Listen to your Clients

Today I hosted a One-Day Institute for our business and legal small business clients. I heard the questions and comments from workshop participants and thought to myself, this is it! This sense of community with other service-based small business owners is what my clients need and yearn for.

A year ago, I submitted a survey to clients and the response was that they wanted events that would offer both networking and educational benefits within a comfortable environment. So, I decided to work hard to get them this event and they willingly paid to attend it. Although there were times I doubted being able to pull it off after such a tough year, I still kept pressing on.

I say this to say that sometimes we have to go beyond fear or uncertainty and take risks to develop better products and services for our businesses. Otherwise, someone else will do the developing for us. Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid, recently wrote in his new magazine column, "treat your best customers like stars." How can we all start treating our customers like stars? I think back to the places I patronize regularly that never give me a discount. If they don't start treating me like I'm special, they won't continue to get my repeat business.

You can check out some of my great speakers and their awesome businesses:

Meredith Liepelt and Rich Life Marketing, (www.richlifemarketing.com) Yvette Alexander Slate and Carried The Bag, (www.carriedthebag.com) Amy Franko and Amy Franko Consulting, (www.amyfranko.com) Tiffany Odutoye and Talk Social Networking, (www.talksocialnetworking.com) Mary Slane of Slane Financial (www.slanefinancial.com) and John Siebert of Siebert and Associates, (http://www.columbus-cpa.com/index.htm).

My special guestspeaker and Dayton's own small business rockstar was Marty Grunder of MartyGrunder! Inc. www.martygrunder.com Marty drove to Columbus and gave us all a great and much-needed talk on "How to Lead in Lean Times." What an amazing speaker!

It was a power-filled day with great information and insight. As you can imagine, I'm beat after working with my team to get this event planned.

So while I leave you to take a much needed nap, I leave you with this quote I learned today, "we cannot direct the wind, but we can direct the sails." (Bertha Calloway)


About the Author: Cheryl Isaac is a Start-up Business Planner & Owner of Isaac Business Services, The Business Startup Company. She is also the creator of The 12MonthBizPlan.com; an online business planning center where business owners can work with a personal advisor for a year, to plan their new business