Continuing the research into destination shopping, I visited Tubney Retail Park in Dorset. The retail park itself is a destination shopping centre. There is ample parking easy access for cars, walking and buses. However, I think their target audience is car drivers.
As an aside, and by comparison
IKEA has thought about the customer, the customer journey and envy purchasing. They have their showrooms laid out in a way that invites aspirational living. IKEA has been in the United Kingdom for many years and is incredibly popular. Indeed, in some towns, you queue to enter the shop (pre pandemic).
The three shops I visited today do not appear to have thought about the customer. They are stuck in the same layout as was around in the 1950s. The customer journey and envy purchasing are non-existent.
Dunelm’s
The first shop I went into was Dunelms. A shop specialising in home furnishings. Like most shops in the United Kingdom, there is a dedicated path through the shop. Items are in order of interest and psychological purchasing. Dunelm’s should look at how IKEA has attracted customers. I was looking for new towels, but I didn’t enjoy my time in the shop, the staff were too busy to talk to me. In short, I felt like I was intruding on their lovely displays. As a result, I bought nothing in this shop. I didn’t have that enjoyable customer experience I was looking for and became frustrated.
The Range
The next shop I entered was The Range. I have walked out of this shop before as I dislike the lighting, as it is too oppressive. The lights are dim; it feels dark; the fixtures are so full, you can barely walk around the shop without banging into something. I spent 15 minutes in this shop, and that included going to the loo.
Home Bargains
The last shop I visited was Home Bargains, selling cheaper homeware, from food and garden furniture to toiletries. The shop is bright, light and there is plenty of walking space. I have, on previous occasions, spent up to an hour in this shop just looking around. Thinking about the products for sale, could I use them in my home. However, on this occasion, I asked for help from one of the shop assistants. Unfortunately, she had no clue about the products she was selling. My conversation was very abrupt and along the lines of, it’s over there if we have it.
Dunelms Bedroom
The Range Bedroom
Home Bargains Bedroom
I am not a demanding shopper. However, I work hard for my money, and I want to enjoy spending it. When I purchased a computer a few years ago, I walked into PC World and laid down my expectations. I told the assistant that I wanted to buy a laptop and have an enjoyable experience or go elsewhere. The assistant couldn’t have been nicer. He was attentive, helpful and guided me directly to the Laptop I needed. An enjoyable experience and as a result, I often go back to that shop.
Destination Shopping via a website
As my business is very much an online business, I want a destination website. I went to the website of each business.
Dunelm’s has some images perfectly correct. There are some aspirational images of their products. The beds look luxurious, and you can see yourself asleep in them. Then they look at each item. I am not sure I would look at their website if I weren’t writing this post. However, I would look now.
The website for the Range could appear just as busy as the shop. The top banner is dynamic with loads of clashing images. However, the website is bright and full of information. I am not sure where my eyes fall on the homepage as there is too much to see. The product pages are helpful and bright. I prefer more space with images, but that is very much a personal style issue. Would I visit this website? I am not sure. Maybe for price comparisons.
The final website was for Home Bargains. Like the previous two websites, it was bright, easy to read and navigate. I would not have thought to visit their website in the past. It would never occur to me that Home Bargains would sell online. I don’t know why. Would I revisit this site? Yes, I think I would.
All three shops have a physical presence. All three shops have a website that is also selling their products. Do the shop and website give the same customer feel? Dunelm’s and The Range certainly don’t. It feels as if they are two very distinct businesses (which they could be). Home bargains was a surprise. I visit this shop every week. The website appears to have the same feel as the shop.
My View and my clients
I want my clients to have the same feeling when they meet us in person as when they visit the website. It is going back to getting that personality of the business and website to match. Maybe that is the key to marketing, being coherent? All touches with potential clients have the same feel and personality. Is branding about the ethos of the company and saleable products?
What I learnt about writing my memoirs
I don’t want to fight a website for information.
My website and company should have the same message, the same personality.
Reviewing successful websites and businesses to see what they do well is valuable for the success of your business.
Writing My Memoirs – 31 Day Challenge – Video and Blog Posts
Destination Website – The Decision and now for the changes
After my last post (see here), I revisited www.publishmystoires.com and view it as a visitor. I want this website to be a destination website, and I feel that it’s more about me. About my skills at writing my memoirs, about what I do and the skills I have. It may not be about my potential clients and could be more of a lecture. The website is a sales tool that yells, look at me. As opposed to, so, you want to write your memoirs, well this is what you need to do. My blog www.forgetmenot.publishmystories.com is the place to tell people about me.
There is a theory that you should give away all your content for free as a good business. If people want to use your services, they will judge you on your knowledge. If you are giving your information away for free, you demonstrate you know your services. You are showing your clients that you are open and honest. My website is transparent, my prices are visible, and I tell my clients what I do.
However, I don’t think I give away much information to my clients for free. When speaking with me, clients tell me I can overload them with ideas and suggestions. My passion for their memoirs needs to slow down and get one or two tasks completed before moving on.
My clients tell me that my passion is infectious.
