Time2Market Business Development Coaching & Consulting

Brava, Giusi Mastro!

Congratulations to one small business owner I've had the privilege of knowing and working with in NYC.  First book compiled and available for sale here.  Great designs.  You'll be amazed at her collection of works.  Brava, Mastro!

Where is your customer?

With more companies and individuals embracing social media, it's useful for you to understand today's networks and their demographics.  Study: Ages of Social Network Users  provides an interesting snapshot of social network user demographics in the US.

Resilience - it's ordinary, not extraordinary

Resilience: recovering from or adjusting easily to change or misfortune. You may think it's something you're either lucky to have or unlucky to lack, but that's not so. Resilience is an ordinary ability, and you can take focused action to build it in your life. Don't wait. Start today.

The first step to building resilience is accepting change. With Spring being a time we welcome change, this first step should be easy. Beyond acceptance, focus on your adaptability, strategic planning, results-oriented actions, and persistence-- so you can build resilience and achieve goals. While the economic forecast is looking rough in many parts of the world and here in New York the Department of Labor warns that 2008 was the good year, 2009 can still be fine.

To work toward keeping 2009 just fine, concentrate on building your resilience a little bit at a time and successfully seizing new opportunities. A few tips to do this include:

1. Avoid viewing crises as insurmountable.

2. Establish and grow your professional support network, making contact to ask for and accept help, and to help others.

3. Nurture a positive outlook, discover what restores you mentally, and take care of yourself physically.

4. Do not stop looking for new opportunities.

5. Take decisive action to work toward goals, proactively working a plan.

Resilience is an ordinary ability that everyone has, it is not extraordinary. But you must build and foster this ordinary ability to have it ready in challenging times to drive favorable business and professional results.

Work the list on your own, or foster your resilience working with a Time2Market coach or consultant to move forward faster. We're helping professionals daily. Contact us here if we can help you or your organization be resilient too.

Marketing Innovation for Today's Publishing World

January has been an exciting month, with Gabriella Goddard, a UK-based Executive Coach who is part of the Time2Market team of experts, launching Gulp! in the US and visiting New York. I'm receiving my signed copy this week! I've known Gabriella for about ten years now and loved the UK version, which was fun and inspiring. I also learned some very funny expressions that stick with me today. One of those was "nut it on the head", which I'll write about later. But for now, if you need to nut your book marketing on the head (if I can actually use the expression that way), here are a few tools to help make your mark:

• Blogs
• Book trailer videos
• Podcasts
• Interactive facebook

Gulp! is a great example of marketing innovation in the publishing world, with these on-line tools in action. Check out www.gulptoday.com, and give up living passively. Your marketing campaign can take on a whole new look, integrating these digital tools.

10 Business Building Strategies - Grow

Looking to build your business in the New Year? Here are 10 strategies to grow your business in the next 12 months:

1. Expand the number of locations
2. Franchise
3. License your products
4. Form an alliance or partnership
5. Diversify your offering
6. Target new business markets (i.e., consumer, business, government, etc.)
7. Target new customer segments
8. Buy a new business or merge
9. Expand your business footprint internationally
10. Build your online presence

Time2Market’s business development coaching and consulting services focus on these very things, but this list is from Karen Spaeder, who wrote 10 Ways to Grow Your Biz for Entrepreneur.com. My terminology here is slightly different, but it's a great list and article to share.  Contact us to help.

Start up and Small Business Tips - Lessons Learned

9 small business owners share what they would have done differently starting their businesses today and the following tips result:

• create a marketing plan to promote e-commerce and build your customer base faster
• focus time and money on search engine optimization, especially if you are in a competitive market that is closely tied to on-line shopping and/or information gathering
• emphasize employee commissions as incentives to drive more business
• seize multicultural product offering and/or marketing opportunities
• consult your board of directors to sound out ideas for growth
• have a marketing and PR budget
• create a local, scalable, sales development program/model
• have a partner to work with
• get help/staff to support the business and pick up some of the work

Check out the article from Entrepreneur.com, which highlights e-commerce, real estate, health-care management, restaurant, hair care, catering, video game, and apparel retail businesses.  And, contact us, if you need to move forward fast with tips above for business growth.

Build your Business - Sign up Now for August 14th Women's Leadership Exchange Event

If you've got a business to build and products or services to move to market, don't miss this one day event to work on doing it fast! Please join us and e-mail me if you would like to meet there in person.

In one day, the Women's Leadership Exchange Conference offers women business owners:

• Acclaimed facilitated networking sessions which allow you to connect with successful business owners, professionals and top executives that will have an impact on your business going forward.
• QVC Quick Product Review (!!!)
• Workshops from top experts
• Speed coaching 

I am pleased to again invite you to this unique one-day conference for women in business and offer you a special rate! Women's Leadership Exchange is committed to supporting the growth of women-led businesses in all sectors through the sharing of knowledge, resources and contacts.  Their conference is an investment with an invaluable return.  You have to see it to believe it!!

For details, see below or visit www.womensleadershipexchange.com. Please register for the conference at www.womensleadershipexchange.com and use my Source Code: AMBASS07 for $25 off.  Also, note if you are a member of a listed Supporting Organization, you receive an additional $25.00 off!

See you at the 5th ANNUAL SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CONFERENCE!
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007
from 7:30am–7:30pm

Long Beach Convention Center
300 East Ocean Boulevard
Long Beach, CA

Looking for networking books?

Effective networking continues to come up as a question area among business managers and entrepreneurs that I meet.  Here are a few networking book recommendations. These are used by top companies' sales teams, as well as entrepreneurial CEO's...

T2M20 Customer Feedback

“Working with Time2Market has been an amazing experience and a huge advantage to my business.  We have gone from “start up” to having three audio books with international distribution in the space of under four months. Not only is Megan’s knowledge of business strategy and planning extensive, she brings that unique quality of blending blue sky thinking with nuts and bolts numbers.  Plus her persistence about taking focused action means that my ideas actually get off the ground – and the results speak for the speed at which that can happen!"

Gabriella Goddard, Founder of Good Karma Media

I like Juice too...Juice Wireless and JuiceCaster that is

Qualcomm's not the only one. See Red Herring.  Great news yesterday for Juice Wireless, with the announcement of great funding partners. I like everything I've learned about Juice so far. JuiceCaster is quite interesting and the company has moved forward fast!  I'm adding Juice Wireless as my first "Showcase-able Start up", with high-energy, experienced and focused entrepreneurs leading the way.  Wishing the company and team lots of luck and will continue to watch.