How your business email address can gain or lose you business

How your business email address can gain or lose you business

by | Apr 30, 2018 | Business Success, Running a Business

Are you aware that your business email address can gain or lose you business?  And no, I don’t mean wrong as in misspelt.

So often, I come across someone whose business I like the look of, I go to their website, love what I see and go to the contact page.  And therein lies the problem.  Their email address ends in @hotmail.com or gmail.com.

But why is this a problem?

It makes you look unprofessional

Firstly, having a Gmail or Hotmail business email address makes you look unprofessional.  Your website may give out all the right signals but can be instantly let down by an amateur email address.  Whenever I see one of these email addresses, I instantly change my impression of the company and don’t view it in such a professional light.  If you have a specific domain name for your business, use this for your emails also.

Your business email address may be viewed as spam

Secondly, if you are sending emails with a @Hotmail, @Gmail or similar, there is a much higher chance your mail will get blocked at the other end.  Many companies have blocks on these emails as they have a high chance of being spam.  You don’t want to be tarred with the same spam brush, do you?  If I ever see an email come in from a Hotmail or Gmail account from a business, I simply delete it.

You are missing a marketing opportunity

Thirdly, if you use a specific email address ending in your domain name when you send out emails to contacts they may just become curious and check out your website.  Another simple way of helping drive traffic to your site.  I’ve done this before with people I have been in contact with and then become a buyer.  It’s a no-brainer!

If you don’t have a professional email address, go set one up now.  Usually, you can get one free through your domain provider and it’s not difficult to set up.  And if you are afraid of having to check in to different email accounts for both your personal and business emails, you can simply forward your emails to one single account.

Remember, it’s the small things that can make a big difference.

 

What Does Success Really Look Like To You?

What Does Success Really Look Like To You?

by | Feb 13, 2018 | Business Success

How To Plan A Successful Home Business Part 1

Welcome to Part 1 of planning your business success

 

Define success

In order to succeed, you must define success.  Success could be defined as something which gives you happiness and satisfaction, but is that all?  A phrase I love which I heard recently is that the key point in finding success is when you find your today is better than your yesterday.

But what does success mean to you?  If you cannot define what success means to you, then you will never know if you have achieved it or not.

So many people think that success only consists of having money or power but this is not the case.  Success will vary from one person to another.  For one person it may mean material wealth and therefore they define their success by achieving a sum of money in the bank, or by owning material items such as a luxury home or top of the range car.  To someone else, success may be time freedom.  They will consider themselves to be successful when they are able to have time to do the things they love and with the people they love when they want.  And to another, it may be by gaining a significant achievement such as winning a business award or completing a race in a particular time.  It could be as simple as working in a job you love.

Take time to really think about what success means to you so you will know when you have achieved your dream.

Be specific

Now you know what success means to you, make it specific.  You need to specific about what you are aiming for or it will all become a bit woolly around the edges and you will never be quite sure if you are on the right track to attaining it or not.

If you have decided that you will have achieved success by being debt free with ample disposable income, be clear on exactly what figure this income is that you will have.  If you want that top of the range car, what make, colour, and engine size will it have?  If you want to increase sales in your business, be exact as to by how much of an increase you want.  Is it by 50% or 100%?  Or is it a specific amount of sales income that you are looking to achieve?

Saying you want to live in a nice house is just a loose dream compared to saying you want to live in a four bedroom detached house, with quarter-acre garden, garage, home office, gym and sea views in North Devon.  The more detailed and specific you can be about what it is that you want to achieve, the better.

Get down to the nitty-gritty of what you really want.  Cross the t’s and dot the I’s.  If you get stuck research online and in magazines for inspiration to help you build that perfect vision.

 

How To Make 2018 The Best It Can Be

How To Make 2018 The Best It Can Be

by | Jan 4, 2018 | Business Success, Personal and Lifestyle

Here are my top 10 tips to make 2018 your best year yet

Be the best

Be the best version of yourself that you can be. Whatever you are doing give it your absolute best.

Dream big

Dream big and step outside your comfort zone to achieve your goals.

Prioritise

Focus on your priorities.  Choose these wisely and focus on them above everything else.

Focus

Choose activities that will take you closer to your goals.  Focus on money making activities not scattergun time wasters.

Eat that frog

Eat that frog!  Whatever is important; do it first. Create a morning routine to get the important things done first before you turn on your phone or computer.

Visualise

Spend time every day visualising your dreams and goals. Have a vision board.  Take a picture of this and keep in your purse.  Keep looking at it.  It’s powerful stuff!

Question yourself

Ask yourself daily “What can I do to make a positive difference today?”  Then go do it.

