I had one of those ‘aha!’ moments the other day when I received this email from Andrea J. Lee’s Best of Multiple Streams f’ree ecourse. The subject line was:

Niche + Problem + Format = Income Stream

Out of a deluge of emails in my inbox this one instantly jumped out at me – as a (much needed) reminder of just how simple online business really is! And how much I had been overcomplicating some things in my business lately…

I’ve been knee deep in online business for years now – coming up on ten years actually – and despite all the great new things that arise in the online world it all comes back to this simple formula.

To break it down…

Niche

Definition: A niche is a group of people who have common issues and problems and who hang out together in some organized fashion.

Who do you serve?

It is essential that you have a clearly defined and specific niche market. This is the foundational piece in the ‘8 Steps to Building a Multiple Streams Business’ that we’ve been teaching for years now… and is the one area where many businesses fall apart.

If you don’t have a good handle on your niche it becomes really hard to effectively tap into the specific needs of a market and provide products/services that serve that market (and that they are willing to pay for!). We go into finding your niche in great detail in Pink Spoon Marketing – be sure to check it out if this feels like an area that needs some work in your business.

Problem

People spend money on things that will help ease the ‘pain’ of their problems.

What keeps your niche up at night?

When you know what it is that the people in your niche market struggle with, then you can look for ways to help them – the solution becomes obvious. The key is, of course, to know what their problems are in the first place! And the thing is, this will change from time to time… so you need to make sure you are ‘plugged’ in to your niche.

How to find out their problems? Ask them what their biggest challenge is, and listen to their answers – look for themes. Read their blogs. Subscribe to their ezines. Follow their tweets. Pay attention.

Format

Once you know the problem, you want to consider how you are going to package and deliver the solution.

What is the best package for your solution?

The options for packaging offerings today are simply endless – everything from print-on-demand services (for books, CDs and such) through to webinar, multimedia and online video. It actually wasn’t too long ago that we were limited by our packaging choices, as many options where complex and expensive. We’ve come a long way baby!

When looking at packaging you want to consider two things:

1. What will be appealing to my market? If you are marketing to baby-boomers they may prefer a print book to an ebook. If you are marketing to twenty-somethings you may want to do an online video series.
2. What would I enjoy creating? If you love speaking but aren’t a big writer, drop the idea of writing a book and look to create classes, trainings, recordings and such. If you are camera shy you may not want to go the online video route. It is just as important for you to enoy the creation process, otherwise you will get frustrated, stuck and may never finish your product.

And there you go – at the heart of things it really is just that easy.This is one super powerful little formula – one that I recommend you print off and post on your wall.

If you want to dive deeper into any element of this simple formula check out the Pink Spoon Marketing Multimedia Home-Study Kit which will take you step-by-step through the process of building your business online.

Comments, thoughts? Post them here at the blog.

With all the bumps in the economy these days, i’m hearing some buzz among online support folks (virtual assistants, online business managers and the like) along the lines of:

“If my client’s business is struggling – doesn’t that mean they’ll have to let me go?”

Au contraire! Your services are needed more than ever because of these challenges.

Now I am no economist – heck, I barely pay attention to the news at all, never read newspapers – but my take on how these challenges affect us small/home-based business owners is this:

We need to step it up a bit, take a good look at things, let go of what isn’t working and get creative with how we serve our markets.

I’m certainly not the only person saying this of course, this is the basis of alot of the business advice out there right now - and for good reason. Those who are adapting are growing, those who are resisting are stagnant and struggling.

But I do want to make this clear – this applies to us as virtual assistants, online business managers and virtual support folks as well.

I believe quite strongly that regardless of what we are hired for – be it customer service, to build a website or to full out manage the business – our intention is the same. We need to always be focused on how we are helping to grow our client’s business.

This is always important, but it even more so important these days.

If you find yourself in fear of ‘losing your clients’ or are seeing some of your clients struggling I want to ask you:

What are you doing to help grow your client’s business?

