Seems a day doesn’t go by when I hear some say, “where in the hell did you find that?”. And so for fun, a few years ago I sent out an email to close friends and subcontractors called “Gordo’s Website of the Day”. If it was a really cool site that was in my top 10 sites, it was deemed Site of the Week Material.

So I went back and started looking at websites I had favorited, or copy to a toolbar or “liked” in Stumbleupon. And I started rating them and looking at how these sites might:

• teach me how to make money ( legitimately)
• help me teach others how to improve their financial situation
• learn some cool new process for marketing products and services.
• show me a new, undiscovered software program that could really help my business.
• offer free tools and downloads like case studies that showed me how other companies where successful.
• Show me ways to use my Mobile phone in unusual ways that help me.

So I have developed a list of over 4000 resources and sites that can help pretty much anybody.

My goal now is to create a mailing list and send out a email once or twice a week with a cool site and then my take on why its cool and how someone might use the info to learn something new or profit. With about 400 FB friends, loads of blog subscribers, I would be curious to see what sort of interest there is.

My offer to you: Does this sort of thing appeal? Would it work for you?

Gordon

The old adage “hire for attitude, train for skill” is so true. You can’t build a great company without great people. The problem: How do you know the great people when you see them?

So for this reason, I want someone who;

• Has a really positive attitude
• Gets up in the morning and is EXCITED about going to work.
• Doesn’t mind putting in extra hours to complete a project
• Willing/Able to work alone or in a team. So, if motivating yourself to complete a project is a problem, see ya!
• Can be really creative and isn’t afraid to develop and share ideas or be embarrassed.
• Has an attitude that anything is really possible and doesn’t immediately assume that “it can’t be done”.
• Is focused on customer service and then exceeding that.
• Understands the concept of providing value and not creating products and marketing them for cheap.
• Someone who values their time and see’s what they provide as above average and worth more than the standard fare.

At Eldoren, we communicate in unique ways. Consider the following:

• We don’t call long distance anymore, we SKYPE clients and subcontractors. We can add in video and see the people we work with. At no cost. When working with staff, they can work remotely and don’t have to be in our office. Good for the environment and productivity.
• Communication can range from a small 3G/4G Smartphone to an laptop or IPAD. As technology advances, we find we can run the business much more efficiently with lower costs. And that equals higher profits and ROI. We don’t require workers with desktops…they can work for us using laptops and IPADS with remote Bluetooth enabled keyboards.
• No restrictions on where Eldoren staff or subcontractors work. We don’t work in formal offices/cubicles or boardrooms. We can hold meetings in coffee shops, on couches or dining room tables.
• Rather than purchase software or licenses to software, we utilize two primary techniques:

1. We use online software ( known as Software As A Service) and Application Service Providers ( ASP’s). Lower costs, instant updates and services.
2. We utilize OPEN SOURCE software ( free) and this allows us to save thousands in costs.

What is Eldoren Design working on?

• We are designing and developing new web and internet projects daily. Some vary from web site design to marketing services, graphic designs and creating new business online.
• We manage and look after Social Media for many clients (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and many more.
• We work with clients all over the Canada and the US. We visit with some but the majority we work with online using SKYPE, Conferencing software, email etc.
• We do ALOT of brainstorming and creative work with clients. It really ranges from simple idea generation to completing business plans and launching businesses.
• We are involved in affiliate marketing and help clients get setup.
• We design cool images, trade show booths, flyers, videos, screencasts, podcasts.
• Research, research! A lot of the work we do with assistants is have them find us stuff on the Internet. Are you a Google user? Can you find stuff or search Facebook / Twitter?

What can a person make at Eldoren?

• A great deal of work is project work. We bid a fee on the overall project and then pay subcontractors.
• It’s not minimum wage. If we bill out a project or an assistant at $45 hr, we start paying them around $15-$20 and then pay bonuses based on quality of work and most of all, meeting deadlines. We aren’t cheap. And if they work with us, LOTS of other cool things we can offer.

What kind of hours?

