Are you being true to yourself in your business?

When I first heard the quote from Irish writer and poet Oscar Wilde “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken”, I thought it was one of the most brilliant things anyone had ever said.

Maybe I was just ready to hear it.

I was fresh out of college, working in my first job as a merchandise buyer and ready to take the world of retail by storm.

Of course, growing up I know people had echoed that same sentiment to me in many forms. “Be yourself honey, don’t try to be like someone else.” my favorite aunt used to say to me.  “People will like you for who you are.  And if they don’t, they’re not your true friends.” said Fergie (a friend of the family, who was “Fergie”, way before the singer “Fergie” or Fergie the Duchess of York became famous.)

But for some reason it never quite rang true until I heard the quote from OscarWilde.

I think it was the “everyone else is already taken” that really clicked with me.

I remember thinking to myself “yah they are already taken”.  And it was in that moment that I felt like someone had given me permission to be myself.

So if everybody else was already taken, I may as well be me and enjoy it!

It made sense.

I started thinking about this the other day, when I was thinking that maybe I should switch from pronouncing the word niche (rhymes with switch) to niche (rhymes with quiche).

You see I’m interviewed a lot on the radio about the topic of niche markets. And over the past couple years, I’ve noticed more and more, the people who interview me are pronouncing the word “niche” like “quiche”.

So on interviews it sometimes feels like a game of “niche-niche tennis”. The interviewer says niche (rhymes with quiche) and I reply with niche (rhymes with switch). And I can just imagine our audience listening in and laughing at the niche – niche banter.

A few years ago no one, except my friend Robin Cowie, former president of Worldwide Brands and producer of the Blair Witch Project pronounced niche  like quiche. But with Rob  it sounded good, because he grew up in South Africa  and has one of those totally awesome accents that makes plain old English words sound like something special.

However, over the past few years, I’ve noticed that everyone seems to be now pronouncing  niche like quiche. Maybe it sounds more sophisticated.

So a few weeks ago, I decided in the interest of radio interview compatibility, I’d better start pronouncing niche like quiche and not niche like switch.

The first few interviews, it went OK. I had to stop myself from pronouncing niche like  switch a couple times.

But it was fine… until this afternoon. When I gave a 90 minute energy filled teleseminar called “15 Creative Ways to Make Money on eBay”.

I started out saying niche = quiche, but then I got so wrapped up in showing people how they can think our of the box when it comes to making money on eBay, that niche just automatically popped out like switch.

“Great “I thought, “now I’m having a game of niche-niche tennis with myself.” LOL!

90 minutes later I wrapped up the teleseminar totally psyched because I knew I’d expanded people’s vision of how they can use eBay to make some money.

And you know what?

They didn’t care if I said niche = quiche, niche = switch or niche = nicho (the Spanish pronounciation).  What people cared about was that I gave them 15 great ideas about what to sell on eBay and how to sell on eBay.

And it was at that point I thought of Oscar Wilde’s quote. “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”

Right then and there I decided I was going to pronounce niche = switch like I always have. I was not going to rework the pronunciation.

Niche = switch is who I am. My favorite food is pizza. I don’t like “nouveau Northwest Cuisine”.  But I do like to shop at Nordstrom. No rhyme or reason. It’s just who I am.

How about you?

Are you being true to yourself in your business? Or are you trying to be someone you’re not?

Are you trying to copy someone else’s style because you think they have “it” and you don’t? Or do you think there’s only one persona you can adopt to “make it” online.

There’s a big difference between observing a successful person’s behavior and modeling what they do within the context of your own personality.  Versus completely squashing your true essence in the name of “success”.

So are you building an online business that reflects your authentic personality? I hope so.  Because it affects the kind of customers you attract. And if you attract the wrong customers your sales will suffer.

Something to percolate on. And if you ever feel yourself tempted to be someone else in your business other than who you really are… remember – everyone else is already taken.

-Lisa

The only thing constant about entrepreneurship is change. If you’re not one for change, prefer the status quo and like to keep things “as is” for was long as possible, then being the CEO of your own business is probably not for you. Nothing will kill your online business faster than stagnation.

Keeping your business current  is the name of the game. Although this doesn’t mean “chasing rabbits” or having ‘bright shiny object syndrome”.  Nor does it mean dumping your core values.

A current  business  means your market + your products + your marketing + YOU = are in tune, fresh and relevant in your niche!

Unfortunately, even the most well-intentioned entrepreneurs can let things get stale. Reinventing doesn’t mean starting from scratch. It means updating, refreshing and sometimes retooling.

So how do you know if your business is ready to be reinvented? Here are 7 business and personal signs that tell you it’s time!

7 Signs It’s Time to Reinvent Your Online Business

1. You’re doing things exactly the same way you did a six-months, a year, two years ago or more. Things happen fast on the Internet. (That’s one of the things I love about it the most.) Everyday brings a new tool, technology, strategy, opportunity. Your customers change. The market changes. If you’re doing business in exactly the same manner you were 6 months ago, your business is losing ground. What’s one new thing you’ve implemented in your business this month?

2. What your customers want to buy from you has changed, but your offerings haven’t. Can you imagine going to your favorite store week-after-week and seeing the same products displayed the same way? It wouldn’t take long for you to say “What’s the point of coming here anymore, everything is always the same?”  What new things are you offering your customers? Are you continually bringing exciting products into your business?  It doesn’t matter what you sell – whether it’s physical products, affiliate products or digital products – you have to continually introduce new products into the marketplace in order to keep up with what people are buying now.

3. Your business model isn’t a viable business model. If you’ve read my recent blog post on profiting without passion or purpose, you know that I am a firm believer that you can’t be successful in your online business without a passion, purpose or interest. But that doesn’t mean “do what you love and the money will follow”. If you love goats and want to build a business selling goat products but there isn’t a big enough market for goat products – you don’t have a viable business model. If you want to build a business selling common craft project instructions that are widely available for free on the internet, it’s going to be a tough-go. And many times your business model and your numbers don’t add up.  I had a client who wanted to design, sew and sell her own clothes online. She also wanted to make a consistent $10,000 a month in her first year with no additional staff. We ran the numbers – she wouldn’t have had enough hours in the week to turn out the inventory required to make that kind of money on her own. Even with staff, she would have been working for free. Passion, interest and optimism are core when running your own business. But a viable business model is a requirement.

4. Sales are lagging. If your sales are not what they used to be, something has changed. And before things get any worse, you need to find out what the problem is and figure out a way to solve it by reinventing what your business offers.  If you sell physical products, the first place to start is by looking at your product line.  What new products have you brought into your product line recently?  If the answer is none, it’s time to restock. If you’re marketing affiliate products and your sales have dropped, what’s changed? How’s your traffic, what’s the demand for the product your marketing, did you get slapped by Google? If you’re business is not growing, it’s dying.  But don’t let it get to that point before you refresh and reinvent it.

5. Your niche is declining or has changed. Every niche market ebbs and flows, morphs and changes. This is why it’s so important to stay on top of the trends in your industry. Trends are about people – your customers. Lifestyle changes, demographics, the economy, marketplace changes all dictate the trends in your niche.  What about your niche? What’s really going on in it today?  Is it growing, changing or declining? How has it changed? Where does your business fit in?

6. You haven’t grown as a person and neither has your business. The person you are when you make your first $1 on the Internet is not the same person you’ll be when you make your first $10,000 or $100,000 or $1,000,000,000.”

