The co-founder and first CEO of Netflix, Marc Randolph, has a personal mission to help entrepreneurs around the world achieve their dreams. He has mentored hundreds of early-stage entrepreneurs and helped seed dozens of successful tech ventures, and now he wants to help you.
In our livestream series Ask Marc, you have the opportunity to ask Marc Randolph any of your most pressing business questions, from big-picture problems to in-the-weeds details, including:
How do you start a business on a small budget?
What’s the best way to raise funds?
What are the top actions a business should take to grow revenue?
What is the best way to find and hire the right talent?
This is a remarkable opportunity to ask one of the most successful and innovative business leaders anything you want! Submit your questions now then join us on March 28th at 3 p.m. EST to hear your answers live.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
News of slowing revenue growth and layoffs in almost every sector currently dominate the headlines in all the places we consume media. Coupled with the inverted yield curve we saw in November, typically a harbinger of a global recession, it’s no wonder we feel stressed. What can we do in a looming recession as entrepreneurs and business owners? How do we protect our companies and limit the fallout from a global economic downturn?
I unwittingly founded my marketing agency in 2008 during the Great Recession, not understanding how serious and prolonged the recession would become and its effects on the entire world economy. Thankfully, my business lived through that turbulence, emerging on the other side with more clients and revenue than one would have expected. Now on the cusp of an economic downturn that feels eerily familiar, I want to see ambitious women entrepreneurs learn how not only to endure but also flourish during the potential next recession.
Why? Because everything everywhere is telling business owners and entrepreneurs to pause, pull back, shore up and play safe right now. I want to give you permission to do the opposite. Despite your natural inclination to hesitate, it’s time to implement these measures right now: Take action before the recession has even been declared.
Beyond scrutinizing your budget and cutting non-essential spending to ensure you have working capital during the potentially lean times, here are the top four tips I used to help my business grow during the last recession.
Making regular connections helps keep your business top of mind, no matter the economic conditions. Most of us have heard the saying, your net worth is in your network. Cultivating mutually beneficial relationships with clients and other business owners is a great way to keep a steady flow of prospects for your services.
There are numerous ways you can network in person and online, including connecting with customers and prospects on social media (yes, you can even slide into DMs) and attending industry events and conferences to meet potential customers and partners.
Additionally, you can join professional organizations related to your industry or target market. You can even reach out to influencers in your industry or target market and ask for their advice or feedback on your products or services and connect with other businesses in your local area that could be potential partners or referral sources.
2. I doubled down on my content marketing efforts
Content marketing is an excellent way to reach your target customers and build relationships with them. If done effectively, content marketing can increase brand awareness, generate leads, and drive sales. If you’re looking to double down on content marketing for your business as I did, here are some tips to get started:
Create a content strategy: Develop a plan that outlines the types of content you’ll create, how often you’ll post it and where it will be distributed.
Always focus on quality over quantity: Quality content is more likely to be shared and engage readers than low-quality content in every case. Quality content doesn’t have to be complex, but it must add value.
Leverage multiple marketing channels: Utilize different marketing channels such as your monthly newsletter, your company blog and social media to reach your target audience. Further, you can host webinars or workshops related to your industry or target market to build relationships with potential customers and partners.
Monitor results: Monitor the performance of your content marketing efforts so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Invest in tools: Invest in tools that will help you create better content faster and more efficiently. Tools I use include Google Trends, Grammarly, StackEdit and Answer the Public.
3. I ensured my business had multiple income streams
As a business owner, if you’re solely relying on a single income stream, you must take the time to diversify. Multiple income streams are critical to creating a thriving business, as it helps diversify your revenue sources, reduce risk and increase potential profits.
Easy ways to create multiple income streams include: offering complementary services or products, building digital products like courses, affiliate marketing, selling advertising space, creating subscription-based services, speaking and offering consulting services. You want to find additional ways to monetize your business IP so that you can diversify your offerings, ensuring you have a steady stream of revenue.
4. I acquired new business skills to enhance my services.
This is the moment to invest in your professional development. Acquiring new skills that can enhance your customers’ experience will allow you to reap an astronomical ROI, especially once the economic downturn ends. For example, as we’re all learning and leaning into all things Web3, what skills could you learn to help your customers in that space? Other professional development skills and training to consider:
Take a course in digital marketing to learn how to use social media, search engine optimization and other online tools to promote your services.
Get certified in project management to learn how to manage projects more effectively and efficiently.
Get certified in financial management to become more adept at the financial aspects of running a business.
Learn about data analysis and analytics to make better decisions based on data-driven insights.
Take a public speaking or presentation course to communicate more effectively with clients and potential customers.
I took many other steps during the last recession to ensure my business succeeded, but these were the actions that garnered the most return. As business owners, we are always searching for ways to grow revenue and a loyal, excited customer base. The central tenet of all of my actions was how to better serve my customers.
Staying customer-centric is critical, focusing on providing excellent customer service in each and every interaction. Customers who feel valued and appreciated are more likely to return and recommend your business to others during an economic recession or boom. Leveraging these tips will help you and your business emerge with more advanced skills and resources, ultimately helping you stay ahead of the competition.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Today’s digital world has opened up many opportunities for small businesses to leverage data and maximize their marketing ROI. First-party data allows businesses to develop customer insights, optimize campaigns, track performance metrics and create targeted strategies.
With first-party data in hand, small business owners have access to valuable consumer preferences, which they can utilize when planning engagement activities or launching new products/services. Additionally, using this form of data helps build a clear view of customers’ journeys while creating personalized experiences at every touchpoint along the way — without spending huge amounts of money on expensive market research tools.
Small businesses have to be smart in their marketing efforts. Leveraging first-party data can help you get the most out of your marketing budget, ensuring that every dollar spent drives value and a higher return on investment (ROI). Small business owners can adjust their strategies accordingly by processing website data such as customer behavior and engagement metrics.
Leveraging Google Analytics 4 for your first-party data can help you rank higher in Google search results. There are numerous advanced features of GA4 that allow businesses to collect valuable insights about their customers, allowing them to create targeted campaigns with more accuracy and efficiency than ever before. This new platform also offers powerful tools that enable you to measure the success of your digital marketing efforts and make quick adjustments as necessary.
Understanding user journeys across different pages provide a further understanding of what works well for an organization’s digital presence, allowing them to focus time and effort more effectively on areas that drive conversions or revenue opportunities. Research shows investing in targeted campaigns using first-party data generates up to 20% higher return on investment than non-targeted approaches like social media ads.
Place your customers in the right buckets
Customer segmentation is a powerful way to leverage first-party data and boost marketing ROI. By gaining deeper insights into customer behavior, businesses can target their most valuable customers with specific content that resonates more effectively than ever before.
Email segmentation, for instance, can help businesses leverage first-party data to create personalized, targeted messages. By grouping customers into segments based on similar profiles and behaviors, companies can tailor their communications and promotions accordingly. With this strategy in place, organizations have greater control over the messaging they deliver to specific cohorts of customers, helping them develop stronger relationships with the people who matter most.
Behavioral segmentation helps small businesses create a tailored experience that resonates with each audience, rather than simply creating general messaging campaigns without any context or personalization attached. This personalized approach has the potential to drive higher engagement from customers by providing them with experiences catered just for them — resulting in greater brand loyalty and increased revenue opportunities further down the line.
First-party data can also help in strengthening relationships with customers. This is done by improving customer communications, creating personalized conversations and experiences, enabling segmentation of audiences for better targeting and providing relevant content to the right customers at the right time. Also, by leveraging this data, businesses can gain insights into buyer behavior, allowing them to become more responsive while helping build trust among their customers.
For instance, personalized text messages can help create a closer connection between the business and its customers. This strengthens the relationship over time, creating a better understanding of what each customer wants and needs — further increasing customer loyalty and creating greater opportunities for revenue growth.
First-party data helps with this by allowing you to understand shoppers’ habits by collecting behavioral information such as email open rates or click-through links. By doing so, companies can give customers a tailored and targeted experience that increases engagement and loyalty.
Facebook pixel and other tags
The Facebook pixel is a powerful tool for businesses to gain access to rich first-party data. This allows them to better understand customer behavior and build tailored campaigns that match their customers’ interests. With a Facebook pixel, you can track website visitors across devices, create custom audiences, measure conversions from ads and optimize ad spend for improved results. Utilizing this valuable first-party data enables businesses to make targeted decisions quickly, increase ROI and maximize performance.
Utilizing first-party data to track and optimize marketing ROI requires dedication but can be immensely rewarding. Tracking customer behavior across various platforms is essential for efficient optimization and successful campaigns.
With appropriate investments into understanding first-party data and employing ways to analyze its effectiveness efficiently, small businesses can equip themselves with what they need to increase their profits through increased ROI.
Having accurate data is an essential part of any successful marketing campaign. With the right first-party data, businesses can ensure they’re targeting their audience in the most relevant and effective way possible. To ensure reliable data collection, small business owners should strive to use multiple sources that are consistent with each other, such as social media platforms and customer databases.
Additionally, tracking analytics on a regular basis will allow for ongoing insights about trends or changes in consumer behavior over time to adjust strategies accordingly. Finally, investing in sophisticated tools like GA4 can enable companies to go beyond basic demographics and build better profiles around customer needs or preferences. This will help them create meaningful interactions with potential customers, leading to higher ROI from campaigns.
Small businesses often have limited resources and need to be smart about how they spend them. Fortunately, first-party data is an inexpensive way to reach potential customers and understand consumer behavior. By collecting the right user information, small businesses can use this data to better understand individual buyer behaviors and create data-driven customer journeys and targeted campaigns tailored specifically toward them.
This allows the business to maximize its return on investment by sending out highly personalized communication that instantly connects with potential buyers in a powerful way.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
How well do you know your audience? It’s a question that every entrepreneur must carefully consider if they wish to make their products or services appealing to potential customers.
The better you know your audience, the easier it will be to speak to their specific pain points and to present your business as a desirable solution. While getting to know your audience better isn’t always easy, there are some proven practices that businesses have consistently used to gain the level of understanding needed to succeed.
