My special guest on this episode of the podcast is Danny Flood, the editor of Open World Magazine.  In our interview, we discuss the many benefits for local small business owners of writing a book, and get into various ways of actually accomplishing that daunting task.  Listen to the episode to hear Danny's great tips, and then head over to www.openworldmag.com to learn more about Danny.

On today's episode of the podcast, my guest is Alex Berman from InspireBeats.com.  The tactic Alex and I discuss today is definitely not for everyone, and if it has any chance of working it must be done using the formula that Alex suggests, but in certain situations and industries it can be a good lead generation tactic.  The tactic in question is cold emailing--i.e., sending emails to people who don't know you, like you, or trust you, and have never even heard of you. 

Listen to the episode to find out exactly what you need to say in your emails to make this tactic work.

I have two main business goals for 2016:

In today's episode, I share which organization I have decided to support and why, and tell you about how I am tying that goal to my first goal.  I also tell you about my reputation marketing sweepstakes, which will award one lucky business owner a free year of my reputation marketing service. 

Content marketing is here to stay, and the content arms race will only intensify in 2016.  Remember the good old days when all a business needed was a tri-fold brochure and a website?  Now, every small business practically has to run their own publishing house in order to keep up with the competition when it comes to producing educational content.  Sometimes, it is hard to even think about what kind of content to produce...which is why in my last podcast episode of 2015, I'm giving you a complete content marketing calendar for the next 12 months.

Simply produce one piece of content each month around the themes I list in this episode, and then re-purpose that content in several different ways.  For example, if you're a great writer, you could start by writing a blog post, and then read the post into a voice recorder to turn it into a podcast episode.  If you're better at speaking than writing, do it the other way around--record your thoughts on a subject first, and then turn the transcript into a blog post.  By using this method and following the outline I give you, you'll have 24-48 really nice pieces of content by the end of 2016.

All too often, as small business owners we are so busy running our businesses that we fail to stop and take stock of everything we have been able to accomplish.  The end of the year is a great time to do that, so today I'd like to suggest that you take a moment to write down everything that you were able to accomplish in 2015.  Use the following questions to help you reflect on the past year:

Chances are, once you have your list compiled you'll be shocked at everything you were able to get done in the past year.  If you had a particularly good year, share some of your top accomplishments by sending an email to [email protected], and I'll feature you on an upcoming episode of the podcast.

While most big businesses have some type of statement about their mission, value, and purpose that they use as a guide in their marketing efforts, not many small businesses do.  As Scott Beebe from Business on Purpose explains in my interview with him, this is a shame,  and also a lost opportunity.

Scott shares several concrete examples in our interview about how having a strong sense of purpose and values helped a business increase their bottom line revenue.  Far from being abstract ideas, a mission and vision statement should be something a business uses as the foundation for their entire marketing system.  Listen to the interview to get an understanding of why this is important and how you can create it for your business.

Learn more about Scott at MyBusinessOnPurpose.com and FourStepstoBusinessFreedom.com.

It's the time of year that many businesses send out holiday cards to their current customer base.  I think this is a great idea, but unfortunately many business owners think that the main purpose of doing this is simply to say "happy holidays". 

It's not--and if that's what you think, you're missing a big marketing opportunity.  In today's episode, I explain the true purpose of holiday cards, and give you a few ideas about how to use your holiday card mailing to get big results for your business this year.