I’ve just returned from a meeting which I had in Bishop Auckland Town Centre. I’ve not been there for an age, and I doubt I’ll be going back in a hurry. Since the opening of both Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s on a retail park just on the outskirts of the town, which also just happens to have a Starbucks, I’ve had little need for going into town.
Well with the fact that you have to pay to get into the major car park situated at The Newgate Centre, and that car park has its main floor closed, and entry into the car park and exit ensures you’re basically asking to have a bump in your car because it’s simply dangerous, it’s not very inviting let alone welcoming. Obviously the management company want to be handing the trade hook line and sinker to the retail park. If this is so they’re definitely doing a great job of it.
Maybe not surprising when you find that shop after shop in the town centre is now run by a charity organisation or is boarded up. Alas I know this is something replicated up and down the country, not just here in Bishop Auckland.
In 2011, an estimated twenty shops closed every day, leaving one in seven UK stores empty. A Government report, Understanding High Street Performance paints a similar picture of town centres in terminal decline, with a third of High Streets either “degenerating or failing”.
This gives me even more motivation to help people build a business online. If our local authorities do nothing to support independent businesses in their home towns, which in mine they certainly don’t, why would you consider setting up a traditional business when the alternative, online, is so much more attractive, and potentially profitable. Let’s also remember you don’t have to physically open the doors every morning and wait for a customer to step in.
Going off topic a second, I wonder what local authorities actually do. Ours isn’t this year running any form of fireworks display, and this I find crazy. It’s such a shame that towns like Bishop Auckland are being allowed to die.
Maybe they need to be looking online, finding people like me, and this lady I met today to breathe new life into our town through our skills online. An online business gives you a wonderful new world of opportunity, where you can build a brand, sell products and spread the word further and faster than ever before.
Anyway back to today’s meeting. It was with a person in despair of ever getting her online business off the ground. Not because she’s not able to do so, but just because she can’t build the vision of her big picture.
She’s a remarkable lady, who has a wealth of knowledge and skill with one particular area online, and that’s social media. What she doesn’t know, isn’t worth knowing. The network that she has built is phenomenal. Her name is out there. She is invited to talk on social networking by a variety of organisations, and has spoken many times on Radio.
Now’s her time to build a business, where she can help others to build their online brand, to communicate with prospects and customers through this complicated world of social networking. She simply gets it, and can teach it easily. She has that skill. But now she has to learn about product development, and see the complete vision for her business
She is a rare creature. She really understands the emerging and accelerating areas of social media, with an amazing insight into trends and models, knowing how to influence others through her communications. I know nobody better to call on, or put forward to others who are hoping to grow their brand, improve sales, and increase profits, all while creating a personal brand that catches people’s attention and earns their trust.
So she has so much to offer, but I say again she can’t put together the big picture of her vision. Only this is holding her back. Or is it the fear of stepping up and turning a hobby into a business.
She interacts with hundreds of companies, and thousands of on liners, particularly across Facebook and Twitter. They don’t just follow her, they interact.
I have no doubts many of these would jump at the opportunity of buying a book filled with her knowledge, take a course that she’d give through live webinars, buy 1-2- coaching or attend a coffee shop morning group where she’d speak and invite other successful on line business people. Hey I’d volunteer if it was at Starbucks.
She could also be offering social media consultancy to local larger businesses, many of whom need to get their acts together online.
At the end of the day, she now will have the ability to show many, who currently spend hours and hours online but make nothing from it, like she was, how making money online is no longer the impossible dream. She can mentor them and lead them in the right direction, which admittedly will be through All The Missing Pieces, so it is a win win for all.
She will now be able to put on all her followers doorstep services, support, product and brand marketing that can completely change their online experience. Taking them from potential to fulfilment.
So being a social network specialist, brilliant at listening, connecting, speaking and influencing, I hope as her entrepreneurial mentor I’ve got her, at last, to start to see the big picture for her.
I’ve been coaching and mentoring all kinds of people for a long time now, and for the last 6 months helping them to grow their businesses online and have had some great success and I know I can help her too.
She just has to start by understanding the end outcome of her venture, who she’s going to sell to, and how she’s going to sell and of course most importantly exactly what it is she’s going to sell.
I know a very healthy income is waiting for her, and many people desperate for her kind of teaching. It’s now down to her to get started.
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