I got an email this week from a former coaching client of mine, Peggy Porter. Which was funny cause I had been thinking of her just a few weeks ago… gotta love how life works that way.

It is, of course, a treat to hear from Peggy… who is just an awesome lady all around.

And her new website gave me such a kick that I just had to share it.

From Brief to Thong - Break free from life’s panty lines and thrive in a Thong!

Talk about a great BOP statement, sure grabs your attention no? (BOP = your Bold, Outrageous and Provocative stance in your niche market. Step #8 in the Multiple Streams Model)

Her target market is mom entrepreneurs, which is of course close to my heart. She is offering a variety of coaching services, including the Inspiration and Panties New Year’s Coaching Club (hence the subject line of this post, I couldn’t resist!)

I also had an extra chuckle thinking of the first and only time I bought thong underwear. I was in highschool - 16 or 17 years old - and strangely enough my thong disappeared after I put it in the laundry basket. I can only assume that my mother ‘disposed of it’ when she went to do laundry, hehe. Can’t say I blame her, thinking of my own daughter Sam wearing a thong when she hits her teens… harumf.

So ladies, are you ready to start off the new year in your best pair of panties? Maybe dare to break out a thong?

And for the gents… no panties of course, perhaps a nice pair of boxer shorts instead?

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In my random surfing tonight I came across The Enlightenment Card.

It’s a ’socially conscious’ Visa card, with a great philosophy:

Some people say money is evil…

We say “how” money is used determines the effect.

Love it!

And they have a super cool rewards program… instead of collecting ‘travel around the blackout dates points’ or ‘buy a blender points’ you can use your points towards things like yoga retreats and charity donations.

And they even have some funky designs for the card, sure beats my boring ole gold Visa card… yawn.

Sign me up!

Filed under: Marketing/Traffic | 2 Comments »

Hate shopping for the holidays? Why not hire an elf to do it for you?

I saw a commercial the other day from Sears that I thought was super cool… you can ‘hire an elf’ to do your shopping for you. I’m not 100% sure on exactly how it works, but from the commercial it looked like you give your elf a list of who you need to buy for, they come up with ideas and gather the items for you, you pay and are gone.

Here’s a snapshot from their website with the details.

Brilliant, yes? On so many levels…

First of all, they are simply reframing what their retail staff are already doing… to help you find what you need. With the extra added service of actually collecting the items for you. Same job, different (and much more fun!) title.

And instead of them having to approach you in the store to ask the dreaded ‘can i help you?’… you are instead going to them and saying ‘be my elf!’ and happily handing over your shopping list.

Which of course means that shopping can be much easier for you, with someone else doing all the grunt work.

And of course, Sears gets the benefit of you buying a whole bunch of presents from their store…

I’ll say it again… brilliant! It’s almost enough to make me want to shop at Sears, which I so rarely do… now that’s good marketing.

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This comment from a coach on a Q&A Membership call I did the other day really made me think.

“Now that i’m no longer a lurker, my business is going much better”

(For those not familiar with the term ‘lurker’, in the world of teleclasses it refers to someone who is on the bridgeline but doesn’t say anything.. they just ‘lurk’ in the background and listen.)

It makes me wonder, what is the relationship between lurking and success?

I remember back in my CoachU training days, I was the *queen of lurking* on my training calls. I attended all my classes, but rarely spoke up or participated. To be honest I was usually multitasking, tsk tsk!

My coaching business never really took off either… coincidence? Hmmm.

Now, in my work as an Online Business Manager for various clients I *rarely* lurk. I’m usually totally engaged or actually leading the class itself (lurking while leading, don’t think that could work! hehe).

My OBM business is a success, where my coaching business was not…. double hmm.

I think that lurking may indicate a level of unwillingness to fully engage or commit… in the class itself and perhaps in our businesses as well.

So are you lurking on your classes or participating?

If you aren’t participating, why not? What is stopping you?

There could be various reasons, but I wonder if those reasons are also affecting your overall business success? Triple hmmm.

It’s worth taking a look at, and possibly making an effort to ‘unlurk’ from time to time… even just to say ‘hello’.

Filed under: Life & Such, General Biz | Add a Comment »

What a lovely (and somewhat shocking) treat to open up a magazine and see a full page color photo of yourself. As per my recent article in the November issue of The Mompreneur magazine.

(A little secret… this picture is about 5 years old, but it still does look like me, I swear! It was the only ‘professional print worthy’ photo that I had on hand.)

And being dubbed a Digital Diva… I consider myself many things, but rarely a diva (is there any such thing as a diva who works in her jammies?). So allow me this moment to bask in my diva-ness.
Care to read the article? Here it is in PDF format… the writing is a bit wee and blurry from the scan.

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I saw a commercial for something this morning that I thought was really cool.

It was for a senior’s lodge in Detroit… and they weren’t advertising the lodge itself. What they were advertising is their real estate service. For anyone moving into the lodge, they provide complete real estate support to help sell their current homes. Everything from getting the house in tip-top shape to the actual sale of their home.

Now how brilliant is that? Talk about truly putting themselves in the shoes of their niche market and looking to see how they can serve in a bigger way. I can imagine that *many* of their potential clients don’t want to deal with the hassle of moving… to the point that it may be stopping them from moving into a lodge even when they would like to.

