How to Simply Develop Your Internet Presence

I have not posted anything for some weeks.  Blogs, Web sites, social media are somethings I am attempting to learn in order to help small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.

After a year of trying different approaches, I believe a good approach is:

1. Obtain a domain name (GoDaddy.com is good)
2. Set up an e-mail account at google for Google Adsense (gmail.com)
3. Set up an E-mail account at hotmail.com
4. Design and host FREE a Web site (if don’t need a shopping cart) at OfficeLive (hotmail.com).  You can also use weebly.com.  With OfficeLive it is very difficult to add Google Adsense.  Weebly is much easier.  It really is your preference.  I like the way OfficeLive works.
5. Add affiliate status with Amazon.com, text-link-ads.com, and kontera.com.
6. Draw people to your Web site with: linkedin.com, twitter.com, facebook.com.  Update frequently.
7. Set up a blog with google.com/blogger.
8. Do regular posts to your blog and update your Web site less frequently.

Check it out:         www.BizPlanSpecialist.com

I do hope this is my last domain name change – it is oftentimes very difficult to get the one you want!!

E-mail me at:        DMcCormick.Planner@gmail.com

A New On-Line Approach

For the past several months I have been working with two free Websites for design and hosting.  MS Officelive is my preferred host for flexibility and creativity; but you cannot link with Google Adsense easily (it can be done but is quite involved and difficult).   With Google Adsense you can develop passive income – a click-through results in several cents income.

Weebly.com is not as good looking but is much easier to load Adsense onto.  During the past two weeks I have had difficulty publishing my Weebly Website.  As soon as that is live I will no longer be using WordPress; hopefully this will be in the next week.

Thank you for viewing my posts.  Very soon I hope to have BizPlanSpecialist.com active with the focus being – you guessed it – a more effective approach to developing your business plan.

In the time being, please utilize PeakPlanningSpecialist.com.

Dick McCormick     www.BizSuccessWithLess.com

www.PeakPlanningSpecialist.com

Make a Difference in Your Business

For my bi-weekly post, I am encouraging you to review prior posts, select one, two, or three priority items to implement, then implement them! We – me included – have a tendency to read,… and read,… and read but take too few action steps.

Scroll down and review these posts – find something that will help you. And just do it!!

Dick McCormick     www.BizSuccessWithLess.com

Se also: www.PeakPlanningSpecialist.com

“In Times Like These,…” Part II of II

(This is the continuation of the article, “In Times Like These, You Get a Chance to Show Your Strength,” appearing in the April 2009 edition of Inc. Magazine.  Please read Part I from two weeks ago if you haven’t.)

What has changed if  you’re building a business now as opposed to 10, 20, 30 years ago is the skills. You need to be continually learning.  You have to manage your time and not your work!  You need a laserlike focus on doing first things first.  And that means have a ferocious understanding of what you’re not going to do.

There has been a big shift away from seeing the essence of entrepreneurship as the creation of a better mousetrap to viewing it as the development of a better process. Did Starbucks have a better mousetrap?  Or Home Depot?  There are lots of really great mousetraps and very few really great processes — whether it be a process of building a brand, building a culture, rolling your approach out to the world. … Isn’t it much more important to create a better process that will produce many mousetraps over time?

Stages of Entrepreneurship:

1. Stage One – You have a great idea.  (1979)
2. Stage Two – You Build a successful business.
3. Stage three – You build a great company.  (1990s)  This is different, because a great company will have, over time, many successful businesses.
4. Stage Four – Going from a great company to a great movement!  Yes, a movement.  Something bigger than the company.

Think about the early days of Apple, which went through all these stages.  They started with a great idea, a neat little computer.  Then they built a great business around the Apple II.  Next came the conceptual step of saying, “Actually, Apple is a company from which many things will happen.”  And on top of that was the whole notion of a movement – putting technology in the hands of individuals, giving them a lot more power.

Wendy Kopp built Teach for America. …  a great company.   But what she is doing goes beyond the company.  It’s about a process that will utterly transform people, and they in turn will utterly transform education in this country.  That is a movement.

