Space 1999 was a British sci-fi show that aired in 1975. It starred Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. The premise was that nuclear waste stored on the moon exploded sending the moon and it's 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha off into space. It was a kind of Star Trek meets Dr. Who with acting by way of Thunderbirds marionettes. They encountered aliens and handled internal conflicts as they tried to deal with the fact that they were getting farther and farther away from earth with their chances of getting back lessening every second.
Let's contrast this with the premise of Star Trek, which we all know. Captain Kirk and his intrepid crew of about 430 signed up for their adventures into deepest, darkest space. There was no accident that caused them to go on this 5 year mission to seek out new life, new civilizations, to boldly go where no man, woman, LGBT, hermaphrodite had gone before. (Covering my Politically Correct ass here.) Except for the crew members in the red tunics they were all pretty happy on board the Enterprise.
Okay, I'm a sci-fi nerd, but you get my point, right? Space 1999, a bunch of people forced into a situation, not of their making, or liking, and Star Trek where everyone is onboard for the adventure. I encounter a lot of businesses that are just drifting out there. They are either family-owned and now run by an offspring whose dreams of becoming a skateboard model had fizzled and are now forced to run the business because they need the livelihood, or businesses that got off to a fast start and are now drifting because the owner is bored. It's also not so rare that I find people who are not quite sure what business they are in.
Add to this those that dream of doing something else and are panicking because the longer they stick with it the harder it will be for them to 'get back to Earth'. Now contrast this with the Star Trek business owner who knows what the mission is; they have their 5 year business plan (probably a little too long in this day and age but let me have my metaphor, please) and everyone she or he has on board has shared goals and have signed on of their own free will.
Okay, everyone, which company would you rather be working for? Or, more importantly, which company would you rather be leading? Of course you might be thinking, but how can I be Captain Kirk when my employees are just like those Moonbase Alpha complainers? Or, “I can't kill off those crew members in the red tunics, they're my relatives.”
While I'm not recommending you enact the militaristic, hierarchical aspect of the Star Ship Enterprise, I do recommend that you find the passion in your business. When I speak with bored small business owners I always ask them if there is any aspect of their business that they actually do like. More often then not they'll say yes, they do love to do X. Then I tell them, why don't they do X?
Sometimes their website can be the conduit through which they find new inspiration. I have advised many companies that haven't sold anything on-line before that they could explore that option or promote a series of breakfast seminars. The opportunity to focus on something different that still benefits the company is exciting.
Find an aspect of your business that you can be passionate about. You might not have to find a new crew. Your employees will be happier about this one, simple change more than you could imagine. Employees like seeing their leader actually leading. It might even keep you away from the shop which will make them even happier.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
We are all inherently lazy. By that I doesn't mean we don't work hard on our business or short-change our customers (usually the opposite is true), but it would be really nice if could all make a decent living off of our small businesses. The reality is that most small business owners make between $35,000 and $75,000 a year. That's a lot of grief, passion and sweat for very little money.
The small business owner is a bundle of contradictions. We know that marketing campaigns only work if they are executed over a long period of time. Same goes for PR, social media, pretty much any marketing project, but SMBs want to spend very little money so they look for the quick hit and hope that that will turn the tide. They opt for the one-off email, or snailmailer, Goodle Adwords, or radio campaign. It almost never works so resentment is built as it relates to the relative usefulness of marketing and marketers (those bastards).
I tell SMBs spending more money on marketing doesn't so much guarantee success, it mitigates the risk of it not working. If you don't spend the time and effort to research your audience before marketing to them then you're increasing your risk of failure. Most SMB's will tell you they already “know” who their audience is and dispense with research. This is bad on several fronts. Research will confirm and focus your assumptions and it can also find the secret lever which will actually move those prospects to buy from you. I can't tell you the number of times finding the key to a campaign came out of doing the research. “Oh, pig farmers are huge Alice Cooper fans!” Who knew?
So, if you're not going to spend the money on risk mitigation, are there any easy, magic bullet ways to get the business going? The only answer I have for that is, “Unleash the herd mentality.”
The idea is that you want your prospects coming after you like the bulls of Pamplona. “Oh, my gosh. Yes!” You say. That's what you want, less they gore you, of course. Oye, to have that problem. Here are the only ways I know of to create this circumstance:
A PR stunt. An idea so brilliant that all the media jump on it. (like the cheap gas day for FightNetwork.com)
Hire a really well known personality to hock your stuff- ColdFx and Don Cherry (hey, anything and Don Cherry)
Associate your product with personalities that match your brand. Have them model for you. (Roots did this early on to kickstart their business)
A viral video.
