Isn’t it about time I finally put my money where my mouth is and develop a real speaker website for myself? Indeed so!! The process begins next week. Stay tuned.
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How Competitive League Hiking is Like Your Business
What a great Memorial Day 2011 weekend full of baseball, baseball and more baseball! But when the baseball was over, we were faced with the question of what to do for Memorial Day Monday. So, we packed up the car and drove to Idah0 Springs for breakfast and then stopped at a great hiking trail on the way back home.
It didn’t take long as I walked up hill gasping for breath to realize there are two types of hikes…a casual one and a “competitive league” hike! Sure, it started out nice and easy with a nice dirt path where we could just walk along and enjoy the sights….
But, then, after you’ve passed the basic test of not having a heart attack in high altitude on the flat part, you’re thrown into a 1.5 mile swell of steep climbs and rocks! Some people turn back and some people move on and choose their steps carefully….
Suddenly, without warning, our main focus became keeping balance more than anything else! No more looking at the mountain landscape! I found myself looking down at every rock. My pace of walking reduced by half. Sweat started to surround my hoodie. I really had to focus or I could easily turn an ankle and make an easy hour hike evolve into an assisted rescue back to the car and a trip to the hospital…if I wasn’t careful.
Well, we made it back safely of course. And, it turned out to be a great morning as we walked almost 5 miles along the ridge of the Colorado Rockies, just a short 30 minutes from our home.
My point with this post is that your business is very much like our hike today. For those of us who have already started a business, we can remember the day we launched it. Things were smooth in the beginning weren’t they? Our first days in business were a lot like that nice dirt hiking track in my first picture.
But then as we got into it, that nice dirt trail became a bunch of rocks! Each step had to be carefully negotiated. If you went too fast, you’d turn an ankle…or worse! Go too slow and you’d just lose your adrenaline and never get anywhere and the day would suddenly be over.
Here are three action steps I came up with on that rocky trail that you might be able to use in your every day business:
1. Be Ready for Anything – If you are just starting your business, know in advance that your road will not be nice and paved all the way. You’re going to run into sections of rocky areas that will require you to slow down and evaluate the best path. Be ready for it.
2. Every Business Has Ups and Downs – One of the most relieving aspects of our hike was that we got to go downhill sometimes. Whenever there was an uphill climb, we toughed it out because we knew there would be a downhill on the other side. That’s exactly how business is too. You might have to climb up hill for a while and huff and puff and work extra hours to complete a task, but then the downhill appears and you know it’s going to be easier for a while.
3. Taking Breaks is Legal! – We didn’t walk all of that 5 mile trail all in one set of steps. We took breaks along the way. We drank water. We took pictures. We got into conversations with other hikers and bikers on the trail. When your business is experiencing highs and lows, you need to take breaks.
Once we got back to the car and sat down and turn on the air conditioner, we realized what we had accomplished…
You see, on Memorial Day of last year (2010), we hiked the same exact trail. The only difference is that the kids were younger and the parents were much more OUT of shape last year! We only made it half the distance last year and turned back. This year, we went twice as far with half the effort. We could’ve walked another 5 miles no problem. We were in much better shape this year.
Maybe it was that we knew what to expect. Maybe it was that we have all been exercising more over the past year. Maybe it was our determination to succeed; which would all be true.
But, I suspect the main reason we got as far as we did before turning back and heading to the car was because we weren’t thinking about our fatigue or being out of shape. We were focused on being together and accomplishing a feat of going further than we made it last year. We were in competition with not only the hike itself, but with ourselves as well. Now, that’s competitive league hiking at its finest.
5 Things EVERY Audience Needs to Know About Facebook
It’s a little scary to think how many people are not embracing facebook and still feel facebook is just something to participate in if you’re looking for something fun to do or to keep in touch with friends and family.
Facebook is, by far, is the biggest game changer in how we do business since the invention of the steam engine. Back then, I’m sure there were people wondering why we would ever want to use anything other than a horse for travel. Of course today we think that mentality would be silly and far too reserved.
The same thing applies to how people are shying away from fully engaging in using facebook for their business. Those who think facebook is simply a waste of time will be the same people wondering a year from now how their competitors got so far ahead.
I believe every speaker for every business related seminar, workshop, or keynote should be citing 5 key factors about facebook. These include:
1. How facebook is taking over everything online. They will, seemingly overnight, become the worlds largest email carrier in history as their beta is rolled out. They even have their own cell phone coming soon.
2. More people spend more time on facebook than on Google or YouTube combined! If you want to do business online, you really need to be spending your time marketing to people where they are spending their time.
3. Facebook isn’t a one-week success story. The strategy is to start working in facebook daily, learn the techniques to build friends and page likes, and over time…maybe even a year…you will see significant growth in your leads, sales and communications.
