I got to start the new decade doing something on my bucket list: skiing Aspen’s Highland Bowl. If you are a skier, you’ll understand – Highland’s Bowl is Aspen’s crown jewel. It involves an hour-long hike along a narrow cornice to reach the summit. The hike would be difficult in the summer, much less in the winter with the wind blowing, carrying your skis, and walking in your ski boots. Once you get there, the entire bowl is all double black diamond runs filled with powder. In part, I wanted to do this because as Warren Miller always said, “If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do.” And I’m not getting any younger. It is not easy, either to get to or to ski down. But it is worth every minute of it.
The reason I’m telling you this story is that nothing great happens inside your comfort zone. We are at the beginning not just of a new year, but a new decade. A decade of double digits and one that is a common representation for perfect vision: 2020. This is a perfect time for us to evaluate what is happening in our businesses and how we are going to design the next decade to make our businesses great. But it isn’t going to happen by staying inside of our comfort zones. We are going to have to push ourselves.
Some of you have been on my list for 5, 6, 7 or more years. You’ve been receiving my message about creating content to grow your online sales, but have yet to implement. Now would be a good time to start implementing. Pablo Picaso said, “Action is the foundational key to all success.” You don’t have to do everything at once, but you do have to start. I love this quote by my late friend and mentor, Joe Sabah:
You don't have to be good to get started, but you do have to get started to be good! ~Joe Sabah Click To TweetZig Ziglar later modified this to substitute “great” for “good” (giving Joe full credit). Powerful stuff, and now is your time! This past week I had a coaching client ask me, almost to the point of overwhelm, “How can I possibly do all of this and still get any real work done? It seems like blogging and social media takes 40 hours per week!” It’s a great question. Companies that have even as few as 100 employees likely have a full-time person on staff that does nothing but content marketing. When you have 10 or fewer employees, or are even a solopreneur, how can you possibly give content creation and your website the care and attention it needs and deserves?
The answer is to automate and outsource. Every week you get an email from me like this one that is a full-length article. This article becomes the basis of a newsletter. And it is also the basis of a post on most of my social media accounts. I can assure you that I probably spend less time on social media than you, but I have a bigger presence (and probably a bigger following with over 25,000 on LinkedIn alone) than you do.
And it all happens because of automation and outsourcing. Have you ever noticed the number of guest posts I have? These guest posts not only save me time, but help to grow my site’s popularity.
WebStores Ltd. now offers a number of tools to help you automate your online business, including:
- Review Automation Software
- Bulk Text Messaging software
- Chatbots
Automating your business with these tools will save you countless hours every month. With our mentoring and coaching programs, I can show you how to automate other tasks as well, much like I do with my posts. Plus, we provide services to off-load some of your digital creative work that you can out-source to us:
- Virtual Webmaster
- Blog posting
- Social Media posting
- YouTube videos
- Facebook advertising
- Retargeting ads
Perhaps, you prefer to do these things yourself – if that is the case you should really consider signing up for one of our online courses to be more effective. Together, these things can greatly impact your digital footprint. But like I said, you don’t have to do everything. You can select the item or items that are going to make the greatest impact on your business this year and this decade. Remember, “you don’t have to be great to get started, but you do have to get started to be great!” Call us at 877-924-1414 and let’s get started making this your best decade ever!
Podcast, Season 2
I am relaunching the “20 Minutes of Influence” podcast with season 2. This year I am stepping out of my comfort zone and creating a new format for the podcast. I will continue to interview guests, as many of these people have some great advice to offer, but I will also be providing episodes that have some information that I have learned myself. It will have lots of great free content. I am starting with 7 episodes covering:
- Getting Found
- Getting Clicked On
- Getting Them to Stay
- Getting Repeat Visitors
- Getting Social
- Getting Endorsed
- Getting More Sales
Be sure to visit 20MinutesofInfluence.com and subscribe today!
What’s New with WooCommerce?
Point of Sale for WooCommerce
Designed to work natively with WooCommerce, multiple POS configurations allow you to manage products, orders, and customers flexibly. Point of Sale for WooCommerce is a web-based point of sale (POS) application that allows you to sell online products in your physical store. It turns any modern web browser into a cash register, allowing you to holistically manage your products, orders and customers.
With over five years of research and development, Point of Sale for WooCommerce has been designed and built to work natively with WooCommerce. There are no third-party API interfaces; simply download and install the extension, open a register, and start selling. It is seamlessly integrated with WooCommerce, so all of your online inventory is synced with your in-store purchases.
Visit my affiliate link to learn more. Or call me 877-924-1414 if you need to implement this for your store.
Buy Again for WooCommerce
Make it simple for customers to quickly re-purchase products they’ve previously bought from you. Encourage repeat sales with a “Buy Again” section in their account dashboard or add calls-to-action on product pages and in past order details.
Visit my affiliate link to learn more.
If you enjoy these articles each week and get some value out of them, I’d really appreciate a positive online review on Google. Just visit https://webstoresltd.com/review. Thanks for your help!
Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/