In order to be a stage four entrepreneur, you have to have Three, Two, and One.  You cannot build a movement without having a strong, strategically sound business underneath, held together by a really effective set of processes and values. These mechanisms enhance the discipline of what you’re doing and therefore enhance the creativity.  Creativity and discipline go hand in hand.

The line between the social sector and the business sector will become increasingly blurred. …  We may actually have more to learn from (the social sector) than they have to learn from those of us in the business sector. …  In business, we largely have power, not leadership.  In a social-sector organization, power is diffuse.  So, getting things done requires the ability to truly lead.

THE END.

What are YOUR take-aways from this article?  Re-read it, think about it.  How can you apply it to where YOU are right today?!

Dick McCormick    www.BizSuccessWithLess.com

See also:  www.PeakPlanningSpecialist.com

Jim Collins: “In Times Like These…” Part I

Jim Collins is the author of Good to Great and Built to Last. He is a guru of how companies have been and can be successful.  Here are some relevant-for-entrepreneurs-and-business-owners quotes from his article in Inc. Magazine, April 2009: “In Times Like These, You Get a Chance to Show Your Strength.”

We realized that being an entrepreneur is a choice. It’s not about temperament or personality.  It’s about action!

It is only in times like these that you get a chance to show your strength. In the end I think we have to have absolute faith in our ability to deal with whatever is thrown at us.  And we need to have a complete, realistic paranoia that a lot can be thrown at us.  We need to be prepared for what we can’t predict and, at the same time, have this total unwavering faith that we will find a way to deal with all of it.

Think about the leading entrepreneurs of the past three decades: Steve Jobs, Yvon Chouinard,…  They defined success on a very big scale. For Steve Jobs, it was about much more than selling computers.  For Yvon Chouniard, more than clothing. …  (It is about) transforming society.

The most important decisions are always WHO decisions… Who comes first and WHAT comes second, for a very simple reason:  If you cannot predict the WHAT, you have to be able to do a good job with the WHO, because the WHAT is going to be constantly shifting.

Do you have a culture of people who:

• Share a set of values?
• Have very clear responsibilities?
• and Perform?

Those who build a culture around those ideas are building on something that is largely unchangeable.

(Part II next post in two weeks.)

Dick McCormick     www.BizSuccessWithLess.com

See also: www.PeakPlanningSpecialist.com

OK, Things Getting a Little Tighter?

Is your small business feeling the strain yet? If it hasn’t, it most likely will.  Money for small businesses is supposed to start flowing again as the Fed provides more funds through the SBA loan program and banks are encouraged to lend more.  But there are less consumers/businesses and they aren’t buying as much as they used to.

So what is the priority? – PLANNING!

Planning has to be an on-going weekly (daily?) function now.  Yes, planning – “Determining a course of action to follow.”

Quit being discouraged and come up with a thoughtful plan of action!!  Get your employees, your customers, other professionals (SCORE.org, Small Business Development Center folks, …) together and discuss:

• How can we serve our customers better?
• What new products or services might we offer our customers?
• What NEW markets might fit our core products and services?
• Where can we cut costs?
• How can we increase sales (to existing customers, to new customers?)
• How can we retain our current customers?

KEEP ASKING and looking and you WILL find some answers which will help your business survive and perhaps thrive during these tough times!

Don’t forget to keep current on trends by reading publications like BusinessWeek.com, Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com, USAToday.com, the Wall Street Journal, trade and association publications and others.  Ask, What do these trends mean for me and my business?  What action do I need to take now?!

Here’s wishing you the very best – You WILL make it work!!   You WILL prosper!!

Dick McCormick    www.BizSuccessWithLess.com

Check out: www.PeakPlanningSpecialist.com

Retailers as Innovators

We usually think of innovation more for the manufacturing industry than for retail. There was a good article titled “Retailers Need to Be Innovators Too” that appeared in The Retailer last year.  The following are excerpts.

Retailers need to know what their customers want.  Abercrombie &  Fitch has done its research to find what constitutes a unique experience for its core customers.

Consumers are becoming older, wiser and harder to please.  EVERYTHING should be assessed: music, layout, displays, customer service, lighting, mirrors, technology, even aromas (men’s favorite scent is cinnamon rolls).

