time. These mini ‘moments of truth’ are the moments that ultimately determine whether your business will succeed or fail. They are the moments when you must prove to your customers that doing business with you is their best alternative.

Can you think of some 15 second moments of truth in your business?
Here are just a very few to consider:

How do you or your employees answer the phone?

What does your voicemail message REALLY sound like?

What is the first thing you say at the beginning of a sales call or when a prospect calls you?

What do you say at the end of a sales call?

How quickly do you respond to email and phone messages?

How do you and your employees describe your business when they are not working, but meeting people socially?

Use this simple format to identify and transform your business’ moments of truth:

Moments Of Truth Worksheet

Moment of Truth:

What you currently do:

What your competition typically does:

What you can do so your customer can’t help but say “WOW!":

If you want to give your business a powerful “Wow” tune up, then once a week, take 15 minutes and write up at least one “moment of truth” for your business. After a year, you’ll have improved your business in 52 ways and given your customers much more of the “Wow” that you need to if you want your business to thrive well into the future.

Anne Alexander, president of Authentic Alternatives, Inc., based in Fort Collins, CO, works with business owners and managers all over the U.S. to develop strategies and systems that dramatically increase their bottom line profits. She can be reached at (970) 672-4946, anne@authentic-alternatives.com or http://www.authentic-alternatives.com.

by Melissa Clary, CPA

When it comes to income taxes it is crucial to find someone who you can trust and will do a good job. How should you start by going about finding a tax professional? It’s easier to ask for referrals first before leafing through the yellow pages. I would suggest by asking either other professionals that you work with already, your banker, financial advisor, lawyer, and asking if they can refer you to someone. It is also important to find out those preparer’s credentials.

Certified Public Accountants – are required to have a college degree and pass a rigorous certification exam that covers topics from tax preparation, audit, law, and accounting. Many CPA’s will go beyond tax preparation and provide business and professional advice. They are required to fulfill continuing education requirements on an ongoing basis, and are authorized to represent you if you are audited.

Enrolled Agents – must have at least five years of IRS work experience or have taken an exam administered by the IRS. They are required to fulfill continuing education requirements and are authorized to represent you if you are audited.

Unlicensed Tax Preparers – Anyone can be a tax preparer but it is important to ask these people how long they’ve been doing income taxes, what kind of returns they have been doing. These individuals typically are not allowed to represent you if you are audited.

Once you feel you have the names of three different qualified preparers call their office to set up an initial interview to discuss pricing and to ask questions. Here are sample questions to ask this person.

How long have they been in business? What is their specialty?

What other services does the tax preparer provide, for example business advice, estate and gift planning, tax planning?

When can you expect that they will have the work completed? Will they be preparing the return or will a staff member be preparing the return?

Will they be outsourcing to a 3rd party? You should not have to pay CPA prices to have a sweat shop employee in India prepare your return, plus you will lose out on that privacy protection.

Also, avoid those preparers who appear to show signs of being fraudulent. Warning signs would be if their fee is a percentage of your refund, they have you sign blank forms, or they offer to make up tax deductions to boost your refund. Many people have different needs when it comes to a tax preparer so take the time to think about your taxes and own situation and pick someone who is qualified to help you.

In addition, choose a preparer that you will be able to contact after the return is filed and one who will be responsive to your needs. Many of the large franchise tax preparation companies are gone most months out of the year and you will have to call an 800 number and speak with someone who will inevitably give you the run around if you have a question. Also, these tax preparation services are usually NOT less expensive than small shops - and they tend to hit you with fees for “extras” and try to sell you products. If the initial quote is small, ask about add-ons, “accuracy guarantees” and rapid refund costs. Overall it is important to choose someone who is responsive to you, and that you can communicate well with.
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Melissa Clary, CPA is a partner of the Colorado-based C.P.A. Firm Kruger & Clary. For details on their firms services visit http://www.krugercpas.com/

By Kurek Ashley

Imagine you go to the airport and get on a plane. As you’re sitting there, the pilot voice comes over the P.A. system and he says, “Hello ladies and gentlemen, I’m Captain Bob. We have a plane full of fuel, I’m not really sure where were going, but lets take off any way and hopefully we’ll find some where to land before we run out of fuel! Enjoy your peanuts and movie and fly with us again if you live through this flight".

