February is American Heart Month
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., and February is the perfect month to run a healthy heart campaign. Businesses needn’t be in the health-care industry to run such a program. Anyone concerned with the wellbeing of its business partners, vendors and employees can launch a campaign. Healthy employees result in lower health-care premiums. Encourage everyone to get a physical and reward those who do with heart-shaped stress relievers. Use social media like Facebook to promote healthier eating and exercise. Engage clients, vendors and employees through Twitter and tweet about success stories. Contact your distributor partner, as she can help you find lots of great heart-themed promotional products.

February 2 
National Groundhog Job Shadow Day
Rather than fixate on the groundhog and whether he sees his shadow today, become part of a movement that has high school students shadowing your employees to learn more about business. Students will gain valuable insight into what they’ll need for their future endeavors, and businesses become important mentors for today’s youth. Reward all participants with imprinted products like backpacks or speakers for MP3 players. Your distributor can help you set up the program.

February 6-10
International Networking Week 
Since business doesn’t operate in a vacuum, you need to get out there and network. This week is the perfect time to set up and run networking events within your business community. Announce the event via social media like Twitter and Facebook. And provide imprinted products for all participants. Selections can include neoprene laptop sleeves, iPad accessories and leather portfolios. Your distributor is a valuable resource for putting the event together.

February 14 
Valentine’s Day
If you love your clients, let them know … today! February 14 isn’t just for red-hot lovers. Send boxes of logoed chocolates to clients with a handwritten note expressing your appreciation for their business. Consider throwing in a bouquet of imprinted roses to complete the sentiment. Your distributor partner knows where to get all the lovey-dovey stuff for you today.

February 21 
International Pancake Day
Take time today for a fun promotion. Visit clients with pancake kits that include mixes, aprons, bowls and spatulas as a way to say thanks for doing business with us. Host a pancake breakfast for all employees too. Your distributer partner can get everything for a logoed kit.

As a marketer, this comment from prospects and clients has always baffled me. I have always screamed in my head, ‘What do you mean you have enough business already?!’ 

Tonight as I presided over our biweekly meeting as President of the Freehold Phrasers Toastmasters Club, as is customary at the end of the meeting, we took volunteers for the different roles for upcoming meetings; Grammarian, Ah Counter, Joke Master, and the ever-coveted Speaker role. We basically set our agenda until the middle of September…it’s starting to seems like “we have enough business already”.

When I first took over the position of President of the club, I quickly assembled the executive board for a meeting about the upcoming year. When it came time to discuss public relations and new membership, I had a TON of great marketing ideas.

After I was finished presenting all of my “great ideas” to the group, they asked me a very poignant question, “How big do we want to get?” At 32 members, our club is rather large for a Toastmasters club. And because we have so many members, and a limited amount of roles, I understood what they were saying.

Of course we could get more members if we advertised more, but at what cost? By adding too many members too fast, we would risk alienating and discouraging the members that we already have.

However, as a marketer this is unacceptable to me. Maybe we could just add a few minutes to the agenda to allow for more speeches? Maybe we could meet 3 or 4 times a month instead of 2? Maybe we could start a whole new club? Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Or maybe we should focus our marketing internally for now. Perhaps we need to focus on developing the talent we already have and really help our members to grow. Yes of course, that’s it! While we can and should plan for expansion and the future, we should never do it at the expense of what we already have.

So when you feel like you have enough business already, focus on what you have and how you can help your people grow. Then, when the time is right you will grow too. 

Because let’s be TOTALLY honest here, you can never really have enough business, can you?

John Zalepka

The sun got in my eyes…

…the #Trust30 challenge ended on Friday…

…it’s a holiday weekend…

…I never got to a computer yesterday…

…I was spending time with my family…

…I’ll just say I meant 30 business days.

Yesterday was a very busy day for me with the family. The beach in the morning, a dip in the pool in the afternoon, and a pig party in the evening.

The truth of the matter is that I could have posted to my blog yesterday from anywhere, but then I could have gotten sand in my phone, or dropped it in the pool, or, well there I go again.

You see there was never a perfect time for me to sit down and write, plus I hate typing on my phone, you know I have fat thumbs. What if I had typos or grammatical errors…wouldn’t people think I was an idiot?

Plus, what would I write about? What could I possible offer about marketing while sunning (burning) myself on the beach that would be really thought provoking or interesting? I’m doing it again, aren’t I?

Now what do my excuses have to do with marketing?

Well my suspicion is that if you are a small business owner, you probably have some excuses about why you don’t market your business more, or worse don’t market it at all. 

Marketing is all about putting yourself out there and telling people who you are. And as long as you stay true to your message and target properly, then your message will be fine. Will it always be perfect and great? Probably not, even the greatest of marketers don’t always get it right…New Coke, anyone?

Anyway, I found a good article on the Top 3 Excuses for Not Marketing a Small Business, and what to do about it.

So let’s cut out the excuses and get to work.

John Zalepka

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down a major life goal you have yet to achieve or even begin to take action on. For each goal, write down three uncertainties (read: fears) you have relating to each goal. Break it down further, and write down three reasons for each uncertainty. When you have three reasons for your fear, you’ll be able to start processing the change because you know where the fear stems from. Now you’ll be able to make a smaller changes that push you towards your larger goal. So begins the process of “trusting yourself.” 

(Author: Sean Ogle)

Upon my first read through of today’s quote and Sean Ogle’s subsequent post I started thinking about my “goals” …all of the sudden visions of me swimming in a pool full of hundred dollar bills filled my head.

As I read through a second time though, I realized that I did not “fear” money, what uncertainties could I come up with? I mean I could definitely find something to spend all of my goal (money) on. That’s when I began to come to my senses; I realized that money should never be THE goal, instead it should be a by-product of a goal that you actually achieve.

Dictionary.com defines a goal as: the result or achievement toward which effort is directed. Now you could certainly make a case that money could be a “result” of your “effort”, but then what would be a good goal? Should I set out to make $100,000 per month? $10 million per year? Perhaps a net worth of $1 billion should be my goal? My point is that maybe money is better off on my business plan and left out of my personal goals.

A friend of mine whom with I am working on a project, sent me a text message yesterday stating that we needed to take the project in a different direction. I agreed with him, but figured we would talk about it later in the day. Within a minute, I received another text message from him stating that it was done. My first thought was, ‘What do you mean it’s done? We didn’t even give ourselves a chance to second guess ourselves.’ When I asked him about it later he said that, “When I make my mind up about something, I need closure right away.” Wow, what a concept! He is able to move on, where I would have been left hemming and hawing until someone else made up my mind for me.

So my life goal is this; Decrease the amount of things that I allow myself to ‘think about’. Sure there will be major life decisions that I will need some time to properly formulate the best way to handle, but for the most part, for my day-to-day, I need to follow my gut …make a decision, take action and then stick to my guns. I have emails sitting in my Inbox from weeks ago, I have papers piled up on my desk that I need to go through, I have half-finished projects waiting for the perfect time to complete them.

I’m not sure why I have such a tough time deleting an email or throwing away a piece of paper. Maybe my fear is the uncertainty of finality. Whatever it is, it has got to stop! I need to start trusting myself, after all I’m a pretty smart dude.  I have to understand that there will never be a perfect time, or a perfect place, or a perfect business partner. Einstein said it best when he defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

So take action and take it now …before you end up in a strait jacket.

John Zalepka