Phone Addiction, Support Desk Overkill, Poor Conversion & The Good Stuff

This is another chapter in a series of posts that I’ll be writing to keep you updated on what’s going on with WP Buffs from the perspective of its founder. That’s me.

I’ll keep it pretty simple. 3 things I screwed up and 3 things that went well over the past month. I want to tell you about all the solid stuff happening at WPB, but I can’t stand people who only post when they have good news. It’s like looking at someone’s Instagram account and being jealous of how awesome their life is when those pictures have been carefully curated from the best 1% of their lives.

Please.

As anybody who’s run a startup before knows, what it looks like from the outside may not reflect what’s happening on the inside. A company can easily look like it’s running smoothly when in reality, it’s going up in flames.

I’ll be writing something quick like this every month so please subscribe to stay tuned in.

🙁

1. Poor Conversion

I’m still struggling a bit converting visitors on this blog into email subscribers. It’s really tough! I’ve been doing a lot of A/B testing of different pop ups, welcome mats, scroll bars, etc. It’s been tough finding strategies that even convert above 1%.

Here’s a test I was running for different variations of a welcome mat that was meant to collect email addresses. The conversion % is highlighted. Yikes.

I’d really like to be converting anywhere from 3%-5% of you guys. That would be money.

What I’m trying next is offering a free eBook. All I’m doing is turning our 7-day email course into a digital PDF so I can offer it to people for subscribing.

It’s being put together now. I’m really hoping this lead magnet will increase my numbers here since the more people I get into my sales funnel, the more come out as new customers on the other side.

We’ll see.

2. Support Desk Overkill

One downside of this month is that I’m managing a significant amount of our help desk this month. Becky usually does this, but because of unforeseen circumstances, she had to take some time off.

Which leaves me with a bit more work to do here than usual.

The thing is I actually like managing the help desk! Hearing the painpoints of our customers and interacting with them is definitely something I enjoy.

The problem is I have to check in throughout the day and it just kills my productivity. I need to be thinking big-picture and this makes things hard here.

I spent this whole week interviewing new candidates to join the team though, and I’m excited for the person we’re bringing on board. Keep an eye out for news on that next month.

3. Phone Addiction

I’ve been really trying hard to only check my email twice per day. I put up a vacation reminder that I would only be checking email twice per day and have turned off a ton of notifications on my phone.

Still, I sometimes find myself unconsciously checking email, apps or other things when it wasn’t even a purposeful action.

At least I recognize that it’s happening, and I think that’s the first step towards figuring out some strategies to combat that. I think I’m going to try to not take my phone into the bedroom with me anymore so it’s not the first thing I check every morning. Maybe keep it on airplane mode more often.

This reminds me of the app I idea I had a while ago. It would force your phone to only receive notifications at certain points of the day. So you could set it for 11am and 5pm and all your notifications would popup at those times only.

But I digress.

🙂

1. Possibilities Seminar

This week I’ve been doing a lot of decompression after my Possibilities Seminar here in DC. These are a few of my takeaways:

• What you pay attention to determines what you see. It also determines what you miss.
• When you listen to what somebody is saying without an agenda or thinking about what you’ll say in response, you’ll get far more out of it.
• Taking a purposeful pause to assess all the options and all the possible outcomes before making a decision allows you to see options C, D, E, F and G when without deep though, all you would have seen were options A and B.
• The idea that when one person or group wins, another loses is a fallacy.

These are just a few of many, but as I continue to review my learnings and learn about how I tick, the better I’ll be able to run this business and engage in the pursuit of happiness. I would encourage anybody (especially small business owners) to take a hard look at their emotional intelligence; after this seminar, I’m convinced it can make the difference between success and failure (financially and personally).

2. ViewedIt

My good friend and fellow marketer Will Curran visited me here in DC this week. He showed me this great Google Chrome extension called ViewedIt that allows you to record really lightweight, high definition videos that you can easily send to clients, or even potential customers.

Here’s a video I shot while writing this post! It took me about 30 seconds to shoot the video and add it to this article.

I’ve started to use this here and there when talking to sales leads. I think it adds a personal touch that people really appreciate. Everyone wants to have a strong relationship with the person or company taking care of their website; I think this will help bridge that gap as well as increase click-through rates, open rates, etc.

3. Burning Man

Yep! I’m headed back to the desert for the second time with my wife and campmates of Kindred Spirit. Sterling and I (mostly Sterling) have been prepping for this adventure for a few months now and I’ll be completely out of touch with reality for about 10 days in late August, Early September.

People often ask me why I go or what the point of it all is. Recently, my reasoning has centered on the fact that we’re all going to die. And pretty soon too. Why not do something incredible and build a city out of nothing in the middle of the desert? That thought process puts things into perspective for me.

I know this seems like simplified thinking, but hey: I’m known for taking an Occam’s razor approach.

Onward and upward!