In fact, it’s impossible for you to remain the same and make more money. If you’re not growing as a person, neither is your business. That’s why if you haven’t made your first $1000 yet, you shouldn’t be worried about how you are going to make your million.  You’ll  grow and change along the way and as you grow, so does ability to make money.

7. You’ve lost passion/interest in your business. This one is tricky. Because there is a fine line between temporary boredom or frustration in your business and a true loss of passion/interest. And  of course there are a whole slew of emotional reasons why we may think we’ve lost passion in our business, but we haven’t. Things like fear of failure, fear of success, wanting to “have fun” and not work, reluctance to adhere to a schedule, perfectionism, you name it. But don’t kid yourself. You know in your gut if you’ve truly lost passion/interest in the business you’ve been running. And if you have, the time to sell it or reinvent it is now. Don’t wait for it to die on the vine so that you have an “excuse” to shut things down.  I see this happen all the time. Instead of taking a stance of power and saying “I’m ready to move on.” and then sell the business or reinvent it while it’s still profitable, they wait till it’s on life support to make changes. It’s a lot easier to sell or reinvent a business when it’s on top.

Catalyst for Change

Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

If it’s time to reinvent your business, it’s better done sooner than later. There’s no sense in waiting a moment longer to reinvent a business to make it more profitable!

How about you? Is it time to reinvent your business? Have you recently reinvented your business? Share your experiences below…

To-do lists don’t work. In fact, they often quickly become “Didn’t Get It Done Lists” for even the most well-intentioned entrepreneurs.

Why?

Because most people make a daily to-do list packed with more tasks than they could ever accomplish in one day.

I call this being “Time Optimistic™”.

Time Optimistic is a state of mind that lets you think you can organize the office, put together your email newsletter, write a blog post, add new inventory to your website, finish that special report, make a couple joint venture calls, take care of the kids, run a few errands and cook a cozy dinner for ten – all in one day.

How do I know about being Time Optimistic?  Well if the definition of  Time Optimistic were in the dictionary, you’d see my picture next to it. 

When I got started in business, I’d write these looonnng to-do lists… I’d easily fill up an 8.5 x 11″ piece of paper each day fully anticipating that I’d get it all done.

But I kept falling short.  Day after day.  And it was frustrating. 

In fact one of the most common concerns I hear from small business owners is that there’s not enough time in the day to get it all done!

Finally I decided that if I was going to run a successful, profitable business, I needed to get a handle on it.

I knew it was time to learn to manage my Time Optimistic nature. (Notice I said manage, not cure.)

I tried a lot of different systems, read a ton of different books, listened to various experts – until one day, it occurred to me….

“What would happen if I scheduled the activities on my to-do list on my calendar?”

Make an appointment with myself to get the things done that I KNEW would move my business forward.

What if I made an appointment with myself, just like I did with clients and colleagues and stuck to my scheduled appointment time?

It’s sounded like a practical approach,  so I decided to try it.

My first big wake-up call happened when I tried to schedule everything that was on my 8.5 x 11″ to-do list into one calendar day.  There weren’t enough slots. It was at that moment that I realized I’d been like a hamster on a treadmill, running as fast as I could with no hope of ever “catching up”.

And I knew I needed to get real with my time.

So I started scheduling my most important tasks on the calendar each day.  And then I stuck to the schedule.  And tracked how much time it actually took me to do things versus what I’d expected.

And I called them Action Appointments™.

When you set up Action Appointments with yourself, you’ll also find that the things that you imagine will take hours, usually take no time at all.  The things you think will be quick and easy, usually take the most time.

Hour-by-hour, in as little as 15 minute increments, I scheduled each task as an Action Appointment .

And I was AMAZED at what happened next!

I had been so worried that if I didn’t accomplish everything on my to-do list that my business would start to fall apart.

But what really happened shocked me.

When I scheduled Action Appointments, I actually completed things!  And because I was now committed to scheduling and completing the tasks that I knew would  grow my business – it began to grow at a pace that I’d never imagined possible.

I went from feeling like I was constantly scrambling to check things off a never-ending list, to feeling like I was in control of my business and my LIFE.

And the big surprise is that even though I was doing less “stuff” the actions I was taking were key to the growth of my business.

I’ve scheduled Action Appointments with myself every day since.

Schedule? Structure? Yuck! What About the 4 Hour Work Week?

Many people get on the road of online entrepreneurship because they’ve heard that running your own business offers you freedom from a schedule, the ability to do what you want when you want to.

And it does – to a point.

The good news is that as an entrepreneur you do have the freedom to work whenever you want to. But you have to put in consistent time on your business every day.

If you’re at your most creative from 12:00 -4:00am, there’s no reason you can’t work between 12:00 and 4:00am.  But you have to schedule that time as work time on your calendar and then keep that appointment.

When you have an appointment with yourself, it also makes it easier to say “no” to people who want to eat up your time during the day because “you work from home”.

Because of my Action Appointments I also know exactly what I need to do that day when I hit my desk in the morning.

Scheduling Action Appointments Does Not Require You to Be Inflexible or a Perfectionist

Without Action Appointments I couldn’t have built a successful business, taken care of my family, managed the house etc.  It would not have happened.

But I don’t want to give anyone the impression that every day is  smooth sailing and I never miss an Action Appointment. Some days life happens.

I have days when I don’t get it all done.  When there are literally not enough hours in the day.  When there are not enough slots on the calendar for the important tasks.

I still have days that feel out of control, times when I feel overwhelmed.

But it doesn’t worry me because I always get back to my Action Appointments. If Tuesday was chaotic, I start fresh on Wednesday with my new Action Appointments. And I get right back on track.  It’s one thing to lose focus for 24 hours. It’s another to lose focus for a week or two.

Action Appointments Will Work for You Too!

How about you?

Do you feel like you have too much to do?

Do you sit at your desk paralyzed, not knowing what to do next?

Do you end each day frustrated or demoralized because you didn’t get everything done?  Or even worse, not making the money you know you could be if only you could fit it all in.

Then it’s time to start making your own Action Appointments.

In fact, soon after I saw the results I was getting,  I began introducing this approach to my coaching clients to see if it would work for them.

I saw the same transformations in their businesses too!

New clients who had been struggling endlessly to get things done and dragging a mile long to-do list with them day by day, started making Action Appointments and almost immediately started making more money. They were also less stressed, happier, felt more and control and most importantly, were becoming more realistic about their time!

Try scheduling  Action Appointments™ with yourself this week and let me know how it works for you by posting below.

Remember, you can learn all the best business building strategies in the world and they won’t do you any good unless you take action!

-Lisa

Are you struggling to build your online business? Not making the money you want? Following strategies but not getting results? Do you find yourself wondering why other people are successful and able to “make it online” and you’re not?

You might think it has to do with traffic, marketing, sales conversion, even what you’re selling.  And it’s true – to build a solid business, you need all of the above; a product people want to buy, a market that spends money, a way to reach those customers and enough customers clicking the buying button to generate income.

But there are two ingredients that are more important than all of the above – and without them, you’ll be hard pressed to become a success at whatever business venture you attempt…

Passion and purpose.

Over the years I’ve worked with thousands of entrepreneurs. I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurial profiles, biographies and autobiographies. And the one common trait among people that are successful and happy in their business is that they love what they do.  At the heart of their business there was a passion and a purpose that determined what type of business they built.