Let’s put on our thinking caps shall we? It may not be as hard to do as you think. A few ideas:

• If you take care of customer service you actually have a pretty unique perspective on the business. You are in direct contact with potential and existing clients. What are they asking about? What are they upset/annoyed with? Share this with your client – these can be clues to potential new revenue streams. Also, what about people who have inquired but not purchased – can you put together a follow-up plan to reach out to these people with some kind of special offer? Being on the “front line” of the business is a very powerful place to be, you can truly make an impact here.
• Look to streamline, simplify and cut the fat. Where is the business leaking money? Most businesses are, and being in the role of ‘doing’ you are most likely the one to see where alot of this is happening. What tools are being used in the business – are they all necessary? Is your client paying for stuff they aren’t even using? Is there perhaps a new tool/software on the market that might be better? What about processes – what are you (and other team members) doing that could perhaps be done better? Saving time that can be put towards other business-building activities. Come up with a plan to ‘plug the leaks’ and share with your client.
• What can you take off your client’s plate? Freeing them up to focus on new business building opportunities… We talk about this alot in the Online Business Manager Training – one of the best things we can do for our clients is take stuff off of their already full plates. Give your client a tap on the shoulder and say “hey, I noticed you are really busy… why don’t you let me take x, y, z off your hands? I’d love to help”. This is music to your client’s ears, let me assure you! Chances are they didn’t realize you could help with x, y, z or in many cases they are so on autopilot it never occurred to them to let it go. I can hear the sigh of relief from your clients already….

 What else can you do to help grow your client’s businesses? Post your comments below…

And for the business owners reading this – don’t be shy in sending this to your team and/or having a discussion about it. Chances are they would love to step it up and see how they can help… they just might need a little nudge from you.

I got to thinking the other day re: social marketing as a business strategy. I know it’s a powerful tool for building a business, many folks are seeing great returns doing so… but as I shared a few weeks back I find that I get tired of social media.

And it occured to me – perhaps I find it tiring because I am an introvert?

See the thing is that I really get what social media is – I’ve invested in some pretty high end social media training, have been paying attention to how it all works and have even coached my clients on many of the strategies.

But for me personally, I haven’t been able to plug into a ‘flow’ if you will… I find that I go hot/cold – some weeks i’m really on, and others not so much – and I think it may have to do with being an introvert.

Now i’m no shrinking violet or anything, I’ve been told i’m quite outgoing and I daresay fun to be around (most of the time, hehe). But I do know that energetically I am an introvert – I ‘recharge’ more from solitary activities, getting away, reading, relaxing and such (as compared to extroverts who recharge in social situations, being out and about.)

When discussing social marketing with people i’ve always likened it to the world of ‘traditional networking’ – getting out and meeting people face-to-face at local networking groups, association meetings and the like. Some people really enjoy marketing this way, others not so much. I remember going to my very first professional coaches association meeting about 10 years ago in Calgary – I was so nervous the night before I barely slept! And it was just a breakfast meeting.

With the wide world of social media being online we aren’t meeting face-to-face of course, but the ‘energy’ of it is very much the same I would think? And so perhaps a bit more challenging for us introverted types?

I don’t have the answers here by any means… just struck me as interesting. I did a Google search on this and actually didn’t find much out there – would love to know if anyone has actually dug into this idea of social marketing for introverts a bit further.

I may put together a list of ’social media tips for introverts’, hmmm…

Your list is probably your most important asset in an online based business – and as such we tend to spend alot of time and energy in building up our lists.

So what do you do with that list once you have it?

The key thing to remember is that the value of your list is not based on numbers but on relationship.

You need to stay in touch with your list on a regular basis in order to build a strong relationship. 

Why is relationship so important? People buy from those they know, like and trust – and in the online world one of the best ways to build this relationship is simply by staying in touch.

