How often should I check email each day?

This is a great question that we each wrestle with on a daily basis. The answer is: as often as you absolutely need to. That means a different amount for each person. If your business is one that you are getting lots of email inquiries from your web site or online leads, than you should probably check your emails more frequently throughout the day or even consider getting a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) type of phone so you can receive your emails where ever you are at.

If the majority of your inquiries to your business come to you by phone, then you should check your email at least 3 times per day, morning, noon and afternoon. If you do not get many emails than you might consider checking them twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

Another good idea for you is to forward your phone calls from your office phone to your cell phone when you are out and about, especially if your inquiry’s are time sensitive.

Remember, to build your small business you need to be in front of prospects and customers. Prospects to get more new business and customers to get repeat business and to ask for referrals! Stay closest to where the sales come from!

© 2009 eMarketing 4 Business LLC

# 1 Tip for 2008 Goal Setting

Think about what you want, not what you don’t want. This is an area that haunts most people in their life and they don’t even know it. Ask someone you know “What is most important to you about…” and fill in the blank. Put family, friends, business associates, vacations or job and see what the people say. Do they tell you what they want or what they don’t want?

If they tell you what they want, chances are they are a person who gets what they want or gets closer to what they want than most people do. If they are a person who tells you what they don’t want, even though you asked them what is important to them, chances are they are getting what they focus on…..which is what they don’t want.

Hopefully this is not too confusing for you. If it is, read it over again and you’ll get the hang of it. Set goals, focus on what you want and don’t let negative thoughts of what you don’t want, slip in.

You are what you think about, make it happen in 2008!

© 2009 eMarketing 4 Business LLC

Are you really focused on Success?

A couple weeks ago, I spoke to a home inspector who spent a great deal of time telling me how bad he thought the market was. After asking him why he felt this way, he proceeded to explain how bad new housing was and that the mortgage crisis was affecting everything. It really didn’t matter what kind of “business building” suggestions I made to him. He opposed every single one of my ideas. No matter what I suggested, he was not willing to adjust his viewpoint that everything was “terrible”.

I decided to research other home inspectors businesses. I approached employees of AHIT, American Home Inspectors Training Institute, a company which has trained thousands of home inspectors across the country and asked them what the general feeling and feedback was the inspectors who called their customer service and technical support. Overall these were the comments: “I’m not growing as much this year as last year, but things are still plugging along” or “I stepped up my marketing efforts because my business is a little flat this year, but I feel like I’m going to be up a little over last year when it’s all said and done”. In general, the people who remain positive and focused on building their businesses are doing better than the negative ones.

This is true of people in any business. If you only focus on what the media is saying, whether bad or good, your business will probably flow with the “headlines.” The reason for this is because what you believe and get emotional about, you bring about. If you’ve built your business on sound business principles and you focus on the positive, you have very good chance of doing better and more customers will want to work with, or refer you. It’s much more enjoyable to talk and be around positive people than negative ones.

Take a close, objective look at your attitude and make sure you’re staying positive about your business and your industry. If you’re staying positive, good for you! If your attitude has been negative, change it. Every industry has cycles and your attitude has a lot to do with how your business will weather it. Focus on how you want your business to be, focus on the good benefits you provide your customers, and focus on being positive. Do this and you’ll have a better outcome with your business.

Make it happen!

© 2009 eMarketing 4 Business LLC

Why “Doing It Now” is a good thing.

Why do people procrastinate? Typically there are two main causes that result in procrastination; either the task at hand is OVERWHELMING or the task at hand is UNPLEASANT. Procrastination sucks the energy out of you and causes unnecessary stress. When a person procrastinates they are overloading their mind with too many tasks to manage causing anxiety and nervous tension, all which is avoidable. People spend too much time following up on their follow up instead of using a “Do It Now” frame of mind.

It is much easier to complete the follow up now, instead of putting it off. Try doing this with the things that make sense to do it with. As an example, if you tell someone you’ll call them back in two days; call them back in two days. Really, could you have dealt with the issue present day rather than calling them back in two days? By telling yourself you are going to do less procrastinating and less follow up, you will complete more tasks NOW!

Procrastination can lead to undesirable results. For instance, if you’re not in the habit of making regular backups of your computer files, the first time your hard drive crashes you’ll discover how detrimental procrastination can be. So how can you tell if you are a procrastinator? There are a number of ways, but here are some just a few tell tale signs:

• You allow piles of paper to grow in your home or office
• More often than not you don’t respond to e-mails and letters in a reasonable amount of time
• You have a tendency to delay important projects for more easily accomplished tasks.

Have you identified yourself in this list? No problem, there is still hope for you! To beat procrastinating you must change your mind set and deal with the task immediately, meeting it head on. If the task is quite large, break the task up into various stages, setting goals, and rewarding you for completing the tasks on time. Most importantly ask yourself, “What will be the price of procrastinating and am I willing to pay it?” Eventually you will have to do the task anyways, so you might as well get it over and done with.

By using a “Doing it NOW” frame of mind, you will create more time for yourself and add a new level of efficiency to everything you do.

© 2009 eMarketing 4 Business LLC

Do my business taxes need to be filed by April 15th?

If you are on a calendar year-end reporting with your company, the answer is most likely yes. The only exception to that would be if you incorporated your business, in which case the company’s taxes are due March 15! You will at least have to pay any taxes you owe by that time. If you would like to file an extension for some reason you can do so, but the extension only gives you more time to file your taxes, not to pay your taxes. It’s always best to file by the original due date to get it out of the way. This way you can focus on building your business the rest of the year instead of having to be concerned about meeting your extension deadline.

Keep in mind that with your small business you will most likely have to complete your business taxes either before or at the same time you file your personal taxes. Since today is New Year’s Eve, it’s a good time to make your list of things to do in 2008 and completing your taxes on time is a great one to add to the list!

© 2009 eMarketing 4 Business LLC