In fact, I can’t think of one successful business owner who has ever said “I don’t care about what I sell, I don’t care about my customers, I’m not interested at all in my niche market, yet I’m wildly successful.”

Somewhere in the equation you call your business, you have to be passionate and have purpose about what you do. You may not like every aspect of  your business (in fact most people don’t), but there has to be some part of your business that gets you out of bed in the morning and finds you saying “Yes! I am excited to do this today!”

Because it’s this passion and purpose that leads to the other “p” that you need in business – and that’s persistence.

If you don’t love what you do (or at least like it a lot) you won’t have the motivation to persist.  With out persistence, the success rate is nil.

How about you? Do you love the business model you’re pursuing? Do you get up in the morning excited about what you’re going to sell or with new ideas of how you can serve your customers?

Or are you going through the motions, hoping that if you just take the right steps, you’ll make some money.

Now there’s nothing wrong with creating a short-term cash machine. Need money by next week?  Anyone can list something around the house on Craigslist or eBay and make a quick buck.

What I’m talking about here is a business that generates a part-time or full-time consistent income.  Something that you are invested in that is going to pay you back with income.

Unfortunately many people who are stuck or struggling with success online are pursuing the wrong business model.

There’s a big difference between discovering that you love the thrill of selling physical products online and wanting to learn how to be very good at it versus trying to start an eBay business or a website because you heard there’s big money in online sales and “anybody can do it.”

You may be enthralled with the idea of being a profitable blogger, but you hate to write or be in the public eye. Each post becomes a struggle, each day you have to gear yourself up to blog.

If this is the case, it’s not the right business model for you.

If you’re struggling with what to sell online – you’ve gone through niche after niche, product after product, and you just can’t hit on something that feels right for you – there is something inside of you that’s blocking your progress. (Note: This applies to people who have been looking for profitable items to sell for a few years. Not the person who has been looking for a week.)

If you are trying to build a business without passion or purpose you won’t have the motivation to dig into your market and figure out what your customers want, what the new products are in the market, what books your customers are reading, what they are buying. etc.

If you’re out there searching and searching for a way to make money online, you first need to stop and take stock of who you are and what you like to do.

• If you like to write, you’re probably good at it – or you like it enough to want to get better.  Blogging might be the perfect business model for you.

• Love the process of ferreting out niches, putting up websites and driving traffic? Affiliate marketing might be your passion and purpose.

• Have a skill, an expertise, an experience that you want to share with the world? Information marketing might be your perfect model.

• Maybe you love to present in front of groups and enlighten and inspire? A business that revolves around teleseminars may be your path.

• Are you an expert at getting people organized? How about marketing that business along with related products online?

• Maybe you’re the ultimate connector, bringing like minds together wherever you go. The perfect business model for you could be a community portal – one that gets so much traffic as a result of your desire to connect that advertisers come to you and pay you to piggyback off your traffic.

• Maybe you have a passion for antique cars and video and you travel the country taking videos at all the events. What about a membership site where fellow antique car lovers can connect?

You could be like my friend Dave. Video and audio editing was his job. And he’s good at it. But he loves cooking.  These days you’ll find him cooking up something tasty on a local TV cooking show in his hometown.  I have no doubt it’s just the beginning of his path to the Food Network. Speaking of which – did you know that Martha Stewart started her empire because she had a passion for cooking and entertaining. She started a catering company with a friend. Do you think she would have been as successful if she had decided to start a business selling plumbing supplies?  It’s doubtful.

Or my other friend Jeff who’s what I call a “Deal Scout” – he’ll find a way to sell anything.  No matter what it is, he figures – why not try and sell it? And he’s always looking. You’d be surprised at the stuff he’s sold on eBay. This is a guy who if he sees me with a bag ready to be donated to Goodwill, will ask to go through it first to see what’s in there that he can sell.  He loves the thrill of the hunt.

What about you? What makes you light up? If you could have any business at all, in the entire world with guaranteed success, what would you do? In that answer lies the clues to what you should be doing.

I hope this is gets you thinking… gets you in touch with your dreams, your passion and your purpose…

Because what I’m about to say next might shock you.

Profiting online with passion and purpose is not about “Do what you love and the money will follow.”

What you love to do must translate into a business model if you want to make money.

You may have a passion for goats, but are there enough products , services and information to sell related to goats in order to build a business? And are there enough people buying products, services and information about goats to generate the kind of income you need?

If the answer is “yes”, then congratulations, you can monetize your passion!  If the answer is no, then it’s time to look at what is it about the “goat business” that appeals to you.  Maybe you can’t build a business solely around goats, but you can build a business around farm animals (goats included).

When I got started selling online, I was also contemplating  homeschooling my son. I had a lot of friends who were homeschooling their kids. So I thought about selling homeschooling products online. Unfortunately there are many limitations by the manufacturers as to what homeschooling products you can sell online. Additionally, there is not a lot of profit in selling used homeschooling products. Because my potential market – homeschooling parents -  like to make their training materials budget stretch as far as  possible.

If I had stuck with the homeschooling niche, I wouldn’t have been able to make a go of it. Instead I went into the more lucrative kid’s higher-end product niche. A market I also knew and loved – and one that was profitable. In the end, I was happy – I was selling high-end products to parents who had the money to buy them, and in turn, I was making an income that fulfilled my needs. I had a passion and a purpose in my business, and at the time there was a huge market for what I was selling.

If there is no market for your passion or purpose, take a look inside and see what else fuels your spirit.

We all have more than one thing we love or are interested in. I started my online business with e-tail because I had experience in retail, I was good at it and I liked it enough to want to really want to get into it and immerse myself in the niche market. I reveled in reading about the latest kid’s products.  Got excited when I went to a trade show and looked at all the innovative new products that were coming into the marketplaces. Felt joy when I received an email from a customer telling me how beautiful her granddaughter looked in the seafoam green and pink flowered dress I had carefully sourced. I also sold books on Amazon – which I also loved.  I love to read . I love books. It was a product line I adored. I looked forward to sourcing books and watching them sell.

But there was additional  passion and purpose inside me which revealed itself 7 years ago… to help motivated entrepreneurs turn their passion and purpose into a profitable online business.

So how about you?

Are you building a business that plays to your skills, your talents, your passion and purpose? Or are you trying to follow a cookie cutter formula because you heard it works? Do you enjoy the core actions in your online business? Remember, you won’t like every aspect of it, but you’d better have an interest at the core.

Is there a market for your passion and purpose fueled business?

How much money do you want to make?

Maybe your passion is a facet of a larger scope.

The bottom line? If you’re not making the money you want online, before you buy another “traffic” ebook, or the latest get rich quick pitch, ask yourself “What exactly is it that I like to do? What am I good at? What energizes me?” Then see if it’s in alignment with what you’re doing now. Chances are it isn’t.

Want to revisit your business and help align it with your passion?

Share your thoughts below and let’s take a look at your next step.

-Lisa

William Shakespeare never ran an online store, but if he’d had the opportunity, I have no doubt he could have been successful.

Why?

Because William Shakespeare understood the importance of timing…

He once wrote…

“Timing is everything. There is a tide in the affairs of men  which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

The same applies to your online business.

Selling successfully online means paying attention to the change in seasons, the change in what your customers are buying and making the the right changes in your business at the right time to ride the wave of momentum towards  future fortune.

In short, it’s all about timing.

Now when many people think about summer, the word vacation comes to mind. But if you’re an online entrepreneur, don’t plan on taking the entire summer off!

