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on a mission … in Life, in Work and with People

Nov
30

What Lady Ivy Taught Me About Customer Service

Over Thanksgiving break, I was thinking a lot about carrying around a spirit of gratefulness well beyond the turkey carving and holiday gift-giving.

One of the things I am truly grateful for in life is great customer service.

It makes that moment, that day, and in many ways my whole life a lot more enjoyable when people around me care about what they do and how they do it.

Those great customer service moments elevate ordinary people to extraordinary status.

They become super heros who I tell others about, spend my money with — and they also become my friends, business collaborators, partners and people whom I greatly admire and seek out whenever I can.

After Church on Sundays, Al and I like to go to Bob Evans for breakfast. We’re empty-nesters (most of the time) so we go often.

We think the food is pretty darn good there, but what makes this weekly habit particularly memorable is a server named Lady Ivy (yes, that is what her nametag says–and has she got style.) In fact, this extraordinary woman has made me look at customer service in a whole new way.

So thanks to Lady Ivy, here are a few customer service thoughts …

We Want to Feel Special

How does one do that? Remembering my name, remembering things particular to me, greeting me with a big smile and making sure my needs are met and more. It is that feeling that we should all create for our clients — that even if for just a moment, no one else in the world exists except for that one person you are serving at that moment.

We Want Things Made Right Without Excuses

Occasionally, and it is very rare, someone, somewhere makes a mistake on our order. But no worries, because Lady Ivy is all over it before you can butter your toast. I have an advocate, an evangelist, a woman on a mission to make sure my breakfast is perfect — without blame or negativity. Even if there is a hiccup somewhere in the bacon and egg system, I feel really good about my decision to eat there again and and again.

We Love it When We Get More Than We Expect

Wow, she offered to serve griledl pumpkin bread for me one day. I eat Paleo and gluten free, so I don’t usually eat any bread or grain at all even though I can eat it. But this … this, I just couldn’t resist giving it a try. It tasted like warm pumpkin pie and melted in my mouth. Going that extra mile really made an impact.

We Appreciate New Ways of Thinking

Well this is actually quite interesting because we are talking about breakfast here … but are we really? Creative thinking applies to any situation in business and in life. Maple syrup in our coffee? Grits instead of potatoes with a little butter or  maple syrup. Omelets loaded with fresh spinach and minus all the other stuff that I don’t want — and her list of creative ideas that build on the standard menu goes on.

While hubby and I often get the same basic entree (bacon and eggs), she knows us well enough to know that we like to mix it up a little — so she is always offering new ideas to enhance our experience and keep us coming back for more. We might even spend more money now than when we first started going there. I don’t know for sure — and I don’t care because I am so happy with my experience. If she can innovate with breakfast, I should be able to innovate with marketing.

Do you know someone who is a customer service stand out? How does it prompt you to look at serving others in a new way? ~Lori


Posted in Customer Service, Marketing, Written Impact | Tagged | Leave a comment
Nov
14

Social Media Club Columbus Talks Blogging

On Tue., Nov. 15th, I will be part of a blogging panel at the meeting/luncheon of the Social Media Club of Columbus.

If you are not familiar with this organization, you should check it out.

They are great about varying the speakers and topics and they deliver the latest social media info, including, but not limited to: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Geo-location, and Blogging.

They try to make it work with the day– 11:30-1 at the Main Library with a Panera lunch. Only $15 for lunch, presentation and the chance to spend time with 20-40 interesting people. So there is my plug for joining this organization — and it is real.

I finally figured out this WordPress SlideShare widget …so here is the presentation — and I will share some insights from BlogWorld recently.

One of the slides is entitled: ‘You are a Freakin’ Publisher’ and this statement came from Peter Shankman’s talk (Founder of HARO among other things) in which he reminded us that traditional media folks are beginning to take bloggers more seriously and that our voices matter.
Come on out on Tue., Nov. 15th and join us for lunch and blog talking. ~Lori

Posted in Blogging, Written Impact | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
Oct
31

Reflections After Two Years in Business

Written Impact just celebrated two years in business … and as I kick-off a new venture BlogCoaches, I thought it would be interesting to post a few reflections about my entrepreneurial journey.

  • Being an entrepreneur suits me — every time I think about going back to the corporate world, I break out in a cold sweat. So no matter how hard this is, it is right for me right now. Why? I thrive on the creativity, flexibility and the ability to serve a number of organizations in very different ways — but most importantly — in my own way.
  • Networking is the most crucial element of business — sure, social media is great online networking, but most of my work still comes from meeting with people, talking with people and allowing them to get to know me and how I do business. Not so revolutionary, but it is a good reminder to get out of the office on regular basis.
  • Change is the only constant – it goes without saying that a small business owner needs to be nimble and willing to innovate. What do my clients want and need? What skills do I bring? Where do I need to grow? Too much work or not enough work? Is this the right work for me? I suppose it would get boring if it everything all lined up nicely every day … hmmm.
  • I still love writing — there are certainly a lot of aspects to running a business: cultivating new business, planning, using social media, networking, finance, developing proposals, dealing with equipment/office issues … Writing (especially blogging) brings me back to why I started this business, fulfills my creative side and still brings me great joy.
  • Staff or Solo — have worked in both worlds and I find a lot of fun in each. Right now I am flying solo and it feels pretty good as long as I can maintain a decent life / work balance.
  • Still have a heart for the non-profit and small biz — a friend just asked me if I had moved on to larger companies. Nope. Still love the startup, the small, the non-profit mission, the beginning, the challenge, the hope … and the Great Possibility of It All. Looks like others like Leonardo DiCaprio do too.

What about you? Do you take time to reflect on your entrepreneurial journey occasionally?

 


Posted in Business, Business Passion, Networking, Written Impact, WrittenImpact Connections | Tagged , , | 2 Comments
Oct
18

From a Tweet to a Blog Post … and China?

This is a guest post from Written Impact Visual Brand Manager, Matthew Pasternack, founder of Nack Creative. I challenged him to take an interesting tweet and expand it out into a blog post. It is a great story!

I recently posted an “Image of the Day”, on Twitter, of a screenshot I took of a Chinese website that featured my personal letterpressed wedding invitations.

Trying to fit all my thoughts into 140 characters I tweeted, “The wedding invites found their way to China. Thank you google analytics and google translate!” along with the image of the screenshot. There was much to the story that I couldn’t tell with those 140 characters and an image that I wish I could. Well, here’s my chance …

I got married a few months ago in July, and being a designer, I decided to brand my own wedding of course. I went all out. From the invitations to the table numbers, everything was branded. My favorite part about the process was letterpressing the save-the-dates, invitations and envelopes. A couple months had passed after the wedding and I finally got around to documenting the wedding material and posting it on my website. Within a couple of days, they were noticed by a design blog called “Lovely Stationery” and were featured on their website.


I checked my google analytics shortly after and noticed a pretty good size spike in visits to my site. A few days later, I checked back on my analytics and saw a spike in visitors about double the size of the first one. I immediately check the traffic sources and saw that another website must have featured the wedding invites. Sure enough, another website was driving visits to my site. I dug a little deeper and to my surprise found out that the site and the visits were from China! I looked at the Map Overlay in Google Analytics and noticed that the country of China was providing more hits to my website than the United States was.

I had to see for myself the site that was providing all this traffic! I went to the site and couldn’t read one word because it was all in Chinese, however I could see that my wedding invites were featured. They wrote a brief paragraph about them … but it was in Chinese and I’m no scholar when it comes to foreign languages; fortunately I remembered that Google has a translation tool.

Google Translate is one of many services that google puts on the web for free. I literally copied the Chinese text from the website, and copied it into Google Translate. With a click of a button I was able to read what was written about my invites. It was amazing how easy it was to get a translation from Chinese to English that seemed fairly accurate.

Have you checked your google analytics recently to see how traffic is being driven to your site? You may be surprised of what you might find (or have to translate)!

 


Posted in Blogging, Collaboration, Creative Design, Creativity, Written Impact | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments
Oct
12

Small Business Owner Survival Tip: Exercise

When I started Written Impact in Sept. 2009, I was running outdoors and balancing my time pretty well. But as my business grew, I started cutting out my morning runs to get more work done.

Lori and Al After Lifting at the Gym

From January 2010 – September 2010, I didn’t exercise at all. This was the first time in my life that I wasn’t doing anything physical and it didn’t feel good.

