Heather Villa, Business Coach and Entrepreneur

Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 3/12/10

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:45:06 +0000

How a Small New York City Hotel Put Itself on the Map through Social Media – A really nice and incredibly informative article which describes how the Roger Smith Hotel has now become known as the Social Networking Hotel of NYC. Check out the video montage, very cleaver and well put together!!! Oh yeah, the hotel amenities are amazing, I clicked through the link and looked at their site.

Granny DJ Spins the Internet into a Frenzy – OMG, here is the viral DJ Ruth Flowers video. I had to watch it twice! I wonder if she only wears the glasses when she is portraying DJ Flowers? =P

Breaking up is hard to do: Why businesses need to occasionally fire clients – Is there a “totally true” button here? Aaron discusses how the customer is not always right. Also talks in detail about how a business relationship with a customer can get to the point where it just makes sense to go separate ways. Maybe their focus has changed, or they no longer fit the bill in what your company defines as a customer. There is a great process/tool that the author describes to help you discover if you have to “trim the fat” when it comes to the best customer base for your company, and for the customer.

What Happens to Your Website If You Die? – This article talks about a topic most of us probably have never even thought about. What happens when you pass on and you have a bunch of websites that you monitored daily, contributed to, blogged on? It does make one think – what happens to your email inboxes? Can you “leave” them to a relative, or an employee through your will? This is a really good read and really makes you stop and think about it for a minute.

Personal Branding & Finding Your Naked Superhero – Captivating title, a photo that demands you to look twice, and content to boot! One of my favorite bloggers, Lisa Barone talks about the traits necessary to ensure you apply that personal branding paint nice and thick – so people will be drawn in to reading most everything you write about. As she mentioned in past blogs “….create a character around yourself so that you are always presenting people with the absolute best version of who you are”. A must read for bloggers who are looking to perfecting their own branding.

Why Entrepreneurs Should Eat Their Young – Jonathan Fields says it best – ” Entrepreneurs often get so emotionally-wed to their babies, they lose the ability to make good decisions”. He actually provides some information taken from a study by Hope Klug and uses it to the relationship between entrepreneurs and their still wet behind the ears followers.

Check out more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy reading!

It’s March. Do You Know Where Your Resolutions Are?

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:37:11 +0000

: Photo Credit:© Gabriel Plata Stapper

Roughly 60 days ago (or so), you probably made some resolutions. Maybe to eat better or work out more frequently – which are resolutions that are similar to what everyone makes – but I’m more interested in your business resolutions. As you prepared for 2010, what did you decide to do this year that will make you more successful?

More importantly, are you doing what you decided to do?

I was thinking about blogging on another topic today but I stumbled across a great article and I just had to post it (along with my own thoughts on the matter).
One reason why people struggle with making resolutions that they stick to all year is that they haven’t turned those goals into habitual actions. It’s easy to say “I’m going to decrease expenses by 10% this year” or “I’m going to grow my customer base by 12 new paying clients by the end of 2010″, but making those goals into actions – and those actions into habits – is a completely different (and far more challenging) effort. And I’m not just talking about New Years Resolutions here. This is the case with any goal.

So when I read the post by Leo Babauta called “The Habit Change Cheatsheet: 29 Ways to Successfully Ingrain a Behavior” at ZenHabits, it got me thinking about how to make my business and your business even more successful with good habits. This cheatsheet deals mostly with general habits (stop smoking, exercise more, etc.) but I’ve been thinking about how it can be repurposed for business use.

I won’t list all 29 points here, but I will comment on a few of them from a business-habit perspective:

Habit #1, do just one habit at a time. Although I “fail” at this one by making several goals at once, I think this advice is actually fairly wise. And when you combine it with habit #3, do a 30 day challenge, you can theoretically do one goal a month. (So if you made 12 New Years resolutions, don’t panic, just spread them out over the year).

I’m torn about whether or not I agree with habit #7, Don’t start right away. The author makes a good point that having a start date and an end date help to create a sense of excitement that you will look forward to. But I’m torn because I also know lots of people who say “I want to start doing [some habit] so I’m going to start Monday [or next month or next quarter or whatever]. I like the idea of setting a start date to make it exciting… just make sure you don’t set a start date as an unconscious delaying tactic. I would rather start a good habit today.