After hearing that, are you now heading for the exit?

If you’re not going to trust someone with one flight because they don’t know where there going, why are you trusting yourself with your own life when you don’t really know where you’re going either?

So, the first step to achieving your goals is to figure out what those goals actually are. Just by sitting down and writing out your goals puts you in the top 97% of the population. The average person never writes down their goals. Do you want to be average? If you do what average people do you get what average people get. And having goals is not enough! Why? Because having goals is a good measuring stick to see the results in regards to what actions you’ve put in and what results that you got from those actions. The challenge with goals is that they’re not inspiring unless they are dreams. What I’m really saying is instead of just writing down your goals, write down your dreams. Dreams are goals that have passion.

You may be saying, “What’s the difference"? The difference is that adults write down their goals. They put limitations on what they say they want because they say what they think they can achieve, instead of just saying it is what they want. You’ll hear adults say things like, “I don’t really want a big home because it just means that cleaning it would be more work. I just want a comfortable place to live". Or when it comes to talking about the car that they’re going to get, adults say things like, “I just need a good dependable car that gets me from point “A” to point “B", that’s what I want. There’s no real difference between a Daewoo and a Mercedes, they both get stuck in traffic. The Mercedes doesn’t have the helicopter attachment that gets you out of traffic. And the Daewoo is cheaper".

I can tell you that the only people that say there’s no difference between a Daewoo and a Mercedes, are those who drive a Daewoo! Yes they both get stuck in traffic, but when you’re stuck in traffic in a Mercedes, at least you’re stuck in style. There is a difference. A Daewoo might be on an adult’s goal list, but I’ve never seen a Daewoo on someone’s dream list.

And when you ask a child what a child wants, a child will tell you what their dreams are not their goals. See children don’t have any limitations.

When you ask a child about what kind of house they are going to get, they’ll tell you that they want one with 15 bedrooms that are all theirs. They want the world’s largest swimming pool complete with water slides and dolphins swimming in it. They say that they are going to have a Ferrari in a different color for each day of the week. You see, children don’t have limitations on their dreams. And I believe that the creator made us children first so that we could master it, not surrender it. Being born a child first was our training period so that we could become “a wise child". A wise child is one that evolves by life’s experiences and yet still looks at everything in life with wonder and awe. A wise child never gives up on their dreams.

Ask yourself, is the person that you are right now, the person that when you were a child you dreamed that you would grow up to become? Is this all of the results that you thought that you were going to accomplish? Is life as fun as you thought it was going to be or are you stress out more than you thought that you would be?

If you said that this is not the life that you planned on living when you grew up, then it’s not too late. This week take 5 minutes and write out all of your wildest and most exciting dreams that you want to have in your life. Don’t write what you think that you can achieve, write down what you really want. Then write a full page on why you want it. Actually the most important step of this whole process is knowing why you want something and the purpose for wanting it. And it’s not actually the goal itself that we want to achieve, it’s the purpose for why we want it that we want to achieve.

Think about it, why do you want the money in your life? Do you want a bunch of numbers on a bank statement or do you want the experiences that the money gives you? So when you think about all of the awesome experiences that you can have and all of the great things that you can do for yourself, your family and all of the people that you care about. When you think about that feeling of freedom that being wealthy will bring you, that is your purpose for wanting the money and that is what we’re really going after.

It’s having a strong purpose for achieving your goals that gives you the inspiration and the drive to go after them. When you have a strong enough “Why” you want your goals, the “How” to get the goal shows up. Having a strong purpose helps you tap into your dormant resources which makes you more efficient and more effective in achieving your goals and dreams.

Next set a course of action that will lead you in the direction of your dreams, using your purpose as the driving force to get you there and then take the necessary action. Dreams come true when you make the decision to make them come true!

Have a most outstanding day!

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Kurek Ashley has been transforming people’s lives around the globe for years. If you would like to learn about Kurek, visit www.kurekashley.com