We now offer a flexible, cost effective, friendly web-site consultancy service in and around Heathfield in East Sussex.
Perfect for the small business owner who would like to remain in control of their site’s functioning, content, and importantly, costs.
This is just a quickie.
Here is an excellent tool for checking the speed of your website.
Not only this, but it also stages a loading time race with another site of your choice.
You can run the tests again and again, and keep comparing the results, it’s quite addictive!
You may have come across the Wheel of Life.
It is a very useful tool used in Life Coaching. The idea is that it gives a graphical representation of life, or more specifically our view of our own life.
The wheel is made up of spokes and each spoke represents a particular attribute of our life that we feel is important enough to be included in the picture.
A typical Wheel of Life will have spokes made of such things as: money, job, relationships, family, health, home, spirituality, education, etc.
The spokes are drawn, and then concentric rings — numbered 1 to 10 — are added. Each spoke is scored, subjectively, according to how satisfied we are with that aspect of our lives; a point is marked on the wheel. By joining the dots we get to see how round our wheel is — how rounded we feel too. If our wheel ends up looking a bit square, or maybe flat on one side, then we are in for a bumpy ride.
If we were completely satisfied with every aspect in our life then we’d have a nice big, completely round wheel (and I’d probably suggest that another spoke was added, that of growth). Probably though, we will see certain spokes less well developed than others. For instance, we might see a bit of a wonky wheel because the spoke relating to family is a bit short. We might have a really well established business and a secure income, but our family life has suffered at its expense. We can quickly see that we should devote some attention to the family spoke, to get it more closely matching the others — if we don’t look after this spoke it might snap off altogether.
We are not limited to just one wheel though, we can have two, three, four or as many as you like. You might think that your health needs a wheel of its own, and its spokes might be called such things as fitness, diet, insurance, weight, booze, etc. There are no rules, you have as many wheels, with as many spokes as you want, and you can call them what you want; whatever is important to you.
So what about your job? If you work for someone else, very often some of the spokes are outside of your control; no matter what you do, you can’t make a round wheel. Your bumble along, frustrated and literally careering out of control. If you work for yourself, then hopefully you are in more control. You really can craft the spokes as you like. An example work wheel is shown below.
Of course, your wheel might look a bit different. For instance, there is no spoke on this wheel that represents work environment. I say that because I’ve just looked around and noticed how untidy my office is. A minor point perhaps, but sometimes it is not until you carry out an exercise like this that you become aware of the need to address something.
Returning to our work environment for a moment. If we did put that spoke in our wheel, then, for a moment, we’ve got to ask ourselves a question: how content are we with our work environment? Perhaps, we are not really that happy about working in the chicken shed anymore and that maybe we’d be more effective working from a comfortable, warm office (the chickens might prefer it too). So the wheel of life is like having someone looking over our shoulder and just asking occasionally, for instance: is this really the best place for you to be working? And if not, how about making a little effort to improve things.
This really is very powerful, our motivation (like most of our mental attributes), is determined by our subconscious. For instance, we might be struggling to get enthusiastic about our work, and blaming that on the work we do. Now, after digging around, we’ve found out that the real problem is the thought of spending another few hours in that smelly shed (apologies to all the clean chickens out there).
This is what makes working for yourself so good. Ultimately, you are in control, and usually, whatever you want (or even need) to change, you can. It’s not just about money, we all know people who have loads of it and are still unhappy. It’s about us, retaining control is one of the most important factors that determines our happiness and in turn, our success.
The Wheel of Life, or in this case, the Wheel of Work, is a very useful tool to use not just once but as a constant reference to keep us on the right track.
If you want help with its application, just get in touch.
What do the following figures represent?
1.12 – 3.21 – 7.12
Answer: they are percentages from Statcounter and show the usage share for mobile web browsers for August 2009, 2010 and 2011.
You might think that 7.12% is not a great amount, but when you consider that most websites render poorly in mobile browsers and offer a similarly poor user experience, it is a very significant figure. But look at that increase; what will it be next year? And, what would it be if more businesses actually designed their sites for the web?
According to a BBC Technology report on mobile use, half of UK internet users are accessing the web via their mobile phones.
The message, very clearly, is this: if you have a website (and few businesses don’t need one), how are you going to connect with this rapidly increasing market?
Mobile websites mean business: want to know more?
Get in touch and we’ll help you get connected to the mobile market.
