The Problem with Crowdsourced Knowledge

We believe crowdsourced knowledge can be useful for two reasons ONLY.

    1. Ascertaining general knowledge on a topic with which you’re unfamiliar.  An example is changing a tire on a car.  If you’ve never changed a tire on a car and you either ignore the instruction manual in the glove compartment or don’t have one (you can download it online in most cases), then crowd-sourcing other people’s experiences with changing tires can be useful to the extent that you’ll learn special tips or come to understand the general concepts: jack, bolts, tire pressure, etc.
    2. Obtaining referrals to experts.  After learning of other people’s experiences with changing a tire, you may decide there’s too much at stake—such as the car falling off the jack. For this reason, you may decide to not undertake the job yourself.  You seek out advice from expert providers of tire-changing services.

Both of these concepts are valuable, but should only be used as a starting point if you have absolutely no knowledge or experience of the task or information you’re researching.  Or, if the task is complicated and requires true expert knowledge of the subtleties and nuance of the information.

The starting point of using crowdsourced knowledge can become a “fork in the road” to move forward with the activity you’ve been researching.

You can choose to take the knowledge and seek out an instruction manual for the car you wish to change the tire on.  You can then do the work yourself, guided by the instructions created by an expert—in our example, the vehicle manufacturer.

Or you can choose to conduct additional research on the experts you’ve seen recommended:

    1. You might look up each expert’s online reviews through other platforms.
    2. You might seek out the expert’s professional credentials through government regulatory authorities or check out the professional biography of the expert.
    3. You might ask your trusted circle of friends, family and colleagues if they have used any of the recommended experts to obtain further information and enhance your research.

Using these additional activities, the crowdsourced research can lead you to find a high-quality expert in the area you’re researching.

But there’s a small alleyway off the side of the road where the “fork” in the road lies. We call that “shortcut alley” because too many people don’t want to take on the extra work necessary to find the best results for the information they seek.  Instead, they want the shortest way to solve their problem. 

They’ll take the crowdsourced information they’ve obtained at face value as the be-all and end-all of expertise.

They fail to use the crowdsourced knowledge solely as a starting point, and then do the extra work necessary to gather data and inform the ultimate decision with comprehensive research.

In our opinion, this is a disaster in the making more often than not.  Yes, the crowdsourced information can often be very useful, such as learning to add a dollop of butter to your oatmeal at breakfast.  But when it comes to more complicated topics, the crowdsourced expertise is anything but expert.

We learned this through the pandemic as we sought to provide free expert information to small business owners trying to navigate the United States Small Business Administration’s COVID-19 disaster loan program.  Often, we’d encounter business owners telling us that our information was wrong. They would challenge us with the information they’d crowdsourced.  Our pushback was to say that the experience of one person was unique to that person and that the loan program was too complicated to rely on the one experience of one business owner with their particular scenario.

We continue to encounter these crowdsourced-fake experts as many small businesses fail or continue to face challenges repaying these COVID-19 disaster loans.  The crowdsourced-fake experts would have people believe they can simply walk away from the loan, to either ignore the consequences or, worse, to go about their days thinking, “The government will never come after me.”

Because we rail against this terrible advice, we’re sometimes accused of being fear-mongers so we can sell our products and services.

While it’s true that we’re a small business and we have products to sell and services for hire to earn a living, we also give away volumes of free expert advice through our YouTube videos, free downloadable guides, and responses to video comments. Our expertise is derived from our respective careers in the financial services field, from the work we did during the pandemic, and from the ongoing work we do to assist small business owners with their interactions with the SBA post-pandemic.

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In today’s New York Times, an article about a basketball player’s dream of owning a home in Canada provides probably the most succinct insight into the reasons why simply “crowdsourcing” your expert knowledge is a failed concept if you don’t do the additional work. This is a tale of the worst aspects of bad crowdsourced experience, and the shortcut mentality that led to a financial disaster.

In the article, the basketball player must vacate the house he purchased because nefarious characters continually show up at the house looking for the previous occupant.  The previous occupant is a person named Aiden Pleterski, a self-styled “crypto king” who declared bankruptcy in 2022, while owing 26.8 million Canadian dollars to more than 150 investment clients.

He’s under investigation for the massive financial fraud involving monies that he is alleged to have stolen from investors.

Pleterski had no professional or educational experience or expertise. In this quote from the article, you can see where Pleterski learned how to become a financial whiz: “Mr. Pleterski said he first became interested in cryptocurrency after using it to make purchases for video games and began trading it when he was still in high school. He started out with money from his family and his earnings as a part-time baseball umpire. His knowledge of trading and financial markets, he said, came from “YouTube videos, Google, quick Google searches.”

