Making Resolutions Stick

by Elle Ray | Jan 29, 2019 | Small Business Advice

Keeping Your Resolutions Requires Insight

The first step to making resolutions stick is writing them down

Whether you’ve promised to call on 10 new prospects a week, write a weekly blog post or take 10-minute stretch breaks every hour, making resolutions stick this year often befuddles many small business owners. But you’re not alone. According to U.S. News & World Report, nearly 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by the middle of February.

On January first, making resolutions stick seems like a no-brainer, especially when you’ve chosen promises you know are vital to your business and/or your health. You’ve got all the motivation you need (so you think) for making resolutions stick, right? You’ve learned from past mistakes, and you’re determined not to make the same ones again.

Then Time Passes

Part of the reason resolutions seem so intense once the holidays are over is in part due to guilt. If you took off more time than you’d planned or put on a few extra pounds, the remorse you feel naturally causes some pangs of guilt. Perhaps you spent more money than your budget allowed, so a resolution to save more in the new year sounds like a really good idea.

Guilt and shame usually aren’t the best motivators for making lasting changes. They are negative emotions that typically don’t lead to positive results. Top that off with unrealistic expectations of yourself, and making resolutions stick becomes harder still.

Sure, you were charged up with optimism and goodwill toward the future when you made the resolution. You trusted your ability to plan for a better tomorrow. It’s easy to get swept up in the frenzy of love and good intentions that so often swirl around the holidays. Just after the first of the year, gyms are full of eager faces signing up for a year of great workouts. Advertisers know this and sell, sell, sell gym memberships like crazy. But by the end of January, the parking lots have plenty of empty parking spaces once again for the regulars.

Do It Right This Time

If you started a business, graduated from college or landed a coveted promotion in your career, you know that when you set your mind to something, you can see it through. It’s that same level of persistence and self-discipline that serves you just as well when it comes to making resolutions stick — this year and every year.

To help you get back the edge that’s still alive inside you, try these tips for making resolutions stick and stay stuck:

Turn your resolutions into positive affirmations. For example, instead of losing 20 pounds, say you want to reach your best healthy weight. Instead of saying you’ll earn back the excess money you spent over the holidays, frame it to say you’ll exceed your financial goals from last year by 10 percent.
Find support in a friend or group with similar intentions. When you add accountability into the mix, you have another reason to stick to your plans: another person is paying attention! (On a personal note: I’ve started many businesses in my life, but none has been as successful as Ray Access, which I began with a partner, says Linda.)
Change your mind first. Real physical change always starts first in your brain. Just like the little engine who could, you can think yourself thin, think the new clients in the door and believe you are going to be successful in making resolutions stick.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.

Working with Copywriters

by Mark Bloom | Jan 21, 2019 | Small Business Advice

How to Get What You Need from a Copywriter

Despite our obvious bias — Ray Access is a company that performs copywriting services after all — we’ve learned a thing or two from our clients and our experience. Working with copywriters can be as easy as ordering a pizza … or it can be fraught with missed signals and unacceptable deliverables. How can you get more of the former and less of the latter?

make your business blog engaging

Copywriting is an art and a science. Give the exact same assignment to two different copywriters, and you may get two very different articles back. When trying to make sense of it, you invariably want to blame the writer:

You didn’t follow the directions.
This isn’t what I asked for.
How did you get this from my request?

The Blame Game

Whose fault is it really? You know what you want. The writer thinks she understands. And yet there may be a hidden chasm between the two of you. In reality, maybe both parties are at fault.

Working with copywriters is often less like ordering pizza — with a specific number of toppings, crusts and sauces. Instead, working with copywriters is more like designing a house. There’s an obvious foundation, but from there, the sky’s the limit. The more choices you have, the more differences there can be in the final product.