No entrepreneur is going to launch their company without at least some understanding of their target audience. Whether that knowledge stems from your own personal experience, focus groups you conducted when testing your product idea or even reviewing industry news and surveys, this is a valuable starting point for coming to understand your audience.
This initial set of information should serve as the foundation to help you focus your learning efforts. It probably isn’t as detailed as you need it to be, but it can provide a useful guide when deciding which pain points to explore or which competitors to evaluate.
2. Make the most of buyer personas
Buyer personas serve as a fictional composite of what your ideal customer looks like. When done right, they can help you better hone in on the types of messaging that will best appeal to your target consumer.
Buyer personas draw information from available data to help you better define target audience demographics, behavior, motivations and objectives. This tells you who they are, why they buy and even how they might go about doing business with you. Negative buyer personas can also be helpful in clearly identifying audiences that aren’t a good fit for your products or services.
Your buyer persona essentially serves as a representation of that data you’ve already accumulated. It ultimately makes it easier for you to visualize who you are selling to and how to appeal to them.
Additional surveys of existing customers and those who fit your preferred buyer persona can provide valuable qualitative insights into industry trends, specific details about your products or services and even the type of messaging that best appeals to them. Asking for honest feedback can help you better define your core messaging.
You don’t need to rely exclusively on your own internal surveys to gain better insights into your target audience. For example, travel insurance company Faye recently conducted a study that revealed, among other things, that 38 percent of Americans would sooner give up intimacy than travel — and that 40 percent are spending as much as $8,000 per international trip. For travel-related brands, such insights can be key to better understanding their audience’s mindset so they can market accordingly.
Notably, audience perspectives can shift over time. Regularly conducting surveys of your own and following other survey results that are relevant to your niche can help you adapt accordingly.
4. Look at successful competitors
Sometimes, evaluating successful competitors can provide the best insights into how to appeal to your target audience. Look at things like the brand voice, particularly in regards to the marketing tactics and messaging they use.
For example, outdoor brands might want to look at what has made the National Park Service Twitter account such a success. When you can identify patterns in the types of images or phrases successful competitors use, you may be able to incorporate similarly appealing facets into your own marketing.
Of course, evaluating your competitors can also help you identify opportunities where you are able to solve a pain point that they don’t. What types of complaints do your competitors receive? What services do their customers say they wish were available, but aren’t? These insights can prove key to differentiating your own services in a more meaningful way.
In 2020, there were roughly 290 billion actions taken on brand-owned content on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, audiences are significantly engaged with brands on social media and other online platforms — and this can be a valuable way to learn more about your audience in real-time.
How your audience responds to different social media posts or blog posts can go a long way in helping you understand the type of content that resonates with them. Understanding what works (and what doesn’t) will enable you to refine your messaging over time.
Of course, social media is far from the only place you can get valuable engagement. Customer support interactions, forum mentions and your own experiences during sales meetings can help you better understand what your audience values — and whether or not you’re successfully catering to their needs.
Even picking up on trends like how your clients speak differently than other audiences, or have different concerns or goals, can help you identify shared attributes that can better define your messaging and services.
To know is to sell
Truly getting to know your target audience requires a fair amount of work.
But the rewards are well worth the effort. When you utilize these methods to understand your customers on a more personal level, you will be far better equipped to adapt your marketing in a way that truly speaks to them. You’ll correctly identify their pain points, desires and goals. And you’ll be able to clearly articulate why your product or service is the right match.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Do you feel like there’s more you could achieve with your coaching practice? Do you find it challenging to adapt to the changing needs of your clients? Are you searching for a more straightforward method to deliver top-notch coaching services, grow your coaching team and increase your client base?
If so, Service Delivery Intelligence can help you solve these challenges.
Service Delivery Intelligence (SDI) is a new methodology we designed to help you streamline your operations, increase efficiency and improve client experience.
Continue reading to learn what Service Delivery Intelligence is, its benefits and how SDI helps you level up your coaching business.
To help you improve your coaching business, the Profi team has developed Service Delivery Intelligence (SDI). This methodology allows you to collect and analyze data from the client feedback loop. By utilizing SDI, you can continuously improve your coaching business operations and gain a holistic view of your business performance.
You can implement SDI in your coaching business operation to remove any friction that hinders your progress, manage your professional practice, optimize service delivery and grow your coaching business online.
SDI consists of tools and resources that enable you to:
Monitor client journey
Streamline clients’ experience
Increase clients’ engagement
Gain insight into their needs and preferences
Identify patterns and trends in their behavior
Customize your services accordingly
As a result, you can stand out from competitors, acquire new clients, retain existing clients, renew your coaching contracts, track the success of your coaching programs and ultimately increase your revenue.
The benefits of Service Delivery Intelligence for coaches
Service Delivery Intelligence offers many advantages for your coaches and coaching business, regardless of your specific focus or area of expertise. Let’s discuss the most important ones:
Increased efficiency and productivity: Optimize workflow, streamline processes and tasks, and let your coaches focus on more complex or high-value work. It is why they have chosen their profession — to assist clients with their coaching requests.
Reduced errors and improved insight into clients’ progress: Reduce manual work and errors in manual data collection and migration and ensure consistency in service delivery with unified operating systems.
Improved customer service and faster response times: Promptly address customer inquiries, increase customer satisfaction and prevent any loss of customer information.
Ability to handle a larger volume of clients: Enhance productivity and enable coaches to manage more clients and customers by using their time and resources more efficiently.
Increased flexibility and scalability: Quickly adapt this methodology and scale SDI to meet your evolving requirements.
Improved data collection and analysis for decision-making: Gather real-time data and insights to help coaches make good decisions and improve coaching services.
Reduced labor costs and increased cost savings: Reduce the amount of manual work and VA/admin backend management.
Increased consistency and standardization in service delivery: Ensure your services are consistently standardized.
Improved communication and collaboration among coaches on your team: Improve communication and collaboration by providing real-time data, templates and services for team members.
Increased availability and accessibility of services for customers: Make services more available and accessible by eliminating the need to answer repetitive questions.
Choosing the right enablement for Service Delivery Intelligence
Implementing Service Delivery Intelligence in your coaching practice requires a mindset and using specific software to collect, analyze and utilize data. However, knowing which tools best fit your business can be challenging with so many available options.
Here are some factors to consider:
Data collection: Consider the type of data you need to collect, such as client demographics, progress and session information. For example, you can focus on the client feedback regarding the session and service delivery experience to optimize their engagement with your coaching business. Look for tools that automatically fire off such forms and manage and store this data in a centralized, secure location.
Data analysis: Ensure the operating platform can securely store the data you need to analyze and has the necessary visualization and reporting capabilities.
Integration: For optimal usage of digital infrastructure, integrate data and tools seamlessly to prevent inconsistencies or loss of information, particularly the data collected through forms. It can prevent loss of revenue.
Accessibility: Ensure that your digital infrastructure allows for a superior and streamlined client experience and journey to engage and activate clients.
Cost: Assess the cost of the platform you are considering, and ensure it fits your budget.
By evaluating these factors, you can choose the right tools for your SDI needs and make data-driven decisions to improve the effectiveness of your coaching business.
How to incorporate Service Delivery Intelligence into your coaching practice
Implementing Service Delivery Intelligence in your coaching practice may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some steps to help you get started:
Assess your and your coaches’ current process: Take a look at your current coaching process, and identify what you need to improve.
Choose the right software: Choose the right tool for data collection, analysis and utilization that fits your practice.
Set clear goals: Determine what you want to achieve by implementing SDI in your practice, such as improved client outcomes, increased coaching effectiveness or better client engagement. Clear goals will help you focus your efforts and measure progress.
Train your team of coaches: Ensure your team understands your chosen tools and processes, so you can further scale your coaching business and framework.
Continuously monitor and evaluate client feedback data: It helps you stay on track and achieve your goals.
Following these steps, you can implement a Service Delivery Intelligence mindset in your coaching practice or any other professional service business smoothly and efficiently. It will allow you to gain valuable insights into your clients’ needs and make data-driven decisions to elevate your coaching practice and reach your full potential.
In conclusion, the Service Delivery Intelligence methodology can significantly benefit your coaching business by maximizing efficiency, reducing data loss and insights and improving customer satisfaction.
By streamlining processes, you can focus on providing better customer service through hyper-personalization and a better service experience. You should also analyze customer feedback, anticipate needs and optimize the resource allocation of the coaches in your team.
Finally, you can identify potential problems and take preventive measures, reducing costs and improving customer experience. Service Delivery Intelligence methodology can be your powerful ally for maximizing service delivery and boosting clients’ results.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I was obsessed with bullwhips as a kid. Who wouldn’t want to be Indiana Jones? Unfortunately, the first time I managed to get my hands on one, I accidentally whipped myself in the face. While a bullwhip might not be the best toy for kids, it is the perfect analogy for how your business structure and its functional groups should interact.
Image credit: Jasmine Holmes
Let’s dig into the mechanics of the whip
Whips generate force using the momentum (energy) of a loop traveling along a tapered strip of leather. As it travels, the energy is focused on an ever-narrowing structure. This amplifies the energy to drive the tip to over 30x faster than the initial motion in the handle. That telltale “crack” of the whip is a small sonic boom. Isn’t it crazy that 2,000 years ago, man was able to break the sound barrier with just a strip of leather? Over 1,900 years passed before scientists could mechanically reproduce it!
In many organizations, marketing is the most operationally challenging division, containing many complex issues. The best marketing structures are smooth, sleek and have results that break the sound barrier, regardless of what season, campaign or product is being marketed. To understand how to achieve that satisfying crack in the market, let’s go back to the start … the hand.
The hand of the brand steward holds the whip. Traditionally, the brand steward was the CMO, with a singular focus on marketing. In startups, it is usually the founder. However, in progressive organizations, it’s the Chief Growth Officer. A CGO is a catalyst for cross-functional collaboration and sustainable growth while the marketing whip acts as an extension of the brand itself. So, when the brand steward brandishes the whip, the brand’s power and influence travel through each section, guiding all strategy and movement in the same direction.