Organisation? We are talking verb here, not the noun and organising our business is one of the great challenges for the solo worker. You are busy working the business, who is busy working you? Nobody, because there is nobody else.
As solo workers we’ve got to make sure we are as slick as can be and anything that can help us keep on track, or even find the tracks we already made, will make us more productive and profitable.
I’ve just come across a useful little tool, that could really help you stay on your tracks. Take a look at Personal Brain, there’s a free version and premium, but free will do for most of us.
And even if you don’t use it, give it a try it, it will help you think about alternative ways to organise your business, your life — it’s vital.
Following on from the previous post starting a new business prompts some obvious questions: what business should I be in? or Why don’t I like my job?
Work is much easier if we like what we do, or if we are very good at it, or better still, both. If we enjoy our work some would say it ceases to be work at all.
It’s not just the work we do though that determines our interest, satisfaction or (dare I say it) pleasure. No, sometimes, it’s simply the way we do it.
We are all different, we have different ideas, different strengths, different weaknesses, and different beliefs. But, interwoven between all of those, are our values.
Our values dictate our conscious and unconscious thought, and consequently our decisions and actions. If we work in a way that fits well with our values, then we work effectively. Getting up on a Monday morning ceases to be a chore.
Being aware of our own values gives us a head start when it comes to choosing the work we do and the way that we do it. Do you know yours? If not, you can unearth them by doing this simple exercise on defining career values.
How many people work in a job they don’t like?
How many people are not working at all?
How many of these people would like to start their own business?
How many people have a home business idea or an idea they’d like to turn into a small business?
How many will actually start their own business today?
The UK (at the time of writing) has unemployment of around 2.46 million and the US about 15.7m.
I’ve no idea how many people don’t like their jobs, probably most of them.
Out of all these people, a great proportion would, I’m sure, like to have their own business and a great many of them will have ideas of what they’d like to do.
So, how many will actually start their own business today?
Or tomorrow?
Comparatively, very, very few.
What stops them?
Some will say that the time isn’t right, some will say they can’t afford it, some will say that they must keep working at their current job to keep the money rolling in, and of course some will say they just don’t know how.
These aren’t reasons, these are excuses.
Why?
Because starting your own business need not cost a penny, does not require you to stop your current employment, and virtually anyone has the knowledge or ability (or can easily get it) to start.
So, what really is the hardest thing about starting your own business?
The answer lies in the question.
Starting.
Starting can be as simple as deciding to do something, it could be as simple as telling someone what you are going to do. In short, starting means taking action. Because once you take action, you begin to move. It’s like freeing a sledge that is stuck in the ice: once you are moving, keeping going is easy.
So to start your own business, follow these simple steps.
When do you start?
If you want to, and really want to, then start right now — do what you have to do.
Anyone who markets their business online will have heard of Google’s Adwords; or they should have done. Adwords is Google’s name for their pay-per-click (PPC) service; it’s the very core of their business. Essentially PPC offers highly targeted advertising, it provides the facility to place your advert right in front of the very people that are looking for your product or service.
For example, your business specializes in repairing old Nikon cameras. You could use PPC to show an advert for your company when someone looks online for information about how to repair a shutter in a Nikon F1.
For the advertiser, this is great because you only pay to advertise to people who are looking for your service. You are not advertising to people who have a problem with their Pentax, or to people who want to take better pictures, or to people who want to photograph dolphins in the sea. PPC has been an advertising revolution for another very important reason too. If you advertise in a newspaper or a magazine your advert has to jolt the reader away from what they are doing (reading). With PPC, people are already looking for information and you (or your advertisement) can feed straight into that; no distraction necessary.
But, what has all this got to do with PPC improving offline advertising? Well, one of the great things about PPC is the rapid, measurable results an advertiser can get. Within a day of posting their advert they can see how many times it’s been displayed, how many times it’s been clicked on, and how many of those clicks resulted in an enquiry or sale (conversion rate). How long does that take to do with traditional offline advertising? Ages. With this fast feedback advertisers are able to test their adverts very quickly and cheaply. In particular, the all-important headline. It’s stated by various advertising experts that anywhere between 80% and 90% of an advert’s viewers will not read past the headline. The headline is absolutely vital in the battle to encourage a reader to find out more by reading on. Some headlines work and some don’t; there are certain rules to follow, but it’s almost impossible to predict what headline will perform the best. With PPC, headlines can be tested with high precision. It’s called split testing; all elements in the advert are kept the same, only the headline differs. After a few days, the results can be analysed and the better performing headline will be apparent.
