US Finance World

My desperation to be at a football match meant I almost played into the hands of a scammer.

I nearly had a disastrous start to 2012, when my desperation to be at a football match meant I almost fell victim to a scammer.

Tickets for the game had sold out weeks in advance, and for various reasons I’d missed out on them. I’d even entered competitions to win some, but no joy.

So I thought I’d take a final punt and put an ad on the local sections of free classified ad website Gumtree.

I said I was looking for two tickets in the home end (although I support the away team) as I reasoned the odds were better. I put my mobile phone number on the ad and asked for people who couldn’t attend the game for whatever reason to call me.

To my surprise and delight, within 20 minutes of the ad going live on the site, I had a text: “Hi. I have two tickets for the game. I have ha

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What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: S.B.A. Gains Clout?

The Small Business Administration is invited back to the grown-ups table (but reaction among small-business advocates is mixed).

Trade Shows: C.E.S. Loses Clout?

This year’s annual International Consumer Electronics Show had lots to offer for small business, and Startup America firms converged on the event. And there were plenty of models — and Justin Timberlake, too. But many feel that the show is losing its clout. Matt Ryan explains why you should be glad you didn’t go: “Only a handful of companies are very good about keeping secrets, and they don’t typically announce products at C.E.S.” But you could have seen these 12 quirky gadgets on display. Or checked out some really strange laptops. The Neat Company introduced new scanners aimed at small businesses. Tom Simonite says there were three gems hidden in Steve Ballmer’s final keynote speech. Apple had 250 n

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Jan 14, ’12 1:33 PM Author Adrian Swinscoe Categories Business Ideas, Business Marketing, Customer Service, Marketing/PR, manage your time Tags automation, customer experience management, customer relations, customer relationship management, Customer Service, customers, digital world, ecrm, electronic commerce, help you, marketing automation, Marketing/PR, relations, stand out

Readers of this blog and my own across at know that I write about building better and more valuable relations with your customers and your people as a way of growing your business.

Over the festive break I spent quite a lot of time unplugged from the digital world thinking about how we can help ourselves stand out in front of our customers and, at the same time, help ourselves build better relations with past and present customers.

Heres a few ideas that I would encourage you to think about doing more of:

1. Automation, particularly marketing automation, is becoming really popular and there is a lot of talk about how we can automate this and that, specifically, when referring to online transactions, communication, customer service etc. W

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Its been awhile since I did a debt update, so lets take a look at where Im at vs when I started debtkid.com back in 2007.

2011 was definitely not my best year for earning, especially compared to 2010 and even 2009. I let my work slack off with moving to Portland 2010 and getting married and other major life stuff.

So I was not able to save as much this year as I would have liked. I also started investing back into my current business more and so the last few months Ive been going negative on my savings! Yikes. Hopefully only a few more months of that and I can start saving again.

Total Debt Jan 2012

(change from 2010 in parenthesis)

Student Loans: $7512.01 (-$841.99)
Mom Debt: $67,000 (-$20,000)
Total: $74,512.01 (-20,841.99)

Whats in store for 2012

Im hoping that 2012 will be a breakout year for my business to really start earning well again.

Other than that life has been pretty darn good.

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1. “We carefully picked your neighborhood.”

The average $21 or so the National Retail Federation estimates most Americans will spend on Halloween candy this year might only buy Susan Stroga enough to last through an hour of trick-or-treaters. Parents for miles around like the closed subdivision in Barrington, Ill. where Stroga lives for its safety and walkability, while kids know it for having the best goodies. “We’ve developed a reputation for having a lot of candy,” she admits. Stroga plans for a whopping 1,000-plus visitors and spends $100 on value bags of candy at Costco to save cash — and only once in her 10 years in the neighborhood has she had any left over. The first year, and in most years thereafter, she’s had to send her husband out to the store for more. “I was shocked,” she recalls. “I was thinking, where did all these kids come from?” Now she routinely alerts new neighbors to stock up.

Where you live plays a big role in the number of trick-or-treaters you get and how much you may have to spend.

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As a Credit Karma user, I recently received an email announcing that they have begun offering daily free credit monitoring in addition to free credit scores!

What is credit monitoring?

Credit monitoring is a service that automatically updates you when a significant change has been identified in your credit report. This could include a hard or soft credit inquiry, a new credit account being started, late payment updates, or updates to your personal information.

You will automatically get an email when one of these things happens. In the long run, this can help you protect your credit and protect yourself from identity theft. If you have a big credit event such as a loan application coming up, it can also protect you from any unforeseen roadblocks.

Just like Credit Karmas credit score service, which offers up your Transrisk (TransUnion) and VantageScore, it is also free. You do not need to enter your credit card or any payment information like you do with other free credit score services.

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Ive been telling you about Indie Business Meetup, and today, I have more news. Weve got 24 cities registered! Not all of them have locations set, pending registered participants, so if you are planning to join us, remember to RSVP for your city at our MeetUp Page!

This is a super exciting way to start 2012, sharing and networking with like-minded Indies in your own local area. The largest participating cities, listed below, have definitive locations for their events. Click through as indicated to see registered participants, and to RSVP yourself!

1. New York, NY. Hosted by Melissa Rivera of Naturally Good Soaps. RSVP for New York City here.
2. San Francisco Bay area. Hosted by Lori Nova of The Nova Studio. RSVP for San Francisco Bay area/Point Richmond here.
3. Newark/Northern NJ. Hosted by La Shonda Tyree of Handmade Soap Coach.

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So, here we are in the first month of 2012. How many of you whose business year corresponds with the calendar year have your plan written? Better yet, how many have taken action on the plan?

In my fifteen years in business, many of them spent assisting other business owners develop robust goals and action plans, I continue to be amazed at how many individuals think that drafting goals and action plans is nothing but a paper and pen exercise; that they are nothing more than stacks of paper to join the already ceiling high stacks of paper. All the planning in the world won’t help you run your business if all you do with the documentation is file it away until you get into trouble. Then, it will be too late to pull it out and dust it off. The famine will be upon you.

Often, business owners tell me that they are too busy running their businesses to take the time to review their plans, or develop the systems to sustain the actions that will deliver on the goals they set. All business owners who want long term success have to pause periodically and reflect on their goals and actions. Are you doing the right things in the right order at the right time? The small amount of time required to review your actions and systems can save you both time and resources in the long run. There may be things you can stop doing, things that require refinement, and things which are making the strongest contribution to your company.

When you are in action and building systems you have to know what it takes to run your business and how systematizing those operations will benefit you. Start with looking at your lead generation. What is your system to ensure your marketing and sales funnels remain full? Do you use advertising to generate leads? A website? Referrals? And do you have a process to follow in each case?

Here is a list of other business activities that may lend themselves to systemization:
• Social networking system for Twitter, Facebook, Linked In
• Invoicing system
• Accounting system
• Product creation system
• Customer support system
• Client retention system

Any of these systems will take time to develop and you will always be looking to improve them. But the documented step-by-step processes you develop will free you to engage in productive, profitable work, not just busy work that yields nothing. It’s still early in the year, so ready, set… take planned action.