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Soul Investment

public-domain-images-archive-high-quality-resolution-free-download-splitshire-0002-1000x666Entrepreneurs make investment decisions almost daily. You decide whether to spend limited money and time for projects, capital equipment, additional staff, inventory, brand marketing, professional services, employee development and training, and computer systems, etc. But the best investment you can make for the health of your business is in your own personal vitality. Long hours and stressful situations are standard fare but that doesn’t mean you can’t be energized and inspired. YOU are the soul of your business and it takes energy to build a strong business. Investing in your self-care pays dividends in greater reserves of energy required to build your business.

Invest in yourself. You are the soul of your business so it’s essential to “pay yourself first.” If you are lacking physical, emotional, or mental well-being, it will reflect on your bottom line. Taking care of yourself by following a wellness program combining eating right and exercise will improve every area of your life and generate energy needed to build a business. Commit to ongoing learning. Online classes and webinars are available on any topic and price point so there’s no excuse for not investing in your professional development.

Invest in relationships. Entrepreneurs profit from developing relationships with other business owners, coaches, and communities. You may be independent by nature but the ability to call on an advisor, coach, and colleague or mastermind team member in the midst of an issue is a priceless investment.

Invest in your legacy now. Don’t just make giving a line item in your will or your balance sheet – get out there and find a way to get active. Volunteer as a mentor or support local community fundraisers – there are countless ways to get involved. Giving is good for the soul and the positive feelings it generates in you reflect back to your employees, your customers, and your community.

Small Steps to Better Than Ever Business…
Investing in your personal well-being, nurturing power partnerships, and creating a legacy now will generate inspiration and vitality that powers your life and business with immediate momentum.

Choose one area you think will give your psyche the biggest lift. Start an exercise program. Sign up for an online class. Call a local college and volunteer to mentor students. Start a mastermind team. Volunteer for your community 5K. Can you find a way to combine all of the above? Repeat tomorrow and everyday thereafter and soon you’ll feel the dividends in your personal life and your bottom line.

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Retreat, Refresh and Re-Ignite your Vision

For the past 15 years, I have taken a week during my birthday month to revisit life and career, refining a vision for my coming years. I usually take a few days alone at the beach with no TV and no technology but the process can be done over time and in any quiet place.
These questions and exercises are great kindling to ignite a fire in your soul and reconnect with an authentic vision for your life and business. You can complete all the exercises or you can respond only to those which speak to you the most.

1. Imagine your face on the cover of a magazine or newspaper – the featured article is about you! If you could choose any magazine, what would it be? Is it Entrepreneur? Parents? Philanthropy Magazine? The Business Journal? What is the cover headline? What are the supporting headlines? Write the first paragraph or the whole article? Why are you being featured? Who contributes to the article and what did they say?

2. Imagine giving a speech at your own funeral. You are in a room full of all the people who have been meaningful to your life, whether living or passed. Who is there and what do you want to say to them? Who is missing and why?

3. You are being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award (think Academy Awards or similar). Who are you thanking for support, love and mentorship? Who is there? Who introduces you and what do they say? Whose face do you want to see in the front row while giving your speech?

4. Letters to Children: You write a letter to your child or grandchild at their birth. What does it say? What do you want for them? Reverse the exercise and assume your son or daughter hands you a letter upon graduation from high school or college. What does it say?

5. You and your spouse decide to renew your vows. In the presence of all your friends and family, you will deliver personal vows. What do your vows say? How about your spouse – what do his/her vows say?

6. It’s a Wonderful Life. Did you see the eternally favorite Christmas movie with Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey? George is a frustrated businessman who is given the gift of an angel who shows him what life would be like if George had never been born. Envision yourself as the main character in It’s a Wonderful Life. Whose life is better because you were born? Tell the story of how you positively impacted the lives of 5 key people in your life and how you made it better.

7. The Perfect Day: What are the ingredients to a perfect day? Name at least 5 activities you would do every day without fail and be able to go to sleep contented? Is it prayer, exercise, dinner with your spouse?

8. The Bucket List: Here is another movie inspired exercise for creating a vision. The gist of the movie is about two men with fatal illnesses trying to check off a list of all the things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.” You can place anything on the list: items you want to buy, places you want to travel, people you want to meet, forgiveness you want to extend, love you want to express. It’s your list.

