We’re cleaning up our business operations.

We’re making everything we do better, more congruent, quicker, shinier, and neater.

This might mean that we’ll be gone for a while while we serve our customers: we know, and we’re fine with that.

This site will be moved over and made live at http://flatratebiz.com shortly.  The only product we’re now selling is our website packages and website boosting packages.

And training.

But instead of making our changes incrementally, we’ve put the brakes on that for a week or so and we’ll be up and live and “in effect” shortly.

So stay tuned.

I switched to the mac almost 2 years ago.  I never looked back, except when it came to blogging software.  I tried Ecto, I used MacJournal (and hated it), and I genuinely missed the crown jewel of Microsoft: Windows Live Writer.  I wanted something easy, and useful.

Phil Hodgen said he really liked Mars Edit.  I putzed around with a 2. something version, and I was nonplussed.  It wasn’t what I thought it would be, it had some feature or other that caused me to dismiss it around the time of the trial a year or so ago.  Then I realized I needed more of an offline editor: I was doing more and more with my Macbook, so I had to have something that let me get out of the office and still update my sites, blogs and client sites when I had some time.  I hate the cumbersome and chatty nature of WordPress’s posts editor: basically, it makes you wait to see what’s on screen a few times every 5 minutes.  That’s an “in the way” distraction to writing.  You wait for the software, write a few sentences, wait for the Ajax to upload, and while you do, it butchers one word.

Distracting.

So, I got Mars Edit just after the 3.0 trial started.  And I just started using it.  I was up and writing in 2-3 minutes–if that.  It was out of my way.  No pinging the server, it was as fast as I was.  You can drop images in there by drop and dragging them.  It was a nearly perfect toy.  I was able to use it to catch up because it doesn’t distract you while you write.  It took me a whole 5 minutes to put the Thesis Custom Fields into Mars Edit (video coming soon).

Mars Edit is blogging on speed.  Better than even Windows Live Writer, which was the best software that Microsoft has done since XP.  I immediately reached out to their team to find a way to bundle it with my blogs. (Yes, now all Mac owners  that get a site from me get Mars Edit free.  It costs me a few bucks, but I think it’s so worth it–I think that a non distracting environment to write a blog out is going to be so much better than the stupid mess that is WP.).

Now, Mars Edit isn’t without its downsides.  There are some features missing: notably, the behavior of “send to blog” when offline.  It should be that when you send something to your blog, Mars edit will tell you you’re offline and then put it up there next time you’re online.  As it is, mars edit gives you an error saying you’re not connected.  A little bit of “publsih when connected,” love would go a long way.  It probably would require a few more features, but it’s the only missing essential feature to the service.

The other things are preferences: allowing nested pages/parent pages as part of things, having a preview engine that looks at how the post will look on the blog would both be helpful.

Not to end on a bad note, Mars Edit increases the velocity of how I work and write by about 40%.  It’s a tool that is absolutely killer.  I’ll walk through adding some customizations for my customers that use Thesis, and possibly even do some type of plugin that supports what we’re doing there.

In any case, go ahead and grab Mars Edit.  We don’t have an affiliate relationship, but I will be running some type of contest with Mars Edit as the 2nd place prize.

5-12 raving fans, people that you’ve helped and that will help you is a wonderful new asset for nearly any business.  That’s the first part of building your community, the steely center of your business and the focus of the people you want to serve.

The Core is a starting point, and learning to be of serious service to a set of peers.   It’s good for you because you get beyond the day to day noise of your business and you get involved with learning to serve people that you admire.

Buy we want to get beyond that core, and we want to recruit others that can we can help (and will help us).  We want to have a group of folks we know somewhat, we’ve spoken to, and who might be folks that we can serve at the next level.

I call it my nifty fifty. Right now, my nifty fifty is at 86 members.  I need to determine which of the relationships I want to really, really bet on and which can drift into the “crowd” status (that gets baseline friendliness, help, and en masse interaction and response).

Now, the goal with the nifty fifty is this:

To have a good group of diverse pros and “go to guys,” that I can introduce to one another.

To be a resource and connector between 12-50 people that I really like.

To have some social interaction and a pool of people that has received a favor from me, personally.

To challenge myself by learning other businesses.

To get business.

