Your Content Must Also Be Easy To Consume…

The other day, I received an email about a 45 minute video someone posted online which I wanted to see. Great, right? Not so much.

As I sat down to watch the video, my phone rang, I got busy, and to top it off, the video played slow. There was no way to download the video and it was not created with chapters or sections to make it easier for the viewer.

They Lost Me!

People are busy and now more than ever, it is critically important to make sure that you are easy to do business with and your content is EASY TO CONSUME.

Videos

Some ideas for making online video easier to consume:

1. Offer a download option so viewers can save to their own computer and watch on their own time.
2. If you have a long video, break it up into shorter segments and files so that is loads faster and allows the viewer to come back to it easier
3. Create chapters or markers in your video
4. Make it interesting to watch. Add background music and graphics, calls to action, notations, and things like that.

Blogs

It is also important to make your blog easy to consume and read. Some things you can do are:

1. Make sure that your blog design is neat, organized, and not cluttered

2. Don’t have distracting flash, graphics, or colors on your blog that take away from your message

3. Make sure people can easily reach you – Prominently list your social media links, email, RSS feed, etc.

4. Make it easy for people to share your blog with others. I highly recommend the "Share This" plug-in which is displayed at the end of all of my posts. Try it out and see how easy it is to share this blog post.

These days, having great content is not enough, you must be easy to do business with and your content must be easy to consume.

What do you think?

Photo Credit, Jaxed

In my continuing movement to help people who are worried or struggling with the economy, I have asked billionaires, millionaires, and other very successful online and offline business leaders to answer just ONE question. We have already heard from billionaire Mark Cuban as well as Kris Jones from Pepperjam. This time, we hear from everyone’s favorite social media icon, Gary Vaynerchuk, aka @garyvee.  http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

Gary gets the same question that I asked Mark Cuban and others:

If you could give just ONE piece of advice to people who are starting or running a business and are worried about money and the state of our economy, what would it be?

 

Gary V said: “U have to position yourself to RUN to work everyday, be happy as heck everyday and that business will GROW”

 

I completely agree with Gary V. It’s about finding something that you LOVE to do, something that makes you happy, something you would do for free, and then hustling you’re A** off every single day. You will be happy and your business WILL grow.

Find your passion, monetize it, build your personal and business brand, work your tail off, be positive, make things happen, and enjoy the process. It’s so much better than working for someone else and doing something that you don’t give a damn about. Remember, opportunity is everywhere! 

Next up…DIDDY!

 In my continuing movement to help people who are worried or struggling with the economy, I have asked billionaires, millionaires, and other very successful online and offline business leaders to answer just ONE question.

I have already posted billionaire Mark Cuban’s answer a few blog posts below. This time, I will share what Kris Jones had to say. For those who don’t know him, Kris is the CEO of http://www.pepperjam.com and a major player in the online business world.

Same question that I asked Mark Cuban and others:

If you could give just ONE piece of advice to people who are starting or running a business and are worried about money and the state of our economy, what would it be?

Kris Jones said: “My single piece of advice is to be willing to welcome risk even in difficult times. The degree to which one perseveres in the face of hardship defines the strength of their character.”

That’s funny; it is very similar to what Mark Cuban said. Hmm, are you noticing a trend yet?

I have said it before and I will say it again, you must be able to risk in order to be ultra successful.

Here is a quick success formula for you:

Find your passion

Find a way to monetize that passion

Work your *ss off day and night to build the business

Build relationships

Build a BRAND

Be willing to risk

Do what most people won’t do

Enjoy success

 

On deck: Gary Vee!

 

Photo Credit: affiliatesummit

 

Let me start this off by saying, I LOVE Costco, I am a huge fan, but I don’t love them today and if I were their CEO, what happened today would be a BIG ISSUE that I would immediately fix.

To most people, this will seem trivial, but if you are running a company of any size, you MUST MAXIMIZE your customer experience or you are absolutely leaving money on the table. If you do think it’s just trivial, I’d love to compete against you.  

Everyone knows that Costco has “receipt checkers” at the doors when you leave the store. Their primary job is to make sure that nobody walks out with something that they did not pay for. Their secondary job SHOULD be maximizing the customer experience to ensure return visits and goodwill.

It’s not happening. As we walked out today, after the lady checked our receipt, I looked at her and said “thank you”. What did she say? Absolutely nothing. That’s a CRIME!

This was a perfect opportunity to maximize the customer experience with something so small as saying “you’re welcome”, “have a nice day”, or “thanks for shopping at Costco today”.

