Articles by Karyn Greenstreet

Small Business Development

• It's Okay to Think Small - In nearly every business book I read and from the lips of nearly every business guru I listen to is the premise that you have to grow your business. Grow, grow, grow -- think big -- and you'll feel successful. More products, more services, more revenue -- and you'll be happy. Bigger is better, right?

• The Best of Times, The Worst of Times - What would happen if your revenues decreased by 44% in one year and looked like they would continue to fall in the next 12 months?

• Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: How to Fire Your Assistant, Website Designer, etc. - We hire people to help us grow and run our small business: assistants and virtual assistants, website designers and graphic artists, copywriters, coaches and consultants, and bookkeepers. But what do you do when their work isn't up to par or they are constantly missing their deadlines?

• Think Small and Accomplish Great Things - Mary came to me to create big, new changes for her business. How exciting, having a big dream! She had a million ideas and a solid, well thought-out task lists to back up the big plan. Except there was one small problem -- Mary's dream was dying on the vine. By thinking big she was overwhelming herself. She was paralyzed.

• How to Choose a Virtual Assistant - When I looked through the list of all the tasks I wanted an assistant to perform, there was no reason why this person couldn't be located anywhere in the world. After careful research I hired an assistant who lives 2,500 miles away, and although we've never met in person, we've formed a strong foundation which helps my business run smoothly.

• Vacations Are A MUST For The Self Employed - It's impossible to describe the sheer terror of finally deciding to take more than a week's vacation.  Would my business crumble?  Would I miss logging on each morning to get my email?  Would my clients remember me when I returned?? Would I miss a new business opportunity while I was gone?

• What Should Be In Your Business Plan? - Many people quake in fear at the idea of writing a business plan. They imagine in their mind a 100-page document full of charts and financial figures. While it's possible to create a business plan of that magnitude when trying to get capital for your business, a typical business plan for self-employed people should be less than 10 pages.

• Self Employment: The Hardest Way to Make Easy Money - So many people I speak with dream of becoming self employed and starting their own small business. Don't get me wrong: being self employed is the best lifestyle I know. But it is hard work, plain and simple.

• Are You Cut Out To Be Your Own Boss? - There really are personality traits that separate born-entrepreneurs from people who can't hack it

• Someone Stole My Site: How To Defend Yourself When Someone Plagiarizes Your Website Text - I knew one day it would happen. Someone stole the text from my website and used it on their own website. Dirty rotten scoundrels! Here's what you can do about it.

• How To Raise Your Fees - There is a delicate balance between the fee you need to charge for your products and services, and the fee that people are willing to pay for them.  But with gasoline, heating, shipping, health care, and other costs rising, there comes a time when you must raise your rates in order to remain profitable.

• Are You a Jumper or a Planner? - There appears to be two types of small business owners: people who jump right into running their business and marketing their products and services with little or no planning, and those who plan a strategy -- and a service or product design -- before they ever dream of offering it to the public.  Is one better than the other?  Yes and no.

• How To Manage Success - You’ve struggled for years to get your small business off the ground.  You planned, marketed, sold, schmoozed.  You spent long hours with little rest.  Then suddenly it comes: Success!  Do you have a PLAN for success?

• Courage, And The Self-Employed - Each week, I hear people telling me they want to be self employed, but they don’t (or can’t) move forward on their dreams because they’re afraid.  There are so many things to be afraid of when you’re self employed: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of illness, fear of lawsuits.  No money, no time, no skills, no help, no support.

• Self-Sabotaged By Research - A woman in my MasterMind group posed a question today: why did she spend all her time doing research and never actually go on with "doing" the thing she was researching?  She loved looking up information, finding resources, interviewing people, gathering facts.  But taking these facts and applying them to her business seemed to always be put on the back burner.

• 10 Things To Do When Business Slows Down Over The Holidays - I’m sure you’ve seen it happen every year: your business slows down during predictable times, like the summertime months or year-end.  For the self-employed who rely upon steady cash flow, this can be a disconcerting time.  Should you just take a time off until things naturally pick up again?  Or should you try to find the needle-in-the-haystack business that might be out there during slow times?