Goals are roughly in this order.  I don’t apologize for wanting business from this group–it’s a bigger group and the bigger the group gets the more you focus on automatic monetization.

Where Do You Find Your Nifty Fifty?

Right now, you need to go looking for the middle group, and oddly, adopt these folks in a more formal way than your core community group.   You want to make sure that this group is balanced, and that you keep your promises to them.   You find this group in the same spots as the core community group, except you focus on geography.  If your business is location dependent, you want to keep 60% or more of them where you live.

But, you recruit these people from:

• Your best customers
• your favorite vendors
• Business professionals in a “round table” (i.e. attorney, CPA, financial planner)
• Your friends with businesses.
• Folks you admire
• People that commented on your blog
• People that interacted with you via social media
• Long term contacts that you can help.

Again, I want to focus on people I can help and that aren’t necessarily my close friends.  Someone in a corporate job with little interaction with your product might not seem like a good fit, but referral sources are almost always a surprise.   You want people that know you.

How Do You Introduce Yourself To Your Nifty Fifty?

I did it seeking 100 people.  I think 100 might be OK once you really have a handle on 50 people, but I did it with a semi-custom form letter. My subject lines were stuff like:

“blog comment last month – what I did with it.”

“do you need any of my contacts?”

Dear $name of person,

[1-2 sentences describing event/connection]

With all the stuff that’s going on, I wanted to slow down and see if I can help you.  I really appreciate the way you present yourself online and the way that you do business.  I want to help folks like you.

No, there won’t be any pitch and there are no strings. I  just want to make sure that I’m helpful to the right people.

If you ever need anything from me–a connection to one of my contacts, some free send out of your marketing to my list, I’ve got your back on that.  Don’t hesitate to ask for anything, I’m here to help.  Even if you need me to show up and support an event your doing, I’ll be there for you.

Truly yours,

 

Chris

P.S. Feel free to pick up the phone and call me at 614-312-9141 any time.  I’ll always take your call when there’s time.

With these people, if they blog, I auto-spit their blogs via Hoot-suite and I make an effort to help them whenever I can.  My job is to make sure that I can stay in front of and friendly with them.

How Often Do You Stay In Contact?

With this group, it’s once a quarter.  I use a spreadsheet for mine, but I suppose you can use a CRM.  The key here is to keep everything personal as possible.  Relate a memory, shared experience or goal with the other person, and try to keep it as natural as possible.   I do this on purpose.

With 86 people in my list, and roughly 60 business/working days in a quarter, i do 2 per business day.  It’s a nice way to warm up as well, and if you can do a favor for someone, it’ll keep your cash register ringing.

I’m going to be doing more of this as time goes on, so just watch.

I tell people what’s been working in my business, and what hasn’t been.

I offer up leads (and try to stay in tune with what a real good & viable lead is).

And–for those of you on the blog that I’m truly following, you’ll hear from me at least once a quarter.

This builds nicely to the third step: getting your core audience to bring their friends and share your stuff.

In my community post, I shared the building blocks of community creation.  The gist was recruit a small group of 5-12 people, then recruit a group of 10-50 people as your ‘tribe/community/whatever.’  It got even the great Tamar saying nice things about it.  But the ‘how to’ portion for each step was a little lacking.  So I’m going to go through and detail in detail what I’ll be doing or have done in each section.

Build a great core community: Find 5-12 Likeminded People

The first thing that you have to do is build a group of 5-12 likeminded people.  These folks are the most important people that you’ll be working with.  These are the folks that are fans, friends, and hopefully a lifelong relationship of people that have your back and vice versa.  Bottom line is that you have to recruit them, you have to give to them, and you have to do most of the work to keep your group connected to you.

Think about that: you have to do most of the work.  This “group” isn’t necessarily a group that meets formally, knows about its own existence, or is anything more than a set of promises about what you’re offering. You’ll probably give to others as much or more than they give to you.  Getting hostile or entitled about your commitment to the group will kill the value you get.  In fact, learning to be of service is the most important part of the equation.

Now, with that out of the way, who makes up the group?

I have 11 people that I’ve identified as part of my “mastermind.”  They all answer my emails, and I think that they all “like” me.

3 are older than me by 10+ years.

6 are about my age (within 6 years).

2 are 5+ years younger.

