One of the most common reasons why people start their own business is wanting to be in control of your time: you want to be able to decide when and how long you go on holiday, when you get up in the morning and when you leave work in the evening,  and to take time out to be at your son’s footie game or to pick your daughter up from ballet.

More often than not, you’ll be in for a rude awakening…

Starting a new business is extremely time consuming. There are so many things to do and consider, new learnings to take on board, staff to employ and lead, money to invest… Last but not least getting paying customers into your business.

Starting your own business is an exciting, yet scary step to take, and once taken you’re in head over heels. You start working ridiculous hours to get everything done (just for the time being of course, because in a couple of months time, it will get easier…). But not just that, on top of all of  that you also start thinking about your business all the time, even dreaming of it at night…that’s if you can still find sleep in the first place.

Believe me, I know what I am talking about: I’ve been there, done that.

You’ve entered a vicious circle, because by now you’ve invested a lot of money into this business of yours, you’ve worked incredibly hard to get where you are, and where you are is: exhausted, just keeping your head above water financially… and working harder than ever before.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Your health is starting to suffer. You are secretly worried about your sanity. But you can’t give up now, because you have invested too much (and not just financially). So on you go….

You are not alone. Literally MILLIONS of unsuspecting small business owners have fallen into this exact same trap before you.

The difference between them and you is that you can STOP, right NOW!

Take the first step and claim your 5 Secrets Of Marketing Success right NOW! Simply fill in your name and Email address and this resource valued at $97 is yours for FREE.

I have good news for you: you CAN take control of your own time!

Many small business owners are in a symbiotic relationship with their businesses: the business can’t live without them, and they can’t live without their business (financially as well as emotionally).

To improve the way your business works, you have to start taking a step back, and adopt a bird’s eye perspective. But first…

Time Management

If there was ONE key to success in business, it’s effective time management.

We all have the same amount of time available in one day. The question is: are we using it wisely?

To be a successful time manager you have to spend an hour getting total clarity on how you are currently spending your time. I challenge you to keep a time journal for just 1 week (to start with). It’s going to take you under 1 hour to write down what you do every day and how long you take to do it.

Once you know HOW you spend your time, you must prioritize your actions and apply the four Ds of Time Management (Do – Don’t – Delegate –Delay).

One of the most important questions that you can ask yourself in terms of your Business is:

Which of my actions actually create profits, or bring in money?

For example in any Sales-based Business, this would be time spent talking to prospects or clients.

Whatever you do on a daily basis in terms of running your business, the things that create profits have to assume TOP priority. In fact, if you can double the amount of time spent taking just those actions that make the money…you can double your income! It’s as simple as that.

Do I really have to be on Facebook? Twitter isn’t just for kids who have too much time on their hands?? You want me to make a video for You Tube???

Actually, I am totally not! And the answer to all of the above questions is: YES!

But it’s not as bad as you think. You DON’T have to spend hours and hours every week updating your social media pages. And you don’t have to go in front of the camera to be on You Tube.

The reason I’m urging you to have a presence on the social media scene is to get the back links. ‘Back links’ are links that point to your website from other websites. The BYG search engines (BYG stands for Bing, Yahoo and Google) value links from Facebook and You Tube highly. This in turn will give your ranking on the search engines a major boost.

Of course, being visible and active on the Social Media scene has many other advantages for your business! But for now: just get started. Get yourself a Facebook profile and page as well as a Twitter account.

In my next blog, I’ll show you how you can connect (or ’syndicate’) the two so that every post you make automatically shows up on both accounts!

I believe that every business must have a facebook page these days if they want to generate more leads more easily than ever before.

Here are some objections that I get from business owners almost every day:

• Facebook is just for teenagers (The fastest growing demographic on Facebook today is women around the age of 45.)
• Facebook is a waste of time (It’s up to you how much time you spend on Facebook!)
• I am worried about negative comments and slander (I have been on Facebook for a couple of years now and nobody has left a single negative comment or been obnoxious in any way.)