“The business, Mr. Pleterski said, operated through his personal bank accounts until December 2021, when he set up his company at the suggestion of a former landlord. His only record-keeping, he said, consisted of his texts and WhatsApp messages with customers. While Mr. Pleterski did create spreadsheets for a handful of customers who demanded them, he acknowledged that the investment return they showed was just “a general ballpark figure” he came up with after looking at his bank accounts.”

We understand that the nuances of some activities, such as interacting with a complicated program such as the SBA’s COVID-19 loan program can make the search for expert knowledge more challenging.  But we’ve too often heard from people—as recently as yesterday, in fact—how they wish they’d found us sooner.

The small business owners we spoke to yesterday are not “shortcut” people by any stretch of the imagination. They had a question during the pandemic about how to properly use the funds their business received from the COVID-19 EIDL program. They sought out expert advice and received a referral to an expert.  But that professional ultimately gave them bad advice, so bad in fact, their business might be in legal jeopardy should the US Government investigate the use of the funds and then discover the improper utilization.

Based on our conversation, we know these business owners were so desperate to get an answer to their question, that they failed to go to the next step of taking their crowdsourced referral to investigate further the background of the expert. They did not read online reviews of that expert’s professional services or acumen.  They did not research the expert’s professional credentials or professional biography.  They simply accepted the crowdsourced recommendation, contacted the expert, and followed his bad advice.

Too often the desperation to resolve a problem quickly can lead to taking shortcuts.

When it comes to your COVID-19 EIDL, there are no shortcuts. The program is complicated and there are substantial real consequences to making bad choices and bad decisions. Whether you need to make a simple change to your business or if you’re facing challenges in repaying the loan, take the time to thoroughly research and locate the expertise you need to make the best decisions possible.

If you don’t invest the time to thoroughly research, if you take a “shortcut” and accept the crowdsourced knowledge as the ultimate expertise, you may discover the car falling on top of you as you try to change the tire with the badly sourced fake expert advice.  

And it’s going to hurt. A lot.

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Terms of Use in the Fine Print

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  • Are you the kind of person who reads those long legal “Terms of Use” statements on websites?
  • When you get a new credit card, do you read the Terms of Service statements and APR disclosures?

I am that kind of person.  I like to read. I know you’re thinking, “He’s well and truly insane because reading TOS disclosures is not what people call ‘reading!’” 

This affection for reading complicated disclosures and the like is one of the qualities that made me successful as a Mortgage Banker for 30 years. 

I cannot tell you how many times I won an argument with a loan underwriter or processor or colleague because I’d read the actual guidelines. While I didn’t always quote chapter and verse, and often didn’t need to, the fact that I had read the guidelines informed my ability to win the argument.

Sometimes, knowing the guidelines helped me to say to an underwriter, “Show me where in the guidebook it says that, and I’ll happily comply and get the document you requested from the loan applicant.”

 

That’s some poker-level “call your bluff” Yoda-level-Jedi-mindtrickityness, right there.

My reading of the underwriting guidelines also helped me to call “B.S.” on people in the business who tried to take shortcuts…sometimes illegal shortcuts.

Consider the argument I was having with a loan processor one day about an appraiser’s failure to include the market value of a rental apartment in a multi-family house on the appraisal report (a “Standard Operating Procedure” of appraisals, BTW, FYI, and WTF).

While we’re having this polite and only slightly animated discussion—I was always a respectful professional—the Vice President of the mortgage company emerged from his office and shouted across the room at me, “Trevor, just go to Staples, buy a blank lease and type one up with the rental amount on it!”

Yes, this really happened; I remember the loan applicant’s name, FYI, and this happened way back in 2001!

And, no, I did not buy a lease. Instead, I called the appraiser myself and requested the appropriate amendment to the report. This wasn’t crossing any legal lines because I was requesting something that was considered “common and customary.” 

And, no, I did not continue working at that company very much longer for obvious reasons.

I remember another reason for my affinity for reading disclosures. From the early days of my mortgage career, when presenting an application disclosure to a loan applicant, I wanted to explain to them what they were signing. I know that many of my colleagues, then and probably now, took the shortcut and simply asked people, “Sign here.” 

I refused to disrespect the loan applicants that way. I showed them due respect by first reading and learning the disclosure forms, then explaining to them before they signed, in the simplest language possible, what the heck they were signing. I refused to take the shortcut.