The whip handle can be compared to the brand itself, where management, market equity and brand fundamentals are stored (including brand ideology, identity, market positioning and culture). This is where brands establish a market presence, cultivate consumer perception and attract their target audience. With just the slightest movement, the brand steward inputs energy into the handle, which travels down the whip, amplifies and creates a loud crack in the market.
The functional groups are the body (or thong) of the whip, through which the brand’s energy flows, amplifying in speed and power while traveling from group to group. Like strands in the whip, the groups weave together to support each other, maintaining the perfect balance to allow for creativity and productivity. Most importantly, they strengthen the entire structure. If one strand breaks, there’s no chance of making a loud crack. These groups are teams like sales, finance, creative, communications, trade marketing or any team that contributes to your go-to-market. Like bullwhips, better materials (i.e., your team’s skillset), get better results.
Image credit: Jasmine Holmes
The hitch is where the body of the whip gets thinner — the motion getting faster and faster until product launch — and all the efforts of the functional groups get focused into sales tools. Logistically, this can be extremely complex and time-consuming, with trade marketing teams having the least amount of time to execute their work. If trade, event and digital marketing fail, all previous work done by the functional groups above is null and void. Without sales tools, the brand and its ambassadors are dead in the water.
The fall is where all marketing has been delivered in the form of sales tools into the digital and brick-and-mortar marketplaces. It’s the thinnest part of the whip, traveling at the fastest speed, with the most urgency behind it. Sales tools are designed to attract and engage the target consumer, including things like sales promotions, social media, custom art, POP, signage, displays and more.
The popper is the intended effect: converting the target consumer! For a consumer brand like Nike, it’s the sale of their new line of shoes. For a non-profit, it’s donations. Sales tools should guide consumers towards the product and ultimately win the sale, creating that loud crack in the market. Each successful whip-crack adds value to the brand, making the next one faster and louder.
If you listen to the echoes (sonic boom) of the whip crack, it’ll provide an inordinate amount of data and feedback on what was successful and what wasn’t. Those holding the whip should learn something new each time that contributes to their next GTM cycle — otherwise, they’re destined to make the same mistakes over and over.
After the crack, the hand of the brand steward needs to follow through with the motion, (so they don’t end up whipping themselves in the face). This means taking post-sale action on the consumer, operational data, issues and market feedback received from the product launch, thereby readying the whip for the start of the next cycle.
One: Ensure the person holding the whip has a holistic understanding of your organization, with the ability to align departments and create sustainable growth.
Two: Be confident in your brand’s vision and values. Make sure the brand is at the core of every functional group so all teams pull in the same direction with easy cross-collaboration.
Three: Maintain a balance of skill and technicality between functional groups. Backfill any weak teams with the correct talent, education and tools.
Four: Overcome tricky logistics with automated, streamlined pipelines to avoid bottlenecks.
Five: Observe, analyze and act upon all insights, feedback and market data gained from cracking the whip.
The best structures have clearly organized operational data and a defined automated process that produces smooth pipelines. It’s clear that the future of marketing begins with a system designed to streamline cross-collaboration, glean optimized insights from embedded metadata and enable instantaneous decision-making with purpose-built tools. You want people to hear the “crack” from miles around, and the sound should increase in volume and travel a further distance every time you brandish the whip. Get crackin’!
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Every time I speak to entrepreneurs and brands, they always seem to complain about a lack of reliable and skilled social media managers. A quick glance at your social media feed will show you how even 8- and 9-figure companies are lost when it comes to posting online.
This is why, if you have a Wi-Fi connection, a phone, and you know how to write and schedule a few Instagram posts, you could easily replace your current 9-5 job with something that allows you to work from anywhere, whenever you want.
The first thing you should do is create a portfolio that shows potential clients your skills when it comes to managing social media accounts.
If you don’t have any experience yet, you could reach out to friends or family members who have a social media account and ask them if you can manage it for them for free. You only need to do this for three months to have a substantial portfolio that will put you ahead of anyone who has a degree in communication, social media management or marketing but no practical experience.
Another way to build a portfolio is to apply for beginner paid gigs. The best platforms to do this are Upwork or Fiverr. Sure, the pay might not be the best in terms of compensation, but you’d be building a portfolio in no time and get testimonials that you can use once you start approaching bigger clients.
Once you have gained some experience managing social media accounts, it’s time to attract clients that can pay you $500-2000 a month to manage their accounts.
Here, most aspiring social media managers will usually resort to cold emailing or cold calling to find potential prospects and initiate a conversation. And while this approach might work for some, it puts you in a weaker position and makes negotiating a higher rate more difficult.
That’s because, when it comes to negotiating, you always want to come from a place of authority. Contacting a client that has never heard of you can work if you’re already an established figure. But if you’re just a beginner, it will just show that you’re desperate to work.
So, what’s a better approach to finding those clients that pay you premium fees?
One way is to keep using platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. If you started there, it’ll be easier to keep searching for clients there, as you’d have collected good reviews and will have built a reputation as a trustworthy professional.
But a better way is to post on social media platforms to build your authority. This has two advantages. First, it will show potential clients that you aren’t just claiming you can manage a social media account. You are practicing it, which is the strongest form of social proof you can have. Second, it will help you attract potential clients that will see you as an expert in your field and will happily pay you your fee without any hassle.
Once you have attracted four to five clients this way, it’s time to turn them into repeat customers. The simplest way to do it is to overdeliver so much that they’d be crazy to not continue working with you. If you do so, you simply need to create an offer to manage their social media accounts that can last between three to nine months that gives you some predictable revenue.
The goal when working with a client on a retainer basis is to keep communications tight and constantly remind them of the wins you are providing them (like increasing their followers or monetizing their platforms). Doing so will also help you routinely raise your rates without losing too many clients and can even make those clients refer you for more work.
On top of maintaining good relationships with your existing clients, you should still actively search for new clients by posting on your pages (or using other lead-generation methods). This will put you in a stronger position when it comes to raising your rates or negotiating different packages.
Still, there is always a cap on how much money you can make working 1-1 with a client. This is why every smart social media agency will eventually package the solutions, frameworks, templates and any other assets they use with their clients in a format that can be sold to many people at the same time.
If your clients all share the same struggles, and you have a solution for it, you can easily turn that into an ebook, a video course or anything else that can be sold digitally. This will allow you to break through the freelance income barrier and scale to a million dollars a year.
It might take some time to get there, but these are the steps that 99% of successful social media agencies have followed. The earlier you begin building your social media agency, the sooner you will reap the benefits.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Building a good relationship with a client, built on mutual trust and respect, can take a long time. However, there are ways to kickstart the process and create a rapport far more quickly. That rapport can then be the foundation on which your years-long working relationship is based. How do you connect quickly with someone you’ve just met?
When it comes down to it, your client wants most to know that you’ve heard and understood what they’re saying to you. The quickest way to demonstrate that you’re on the same page is to reiterate what they’ve said. There are a few good ways to do that.
In reflecting, you pick a few critical words your client has said and use them in your reply. For instance, say your client wants to expand their business and branch out to different cities. They might say to you, “I feel like we’re stagnating where we are. I hear there are great markets in Chicago and St. Louis, and I want to explore that.”
You might reply, “I’ve heard the same thing about Chicago and St. Louis. If you feel you’re stagnating, then the time has probably come to explore those options and see what new opportunities you can find.”
It seems simple, but it’s a proven technique for fostering a connection. This was demonstrated in a study conducted in Holland with waitstaff at restaurants. It was found that when servers repeated a customer’s order back to them before bringing it to the kitchen, they earned nearly twice as much in tips, on average, than when they didn’t repeat it. Reflecting a client’s needs back to them shows that you understand what they want and are on the same page.
2. Paraphrasing
Reflecting is an excellent technique for shorter conversations, but the longer you talk, the more noticeable it becomes if you’re repeating the same things your client is saying back to them. That’s where paraphrasing comes in.
Paraphrasing is similar to reflecting, except instead of picking out keywords and repeating them, you restate the client’s basic ideas in your own words. This helps to show them that you’ve been listening and understand what they’re saying.
It’s most effective if you phrase it as a question. So, your client says, “I don’t want to spend too much money, but I do want something that’s going to last me a while.”
You might respond, “So, if I understand you correctly, you want something reasonably priced but not of poor quality that you won’t have to replace right away?”
Phrasing it as a question shows that you’re actively engaged in the conversation. You’re not telling the client what they want. You’re listening and making sure that you’re on the same page. This makes them feel heard and shows them that their opinion is valued, which brings me to the next method of developing a rapport with your clients.
3. Identify and acknowledge your clients’ emotions
If your client is angry or frustrated, your first instinct will likely steer them away from those emotions. You don’t want angry clients; you want happy, satisfied clients. However, trying to steer or maneuver a client’s feelings to a specific place can seem insensitive and unempathetic. Instead, if you want to build a rapport with your client, it’s important to identify those emotions, acknowledge them and validate them.
4. Meeting people where they are
Meeting someone “where they are” means bridging the gap between your own expectations and where the other person is coming from. It means intentionally listening to understand their values, needs and what they are really saying. Buddhists have a saying, “holding the space,” which means the same thing. It’s about being truly present in the moment.
Having a simple chat with someone can sometimes reveal what a person really needs if you have the patience to just observe them. Be mindful of their body language; their behavior may tell you everything you need to know. And it’s also meeting them where they are, in a way.
Dealing with clients and their emotions requires a delicate hand. If you make them feel like they’re not allowed to feel a certain way, they can come to resent you. Instead, you need to meet them where they are. If someone is happy, celebrate that happiness with them. If someone is angry, let them be angry for a little bit and show that you understand why they’re angry. This will help your clients to feel seen and help you connect with them better.
5. Identify the root of their emotions
In identifying your clients’ emotions, it’s essential to try to understand what’s causing them as well. If it’s someone brand new you’ve had little or no interaction with before, and they’re angry right out of the gate, then you’re likely not the cause of their anger.
