Wayne Liew Dot Com

Business Hazards 101 and How to Avoid Them

Jay Reese — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:42:18 +0000

Businesses can come with a wide range of potential hazards. Business owners need to take precautions against hazards so that the potential injuries or problems are avoided and employees are working in a safe environment. By taking measures to avoid hazards, business owners are effectively making their workers safe and secure against future problems.

Physical Injury Hazards

Business owners should always take measures to avoid hazards that can potentially cause physical injuries. This might include something as simple as slip hazards from electrical wires in the office to injuries that might occur as part of the nature of work in jobs like construction.

Business owners should first take measures to minimize the risks. For example, in an office space the wires should run along walls where the employees are not going to walk. For construction businesses, it might not always be possible to avoid all physical hazards, but it is possible to take measures to minimize the potential problems by providing appropriate training, using appropriate safety equipment or otherwise providing measures against injuries.

Having the appropriate business insurance for a company is also a measure business owners should take as a precaution against hazards. Businessinsurance.org can provide more details about the appropriate type of insurance based on the type of business.

Non-physical Hazards

While physical hazards have obvious measures to help limit the potential injuries or problems, some hazards are not physical in nature. Business owners need to become aware of the hazards the employees might face when it relates to non-physical areas of work.

Stress hazards can arise from situations like bullying, harassment of any kind or even simple overwork. To help avoid non-physical hazards employees might face, business owners should start by keeping work hours to reasonable levels. This might mean hiring one or two more employees to manage the work load or it could mean simply preventing employees from working beyond a set number of hours each week.

In the case of harassment and bullying, business owners should set up a no-tolerance program and have clear consequences of different acts.

Hazards are part of business. By taking measures to avoid injuries of any kind, business owners are able to ensure the safety of their workers. A positive work environment that is free of hazards ensures quality work.

10 Ways to Make Your Social Media Campaign Fail

Wayne Liew — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:34:28 +0000

You were probably pretty fired up when social media first came along. It was an exciting new approach, a lot of buzz was circulating about it, everybody was eager. But now one of the key questions a lot of folks are asking themselves right now is: “If social media is such a powerful tool, why did my first campaign fail?”

We analyzed the most common mistakes people make when they run a social media campaign and created this checklist to see where you might be going wrong.

You didn’t measure the results of your campaign.

Interestingly, this is an all-too-common problem. You set the measurements: mentions, volume, trends, word clouds, geography, gender, age, and more. But it’s essential to measure the information popping up online, gain insight into patterns and relationships behind it, and finally look at the impact—what specific, measurable actions were taken because of your social media campaign.

You didn’t set clear objectives.

Some companies create a Facebook page or a YouTube channel before they think through their objectives. Is it to build awareness? To drive traffic to a landing page on their site? To give people a channel to make comments and record their frustrations?

You thought social media was only about Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube.

Of course, social media is about having many conversations across as many platforms as you can manage. The more opportunities you provide customers to engage with you, the more successful your campaign will be.

You didn’t know how to set up a landing page.

One basic model of social media success looks like this: prospect → social media channel → landing page on Web site → new customer. If you don’t have a landing page on your Web site that’s designed to convert prospects to customers, you won’t be able to track your return on investment (ROI). No ROI, no social media campaign (or, rather, no effective social media campaign).

You didn’t remarket to customer prospects.

Most prospects who visit your landing page won’t become customers. In fact, the vast majority won’t. But that doesn’t mean they’re never going to buy. It just means they aren’t going to buy at that time. Keep them in your pipeline— you’ll get them someday if you remarket to them.

You didn’t know how to turn a social media campaign into a sales and marketing campaign.

Social media isn’t just about building awareness. It’s about turning prospects into customers. Don’t be shy about nudging prospects along the sales funnel. They expect it, to a certain degree.

You sat on the sidelines.

True story: We were in contact with a creative director at a major advertising agency a while back who said, “This whole Internet thing is just a flash in the pan, and I can’t wait for it to blow over.” We’re serious, he said that. Our point? You don’t want to be that guy.

You downplayed the importance of social media.

Some people don’t sit on the sidelines as much as they participate without passion. That’s almost as bad as sitting on the sidelines. You don’t want to be that guy, either.

You thought you could do social media in ten minutes a day.

Social media is a little like a marriage: You won’t have a successful marriage if you plan on spending just ten minutes a day having a dialogue with your spouse. The same holds true for a successful social media campaign.

You thought social media was like traditional marketing.

Social media and traditional media have a lot of similarities. But they have a lot of differences, too. Your job is to embrace those differences. Don’t be scared—social media won’t hurt you.

How Many Did You Checked Off?

Of course there are more ways your social media campaign might have failed, including a few out of your control, but it’s important to take a step back now and ask—what did I just check off this list?

Jamie Turner is Chief Content Officer for The 60 Second Marketer, an online magazine providing resources for marketers and entrepreneurs. For 20+ years, he has helped firms like AT+T, Cartoon Network, CNN, Motorola, and Coca-Cola grow sales and revenue through high-impact marketing. A frequent media guest and speaker, he was recently profiled in Advertising and Promotion, a leading marketing text.

Reshma Shah, Ph.D., Asst. Professor of Marketing at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, has worked in procurement for IBM, litigation consulting for Price Waterhouse, strategic planning for Unilever, and account management for Leo Burnett.

Adapted from How to Make Money with Social Media: An Insider’s Guide on Using New and Emerging Media to Grow Your Business by Jamie Turner and Reshma Shah, Ph.D. Copyright 2011. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as FT Press.

Mike Samson, Co-Founder of crowdSPRING on Community Building and NO!SPEC Campaign

Wayne Liew — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:36:40 +0000

If you missed the first part of my interview with Mike Samson, co-founder of crowdSPRING, where he talks about how crowdSPRING successfully raised $3 million in angel funding and shares some important tips that every entrepreneur will find useful down the road, click on the link below to get started.

Mike Samson, Co-Founder of crowdSPRING on Raising Angel Funding [Part 1]

In this second part of the interview, Mike shares with me the secret of building two communities on crowdSPRING and keeping both of them in balance. Towards the end of the interview, Mike also explained the stance of crowdSPRING on speculative work.

Keep reading and I’m sure you have tons to learn from this interview.

Community Building Tips for All Businesses

Wayne: We’ll talk a little bit about community building. A lot of entrepreneurs and bloggers that I spoke to have trouble building a community around their applications, websites or blogs. Since crowdSPRING does not only build one, but two communities, one of which is the designer community and the other is the buyers community, there must be some secret that you guys have on community building. What do you think are missing from all the community building efforts out there that failed?

Mike: First and foremost, you have to have a reason for building a community. We were trying to build a community of creatives and a community of buyers around a common purpose and the purpose is buying and selling creative services.

Mike: Buyers came to us because they need a solution to their problem and their problem was they couldn’t find high quality design at a price they could afford. Creatives were coming to us because they couldn’t find clients to work with. crowdSPRING, from day one, offered a place where they could meet each other.

Mike: One of the important elements we believe in community building is giving people resources they need. For both groups, we offer lots of education, lots of written content and forums where they could speak to one another. We started a blog from day one that is very focused on providing them with content they would be interested in. We started using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook very early. Tools like these allowed us to communicate with them and vice versa.

Mike: One of the things that we’re proud of is our transparency within our community. We are very available to answer questions, we provide them with information about us and our business transparently. We try to be very honest. We run into problems and we share those problems with our community. We work very hard and it’s a credit to our Marketing Director, in creating a voice for the site and personality. That was long way to help those things together and to help people relate to our site, to our business and feel connected to our site.

Mike: Those things together, for us, are really the building blocks of community: Providing great content, giving them the ability to communicate with you and with each other, having the personality and voice, being honest and transparent, and really using the tools that exist to help people solve their problems. If a company can do those things, I believe they can start to gain some traction and they can really go far towards building a community.

