Category Archives: little tips for starting big!

Feedback


Posted by Amy Diederich

When starting your own big thing you will encounter times you need to give feedback. When you have the opportunity to give feedback you should keep in mind Gibb’s supportive behaviors:

Description:  Make sure you focus on describing very specific behavior so the person can repeat the behavior if it is positive feedback you are providing or isolate the behavior if it is negative feedback.

Problem Orientation: Focus on the task  not on the person! Most importantly focus on behavior they can change versus labeling them.

Can't you stand up straight!

Spontaneity: Give feedback in the moment when you see the behavior. Make it relevant!

Empathy: Make sure you show concern for others. Make sure you take the perspective of the person you are giving feedback!

Equality:  Beware of little status differences, say “we,” “us,” “our” versus owning your feedback and using I and coming from a place of equality.

Provisionalism: Finally be tentative/flexible: “We could . . . One way we might do that is . .  or I think this is what is happening…Remember things are not always what they seem!

“The floor is flat”

 Go out and Live your BIG life! Give positive feedback when you can and always give feedback it is a gift!


Tools to Help You with Your Website


Posted by Amy Diederich

Happy Fourth of July!

Many entrepreneurs ask me questions about SEO and websites. This weekend while celebrating the Fourth I gathered with some fellow entrepreneurs and we discussed our websites. While I am no expert I love to share what I know and the tools I have found helpful.

One tool I love is Hubspots’s website grader. http://websitegrader.com.  This free site gives you up to date advice in how to improve your site. It assigns a “grade” which being a type A personality I love to follow the suggestions it provides to improve my grade.

Another site I like is backlink watch http://www.backlinkwatch.com. This site is also free and provides you with details on what backlinks you have and the page ranks of these back links.

Also check out www.Alexa.com. Downloading the Alexa toolbar allows you to see your traffic rank. It is a free tool that not only lets you watch traffic ranks for your site but others as well.

For  Ipad users and owners you should check out all the great SEO apps! For less than five dollars each you can get some great stats on your site. I love SEO Ranking. It tells me my keywords and how my site is doing for those words. There is also an SEO course. It contains short videos to help educate you quickly on how to improve your position in search engines.

What tools do you like? Please share. As entrepreneurs we often have to wear many hats. I know for this entrepreneur I am loving my new role of understanding SEO.


Little Tips for Starting Your Own BIG Thing!


Posted by Amy Diederich

My message today is a departure from my entrepreneur series.  I had a request from a client to review with their employees email etiquette. It is a really dry topic but one we probably all can benefit from an occasional reminder!  The words we chose to convey our message whether in person or in writing matter.

An Example

I heard a story once about a military Sargent whose job entailed distributing apricots at the end of the lunch time. Being bored with this seemingly trivial task,  he varied how he presented the apricots. Sometimes he would say, “You don’t want any apricots do you?”  The person met with this response generally did not take any apricots. Sometimes he would say,  ”Would you likes some apricots?”  This question led to more soldiers having apricots. Finally he tried, “Would you like one or two servings of apricots?”  This led to the highest take rate of apricots! Almost double the amount of apricots were selected then when asked “You don’t want any apricots do you?”

As we review email tips remember the words you chose are important when talking with your clients, contacts, customers, and employees!

Email Tips!

  • Always consider who you are sending your email message. How do they like to be addressed? Are they formal in their email or more casual?
  • Always review your message content before you send it out.
  • Use polite terms like please and thank-you, hello and goodbye, etc.  When you are in doubt it is always good to be more formal!
  • Always have a title to your message. Try to make sure it is a relevant title. This is important when forwarding.
  • If you forward a message to somebody else to deal with, tell the original sender so they know who to expect a reply from.
  • Do use emphasis where its useful to do so.
  • Never  reply to an email message when angry , as you may regret it later. Once the message has been sent, you will not be able to recover it.
  • Don’t type in CAPITALS as this is considered to be SHOUTING.
  • Don’t make personal remarks about third parties. Email messages can be easily forwarded or misdirected.
  • Don’t send unsuitable email or attachments, especially anything of a sexual nature as they may well be found by a third-party later.
  • Never, ever, use scanned images in a signature as these tend to be very large. Be careful of large attachments of any kind.
  • Don’t mark things as urgent if they aren’t, because then when you really do have an urgent message it may not be treated as such.
  • Be careful when adding recipients I recently had a client add an unintended recipient to an email. They shared confidential information with a third-party.
  • Use spell check! Always reread your message incase words are auto corrected inappropriately.

Today when you write an email think of the apricot story! Chose your words carefully and double your results!

For more inspiration check out: http://www.getyourbigon.com/start-big


Give BIG Entrepreneurs Give Back


Posted by Amy Diederich

Terry

As the co-founder of Get Your Big On, I am fortunate to meet many people who are living a big life. I have been blessed to interact with entrepreneurs who are not only making it big for themselves but helping others.

Meet forty-two year old Terry  Grahl, an entrepreneur and a person who Gives BIG!

She says,  ”I not only reinvented myself but I took a major leap of faith five years ago by closing my interior decorating business and turning it into a non-profit that transforms shelters for women and children into peace and possibilities.

I remember sitting on the edge of bed in December 2008 crying my eyes out and making a deal with God. My request: ‘you better make sure you keep a roof over my families head and food in the fridge’ and his request: ‘glorify me.’

