I started that business selling a downloadable e-book that I sold for about 30 bucks. Within a few months, my “do-it-yourself” SEO strategy (after first hiring a consultant to get me started with the basics) and home made sales letter was yielding me a consistent small cash flow each month without me having to do much. In fact, I actually ended up building a list of over 7,000 subscribers to my weight loss newsletter over about an 18 month period.

Then I decided to “rev it up” a few notches and convert my business to a membership model so that I could look forward to steady income growth each month. After 6 or 7 months of writing copy, designing, choosing stock photos, finding recipes, and setting up back end membership systems I unveiled my new membership site and immediately began racking up new customers almost daily who were paying just under $20/mo each. I was well on my way.

Then something happened.

I was doing a routine update of my membership software and something just went wrong. Things stopped working; and customers started complaining–and cancelling. As I watched the precious continuity income that I had worked so hard for circle the drain I quickly ran through 3 different software development companies and several thousand dollars of my own money (did I mention that I was bootstrapping?) over a 2-3 month period before the mess that I made was finally cleaned up by professionals. By then, however, my paid membership had already been decimated.

Less than 30 days later, the #1 ranking that I had held on Google for 3 years slid down to #37–on the 4th page. My traffic plummeted by a whopping 98% and my entire business came to a loud, screeching halt. Tired, strapped for cash and emotionally burned I ended up shutting the website down after several months of working 12-18 hour days trying to recreate all of the momentum I had lost to no avail.

Though I did not realize it at the time, I had been running my business like a “grunt”–so involved in day-to-day activities that I couldn’t step back, see the big picture and grow my business strategically. Unfortunately, running a business in this fashion is somewhat common among gritty, do-it-yourself entrepreneur types. It’s also what keeps so many small business owners from ultimately becoming great success stories.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, the trick to turning it around is to start running your business more like a c-suite executive–managing the big picture while people and systems babysit the minutiae for you. If this sounds’ “easier said than done” to you, here are few red flags and guidelines to point you in the right direction.

5 Bad News Clues you may be running your business like a “grunt”

(and what you must do about it immediately).

1. Your business can’t run without you

This is the most tell tale sign that you’re operating your business like a grunt. The solution? You need processes that you can outline (or have outlined) step-by-step and then hand them off for someone else to handle. Do you have a process for EVERY function in your business? If not, that’s a great place to start. Begin with the most repetitive tasks that take the least amount of skill and go from there.

2. You personally perform repetitive daily tasks

This is the one that took me to the cleaners in the story I gave earlier. Repeating the same menial tasks over and over is a major time waster in business. In this day and age many small repetitive tasks (like clearing spam, answering the phone, organizing files) can either be automated with software or passed off to an assistant for nickels on the dime. Write a list of every small task you can think of in your business and begin to look for ways to take each of them off your plate. Once you have someone else (or something else) managing these kinds of functions you’ll not only feel better and experience more balance but you will be able to focus on things that are most important to driving your enterprise forward while avoiding burnout.

3. You have no idea what numbers to expect out of your business this month

This is a big one. Forecasting is one of the things that small business owners routinely overlook–a dangerous habit indeed. Looking at where your business is right now and forecasting what numbers you might expect about the future is not just about the numbers; its about what’s behind those numbers.

A month where you don’t meet your sales goals undoubtedly points to something else that may have gone wrong in your systems or strategy. Web traffic that is steadily on the decline may point to some SEO work that needs to be done or a greater need for investing in search ads. However, if you’re too busy “tending to the weeds” and minutiae of your business you may never be able to step back and gain the broad perspective that will allow you to begin looking at these sorts of things.

4. You’re scratching and struggling for every sale

I would dare say that most small businesses suffer with this issue, and it;s never an accident. There are many reasons why your business may be experiencing this, but more than likely it is the absence of either A) solid positioning and/or B) a good marketing system. In order to have a reliable stream of sales coming in you need a mechanism out in the market place that has the ability to  expose you to large numbers of people in your target market and bring them back to your business. From there a certain number of them will decide to do business with you; but if you have no system, you will struggle to be seen by a large enough sample of people to cause this effect.

If you can relate to having this problem then you should be in heavy pursuit of ways that you can project your brand in front of large numbers of people in your target market.

5. The audience you have right now hasn’t significantly grown in the past year

If your audience isn’t growing, that means that your list is stagnant. And if your list is stagnant, then you’re not really reaching new people. And without new people, it becomes more difficult to drive new sales. The #1 reason why your audience might not grow from one time or another is a lack of consistently. Blogging, public speaking, publishing newsletters, being active on social media and driving traffic to your website are typically the best ways to grow and audience over time.

