Tag: Business Strategy

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New Podcast for Business People with ADHD

Last year, I started writing a little bit on my personal blog about the fact that I have ADHD.

This was quite a startling revelation for reasons that I won’t get into now. But the “shiny object syndrome” which is clearly shared by many of the:

  • entrepreneurs
  • business owners
  • freelancers (designers, software engineers, web developers, marketers, musicians, etc.)

… that I’ve known is clearly related.

Do All Entrepreneurs Have ADHD?

Clearly that would be a bogus claim to make. But the idea that entrepreneurship is correlated with ADHD is grounded in science. One study from 2018 said:

This grounds prior research on ADHD and entrepreneurship, indicating that individuals with ADHD are indeed more likely to not just espouse entrepreneurial intentions, but also to initiate business venturing.

Lerner, D.A., Verheul, I. & Thurik, R.

Resources for Entrepreneurs with ADHD

An overwhelming majority of the information online about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (“ADHD”), formerly known as Attention Deficit Disorder (“ADD”) is focused on children, schoolwork, and parenting.

For someone like me that was diagnosed as an adult, it’s been difficult to find credible, reliable information that I can use as a business owner to help me manage the downsides of ADHD and maximize the many upsides of this powerful trait.

After working with Dana Rayburn, who is a very successful (and helpful!) coach for professionals and business leaders who have ADHD, I experienced such incredible benefits, that one day I suggested on a whim that we start a podcast.

Thankfully, Dana was a fan of the idea!

And so, Kick Some ADHD was born!

We launched a couple of weeks ago, and we’re releasing a new episode every Monday morning. In fact, today’s episode was part 2 of a two-parter on the unique ways that we procrastinate (everyone does it, but people with ADHD have refined it to new levels!) and what we can do about it.

You can find the podcast by searching Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and most every other place you get your podcasts. Or just visit the website for links.

I hope you enjoy the show!

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The Machine That Goes “Bing!”

And now for something completely different: In a bizarre move, Microsoft does something brilliant.

At first I thought,

“Well… they grabbed a 4-letter domain name that’s easy to remember… they couldn’t possibly have intended to connect it to the Monty Python sketch…”

That was when I first started seeing the bing.com commercials about the tangential search results. The commercials are humorous, although for me they purport to solve a problem I don’t have.

But now… they started using the funny little high-pitched male voice saying, “Bing!”

And really… what Python fan in the world could forget this moment from The Meaning of Life?

Until Apple managed to emerge from the 1990s somehow still in business, I had always thought of Microsoft as a corporation that was brilliant in its marketing. In retrospect, my admiration was actually aimed at what I would now classify as business strategy. Apple is without question a brilliant marketing machine, and to say they’ve successfully trumped Microsoft in that department is like saying that Alexander the Great had some military victories.

But I must admit… the “Bing!” thing is a brilliant marketing move on many levels.

Whether the “new” search engine actually offers any unique value remains to be seen.

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Ready for a Strong 2009… Regardless of the Economy?

I recently learned that I’d made a bit of a faux pas. I used the word “recession” in an article I was asked to write for the newsletter that Zig Ziglar sends out every week.

It was an honest mistake. I wasn’t aware of his personal — and consequently, their corporate — policy to simply not use that word. It really got me thinking. After all, Zig has been responsible for mentoring and coaching thousands (tens of thousands? more?) of successful people to the top of their game.

So… from here on out, I’m dropping the word. It might seem like a silly or symbolic move, but I had already decided months ago that we — that is me (David Johnson) and my company (Epiphany Marketing) — weren’t participating in it.

So… we officially renamed the event that I’m privileged to be a part of next week with my good friend, Tom Ziglar. It’s new title is:

How to Attract Customers at Low Cost in this Tough Economy

Ziglar Webinar: How to Attract Customers at Low Cost in this Tough Economy
Ziglar Webinar: How to Attract Customers at Low Cost in this Tough Economy

And perhaps a better title would be, “in any economy.” The fact of the matter is that we’ve systemized some processes that any business can use — after all, it’s the very process we’ve used an honed for years in our consulting work — to bring in a steady stream of new prospects, clients and customers.

