Posted on September 4, 2010 by rossiverson
In small business, many owners are not only trying to build income, but they are also trying to build their “net worth.”
I recently heard a new perspective (from Tim Ferris’s blog) on “net worth” that relates to many firms in the building industry. Most people derive “net worth” by taking your assets and subtracting your liabilities.
What if your “net worth” was what you are left with if you lost all of your money, and start
ed at zero? And, it could be calculated on the speed of you re-building back to where you were before losing it all.
What he meant by this was, all of the activities, relationships, past clients, intellectual capital that you build on a weekly basis throughout your career can turn into your “net worth.” We have all heard of millionaires who have lost it all, and within a year are back above the million dollar mark.
Focusing on building the intangibles of “who” you and your business are will create a situation that will allow you to bounce back quicker from a temporary slow down in demand. It will allow you to cross into new segments to supplement a decline in your business, sell a different set of skills, and be more confident in re-building your “net worth.”
*Patience is the key to building this type of “net worth,” but it can be accelerated with a focused plan.
Action Items to determine if you need to spend more time building your “net worth”:
1. Make a list of 5 things you have done in the past 6 months to further educate yourself within your industry?
2. Make a list of 5 people you have added to your core network within the past 12 months that enhances your chances of future opportunities?
3. If your past customers were your only advocates to build a future income, how confident are you in how you you have treated them if your future “net worth” was in their hands. (1. absolutely confident 2. not confident).
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Posted on August 16, 2010 by Kristin Kowler
It seems everyone in the building industry is buzzing about search engine optimization or SEO — the practice of optimizing your website so that you will “be found” by the search engines.
Competition to top search engine results for long-tail search terms like “St Paul Remodeling” and “minneapolis custom cabinets” is intensifying. Before long, it will be impossible to achieve top rankings without a good link-building strategy.
In his recent Whiteboard Friday video, Rand Fishkin, CEO of seomoz.org, recommends the following quality-over-quantity strategies for article-linking:
1. Avoid mass-submission/ SEO-play article sites. It’s ok to submit a press release to the online services. But as a general rule, copying and pasting a poorly written article into the top 10 (or 50) free article directories is a waste of time.
3. Find sites with good metrics & relevant readership. For example, if you are a company that specializes in green remodeling, you might look for blogs and websites written for consumers who are specifically interested in reducing the size of their carbon footprint, or in saving energy. Build online relationships by contributing to the conversation. But be careful! Blatant self-promotion is a big no-no. Your goal is to join in the conversation and add value for readers. If you do, you can “earn love” and a valuable in-bound link to your website.
4. Make sure you put great content on your site too. So those in-bound links you work so hard to get, won’t be wasted.
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Posted on July 28, 2010 by Kristin Kowler
Yes — not all but some — Like Katie Wolfe of St. Paul Minnesota. Katie is a marketer for a B2B technology company. Like lots of young women she’s savvy about social media. Guess how many twitter followers she has? 527. And she’s following 538. That’s a pretty decent social network!
Katie follows friends, publications, non-profits, brands, and social buying sites like Groupon. She tweets about stuff she likes, including High Road Heating and Cooling.
I hope they are monitoring the social web – so they can thank Katie for singing their praises!
Helpful tip: If you’re looking for more information about social media, especially HOW TO: Track Social Media Analytics, and you don’t know where to look. Start with mashable. According to postrank, it’s the #1 ranked blog on the topic of social media.
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ed at zero? And, it could be calculated on the speed of you re-building back to where you were before losing it all.
