45 Business & Marketing articles.

Spring has sprung and it’s time to shake things up.  I always use the seasons as a prompt to freshen my office and menu. For example Green Tea and Lime Leaf have usurped Milk and Honey as the go to experience and exfoliation is the name of the game. Clients are shedding winter wear and showing more skin.  Most have been on low fat diets and their skin shows it.  So before they get their spray tans, they need this. 

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of joining BIOTONE at the New England Regional Conference in Framingham, Massachusetts. What a great show! It's always so much fun to talk shop with the attendees at conferences such as NERC. Often the therapists who visit the BIOTONE booth have a "favorite" product and know exactly what they want.

The news of Steve Jobs’ passing reverberated around the world. He was a technology rock star to his followers, many of whom feared Apple would decline without him. A friend of mine shares that concern. She left the Apple store the other day empty handed after trying to upgrade her three-year-old iPhone. None of the options appealed to her. “Without Steve, things are awful,” she said.

In the past, I’ve talked about the importance of building your brand (see: Your Personal Brand is Your Promise to the World). Brand building involves creating a unique and lasting impression about your business. Your brand is a key part of the relationship you build with your clients and others.

As a consultant I often have to deal with the delicate balance of resource use, including space planning.  How much do you dedicate to revenue generating like services and retail and how much goes to ensuring a quality experience for the client which includes staff support, décor, and amenities? 

Getting up in the morning and going to work does not seem to be an issue for most of you. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. What I hear from so many of you at trade shows is how much you love your work especially because you feel you are making a difference.

Last Thursday, my vet called in two prescriptions to my local drug store for one of my dogs. Fortunately it’s not a serious problem, but something that does need treatment. I followed up later in the day to find out when the prescriptions would be ready.  It should have been a simple call but there were problems. Whoever initially took down the prescriptions got my dog’s name wrong; and then there was an issue about one of the pills, which was a refill.

Over the years I have dedicated myself to being an effective therapist for Active Aging Adults. I have now reached the point my books are consistently full and if I’m going to continue to expand I need to fine tune. As most of you know, it’s easy for this type of intense work to become out of balance. I love it and would never give it up, so this year my focus is on incorporating Zest into my life and my practice.

Here we are once again off to the start of a brand new year. I always enjoy the anticipation of what lies ahead. Some things reoccur annually, so I pencil those in right away on my Day Timer. But there’s still a lot of time and time slots waiting to be illed. And that brings me to the point of my first blog of the New Year. What’s in store for you in 2012? Is it going to be pretty much a repeat of 2011 or is the year the year when you plan to try something new with your business. Call it a reinvention or maybe just a refresh, but the demands of the market and your clients – not to mention your own personal and professional aspirations – require doing something differently.