Running your business like a “grunt” is great way to stunt your business growth and ultimately quit from burnout. To create the sort of consistency, longevity and momentum that leads to success find and create more ways to build leverage into your business that allows you to run things from the corner office instead of the mail room.

My answer used to scare me, too; and then I figured something out. Actually, I RE-figured it out (I know, I totally made that word up, but work with me. I’m going somewhere with this.). Remember Michael Gerber’s classic book The E-Myth (The Entrepreneurial Myth)? Yah, I be you do. Every business owner this side of Mars claims to have read it; yet, so few us actually practice its teachings.

In The E-Myth Gerber speaks passionately about working on your business instead of in your business. The basic concept is that you need to be able to find ways to create leverage in your model so that you aren’t stuck doing so darn much yourself.

I’ve talked to, coached, and interacted with countless entrepreneurs over the past 10+ years. And what I have found is that the #1 business function that has small business folk working in their businesses rather than on them is MARKETING.

And to make matters worse, every time you turn around there is yet another 21st century marketing tool that you’re told you MUST master if you plan to be a dominant force within our market niche (how’s that Google Plus strategy comin’? Oh, you’re still figuring out Facebook Ads? My point exactly!)

The key to a successful marketing strategy is to build it into an actual machine–a marketing machine–that gives you results while creating leverage for you and freeing up your time. Of course you know this, to which your reply might be “but I’m bootstrapping my business Lawrence! I simply cannot afford a dedicated marketing department.”

…and that’s where this gets really good.

I must get at least 2-3 texts per week asking me “where have you been?” or “why haven’t you been blogging”. Well, here’s your answer…I’ve been BRANDING…re-branding, that is. And within the next 3-6 months there’s going to be some pretty AMAZING releases and new deliverables specifically design to help you solve your #1 problem: marketing. More specifically, building an xtreme marketing machine that runs 24/7 collecting leads, building your list, and generating sales revenue for your business.

FUN!

(…to be continued)

I quickly navigated over to my Xtreme Marketing Facebook Group to see if anything had changed; you know how Facebook likes to make its “changes” without our consent. We hate most of them, but eventually get used to them and forget that it was ever done another way.

I found everything the exact same as I had left it. However, when I needed to create a new group for my Xtreme Sales Training event in Los Angeles I noticed that there was a new format and that I could no longer send invites for people to choose to become members. I had to add them. This sounded pretty “spammy” and intrusive from a business perspective. And I thought to myself, “why would Facebook promote something like this”. So, after some digging, this is my synopsis of the latest and greatest Facebook group paradigm:

• Facebook groups were the original community building tools for small businesses
• The popularity of Facebook groups began to wane with the advent of fan pages in 2009, which quickly outpaced Facebook groups as the relationship management tool of choice for small business.
• Facebook made another change early in 2010 that placed updates from Facebook fan pages in some obscure update folder. Meanwhile, messages from Facebook groups would go straight to someone’s inbox.
• Due to the previously mentioned change, I began to advise my clients to use their fan page for branding while using a group for messages and updates, since the messages went into somene’s inbox.
• Facebook is now moving toward groups being used as tools to facilitate communication within small networks, very similar to how Yahoo! groups operate, but with a graphic user interface instead of just communicating through an email digest.
• New Facebook groups will not have the option to invite new members. They must be added by force, which really isn’t good for business (I had to learn this the hard way!)
• Older Facebook groups have currently been “grandfathered” into the old way of operation and remain unchanged as of right now. Facebook has yet to release a statement of intent on when or whether it will convert the older groups to the new platform.
• Facebook fan pages are now the sole mode of creating business communication on Facebook (unless you have one of the older grandfathered groups).
• Facebook has made improvements in the visibility of fan page updates, restoring some of the fan page’s power as a business building tool.
• If you are using Facebook to grow your business, you should avoid using Facebook groups unless you have one of the older, grandfathered versions. Facebook fan pages should be focused on instead.

One thing that is for certain is that Facebook will continue to make more and more changes as it is constantly tweaking its user experience. As a business owner you’ll want to definitely stay abreast of these changes and how they could affect your business. I will definitely make sure to keep you up to date with how any new changes stand to affect small business owners like you and I.

And, if you just don’t feel like keeping up with all of this, you could always have it done FOR you at www.xtrememarketingdoneforyou.com!