This shortcut mentality isn’t limited to people committing fraudulent illegal activities in the mortgage business. We see Small Business Owners taking shortcuts all the time, and we also see how shortcuts can get people in all kinds of trouble for their businesses. Not the illegal kind of trouble necessarily. More often than not, shortcut thinking leads to trouble with basic business operations, and, too often, profitability.

Let’s get to the meat of why we wrote this blog. We experienced something this week that is a good example of the “shortcut mentality” and directly ties into the opening premise: I like to read Terms of Use disclosures.

Our services include general business consulting. A small business client recently engaged our services.  Priority one is to improve bottom-line cash flow. Secondarily, it frees up time for our client to better run her business. 

This secondary activity involves mostly organizing basic business operations systems and procedures.  This is a business that has experienced rapid growth in the past three years, far faster than the owner could keep up with the increase in business to find the time to get the fundamentals in place.

She presented us with an important objective: she wanted to offer her employees health insurance and a pension plan. She loves her team and she wants to reward their hard work and loyalty with these benefits.

Fortunately, the State of Connecticut recently passed legislation requiring all small businesses in the state with 5 or more employees to register with a new state-managed pension plan.  The employer doesn’t need to contribute, simply register with the state for the plan. Employees can then decide if they wish to contribute to the plan, overseen by the state Comptroller’s office. 

We thought this was an excellent opportunity for our client to at least begin to offer a pension plan to her employees, with a longer-term goal of offering a better plan in the future, which the employer contributes.  Registering with the state plan would also keep the business in compliance with state regulations, another fundamental business organization principle we’re helping our clients to implement. 

In our first meeting with our client, we discovered her accountant had not filed the required annual reports with the Secretary of State’s office for three years, thus putting the business entity in jeopardy of imminent dissolution. We immediately filed all the reports.

The deadline for registering for the state-mandated pension plan was August 31st. On August 30th, I jumped on the state website to register our client.  The state is using an outside vendor as the administrator of the plan.  The state website redirects a registrant to the third party’s website.

I began the process of registration, entering the business EIN and special access code provided by the state. I created a username and secure password (a good topic for a future blog, BTW, especially for folks with the “shortcut” mentality).

I was then directed to the vendor’s “Terms of Use” disclosure page on the website. I scrolled through in my attempt to read the disclosures. Navigation was difficult due to the graphics configuration of the information box, but I found my way through most of the disclosures.  Having read lots and lots and lots of Terms of Use disclosures over the years, I can skim quickly because many of the terms are standardized.

But then I arrived at paragraphs 24-26 and my fast-scanning eyes had to hesitate and back up because what I was seeing was, at first glance, outrageous.  “This can’t be,” I said to myself as I scrolled back to slow down and read these three paragraphs more carefully.

Essentially these three paragraphs remove some of the registering business’ autonomy in its decision-making and essentially makes the pension plan administrating vendor a business partner of sorts! I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Humor me, and read the paragraphs for yourself and tell me if you agree these terms are absolutely outrageous, or not.

 

24. Use of Your Trademarks and Logo

By accepting the terms of this Agreement, you give xxxxx a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use your logo and/or trademark for the purposes of performing the services to support Plans using the xxxx Platform, xxxxxx business development purposes, or for any joint marketing activities or creating marketing collateral. xxxxxx will use your logos or trademarks in the form provided to us.

25. Non-Solicitation, Non-Compete

Unless we have agreed otherwise in writing, you and your firm agree not to solicit to employ any employee of xxxxxx or xxxxxx client or prospective client that you come to know solely by way of this Agreement. General advertisements and other similar broad forms of solicitation shall not constitute solicitation for purposes of this Agreement. Other than as expressly permitted by this Agreement or otherwise agreed upon in writing by xxxxxx, you also agree not to provide, directly or indirectly, or assist others in providing services that compete with xxxxxx services to any xxxxx client or end user of the xxxxx Platform.

26. Marketing and Business Development

You and your firm will devote sufficient time and resources to cooperate in good faith with xxxxx and/or create appropriate public and promotional announcements relating to the relationship set forth in this Agreement. This potentially includes conspicuously highlighting xxxxx on your website, inviting xxxxx as a speaker at in-person or virtual events, introducing xxxxx to Qualified Leads[2], and otherwise engaging in joint business development activities and regular meetings designed to promote and expand the Parties’ relationship and evaluate opportunities to expand the use of the xxxxxx Platform for clients and potential clients.

