Today I am talking about how my personal philosophy, The APE Philosophy, can help you grow your small business to the next level of success you are working towards.

Awareness:         Being able to plan ahead, write a business plan with short and long term goals.

Prevention:         Knowing how to prevent some of the major challenges many small business owners encounter.

Early Detection:   Dealing with known challenges early enough before they get out of hand.

If you are aware of the steps to take to ensure your business has strong foundations this will save you time and money.

If you know how to prevent loss of revenue, credibility and even clients in the early stages of your business this offers you more opportunity to move forward.

Detecting any problems early enough to deal with them can mean the differende between success and failure.

So how are you made AWARE in the first place. One of the steps people sometimes like to skip when planning a small business is market research. Being aware of what is out there, who your competition is, how much financial backing you have or do not have are crucial elements within your business. If you decide to miss this step out and jump forward too fast you may find your small business does not succeed. Being aware is quite simple, visit your local small business centre and find out how they can help you. You may have friends who already own a business and they raise your awareness by offering tips and ideas how to build strong foundations for your future sucess. AWARENESS is a vital tool which, if utilised and used properly can benefit you on a daily basis.

How can you PREVENT certain challenges impacting your business. Prevention works hand in hand with AWARENESS, by practising both Awareness and Prevention you can definitely ensure your success. Let’s use your office computer as an example of practising prevention. You may not be able to hire an IT consultant in the early days so you decide to set up your business computer yourself. You can prevent the loss of data, and other serious issues from occuring by being Aware of the consequences in the first place. If you do not have a firewall are you preventing the bad guys from breaking into your computer and stealing all your client information? Prevention means you are aware of the relevant facts and ensure you act accordingly to prevent challenges to the best of your ability.

Does EARLY DETECTION mean you failed to ensure your business was adequately protected in the first place or does it mean that you detected a challenge early enough to ensure less serious conequences? Early detection means that there is a challenge, which you discovered early and you can deal with it before it gets out of hand. It may or may not be that you were not Aware, or practised Prevention, but ultimately, the goal here is not to be perfect but to do your best.

APE is a tool you can use in every situation every day of your life, I do and it works for me, so try it and see what you think!

I am very active on social media sites and I see the value of connecting with like minded people. What I find many people are doing today, and let’s take Twitter and Facebook as a good example, is connecting to as many people as possible and announcing to the world they have 5,000 plus followers, connections etc. Well good for you! Now what are you going to do with thos people?

The purpose of connecting with anyone at all is mainly to get to know them, build a relationship and see how you can help them, or they can help you. Before you run away at the word – help – think about it in a non business respect. Remember when you were a student at school or college and you were the new girl or boy and you wanted to make friends and also, you wanted to be popular. I am almost positive you did not run up to everyone and state your name, where you lived, and then asked them to help you with your homework  or drive you home from school or even buy you lunch. What I think you did do is ask if you could hang out with them, slowly listen and learn and get to know them, and work out who you did want to be friends with and who you did not. Obviously if you are super popular you are friend with everyone, but juggling school, part time work, eating and sleeping probably means a lot of your friends did not get your attention 100% of the time. Once you had built up a relationship with other students you would have friends in your inner circle you wanted to help, either with homework or even a ride home from school. But, once in a while you would come across someone who needed your help who was not exactly a best friend, but you felt you could help because they were good students and you liked helping others. You may even have found that by helping others you could be deemed as an influencer at school and may even become Head Girl or join clubs at school in a leadership capacity.

Flip this scenario over to the world of social media networking, and imagine you are friends with 1,000 or more people on FB or Twitter, how much time would it take you to connect with them all, via a phone call, email or a word or two on twitter in private message? Not possible, not if you are working the social media sites properly, and know why and how to be successful and how to use these sites as a tool and not let them become like a rock around your neck dragging you down!

Now I am not saying don’t connect with as many people as you want, what I am saying is don’t go around bragging like you bagged a new trophy, people are people and we all like to be thought of as special and not part of the herd so to speak. So you announce you have 1,000 followers, what will this give you? how do they know who you are, what you do, how can you help them all? By all means bag as many trophy followers as you like but long term you could end up with nothing, the same as you started. People are latching on to this pretty quickly and choosing not to connect to just for numbers.

I have a lot of followers on Twitter and not quite so many on other social media sites, this is a calculated decision and I know my reasons and the whys and wherefores.