Because… to quote another famous saying “You snooze, you lose.”

The summer is a golden opportunity for you to make some smart moves that will set you up to make more profits the rest of the year.

11 SMART Moves to Make This Summer (to Put Sizzle in Your Sales This Year)!

1. Put the plethora of available talent to work! Throngs of teens, college students, even your own children are looking for a way to make some extra money during the summer. Summer is the perfect time to enlist the help you might otherwise not have access to all year. Your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, the neighbor kids, etc. would be thrilled to have a great summer job a few hours a week working for YOU.

The pool of qualified workers for straightforward home based business tasks mushrooms during the summer. Yet the home based business sector is the least likely to take advantage of this opportunity. And what’s ironic of course, is that home based business owners need reasonably priced labor most of all!

I  already sat down with my own kids and outlined what projects are available this summer in the business and what they’d like to do. And they’re thrilled!

NOTE:  I am not a lawyer or tax adviser. You’ll want to be sure and check the specific laws in your state when contracting children under age 18 to work for you. If you are actually going to hire a son or daughter, check with your accountant first.  And get clear on the number of hours you can bring someone in to work with you before the IRS requires you hire them as an employee.

I recommend bringing people in on a project by project basis.  i.e. photographing inventory, or organizing the office etc. If you do bring someone in to ship products a few times a week or do other tasks on an hourly basis, make sure they fill out a time sheet and that you track their time worked.  Dot every “i’ and cross every “t” but take advantage of this ideal opportunity to grow your business.

2. Snap up the sumptuous samplings of available inventory . If you sell unique one of a kind items online, the summer is your oyster. Yard sales abound, flea markets are in full swing, thrift stores are marking down their inventory.  In fact some of my clients brings in a team during the summer, just  to help them scour the city yard sales, estate sales and thrift stores several times a week.  They do 60% of their product sourcing from May – Sept.  With a team help them, they can cover 10 times the territory that they could cover on their own.

With the sunny summer weather comes the desire to clean out the house and have a yard sale.  This makes for a product sourcing cornucopia.

3. Contact suppliers for sizzling hot deals. End of season merchandise, pre-season specials, you name it!  Now’s the time to call and ask your supplier what summer deals they have available. Or take a trip and do some local product sourcing.  Heading to hot Atlanta? Visit the AmericasMart merchandise mart while you’re there.  Check with your accountant about writing off a part of the trip as a business expense.

4. Last call for holiday importing. Been thinking about importing new merchandise for the holidays? Better get the show on the road – because if you wait past mid-July it will be too late to get it in time for the holiday selling season.

5. Wave the flag and make sure your customers don’t forget you! Keep marketing!  Just because your customers are at the beach, on vacation, or enjoying the great outdoors, doesn’t mean that you should stop marketing to them.  Email marketing is still the best way to connect with your customers on a regular basis.  And people who receive emails from online retailers spend on average 138% more than than those who don’t receive emails.  Keep in mind that between Smartphones, Netbooks and iPads your customer may very well be at the beach while she is reading your email and shopping at your online store.

And make your marketing fun! Tie it to the 4th of July holiday or pick an obscure summer holiday like Bloomsday (June 16th) or Sewing Machine Day (June 13th)  or National Pink Day (June 23rd) and tie a related promotion to that.  Make it fun!  It’s summer!

6. Retail resale is real swell during the summer. Lego sets at 90% off. Wet suits discounted 60%.  Pre- back-to-school sales previews what will be the hot holiday products. It’s all there waiting for you at your local retail store. By July 5th, brick and mortar stores will be transitioning to their back-to-school inventory. You can pick up some GREAT deals in you local store and bring that inventory online for your global customer base.

Which brings me to… yep, dare I say it?   The holiday selling season!

7. Stock up now for the holiday selling season. Even though you’re wearing a bathing suit and sitting by the lake, your need to spend some time thinking, planning and sourcing for the holiday season. If you’ve been tracking the trends for 2010 in your category, you should already have an idea of what will be hot in  your category for Christmas. And for some categories, especially the toy category, NOW is the time to head to your local retail store and stock up on those hot sellers you can’t get from a wholesaler.

8. Sit under a tree, envision and plan. Did you know that envisioning what you want your business to look like, then planning it out on paper will make you money? In fact, without a vision and a plan, I can guarantee you won’t hit your goals. Next time you’re sitting under a tree, don’t just watch the grass grow.  Take a few of those summer days and purposefully get away from you desk, pack a lunch and head to the park to work.

Bring a notebook, a pen and let your mind flow.  Think about your business. What you from it.  What you want your day and your life to look like. Let all the creative business ideas you have in the back of your head come flooding back into your consciousness.  And let them flow onto the paper. By the time you’re done, you’ll have numerous profit generating ideas documented, a mind that’s clean and clear – ready for NEW ideas to grow and the empowering feeling of knowing that you are in charge of your business as the CEO, rather than beinghe business every day.

9. Clean sweep your product line. Throw open the windows, let the sun shine in and dig in to those boxes of inventory that need to be listed an sold! Have anything that will sell on Amazon? Box it up and ship it to Amazon FBA.  Let them handle the packing, shipping, customer service and while you spend your time being the CEO of your company with a focus on growth, marketing and bringing in new inventory.

10. Get organized! There is a direct relationship between the amount of clutter you have and the amount of income you can make. Over the years, I’ve consulted with many types of  clients – those who are neat as a pin and those work work in a “lived in” office.  And I’ve never once have a worked with a client whose income didn’t improve when they cleared out the clutter!

While you’re clean sweeping your product line, it’s a perfect time to clear out the clutter. It’s also a opportunity to hire a  Neat Nellie teen and let them have at it.  (And for those who think such a bird does not exist, I’ve had three of my 13 year old son’s friends beg me to come help with my organizational projects this summer because they “love to organize”.  (PS: So far it’s all been girls who have offered.)

Buy shelves, label your inventory, take inventory! and put it in a spreadsheet. Get your paperwork filed.  If you haven’t filed your tax returns yet, find the forms and finally get that refund.

11. Implement One New Thing In Your Business You’ve Never Done Before. There’s something about the summer sun (maybe all that Vitamin D?) that brings out the adventuresome spirit in us. A vacation spot you’ve never been to before, a taste of an exotic summer fruit, maybe a spin around the lake on a Seadoo or camping out under the summer stars…

Why not apply your adventuresome  summer spirit to your business and challenge yourself to implement something different in your business over the summer.  Maybe it’s a trek into video, testing a new product line, creating a Facebook Fan Page. Maybe it’s sending out your first email marketing campaign!

In fact, I’ll even go one better – I’ll put out a challenge to everyone  – implement something new in your business this summer and then come back to this post and tell me what you did!  The winner will get something cool.

Sales Happen When Preparation Meets Opportunity

There’s a Chinese Proverb that says “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.”

The same is true of your sales.  If you use the dogs days of summer like one smart puppy and do a little every day to to get ahead of your competition. Come fall, when everyone wakes up out of the summer haze realizing that the biggest selling season of the year is right in front of them, and they’re not prepared… you’ll be sitting in your nice clean office, watching your products sell, calm and relaxed and excited about your sales figures this year…

Now that’s a long cool drink of lemonade!

-Lisa

PS: If you make a plan and do a bit every day, you’ll be able to put the sizzle in your sales and still have plenty of time to enjoy your summer!