Now, I’m no pension plan expert, I don’t pretend to be, at all. So, I called an expert, someone with 30 years in the pension planning profession.  I read the three paragraphs to him and he was as astounded and outraged as I was. I then ran it by my partner, Linda Rey, and I called another expert with a payroll services company that also provides pensions as part of their package.

We all agreed these terms were ridiculous. We could not understand how the State was allowing these terms to exist in a legislatively mandated pension program.  Our combined conclusion was that no one at State level was aware of these terms.

Most likely the vendor went through a basic vetting process, but somewhere along the way, someone at the State level took a shortcut and didn’t delve into the details.  And, as they say, the devil is in the details, isn’t it?

I copied out the terms and pasted them into a word doc for easier reading.

Next, I call customer service for the vendor.  The customer service representative was an excellent professional, but she basically said there was no workaround for the required acceptance of these terms. You cannot complete the registration for the pension plan without accepting the vendor’s Terms of Use. 

She suggested a supervisor might offer better insight and a solution to my conundrum. She attempted to get a supervisor on the line, and, in the absence of an available person, took my contact information. As of this writing, two days later, no one from the vendor has responded to my inquiry.

I asked the customer service representative if I was the first person to raise this issue. “You are definitely the first person who has called while I’m working,” she responded.

And, there you have it, that’s the other shortcut-mentality problem. Because it is clear that many, many small business owners all across the state have registered for this pension plan and likely not read the Terms of Use disclosure.  If they did read it, they simply signed off without a clear understanding what it was they were signing, in this case, essentially abdicating several aspects of how they run their businesses.

I contacted the state Comptroller’s office and, to their credit they did respond by phone and email. But their response proved my initial suspicion that no one at state level had actually read this Terms of Use disclosure.

I pushed back on their email—where they essentially patronized me and told me to contact the vendor—with a long-winded dissection of the argument I was making, and I included a PDF of the copied out Terms.

I’m waiting to hear back from the vendor and the State and I will update you all if and when I do.

But I hope that your takeaway from my love of reading disclosures is twofold.

First, read the disclosures.  It probably takes an additional 3-4 minutes of your time to do so. If necessary, show a disclosure to your attorney (every small business everywhere should have a relationship with a good business attorney, and, if possible, have one on retainer for just such situations).

Second, there are no shortcuts!  

How many business owners simply “accepted” these ridiculous Terms of Use disclosures to complete and comply with the state-required registration simply to “get it over with?”

We don’t know if or even how this vendor could possibly enforce these three paragraphs, but acceptance of the Terms of Use certainly gives them the right to do so, and to impinge on the efficient running of YOUR small business.

Linda Rey and I would love your feedback on this article. Please email curious@auroraconsulting.biz with your thoughts, ideas, and criticisms. I have no ego about this stuff; and last I checked, we don’t bite!

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3 Things to Expect From Your Insurance Broker

I’m going to hit you between the eyes, and you may like it, but not at first. I’d like to think I know a couple of things about insurance.

I’ve worked in the Insurance Industry for over 30 years.  My ultimate accomplishment was owning an Independent Insurance Agency. Additionally, one of my favorite clients trains insurance agencies so I see what thousands of agencies do wrong, every year, all across the country.

Here it comes, the part where I hit you between the eyes:  Your Insurance Broker may not be servicing you properly, and it could be costing you money, and maybe a lot of money.

I know, I know, insurance isn’t something you think about all that often, maybe once a year, when it’s renewal time. And, that’s when you discover how your Insurance Agent is managing your account.

Maybe your premium went up. A lot. And no one from your Insurance Agent’s office contacted you to let you know that they are aware of the situation. So, you go through the strife and stress of dealing with that situation, whether you go through the motions of switching to another company, or you complain and ultimately pay the higher premium.

You get through the moment. Then, return to your normal life. Until the same thing happens next year when you’re stressed out again.

My Insurance License in Connecticut is still active. I kept it as a matter of convenience for the occasional client. During the pandemic and the assistance we provided to thousands of business owners seeking disaster relief funding, we were exposed to many other elements of their operations, including their insurance, as part of the financing process.

When I see how business owners are being serviced by their insurance professionals I am, quite frankly, surprised and confused. What I see most often is these businesses have insurance policies where their business is under-insured, over-priced, and minimally serviced.

I didn’t run my Independent Agency that way nor for the clients we assisted during the pandemic. Your insurance agent or broker is a licensed professional and as such, they should be doing these three things.  If they’re not doing these to honor your business relationship, then you may want to consider who is managing your insurance.

