Blog Author Mellissah Smith - Page 55

'Anything is possible' and if you truly believe it, you can see it.

The world is full of pessimistic individuals who are tirelessly working to pull you down, but if you are a real entrepreneur with a BIG DREAM and determination to make it happen, then you may be in the minority of business people who achieve success.

Business can be a rollercoaster and there is always something that pops up that will challenge you and make you dig deep for solutions that may not be obvious at the first glance. It's part of the journey that both you and I have signed ourselves up for.

Creating a winning formula for business isn't easy and the reality is that for most, it is near impossible. But if you are serious and you have the vision to take your business to the next level, from whatever position you are in today, then you may be someone we will all read about in Forbes or Inc Magazine in a few years time - and I can't wait to see that happen.

This blog '5 Winning Ways To Turn Your Business Around' is my story - not necessarily yours. I will share with you my insight into what I believe to be the future of Marketing Eye and how we are going to cement ourselves a global small business marketing company that is unparalleled in the market place.

Think big. Dream even bigger.

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Atlanta. After landing last night, I could feel the buzz. Literally, as I walked through the airport, hopped on the plane train and grabbed my luggage after almost 24 hours of flying and being in transit, I felt this overwhelming energy. In Atlanta, anything can happen. You can be anything you want to be. You just need to believe.

It's day one and I checked on the guys marketing the company from the Atlanta Technology Village. They work tirelessly ensuring that our brand is prominent in the market, and that we stay number one on Google. They are designing stuff; diaries, promotional products, website landing pages, edm's, books, magazines - you name it - they are doing it.

Their passion is that of an internal entrepreneur. People who make 'shit happen'. Designing a culture like this is incredibly hard - but in our case, it happened by accident or at least due to the environment we work in.

For a long time Marketing Eye has been toying with the idea of hiring an Inside Sales Executive in our Melbourne office, similar to what we have done here in Atlanta.  We sat on our hands for a while, hesitant because we have not been fully equipped to train an Inside Sales Executive.  Finally, the time arrived.

With our business growing exponentially, recently, we relocated to a bigger Melbourne office to accommodate for this expansion.  Again, the question arose – should we hire an Inside Sales Executive?

What does Khloe Kardashian, fur and nudity all have in common?

They are the elements of a multi-leveled marketing campaign by PETA that went viral.  

Being a business owner has many benefits; you can make sh*t happen, turn up when you feel like it, feel empowered to do anything you set your mind to, fulfil dreams, make millions (if you work hard and are successful) and in general, you have an ability to change lives, that of your own and others. It's a pretty neat gig if I may say so myself.

The negatives, well, there are a few but one of them has never been that I didn't want to get out of bed and turn up to work. Instead, I wake up early and make my way to the office as fast and efficiently as possible. 

What I find challenging is the same things most small to medium-sized business owners find; people management, enough hours in the day to do all the things that you want to do and find the right talent. The latter being the single biggest issue I think most agencies find today. 

I’ve been in the marketing industry for over 20 years; it’s fair to say, nothing fazes me.

However, every now and then I meet a client that achieves the extraordinary.    

Then I meet a client that achieves the impossible, and recently, for me that was Frank Richmond, the Founder of Cirrus Networks.

While a sex tape is a good way to get media exposure for some; Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and alike - it's not the right way to get the type of media exposure to escalate your business's chance of being written about.

When I first started doing PR, I used to write a media release and fax it to a media outlet - all with varying results. The headline, like it is today, is worth it's weight in gold, and if you have a strong first paragraph, you may get that call back you have been waiting for.

That was soon followed up with 'pitching' on the telephone and depending on what mood the journalist was in or your ability to 'sell' a story to them, you either walked away with a published article or your press release was thrown in the trash can.

In 1998, the faxing part changed to emailing which was fantastic because it was a much faster and less tedious way of getting a media release out to journalists. It also was a much more environmentally friendly way to operate and allowed for changes to be made to ensure that each email sent out to a journalist was a one-to-one marketing piece rather than an everything to everyone, hit and miss style approach.

I am mad. Very mad. In case anyone has forgotten, it is 2014 and people are still senselessly killing others. Terrorists not only exist, but take the lives of our loved one's who innocently fall victim just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thursday 17th July, 2014, will go down as the day that it stopped being another terrorist attack and started being something that every person became responsible for. A human life is valuable whether they are young or old, man or child - it all means the same. That person deserves the right to live in a safe world, not scared to walk out on their doorstep, or take a flight.

The plane had not sent a distress signal. It reportedly came apart at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet, with its wreckage landing in territory held by pro-Russian insurgents who have been fighting the central government in Kiev.

Last month I sent a team member to a two-day class to learn about "The Project Success Method".

As a company, we handle many projects, all at the one time, for multiple clients across multiple offices. Ensuring that everything runs as smoothly as possible is critical. 

I had read quite a bit about Clinton Padgett and his proven Project Success Method. What prompted me to take action was the fact that our company is growing exponentially and we have so many international projects on that unless our people are equipped to run these projects, something will fail. Most importantly is that qualified people train the project leaders, who then in turn work with their teams to train them.