I was tired, grumpy, always working — and finally in October 2010, hubby Al intervened to get me into the gym to lift weights with him under the guidance of a fitness coach a few days a week.

It has now been a year since I started lifting weights and I have been reflecting on the impact of this regular exercise routine in my personal and business life. Some positive things have happened:

  • Increased strength
  • Balancing work and life
  • More energy
  • Sharper mental focus
  • Need less sleep
  • Eat better
  • Happier and more in control
  • Live less stressed
  • More confident
  • More creative
  • More social

How does this make me a better business person?

The physical/mental jumpstart that I’ve realized through exercise help me to do what I normally do with more energy, determination and light-heartedness. I am just darn happier, more balanced and able to attend to the needs of my family, friends and clients with more zeal.

Check out this article about how exercise is like Miracle-Gro for your brain.

What type of exercise do you enjoy? How does it help you do what you do better?

 


Posted in Change, Entrepreneur, Exercise, Fitness, Written Impact | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments
Oct
1

Announcing BlogCoaches.com

I am very happy to announce BlogCoaches.com.

This new venture is a result of my strong belief that you can create and maintain a business blog that inspires others, builds your brand, increases SEO, connects you more intimately with new and potential clients and helps you learn about yourself and what makes you tick.

My hope is for the privilege to assist organizations with their blog development and growth with advice about creative and consistent content planning, strategy, writing, editing, promotion and connection.

Here are some thoughts from some bloggers about the role and importance of blogging:

“Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.”~Seth Godin

“Blogging is the new poetry of our time!” ~Author Unknown

“If you know what you want, blogging can get it for you. But you need to want something beyond blogging. Use your blog to figure out who you are and what you are good at and who the best people are for you to connect with.” ~Penelope Trunk

“Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.” Brian Clark

“A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.” ~Unknown

“Your blog is what you say when there is nobody standing over your shoulder telling you what to do.” ~lorelle

“A blog is like a muscle. You need to use it to grow it. And for most of us, that means actually being a little bit strategic and putting some sort of a system or a rhythm or a routine in place to help us to go to the next level. Whatever you do, don’t just leave it to chance. If you want your blog to be successful, if you want it to achieve certain goals, you need to put some systems and rhythms in place to take you to those places.”~Darren Rowse

Are you blogging? Has it been a good experience for you?


Posted in BlogCoaches, Blogging, Branding, Business Passion, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Entrepreneur, Marketing, Seth Godin, Writing, Written Impact | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
Sep
21

Unselling = Relationship Building

A recent post in Ideas to Deals focused on selling strategies and the power of relationship building versus hard selling.

Michael Bowers, Columbus SBDC Director, summarized a panel discussion which included three different perspectives on ‘selling’.

What was key for me, was Bowers’ point about how much he disliked being sold by someone in the first few minutes of meeting.

I agree. Who are you, what are you about and what do you do? Don’t move too fast. Hard sell is no sell for me. Let the relationship build and evolve. A little patience is required.

As the Written Impact owner for the last two years, I am now starting a new venture, BlogCoaches, and I am faced with ‘selling’ a new service to a potentially new audience.

Moving forward, the relationship building sales model includes in-person and online networking and looks something like this ..

  • Meet with entrepreneurs to learn and zero in on their specific needs
  • Deliver workshops and presentations to get the word out about the new venture
  • Create Webinars to reach online prospects
  • Communicate using social media: regular blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ to share my ideas and ideas from other leaders in my field
  • Internet marketing with e-blasts and updated website content
  • Phone calls and meetings to partner with organizations and small business owners where there is some natural synergy and we both can benefit.

I will be present both in person and online with relationship-bulding. A friend asked me why I was so open to meeting with potential clients in person — wouldn’t it be more time and cost effective to build an internet business? I see my new venture as a blend of both.

Sitting across from clients is still what I really enjoy about business and carrying that same relationship into the online space is possible with care and attention to client needs.

I am patient. My plan includes relationship-building (unselling) over the two years.

How do you ‘sell’ your services? Have you tweaked your approach over time? If so, how? Share some of your successes.

 


Posted in Business, Communication, Marketing, Written Impact | Leave a comment
Sep
11

St. Gabriel Catholic Radio Acquires WOSU 820AM

We are very excited to announce that Written Impact client, listener-supported St. Gabriel Radio, Inc. announced it has signed a purchase agreement for WOSU-820AM from The Ohio State University.