  1. Annual Review. Your Agent should contact you 60-90 days prior to the policy renewal to review your current policies. The review should include questions about the status of your business and plans for the future. They should be reviewing current coverage and premium as well as other life changes so that could affect the policy and any potential claims.

  2. Updates on Coverage. Insurance Carriers can change their underwriting standards from time to time. It’s up to your Agent to be aware of those changes and to update you when those changes can affect your insurance, negatively and positively.  Your Agent is the one with their finger on the pulse of the industry, and as a licensed representative, while you’re busy running your business.  Your Agent should notify you when a change will affect your business.

  3. Servicing the Heck Out of You. Practically every business owner I’ve come into contact with in my financing business states that they never hear from their Agent. When we needed an insurance document for their financing, the process of obtaining that document takes longer than necessary because of the lack of communication. The Insurance business is a SERVICE business.

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Don’t Get Burned by Your Business Partner

Here’s a Valentine’s Day business tip for all the business partnerships out there, especially if you LOVE your business!

An entrepreneurial relationship can go sideways FAST if one partner begins to scrutinize another’s activity in their respective roles. It happens believe it or not. People change, goals and dreams change and how one approaches their profession, their job, their business can change due to a myriad of reasons such as:

1. An entrepreneur may feel they have “arrived” and they want to slow down a bit.

2. One learns and knows how to effectively delegate in order to scale the business.

3. They want to transition in order to finally honor their passion, their “calling”.

Contributions to the venture can be overlooked by a partner(s) when resentment sets in by another. If reasonable, kind, compassionate communication fails, resentment can creep in faster and most insidiously.

Hiring an outside consultant could be beneficial. However, vet that consultant vigorously. Check their background and their experience with managing businesses and business partnerships. You do not want to find out too late that they have no idea how to navigate a difficult situation.

Equally and most importantly, the following must be considered. You will want to consult with your business attorney on this.

1. Draft an operating agreement that specifically outlines duties of each partner.
2. Review the role and duties of each partner at least once per year.
3. Document the file with minutes of the meeting.

When an agreement / document is referenced on a regular basis, issues can be addressed before they get unruly and people get ornery. Memories fade and/or get distorted to match a current perspective.

In this age, where narcissism and borderline personality are a true epidemic (and perhaps incurable), victims can stay stuck in bad habits out of fear and confusion of bad behavior. This is no way to live a happy life. We all deserve to be happy and to seek a way to be happy when something feels off.

You don’t have to be an “Outsource Junkie” like myself, but research on how you can continually improve how your partnership can soar to the heights of what you envisioned when you got into business with your partner(s) in the first place.

Who Has Time to Micro-Manage?

Control.  It’s all about control.  Or is it about trust?

For control, we mean it in a neutral way, neither positive nor negative. Because, depending on the entrepreneur and/or business owner, the definition of control changes.

Many of us have worked in environments where you’re micro-managed. We understand it, but we don’t have to like it.

Whether it’s the boss’ issue with control from a positive perspective (wanting the business to succeed) or a negative perspective (lack of trust by the boss), the question more and more people are asking is, “why can’t you teach me what I need to do…or train me…or trust me…and then, leave me alone?”

It’s also about trust. The more trust you have in someone, the more you’re likely to delegate and let people do their job so you can do your’s.

How do you know if you’re micro-managing?

We’d love to hear your feedback after you read this excellent article we found on INC.COM about micro-managing.

Please email us your feedback at curious@auroraconsulting.biz

CLICK HERE for the link to the Inc.com article.

 

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Kick Overwhelm To The Curb

Do you ever have to prompt your kids to eat something, wear something, do something or go somewhere?

They resist; you persist because you want the best for them.

You’re selling, but you’re able to do that because ultimately you believe it’s best for them because you love them. You are delivering value by showing something that’s good for them.

Your kids are like the general public at large and your business is the parent that is trying to show them something of value.

I’ve been marketing since about the mid 1980’s. But I didn’t know I was marketing. 

My favorite course in college was marketing. We reviewed businesses that excelled because they applied business fundamentals that introduced their products and services to consumers.

Then when I joined my father’s insurance agency.
My first thought was “I don’t want him to be the best kept secret.”
My other thought was “this could take a while. People need to get to know me.”
My mantra became “there’s no immediate gratification in a long term strategy.”