It really varies but based on projects. We usually start people around 20 hrs a week. And it’s not a 9 till 5…it might be a few hours a day or 11 hrs. It might include work and meetings over coffee. Or work after hours (ex; evenings, work can be completed at home). Have an appointment with your doctor? No problem. Need time off, that’s up to you. As long as work gets completed, that’s perfect. The quicker you work and maintain quality, the more you make.
Interested? Email me at gcurrie@eldoren.com

1) Years ago, our cat had kittens. We tried to give them away to a good home. NO ONE was interested. So at on the advice of a few people, we listed them for $10 each. They sold out immediately. Hmmmm…

2) About 2 years ago, my company offered micro-services at a small cost. Instead of paying me our billable rate of $75 hour, I offered to provide advice or small project work for $5, $10, $20. A small price to pay. No one was even remotely interested. So then I said, hey, buy me a book from Amazon and i will trade you for services. No one interested.

3) A couple days ago, I post to about 400 Facebook fans, that I would provide for the next few days some free advice or answers to their questions about small business, marketing etc. One response from a friend who knows me well. But of the 400+ people on facebook….no takers.

So I then analyzed the situation – how many where in a small business? about half. How many had expressed interest in home based business or getting a parttime business? About 280.

So I know I am doing something wrong here. I need tor revisit and reread my books on marketing.

I know that if Mark Z from Facebook offered to give me advice on Social Networking… I might take him up. Bill gates offers to teach me networking….I might say yes. Or maybe Michael Dell. Now please understand, I don’t come close to their stature. But i have worked with some pretty good size companies in the past (Mattel, Pacific Bell, Virgin Records, The folks at the Loympic Committee. But hey…maybe I need to chill. Today I learned a valuable lesson. :+))

 A Sarcastic Web Developer / Marketer….

The following blog post is a brief excerpt from my upcoming book “Creative Innovation” due out in the early fall of 2011. This book will be published in a variety of versions including Amazon Kindle, Epub, PDF and soft cover. The focus on the book? Outlining 20+ years of marketing experience and innovative approaches to small business. All 100% based on real case studies and client examples. Hope you enjoy! For a table of contents listing, check out http://www.eldoren.com/creativeinnovationtoc.html

Get  Lazy With Automation: Inside secrets to increasing your production and profitability by 300-500%.

Over the past few years, my favorite two words when it came to small business was “leverage” and “automation”. The whole idea of spending a dollar and leveraging that into $20-$50 dollars was exciting. With the concept of “automation” in my business, I was able to make this leverage actually happen and return many times my return on my investment of dollars or time.

My goal in this chapter is to show you methods that worked for me.

The whole concept of automation hit me hard 15 years ago when I learned we were only blessed with 24 hrs in a day. Call me crazy but it took that long in my life to see I had limitations.  I lived the entrepreneurial dream like many that I could build my small business and do everything myself. I would make money “while I slept”. The reality was quite a bit different. But  let’s start with what automation is.

I started my computer businesses as coder, designer, marketing manager, CEO, customer services, accounts payable clerk and about another 19 positions. I needed a way to focus on making more money, lowering my stress and trying to focus 100% on what I was super good at.  I read a lot of books, took courses, and begged for advice from my Dad (an accomplished time management expert).

The secret for me lay in a few areas. Computers and technology was the first step. I made a point of looking at how I could program specific tasks that could run while I was working on other projects. So early on I priced out computers and purchased a couple of extra. My wife thought I was crazy. Back then, that was a $2000+ investment per computer. But I had learned how to leverage these and make them pay big dividends. In fact for every $1000 I spent, I could recover those costs in less than 1-2 months. This topic alone, about investment in technology will be covered in another post!

At the same time, I was getting hundreds of emails on a daily basis. A good 75% were emails I had to review and answer. Clients and prospective clients needed quotes, information on my logo design services, interest in my articles on going online and many other topics. It could easily take me 6-8 hrs just to answer emails. So in the interest of automation, I started creating auto-responders in my email program. In fact, my hosting package (the same I use for all my current clients) included free auto-responders! It was SIMPLE. I would simply create an email address (ex; coolstuff@eldoren.com) and then program it to send out information to my new and existing clients. At the same time I would receive and email advising me that someone (the name and email was sent to me) had requested information on “cool stuff” from my company.

