Call me spoiled, I say I am just used to having the Internet at my beck and call, I live in Canada and that’s how I like it! I did realize when Dave and I set out on our business/vacation trip this time that there might be some challenges with the Internet, but not to the point where I felt cut off from mankind! This is our second trip to Geneva and we were booked to stay in a different hotel, but as it was close to Dave’s corporate offices, it made sense to us. Having the promise of WIFI in all of the rooms made us feel secure and safe in the knowledge we could carry on with our work regardless.

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon so when we worked out the WIFI was not working and informed the hotel we were OK about being told it could not be fixed until Monday, but when it was fixed and we still had no signal in our room, and the business centre was very small and crowded, we were very disappointed. Throughout the whole of our stay in Geneva we were cut off from the outside world, and more importantly Dave could not even access work through his VPN.

This may sound quite silly to people who are not quite so dependent on the Internet for work and keeping in touch with family around the world, but for me it was, quite literally like the end of the world! Not only did I have a presentation to finish off so that I could inspire my audience in Geneva, I had urgent emails that needed to be sent and I also wanted to know my family in Canada were aware we had arrived safe and sound.

Obviously we got through this challenge and flew to Dublin to check into yet another hotel, and yes our expectations this time were, let’s wait and see before we get excited about WIFI connections.

At least the customer service at this hotel was better, we were about 3 hours from Dublin in a small town called Letterkenny, and once we discovered the WIFI signal in our room was non-existent they handed over 3 keys to different rooms so we could find another room that did have a decent signal. Unfortunately this was not to be so we unpacked and the next morning were told that a room with a great signal would be available later that day, wonderful.

So now we are all set, I am back on track and just wonder what on earth to expect when we fly to London, UK in a week, fingers crossed the Internet there is great!

Social media has made it possible for us to get to know each other on a daily basis and really open up, people see us as someone they relate to. When asked to refer someone it is much easier to think about the people we deal with on a daily basis. It is OK to show our connections we have a heart, we get upset, we can be stubborn, or even hard working, and this endears us to the people who are in our lives via social media. If you are like me people who meet me face to face are always surprised I am the same *me* in real life as I am on social media sites and they like this, in fact the actually prefer it. I know my products and services are the best, and along with my likeability, my social nature and desire to help others, I am referred time and time again. Who do You know, really know?

LinkedIn is a powerful platform on which to grow your business connections and your business, find new positions within organizations, or even find out who works at certain organizations, etc. You can find out more about the correct etiquette to use on LinkedIn if you check out the Help section. Did you know it is not good form to ask for recommendations, but if you do ask for them be sure you have a good, trusted relationship with the other person and that you have kept in touch with them and are not using your connections as a bridge to gain you more recommendations.

The people who think LinkedIn is another numbers game where gaining the most recommendations is the way to go have lost the plot. I do not respect people who want to connect with me for no apparent reason, and when I ask them they ignore my question via email.

Use LinkedIn as a great resource to grow your business or find a new position, but please do it properly.

Being honest is something I can never give up, it has cost me many relationships, both in my personal and business life, but I cannot be the person people think I am. I am the person I am and if people do not accept that, it is their choice. Once you know the real me you will be my ally, my friend, whatever you want to call it, for the rest of my life, and this is because it is meant to be.

In the early days of building my first small business, Motivational Steps I had no idea that some people would be judgmental about my honesty and treat me differently to other small business owners. Let me give you a few examples of what I shared in those early days and still share today:

• I worked 3 low paid jobs: shoe store sales assistant, cleaner in a hotel, sold vacuums, and I did this in order to earn money to pay my bills so that myself and my 4 children could survive all the challenges we were going through.
• I am a two time breast cancer survivor, proud to be alive to tell my story and help other people in any way I can.
• I have never been to University or College. As a student in the UK I was not as motivated and inspired to do well at school. I worked as a secretary for an Insurance Company from the time I left school until I left to become a full time mommy.
• I suffered from panic attacks many years ago in the UK and sought help from a hypnotherapist.
• I almost lost my home in Canada because of debt, divorce, cancer, and other challenges. After years of working hard with the help of my 2nd husband the house was sold and we moved to a larger, happier home.