I networked and joined business organizations to meet other business owners. I created events to engage the community.
I grew revenue 800%. He was able to retire when I bought him out and then I sold my shares to my sister six years later.

It was all from marketing. 

This was inspired by a conversation with a few of the Board members of an IDS Chapter in CT who brought me in to do a presentation. I asked, “what do you want me to talk about?” 

I wanted to do something different from what may be expected.
I didn’t want to beat a dead horse with the obvious platitudes about marketing. 

Nor debate about which is better:
Facebook vs. Linkedin
Posting in the morning or afternoon
Writing a Blog or recording a Vlog.

You don’t need me to tell you to post on social media.
It’s been trending for the past decade or more. Being an early adopter has left the station.

They said, “We’re overwhelmed. Many of us are Solopreneurs and doing everything ourselves.”

FEELING OVERWHELMED

Do you ever feel overwhelmed with marketing? I have good news and bad news.

I believe being overwhelmed is an opportunity to learn how to grow in some capacity.
Your business could be at the precipice of growing to the next level.

Being overwhelmed, to me, is the difference between doing the things we want to do and doing the things we think we should be doing. It’s an internal conflict. It’s why we procrastinate and make excuses instead of delegating.

A side effect of being overwhelmed is complacency.

I don’t want to steal my therapist’s thunder, but most of the time, many of us, in general, have the same doubts and fears. 

People aren’t paying attention to us as much as we think they are. They’re too worried about their own stuff.

I’ve listened to hours of marketing podcasts where professionals share how they got started and invariably it begins with some fear and doubt as they stumble to figure things out.

Is there anyone here that DOESN’T want to grow to the next level?

Anything I share with you today is nothing i’ve not been through already.
I’ve worried. I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’ve doubted. And I’ve succeeded.

Marketing is not an event. It’s a process.
And when it comes to process, we don’t seek perfection, we strive for progress.

Who has a purpose they are trying to accomplish?

Marketing is about understanding our purpose and the goals we set to achieve the fulfillment of our purpose along with the good we want to put out into the world.

Sometimes it feels like marketing it’s not always practical or executable.
It’s too much, we’re too busy. We can always find an excuse. I know I do.

If we’re following our purpose, it’s practical.
If we’ve not achieved all of our goals yet, we must make it executable.

i can talk to you about tactics and techniques, but it’s boring, and you know it already.
You can google everything and anything for FREE.  You know more than you know.

It’s the motivation, inspiration and creativity that we seek sometimes.

I’ve been saying for years:
You have to start somewhere in order to celebrate progress.
It’s basic benchmarking.

Rachel Hollis said it better,
“You can’t get to great if you aren’t putting “good enough” out in the world.”

Rachel Hollis also wrote a book about the lies she told herself and how she overcame them. 

I’m going to share the lies I told myself when I started social media in 2009:

  1. I have nothing to say.
  2. No one is listening to me.
  3. I don’t have an audience.
  4. There is so much noise, no one is finding my stuff.

This is ego hijacking our brains. 

Because the truth is:

  1. I was most talkative in high school. So, Duh!
  2. I’ve been hired so people are listening.
  3. I’ve built an audience.
  4. I started with my inner circle & circle of influences to let them know what I’m doing out here in the world.

CONNECTION
Remember when we discussed purpose? There’s a reason I didn’t say passion or profit first.

Who doesn’t love financial gain? With profit, sometimes we let our money junk get in the way. Sometimes we charge too little or too much or we procrastinate because we don’t know what to charge or how to charge.

With passion, we keep ourselves mired in minutia because it’s an art or it’s too important and it has to be perfect and we don’t let go.

Purpose allows us to dig deep within ourselves to reveal and share our values. And values have impact.
Impact will tempt people to pause and perhaps notice you. And the more they notice you, the more likely they will remember you. When they remember you, they will buy from you when they need your products and/or services.

Your marketing strategy should include your story. People don’t want to feel alone. They want to connect.
We’re biologically wired to connect as humans.

Sharing your story, your struggle to make it in this business causes connection. People can relate.

No one cares what you post unless they know that you care. Thank you Theodore Roosevelt.

Let’s talk about the “Judgey Judge Judys” in the world. If anyone judges your content and proclaims it as a failure, thank them. It’s a gift. It’s called feedback. Feedback directs us on how to improve.  It’s not about perfection, it’s about progress.

Y’all still with me?

CONTENT
Content is king; consistency is key.
It doesn’t have to be all business all the time. The best marketing is when people don’t pontificate all the time with all that they know.