Publishing and helping people write their memoirs is a passion for me. It is so important that we don’t lose the life lessons. We should pass these lessons on to the next generation. The government also agrees with me. How often have you heard a politician say that ‘lessons have been learnt!’ this is all I am doing, helping people pass on lessons.
I know that sometimes my communication style is very middle class. Very 1950s, prim and proper. Please understand, I am not ashamed of being middle class because I am middle class and proud of it. Being middle class is not a dirty word. It is not an embarrassment. It just is. I want my communications to reflect my personality. I want my business to reflect my passion.
Family Feedback
My brother, looking cool on Bournemouth Pier
I asked my brother to watch one video I created (day two). I thought I came off well and was open, friendly, and relaxed. My brother disagreed and thought I was stiff, reserved, and nervous. It’s so interesting that what you think you have said is not what other people hear or see. Paul (my brother) wants my personality to come across in the videos. He knows me well. He understands my passion and is very supportive of my www.publishmystories.com. I now need to revisit my video recordings style.
It’s not that straightforward
YouTube and matching my blog posts is all a learning curve for me. I know that at the beginning of my video monologues, I will make mistakes. There will be improvements, changes, and experiments. Having a destination website and YouTube channel is one of my marketing strategies. I need to get it right. I also know that what I write in the blog has to be similar to YouTube. These subtle changes are hard to balance, and I think I may overthink the situation.
Maybe I need to look at the camera as one of my clients, stay focused and discuss the post with suggestions. Added to this, I need to add keywords and phrases in the narrative so Google will find the post. The posts then must pass Yoast’s SEO rules and a few other tools that I use. Finally, the post URL is to be to several social media outlets.
What I learnt about writing my memoirs
My videos are not showing my personality and passion for my clients
Marketing is about the client and not my skills within the business. My expertise is a given. That is why I am in business
Giving away free material is a valid marketing strategy. If a client works with you, they know and understand your expectations
Writing My Memoirs – 31 Day Challenge – Video and Blog Posts
Writing in your voice is so crucial to your writing style. I know this as I had lost mine; if I am honest, this is not the original blog post I was going to post today. I had spent the last three hours writing a post and researching wearing a dressing gown outside the home. The reason for this was that I opened my curtains today and noticed a woman walking her dog. She was wearing a pink terry-towelling dressing gown and flip-flops. My entire article was about social norms and values, our individual freedoms and being judgemental. It was more like an essay or lecture. So my three hours have resulted in no blog post and me starting afresh.
Deciding if you should walk away from a task can be daunting. You need to evaluate several factors. How much time is this costing you? Should you spend your time on more cost-effective tasks? Is there someone cheaper and more experienced that can do the job instead of you? After careful consideration of the above philosophy. I am going to walk away from the previous three hours of research. The post will be marked down as an experience to stay focused in the future. It turned out to be a vanity blog post to say, look at me, don’t I know many long words.
I don’t want to write my memoirs using words that are not from my mouth. Words need to resonate with me, as they are so important. My style of writing is straightforward, to the point, and I think easy to read. Using a voice that is not mine is not part of me writing my memoirs or www.forgetmenot.publishmystoires.com.
Writing in your voice
Writing in your voice is so important; it will convey more to the reader about you than you will realise. You tell your reader your truth in your words, and it is you being genuine when writing your memoirs. It is very much the tone you use, the words, the way you describe something. When writing your memoirs, you have the control.
So, I stopped writing my last post. It was a good essay if I was at university, but I don’t want to write in that style. Writing my memoirs in this business blog is about me. I do not wish to lecture or get on my high horse and tell you how to think. I would prefer you get to know me and my style, know Publish My Stories, and writing memoirs is fun.
What I learnt about writing my memoirs
I need to stay focused on my primary goal and not go off on a tangent
Have the courage to walk away from a business deal or activity if it isn’t working
I have found my voice in my blog and my business.
Writing My Memoirs – 31 Day Challenge – Video and Blog Posts
We all think we can listen; we believe we understand what the speaker in front of us, or on the telephone is asking us to do, but this is not always the case. How many times in your work have you heard the statement “Oh, sorry, I didn’t understand what you wanted me to do” or “you told me to do X”. It is more common than you would think. This is because we are not listening or understanding what the speaker is telling us. This could be because they are not describing it in a way that resonates with you. Maybe the terminology they are using is unfamiliar or that they are describing it in a way that is not congruent with your listening/learning modalities (Kinaesthetic, audio, or visual).
One of my clients called and asked if I would do a task for them. I told them I would in about 10 minutes, as I had to finish something else. They appeared happy with that outcome. 6 minutes later, they called back to see if I had done the task. I repeated back to them I had a task to finish and that their task would be next on my list. Again, they were happy with that outcome. On the third call I changed my tactic and told them it would be done by ‘close of play that day’. On this occasion they replied they were happy with that and apologised for calling me so many times. They were in the middle of cooking and their mind was elsewhere.
There are in fact three main types of listening skills we all use daily.
