When you start and grow a business, you’re involved each day in the detail of running the business; perfecting customer service, ensuring positive cashflow, making new products, and so on. This is all good and right but to plan for business growth, it’s important to step away from day-to-day affairs and take a good look at the business from a distance.

 Leave Home

Years ago someone told me the story of a successful business owner who, once a year, would pack his bags, leave the family home, and head off to spend a week alone with the business plan. I’ve emulated this ever since and every year I think it’s time well spent. Freshly back from this year’s break, here are my five tips on how you can reap rewards from taking a business break.  

Head to a place that stimulates the senses

This place doesn’t have to be far from home but it’s important you travel to it as the journey itself gives a sense of separation. As the car drives away/train pulls out/plane takes off, you positively feel yourself moving farther from the detail of the business and heading towards a space and place that will help you focus on ‘the bigger picture.’ Ideally, choose a place with dramatic scenery; open seas, rolling hills, tall skyscrapers; essentially you’re looking for a landscape that’s different to the one you’re used to as this will stimulate the imagination and create the perfect setting for planning.

Get settled

you’re in the setting and a new place, get yourself accustomed to it; take a walk, have a drink, allow your mind to wander and people watch! Feel yourself starting to relax? Good. You’re in the right frame of mind to start planning!  

Ask yourself two questions

How has the business performed over the past six months/year and where do you want to take the business in the next 6 to 12 months. Write down your thoughts .. on napkins … in a notebook .. on your phone ..whatever is closest to hand. Be ambitious in your goals and make the most of being in a place that’s encouraging you to plan for your dream business.

Don’t rush it

It’s likely you will come up with a new idea for the business in a ‘eureka’ moment of ‘Ah! Why didn’t I think of that before!’ – allow time for this moment to come. You’ve certainly created the right conditions for innovation as your brain is finely tuned on the business and not distracted by detail.

And now for action

Possibly the most important point of all. Take your notes, head home, and get started on turning plans into reality!  

Business breaks don’t have to be a full week, or far away. What’s important is to place yourself in conducive surroundings. I do this alone as did the man I emulate but you may choose to go with a business partner or friend so you can vocalise your thoughts. Go with what works for you and know that taking time out may seem like an extravagance, but it will pay dividends.

About the Author: Emma Jones is founder of Enterprise Nation www.enterprisenation.com, a business expert, and author of ‘Spare Room Start Up’ and ‘Working 5 to 9’

We know we need to keep clients and customers happy.  But sometimes we commit to unrealistic deadlines, which can cause us to let them down. So instead of over promising and under delivering, why not build the opposite into your business practices?  Build customer delight and loyalty by under promising and over delivering.

 Here are some ideas to get you on your way.

 What’s the customer’s real deadline?

Sometimes we assume customers’ deadlines. We project when we think they’ll need our product, service or action by and cause unnecessary business stress in the process.  So ask the customer for their deadline from the outset.  You may find there’s more time available.  And if the timescale is tight for you, be honest with them. Is it possible to deliver a specific part of the project, service, action etc by then with other elements being completed at a slightly later date?  If so, make sure you do deliver as promised.

 Prioritise by deadlines 

 Can you move away from a first come/first served approach – methodically processing one customer at a time depending on when they placed their order?  One customer may not need your product or service so soon, where for another it’s vital right now.  Keep everyone happy by putting customers’ deadlines at the heart of your processes.  If some clash and cause problems for you, then talk and see if there’s any margin for moving the dates with any of them. Alternatively try sweetening things by offering a small discount or other incentive to extend the deadline.  Or quickly call in reinforcements!

Be ahead of schedule

In today’s world, deadlines are more often missed than achieved.  Customers are really impressed when you deliver slightly ahead of schedule.  So assess the time it will take to get your product/service/ action completed and then communicate a deadline a day or so afterwards (but deliver that day early). Don’t deliver too far in advance of the deadline as customers won’t trust your word. Also, don’t always expect customers to spot that you’re ahead of schedule.  Emphasise it to them, albeit subtly.

 Perfect your processes 

 Look at the current obstacles in your business operations.  What gets in the way of you delivering your promises to customers? Can more people, outsourcing, better time management, faster suppliers, project-management software or other IT applications improve your efficiency?  Ask for an external viewpoint if necessary to spot ways to fine-tune your approach.