Balancing the Ecosystem of Dual Communities

Wayne: Another aspect of community building that I see crowdSPRING is doing very well is keeping both the creatives and buyers communities in balance. If creatives outnumber the buyers, there will not be enough projects to go around and if buyers outnumber the creatives, projects posted will not have enough bids or participation from the creatives community. What is crowdSPRING doing to maintain the balance of the whole ecosystem?

Mike: It’s a very good question and it’s a critical component for us. When we first started, we had many discussions about who should we focus on. Thinking that creatives will then follow, should we focus on attracting buyers to the site? Or should we focus on attracting creatives to the site and thinking that buyers will then follow?

Mike: We made a conscious choice that we would focus on attracting buyers to the site and our thinking was pretty simple. We determined that creatives, providers of the services, for the most part, were more technically sophisticated and they were already working on the Internet. The word would spread much more easily, virally, with creatives than it will with buyers because we knew that there were already communities of creatives out there that speak to one another, look at each others’ work and so on.

Mike: Buyers are more difficult to communicate with. They tend to be less sophisticated technically, they spend less time on the Internet, they do not congregate in the same place necessarily, they don’t read the same online magazines, blogs or journals and they come from all different industries, geography and backgrounds. Our thought was that if we could attract buyers and have them to post projects, effectively putting money on the table, the creatives will follow because there’s money on the table. That’s proven to be true and we see that in our data.

Mike: For instance, as we grew, the more projects we had available on the site, it means the more money there was on the table and the more we saw the registration by creatives. When there are more open jobs, there will be more registrations. Creatives do see each other and do spread the word. The example that I gave you in the story about a group of Malaysian design students, that was an existing community! It is very easy to find those communities, talk to them and get the message out.

Mike: We have been very fortunate and lucky to build our community that way. If we can get the buyers to come to the site to post the projects, the creatives will follow. Speaking to both sides equally really does work for us. Part of the reason that we’ve had some traction is because of that strategy.

Pitching for Business from Big Brands

Wayne: Apart from small business buyers, I’m also seeing some projects posted by big brands. For example, crowdSPRING is currently featuring a project posted by Amazon and another by Philips on its homepage right now. Does crowdSPRING actively seek for big brand buyers or they just come to you guys organically?

Mike: We have some features that nobody else has and that really served to attract larger businesses. First of all, when we conceived of building the company, we didn’t build it for Philips or for Amazon,we really built it for small and mid-size businesses that don’t have access to creative services and good designs in the same way that Philips does or Amazon does.

Mike: However, we really quickly think that there was a demand, not just among larger businesses, but also advertising agencies for their clients. They have a very special need that nobody was offering so we very quickly responded to that and started offering some products that really fit their needs.

Mike: We started off with a product that we called crowdSPRING Pro. crowdSPRING Pro works exactly like a regular crowdSPRING project but what it did was to give a layer of privacy protection. Agencies and larges businesses found this to be very valuable.

Mike: For example, crowdSPRING Pro projects are protected by non-disclosure agreements. In order to participate in a Pro project, a creative has to agree to a non-disclosure. It also gives the buyer the ability to have a “closed gallery” and in a closed gallery, the only party who can see all of the entries to that project is the buyer. The creatives cannot see one another’s entries if the buyer chooses to close the gallery.

Mike: The advantage to that is about their competitors. For example, if Philips wants to post an industrial design project for a steam iron, one of the things that they will worry about is to have one of their competitors find their way into the project and steal ideas. With the closed gallery, that’s not a problem because if someone did manage to get into the project, they couldn’t see anybody else’s ideas. The ability to do that was something that really allowed large businesses and advertising agencies to start leveraging the site and leveraging the community.

Mike: We are really proud of the fact that of the available sites out there who work in a similar model to us, we have done a great job honoring the market of larger businesses and advertising agencies because of the privacy protection. We have many Fortune 500 companies posting on the site. Lots of big projects from companies like LG, Tivo, Starbucks, Forbes Magazine and I could go on and on. Most of the major agencies have been on the site, either for their own internal work or for their clients.

Wayne: You know, those brands that you have just mentioned are all like really, really big brands and most entrepreneurs, especially first time entrepreneurs, have a hard time trying to buff up their confidence to speak with established brands or companies. Do you have some tips that might be able to help them out?

Mike: The biggest tip I can give is to make sure that you have a great service and a good offering. If you have value to offer and you have confidence in that value, you can sell it to anybody. It doesn’t matter if you are selling it to your local auto mechanic who needs a logo or Amazon, who needs a new email template. If the value proposition is clear, it sells itself.

Competitors and How crowdSPRING Competes

Wayne: I noticed that there are other startups that are competing in the similar space as crowdSPRING. One group will be the RFP-based outsourcing sites like Elance, Guru and oDesk where businesses actively search for contractors or agencies to get tasks done and the other group will be those that bears a similar concept like crowdSPRING such as 99designs. How is crowdSPRING trying to differentiate itself from the rest and what is crowdSPRING doing to stay ahead?

Mike: Great question and that’s a great question for any business. Every business has competitors, whether they are direct competitors or indirect competitors, you have to offer value and differentiation. When we differentiate ourselves from Elance and Guru, we offer value of choice. A typical crowdSPRING project is going to give you over a 100 entries to choose from. When you go to Elance or Guru, you don’t get to choose any entries. All you get to choose is the provider and hopefully, you can find a good provider who will do the work for you at a cost that you can afford.

Mike: When you go to an individual graphic designer, that person is going to, hopefully, have a good draft for you at a price you can afford and hopefully, three or four concepts to choose from, which they will offer a few more revisions on the concept you picked. In our concept, all that matters is how good the work that are submitted because you see the actual work of the provider that you’re using. You don’t see a bid or a proposal so that’s a critical differentiator.

Mike: With our direct competitors, we focus on a couple of things. We focus on the protection of intellectual property, Nobody protects intellectual property like we do and that goes to the privacy features that are represented by Pro projects. It goes to the fact that we provide a custom contract for every single project done on the site so the intellectual property is protected. We also have policies and procedures internally for reporting and judging violation of intellectual property. Those are some key differentiators.

Mike: You’ve asked also on how we continue to compete. Part of the answer is in the community building that we discussed earlier and another part of the answer is building great word of mouth and great reputation. We are very focused on providing world class customer service. We take customer service very seriously and we take customer service requests very quickly and accurately. We believe that great customer service is also great marketing because when people get great customer service, they’re happy and they’ll spread the word about the their great experience. Finally, you have to constantly improve, add features, make what you have better and make sure your platform is dependable, solid and fast.

Spec Work and crowdSPRING’s Stance

Wayne: Mike, while I was researching for this interview, I came across this one big word or phrase that is somewhat negatively related to crowdSPRING. Do you want to have a guess at what it is?

Mike: Haha… I don’t even need to guess. it is the NO!SPEC movement.

Wayne: Yup! Do you mind explaining it because I’m not so familiar with it? And perhaps you can also describe crowdSPRING’s stance on this issue?

Mike: Wayne, the idea of spec work is that people will do work, speculatively and it happens in many industries. As a matter of fact, speculative work is around the design industry or creative industries as long as the industries have been around. Very simply, speculative work is work that provider does with no guarantee that they will be paid for or hired for that work.

Mike: For instance, when an advertising agency is trying to pitch a new account, they will do a certain amount of work to prepare that pitch and they are competing with other advertising agencies that are doing the same thing. A brand might invite three or four agencies to compete for their business and each of those agencies will produce speculative work to make the pitch, to say that this is what we’ll do if you give us the account. At the end of the process, the brand hires which agency’s work they like best and the agency is then paid for the work that they have done.

