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The Key to Innovative Business Ideas: Cross-Pollination

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Gather round, everyone. It’s time to have “The Talk.” You know the one I mean. You’ve started asking lots of questions and I can tell you’re ready for it, so make yourselves comfortable and let’s go over the basics. Because if you’re in business, you need to know about this. It’s crucial to your success. Mastering this technique will put a spring in your step, and bring new life to your ventures. Plus, it’s actually pretty fun. Birds do it, bees do it The birds and the bees do this naturally, and we can, too. It’s called cross-pollination . They fly from one flower to another, or one tree to the next, picking up bits of one plant and carrying it to the other. The plant on the receiving end of this pollination is hardier and able to reproduce with greater variety. It meets environmental challenges more successfully because it’s genetically diverse. In the same way, when you cross-pollinate ideas, you make your business stronger. You’ll be better able to weather the difficulties that every business and brand has to face to survive. Keeping your eyes open to sources for ideas is the first step. Having a system for gathering and using these ideas is important, too. Really great ideas can be found where you least expect them. Get started here First, the obvious sources. Cross-pollinate your business with innovative new ideas by: Reading books, magazines and websites outside your field. Talking to people in different industries. Find out what their challenges are and how they’ve met them. Ask yourself how you can apply their solutions to your own business. Learning from your customers. Design thinking is a concept that is built around staying in close touch with your customers’ needs, and building your products and services around meeting them. Look for love in all the wrong places You can find great new ideas in places you never expected, too. Get inspiration from your fiercest competition. Your competitors are fighting the same battles you are. What are they doing that you can learn from? How have they solved the same challenges you face? What techniques do they use to succeed? What are some problems they don’t solve particularly well, where you could fill in the gap? Learn from your own failures. The School of Hard Knocks can teach you more than anything else. Look back on your projects and learn from what went wrong, so that you can get it right the next time. Keep the innovative ideas flowing Finally, it’s easier to keep the new ideas flowing in to your business if you have a structure in place that allows cross-pollination to happen on a regular basis. Here are some techniques: Create an informal Board of Directors . Gather a group of 3-5 people who are willing to support your efforts. Meet with them in person or by phone at least four times a year. Update them on your goals, the progress you’re making, and your struggles. Let the ideas flow, and take good notes. Join a Mastermind group . Many groups meet monthly, some more often. Some Chamber of Commerce organizations coordinate them, but you can also find virtual Mastermind groups with a quick web search. The group supports each member, so you’ll both offer and receive encouragement and ideas. Join a virtual private community . Sites like Third Tribe are great places to connect with like-minded people and to generate exciting new business ideas. Consider working with a coach . Because business coaches speak to many different clients, they’ll naturally cross pollinate your conversations with ideas they’ve picked up from helping other people. Small business, big ideas We all want a more resilient business, and a lot of Copyblogger readers have very small organizations. Letting ideas flow freely between your small-scale operation and the larger world will build a business that withstands the challenges of the marketplace. How about you? Are you gathering and applying ideas from all over? Buzz down to the comments and cross-pollinate them with some thoughts of your own. About the Author: Pamela Wilson has been in the same Mastermind group since 2004. She cross pollinates her Big Brand System site with ideas to help small businesses use the power of design to grow.

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The Key to Innovative Business Ideas: Cross-Pollination