• What's the Difference Between a Coach and A Consultant? - When should you pick a Coach, when should you pick a Consultant, and when do you need someone who combines these two talents.

• Six Reasons to Become Self-Employed in Your Retirement - So, you’re looking forward to being retired.  Relaxing in the lawn chair, sipping iced tea, watching the clouds roll by.  Lazy days of reading good books, traveling with family and friends, puttering around in the garden. What?  That’s not the lifestyle you want?  Good for you!

• Full Time or Part Time -- What's Right For You? - When you're self-employed (or thinking about becoming self-employed), one of the more important decisions you'll need to make is whether you want to do this work full-time or part-time. That's a difficult question for many people, and here are some things to consider when making that decision.

• What Should Your Fees Be? - You must decide for yourself whether you will charge for your services or not. Should you decide to charge, the next question is "what should my fee be?" First, examine carefully your skill level. It is common practice in business to charge based on skill. The more skill and experience you have, the more you charge.

• Do You Have Enough Clients To Survive? - When your business is offering a service, you have to determine how many clients you'll need in order to reach your goals. You don't have to have a group of ready-made clients when you begin, but it helps if you have a good network of people who you can approach, asking them to become clients.

• What Is Your Legacy? - During a recent speech, I told the audience that my mission was to empower the self-employed to succeed.  Instantly a hand shot up in the audience. “What’s your definition of success?”  I smiled to myself -- I love it when they ask this question!

• How to Create and Run a MasterMind Group - There is synergy of energy, commitment, and excitement that participants bring to a MasterMind group.  The beauty of MasterMind Groups is that participants raise the bar by challenging each other to create and implement goals, brainstorm ideas, and support each other with total honesty, respect and compassion.  MasterMind participants act as catalysts for growth, devil’s advocates and firm supporters.

• Why Small Businesses Fail (or Fail to Thrive) - We review some of the common reasons why small businesses fail.  Here are 14 top reasons, which might help you to determine why your business isn’t growing and thriving.  Some of them are related to learnable business skills; others relate to personal attitudes, habits, or self-sabotaging belief, which are not so easy to change, except through coaching or other self-development work.

• Cleanup and Planning Checklist For The New Year - As the end of the year approaches, it’s important to both close-out the old year properly as well as plan for the new year.  I recommend you do this process throughout the year so that there isn’t a last-minute rush to complete your year-end closing tasks.  Here are some idea that you might want to add to your checklist.

   

Small Business Marketing

• 10 Ways To Grow Your Mailing List - The real key to e-commerce is building a mailing list of people who are interested in the topics you write, speak and teach about. On a good day, you might get 10 percent of your website visitors to buy. But what about the other 90 percent? Are you just going to ignore them and their needs?

• Why Marketing Fails: The Silo Effect - When you think of a silo, you think of the kind that are found on farms, full of grain. Full grain, full harvest -- it sounds like a perfect metaphor of a successful business marketing campaign. So how can a silo be a bad thing?

• How To Make The Most Out of a Business Networking Event - The following techniques will assist you in connecting effectively with others.

• Embarrassed To Discuss Your Prices?  Seven Common Reasons We Can't Talk About Fees and How To Overcome Them - All entrepreneurs feel fear at some point, including attorneys, consultants, coaches, and writers. It's a natural part of starting or growing your business. It can be uncomfortable to take risks, to name your price and tell a prospective customer that you want to work with them.

• On Being YOU in Your Marketing - People are so numb to all the marketing that's coming to them. Let's face it, we ignore a lot of email and letters that come our way. You really must form a personal connection with your customers and prospects.

• "Ground Truth" and the Importance of Market Research - I know.  I know you’re excited about your new business.  I know you have a great idea and when you tell others about it, they think you have a great idea, too.  A great idea is the birth of a new small business. But as a self-employed small business owner, you can’t afford to take chances on ideas without getting more information about what your entire market audience wants and what they’re willing to pay for it.  Talking to 10 or 20 other people isn’t enough.  You’ve got to talk to thousands.

Internet Marketing and Small Business Websites

• How To Create Strong Passwords - As a small business owner, you can't afford to have your identity or business information stolen. Using the internet to help run your business is absolutely necessary, but being lax about the passwords you use on banking, hosting and other business sites is short-sighted and dangerous.

