Or how to write your ebook or other digital download-y thing.
“The ebook wrote itself,” I said skyping with a client last Thursday afternoon. She had set out to write her free pdf thingy but found that under the pressure to perform, it wasn’t coming. Shifting directions like a nimble entrepreneur does, she decided to go back to basics. Start with her blog. And just write a few posts.
“How about a list of posts that help explain your three main core values… for yourself or your business?” I continued.
“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” asked Piglet, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?!” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said.
Back to my roots. Back to me.
It’s been over 17-years since my cousin, Layla, said, “Here… you’ll love this!” and handed me Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh.
I was in Oregon. On sabbatical. During the long ending to my first marriage that lasted eight years.
Stories are the recipe, life is the medicine.
I’ve been working with a new client. The label ‘client’ doesn’t quite fit but that’s beside the point/another post.
I am helping her face some challenging or difficult stuff in her biz. And I sometimes also help people do that in their lives.
Anyway. We were talking. We had just navigated through a pretty considerable bump called misunderstanding.
And there are all kinds of misunderstandings. Some can make you laugh or smile. But, depending on how big it is, a misunderstanding can be quite painful and hugely destructive. And that was the kind we had just faced together. The kind that completely derails a project, sometimes to leave only a smoldering tree stump.
Tech Savvy 101 is a series of posts designed to help demystify some terminology so you can get your brain around what it really takes to start getting your tech savvy on.
Yesterday, I talked about the importance of defining core values early on in the web creation process because it provides an anchor, to help you remember, when things get freaky-deeky. Knowing your own values gives you a rope to hold onto to guide you back to a simpler time… when you were clear about what makes you blissfully happy and why the heck you are doing this in the first place.
This being creating that blog or web site for your business.
Why begin with core values and not the technology stuff?
Well it’s like this. As you’ve probably heard, content really is king, of all of it. And so very shortly after you start to receive the technology know-how pieces of creating a web presence, you’ll be up against a different kind of question. A few of them in fact. And most of them will stem from:
What do I say (write) here (on this webpage)?
Simple enough question. Not so much with the answer. This is… an inside job.
Continuing from my last post, I’ve been talking about the three critical ingredients that are needed to create a web page, web site or web presence. No matter where you are on the map… small business owner just starting out or big business generating hundreds of clicks per day, each part is essential and needs to be addressed or there can be no web *anything.*
Ingredient #3: Creating Content
In all my years of creating e-commerce web sites for big corporatey places, the number one overlooked issue and where time was consistently underestimated was developing content.
I have this amazing story to tell you. Get some tea, whatever comfort creatures you delight in and I’ll tell you all about TECHNOLOGY BABY!
Ready?
A Business Root Sprouts
End of Summer 2007 during a type of mastermind-ey call, I ask Wendy if she’d be interested in hearing a proposal I had to teach coaches how to build their own websites. I was looking around my world and asking myself questions like, “where can I transfer some of my ‘feel’ good activities into helping others and generating income. I had a ton, and I mean a ton of technology skills and talent to transfer into my small business services and needed cash, income, dinero! This was a huge opening and shift in how I had been looking at being self-employed while dancing my special dance. Alternate streams of income, right?