To Your Xtreme Success,

Lawrence L. Cole, II
The Xtreme Marketing Guy

• You will likely end up investing thousands of dollars looking for the GURU to give you answers that really lie deep within YOU, not in someone else’s “silver bullet” product or coaching program.
• You are likely to end up disappointed after the GURU takes your money and then provides very little true mentorship or support.
• Most GURUs have gotten really good at one or two very specific things, and if you do not fit into their “cookie cutter” system, they probably won’t be able to help you very much; yet their egos would never allow them to admit this to themselves let alone you.
• You are likely to be given “just enough” to give you a few small results and get you “hooked”, then you can count on being up sold to larger packages with more promises, yet few additional results.

At the same time there are some really good guys and gals within the GURU ranks who are worth every dime of your investment. And yesterday while taking a holiday flight to Florida to see my folks I ran into one of the best of them in the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

I was minding my own business sending emails back and forth with my assistant Jeanna about some new customer relationship software that we are implementing into my business when I overheard the jovial voice of a guy who had apparently spotted some friends of his who were waiting for a flight. It was internet marketing icon and multi-millionaire Tom Antion.

First I was impressed by just how friendly he was to these people. My guess was that they were folks who were former or aspiring coaching clients of his, judging by the tone of the conversation (which i tried to eavesdrop on but was not within a close enough range to hear every word).

Then, being the well-mannered southerner that I tend to be (I live in Los Angeles but was raised in a small town in Central Florida), I went over to speak to him. I was brought up to believe that it is impolite and rude to see someone that you know and not speak to them (unless you really don’t like them; then its perfectly ok!). Tom noticed me instantly, as we had crossed paths several times at the bootcamp of another really awesome GURU friend of mine, Craig Duswalt of the Rockstar System for Success.

We chatted for a few minutes about marketing stuff (including a few bits of gossip about some new trends and who was coming out first with new products and coaching for it!) before taking a picture and then going our separate ways to catch our flights. Being that it was the Sunday before Thanksgiving, direct flights had been booked months in advance and we both had a full day of travel with long overlays ahead of us; he en route to his mansion in Virginia Beach and me en route to see good ole’ mom and dad.

So whenever you catch me “bashing the GURUs” please understand that first and foremost I am working very hard to protect you from the mistakes that me and my friends have made that have cost us THOUSANDS of dollars that could have been invested more wisely getting coaching from good guys like Tom Antion and Craig Duswalt or even better invested in our actual businesses. And also understand that there are some GREAT GURUs out there that you should jump at the chance to work with–there just aren’t that many–so “buyer beware”!

To Your Xtreme Success,

Lawrence L. Cole, II
The Xtreme Marketing Guy

I get tons of prospective clients who come to me after their hard-earned business development money has been wasted on some hack who purported themselves to be “an internet guru” when they really were just some guy or gal who decided yesterday that they were going to “ride the wave” of the internet/local marketing trend, bought some “business in a box” system, printed business cards, and started marketing themselves as an authority.

Here is a quick check list to help you make sure that you are truly working with a bona fide online marketing professional that is worth his or her salt:

• Ask them how long they’ve been doing this kind of work

Upon close observation you will quickly find that many of these hacks just started doing this kind of work a few months ago. Don’t put your business at risk by investing in someone who is still wet behind the ears. Look for someone who has 5-10 years minimum experience as an online marketer either working with clients or in their own businesses

• Take a critical eye to their own results

If someone is trying to sell you on their social media expertise, are they well established in social media themselves? Do they have profiles, fan pages, and groups with healthy followings? Do they have what YOU would want to have? Who else is listening to this person besides you? If they claim to be internet marketing experts, how many other websites have they helped to rank well in the search engines? Ask them for a list.

• Ask them for publications that they have written on their topic of so-called “expertise”

Have them written books or published white papers on the subject? Anyone can submit an article to Ezinearticles.com, but can they be found listed on Amazon?

• Have they been featured in the media?

If you are working with someone who really knows what he or she is doing they should be able to refer you to where they have been featured or interviewed in the media. Have they? You should definitely ask this question, and pay close attention to the response that you get.

• Ask to speak to former clients of theirs

This is where the rubber really meets the road. Get the contact information of several of their former clients and really vet the actual experience of working with them and the kind of results that people are getting (or not getting). If they won’t let you talk to former clients (or if there ARE no former clients) you definitely have a problem!

If the person who you are considering working with can pass ALL of the above litmus tests, then you are more than likely working with someone who will be a wise investment for your business. A few charlatans may slip through the cracks here and there, however, this check list should eradicate 99.9% of the people who you should NOT be risking your hard-earned investment capital with.

To Your Xtreme Success,
Lawrence Cole, The Xtreme Marketing Guy

In the information age there are tons of resources out there that can help you achieve almost anything at any time for nearly any purpose. You spend hours on Google looking for answers. You find a few interesting website and eagerly submit your name and email for the free report or E-course.