The Cure for Analysis Paralysis

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You try to kick someone under the table and your leg stays as inert as the table’s leg. Your toes are unwiggleable. Your eyebrow won’t arch wryly in disdain. You want to make something happen, but that desire isn’t translating into movement. Your muscles don’t obey the signals from your brain. That’s paralysis. Analysis is pretty much the same thing. You analyze your business all the time. You decide that it would be smart to start an email campaign, or change the direction for your blog posts. You decide whether to run a promotion for your consulting business or launch an information product. You’re thinking about something happening. But you’re not making it happen. When analysis paralysis is beneficial It turns out that sometimes it’s good to be paralyzed. Every night, when you go to sleep and drop deep into that REM state that lets you wake up all refreshed in the morning, you are, medically speaking, paralyzed. This is a good thing. When you get tired, your ability to act is impaired. You’re more likely to get lost, to drive poorly, to call the ex you swore you’d never speak to again. Get paralyzed by sleep for a couple of hours, and suddenly everything improves. When your spouse throws the car keys at you a little too hard because they haven’t forgiven you for calling your ex last night, you catch them effortlessly with catlike reflexes. Analysis can be like this. Sometimes we have too much going on in our businesses. It can help to take a moment to stop everything and hold completely still, moving nothing but our brains, just thinking about the problem. We don’t have to take action yet. We don’t have to move a muscle. We just have to think about what we’ll do when we’re ready to move. Analysis can be a refreshing pause for our brains. It can also be a serious problem. When analysis paralysis Is detrimental The kind of paralysis you experience in REM state every night is good for you. You probably didn’t even know you were paralyzed. (If you weren’t freaking out about it before, don’t start now. Whatever you do, don’t think about the xkcd comic that points out that dreaming means going comatose, hallucinating vividly, and then suffering amnesia. Adding paralysis to that list doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?) It’s okay for your legs (and the rest of you) to be paralyzed for a couple hours a night. If it goes on for more than a day, though, you’re going to start to be pretty concerned about some of the logistics. Analysis can be like this, too. When you’ve taken the time to hold still and analyze your business for a couple of hours — even a full working day — before you take action, that’s perfectly healthy. It has probably improved your ability to move forward confidently and with good judgment. If you find yourself analyzing for weeks or months at a time without moving, it’s time to be concerned. How to cure analysis paralysis To cure real paralysis, you generally need the sort of miracle doctor featured prominently in many a popular medical drama, but not so prominently in real-life hospitals. To cure analysis paralysis, though, you just need to check out the recent Third Tribe seminar featuring Sonia Simone and Chris Garrett , where they talk about how to take action on that product launch you’ve been meaning to do, thinking about, analyzing, and never doing. You’ll learn: The product development technique that kills paralysis, moves you to a fast launch, and creates great value for your customers Why “thinking big” can stop you dead in your tracks, and how to get moving again How to use your own “weaknesses” as strengths that move you forward What to do if you don’t have thick skin (and how it can work to your benefit) How to create products that move your customers farther and faster toward their goals. While you’re listening, you’ll find yourself analyzing how to use these techniques in your business. You may also find yourself lulled into a soporific state of bliss, because Sonia’s voice is extremely soothing. And that’s okay. To make sure you don’t get stuck there, though, there’s a Next Action worksheet to help you move forward. Use it. Make your business stronger through movement. Otherwise, I’d have to explain what “atrophy” means. And no one wants that. About the Author: Taylor Lindstrom is a freelance copywriter and the new Assistant Editor for Copyblogger . This is her first Copyblogger post. P.S. To snag Chris and Sonia’s interview, and instant access to 15 more cutting-edge seminars that will move your business forward (with new seminars added every month), join the Third Tribe today .

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Launch Tree

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What’s the root of your business? To get the right answer, you need first to get inside your customers’ minds to give them what they really need. This is where roots come from. Launch Tree is your golden gem where you can find these healthy roots (the bestselling products). The product also gives you the

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Launch Tree

Lessons 6-10 from One of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters

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This is part two of a three-part series on how to profitably translate advice from old-school marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment. Last week we looked at the first 5 steps in Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Marketing Plan , and how you can translate those old-school ideas into an online marketing strategy. This week we’ve got five more for you. 6. Get Free Advertising In the book, Kennedy focuses on methods for getting free advertising through traditional media. However, times have changed. These days, it’s social media that can best butter your bread. If you’re comfortable navigating online, you have a clear advantage here. Other than the expense of time, the majority of social media tools are entirely free. There have never been more easy to implement and widely available instruments to help you smartly promote your business. If you’re a regular reader of Copyblogger, you already know this goes hand-in-hand with the content marketing gospel flowing from the pulpit, day in and day out. If you deliver value on a consistent basis, eventually others will help you with the hard work of promotion. They’ll spread your influence and draw prospects to your business like metal to a magnet. Whether you do this by being flamboyant, an expert , an observer, or otherwise, it’s never been simpler to reach a worldwide audience without having to have a war chest budget. 7. Become Hot! Trends are great; fads are not. The last thing you want is to be here today and gone tomorrow. Getting people engaged so they are not only talking about whom you are but also what you’re doing is a tremendous way to increase business. Once in your sphere, you can groom your one-time prospects into evergreen customers. Kennedy cites seven ways to get people talking: Gain prestigious recognition. Get name checked by someone in the know. Perhaps Chris Brogan or Darren Rowse mentions you, thus instantly putting you on the radar of a wider audience. Guest posting is a great shortcut to accomplish the same thing. Offer new products. Offer something new or put a unique spin on something old. Offer something decidedly different or measurably better than your competitors, and people will be talking. Offer new services. Find a unique way to service your clientele, or create an unbeatable guarantee and people will naturally want to share it with their friends. Tie into trends and news events. Always have an open ear for what people are discussing these days. This doesn’t mean you need to jump on a Tiger Woods Infidelity Special! , but you can find ways to make the headlines relevant to your business. Tie your business to seasons and holidays. From Groundhog Day to Christmas, there’s always a jubilee to jump on. Be creative. Why wait for a “Harvest Sale,” when you could promote your business during “Talk Like a Pirate Day?” The possibilities here are endless. Tie your business to movies and entertainment events. We love to talk about the latest movies we’ve seen or television we’ve watched. Even if we pretend not to, most of us glance at the tabloids while paying for our groceries. Make your business a part of the water cooler conversation. Piggyback off the fads of others. Fads are here today and gone tomorrow. Though you wouldn’t want to build your business on a passing whim, it can be great to ride the waves while they’re good. 8. Poor Boy Marketing It’s easy to fritter mountains of money on poorly placed advertising, but moving your enterprise online has made it far easier to avoid this tragic mistake. See #6 – Get Free Advertising. Get online and get going. Don’t spend tons of money on Adwords or banner ads when you’re getting started. Instead, spend tons of time making connections and getting your message heard. 9. Maximizing total customer value The life of a customer over time is, by far, one of the biggest assets your business can have. The cost to gain a new customer is substantially higher than that to keep an old one happy. Yet a common mistake many business owners make is giving too much attention to getting new clients, rather than focusing on their existing loyal customers. Losing some customers is unavoidable, but there are many things you can do to avoid the fallout. According to Kennedy, businesses lose customers because: 1% die. Until we figure out how to cyborg ourselves, there’s not much we can do about this one. 3% move. Offline, this is due to geography; online, it’s due to shifting interests. You must do all you can to hold the attention of your audience. Some loss is acceptable over time, but stay remarkable and you will minimize the losses. 5% switch to something else due to a friend’s recommendation. There is no more valuable referral than that from a friend. Yet, if your customer is truly happy with your product or services, the odds of them leaving are slim. 9% switch to a better product or service. The best way to fight this is to make sure your products, services, and offers are simply the best around. 14% leave for general dissatisfaction. Again, it’s a good idea to trim the tribe, as you’re never going to please everyone. However, if a customer leaves, make sure you did everything within reason to keep them. All together, those five reasons only add up to 32%. A staggering 68% of customer loss is due to indifference . Appreciate your customers , give them value at every opportunity, and allow the relationship to grow over time. 10. Fueling Word-of-Mouth Online, we call this going viral . The best referrals come from other happy customers. Your job as a business owner is to fuel that praise. Kennedy suggests using the “EAR” formula: E- Earn your referrals. Do what you do so well that others can’t resist talking about you. Publish content that makes others eager to share. A- Ask. It might make you uncomfortable, but you shouldn’t be shy about asking for referrals if you are doing a job that warrants praise. Give your customers the tools they need, clearly communicate your desires, and watch your business grow. R- Recognize and Reward . Acknowledge your customers when they give you the gift of a referral and never fail to reward them for their efforts. Reciprocity goes a long way, both online and off. That’s it for this week. The final four elements of Kennedy’s Ultimate Marketing Plan applied online will be in next week’s final installment of the series. About the Author : Sean Platt writes direct response copy , as well as helping authors write, publish and promote their book. Follow him on Twitter .

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Lessons 6-10 from One of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters