We Make Our Own Fairy Dust
The one thing that I’ve realized is that in business and life, there is no such thing as fairy dust.
Scratch that. There is; but we make it ourselves.
Image: Alexandria LaNier via Flickr, CC 2.0
Worms
A few weeks ago, I was on the receiving end of an “I’m going to the garden to eat worms” type of message from a friend.
She was down in the dumps about business, it just wasn’t as groovy as it had been a few years ago. She was worried about being personally affected by the sequester, and was seriously considering taking a J-O-B. Would I talk her out of it?
Filed under Business, Marketing, Shonali Burke, Women's Issues | Tags: ann bevans, business development, fairy dust, international workers day, may day, sales | Comments (15)Streak: Possibly the Best CRM System for Small Business
Remember when someone would say “CRM” and (y)our eyes would glaze over?
CRM, public relations and small business
While it’s now a huge industry, good CRM (customer relationship management) is a practice that many of those who are forward-looking-and-thinking PR pros (such as WUL’s own Kirk Hazlett, to name just one example) are meticulous about.
And when it comes to those of us who are business owners as well… well, we have to know how to manage relationships with not just the media, bloggers and our community, we also have to keep track of our business relationships. Which makes a good CRM system for small business a necessity.
Image: t. magnum via Flickr, CC 2.0
Because we can only grow our businesses if we have a system that helps we keep track of conversations in play, as well as those we need to initiate. There are a lot of CRM systems out there, but not very many for the small business owner (and by “small business,” I mean “micro to the point of bootstrapping it right now”) that are affordable… at least, when we start out.
Filed under Business, Communication, Marketing, Resources, Shonali Burke | Tags: business development, CRM in your inbox, customer relationship management, customer service, productivity, streak | Comments (34)Learning to Say…
There’s a lot of advice for small business owners to learn to say no. To prioritize our workloads, to avoid hastily jumping into activities without a plan for gain.
It’s hard to follow that advice, especially when we most need it. And when launching a business – swamped with to-dos, events, and life – we always need it.
As we grow, we set patterns: busy periods and way-too-much-time-for-Twitter periods, and rinse-and-repeat activities that build and cement our business and relationships.
And then, we start to get restless. Everything is under control, but not yet quite the way we’d like it.
We consider and then begin rearranging our schedules, eliminating the unnecessaries, fine-tuning our processes.
Filed under Business, Guest Posts, Shakirah Dawud | Tags: business decisions, business development, grow smart business, small business owner | Comments (43)