I don’t often blog about my life as an entrepreneur mom. I frequently want to, but there’s only so much time in the day to blog, and ecommerce strategy posts usually take precedence.

But since it’s Mother’s Day, I wanted to reach out to all the other entrepreneur moms (and those who are thinking about becoming one!) to wish you a Happy Mother’s Day and share some of the tips that I have used to balance life as a mom & business owner over the past 8 years.

I left a high-paying corporate job in 2002 to strike out on my own as an entrepreneur. A lifelong entrepreneur at heart since age 8, I had always wanted to own my own business, but never had the courage to do so. I grew up in a family where the message was, go to school, get a good job, work hard and you will be rewarded. I didn’t know any other entrepreneurs and thought for sure they must have some “special gene” which I was pretty sure I didn’t possess. Figuring if I did have “it” I would be able to start a business without being scared.

Having my two children changed all that. Tired of leaving my son with a babysitter (even though she was great) and dreading the prospect of starting child care all over again with my infant daughter, I decided to make the leap. I was going to “work from home” in my own business. I wanted to be home with my kids every day.  And I’d seen all the stories about work at home moms with the kids playing happily by their side while mom built a brilliant business on the computer.  I also felt that if I had a dream this big and didn’t

Bellie & Noah - 5 months after I became an entrepreneur!

pursue it – what was I modeling for my kids? By doing this, I was showing them how to pursue their dreams someday.  (Which by the way, actually has impacted their lives in a positive, now that they are old enough to understand it.)

An added factor in the equation was that I am a single parent. So leaving the safety of a corporate job, with vacation, benefits, insurance, was not a decision I took lightly.  (In fact, for anyone considering this, I highly recommending starting the business first, and then when the income starts to come in, make plans to leave your job.  It’s much less stressful and a financially more sound decision.) But I knew if I didn’t do it all the way – and get off the corporate gravy train, I wouldn’t do it at all.

Choices, Guilt, Rewards, Choices, Guilt, Rewards, Choices… (Well, you see where this is going.)

The first thing I discovered about being an entrepreneurial mom is that things don’t work like the pictures in the magazines. The vision of the kids happily playing with Legos on the floor next to you while you’re on a business call is not a reality. When your pre-schooler sees mom, he thinks “Mom is available to play!” not “Oh mom is building her Internet business, I’d better give her some time to work.”

And the photo of the beautiful baby sitting on entrepreneurial mom’s lap while mom types on the computer and builds her empire? Nope! Babies love to pound on keyboards when they are sitting in your lap.

Uh oh.

It quickly became apparent to me that I was going to need…childcare. Child care!?!?!  But that’s why I left corporate America!  So I wouldn’t have to do childcare anymore.

I fought it for several months, before I could see that this situation was going no where fast.  I wasn’t making progress on the business, my oldest was getting frustrated with mom’s “available unavailability” and I wanted to hold the baby.  But I knew that in order to generate an income, I was going to have to start treating my business like a business.

It was at this point, I began to realize what it was really going to take to be a successful entrepreneur mom…

The 5 Tips for Being a Successful and Happy Entrepreneur Mom

It’s what I tell all my coaching clients and the principal my Business Growth Group is founded on:

Entrepreneurial Mom Tip #1. “Treat your business like a business and it will pay you like a business. Treat your business like a hobby and it will cost you like a hobby.”

Once I made the decision to treat my business like a business, and set a specific schedule for work time (and yes childcare time, although not nearly as much as when I had been in corporate America.) my business started to grow rapidly.

I had made the choice. It was rewarding to see the business grow. But I also had tons of mom guilt.

Why? Because now my kids  knew I was “home” all day and they wanted to stay home with me too.  I can’t tell you how hard it was to bring them both to the babysitters each day. Those big brown eyes looking up at me, and what I really wanted to do was take them to the park.

Oh and just to add mom guilt on to more mom guilt…  I loved my business too.

And that was the dawning of the realization. As an entrepreneurial mom, you’ll never feel like there is enough of you to go around. You can never give 100% of you to all the things you want to do. And it can demoralize you until you look at it with perspective.

Entrepreneurial Mom Tip #2. You can’t give 100% of yourself to everything. There will be choices. Things you wish you could do, that you can’t. Don’t spend the years wracked with guilt. It doesn’t serve you,  your business or your children.

The best thing you can do is talk to your kids about this. Tell them how you feel. My kids are fully a part of my life.  If I would have loved to volunteer at such and such event, or wish I could have made the cake for the carnival instead of buying it – I share this with them. Sometimes they wish so too. But most of the time, it doesn’t matter to them.  What matters is that as an entrepreneurial mom, I am around enough to have conversations with them. They can walk into my office in the afternoon and show me a school paper. They can pop their head in the door and ask me how to spell something.

Which brings me to my next entrepreneurial mom tip…

Entrepreneurial Mom Tip #3. Don’t try to make everything perfect. Something’s always gotta give.

When I first thought about writing this blog post, I was surveying the condition of our house.

On the kitchen counter lay the contents of yesterday’s lunch boxes.  Sure my kids know to pick stuff up and put it away, but I was working at my desk when they got home from school and well… the sunny weather and basketball hoop outside were calling their names.

Dishes from dinner dotted the kitchen.  Normally the kids and I pick up after dinner together, but last night we headed straight to a function at my son’s school (chocolate cake courtesy of Costco) and there wasn’t time to clean up.

As I looked around the house, I was tempted to get stressed.

“Why are there dirty socks on the mantle?”

(Note to self – Remember to talk to 13 year old son when he gets home.)

But then I looked around the room some more.

This is a picture of what was supposed to be a business white board in my office. Except my kids kept coming into my office and writing messages to me on it. After a few weeks of telling them “This whiteboard is for business, quit writing on it.” I got another whiteboard for business. I’m glad I did.

My daughter’s beautiful art project in one corner of the room, brightly colored markers sprinkled all over the carpet.

The basketball from yesterday’s game, strategically placed right in the middle of the doorway between the living room and dining room.  How many times did we walk around it this morning and yet no one (including me) put it away?

Signs of life,  fun and living.

And the home of a entrepreneurial mom.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t always look like this…  There was that one day last month when the house was spotless …

There are days I go directly from teaching a webinar on search engine optimization for websites to driving a carpool full of laughing 9 year olds and middle schoolers.

In 2008 when I spoke at eBay Live! in Chicago, the kids came with me. While I worked, they were at eBay Live Camp.  We had a blast.

During times like this I feel on top of the world!

And then there are the mornings where there is no food in the house, because I worked late into the night and didn’t get to the grocery store.

Or I wake up to a flurry of questions “Mom did you do this? Mom you said you’d do that! Mom can we do this, this and this today? Aw.. do you have to work today.”

Last month when I was speaking at the 2010 Ecommerce Summit in Las Vegas, they didn’t make it to their sports practices, a book project didn’t get done on time, but they did have lots of fun spending time with their dad!

Entrepreneurial Mom Tip #4. Involve your kids in your business and in your life and let them participate!

Kids from Front to Back: Bellie (mine), Indy (Lynn's), Noah (mine), Houston (Lynn's)

The message my kids have heard from me since very early on is that we are all in this together! They participate in my business, in keeping the household running smoothly (i.e., chores!), they know the names of many clients I’ve worked with over the years, read my blog posts, and are always on the lookout for product trends!