 Do more than you said on the tin 

 Can you create added value around the product, service or action that you deliver?  For example, can your report be in a format that fits easily with the client’s house style?  Can you include samples or testers of complementary products when you dispatch the a customer’s bought?  Can you give a voucher giving a slight discount off the next purchase or if the customer recommends a friend?   A word of warning though – added value does impress, but only if the initial product or service purchased meets expectations. Get the basics right first.

 The more you understand why a customer is buying this service or product from you, the more chances you’ve got to tick their boxes and delight them.  What issue are they trying to resolve?  What need are they hoping to satisfy?  What other factors pivot around this purchase?  If you can find these out, then ways in which to under promise and over deliver will become clear. And you can look forward to a happy future built on this customer’s pleasure and loyalty.

About the Author: 

Michelle Daniels is the Managing Director of Extended Thinking. An experienced and effective business development and marketing strategist, Michelle has built a successful career increasing top line growth for service businesses and organisations. She helps her clients turn their marketing, business development and thought leadership plans into reality with her ‘hands on’ support and practical advice.    A prolific writer, Michelle also combines creative flair with business nous to produce highly effective results.  She has written (and ghost-written) for many professional and business publications and is a chartered marketer and member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Extended Thinking

Extended Thinking is a hands-on marketing and business development consultancy.  Bringing together great minds and great ‘doers’, we help our clients devise and implement plans that achieve real business growth.  Our clients come from a wide variety of backgrounds and sectors, but invariably are those who are too busy or lack the resources to action their marketing and business development plans.  We roll our sleeves up and muck in to free them up to do what they really want to do and are good at doing. 

For more visit: www.extendedthinking.com

A while back I (a bit ironically perhaps) tweeted this message:
‘Consider what you give your attention to each day. It’s a precious resource, & determines the shape of your life.’

This seemed to strike a chord with many people, who I think are feeling overwhelmed these days. Our attention is being pulled in too many directions, leaving us feeling overloaded, distracted, chaotic, spread thinly, without focus.

There are a million blogs, people, services, media, competing for our attention. Our attention is limited, and valuable, making it one of the most precious resources we have.

The world wants that attention. Only you can decide where it goes.

And it does determine the shape of your life: what you pay attention to becomes your reality. If you watch and read the news all the time, you will become obsessed with the latest crises. If you watch and read about celebrities, your life will revolve around them. If you socialize on social networks all day long, this will become your world.

If instead, you choose to give your attention to work you’re passionate about, that you feel is important, that will change your life and the world in some small way … this will become your life.

If you choose to give your attention to your friends, family and other loved ones — really give your attention to them instead of only half-heartedly while also checking text messages and emails and other updates — your life will be rich in many ways.

And so I urge you to reclaim your attention.

Here’s how:

1. Limit your friends.

Not real-life friends, but social network and blogging and forum friends. Not that these can’t be good relationships, but having too many makes them meaningless. And each friend will take up a little bit of your attention — when you read their updates, click on their links, reply to their messages, look at their photos, and so on. The more you have, the more attention they’ll require. Limit them to just the essential. Read more.

2. Limit your feeds.

Blog subscriptions, newsletters, other updates and news subscriptions and so on. Limit them to a handful of essentials, and let the rest go. The more you have, the more attention they require.

3. Limit your communication time.

Going into your email inbox? Just give yourself 10 minutes to read, reply, delete, and get out. Going to do Twitter? Give yourself 5 minutes. Seriously, set up a timer. Don’t let these things take up all your attention.

4. Give up on news.

 It’s a never-ending cycle. And if you’ve paid attention to the news as long as I have (I’m a former journalist), you know it’s all the same, year after year. Unless your job depends on it, the news is usually a waste of your attention. Let go of the need to stay updated. Even if your job does depend on it, keep it limited.

5. Be brief.

Write brief emails, tweets, updates, blog posts. With some exceptions, of course. But make brief your de facto. Read more.

6. Give your attention to the important.

This is the crucial part: choose what you give your attention to, and do this choosing carefully. What is important to you? Writing? Photography? Design? Coding? Creating a new business that helps others? Your kids? Figure this out, and give this the majority of your attention.