The signing of this agreement is the first step in the transition to the future, permanent radio home at 820AM with a wider reach around Ohio.

St. Gabriel Catholic Radio will continue to broadcast on 1580AM until they receive approval of a license transfer from the FCC which we anticipate to occur by January 1, 2012.

Marc Hawk, president of the St. Gabriel’s board, said the goal is to reach the entire Columbus diocese, and this purchase almost accomplishes that during the daytime hours, with the exception of the far southern region around Portsmouth.

The station will rebroadcast Catholic programs from a national feed, as well as local talk shows and local Catholic high-school football games.

Written Impact has been busy working with St. Gabriel Radio to prepare new branding and various marketing initiatives. It is exciting to watch the growth of a non-profit that is fully donation-funded and who seeks to reach as many people as possible.

 


Posted in Branding, Catholic, Client Spotlight, Columbus Diocese, Communication, Nonprofit, Ohio State University, Radio, Written Impact | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
Sep
5

8 Reasons Bloggers Should Read Other Blogs Regularly

  • Expose yourself to different blogging styles. This may help you find or refine your voice to better connect with your audience and develop more power to market your products and services.
  • Identify a content hole that you can fill. Know what the conversation is out there and then bring your own unique perspective to it.
  • Learn and be entertained. In my mind, these two go together. Follow blogs that are of interest to you, help you gain tips or knowledge to do something better … or help you unwind or relax much like watching a television show or movie.
  • Notice what readers like. People are funny and unpredictable, so reading blog posts and reactions to the post (comments) can be enjoyable and also give you ideas about components, such as the personal anecdote, to include in your own blog posts.
  • Practice commenting on posts. Get your name out there, be active and conversational. Most blog posts give you the opportunity to enter your website or blog URL, and you must at least enter your email, so there is an opportunity for connection with like-minded people. Readers notice and even subscribe to comments so don’t underestimate the power of adding your 2 cents.
  • Learn what you like in term of visuals, links and other blog characteristics. After reading many blogs, I now know that I find more than about five links in a post annoying and I feel overwhelmed because I want to click through them all … but I won’t allow myself the time to do so. I also learned that I like big, powerful photos. You have your own opinions that develop and clarify the more you read.
  • Be inspired. When I read other blogs, it makes me want to write. Kinda like when I am driving somewhere and I see a runner, I wanna get out and run. My mind goes like this … if that busy parent can write, or that engineer, CEO or fitness coach, I can make time to write too.
  • Find potential guest post writers and vice versa. It is fun and interesting to build your network with guest bloggers and gaub some SEO power by writing new or tweaking existing content to provide for another blog site.

Careful … DO NOT spend too much time reading other blogs each day. Limit yourself to a set time, such as 15-30 minutes and DO NOT give in to any thoughts of copying content. Respect the blogger. ~Lori

What types of blogs do you read regularly? What have you learned from reading other blogs?

 


Posted in Blogging, Branding, Business | Tagged , | 3 Comments
Aug
30

Grace Waves

There are moments in our lives when we feel driven to do something that we don’t quite understand.

My question to you is this … do you listen, follow you gut and move forward with that prompting or do you ignore it … for whatever reason?

And what happens when you listen and respond? Do you experience peace or does your life simply become more complicated?

For me the answer is both.

If I say yes, then there is more to do, perhaps something new to learn or someone I have to help. It complicates my life. I have less time for me. Less time for other things. But usually, I have peace and my day seems to work out okay. Maybe not the way I envisioned, but still okay.

Trusting those promptings, what a friend of mine calls ‘grace waves’ can be challenging.

It means having a little flexibility, giving up some control, going with the flow and listening to that interesting combination of head and heart.

Lately I have been giving in to these grace waves over and over and experiencing much peace.

Maybe I have finally grown up.

Or maybe I finally get that I am a mere human and all I can do is what I am being asked to do at that moment … being fully present to that person or task that is right in front of me.

Does everything get done? No.

But I am totally okay with that … as my life journey continues to unfold, I hope to become a better listener and a better responder to that inner voice … with the hope of making a difference wherever I am needed.

Are you tuned in to your inner voice? If so, how do you respond?

 


Posted in Inspiration, Written Impact | Tagged , | Leave a comment