If it does, then do it!

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “always do what you are afraid to do.”  (Emerson is amazing, he said something wise about just about everything, don’t you agree?)

• Fear of failure
• Fear of success
• Fear of change

If you get some (or a lot) of butterflies, it’s worthwhile. The more daunting the task, the more rewarding the goal is likely to be – the journey certainly will be worth your while.

So rest easy, your discomfort is a great barometer. Use it to your advantage.

One caveat, when contemplating something that’s a stretch, something that gives you pause, go ahead and seek advice, but keep in mind Warren Buffett’s advice that “People will always try to stop you from doing the right thing if it is unconventional.”

Unconventional in this case, means both completely crazy and new, or just a little bit out of the status quo. You have to carefully evaluate the source of your advice and their motives. Often, people don’t want to see you succeed, or they don’t buy into your idea of a new self-image. That’s sad, but true.

So go ahead, stretch, embrace being scared and take the leap!

Testimonials are the primary tool business owners and marketers use to overcome skepticism and reinforce claims.

Thing is, many small businesses owners aren’t aggressive enough in accumulating and using testimonials. But it doesn’t have to be a big undertaking. Just below I share Ten Top Testimonial Tips that you can put to use immediately in your business at low or no cost.

1. Implement a comment card that asks this specific question, “If you were trying to convince someone to ‘visit Joe’s Restaurant,” what would you tell them?”
2. Use the gathered testimonials in all your advertising and on your web and social media sites.
3. Put together a nice book containing all your testimonials and put it in your reception area for waiting customers to browse.
4. Feature a few testimonials in each email you send to customers and prospects.
5. Feature a few testimonials in your printed newsletter or catalog.
6. Upload testimonials as reviews to your local search sites on Google Places and Bing and Yahoo local.
7. Upload testimonials as reviews on sites like Yelp!, CitySearch, FourSquare, YellowPages and other review sites.
8. Include your testimonials as a part of your proposals or pre-sale packet.
9. Ask some to customers to provide video testimonials. Use a Mino Flip or your digital camera to record one on the spot.
10. Ask customers to submit testimonials by telephone using a phone to audio service. Then link and post the audios on all your web sites, blogs and social media sites.
11. Bonus! Share the testimonial book or playback an audio or video with all the testimonials to the people that gave them to you and then ask for an order from them!

Testimonials truly are low hanging fruit. They are proof that you deliver or over deliver and oftentimes will do more to convince people to do business with you than your own sales message.

To give you an idea of how to implement a testimonial gathering system, I can share the story of a Madison restaurant I work with. We included the question in Tip #1 on a comment card I designed for them. The card is lot different than your standard restaurant card in that we ask for (and receive) quite a bit of personal information that we use in email marketing and social media too. Anyway, within a month we had over 50 unique and catchy testimonials to begin using and over 300 email addresses!

I suggest you pick a starting point on the list and implement them one at a time, one per month, until the list is fully implemented. When you’ve done that, tally up your sales growth and let me know the impact testimonials have on your bottom line!

This concept came to me just 10 days ago when I was visiting two friends who are also small business people. Joel is an internet marketer, and Andrea (Ahn-dray) runs a lingerie business. We were sitting around their kitchen, Andrea was working on a mind map and Joel was tutoring me on setting up a blog for my wife, Anke. In the course of our conversation the domain name just popped out of my mouth and we all instantly knew it was a keeper.

So over the past 10 days I got everything rolling and here we are, on my  40th writing the inaugural post!

My goal with SmallBizWithKids.com is to provide engaging, entertaining and valuable insight, commentary and “best practices” on work, life and family. I hope that others will join in the conversation and add their comments and perspectives.

Work Life and Family are the three keystones for every small business owner. More appropriately, work life and family are the three balls that a juggler has to keep up in the air. Small business owners are jugglers by choice and by necessity. The real trick is to keep it to just three balls, and to keep them all going happily and productively.

In the future, I’ll be interviewing executives and productivity tools, reviewing and commenting on books and news and sharing some of the day to day highs lows and challenges that come from parenting, from marriage and from running a business.

I hope you enjoy your time here and like it enough to tell your friends and subscribe to my feed.

My best to you and yours,

Tim Johnson