7. Become conscious of your distractions.

Once you’ve decided to focus your attention on the important, become more aware of distractions as they come up. Make note of them, and as you get the urge to be distracted, learn to pause, breathe, and return to the important.

8. Surround yourself with the positive.

If you want your life to be positive, let the positive have your attention. This applies to blogs, people, projects, and more.

About the Author: Leo Barbauta author of the new best selling book, focus: a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction.

Financial goals in your business are no different from other goals that you set in your life, be it in your health, your family or your relationship. Just like these other areas of your life, there are times when you achieve exactly what it is that you set out to achieve and other times when you don’t. So what’s the difference that makes the difference?

1. Passion

As with anything in business, passion is a must have. If you are no longer passionate about what you do and why you do it, it’s going to be almost impossible to achieve your financial goals.

If you are already really passionate about what you do, then great! You’re on the right track. If you’re not, then take some time to truly understand what it is that you are passionate about, assess whether it’s viable from a business point of view and whether it will help you achieve your financial goals. If the answer is yes to these points then do that instead as you will be more committed and determined in the long term.

2. Clarity

In order to achieve your financial goals, you need clarity, not only about where you want to get too financially but also about where you are now financially in your business.

Set one overriding financial goal for the future, be it to sell your business, to retire or to hand over the business to your successor. Make sure that you know how achieving this goal will allow you to have the lifestyle that you want in the future.

Make sure that all of these goals are set in a S.M.A.R.T [1] way. Then set a number of smaller milestone goals along the way. These will keep you focused and allow you to check whether you are on track.

Lastly, take a good look at where your business is now. Where is it financially at this exact moment in time? Not in a few months once you’ve done your end of year accounts, as this information is historical. If you want to drive to Bristol, you need to know whether you are starting from London or Edinburgh. It’s the same with financial goals. You need to know where your starting point is to set the course of your business.

3. Planning

Once you have your financial goals clearly defined and you know exactly where you are now financially, you can build up your financial plan/ budget working backwards from where you want to get to. E.g. if you want to get to a yearly profit of £100k in ten years and you are currently making £10k then one way to get there is to increase profits by £10k per year.

Once you have written this plan out, walk away from it, leave it for at least 24 hours and then come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. Does it look realistic? Achievable? Does it stack up? Take it through the S.M.A.R.T criteria again and adjust it if necessary.

4. Take action and monitor progress

Once you have your plan of action, you need to take action. So how much action do you need to take? You need to take as much action as is required to achieve your outcome.

Once you have taken action and are making progress, review your financial position. Where are you now compared to where you started? Where are you compared to your financial goals? Where are you now compared to your financial plan/ budget? If you are on track then great! Keep Going! If not, you either need to take more action or change what you are doing.

Use the financial position of your company as feedback. If what you are doing is not working for you then modify it.

And lastly, keep going until you reach your goal. Your passion, drive and clarity of vision around all of your goals including your financial goals will keep you motivated to achieve what you set out to achieve.

Wishing you every success.

Nathalie Simpson

[1] S.M.A.R.T stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time

About the Author: Nathalie Simpson is the Managing Director of Simply Profitable, a business consultancy established to help make finance simple for SME’s and individuals. Simply Profitable helps SME’s and individuals improve their financial position and understand simple finance through its seminars and one on one financial training and consultancy. Get a free copy of “49 ways to increase profits” at www.simplyprofitable.co.uk

Whether you’re thinking of an idea to start off in business or mulling over how to grow, Emma Jones suggests ideas will come from asking five straight questions.   

Starting out

If you’d like to start a business and become your own boss but haven’t come up with an idea, start by asking yourself these three questions:

1. Is there a gap in the market? Have you tried to buy something that just can’t be found? If so, others may be looking too. Carry out research to gauge the number of people prepared to buy and plug that gap in the market with your product or service.

2. What is my passion/hobby/skill? As this can be turned into a way of making a living. Whatever your talent; whether it be photography, fashion, food, music, writing, you can earn an income from it. And if you’re making money from doing what you love, it never really feels like work!

3. Can I do what someone else is doing but do it better? Take a business idea and improve on it by adding your personal touch or an innovation. Attract customers by focusing on your point of difference.