Maybe they’re frustrated by the problem they’ve come to you to solve. Maybe they spent a long time on hold before you got to them or they had difficulty parking on their way up to see you. If you talk to them for a bit, without judgment, they might open up and tell you what’s happening or at least provide clues you can use to get the gist.
Once you’ve identified their emotions, you need to validate them — even before identifying the cause. You can use a few phrases to help show you care. However, there are also a few pitfalls to avoid.
“I’m sorry you’re angry” or “I’m sorry you feel that way” can sound condescending to some people. Like when people apologize by saying, “I’m sorry if you were offended.” It puts the onus on the one being apologized to rather than you as the one making the apology. Instead, try, “I’m sorry that happened to you,” or “I can see how that would be frustrating.”
Once they’ve had a chance to get their emotions out, your next step is to fix things. Not fix their emotions, but fix the root cause, whatever it may be. If it’s something your company has done, ask how you can rectify it. If it’s about the problem they’ve come to your company to solve, show the exactly how your company can help them. If it’s something outside your control, offer them something you can control: a glass of water, words of encouragement, a minute to catch their breath, etc.
You can quickly build an authentic connection by showing your client that you understand them and empathizing with them. Then once you’ve built that connection, it can lead not just to one good sale but a years-long professional relationship.
They may even recommend you to their friends as someone who can be trusted and depended on to help them with their needs. It doesn’t take much effort to connect with clients in this way, but the potential benefits can be exponential.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Too many business owners and marketers expect their copy to click and convert, but only a few know how to get past the click part.
When you’re selling something, you can’t fall into the trap of mindlessly writing about your offer without regard to why people don’t buy and without knowing how to present your offers.
After reading this article, you should be able to go back to your copy, make sure it has the strategies you’ll peruse below and restructure how you write your future sales copy.
If you budget or “categorize” your expenses each month or quarter, you won’t be shocked if I tell you your prospects do the same.
And thanks to the bottom-dollar effect, they’re probably not thinking about spending what’s left on your offer. The bottom-dollar effect is our tendency to be less likely to purchase products or services that would deplete our remaining budget. And even if we purchase, we are less likely to be satisfied with our purchases.
Say you want to invest in an online program that you know can help you scale your business, but you’re so close to capping your education bucket that you wonder if the investment is worth it. You buy it anyway. Then you ask yourself, “Was this the best use of my money?”
One effective way to help ease the bottom-dollar effect is by offering your leads a deal so that they feel that the product is worth it. This deal can be a discount, a free add-on, a payment plan or a 2-for-1. Add it to your copy!
You can also ease their anxiety by adding a guarantee. But, of course, this depends on the space you’re in and who you serve.
If you want to form a real connection with your prospects, you might want to consider going easier on your sophistication and coming off as casual and sincere.
An 18-year-long study showed that brands that show excitement, competence and sincerity have a more positive effect on customers than sophistication and ruggedness. In fact, the influence of sophistication and ruggedness has declined over those 18 years.
Why am I telling you this? Because I know a lot of business owners who have shifted their entire brand voice and how they show up online. I’ve seen this time and time again, and I’ve unfollowed a lot of brands that I once looked up to simply because the spark that made me feel a connection with them was gone.
So if you want to sell more, relax your fingers, drop your shoulders and be more casual.
3. Use your humor
I’m not asking you to become a comedian unless that’s your business model. But, throwing in some humor shows your awesome personality and hits the two big marks of persuasive communication: clarity and conciseness. Because humor is often punchy – and honest.
By making people smile or laugh a bit, you’re connecting with them on a deeper level and they will feel inclined to trust you and buy your product — mainly because you made them feel something other than a reason to buy.
With humor, you humanize your brand, your product and yourself. Although written humor might seem forced, adding it to your video sales letters and presentations will make a massive difference in helping your prospects make a buying decision.
If you give customers many options to choose from, they will be more likely to hesitate. But if you give them fewer choices, they will make up their mind faster and buy.
Simply put, when customers have many options to choose from, they buy less. But, unfortunately, this also leads to more dissatisfaction because their expectations of your product are higher.
So, let’s suppose you have a sales page with three payment options, one of those being a “pay-in-full” and the other being payment options. They know they don’t want to pay in full because they simply don’t want to or can’t. So, how are they going to decide which of the payment options to choose from?
During that thinking process, they’ll be burning extra brain calories while raising their expectations. So even if they choose to buy from you with a payment plan, they won’t be too thrilled.
My rule of thumb when I work with clients is simple: one call to action is beautiful. Two are okay. Three are unacceptable unless absolutely necessary.
If it takes you 1,000 words to say something, make sure each word serves a purpose. This is crucial when it comes to conversion copywriting.
Whatever you write must be as long as necessary and as short as possible.
People’s attention span decreases yearly thanks to overstimulation and bite-sized content. That means you have to work smarter with the content and copy you put out.
Your emails? Make them shorter unless they require all the details you’re including. The same goes for your sales page. Make it as long as absolutely necessary, so it tells your readers everything they need to know to purchase. Remove the fluff.
If you’re reading this, you made it to the end. Congrats! Now you have a job to do. Go optimize your sales copy.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Small businesses and enterprises might exist in the same industry, but they differ greatly in their needs, resources, and goals. Due to the varied nature of budgets, customer bases and agility levels, it’s best to target one or the other when marketing a new product or service.
There are a few key determining factors that can help you determine whether your product is best suited for a small business or an enterprise. When you zero in on these strategies, you’ll be well-equipped to make the best decision for your business and maximize the impact of your marketing campaigns.
How to decide between small business and enterprise
When deciding whether to cater to small businesses or enterprises, ask, “Has this been done before, and has it been done well?” The enterprise landscape is filled with strong competitors. Depending on the product or service you’re offering, you may stand out more in a small business market, especially if you provide an enticing price point and performance level.
This scenario was true for Vagaro: Starting out, most players in the salon and spa space were going after the larger, more wealthy businesses. But after further research, we found that a majority of companies in the industry only had a few employees. It made sense to deliver less expensive software and target smaller companies that were often overlooked.
Enterprises also tend to shell out huge sums of money in exchange for a customized product, with the expectation that you’ll continue to iterate to meet changing customer needs. So, start by thinking about how involved you’re willing to be. Then, consider whether your goal is based on profit or if you want to dedicate efforts to building out your customer base.
Enterprises can afford to write big checks for your product, so you only need a few of these partners to keep your business afloat. The drawback, however, is that if you lose even one of those enterprise clients, you run the risk of losing major revenue.
On the other hand, when you target small businesses, you may not turn a profit as quickly, but you’ll have a larger customer base. If you lose a few partnerships here and there, you’ll still be relatively secure. Small companies are also in a position to offer you more relevant and timely feedback, and they’ll be more involved in your growth process because your relationships with them are more intimate.
In general, smaller businesses typically aren’t as seasoned. They may be just as efficient and innovative as enterprises, but they usually do not have the same abilities in terms of finances and resources. They can’t always afford to learn, plan and iterate over and over again. And in many ways, they’re still figuring things out. Because of this, these smaller businesses won’t want to pay for a product or service that can’t be proven. They need to see demonstrated proof that your product will improve their bottom line in some way. So, small businesses are the ideal choice if you have a less experimental product that can guarantee results.
Unlike enterprises, which are usually more interested in products that can manage or optimize existing accounts, small businesses are more concerned with growth. When you target them, you need to consider the ways that your product can help them gain visibility and expand their reach.
Catering to smaller businesses is often equally rewarding for both sides. We noticed that many of our small business clients eventually grew to enterprise levels. In some cases, offering a product or service to a small business is an opportunity to grow alongside them and be a part of a monumental journey. The more they grow, the more you can, too. If you find yourself asking how your product can help influence the growth of another company, small businesses might be a good partnership opportunity.
When enterprises make sense
If you focus heavily on innovating, connecting with enterprises can be extremely advantageous. These larger businesses have the budget to experiment, so investments from these types of businesses will allow you to test the waters, build out new iterations and shape your product into something more powerful. Because an enterprise will account for a bigger percentage of your profit, though, this route naturally involves more risk.
Enterprises also have an edge in networking since they’re familiar with key industry players and have desirable connections. They make it a competitive point to know the market and what they need to do to influence it. If you want to expand your reach and elevate your company’s status, partnering with a well-connected enterprise can help you stay ahead. But enterprise businesses have numerous organizations vying for their attention, so getting your foot in the door will require some strategic thinking on your part. Partnering with at least one other organization can boost your reputation and convince enterprises to take you more seriously.
Over time, both small businesses and enterprises can become part of your operations
Ultimately, when it comes to targeting small businesses or enterprises, the decision is yours. Each option has its own set of advantages and drawbacks that you should carefully weigh before making a final call. However, if your product can guarantee results for smaller companies and provide them with visibility as they grow, then this might be the best choice for you.
On the other hand, partnering with an enterprise could help you expand your reach and elevate your company’s status by leveraging its industry connections. Whichever route you decide to take will require some strategic planning — with careful consideration and effort, you can not only grow your business but also establish life-long partnerships.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The hype that often accompanies new startups can be both a blessing and a curse for entrepreneurs. On the one hand, it increases the likelihood that investors will be ready and waiting to hear about your new startup. On the other, it means there’s a lot of pressure to go big and deliver fast to stand out from the competition. This has led to an environment where “fake it ’til you make it” has become something of an unofficial motto in Silicon Valley.
For those just starting out, this approach can feel like the only way to get ahead. Startups are rarely funded in excess, and the people providing that funding are pretty much always short on time. That means you’re dealing with tight competition and a small window of time in which to present your best self to investors. It can be extremely tempting to mix imaginary future successes with the reality of the present moment to make your startup seem like the best investment out there.
However, this creates an environment where investors approach everything you have to say with skepticism, regardless of whether you’re telling the truth. It also fosters an unhealthy environment where successes are exaggerated and failures are swept under the rug. On the extreme end, this leads to high-profile disasters such as Theranos; even in moderation, it can cause lasting harm to your startup’s business prospects and your own reputation.
