Make 2012 your best year ever, with these 9 powerful business ideas and professional development tips!

1. Show them what you know

In business, anyone can claim to be an expert. Look at the profile of any businessperson on a social network, even the most inept ones, and you will see them claiming to be anything from an expert or thought leader to a guru or ninja!

Use your blog, newsletter or social media accounts to demonstrate what you know. This is one of the finest ways to attract the interest of genuine, prospective clients. I get email inquiries for my services via this blog daily, with almost all of them telling me that the reason they want me to work with them, is they value my approach to marketing and business development. How do they know what my approach is? They see it here on the blog.

You know you are great at what you do. Your clients know it too.

Now, show the rest of your marketplace and blow the lid off your potential!

2. Walk more

Something almost magical happens when we walk. Not only do we get some extremely valuable health benefits, it seems to have a massive impact on how we feel. I have already written about this in detail here.

However, I really want to share the following video with you. It’s from Dr Mike Evans, and is all about the many medical and fitness benefits of walking, even for just 30 minutes a day.

If you can’t see the video, you can watch it here.

3. Fire any clients that make you unhappy

You can not run a successful business, working with people who make you miserable or pay you late or speak to you like you’re a fool. This is one of the first things I work on with new clients and the difference it makes to their businesses and quality of life, is enormous. Seth Godin said this was a key reason for his success.

4. Start blogging

If you already have a blog, start taking blogging seriously. Blogging is the single most powerful marketing tool I have ever found. Every day, thousands of business owners read this blog and share it with their friends. In 2011, this site generated over £145,000 for my business in client fees, sales and consulting work.

5. Become super selective who you listen to

There are many different voices you can tune into these days. Some will make you healthier happier and wealthier. Some will do the opposite. Listen to people with the knowledge and experience to help you.

6. Be yourself

The single most valuable lesson I have learned from my 25 years in marketing, is this: Be yourself.

The world is filled to bursting point with people, who simply copy what others say or do. For a 16 year old child who has little confidence and wants to avoid standing out, this is an effective strategy until they grow up. For a business owner seeking to gain visibility, it’s total insanity. I call this process embracing your inner freak. You can read all about it here.

7. Understand that there is often, more than one truth

You can make the coming year (and years), a lot less stressful with this basic mindset adjustment.

One of the reasons people get so frustrated, is that they know they are right, yet the other person simply doesn’t get their point or the other person is wrong and won’t admit it!

Here’s an alternative approach, which may make your future a lot less stressful and make YOU a lot more attractive to others. It’s about understanding that often, in business and in life generally, there is more than one truth.

For example, I love the taste of oranges. You may dislike them with a passion. If a third person asked each of us what oranges taste like, we would give completely opposite answers, yet both of us would be telling the truth, or to be more exact, we would be telling our truth.  When you get your head around this concept and learn to respect the opinions of others, you will be amazed what it does for you in just about every area of your life.

8. Go deeper

One of the most common mistakes people make with their marketing, is that they build large, shallow networks online. In other words, they may have hundreds or thousands of Twitter followers or Facebook friends yet find it’s of little real benefit to their business.

I suggest you try a different approach. I suggest you focus on building a deeper relationship, with a far smaller, more focused group. Why? Because if you focus on attracting just 10 passionate advocates, they will each bring you another 10. That 10 will then do the same and before you know it, you will have a massively more targeted network. It’s all about shifting the focus from building numbers, to building quality.

I explain how it works in detail, in this post.

9. Answer this powerful question

There is a question, which every business owner should answer and then get to work on. The question is this:

“If my business were perfect in every way, what would it look like?”

A few things to consider, may include:

• How many hours would you work?
• What would you earn?
• Which causes would your business support?
• Where would you work?
• What kind of clients or customers, would you work with?
• What kind of systems would you have in place?
• What would you charge?
• What would your business’ image be?
• Which business specialists would you hire as consultants?
• How many people, if any, would you employ?
• What would be your unique twist, the thing that set you apart from the competition?

One of the reasons many business owners fail to grow a business that inspires them, is that they never took the time to decide what THEIR ideal business looked like. Getting clear on exactly what you want, makes it a lot easier to achieve. Its easy to take a wrong turn, when you’re not sure what your destination is!