Defining Your Choices

It’s the copywriter’s responsibility to tease vital information from her client. Every writing project begins, therefore, with some distinct questions that every copywriter worth her salt should ask:

Who is the intended audience of the article? Writers need to know gender, age, profession, and more. The more information you can give to a copywriter helps make the resulting article targeted and more effective.
What’s the purpose of the article? Is it rhetorical, to persuade the audience into action? Is it informational, to impart insight? Or is it entertainment, to delight the readers?
How will the article be published? If it’s a blog post, that specifies a particular type of writing. If it’s for a magazine, then it has to have a different focus. The media affects the message.

If you want to be successful working with copywriters, be clear about how you answer these questions. Still, copywriters need to keep asking questions until they’re satisfied that they fully understand the assignment. When there are too many choices, the results can vary widely.

Tone It Down to a Point

Once you’ve defined what the article is about, make sure your copywriter knows what tone to adopt. The tone plays a large role in how the article is perceived by readers. There are many, many ways to deliver the same information, such as:

Playfully
Dead seriously
Friendly
Factual
Formally
Humorously
Anecdotally

Ray Access spends the time to get the tone right, because only when your article is delivered the right way will it connect with your intended audience. We work with new clients to find the balance between professional quality and on-target effectiveness. Sometimes, it takes several back-and-forth efforts to get it right.

Know What to Expect

When working with copywriters, you generally want to avoid surprises. A surprise is getting an article, blog post, website page or press release that isn’t anything like what you expected. Just as journalists are trained to ask the right questions, copywriters know to ask for clarification when needed.

But assumptions still get in the way, most often unconsciously. Assumptions lead to unasked, and unanswered, questions. So become detail-oriented. Spend more time at the beginning of a project so you won’t have to use even more time at the end of it — on revisions, rewrites and do-overs. Take it from professional copywriters.

How to Take a Vacation When You Own a Business

by Mark Bloom | Oct 9, 2018 | Small Business Advice

You Need a Vacation for Small Business Owners

When you own your own business, it’s a 24-hour-a-day job. Small business owners have to wear many hats — managers, salesmen, customer service representatives, bookkeepers, marketers and more. You name it, and business owners have to take care of it. So what about a vacation for small business owners? How is it even possible, given the never-ending responsibilities?

Vacations, or any kind of downtime, are vital. All that pressure to succeed, with the entire company depending on your focused attention, puts a tremendous strain on your mind and your body if you’re a small business owner. You need time to recharge. You need a change of scenery to rejuvenate. You need the space to reset your brain so you can more easily overcome future obstacles.

The Burnout Dangers Are Real

According to Small Business Trends, 77 percent of small business owners suffer from some form of burnout. As many as 80 percent of small businesses fail within 10 years. Stress contributes to that figure.

Burnout does more than reduce your effectiveness on the job. It interferes with your passion and changes your priorities. Burnout can lead to failure, according to a 2016 Medium.com report. Small business owners, along with many office workers in the country, often work more than 60 hours in a typical week, which adds to the stress.

Taking a Vacation for Small Business Owners

Since 98 percent say a vacation for small business owners relieves stress, you need to find a way to make vacations happen for you. If you’ve learned to schedule uninterrupted work time, you can schedule a vacation. If you’re a solopreneur, you may have some additional hoops to jump through, but arguably, a solopreneur needs the time away even more than other business owners.

To encourage you to take a vacation for yourself, the co-founders of Ray Access have created this blog post to explore some tips for getting away — and making the most of the time away that you have. Not all the tips below may apply to you, but it’s our hope that you’ll learn something new and gain the wisdom to apply it.