Mike: It happens in architecture for instance. Architects compete for work and as part of the competition, they will prepare a concept or drawings to present to a potential client and hopefully, the client will pick them. Musicians work speculatively all the time. They will create and record music with no guarantee that anyone is going to buy it or a record label is going to sign them but they will do the work with the hopes that they will be paid for ultimately so that’s speculative work.

Mike: crowdSPRING is built on a speculative model. Designers come to participate in creative projects with no guarantee that their work will be chosen and paid for. The objection to speculative work is that people are working for free with no guarantee of being paid. That’s absolutely true, people are doing work with no guarantee that they will be chosen. That’s not evil and that’s a decision for people on how they choose to work.

Mike: Different people choose to work in different ways. Our short answer to people who ask is, crowdSPRING is not for everybody. It’s for many people but for others, it’s not for them. That’s OK for us and we recognize the fact that we are not for everybody. We’re certainly nothing new in the world to that sense. Speculative work has been around forever and we are doing something that the Internet and technology has enabled on a scale that wasn’t available before. Sometimes, meaningful and profound change like that, represented by technology, does scare people so a lot of objections that you see are fear-based.

Upcoming Plans and Features from crowdSPRING

Wayne: Are there any upcoming plans or features for crowdSPRING that you can share with us?

Mike: We’re working on some great stuffs that we don’t talk about publicly but they will be rolled out in the coming months. We constantly polish and redesign parts of the site and we continue that process non-stop. We are building several new features. Again, I can’t talk about those today, Wayne but we’re proud of them and excited. In the next couple of months, you will start to see those features being introduced. Keep an eye on us because we’re going to introduce some more fun stuffs.

Get In Touch with crowdSPRING and Mike Samson

Wayne: Before I end this interview, are there any ways which my blog readers can get in touch with you?

Mike: Sure. First of all, we encourage all of them to come visit the site. The easiest way to contact us is to come to the site and click the link that says “Contact Us” or they can write to us at support@crowdspring.com. Plus, we provide lots of information on our How It Works page which shows you quickly how the site works, some examples and great testimonials from other buyers that have used the site.

Wayne: OK, Mike. Thanks again for doing this interview with and you have definitely shared a lot of tips with my blog readers.

Mike: It’s a pleasure, Wayne. Thanks for the time and we really appreciate you writing about us.

Questions and Thoughts on the Interview?

It’s definitely a lot of fun to chat with Mike and as crowdSPRING grow, I’m sure Mike will have lots more to share with us in the future.

What do you think about the interview? Do you have any questions for Mike or would you like to comment on some of his tips and answers?

Feel free to leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you!

If you like the interview, you would probably want to sign up for Wayne Liew Dot Com Newsletter, where you will get the latest insider tips, small business tools recommendations and more. Join us by submitting your first name and primary e-mail address using the form below.

Mike Samson, Co-Founder of crowdSPRING on Raising Angel Funding [Part 1]

Wayne Liew — Wed, 25 May 2011 15:13:17 +0000

crowdSPRING should not be new among web designers but most of us don’t know the founding story behind the site, which is one of the largest crowdsourcing marketplaces on the Internet.

In fact, as a small business owner or an entrepreneur, you must at least pay a visit to crowdSPRING. Here’s why:

Every business needs a refreshing design or copy, whether it is your business logo, letterhead, website, product designs, newsletters, whitepapers or even a brand new banner for a marketing campaign. crowdSPRING, utilizing the power of its designer communities, allows you to adopt only the best design or creative work out of a wide range of work submitted by a large group of creative producers.

This week, I am proud to feature Mike Samson, co-founder of crowdSPRING in a two-part interview series. In the first part below, Mike shared with me how crowdSPRING got started and how he and Ross Kimbarovsky, another co-founder of crowdSPRING, pulled off the stunt of raising $3 million from angel investors to kick their idea off the ground. Enjoy!

Interview with Mike Samson, Co-Founder of crowdSPRING

Wayne: First of all, I would like to thank you for taking time out to do the interview with me. I really appreciate it.

Mike: You’re very welcome.

What is crowdSPRING and How It Works?

Wayne: For those of us who are constantly connected to the Internet, crowdSPRING is not new but Mike, some of my readers are actually small business owners who are not that savvy when it comes to the Internet. Is it possible for you to make a short introduction of what crowdSPRING is all about and sort of, briefly explain how it works?

Mike: Of course, crowdSPRING is an Internet marketplace for creative services. It is a place for buyers who are looking for design services or writing services to source their creative needs. We use a crowdsourcing model, which means that when buyers come to crowdSPRING, they post their projects, determine how much that they would like to pay, describe what they are looking for and determine how long the projects will last.

Mike: In turn, designers and writers from around the world (we have 73,000 designers and writers that come from 185 different countries), in response to the buyers’ description of their projects, will submit actual work that is created to the buyers’ specification. Not bids, not proposals but the actual designs or the actual written work.

Mike: For instance, Wayne, if you wanted a new logo for Wayne Liew Dot Com, you would come to crowdSPRING, post your project, describe what you’re looking for, what your business is, who your customers are, your audience, your own price and in turn, designers will submit actual logo designs to your specifications. You will have the opportunity to interact with those designers, to give them feedback, and they will revise their designs, iterate and submit new concepts. At the end of the process, you pick the one you like.

Mike: We handle payment, file handling, project management tools and we give you a free legal contract that transfer the rights to the intellectual property to you so you know that you own your design.

How the Idea for crowdSPRING Comes Along?

Wayne: That is actually a pretty great concept and I have been following crowdSPRING since it’s launch date. Prior to this interview, I did some research on both you and Ross and found out that you were in the film and production industry while Ross was a trial attorney. How did both of you meet and where did the idea of crowdSPRING comes along?

Mike: Well, we like to joke that we have rather unusual backgrounds for startup entrepreneurs. Ross and I have known each other for quite a long time. Although Ross wasn’t my attorney, we would talk about our businesses, ventures and so forth often.

Mike: At the time when we first came up with the idea for crowdSPRING, I was still working in the film industry and I was looking to acquire companies in the video and post-production space (editing and motion graphics). I was looking at how, with a creative product or a creative service, a business could leverage outsource so specifically, I was looking at companies in India and looking to outsource video post-production work to India.

Mike: This is primarily because India has a very robust film industry. They have wonderful creative artists, uses the same processes and software that our artists use here in the United States and the labor rates are significantly cheaper so it was really looking at the strategy for lowering prices in the creative industry through outsourcing.

Mike: Ross at the time was in a law firm here in Chicago and he was in charge of technology at the law firm. He was the Chairman of their technology committee and one of the things that his committee was doing was having their website redesigned. It turned into a very frustrating process for him. They went through an RFP process, received bids from some important companies that did web design work, chose one of those companies to redesign their website and they were very unhappy with both the results and the process.

Mike: Ross was looking for alternative ways to source web design and he knew what I was working on so he called me one day and said: “I know the outsourcing things that you’re working on are a little different but come meet me for lunch and let’s talk.” That conversation, Wayne, turned into the seed of the idea for crowdSPRING. We started looking at how to source for creative services by accessing talent from around the world via the Internet and the seed of the idea evolved into this crowdsourcing model that we have today.

Group of Malaysian Design Students Inspired crowdSPRING!

Mike: By the way, let me share with you one of our early inspirations when we started doing a lot of research and looking on the Internet for design communities. One of the early inspirations we found was actually a group of design students in Malaysia that had created their own website and they were holding internal contests for design. They are doing their own design challenges, not for money but to help each other and for learning purposes.

Mike: The work was phenomenal and Ross and I were very impressed that a small group of students, halfway around the world, could produce work that was as good as anything that we could locally. It really inspired us to find a way to connect people globally, who are either buying or providing creative services.

