Author: Jeff Hora

Mindfulness and Taking Stock

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Mindfulness

Mindfulness

This past week was a good and difficult one.
One of the hard bits was working to get five + days of work done in three, as I had scheduled Thursday and Friday off to celebrate my anniversary and birthday. I work to do this every year and have been pretty successful to date, although banishing work from my mind is always a challenge as an entrepreneur. Still, it was good to get away from the screens and focus on each day and the moments each held, along with the commemoration activities.
I focus on this set of events for a couple of reasons.
First, I wish to celebrate life and relationships, and this is another way to mark them as memorable and life-giving.
Second, this particular birthday gives me pause. I am now the age my father was when he was consumed by cancer and died. That, along with the near approaching anniversary of the death of my younger brother in two weeks, I am particularly aware of being present in each moment and how this manifests itself in my “normal activities”…..”normal activities” being the usual, rather mundane things of every day.
You may be thinking (if you’ve read this far..), “Why is he writing about this on a business blog?” A fair question…

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Survey Says!!

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Survey
The best way to find out what your customers are looking for from you is ASK THEM, Right?! Well, that’s the message this week.

I’ve written frequently about the importance of really listening to your customers and acting on what you hear. Now you have your chance to participate, and I have a chance to “Walk The Talk”: I am announcing the first ever survey for my blog.  The objective is to provide you with more of the kind of information and conversation you actually find valuable to you and your business.

As I look at the articles for this year that have been the most read, the Top Five are:

 

 

 

 

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Loyalty, Customer Experience, and the Death of Your Business

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Customer Experience

Customer Experience

The deeper I get into the research concerning customer loyalty and engagement, the more it is pounded into me that it centers on Customer Experience (CX for short). The kicker about CX is that, while there are certain common factors and processes that carry across most customers and audiences, it really is an individual experience with you and your business. What does this mean?

First let’s look at the percentage of Loyal customers / audience you already have. Recent studies propose that you may have between 8%-15% customers that can be considered Loyal (your mileage may vary, especially given the differences in businesses: e.g. a coffee shop may have a greater opportunity for “regular” loyalty than a real estate office…). Let’s posit that your customers (a) DO have the opportunity, given your product / service, to purchase from you again within 12 months (and can certainly REFER you at any time!), and (b) this product /service is of value to them and at a fair price. The end-to-end CX for them has been better-than-just-positive overall, hence their loyalty. Their post-purchase experience has also been “positive+” (better than just OK…).

As it turns out, that bit is very important! 

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All About the Numbers! – The Best of October

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Holidays!

Holidays!

The holidays are nearly upon us!

Shortly we start that Rocket Slide toward year’s end…a rapid countdown, for sure.
In the spirit of a countdown, this month’s articles all have numbers as part of their headlines, so you can come away with some actionable points you can use.

Grow Your Facebook Page

Grow Your Facebook Page

Not every idea will work for you business, but these 32 “out-of-the-box” notions just might give you some other ideas about how to grow your Facebook page. Be Creative! Try new stuff…..

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If You Read One Article About Ideas, Read This One!

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BOOKS: Ideas Bound

BOOKS: Ideas Bound

I have long had the habit of reading more than a book at a time…

Since the advent of the Amazon Kindle, however, this has become something that is second nature. I don’t think it odd, and, with the ready access to who-knows-how-many books and samples I carry around, it just “is”! Much lighter, and a bit easier to keep track of where I am in each one….

This has allowed an enhanced creative journey for me. I read several kinds of books, according to my mood and focus…right now I am in the midst of:
…along with a couple of physical books (I have an enormous number of them that I either haven’t read yet, or return to regularly…):

Loyalty, Strategy and Connection

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Loyalty, Strategy, and Connection

Loyalty, Strategy, and Connection

I’ve written a lot about loyalty, strategy, connection and relationship-building. My recent post about loyalty went into some of the reasons that customer and audience loyalty is critical to your business. Another recent article about lining up your strategy with your actual problems perhaps deals with a bit more about problem-solving and identifying where your strategy, such as it is, might not be a fair representation or plan that works within the realm of the daily reality you face. Another article concerned connections, both real and perceived.

These are all related. Strategy is generally defined as some kind of innovation or reinvention process. If it doesn’t reflect the constant change the market and your business is experiencing, it isn’t strategy. It may be a corporate wish-list, a reason to have a kind of high-faluting retreat every year, or some kind of box-checking activity….although there are generally a lot of nervous, but well-meaning efforts aimed at it. However, if it doesn’t actually help your company break from old habits that are keeping you from at the very least repeating the same things every year, it’s not doing for you what it might.

