Innovation? Why Not?

How are you working your brand?

Follow me at Smart $ Guides.

Introducing the new generation of beauty. Racial diversity? ✔️ Body diversity?✔️ Religious diversity?✔️ and she’s just getting started….. Rihanna worked for more than two years on #FENTYBEAUTY to make sure women of every color, race, sizes and culture could enjoy her line.

“Everyone has their shade, someone just needs to make it” -Rihanna

Follow me @ Smart $ Guides.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING AN AVAILABLE PRODUCT

Work Smart Show daily blog. What are the reasons people buy your product? Undoubtedly this question has many answers and I want to focus on the lesser known today, that of reciprocity. Of course many people buy a product because they need it, want it, have worked to be able to buy it or often times because they want to thank the vender.

​I want to look at the case study of Patt Flynn, host of the Smart Passive Income and Ask Pat podcasts, who wrote his first book, Will it Fly, in late 2016. Now Pat is someone who provides immense amounts of value to his listeners through both of his podcasts and really builds into his listeners, taking an episode each to answer their questions even though they could be considered competition.

So it was that when he released his book and surveyed the reasons that people were prompted to buy it he found a strange trend. He found that many people were buying to support his work and his brand. He had provided so much free advice and material for them that they wanted to financially pay him back and so many bought the book even if it wasn’t relevant to them.

This idea fascinated me and I have seen it in several other situations recently such as my wife buying a products to support her favorite YouTuber simply because she wanted to financially support them. Now undoubtedly people buy your products because they need or want them, but are people also buying to support or thank you or your business.

This provides us with two very key takeaways to implement in our business. If you are in a business or entity that sells services or media maybe consider a physical product that people can buy to support you. Secondly if you have products available for sale are you providing enough valuable content that makes followers or customers feel they want to support you with their purchasing power?

Power. Nap. Follow me while awake; however.

Follow me @ Smart $ Guides.

How Mark Cuban Decided He Couldn’t Work for Anyone Else | Inc. Magazine

Write beautifully what people don’t want to hear.

Frederick Seidel (via help-n-quotes)

“The pain of regret is far worse than the pain of discipline.”  - Nathan Whitley

Follow me @ Smart $ Guides.

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF SOCIAL MEDIA AUTOMATION

Work Smart Show daily blog.

Now please don’t think I am scared of or anti-technology, in fact it both amazes and frustrates me. I am far from a Luddite taking to a computer with a hammer, well sometimes, but there are some parts of technology that I could do without. I am talking specifically about the auto likes, auto followers and auto DM’s on Twitter.

Almost every time I post an article or daily blog I will receive a notification a second later telling me that someone has liked, retweeted or commented on this. Now please don’t think I am bragging in fact it is quite the opposite; this will be a company targeting a keyword that I have used such as ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘business’. At first I would follow the account because of their like but very quickly stopped when I understood their tactic. They are trying to illicit a human response, a like or follow, with a system set to auto-pilot.

The other example of is auto DM’s when you follow someone. I have read the auto DM’s of three people. Only three of the 1,810 people that I currently follow. When I receive a DM stating “XX person sent you a link” I don’t even open the message. To have people open and respond to your DM’s you need to respect them, their time, needs and wants. Almost no one on twitter wants a link to your site, training course or sure fire way of earning an income at home. Also if you have set up your profile correctly the follower would have already seen this information and links in your bio.

Now let me tell you about the three that I did open and respond to even though I knew they were auto DM’s. The first was when I followed @begosite and received the message “Are you the DIY type of person, or would you rather someone else do things for you?” There was no link, no promotional material even though this is an account for a DIY website builder. This lead to a very interesting DM conversation about outsourcing and what work as an entrepreneur or business you could or would outsource. It also lead me to follow all of the accounts linked to this; @bruceandeddy and @butchewing and receive a similar auto DM; “Would you rather see us as giant corporation or small business?”