At this point, I realized that simply automating my email handling and processing daily, saved me valuable time. The biggest benefit for the email automation tools was that it appeared to many that I was IMMEDIATELY responding to their needs. Once they had read what I had to offer, I would provide them with contact information to follow up with me.  I was also able to cross sell them and educate them on my many other services.

The other big advantage to using the auto-responders was the fact it pre-qualified many new clients. For example if I provided them information on my logo design packages or webhosting options, they were given rough estimates of costs. If I was way out of the ball park, I didn’t hear back from them. As horrible as that sounds, sometimes focusing on the folks that value what I do and what I charge was more important. I simply couldn’t satisfy everyone.

Having automated my email as well as automating my office operation using multiple computers, I could start to see myself saving time. And especially once I cranked up the computers.

Over the years, family and friends wondered aloud, “How is having 3 computers running save you money?” I explained, it was really quite simple. I listed all my daily activities that I did on my computer and looked for solutions that might save me time.  

Here is an example of just a few items I automated that helped me out:

• I run daily, weekly, monthly reports for clients using Google Web Analytics. These reports provide me and my clients regular information on their websites and also provide me with trending information on activity on their website. These trends help me identify certain pages that generate sales or inquiries for clients. This was particularly critical for E-Commerce web sites. By automating this process, I had reports for clients scripted to run at specific times without slowing my main computer down.
• Updating websites with new information and content can be very slow at times due to large files sizes and specialized content ( movies, flash presentations, hosted video etc). Again, while working on email and consulting work, I automated all my uploading tasks so that one computer was solely dedicated to ensuring my clients sites were current. In fact, many nights these changes occurred while I slept.
• Gathering news and following online information, blogs, announcements, news articles and more can be very time consuming. For me it was 100 times easier if I could find and use tools that went out while I slept or worked on other projects and gather all this information for me and then assemble into single page reviews that I could look at.  I was now able to review the equivalent of 100-150 newspapers a day in less than 15-20 mins using FREE tools found online. I only read what was applicable to me or my clients. This saved me hundreds of hours in a year. And insured that I was always in the know on how my clients were being reported on, online.In the past 2 years, I have increased my INFORMATION INTAKE by about 50 times as I monitor e-zines, newsletters, hundreds of blogs and new alerts. The big advantage is my productivity increased significantly.

  A good example is I can monitor all newspapers, magazines, blogs, facebook, twitter for mention of my clients names, trademarks, discussions etc around the globe. What is that worth to a client? What is that worth to me!

• Most days I found I put in a solid 10-12 hrs a day and managed to stay on top of a lot of my work. But I worked in one time zone and 12 hours a day represented only 50% of a full 24 hrs a day. Knowing there are physical limits to how many hours one could work in an average workday, I looked at ways to automate certain programming work. Using a combination of leverage and outsourcing, I found ways to get work produced and automatically uploaded 24 hrs a day. I picked two time zones ( one 7 hrs ahead of me and one 7 hours before I started work) and located individuals who could produce subcontracted work and then submit to me automatically online. ( Note: in the full book I explain how I also increased the profit level as well as ROI on the project work)

The above are just a few techniques that I developed and started to use. It’s important to remember  some key points:

1. Automation and streamlining your business processes and tasks can save you TIME, MONEY and PEACE OF MIND.  By creating methods like those above, you can easily squeeze 30-40 hrs of work into a typical 8 hour day.
   
2. Automation can apply to pretty much ANY business. Obviously I am in the web developing / computer consulting business. But it’s fair to say, we all deal with time constraints, way more email than we can handle and loads of mundane tasks that make us little money.

In my new book, CREATIVE INNOVATION, I provide many more real life examples on how to automate your business. I include the actual tools that I use (with links to them online), actual working examples and what you can expect to save in terms of time and money. This one chapter on Automation will easily pay for the cost of the book coming out (priced around $12.95 to $19.95 depending on the format of the book.

Have a great prosperous day!