4. There’s no silver bullet. The best result for facebook come in the form of your own participation. And, that’s just going to take time….your time. Sure, you can outsource people at $3/hour to make wall posts for you, but it’s the back and forth communication with those commenting on your posts that really makes facebook hum. That communication comes best from you directly.
5. Facebook will deliver you opportunities and challenges at the same time. This is one of the most difficult concepts to embrace and understand. And, maybe that’s the best opportunity for a speaker to present the why’s and how’s to make the most of facebook in this new world of business.
If you are meeting planner or speakers bureau manager, ask your potential speaker if they can include these five items in their presentation. It’s what every audience needs to hear for their business learning to be complete.
GoDaddy Hosting Review
I was asked by a client today if it was a good idea to change their web hosting to GoDaddy to save on costs. My answer is that hosting through GoDaddy has its place. But, there is a line to be crossed where it could become more of a headache (which costs time and money) than an opportunity to save money.
For the past 6+ years, I’ve been a reseller for the same system GoDaddy uses. Yes, GoDaddy is a gigantic reseller of services. Anyone can sign-up to become a web hosting and email reseller and use the same servers GoDaddy uses. When someone calls on the phone for support, they would be using the same staff that GoDaddy would be using to support their servers.
We still recommend our reseller account to people today…especially for domain name registration. For some, it could be thought as the best web hosting place there is because of the cost and 24/7 support. If you’re just starting out online and you want a very simple website that does not use a database, you might qualify for being a good fit for saving a buck and hosting there.
But, there is a line that when crossed, GoDaddy hosting can become a big headache and wind up costing you 2, 3 or 4 times as much as what you saved for that annual payment. It’s because of those headaches that we wound up getting our own web servers and email server in the first place and offer what we call “club hosting” to clients where you’re part of a very special club.
GoDaddy is fine for first timer websites and landing page sites that use flat files and are all simple html based. GoDaddy support will not help you if a significant database problem arises. And, if you’re running a 3rd party web software program, forget it. You’ll have to get support for that somewhere else.
When we get a client that insists on keeping their existing GoDaddy hosting, there are always 4 or 5 plugins we install for WordPress that simply don’t work. I don’t know what it is about their server configuration, but something about it doesn’t like all plugins. And, it’s those plugins that make WordPress hum.
Worse than website hosting is email. I have a client that let’s me know every month about how horrible GoDaddy’s email is and how every week she has two or three people call her to complain she hasn’t replied to their email. It’s not that she hasn’t replied. The problem is that GoDaddy email just doesn’t deliver all the email. So, she winds up “white listing” every single email address by-hand to make sure she receives them. Another example of how her time spent on the headache exceeds the allure of the attractive GoDaddy pricing.
We’re happy to work on websites that are on GoDaddy, BUT only under the condition that we are free to decide when to say something just won’t work. And, you should expect that there will be times when things just won’t work right on GoDaddy hosting. If your website uses a database, for example, or has other more involved program requirements, you will likely wind up paying more in support time than if you were to host at a company more suited for database driven websites.
Laura Stack Doing a Great Job Presenting How to Monetize Web Video at NSA Colorado
Laura Stack is doing a great job of presenting at NSA Colorado about how to monetize web video. Laura is the president-elect for 2011-2012 NSA National. She presented a particularly interesting tool called RoboForm, where you can put all your passwords into one database on your computer and it will remember what login page you’re on and apply the right password. So, you don’t have to remember any passwords. Good tip.
More importantly, Laura presented some good strategies for creating your own home green screen system for $10 and also how to create an entire web-based video training center and charge for your webinars. Good stuff for speakers and authors Laura Stack and best of luck running NSA next season!
My First Official Website for Marty Dickinson
Ever finally DO one of those things you should’ve done 10 years ago? Well, that’s me today. I’m finally making a website just for my speaking.
Why the procrastination? Partly because I always considered any speaking I would do as part of my main company, HereNextYear, Inc. So, that would mean I could just add a page to HereNextYear.com and call it an Internet marketing speaker for hire page.
But, that’s not the right way to do it. I mean, we have author and speaker clients all over the world. And, we tell THEM to have a separate website just to feature their speaking. So, I figured it was about time I “walk the walk.”
The other reason is because I have a renewed interest in speaking. I’m not tying myself to just “internet marketing” either. Sure, I still love to inspire others about WordPress, SEO, facebook (my hottie right now), affiliate marketing, blogging, all those things. But, after 15 years of running a business, I realized a little while ago that I have a lot to offer in other areas too.
A lot of people out there need simple motivation to keep going. They might already have a business and things are not going so well for them. Or, maybe they just got laid off from corporate America and are now looking for something new. I simply love to talk to both of those types of people and share what I’ve learned along the way in that journey.
So, this is just blog post #1. There will be more coming of course. And, this is only a temporary design until I can get my team to crank out a really nice layout for this site. Stay tuned for a lot more coming from MartyDickinson.com.
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