If you don’t keep in touch with your list then it is basically just a group of people who don’t know who you are, and who won’t care when you do finally reach out with a promotion or new product.

As I like to say – I would much rather have a targetted list of 1,000 people who I have a strong relationship with, than a list of 10,000 people who don’t know me at all. Guaranteed I will make more sales with the first list than the second.

Some ideas for keeping in touch:

• Send out an ezine/newsletter on a regular basis – this may seem obvious, but many business owners struggle with this. An ezine doesn’t need to be a big production – keep it short and simple, and hire a VA to help you if need be.
• Do a free teleclass – invite everyone on your list to join you for a free teleclass on a hot topic of interest for your market. Even if you aren’t promoting anything right now, you can still do a call for the purpose of building relationship.
• Setup a blog and post to it on a regular basis – make sure that you setup RSS feed and email notification options for people to subscribe to get new posts.
• Invite people to join you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – assuming that you are active on these (and other) social media sites, this is a really great way to share fun stuff, quick tips, ask questions and just have fun. (Here’s my Twitter page, follow me?)
• Do a podcast or online video – a great way to connect with people in a new way, especially if you want to breathe new life into an old list.
• Ask for their opinion – people love to share their own ideas, thoughts and make a contribution. Do a quick survey, or setup a ‘quick question’ email as part of your subscription process.

There are of course hundreds (thousands?) of ways you can keep in touch with people. Just remember to do it authentically – provide good value to folks and that will come back to you in the form of increased sales and long term clients.

Have other ideas for how to build the relationship with your list? Bring em on… comment here on the blog.

Be it the economy, cash-flow issues or even just ‘taking a look at expenses in the biz’ i’ve had a few support professionals share lately that “my client asked me to cut back my hours as they can’t afford me right now”.

When faced with lowering revenues or rising expenses it can be easy to think “oh, we have to cut back!” However I like to look at it another way – what can we, as a business, do to increase revenues quickly?

This is the topic of one of my favorite chapters from our book Money, Meaning and Beyond (co-written by moi and my biz partner Andrea Lee).

What is your fastest path to money?

This is an important question in any business – so much so that i’m including the whole chapter here for your reading pleasure. It’s a short little PDF, quick read I promise.

This question is just as important for the Online Business Manager to consider on behalf of their clients. Where is your client’s business struggling? Where is their business thriving? What can you do to perhaps shift a bit of focus/energy to the areas that are flowing right now (and maybe let go of some projects/etc that are really stuck).

As an OBM we do our client’s a disservice if we don’t consider their business from this angle as well. Our client’s look to us to be able to ‘think on behalf of their business’, and this is a prime example of that. It could be that they aren’t seeing the struggle in the same way that you are (and likewise may not be seeing the opportunities that naturally arise). Being involved in the day-to-day activities of the business gives us (as OBMs) a different perspective that the business owner may be seeing, so don’t be shy in sharing your insights!

Or is it just me?

I’m not quite sure what it is… I just find myself getting tired of certain aspects of the ‘wide world of social media/marketing/networking’ (whatever you like to call it).

I’m tired of getting random invites to stuff that I don’t really care about.

I’m tired of feeling like I *should* be doing more with my social media efforts when it comes to business building activites…. but I don’t want to go overboard and become all promo-ey.

I remember signing up for my Facebook account a couple of years ago, at which time it was all about personal relationships – connecting with old high school friends and such. It was fun to catch up with folks, see what they were up to, etc. Simple stuff.

Then the buzz became all about ‘using social media to build your business’ and it became a very different landscape. Alongside my friends I was now starting to connect with business contacts/colleagues online (which I am picky about as per my facebook friending rule)… this brought a different feel to the whole thing. Having to think twice about what to post, what to share, etc.

If I post something about my business will it turn off my friends? (most of whom could care less about what I do). If I post personal stuff is that a ‘too much information’ scenario for my biz connections? (who probably don’t want to see pictures of my kids).