Finally, I hope the next 12 months are the best ever for you, your family and your business. Thank you for your support over the past year!

 

Here are 15 ideas and suggestions, to help you and your business have your best year ever!

1. Embrace brevity.
2. Understand that you must fail more often, if you want to make meaningful progress. If you’re not failing often enough, you’re sticking to things you already know. This means you are no longer growing.
3. Remind yourself that the process of giving and receiving starts with giving.
4. Avoid chasing perfectionism. It will stop you getting started, kill your creativity and block your progress.
5. Avoid these rhinos. They will hurt your business and motivate you to do the wrong things, correctly.
6. Accept that not all advice is created equal. There is a lot of poor quality information out there, especially online. There are several well known business bloggers, who are working as sub contractors because they have no idea how to develop a viable business. If advice smells like bullshit, it probably is.
7. Get yourself a Google+ account. If you are on Google+, you can connect with me here. For those interested in the numbers, in the few months I have been using Google+, I have built a network of over 9,500 people. It has taken me almost 3 years to attract just 6,000 on twitter.
8. Stop doing work that pays and start doing work that matters. Here’s why. (Hint: The payback is better!)
9. When an opportunity comes your way, trust your intuition. It’s your mind telling you what’s best, after running the information through all your past life experiences. In my own case, every time I have gone against my intuition, it’s bitten me on the butt!
10. Get expert help in any area of your business, where you are under performing. Things don’t just change for the better because you hope they will. Hope is important, but it’s not a business strategy.
11. Remind yourself often about the value of your time.  No one ever lay on their deathbed, regretting they hadn’t spent more time watching reality TV. Throughout the day, ask yourself, is this the best use of my time right now? If it isn’t, go and do something more productive.
12. Take care regarding what you say online. Most of it will be stored somewhere and searchable. A reader told me that a drunken rant from back in 2009, was found by a prospective client this year, who immediately withdrew their interest. It lost him a very important contract and was, he says, instrumental in his bankruptcy. Just because you may think it’s OK to rant, doesn’t mean everyone else does. Do it if you must, but be aware of the potential cost.
13. Ask better questions. If you want great answers you need to ask great questions. If you want to attract more clients you could ask yourself, “how can I attract more clients?” Alternatively, you could ask yourself; “how can I attract high quality clients and lower the acquisition cost?” Better questions cause you to focus on better answers.
14. Consider the source. There is always a reason behind people’s actions. People give you advice or feedback based on their motivations, not yours. Equally, some well intentioned advice can come from people without a clue.
15. Learn to embrace your inner freak. This may be the best advice on this list.

Those of us who regularly use social networking sites, know that it has never been easier to spot a fake.

It’s hard for people to hide who they really are and what they know (or don’t know,) when they regularly update their social networking accounts.

Yes, anyone can fake it for a little while, but in the medium and long term, we get so much information that it’s very simple to build up a profile of the people we regularly see sharing.

Fakes, saying and seeing

Ironically, many of those people believe that the Internet makes it easier for them to fool the marketplace, because social media gives them the chance to say anything they like.  They can pretend to be experts, leaders or visionaries, so people will ‘just believe them’, right?

Wrong!  The exact opposite is true.  Today, we can see what the fakes are doing on social networks, regardless of what they say.

Some common examples we see all the time include:

• The web designer, who talks every day about the need for great design, yet whose own site has rookie design errors.
• The leaders on Twitter, who ask you to follow people on Fridays because that’s when everyone does it.
• The thought leader, who never shares an original thought.
• The business development expert, who feels compelled to scream “TGIF!” to everyone who follows them every Friday, because they can’t wait to get away from their own business.
• The marketing expert, who uses social media to pester people for their attention, rather than attract their interest.
• The social media guru, who shows they have no idea about being social.
• The business networking expert, who works behind an avatar photo that was taken 15 years ago.
• The copywriter, who is unable to write interesting social media updates.
• The work-life balance gurus, who go missing for months, because their own work-life balance is totally out of control.

Thankfully, the same visibility that exposes the fakes, makes it easier than ever for genuine people to demonstrate their knowledge, professionalism and consistency.  It has never been easier or more rewarding, to be your unique self.