Instead, you should try to be forthright and transparent right from the start. This engenders trust among investors and also puts you in a better place with potential customers. According to a report from NielsenIQ, 72% of consumers consider transparency to be either “important” or “extremely important” when it comes to choosing whom to buy from.
With my own company, I’ve found that people are more willing to recommend us as a startup worth investing in. This isn’t because we offer guarantees that we won’t end up being one of the 90% of startups that fail. Rather, it’s because people know where we stand — both in the areas where the company is succeeding and those in which it’s struggling. Creating a positive brand image isn’t about removing risk from the equation. It’s about making both the risk and reward crystal clear to investors.
The startup world might seem intimidatingly large, but when you narrow it down into specific niches, such as fintech or food tech, it becomes much smaller. You might start out as an unknown entity, but once you build a community around you, your reputation in your industry will likely precede you. You should make sure that reputation is one you’ll be happy to have associated with you for the rest of your career.
For entrepreneurs who want to build that all-important customer trust, here are a few places to start.
1. Balance optimism and realism
I have to admit that I am more of a skeptic than an optimist, which makes one wonder: Why run a startup? I like to think of myself as more of a critical thinker. I would prefer to find the flaws in the path than have the market show it to me later. Transparency in business isn’t about admitting you don’t know the answer to something. Instead, it’s about admitting you don’t know the answer yet. You need to tell people where you are but also what your plan is for getting to where you need to be.
If you’re still trying to figure out what or where your startup is, don’t shy away from that, either. You can be forthright without sounding lost at sea. Talk to potential investors and customers about your great idea, as well as the ways in which you’re moving toward understanding how to put that great idea into a commercial package.
2. Build your foundation on defendable information
Data is important in any organization, but having data in a startup shows that you have done your homework to the furthest extent possible — whether that be market size backed by multiple industry contacts or lab data that has been repeated more than once. We have all seen the good news story that is based on only a single data point, but a company needs to build its foundation on defendable information.
Remember that the goal shouldn’t be to raise money just because you can — it should be to raise money because you should. The best way to prove that is by backing up your efforts through data that shows what your startup is doing is impactful.
Be honest about what kind of revenue to expect and what obstacles you’ll encounter. If all you have is a rosy, unrealistic forecast you relied upon in order to secure initial funding, it will only be a matter of time before you find yourself at the end of your runway with no real idea of how to take flight.
3. Ask yourself the tough questions
To succeed as a startup, you need to do some serious self-reflection. Understand that it is just as important to have a board made up of individuals that will ask the organization the tough questions as well. Ask yourself: Is your startup something that can actually make it with today’s technology and consumer demand? If it is, do you have enough money to make it happen?
The answer to these questions might be no, but it’s better to know that before you’ve sunk your time, money and reputation into an idea that just won’t work. This can not only sink your startup but can also end up sinking your career as an entrepreneur. One such example is the drone startup Airware. The startup could have potentially made it if it had saved its funds and waited for its clients and tech to get up to speed. This is an excellent case to use as a comparison for future startups to ask themselves hard questions about budgets, market readiness and more — while not counting their victories with prestigious investors before reaching the finish line.
While “fake it ’til you make it” might look good on a coffee mug, as a strategy in the real world, it leaves a lot to be desired. You might be able to convince venture capitalists to take a risk on you at the start, but if you’ve built your business on the back of empty promises, there’s nowhere to go but down.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Many business owners may find it counter-intuitive to believe that saying “no” could lead to business growth. However, it can be one of the most important strategies for achieving success and long-term sustainability. By being selective in what tasks and projects are taken on, companies can free up valuable resources to focus on the most important opportunities and create an environment of success that most definitely led to business growth.
1. Say no to unnecessary expenses
In today’s competitive marketplace, cutting costs is essential for companies to survive or achieve business growth. Saying “no” can be a powerful tool in helping businesses reach their goals while saving money and having a better cash flow. When it comes to lower-cost operations, learning how and when to say “no” may be one of the most important lessons a successful business chief must master.
Cutting back on expenses can drastically reduce overhead and increase profitability, but making this change means investing time into analyzing which costs are truly necessary for long-term sustainability versus those that are no longer required or affordable in the current climate. For example, having the courage to say “no” to your suppliers might lead to improved cash flow, decreased debt, and financial freedom over time. And as business owners, you’ll have to learn how to do it sooner or later so you better start right away.
2. Say no to job candidates who don’t fit your business — even during a talent shortage
Poor staffing decisions have a major impact on the success of any business. Low-quality employees can cause decreased productivity, and when it comes to running a business, time is money. Therefore, it’s essential to make sure you hire the right people who are capable of delivering quality results in an efficient manner. By saying “no” to inadequate staffing decisions, you can ensure that your team is equipped with individuals who understand their roles and possess the necessary skill set to get the job done right. Properly staffed teams help improve performance and quality of work output while reducing costs associated with employee training or mistakes due to inexperience. In addition, having staff members with good morale helps create a positive work environment which further boosts productivity levels and contributes positively towards growing your business.
Many entrepreneurs and company owners tend not to give proper attention to the importance of employees in their company. Still, many studies in recent years show that employees who are satisfied and engaged at work are employees who, in practice, bring higher productivity and higher income to their company and take an active part in the company’s growth. There is no magic formula for finding such employees, but one thing is certain: We must give great importance to recruiting personnel in our company.
Our employees must be suitable and have the right skill set for the job they were hired for. It’s a win-win situation; the employees are satisfied at work, feel appreciated and valued, have a positive impact and are more involved in the processes. When this happens, you can expect an increase in productivity and income. Several years ago, a study examining companies with a low percentage of employee engagement versus a high percentage showed that high employee engagement in companies resulted in a 10% increase in customer positive ratings, a 22% increase in profitability and a 21% increase in work productivity. With such data, it is not worth arguing. Learn to say “no” to mediocre personnel, bring in employees with appropriate skills and give them the right conditions for growth. Their success = your success.
3. Say no to (some) tempting business deals
Knowing when to say “no” is an essential skill for any business owner. Refusing the wrong opportunities or deals can spell trouble, but so can saying “yes” to the wrong ones. Learning to keep sharks at bay, literally and figuratively, is always a good idea. Sharks in the water are a danger but don’t be fooled by sharks on land who want to buy out your company or offer you a bad deal; pay attention to them as well.
Remember, sometimes the best deal is to remain independent and make your own decisions on the direction of the business rather than rely on advice from those you do not know or can’t be 100% trusted. Your fear is natural — we all have a fear of change in a way — but it doesn’t make it a good enough reason to say “yes” to the first competitor or investor trying to get you out of the game. Saying “no” and refusing such a serious offer should be carefully considered, but under the right conditions, the refusal may lead to greater business growth; now that you know people are interested in your activity, it may be a huge motivational shot for you and your entire staff down the road. In addition, the refusal may signal to potential buyers and other sharks that you value your company and operation at a higher value.
Take, for example, the navigation app Waze; the company received low bids early on and thought it was worth more. Later, very good offers came; according to the reports on various news sites, Apple offered about $500 million to buy Waze. What was Waze’s answer? You guessed right — the answer was “no.” Then Facebook made a very generous purchase offer of $1 billion. Waze company bravely said “no” once again. Then few offers were bid by Google, and the last one reportedly ranged between $1.1-$1.3 billion. This time Waze took the offer with both hands and achieved a very impressive high-tech exit. I can’t guarantee that the Waze example will work in most cases, but it’s a real example of why you must know when to say “no” even when the temptation is overwhelming.
Saying “no” helps open up growth opportunities, and learning when to say no is a powerful tool that can help unlock potential for growth within the organization. The ability of a business owner or team leader to recognize their capacity is essential in order to turn down certain tasks and projects that may take away from the main objectives of their business, creating a more productive environment and happier employees, etc. A clever entrepreneur will know when it’s time to balance between saying “yes” and flowing with the river to taking risks and taking advantage of opportunities they can handle and convert into a business growth opportunity.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Now more than ever, this sentiment rings true: It’s ultimately the customer who will decide the fate of a company, especially with expectations at an all-time high and tighter budgets forecasted over the next year.
In 2022, we saw one overarching theme from brands that excel at customer experience: to treat people as humans, not as targets. Successful companies did this through authentic and personalized content, real-time feedback through tech tools like CRM and an emphasis on employee engagement. If you didn’t prioritize the customer experience last year, you probably felt the effects, but it’s not too late to start.
Businesses should continue to implement critical customer experience tactics in the year ahead to ensure they are evolving with the needs of their customers. Here are a few you can expect to see in 2023.
Today’s consumers are savvy and expect excellence from companies where they spend their money. Your competition — especially up-and-comers in your industry — could potentially lure away your loyal customers by offering the same services but providing a better experience. One way to ensure this doesn’t happen? Making customer service your No.1 priority. This means getting it right every time, whether the interaction happens online, over the phone or in person.
Don’t restrict “customer service” to a certain department or team member. Instead, ensure the entire company is customer service-focused and able to help. Utilizing your tech stack and aligning teams within the same platforms is a great way to do this because it allows for real-time insight into each customer across all departments and, therefore, can eliminate tone-deaf responses and outreach. With so much competition in nearly every industry, you need to step it up with your customer service to showcase your value and retain customers.
Tighter wallets
Whether or not a full-fledged recession will come to fruition is up for debate, but many companies are already pulling back spending and tightening budgets. Expect that your customers will be cautious with their money this year; the days of paying for extraneous features are gone. Customers will expect highly efficient and cost-effective solutions, so be sure your products meet their expectations. One way to do this? Offer packaged deals and discounts to meet their needs — when budgets are tight, nothing is more appreciated than knowing you are getting a good deal. Not to mention, offering a discount while your competitors aren’t might be what moves the needle on turning a potential customer into a new one.
Hyper-personalized communication
Companies will need to go beyond personalization with current and prospective customers this year; ensuring timely responses and providing instant access to an expert is a baseline expectation and is no longer enough. To hyper-personalize your customer’s experience, you need to leverage real-time data — website behavior, purchase history, most active times online and previous interactions to develop a deeper understanding of who they are, what their habits are and how your company can better serve them. Once you have this information, put it to good use to improve their experience based on their wants and needs.