Gets confusing at times… hence my tiredness.

That being said, tomorrow I will probably get over it and tweet my head off, LOL.

You? Are you loving the social media or getting tired of it as well?

I needed a new logo for a project we are launching in the new future – a free online ‘job search’ tool for virtual support professionals and the business owners who want to hire them. (VERY excited about this, as we get alot of requests from people who need to find/hire someone and this will give us all a way to connect.)

I’m a pretty visual person, and whenever I start a new website/project I like to get a new logo right away. Chatting with my biz partner Andrea Lee last week she told me about a site called LogoTournament.com – you setup a ‘contest’ with details on your logo needs and a bevy of graphic designers submit their designs and ‘compete’ to win the prize. How cool is that? I couldn’t resist and setup a contest for this new logo.

Well at the end of 7 days I had 82 entries, and quite honestly it was really tough to pick… I almost felt like a kid in a candy store! There were probably a good 5 or 6 logos that I REALLY liked, and it was just plain cool to see what different designers came up with. Here is the winner:

And if you are curious to see the other entries there are still posted here. Need a new logo? Give LogoTournament.com a try - fun and you can have a great logo with 7 days.

Oh, and more on the new OnlineBizConnect site soon – aiming to have a beta version of the site up by end of month.

I will freely admit it – I am a Costco junkie.

Pretty much everything I own comes from Costco, from the pajamas i’m wearing as I type this to the picture on the wall here in my family room. My daughter’s very first outing was a trip to Costco, and we are proud of that! LOL

What’s so great about Costco? I remember having this conversation with a friend a while back, when I was joking about how much I love Costco. And she asked me why I thought it was so great (being a person who didn’t shop there much.) I wasn’t sure of the answer at first, but then it hit me - simplicity!

Rather than carrying a huge selection of everything (like most department stores do) Costco has a very limited selection of everything – usually just one or two options for any given item. Want to buy some new towels? Costco has one brand of towels at any given time, in a variety of colors. A new shed? They carry only one shed each year. A speaker dock for your iPod? They have 2 options for you, one with and one without an FM radio. And most often the item that they choose to carry is of really good quality, even with their discount prices they don’t carry ‘cheap junk’. It’s all good stuff.

If I need something, say a new coffee maker, I know that whatever Costco is carrying at that time is probably a pretty good coffee maker to buy. Compared to going to Walmart and facing a wall of coffee makers, each one with so many bells and whistles that I don’t even know where to start. I find that when I have too many options, I generally end up not buying at all… my brain gets scrambled up.

If I was to do a little personal digging on this I would say that my life has enough complexity as it is, and I don’t want to have to do the research, consider all options and shop around for the best value for every little thing I want to buy. Yes, I will take the time to do that with a big purchase like a car. But a new coffee maker? I don’t think it’s the best use of my time to try and figure out which one is best. I like to let Costco do that for me – I trust that the coffee maker they choose to carry is a good value and high quality.

This seems a great illustration of the saying in business that “a confused mind doesn’t buy”.

And it makes me wonder, how can I simplify what I offer to my clients? Where am I maybe being a bit too much of a Walmart vs. being a Costco?

We see this quite often in the online-based businesses that we coach and support. Especially when it comes to websites – many people default to trying to put everything possible on their website, and in the process end up basically overwhelming people to the point that they don’t buy. Or they may try to be ‘clever’ with an idea or offering and end up confusing people with all the options instead.

A good rule of thumb is this – if you have a hard time explaining something or find it confusing yourself, then so will your potential customers. Regardless of what you have to offer – be it a book or a coaching program – be sure to make the offering as clear and simple as possible.

And I wonder too – how could I get folks to spend at least $200 everytime they visit my site, like I always do when I visit Costco, LOL.

I happened upon this today’s on Amazon’s homepage (for some reason the story was a graphic image and not a webpage, so this link opens up a graphic).

Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging, a multi-year initiative designed to alleviate “wrap rage,” features recyclable boxes that are easy to open and free of excess materials such as hard plastic clamshell cases, plastic bindings, and wire ties. The product itself is exactly the same—we’ve just streamlined the packaging.

Now I don’t know about you, but I am truly a sufferer of “wrap rage“. Electronics and gadgets have always been pretty bad with all that crazy ‘impossible to open’ plastic packaging… but now that I’m the mother of 2 small children my wrap rage has risen to new levels. Have you ever tried to open a new children’s toy? It is truly ridiculous, and I kid you not when I say you almost need a degree just to get the toy out of the box. All these crazy wire ties that go through the toy, plastic tabby things stuck all over the place, twist ties that you can’t open with your fingers alone (need pliers) and more. My family and I have often wondered who the heck came up with all this packaging? Not only it is VERY annoying and sometimes dangerous in itself but it seems a huge waste… here is an example of how crazy the packaging is from the Amazon site.

Amazon is starting by offering 19 items as part of their Frustration-Free Packaging initiative and will be continually adding to the list. I have certainly bought many books and some DVDs from Amazon over the years, but i’ve rarely purchased anything else from them. This will now change… they’ve tapped into a HUGE annoyance of mine and provided a solution. And for that they have created a raving fan.

There is a really great business learning here as well - a brilliant example of tapping into a ‘problem’ and providing a ’solution’. I actually find it kind of funny that Amazon is the one to lead this initiative, I would have expected this to come direct from the manufacturers themselves (wouldn’t it save them packaging costs anyhow?). But the fact that Amazon is leading the way here has a fun twist to it, go Jeff Bezos go! hehe…

And hey, while we are on the topic of Amazon… how about making the Kindle available to Canadians? I’ve been waiting for the Kindle to hit Canada but alas my patience is wearing out and I think i’m going to go for the Sony Reader instead.

I get the value of using Facebook for business building purposes, believe me – but there is still a part of me that resists friending ‘anyone and everyone’ in order to have as many friends as possible.

For me it dilutes the purpose of Facebook – to connect and build relationships – to have just under 5000 friends (the current Facebook limit of # of friends a person can have) most of whom I don’t know at all. And yes, I understand that the more friends I have the more people who can see my posts, status updates, etc.

However when I get these friends requests out of the blue from people i’ve never heard of – quite a few these days! – I can’t help but wonder who the heck these people are? And why would I want to ‘friend’ them? And nine times out of ten these people don’t include any kind of personal message as to why they want to connect with me. Which to me means that they don’t really care who I am – they just want to get as close to that magic number as possible.

I like to compare it to a regular ‘offline’ encounter (which is rare for me these days, LOL). Say I was at a local networking meeting, and someone came up to me, handed me a business card without saying a word and then moved on to the next person. I don’t know about you, but that person’s card would go straight into the garbage bin on my way out the door.

This ‘friend everyone I can’ Facebook strategy feels very much the same to me. And so i’ve set up a personal rule for accepting new friend requests – they need to either be:

1. people I actually know – I LOVE how many old friends and business contacts i’ve been able to reconnect with in Facebook! OR
2. people who take the time to send a message along with their request – even just saying ‘hey tina, i see you are also friends with X and would love to connect with you as well’

As a good rule of thumb I think it’s a great idea to always send a personal message with your friend requests – even if you know the person they may not necessarily remember you, especially if a few years have passed. I’ve had that happen a few times where I know the name but can’t remember exactly how we met, so even just to say ‘hey sarah, i haven’t seen you since we met at conference X – what a blast that was when we went out for dinner that night! how are you?’

I really enjoy my Facebook connections, and want to keep them ‘real’ – for me it dilutes my connections to have a bunch of people who don’t know me at (nor I them). Be it a new friend or old, if we can make an authentic connection I would love to become your Facebook friend.