Tips on Pitching for Angel Funding

Wayne: Wow, that’s a good story right there. From what I’ve gathered from CrunchBase, which is sort of the Wikipedia for startup companies, you guys raised like $3 million worth of angel funding in 2008 from 16 angel investors. Is that correct?

Mike: That’s correct.

Wayne: $3 million is a lot of money for most entrepreneurs out there. How did both of you manage to pull of a stunt like this?

Mike: When we started thinking about how we wanted to launch this business and how we hope to fund this business, we knew that we wanted it to be a real business. First of all, neither of us are technologists so we didn’t have the skill sets to build the site ourselves, the skills to design the site, the marketing ability to actually build awareness and build a community so we would have to bring people in to help us. All of that meant money and we needed funding to actually get this off the ground and create a business that could hopefully grow to a serious presence on the Internet.

Mike: We basically opened our address books and said: “Each of us knows people so let’s think about how do we reach out to those people and identify potential investors.” But more than anything, Wayne, long before we started doing our funding, we did our homework. Remember, Ross was working full time as an attorney; I was still doing a great deal of consulting work in the film industry so this was sort of a side project for us but we spent six months for doing the research, writing the business plan and building a financial model so by the time we started introducing the idea to investors, we had answers for ourselves the questions that we know the investors were going to ask.

Mike: We thought that we have a very solid proposal. The homework paid off! What it allowed us to do was to convert potential investors pretty quickly. Once we identified a potential investor, we have a very good success rate at converting them and getting them to commit in investing. We were actually able to do our first round funding in about 4 and a half months. We think that was testament both to the power of the idea itself and also to the fact that we really have done our homework, hit on our research and could answer the questions that investors will ask.

Extensive Research Prior to Pitching Investors

Wayne: What kind of research are you referring to when you say you did your homework? Are they on the background of the investors, industries that they are interested in or other things?

Mike: Well, there was that but much more important than that was the business itself and really understanding or having a detailed understanding of the marketplace, the industry, as well as both the buyers and providers that make up the community. We did a lot of research into online communities in general and our competitors (even though at that time, there were no real competitors, at least in terms of creative crowdsourcing).

Mike: There were plenty of other ways that you can go online to get this kind of work done so among the companies that we looked at and researched early on are companies like Elance and Guru, which are marketplaces for freelancers. They use a very traditional model – an RFP model. We looked at all sorts of forums for different industries and different interest groups to understand communities, how communities are built and strengthened. We also looked at providers of the services, designers specifically, and how they were using the Internet to service their services.

Mike: We took that information and built a very extensive financial model. We spent a great deal of time trying to understand how we can make money with this business, how much money would it take to start this business and how long we can survive in this business.

Mike: When I talk about homework, that’s the kind of homework and investors really need that kind of detailed research to make their decision on whether if it’s a good investment for them and whether if they want to take the risk to start. We talk to startup entrepreneurs and young people a great deal about the value of doing the research, doing the homework and how that can pay off in launching a startup.

Wayne: I’m just wondering here. How many angels were pitched by you guys? You know, before it ended with the 16 that actually invested?

Mike: Sure! Well, we have 16 investors, Wayne. We pitched a grand total of 36 people so we converted almost half of the people that we pitched to and they ultimately became committed investors.

Wayne: Other than doing the homework, do you have any other tips on pitching for investment that you would like to share with my readers?

Mike: One of the things I would say is listen to people. All of us, everybody, has a network and both Ross and I had lots of smart people within our networks – people who were not necessarily be investors but people who were very smart, people who understood business, law, marketing and the marketplace. What we would do before we started showing this to investors is we would meet with people, introduce them to this idea and answer their questions.

Mike: Every time we did one of those meetings, they would ask questions that we had a hard time answering, questions that we didn’t necessarily have the answer for or they would find a weakness. We would learn from those conversations and improve on the idea so by the time we got around to introducing the idea to investors, we have already met with many people who had tried as hard as they could to poke holes in our idea.

Mike: We have plugged those holes one at a time so by the time we got to the investors, there were very few questions that hadn’t been asked and answered already. We were very well prepared and our idea was greatly strengthen through that process.

Stay Tuned for Community Building Tips from Mike Samson

There are tons to be learned from Mike. Tomorrow, I will be posting the second part of the interview where Mike shared a lot of tips on community building. Note that on crowdSPRING, there are not only one, but two communities – buyers and creative providers. If you want to learn about community building, there’s no better person to learn from other than Mike himself.

Do you have any questions for Mike? Have you personally tried crowdSPRING before?

Share with us your thoughts and experience with crowdSPRING in the comments section below!

If you like this interview, you might want to subscribe to Wayne Liew Dot Com Newsletter by submitting your first name and primary email address using the form below. In turn, you will get insiders only content on small business, entrepreneurship and marketing.

10 Tips to Run an International Business Cheaply

Wayne Liew — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:26:57 +0000

Setting up and running an international business is getting easier by the day. In fact, all entrepreneurs and small business owners should start running their business with a global perspective. With globalization and democratization of most international markets, sourcing products and services from another country as well as selling goods and providing services to a foreign consumer market never had such low barriers.

However, depending on the nature of your business operations, your small business that frequently interacts with foreign suppliers, service providers, customers or business connections may be slapped with a huge expenses bill if you are not careful.

Help is here! Here are 10 Tips to Run an International Business Cheaply.

Adopt Online Marketing Strategies

Done properly, online marketing is the most cost-effective way of selling your product or service. It’s possible to have a website up and running on a very small budget. The web is also the perfect way to get into international markets. By properly localizing your website, in other words, using a professional to translate your content and being sensitive to cultural issues within your target market, you will ensure your online marketing is effective overseas.

Do Your Own SEO

Once your website is set up, it needs to attract visitors. The best way to achieve this is to make sure people can find you in the search engines. You can use paid advertising in search engines, but the most cost-effective way of capitalizing on search traffic is through organic search engine optimization (SEO). This will ensure your website ranks well in the search engines for your chosen keywords.

There is a vast amount of free information on the web about how to do SEO. With a little time and effort, you can learn how to optimize your website for the search engines, without the expense of hiring a professional.

Use Cloud Computing

These days businesses don’t need their own IT infrastructure to run their enterprise systems. More and more businesses are moving into the ‘cloud’. In practical terms this means all your software and data is stored on remote servers, which your staff can access via the Internet. These ‘hosted applications’ avoid the expense of buying licenses for software and hiring IT professionals to manage your systems.

For example, Google Apps provides email on your own domain, word processing, spreadsheets, calendars and presentation software, all for just $50 per user per year.

Work from Home

By working from home, and having your staffs do the same, you can keep your overheads low. It also means that you can hire local staffs in the markets you operate in without the need for physical offices all over the world. You can even rent virtual office space to use for important client meetings. If you use cloud computing for your IT infrastructure, home working can be very efficient and productive.

Cut Travel Costs

When you do need to travel, keep your costs down by using budget airlines and no-frills hotel chains. The Internet allows you to shop around for the best deals on travel. Remember that by booking hotels and airline tickets well in advance you can often take advantage of big discounts. If you travel regularly for business, putting your travel expenses on a business credit card with reward points can also help you save money over time.

Cut Phone Bills

Many VoIP service providers offer packages with internet services, allowing you to cut costs altogether for your business’ needs.

You can make big savings on telecommunications by using Voice Over IP (VoIP) services, like Skype and Vonage. VoIP uses the Internet to transmit voice calls and it is particularly cheap for international calling. The equipment costs are very low because your staff can use their PCs or mobile phones to access VoIP services; there’s no need to invest in any special handsets.

Use a Virtual Office

If you do need somewhere to meet clients or hold staff meetings, there’s no need to have permanent premises. Most major cities around the world now have plenty of virtual office space to choose from. It’s not just somewhere to hold a meeting, you can also use a virtual office as a mailing address and many virtual offices will provide reception services to sign for incoming deliveries.

