“We all arrive with laptops ready to market and work. It’s two EARLY Saturday morning hours of putting on the glitz for our businesses while we stroke our inner child with a pajama party,” says Corynne whose favorite house seat is the Papasan Chair with a Blue Fleece snowflake blanket.

“The most productive person at the event usually hosts a luncheon later in the month to sum up our mutual business effort, which most often includes a new product or market source for one member of our little coffee group. Last month we figured out how to include samples of Deb’s foot rub in an open house display bag. The month before, we organized a blog tour for a local author who has just published his book,” says Megan who often leads the group’s speaker events.

Each Business Breakfast Tradition — or BBT lasts 2 hours, most often at Jan’s house, and includes computer time, a luscious dessert brought by one of the attendees, coffee (in various forms) and a monthly “project” for the group – ending in lunch mid month for a grand finale on the project. The best part… Nobody dresses up. We all wear pajamas (modest, of course) and it’s just the ladies.

How does Business Breakfast Tradition work?

• Every member is responsible for bringing their current project to work on.
• One member brings a group marketing challenge – a product ready to market and suggestions for how the group can assist in their challenge.
• Food and coffee are served.
• Everyone dresses casual and brings a laptop to work on.
• Business Cards and Events are exchanged for the next month – fliers are welcome!
• Event lasts two hours and everybody has accomplished something in those two hours when they leave.
• Try to keep the numbers under 10 in order to have optimal business exchanges and no duplicates.
• Have fun!
• Oh, and bring something for charity – we donate something after each event, either clothing, canned goods, or money to our favorite local charity.

Arrive in your bathrobe, hair in curlers? We don’t care, just jump right in and get involved in the topic of the day and get your work done!

Or do you?

Business online requires people too. Although they may not walk into your office and have a REAL cup of coffee with you, they probably do want to know you in much the same way as the client in your office.

Smile online.

Be visible. It’s been said that people respond to websites with a personal photo on them twice as often as they do to websites with no photo. Put a big smile on your face, take a picture and post it on your website. It’s important that people be able to recognize you online. They want to see your smiling face, so post it!

Be yourself.

When you talk to people you meet online, share something of importance about yourself that gives them a sense of knowing you, personally. It’s okay to be yourself and to let your viewers know who you are. This doesn’t mean that you’re required to share your children, your most embarrassing moment, or even the secret you’ve managed to keep from your mom and Aunt Judy for an eternity. Just be yourself, tell them you like orange roses with pink edges and purple status flowers with white daisies on Mother’s Day. You might even tell them that you like real half and half in your coffee instead of fake or non-fat creamers. It’s all about being yourself. Don’t tell it all, but tell a little bit that gives them a glimpse inside your life. They need enough to know you’re real.

Give referrals.

Your favorite customers are probably involved in some kind of business development themselves. Ask about their business and know what they do. Not only will it help you to serve them better, but it will help you to refer other business to them. Once you’ve garnered enough referral business to keep yourself and your buddies in crackers and cheese sticks, you can have a party and share the wealth with more personal interactions. Maybe an all out trip to Vegas, to celebrate your mutual successes?

Building business online is really not so different from building it in person.

• Your clients want to know you.
• Your clients want you to offer them solutions.
• Your clients want to know who you know.
• Your clients want references and referrals.
• Your clients want to come back for more answers.

The most successful client relationship I’ve ever had was not necessarily profitable in the sense that most measure profit.

I met a man online, one of the first times I got onto a chat room. His name was Pete. He asked me what kind of coffee I drank, and within a few days I had a gift pack of coffee and a new Gevalia Coffee Maker delivered. Inside the package was a box of cookies and some dried fruit mix that went delightfully with the Kona Coffee he sent me.
He asked me to design a website for him and I did, for just a couple hundred dollars. Several weeks later, I realized that he had referred more than half of the new clients I’d met online. Within a few weeks, he asked me if I knew anyone who worked with antique vehicles and I referred him to several contacts from my address book. Over the next eleven years, we referred each other to others, referred clients, and multiple times, he sent me gifts “as a remembrance.”

When his home burned in 2008, I was able to find resources and help he and his wife rebuild their home, even after their insurance refused to pay the cost of reconstruction. When he passed away a few months later, his wife contacted me and asked if I could help her sell his collection of antique vehicles.