Niche is nice

I used to deliver a presentation that included the line ‘What’s the BIG idea?’ but this gives the wrong impression as it’s not about having a ‘big’ idea – what’s important is to have a ‘niche’ idea. So ask yourself …

4. Does my idea cater to a niche audience? The more niche, the better. Bompass & Parr is a company that focuses on doing incredible things with Jelly (!), Green Union helps couples who want to have an eco friendly wedding, and Labels4kids.com sticks to its knitting (well, sewing) by providing personalised name labels and stickers for children. The benefits of a niche idea is you clearly know what you’re offering, and to whom. This keeps marketing costs low and customer satisfaction high.

Keep on innovating

You’ve developed a niche and a loyal following of customers and it’s time to come up with ideas to help the business grow. There’s one final question to ask of yourself:

5. Am I monetising my product/service in as many ways as possible without diluting the brand and quality of delivery?

Asking this question will challenge you to think of new revenue streams. If you sell a skill or knowledge, are you generating revenue by delivering that knowledge online, at events, and in print/digital format. If you’re doing all these things you can be generating income from online advertising, paid-for content, product sales and event fees. The opportunities are endless. And it all started with one small, niche idea!

If you have an idea and would like £100 to turn it into action, enter Ideas 101 http://bit.ly/ideas101

About the Author: Emma Jones is founder of Enterprise Nation www.enterprisenation.com, a business expert, and author of ‘Spare Room Start Up’ and ‘Working 5 to 9’

A desperate entrepreneur contacted me recently. “I need to get clients immediately,” she said. “I’ve been trying for months with no success, and I’m almost out of money.” When I asked her how she had been marketing herself all this time, she gave me the following list of what she had been doing:

• Attending networking events where she met people, introduced herself, and exchanged business cards
• Launched a brochure-style website describing her services      
• Purchased ads in several directories where businesses like hers were featured
• Printed some flyers and posted them on bulletins around town                                                                                                                        

 Now here’s some of what she hadn’t been doing:

• Never asked any of the people she met at networking events to have coffee, get better acquainted, or find out more about their needs
• Never looked around her community to see who might be a good referral source and ask them to consider referring business to her
• Never told her friends and former co-workers about her new business and asked them to let others know about it
• Never asked anyone else in her profession where they found their clients

In other words, she had never asked anyone for help, even though she was drowning.

I’ve heard sad stories like this many times over the 18 years that I’ve been helping entrepreneurs find clients. It seems there is a persistent myth that the “right” way to get clients is to do it all on your own. Yes, many entrepreneurs do tend to be Lone Rangers and enjoy their independence, but this determined avoidance of asking for help goes beyond ordinary self-reliance. It’s almost as if these business owners had been told getting help was illegal.

Because of this pervasive do-it-all-yourself attitude, I hear from many entrepreneurs that they are embarrassed or ashamed to ask for any assistance. One business owner told me, “I was really struggling, but I couldn’t ask anyone to help me, because then they would think I was a failure.” Tragically, by refusing to ask for help, he was actually causing himself to fail.

Let’s bust this myth wide open, here and now. Successful people ask for help all the time. It’s how they become successful. That is how the business world works. Entrepreneurs do not build successful businesses all on their own. They build them with the help of their family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, networking contacts, customers, and fans.

Here are five approaches to get started with asking for help to build your business right now.

1. Ask and ye shall receive.

If you’ve been feeling held back by believing that asking for help is somehow weak, presumptuous, or taking unfair advantage, let those feelings go. Give yourself permission to ask for help, recognizing that all around you, people more successful than you are doing exactly that in order to succeed.

The people already in your life — family, friends, colleagues — truly want to give you their support. They just need to be asked, and shown how. If you have not yet told every single person you know about your business, now is the time. Tell them what services you offer, the type of clients you are seeking, and ask them to please spread the word about how you can help the people they know.

2. Make your requests specific.

First, make sure you are actually asking, and not just hinting. Direct requests are much more likely to produce results. Say, “Would you introduce me to your friend?” instead of, “It would be good to meet your friend sometime, but I know you’re awfully busy.”

Second, be specific about what you’re asking. Saying, “Please refer me some clients,” is nowhere near as effective a request as, “The best clients for me are people who care about their health and are suffering from back, neck, or joint pain. Do you know anyone like that?”

