On your way to the office, you notice a fellow in a flannel shirt hanging out at Starbucks, his tablet in hand. A block down you spot a middle-aged woman in a café staring keenly at the contents on her laptop. You pass a park and smile to yourself when you see a young couple kicking back in the grass with their headphones on. If only you had the day off like them.

In fact, those people are all hard at work. With real-time global communication and mobile everything, the ‘office’ has gotten a lot bigger these days. Instead of staring at dull walls and cubicles, you can get things done in an environment that relaxes you and helps you do your best work.

Featured Resource this week - Infusionsoft

The Sales & Marketing Software for Small Business.

Customer & Marketing management: Manage and automate all facets of your customer relationships. Infusionsoft revolutionizes the way small businesses drive and manage their growth. With a robust dose of marketing automation, Infusionsoft replaces your diverse incompatible systems and provides you with an "all-in-one" solution that leaves you with more time to strategically grow your business.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

There are people whose sole focus is uncovering and watching important trends in business and I, for one, am grateful for their persistence.

In an excellent article I recently read by Ian Altman on Forbes, he outlines 10 trends that will drive success in 2017. Realistically, not all of them will be critical to your business or mine but they are worth looking at and considering what the impact might be on your business and business in general.

The title says it all! Sooner or later you will have a catastrophic failure of everything electronic. Your computer, your web server, your website, your smart phone, whatever. Trust me on this one! The only thing you can do is keep recent backups so you have some recourse when disaster happens.

Today, I want to focus on your website. First, don’t count on your web hosting company to keep backups for you. They may, or they may not, but it is really YOUR responsibility to have a recent backup of your site. And best yet, have one that you keep off site, say, on your computer.

“Everyone is not YOUR customer.”      ~  Seth Godin

That little nugget of wisdom is worth writing down and then pinning up where you'll see it. It makes things so much easier when you discover who your ideal customers and clients are, because then you only have to market to them. Your marketing will become less generic and more personal when you know who it is you're “speaking to.”

You have to admit it—autumn is a great season. The weather's nice, the changing colors of the leaves are mesmerizing, and your inner child is nudging you to look at back-to-school supplies and Halloween costumes because there might be something “cool.”

Try to muster up that childlike enthusiasm for your fall marketing plan! Take advantage of all that the season has to offer, and it should be a breeze:

Featured Resource this week -

Start Syncing Infusionsoft with Facebook Custom Audiences in Seconds. Deliver Targeted, Money-Getting Ads, Every Time. Double or TRIPLE Your Earnings from every Infusionsoft email contact!

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Congratulations, you sold another product! Now you just have to confirm the order with the buyer, find a box, pull the product off the shelf and add it to the box with the correct paperwork and packing material, print the address label and get it to the post office for shipping.

All done? Hmm, what about their access to the membership site and the online part of the product or bonuses? Then what about support followup or education on how to use your product?

If you work within the current craze of open office space, or even in a home office or on the beach, you know what it’s like to try to focus when there’s activity and distraction surrounding you.

Kerry and I have separate adjacent offices but they’re not hermetically sealed so sound travels and it’s easy to get distracted. When you’re trying to do creative work or focus for productivity, it can be downright annoying when the noise around you breaks your concentration and you have to start again.

In a recent blog post, we talked about how to identify your ideal client and what to say to them. Now that you know who they are, let’s move on to the science of choosing the right media to convey your message.

You have a good idea of your ideal client’s age, gender, education levels and their income. You know what they like and what they don’t. When you sit down on the couch, you can practically imagine having a conversation with them.

You already know trying to market to everyone spreads your resources too thin and results in your message being lost in a sea of similar looking ones.

You’re looking for that ideal client, the perfect fit for your product or service. Have you found them?

If you have, good for you! (If you don’t know who your ideal client is or how to figure it out, give us a call or contact us online for help.)

Featured Resource this week -

Automagically Email Your Infusionsoft Contacts When You Update Your Blog or Feed

With FeedBolt, simply enter your blog URL, select an Infusionsoft Tag, and choose your template. FeedBolt takes care of the rest.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

One of our clients is a staunch supporter of marketing automation. They manage all their lead acquisition, followup, and client nurture using email automation. And they are consistent and successful with it. That’s all they need, right?

Wrong.

Do you wish you could leverage the great content you write for your blog and get more traffic and engagement? Statistics show that the majority of people need to hear or read something multiple times before they engage.

We found this new-ish tool that increases social engagement and blog traffic by posting automated campaigns on your social platforms over an entire year.

Aah, the beach. It conjures images of the sun, a gentle sea breeze in your hair and the whoosh of the waves as they wash in over sparkling sand. You’ll want to relax under the palm trees like they do in the Corona commercials or hang ten like in those Beach Boys’ songs.

If the beach is your destination this year, here are 7 great ones scattered across the U.S. Some of them you’ve no doubt heard of, others are a little off the beaten track.