Tips to Maximize Your Vacation

Put it on your schedule. Don’t pencil it in; chisel it into stone. A vacation for small business owners can only come about if you take it as seriously as a meeting with a new client. Once it’s on the calendar, schedule around it.
Take the time you can. If you can only get away for a weekend — or better, a long weekend — take it. Go away someplace, even if it’s the next state or the next county. The change in scenery matters, as does the change in routine. These changes break established patterns, allowing you to regroup even in a short amount of time.
Do something different. You don’t have to cram your vacation full of activity to force you to forget your day-to-day duties, but change up your environment. If you work daily on a computer, go camping or take a hike into nature. If you live in the plains, get to the mountains or the beach for a different kind of fun.
Leave someone you trust in charge. If you have a business partner, let them carry the ball while you’re away. If you have a trusted employee, leave her in charge. For solopreneurs, this isn’t always possible — and you may have to rely on your auto-reply for a couple days.
Use technology … lightly. If you must, put aside time every day you’re away — but no more than 30 to 60 minutes — for work-related activities, such as writing emails, making phone calls or reading status reports.
Alert your clients. Schedule your vacation for small business owners when you don’t have a pressing deadline or project milestone. Tell all your clients that you’ll be away. Let them know when you’ll be back. They’ll understand and appreciate your honesty.

You’ll be amazed what some downtime can do for you. You’ll regain your edge and refresh your passion. You may even think of new ways to do things or new products or services to offer. Time away from your daily chores frees your mind and relaxes your body. Don’t wait until burnout strikes; take a vacation for small business owners to save and revitalize your business!

How to Fill a Slump

by Elle Ray | Sep 15, 2018 | Small Business Advice

What You Can Do When Your Business Slows

Every industry has them, and every small business owner experiences them. Slumps hit whenever business is slow; it seems to occur every year. Slumps may be cyclical for you — whether due to the holiday season or the summer season. Or you may never know when or why business crawls for a week or two. You may be one of the lucky ones and only get hit with a slump at infrequent times, like once a year or so.

Whether you know in advance or just reach a little waiting period between projects, you need to have a plan for what to do when business is slow. Waiting until it happens and then scrambling to keep employees busy or worrying about the bills is not fruitful — nor is it the best way to run a successful enterprise.

As Ben Franklin was fond of saying: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Forecast: Stormy and Calm

Like weather forecasters, humans and their algorithms and predictors can only go so far. They provide accurate predictions only so often. So while you may know that September is hurricane season since you live in a coastal community, you recognize the value of having an emergency evacuation plan in hand. But you still need to know how to react when the big one hits in August or October!

Wall Street may give you a clue as to when you can expect an economic slump for which you can prepare, but financial wizards can’t tell when business is slow in your neighborhood with certainty that’s as clear. You may rely on experienced brokers and the latest technology to give you forecasts based on historical data and market research, but when business is slow for no apparent reason, all that investment may seem like redundancies and wasted resources.

J.R.R. Tolkien seemed to have his finger on the pulse of American business when he said: “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”

It’s Not If, But When

Even the brightest financial prognosticators encourage business owners to keep a little back — to include a contingency plan for when business is slow through no apparent economic, cultural, political or earth-shaking disaster. And while the best mindset for successfully running a business is one that’s positive and optimistic, it never hurts to give way to the realistic left-brain side of your mind and prepare for a time when business is slow.

Use that time wisely, shore up your energy and keep up the optimistic forecasts even when business is slow by following a few creative and common-sense tips, such as:

Turn to your clients and use the time when business is slow to recognize them with a little extra attention or a limited special deal.
Know and become proficient in every aspect of your business so that you can fill in when business is slow. When business is booming, you may not have the bandwidth to pay outside contractors for every little job in your company.
Keep a training program or two in storage. When business is slow and you don’t want to resort to layoffs, put your staff through these training processes when everyone has time, not when they’re busy filling orders.
Diversify your services. Create new offerings that serve to fill the gap the next time you get in a slump. Time is now available to get together with your partner or leadership team to brainstorm in a creative session.
Lay out your marketing strategy for a complete review. Check the analytics on your social media campaigns, look at the number of views your blogs are getting and see how long visitors are staying on your website. Then decide what and how to change.
Ditch the analytics when business is slow and go with some new, outrageous marketing ploy you’ve always wanted to try. Just like the weatherman and his Doppler radar, marketing analytics aren’t always right!
Revisit your staffing needs. Meet with key HR staff or look at the performances of your employees to see how you can better use them. Or contemplate which ones may be best left off your payroll for good because they weren’t really doing all that well anyway.
Dust off your going-to-a-meeting outfit and do some networking if you’ve let that part of your marketing go in lieu of business demands. Find some new networking opportunities and get out and shake hands, pass out business cards and get to know your neighbors.

