Reinventing ourselves to keep up with today's business world---putting ourselves on the right path
Do you have "enough" customers? Do you have "enough" business? Are you looking for more? Can anyone really say they have "enough" customers?
In this economy, many people have lost their jobs, many have lost their homes, many have had to return their leased cars to the bank, many had to leave the keys on their boats for the bank who financed it. And many have also experienced for the first time, what it's like to stand humiliated, before a bankruptcy judge...hoping that they will be able to walk out with their dignity, if nothing else.
If you're someone, who, like me, has personally been affected in a downsizing or reduction in staff or position elimination or a business closure, over the years, on a few occasions, as a result of a bad economy, whether self-imposed or simply because you were in the wrong business at the wrong time, or you were underfinanced, or the rain wouldn't stop falling on the days your business counted on sunny days, then you know that there comes a moment, when you find yourself sitting there, alone, thinking about what you're doing with your life-- and contemplating "the rest of your life".
And suddenly it hits you, that this isn't really where you want to be anyway. And it's not "sour grapes" and you're not making an excuse and blaming it on the economy, cause you know that while the economy did impact your decision, or "their" decision, the fact is at some point in the past you reached a fork in the road and you took the wrong fork. And sometimes you reach that conclusion because the economy can't support the business you're in or maybe it's because you realize that it's simply not the right path for you, the one that provides the career growth or self-esteem or rewards you aspire to reach or sometimes its just not providing you with either the opportunity or possibilities, to earn the income you need or want, to do the things with your life that are important--or maybe it's not the one that will provide you with the freedom and encouragement to do the things you enjoy doing, without someone stifling your creativity and telling you "that's not your job"... (even when you know what you did had great benefit to the company)
My father was a wise man, well read. He used to cut out these little sayings he would find in magazines or his junk mail or whereever. And he'd slide those little pieces of paper under the clear glass top of his wooden desk that was in his office, in our home, and whenever I'd wander into his office to talk to him, I would stand by the side of his desk chair as he was working(he was an accountant), and he'd show me his latest "additions" under the glass and we'd talk about what they meant. I remember that one of the little pearls of wisdom he had placed there said "money is not the most important thing in life, but it's just ahead of what's in second place". And it's true.
I was fortunate to have lived and shared a very comfortable life in past years, with my husband, before moving to Florida. We lived a lifestyle that afforded us a very nice, large, contemporary home on a wide lagoon, that fed into Silver Bay, which led to Barnegat Bay, at the NJ seashore, and we had a gorgeous big boat parked behind that gorgeous home, two luxury cars in the driveway, the ability to buy anything we wanted, the freedom to travel anywhere we wanted to, stay in the finest hotels, dine in the finest restaurants in the world...and in those years, I always had a tough time coming up with what to put on my birthday wish list or Christmas/Chanukah wish lists for my husband and family, cause I felt that I had everything I wanted and needed and always had to struggle to put "something" on the list. We wouldn't have lived that lifestyle if we didn't have or earn the money to support it.
When we moved to Florida just over 5 years ago, hoping to continue that lifestyle, enjoy the soft breezes, the palm trees, cruise the Intercoastal to Cabbage Key or Sanibel or Captiva or take little cocktail cruises on Sarasota Bay in our SeaRay Amberjack, have the freedom to enjoy our lives without worrying about how to pay our bills, we didn't anticipate that the perhaps the path my husband and I chose, would not be the path that supported that lifestyle, or supported it for very long, anyway.
As a professional career woman, I have reinvented myself about 5-6 times in my adult life. I had a long career as a Vice President of Human Resources & Office Operations for a large national advertising agency, I fulfilled a lifelong dream to create a French themed gourmet upscale tea salon, featuring all my own recipes and love of French things, in the scenic hills of Bucks County Pennsylvania. The business failed within a year of opening and I lost everything I put into it, including the home I had put up as security. And it destroyed my first marriage, but I don't consider that business one of my failures. I consider it one of my major accomplishments...fulfilling a lifelong dream and bringing it to life and I was willing to do it at any risk.
I've spent over 12 years consulting, parttime, fulltime, anytime, on recruiting, Internet research, developing e-commerce marketing solutions, making money on Ebay, website design, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) marketing programs for other businesses. I've managed my own e-commerce upscale designer fashion business on Ebay, and my own websites, for several years. I managed, jointly, with my husband, a successful e-commerce wholesale clothing business, marketing our products around the world, dealing with suppliers in all corners of the globe, for several years. I developed a company, marketing products for romance and intimacy, for adults, which I marketed through home parties and my own website, for long enough to realize this wasn't the right market for that business.
