Lynda's Lookee Here

Brett Sharp of WSLC, 949 Star Country has taught me a lot about attracting a large audience.  One of his tricks is to ALWAYS get there early.  If he is hosting a live event, or speaking for an organization, or hosting a concert, Brett is always early.

Do you know what he does with that time?  He greets everyone possible!  Seriously, I’ve heard of him greeting more than a thousand folks that were coming to hear a concert.  He’s the World Record holder for most amount of hugs in a 48 hour period or something like that.  He’s built, along with his team, an audience of more than 100,000 each week from pure hard work and all those hugs and handshakes.

If you own a business you’re building a tribe of fans that want to buy your product or service.  People like to buy from people that they like.  Sometimes it’s the one thing that can seperate you from your competitors.  If you’re a small business owner, YOU are an important part of the buying process and decision.  Use the Brett Sharp equation for success and arrive early.

I wish it was.  I wish there was a way to the top of the mountain without sweating.  I wish the waters weren’t rough and we could all just have an idea one day and “BAM” success would come the next.  Many of the books and tapes out there want you to think that.  They want you to believe if you could just understand what they are trying to tell you and execute as they show you that you would make millions of dollars – fast – without very much effort at all.

I haven’t found that to be true.  I know lots of millionaires that are small business owners.  If they started from scratch, it was hard.  There were times when they were broke.  There were times when failure was immenent and through good planning, hard work, and just a little bit of luck falling in their favor, they got through the challenge and prevailed.

Some would say that success has everything to do with your passion and not giving up.  I haven’t seen that to be true either.  I’ve seen people that worked really hard, stuck to it, had passion and still failed.  They lost everything.  They had mortgaged their house on their dream of entreprenuership and their idea that they thought couldn’t fail, and they did.  It happens.

There’s this special combination of having the right idea, surrounding yourself with great advisors that have experience in what you’re about to do, hard work, passion, capital, and a great plan that is based on reality and hard numbers, that lead people to success in small business.  There’s a focus that a successful small business has that others that fail don’t have.  They have a clear understanding of their “why”.  Like why they are in business in the first place.  Why they want to serve the customers they want to serve.  Why it is them owning and operating the business and not someone else.

Honestly, though, there’s nothing about the success of a small business owner that I can find sexy.  They’re consistent.  They’re not all glittery.  They have a head for numbers and they are checking them often to keep their thumb on the pulse of the flow of money through their company.  They’re able to tell you where their revenue is generated from and what their expenses are as a percentage of their gross sales and can usually tell you their ROI most anytime you ask (if they want to share that with you – the successful one’s usually don’t).

There’s plenty of small business owners that are micro-businesses and have plenty of business to keep them busy and clear maybe what they would if they worked for someone else.  They are successful.  They are people who didn’t want to work within corporate America and may find it exceptable to work for corporate America, just as a vendor.  Yay for anyone who knows exactly what they want, finds their lane, and stays in it.

Small business success that I was describing previously was about those businesses that want build businesses that they can sell one day.  Businesses that can be run by someone other then themselves.  Small businesses that are building equity so that their owners can sell and retire or step out and receive royalty checks for the rest of their life and leave those businesses to their heirs.  That’s what I dream about.  That’s what drives me.  That would be my definition of small business success.  It may not be sexy, but it sure is attractive!

I read somewhere that for many professionals that have worked in a field for 20 years they actually don’t have 20 years of experience but one year of experience that they’ve lived for 20.  It’s like the movie “Ground Hog Day”.  They just keep living the same year over and over again because they don’t get additional training.

I think that could have worked for people in the past.  Things really didn’t change that much in business for a really long time.  Yes, we got computers, yes, the internet became available and email started to be the way people sent business communications, but I knew many in business that didn’t adopt these things for a really long time and were able to continue to make a fine living and maintain their status.

The game has changed though.  In fact, the game is rapidly changing in almost any industry.  It has certainly changed in the way that consumers get and exchange information about businesses that they are thinking about doing business with.  I had a top level marketing executive tell me two years ago that “Facebook is a fad”.  He was in charge of millions of dollars of company’s marketing and advertising spending.  I wondered, at the time, if he would be able to hold onto that ideal and maintain his level of billing in the future.

Hey, 10 years from now we might look back and think that Facebook was a fad, and we might review things in the future and see that Twitter didn’t stand the test of time, or that network TV was more able to weather the changes and was still a significant tool to reach many consumers with new marketing messages.  Who really knows?  No one. 

Here’s what I’m positive about.  People want control.  They really like to have control of the content that they consume and when they consume it.  People dig the fact that they don’t have to be somewhere at a specific time to watch their favorite program.  They love that freedom.  They love to choose how and when they will interact with things.  The freedom that the consumer is getting is popular and since it’s an ideal that is executed through tools, the tools may change but the ideal is here to stay.

So, here’s my message.  Learn.  If you don’t think you have time to read about some of the changes that are happening your industry or marketplace, then get an iPod and download some books or Podcasts and when you’re getting ready in the morning or driving or have any time where you can listen to something, listen.

If you don’t think you have time to learn, I’m just going to tell you straight up - you’re wrong.  That may sound harsh but you need to hear it.  Life-long learning is so mission critical to small business owners and professionals that you have to find the time.  5 minutes here, 10 minutes there – it adds up.  You can put books everywhere.  You’d be surprised how much material you can go through in a year at 10 minutes at a time.  You can reach large volumes of text in that amount of time, over time.

Let the excuses be gone and figure out a strategy to have consumed pertinent information that can help you grow yourself and your business by year’s end.  I want you to be successful and this success accelerator tip is one of the most important to be sure that you are.

Jeffrey Eisenberg explains, in real, raw, talk, what he thinks makes a small business successful. Jeffrey Eisenbergy is a two-time New York Times best selling author and Internet Marketing pioneer.

I caught up with Guy Kawasaki at the recent Convergence Conference held at the Microsoft Headquarters in CA. I asked him what small business owners should do to market themselves.

In my final question, I ask Bob Childress of Chick-Fil-A in Roanoke, VA, how he has adapted to the new world of social. He discusses his apprehension to get started and addresses the question, “how do you deal with negative comments about your company on Facebook?”

I continue my interview with Bob Childress, owner-operator for Chick-Fil-A in Roanoke, VA, on the day of the spicy chicken sandwich launch. He tells me how the execute the idea of keeping things consistent for the consumer.

Bob Childress of Chick-Fil-A, Roanoke, continues his interview with me. I ask him what is the secret behind his success.

Finally… I’ve learned how to create a blog!  It’s taken months of instruction from Fredy (our on-site guru for this sort of thing) and our collaborative guru, Brian Duvall.  With their patience and tutoring, we now have the new Synergy Session website up and running.  The reps that have worked so hard to help pull all the groups together have been angels and patient as well.  No – it’s not perfect yet as Fredy has to come back from paternity leave and make it even better and more beautiful, but now Synergy Session participants have a home they can go to and find out:

• What sessions are upcoming for the month and year
• Who leads which group meetings
• Post recommendations for other Synergy Session participants
• Submit events with discounts and savings for Synergy Session participants
• Learn about ways small business owners can save time and money

If you are a Synergy Session participant and haven’t submitted your picture, website address, short description of your business, and contact information, please do so in January.  We want to post all participant information so collaborations can be made easier among your groups and other Synergy groups!

WHOO HOO!!!  The Synergy Nation (as Bob Brudzinski calls it) is coming of age and rockin’ and rollin’. Thanks to all that are part of it, all that have helped with and God for giving me the ability to not fall apart while building it.