9. Imagine your last days. Sitting in a rocking chair reminiscing beside your best friend, what will you spend your time talking about? What are the stories you tell over and over again? Who are the people you love? What are the experiences you shared which cause you to smile or laugh?

10. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia written by the crowd – anyone can contribute to it. When doing research on famous people, it’s usually their Wikipedia entry which comes up first on Google. If you’ve ever checked someone’s bio on Wikipedia, where do you look first? Are you looking for their professional achievements? Checking on how many marriages and children they have? Assume someone starts a Wikipedia entry about you. Who would contribute and what would they say? Is there anyone you don’t want to contribute to the entry?

If you are like most entrepreneurs, your personal and business lives are intertwined. You are forever trying to strike a balance between personal and business goals. You spend time creating a plan for your business which includes spreadsheets, strategies, and big goals. You write assumptions, a budget and create project plans to get the job done. But, do you spend the time to examine whether those plans fit with the vision for your life? If not, give yourself the gift of a retreat and refresh your vision.

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Where did April Go?

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
Napoleon

It has been one of those months, so busy I didn’t get a chance to write a single blog post. I had big plans for the month, hoping to write a few times a week. What to do? I could beat myself up for not getting it done but I would rather focus on the positive.

Where did April go? Where did I spend my time?

* Held Quarterly Mastermind Retreat for my longest standing mastermind team witnessing the remarkable success and breakthroughs my fellow entrepreneurs made this past quarter. Mostly, I enjoyed the loyalty and enthusiasm they have for helping each other succeed.
* Deepened my involvement with members of my favorite networks.
* Worked with Kim Doyal, The WordPress Chick to clean up the back-end of my blog and define requirements for a new and improved website.
* Designed 2 products to be rolled out with the new website.
* Continued editing “The Book” which has dominated my life for two years.
* Coached the most amazing business owners in the world.
* Completed Feasibility Reports for consulting clients.
* Worked with Designer on a new logo and “The Book” cover.
* Welcomed new office-mate on April 3 – a 12 week old puppy Maija who is learning the rules of the office.
* Handled my teenage sons’ car accident and gave thanks no one was hurt.

So, what is the point of this blog post? Is this a “guilt” post, one to explain why I didn’t blog through the month of April? No. It’s also not a “brag” post to impress my readers.

The point is we all have a choice as we look over the passing months and years. We can look back with guilt over what we haven’t done, compare the “planned versus actual” and wallow in frustration. My preference is to take the opportunity at month’s end to reflect on what was accomplished, give thanks for personal and professional blessings, and refresh my vision for the future.

What choice will you make?

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Research Trends to Prepare for the Upswing

Three-legged Stool of ResearchIn the last two blog posts, we covered market research tools and methods for Customer Intelligence and Competitor Intelligence. Today we add a third leg to the proverbial stool by listing website resources for gathering trend information to inform business strategy.

1. What are the most popular searches on the web right now or over some past period of time? There are countless tools and methods to gather this information but if you want to capture a snapshot “pulse” of the web, here are a few suggestions.

Explore real-time hot topics and hot searches with Google tools such as Google Trends. For more advanced analysis from search data, try Google Insights which provides drill down capability by category, geography, seasonality, and properties of search.

SEOmoz has comprehensive tools for search engine optimization but for the purpose of trend monitoring, there are several free keyword tools that can help you with trend research. SEO Book and WordStream are also SEO tool providers with a variety of keyword research, competitive research and web traffic evaluation capabilities. I won’t speak to their respective strengths and weaknesses but offer these tools only as a means to monitor current trends.

2. What is the buzz on the blogs, forums, and social networks?

Blog Pulse : gives you a real-time snapshot on the hot topics being discussed in the blogosphere. In addition, a searchable archival database of topics over the past 180 days can be used to research on any topic and provide popular blog pots on the topic based upon user engagement.

Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious show popular content such as articles and blog posts submitted by and voted on by their respective web communities.

What the Trend provides information on top trending topics on Twitter as well as trends over the past 30 days. Twitter keeps a running log of the top trending topics worldwide and in selected locations. Twitter Search provides real-time hot topics and advanced search capabilities to find tweets on any topic you choose.