This is a picture of the kids and I with Lynn Dralle, the Queen of Auctions when we all got together last summer at Lynn’s mom’s house up in Bellingham, WA. While the kids played on the beach Lynn (a successful entrepreneurial mom) and I did a teleseminar on eBay’s Fall 2009 changes. (You can get out latest audio on the 2010 Spring Changes here.)

My kids love the fact that I am an entrepreneurial mom. They are proud of what I’ve achieved.  And they feel like they are part of that success.

And now that they are 9 and 13, I see them applying skills they’ve learned from watching me in their everyday lives.

They hear me talk about persistence and how it’s the number key to success – and they draw on that when they are facing a challenging task at school.

Over the years, they’ve heard me talk time and time again about making choices.  And how the hardest choices are between two worth options. They find comfort in this when they have a hard decision to make.

One day my daughter said to me “Mom, it must feel really good to create a successful business out of nothing – just starting with an idea.” My son chimed in “Yah, I think that’s so cool. I have this idea…”

They get it. They see it. What I set out to do.

Entrepreneurial Mom Tip #5. Don’t try and do everything yourself. Ask for help. Hire help. Accept help when offered. Learn to say no. (I’m still working on these.)

For a long time I took pride in being super-entrepreneur mom. I did it all. And did it all pretty darn well. But about a year ago, I realized that “it” was continuing to expand. And even I have my limits of what I can accomplish in one day. And if I wanted to grow my business, be a good mom, and not burn the candle at both ends and in the middle, I was going to have to start bringing people into my life to help.

It takes a village to raise a family and build a business.

Whether it’s an offer from a friend to pick up the kids after school on the days I have a 5:00pm webinar or hiring someone to clean the house every two weeks (which I did and it’s been some of the best money I’ve ever spent!)

It also means learning to say no.

It means saying no to things I do in my business that eat up time, rather than grow the business.

It means saying no to things that people “expect” me to do but that are not in alignment with my personal or professional goals. Time is my most precious asset.

It means that even though my nature is to give and give  of myself to my customers, clients, potential customers,  friends and family (because I want to)  until there is nothing left – I need to say no before it gets to that point.

And so do you.

There is only “one of you”, entrepreneurial moms.

And you owe it to yourself to take as good care of you as you do everyone else!

So a very Happy Mother’s Day to all entrepreneurial moms, grandmoms, and aunts and sisters who are moms!

You are special beings, on an amazing journey.  And this is your day.

-Lisa

PS: I woke up earlier than the kids this morning to write this blog post. As I was writing at my desk, I heard the rustling of paper, whispering and giggling…

I was sitting down at my desk today, about ready to write my new blog post called “Six Simple Steps to Increase Your Sales Conversion” when I decided first to go through the questions from my coaching group for tomorrow’s Monthly Progress Check webinar.

Each month, I get on a webinar with members of my coaching group and they submit their most pressing questions, their biggest challenges, things they’re confused about… sometimes it’s about venting frustrations, fears or regrouping and reprioritizing.

But I should have known that this month would be different.

As I sat there and read question after question, comment after comment, I knew it was happening again.

Like clockwork.

120.

It always happens right around 120.

I’ve been coaching online entrepreneurs for eight years now.

And it always happens around 120.

120 what?

Here’s a quick equation:

business success = CDA x 120

So by now, you’re probably wondering “Lisa, what the heck are you talking about?”

• First, the 120 = 120 days.
• Business success is self explanatory.
• CDA = Consistent Daily Actions

Business success = (the right) Consistent Daily Actions x 120 days.

It happens every time.  And it happened again today.

You see my 2010 coaching group (aka the Business Growth Group) started on January 1.  We changed formats this year. Each month we get together on the phone and do a group coaching session.

Tomorrow’s session falls right about the 120 day mark.

And that is why comment after comment,  revealed success after success.

Granted, we’ve seen successes at the 30 day mark and the 60 day mark.  But some real breakthroughs are happening this month because people have been taking Consistent Daily Actions for 120 days.

How about you?

Have you taken consistent daily actions in your business for the past 120 days?

Or have your efforts been hit and miss?

Have you been taking the RIGHT consistent daily actions for the past 120 days?

Or have you been taking random actions in your business, hoping something would work.  Maybe chasing bright shiny objects? Switching gears? Buying the latest “Googlelicious Cash Generator” product that turned out to be just another rabbit hole.

You see the bottom line is this.

IF you take the right consistent daily actions in your business  for 120 days, you will make progress.  You will make breakthroughs.

For members of my coaching group taking the right consistent daily actions has lead to some major successes!

• Increased sales.
• New websites.
• Better conversion.
• More traffic.

But ONLY the passage of 120  DAYS can truly demonstrate how this process works.

And most importantly, this can work for each and every one of you.

PS: A lot of people ask me “Why 120 days?” “Why not 90 days or 150 days?”  The new research shows that it takes on average, 66 days to form a habit.  It can range anywhere from 18 days to 254 days, but for most of us, it takes just over two months to get in the grove.

In business though, once you form that habit of Consistent Daily Action, you’ll need about 30 – 60 days to test and tweak the actions you’re taking, in order to determine if they’re working.

By the time you get finished testing and retooling for 30-60 days, we’re right up to the 120 day mark.

Which is the point that year-after-year, I see my clients and members of my coaching programs start to really make strides in their business.

But remember, it’s not just waiting for 120 days and then things magically happen…

You must apply the formula for business success:

Business Success = (the right) Consistent Daily Actions x 120 days.

So I urge you to ask yourself… “Have I been taking the right Consistent Daily Actions for the past 120 days?”

If the answer is “yes”, then post below and tell me what you’re doing that’s working for you. If the answer is “no”, then post below and tell me why you think you aren’t taking the right Consistent Daily Actions.

And let’s see what we can do to change that…

Your Partner in Online Selling Success

-Lisa

When you’re an independent etailer, and you see a big box retailer moving into your category, you might think that your biggest fear would be that of the ‘big eating the small’.  The “big box” comes in with it’s buying power, pricing advantage and large staff, hungrily looking to gobble the dollars of your customers. And while there is certainly an element of concern in that scenario, there is something else equally as important that you need to watch out for when building your online business – and that is… “The fast eating the slow.”

Paul Greenberg, CEO of DealsDirect talked about this in his keynote speech “Being Small Never Felt So Big” at the 2010 Ecommerce Summit.  He said “You used to have to worry about the big eating the small. Nowadays, it’s about the fast eating the slow.”

Speed and agility in your ecommerce business are two success factors that we talk a lot about in my coaching group. You see one of the cards you have in your back pocket as an independent online seller is the ability to move fast and capitalize on changes in market trends, to adapt your product lines, or snap up unique inventory faster than a Walmart inventory buyer can say “purchase order.”

I often hear smaller sellers lamenting the fact that they are small.  But if you want to be successful,  you need to play to your strengths!  And YOUR strengths as an independent online retailer are:

A) You run the show and are empowered to make decisions quickly

B) You (hopefully) run a lean enough business that you can turn direction, even ever so slightly, on a dime

C) You know your niche so well, that you anticipate what they’ll want before they do

However,  a lot of online sellers I see are slowwwwd down…  by things they shouldn’t be doing.

Things such as:

1. Bookkeeping. No matter how small your business is, the first task you should outsource is bookkeeping. If you don’t know the numbers in your business, how will you know your profits and what changes to make. And no one ever made money while drowning in receipts, paperwork and Quickbooks files.

The fast eat the slow.