So by offering their own real estate professionals to their clients everyone wins - people get the support they need to make their home sale smooth and the lodge gets new clients in the door sooner.

If I was selling real estate I would be looking to partner with my local senior homes in just this way…

Filed under: General Biz | Add a Comment »

Sharon writes:

My biggest question at this very moment is how do you respond to questions like these [the quick question email] when you ask them? Personally to every individual e-mail or with some kind of template response?

Hey, you asked.

I do try to respond to each email that comes in personally, as it is a great opportunity to connect with people and provide value. Although I have to admit that this isn’t always possible given how busy we are at times (I have been delinquent in answering some emails lately, tsk tsk).

And I would look to respond personally vs. using a templated response… just because a templated response can come across as ‘canned’ and may be a turn-off.

There are a few ways to make responding as easy as possible:

• Pick a day of the week to respond to these emails. I like to do this on a Friday afternoon as I find it a fun way to wrap-up the week.
• Whenever I answer a question I also post the answer at my blog. Which means that when someone asks a similar question in the future I can point them to the blog for the answer, vs. re-answering it again. Great way to save time AND also build up your blog content.
• Look at each response as an opportunity to create a sale. If you knew that the person on the other end of the email could potentially become a buying customer, would it be worth the 5 or 10 minutes it takes to reply? But of course!

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I’m being interviewed right now for Momprenuer Magazine and was asked to put together a list of 5 tips that I would offer other Mompreneurs. So of course I need to share them here.

Tip #1: Get a like-minded business community in place for yourself… a place where you can bounce ideas for your business, get support when you are unmotivated, ask questions and just plain ole whine and complain when need be. This could be a business coach, business partner or other working moms who understand the joys and pitfalls of business. (The Mompreneur network!)

Tip #2: Draw a solid line around work and home/family time (especially if you work from home). It is super easy to fall into the trap of ‘working all day long’ if you aren’t careful, so pick the times when you work and the times when you don’t… and try to stick to them as much as possible (always exceptions of course). ie: Make a commitment to not work weekends, or if you need to work on the weekends while you have the support of hubby to babysit, say you will work ‘Saturday morning from 8-12′.

Tip#3: Hire help for the administrative stuff. Your time is at a premium, so keep yourself focused on the money-making tasks that *only you can do* and hire help for the rest. Most new business owners think that they need to do it all - especially in the beginning - when really your business needs your focus where it should be (marketing, delivery of products/services) and not on administrative stuff. Ask yourself throughout the day “Is this something that someone else could do for me?” and make a list… then hire someone to take care of those things. Budget can be a concern in the early days, however consider that hiring someone can actually make you money in that it frees you up for money making activities.

Tip#4: Stay in touch with the joy and passion for your business. Especially important for us moms, as it can be super easy to just let business slide in light of other priorities if we aren’t enjoying ourselves… why are you doing what you do? And if you aren’t enjoying yourself, what can you change to make it more enjoyable?

Tip#5: Kiss and hug your kids everyday! After all, they are why we do what we do.

Filed under: General Biz | Add a Comment »

by Cindy Greenway
Multiple Streams Team

You’re a busy small business owner. You’re working hard to find more time in the day to build your business - create more products, build your database, generate more revenue but yet no matter how hard you try, you find yourself wasting time over and over again on tasks that are important but don’t necessarily help to generate more revenue.

So … what’s the answer? Simplify … automate …. Virtualize. Sound familiar?

In today’s virtual community, there is no excuse for not taking advantage of online tools that will simplify, automate and virtualize various tasks in your business. If you’re thinking “tell me where to start” … keep reading as I share 8 easy and affordable ways to automate in your business.

1. Online Calendar

Every day we have appointments – client appointments, special events, telephone meetings or even just time set aside to take care of “work”. By using an online calendar system, you can eliminate the manual and continuous scheduling and rescheduling of appointments. Start by creating a calendar that specifies “available” times – send the link to your clients and they can easily schedule their appointments into the system. No more playing email or phone tag to schedule a good time.
(more…)

Filed under: Automate Your Business, General Biz | 2 Comments »

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people use technology just for the sake of the technology…

ie: I just went to unsubscribe myself from some email thingie I was getting, and instead of having a simple option to ‘unsubscribe’ (which is CANSPAM rules anyhow) I was lead to a website that asked for my name, email address, reason I was contacting them, etc. This site *required* that I fill in each field before the form would even be sent in… all I want to do is unsubscribe!!

And there was no email address anywhere so I could pop off a quick email… to contact them (and thus unsub myself) I had to fill out this form. So I basically made stuff up for each field as it didn’t apply to my needs.

Then I get an email response from them asking me to confirm that I want to unsub and why… I reply and the email is bounced back to me because I ‘forgot to include the reference # from the original email in my reply’. Argh!!

I really think that systems such as these are built to make life easier for the company, and that they forget the customer in the whole thing. Whatever happened to good ole customer service and making it easy for the customer to do business with you? Like when you call the phone company to change your mailing address and have to go through 10 menu choices before you talk to someone who ends up being the wrong person anyhow.

I’m a big time lover of technology when it makes life ‘easier for all involved’, not when it’s used in a more selfish manner such as this. So I ask you, could your technology be getting in the way of your customer’s positive experience with your company?

Enough ranting, off to finish unpacking as we settle into our new house. More on that and back to ‘biz as usual’ here in the very near future.

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