Rapid Business Growth’s Blog

Last night was the Dublin City Enterprise Board’s Link event as part of Enterprise week. A topic for discussion was what do you lose when you start your own business, and what can you do to cope with that.

To kick off the topic we had an animated video based on the bestselling book “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson and a very insightful talk by Miriam Ahern of Align Management Solutions.

The discussion at my table was all about giving up certainty, security & salary. There were many different ways in which it was phrased, but that was the bottom line. We had a Property Developer, a Coach, a Project Manager, a Taxi Driver, an IT Specialist, A Shoe Maker, an Italian Food Importer and me the Marketing Expert. Each in their own way articulating the same point that “once you start on your own, you are on your own”.

There were lots of examples given such as not having a social network around you, not having defined roles, no salary. Lots of examples of where people were getting something of value from a previous role in life that they gave up to become an entrepreneur.

Being practical types we of course looked for solutions. As some Business Owner mentioned an “ending” they immediately offered something as a defence mechanism. As if denying that weakness are characteristics of humanity. If I may generalise: Entrepreneurs focus on solutions and deny their own falibility! But I digress….

We did list solutions, these were a selection from memory:

Then the more thoughtful people took over, beside the external stuff perhaps we could also look inside? We should always look at what our own mental state of being is before setting any goals. On good mental days we should seek out very stretching goals. Conversely on bad mental days we might deserve a bit more minding rather than punishment!

The discussion was open and free and what I’ve recorded here are the thoughts of 9 Entrepreneurs (or owner managers depending on your definition of Entrepreneur!!) If you found this interesting and would like to join in contact Miriam Ahern the LINK! network manager

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.
Best wishes
Mike Spratt
www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328

Have you spent money on a website but aren’t seeing the benefits?  Do you need more visitors to your online shopfront?

The key to getting on traffic to your website is having your website on the front page of search engines.  Studies show that surfers are notorious impatient and while they are highly motivated, they have a very short attention span.  If their interest is not grabbed immediately by you, they will wander off to whatever topic shouts the loudest at them.  

So how do you get high up the rankings?  Well the first step is see where you sit right now.  There are various services to check your page ranking and while you are there try a few of your competitors websites also.  So where do you sit? Best in class?  Midway? or Tailend Charlie?  Store these results and check back often until you get a decent feeling for how you are perceived.  If you are number 1 and stay there - congratulations.  You are winning the a big share of business that comes via the web. 

For everybody else you now have a target to beat.  One very important element in Search Engine Rankings is the number and quality of the inbound links to your website.  The more and better links you have the higher your page ranking.  So the second step is to look at your own inbound links and your top competitor.   Check it out and take note of who is linking to your top competitor and not to you.  Repeat this for all your competitors who have a higher Page ranking than you.  

Now you have a readymade list of websites to contact to seek reciprocal links! Just send them an e-mail and ask for a link.  What is the worst thing that can happen, they say no?  Why do they link to your competitor and not to you?  Perhaps you should seek links from their competitors? In other cases you will see that links are from directories who will all have a subscribe mechanism, which you can also use. 

In this way you can start pushing yourself up the page rankings and getting to the top of the search engines.  There are a few other tricks such as articles like this one, blogging, social book marking that will be the subject of future articles.

For help and assistance with this or for any of your marketing needs, please give me a call. I’m very happy to discuss how we could help you further.
Best wishes
Mike Spratt

www.rapidbusinessgrowth.ie
Phone: +353 1 491 3328