Habits #9 and #10, write down your [negative] triggers and for every trigger write down a good habit is something I read just last year in another source; I think it’s a good idea and something I’ve been trying to incorporate into my life.

Habit #18, have a mantra is a nice, neat way of creating what amounts to a short term “cheer” for yourself during your new-habit “indoctrination”. If you want to add more customers to your customer base, then make this year “2010: The year of ‘yes’.”

Lastly, habit #27, engineer so it’s hard to fail is brilliant. It’s too easy to fall back into old habits (or, at least, default action where there wasn’t a habit before). One example might be: If your goal is to decrease expenses by 10%, you might consider a mandatory 48-hour waiting period on any new purchase with a series of “do I really need this?” questions to ask yourself.

There is a lot of writing out there on goals but people fall short of their goals all the time. The real secret to success is to convert those goals to habits and this list is one of the most useful tools to help you do just that.

22.5 Minutes is all You Really Need to Make a Big Difference

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:14:15 +0000

Paul Lemberg and I share a similar goal in the work that we each do. Ultimately, both of us strive to help business owners use productivity to increase business success.

Paul has developed something called the Formula 5 system in which he lists 5 aspects of a business that can be altered to grow the business. The first 3 parts of his Formula 5 are:

1) Increase your conversion rate.
2) Increase your value per customer.
3) Increase the number of leads.

You can read more about them here: Formula Five – Learn the Secrets to Growth.

Okay, all of that is just my introduction to this video — Time Management Secrets: Getting More Done — which is the first of a 4-part video series (each one is about 15 minutes long). In the first video, about 2 – 3 minutes into the video, Paul says that his research has found people only spend 2 1/2 productive hours of time each day. Yikes! It’s scary but probably true. When you add up the phone calls and the email and the coffee breaks, he’s probably not far off.

Now, here’s what makes Paul’s system so compelling to me and I think you’ll like it too. Paul says that asking us to make adjustments so that we double our conversion rate or triple our value to our customer or get 6 hours of productive time each day is really unrealistic. It’s difficult to make such a profound change all at once. It’s disruptive to the business. (Yes, we WANT to make big improvements but they’re not likely to be healthy and long lasting).

So Paul says what we really need to do to make actual, valuable change in our businesses is to just increase something by 15%.

That’s it!

So if you acquire 20 leads in one month, try to get 23 leads the next month. Although we may dream about getting 40 leads next month, it’s not likely going to happen. But 3 more leads is very possible. And if you earn $1,000 per customer per month, try to get $1,150 per customer the next month. 15% isn’t that hard to get, is it!?!

And the same goes for your time. Since we only get 2 1/2 productive hours of time each day, a 15% increase is 22.5 minutes. So, although it might be difficult to bump up an average productive time each day to 5 hours (doubling it from 2 1/2), it’s easy to get an extra 22.5 minutes with just a few small changes.

The strength of this system is not one 15% change and then a subsequent retirement on the beach because of the increased wealth. Rather, I find the strength of this system is that these 15% incremental improvements can take place again and again over a period of time and they are painless to implement and, when you add them up, they can really be quite profound.

Here’s my advice: As we approach April, choose 5 measurable aspects of your business and aim to improve just one aspect by 15% each week.

Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 3/5/10

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:10:15 +0000

Reinventing Yourself Through Mindfulness – A very thought provoking post with some incredible case studies. How much better quality of work can be done when we are mindful? The mind is a powerful tool.

Car Dancing for the Greater Good – Come on! You know you wanna! Check out the video.

How to Donate or Recycle Old Office Equipment – Don’t know where or how to recycle your old office equipment? Kelly provides many great ideas and links.

Diagnosing Technical SEO Issues – This is just one of the great posts that Lisa has on her blog outlining the session at the (Search Marketing Expo). Every post makes you feel like you are there.

Slow Motion Dog Treat Commercial Beguiles Internet [Randomly Viral] – Couldn’t resist sharing this one. I love dogs and this is a cool commercial.