3. Offer something in return.

People are more likely to respond to your requests — and you’ll feel better about making them — when you offer something in return. When speaking with entrepreneurs, ask who would be a good client for them, and how you can best refer likely prospects. When speaking with others, just ask them: “What can I do for you?” Simply showing your willingness to make the relationship reciprocal is often enough for both of you to feel comfortable about your request.

4. Make your request appropriate to the relationship.

You’d be amazed how often I get emails like the following: “I’m brand new in business, and I do exactly what you do. I imagine you get more inquiries from prospective clients than you can handle. Would you refer some of those to me?” I applaud these folks for taking the initiative to ask, but a request like this isn’t appropriate to make of a complete stranger.

Spend some time getting acquainted before asking for a referral. Entrepreneurs who share your target market, but don’t do the same work, are ideal candidates to become referral partners. When you encounter successful people who are essentially your competitors, ask them to share their wisdom about where to find good clients. You’ll find that most other entrepreneurs will be happy to help you when you approach them with reciprocity and respect.

5. Don’t wait until you’ve made it.

If you wait until your business takes off to let friends and colleagues know about it, you will lose out on the most likely source of referrals most new businesses have. If you wait for clients to send you referrals instead of reaching out to likely referral partners, you may never have enough clients to make those referrals. If you wait for people you meet while networking to contact you instead of contacting them to ask how you can help, you may be waiting a very long time.

Asking for help is not cheating. It’s how anything important ever gets done. Stop struggling all alone! Start asking for help, and you’ll also start building your business.

About the Author: C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now!™ Thousands of business owners and independent professionals have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of “Five Secrets to Finding All the Clients You’ll Ever Need” at www.getclientsnow.com.

Every business should have a website, right?

True. Every business, big or small, should have some sort of web presence. The internet is part of every day life and, as you don’t need thousands of pounds to get a business online now, there really is little excuse for a business not to a have a website created at some point.

But my question to you today is whether your website is a help or a hindrance?

Just because you’re online, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s doing anything for you. And worse case scenario is that your website could actually be working against you.

Let’s look at how the average person uses the web. Did you know that the average time it takes for someone to “read” a website is 3 seconds?

Think back to the last time you used Google to find something. You may have been looking for the best place to buy toner cartridges for your printer. It could have been that you were trying to find a villa or cottage to rent for your holiday this summer.

Do you remember how long you took to make the decision to hit that back button and go on to the next website on the search results listings? I am pretty sure it took you less than that average of 3 seconds on the websites that didn’t grab you.

How long would it take for a visitor landing on your home page to make a decision to stay or go? 1 minute? 10 seconds? Or less than the average 3 seconds?

And imagine if they were on hold to their bank at the time. Or waiting for a file to download on to their laptop, whilst they click through to your website. How is your website grabbing their attention?

It could be that your website is being more of a hindrance, than a help!

Here are some of the common “hindrances” that I see every day on websites that don’t generate any leads or new clients for a business.

1. A website that talks about the company and not the potential customer.

Look at your home page and for every “We”, “I” and your company name, exchange it for the words “You”, “You” and “You”. People are only interested in themselves when they are looking for someone to help them. It’s all very well that you are the market leaders in what you do, but how is that going to benefit your clients?

2. A website that is so obviously “home-made”.

You may have gone on a HTML programming course to save yourself a few pennies. You may have even used your next door neighbour’s son who is studying IT at Uni. But saving money on your website to end up with a site that doesn’t work in a particular browser or doesn’t display on a mobile phone will only push clients away. There is really little excuse not to have a nicely designed website. Using blog platforms such as wordpress.org, for example, mean that you can have a simple, professional looking site that works, set up for as little as £500.

3. A website that has a fussy design, clashing colours and is more concerned with how pretty or trendy it looks.

Internet users want to find their information quickly, rather than hunt for it in cleverly worded menus or images. Flash introductions just annoy – remember the 3 second time limit. Unless your clients expect to watch a dancing cartoon or slideshow, they will be gone before it’s finished playing!

4. A website with no obvious purpose.

Static brochure style websites just don’t “do” anything. They may look pretty and give lots of information, but what is that website visitor meant to do? Picking up the phone and making an enquiry may just be too big a leap to make. They will more than likely leave and move on to the next site on their search lists.