What if you are advertising in magazines? Of course, with magazine advertising, this degree of testing is not possible, once the advert is printed, there it is — good or bad. However, if an inexpensive PPC campaign is run prior to placing a printed advert, then the best performing headline can be used in the magazine, thus ensuring maximum response.
I can’t answer the first part of that question, but I can answer the second with a very firm ‘yes’.
If you are in business, particularly sales, then you need to know about this.
By explanatory style we mean how you explain the events that you experience.
For example, say you’ve just left your laptop on the train. The train departs the station and then you realise.
Maybe you’ll swear a little (or a lot) and you’ll probably try to explain or give a reason to yourself why it happened. Think about it for a moment, if it happened to you, what might be a likely reason for it happening? (It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a laptop, or don’t use trains, just imagine the scene).
What reason would you give?
Can you see how these reasons differ? Or how some of them are similar in some respects? Admittedly, this is rather an extreme example to illustrate the point; typically the answers can be a little more subtle.
Explanatory style is said to have 3 attributes:
Personal Permanent Pervasive
Returning to our list of excuses The first reason wasn’t personal; we’d blamed that kid. It wasn’t permanent either; it was an isolated incident. It wasn’t pervasive; it was a very specific event.
The second reason is similar except that it is rather more personal, it was clearly our fault but we can see that it’s not going to be a permanent situation and won’t necessarily affect other parts of our life.
The third reason is certainly personal, and we are also implying that we are normally like that so it is permanent. But, pervasive? Not really we are only saying that we are forgetful.
Finally, ‘I’m so pathetic’, is personal, permanent, and pretty much pervasive too. If you think like this then really, you should try and do something about it.
So why does it matter how you explain things to yourself?
Not surprisingly, research has discovered a connection with our explanatory style to depression. If we tend to explain bad events in a personal, permanent and pervasive way then we are pessimistic.
The reverse is true when considering good events. If we’ve just won a race and we are an optimist, then we’d likely say that we’re better than the others. A pessimist might say that the others had an off-day or that we had a lucky break, or the favourite was injured.
What has this got to do with business?
In almost all cases it is far better to have an optimistic rather than pessimistic explanatory style. Some jobs call for a more cautionary outlook. If you are involved in assessing risks, or in the security or fire industry for instance. By and large though, being optimistic will serve you much better than not. Some jobs: telesales, insurance sales, and countless others, demand an optimistic outlook. It is what produces the required persistence that leads to success. In fact, a very well researched study involving one of the largest US insurance companies documents how they massively improved their sales staff’s performance by introducing selection tests based on explanatory style.
Can I improve my explanatory style?
Yes, you can.
Of course this short piece can only scratch at the surface of this fascinating subject. If you want to learn more (including the insurance company research) and also learn how to improve your explanatory style and hence optimism, then get hold of a copy of the excellent book Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman.
If you’d like more direct help on how to improve your performance, then get in touch.
I came across this the other day in a book published a few years ago.
It’s a short story describing a very bold but effective sales meeting.
It may not be a strategy many of us would think of using, but it’s a fantastic example of very canny selling; not for the fainthearted though.
The salesman in question is Bill Kessler who at the time was manager of the transportation division of Velcro USA.
Bill had flown to Europe to meet the chief engineer of a car manufacturer (a huge market for Velcro).
The chief engineers’s greeting was ‘We have no need for your product’.
Bill replied ‘Fine’. He shut his briefcase and prepared to leave.
The engineer was stunned by this, ‘You’ve flown all the way from America just to see me, aren’t you going to try harder for an order?’
‘No point,’ Bill replied. ‘If you don’t use Velcro you’ll either go broke, and why would we want to do business with a company heading for bankruptcy? Or you’ll be taken over by a Japanese company. We already do business with all of them anyhow.’
‘Hmmmm,’ said the engineer, ‘perhaps we should start again.’
A substantial order followed.
This strategy, known as ‘Closing the Bag’, can be very effective in returning a client to reality and removing their natural sales resistance. Use it with care.
The story comes from a book titled ‘Winning New Business, How to deliver Successful Sales Presentations’, by Dr David Lewis. Loads of useful tips for anyone with anything to sell. Not sure if it still in print but there are cheap used copies on Amazon, etc.