Emphasis on post-sale loyalty
As more tech companies continue to offer subscription-based models, the days of one-off customer transactions continue to shrink. Now more than ever, what your business does post-sale is equally as important as the actual transaction itself in order to build loyalty. This brings us back to the point that personalization must go beyond the basics. A thank you email post-purchase, for example, is one of the easiest and simplest things you can do and may foster an ongoing dialogue. With so many communication technologies now available, doing nothing after a transaction is no longer an option.
It’s no secret that AI has a multitude of benefits and, up until now, has been a nice-to-have for businesses — but this will change in 2023. Between the release of ChatGPT and AI’s impact on the customer experience, implementing it is now a must-have to keep pace with your competitors. Things like chatbots versus waiting on the phone for customer service and automated callbacks can go a long way toward customer satisfaction. Good AI technology can make your customer feel as though the experience was crafted just for them, which is the ultimate goal.
The bottom line
Making changes and additions to your customer experience strategies can have a huge impact on maintaining loyalty and trust with your existing customers and grow a larger fan base that will stay with you for many years. If there were ever a time when a focus on the customer should be your priority, make it 2023.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Franchising your business is a proven route to rapid growth. But becoming a franchisor is not an automatic ticket to success, especially in this challenging economy. In January, for instance, three established franchisors filed for bankruptcy protection: Taco Del Mar Franchising Corp., Uno Restaurant Holdings Corp., and Daphne’s Greek Café.
Still, many business owners dream of seeing their brand become a household name, with a network of franchisees from coast to coast or around the globe. When the right concept is franchised effectively, it can be a great expansion strategy that doesn’t require as much up-front capital as growing through company-owned units.
If you’re considering franchising your business, know that the process of becoming a franchisor is usually long and involves considerable cost. Just because you qualify to sell franchises doesn’t mean you will find buyers. Data from the International Franchise Association shows that of the 105 companies that started selling franchises in 2008, more than 40 had not reported the sale of their first unit by the end of 2009.
Becoming a successful new franchisor entails making many thoughtful decisions early on that will affect your business for years to come. There’s also a lot of legal paperwork to wade through to make sure your business complies with federal and state laws that regulate the franchise industry.
Here’s our guide to the important steps you’ll need to take along the road to becoming a new franchisor.
Step One: Step One: Evaluate if Your Business is Ready
The first question to ask is whether your business is suited to being franchised. Beyond having a track record of sales and profitability at the existing business, there’s several factors to weigh here, says Mark Siebert, CEO of the national franchise-consulting firm iFranchise Group.
Consider your concept.
Most good franchise concepts, he says, offer something familiar, but with some unique twist to it. A good example is Florida-based Pizza Fusion which offers a familiar product–pizza–but with all-organic ingredients, delivered in hybrid-electric cars.
The concept has to appeal both to end consumers and to prospective franchisees. There should be an expectation that more units will create economies of scale and increase profits. Additionally, the business needs to be something you can systematize and replicate, not something that needs your personal touch to be successful.
“Ask youself, is the concept salable?” he says. “Can you clone it? Does it provide good returns?
Check your financials.
Most successful franchises take a business that’s already profitable and try to replicate that success in other locales. Cleveland-based franchise consultant Joel Libava says he likes to see companies with at least a couple of profitable units beyond the first one already in operation before a company tries franchising.
“Is it just one great restaurant and mama’s wonderful pizza sauce?” Libava asks. “Or did you keep growing?”
Gather market research.
Don’t rely on your gut feeling that your business would be a smash hit across the country. Gather market research to confirm there is widespread consumer demand beyond your home city for what your franchise business would offer, and room in the marketplace for a new competitor.
Prepare for change.
Becoming a franchisor means you’ll be engaged in entirely different activities than you were as a business owner. You’ll primarily be selling franchises and supporting franchisees now, instead of selling pizza or fixing toilets.
“Ask yourself if you’re comfortable having a role as a teacher and salesperson, selling and supporting franchisees,” Siebert says, “as opposed to going out there and doing it yourself.”
In addition, franchising your business will require that you relinquish some of the control you’ve had over how your concept is executed.
“Franchisees won’t do it exactly the way you would, even if they do it well,” says IFA president Matthew Shay. “If you are so married to your concept that you won’t let anyone else touch it, then franchising may not be right for you.”
Evaluate other alternatives.
Before you plunge into franchising, you may want to consider other options, Siebert says. Depending on your situation slower growth, finding debt financing or taking on partners are all alternatives that may prove better ways to move forward.
It also can cost $100,000 or more, so ask yourself if your company has the financial resources. Remember that while franchising allows you to grow fast, it also means giving up most of the franchise units’ future profits, Shay says.
Step Two: Learn the Legal Requirements
In order to legally sell franchises anywhere in the United States, your business must complete and successfully register a Franchise Disclosure Document with the Federal Trade Commission . In the FDD, you’ll be asked to provide a wide range of information about your business, including audited financial statements, an operating manual for franchisees, and descriptions of the management team’s business experience.
Beyond the federal FDD requirements, some states have their own rules for selling franchises within their borders. California and Illinois are generally regarded as having the most daunting registration process, says Libava. If you want to sell in one of these states, you’ll need to meet their requirements as well, at additional cost.
Franchisor Cindy Deuser, 51, co-founder of five-year-old franchisor Lillians Shoppes, says the rule binder her home state of Minnesota provided was two inches thick. It took the bargain-fashion-accessory company a full year and cost more than $100,000 to qualify in 45 of the 50 states, she reports.
“It took longer than we thought, and was very intense in terms of all the things you have to cover,” she says.
To advise and assist in this process, consultant Libava recommends hiring an experienced franchise consultant or franchise attorney. Often, a new company will be set up to act as the franchisor. Find an expert who can make sure you’re doing every required step correctly.
Step Three: Make Important Decisions About Your Model
As you prepare your legal paperwork, you’ll need to make many decisions about how you’ll operate as a franchisor. Key points include:
The franchise fee and royalty percentage
The term of your franchise agreement
The size territory you will award each franchisee
What geographic area you are willing to offer franchises within
The type and length of training program you will offer
Whether franchisees must buy products or equipment from your company
The business experience and net worth franchisees need
How you will market the franchises
Whether you want an owner-operator for each unit or area/master franchisees who will develop multiple units
New franchisors don’t realize how much each of these decisions can affect their future profitability, says Siebert.
“If you’re thinking either 5 percent or 6 percent royalty, for instance, the difference doesn’t sound big,” he notes. “But five years later, when you have 100 franchises sold, and they each make $700,000 a year, that’s a $7 million annual mistake. And you’ve signed a 10-year contract.”
Lillians’ Deuser says she and her sister/partner Sue Olmscheid, 45, ran many business-model scenarios with their franchise attorney before settling on their $25,000 franchise fee, 7-1/2 percent royalty and 10-year contract term. They seem to have hit a winning formula–Lillians has grown to 32 shops in its first two years as a franchisor with its unique concept, in which stores are only open a few days a month.
Be careful to note whether geographic variables such as weather or local laws may affect franchisees’ success. Territory size is important too, as too-large territories may have to be bought back later at a premium so they can be split up, notes IFA’s Shay.
In the case of San Francisco Bay-area solar-panel installation franchisor Solar Universe, the company is selling franchises in concentric circles moving outward from its headquarters, mostly in warm-weather states with high electricity costs and generous state green-energy rebates, says founder Joe Bono, 36. Solar Universe has sold 14 territories since qualifying as a franchisor in January 2008.
Inadequate training can leave your franchisees ill-equipped to implement your system successfully. Solar Universe spent nearly $1 million preparing to franchise, Bono says, including $150,000 to create a state-of-the-art training center for franchisees complete with indoor roofs where they can practice installations.
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Step Four: Create Needed Paperwork and Register as a Franchisor
Once you’ve made the important decisions that shape how your franchise will operate, you’re ready to complete your legal paperwork. When you submit it, be prepared for authorities to critique the document and possibly demand additional disclosures before they approve your application.
While the FTC essentially just files your FDD away, you’ll need to wait state approval. Bono reports Solar Universe waited several months to receive comments back from the state of California on its filing, and it took four months in all to get approved there.
Step Five: Make Key Hires
As you prepare to become a franchisor, you’ll usually need to add several staff members who will focus solely on helping franchisees. In the case of Solar Universe, the company sells its franchisees the solar panels they use, so founder Bono says he needed a full-time hire to staff the order desk. The company also hired a trainer and a full-time “franchise advocate” to answer franchisee questions and resolve any problems.
For its part, Lillians Shoppes hired a trainer, a creative director, a marketing assistant and a franchise-process manager who helped get franchisees using company software and systems, says CEO Deuser. Lillians now has a full-time staff of seven. The founding sisters still do all the buying for the growing chain, but Deuser says growth means they are already looking into hiring a second trainer.
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Step Six: Sell Franchises
Now that you’re in business as a franchisor, one of your most pressing activities will be to find franchisees and convince them to buy your concept. Lillians is unusual in that the company has sold all its franchises by word of mouth and doesn’t have a sales representative. To help stimulate interest, the company offers a $1,000 referral fee to anyone who sends the company a new franchisee.
At Solar Universe, Bono says they’ve hired two in-house salespeople to handle franchise marketing. The company has also entered into a partnership with the national franchise-consulting chain FranNet, whose consultants may present the company to their prospects. Other common sales techniques include attending franchise fairs or hiring independent franchise marketing firms to help locate investors.
Selling franchises is difficult because of the high risk involved for franchisees, notes Siebert. Your salespeople should know your business well and be able to tell a compelling story about why you’re a worth the investment of their time and money.
Siebert boils down the issue this way: “You’re saying, ‘I want you to give me all your money. Then, quit your job, give up your security and benefits, and go into a business you’ve never been in before. And follow my rules.’ You’ll need to establish a pretty high level of trust.”