Plant the Seeds Today

Risk management is not a dirty word, nor is it negative. In fact, forethought is always a positive, proactive frame upon which to base your actions from week to week, especially when you’re the boss. When business is slow, it’s exactly the right time to work harder.

Alternatively, if you’re really a flexible Frankie, you may want to use the time to go fishing or take that trip you’ve been putting off for a while. With 24/7 connectivity, no one even has to know you’re not in the office when business clamors once again for your immediate attention.

When it comes to business planning, Ray Access follows the advice from one of our financial heroes, Warren Buffet: “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Website Hosting Basics

by Mark Bloom | Aug 28, 2018 | Small Business Advice

The Hosting You Choose Affects Your Website

Learn website hosting basics to see through the haze

Your company website provides not only a virtual storefront or salesperson all day, every day, but it also sets the tone for your online presence. Sure, social media campaigns help spread your gospel and online ads promote your goods and services, but all those posts and clicks ideally link back to your website, where website hosting basics come into play.

Your website is the base of operations for your business on the internet. Optimizing your website means keeping it responsive, mobile-friendly, up-to-date and welcoming. The more accurately your site hits each of these targets, the more likely your company is to benefit from your online presence. The best websites actually make money for their companies by generating leads that turn into customers.

What Your Website Needs

Every website requires three things to operate efficiently:

Your unique content
A unique website domain name
A stable website host

Your content is how you connect to your visitors. It includes the words, the illustrations and the links that tie all your pages together. Without effective content, your website is nothing but an empty shell. You can either craft your content yourself or hire a team of writing professionals to write it.

Finding a domain name may be the easiest of the three steps, but it’s no less important. Imagine if Coca Cola had called its website carbonatedsugar.com instead of coca-cola.com. It would likely have been much less effective. A domain name can make the difference between memorable and forgettable.

Finally, for website hosting basics, a website host is the company that houses your website files and makes them available to everyone on the internet. You can spend thousands of dollars on designing and developing your website, but if you opt to go with the absolute least expensive host, you’re limiting how effective your website can be.

The Skinny on Website Hosting Basics

To get the best deal and the best results from your website hosting company, it helps to know what to look for. The features that matter most depend on your specific needs, but common things to inquire about include:

Price, usually per month or per year. You may even get a discount by paying annually. Find out what’s included for that price. Some companies charge extra for each request!
Platform-readiness. If you’re building a WordPress site, for example, make sure the host supports that platform without any hidden fees. That’s one of the big website hosting basics.
Uptime support. How responsive will they be to your requests or to emergencies? You may not need 24/7 support, but then again, if your website is your business, any downtime can cost you money.
Speed. Some hosts cram as many of their smaller clients as possible onto a single server. Your website stays up, but its load speed slows way down due to the load. A slow website doesn’t encourage visitors to remain on your site. No matter how well designed your site is, if it’s slow, it’s not going to be effective generating customers.
Security. Does your host offer secure sockets layer (SSL) security? That puts the “s” after the “http” and adds a layer of security that Google for one now expects. Your host should also do more to protect your data, like protection against hackers.
Backup and recovery. Find out how frequently they back up their systems, including your website. Ask if they can restore your whole website or even a single file from a previous version.
Storage space. Some hosts limit the amount of space you can use on their servers. It may seem like a large amount when you’re starting out with a six-page website, but as you blog and add pages and images, you may need more and more space. Make sure you won’t have to pay extra.