• Back links: A back link is a link back to your website. The search engines value these links highly. This means that your website will get a better spot on Google and other search engines and online directories.
• Advertising: Once you have a Facebook profile, you can advertise your business here! Just as on Google, you pay per click (you only pay when someone actually takes an interest in your ad and clicks on it). The difference that makes the difference: clicks are MUCH cheaper on Facebook than on Google.
• ‘Social Proof’: If you manage to get some people to ‘Like’ you on Facebook, the number of your followers act like a recommendation for you business.

If you still need more proof, watch the video below:

I look forward to your comments!

This webinar reveals the most important aspects of successful websites in great detail. It’s a really valuable resource where one of my project partners from Marketing Mentors Australia, Angela Dimos, and I critiqued two business websites during a webinar.

To watch and pick up these valuable insights simply Click Here!

I have been working on the internet for a while now. I first became interested in how to create an income online a few years ago by buying my first e-book on internet marketing: TheRichPom.com for $75! It was actually not a bad program at all. But I my heart wasn’t in it.

Since then, I have spend hundreds of dollars online trying to figure out how to make the internet work for me, and by ‘me’ I mean ‘me and my clients’, naturally. My clients are other small business owners who already have a business, but are keen to maximise their profits by using internet marketing strategies.

I would love to save you the time and the money that I have spent on research and more study, and most importantly asking myself: will this work? The truth is, no matter where I looked, and which ever system I studied, I couldn’t find the magic pill that would do it for me overnight!

What I found was that it all boiled down to a couple of Simple Strategies…

In a nutshell (and because each of the steps is worth spending some time on, I will go through them in great detail in my upcoming blogs):

The Mindset
You can achieve almost anything in life, if you have the right mindset. The mindset includes:

• belief in yourself,
• belief in the system or strategy,
• a burning desire to succeed.

• Create a downloadable product that you can sell {{on the internet | online}} (yes, even if you already have a brick-and-mortar business!),
• Create a blog and deliver valuable content consistently,
• Create a page on facebook,
• Have both linked to an effective company website,
• Link your online and offline business presence.

Many small businesses are doing it pretty tough these days, and a lot of business owners are struggling to keep their heads above water. Yet there are ways to help you boost your income and to keep that important cash flow going even when things look bad. Many business owners know exactly what they need: they need to boost their Sales. However they are struggling to find simple and effective ways to do this.

Obviously to boost your Sales you need to either increase the number of your customers or get your existing customers to buy more of your product or service (or preferably both).

This is where your website comes in. It is the job of your website to generate all the new leads that you can deal with, and then some. It should also be keeping you in touch with all of your previous customers. The only reason for any business to have a website is to ensure that customers are spending money with you!

It doesn’t matter what business you are in, if you don’t have a website that is doing this for you (or if you don’t know how many new customers your website is actually generating), then I can almost guarantee that you are leaving money on the table. In fact, I guarantee that no matter how many leads and customers your website is generating, you are still missing out on extra income.

And that extra income? Well, that is going straight into your competitor’s pocket!

Most visitors to a website only spend a few seconds browsing for what they’re looking for, and if you don’t grab their attention immediately they’re gone again just as quickly. A potential sale has just been lost. But wait. It gets worse. That customer, and they are a customer (just not yours!), that customer has left your site knowing that you have nothing to offer them. Not now. Not ever!

Research has shown that once people have left a website without leaving their contact details or making a purchase, they never return. Next time they’re searching for a product or service that you sell, when your name is listed by Google or another search engine, they will ignore it and skip to the next result.

There are many ‘Look at me!’ websites on the Internet, but most of them are nothing more than a glorified online brochure. Some of the most successful sites on the Internet are the most unassuming websites. They are successful because they give their target market exactly what they are looking for.

At Brilliant Minds we analyse websites and small businesses marketing strategies.

Often the first thing we find is that people have no idea of what their website is actually doing for their business! This is usually because the web design company has failed to explain just how easy it is to obtain some seriously valuable information about your visitors.

You can see how many people come to your site. Why they come. What they are specifically looking for. Where they come from, as well as when and where they leave your site! If you know which pages people come for and you know which pages they leave on, well, you have some really valuable information right there!

