Last year I reported the amazing experience from Bora Bora and this year I am glad to continue in that tradition. So with some outstanding minds around me, we had the privilege of examining our businesses and explore new improvement growth ideas. Below are my key take-aways from our September 2011 meetings of the Million Dollar Club in the beautiful Vila Aminta, located in Stresa, Italy, and situated on lake Maggiore:
Growth ideas:
Reinvent yourself often.
Become the catalyst to help reinvent your clients.
Build and strengthen relationships with clients.
Hold yourself and help hold your clients accountable.
Consistent personal touch.
Share best practices.
Ask for referrals.
Make sure your passion and enthusiasm is demonstrated through your work.
Build communities.
Build on your strengthens rather than correcting your weaknesses.
Focus on creating new offerings to existing clients and then focus on existing and new offerings to new clients.
The key to monetization of your intellectual property is to build and strengthen your brand.
What action will you take right now? It’s all about execution!
What opportunities exist that you may capitalize on?
What apps should you consider developing and what is the value to your clients?
Deliver “just-in-time” knowledge to your clients.
Securing cash reserves to sustain your operation for many months will have a dramatic affect, which will free up your mind to focus on your business growth and vision.
Explore new markets all the time.
Create a powerful support system of people you trust.
Does your team meet, don’t meet or exceed expectation? Reward those that exceed your expectations.
Get rid of low margin business.
Create rain makers.
Create remarkable content and get it into the hands of buyers.
Rather than interviewing people as podcasts, videos or articles, why not call them “conversations” which allows you to inject your own intellectual property and position you as a peer.
To grow your business, get the right clients!
And some photos:
Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy
Left to right: Guido Quelle, Susanne Quelle, Suzanne Bates, Drew Yarro, Maria Weiss, Alan Weiss, Chad Barr, Stuart Cross, Phil Symchych, Kerri Symchych, Wendy Nour, David Nour
Chad Barr and Alan Weiss at the poolside reception
Chad, Stuart, Phil, Kerri, Guido, Susanne.
View of lake Maggiore
View of Lake Maggiore from my room. Doesn't get any better than that.
I am delighted to announce the new site we’ve launched of Garry Beavis, CEO of Beavis Consulting Group, located in West Leederville, Australia. Garry partners with entrepreneurs and business owners to create vibrant businesses and achieve extraordinary results.
When it comes to the various social media platforms, a common question I am often asked is whom to connect with? Here are my recommendations:
Anyone requesting to connect with you who has initiated such request. However, they must be genuine and credible. A quick look at their profile should help determine such.
Clients.
Past clients.
Prospective clients.
Executives in organizations.
Journalists.
Colleagues and professional business acquaintances.
Interesting individuals in groups you belong to and others asking and answering questions.
Back in 2009 we have launched the new site our dear client, Stuart Cross of Morgan Cross Consulting, located in the UK. Earlier this year we have redesigned Stuart’s site, blog and newsletter in order to implement the following:
Create a dramatic new look. I have to admit that this is one of my favorite sites we have developed. You probably hear me say this about all the sites we create, but this is the one!
Implement various aspects of marketing initiatives and gravity.
Implement a dynamic interface to better showcase Stuart’s ongoing content development of his remarkable evolving intellectual property.
Enable Stuart to easily change his own content.
Here is what Stuart has to say about the results we have help create for his business:
What are some of the effective concepts you should consider when creating videos? Listen to this podcast and to Chad discussing these points by clicking the play button below:
When registering your domain name (URL) the one I recommend you secure, that is the most important and popular, is the one that ends with a .com extension. Assuming then that you have secured the .com extension, you are in great shape. However, you may want to also consider registering the following extensions: .net, .org, ,info, .biz and .us if you are in the US.
For example, my blog name is hosted under www.ChadBarr.com which is registered and owned by me. What if someone decides to register one or all of the other extensions, such as the .net which would then make www.ChadBarr.net available for them to populate with their content. This could and would create a situation that when my clients search for me, they would most likely find the other domains that are actually not associated with me and my company.
So the primary reason you want to consider this, is to avoid others from trying to take advantage of your success and then registering and owning the other domains associated with your company name or brand names.
One final point of consideration is that once you have registered and own all these extensions (URLs) is to redirect all of them to your .com domain so when one tries to type the others, they will end up on your main domain.
I am delighted to share with you that I have just completed the writing of my new book Million Dollar Web Presence – Leverage technology to build your brand and transform your business, which I am co-authoring with my great friend, colleague and partner, Dr. Alan Weiss. This took five months to complete, will be published by Entrepreneur Press and is expected to hit the stores by March 2012. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements, excerpts from the book and remarkable new ideas, to help you transform your business.
Developing a sound strategy is critical before success is achieved on the Internet. I often talk with prospective clients who ask me to further articulate and provide them with additional clarity as to what strategy is. So with that in mind, I have decided to write this section for my new upcoming book Million Dollar Web Presence. Since I get asked this question a lot, here it is for your benefit.
A strategy is the framework that helps you identify where you are taking your company and what you want it to become. It is all about answering the “what” and the “why” questions while tactics are the detailed action plan that answer the “how” to achieve these type of questions.
Answering these questions will provide the clarity necessary to then develop your tactics or action plan:
Convert visitors to prospects and prospects to clients?
Enable products purchasing for passive income?
Leverage marketing effectively?
Promote your products and services?
Create a community?
Promote your books?
Capture visitors’ information?
Become the hub and the repository of your intellectual property?
Help you gain as many clients as possible while reducing your labor intensity and increasing your responsiveness significantly?
Visitor to have fun?
2. Who is your audience(s)?
Identify all groups.
Where do they hang out and what are their geographic areas?
What do they read?
What trade shows do they attend?
Where are they on the web?
What are they looking for?
What is their age group and sex?
Do they search on search engines?
Do they use social media platforms and which ones?
Should journalists be targeted?
3. What do you want to become?
Thought Leader?
Consultant, author, coach, speaker?
All or others?
What are you known for?
4. What is the outstanding value you bring to your clients and your offerings?
Let me finally suggest that no technology should be discussed or design executed prior to the strategy being clearly identified followed by the tactics. As you’ve heard me say: “Strategy first, technology second!”
This is an excerpt from my new and upcoming book Million Dollar Web Presence - Leverage technology to build your brand and transform your business, which I am coauthoring with Dr. Alan Weiss and which will be published by Entrepreneur Press.
The Bridge to Web Success
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