Why Show Up?

Today at the store, we had not one, not two, but three repeat customers come through our doors. They were greeted like family.

Just like they should be.

And the sales we’re good.

It didn’t happen by magic or some kinda voodoo.

It happened by showing up… Every single day.

You must focus on what is absolutely critical to your business. If you a blogger spending that 30 minutes a day to flush out a blog post is key to your success. A realtor paycheck is directly related to how many lead gen activities you do. In retail keeping the door open is vital.

Am I saying it has to be you ringing the register. No.

What I’m saying is to step back sometimes and see if what you’re working on is really moving your business forward.

In Mastering the Rockefeller Habits (A fantastic book by the way) the author talks about how just doing 1 thing that keeps your business moving forward has a dramatic impact by the end of the year. Think about it. 365 things that are absolutely nagging you about your business will be fixed one year from now if you implement this.

But, you must show up to do them.

In the store next to me, it has closed 4 and opened 5 times since we started our business.

The people who ran those businesses didn’t show up. They are no longer there.

That is the consequence of not showing up in the retail business.

Another, more positive example is a wholesale supplier that updates their website everyday with at least 2 dozen new products. Clearly that doesn’t work in every industry. Imagine if you were Net Jets, introducing a new program everyday would be really strange if not corporate suicide. But, you get my point. You have to do the most important thing in your business everyday.

Today, was a good day for the business. Tomorrow? Who knows.

But, at least I’ll be there to find out.

– Mark

Sunday Links

I wanted to start this week off school with a new feature that I’ll be doing on Sunday. It’s called Sunday Links (for lack of a better name) and it will feature 3 of the best articles that I have come across this week.

Here they are…

The Billion Dollar Smart Cover via Asymco.com
http://www.asymco.com/2011/03/13/the-billion-dollar-smart-cover/

“It gives an insight on how an up sell can be inhernetly designed in an offer. I was walking around Downtown Disney and they not but three different up sells right at the register. This is what the corporate is doing to increase their margins. Also, the last line is really compelling but a very good point.”

JetPack for WordPress
http://jetpack.me/2011/03/09/blast-off/

“Matt Mullenweg talks about his vision of WordPress JetPack which is a plugin that brings the best features of WP.com to the self hosted version. This are some really cool features in the plugin bundle and it will replace several plugin installs in just one big ol’ pack. Now where is Rocket Man when I need him.”
10 Tips on Adding Content Marketing to Your Mix
http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/03/10-tips-content-marketing/

“In this post I talked about how adding content to your eCommerce store is a surefire way to get a boost of rankings in the search engines so, here is a good checklist to think about when adding content to your site.”

That will do it for this week’s edition of Sunday Links, enjoy your Sunday.

– Mark