Gordon

Many of the objections I hear vary but here are some examples followed by my response:

I don’t have time to update the web site – I hear this a lot and thankfully there are loads of solutions. The first one that comes to mind of course is hiring a web developer to help you update. Even a short update every 2 weeks shouldn’t take more than 15-30 minutes including adding photos. If you want to keep costs to a bare minimum, consider a website that you can edit yourself and add articles. Known as content management systems or CMS’s, they allow you to login and create articles that can be published simply by clicking on a button. Remember, even a small update is better than no update. Regular updates and addition of content can generate 200-300% returns of your investment!

I am nervous about selling online…is it safe? - This is a question I get daily as well. But before I delve into the security and privacy of a website, I like to make it clear to potential clients that you really don’t have to sell products online. Many of my clients simply go online to provide better customer service. Or to provide maps on how to get to their business and to announce new products that have arrived in their store. This past week I assisted a business go online to announce their Facebook and Twitter pages. We also added the hours of operation and how to book an appointment. All without selling a thing!

I don’t want my phone to ring off the wall! – This is a common comment and as odd as it sounds, many small businesses are nervous about the getting too busy. Can this happen? Yes. But in most cases, its normally not that crazy. And besides, if those calls are generating more sales, then the store owner and decide how much he wants to sell or simply bring on a answering service. They can then prequalify the calls for orders only. Or support only. Few businesses are worried about getting too busy. But if you anticipate this happening, simply spend some time scaling up your operation or hire some part-time staff to help you with the online sales or extra calls.

I don’t want people to quit coming to the store – Again, it’s highly unlikely that customers would abandon your storefront. That said, if they want to order over the phone or know want products they want, that not a bad problem to have. In many cases, my clients use their websites to draw traffic to the store, where the client can look and feel the product, ask you questions face to face. The store owner can then sell face to face or even upsell a better product. Rarely do you see a huge drop in foot traffic unless you are selling to people outside your area or region.

I really don’t want to spend a lot! - Fair enough, you only spend what you are comfortable spending. But consider in many cases, acquiring a customer online is much cheaper than using traditional forms of advertising. And the old adage “You Get What You Pay For” is still very true. But look at it from a different perspective: You decide you want to earn an extra $50,000 a year in business. What is that worth? Many Canadians are not willing to risk more than $1000-$2000 to earn that much. That’s a small price to pay. Running newspaper ads, Television commercials, print magazine ads can easily cost $20,000 – $30,000. The key is to manage your expectations. If you want to make an extra $1000, then maybe your $500 website will work. But there will be limitations. If you are serious about growing your business online and making some serious income (many of my clients do this daily) then consider developing a plan (slowly) to roll out a multi-stage approach. If we can show you how to make $50,000 a year cheaper than through traditional advertising, it might be something worth following up on!

In my next post (Taking Your Business Online: Is it really that hard? Part 2), I will address some more examples and how we can provide you with solid reasons to make this month, the month you move online. I guarantee you, you and your business will not regret it!
Cheers,
Gordon Currie

Gordon Currie is president of Eldoren Consulting Inc, a web development company specializing in online marketing, web design, graphic design and Search Engine Optimization. Gordon is also a recognized futurist, trend watcher and active online 24/7. You can visit Gordon’s site at www.eldoren.com or monitor him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/eldorenconsulting. Watch for him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/eldoren

For me it started with the computer and the ability to write with word processors. And then spreadsheet programs. A few years later we get access to the World Wide Web, online marketing, Social Networking, blogs, Twitter and on and on. Now the big buzzword and change in how we manage our lives and businesses is cloud computing. This is a topic that I will continue to write about in future posts.

But before I go further, I have to comment and say that in the past 25-30 years, I saw significant changes and every few years a major new technology appeared that changed how we do business. Changed how we start businesses. We saw costs come WAY DOWN, technology advances increase and markets expand. Now I could go on and on about the changes and such but I wanted to make a point about starting businesses….today. Its never been easier, cheaper and there has never been a better time than now. A horrible cliche but it is very true.