Right out of the blue, Ricky Gervais tweets about loving your business.
You get a client that everyone in the vertical looks up to and you are associated with their success.
Here's how the above stack up.
Requires money. Damn. And there's no guarantee the media will pick it up. But I am partial to this option.
Do you know anyone from high school who's become hugely famous that you could call to help you? Ryan Gossling grew up on Burlington, Ontario. Did you go to school with him? Otherwise, this is also going to cost you money. Or maybe you have a famous fan out there that you don't know about, like Eddie Shack, Liam Neesen. If they use your product and believe in it, awesome. They might give you a break.
This is a good gambit. Start with the best you can connect with. If you're in a small town, getting a sports hero from the local baseball farm club, or OHL team could be all you need. The more well known your target, the more work it might be. Oh, and it will cost you.
Forget the viral video unless your business involves hamsters eating popcorn on the piano. Even the biggest ad agencies will not guarantee that they can create a video that will go viral.
Even lower percentage.
This happened to us. For years we had been trying to attract real estate agents. Then one day we landed a great customer who just happens to be a real estate powerhouse. Agents suddenly started calling us wanting us to build their websites. The fact that we had nothing to do with our customer's business model or their style of selling meant nothing to the agents calling us. We had unleashed the herd mentality. Super stars of real estate were using our system. That was enough. Do you have a stellar customer that others look up to? Maybe they'll let you grab onto their coat tails. It's worth a try.
If I was smart I would have suggested that you all come over to a breakfast session at the Hilton Garden Inn and charge you for the above insights. Oh, well. Blew it.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
I am continuously amazed at how cavalierly many small business owners care for their domain. It's just more technobabble to them. Learning new vocabulary like URL, domain, registrar, Whois information is somehow mindbogglingly difficult. I know many execs who wear their technical ignorance as a badge of courage as if they were the last bulwark against the onslaught of the zombie technocrati. However, when their website goes down because the employee, whose email associated with the administrator of the domain, has long departed, so you haven't been receiving the domain payment notices, then it's mass panic.
The lesson here is that you must treat your domain as if it were a piece of property. It's the deed to your ranch. You need to know where it has been registered. You need to know how to access the account in case you have to make changes to its settings, even if you rely on others to do this. You need to keep up-to-date the Whois information if emails, personnel or addresses have changed.
I also strongly recommend that your domain be hosted with a dedicated domain management service like hover.com, 10dollar.ca, etc. I used to recommend godaddy.com but the number of come-ons and up sells have gotten so bad that it's a pain to register. Having a confused customer is bad no matter who has created the confusion.
The other reason I recommend the above is if you're one of the unfortunates who are using one specific, huge, popular website service, that happens to be based overseas, and if you choose to migrate your website someplace else they make it extremely difficult and are sometimes quite hostile about letting you take control of your domain. It can get nasty.
Don't register your domain for longer than two years. We've had several websites go dark because someone registered their domain for 10 years and they forgot about it and the administrator had changed in that time and once again emails didn't go to the owners.
So, if your a small business owner without a big IT support infrastructure, right now after you've finished reading this post contact your web people, IT guy or site designer and ask them where your domain is being hosted and who has control of it? If the administrator is someone other than yourself, then get them to change the Whois information so your name and email contact is the administrator.
Ask them if the domain management is being handled by the same people hosting your website. If it is do they also offer full domain management services for administrating A Records, C Name Aliases, MX Records, forwarding. Okay, I know I've lost you, but if they don't offer these services then you should strongly consider moving the domain management to a dedicated service that you control. You can still keep your website where it is.
Or just forward this article to your designated geek and write, “What he said.”
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
While statistics show that about 40% of small businesses do not have a website (yes, unbelievable, but true) I am continually amazed at how bad the websites are of those that do have them. And because I know small business owners hate talking about marketing I've always tried to come up with snappy ways to help those same owners envision why they should care what their websites look like. Here's my latest one:
“If you're going to a party, you might as well dress like your hosts.”
What does that mean? Why couldn't I come up with something catchier? Well, if I could do the latter, I'd be writing useless business books and making millions, so let's just deal with the former. It's actually easier for me to tell you where I came up with this.
