Uncategorized

Stay at Home Dog Mom- Day 3

Quick update. I think I’m still on a good start. I spent yesterday creating a visual display for my room/office.

I’ve spent some time figuring out what my niche site is going to do. I had ideas for dozens of articles on basic dog questions, but thought they had already been done, how was I going to do it better?

I think I now have that answer.

While there is a ton of great information out there, it is not easy to find. And, in my opinion, some of it is hard to read.

So, this site, dogmom.me will be a great resource for dog-moms by a Dog Mom. Loads of tips and tools and advice and gift ideas. A one stop shop for dog mom’s.

And this site, where you are right now, will chronicle my journey from employee to full-time stay at home dog mom in 24 months.

And of course, I offer a membership site for anybody who wants to do the same. To create an income online so that they to, can be full-time dog parents.

Now, if they have a different reason for creating an online income that will replace their day job… I guess that’s fine.

But ya really oughta think about the dog angle. Just sayin.

That’s it for today. I said I would be brief.

I’m going to do some more work on that new site and some work here so it is more focused. I’ll be back with another update in a few days.

A Critique of a Decent Real Estate Site

by Dachia

Hey there
Dachia here.
Welcome back to Focus On Your Small Business.

I wanted to share some good content with you… so you didn’t think I disliked everything out there.

Not at all.

And I stuck with real estate because the previous critique was also real estate so I want to compare apples and apples.

If I do a search for real estate on google, google will give me results based on my location. If I’m doing a critique of a site outside my area, I’ll open a private, or incognito’ window before I do the search. But as a regular person doing a search, this is what I’m going to find. These are the sites that come up on top.

First is realtor.com

Next is zillow and then the local criagslist.

Then realestate.com

Then Real Estate the Band… which apparently is an actual band… Their site loads slowly, probably because it is heavy in animation. So, I can’t tell you if they are any good… but they do look interesting.

Then a Wikipedia article, and then a local downtown site.

Then, finally… we have an actual company site, and it happens to be ReMax.

Now, landing page is clean. A big but not hero image of an agent. The header image is very branded. ReMax balloons. The information provided on that content block with his image is the office address and his office number and his cell number. And there is a very simple search tool over the top of that contact block.

Clean. Streamlined. I would suggest that even on the larger device, to make those phone numbers clickable.

They are clickable on the mobile device.

I’m not crazy about how this site looks or feels on my mobile. In vertical, it just sucks, but even in horizontal… it’s a bit awkward. Now… that is somewhat the norm for real estate sites on mobiles… but something to always be trying to improve.

Back to my Mac.

Under the header is a slider gallery of properties. You can see 3 and then you click a slider arrow to get more. This works. Usually I dislike having to scroll to the side, but these buttons are very recognizable and the surrounding area is clean.

Also, as I scroll down, there is a static bar at the top with his pic and a blue bar that says Ask Me Anything.

Of course my 13 year old self wants to ask him how old the sun is… but really that is inviting. He is open to discussing whatever you want to discuss.

Also at the top is that static bar is a search tool, where you can put in a city and state. Right there…all the time.

Scroll down a bit further and it says HONEST-THOROUGH-SERVICE, All in caps. This I would change… I would capitalize the first letter. All in caps is hard to read. Doesn’t flow. Also, each word has a hyphen between them…

It doesn’t look right.

Then a brief clean paragraph about the agent professionally.

Then 2 sections that look like 2 of 3 columns… because they are not centered. You know how I dislike things that are not centered when they look like they were intended to be. It throws off the balance of the page.

Then a “ask a question“ button, then a ‘get connected’ button with a Facebook logo. Followed by a handful of recent facebook posts. This looks clean. Not too many posts. Each block has a white background to it does not stand out from the main white background, but does have a mild border so it is delineated from the rest.

This is a simple plug in you can use if you have a wordpress site or Joomla… this plug in will automatically bring in the most recent posts from Facebook or you can set it up for Twitter or whatever.