All but 2 have their own businesses as their primary source of income.  Of my group, I don’t know exact numbers, but 4 present themselves as making substantially more income than me.  Only 2 make less.  5 are in the same category income wise, within 25%.  I admire–at my core–100% of the people in my “advisory board.”  I am 100% committed to adding real value and real help to them.

Finally, of the 11 people I’m in touch with: 3 are vendors/suppliers.  2 are former and occasional customers, one is a direct competitor.  6 are unrelated business owners.

Ideally, then the makeup of the group should consist roughly of 20%+ people above your level financially/professionally.  Roughly 60% of folks AT your level, and then 20% of folks that are just starting out or getting to your level.     You can’t be a snob about your level, and realize that people present themselves as being more financially successful than they are.

Second: Add Value Without (immediate) Expectation of Financial Return

Real value, real insight, real things that they really want.  Not just excess work-product you have lying around, but spend real time in investing in this group, an hour or two per member, per month.  This is a commitment: if you have 20 members, you spend up to 20 hours looking at their stuff, thinking about how you can hep and helping.  You can make referrals, you can think of their business in a different way, and just give of yourself.

Make referrals, without strings or a rake.  Make introductions based on adding value to their business.

Look at their sites, and move them towards best practices.

Do favors, offer the use of your assitant without any strings.

Believe me.  You’ll get paid back.  Not always directly.  Your attitude will change and you won’t come off as someone that always has to maximize their return.  You’ll become a Trust Agent of sorts.  Anyone you can refer, refer.  Make sure it doesn’t waste their time.  Figure out what you’re doing right that they should be doing.  If you have a helpful service, recommend it (without attachment to the outcome).   Try to help, ask what is helpful, useful, and offer yourself as a resource.

When you think hard enough, you’ll find a way to deliver real value.  It might not come in the glorious way that you want.  I helped a mortgage broker friend of mine organize 80 files.    That was service, and there was no glory involved, just simple friendship.  I got nothing out of it except this: getting over myself and my notion of what I should be doing for a few hours.  And that was a good gift for me.

When you intend to add real value, you’ll eventually do so and you’ll have the right to ask things of people.

Third Step: Keep In Touch On Purpose

Relationships are like teeth: when you ignore them, they will go away.  Some people are naturally in sync and connected with you.  Other people just aren’t in sync and you have to work at it.  That’s OK, different people take different efforts, we as humans are all individuals with individual needs.  You have to do the work to stay in touch with people.  If you’re really a “people person” this will not burden you.

It is your job to keep in touch with people.  It’s not theirs to keep in touch with you, get over yourself.  You have to do all the work to keep your community together for a long time–and this includes staying in touch on purpose.

I have an excel spreadsheet with my core 11 and my “nifty fifty” and I know when the last time I spoke with each is.  I’m not really strict about this, but I know that I’ve been in touch.  If I decide to remove/promote someone into another group, I can do this there as well.  I know that when I talk to people on a regular basis, I have more sales. Jesse Petersen and I were talking about it earlier.  When we are engaged, good things happen.  When we try to be in touch, we tune in to opportunities that can help other people, and in turn they tune into opportunities that can help us.

For those people that I know I’m going to get that yell about this not being “authentic” or “organic.”  Go crunch yourself.  Seriously.  If you like someone you’ll find a way to get in touch with them.  If you plan in advance it shows that you give a crap about your community.   I need to make sure that I honor the people that I’ve picked in my group and help them.  Leaving it to the vagaries of my memory is showing people I don’t care.

Fourth Step:  Managing Expectations

What I’m outlining has made me money.  This practice I’ve done for years unbeknownst to my “nifty fifty” and “11 disciples.”   It didn’t make me money fast and it didn’t make me money in the ways you think it might.  I got to look at good examples for myself.

The people that you pick are not necessarily going to do or refer business to you.  (Doesn’t mean you can’t do loads of business with them, but you have to continue to earn that right).  You’re here to help them. Any bits of knowledge or fun you get out of that is gravy.  You’ll see other people’s businesses up close, and you will pick up phrases and habits that go into yours.

You’ll learn a new way of thinking.  And you’ll change into someone that’s consistently helpful.