And then you see it. The offer from THE GURU. The copy is impeccably written to appeal to your emotions. The offer is tantalizing and the style and manner seems oh, so down to earth and believable. Before you know it, you’ve whipped out the business debit card and swiped it to attend THE BOOT CAMP.

THE BOOT CAMP is a magical place. Good energy is flowing in all directions. Entrepreneurs just like you who are searching for the same answers you are searching for abound from wall to wall. You make great contacts over the next few amazing days and find yourself in 2 or 3 new mastermind groups. THE GURU is the Master or Mistress of the domain, dropping golden nuggets all weekend long that inspire pages of notations that you know will help your business! “Where have you BEEN all my life?”, you think to yourself.

When the offer is made for Private Coaching, you think “Duh! This GURU Lady can SAVE MY LIFE! She holds the key to my success! I’ve GOT to do this!” Out comes the debit card again, and in one swipe (or in one call to your 401k company) you’re in! Now you’re going to FINALLY get the “secret sauce” you’ve been looking for and be rich!

Six months later…

You have a blueprint from the GURU. You are confident that it will work, but the implementation of it all is a much more daunting task than you bargained for. Getting the design stuff right, getting your content together, putting the marketing system together–so NOT your area! You just want to do what you do best, and this isn’t it!

You’ve also incurred additional expenses that you never saw coming. For starters, you have needed to hire an additional team of contractors to complete the work outlined in your GURU blue print. This may be a struggle because you do not speak “their lingo” and have trouble communicating our vision to them in specific terms that they can bring to life. There is also additional pressure from the GURU to be up sold into additional products, services, and coaching that you must get along with what you have already invested in to get the “real” results that you are looking for.

And to make matters worse, you aren’t getting much help from THE GURU. Her work is done. She’s off to the next client. Frustrated and in thousands of dollars of debt your soul writhes in pain and anguish as you realize that you are no further along than you were months ago. You have a head full of new ideas but have not made satisfactory headway in getting them implemented.

THE SOLUTION: Done for You services. Whether its for marketing, process mapping, or the outsourcing of daily tasks, a “done for you” services has several benefits to your business:

• They are results-based

As opposed to just getting a “blue print” for your investment, you actually get things accomplished that can begin putting money in your pocket right away.

• They provide leverage in your business

This allows you to focus on what you do (and like best); your core competency that brings revenue into the business.

• You get your results in one complete solution

You don’t necessarily have to purchase an up sell or hire more and more people to get work done after you’ve gotten your “blueprint” from Ms. GURU. If you choose to invest in an additional product or service, its because you want an additional solution, not because you need something else to help you get results from what you have already invested in.

To Your Xtreme Success,

Lawrence Cole
The Xtreme Marketnig Guy

For starters, attraction marketing is pull-based marketing. That means that prospects are coming to you and/or placing what you offer in high demand without provocation. Tapping into this “pull” effect is quite a powerful force because once it is done, its FREE-99! Attraction marketing can be defined as a form of marketing that builds interest around who you are and what you do to the point that people are attracted to you and your business in a way that makes them more likely to buy from you.

I can remember the first time I met my image consultant, Tamra Nashman. I was at a marketing boot camp with a friend. When Tamra entered the room we marveled at how impeccably put together she was. She looked like everything she had on from head to toe had been especially made for her and only her.

Not knowing exactly who Tamra was or what she did, we were attracted to her aura in our minds we elevated her perceived value above most of the other people in that room. A year later, I was investing in her image consulting services, and was happy to do it.

Another example would be my breakthrough coach Madeline Alexander, The Power CoachTM. Before I knew her personally I was intrigued by the sense of confidence and energy that she walked around with. I was amazed at how much understated power was emanating from such a petite woman. Again, I eventually became a loyal client and my life has been irreversibly transformed because of it.

In the new economy, you may not always have the opportunity to walk into a room and pull the interest of your potential customers and business partners with the strength of your personal power. You need to employ the reach and expanse of the internet. Social media in particular is one of the primary mediums that you can use to develop an attractive pull toward your business. In order to execute this effectively, you need:

• Clearly stated differentiation from your competitors
• A branded look and feel that adds to your level of perceived value
• A strong presence in several of the most popular social media networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn)
• Some statement of value that tells the story of what you have to offer a prospect
• A call to action that pulls the prospect into your vortex either as a new customer, client, or newsletter subscriber (hopefully all of the above!)

One these things are in place for your business you will be equipped to begin “pulling” in a steady stream of leads, prospects, and customers that are absolutely FREE!