Pete had introduced me to a venture capitalist in 2002, who not only invested in my business, but became my partner for the next seven years. Our friendship, though I never personally met Pete, is constantly remembered in my success, my business, and my relationships.

Relationships like this don’t come along every day, either online or offline. Building these kinds of friendships offers rewards greater than business profits, but your business will benefit from building relationships with the people you meet both online and offline.

Get known! Attend this Denver Business Building Event at Solid Grounds and let’s continue to grow a network of referral business groups for the betterment of the community!

Wednesday, December 3rd, 11 AM at Solid Grounds Coffee Shop.

Focus is an incredible way to build your business. Without it you’ll fail, just as surely as you’re reading this message. With TOO MUCH of it, you’ll succumb to burnout and stage a SIT OUT, losing valuable business building time to a mental disorder that nobody wants to admit. When it’s right, you may not notice for a while, but when it’s wrong – you’ll be broken. Don’t wait for it to be wrong, try out your options early.

These five steps will build your business successful – get started.

1 – Read and Answer your Email – EVERY SINGLE ONE.
2 – Promote your business on internet based networking sites, email, and any other means you have to promote your business.
3 – Make enough contacts each week to increase your body count and numbers.
4 – Follow up with each client/prospect EVERY week.
5 – Be consistent. Do each of these five steps – even this one – every single week.

One instructor shared with me that she keeps track of her deposits on her calendar, every week. She simply ads her deposits to her calendar on one of her days off, as they come in, so she knows what her weekly totals are. She has to look at them each week, and make sure it’s enough to manage her budget.

I’ve always posted my minimum/maximum requirement/goals for the week on Saturday – so I can see at a glance where I want to be. It helps to have the totals right there in plain open sight.

Need a website? Visit http://denverwebstudio.com for more information about how you can grab your new website with content for a low discounted rate during September 2010.

When Susan Kildahl speaks in Denver, women business owners hear her, listen and follow directions. There’s a rock solid example of remanufacturing the business prototype when Susan enters the room.

Radical Business Triage sets the tone for Business Development and Networking in south Denver Metro area. Whether your business meets on Tuesdays for Accountability and Action or Wednesday for Catalyst Education at Enchanted Grounds in Highlands Ranch, or just signs on with Susan for some one-on-one strategizing, you’ll benefit from her seat of the pants business sense. “Nobody leaves without a better business unless they just don’t want to make a commitment,” says Susan of her events.

Several clients have doubled their businesses in the past three months, and other business owners are on target for five figure incomes within five months. These aren’t big business, they are simply one-man-show, entrepreneurial businesses that operate on a shoe string that is growing as they bring new clients and business to their network.

“You attract the business you’re ready to have,” says an associate, who spends his time working with clients to prepare for success to come their way. “Now, let’s get you ready.”

Another associate explains, “There are business owners who simply don’t understand that making money is part of their business. They’re afraid to ask their clients to pay them for what they do.”

If you’re a boot strapping business, starting out from the bottom of the line, you may have difficulty setting your sights high enough to earn substantial business from the beginning. Business coaches and strategists will help you learn to achieve your goals, when you participate in group networking and business building courses they schedule.

For more information about setting up a strategy for success, visit http://susankildahl.com and sign up for an interactive coaching session or her events newsletter that will bring you plenty of opportunity to build your business in the Denver Metro Area.

© 2010 – http://janverhoeff.com

August 14th, 9 AM until 3 PM, there will be activities going on at 6560 South Broadway, all businesses welcome. Bring your business cards and mingle with other business owners while we support the troops at a FUN Saturday event. Get a hair cut, bounce in the jumps, or just grab a burger from the South Fellowship Youth and you’ll be part of the crowd enjoying a great afternoon.

Bring plenty of cards and fliers to pass out to support your own business and promote an event of your own. This is an opportunity you won’t want to miss.

Take a moment and have coffee at Solid Grounds… You’ll appreciate the opportunity to share a quiet moment with God and others.

There, I’ve said it.

Some of the most disgusting tweets include insulting cuss words, derogatory remarks and negativity in the mix. Why bother? Isn’t there enough of that in day-to-day life, on the tube and elsewhere? Why must we discourage real business interaction by including the negatives on Twitter too?

When you cut the jabber to 140 characters, you don’t have much time to get your point across. You must actually state your cause and direct your reader in minimal words. So use words wisely on Twitter.