Catch more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy reading!

“What Should I Do?” – Advertising

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:15:56 +0000

In a previous blog post, I give you a link to a fantastic map on MindMeister that contained nearly every marketing technique known to humankind and I promised to go through each of those techniques and show you how to do them well, without spending a lot of time or money.

In today’s blog I’m going to talk about advertising (which is in the top, right-hand position on the map.

The map’s creator lists 3 different advertising channels:

Affiliate
Other networks
Pay per click

Affiliate advertising is when someone else sells your products or service (or, at least points people to your sales page where you sell them your products or services) and they get a cut of your revenue. This is basically a commission-based sales program but it’s automated, which makes it convenient for you.

If you want to succeed at affiliate marketing, you really need to make sure you offer good affiliate support. Your affiliate should be rewarded for his or her effort. There’s a temptation among marketers to try to squeeze out every dollar of profit for themselves and minimize affiliate commissions, but the higher the commission for the affiliate, the more likely they are to sell your product. Also, your affiliate should have the tools to market you appropriately, which means you need to think about buttons, banners, and sales page content. If you support your affiliates, it’s like enabling a sales team and they will sell more for you as a result.

“Other networks” sounds mysterious! And there’s nothing in that part of the map. I would put a site like Craigslist here. Craiglist, which is basically like a giant classified ad section of the newspaper, lets you advertise your services. But there might be local online classified ads, too, so check to see if your local newspaper or media outlet has these. Make sure the content is fresh and relevant for your audience. And if it’s a local advertisement, be sure to highlight that you are local.

Pay per click is exactly what its name suggests: You advertise and pay every time someone clicks. This is most (but not all) banner ads, Google AdWords, and similar ads. The secret to success here is to spend a bit of money and measure everything and then do it again and again. Figure out how many impressions your ad is getting and compare that to the number of times it is clicked. Then compare the number of times your ad is clicked to the number of people who buy from you. Tweak your ad to get more clicks and tweak your sales page to get more sales.

These advertising channels are all about putting out a little bit of teaser content to entice people to go to your site or to contact you for more information.

Good luck!

You will not make a fortune overnight, especially selling advertising space (BUL Series)

What Your Business can Learn from Video Games

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:03:39 +0000

I’m not much into video games. I have nothing against them (although they can eat up time like crazy) but I just have other things on my radar that are more pressing for me. Regardless, I can appreciate a good video game, not just for its artistry but for what it can teach business owners:

Video games are a great intersection between technical proficiency, artistic ability, and user experience.

When those things intersect in the right ways, a compelling game is created. Your business is similar:It’s an intersection between those three things.

You need technical proficiency to make sure your website and backoffice operations are running correctly
You need artistic ability in your design, branding, marketing, content creation, packaging,
You need a positive user experience throughout the entire process, from the time someone first interacts with your business until long past the time that they’ve purchased and used your products.

Since there is a clear link between video game excellence and business excellence, there are a few things we might be able to learn from video games that we can apply to business.

The first thing we can learn is this: You can’t do it all alone. There are very few video games designed and successfully distributed by just one person. (There might be some but I’m sure those are the exception). Instead, it takes a team approach, with each person leveraging the things they are good at, to make it happen.

The second thing we can learn is closely related to the first thing: A team is not made up of people who do the same things. Each person brings something different to the table and, as a result, business owners end up doing the hard work of managing projects to keep everyone happily collaborating.

The third thing we can learn is this: The most successful projects – whether video games or businesses – are achieved when the business-owner/project-manager acts as a visionary head and relies on the team to work together. (Compare this to the more frequent circumstance where business owners are familiar with their small slice of business and try to shoehorn others to fit their ideas).

What inspired me to write this blog was an article I read in the New York Times called: “On Will Wright’s Team, Would You Be a Solvent or the Glue?“ Will Wright is the guy who created the Sim line of games, starting with SimCity (and all of its iterations) and most recently “The Sims” series (and a bunch of other games I confess I’ve never heard of). So if there’s anyone who knows how to take a team of disparate people and create something popular, it’s Will Wright.