And, you’ll build trust from strangers  because when you have the “always generous, always giving,” vibe that’s attractive and magnetic.  You’re proving that your business is solid enough to give away time, and is strong enough to be generous.

When you have your core group built, start getting in the habit of adding value, presenting opportunities and making introductions.  Rotate people out occasionally.  This is your board of directors, your brain trust and the folks that you are syncing up with.

Communities are never born.  They are built. Usually deliberately.  Someone has set out to create something and has an idea, anything from politics to marketing…and builds it.  The best brands on the internet have communities powering them.  From Apple, to Lifehacker, to Copyblogger…to Active Rain…brands large and small have a cadre of followers, a set of promises and people both advancing the brand and holding it accountable to keep its promises.

When it’s time to take your business online, a community of people that are invested in you (and vice versa) is the difference between a leader and an also ran.   Your community is your primary audience: important customers, vendors and peers that have something to offer you.  But, making a community is hard.  Many communities fail, and the difference in failing and success isn’t in effort, it’s in direction.  Directing your efforts into something smarter is the difference between success and failure.

Does this work?  Watch me do it.  In six months, come back, see where we’re at.

Build an Online Community Step 1: Pick Out Your Core Group & Commit To Helping

The first thing is this: pick out your own crowd.  The people that are currently peers, vendors, and clients that you really enjoy working with–and enjoy working with you!  Write people’s names  down, in 24pt font.  In most cases, no more than 12-14 people, and at least 5.  I’d pick at least one person that you don’t yet know well.  You are recruiting and selecting folks you think you can add value.  This can change later, but be committed to the people you are picking out.

Remember: your community and your tribe are never about you.  You have to respect your network.  You have to on purpose determine what they’re going to get from you, and a minimum amount of time you’re going to spend on it.  You’ve got to build a community and do much or most of the work.  What do people get when they work with you?  What happens next?  Be specific, write it down.  Give real value.  For me, I’ m always happy to read and comment on work in progress, I’m happy to help out and even do some “water-carrying” unglorious labor for my network.  Gratis.

Send them an email, offer to help & be aware of what they are trying to accomplish, and be a resource for them. 5-12 people is plenty.

Now, other people may want access to your time and energy and effort for free.  Don’t sweat it.  You’re not under obligation to give yourself to anyone other than those you chose to find & recruit.

The goal is to communicate with this crowd about once a week.

Caveat: you must have no drama here.  If someone is overly dramatic, they can’t stay.  Note: If you don’t know 5+ people that will help… you have bigger issues to address, and probably should hit those first.

Step 2 To Building an Online Community: Find 12-50 more people that you admire & Offer to help.

Again, this takes time….and real personal engagement.  And this is a spot where some people may be nonresponsive.  They may ignore you or not have a fit.  Since this isn’t about you, it’s not a big deal: you’re offering people something that we hope that they need.  If they don’t need it, drop it.  Figure out what you have that they need.  Some businesses will be able to re-use workproduct, like Hugh does at Gaping Void.  Other businesses will have to offer something non related: contacts, referrals, or anything.

When you add value, make sure you have it to give and keep it real.

You can find this part of your community in past blog comments, Twitter followers, peers you admire, Facebook friends, linkedIn friends and elsewhere.  These folks are folks you want to pay attention to, help when you can and be aware of.  I track mine in a spreadsheet.  I want to talk to these folks (to help them) once a month or two. Simple hellos, emails and relevant articles are some of the value.  Look at their websites, offer improvement.

My rule of thumb is to pick 10-15% of people “below” your level, 60-70% of people “At” your level and 20-30% of people above your level.  Don’t be cocky about this, and realize that you’re here for them not you.

Now–when you write a blog post, this crowd is who you are writing it to.   This is your best audience. These people will do business with you, and these people will get value from you.  You’ll get much from this crowd.  Stay on top of it, look at their social networks, make notes.  This is good for you as it is for them because it’s a deliberate listening skill.

You want to have these people feel like VIPs and you want to know who they are and what projects they are on.  Talk to them once or twice a quarter and learn that.  This can take a while, so don’t worry if you get bogged down.

I have a  spreadsheet that has who they are, their email, their goals.  It’s separate from auto-responders/CRM.  You have to keep track, and you have to stick with this to make it work.  You’re here to help, and you have to divorce your brain from the expectation of a return.  And yes, sometimes people in this list can go into the “first/best” crowd and vice versa.  Still: that there are 50 people that you’re committed to helping in the form of referrals, and everything else is the important first step.