We were working with a customer trying to transform their truly dreadful website into something marginal, and for this customer, that was pushing the limit. The one thing that kept hitting me was that his clients included P&G, Lever, and other Fortune 500 companies. So, his awful website did not seem like it was not an impediment to doing business with these companies.
I printed out the home pages of the websites of his customers, laid them out on the boardroom table and asked, “At the very least, don't you think you should be going to the website party dressed as well as these party-goers?” I pointed out that essentially he was going to a soiree hosted by his customers dressed in torn jeans and wearing two different coloured socks. He got my reference but didn't get the point. He was still getting work from these people after all.
I told him that he was in the kind of business where he had to fight the battle on two fronts. He needed to confirm to potential customers that he was the right person to do business with, and at the same time he had to watch his flank to make sure he didn't lose the customers he had. Didn't he think that his customers would prefer to work with someone who 'looked' like one of them? His catalogue of customers came from relationships built a long time ago. What if new people came to those companies that didn't care about this history and judged him on his marketing materials?
If you think about it, living your customer's brand commitment with a matching one of your own shows respect for them. Most small business owners don't consider that when designing a website, but I think it's really important. You need to continually confirm to your customers your progressive nature. It also shows that you care about your own business.
In fact that very same week, a new contact at his oldest customer saw his (old) website and wondered what the hell they were doing working with him and decided to move on to another supplier.
Our customer realized that perhaps he had been shortsighted and updated his website to at least clean jeans and a pressed shirt. Some people are just not comfortable in designer clothes.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
As a small business owner in Canada that sends emails to their customers you'd better get ready for CASL. No, that's not a sexual disorder, it's the government's proposed Canadian Anti Spam Legislation. It also stands for, The Clowns in Ottawa Have Gotten It Wrong Once More. Rather than implement similar legislation already hammered out by the EU and the USA, Canada is not only late to the game our government seems to want to control the Internet.
The EU and USA regs take a targeted approach to the problem of business spam. Whereas the CASL will make it illegal to send any commercial electronic message without the express consent of the recipient. It does not matter that they are your customer. It does not matter that when they signed on to your service that they checked a box indicating that they agreed to your service level agreement, which gave you permission to email them. It doesn't matter that every email you send has an opt-out link. From now on you must get EXPRESS permission to email them. You will need to go back to ALL your customers that you communicate with and get them to reaffirm their desire to be contacted by you. And if you don't the penalties are up to a million dollars per email transgression.
I'm sorry for being a sleep at switch here. When I heard about CASL back when it was published in 2010, I thought, “Wow, more CRTC crap. Who cares? Where's my coffee?” But after seeing a recent presentation by James Minns of Shibley Righten, I became overwhelmingly concerned about the affect on our business and the amount of time necessary to make sure we're adhering to the legislation if it is passed under its present guise.
Did you know that it will be illegal for your salespeople to send a casual, “How'r you doing John?” email to a customer if you have a link to a commercial enterprise in it? “Cathy, you gotta see the new shoes at David's.” If you put a link to David's shoes, you will be toasted.
We are law abiding citizens here in Canada. What if we want to correct the situation? Well, you'll be barred from communicating to your customers on your email list because even sending an email to ask for permission will be illegal. What are we expected to do, go door-to-door? Send snail mail? Oh wait, Canada Post are not required to stop sending us garbage to our mail boxes. Why is that? Perhaps because they are a crown corporation and the government makes money off the practice? Stop Paul, please don't be so cynical.
If you're a small business with a mailing list or even if you email customers regularly, read the legislation. It is ridiculous in its present form. While the law has been passed, it's not in force yet. Contact your MP. They will know NOTHING about it, of course. They will be happy to send you a form letter thanking you for your support in the next election, but do it anyway. Even better? Contact your lawyer.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
I love Google Now. It gives my iPhone 4 Siri-like capabilities that Apple chose to give only to 4s and 5 users. Was I a bit miffed at Apple? Sure. The same goes for the much maligned Apple maps app, but only for the reason that turn-by-turn with voice is available only for 4s and 5. Once again Google stepped into the breech and delivered turn-by-turn when Apple wouldn't. This proved that the iPhone 4 platform was fully capable of offering such amenities and that Apple were money-grubbing shit-heads.