All Website Hosting Is Not the Same

Website hosting basics include learning how each company differs. When you know what to ask, you not only get the best deal, you get the best service. It’s your business. Make sure you get:

The fastest servers
The most up-to-date software
Lots of space on the server
No competition or sharing for server processing
Servers that don’t crash
Backup servers to ensure your website is always online
Protection from hackers
Prompt response to queries

Kick It Up a Notch

by Elle Ray | Aug 7, 2018 | Small Business Advice

5 Steps to Take When Your Enthusiasm Wanes

If you’re like many small business owners, you were full of enthusiasm and spirited motivation when you first started your business. If you weren’t, it never would have taken off, much less soared into the stratosphere — or however high you’ve managed to push it so far.

Small business owners: how high is your launch?

The more clients you added, the more stable your company became, the more excited you got about your initial investment of time and money. Small business owners are nothing if not dreamers and inspiring leaders. Everyone either envies your success … or wants to join your team.

Risk vs. Reward

Small business owners share a number of characteristics. Among the most common traits, they:

Love the thrill of risk-taking
Are always full of new ideas
Possess a strong need for challenges
Get a kick from beating the odds
Are fiercely independent
Bore easily and need stimulation

Depending on how you look at it, these common traits can be positive or negative. Risk-taking gives you a big shot of adrenaline, for example, which can be addicting. You may end up seeking out those risks, which can lead to rash decisions. But if small business owners were afraid of the unknown, no new businesses would ever get started!

You may value your independence, but often that impedes your desire to ask for help. So, while new ideas and innovations are prized qualities because they lead to discovery and foster growth, these same qualities can cause you to make hasty, imprudent decisions. And so a virtue becomes a vice that hurts your business.

Keeping Yourself in Check

An effective tenet for all small business owners is to get in the habit of keeping a watchful eye on your emotions and your thinking. In other words, objectively watch your own inner workings as closely as you watch your bank statement and your employees.

“Physician, heal thyself” is not a mantra designed strictly for doctors. In fact, it aids anyone, no matter what you do for a living. When you pay attention to your thinking, you shape your future. As the great philosopher Anonymous once said:

Watch your thoughts for they become your words.
Watch your words for they become your actions.
Watch your actions for they become your habits.
Watch your habits for they become your character.

All your actions first begin in your mind. Think it and make it so. Small business owners are acutely aware of this mental phenomenon — you know that your business, your inventions or your innovations first came from a tiny seed planted in your subconscious. Knowing this, it should be easier to accept that the end of your business — whether it’s your imminent demise or your successful transition — also comes first from your thoughts.

The Choices Are Yours

So what are small business owners to do when the thrill is gone? To whom do you turn when your latest new ideas are threatening to blow off the top of your head if you don’t act on them? Where do you go when you just need another challenge or you’re bored?

Get ideas for small business owners here!

Like the many small business owners who’ve found themselves in this situation in the past, one of your choices is to scrap the whole enchilada and start over. But that option typically leads to regrets rather than continued success. Consider these five more effective approaches to scratching your itch:

Start a hobby. After years of devoting all your time and energy to your business, look to other enjoyable pursuits to challenge yourself and provide unpaid suitable risks. For example, you can try whitewater rafting, learning to fly a plane or taking up yoga.
Take on a second job. Once your business is running smoothly, you may be able to step back, an inch at a time, until your daily input is no longer as vital as it once was. Follow your bliss to another income-producing gig, such as writing a book, teaching or creating a new app.
Sell the business. Getting your company ready for a sale takes time. Talk to a business broker for tips about how to prepare, explore markets and find the highest bidder. The whole process of selling your business will be enough of a rush to keep your adrenaline up for a while longer.
Expand your current line. Promote some of your best workers to management while you pursue other avenues of products or services you might offer. It may feel like you’re starting a brand new business, but without all the stress that small business owners take on to feed the need for something new and exciting.
Find new markets. In the same vein as the above tip, work within the existing structure that you worked so hard to create. Take a trip overseas to look for new clients. Open an office in another city. Franchise your idea and spawn a new generation of entrepreneurs.

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