Enjoy your trophies on your wall:)

I wake up around 7am and I am always hungry, my favourite breakfast is Porridge, which my lovely husband DaveOJ lovingly prepares for me, he is normally half asleep, and I make us a nice cup of tea. My laptop is open and ready to go so as I read the newspapers online I check my emails too and make some comments on Twitter, Facebook, Sprouter, to name a few of my social media sites.

After a shower if I am working in my office and not speaking at an event I reply to emails and note which newspaper articles are worthy of showcasing on my social media sites. Due to the amount of emails I receive regarding the Small Business Community Network, which I co-founded with DaveOJ 7 years ago, and the emails regarding Motivational Steps, I am normally stuck at my desk for hours replying to people who I feel deserve a reply. Obviously like most of us I get a lot of spam email, some of which I send to Junk if our spam filter did not catch it first. Others I keep as my way of doing lazy market research, useful to know what works and what does not in this area.

I normally speak at conferences across Canada and if I am not opening Keynote Speaker I am closing Keynote Speaker, this is my passion and joy and where I feel I reach so many people and help them in many different ways. DaveOJ and I are very happy to be able to travel to these events together and most conference organizations invite us to enjoy the whole conference and this means meeting so many wonderful people and build relationships. Most of the  events I speak at are during the week, but if the odd conference happens to be during a weekend, Dave and I make a short holiday off it and take a few days extra to explore the surrounding area.

I know the benefit of a healthy lifestyle so I break around 10.30 for a coffee and a healthy nibble and stretch my legs and give my eyes a break from the computer screen. If the telephone is quiet and no one bothers me with calls I get to work on my articles, blogs, new keynotes or finding information & tips for my groups on LinkedIn, Facebook and other sites.

Networking face to face and attending different and diverse networking events takes up a lot of my time, but the benefits are tremendous.

After lunch if it is quiet I watch videos, read blogs and seek out people I respect who I can learn from and take notes or connect with them to ask questions or gain new mentors.

My newsletter, Stepping Stone is published once a month and I am always looking for articles from subscribers to publish in my newsletter. I also offer the Motivational Moments Podcasts at least twice a month and like to interview people from all walks of life for my podcast. I am often invited to be interviewed on radio stations and local t.v. shows which is great exposure for me.

The Small Business Community Network offers meetings once a month, for which I find speakers and also guests and members are encouraged to attend as much as possible. The SBCN also offers a couple of special events a year so I am always looking for seminar leaders.

I am also a business development consultant and take on 4 clients a year and that fits into my schedule nicely as I tend to keep those clients for early morning appointments.

As a successful business owner and member of a wonderful local community I offer mentorship to people who I feel need my help and this is on a complimentary basis. If we do not speak on the phone I meet them at my other office, which is located at a local Williams Coffee Pub.

Volunteering is very important to me so I make sure I leave space in my calender for my duties with various organizations.

When 5.30 arrives, I look at the clock and wonder where the day went! After supper DaveOJ and I can often be found at our laptops working on new ideas, marketing plans or just relaxing chatting on line.

It seems like I have a busy day, which I do but I would not change a thing, I love what I do and I love my life!

We all have dreams to follow, unfortunately some of us only dream about our dreams and never actually turn our dreams into a reality.

I know I sound like an irritating Miss Perfect sometimes, but I am not, honestly, saying that I always follow my dreams and make them my reality. You all know my story by now so I won’t bore you with it, but after living through all the challenges I have I know the only way I came out the other end is by following my dream. Yes, it is OK to dream, the problem arises when we fail to take action!

I have a new dream, all shiny and sparkly and it’s all mine. My dream is to be discovered in the UK, I was born in Birmingham, so I am working towards making that dream my reality. It will happen, I know because I believe in myself, and I work hard to make my dreams come true.

My plan is to be engaged to speak at as many events as possible, so that I can reach all the people who want to live their dream. I will start off in Birmingham and work my way to all the other cities until I have connected with and helped all  the people who want to listen to me.

By the way, just in case you think  I am asleep and dreaming at this moment, I am wide awake and already moving towards making my dream my reality.

When I published my second book a year ago, The APE Philosophy, For Everything Money Can’t Buy I knew I needed to share with everyone what they already knew, but failed to realise that fact.

My book is set in the Town of Simple. Notice the word *SIMPLE*.

4 main characters appear to have the perfect life. They have created an illusion – but not made it into their reality.

As the story continues you will discover that eventually the townspeople of the town of Simple have to come to terms with the fact their lives are not perfect and find ways to deal with their challenges. Challenges they either knew they had but would not admit to them, or challenges they had no idea they were experiencing. Both worst case scenarios.