I have a whole sheet of these folks that I’m committed to helping every single week.  Starting next week, I’m giving up my Fridays to help folks in my network get what they want.

Notes: don’t feel entitled to anything.  You aren’t owed anything by this crowd and if you feel that way, this project will turn rancid and poison you.

Step 3: Ask your crowd to bring their crowd.

This is your big step, and you take it after having demonstrated helpfulness to your “broader” crowd.  You’re asking them to trust you with business contacts.  And some of these people will inevitably make it into your “12″ or “50″ and that’s fine.  Once you can demonstrate that you add value in your profession, you have earned the right to ask people to bring their crowd.  You don’t need to have high expectations regarding this–if they aren’t convinced…

…you haven’t been convincing enough.  They are right: you can’t force trust.  You are hoping that “their crowd” is in the systems you have in place: the RSS readers, the autoresponders and everything else.  These folks will occasionally move into your ‘known’ folks, and my suggestion is this: once you get 100 or so in your excel spreadsheet, you can simply remove the “non-responders” from your list.  Managing intimate relationships with 200 people isn’t really a relationship, but delivering value to strangers…

…is the highest paying job there is.

I’ll share what I’m doing to benefit each list as time passes.

I’ll share the results and how everything worked, and what traffic converted into buyers and sellers.

500 people that know, like, trust and pay you.  And that you serve.  That’s a tribe, and that’s enough for you to make a good living.

Doing business online is a multi step process. It’s not something that normally you can expect overnight success in. The learning curve isn’t bad, but it doesn’t come without work and effort. You hire us to help you determine where you put your time, energy and effort. You hire us to let us help you make everything more focused and linaer. Enthusiasm that doesn’t produce results is worthless.

The first thing that you need to do is put your business basics online. Don’t worry about having well crafted perfect, pithy and punchy prose. Getting the basic information up there is step one. That basic information will include:

• Where you’re at (bonus if you use a google map)
• How to reach you
  • Name
  • Email
  • Address
  • Phone
  • Fax
  • Cell
• Hours you are available- for yoursake & to set expectations
  • Call anytime but I return calls between X and Y
• What services you offer.
• What products you sell.
• A basic contact form: hint if you’re doing under 7 figures, you put your # on there.
• How to hire you/buy from you.
• What benefits and features you have
• Who your customers are
• What problems you solve.
• What statutory disclosures you have to make. (i.e license numbers and such)

This basic first step doesn’t require a lot of original thought, yet I’d guess 75% of small business owners never get this done.  The basic information on a website should be easy to find and easy to find.  We don’t need to worry about SEO, Social Marketing or anything else just yet, this task is job one–yet I see good sized companies not doing this…making it hard to do business, and trying to force feed contact forms on folks.

What works for pure internet business isn’t always appropriate for a good Realtor, Lawyer, Dentist, CPA.  There is a ubiquitous amount of those professions, but first you declare who you are, then you show how you have your cusotmer’s backs.

That’s the next post.

Promote your Blog Posts and…Protect your investment.  We hear that by marketers at Best Buy trying to get us to purchase an extended warranty.  We hear it when we’re buying a leather couch, and we’re given the opportunity to protect our investment with some type of treatment.  Most of the time, it’s a ploy to get you to spend more money.  It’s not really something that’s in your best interest to do.

When we’re blogging, we have to protect the time we spend crafting a post and communicating an idea.  Yes, some things become ideaviruses but most ideas don’t get the cance to gain critical mass.  Most blog posts wither and die on the vine because they didn’t get the discussion going.  My blog is no different: most of what I write is not getting a big audience because I break my own rules.  Here’s what I’m doing to fix it.

Promoting your blog (without being sleazy) is as important as crafting it.   You have to follow Johnson’s 60-40 rule: 60% of your energy either promoting or creating content and 40% of your energy doing the other thing.   Most small business bloggers aren’t yet Seth, Brian, Chris, Darren or even Johnny.   They don’t need to be, and they shouldn’t even attempt it.

They should attempt being the best resource for the local customer base that is around.  They should become a directory of all that’s best in their area, and focus on making things correct.  Curating resources of good  content providers is what we need to do.