Then there is another ‘connect with me’ button. Now, when I click that, I get a drop down popup… it has a few fields to fill out and has the agent’s pic there. However… the pic is cut off. So while there is space above his head, it is cut off at his chin. This is an easy fix… but likely he is unaware of it.

Then, we have a video. I would say this video could and should be bigger, however, it looks nice with the clean background and only a simple button next to it. The button says “ready to get started?”

However… the video is a youtube video. So, at the end, you get all the other videos that youtube wants to show off… and draw the viewer to youtube. Unless you have an affiliate relationship with youtube, don’t advertise for them.

Host your video yourself or on Vimeo, $7 a month and get rid of the ads and embed it on your site. (ETD, for commercial videos, you’ll need the $20/month level)

So, overall, nice site. A few things I would change, but I would bet it has a low bounce rate. People who are doing a search for real estate, in this area, after offered the other topic sites, have this one.

I hope you got some ideas from this. Just a heads up: you are never actually done with your site. Content changes… trends change… but a habit of self auditing will help you stay current and clean with no broken links or formatting.

Keep in mind that if you are spending hours and hours in research mode online, learning what you need to do to build your business and then hours more figuring out how… you might want to check out the membership site. It can save you many hours every month in research and determining which resources are accurate and worth your attention.

You can find more information and a webinar that will walk you through whether or not this is the right path for you, on dachia.com/membership

Until next week. Make it a good one. It’s all up you… with a little bit of me.

Kissing in Business

by Dachia

While out and about today, I had some thoughts regarding this odd and questionable relationship and my interest in helping small businesses build relationships with their customers/clients. A point I realized as I was journalling yesterday was that I needed to ask an additional question.

My general questions included: are they single and are they a non-smoker. The question that I needed to add was, “Do you want a relationship?”

Still with me?

We can’t assume that our customers or clients want a relationship. But then we need to make a tough choice as to whether we want them in our lives.

It’s your business. It’s up to you who you invite in.

Just as if this were a personal relationship, something intimate, it’s your decision what you want out of it. Something long lasting? Something unexpected? But if you want a relationship with this person, you need their permission. You need to invite them into it.

Find out what they want from you. Find out what sort of relationship they want. Find out how they’d like to be treated.

There is something very sexy about being asked permission to be kissed. But there is also something very sexy about offering a kiss or always being available to receive one.

So, what’s all this about kissing?

In business, a kiss is a gesture of connection.

When Chewy.com sends portraits of pets to their proud parents, that’s a kiss. Chewy knows that their kisses are well-received.

Your kisses might be loyalty club discount. Their kisses to you might be bringing family and friends into your establishment. My kisses to Chewy are gushing over them on social media.

I have the same advice for businesses as I do for personal intimate relationships. Learn how to kiss. Enjoy it. Do it often.

Our Search for Our Needles

by Dachia

Many years ago, I was listening to tapes (yes tapes, not CD’s) from a leader in personal development and self-growth. I think he was discussing clarifying goals and to make his point he described how he wanted to have a great personal, intimate, long-term relationship with a woman. On a train, he began to take notes with pen and paper (yes… not a laptop or tablet) and described her in every detail. He went on to tell me that he met her and married her and was blissfully happy. I was hooked. I started making a list. My list was the typical shallow needs and desires that I heard him describe and that seemed to be right there in the forefront of my mind. I could see my hunky perfect mate and he said the perfect things and I felt perfectly happy and then nothing ever really happened with that.