I notice all around me that people are taking on my philosophy. They are striving to go back in time, they are realising that simple is the way to go. A couple of instances of this could be the large organizations who hide behind complicated policies and procedures and no one undesrtands them. No wonder that these policies and procedures are not always followed!

Another example is the way we network and build relationships, it really is not rocket science it is simple. We can hide behind the elevator speech and portray we are perfect, or we could display our real, unique being, the real us, and keep it simple. An example would be rather than spouting off the perfect spiel when you meet someone at a networking event, would be to simply introduce yourself and tell them you would love to get to know more about them. SIMPLE!

I hope you can take the time to check out my book on my website and then offer me feedback on my comments in this article, thanks. http://www.motivationalsteps.com/the_ape_philosophy/ my email address is linda@motivationalsteps.co

I always find it fun to be interviewed by people around the world. It also raises my exposure which is wonderful.

Recently Robin Banks, www.robinbanks.co.uk interviewed me for his radio show and we had a fun time chatting to each other.

You can listen to this interview by following this link:

http://media.motivationalsteps.com/press/resources/multimedia/download/linda_robin_banks.mp3

If you are a speaker and offer Seminars or Workshops you can’t always rely on organizations to book you for their next event by finding your website or reading your emails offering to speak at their events. Websites are a great resource for event organizers when looking to book speakers, but some websites are missing valuable information,

Here are some tips that work for me and you can use them to move your speaking business forward:

a) Ensure that your website has a Press Page which is where you offer your Press Kit. This should include some of the items below which I have on my own Press Page on my Motivational Steps Website.

* 2009 Promotional Photo JPEG (screen) | TIFF (print)
* 2004 Promotional Photo JPEG (screen) | TIFF (print)
* 2002 Promotional Photo JPEG (screen) | TIFF (print)
* About Linda
* Introduction
* Biography
* Logo JPEG (screen) | GIF (screen) | TIFF (print) | EPS (print)

The above is an example of what appears on my Press Page, yours may differ obviously.

Your Press Kit is a valuable resource that is intended to make it easy for anyone to access your information, print off your marketing materials ,i.e. brochure or even advertise your business on a website.

b) Include any articles, media appearances, newspaper interviews, or videos that you feel help your profile and will enlighten someone who may be looking to engage a speaker.

c) Ensure that your social media presence is easy to find and include your Twitter, Facebook, LInkedIn, Sprouter etc information is easy to find.

Your website is a a place where once someone finds your information it can either encourage them to find out more or leave without knowing who you are or what you do. Make it easy for someone to want to know more about you and spread the word.

You may not realize it but you are always been judged on your brand. Your clients, customers, and networking contacts will all talk about your brand, and not always in the nicest way. In reality they are talking about you!

Building your brand takes time, and it always amazes me when people do not stay authentic to who they are and their business offering. If you offer a brand that does not fit in with your personality or even your mission statement not only will that confuse people, they may not take you seriously.

If we look at some of the film stars who are in the news and however good an actor they may be the press seems to always jump on the fact that they may have worn the wrong color shoes or their hair looks a mess. Unfortunately this could be because the actor concerned has created an illusion, not a brand. A brand should always be consistent with you, if you veer away from the illusion you created you could be heading for disaster.

When I started to plan my business I had no idea what branding was, I soon picked up on the fact that no one noticed me at networking events, I did not stand out. After researching some famous brands I realized because of my particular business, standing on a stage offering a keynote meant I was in the public eye more often than not. I already knew that by wearing Pink I was helping promote awareness so I decided to make the colour pink a permanent part of my wardrobe and accessories and I soon began to get noticed. The way I speak also became part of my branding, I have an English accent so this is an asset I use effectively. I am naturally a bubbly and friendly outgoing person and whether I am attending a conference as a speaker or a guest I connect with the audience as much as possible and offer my time and tips and generally connect with everyone.

I soon came to the realization that even when I was not working people expected me to be the nicely dressed, happy and motivated person they saw on the stage and if I chose to ignore this fact and be someone else then I was impacting my brand in a negative way. Luckily for me I had built my brand around the real me and this meant I could be myself.

In order for me to gain referrals someone has to like what I offer, once again I stress that very much like when you are being interviewed for any job you are always on your best behavior, but if you pretend to be someone you are not and you are hired, how long can you keep up the pretense?

You are your brand, remember this when you are building your brand, if you are not comfortable being the center of attention and feel that you are not the best person to represent your brand you have some changes to make.

My super hero APES want to help Ellen achieve world domination please tell everyone to watch these videos of APEs to the rescue and see if we can achieve our goal thanks:)