Business & Marketing

2012 was a great year to be in the web design & technology business and I learned a ton. I count myself as one who is very fortunate and blessed to be able to do the work I love to do. 

Less than irrelevant actually. What you think about your website is a potential disaster waiting to happen.

Why?

Because YOU are NOT your target visitor. You're a content creator/ecommerce merchant/brilliant mind behind the start-up, but you are NOT your target audience.

Let that one sink in for a minute.

You are not your target audience.

The sooner that you get that, the better off you will be.

One of the big things that I've been paying more and more attention to over the last year is the information that my website has been sending back to me. I've been studying it intently at Orracle Media and more recently at my niche site projects.

As you know, just having a website isn't enough. You need to know how it's performing, what's working, what's not working, where there are issues, and how it's converting.

What habit do you want to change? Why do you do the things you do? You may have the answer, but then again, you may be wrong. Charles Duhigg's Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business takes a fascinating journey in to the mechanisms that power our behaviors, and helps uncover how they can be changed.

Dave Ramsey has been wildly successful building his business from a card table in his living room to the force it is today. It's obvious from the reach of his small business that he knows what he's doing and I'm grateful that he put pen to paper in EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches to outline what's made him so successful in his business. This is a book that you have to get.

Teaching financial principles of getting out of debt, saving, and giving has become a big business for him. He's published the original Financial Peace and the Total Money Makeover and his live events are wildly successful.

His newest book does not fail to impress as it invites the reader to peer behind the curtain to see the principles and practices that he's used to build his business and it's impressive.

It leaves you wondering why more businesses don't operate like this. In my experience a lot of companies talk about values, mission and goals, but rarely do they live up to it. Dave and his team have clearly built something awesome.