Avoid Banks

When you’re moving cash around internationally, banks can be a very expensive way to do it. It’s usually much cheaper to use online services like PayPal and Moneybookers.com. Before using your bank, check out the other options.

Hold Meetings Online

There is no need for people to physically get together in order to have a productive meeting. There are dozens of online services which enable your staff and clients to meet via the web, wherever they are in the world. Attendees of online meetings can see and hear each other by using web cams and microphones and most online meeting providers offer the facility to share documents and view PowerPoint presentations.

Outsource

Hiring freelancers and contract staffs can offer you big savings. It cuts out the expense of traditional recruitment and means you can hire resources on-demand. You can also tap into local expertise by hiring contractors within your target markets. To read more on this, you can check out 9 Alarming Reasons to Outsource or Hire.

Do You Run an International Business?

Is your business global? In one way or another, you might already be doing business with businesses that are overseas, especially if you are constantly looking for new business partners, connections or services on the Internet.

How are you keeping the costs low? Do you have any experience with overseas business partners or connections that you would like to share?

Leave a comment below to share with us your experience on running an international business.

About the Author

Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation service provider Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 120 employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries.

Contact Lingo24 with a translation request mentioning ‘www.wayneliew.com’ before 30 October 2010 and receive a 10% discount on your first order.

What Google Starred Results Means to Search Engine Optimization?

Wayne Liew — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:35:41 +0000

While doing some routine searches on Google today, I noticed a small star appears at the side of each search result item. Popular blogs haven’t got their hands on this and I have no idea whether this is an experimental or a permanent feature.

One thing is for sure though. Google has been introducing a lot of additional features to its search engines to introduce personalization into their search results. Google Starred Results will definitely bring the level of personalization in search to another level.

(Click on image to enlarge screenshot.)

The basic idea is, searchers can now ‘star’ items that appear in search results and when they conduct the search again, all the starred results will appear on top of all other search result items.

What does this mean for search engine optimization efforts? Why should you pay attention to this?

Search Results Curation – More Than Just Content

I know, great content, great content and great content… You hear this all over the Internet. Now, with starred results, not only that your content should be great, it must also be relevant to the audience that you are targeting.

A search term may bring up multiple results with roughly the same idea behind their content. However, other elements such as the design, content presentation and the overall experience at a page will now play a role in influencing a user whether to ‘star’ that particular page in the search results.

As a marketer, you need to make sure your content explains ideas in the context of your target audience and that they are presented in a way that your target audience favors.

Higher Return Visits from Google

If you look at your analytics software installed to your blog or website right now, a large percentage of traffic from Google or other search engines are new visitors, which means that these visitors never visited your site before.

With the introduction of Starred Results, useful and relevant content will appear on top of search results and start to receive a higher percentage of return visits from Google. This is simply because users, if given the choice, do not want to spend time going through tons of search results to find what they need.

Content or Search Engine Optimization?

The explanation above may bring along a headache for marketers and small business owners who are just dipping their feet into search engine optimization (SEO). Since the relevance of content is becoming important, should we be discarding our focus on SEO?

Well, SEO and content creation goes hand-in-hand. Without well-crafted and relevant content, users will leave your page even though you rank first on search engines. Also, useful content get links from other sites and this definitely helps in SEO.

On the other hand, great content without proper SEO elements will be left deep in the search results. If a page is ranked in the 100th page for a search term, the chances for it to be discovered is nil and you can forget about getting the page some stars on Google.

Prediction: Curation by Searchers Gain Momentum

Google Starred Results seems to me like a stripped down version of Google SearchWiki, which was introduced in early 2008. Instead of a simple ‘star’, users were given the opportunity to vote up/down for search result items and even comment on them. Of course, ‘starring’ result items is definitely more intuitive and require lesser efforts from the user side.

Nevertheless, the introduction of Starred Results shows the seriousness of Google in giving its search engine users the power to personalize search results. Their starring (or perhaps, voting) activity will definitely be taken into account in the ranking algorithm one day.

Your Thoughts on Google Starred Results

How do you think the search engine optimization arena will change as a result of Google’s continuous push towards personalized results? Also, how will your online marketing strategy align itself with these changes?

Leave a comment in the comments section below with your thoughts.

If you like the insights above, you may want to subscribe to Wayne Liew Dot Com Newsletter for premium content, weekly updates and priority notifications by submitting your first name and email address using the form below.

Interview with Ash Sud, Founder of ZippGo

Wayne Liew — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:01:30 +0000

Green businesses or businesses that focus on making the environment a better place always get my attention. You don’t have to come up with an alternative to oil or fossil fuel in order to become a green entrepreneur although that would be a dream come true for everyone.

The first interview with a green entrepreneur on Wayne Liew Dot Com is finally here when I had the chance to interview Ash Sud, Founder of ZippGo.

In this interview, Ash tells his story as an entrepreneur and why entrepreneurs should adopt the triple bottom line approach to run their business. Additionally, Ash also talks about how ZippGo created customer evangelists and fans despite the young age of the company.

Introduction of Ash Sud, Founder of ZippGo

Wayne: Ash, I have been looking for an entrepreneur running a green business for some time now and I’m more than glad to have you as an interview guest. Thank you. Before we look at the questions I have for you, can you do a brief introduction about yourself and your background so that my blog readers can get to know you better?

Ash: I have been around entrepreneurs since the time I could walk. My parents have owned and operated a number of small businesses in the last 30 years including a drive-in dairy in the early 80′s, an employment agency, and a metal manufacturing business. Working at these businesses growing up, I developed an internal passion for entrepreneurship.

Ash: After working at a few startups during the dot-com boom of the late 90′s and early 2000′s as an ERP developer, I was laid off during the market crash in 2001. I used this time to travel to Europe, let my creative juices flow, and focus on my true calling of being an entrepreneur. A few months later I started my first green venture called Westside Organics.

Ash: Westside Organics was a web-based organic food home delivery business serving the San Francisco Bay Area. During the 7 years I operated Westside Organics, the business had lot of press, awards, and happy customers. I merged Westside Organics with North America’s largest organic home delivery company, SPUD, in 2008 in order to increase our market share, expand outside the San Francisco area, and benefit from economies of scale.

What is ZippGo?

Wayne: Our interview today is going to revolve around your current venture, ZippGo and your experience as an entrepreneur. ZippGo was launched in November 2009 and I think it’s still a fairly new business. In simple English, can you explain what ZippGo is all about and the service that it offers?

Ash: ZippGo was created to solve the problem of excessive waste created during the moving process. With 46 million people moving annually in the United States, and many using cardboard boxes during their move, our landfills are becoming congested with cardboard boxes.

Ash: ZippGo created a reusable moving box made from 100% recycled plastic to replace the conventional cardboard box. Each of the ZippGo boxes can be used 500 times each where as cardboard boxes even if reused can be used a maximum of 3 times. ZippGo rents our green moving boxes to people relocating to a new home or to a new office. We deliver our boxes and sustainable moving supplies using trucks powered by biodiesel made from waste vegetable oil. We typically rent our boxes for a 2 week period with an option for additional weeks if needed.

Wayne: Does your company provide moving services or just the boxes?

Ash: ZippGo provides rentable moving boxes and sustainable moving supplies such as recycled packing paper, a compostable bubble wrap made from recycled paper, and eco-friendly packing peanuts also made from recycled paper. While we don’t provide moving services ourselves, we have partnered with green moving companies who share our same vision of reducing waste and reusing when possible.

ZippGo Services for Business Owners

Wayne: Let’s say a business owner reading this is planning to move his/her office soon. What is the process they need to go through? Can you briefly explain the process that a customer has to go through after he/she got in touch with ZippGo?