Still, when we write a blog post, we have to make sure it matters.  Writing a blog post is step 1 of many.  It’s not the endgame for content creation.  Writing it doesn’t guarantee that people will come.  I am sure that there are many timely, relevant, helpful sites that are totally unheard of because the investment (great content) was never protected.

Some of my best work languishes in obscurity because I paid no attention to post content creation.  That won’t happen anymore.  Each post I do on any property is going to get promoted now and promoted later such that it’s got the ability to have legs. I’ve devised a system–still experimental–that should increase traffic here on Flat Rate.

Step 1:  Create post & Headline. This is the very first thing that we have to do to make sure that what we’re doing matters.  The post content has to have a headline that matters to other people, and it has to be crafted deliberately for that purpose.   Finishing the post, making it relevant is important.  AN irrelevant post is sunk from the beginning.

Step 2:  Use Title Tags & Meta Descriptions: Scribe SEO can help with this as will many a other tools.  Promoting blog posts for the long tail needs some attention spent on the custom title tag and metadescription–so you can call to action what happens in the serps.

Step 3: Make a list of 100 people that are fans/advocates-or people you want. Send to 10 per post and rotate.  THis is a Gdoc/excel problem.  Find a list of 100 people that are in your niche and tangential members of your target audience.  Each post that you do, send to ten.  Make sure that it kind of matters to them, and ask them to re-tweet-, link or facebook it.  Doing this on every post, and curating a list once  will allow you to grow and get more of what you want.  [Note: Make sure we're not going to the well too often, and that we're willing and happy to reciprocate with good posts].

Step 4: Rewrite the headline 5 different ways  & Bit.ly it. You need to write different headlines for your post to see what people react to, and to see what things are done in general.  Write down 5 headlines and use the link shortener.  These will all get tweeted.

Step 5: Tweet & Facebook each headline over the next 2 days. You can even include these headlines when you’re doing step 3: asking people to help.   You want to use a tool like Tweetspinner, Twuffer or Social Oomph to set this once and forget this.  Taking this step has meant that traffic really increases.

Step 6: Google the keywords you are hoping for with “BLOG” appended. The first 3 blog items that come up get a comment with this post as a permalink.  Read the post, make the blog comment relevant, but do this part of it.  This will help you rank for some of those keywords, especially when the blogs are Dofollow.  Even if not Doofollow, the traffic/click-throughswill help you.  Make your comment relevant and feel free to reference or revise your post.

Step 7:  Link out to industry (above-your-level) blogs on and aroudn this topic.  Linking out to other blogs on blogging can get you on the radar of good bloggers, and it can also help you rise because Google knows that if you’re confident enough to link to authoritative sites, your blog is probably pretty OK.

Step 8:  Make an Image, title it with your keywords. More SEO, but this is a helpful way of getting clickthroughs.

Step 9: posterous it. Make an excerpt and a posterous that is wired everywhere.   Have it propagate to Blogger, Livejournal and have it link back to yourself.  I generally excerpt it, send to posterous and forget it.

Step 10: Send to your Aweber list either as part of “blog broadcast” or separately.  This should test–in addition to other things–how much your list is paying attention to you.

All of the above tasks take time, but it protects what you’ve done on your blog.  I’d also make sure that I promoted parallel people on a regular basis. This would make sure that your blog would have a basic list of promotion items.  I’ll test this for 90 days and see what’s working.  I’ll eliminate the lowest 2 performers and add 2-3 more performers.  This will mean that I’m going to be able to have a self healing system.  If you’ve found this post in the search engines, it’ll get better.

One of the concepts that I’ve been in love with is the idea of anti-marketing. That is the little, cringe-inducing details that cause people to abandon your shopping cart, wander off mystified or confused.

Anti-marketing kills conversions, and it’s anything that makes the buyer lose trust in you that is completely under your control. It’s the glaring errors in copy, the cobbler’s unshodden shoes.

And let me admit this: Flat Rate Web Jobs had more than its share of anti marketing.

Our copy was all over the place. In an effort to help the sales team, we added products irresponsibly, undercutting the sales team by diffusing the message of “what you get” when you work with us. There were pages that went nowhere, that are public facing. I was in a hurry to build out, and part of that instinct is right.