Is loyalty a key component of your strategy? You realize that there is more to it than crafting good offers and making sure your customer service is stellar (both good things in the right priority….). It need not be itemized, but, since strategy with, hopefully, drive goals and action within your company (including what your employees are given as part of their roles and how they are incentivized…). Strategy that drives real change in a company is difficult, businesses rarely achieve extra-ordinary results unless they do something very strategic.

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Why Focus on Loyalty?

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Loyalty

Loyalty

Loyalty, always a high-sounding word, is ever more in the news and on our minds.

Whether it’s loyalty to a sports team, a political cause or ideology, a leader, a brand, a long-standing relationship, a coffee shop, or the family doctor, we seem to be more concerned with it and discuss it more than ever before.

I’ve been doing (and continue to dig into…) research on loyalty. Specifically, I am interested in:
  • What the drivers are for customer loyalty to businesses
  • How these drivers relate to relationship and dialogue stages
  • Factors / components that are online, off-line, and a blend of the two
  • Other components or influences that I have yet to uncover
While this will not be the “Unified Theory of Loyalty” (with apologies to physicists everywhere….), I wish to come to a clearer understanding of what establishes, builds and maintains this stance in customers and people in general. Humans are complex, absolutely unique individuals who, nonetheless, exhibit certain related behaviors and tendencies. If this were not so, the social sciences would have to just fold up their collective tents and take up hospitality management.

As I continue to research this topic and make discoveries, I will be writing about them here first. The eventual end-product is likely to be a paper, some podcasts, a video or two….likely a combination of all of the above.

So stay tuned!

Now, having gotten the preface out of the way, let me get to the first bit:

Why Loyalty?

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END OF THE SUMMER! THE BEST OF SEPTEMBER

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Autumn is HERE!

Autumn is HERE!

The beginning of Fall is upon us and we’re all planning for what our holiday business is going to look like, right? In a final look-back on our collective Summer, here are some articles I found to be particularly arresting……

CLICK THAT HEADLINE!!!

CLICK THAT HEADLINE!!!

Great article…but the headline you wrote for it is a definite “…meh…”. Want to figure out how to get your audience to click through and actually READ it? Here’s some tips, backed up by data, that tell you how!

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3 More LinkedIn Tips

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LinkedIn

LinkedIn

LinkedIn continues its steady march as THE PLACE online for professionals. I also have found that it is where many people and businesses go to check on the “bona fides” of an amazingly wide array of professionals and service providers. Lawyers, managers, sales associates, plumbers, contractors, chefs….you name it. People go to LinkedIn to see if you are who you say you are on your website and marketing materials.

The Internet has taught us to do research. It doesn’t matter if I’m looking for a new car, a better financial solution for my future, or the most engaging cat toy (which, frankly, is a rolled up piece of paper, but that’s another thing not covered in this article…). Anyone with access to search and reviews online (or asking for referrals on Facebook…) is likely to head over to LinkedIn and check on you.

I published an article earlier with 3 pointers for a better LinkedIn profile. I also posted a free downloadable LinkedIn Professional Profile Checklist as a good tool to get the basics online.

I want to add 3 more tips to these. The more you can not only get your profile to completeness but to EFFECTIVENESS, the more successful you can be in providing your visitors with the kind of information about you that increases your reputation and validates your expertise.

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Innovation and Dialogue

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dialogue innovation

Dialogue

How much of innovation is an Isaac Newton-like moment (mythically alone and the apple drops on your head….”AH-HA!”) and how much is something else entirely?

And what IS that something else?

I wrote another article asking if innovation was dead. Looking at the world around us, it seems a mixed set of answers. Some things like Artificial Intelligence (AI), driverless cars and certain kinds of other technology seem to beg the question that innovation is alive and well. But we still have stubborn problems as a culture and a world that seem to defy innovative answers. Some of these problems are so monumentally complex that just trying to confront or define them is hard enough (think eradication of hard poverty, cures for things like cancer or diabetes, nuclear proliferation, economic inequality, how to have a positive outcome with whatever the heck is happening to global environment, etc….).

Getting to a more manageable level, like your business, how do you:
  • keep from being a follower when it comes to coming up with new and different ways to attract customers
  • improve and create new products and services
  • grow your business in scalable ways
  • stand out from the crowd of competitors
and the like?

Going it alone can seem attractive. It can feel like, unless you come up it, it’s not really your innovation or idea. This is a real danger for solopreneurs, as innovation is not the same as churn, and this churn is where many of us live and work. Surrounded by shifting tasks, fluid schedules, never-ending revisions of services and offerings….it can SEEM like Innovation at times, even if it’s just a new way to get through the day in one piece!

It’s not.

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