“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to the Small Business Administration, more than half of all small businesses in the United States are based out of the entrepreneur’s home. That’s around 15 million home-based businesses and represents 500 billion dollars in revenue every year.

You can start a business with just an idea, a little creativity, hard work, and a desire to succeed. That’s all it takes.

Notice I left money out of the equation because most businesses can be started with little or no money. I talk to people all the time who would start a business if they had venture capitalists to fund their idea or if they had a great business plan or (you can fill in the blanks with other excuses as you see fit).

We are moving into a totally different economy. It’s time to change your mindset to fit the times. It’s time to take responsibility for your own success. The days of working a job for 20 or 30 years and then getting a check (defined pension) for the rest of your life are gone.

As a society, we have become soft, and we have come to rely on corporate or government entities to “take care of us”. Just show up for work, go home at 5:00, and a check automatically appears on Friday. As a result, many people have lost their ability to think. They have lost their ability to dream and to innovate. They are missing out on life because they are dreaming of the day they can “retire”. And most people find retirement is not what they thought it would be.

In this new economy, you may not find a job. You may have to create a job. Find something that you are interested in and do a little research at your local bookstore or library on that topic. Learn something about yourself by taking a DISC assessment. Access your strengths and weaknesses. Find where your real passion lies and start pursuing your passion.

You will be surprised at what you are able to accomplish with a little hard work and focus. Technology has made it so much easier to start a business. You can create a WordPress blog, create a Facebook profile, print a few business cards, and you are in business.

It may be time to step out of your comfort zone and join the other 15 million home-based businesses out there. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Don’t let the fact that you can’t find a job hold you back from pursuing your dreams and achieving success.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

The arrival of the new year causes everyone to look at where they’ve been and where they are going. They review their failures and celebrate their successes.

Have you thought about the changes and choices you need to make in 2011?

For some people, that may mean they quit smoking or lose weight or start exercising. For business owners, it may mean you will increase your revenue or get more clients. Think about the changes you want to make in your life and in your business in 2011. Are they the same changes you wanted to make at the beginning of 2010?

My biggest goal this year is to make better use of my time. Time in my business will be divided into the following segments:

70% – Marketing.
20% – Development of new products and services.
10% – Delivery of my services.

Those are not hard and fast numbers but that is my intention.

My challenge for you is to block out a few hours this week and do three things:

1. Create a plan for how you will spend your time and start planning your week in advance.

2. Take full inventory of your life. Find what is standing in the way of you living life to the fullest. Write these things down and decide what you have to remove from your life to create a better life.

3. Take full inventory of your business. Find what is keeping you from achieving the success you know you deserve. Write these things down and start taking steps to eliminate or change anything that is holding you back in your business. Decide what you need to let go of to move foward in your business.

It really is that simple. It may not be easy, but it is that simple. You have the opportunity moment by moment to make different choices. You have the opportunity today to make the changes that will create a better 2011. Go forward with the full intention of making things happen. Happy New Year!

One of the big challenges facing business owners and professionals is prospecting. I have great news. It is easier than ever to prospect and to make contacts in today’s online, connected, sharing everything with everybody world.

There are social networks popping up everywhere. I always recommend to clients that they have a Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn account. All three are great business tools but today I want to share a tip with you to help you get more out of LinkedIn.

To get the most out of social media, you need to develop the right mindset about social media. Social media is a place to develop relationships with existing and potential contacts. It is also a place to store and manage contacts. In a nutshell, social media is just a huge (almost infinite) electronic Rolodex.

Unfortunately, most people only use 10% of the potential that is offered by online social media.

In LinkedIn, you can create tags to categorize your contacts. In my case, I have categories for speakers, prospects, clients, musicians, venues, and a few others.

Here is how you can create a Tag (or category) in LinkedIn:

1) Sign into your LinkedIn account.

2) Click on Contacts tab and select My Connections from the drop-down menu.

3) Click on one of your contacts and a mini-profile will pop-up on the right side of the page.

4) In the mini-profile, click on Edit Tags and either add the person to an existing group or create a new group.

Tags allow you to have easy access to your contacts by category. You can also send eblasts to a specific category. Tags will help you organize your prospecting efforts and help you become more effective in your prospecting.

These Tags will also show on the left side of the page. In addition to Tags, you will see Locations on the left side of the page. Locations segments your contacts by areas in the country. Check out some of the other links on the left side of the page.

Last night, my wife and I went to see Garth Brooks in concert at the Bridgestone Arena here in Nashville, Tennessee. He sold out nine consecutive shows and has raised over $5,000,000 for Nashville flood relief. He is also donating all the proceeds from product sales.

