May 2018
It’s finally Spring! The weather is beautiful, the leaves are unfurling, the cherry trees, magnolias and red bud trees are in full bloom, as well as azaleas and other flowers. It’s golf season. The Kentucky Derby this year fell on the same day a Cinco de Mayo. My husband and I threw a great Derby/Cinco de Mayo party. It’s my anniversary this month, for meeting my husband and marrying him a year later. And at the end of the month we’ll celebrate Memorial Day.
We also celebrate Mother’s Day this month. Mother’s Day was made an official national holiday in 1914 by President Woodrow Wilson, on the second Sunday in May. In honor of all the mothers in the SkillBites community, I offer any mother a free eBook of your choice from the SkillBites website. To obtain your free eBook during this month, click here, then click on either Business SkillBites or Lifestyle SkillBites, depending on whether you would prefer a business or lifestyle book, and then when you select the eBook you want, use the coupon code MOMGIFT[JW1] at checkout.
I recently began an exercise program that I heartily recommend for anyone suffering from chronic pain – whether low back, hip, knee, shoulder or elsewhere. The program was designed by Pete Egoscue, who wrote a book called Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain (among several others). The theory behind the program is that surgery may alleviate the pain in the area that one feels pain, but the root cause of the pain may not be eliminated by the surgery, in which case the patient will likely experience pain elsewhere. Unless the root cause is fixed, you may just be postponing the recurrence of pain somewhere else. The method starts with determining the root cause (often a misalignment or imbalance) and prescribing exercises that (a) re-align your body and then (b) work the muscles to maintain proper alignment. It makes sense to me, and in the 2 weeks that I’ve been doing the exercises, I feel quite a bit better (and my golf game is better too!). You can look on the website https://www.egoscue.com/ to see if there is a clinic near you. I hope this information can help those of you who may be suffering from pain.
1. New Publication
SkillBites will soon be publishing The Executive’s Guide to Buying Commercial Property: How to Avoid Common Pitfalls When Buying a Building, by the father/son team of Alex and Noah Ruggieri. The authors have over 50 years of combined experience in all aspects of buying, selling and building multimillion dollar commercial buildings. They want to help you avoid the typical pitfalls that executives can run into when they attempt the complex process of purchasing commercial property for the first time.
In this powerful guide you will learn about:
- The benefits of owning versus leasing or renting the property
- Working with real estate professionals
- Short term versus long term thinking
- Planning and zoning boards, city ordinances and other political pitfalls
- Financing basics
- Building the right commercial real estate team
- Post-purchase matters to address
Look for this book on Amazon and on the SkillBites website by late May/early June.
2. The SkillBites Show
Each month, we bring you an expert to help you get your book done, leverage your book, grow your business or improve your life. The shows are recorded, so if you can’t listen to one live, you can listen to the recording by clicking here.
Our next SkillBites Show will be held on May 16 from 1 to 2 ET. Our guest will be Julie Friedman Bacchini, president of Neptune Moon, LLC. Julie is a master of digital marketing, with particular strength in the Analytics and helping clients gain powerful insights from their data. In this show, Julie will cover the basics of two types of paid advertising on Facebook – promotions and ads, and explain how to best use them to reach your target audiences. At the end of the session, you will understand the types of audience targeting available as well as how to track basic results from your promotions and ads.
To listen to the live presentation, you can call in at (641) 715-3660, Access Code: 467398.
Last month we heard from Cathleen Fillmore, owner of Speakers Gold and a top marketing consultant to professional speakers. Cathleen spoke on how to get paid professional speaking engagements. If you missed this presentation, you can listen to it by clicking here, or you can read some of the tips from this show on the SkillBites blog at http://resources.skillbites.net/blog/.
Do you have expertise that you believe would benefit the SkillBites community of entrepreneurs and authors? If you would like to be the guest on the monthly SkillBites Show, contact me at judy@skillbites.net or 610-783-4519.
3. How are you promoting your book?
What have you been doing to promote your book? I’d love to hear what has been working for you, or if you’ve tried different marketing tactics that haven’t gotten you the results you desire. I’ve been developing a course on how to market and leverage your book, and your feedback as to what has worked or what hasn’t would be very helpful for me. You can email me at judy@skillbites.net, or call me at 610-783-4519. For those who share what they’ve been doing, I’ll return the favor with some additional ideas that they could try.
4. Tip of the Month: Reaching New Audiences via Podcasts
One of my authors recently contacted me for advice on how to expand her reach without having to pay a lot of money for marketing. My recommendation to her was to try podcasts – find podcasters who have the audience that she wants to reach and ask whether they would like her to appear as a guest on their podcast. This month I will cover why you may want to get onto others’ podcasts, and in future newsletters, I will address how to get on podcasts.
When you are a guest on podcasts, you can gain massive visibility, as podcasters have thousands of listeners. You also develop a relationship with the podcast host, who, as a person of influence, can make valuable introductions and referrals for you. You gain authority and credibility from appearing on a podcast, and you can gain a lot of leads from providing a freebie during your talk.
Being a guest on a podcast generally doesn’t cost you anything since most podcasters don’t charge guests. You don’t need to travel – you can be a guest from your own office or home, while in your pajamas. And you don’t have to do much work. The host does all the heavy lifting.
Podcasters are continually looking for guests who can provide valuable content to share with their audience, so it is relatively easy to get guest appearances. You don’t need to have a big name, or a big list; if you can offer tips or advice that their audience could use, then they will welcome you on their podcast.
More and more people are listening to podcasts. It’s become much easier for people to access podcasts, and as cars gain wi-fi accessibility, the growth of podcasts will accelerate even faster. People who listen to podcasts are much more likely to purchase something recommended on a podcast than they will from the same message in an email message or blog or social media. According to podcaster Steve Olsher, 42% of people who listen to podcasts have an annual income of over $75,000, so they have funds to invest in their growth. Those who listen to podcasts are hot prospects because they are choosing to listen, so they are interested in your message.
Stay tuned for next month to learn some tips for getting guest appearances. If you have a podcast and would like to offer guest appearances to people with specific expertise, let me know and I’ll reach out to the SkillBites network to help you find those guests. You can email me at judy@skillbites.net.
5. Earn Commissions For Referrals
Do you know anyone who has been wanting to write a book but has been stalling? Let them know that SkillBites offers a variety of services to make book writing and publishing easy, quick and convenient. When you sign up to be a SkillBites affiliate, you can get a commission for each person who signs up to purchase SkillBites services through your unique referral link.
Thanks for supporting SkillBites. If there is anything you think we ought to be doing better or anything we should be doing that we’re not, please let us know. We value your input.
Cordially,