This last point has to be the one that I rant about the most. A website with no obvious purpose is a waste of time. It just floats around in hyperspace, gathering pixel dust and being ignored by by anyone who happens to stumble upon it.

For the majority of small businesses, the most effective purpose to give your website is to help build a database of potential customers.

The competition to be found through search engines is so fierce, you can’t afford to trust that your website visitors will bookmark your site and come back another day. They will have found what they are looking for by then and you’ll have lost a client.

Having a website whose primary purpose is to invite visitors to leave their name and email address has been proved to be one of the most successful online marketing strategies to have for the majority of small businesses.

It creates the opportunity for you to build a relationship with that visitor so, over time, they trust you enough to become a paying customer.

How do you do this?

Capturing names and email addresses by offering something in return is something so simple and yet so many small business owners don’t do this. And the easiest way of offering something in return is to offer a free newsletter, a free e-course or free report. The options available to you are limitless.

You may be keen to start your own email newsletter but feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information out there. I know I get enough emails asking me about them so if you haven’t started one or in the early stages of creating a database, then do check out my “How To Do Email Newsletters” programme starting this month.

In the meanwhile, start by checking out your website right now. Ask yourself – is yours a help or a hindrance?

And what are you going to do about it?

About the Author: Karen Skidmore helps small business owners work smarter and use the right marketing tools so they can attract more of the right clients to their business. To subscribe to her free email newsletter and get access to practical advice and marketing ideas that will move your business forward, visit www.CanDoCanBe.com

If your goal is to start a small online business that replaces and exceeds your current income this may be the most important article you read this year.

Brash, huh?

Here’s the deal: I’ve been working online full time for almost 10 years, since age 19. I’ve had a lot of failures and a lot of successes.

There is no better way to learn how to succeed than to learn from someone who has already done it.

Tip 1: Focus On What’s Important

What’s important? Action.

In the beginning, just get started. Don’t get too caught up in details that don’t matter.

Dealing with the paperwork, business cards, and other ancillaries isn’t absolutely necessary.

It’s an online business for a reason. Save the time, paper, and money and don’t get business cards.

If you happen to meet someone who wants to know more about you or wants to visit your site ask for their e-mail address and actively follow up with them.

Handing out business cards is passive, and even more than that, ineffective. (Unless your name is Johnny B Truant and you do something really unique that gets people talking.)

Other paperwork a lot of people get caught up in is registering a corporation or other business entity. That will be important eventually. But you can start a business in your own name with very minimal paperwork (a simple Doing Business As form) and cost.

Consult a tax advisor for specific insights.

Tip 2: Invest In Education

Whatever business you want to start, be it blogging, eBay sales, information product selling, affiliate marketing, or any one of the countless other ways to make money online, there are hords of people who have done it before you.

Sometimes those people will have written about what they did to succeed. In those cases, if their business aligns with what you want to do, don’t be afraid to invest money into their products.

Personally, I have easily spent upwards of £26,000 on non-University education. That includes buying eBooks, print books, seminars, coaching, membership sites, you name it.

As a general rule, the most important skill you can learn, no matter what business you’re starting, is marketing. I don’t make a distinction between online and offline marketing. Once you learn marketing you can use it anywhere, with a few tweaks of course.

I liken it to learning computer programming. The language you learn isn’t as important as the logic behind it. You can adapt to any language.

Tip 3: Ask For Help

If you’re a bit introverted like me you might be shy about asking for help.

Don’t let that be a barrier to your success.

In other words, feel the fear and do it anyway.

You will deal with rejection. Many people won’t respond to your e-mails, phone calls, or tweets.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter.

Starting a business isn’t supposed to be easy. That’s the filter.

I promise you, if you talk to enough people, you will get the help you need. I’ve been quite surprised by just how accessible some people I was initially afraid to contact are.

Bonus hint: I’ve had greater success connecting with ultra successful people than those who are just ultra successful in their heads.

The key to getting a response is to send very short, very succinct e-mails. Practice the http://five.sentenc.es rule. Keep your e-mail to five sentences and make it clear what you’re asking.

Tip 4: Participate In The Community

Whatever niche you’re in there is a community.