Scaling is the process of taking your business model and expanding it into a large enterprise. In fact, one of the reasons that many small businesses ultimately fail is because the model that they are operating with just isn’t scalable. There are several characteristics that your small business MUST have in order for it to be scalable; however, there are two that are more important than most others for the solopreneur:

• It must have systems that remove you from many operational duties
• It must have processes that allow your business to handle a large volume of clients, records, information, and orders

Most small business completely miss the mark just in those two alone. Back in 2004 I built a weight loss business. The website is no longer operational, however, I’ve kept it up for nostalgic purposes. It was the first business that I built that really worked in any significant way. Its problem, however, was me. I was too involved in th daily operational tasks of running it.

I did the web design, wrote copy, wrote content, handled customer service, answered the phone, managed email marketing, did the SEO (search engine optimization), managed documents, performed sales forecasts, managed the marketing strategy…I think you get the picture.

Due to the fact that I was so intrinsically involved in EVERY aspect of that business, it ultimately failed. It did not fail because I wasn’t getting customers or making sales. In fact, it was quite the opposite. My membership base was growing each month at 10%-50% and as the business grew I simply could not handle it. Ultimately, I gave out of gas and everything came crashing down.

One of my passions as a small business online marketing strategist is to help other small business people like yourself avoid my mistakes. So I ask you, what are you doing in your small business right now to make it scalable for growth? If you got 1,000 customer orders or new clients TODAY, could your business handle it? If you needed to pull yourself completely out of your day-to-day operation in order to focus on a big deal, project, or marketing push, do you have the people and systems in place to allow you to do it?

In the coming weeks I will be posting several blogs specifically geared towards giving you the exact tips, tools, and strategies that I have employed to make sure that I don’t end up having another entrepreneurial disaster like I did with my 2004 business. And I’ll show you how to avoid disaster and achieve success in your small business as well.

To Your Xtreme Success,
Lawrence Cole, The Xtreme Marketing Guy

The million dollar question (literally) is WHY is this the case? At times it seems as though every half-witted, idiotic after thought of any celebrity is instantly headline news. And to make matters worse, the press is in on it! Media outlets scour the networks of press release wires looking for any morsel of juicy celebrity info that they can spin into a provocative headline? What would inspire Ivy League educated journalists to stoop to such scavenging behavior? Its because the press knows that these people are newsworthy. They know that the public is interested.

Now here’s what no other marketer out there will tell you (unless they’ve been reading my stuff!). There is a reason behind all of this that digs much deeper into human psychology and motivation than the over-simplified reasons that most marketers are regurgitating between one another; there are 16 reasons, in fact.

In a series of research articles written between 1996 and 2000, Ohio State Psychology faculty members Drs. Steven Reiss and Susan Havercamp crystallized 16 basic desires after surveying thousands of people on the relative importance of a list of several hundred life goals.

1. The desire to influence (includes leadership; e.g. Barack Obama)
2. The desire for knowledge or to be respected for knowledge (e.g. Benjamin Franklin)
3. The desire for autonomy (e.g. freedom)
4. The desire for prestige (e.g. Prince William and Kate Middleton)
5. The desire for peer companionship (social contact; friends)
6. The desire to get even (e.g. the ugly duckling that becomes Miss America)
7. The desire for a traditional moral code (e.g. religious figure; ideologues; pundits)
8. The desire to improve society (e.g. Susan Komen for breast cancer)
9. The desire to exercise (e.g. Billy Blanks, Susan Sommers)
10. The desire for sex (e.g. Kim Kardashian and Reggie Bush)
11. The desire to produce and raise offspring (e.g. any happy family with kids)
12. The desire to organize (includes ritual; e.g. fraternities, sororities, and clubs)
13. The desire for food
14. The desire for approval (e.g. awards, recognition, commendation)
15. The desire for inner peace (e.g. Deepak Chopra; Michael Beckwith
16. The desire to collect (assets and possessions; e.g. Warren Buffet, King Tut)

The degree to which you are successful in creating a “celebrity” brand image will be the degree to which you are a living example of as many of these basic human desires as possible (the desire for food being the one exception). People are attracted to the brands of celebrities because through these people they get to live out the joy of satisfying these desires vicariously. Lindsay Lohan’s wild abandon (autonomy); Barack Obama’s presidency (leadership); Kim Kardashian’s striking beauty (sex).

Learning to master your own portrayal of these desires will help you to create an irresistible force of attraction to your brand and your business.

To Your Xtreme Success,
Lawrence Cole
The Xtreme Marketing Guy