And for a little over the last 2 years, until recently, I learned everything there is to know, and more,about selling luxury cars, having worked for a large luxury car dealership in Sarasota, first learning the ropes as the "rooky without a clue" on the sales floor, in the Audi showroom, and then transitioning to the role of Internet Sales Manager providing information on Audis, Volkswagens and Porsches to hundreds of people each month, who preferred to do their preliminary car research online, sometimes anonymously, many of which enjoyed the experience of dealing with me online so much that the entire deal was completed online. All they had to do was come to the dealership, sign the papers and drive home in their new car. I loved that job, but sadly I realized I wasn't on the right path to meet my own goals.
As that old saying Dad showed me under his glass desktop goes...."when life deals you lemons, make lemonade".
Just as we sometimes have to take a different path and reinvent ourselves professionally in order to embrace a new career, or face the future, in this economy, businesses also have to evaluate the ways in which they are marketing themselves. And if they don't have "enough" customers or "enough" business, it's time to reinvent the way they market themselves, to keep up with the industry, their competitors and in many cases, just to stay in business...
In this economy, the key to having a successful career or a sucessful business is marketing, marketing, marketing.The all important question that says it all. How will people find you if they don't already know you exist? If they already know your name, chances are it's because they are already your customers. What about all the people who don't know your name that don't know you offer that product or service they are looking for?
The majority of the world has computer in their home or access to one at the library or cybercafe and they are on the Internet. Everyone is in a hurry to get information. No one wants to spend the time flipping pages of a phone book, looking at listings of business after business, like yours, trying to guess if "that's" the company they should call. And face it, many people are uncomfortable calling, particularly now, when they know that if you have a website, they can just go there to check out your business without even being noticed by you and feeling, oh, maybe a little pressured to have to interact with you.
Resources say that when the overwhelming majority of people are looking for a product or business locally, they go online, to the major search engines, Google or Yahoo, and they type in generic terms called "keywords" or "keyword phrases", for what they want to find. In 2008 search engines far surpassed the yellow pages directories as the first place people searched for a local business. Only 22% of the people, in the US, who were looking for a business used their yellow pages directory.
And in this fast-paced world, people don't want to spend alot of time searching for information. Research shows that typically they look at the top 8-10 results on the first page, searching for the one description and url that looks like a direct link to the actual business' website, and they will click there first. They want the ability to read everything or just what's important to them, about your business. So it's important to have all the things that people will want to know and that you want them to know about your business, right there on your website, including perhaps some of your products, maybe your prices, your philosophy if you think that's a selling point, maybe pictures of your friendly smiling staff, and your doggie who greets the customers when they arrive, your hours, your adddress, phone number and email address. They aren't as likely to pick up the phone and call you, anymore, like they used to, if they can't find anything more about your business other than your name and contact information listed with all of your competitors, on a local list of businesses or someone else's website.
Forrester Research, a US Interactive marketing research firm, predicts that interactive marketing will top $61 billion by 2012. Search marketing will triple in five years. What are you doing to make sure you and your business are on the right path? What is your ranking in the search results? Have you checked? Go to Google.com and type in generic keywords that people would use to find your business and see if people can find your business by doing a search, without knowing your name? See if they can find your website by doing a generic search (without typing in your business name, just using generic keywords)
They will never find out what's important to know about you or your business, if you don't have a website. And, if you do have a website, but it hasn't been search engine optimized to attract the major search engine crawlers, bots and spiders, so it will show up in the top 10 search results on the first page when someone types in generic keywords that describe your business, the search engines won't find you and no one else will either..and then your website has as much value to you and your business as writing the name of your company on a post-it note and hanging it on your refrigerator door. Who will see it other than you and the people who already know your business exists?
If you need to put your business on the web and on the right marketing path. I can help you.
If you'd like to learn more about how, check out my website at www.justforclicks.net
In this economy, many people have lost their jobs, many have lost their homes, many have had to return their leased cars to the bank, many had to leave the keys on their boats for the bank who financed it. And many have also experienced for the first time, what it's like to stand humiliated, before a bankruptcy judge...hoping that they will be able to walk out with their dignity, if nothing else.
If you're someone, who, like me, has personally been affected in a downsizing or reduction in staff or position elimination or a business closure, over the years, on a few occasions, as a result of a bad economy, whether self-imposed or simply because you were in the wrong business at the wrong time, or you were underfinanced, or the rain wouldn't stop falling on the days your business counted on sunny days, then you know that there comes a moment, when you find yourself sitting there, alone, thinking about what you're doing with your life-- and contemplating "the rest of your life".