Ash: Our goal is to simplify the moving process and make it as easy as possible for our clients. We offer our clients two methods of ordering. They can call our toll-free phone number and speak with one of our green moving agents or place an order and schedule a delivery on our easy-to-use website. We will ask them a few questions about the size of their move, including the size of their current office and the number of employees they have to determine how many boxes they will require for a successful move.

Ash: We will then schedule a delivery day and time that works for the client, they receive an email confirmation with the details of the move, and a cheerful ZippGo driver will be at their office as scheduled. After the move is complete and the boxes unpacked, a ZippGo driver will return to pick up the empty boxes again at a time that is convenient for our clients.

Providing Great Customer Service in Business

Wayne: I want to move into your experience as an entrepreneur and I’m sure you have tons to share. What do you think is the most important lesson that you learned from your previous venture that you have applied to ZippGo?

Ash: A principle that I always live by in business is to make sure the client is always happy. I will go to any length (almost any) to make sure our clients are thrilled with our products and service.

Ash: I once had a customer in my previous organic grocery delivery business who had placed and received a food order a day before Christmas. She was hosting her family for a Christmas dinner and was preparing a home cooked meal. For one reason or another, the bottle of organic olive oil she ordered was not included in her order. She called on the 24th around 4pm after all our drivers had gone home and I was on my way out to my own family Christmas party. I knew I had no other choice but to drive to her home which was 3 hours roundtrip through heavy rain and traffic.

Ash: I could have just given her a credit for the missing olive oil, but I wanted to make sure she was absolutely thrilled with our service. After this "emergency trip" this customer started increasing her weekly food orders and turned out to be one our top ordering customers. Going above and beyond to make a customer happy can do amazing things for your brand and customer loyalty.

Creating Customer Evangelists for Your Business

Wayne: ZippGo’s Twitter profile and Facebook page show that it is indeed a company that successfully won the heart of its customers. Also, Ash, I think that you did a great job of explaining the purpose of ZippGo and how it could help the environment. Apart from this, can you share with us some tips on how you get the word out and more importantly, how did you create a fan base that does not only follow but also tell others about the services you offer?

Ash: People appreciate products that are not only good for the environment but also make their lives easier. Moving is rated as one of the most stressful events in a person’s life. ZippGo takes much of the stress out by providing a solution that simplifies the moving process. We provide ready-to-use moving boxes (no assembling or tape required), deliver them to our clients on an eco-friendly truck powered by biodiesel, and pick them up when they are done unpacking.

Ash: Most of our clients become evangelists for our products after using them and realizing how much easier they are compared to cardboard boxes.

Future Plans to Make ZippGo Greener

Wayne: Zippgo is a great business concept and I do foresee growth for the company. I believe that most green businesses are always looking for opportunities to become more sustainable, whether it is by introducing more green features into the business or by taking up initiatives such as tree planting. Can you share with us some of your plans to make ZippGo a more sustainable company?

Ash: Our entire business is based on reducing waste using sustainable methods and practices. In addition to the core green of our business model, we are also in the process of being certified green by our local state agency for practicing green methods in our office and warehouse. Much of the policy is based on things such as internal recycling, using energy efficient equipment, and developing green initiatives within our organization.

Ash: We also plant a tree for each new person who becomes a fan of our Facebook Fan Page.

Advice for Aspiring Green Entrepreneurs

Wayne: With two green ventures under your belt, what will be your advice for entrepreneurs who are planning to start an environmental-friendly business?

Ash: Working for a triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits is how every business should be run and I commend anyone who aligns themselves and their business with these values.

Ash: Whatever business you decide to do, make sure you are passionate about it because there will be days when you are challenged, things may feel impossible, and you’ll feel like giving up. Don’t give up on your dream. You need to keep pushing forward because success is around the corner.

Connect with Ash or Learn More About ZippGo

Wayne: Good advice. Ash, what you shared with us today means a lot and before I end this interview, how can my blog readers get in touch with you, whether to learn more about ZippGo, or just to connect?

Ash: Thank you Wayne for this opportunity to discuss ZippGo with your readers. You’ve done an excellent job of providing interesting content for your readers. Your readers can contact me in a number of ways:

Web: http://www.ZippGo.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/zippgo
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ZippGo

Wayne: Thanks again for taking time to do this interview and sharing your experience as an entrepreneur with me. I truly appreciate it.

Share Your Thoughts on ZippGo and Green Businesses

With this interview with Ash Sud, I am looking forward to talk to more entrepreneurs behind green businesses so that they can share their insights on green business trends and tips to run a successful business that is also sustainable at the same time.

What do you think about ZippGo’s business concept and what do you think makes a great green business?

Share your thoughts and let us know about your opinion in the comments section below.

If you like this interview, you may want to subscribe to Wayne Liew Dot Com Newsletter to get premium content, weekly updates and priority notifications of upcoming blog posts by submitting your first name and email address using the form below.

Weekly Biz Buzz #13 Haiti, Present Better at Meetings, Improve Conversion Rates

Wayne Liew — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +0000

It’s all about preparing for 2010 in the last couple of weeks with blog posts on New Year resolutions, self improvement areas and how to reach your goals. Now, you should be taking action and strive forward according to your plans.

My New Year started off pretty well, with a few of my plans already taking place, including a change to my Twitter follow strategy. Apart from that, I am also going to outsource more of my work so that I can focus on profit-making activities. I will also continue to review my social media marketing strategies over the coming few months with some experiments.

In this week’s Weekly Biz Buzz, I have a long list of blog posts to share with you but each and every one of them deserve your time. If you are looking forward to some fresh tips that you can apply to your business, this Weekly Biz Buzz is for you.

People of Haiti Needs Your Help

Unless you are living under a rock, Haiti is currently all over the headlines after the country was rocked by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake and a 6.0 magnitude aftershock two days ago. It’s heartbreaking to look at the damage caused by the disaster.

Every little effort counts. If you are trying to help but don’t know what are the best ways or the best channels, How Your Small Business Can Help Haiti by Shira Levine will be able to help you out.

In this article, she explained extensively on picking which non-profit organizations to donate to, suitability of donation items and some key issues that you should be paying attention to when donating. Personally, I made my donation via the Google Crisis Response page and you can make your donation over there as well.

Presenting at Big Venture Capital or Sales Meetings

Presentations form a big part of running a business, especially in a B2B or startup environment. Unlike selling to businesses with a single decision maker or pitching to an individual investor, presenting to venture capitalists or businesses with a management team or multiple decision makers are harder.

In fact, there are a lot of preparations needed prior to attending a big meeting. Successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Mark Suster, wrote a blog post with the title, How to Present at Big Meetings without Going Down a Rat Hole, which I highly recommend anyone reading this to read it.

In his blog post, he listed a few types of individuals with different personalities that you are likely to find at big meetings and how you should handle them while accomplishing your agenda as a presenter. Again, definitely a must read.

Improving Your Website’s Conversion Rate

One huge mistake that I see a lot in Internet marketing plans is the overemphasizing of traffic building. Yes, a site with no traffic is worthless. However, once your site is receiving a considerable amount of traffic, you need to shift your focus into turning site visitors into a lead or a sale.

21 Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rate by Michelle Strassburg is a must read if you are looking to generate leads or sales from your website and your Internet marketing activities.

In this blog post, Michelle introduced several factors such as the trust factors, user experience factors and checkout factors, which are very useful if you are going to tweak your site for better conversion rates.

Using Social Media for Better Networking

As more business owners and professionals get onto social media, it is important for you to understand how to communicate and network using these platforms. The way of we communicate is changing. For example, if you are contacting someone through a platform that he/she only logs in once a week, you might not get an instant response.

Soren Gordhamer wrote 7 Lessons for Better Networking with Social Media which is a nice read. The seven lessons in this blog post are more of a set of etiquettes that you are expected to follow when utilizing social media as a networking platform. It can be very different than your current methods of reaching out to others.