No matter your industry, build in visuals. I don’t want to invite you to my pity party, but I used to post about insurance.
Now, with my new business, I post about Business Credit Financing. It’s not very exciting content.

Find the emotion. You’re bringing your product or service to life.

Here are some things you can do to stockpile content for your business.

  1. Photographically document your process, parts of the process, pieces of the process.
  2. Train your clients to know you’ll be wanting their feedback along the process. Ask how they are feeling and why they are feeling that way. Bring them into the process.

Why is this beneficial?

You want to know what they are feeling at all times because this provides relatable events with what other people are feeling. This provides direction on your how your content will reach people who may need you in the future.

Document and/or develop “case studies” to capture a keyword library for you to enrich your content though your clients’ experience.

  • What is their Pain
  • What are their Problems
  • What are your Solutions
  • What is their Satisfaction

Lewis Howes, renowned podcaster of the School of Greatness said “Create what you would want to listen to if you were stuck, starting out or striving.”

People are paying you for your perspective. They have a problem. You have a solution.
Your job is to find more problems so you can help them solve it.

You are doing a disservice by not sharing your solutions and your creativity.

In my previous business, I amassed 13,000 Twitter followers. When I first started using Twitter, I politely stalked my competition & strategic alliances to see what they were posting and how their content was relevant to a similar audience I was trying to develop. 

Let’s go back to feeling and/or being overwhelmed.

Who feels that sometimes, somedays maybe they squander 30 minutes here and there?

Maybe you’re binge watching Netflix.
Maybe you’re aimlessly scrolling Facebook or Instagram.

Did you know that 30 minutes per day is 182.5 hours which is almost 23 days lost which is more than 3 weeks potentially squandered vs. being productive. 

How will you start taking that time back?

The Dirt on Marketing, Like Literally

When I was younger, I loved city life. The hustle and bustle of people scurrying and vehicles hurrying was alluring and alive.

As I got older, I became more attracted to the quiet countryside. Ah…the fresh air, the sounds of birds chirping, the smell of grass … hold the “flower”, I mean phone. (Yes, i’ll be cultivating these deciduous puns.)

The smell of grass? Yes! It’s a refreshing reminder of spring and summer. So glorious, right?

WRONG! You know how you get the smell of grass? You have to cut it. It’s called landscaping.

There are two kinds of people:
* People that do it on their own
* People who hire someone to do it

But wait, there’s more! There is the third type of person. Those that outsource a portion of the work and do some themselves.

Sound familiar? Yup. That’s how marketing works too.

When I decided to move to the country, I bought a house in Roxbury, Connecticut. It’s a wonderful place. Many people, even Connecticut residents have never heard of it.

Think Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, William Styron, Walter Matthau, Richard Widmark, Alexander Calder.

Ok, enough of this stardom, let’s get back to “grass roots”. 

When you’ve never owned 2.6 acres of land before, and now you have it, you have to decide how to approach this monumental groundskeeping mission.

The first thing I did was to hire a full service lawn maintenance and estate management company to handle every aspect of the property. That got to be too expensive. I then decided to manage some of the yard work myself. I paired working in the yard with the idea of working out in the yard to get some exercise.

I reviewed what equipment I needed, what I had and what outside services I could ”prune” away.

While I was planting shrubs and laying mulch, I got to thinking about how landscaping and marketing are very similar. Let’s take a “broad-leaf” look at how the two compare. 

Curb Appeal vs. Brand

First, you survey the property on how to maintain or improve your curb appeal. That takes an eye towards design.

In marketing, your curb appeal is your brand. It takes strategy to consider how to project your brand.

Equipment vs. Tools

Then you prepare your landscaping project by organizing your equipment needed for mowing, planting, pruning, weeding, etc.

In marketing, you have tools necessary to exercise and broadcast your brand such as your website, social media channels, direct mail, podcasts, etc. 

Maintenance

This is where the two meet and “thatch”, I mean match:
* Landscaping is not an event, it’s maintenance.
* Marketing is not an event, it’s a process.

If you’re looking to “till” through the marketing madness and cover more ground, email us at Curious@AuroraConsulting.biz or call 860-759-9910. 

Fly Birdie Fly

“Thinking outside the box” is a phrase commonly used in the business world to exercise your creative thinking.

What’s wrong with boxes anyway? Boxes are handy.

They store and organize stuff AND transport stuff, you know, like PIZZA delivery. YUM!

The origin is said to emerge from the 1970s and 1980s among management consultants challenging clients to connect a “nine dots” puzzle, using only four lines, and without lifting pen from paper.