And suddenly it hits you, that this isn't really where you want to be anyway. And it's not "sour grapes" and you're not making an excuse and blaming it on the economy, cause you know that while the economy did impact your decision, or "their" decision, the fact is at some point in the past you reached a fork in the road and you took the wrong fork. And sometimes you reach that conclusion because the economy can't support the business you're in or maybe it's because you realize that it's simply not the right path for you, the one that provides the career growth or self-esteem or rewards you aspire to reach or sometimes its just not providing you with either the opportunity or possibilities, to earn the income you need or want, to do the things with your life that are important--or maybe it's not the one that will provide you with the freedom and encouragement to do the things you enjoy doing, without someone stifling your creativity and telling you "that's not your job"... (even when you know what you did had great benefit to the company)
My father was a wise man, well read. He used to cut out these little sayings he would find in magazines or his junk mail or whereever. And he'd slide those little pieces of paper under the clear glass top of his wooden desk that was in his office, in our home, and whenever I'd wander into his office to talk to him, I would stand by the side of his desk chair as he was working(he was an accountant), and he'd show me his latest "additions" under the glass and we'd talk about what they meant. I remember that one of the little pearls of wisdom he had placed there said "money is not the most important thing in life, but it's just ahead of what's in second place". And it's true.
I was fortunate to have lived and shared a very comfortable life in past years, with my husband, before moving to Florida. We lived a lifestyle that afforded us a very nice, large, contemporary home on a wide lagoon, that fed into Silver Bay, which led to Barnegat Bay, at the NJ seashore, and we had a gorgeous big boat parked behind that gorgeous home, two luxury cars in the driveway, the ability to buy anything we wanted, the freedom to travel anywhere we wanted to, stay in the finest hotels, dine in the finest restaurants in the world...and in those years, I always had a tough time coming up with what to put on my birthday wish list or Christmas/Chanukah wish lists for my husband and family, cause I felt that I had everything I wanted and needed and always had to struggle to put "something" on the list. We wouldn't have lived that lifestyle if we didn't have or earn the money to support it.
When we moved to Florida just over 5 years ago, hoping to continue that lifestyle, enjoy the soft breezes, the palm trees, cruise the Intercoastal to Cabbage Key or Sanibel or Captiva or take little cocktail cruises on Sarasota Bay in our SeaRay Amberjack, have the freedom to enjoy our lives without worrying about how to pay our bills, we didn't anticipate that the perhaps the path my husband and I chose, would not be the path that supported that lifestyle, or supported it for very long, anyway.
As a professional career woman, I have reinvented myself about 5-6 times in my adult life. I had a long career as a Vice President of Human Resources & Office Operations for a large national advertising agency, I fulfilled a lifelong dream to create a French themed gourmet upscale tea salon, featuring all my own recipes and love of French things, in the scenic hills of Bucks County Pennsylvania. The business failed within a year of opening and I lost everything I put into it, including the home I had put up as security. And it destroyed my first marriage, but I don't consider that business one of my failures. I consider it one of my major accomplishments...fulfilling a lifelong dream and bringing it to life and I was willing to do it at any risk.
I've spent over 12 years consulting, parttime, fulltime, anytime, on recruiting, Internet research, developing e-commerce marketing solutions, making money on Ebay, website design, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) marketing programs for other businesses. I've managed my own e-commerce upscale designer fashion business on Ebay, and my own websites, for several years. I managed, jointly, with my husband, a successful e-commerce wholesale clothing business, marketing our products around the world, dealing with suppliers in all corners of the globe, for several years. I developed a company, marketing products for romance and intimacy, for adults, which I marketed through home parties and my own website, for long enough to realize this wasn't the right market for that business.
And for a little over the last 2 years, until recently, I learned everything there is to know, and more,about selling luxury cars, having worked for a large luxury car dealership in Sarasota, first learning the ropes as the "rooky without a clue" on the sales floor, in the Audi showroom, and then transitioning to the role of Internet Sales Manager providing information on Audis, Volkswagens and Porsches to hundreds of people each month, who preferred to do their preliminary car research online, sometimes anonymously, many of which enjoyed the experience of dealing with me online so much that the entire deal was completed online. All they had to do was come to the dealership, sign the papers and drive home in their new car. I loved that job, but sadly I realized I wasn't on the right path to meet my own goals.
As that old saying Dad showed me under his glass desktop goes...."when life deals you lemons, make lemonade".
Just as we sometimes have to take a different path and reinvent ourselves professionally in order to embrace a new career, or face the future, in this economy, businesses also have to evaluate the ways in which they are marketing themselves. And if they don't have "enough" customers or "enough" business, it's time to reinvent the way they market themselves, to keep up with the industry, their competitors and in many cases, just to stay in business...