As a big proponent of networking, the fact that more people are using social media has opened up the opportunity for us, as business owners, to connect with more businesses and individuals easily. Keep in mind that keeping your relationships on social media platforms is not a wise choice as these platforms might go away someday. Always try to bring social media relationships to the next level.

Is Your Search Engine Optimization Company Lying?

Search engine optimization services can be found all over the Internet and everyone seems to be an expert on the topic. A business owner who cares about whether a marketing expense is well spent needs to know whether the search engine optimization company that he/she hired knows its stuffs.

Mani Karthik came up with a blog post, 5 Ways to Find Out If an SEO is Lying, and in this blog post, he outlined the signs of an SEO solutions snake oil seller. You can use this blog post as a guideline to indentify whether a potential SEO solutions provider is lying to you.

Just to give you an idea, a reputable and reliable search engine optimization company will not offer a link building service right after their appointment. Instead, they will first audit all SEO elements on your website and then identify all possible link building sources before initiating the link building process. They might also inquire about all past search engine optimization activities carried out.

Useful Marketing Content Coming Up Next Week

Other than my recent Twitter follow strategy blog post, it has been quite some time since I posted an article that is related to online marketing or Internet marketing.

Next week, I am going to publish a blog post covering the most important aspect of an Internet marketing campaign. Feel free to guess what is the most important aspect in the comments section.

If you have any questions or opinions about the articles and blog posts above, feel free to leave a comment in the comments section below.

If you like this week’s Weekly Biz Buzz, you might want to subscribe to Wayne Liew Dot Com Newsletter for premium content, weekly updates and priority notifications by submitting your first name and email address using the form below.

Photo Credits: chanchan222, Zach Dischner and United Nations Development Programme

REACH: 5 Success Tips to Reach Your New Year Resolutions

Wayne Liew — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +0000

New Year resolutions and the latest blog post on self improvement areas of small business owners and entrepreneurs are causing a frenzy on the blog. Of course, we all know that setting your New Year resolutions and goals is one thing, achieving them is another.

Today, I am proud to have Steve Schack, founder of BeMyNudge, a new, breakthrough service that helps keep people on track to achieve their goals, to share with us his tips on how to reach your New Year resolutions.

These tips come from Steve’s experience as a professional coach. He knows exactly why people struggle to achieve their goals. In this blog post, Steve is going to share with us 5 points that can help you to achieve your New Year resolutions.

Reaching Your New Year Resolutions

Over the 20 years that I’ve been coaching individuals, I’ve learned that changing habits isn’t easy. In fact, it’s very hard. That’s why coaches like me stay in business!

In fact, according to a recent survey of New Year resolutions, more than 75 percent of respondents will break them within 3 months. Why? Nearly half say they are not committed to the resolutions they set and a quarter percent say they have too many other things to do.

Some of the most common goals that I see with my clients are to get in shape by going to the gym or losing weight, achieve more balance in their lives – spending more time with the family and less time at work, or improve their finances – like becoming debt-free.

In working with clients, I’ve seen what makes a difference and have distilled them down to five key points. I use the acronym REACH.

5 Key Points of REACHing Your New Year Resolutions

Realistic: Make the goals realistic – Ambitious goals are great, but they should be achievable, meant to start small and build on successes.

Envision: Envision a vivid picture of what reaching this goal will mean for you. Reflect on that mental image regularly to serve as your target. And if you get off track, don’t let that derail you – We all have missteps along the way to lasting change. Just remember why this is so important to you and get back onto the program!

Attention: Focus your attention. All too often we see people set 4 or 5 big goals. The chances of keeping on track for all or even most of them is slim at best. It’s better to target one or at most, two goals, that you can really commit to and mean the most to you.

Compensate: Set interim milestones early-on, and compensate or reward yourself a meaningful reward for achieving each. These don’t have to be big or elaborate. Something as simple as putting $5 into a lay-away fund toward that new outfit you’re going to buy when you achieve your weight loss target can be a powerful motivator.

Help: You’re not alone – friends, family, peers, co-workers… There are many people out there who will want to help. Declaring your intentions is a powerful start. Ask them to help with encouragement and reminders, and a swift kick in the "aspiration" when needed. Here, a coach or trainer can be very effective as an external and very focused motivator.

Taking Action is Key to Achieving Your Goals

With the tips from Steve above, you should be more prepared to take action in order to achieve your New Year resolutions and goals. Stop procrastinating, apply the tips above and start working towards your goals. Nothing beats taking action on your plans.

If you want a skilled coach that will continuously nudge, support, challenge, encourage and make yourself accountable for the goals you set, feel free to check out BeMyNudge, a service created by Steve Schack.

Your Personal Tips to Achieve Goals

Everyone has their own secret sauce to accomplish goals. What’s yours? How it helped and why do you think more people should know about it?

Let us know by commenting in the comments section below.

If you like this blog post, you might want to subscribe to Wayne Liew Dot Com Newsletter for premium content, weekly updates and priority notifications by submitting your first name and email address using the form below.

Photo Credits: Ү

21 Self Improvement Areas of Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs for 2010

Wayne Liew — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:50:21 +0000

Last week, we looked at New Year resolutions of 30 small business owners and entrepreneurs for 2010. The response was well received and a lot of readers actually told me that the list inspired them on where to get started with their own business resolutions for 2010.

Apart from drafting a plan and resolutions to grow your business, you should realize that as an entrepreneur or business owner, you should be improving yourself continuously on different aspects of business.

21 small business owners and entrepreneurs from last week’s blog posts have agreed to share how they plan to improve themselves in 2010 so that they can become a better leader and manager for their business.

Learn and Tap Web 2.0 Opportunities

I am looking to improve myself by learning more about the power of social networking. I am amazed at the capabilities and branding opportunities from Web 2.0 initiatives, and this seems to be the most logical – not to mention, economical-way to market your product and service in the 21st century.

I have already hired a Director of New Media who has experience with Web 2.0, but one of his responsibilities is to train me to be more involved with this new medium.

Thanks: Todd M. Schoenberger, Managing Director, LandColt Trading, LLC

Work Hard Towards Success

I want to continue to recruit talented writers, photographers and artists as contributors. We’re planning to reach out to prospective advertisers upon the release of our first print edition – these would be companies that share Dunce Cap‘s target demo of under-45 city dwellers and sympathizers. It’s no secret that publishing is incredibly competitive these days, and we’re not blessed with trust funds nor a kindly deep-pocketed benefactor.

Everyone invested in Dunce Cap has an outside source of income, and whatever gains we make in the next year will come off the sweat of our backs. Hard work, organic collaboration, outreach and networking – that’s the model we’re using, and we hope it’ll bring us big things in 2010.

Thanks: Ben Fuchs, Publisher, Dunce Cap Quarterly

Build a Better Team and Acquire New Skills

First and foremost, I want to focus on building the right team to grow our enterprise. We are hiring a director of sales and plan to add our outstanding team of freelancers to more permanent roles. I want to ensure that I keep our collegial culture in tact while bringing in new talent. We want Behind the Burner to continue to be an organization where people can grow and learn, while having fun.

I plan to craft a strategic plan for 2010 so that I can stay focused on key initiatives and not get sidetracked by ancillary opportunities. I also plan to spend at least 2 hours a month getting 1-on-1 business coaching from my mentors who are successful entrepreneurs. I want to discuss my daily challenges and issues and get their advice and guidance on these matters.

I also plan to become a more web savvy entrepreneur as I will be educating myself further on search engine optimization and search engine marketing as we grow our presence online.