But then, I started getting orders and referrals.

I never took down the half done.

The pressure to get stuff out was acute, and weeks went by and I lost focus with my message. It wasn’t clear because I was making money. But I could have been making more and doing better with more clarity. And so it’s time to do exactly that.

We’re now culling our offerings down to 2 products: sites & site boosters. We’e going to have 3 levels of a site and one site booster. That’s it. Nothing else. And yes, a website is what we used to call a “blog”.

You might see that things are a little sparse around here till we get it all done. That’s OK with us. We’ll get it done in about a week, and we’ll be and stay on message.

In the mean time, we’re open for business. Call me up at 877-FLATTIE and I’ll deliver a website that rocks.

Your job is the same as my job.  Your job is to clearly communicate why it’s different over there.  Why your company is the best tax preparer, attorney, realtor, etc. on the planet.  Showing people what it means to be an expert and sharing expertise will help you to earn money.  You have to share how and that gets readers engaged and buying.

Realtors, mortgage people, lawyers and financial planners are to some degree fungible. There are are a lot of them, and there’s a sea of sameness surrounding them and to a potential customer, there’s no difference.

Each time you post to your blog, you’re really asking: why should they use you.  What are you offering that others don’t, won’t or can’t?   What is the experience that people are getting?  Describe it.  Show your internal stuff and be transparent to the customer. Don’t worry about corporate speak and polish.  Phil Hodgen does a good job with this at his international tax law blog. Share what’s wrong with your industry and talk about how things really are.

When the customer sees your process, they know what they are getting.  That takes fear away, and with fear, risk.  When they understand what it is that you offer, how you offer it and how you’re different, they will be more likely to convert to subscribers to your email news, they will be more likely to become customers, and they will be more likely to become your clients.

There’s a caveat: you can’t be mediocre.  Hint: if you yourself don’t have a really clear answer to “how you’re different,”  you need to go back to the drawing board and make one.  IF you yourself can’t tell a stranger why you’re different and better than the competition, then you’re not.  Step one is to become different, express it carefully, and  work from there.

We’ll be talking more about this as we define and express what makes us different at Flat Rate.

In the mean time, happy blogging.

I don’t know how long I’m going to do this this way but, I’m doing it this way for now.  I’m focusing on my website product, and being the best there is at it.  Like I said in the last post, we have to stick to what we are good at.  80% of our revenue is from the site product, only 10% of the problems.  We’re delivering websites with blogs built in and getting responses like this from Wendy McSteen:

Chris my site is so fabulous!!!!!  I just sent a reply to support, but wanted to make sure you know I saw it.  I opened it and I was SPEECHLESS–which never happens:)  Thank you all for all of your hard work.  I only hope my content is as good as it looks!!!!!

So we’re canceling all the rest of our products.  No lie.  We’re canning everything but WordPress powered websites.  And we’re going to get really, really good at WP powered websites.

No more “one off consults.”

No more “custom work/favor” sites.

No more “broadcast tower,” autoresponder writing, or anything else.  Just custom WP Thesis sites.

We’re sticking to website delivery, and we’re just getting warmed up.  We’re going to be the best in the world at delivering WordPress websites.  We start with the best software, the best theme and the best business practices.

Our basic package comes as follows:

All Flat Rate Sites ($629 & $15/month) include:

• Full featured website + blog that you can update as easy as email.
• Unlimited POSTS & Pages!
• Delivery in 3-5 calendar days (from your design submission)
• YOUR look YOUR way to YOUR specifications
• FTP Access
• Photoshop files (so you have control)
• Hosting on our speedy servers
• Copyright release (don’t get jerked around)
• Powered by WordPress the secure, opensource content system
• Powered by Thesis, the web’s #1 SEO & speed framework.
• EXCLUSIVE: get custom page templates out of the box.
• Weekly Training: LIVE training & coaching available every Monday & Friday
• Training sessions on Tuesday –Wednesday- Thursday
• 15 Video lessons to learn what your site can do
  • SEO lessons
  • Content Lessons
  • Uploading Videos
  • Linking Lessons
  • Support?  1 year’s worth of email support our customers say is “Simply Great”.

All this for $629& $15/monthly hosting, support and ongoing training.