heartharmony.com.au

No business gets it right 100% of the time. There will be times when mistakes are made, emails not responded to, promises made and not kept and customer service given that is less than optimal.

It is what you do with those mistakes that makes the difference. If you ignore the mistake, pretend it didn’t happen or try and blame the customer you create more problems for yourself. What could simply have been resolved at a lower level gets blown up in the mind of the customer and they escalate the problem or just take their business elsewhere (and complain about you to all of their friends).

But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you train all of your staff that mistakes happen. that it is a fact of life and they have discretion to resolve the problem to a certain level then you can turn a potentially damaging situation around.

Work out within your business what will be your policy if someone complains. If the person complains to an employee – allow the employee to acknowledge the person’s feelings, to apologise that your actions have caused the person to feel that way and ask how the person would like to have the matter resolved. Often all the person wants is to be heard.

If there is expenditure needed to resolve the matter and it is above the employees financial delegation level, empower the employee that it is OK to contact you with a code word to say that the matter has to be dealt with straight away. You need to act and resolve complaints within one business day. Let it linger and you are creating further problems.

Government is a business just like any other. I worked in Government for 15 years and I know mistakes are made – the people in Government are human. They may be acting from the best of intent, but when they forget they are there to serve the greater community and believe they know best for other people – that is when mistakes are made.

Over-responsibility in all forms creates hurt and pain. If you try and run someone else’s life down to the smallest detail you are not allowing them to grow and learn. Your job is not to run a life, but to grow a life.

It is for that reason I totally believe we need to say sorry to the stolen generations. We as a people made major mistakes over generations and now have to live with the consequences. Discrimination in all its forms – both direct and indirect limits us as a society and limits the creative potential of our future.

I am proud that Kevin Rudd is finally formally apologising tomorrow for what has been done in the past. Whatever your politics – it is simply the right thing to do.

I urge everyone to watch the address live and allow your employees to watch the event as paid time (hey if you can watch a horse race in November, you can watch history in the making).

I also ask you to reflect on where your business and you personally may have also unwittingly or knowingly caused hurt and offence to someone else. Take this time to work out how you can say sorry for the hurt you have caused and plan for how you will deal with this in the future.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff
Heart Harmony

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Niche markets are everywhere. Filling a need for the niche, helping them do something better or easier or just making them feel good about themselves is great for business.

One of the best most recent examples is Mika with his song “Big Girl (You are beautiful). Very catchy song celebrating curvy women.

This song is sweeping the world – it is great for teenagers self esteem as well as any lady with a few extra pounds. In other words – an exceptional product targeted to the right niche.

What can you do to meet the needs of your niche market?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff
Heart Harmony

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I have lost track of the number of businesses who have said “I can’t do that – I am in the wrong location”.

That’s why Annette from Annette Piper jewellery is so inspirational. You see she lives on a cattle farm in rural NSW and creates the most gorgeous quality gemstone pieces.

If a mum on a cattle farm can run a thriving jewellery business – what is your excuse?

Annette is someone who asks “how can I” and that’s the difference.

Have a look at your excuses and ask “how can I” solve them.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff
Heart Harmony

What is the strangest interview question you have been asked?

I think mine was many years ago when I was applying for job in a tribunal that meted out the law on things like workplace fairness – I was asked by the male head of the tribunal (in total seriousness) – “What will happen when you fall pregnant and want to leave and have babies.” Scared me right off having kids for another 10 years!

Today I was checking out a blog post by my favourite internet teacher – Ed Dale when I came upon this ad

We have a couple of openings in Melbourne and Manchester for Interns to assist in running our Internet business.

You will be paid!

You will not be paid much…;

We are looking for people who have a lot of enthusiasm and really want to make it marketing online.

It might surprise you to know that I have been an intern! It might surprise you more that I was a multi-millionaire at the time!

I really wanted to know the information marketing business from the ground up – so I took a commission only position with an organization so I could learn the ropes from the inside. I did it for a year and it was invaluable.

I also went and lived with Gary Halbert in Miami for a month. That was one hell of an experience!

Lets be clear – you won’t be doing glamourous work BUT you will see how everything hangs together and be on the inside working with Dan, I and the rest of the team. There will be a lot of admin type work and you will need to know your way around a Mac (notice that I said Mac) if your applying for the position and want to work remotely – a mac with leopard is a must – we live on iChat!

