Archive for July, 2007

Hold Your Horses…Back Soon!

…you impatient lot!!!!
I haven’t blogged for what, a day???!?…because yesterday we were traveling from Grenada via San Juan to NYC and then fly to the UK tonight, so my routine has been a little disrupted, as has internet access.
Still, it’s nice to know you all miss me when I don’t blog :-)

…you impatient lot!!!!

I haven’t blogged for what, a day???!?…because yesterday we were traveling from Grenada via San Juan to NYC and then fly to the UK tonight, so my routine has been a little disrupted, as has internet access.

Still, it’s nice to know you all miss me when I don’t blog :-)

Is technology the key to your business success?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

There is an interesting discussion going on, over on one of the blogs I read. Lena West has been mulling over the relationship between women business owners & technology – and why many women don’t seem to leverage the tools of technology as much as their male counterparts.
I would take this [...]

There is an interesting discussion going on, over on one of the blogs I read. Lena West has been mulling over the relationship between women business owners & technology – and why many women don’t seem to leverage the tools of technology as much as their male counterparts.

I would take this one step further and speculate that it’s not necessarily just a gender thing – but an industry thing. Take the industry that many of my clients work in – the health & wellness industry. From my experience, technology is simply not a vital part of their small business strategy.

In wondering why it isn’t, I’ve come up with the following reasons (which are very similar to Lena’s – great minds and all that!):

• Small business owners don’t fully understand how closely their use of technology is/can be related to their business success.
• They may not know where to turn for help when it comes to leveraging technology and are either afraid of being or have already been burned by their attempts.
• Related to their concern for being burned is the belief that technology is something you ‘do’ to your business – and it’s very often not integrated into the business very well (if at all) meaning that it is often set up to fail in the first place.

Take the poll above and tell me how wrong I am!

In my old role as a management consultant, one of the things I remember very clearly were the ‘People, Process, Technology” relationships. They were deemed as 3 of the most crucial elements of a successful, ‘high performing’ business. A company’s ability to integrate all three was part of what determined their level of success.

It is the same for small businesses. Those who understand these relationships are at a critical advantage over their colleagues who don’t.

I’ve been harping on about processes for a while now – but now I think it’s the turn of technology…

Earning Money from Blogging

…I don’t (well, perhaps a $100 per month) – which is unfortunate given that I spend quite a bit of my time doing it!
Yes, I do it for the love of it and because I love the fact that I can blog about something a little obscure (e.g. most businesses in Grenada) one day and [...]

…I don’t (well, perhaps a $100 per month) – which is unfortunate given that I spend quite a bit of my time doing it!

Yes, I do it for the love of it and because I love the fact that I can blog about something a little obscure (e.g. most businesses in Grenada) one day and the next day it’s at the top of google – great example of this is ‘Boots Cuisine‘. Give it a couple of days, then search for it on google and I am pretty sure this post will be on page 1!

I’ve been reading a bit more recently, about monetising blogs and how you can make some fairly good money by blogging – although I know a lot of it is hype and it’s only a few of the top dogs who can make a decent living. That’s one reason why I’ve avoided making too much effort to monetize my blogs so far.

However, yesterday I thought I’d have a go, seduced by the thought of making lots of money from my blogging efforts. So there I was faffing around, sorting out little ads, placing them here, there & everywhere – only to stop, realise that it would probably put lots of you off and that’s not the reason I started blogging anyway!!

Talk about a waste of an afternoon.

I’ve totally chickened out therefore and settled for the odd little ad bar down the side which I think is enough not to put anyone off and might make me 5p here & there. If you’d seen what I was going to go for, I doubt you’d ever come back to this blog again!