Quick W.I.T.S.

Modern businesses are more accessible to their customers and potential customers than ever before. But that availability can be a double-edged sword. It's easier to engage with customers, but that also means customers expect to be able to engage with you. And they are more likely to engage with a competitor instead if you're not available when and where they are looking. Social media can be a fantastic tool for reaching an audience, but it can also be an intimidating, overwhelming time sink that takes you away from doing actual paying work. So what's a small business supposed to do? You want to be available for your customers and have a presence online. But you can't spare hours a day to browse around social media, write tons of content, and engage in conversations. And you also can't afford to hire someone else to do that sort of thing full time, either. What's the answer? Here are some tips for getting started on social media and turning your business in...

So here's an interesting thought experiment. Let's say you need a new wicket. You know that one company sells a wicket for $15, and another company sells a wicket for $30. Either company can have it delivered to your door in 24 hours. There are no pictures, no product description, and no customer reviews available. All you know is the price. Which one do you order? Which one do you think most people would order? Surprisingly, it's a lot closer to an even split than you might assume. You see, while a lot of people are always looking for a bargain, there are quite a lot of people who are suspicious of a price that's lower for no apparent reason - to them, price is tied to quality, so a lower price always denotes an inferior product. And let's be honest... that's often the case. If you get three quotes from three different plumbers for a job, and one of them comes in with a quote that's a thousand dollars less than the other two, you'll immedia...

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it takes to make a successful business. When you look at certain companies out there, it's very obvious that their owners and employees have put a tremendous amount of effort into the business. They have passion, dedication, and they've clearly put in the time to build something to be proud of. With others, you honestly aren't sure how they are successful at all, or how they're still in business. It's not always obvious how a company got to be large enough to become self-sustaining. I think of these two types of businesses as lucky vs. hard-working. My friend Max Sinnis  and I had a conversation about this just a few weeks ago. Clearly there are hard-working businesses out there - you can see this in their clever or innovative advertising campaigns, their well-thought-out online strategies, their engagement with their customers, or their constant strive to be better and do better. But Max doesn't believe in luck w...

So needless to say, things haven't exactly gone as I planned with the blog. I've been busy dealing with some personal issues, as well as working on getting the business itself up and running. I won't go into long-winded explanations here - those who know me, know what I'm talking about. That said, things are starting to get a little bit more back to "normal," whatever that is, so I'm going to try to start this up again. I've been using the built in blog function that came with my site's builder tool, and it's okay, but I'm looking for something with more options. I like how Blogger works, and I'm comfortable with it, so I'm going to continue using that for writing the blog itself. The only real problem I have now, is that I haven't found a satisfying way to embed the blog into my site so far. I don't like the idea of linking to it instead of just having it in the actual site. The navigation tool from the sitebuilder does...