Evidently I was too honest in my early years of building a small business and people would look at me as a loser, who had moved to a new country, almost lost everything, was in debt, had no education, had been divorced, was an invalid due to cancer,  and to cap it all, I probably had issues with my mental health because I had suffered panic attacks! I got very little help from those people, and I am happy about that. I believe like attracts like and the people who helped me along the way and still do and all the new people I come into contact with now all realized something even I had no idea about all those years ago:

• I was a hard worker, even though the jobs were not the most enjoyable or well paid, I still offered the best I could. I gave 100% to each job and smiled, did what I was told, sometimes offered ideas on how to better customer service, or sales, or even marketing and did not walk away from the jobs, I am not a quitter.
• Due to me being proactive and looking after my own health & wellness, I had sought help early whenever I suspected I had a challenge with my health. Being proactive meant I did survive my health challenges and could now help others do the same.
• I returned to school to better my qualifications and realized the benefit of continuing education. Once again I was being proactive by helping myself and also offering a good example to others. My lack of University or College degrees did hold me back but I worked twice as hard knowing it is never too late.
• Financial challenges and all the other challenges in my life had provided me with a skill set that enabled me to start two small businesses. My experiences had given me the tools I needed to help others, help myself, and move on to the success I have now.
• My skill set includes, sales, marketing, customer service, relationships, mediation, motivational, networking, social media, writing, consulting – all gained through working for other organizations and knowing the challenges the employers were experiencing and also the employees. Whether those challenges were work or personal, I had experience in dealing with most of them, and this led me to a new career, a new life, owner of 2 small businesses.
• Mentors, clients, connections, friends, and family all saw in me, in those early years and now, my desire to move on my dedication, my belief system, my motivation and my quest to continue to learn every step of the way. My ultimate goal was and still is to help others and help make the world a better place.

So when I asked the question, is honesty the best policy in business, I can answer no, not all the time. On the other hand if we are not honest and our skeletons do jump of that cupboard along the way will we lose more than we would have done if we shared our lives openly in the beginning of building our business? I truly recommend being proud of your life, challenges, skeletons, everything, have nothing to hide.

You will attract the people into your business life, and personal life who are meant to be there, the ones who are not open to your honest and transparency are not meant to be a part of your life, you can do without them.

Your thoughts, comments, tips are appreciated and I hope you like my honesty…

We all have to make a living, but if you decide to undercut your competition know it could make you unpopular and not necessarily reap the benefits you expected.

I normally offer the following thoughts when you are thinking of undercutting your competition:

• Make sure you offer less if you do cut the price of your product or service, an example might be if you are printing flyers for your client delivery is not free, or they have to fold the flyers to make up for the price cut.
• If you do not offer *excellence* to your client, after offered them a discount and they are not satisfied they will return to your competitor and be willing to pay more.
• Once word gets out that you are less expensive than your competitors you may have more business but do you have the loyalty of your customers? Will the grab the discount and run, never to return?
• How long can you operate by offering a discount that undercuts your competitors?
• Ensure your long and short term goals are clear and ultimately, you may decide to offer true value, at a price that is fair for the marketplace and work on strategies that offer long term benefits versus short term gain.

As an owner of two small businesses I know the benefits of building relationships with my competitors and sharing tips with each other. This leads to trust and long term connections, which may lead to referrals from your competitors for a variety of reasons. They might have a client they cannot look after and know you have the products and services that would work for their client.

It is up to the individuals to make a choice on this topic, but always know you can sleep at night and not toss and turn worrying if you did the right thing.

Did you know that some people have short memories, and others not so short? There are a few instances where I have let someone down, through no fault of my own, and afterwards I have quickly contacted the person involved and apologized and hoped that I could make it up to them in some way. That worked out well for me, my reputation remained intact and we all moved on. The memory I left behind with these people was obviously a good one.

There are instances when we are let down and it is as if no one cares, and it becomes quite difficult when we come into contact with these people at business related events, or even on social media platforms. We all have choices, we can be the bigger person and forget the past, or we can bear a grudge and not want to associate with these people. This is when we have to think about the benefits of forgiving and  forgetting, or refuse to forget and, in some cases share with others how we felt let down and this is the reason we will not do business with that person.