Google could have kept their tech to themselves releasing it only on Android devices but they didn't. They have given us iPhone 4 users a better iPhone than Apple wanted to give us. Thank you Google. So, why did they do this? Was it because they are a company of geeks that they just wanted to show off their cool stuff to a wider audience? Was it because there are people at Google that love Apple products more than Microsoft's? Was it because Sergey Brin thinks Steve Jobs was a god and wishes there wasn't so much antagonism between Google and Apple? Was it to introduce Apple users to the world of Android and make switchers out of them? Was it a way to extend the Adwords platform?
I think the answer to the above questions is all of the above. What, as small business owners, can we learn from this? I'll call it, “Help yourself by helping your competition.” Why would we do this? As you can see from the above example, what Google has done has made me feel good about Google. It makes me even more pissed off at Apple, which is also good for Google.
Let's contrast this with Microsoft's Apple strategy which has always felt grudging and half-hearted. Even though their latest version of the Office Suite is actually their best, I had abandoned Office for LibreOffice a while ago because of the dreck Microsoft was putting out for the Mac. Maybe they did this because there was little hope of getting a Mac user to switch to Windows, but I think that was short-sighted. Contrast this with the goodwill Google is generating even though Android and iPhone are fiercely competitive platforms. Just read the user posts. It's almost “thermo nuclear” as someone famous once said.
Who are your competition? Can you do something for them and their customers in exchange for some name recognition? Be altruistic. Don't ask for anything in return. Make someone's life better. If you recall the movie, Miracle on 34th Street, one of the shocking scenes was Santa, while working at Macy's department store, told a child to go to Gimbels department store because the toy was cheaper there. The management was in an uproar, but then a customer came up and told them that they were so impressed that they would do such a thing that she would always shop at Macy's.
We've always followed this philosophy. We know Your Web Department is not for everyone and when people ask about using YWD, it only takes a few questions to realize whether we are a good fit. We'll not only turn down the business we'll tell them where to get the most appropriate solution. This happened fairly recently when a woman from a church in Texas wanted us to take over their site. I realized that the issues they had could be handled by their ISP, but they didn't know what questions to ask. I told her that they didn't need us and gave them them the ISP info. She said, in a wonderful Texas drawl, that she had never encountered a company like ours and that she would have the entire congregation pray for us.
Now I can't recall any new business coming from that, but having God on your side couldn't hurt. However, I can attest to new business coming from this strategy, but most importantly, retaining existing customers. And let's not call it a 'strategy'. It makes it coldhearted and remote. You should be doing this because it's the right thing to do. You must want to do this. It must be part of your corporate DNA. Every person in your company should be allowed to help the competition if it makes sense for the customer. It will also make your employees feel good about working for you. That sounds like a win-win situation to me.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
Space 1999 was a British sci-fi show that aired in 1975. It starred Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. The premise was that nuclear waste stored on the moon exploded sending the moon and it's 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha off into space. It was a kind of Star Trek meets Dr. Who with acting by way of Thunderbirds marionettes. They encountered aliens and handled internal conflicts as they tried to deal with the fact that they were getting farther and farther away from earth with their chances of getting back lessening every second.
We are all inherently lazy. By that I doesn't mean we don't work hard on our business or short-change our customers (usually the opposite is true), but it would be really nice if could all make a decent living off of our small businesses. The reality is that 
I am continuously amazed at how cavalierly many small business owners care for their domain. It's just more technobabble to them. Learning new vocabulary like URL, domain, registrar, Whois information is somehow mindbogglingly difficult. I know many execs who wear their technical ignorance as a badge of courage as if they were the last bulwark against the onslaught of the zombie technocrati. However, when their website goes down because the employee, whose email associated with the administrator of the domain, has long departed, so you haven't been receiving the domain payment notices, then it's mass panic.
While statistics show that about 40% of small businesses do not have a website (yes, unbelievable, but true) I am continually amazed at how bad the websites are of those that do have them. And because I know small business owners hate talking about marketing I've always tried to come up with snappy ways to help those same owners envision why they should care what their websites look like. Here's my latest one:
As a small business owner in Canada that sends emails to their customers you'd better get ready for CASL. No, that's not a sexual disorder, it's the government's proposed Canadian Anti Spam Legislation. It also stands for, The Clowns in Ottawa Have Gotten It Wrong Once More. Rather than implement similar legislation already hammered out by the EU and the USA, Canada is not only late to the game our government seems to want to control the Internet.