If I were the CEO of Costco, I would require every receipt checker to say something to every single customer that walks out the door or they would lose their job. In this day and age, the economy, online shopping, etc, people have many choices where to shop and if you don’t maximize every customer interaction, you are losing customers and losing money whether you know it or not.

So, why should Costco do what I suggest?

1. It is EASY

2. It is FREE

3. It takes no time, no money, and virtually no extra effort!

4. It will make them more money.

Shame on you Costco for not ensuring that you maximize the customer experience at every possible opportunity. I also want to note that this was not a one-time thing, it’s happened before and I was going to blog about it but never did.

So Costco, I ask you, why not maximize your customer experience at every possible opportunity, especially with those things that cost no time, money, or effort? You have a great company but you can make it better. I challenge you to improve your customer experience at every level.

As for other companies out there, even small one person internet companies, make sure that you maximize your customer experience at every possible opportunity because if you don’t, someone else WILL!

 

Photo Credit: pokoroto

 

 

What if you could ask BILLIONAIRE’S and leading business leaders about their thoughts on starting/running a business and the state of our economy?

Well, I did just that! I used my connections to get to some of these people and was just plain lucky getting answers from others. When a billionaire talks business, it may just take one small thought or distinction to help you see how YOU can take your business to the next level.

One key point is that it’s not just WHAT someone says, but their thought process behind it that can really make a difference in your business.

First up, BILLIONAIRE Mark Cuban, who is a self made business genius and current owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

My question to Mark:

“If you could give just ONE piece of advice to people who are starting or running a business and are worried about money and the state of our economy, what would it be?”

Mark Cuban’s answer: “You can’t do both, pick 1.”

Great advice, amazing. Bottom line is that you need to let go of all the negative economy CRAP that the media loves to report and focus on building your business. The media doesn’t focus on the fact that Amazon.com had their best holiday season ever or that a 17 year old kid started a blog and sold if for 3 MILLION dollars six months later.

Go out there and focus, dominate, and claim the success that YOU deserve.

Photo Credit: jdlassica

Did you know that Billionaire Richard Branson literally learned how to create and run an airline in only 4 MONTHS?! That’s right, 4 months.

How many people would have never even tried such a crazy thing? Answer: 99.9% of the population. Maybe that is why there are far more low income people than billionaires.

What can this mean to you?

Ask yourself this: If Richard Branson can learn the airline business in 4 months, what can I achieve in 2009? DON’T PUT LIMITS ON YOURSELF. Get rid of the blinders, self doubt, negative thoughts about the economy, and all of that CRAP.

Challenge yourself to accomplish things in 2009 that you think are impossible. The next step is finding a way to make the impossible, possible. When you learn how to do that, you become much more valuable in every aspect of your life.

One of my goals for 2009 is to create 10 new millionaires in the world. It won’t be easy. I could have set a goal to create just 2 or 3 and that would have been great, but I want to strive for what I think is close to impossible.

Once I create 10 new millionaires in this crazy economy, there won’t be anything that I cannot do.

Remember, make the impossible, POSSIBLE!  

 

It’s no secret that in the United States, Southwest Airlines is one of the most successful airlines out there, if not the very best. In an era where many airlines are losing billions of dollars, Southwest has continued to thrive and make money in an unprecedented way.

Much of their success is due to their founder and CEO, Herb Kelleher. You can learn lots of valuable business advice if you study Herb and Southwest Airlines.

The person who turned me on to Herb was billionaire and Virgin founder Richard Branson, who is a business genius himself.

Herb and Richard share much of the same “primary attitudes” and I will highlight a few of them here:

1. Employees are number one. The way you treat your employees is the way you treat your customers.

I will add that in addition to employees, you should also include vendors, JV partners, and people like that to the list.

2. Think small to grow big.

This is a big one! I am telling you, the small companies have a huge advantage right now over the huge brands. It’s one of the reasons why Richard Branson runs so many of his Virgin business units as small companies.

3. Manage in good times for the bad times.

This is so important, especially now. As someone in business, you always need to be thinking about what you will do if sales go down, or you lose a key supplier, customer, things like that. Make sure that you always have action plans for these types of things and set up your business so you have various forms of income coming in at all times. (remember that old saying, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket)

In my next blog post, I will share three more strategies and business principles from Richard Branson and Herb Kelleher and we will dig a little deeper to see how they apply to smaller businesses all the way down to the one man (or woman) internet business.