People simply don’t get told that these tools are not only available to them, but an absolute must have! There is no other business marketing tool that can be so accurately measured as to the value to your business. Once you know that people leave your site at a specific place (if it isn’t the checkout), then you have the chance to turn that around!

Most people see a website as something they ought to have, ‘…everyone has one’ and customers expect it. In fact, if used efficiently your website is an entire business of its own. And the business owners who understand this are serving your customers. Right now!

I spend a lot of time reviewing and analysing websites. It never ceases to amaze me just how difficult some businesses make it for their own customers to contact them! It’s almost as if these businesses were saying: well, if you really must contact me, then I’ll make you fill in a form that will take half the day to complete and will ask you all kinds of details, including the name of your next-door neighbour’s best friend’s dog!

Since the idea of a business is to attract paying customers, why drive them away before they’ve even had a chance to say hello? Does it get any better than somebody stopping by your website and deciding they want to find out more about you? Once people had given you their details, you can sell to them forever!

A good website is one that is properly tailored for your audience. It should welcome the visitor, grab their attention and make them want to return. Your website should give your visitor a reason to become a customer, and then the quality of your product or service should give your new customer a reason to become a repeat customer!

Would you like to know the best bit? If your website is set up correctly, then you have a powerful marketing tool that works for you 24/7! A tool that engages your customer’s interest and generates new leads. Real people who want your products or service. These are the people that you can follow up on – No cold calling required! This turns your website into an extra sales force, that works around the clock for no pay and no commission!

We all know that the Internet is a huge opportunity for any business that wants to make money. However, ensuring that you are making the most of this opportunity requires careful consideration and planning.

Whether you own a website already or not, you are now a good leap forward just by reading this report. In fact, I suggest that you print this out and keep it to hand, visit your website (when did you last look at it?), and see how it compares. Wouldn’t you like to turn your ’shiny’ site into a proper sales tool?

For more information on how to improve your existing website or to request a website blueprint consultation, simply e-mail Kath@Brilliantminds.com.au and get in touch with us!

If you do that right now, then you too could have a website that boosts your turnover in just a couple of weeks time!

Facebook is my favourite social medial tool for business marketing. It has only relatively recently come out of the closet, moving from being ‘just’ a social utility to becoming a powerful business marketing tool. And yet it’s greatest power is still its social aspect.

A paradoxon?

Not at all, but let me explain. Until relatively recently, I was a mere browser on the social media scene. I surfed around, as you do, checking out this and that. Then I came across a video on You Tube, ‘The Social Media Revolution’ (check it out).

Suddenly the penny dropped…

• Facebook is the second most frequented website in the world today (after Google).
• There are currently over 400 Mio active users on Facebook. This means, that if Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country on the planet (only dwarfed by China and India!).
• Facebook added 100 Mio of its over 400 Mio users in just 6 months (a TV ad that will take 13 years to reach 50 Mio people).
• I recently launched my first Facebook ad to attract new people to my business page. In just under a week, 442,852 saw my ad! That’s just short of half a Mio people.

Dazzling stats, or what? If you want to see some more mind boggling numbers, I suggest you might want to head over to www.facebook.com/press.php (click the ‘Statistics’ tab on the right hand side of the page); it’s an interesting experience!

Facebook has long ceased to be a ‘teen’ site, too. In fact, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook right now is women over the age of 45.

But I was talking about the ‘social’ aspect. Once my penny had dropped, I started to spend more time on Facebook. I created my business page and I started to be truly social, and participate in some conversations on other pages. The outcome was beyond what I’d ever thought possible.

In the virtual world of Facebook, I managed to make connections with people I could have never connected with in the ‘real world’. For example, one of Australia’s most prominent Copy writers agreed to be interviewed by me (that interview is now part of our membership program).

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Over the next few weeks I’ll give you The Top 3 Reasons to market your business on Facebook!

Reason number 1: Facebook is Viral

Viral??? That doesn’t sound too good. Well, it is, when your business is the ‘virus’ (so to speak)! The viral aspect of Facebook is what makes it so incredibly powerful. But more on this next time!