2. Photographing, listing, wrapping and shipping your own merchandise. If you’re an occasional seller, or just testing out ecommerce to see if it’s your thing – you do need to learn the business from the ground up. But once you’ve decided to make a real go of this business, the amount of time you spend doing manual labor (photographing, listing, wrapping and shipping) is directly proportionate to the amount of income you can generate.

You are only one person.  And there are only 24 hours in each day.  How is your time best spent?

Think of it this way – YOU are the CEO of your company. Does the CEO work in the mailroom on a regular basis?  Does she/he receive inventory each day?

Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com in the basement of his home here in Seattle -  with one box of books. What if Jeff and his girlfriend had kept on shipping their own products?  Would there be an Amazon.com as we know it today? No!  It would be impossible.

Maybe you don’t want to be as big as Amazon, but if you want to grow your business to a full-time venture, your eyes have to be on the growth of your business, the trends in your market, the next steps to increase sales.

Picking inventory off the shelf and figuring out which box it should go in is not making you money, it’s sucking down your time.

The fast eat the slow.

3. Being disorganized. Inventory, supplier catalogs, stacks of trend publications, unpaid bills, piles of paper on  your desk.  All these things make you slowwwwww.  And while you’re dealing with overflowing operations, your competitor is out their marketing and making their next hot buy.

Now I hear what you’re thinking… “But Lisa! I don’t have the money to hire people to do all this work for me. I’m small, I’m a startup, barely making enough money now.”

And I understand that.  I’ve been there.  I know what it’s like to work 7×24 in the hopes that you’ll “catch up”. But you don’t.  You just get farther and farther behind. And it’s a vicious circle.

But there is a way out -

I urge you to be creative. Think outside the box. Who can you bring in – even a few hours a week? To do any of the above jobs?

So you can focus on building the business.

A high school intern.  A college intern. Your mom. Hubby. Wife. Sister. Kids. Senior citizen living down the street. Someone from church. A stay-at-home mom from Craigslist. The neighbor kids.

Here’s how to start:

Figure out what your biggest pain point is right now. What is the #1 thing that slowwwwssss you down the most? Then bring in one person to tackle that.  Don’t hire them as an employee.  Bring them in for a 30 day “project”.

And watch your business transform before your very eyes. Not only will the work get done. You’ll get your first taste of what it feels like to run a company instead of being the company. And it’s your first step towards growth beyond what only you can accomplish in a day.

Before too long… you’ll find that you are the fast eating the slow.

So tell me – what creative ways have you found to outsource day-to-day tasks in your business. Share your ideas below!

-Lisa Suttora

In the past two weeks I’ve received no less than 7 emails from “gurus” enticing me to make a purchase of their products by promising to sell  me “the secret to success”.  Normally, I just observe these email subject lines with the critical eye of a copywriter, but today one that I received really pushed my hot button.

It wasn’t the email subject line itself that was really the problem, in fact the subject line really isn’t that important. It was the same old schlock that you probably receive in your inbox on a daily basis. What made me made about this email subject was the tone. It was dripping with condescension. Carrying with it the message of “I’m the guru, I know everything and you don’t.”

I was just about to go into a 2 hour coaching session with my Business Growth Group and I quickly added a slide to my presentation to talk about this topic – a topic that makes many would-be (and established) business owners feel inadequate, hopeless and spend tons of money on products and services for all the wrong reasons.

I wanted to share with you what I shared with my coaching group, because I think it will be helpful and make a difference in the way you approach your business from here on out…

Have you ever looked at someone else’s successful website and wondered what “secret” they know that you don’t?

Well you don’t have to wonder anymore.  Because I’m about to share with you the “secrets” of selling successfully online so you can get down to the business of building a business and not spend one more minute looking for the secret that doesn’t exist.

1. There is no “secret” to success, only information, strategies, and insights you have yet to learn. In eight years online, running a successful business, I have never found a “secret” that unlocked the door to the golden room of success. Oh I’ve bought and paid for “secrets”. Especially in my early years online. I’ve bought enough secrets to fund a brand new car. But did I learn any secrets? No. I’ve learned solid information, gained valuable insights, and implemented sage strategies.  But never once was there a secret in that slick packaged guru product. Not even the wildly popular “The Secret” was really a secret. If you’re going to buy from a guru, buy the technique, strategy or information they are selling, but don’t buy it for the secret.

2. If you are not getting the results in your business that you would like, there is a concrete reason. That reason could be that you aren’t getting enough traffic to your website or store.  It could be that your salespages aren’t converting to sales.  It could be that you aren’t selling products people want. But the answer is right there waiting to be found, if you are willing to look for it. Successful business owners have looked at their business found out what is or isn’t working and increased what is working while changing what isn’t working.

3. Just because a business model works, doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Every week I talk to new business owners who want to start an online retail business by purchasing inventory from wholesale suppliers, but they don’t have cash or credit available to make those inventory purchases. Add to that, many have a need for immediate cash flow. They are pursuing the wrong business model. Can you make a go of an online retail business from wholesale products in 2010?  Sure. Does it require cash or credit to buy inventory and build a product line?  Absolutely.  If you have no money at all to invest in inventory, your first goal should be to focus on a  business model that generates cash flow.  I call them mini-profit machines.  A business model centered around affiliate marketing or selling your expertise as a service (trading time for dollars), or selling everything around your house that’s not nailed down or doing the yard sale circuit for 6 months until you get enough seed money to invest in your long term business model.

4. You have to give up something. Very few people selling “how to make money from home” want to say this to you.  You need to sacrifice things in your daily life in order to make your business a success. Maybe it’s your nightly TV shows.  Maybe it’s a few hours of sleep a week. Maybe it’s bigger.  Vacations with the family. Putting off buying that new car so you can invest in your business.  As a single parent, if I sat down with you and told you the sacrifices I’ve made and that my children have made so that I could grow a successful business, you’d be shocked. In the early days of running my business we missed vacation after vacation, because I had a business to run and at the time there was not enough money to bring in help.  So the kids and I had staycations instead. I’m writing this blog post at 4:21am, because both my kids have sporting events tomorrow and I have several things I need to get done before we head out for the day.  Would I change things?  Not in a heartbeat. My children love having a role model for hard work and reward. Next to having kids, creating a business out of nothing is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. It can be the most rewarding thing you’ve ever done. But there will be sacrifices.

5. Learn one new thing and implement it before you move on to learn the next new thing . The other day I got an email from a very nice woman who is a member of my Business Growth Group. She said “Lisa, I’ve read everything you’ve written, watched all the videos and still my sales have not increased.  Can you help me?  I don’t know what I’m doing wrong?” I went to her eBay store and looked at it. She hadn’t implemented one thing that we teach in the Business Growth Center.  I asked her about it.  She said “I know, I’ve been meaning to do it, but I just haven’t had time because I’ve been busy learning.” We now have her on a new Learn 1: Implement 1 program. Each new thing she learns, she implements, then she moves on to the next. After one week on the Learn 1: Implement 1 program, she sold $256 worth of merchandise in one week.  Her previous month’s sales?  Zero.