• What's New in Internet Marketing: Email Marketing - Of course, email marketing isn't new; we've been doing it for over 10 years now. But according to some of the latest research into email marketing, over 70 percent of email marketers say the impact of it is increasing, not decreasing.

• What's New in Internet Marketing: Local Search - One of the up-and-coming internet marketing techniques is "local search."  Think of local search as an online replacement for the Yellow Pages. People type in a search phrase to find local service providers, local retailers, and local restaurants. 

• What's New in Internet Marketing: Search Engine Optimization - According to MarketingSherpa, people are still only spending 10 percent of their budget on SEO and 90 percent of their budget on paid search. What does this mean? Small business owners need to learn what works and doesn't work when it comes to SEO and paid search techniques. The cost of paid search continues to rise, so SEO may be a better place to spend your time and money.

• How To Choose A Hosting Company - There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hosting companies out there. They come in all price ranges, and with all kinds of bells and whistles. Here are some things you may want to look for in a hosting company, especially if your website is part of your overall marketing plan to sell products or services.

• What Do Your Site Statistics Mean, Anyway? - The purpose of analyzing your web site statistics is to look for trends and to research the success level of your marketing campaigns. The numbers themselves can be misleading, as statistical packages count “hits” in different ways. If someone visits a page on your site doesn’t mean that they read it completely.

• Top 10 Website Mistakes: Are YOU Making Them? - Although personal and business websites have been in existence for more than 10 years, I’m still seeing small business owners make the same mistakes on their websites.  Here’s a list of the ones that will drive people away from your site and cause you to lose business (and your reputation as a professional business person).

• How To Stop Spam (Especially If You’re Already a Victim) - Spam.  Those annoying, time-consuming emails that clog your Inbox and ruin your day.  You wonder: How did it ever get so bad?  While it’s not possible to completely eliminate spam, there are quite a few things you CAN do about the problem to reduce your burden.

• What Happened to My Google Ranking?  Explaining The Google Dance - Have you noticed your website slipping in the Google rankings over the past few months for keywords that previously scored high?  Join the club and welcome to The Google Dance.

• Getting Your Site Seen by Search Engines - Is your website listed on search engines?  When people search for you, does your site show up on page 1 or page 20 of the search engine results?

• How to Choose a Website Designer - When you’re self-employed, choosing a website designer is a crucial decision, as a good website can bring you more business and a bad one can drive away prospective customers. Below are some important things to consider when selecting a website designer for your new site or site redesign.

Personal Development

• Eeek! Shiny Object Syndrome! - It seems to be a trend that's growing: small business owners are getting distracted by too many ideas or the latest fad, going off in a million directions and never completing anything. This loss of focus is costing you hundreds of hours a year in lost productivity, lost hours, lost dollars.

• What A Five Hour Hike Can Teach You About Business - It was intended to just be a short hike, as the afternoon temperatures were predicted to be in the mid-90s.

• Never A Diva - On NPR radio's "Fresh Air" program, they did a tribute to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the famous mezzo-soprano who died recently at age 52 after a long illness. Lloyd Schwartz said of her, "She went from triumph to triumph, yet never became a Diva, never lost her sense of purpose, or her sense of humor about herself." In the world of opera where everyone wants to play the starring role, to be the Diva, she remained modest, true to herself and her art.

• Intuition In Business - We really need to trust our intuition more. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago, and explained that I thought our decision-making process should be based on three inner criteria: intellect, intuition and emotion.

• When life hands you manure, Behold The Power of Manure!

• If you want more in your life, you're going to have to Create Room for it.

• When all else fails, we often learn about life through nature, and in this case, Lessons From The River.

• Read about Kathleen's quest for a Perfect Life

• Following Your Soul and knowing if you're on the correct Life Path

• What can a kitten teach us?  Plenty!  Learn about some Lessons From A Kitten.

• Why We Don't Learn: the difference between knowledge and wisdom

• Are you ready for the New Year?  10 Easy Things You Can Do To Start The New Year Right

• Creating Your Destiny, Manifesting Your Dreams: the first steps to creating the life you want.

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