In the past year, my business has changed considerably. The tools I use to manage my business have got more complicated (and easier in some respects), new tools have appeared that have changed HOW I did business from the past 5-10 years. And all within a few months. For example, this morning I stumbled upon an article and book review in the newspaper. I pulled my Android smartphone out, took a picture of the cover of the book with Google Goggles app, and it identified the book, and presented a link to Amazon.com. I clicked on add to wishlist (it already recognized who I was and my various logins) and its now available for family, friends, clients to access or myself. In seconds.

Another case in point – I lived and died by my blackberry for the last 3 years. Great for email, messaging etc. But that was about it. I bought my HTC Desire Android phone as I was learning to create apps for it. As a daily / hourly user of Google products, I found in seconds that once I logged into my gmail, all my calendar functions, YouTube favorites, Google docs etc were available to me. I started downloading both free and paid apps for productivity. Amazing. And thats just the beginning.

This past week I sat down and analyzed how my business has changed in the past 12 months. In a  variety of areas that I simply took for granted. Here are a few highlights that I will explain in future posts:

• My software purchases have dropped by over 200% over past years. In fact my business costs dramatically dropped and in some cases, software that was $1400 was now available for 1/20th the cost.
• I am able to buy and utilize apps for less than $5 each. Apps that I use daily to do specific tasks to stay on top. All syncronized with all my phones / computers.
• I communicate with professionals and clients (old and new) in methods I have never used before. And it generates results.
• I launch and sell products with 2-3 months development time versus years. In fact self publishing as a whole has changed just within the past month. More to come on that.
• I am able to run my business literally from anywhere in the world (taking advantage of the new trend in location independent living), This has been an ongoing trend. But what does it mean for you and me?
• Productivity has increased 10 fold. Maybe even 100 fold.

In the coming months I will be offering services and products unlike anything I offered a mere 2-3 years ago. And that is encouraging. We all agree we live in times of change. But this past few weeks have really awoken me to the fact being self-employed is a very realistic option that can provide untold opportunities for people everywhere.

In my next few posts, I plan to share some direction that I am going that could benefit others. Hope you enjoy the coming ideas.

Gordon

One of the areas that I am going to push myself in a new direction is in providing Small Business Coaching. Over the past 25 years in business, I have had the pleasure of working with hundreds of different businesses (both in Canada and the US). Not only did I get to work on cool projects, I had the chance to work closely with business leaders, CEO’s and vice presidents of some very large companies. I also participated in some awesome startup companies. Some succeeded and others failed. But I was there through thick and thin. The result…..hundreds of hours of experience and lessons learned. I am proud to say I made a lot of money for many of my clients.

During the last 15 years I started documenting all lessons learned and kept success logs and recorded what I learned from failures. I also read hundreds of books, blogs, magazines and leading papers from innovative, highly successful winners.

So moving into 2011, I have decided to start to publish what I have learned in a series of E-Books and provide some for free ( my giving back) and a few at a small reasonable price. I also will be announcing some new services aimed at Small to Medium size businesses. Not only will the clients get someone with a background in marketing (offline and online), business strategy, innovative thinking, graphic design, branding strategy, but someone who is passionate about business and being successful.

My Small Business Coaching services will be available to a select few in order to provide them with as much of my time as possible. I will utilize the latest technologies and will provide services simply not available to many businesses.

Lastly, I am excited about sharing as much information as I can with all my clients (new and old). My e-books will not be expensive and will deliver solid information and success techniques (all documented) that will benefit everyone in business. It’s going to be a fun ride and I hope to share more in the coming weeks.

2011 – Here I come!

Gordon Currie

I also will delve a bit into the new concept surfacing around the globe and thats Location Independent Business. Quite simply, its about creating and running a business from anywhere in the world. Its something I have always enjoyed ( and worked towards).

Lastly, I also will provide some motivational stuff, some of my favorite blogs ( again that have helped me grow), some cool photography hints, and my personal views on getting ahead in life. What you will not see (hopefully) is me promoting my business. This blog is more about giving back and sharing in an open and honest way how certain things have helped me grow. I am not going to hold back either…I have screwed up and learned a great deal. So the “trip” should be interesting.

Should you be more curious about my background, you can visit my about us page for details.

Thanks and time to move ahead!

Gordon Currie