What have you done TODAY to improve your business?

Thu 2 Jun 2005, 12:18 PM

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by Ben Langhinrichs
I was reading Rocky's comments again on making your business successful, in which he says (among other things):

Is my success in this marketplace typical? I have no idea. However, let me give you some insight into my success - and others' lack thereof. Over the last few years I have worked very, very hard to market myself and my abilities as an expert. I speak at least four times/year, I write for Lotus Advisor and Websphere Advisor on a regular basis, I published a book with Brian Benz a couple of years ago, and I created this blog. All of these things help get my name out in the marketplace as an expert - and I truly believe that all of these efforts are the sole reason why I am successful.

He has more to say, all of it quite interesting, but I want to expand on this a bit.  Let's make the assumption that you want you, and your business, to be successful.

That was easy.  Now comes the hard part.

What have you done TODAY to improve your business?  And by this, I don't mean just doing a good job and trying to keep your customers/employers happy.  I mean, what outside of your ordinary duties have you done to improve yourself, your business, your exposure, your website, your skills, etc.?

I try very hard to do something every day to make our website clearer, improve my relations with customers and friends and strangers, clean up Help entries, whatever, but things outside of my normal routine of selling, developing and supporting customers.  It isn't always easy, because it isn't part of the routine.  Sometimes it even hurts, because I miss some part of the job I should be doing to handle something not so directly necessary, but in the long run, it sems to pay off.  Today, I worked on making sure a bunch of our web pages were valid HTML Transitional, and took the opportunity to fix a small bug in Midas which was causing slight problems.  I also cleaned up some of the exessive use of ecblank images, and worked on a new format for our product pages.  That was all before noon, and it doesn't bring in a cent or satisfy a customer, but the slow accumulation of lots of those actions has led to a very successful business and a very happy customer base.  Of course, there is always more to do, but there are a lot of tomorrows, and even more time left today.

So what have YOU done to improve your business TODAY?

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