It’s been one wild ride ever since! Just last year Enchanted Makeovers was awarded by MLB/PEOPLE Magazine an All-Stars Among Us award, and Sheryl Crow even did a special video on the organization. I finally feel I’m living and not existing!”

Terry is just one of the many entrepreneurs who are giving big. Be sure to check out this month’s Start BIG Spotlight Jimmy Tomczak founder of Paperfeet.  


Keywords and other curves in the road


Posted by Amy Diederich

I heard a story once about four new mountain bikers. These bikers were learning from fantastic guides. One guide was in the front of the group and another behind the group.  The line of bikers proceeded through a rigorous mountain course. Everything was fine until they approached a narrow path with a sharp turn. The first biker took the turn to fast and careened off the path. The second biker seeing what happened to the first slammed on the brakes falling head over the handlebars. The third biker swerved to avoid the second. The fourth and final biker listened to the guide behind him. This guide yelled look past the curve! Look past the curve! The fourth biker looked head on the path to the other side of the curve. Keeping his eyes fixed on the place he was headed he effortlessly piloted through his fallen comrades to the other side of the curve.

What do we need to learn from this? We must always keep our destination in focus! We must look past the curves we will undoubtedly encounter when starting our own Big thing!  As an experienced entrepreneur I still get some of those curves right now for me it is Keywords. I will post on what I have learned about Keywords in a future post. But for today I will share with you a more macro lesson. Look past the curve! See your destination so you can make it through the turns!


Domain Name


Posted by Amy Diederich

Right up there with trademarking your company’s name is giving thought to your domain name. You  want to pick a domain name before beginning the trademark process. It is important that your website name be your domain name, and they all be either your brand name or something that is closely related. People tend to think of the URL and the website name as one in the same.

Whether your domain name should be short or long can be debated. I talked about some of the SEO ramifications in a previous blog. There are many additional items to consider. Hyphenation between words can make it easier for search engines but more challenging for consumers. Consider first picking a .com versus a .net or other.  It is true .com still has more credibility that it is worth paying a little bit more. Again many consumers will assume sites end with .com.

If you are having trouble picking out a domain check out Jacob Gube’s 12 tools for finding a domain name.

So go out and Start BIG today and figure out your domain name.


Little Tips for Starting your own BIG Business


Posted by Amy Diederich

I thought it was time I lived up to my twitter claim! Every time I meet someone who is fleeing corporate America to follow their dream of being an entrepreneur I have the same conversations. This is why I started this blog. When I began blogging I focused on how to come up with your “BIG” idea.

Fleeing Corporate America

Now I realize that most of the time I spend talking with entrepreneurs they already have the idea they are just needing the information in how to follow that idea through to a business. My goal is to share with you all the little things I have learned along the way. I will use plain english. I am not an expert in any one field. I will not talk in abbreviations like SEO SOM etc! I did not major in Business or Finance. I will share with you the good, the bad and ugly of what I have really experienced.  On my  journey I have encountered so many people who are trying to sell you one video or one idea that will help you get rich quick! I am not about that at all! Instead I will share with you what I have learned along the way the good, the bad and the ugly! I will encourage my network of entrepreneurs to also share with you what they have learned. These will be practical tips. There is no magic bullet but to engage with others learn as much as you can and have passion for your product or idea.

My goal is to write a post every day this week and next on what I have done to start my own business.

Tip number one! PICK YOUR NAME CAREFULLY. One lesson I have learned is that it is important to have a unique name. In today’s internet economy this is even more important than when I first started. When I started my consulting company I used the name A-Squared. This name was not unique. I thought it clever because I partnered with another consultant also named Amy. I soon found out we had many other businesses out there with the same name.  I did not know to trademark my name. (that will be tip 2)!

A Unique Name that is searchable is more important now that the internet is essential to business success. It is hard to believe that when I started the internet was not the best marketing tool!

When launching a new business now the internet is key. I have just completed a soft launch for my  e-learning site. It has the name “getyourBIGon”. We have had tremendous success in driving traffic to the site. We are around 79000 in the Alexa rankings in the US and climbing!  Sounds good right? Well I called my SEO advisor and said we are getting buyers and new visitors but we are struggling with google. He almost yelled at me when he said what you do you mean you are struggling? You totally own “getyourbigon”! He was correct. We own the run together getyourbigon but we have yet to own get your big on. It seems that most people who are not SEO gurus..do type the spaces between the words  when looking for us!

He assures me that it is good to have phrase. He also assures me that the phrase is unique. As we build awareness and take all the necessary steps we will be number one for the phrase get your big on! We are working on owning the phrase! I will let you know what we do it get there.

One of my lesson’s learned is have at least one unique term that people will search for your business. Luckily my client base knows me well and searches Amy Diederich! They can find my sites this way.

This week I had lunch with a budding entrepreneur and inventor. I will devote a whole post to her. She is off to a good start. She has Trademarked her product name. If you google this term you will find her Although when talking to her she picked he name much the same way I did based on being clever.

Tip One: If you are starting a new business- do your research pick a unique name. Don’t make the mistake I made with Asquared. Research the impact of the name you pick. Have a phrase to go with your name!

Now go out there and START BIG!  Go get your big on by Starting BIG!