6. The average conversion rate for online sales is 1-3%. Now this is one secret the gurus don’t want you to know!  This means for every 100 visitors to your website, you will make one to three sales. I remember the first time I heard this number.  My heart sunk to my shoes. But I was determined, so I figured “Ok, I’ll work with it.” Does average mean that you won’t have a higher conversion rate? Absolutely not.  You never want to be “average” in your business.  You always want to strive for above average. It also depends on what you sell.  If you sell physical products on eBay, a 50%, 75% even 90% conversion rate is entirely possible IF you are selling a hot product. But that’s not the average sell-through rate for most products on eBay. If you source one that sells at an 70% success rate, celebrate your good fortune and go source more of it. But I see people everyday who put up a website selling information products or physical products, or create an eBay listing or Amazon store and expect “a flood of visitors with a high conversion rate to happen just because their product is online. It doesn’t work that way.  There are things you can do to increase your conversion rate dramatically – like getting more high quality, targeted traffic and cultivating repeat customers. But that is the process of Kaizen, which means “continual improvement”.  It takes Kaizen to be successful and increase your conversion rates.

7. Time spent on Facebook  with Farmville is not time spent working. I love social media. And I’m not surprised by it’s mammoth success.  Why?  Because we humans are social creatures. We’re pack animals. We love to hang together and communicate. With so much of our lives and time spent on line in the period of time from the mid-nineties to the two-thousands, it was only a matter of time before our socializing moved online too. It’s the rare person who can sit isolated at their computer, not connecting with people.  The same is true of social media marketing and social commerce.  Shopping has always been a social activity.  Now we’re shopping socially online. Word of mouth marketing has always been the most effective marketing offline.  Now we’re doing social media marketing online.  But… just like there’s a difference in corporate America between sitting at your desk and working versus hanging out around the water cooler chatting, there is a difference between spending 30 minutes a day using Facebook or Twitter to do some marketing and playing Farmville or sending people jelly beans on Facebook or tracking Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. As an entrepreneur, you have to be very clear and very defined about when you are working and when you are not.  Can you schedule in a break to connect with your friends on Facebook?  Sure! But when you are in there for the purpose of marketing your business, you have to ignore all the friendly communications that are calling for your attention. Separating your play time from your work time will dramatically increase your success.

8. A true guru makes things easier not more complicated. The inspiration for this post was the gurus who are trying to sell you the secret to success, so I want to get back to that for a moment. Someone who is truly a guru will take a complicated subject and make it as simple as possible to learn and implement. They will empower their students by telling you and showing you that you can do this.  Gurus make things seem more complicated to make themselves look better and make themselves look indispensable. I’ve been online for 8 years now and I’ve never studied an online marketing subject that can’t be learned and applied by just about everyone. Not everyone can solve the Poincare’ conjecture (thought to be the world’s most difficult math problem). Most everyone can achieve success at some form of entrepreneurial online business if they apply what they learned to the right business model.

9. There is more than one way to skin a cat (my apologies to cats everywhere ) Gurus who try and sell you “the secret of success” will also tell you that their way is the right way.  The only way. That everyone else is wrong and that they are the only ones that have the answers you seek. Beware of gurus who tell you how complicated something is and then in the same breath tell you that they are the only ones who understand it and are the only ones who can help you.  After 8 years of running my own successful online business, I can tell you unequivocally that there is always more than one way to do something successfully. It doesn’t matter what you sell or where you sell it. Whether it’s information products, selling on eBay, affiliate marketing or straight up ecommerce, I have seen thousands of people achieve success using different techniques, different methods, contradictory methods and unlikely methods. Does this mean that there aren’t best practices? Not at all! Does this mean that there isn’t a right way and a wrong way to approach building a business?  Absolutely not.  What is does mean is that there is more than one right way to achieve success. And if someone tells you that their way is the only way, you need to learn what you feel is right for you from that guru, but don’t follow blindly. I’m frequently referred to as a “guru” in helping people start, run and expand their online business. But sitting here right now, writing this post, I could give you the names of at least 5 other “gurus” who you could successfully learn how to build an online business with. We each have slightly different approaches, slightly different communication styles, slightly different specialties, different programs and services, but we can all show you a path to success. How do you choose?  You have to choose the mentor/teacher who is right for you at this time. I’ve studied with some of the best on the Internet.  As I change and grow, and my business changes and grows, the people I study with and learn from change too.

10. Thomas Edison was right. “Genius” said Thomas Edison” is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”  And considering the man tried 1000 different times to create the light bulb before he succeeded, I think he’s qualified to speak to the topic of perspiration and hard work. Thomas Edison also said when asked about how he felt about failing 1000 times to invent the light bulb “I didn’t fail 1000 times.  The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.”  The same holds true for your online business. I like to say “There is no such thing as failure, only lessons learned.” The path to your successful business will entail a series of steps.  Some that work.  Some that don’t. It all gets back to point #2.  If you are not getting the results you want in your business, there is a concrete reason. The answer is right there waiting to be found, if you are willing to look for it.

As you can see there is a reason I rolled out of bed this morning at 4:00am to write this blog post. I felt this topic was important enough that I needed to share it with you in-depth.

I hope it has accomplished three things:

• Made you feel more confident in your own abilities to learn the ropes
• Stripped away any misleading beliefs that there are secrets only the chosen few know
• Saved you some money by not purchasing “secrets” from the next enticing email that lands in your inbox
• Shown you clearly and specifically ten of the factors that it takes to successfully build an online business.

There are more than just these 10.  And if you are interested in hearing more about them, pop me a note in the comments box below.

PS: Don’t just read this and think “great post” and go on to the next blog. Take this, print it out, post it on your wall. Read it regularly.  It will help you stay clear, focused and motivated. It will also save you time, money and disappointment on your path to success.

- Lisa

8 years ago this month I left my job in corporate America to strike out on my own.

I’d never run my own business.

I was a single parent of a 4 month old and a 4 year old.

I had a limited amount of savings.

And a few zero balance credit cards.

I had no support system.  I knew no other entrepreneurs.

All  my friends said I was crazy to leave the “corporate gravy train”.

I didn’t even tell my dad, because being a traditional European father I knew he would be sick with worry.

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What I DID have however, was a lifelong dream.

And a big “WHY”.

I’d wanted to start my own business since the age of 8.

(The same age as my youngest is now.)

And I also wanted to do it for my kids. So I could be home with them and be a part of their daily lives.

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Over the past 8 years I’ve sold physical products, information products, and affiliate products online.

I’ve taught thousands of entrepreneurs how to do the same, written a best-selling ecommerce book, presented on stage in front of thousands of people and been at the helm of the oldest ecommerce subscription site on the web, WhatDoISell.com

But lest you think that my life was touched by a magic wand or I was a lucky overnight success – that wasn’t the case.

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My first year in business was hell.

I was scared. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

My efforts were inconsistent. I had nowhere to turn for support.

I was feeling tremendous pressure.

I had to bring in a steady income.  I had to make my business work, make it profitable, and make it happen FAST.

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So I went back to the one thing that had always gotten me through difficult times in the past.
The thing that kept me going, successful, and focused on my goals.

The thing that in every single case I had attributed my previous successes to.

Until now, I’ve only shared this with my private coaching students.

But in celebration of my 8 years as an online entrepreneur, I’ve decided it’s time to share it with you.

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After 8 years, it’s a new chapter in my life and my business.

Mindset Entrepreneur <<==  It can be a new beginning for you as well.

Your Partner in Online Selling Success,

PS: As soon as I made this change…

• Within a year I’d REPLACED 60% of my corporate income
• Within two years I’d SURPASSED my corporate income and launched
  two more businesses that were immediately profitable
• It’s now been 8 years and I’ve built a solid six-figure business that
  continues to grow every year and has always been the sole support of my
  family.

Click here to find out what I live by daily.