I met and had great relationships with a couple guys who had almost nothing in common with that list I created. We did not last forever. But that is not to imply that it was not well-worth the time it did last. One of them is still a great friend with whom I can be very honest and we touch base regularly on email. Another is someone I consider my favorite ex, because I did the most growth with him and after him, coming to terms with who I really was and who I really wanted to be. One of them was an ego-maniacal, jerk who sent me a Facebook friend request and I immediately shared the event with a friend who laughed with me at the very idea of allowing him in my life again, which would certainly be for his benefit, as everything was. Another was an ex-fiance that I rarely think of except when sharing stories such as this, and I still breathe a sigh of relief when I recall how close I was to the aisle to hell. Another was a sweetheart of a guy, several years younger than I was, who I have nothing but sweet feelings for and wish nothing but the best. As I am not given to casual relationships, my list is fairly short. While there are a couple men who could be included, such as the man I married far too young, the point here is that none of them met my detailed list of perfect mate material.

For years I wondered if that was why that particular relationship did not last. I should have waited for the guy that met my requirements. And then theoretically, I should have waited some more for the guy who met my requirements and for whom I met his. Yeah right. Because “redhead with zero cooking skills, nor household ability, but who loves to talk and share stories, and travel, and meet new people, and experience new cultures, swears like a proverbial sailor and loves good sarcasm” is a basic list for any guy.

But it would be the basic list for my guy.

However, I rethought my list of “he must:” when I heard that my audiotape guru had divorced and remarried… another perfect person.

This got me wondering if perhaps there is more than one perfect person for all of us, or perhaps there wasn’t even one. I kept my list through the years, more as a reminder to me of what to not be thinking rather than to think.

A few years ago I heard another wise leader describe finding love. He pointed out that we each knew about 50 or 100 people pretty well. So, we may see Mary and immediately convince ourselves that that is the person for us. So we ask the universe for Mary. We try to convince the universe that Mary is perfect for us, even though we really know nothing about her. The universe knows 7 billion people really well. We know about 50. Let the universe find you your love.

When I heard this little parable, I found myself laughing a little at the hubris I had displayed for years. I was certain I knew who the perfect guy was for me and yet I didn’t have him. Maybe we just need to try each one on as we come to them. Like sweaters in a mall. Lots of them simply do not have a pattern we find attractive, so we don’t even go there, even though our need for a sweater might be to just curl up in it and read a good book and sip hot cocoa. As a person who is rarely attracted to most sweaters, I make no judgments about the shallowness of determining a sweater as too ugly to try. We are what we are. That ugly sweater might be so soft and snuggly and warm… but we will never know.

Then we see that sweater that is so gorgeous and we go to touch it and it is scratchy. And it fits tight at the neck. And it is loose at the waist. And the tag is annoying against the neck. And it is hand-wash only… seriously? And we are still looking at it? But it is so pretty. I get that.

I don’t know what the answer is to finding love. Maybe we don’t find it, but we simply make it. Maybe it is not so simple, but maybe it is worth the effort.

I heard the phrase “trying to find my needle in the haystack” a couple months ago and I have thought about it ever since. He described the search as having to try a whole lot of needles and I thought how I always thought we were searching for one needle in a haystack, but that there were actually many. So, just because we find a needle, doesn’t mean it is the needle for us, or that we are the needle for them.

I still have that list from decades ago, but I’m much more open to what the universe might have in mind for me. I created a much shorter list of attributes that I think are important so that I could more easily and quickly recognize the needle the universe sends me.

Instead of describing what he looks like and how attractive he is, I simply put that he is attractive to me. He has a good sense of humor. He has an interest in the world. He is passionate about his purpose. And he is attracted to me… and he has a pulse.

That list was 3 pages 20 years ago. The hard part for me, is being ok that just because I might think I have found my needle, does not mean he thinks he has found his. But there are a LOT of needles out there. It’s ok to try a few. It’s also ok to be needle-less. I can tell you from experience that you can live a very full life as a solo-needle.

I’m curious how you have found your own needle. I would bet that the journeys are as varied as the readers and reading different avenues to success in this exploration might be beneficial to those who are still seeking. So, I invite you to share your story, steps or missteps and we can all grow from each others experience. Feel free to comment here or at our Facebook hang-out.