While the phrase is often used in the corporate world, what about the Entrepreneurs, better yet, Solopreneurs charged with leading ourselves to the best place we can be in the outside world?

Earning money calls for ambition, initiative, creativity and “thinking outside the box”. I’m sure those management consultants who developed the “nine dots” puzzle would pontificate about how we need to think outside of the box to differentiate ourselves.

Are you thinking outside the box?
Are you being your best forward-thinking, creative self?
If so, how?

Here’s a few examples of the entrepreneurs out there in the world:

First, there’s Julie from Brandtwist. Her consulting company helps business-owners think outside the box so their business isn’t “boxed in.” I worked with Julie as an insurance agency owner. She guided me with incredibly creative ideas to help me think outside the box. 

Here’s another example of a creative entrepreneur who thought outside the box. She was asked to collaborate with a newly renovated movie theatre that was about to reopen to the public. The theatre owners hired her to manage the cafe adjoining the theatre. This was a wonderful collaboration until the cafe owner realized that there was no parking for people, who were going to the cafe, during a movie showing.

What did she do? She thought outside the box. She walked the aisles before the movie started with beverages and provisions.

Let’s get back to you? What are you doing to think outside the box?

  • How often do you do something that scares you?
  • What are you thinking that prevents you from trying something new?
  • What outside influences keep you comfy and cozy and stuck inside the box.

Your business needs to leave the nest to find those creative marketing ideas that will let your business fly…to then soar! 

4 Reasons Goal-Setting Doesn’t Suck

Let’s face it; it’s a goal to set a goal. 

The new year is almost here, and I don’t know about you, but this happens every last quarter and last month of the year for me and for us here at Aurora Consulting.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. It can be daunting to set a goal, track a goal, and stick to a plan to achieve the goal. Why? Because it’s work.

We also know, and this is that weird icky feeling that we sometimes ignore, having a goal and not meeting the goal could generate feelings of failure and/or rejection. 

This could set us back and cause resistance to maintain momentum.

If you think about it…what’s the resistance around setting a goal? Goals present opportunities, and creating opportunities could mean income to your business. 

That is….IF building your business is a GOAL!? We did this podcast, Ask 6 Questions as a Business Owner | The Difference Between Business Owner & Entrepreneur.

Goals are INSPIRING.

Many different activities make up your role in your business. There are things that you love to do and there are things that are for the greater good of the business that may not be your favorite part of your day/week/month/year.

Create a contest for yourself and/or team members and reward yourself when you’ve finished a task. Something, anything that will motivate you to want to work on those tasks/activities that will help accomplish the goal.

When we’re inspired, we’re more focused on accomplishing the task at hand. And this will help us work smarter to achieve a goal.

Let’s embrace what we do and not be afraid of it.

Goals build CONFIDENCE.

Now that you’re motivated and working on tasks that inspire you, this will build confidence. Confidence propels us to be the best that we can be…and maybe even have a little fun while doing it.

When we’re confident, we seek more challenges. This helps us to be more curious, continue learning, and grow.

Goals are CHALLENGING.

This is when it gets fun. We’re now inspired and that builds confidence.

How about building in something that makes us uncomfortable? We call this getting out of our comfort zone. Competition builds character.

Think of a triathlete. They track their activity and their time to know how they can train to be stronger and faster. When their body becomes adjusted to a certain weight or speed, they begin trying things that challenge their current abilities.

This helps us to grow. See a theme here?

Goals keep us ACCOUNTABLE.

The movie A FEW GOOD MEN includes one of the most memorable movie lines in movie history. When pressed for the truth, Jack Nicholson’s character Colonel Jessup bellows: “You can’t handle the truth!”

I say, you can handle the truth. Tracking your activity will cause reason to celebrate when you achieve a goal or progress toward achieving the goal. 

And if there’s evidence that this goal may not see the light of day, tracking will help you to recognize the signs so you can pivot and/or redirect our focus so you’re working on your strengths vs. giving up altogether.

Have you considered an accountability partner? Some people, and I am one of them, need an external force or energy to stay on track. Whether it’s a weekly call or you’re checking in on a private Facebook page, knowing that you have to divulge your activity, or divulge the lack of activity, it may motivate you to have something awesome to report.

Now, go and set some goals; you can handle it! 

Download our Beacon Oversights and Preparedness Guide. It includes 3 pages of checklists about the many things that must be managed when you own a business. It will help you to create goals for yourself. 

 

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