For example, back in the days when I used to sell on eBay, I hung out on a few eBay message boards. I helped people where I could and I got help where I needed.

As an added bonus, when I decided to start selling eBay how to products (I haven’t sold them for over 5 years), guess who helped me launch that business? The same community that I had participated in freely for over a year.

These days, whichever community you should be a part of is larger and more easily accessible. Take advantage of that.

Tip 5: Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Coming from a guy who wrote 21 Reasons You Should Quit Your Day Job and Travel The World, this might seem shocking.

Your ultimate goal may be to quit your job, but don’t jump the gun.

You will find tons of stories of people who quit their jobs before they had their businesses going, but there’s a reason for that.

People who failed furiously because they didn’t have an income to support themselves in the lean business startup phase don’t usually write about it. And because they don’t write about their failures, you never hear about them.

I want you to quit your job as much as you want to quit your job, but I don’t want you to do it before it’s time.

About the Author: Karol Gajda is a lifelong entrepreneur who blogs about Freedom, Health, Travel, and Life at RidiculouslyExtraordinary.com. Today he launches his excellent guide, How To Live Anywhere.

Look beyond traffic and links and you will find the real value. Social media, and by that I’m lumping together blogs, RSS, social networking and social book marking sites, presents the marketer with a rich set of new tools to help in the effort to generate new business.

You can’t approach new media with old thinking. Taking full advantage of social media requires understanding and adopting a specific social media strategy.

First and foremost you must appreciate the differences between social media and, say, direct mail. With direct mail the outcome is likely, to create an action. With most social media, it’s to create a connection. Both of these have equally important places in the long-term health of a business, but how they happen is significantly different.

Try to do one with the other and the results may actually backfire – ie: Ads on Facebook? There are definitely instances in which a social media play can align with an organization’s industry focus and become natural facilitators of lead acquisition.

I think the best way to look at social media, though, is to view it as a way to open up access points. These points can then be leveraged to create content, connection, and community. Do that well, and they can also add to lead generation, nurturing and conversion. Think of your web site as the ultimate destination or bucket to catch what comes through your social media access points.

Blogging

If content is one of the golden measures, blogs are a given. This one has become so mainstream it’s hard to think of in the same light as say Facebook. Blogging enhances all forms of content creation, drives search traffic and enables the start of connection and community in the form of comments and conversation. Employing this tool effectively feels a bit like social media 101 – a required course of action before advancing.

In Action: A blog connected to or functioning as your website, a blog network for your customers, a blog network for your strategic partners, an idea blog for your industry.

Tools – Typepad, Wordpress, Wordpress MU, MovableType, Drupal, Square Space, Twitter

RSS

Perhaps best known as a subset of blogging, RSS is what drives the spreading, filtering and aggregating of ideas and content. RSS technology has the ability to make content more useful.

In Action: Simply researching through news, republishing news and search results, reformatting information – data and calendars, creating custom news feeds, mashing lots of feeds into one.

Tools – bloglines.com, Google Reader, GoogleNews, YahooNews, aideRSS, mySyndicaat, Feedburner

Social Bookmarking and News

Social news and book mark sites live to promote ideas and reward the creators of those ideas for creativity and consistency. The best social news plays consist of targeted campaigns focused at a specific site or audience.

Getting on page one of Digg or del.icio.us or creating this week’s viral hit on You Tube can send your site’s traffic through the roof, but there a couple things to consider.

These are communities that reward participation and hard work (that’s not to say people haven’t figured out ways to beat the system, but go in realize that methodical work is ahead.)

Choose a community with the proper focus. Digg is technology heavy, Small Business Brief is for small business

Tools: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, YouTube, Google Video, Mixx, Small Business Brief

Best Practices: Build deep once, Study and read, Find and pitch influencers, Make it easy for you and your readers, Build networks, Promote your chosen site.

Social Networking

The recent rise in popularity of sites like MySpace and Facebook clearly points to the desire for community. As marketers rush to these sites it becomes clear that virtual “no soliciting” signs are hung out.

Networks are networks and while the meeting place may be new, the rules (manners) are the same. If you goal is to establish yourself as an influencer of an existing network, you must be prepared to earn the right, mostly by giving, helping, guiding and building relationships without overt efforts to cash in.