Dan, Rob and I spent about six hours yesterday working on forward plans for our business and we did it all on iChat

The way I see it you will be with us for about a year – I would of hoped by then you would be raring to go out and start making info-products of your own.

While I’m happy to consider “virtual intern” arrangements – in truth, we are both going to get a lot more out of it if you are living near-by, if i need you to help me with a location shoot holding the camera – it’s going to be a bit hard doing that from Boston.

For the Melbourne position, there is an option for us to provide accommodation, internet, computer etc as part of the deal. In Manchester you’ll need to talk to Dan!

For the right person this is a golden opportunity. You will need to be a go-getter (duh!) and if you have seen/read “the devil wears prada” – you’ll have a great idea about the level of direction you will get (I’m kidding – mostly…;)

Interviews will be conducted via iChat and in person at Melbourne and Manchester

You can send your application to eddale@mac.com

(now here’s a tip – think about your application, I barely passed high school, attended two classes at collage and as evidenced by the seven deliberate spelling mistakes above can hardly string two words together. CV’s make me sleepy – who you are, and what your prepared to do, what you love and what get’s you up in the morning (apart from the alarm clock!!) is far more interesting. In Fact, what you HATE doing and can’t stand is even more useful – a great job application is just like a good sales letter (or video…;.))

One final thing – In your application answer at least this one question

Think back to when you were little and you wanted to be a ballerina, fireman, six million dollar man, eric estrada on CHiPs (careful, we all have dreams…;.) what did your parent of the opposite sex say to you about your dream??

Have at it – Quick Movers get bonus points

Don’t you love that last question (and the ad)! It truly reflects the company, the people you will be working with and doesn’t pull any punches. A great example of an employment ad.

So what did you want to be when you were little. Apparently I wanted to be a teacher when I was very very little (and have 6 kids. Done that one, 2 of my own and 4 I raised for a few years with a previous partner).

What did my father say about that dream? “Hey the holidays are good, you are paid well and you always have a job.” As he was a uni lecturer at the time I think the answer was more of a reflection of where his mind was at in the middle of yet another school year!

So – over to you. What did you want to be when you were little and what did your parent of the opposite sex say to you about your dream?

Oh – and the job’s still open with Ed – just get in quick!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff
Heart Harmony

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Hi again

When businesses start out, they often want to use email to promote sales, publicise events or just keep in touch with clients. Fantastic – exactly what it is designed to do!

But … there are a few common mistakes newcomers to email marketing make.

1. Addresses – You see a dirty great long list of everyone’s names and email addresses in the To section. Aside from the privacy problems with this (remember you are not permitted to share email addresses from your list without explicit consent), you leave yourself open to sharing viruses between computers. All it will take is for one person on your list to have a virus and it suddenly is broadcast throughout the list of names. Put all names in the BCC section if you are not using a merged email through Word or a formal auto-responder/broadcast program.
2. Subject lines - They are all about “ME” and not about the person reading the email. Subject lines are teasers to make people want to open your emails. (And don’t include hyperlinks in your email – spam filters will generally eat your email).
3. MASSIVE attachments – Most email servers won’t accept attachments over about 3MB. Even if your attachment is 3MB, people on dial up with curse you as it will take ages to download. Save your attachment as a PDF. The free way to do this is use a program like Cute PDF Writer. Save it to your hard drive and just hit print and select Cute PDF = Instant PDF document.
4. Accidental spamming - You meet someone and then add them to your mailing list. Right? Wrong! Just because you met someone at a networking event doesn’t mean they have consented to going on your email data-base. You need to know the Spam Act and comply with it. Speaking about Spam, here are some notes I put together a few years back about Spam Act and small business – yes it is a PDF!

As your list grows it pays to invest in an auto-responder/broadcast program. Choose wisely – as if you move your list to another package in later years all of your subscribers need to resubscribe to comply with spam regulations – you can see a massive list drop by 2/3 in that transition.

Think about what else you may need later on – shopping carts, affiliate programs, whatever. You can put different solutions, but it is easier to find the solution that can grow with you as you grow.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff
Heart Harmony