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Step Seven: Support Franchisees
As a franchisor, you’ll have gone through a lot to reach this point. But here – at the point where you begin supporting your franchisee network – is where a chain ultimately succeeds or fails. Your training programs and other support efforts will create quality control, notes Siebert, making sure the brand provides a uniform experience no matter which unit customers visit. With the Internet, this has increasingly come to mean providing ongoing online learning modules for franchisees to use.
“If you’re a restaurant operator and employ 20 people in a unit,” he notes, “you have thousands of new employees going through the system every year. Without ongoing training, it’s pretty easy to institutionalize wrong behaviors.”
At the same time, you’ll need to start marketing the growing chain to drive sales to franchisees. Many new franchisors underestimate how much this marketing and support effort will cost, says consultant Libava. Marketing encompasses everything from radio or print ads to uniforms, logos, fliers, and logo art on company vans.
“Trust that you’re going to need a lot of money for marketing,” he says.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Voice search use is on the rise globally. Back in 2019, there were 2.45 billion voice assistants in the world. This number is expected to reach 8 billion by the end of 2023, which will be roughly equivalent to the global population. This rapid global increase in the number of voice assistants has created a new ecosystem that businesses can leverage to reach and connect with their ideal customers.
And don’t forget the alarming number of smartphone users, search engine users and IoT devices — we are already living in the voice search era.
But what does it mean for your business? How can your business leverage voice search for growth?
Voice search lets users do a search via voice instead of text. Major search engines like Google and Bing allow users to run a search query through a voice command. This feature is available across devices and isn’t limited to smartphones.
Search engines use automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology that converts voice signals into text, and then search engines find relevant search results from their databases. The text is then converted into voice, and the most relevant result is transmitted verbally to the user. So essentially, at the backend of every voice search, there is a text-based search query that search engines use to return.
Why people are using it
One study reported that 21% of people use voice search weekly, while other research from SEO Tribunal shows 53% use voice search while driving. This makes it convenience-driven as it is much easier and safer to search via voice while driving.
Voice search is also easier than traditional search, making it ideal for people to use voice search when their hands aren’t free. SEO Tribunal’s research shows that 61% of people use voice search when their hands or vision is already occupied, 30% use it due to faster results and 24% use it because it is challenging to type on certain devices.
Speaking of faster results, it takes 4.6 seconds for a voice search result page to load compared to the average search result page, which takes 8.8 seconds. It isn’t just fast but extremely accurate. The Google voice search accuracy rate for the English language is 95%. This means a user is expected to get accurate search results for a voice search 95 times out of 100 attempts.
Voice search also helps people with disabilities use search without typing or looking at a device. A study shows that people with motor, linguistic, and cognitive impairments can easily and effectively interact with voice assistants leading to improved accessibility. Another study interviewed 16 Amazon Echo users with disabilities and found that people with disabilities can easily interact with voice assistants as well.
The benefits of using voice search outperform text search, and this is a reason why people from all walks of life love using it.
Voice search optimization connects you with your target audience, makes your website accessible and improves the user experience. With an increase in the number of voice assistants, a rise in the number of smartphone users and a shift from text to voice search, a lot of opportunities await businesses that optimize their websites and content for voice search.
Think of voice search as an additional channel to interact with your target audience. Though search engines like Google and voice assistants use existing content to serve voice queries, businesses that optimize their content for voice will always have a competitive advantage.
Adding schema markup to your content is one of the primary voice search optimization techniques. Websites that use schema markup for voice search are more likely to perform better in voice search. Google, for instance, has a dedicated version of the schema for voice search (known as speakable) that helps Google Assistant understand and convert text to speech.
Surprisingly, 27.4% of all websites don’t use any type of structured data. Businesses aren’t using regular schema markup, but schema for voice search is a different story. If your competitors aren’t doing it, you should do it — now.
The same goes for conversational keywords that play a major role in voice search ranking. Most businesses focus on search intent and are geared towards commercial intent keywords, which are rarely conversational.
For example, “I am looking for a pharmacy that is open 24 hours and delivers to ABC Street” is a conversational search query. On the other hand, businesses usually optimize their content for search queries like “pharmacies near me,” “pharmacy in XYZ city,” “best online pharmacies,” etc.
Gaps like these need to be filled, and businesses that take the leap will definitely have a competitive advantage.
If you’re ready to leverage voice search for your business, you have to optimize your website and content for voice search.
There are a few major differences between SEO for voice search and traditional SEO:
Voice search is focused on conversational long-tail keywords. As mentioned earlier, this is because people speak in their normal tone when they are searching for something via voice. For example, “What is the best route I should take to the nearest coffee shop?” On the other hand, traditional SEO is geared towards general keywords, including short-tail keywords with or without a conversational approach.
Google uses featured snippets as the voice search result and the assistant reads it to the users. This means two things for businesses. First, you need a further reduction in organic click-through rate. Second, you need more focus on schema markup. You need to target featured snippets and you must use relevant schema markup to do so by answering direct and accurate answers for voice search users.
Voice search is more local than traditional search. This is because more than 50% of people use voice search during driving, and they are more likely to search for a store or a restaurant than ways to lose belly fat during driving. This makes voice search SEO different from traditional SEO. With voice SEO, you need to focus on local search queries more than anything else.
How to optimize for voice search and add it to your SEO strategy
Optimizing your website for voice search requires much more than keyword research and targeting. It needs to be part of your business’s SEO strategy.
Here is how to do it:
1. Update buyer personas
Understanding your target audience and how they use voice search is the first step. For example, millennials are more likely to use voice search than Gen X and baby boomers. Similarly, more than half of all voice searches are for sales and deals.
There is, however, no general rule of thumb. You need to do surveys and interviews to get a step closer to your target audience. Figure out how they use voice search and incorporate the same in buyer personas.
For example, if your target audience includes cab drivers, they are more likely to use voice search as they are mostly on the road. On the other hand, if you own an ecommerce store, a small proportion of your audience might be using voice assistants or even voice search, as online shopping is rarely done via voice search.
You need to understand your target audience and how it uses voice search. Here are a few questions that will give you a nice idea of how to proceed:
What percentage of your target audience uses voice search and voice assistants?
How often do your potential customers use voice search?
What smart devices and voice assistants do they use?
When they are more likely and least likely to seek help from voice search?
Why do they prefer voice search over text search?
Getting answers to these (and similar questions) from your target audience is the first step towards optimizing your website for voice search.
Conversational and long-tail keywords are a norm with voice search. If you want to optimize your content for it, start targeting conversational keywords.
You need to find conversational keywords and target them for optimizing content for voice search. One simple way to target conversational keywords is to switch to a conversational writing style. Write content as if you are talking to someone. This might make your content a bit informal, but it works.
For example, use “I” and “me” in your content and add long-tail questions and answers to make it conversational.
You don’t necessarily have to change your brand voice and style to do this. You can create a FAQs section where you answer common questions and publish each question and its answer as a single blog post. Do this alongside conventional blogging to avoid deviating too far from your brand voice.
3. Optimize content for voice
Create content that’s niche-based and highly targeted. Don’t try to target all the buyer personas with a single piece of content. You need to get specific and personalized with content.
Follow these best practices to optimize content for voice search:
Distribute your content into different sections. Add a heading to each section and make sure you have two or three sentences per section (that’s equivalent to 20-30 seconds of content).
Create a short summary of your article with bullet points of short sections. Add voice structured data (speakable) to the summary only. This significantly improves your chances of being picked up for voice search.
Optimize your website, blog and content for mobile since voice search is more associated with mobile than desktop.
Optimize content for local search queries that target a specific market.
Focus on getting the featured snippets, FAQs and rich results, as these are the building blocks of voice search.
Make content scannable with headlines, sub-headlines, bullets, short paragraphs and accurate information. Avoid fluff and get to the point right away.
When you are creating amazing content, don’t forget backlink acquisition. Backlinks still play their role in the voice search. Research shows that blog posts with 2,500 words are more likely to acquire backlinks naturally and organic shares.
The best thing about voice search is that it works like text search. The voice command is converted into text and vice versa. This means you don’t have to create a separate SEO strategy for voice and text. A better approach is to integrate voice search into your existing SEO strategy. Voice search optimization should be a part of your SEO strategy and both should be aligned.
Consider voice search as an additional marketing channel that has a lot of potential for businesses.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
“Everybody has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth,” Mike Tyson famously said in 1987. History teaches us that we will face conflict when we don’t plan and often when we do. Over 60 years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” We learn valuable information during the exercise of planning and not just the understanding that even the best plans can and will change.
When planning for your business battles, do you ever really know what is ahead, and most importantly, what to do? Strategic planning can help create mechanisms and mindsets to allow you to respond to the battles ahead, but it is not a one-time thing or a “set it and forget it” activity.
It is a plan that shows the way forward for your business, spelling out your company’s goals and why they are important. It can also guide you by outlining things to consider when responding to opportunities and challenges.
I believe in one- and three-year strategic plans and re-establishing them each year. Just keep in mind that a strategic plan is a roadmap for a company to achieve its goals. It’s also a tool to unite your teams, motivating them with clarity, direction and focus.
Not that you wouldn’t want to have a list of items you want to achieve long-term (I do have one), but because we live in a world that is changing faster and faster, we must adapt our plans in an agile way and harness the power of technology and systems to help us.
Companies need to be fluid and mobile. In a changing world, the future is no longer easy to predict based solely on the past. What we need is a strategy that breaks away from the old three-ring binder plan already starting to gather dust on the shelf and instead devises one that is adaptive and directive.
This is why the one-to-three-year timeframe helps and why a 10-year timeframe is obsolete before it even begins.
If strategic goals are your long-term objectives, operational goals — or, as we call them, lead measures — are the daily milestones that have to be reached to achieve them.
While aligning your business goals with your strategic goals can be hard to do every year, we must make an effort. Don’t forget that the actions you take each day should mostly roll up to achieving your goals.
For our franchise brands and us, our three main goals each year are franchisee success, revenue and profit. Each brand determines success, but revenue and profit numbers change each year. What’s important is to have your main strategic goals supported by lead measures — actionable items you will do each day and week that will lead to accomplishing the goal.