The long term can be very fruitful, with patience you can make connections, improve your visibility and increase sales.

Tools: ecademy, Facebook, mySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Jigsaw, Ryze

Best Practices: Participate actively, Pitch influencers, Make it easy for yourself and your network, Find connections

Building Your Own Social Network

The next wave in community building is the personalized, niche, hand-build community. There are some emerging tools that make this idea much more doable, but creating your own community is a serious investment in terms of time and resources. Done well it can be the ultimate in terms of building a brand.

Tools: Drupal, Ning, KickApps, OneSite

About the Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting www.ducttapemarketing.com

If you want to live your dreams, not only must you decide what you want, turn your dream into measurable goals, break those goals down into specific action steps, and visualize and affirm your desired outcomes — you must start taking action.

I recommend making the commitment to do something every day in at least three different areas of your life that moves you in the direction of your dreams.

If one of your goals is physical fitness, make a commitment to do some sort of exercise — aerobics, weight training, stretching -four to five times a week for a minimum of twenty minutes.

I read recently that if you simply go for a 30 minute walk four times a week, that would put you in the top 1% of those people getting physical exercise! If your goal is financial independence, start saving and investing a portion of your income every month with no exceptions. If your goal is to write a book, write for a minimum of one hour every day.

DON’T LET FEAR STOP YOU

Most people never get what they want because they let their fears stop them. They are afraid of making a mistake, looking foolish, getting ripped off, being rejected, being hurt, wasting their time, and feeling uncomfortable. Fear is self-created by imagining catastrophic consequences that have yet to happen. It is all in your mind. In fact, you can actually scare yourself by imagining negative and harmful images. But simply stop the catastrophic thoughts and images, and the fear goes away.

REJECTION IS A MYTH

One of the biggest fears that stops people from asking for support, guidance, advice, money, a date, a job, the sale, or anything else is the fear of rejection. In fact, it’s been known to literally paralyze people. They become tongue-tied and refuse to reach for the phone or get up and walk across the room. They break out in a sweat at the mere thought of asking for what they want. I have come to realize that the whole concept of rejection is false — that rejection doesn’t really exist. Think about it for a moment. If you asked someone to join you for dinner, and they said no, you could tell yourself that you had been rejected. But think about it. Did you have anyone to eat dinner with before you asked them? No! Did you have anyone to eat dinner with after you asked them? No! Did your life really get worse? No. It stayed the same!

ACT AS IF

One of the secrets of success is to start acting like a success before you are one.

Act as if. If you had already achieved your dream, what kinds of clothes would you be wearing? How would you act? How would you treat others? Would you tithe a portion of your income to your church or favorite charities? Would you have more self-confidence? Would you take more time to spend with your loved ones?

I suggest that you begin to do those things now.

When I decided that I wanted to be an “international” consultant, I immediately went and applied for a passport, bought an international clock that told me what time it was anywhere in the world, printed business cards with the words “International Self-Esteem and Peak Performance Consultant,” and decided I would like to first go to Australia. I bought a poster of the Sydney Opera House and placed it on my refrigerator. Within one month, I received an invitation to speak in Sydney and Brisbane. Since then, I have spoken and conducted trainings in over 20 countries and continue to expand my business around the globe.

Start acting as if you already have everything you want.

Most people think that if they have a lot of money, they could do the things they want to do, and they would be much happier. In fact, the reverse is true. If you start by creating a state of happiness and abundance, then do the things you are inspired to do from that state of being, you will end up having all the things you ultimately desire. You may not be able to fill your closets with expensive Italian suits and designer clothing, but why not invest in one or two really great outfits, so that when you do need them, they are there. When you dress like you have already made it, you will look the part, and successful people will naturally be attracted to you and invite you to participate with them.

The Law of Attraction

States that you will attract to you those things that match your state of being. If you focus on having gratitude for what you do have, you will feel rich, and you will attract more abundance into your life. If you focus on what you don’t have, you will send out a message of lack and you will attract more lack into your life.

For more on The Law of Attraction, I recommend reading and watching The Secret, a ground-breaking, feature-length movie presentation and bestselling book.

About the Author: Jack Canfield, America’s Success Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and the nation’s leading authority on Peak Performance. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at www.JackCanfield.com and http://www.freesuccessstrategies.com/