• You must strive for continual improvement. Sustainable innovation – in response to continuous changes in the marketplace – is the key to survival and success.  You must continually refresh your competitive advantage.

• You must challenge conventional wisdom, your ingrained assumptions, things that have been done the same for years and years. Always be thinking of developing a better product and providing better service.  Innovation also means a close focus on customer research and operational excellence.

• Develop your competitive strategies through Strategy Innovation – Reinvent your business:

1) Your business model (like Dell).

2) The way you are organized, structured.

3) The way you do things (processes, procedures) including logistics.

4) Technology.

5) Marketing

6) Product / Service

When seeking to be creative and innovative, these provide the best input and feedback; ask them for ideas:

#1  – Customers

#2 – Employees

# 3 – Suppliers

Think about those things you need to do, make  a list, pick out the top three or four things, go after #1, then #2, until you’re finished. Do this on a continual basis and you will succeed, even in this recession we face now.

Dick McCormick      www.BizSuccessWithLess.com

Check out:  www.PeakPlanningSpecialist.com

Four Concepts Critical to Your Success NOW!

Especially now – given the critical nature of our economic climate – you must understand these four concepts and apply them to your business:

• Responsiveness – You must be able to respond quickly and in a totally customer-satisfying way to customer needs, wants, issues, concerns and problems.  How – Ask them; do customer sat. surveys.

• Flexibility – You must be able to quickly and in a non-disruptive manner respond to changing customer, industry and market needs, wants, tastes, preferences and values.  How – Continuously note and keep tract of changes as they occur; look for them.  Then determine what you will do.

• Creativity – You must bring new thinking to the problems, issues, and decisions you face.  You must look at things in new ways.  How – Define problems and decisions as a group to come up with solutions.

• Innovation – Innovation springs from creativity.  Innovation is a new idea that is implemented that results in an improvement, gain, or a profit.  By it you ADD CUSTOMER VALUE to your products and services.  How – Continually ask yourself, your associates and your customers what would improve what you have to offer.

Each and every day you need to be thinking about these concepts, taking notes, deciding what to do, and applying them in and to your business!! You can be successful even now if you do.

Dick McCormick           www.BizSuccessWithLess.com

Check out: www.PeakPlanningSpecialist.com

Brand New Website!

PeakPlanningSpecialist.com has been created to Fast-Track the business planning process. It is designed to help the start-up develop his/her business plan and the existing business owner update his plan (or develop one if he has none!).

Utilizing the information and links on this site will cut through the long search process, the hit-and-miss approach to finding relevant info about developing your business plan.

Especially check out the “Me, A Business Owner” page for several free assessments that would benefit any small business owner, or aspiring business owner!!

Have a great day!  Dick McCormick

www.BizSuccessWithLess.com                  www.PeakPlanningSpecialist.com

Tips for Tough Times VII

Scenario Planning ~~~

Last time, we looked at the need for a written plan as you consider the changes in the economy, your industry etc., AND many of the variables that impact your own business such as changes in customer needs, what’s happening with your competitors, improvements in technology, and so on.

With all this in mind, you need to think about what could happen in the future and prepare plans for dealing with the various possibilities. Scenario Planning is all about dealing with the unknown future and thinking through – ahead of time – what you would do IF.

• What would happen if sales continue to decline?
• What would happen if my major customer shut down?
• What would happen if a major supplier went out of business?
• What would happen if gas prices went to $4/gal. again?
• What would happen if… (you fill in)

You could spend days and weeks thinking about these.  But don’t.

1. Gather your employees (or family and friends or customers or suppliers) and brainstorm all the various possibilities.
2. Then pick the three, four, or five MOST LIKELY.
3. Next develop the plan for how you will deal with these: What you will do, When, How much it will cost, How you will communicate with employees and customers and others.
4. Continue to closely monitor the climates (customer, economic, competitor, etc.).
5. Continue to address additional Scenarios.
6. ACT when you need to.

Do this and you will be better prepared to weather the storms that are confronting you now and will confront you in the future.  Taking these steps could mean the difference between survival and an early exit from the marketplace!

Dick McCormick      Biz Success With Less

For more business tips go to www.BizSuccessWithLess.com