So, for example, if you are a salesperson and have a goal of $XXX sales this year (revenue), what do you need to do to make those sales?
Look at your sales funnel to determine the steps and the quantity of each step you need to make your goal: how many leads or prospects; how many points of contact, calls, presentations, discovery days and follow-up calls; or how many applications?
One recipe for disaster is never doing the most important things and always doing the urgent things. While balancing them, you should stay focused on the most important goals.
It’s not about “to-do” lists or checklists — it’s about your goals. The only thing worse than not having goals is having too many goals. I believe that three primary goals per year and two to three lead measures for each are good.
While there are set goals and trackable lead measures, don’t forget that there’s never only one way to get something done; there are multiple ways.
So, encourage your team members to do what they feel is right. Find out what they want to do rather than just telling them what you would do to achieve it. Weaving that strategy into your planning together will help you get better results.
In The Power of Positive Leadership, author Jon Gordon famously advised us not to focus on the numbers. We must trust the process, and when we keep doing things the right way, the numbers will eventually rise, those wins will come, and the desired outcomes will occur.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I have built four No. 1 international brands in my lifetime, throughout which time I learned some valuable lessons of my own — and I now feel that I am of a certain age where I want to share that experience and teach others.
I was fortunate enough to learn from those that were great at what they did, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They helped shape who I am and how I work and, in the best form of flattery, I modeled myself after them until I could make it better.
The information technology space often speaks about the digitization of customers and turning them into numbers and data in order to effectively market to them — yet my experience tells me the exact opposite is true.
I know that in today’s world, it is still about customer face-to-face interaction. We should only use the numbers and data to inform and support customer relations, not to remove the human aspect of business. Now more than ever, customer attraction and retention are about creating trust, the initial relationship, execution and how we serve our customer’s needs in a way that they understand that makes us and our businesses successful.
Finding the value in technology
Technology undoubtedly provides access to data surrounding the value of the goods or the service, the customer, the user interface and the user experience. Still, we have to take a personalized approach to meet and support our customers. The code is just the bridge to get to that face-to-face interaction and open up the commerce value. You still have to know your customer and gain their trust. That is very much a personal relationship that a computer or data can never replace.
Technology companies and their engineers should be the first to realize that their front-line workers are the ones engaging and providing the customer experience for them as their representatives. They, in fact, are the resources being deployed by the technology and the company’s most valuable asset.
Without a doubt, it’s essential to learn how to attract and retain staff members that know how to use the resources but not be overtaken by them. They should be treated and valued that way. The sad truth is that many tech engineers and tech executives think of themselves as superior beings, but that’s hardly the case. The reality is they are just as disconnected from their businesses as they are from the workers that represent their companies; without connecting with the business operations and the personnel on the customer-facing front line, they will only have their ideas of what is needed.
This is something I have learned and, having benefitted from great teaching, know will never allow a business to reach its full potential. Tech engineers and executives need to learn by doing the work to fully understand the demands of the business customers and be able to answer their real needs.
Sam Walton, who built Walmart, worked with his shoppers in his stores daily. He did every single job function to understand his business and to identify the smallest inefficiencies. Only by doing so could he truly understand what changes were going to benefit the staff and the customer. For as long as I can remember reading Forbes, four of his children are in the Top 20 wealthiest people; they, too, learned the importance of fully understanding the businesses they are in from the ground up.
I met Bill Gates in 1997 while attending an investment banking meeting in Beverly Hills, and I was up in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time. The only flight there had one coach seat left. Being a muscular 265 lbs at the time, wearing an expensive Italian suit and having a completely different ego and demeanor than I have today, I was quite grumpy about it.
While heading to the very back of the plane, I was somewhat surprised to hear a familiar voice behind a newspaper talking to someone. That someone was no other than Bill Gates.
I asked him what he was doing back here. He answered, “This is how I get to know people.” It suddenly clicked; sound advice from one of the world’s richest men who made Microsoft into what it is today. That meeting had a big influence on me, and I took my seat in coach to reflect on how true what he said was and, more importantly, why it was so important to his success. He knew the value of knowing what people want by actually hearing about them and their life, not by a perception created from his own ideas.
When I arrived at my meeting at The Beverly Hills Hilton to finance a high-end hotel, a golf course and a housing project to be designed by Brian Adler, designer of Beverly Park in Beverly Hills, guess who was sitting right next to me? Bill Gates. Well, Bill lives there today in Palm Springs. The kicker is that Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a fund that he backs, now owns the majority of Hilton.
Another influencing factor in who I am today comes from a time when I consulted Steve Jobs briefly and came to find out a few things. Steve Jobs is likely the most credited person of his time with bringing many new ideas and inventions to market, yet this didn’t happen through luck. It came from his time getting to know his customers. My understanding is that he did customer service for Apple for three hours every day to get to know Apple’s customers. He knew that he needed to understand the problems with Apple and to find out what people who may buy Apple products wanted. He then built what the customers asked for.
My own success and the stories of others are how I have become what I am today, and how I know that technology will never replace humans in understanding a business.
In conclusion, my mantra of “Know your customers and your business” is one that is probably shared by every successful business owner. You can’t leave it all to machines; you need to learn for yourself what your customers and potential customers want.
Only those that fail to see the importance of every human involved in a business, whether potential or existing clients, junior or executive staff, by taking time to understand their roles and listen to their experiences will never be the best they can be. Never become too great to spend time in coach. You can either take it from me or from these other well-known characters that share this commonality, but this is a lesson that will serve you — and your business — well.
The road to becoming a successful entrepreneur is a lot less bumpy when someone who has been down that path is guiding you. In this webinar, two-time Emmy Award winner Mario Armstrong will elaborate on the profit-first mentality that led him to become the successful entrepreneur he is today.
Mario Armstrong is a two time Emmy Award Winner, Entrepreneur, Public Speaker, TV and Podcast Host. He teaches Creators & Entrepreneurs how to build their brand, monetize their passions and build profitable businesses. He’s the Creator and Host of the Emmy Award Winning Never Settle Show filmed at Nasdaq studios in Times Square. Mario is an NBC TODAY Show Contributor and appears regularly on NPR, Inside Edition & more. He is a public speaker with Daymond John’s Shark Group’s Speaking Division. His new podcast “Parents Making Profits” is available on the HubSpot Podcast Network. Mario’s latest venture is the Never Settle Academy, which provides creators and entrepreneurs the blueprint to closing sales and getting paid brand sponsorships.
As a groom in 2005, our next guest experienced first hand how difficult it was to find an online resource that would help him execute his wedding plans more efficiently. He vowed to build a tech-forward company that would make planning less stressful and frustrating for engaged couples. Since co-founding WeddingWire in 2007, Timothy Chi led the company from an internet start-up to a multimillion-dollar leader in the wedding planning industry. He also led the merger of WeddingWire with The Knot and its collective brands under one umbrella – The Knot Worldwide – the largest provider of wedding marketplaces, websites, planning tools and registry services in 16 countries across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
In the next Leadership Lessons episode, Chi will chat with series host Jason Nazar about the greatest lessons he learned from his 25+ year career. Topics include:
Timothy Chi is co-founder of WeddingWire and CEO of The Knot Worldwide, a leading global wedding planning company comprised of over 1,900 employees worldwide. Previously, he co-founded Blackboard Inc. where he helped the company grow to over 600 employees, raised $100M in capital with a valuation of $750M, and took the company public in 2004. Chi holds a B.S. degree in Operations Research/Industrial Engineering from Cornell University and a M.S. degree in Engineering Management from Tufts University. He is a member of the Young President’s Organization in Washington, D.C.
Jason Nazar is a serial tech entrepreneur, advisor, and investor with two successful exits. He was most recently co-founder/CEO of workplace culture review platform Comparably (acquired by ZoomInfo), and previously co-founder/CEO of Docstoc (acquired by Intuit). Jason was named LA Times’ Top 5 CEOs of Midsize Companies (2020), LA Business Journal’s Most Admired CEOs (2016), and appointed inaugural Entrepreneur in Residence for the city of Los Angeles (2016-2018). He holds a B.A. degree from the University of California Santa Barbara and his JD and MBA from Pepperdine University. He currently teaches Entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at UCLA.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
As a groom in 2005, our next guest experienced first hand how difficult it was to find an online resource that would help him execute his wedding plans more efficiently. He vowed to build a tech-forward company that would make planning less stressful and frustrating for engaged couples. Since co-founding WeddingWire in 2007, Timothy Chi led the company from an internet start-up to a multimillion-dollar leader in the wedding planning industry. He also led the merger of WeddingWire with The Knot and its collective brands under one umbrella – The Knot Worldwide – the largest provider of wedding marketplaces, websites, planning tools and registry services in 16 countries across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
In the next Leadership Lessons episode, Chi will chat with series host Jason Nazar about the greatest lessons he learned from his 25+ year career. Topics include:
Timothy Chi is co-founder of WeddingWire and CEO of The Knot Worldwide, a leading global wedding planning company comprised of over 1,900 employees worldwide. Previously, he co-founded Blackboard Inc. where he helped the company grow to over 600 employees, raised $100M in capital with a valuation of $750M, and took the company public in 2004. Chi holds a B.S. degree in Operations Research/Industrial Engineering from Cornell University and a M.S. degree in Engineering Management from Tufts University. He is a member of the Young President’s Organization in Washington, D.C.
Jason Nazar is a serial tech entrepreneur, advisor, and investor with two successful exits. He was most recently co-founder/CEO of workplace culture review platform Comparably (acquired by ZoomInfo), and previously co-founder/CEO of Docstoc (acquired by Intuit). Jason was named LA Times’ Top 5 CEOs of Midsize Companies (2020), LA Business Journal’s Most Admired CEOs (2016), and appointed inaugural Entrepreneur in Residence for the city of Los Angeles (2016-2018). He holds a B.A. degree from the University of California Santa Barbara and his JD and MBA from Pepperdine University. He currently teaches Entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at UCLA.
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