Build the Most From the Least

This weekend I came home from Houston Texas with a plaque that I couldn’t have earned a few years ago.  This might sound a little funny, but bear with me for a moment.  If you run a business, you need a hobby.  Sometimes your hobby is purely an outlet of stress, other times it is a place where you can let your mind do some background processing and clarify problems you have in life or in your business.  This is how successful people see a way around obstacles in life.  Sometimes, your hobby is a reflection of the problems in your life that need to be corrected.

One of my longer term hobbies has been racing in the 24Hours of LeMons series.  No, that isn’t a spelling error, it really is lemons.  The cars are junk, literally junk. 

The idea in the 24 Hours of Lemons is that you are supposed to take a junk car that you paid $500 or less for, and race it.  There are a lot of safety rules and track rules and team rules.  When my friend and business associate, Gabrielle Magno of Maxxom Communications in Houston and I first came up with the idea for the team, we both tried to do everything.  We couldn’t get other people to help or pay money to be on the team.  Just like many small businesses, we were targeting the wrong customer base.  Just because someone is our friend, it doesn’t make them a team member.

Stay Focused for Success

Some time ago, Chris Anderson of Wired magazine wrote the now infamous article about "the long tail". He argued that the music industry needed to have broad based "hits" and serve narrow "niches". How does this apply to staying focused for success or Internet marketing for an attorney in Fresno, California or an Aston-Martin dealer in Scottsdale (or Scotsdale as I have been known to spell it) Arizona?

The long tail theory applies to smaller businesses and Internet marketing in a very direct way. Successful Internet marketing only happens when you know exactly how people are looking for you. The search engines are smart, but if they were perfect, they would match the right website to the right person every time and Internet advertising would die along with their key source of revenue (and mine).

Success Secret: Figure Out What You Really Do.

Every time I sit down with a business owner they are asking me to bring in more business through the Internet. My first question is always the same, "What kind of business do you want?" This meets with generally puzzled stares, and many times it's followed by the statement "why all of it of course!"

Bankruptcy attorneys tell me that people come to them for one simple reason. They don't know what to do or what they're doing. Because they have no guidance they get in trouble and can't figure out any other way to solve the problem than seeking help from a bankruptcy attorney. Most of the time a business owner is introduced to me it is a similar situation, they are bleeding cash or a very stressed and frustrated and can't figure out why. Their solution is to go get more business. The problem with this solution is very simple, if the business loses money performing its tasks why do you want to get more of those tasks? If business is frustrated by performing those tasks why do you want to get more business to perform more of those tasks?