I have been a fan of Garth since the beginning of his career but had never taken the time to actually see him live in concert. My only connection was through listening to his music and seeing his performances on TV.

Now I “get it”. I know why people are so loyal and will travel hundreds of miles to see a performance by Garth Brooks. He makes a very powerful personal connection with every single person in the audience. I have seen performers fake this but I have never seen anyone actually do it.

At one point in the concert he read signs with song requests and he performed those requests accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. He made it personal.

At the end of his show he recognized the person holding a lighted sign in the very top row. He said, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you up there holding that sign”. He turned to the right of the stage and pointed directly at a guy in the very top row to the side of the stage and said, “And I noticed you up there in the blue and white striped shirt jumping up and down all night and singing along to every song that I sang”. He made it personal.

He walked around the stage and did this several times for different people. These were not people he knew. Just people he had connected with during his performance. He was trying to let them know personally how much he appreciated them being there.

He let people know he cared and sincerely appreciated every single person in that audience. I have never seen a performer do this on such a personal level.

He made it real. It was a “show”. But it was something more than a show. It was Garth giving everything he had to the performance and making sure every single person in that almost 20,000 seat arena felt what he was feeling.

When you meet people, are you making it personal or are you faking it just to get something from them?

All businesses say they put the customer first and they care. But, unfortunately, most are faking it. Their actions do not reflect what they are saying.

People generally know when you are faking it. They may not know why they are hesitating making a decision to work with you, but they know something just doesn’t feel right.

If you want to be more successful, increase your sales, and create long-lasting relationships, you have to keep it real. Drop the “professional” act and just communicate with people and let them know you care about them and their success … and mean it. Make it personal.

You can no longer talk to your potential clients and “tell” them what they want. Chances are … they already know what they want. They have already researched your product or service online, read reviews, and compared what you offer to what everyone else offers. They are just looking for the right person or business to deliver it.

Information is everywhere and businesses can no longer hide behind hype and a fancy ad campaign. But many businesses are still holding on to the traditional approach to advertising.

Can you eventually get a customer from newspaper advertising, radio advertising, and television ads? Yes. Is there a possibility you could win the lottery? Yes.

Do you get my point? Hopefully you do because the age of traditional advertising is rapidly being replaced by digital conversations where businesses must engage their audience.

Websites, like Yelp.com, have changed the way people purchase products and services. You can go to Yelp and read reviews on various products or services offered across the country written by consumers.

Digg.com allows people to share the best news, videos, pictures, and content in real-time around the world. You find something you really like and you “digg” it to share it with everyone.

Add Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, pay-per-click marketing, and all the other available digital tools to the mix and you have a vast array of resources at your disposal to promote your business or services.

Digital advertising agencies are sprouting up all over the country while most traditional advertising agencies are hanging on by a thread.

What does all this mean for you? You will get more advertising bang for your buck with digital advertising, if you know how to use the tools and applications. It’s also much easier to get your message to the marketplace, if you put in a little work and spend the money on the front end to set up your digital advertising campaign. If you don’t know how to set up your campaign, hire a digital consultant to walk you through the process.

What does the future hold for advertising? Nobody knows. But this much I do know. If you don’t start embracing digital advertising and engaging your audience in some way, you will not be in business in a few years.

I am a big believer in measuring everything in your business to make sure you are maximizing every opportunity that’s presented to you. You can’t benchmark anything in your business without knowing your numbers.

Don’t spend money on anything you can’t measure. You have to know your return on investment for every dollar you spend. And you also have to know your return on investment for every task you perform in your business.

Here are three areas in your business you need to benchmark – prospecting sales calls, website, time.

Prospecting sales calls should be measured and analyzed constantly. You can do this by creating something as simple as an excel spreadsheet to track your results.

Create columns for calls made, how many people you talked to, proposals sent, closed deals, etc. Just create something that works for you so you can track your numbers. Keep it simple.

How many visitors are you getting to your website every day? Is one of your pages getting more traffic than any of the others? Is the copy on this page the best it can be?

Google Analytics will give you all this information and more. You can benchmark the performance of your website just like every other aspect of your business.

Many times a lack of results or lack of consistent income in a business can be traced back to poor time management. There is nothing more important in your business than being aware of how you are spending your time and spending it wisely.

Here is an exercise you can do to improve your time management skills. Keep track of every minute of every day for two weeks.

At the end of two weeks, review how you spent your time and look for areas where you could improve. This is a real eye-opener for most people.

You cannot stay in business without benchmarking and measuring every aspect of your business. Everything can be measured. And if it can’t be measured, then you may not need to do it.