I treat each situation differently when I feel I have been let down, I take into account how serious the incident was, and how it impacted my life/business and how well I know and respect the person involved. There are some rules I keep for my own use, and these come into play when I have this kind of decision to make. For an example a rule could be that if the same person let you down more than once you would not answer their emails if they persisted even after you shared with them that you no longer wanted to be associated with them. Everyone has their own rules as I like to call them and make their own ideas up about what works  for them. In my case I do not often turn my back on someone

forever, but I may need time to think about the situation and move on before I connect with them again.

So, if you have been let down by someone in business and you have a decision to make, take a deep breath, fine the rational you and take time to think about the situation before you make a decision that could impact not only you but the other  person.

We all let people down at some time in our lives, and I prefer to be the person who can forgive and forget 99% of the time, and not be remembered as the person who had issues with everyone, and could never move on. Food for thought I think.

We are always being encouraged to “Ask the experts” and follow their lead, their tips, their success stories. We are offered workshops, seminars, webinars, tweets, and the list goes on. Sadly some motivated and passionate people may not become instantly successful even if they do everything they were told they should do, it is not guaranteed!

Did you notice the word “instantly”? My point is instant gratification is not always a good thing, and yes many people have become well know, financially successful and go on to have wonderful success with their offerings, but the majority of small business owners do not.

You may be on the point of ruin, and may be about to lose everything if your small business does not become successful, in the financial sense, immediately. Your train of thought might be along the lines, if I do what this well known business success suggests I will gain clients and all  my worries are over. Sadly, this is not true, and again I am cautious and say, in some rare cases it may well happen.

So,what suggestions do I have? Think about your business success as you would think about for instance raising a child, there were certain steps you had to take before you became a parent, you then had to teach your baby how to talk, walk, and a lot of other stuff I don’t need to go into. Another instance might be learning to drive a vehicle, again there were certain things you had to do to be successful to pass your driving test.

The key here is you used a tried and tested method, one you trusted, and had no choice but to follow. You may have tried to cut corner and as a parent it meant your child kept falling over and ended up being black and blue with bruises because they were just not ready to be pushed into walking! In the case of a driving  test, if you missed out any of those steps failure was sure to be your outcome.

My point is, even with a tried and tested solution you have to:

• Follow the steps and not miss out any in your rush to reach your goal
• Know that what worked for someone else might not work for you
• Be able to adapt ideas and solutions that are offered to you, and ensure you understand the Why, and What and How etc.

Just a few thoughts to add to your ever growing list of what you can do or should do to grow your small business. If you want any more information please do not hesitate to contact me, LindaOJ, thanks

I asked this question recently on the Small Business Community Networks group on LinkedIn. So far not a lot of response to this discussion but one small business owner did get it,  and ask me, other than attending face to face business network meetings, what else should he do?

Then I knew that if small business owners were not responding to my question, maybe they had no idea if they were invisible or not, and this is because they had not thought about it! It’s all about knowing what you “don’t” know, which is  difficult.

This leads me nicely into a keynote I offered at a conference where small business leaders came together and this is when I knew for certain that some business fail to move forward,  not because the well known, and sometimes complicated policies and procedures and marketing initiatives did not work out, but because they don’t know what they don’t know! It is so simple.

The next question would be, how to discover the answer and ensure the growth of your business? As you all know by now I like “simple” I feel the steps I share and strategies that worked for my business and many other organizations are not only affordable, easy to use and remember but, anyone can put them into practice.

If you are looking for some answers and like the way I think, follow me on Facebook, connect to me on LinkedIn and Twitter and, if you are really feeling the excitement, contact me so we can discuss how I can help you answer the question – Are You Invisible?

Please check out my recent blog post on the TELUS Talks Business website.

http://community.telustalksbusiness.com/blogs/talk_business/2011/04/05/home-alone-in-your-home-office

Please take a look  at my recent blog post:

http://community.telustalksbusiness.com/blogs/talk_business/2011/03/22/how-can-being-a-small-business-philanthropist-help-you

Do YOU have any tips on this blog post for me?

Comments welcome, thanks:)