This article should be a must-read for any business owner or project manager to learn how to get different people to work together to create something. Be sure to read all 3 pages of the article and get ready to take notes.

Happy Blogging!

Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 2/26/10

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:49:32 +0000

A Lesson from Curious George for Bloggers – Of course I HAD to read this one. I was just as curious as Curious George to see what lesson Darren had to share with us. And as usual, it’s very insightful. Use the same techniques this beloved children’s book author does to keep your readers coming back.

How to Handle Criticism Like a Millionaire – I’ve yet to meet someone who likes and enjoys criticism. However, we all have to deal with it. J.D. outlines the differences between justified and unjustified criticism and how best handle both.

Why You Should Travel Back Through Time – A must read. James is such a great writer you can’t help but feeling like you’re flipping through a ‘blog’ album (like a photo album) as ‘he’ goes through ‘his’ blog archives.

What Parents Must Know about Kids and Social Media – If you have kids or are responsible for kids, you need to read this. Our kids are so tech savvy today, that we, as parents, need to be aware of what they are doing on the internet and help them to interact safely and responsibly.

50 Photos to Inspire Life as a Digital Nomad – Some really beautiful photos that capture what it means to be location independent.

One Sentence – True Stories Told in One Sentence – It’s amazing what all can be conveyed in one sentence. A really great site and you can submit your own one sentence stories as well.

I read so much great stuff this week that it was difficult to decide what to list here. If you enjoyed these, then please check out more of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy reading!

I’ve Joined a Cult!

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:39:23 +0000

Okay, usually when you hear that, it’s not a good thing. One of the first things you think when someone says that is: “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid”. The second thing you think is “How do I get out of this conversation as quickly as possible before the person asks ME to join the cult, too?”

But trust me, this is a cult you’ll WANT to join.

Here’s how I stumbled upon this cult: I was totally looking for something else but I found this blog and thought: “yeah, I’m all over this, It’s called “the cult of done”. Two people – Bre Pettis and Kio Stark – wrote a manifesto about productivity. It’s simple and elegant. It’s just 13 points. And when you read them, you’ll be inspired! Oddly enough, they wrote it in just 20 minutes and I wonder if that time pressure added to its simplicity and elegance.

You can read the full blog, The Cult of Done Manifesto, but I’ve listed the 13 points below (in bold) and added my own comments afterward.

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. This is brilliant because it helps you identify what your Next Action is. If you don’t know, then your next action is to learn. If you know then your next action is action. And once you’ve taken enough actions, your next action is completion!

2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. This is great. Perfection is very challenging to attain and yet people strive for it all the time. Accepting this truth is so freeing.

3. There is no editing stage. Produce, publish, repeat. If everything is a draft, this makes it easier to embrace.

4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it. This is a humorous line that boils down to this: Charge ahead, even if you’re not sure, because you’ll figure out. The default should be always be action.

5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. This one is tough to do! And I confess that I don’t follow this one because sometimes I like to let ideas simmer for a while. But the spirit of this idea holds true.

6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. This is an interesting one and I have to think about it a bit more. I understand what they are saying but I wonder if they’ve presented it too simplistically here.

7. Once you’re done you can throw it away. Uhh, okay I disagree with this for the most part. I have client work that is often done… and then needs to be revisted. But I think they are saying that completion should be a full state and that you shouldn’t only half-complete something but call it complete.

8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. This is true and resonates with some of the earlier points. Perfection is unattainable, which makes it laughable.

9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. You need to work to be a successful completer of something. And work means rolling up your sleeves and risking your manicure.

10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. I like this one! We can’t all be perfect all the time! If I do something and it falls flat, I can still cross it off my list as being done. Completion doesn’t necessarily mean success all the time (although it’s nice if it did now and then).

11. Destruction is a variant of done. This is interesting. I have to think about this one some more. Pulling something apart is an act of completion: I can see that if you learn something and are able to innovate as a result.

12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done. I suppose they are recommending that telling is different than doing. Fair enough. I think this is mainly true unless your goal is to publish something on the internet, of course!

13. Done is the engine of more. I love this! This is true! People with long lists of procrastinated work have growing lists of procrastinated work. My dad taught me an important lesson a long time ago: If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. It’s true! Busy people may be busy but they are doing things!

