Your Not Getting Anywhere Like That...

I'm amazed at how often I catch others and myself making this cardinal mistake. In fact, I'm making the mistake right now and I know it.

The mistake is trying to build a mansion from a house's foundation. It's silly to even think about. How can a giant mansion be held up by something meant for something so much smaller?

Your framework limits your capabilities and while new frameworks require new skills, the payoff is worth it.

We recently transitioned to Wordpress from our custom CMS. Developers have been blowing smoke all over the place warning people about the evils of Wordpress. The fact is, it's more robust, simpler to use, fast and reliable. With a few key guidelines, your cost of IT will drop heavily by using it or switching to it.

On the other hand, we have an e-commerce solution where we are praying to the stars above for updates so we can inch closer to our competition. The other solution is to slowly develop everything ourselves and compromise its the speed of upgrades.

My advice, get good an flexible. As you grow, you'll need to change frameworks get ready for it.

Breathe Life into Your Business Services

Consider branding your thoughts and ideas. Give them a unique name that people will connect with your message and provide them with ways to share that connection through media.

Here's an example, let's say you develop websites. You could classify your services as a 'web development'. Congratulations, that's simple, elegant and clearly explains what you do. Bad news, it puts you in competition with every other web developer out there. Now try this, say your service is called something funky like 'minking' (marketing linking). When people ask you, you can tell them you offer minking, it's like web development, but.... now you can explain why your brand of web development is better than anyone else out there.

Suddenly 'minking' has a life of its own. It can be hashtagged for social media, when your customers talk about it with their friends they're forced to reiterate whatever spin you put on the service and now you're in a league of your own. Paired with a strong message of differentiation and shareable media, you'll be rocking and rolling.

Get clever. Have fun!