A Web Design Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was an incredibly intelligent and amazingly adorable little 9 month old girl (though I’m a bit biased!).

This little baby loved looking at books. She would sit on her floor and turn the pages one-by-one, get to the end of the book, flip it over and start all over again.

For the books she really enjoyed, she’d flip through them 5 – 10 times in a row before she getting bored and moving on to something else. Other books, however, she would toss aside as soon as she turned to the first page.

One day her father (no slouch in his own right) noticed something. The books that she quickly tossed aside were very busy. They had lots of pictures, colors, text and more. It was hard to focus on any one thing. Frustrated and overwhelmed by these books, his darling daughter would quickly move on to something more appealing.

This made the father wonder, “if babies are overwhelmed by lots of pictures, colors, text and more in a book, why would many website owners and designers think things are any different for their site visitors?”

It seems pretty obvious – people visiting a website want to find exactly what they’re looking for FAST! If they don’t, they won’t make it past the first page and will quickly move on to another, more appealing site.

Yet so many still try to cram every last graphic, offer, and piece of information they can on their home page (or, even worse, their landing pages).

If they would only keep things clean and simple . . . if they would make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for . . . if they would stop trying to tell their whole story on one page of their site . . .

then customers would be more likely to stay on the site and buy something, or contact them, or sign up for their newsletter.

An then everyone would live happily ever after.

Business Lessons From a Toddler: You Can’t Walk Before You Crawl

Babies don’t come out of the womb wearing their Nikes ready to run. It takes a good year or so before they are able to take their first steps.

There’s a natural progression that most babies go through to get there – picking their heads up, rolling over, playing while on their tummmies, sitting up, crawling, standing up, and then walking. During each one of those stages, a baby develops, practices, and refines the skills – such as hand-eye coordination, depth perception, and the muscles – they need to start walking. If a baby skips any step along the way, the ultimate goal, walking, becomes much more difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

Business owners often fall into that trap of skipping steps in trying to grow their business. This often leads to disastrous results. Just look to Boston Market and Krispy Kreme as two well-known examples of businesses who paid the price for trying to run before they could crawl.

You can’t open your doors for business one day and expect to have the next Microsoft, Amazon.com, or eBay. There’s a natural progression needed to develop all the parts of a business. Each successful step along the way builds on the previous ones. Go too quickly or skip some steps along the way and the business will fall flat on its face.

This lesson is especially important for individuals that want to start an online business and develop a stream of SWISS Money. There is a tendency to want to rush things. You get bombarded with emails from internet gurus who have supposedly built huge fortunes and tell you that you can too if you just follow a few easy steps.

It just doesn’t work that way. The internet gurus who have built huge fortunes haven’t done so overnight. It took time for them to learn the skills they needed to start that huge flow of SWISS Money their way. They developed, practiced and refined their copywriting, sales, technology, direct response, and AdWords skills.

They built huge mailing lists.
They researched their target audiences.
They tested their marketing messages.

At each step along they way they developed the skills needed to successfully get to the next level. Those that did this have the SWISS Money flowing in. Those who went to fast and skipped steps in the development of their business – don’t.

As you grow your online or offline business(es), never take your eyes off your ultimate goal. Just don’t push things so that you try to get there before you, and the business, are ready. Because you will fall flat on your face.

Make sure you have the necessary skills and support structure in place so you can confidently and successfully take each step along the way to reaching your goals.

Because when building a successful business, as with babies learning to walk, you can’t walk before you crawl.

Why Entrepreneurs and Parents Need Big Bank Accounts (But Not the Kind You Think)

Think a big balance in the bank will help you run a successful business and raise a family?

There’s no doubt having a lot of money in the bank can help in both cases. But it’s not a requirement. I’d even argue that depending on your definition of success, you can be very successful in business and especially parenthood with not much money at all.

But I’m not talking about money here. There’s another type of bank account that I think is extremely important to being successful as an entrepreneur and a parent.

An Emotional Bank Account.

Let me explain.

A few years ago I attended a lecture by a prominent child psychologist at a local high school. During the talk he explained how he’s come to think of parenting as having a bank account. He said “Early on you need to make as many deposits as you can because come the teenage years, you’re going to be making a lot of withdrawals.”

That got big laughs from the audience. And while funny, there’s a lot of truth to it.

I have not yet experienced sharing a home with a teenager. My daughters still have a way to go (though I know sure that time will arrive much quicker than I’d like!). However, I remember my teenage years. I can say with a high degree of certainty that they were not the most enjoyable years for my parents to have me living under their roof.

But it could have been a lot worse.

While we clashed from time to time, my parents had made a lot of deposits into the emotional bank account when I was younger. As a results, there was a lot of love, respect, and trust between us. And while there were definitely withdrawals made along the way (on both sides), the balance remained high enough to get all of us through those years in very good shape.

When it comes to your business, you need to build an emotional bank account with your customers. Starting with their very first contact as a prospect, it’s critical to start building that balance by nurturing that relationship.