If you like this list, check out the picture posted on Bre Pettis’ website, which is a printable poster with graphical representations of the tenets of the cult of done: Done Manifesto.

Join the cult!

Keep Your Eggs in One Basket – Part 1

Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 2/19/10

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:45:50 +0000

Why You Should Embrace Public Criticism – There is something to be gained by good constructive criticism. My favorite line, “People who are happy all the time are liars. And possible serial killers.” Go read more so you’ll get the context.

Tweeting Dog Collar Posts Your Dog’s Movements to Twitter – I love my dogs, but really??

Wordpress SEO – The Only Guide You Need – This is a great tool for everyone who has a Wordpress Blog. I thought I knew all the SEO tricks, but after reading this, I found a few new things to implement.

The ROI of giving a damn – Social Media is such a big part of businesses today. I think we all need a reminder of why we use it and what we expect to gain from it. Some companies are looking for a quick return, but social media is about building relationships. If you focus on building the relationship the revenue will take care of itself. I love this blog for reminding us of the purpose.

Who Pushes You to Achieve More? – The drill sergeant analogy in this is spot on. How much more productive would you be if someone was pushing you to your limits everyday?

The 7 Blog Posts You Write But Shouldn’t Publish – This one really hit home with me. At the moment I can’t think of a blog that I posted and later regretted doing so, however I know there are a ton that have ‘almost’ been published. This post has some great guidelines to consider before hitting that ‘publish’ button.

Calculate the Cost of Wasteful Meetings With MEETorDIE – I have not checked out this application yet seeing how I just read this one today. However, I think it’s a wonderful idea and love the whimsical logo and site design.

I decided to go with a new format for my weekend reading blog. Hope you enjoy. Let me know your thoughts and don’t hesitate to criticize.

Of course more of my favorites are list on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

Have a great weekend and happy reading!

“What should I do?” – New Series – Social Media Mindmeister

Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:45:15 +0000

From time to time, I’m asked the following question by clients and friends and nice people on the street:

“Heather,” they say (or sometimes they call me Ms. Villa… just kidding, most of them don’t), “I’ve got a business and I want to market it with social media. What do you suggest?”

In the past, I would enquire about their business and then look pensive for a moment before making a recommendation. After a while I found that I was recommending the same things over and over and over. Not because I’m lazy but because, through trial and effort and research and experience, I found what worked and what didn’t. To be honest, I’m always reluctant to make recommendations to these folks because it’s on-the-fly and who am I to know, in just a few moments of conversation, what would really work for them? There’s a reason I charge money for this stuff with clients… because I take the time to figure out what’s best for each person.

And then I found a social media framework mindmap that basically lays out a lot of the things I recommend (plus other stuff that might not be right for everyone). You can find it at MindMeister. (If it looks tiny, you can zoom in with the zoom tool in the bottom right corner).

This framework outlines various social media marketing outlets and methods you can use. You’ll notice after each branch in the map there are a couple of grey dots. Hover over one of those dots to get a definition about the topic. Hover over the other one and you get a thumbnail of a resource site. It’s comprehensive and has links to sources and resources that you might find helpful.

Over the next few months I’m going to choose one of these topics and blog about it in detail, talking about some smart ideas, best practices, and things I’ve found that can help you to leverage that particular social media technique for greater success. I won’t be blogging about it in every single blog, but check back frequently because I’ll likely cover one topic a week or so.

Want to get started right away and don’t want to wait for me to blog about it? Here’s what I would suggest:

Start by making a list of the things you do from this list already and what gives you the best return. (If you don’t do anything, or if you do a lot and don’t get any return, that’s okay; at least you’re starting the process of acknowledging it so it can be fixed). Be sure to measure how much time you take in each one. If necessary, track your time over the next few days to get an average.

Once you have your list of stuff you already do, the return it gives you, and how long it takes you, pick a couple more that you want to do… but be sure to choose them from different branches than what you are already doing. (So, if you’re already blogging, don’t choose another blog). That’s a good step one. Step two is to check back here each week to read some ideas and tips on these topics.

Happy Blogging!