Thanks: Divya Gugnani, Founder and CEO, Behind the Burner

Give Back and Getting Back the Focus

It sounds a little malicious to say, but as an entrepreneur I need to become more "selfish." With already a tightly packed Google Calendar directing every single one of my daily appointments, I still feel obligated to speak at events at my school, Drexel University, speak at entrepreneur events, attend fishbowls and networking sessions, awards lunches and dinners, and the like.

As much as I truly enjoy doing all these, and i try to give back to my school as much as possible for all their help with the development of my business, I need to start taking back "my" time and work on the actually product and the business that has gotten me all this attention. Not only that, I need to start sleeping more!

Thanks: Bradley Ericson, CEO, 3SecondReceipts

Focus on Income Generating Activities

The number 1 area I want to improve in myself is to be wiser at how I spend my time. I need to stop doing busy work that does not generate income (i.e. checking my email 25 times a day, playing on Twitter too much) and focus my time on the types of activities that generate income and growth for my company.

This means delegating more of my non-income producing work to other employees (or outsourced contractors) and focusing my time on activities that grow my company – publicity, marketing, and sales.

Thanks: Peter Geisheker, CEO of The Geisheker Group Marketing Firm

Improve on Human Resource Management Skills

To sustain our growth in 2010, I would like to expand our recruiting and hiring practices. In addition to matching skills, experiences and career objectives, we will also work with a number of HR experts and staffing agencies to use new hire assessments, meaningful interview questions and personality tests that will allow us to assess employees using criteria that is important to the culture of our business.

Thanks: Crystal L. Kendrick, President, The Voice of Your Customer

Delegate and Focus on Strategic Growth

I hope to bring on more support staffs and delegate some day-to-day responsibilities so I can focus on the strategic growth of Mom Corps and our franchises.

Thanks: Allison O’Kelly, CEO, Mom Corps

Strive Forward to Fulfill Company Purpose

I would like to improve communication and organization among our employees in order to complete an ambitious list of projects, maintain a high level of customer service and improve the reach and effectiveness of our advertising efforts.

The ultimate goal remains the same as it was on day one: be the best and easiest place to find quality private instruction. With our WyzAid program, we hope to make the same service available to qualified non-profit organizations.

Thanks: Andrew Geant, CEO, WyzAnt

Improve Conversion and Pitching Skills

The area that I’d like to see improved is my conversion rate from website visits to phone calls to actual appointments. My closing rate of sale, from face to face meetings, is about 95%, but I need the former to get those meetings.

I’m also working on a series of email responses (not auto responses, but along the same idea) that will send press releases about me, testimonials, and articles about picking an officiant. I am also working on a "juicy initial offer" that will be presented at the in person meeting.

Thanks: Celia Milton, Wedding Pastor and Celebrant, CeliaMilton.com

Maintain Work/Life Balance and Continuous Learning

In 2010, I would love to run this business in a balanced way while I create an authentic life for myself, rather than carrying out a “role” (my last job in government seemed to require that). I will also spend time developing my creative writing skills and learn all I can about bookkeeping and taxes.

Thanks: Joyce Wilde, Organizer and Transition Coach, Joyce Wilde Services

Learn How to Say No! and Focus

I’d like to be more focused on a few things instead of a little bit focused on a lot of things! It’s so easy to dive into every request I receive and explore new opportunities, but I’d like to create concrete strategic goals to stick to and let the other things fall off if they’re not in line with those goals.

As an entrepreneur, it’s hard to say no to anything, but I’m seeing now that saying yes too many times can lead to a business that is not profitable and growing! In essence, I want to put on tunnel vision, but maybe the sides of the tunnel are made out of mesh so I can still see what else is out there?!

Thanks: Angela Lussier, 365 Degrees Consulting

Build Relationships with Charitable Foundations

As a business owner, my goals for 2010 are to expand productively in the beauty industry. I would like to build strong relationships with charitable foundations who’s missions are to aid women and families to live a better life. I want to empower all women to look their best and take care of themselves.

Thanks: Ebony Sparks, Etsetera Lash Studio

Close the Gap Between Owner and Employees

I want to be more involved in my employees lives. I make it a point to be truly interested in their lives outside of work, but I want to expand on that. I feel that it can only help employee relations and make them more motivated to do a great job for Virtual Assist USA.

Thanks: Danielle Cuomo, Owner, Virtual Assist USA

Learn How to Let Go and Build a Leadership Team

I would love to grow my capacity to not be in control. Like just about every business owner, I’m a bit of a “control-a-holic”. To successfully scale a business, the owner must learn to let go of things to systems, intelligent business controls, and a core team of leaders who run parts of the business.

In order to accomplish that, I will continue to develop my leadership team and help them be better business people and business leaders.

Thanks: David Finkel, CEO, Maui Mastermind®

Become a Professional Paid Speaker

I’m improving myself as an entrepreneur by getting training on how to become a professional paid speaker. I think that training is essential to success. A business owner or entrepreneur needs to be learning new skills related to business all the time and the best way to do that is get involved in training of some type that fits your professional goals.

Thanks: Taylor Ellwood, Business and Social Media Coach, Imagine Your Reality

Manage Teams and Selecting Potential Leaders

As a small business owner, I’m involved in every aspect of the business, which can make it difficult for me to focus on other areas, such as business development.

One of my goals for 2010 is to step back and have key players on my team take on more leadership. I hope to change the company dynamics where team leaders can report to me directly. I think this will result in greater company productivity and free up my time to forge new relationships, partnerships and areas of growth for the company.

Thanks: Mary White, BnBFinder.com

Help Others with Professional Development

In 2010, I am making a personal commitment to professional growth of the students and associates around me. I believe it is ok for people to “not know” as long as they know they “don’t know”. With that realization I want to help people preserve with integrity to always continue learning as they strive to reach their goals and vision. I feel this is best demonstrated by working closer with people helping them to see what they don’t know and helping them to overcome.

Thanks: Mario Tricoci, Founder/Owner, Tricoci University of Beauty Culture

Acquire Better Listening Skills and Go Green

In art, it is important to project a strong personality, but it is just as important to be a good listener. I want to get better at listening to my clients to understand more clearly what they expect from me.

I also want to establish some new working relationships with Green Entrepreneurs. For many years, I have put forth visionary environmental designs. I want to work with some green manufacturers this year to turn some of my concepts into reality.

Thanks: Pablo Solomon, Artist and Designer, PabloSolomon.com

Support the Small Business Community

As a small business owner, I know it’s important to provide support to others to ensure we all move forward as a community together. We already have initiatives in place to enhance our firm’s non-profit and outreach efforts in 2010.

Thanks: Ed Lubbers, Partner, Lubbers & Borg

Understand Social Media Integration for Business

One area I really hope to improve upon in 2010 is my own understanding of implementing social media into our more traditional marketing efforts. While I have set up a Facebook and Twitter account for my business, I know that I am drastically under using them as a marketing tool. My goal in the coming year is to become an expert in using them to augment any of the more traditional marketing methods I may be using.

Thanks: Matt Robison, Owner, Jump Around Fun Zone

Balance Work and Life

I definitely want to get a clear boundary between work and personal lives. I’ve been working on both of my companies non-stop and it has seriously killed my personal life. I went on a date a few months ago and the guy asked what do I do for fun. I completely blanked and couldn’t remember! All I could remember was work!

Working non-stop also burnt me out. It becomes more and more difficult to muster up energy to work. Or worse, feeling uninspired. I also don’t have time for things that enrich my soul. Because of that, I have become unbalanced and stressed, which affects work. It’s a vicious cycle.

Thanks: Cindy Lin, General Manager, EcoJoe

What Are Your Self Improvement Areas for 2010?

How are you planning to improve yourself in 2010 so that you can become a better entrepreneur? Are you going to learn a new skill? Will you be talking to your employees and customers more? Perhaps you might want to improve on your writing skills!

Share with us your self improvement areas for 2010 in the comments section below.

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