Now aside from being another interesting topic for a blog post some other day these accounts went to the time of posing an interesting auto DM question, then taking time to converse in depth once I answered instead of spamming me with promotional material that I would resent.

I have said on the Work Smart Show podcast that I don’t mind advertising if it is interesting and relevant to me and in the same way I don’t mind auto DM’s as long as they are engaging and not self-promoting.

So I give you this challenge; do you have a auto DM? Is it engaging or simply more of your site and contact details? Take time today to work this into an engaging question and then answer the responses. What have you got to lose? After all have you honestly ever made a sale, gained a listener or fan through an auto DM?

Follow me @ Smart $ Guides.

Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?

The long read: It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google – and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell

The core of Elsevier’s operation is in scientific journals, the weekly or monthly publications in which scientists share their results. Despite the narrow audience, scientific publishing is a remarkably big business. With total global revenues of more than £19bn, it weighs in somewhere between the recording and the film industries in size, but it is far more profitable. In 2010, Elsevier’s scientific publishing arm reported profits of £724m on just over £2bn in revenue. It was a 36% margin – higher than Apple, Google, or Amazon posted that year.

But Elsevier’s business model seemed a truly puzzling thing. In order to make money, a traditional publisher – say, a magazine – first has to cover a multitude of costs: it pays writers for the articles; it employs editors to commission, shape and check the articles; and it pays to distribute the finished product to subscribers and retailers. All of this is expensive, and successful magazines typically make profits of around 12-15%.

For achievers only!

Follow me at Smart $ Guides.

8:15PM: The Blue Hour is a time for taking your own way home. With the Gear Fit2, you can track all the calories you burn.

Follow me @ Smart $ Guides.

Follow me @ Smart $ Guides.

How to Start Your Own Clothing Company

A clothing company can be a huge income source if you’ve got the right creative eye. It can take a lot of money to start a clothing store though, doesn’t it? Not just anyone can make one…

Wrong.

If you’re seriously looking to create a brand of clothing, there are some things that I had to learn the hard way that could benefit someone just starting out. Here they are.

1. Do your research on the feel of clothing you want to create. Brands like American Eagle and Vans have a target audience that they know and cater to. Figure out who your audience is and what they’re already wearing. Design like that. Designing clothes you yourself would wear is a really good place to start.

2. Use GIMP to start out with if you can’t afford good software for design. Start each image out with the appropriate dimensions for the graphic. This will cause some research on your end, make sure you write it down on a post it on your computer. Typically they’re about 12″x12″ and at least 150ppi… These things can be set right when you start a new document. Save as .pngs and you’ve just created a t-shirt graphic!

3. Sign up for Shopify.com (This will cost $30 a month but they don’t take your first-born if you start making bank, just $30. Other companies take a percentage.

4. Match the theme and look of your website to your brands feel. This will create a great legit company looking website.

5. In the app section, download the Printful app. This is a company in CA that prints your shirt out and ships it to your customer. This takes out you having to front $200 to get 30 shirts from Vistaprint, etc… No inventory… No risk for bad designs (other than bad designs)… You sell the shirt for $21, they charge you $11 and you keep $10. You can even change those prices as high or low as you want. I would suggest getting a sample sent to you, so you can see your graphics in person.

6. When an order comes in, the print place handles the print and ship part… They’ve never missed a shirt or order in the year we’ve used them for thisiswhattranslookslike.com – Though you do need to pay attention, if an address is incorrect they’ll email you.

7. Use the profits from this adventure to purchase shirts from discountmugs.com, they’re the cheapest place I could find online and they’re good quality. The profit margin is considerably higher if you sell a shirt for $21 that you only paid $3 for instead of Printful’s $11… You’ll have to do the shipping yourself, but it’ll help increase your profit to expand however you see fit.

You can also just maintain the one website without bringing in inventory. They do shirts and tanks and hoodies.

Good Luck! I hope when you’re up and running, you consider advertising in the magazine!