In this economy, the key to having a successful career or a sucessful business is marketing, marketing, marketing.The all important question that says it all. How will people find you if they don't already know you exist? If they already know your name, chances are it's because they are already your customers. What about all the people who don't know your name that don't know you offer that product or service they are looking for?
The majority of the world has computer in their home or access to one at the library or cybercafe and they are on the Internet. Everyone is in a hurry to get information. No one wants to spend the time flipping pages of a phone book, looking at listings of business after business, like yours, trying to guess if "that's" the company they should call. And face it, many people are uncomfortable calling, particularly now, when they know that if you have a website, they can just go there to check out your business without even being noticed by you and feeling, oh, maybe a little pressured to have to interact with you.
Resources say that when the overwhelming majority of people are looking for a product or business locally, they go online, to the major search engines, Google or Yahoo, and they type in generic terms called "keywords" or "keyword phrases", for what they want to find. In 2008 search engines far surpassed the yellow pages directories as the first place people searched for a local business. Only 22% of the people, in the US, who were looking for a business used their yellow pages directory.
And in this fast-paced world, people don't want to spend alot of time searching for information. Research shows that typically they look at the top 8-10 results on the first page, searching for the one description and url that looks like a direct link to the actual business' website, and they will click there first. They want the ability to read everything or just what's important to them, about your business. So it's important to have all the things that people will want to know and that you want them to know about your business, right there on your website, including perhaps some of your products, maybe your prices, your philosophy if you think that's a selling point, maybe pictures of your friendly smiling staff, and your doggie who greets the customers when they arrive, your hours, your adddress, phone number and email address. They aren't as likely to pick up the phone and call you, anymore, like they used to, if they can't find anything more about your business other than your name and contact information listed with all of your competitors, on a local list of businesses or someone else's website.
Forrester Research, a US Interactive marketing research firm, predicts that interactive marketing will top $61 billion by 2012. Search marketing will triple in five years. What are you doing to make sure you and your business are on the right path? What is your ranking in the search results? Have you checked? Go to Google.com and type in generic keywords that people would use to find your business and see if people can find your business by doing a search, without knowing your name? See if they can find your website by doing a generic search (without typing in your business name, just using generic keywords)
They will never find out what's important to know about you or your business, if you don't have a website. And, if you do have a website, but it hasn't been search engine optimized to attract the major search engine crawlers, bots and spiders, so it will show up in the top 10 search results on the first page when someone types in generic keywords that describe your business, the search engines won't find you and no one else will either..and then your website has as much value to you and your business as writing the name of your company on a post-it note and hanging it on your refrigerator door. Who will see it other than you and the people who already know your business exists?
If you need to put your business on the web and on the right marketing path. I can help you.
If you'd like to learn more about how, check out my website at www.justforclicks.net
Comment
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Comment by An Bacheler on August 28, 2009 at 10:25am
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Thanks so much for your comments.
I often think that sometimes my father still communicates with me from the grave...and forces me to remember all of those little pearls of wisdom. They come to me mostly when I'm really unhappy or terribly upset or just frustrated with a situation or feeling helpless about a situation in my life. It's like he's there, still, hugging me from the "other side", encouraging me, getting me through every crisis, no matter how big or small, in my life--
And yes, in general, I do believe it isn't about the destination. It's about the journey. But as you are on each path in life...you sorta feel you have decided on a destination and that's where you're going. You just have to have the wisdom to realize when you either picked the wrong destination or the wrong path to get there.
My father spent all my 18 years that I lived at home with my parents, drilling into my head, (and he probably continues to remind me subconsciously, even now) that I have the power to make my life what I want it to be. He'd say "Andrea (cause that's my full name and what he called me back then), you have to believe me when I tell you that you can have anything you want and you can do anything you want in your life or with your life. You just have to decide what that is and go after it, with a vengeance, and do everything you can to get it and don't stop until you do. And if, in the end, or when you decide you're done trying, you didn't get what you wanted, it's not because of someone else or something else. It's because YOU just didn't want it badly enough"
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Comment by Nelly Camardo on August 28, 2009 at 9:50am
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I enjoyed reading your great article and I can identify with the journey you took. My father's wisdom was perseverance,never give up. You have found your niche.
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Comment by Elissa Bentsen on August 28, 2009 at 9:21am
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Great article, very comprehensive. Perhaps your father had this bit of wisdom under his glass top desk. "It isn't about the destination. It's about the journey" Seems you've had an interesting one.
Elissa Bentsen
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Comment by Nancy Holmes on August 27, 2009 at 9:37pm
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An, congratulations on your latest evolution. I believe you have found your area of expertise.
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