Stay positive.

Keep your words entertaining, positive and enthusiastic. Share the joy you have experienced in your business by choosing happy words. If the words you use make you smile, they’ll make other people smile too.

If you’re a chameleon and refuse to enjoy life, we will allow you to post on twitter, just don’t bring us down. Add a chuckle now and then, just to remind us that you’re an interesting person with positive content. Dry humor is still humor.

Add Links.

Don’t forget to toss in your links. We DO want to know more about those interesting and humorous quips you quote on twitter. Leave us a link to follow so we can read more about your information. Use a URL snipper to snip those long character sucking links and zap them to a smaller, more useful size.

Be sure to #identify.

Using the #beforeidentifiers makes your words searchable. Occasionally, people overuse this object, but more often, they just don’t bother. Then their tweets are lost forever on twitter. Use #tweets to identify your words and bring them back in a search on your topic.

Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/janverhoeff for more information.

If you speak on business related topics, relevant to networking and Internet Marketing of your business, you’re a prime suspect. We want you to speak to our organization and participate in the events.

I’ll be confirming time and places for events today and getting back with speakers. Don’t miss this prime opportunity to share what you do. Contact me for more information.

Well, you could sit down and cry over your no-show, or sit right there having a nice cup of coffee planning the next event better, so people show up. IF you’re an event planner, at some point, there will always be a No-Show, probably when you least expect it. Don’t sweat it, it happens to everyone, so you can be assured, it’s not because everyone hates you. It’s just part of the process, and you’ve got an opportunity to never do it again.

Better Planning

Better planning for your next event means there’ll be more people invited, more people will know about the event, and people will come. Schedule the event for a more appropriate time, so your attendees can stop by on their noon hour, on their way home from work, or after another event. This kind of piggy-back scheduling has worked for years. People often schedule meetings at a luncheon spot so their attendees can eat and meet. That’s always a good plan.

If it’s after work, make sure it’s along a well traveled route for your attendees. Don’t find an out of the way place for your after work meeting, because they won’t get there. Find the most popular route traveled and an easy to locate site, where they can pick up a quick dinner after the meeting. (Coffee shops near grocery store parking lots are a good option.)

Announce it in Advance

Give your attendees plenty of time to plan on attending. Put it on a common calendar so they can recheck the date frequently. Add it to the mailing list, so you can remind them before the event, even the day of the event, easily. Send them a note, text them, call them, or stop by and pick them up to remind them to attend your event.

Eventually, you’ll have enough people coming and bringing guests to your events that you won’t have to worry about no-show events often. But, today, I attended an event where EVEN the hostess had forgotten to show up. That was fun. Three of us networked and chattered about our own businesses (isn’t that all about networking?) until it was time to go and left, happily content that we’d accomplished something. AND… I invited a total stranger to another networking event.

That was a successful event, even though it was a no-show for the hostess (the hostess didn’t show) it was still successful for me.

Invite Popular People

For each event, invite someone who is popular enough to draw in a crowd of their own. This substantiates your own crowd, builds the network and increases the numbers for everyone involved in the networking group. Once your organization can stand alone, the popular people you invite will find their own positives out of the group and be glad they started coming.

Popular marketing people mean positive influence in your group. Always find a few eloquent and verbose individuals who can speak well and will share their knowledge with the group. Bring them to the activities and invite them to share their expertise in a 15 minute presentation. Give them an opportunity to grow their business with leadership opportunities, while they train the rest of your attendees to grow their own.

Polish the Surface

There’s always a wall flower, someone who stands near the exit and stays for the meeting but leaves without making much of an impression. Invite that person to visit in a one on one event and challenge them to be more interactive. The challenge will bring out the best in the person and build their business. You may feel like you’ve wasted your time, but the benefits of that time spent polishing the surface will result in increased profits overall.

If you haven’t joined this networking group or attended a networking event, it’s time to get involved. Stop by our events and add one to your personal calendar. It’s time to get involved!

Learn how you can build a network of referral marketing associates in one hour of time by simply using the opportunities and concepts of social networking properly.

Invest $10 – Build Your Social Network

Tuesday, June 22 – 1PM, Enchanted Grounds Coffee Shop

Jan Verhoeff – 303.968.6863 – janverhoeff@yahoo.com

www.janverhoeff.com