How?

Be reliable.
Be approachable.
Be trustworthy.
Make them feel special.
Underpromise and overdeliver.
Be honest – always!
Make it About You – your customer.

Why is this so important? Because one day, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, something will go wrong.

A server will crash.
A payment will be mishandled.
A miscommunication will occur.
A deadline will be missed.
A campaign will not go as planned.

If you take the time to build up a big emotional bank account with your customers, chances are good they will remain your customers. The emotional account balance you build will not be drained by an occassional withdrawal.

If you fail to grow that balance early and often, then even a little withdrawal can bankrupt your account. And that can have a very real impact on the balance of your actual bank account!

Do you have an example of how building a big emotional bank account has helped you in business or pareting? Please share it below in the comment section.

3 Things Entrepreneurs Can Learn From a Screaming Baby

It’s 2 A.M. You’re sleeping soundly in bed. All of a sudden the peace and quiet of the early morning is shattered by the head-splitting cries of your little pride and joy. You go try to calm her down but two hours later she’s still screaming as loud as ever.

You’re beyond exhausted. You have a headache. You’re near tears. You’re desperately grasping for anything you can think of to get that baby to stop screaming and go back to sleep.

You’ve tried the usual mix of bouncing, swaying, rocking, coddling, dancing, singing, feeding, and changing diapers.

You’ve resorted to more desperate measures like holding her on the dryer while it’s running and taking a drive in the car, hoping the vibrations will do the trick.

Back at home, rattled to your very core, you head to the bathroom to get a drink of water. Your hand misses the light switch and instead turns on the vent. And then . . . silence! The quiet hum of the fan did the trick!

Relieved, but still a bit frazzled by the ordeal, you put the baby back in her crib and go to sleep. Success!

So what can you learn about marketing from this torture that 1000s of parents of infants go through on a nightly basis?

1. Get it wrong . . . quickly! If you’re rocking that baby and she doesn’t stop crying, you’re not going to keep rocking her for very long. You’re going to move on to something else that will hopefully yield better results – and fast!

The same principle applies to your marketing efforts. If you’ve launched a new marketing campaign and are not getting the results you want – don’t go down with the ship. Bail quickly and move onto something new.

Test out new marketing ideas on a small scale. If it works – build on it. If it doesn’t – try something else. The quicker you go through this process, the quicker you will find the marketing ideas that will fuel your company’s success.

2. Make mistakes. In my little story, the usual tricks didn’t work. It was missing the light switch and turning on the fan instead that was the life saver that rescued our desperate parent.

A lot of business owners are afraid of making mistakes. That’s a, well, mistake. Being afraid of making mistakes hampers creativity, makes it difficult to stand out from the competition, and won’t doesn’t lead to any big breakthroughs for your company.

Mistakes have led to some monumental breakthroughs in the course of human history. For more on mistakes, read Scott Ginsberg’s blog post “10 Mistakes That Changed The World.“

Now go make some mistakes of your own!

3. It’s not about you – the business owner, it’s about you – your customer. If you tried some of the things that calm you down (ie. a glass of wine, meditation, deep breaths, spa treatments) on a baby, you wouldn’t be too successful (and depending on which of those you tried, you could end up in jail!).

In business, it doesn’t matter what works for you, what you respond to, what you like. As we talked about the other week, it only matters what your customers want. Give them what they want and they’ll respond by giving you what you want – their business.

Can you think of some other lessons entrepreneurs can learn from a screaming baby? If so, please share them in the comment section below.

And please join me as the “What You Can Learn About Business From a Baby” series continues. Next we’ll explore why in business and parenthood it’s important to have a big bank account. But not the kind you think.

What You Can Learn About Business From a Baby

Remember the “When I Grow Up” Monster.com commercial from a few years back? It featured kids talking about how they want to do things like “work their way up to middle management,” “be a ‘yes’ man,” and “file all day” when they grow up.

It’s a great commercial, though I think the kids in it are too old to be dispensing any sort of career advice. Just listen to them. At 11 or 12 years old the entrepreneurial spirit has already been beaten out of them and they’re content settling for the Dilbert Cube!

If you really want to get some sound lessons in business, you should be looking to the infant and toddler set. Seriously!

I became a father for the first time and started my first business within a 14 month stretch. These are two enormous undertakings by themselves. Taking them on at about the same time was quite an overwhelming task. One thing that helped me however, is that I found I could learn a lot about business by observing and interacting with my daughter. In fact, I think babies can teach you more about the critical skills needed to start and run a successful business than most business courses at prestigious universities.

Now that I’m home for about 6 weeks playing Mr. Mom to our second child, I’ve got baby on the brain again. It seems like the ideal time to share some of the business lessons my kids have taught me (and continue to teach me) because . . . you really can learn a lot about business from a baby.

Join me later this week (baby permitting) to learn the essential business lessons you can learn from trying to get a fussy baby to stop crying.