Sound good? You can do it.

In fact, the Ziglar organization has been kind enough to permit me to invite you to next week’s event.

Go watch the video clip of Zig Ziglar, Tom Ziglar and yours truly, then register. But do it quickly — the space won’t last long!

I’ll see you there next week!

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Congratulations to Sarasota-based Copytalk

Copytalk, LLC, the developers of a dictation service for mobile professionals, received the 2007 Industry of the Year Award from the Economic Development Council of the Manatee Chamber of Commerce. The company is another shining example of the high level of innovation that exists within the Sarasota area.

I’ve actually had the opportunity to work with the company’s dictation service after recommending it to several clients in the past. It’s a great service for sales professionals, financial consultants, or anyone else who conducts meetings — whether face-to-face, by phone, or virtually — and needs to maintain notes or remember to take action based upon the results of those meetings.

How Copytalk Works

It’s really quite simple: you walk out of a meeting, and you dial a number. You talk. It listens. A short time later, an e-mail arrives in your inbox — or the inbox of the person(s) you specify — and your notes are typed and ready to be pasted into your CRM, personal information manager, customer/prospect database, or even printed and filed (does anyone still do that?). I’m not sure about what all the technology is behind the curtain, but I think Copytalk has some elves that listen to your message and do all the typing.

If you’ve never invested in dictation services before, the monthly fee can seem a little high. However, when you consider the lost opportunity cost of missing an important detail in a meeting — you know… the sort of detail that you remember 5 minutes after the meeting, but can’t begin to conjure up just one hour (or one meeting) later — it can easily pay for itself the first day of the month. My clients who have used the service have experienced significant improvements in productivity, effectiveness, and the overall quality of the service they in turn provide to their own customers and prospects.

The company was founded in 2000 and, by all appearances, has been experiencing steady growth ever since.

“The selection of a business to be honored as Industry of the Year is a difficult process,” said Nancy Engel, Executive Director of the EDC. “Our judges were looking for a balance of sustained company growth, adding new professional jobs for our workforce, contributions to the community, and likelihood for continued growth and expansion. Copytalk stood out as far exceeding our expectations in each of those areas. We are very fortunate to have Copytalk in our community and look forward to their continued success.”

Congratulations, Copytalk, on this well-deserved recognition!

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Update: Selling Armor on eBay

We told you previously about the armor we listed on eBay. This isn’t necessarily all that unique — people sell interesting things on eBay every day. What was unique was using a proven platform such as a blog in order to promote the listing.

How’d we do?

Well, we’re happy to report that the auction ended last night. We’ve already been in communication with the buyer (a “mate” from the land down under — howdy, Dan, if you’re reading this!). He seems like a great guy. We’ll be shipping his new purchase out to him tomorrow.

More interestingly, however, are the results we managed to achieve on our search keywords. We got into the top 10 (read: 1st page) of results for these words: antique armor cuirass. Here’s some photographic proof for those of you from Missouri:

Google Search Results July 8, 2007

The lesson? If you’re trying to get noticed, you can’t beat a nicely-placed business blog. From an internet marketing standpoint, this is nearly magical. If you have a business and you aren’t blogging, you’re missing out on a phenomenal opportunity to communicate with your existing and future customers.

For those of you wondering about our traffic, I don’t have any other armor auctions to compare things to, so I can’t speak intelligently to that. But on the blog site itself here, we had a significant spike in traffic looking for armor. Ironically, much of it seems to have come from Digg!

Get busy blogging!

And, by the way, we happen to specialize in getting you off to the right start. Contact us today! 😉

If you can’t wait, here’s a great article we just found from the folks that put together the snazzy new design for Michelle Malkin’s blog.

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Are You Getting Noticed?

Why do small businesses build websites, anyway?

I’ve come to believe that most of them (the businesses) are suffering from dysfunctional strategy.  Perhaps hypo-strategy is a better way to look at it — a sort of neglect where it comes to developing any overall business philosophy or vision.

Why would I say this?

Most small business websites do just about everything except what they should be doing.

Continue reading “Are You Getting Noticed?”