Keep learning

Keep learning from the best.  Read daily, listen to podcasts, follow those who have been there and done it.  Spend 30 minutes each day soaking up positivity and focus from these people.

Look after yourself

Take time to relax all by yourself.  Eat healthily.  Exercise regularly.  Get enough sleep.  A healthy body and healthy mind will drive your forward more than anything else.

Make memories

Make memories, not money.  Spend time with family and friends.  Give them your undivided time.  Life is short, and no amount of money will make up for missed moments.

Are you hoping for a magic wand to save you?

Are you hoping for a magic wand to save you?

by | Nov 21, 2017 | Business Success

As members move through my Small Business Kit, it is so heartwarming to get testimonials constantly flooding in.  And like anyone else, I am more than happy to shout out about them.

These include:

“Wow! I’m a few lessons into module one, and I can wholeheartedly agree or resonate with literally everything you have said Angie! It is amazing how ‘on my wavelength’ you are. I find myself getting excited to put my laptop on and get to work on the course – no more procrastinating. This week, I managed to make more money than I probably ever have in a single week (not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but very good for me!) and when I counted my takings this week I almost cried with happiness!”

“Oh my goodness this course is amazing only on Module 1 part 2! How things have changed! I think if I had done this course 6 months ago would have been totally different answers than today!!!

But on the flip side, a few ladies who had been members for a while have seen these testimonials in our private Facebook group and got thrown by them.  They felt fed up, they were almost angry at these results other members were getting and they let themselves get disillusioned and decided to cancel their membership.

But why did they let themselves feel like this?  No, they weren’t getting the same results and there was one clear reason why.

They didn’t actually put the course into action!!

Simples!!

A couple of them hadn’t even watched the pre-course homework that would have set them up for success!  They had one person only to blame and that was them.  And I seriously suspect that in 12 months’ time they won’t have moved forward with their business much at all and may well have given up.

So, lady, are you prepared to step up and take responsibility for your business success or are you waiting for that magic wand to appear and waft success and money out of thin air for you?

Don’t let anyone tell you that building a successful business is easy.  It takes hard work.  It takes dedication.  It takes having to get up and show up and do the work when you least feel like it.  It takes persistence and it takes consistency.

So if you sign up for a program and it doesn’t work for you, may I suggest you take a good hard look at why it didn’t work?  Did you really give it 100% and action all the points you learned?  Or did you skim a few bits, thought you would do them later and head off to the beach for the rest of the day?

Sometimes reality is harsh and it can hurt to take this criticism on the chin.

At the end of the day, your success is all down to you.

When the reality is not all its cracked up to be!

When the reality is not all its cracked up to be!

by | Oct 16, 2017 | Business Success

When successful people aren’t what they seem!

One of the biggest reasons I see from other women when they are trying to build a business is a drop-in motivation and lack of energy and focus purely because they are comparing themselves to others and just don’t seem to be able to reach the dizzying heights of competitors that they seem constantly online.

Well, let me tell you something. Just this week I had an emergency call from the owner of a number of businesses. From the viewpoint of anybody looking in from the outside, this was a hugely successful person.  They had a couple of very high-profile businesses. They drove the latest top-of-the-range car. They were constantly away on holiday and being seen at all the best parties.

I met with them to find out what they needed and they showed me their cash flow statement. It takes quite a bit to shock me these days as I’ve seen just about it all but I have to admit on this occasion I was surprised. They certainly had me fooled. I knew the person (or at least thought I did) but the reality behind the facade of this high-flying business person with super successful businesses was that whilst they were turning over just short of £2 million the profits were just £15,000!   Yes, really!

I’ve written before about being very careful of believing the outside impression that can be created by others when the reality is a far cry from the truth.  This comparisonitis can be a killer.

Many women building their own businesses that I work with feel they are not successful whilst they are showing profits in excess of £15,000.  They would never even begin to compare their success with that of the business owners that I meet.  But in reality, there are just as successful.  What they don’t realise is that the cars, the holidays, the lifestyle etc are all being funded on credit.

Hopefully, I’ve given this particular business owner enough to work with to rectify the situation, but if you sit there at times wishing you could have the flash car when you pull up outside the school in your battered 13-year-old runaround, you wish you could have the holiday of a lifetime sitting on a beach sipping cocktails when all you get to do is take a long weekend on a camping trip, think again. Because you might just be in a better financial situation than that person you so aspire to be.

Remember, turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.

Stop.   Be thankful for what you have and keep building on that. Don’t compare yourself to others unless you have access to both your bank balance and theirs.