Biz Sugar provides social bookmarking focused on small and medium business information. As with other social bookmarking sites, content is submitted and voted upon by the community but in this case, the community consists mainly of entrepreneurs like you.

3. My personal favorite places to follow trends combine the wisdom of the crowds with analysis from professional trend analysts into a combination of real-time aggregators and analyst reports (free and fee-based) covering every conceivable social, economic, and political trend.

Trend Hunter: You could lose days in this community of over 30,000 scouts who contribute real-time trends to this site which analyzes and aggregates the data on 100’s of categories of trends. Once you find your way through the site, subscribe to the newsletter or create separate subscriptions and notifications based on your topics of interest. (I continue to recommend Exploiting Chaos as one of the best books for business inspiration I have read – please check it out!)

Trend Watching : Great free and subscription based reports with analysis of key trends from 100’s of trend watchers worldwide. I subscribe to their newsletter and find it an invaluable tool.

Poll Daddy : Not only does Poll Daddy offer widgets you can embed in your website or Facebook page to poll customers but the company provides an amazing searchable database of millions of active and archived polls and their results.

Trendpedia : Check out popular current topics from the blogosphere, along with top trends from the past week and month. In addition, compare the relative buzz on several topics and gage interest on those topics in the blogosphere.

Following the trends provides inspiration for new product lines as well as ideas for re-positioning existing products. Many of the tools noted above have more advanced and professional versions available for a subscription fee. I suggest you begin with this list of tools and subscribe to those which provide the most insight for your strategic thinking process.

Again, this is simply a short list of web-based resources I utilize. What are you using to keep abreast of the social, economic, and political trends?

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Build a Customer Feedback Loop

In our continuing series on how to Prepare for the Upswing, we discuss several low cost options for inclusion in a customer feedback loop. Recession or not, gathering customer feedback is always a great idea as the best companies are distinguished by exceptional customer service. During a recession when there are fewer disposable dollars, small business owners may question whether general economic trends or business specific issues are keeping customers away from spending. Here are a few suggestions to adopt which can answer your questions as well as help you prepare for the coming growth cycle:

1. Customer Surveys: While you can ask as many questions as you like, ultimately the questions you want answered are: How was your experience? Would you buy from us again? Would you recommend us to a friend?
Web-based survey tools such as www.surverymonkey.com and www.surverygizmo.com offer you the ability to create a survey, distribute it via email and analyze results. Most web-based tools provide excellent resources to help you design effective survey questions for actionable results.

2. Initiate a Customer Experience Team: Invite a sample of customers to map your business from the customer’s perspective and look for ways to create a remarkable customer experience. Customer Experience Teams do not have to meet in person as you can use web conferencing technologies to collaborate and meet while minimizing the time commitment requirements from participants. Your customers will love the opportunity to help you design an exceptional customer experience, investing them even further in the success of your business.

3. Do you have a project that needs customer feedback such as the introduction of a new product or a new website? Provide an incentive and ask target customers to participate in a Project Team. Again, web conferencing technology such as www.gotomeetting.com and www.webex.com are among the leaders but there are a host of other options that may suit your needs, with affordable packages available on a per use or subscription basis. I have created “practice teams” to review classes before I offer them to the general public. Usability Teams are teams which are often created to evaluate the intuitiveness and navigational ease of websites from the customer experience.

4. Do you want to modernize the customer suggestion box? Create an Innovation Community using social networking platforms. Using a platform such as Ning or Facebook, create a closed forum where you can share product concepts and gather reactions. Similarly, you can ask customers to contribute product development ideas. I have used Ning to create private communities and find it takes an afternoon to create a branded community with custom content such as documents, websites, recorded video and audio, message boards, private messaging, connection and community capability. For inspiration, check out Dell’s IdeaStorm where, since 2007, Dell customers have contributed over 13,000 ideas and Dell has implemented over 400 suggestions.

Connecting with your customers in a new way, especially during the low economic periods, lets them know you care. Provide your customers with some kind of incentive for their participation and show your appreciation for their time. Follow up on the feedback you receive and demonstrate how you give serious consideration to their suggestions. A well executed customer feedback loop will not only enhance customer loyalty but inspire ambassadors who spread positive word of mouth about your business.

What tactics have you used to gather customer feedback? What has worked for you and what hasn’t worked for you?

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