Passive Listening – half listening to a conversation and not understating what is being said and in what context
Reflective Listening – listening to the speaker and repeating back what you have heard in your own words to demonstrate you understand the speaker. (Fantastic for entrepreneurs when dealing with clients to ensure you get the right information to provide a quote and continued services)
Active Listening – When you are paying attention to the speaker and giving them your undivided attention.
Think about your role at work. How much of your day are you communicating (listening, speaking, reading, or writing)? Each job is different, and the time we spend communicating can also vary from day to day.
The ability to listen is an important skill. Listening allows you to understand what the speaker is asking of you. It shows that you’re interested in what the speaker has to say.
We all experience common listening problems.
Our attention wanders
We miss the point
Our emotions interfere
We interrupt before the speaker has stopped speaking
The content (the words spoken) is one thing, but how people feel gives full value to the message. Responding to the speaker’s feelings adds an extra dimension of listening. Are they disgusted and angry or in love and excited? Perhaps they are ambivalent! These are all feelings that you can reply to in your part of the conversation.
An Entrepreneur’s Mindset is generally different to that of an employed person. Entrepreneurs usually have a distinct attitude and set of priorities compared to those people in paid jobs. (When I use the term entrepreneurs, I am talking about those people who set up a business from nothing). We look at things uniquely and wherever we are, every decision, social occasion we talk about, consider or plan something for our business. If we need a job done, it will never occur to us to ask ‘How do I this’. Our first concern is the outcome that I want to achieve. From there, we will then decide on how to get the task completed.
Our minds are all over the place. How do we earn more income, what products can we sell, who will buy this service? How can we leverage our current services? It is a different outlook, which is not right or wrong, it’s just different.
My Hell
My personal hell would be a day of shopping for makeup and clothes. It just has no interest for me. I am not really interested in my socks are matching as long as my feet are warm or if my bag is a different colour to my shoes as long as it holds everything I need it to hold. It just isn’t one of my priorities. Now, if it is one of my author’s books, that is a very different story. The font has to be spot on, the formatting and front cover need to tell a story in its own right and the author has to be 100% happy with the outcome, I am slightly anal about that, because to me, it’s a product that I have produced and I want my clients to treasure that product.
Take, for example, walking home yesterday. Just as I was leaving the office, the skies opened with torrential rain. It just wouldn’t stop. I didn’t have a coat with me as the weather forecast said it would be sunshine all day. So, there I am standing the lobby looking at the rain falling and pondering, how am I going to get home. I could, for example:-
Walk and get soaked
Call a taxi
Get a lift from someone
Wait until the rain stops
Options are available if you think hard
There would be more options if I set my mind to it, Critical Thinking (a very good business term for evaluating all options). I think situations through and make my decisions quickly and run with the consequences. It has served me well and I learn quickly from mistakes, especially as I am a firm believer that mistakes are more valuable than getting things right all the time.
Back to my story. I wanted to walk home as the dog also needed a walk, and the rain would wash her coat, which is a bonus. So, how to get home without getting too wet. Now, I considered my solutions was rather ingenious considering my limited options. Get a plastic bag, cut a hole in the top and arms and like magic an instant raincoat. So, there I am with my pink plastic bin liner, cutting in a hole for the neck and arms to hear someone from behind me question what I was doing.
I explained what I was doing and why. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t just wait for the rain to stop, as she was doing. Her car was 10 feet from the front door. It never occurred to her to walk to her car in the rain and get wet and that a makeshift plastic bag could act as a temporary raincoat for a few minutes. What upset her more was the fact that the pink plastic bag was a Biffa bag, and a trade Biffa bag at that.
Appearances can matter
I have been a member of BNI (a networking group for small businesses and entrepreneurs) for many years. Every so often a member would be asked to give a 10-minute presentation on what their business is and what referrals they are looking for. On one occasion, I took several tools that I use in my business and carried them in an orange plastic bag. As I stood in front of the 35 other members explaining my business and what each tool represented, I felt the presentation went well. It was only after my presentation two women in the group came to me and said they loved the presentation but couldn’t get past the orange plastic bag. They suggested that next time I should use a company branded bag.
It concerned me for a while and what was interesting was that both ladies worked for an entrepreneur, which differs from being an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur’s mindset will equate every penny spent to hours worked or jobs completed. Why would they focus on something as immaterial as the orange plastic bag and not the contents of the bag and what I was saying? To them, the importance of someone’s outward appearance was just as important as what is being said or sold. I have taken this on board and retired my orange plastic bag. However, I am still in business and the two ladies are not working for other companies that provide branded products.
Learning Points about an Entrepreneur’s Mindset
There are many ways to get a task completed, focus on the outcome first and work backwards
Don’t be guided by someone who has never had the courage that you have shown by setting up your business
Thinking outside the box is a prerequisite for an entrepreneur, so stand up and yell, “I will do this, and I will do it my way with the results I want to achieve.”
Writing My Memoirs – 31 Day Challenge – Video and Blog Posts
Welcome to-Day One of my self-imposed blog / memoir challenge to record the daily activities of a business owner and entrepreneur. The trials and tribulations that I go through. I will be honest, frank and to the point. Running a business is fun, annoying, stressful and the best job I have ever had.
I thought I would put some personality into my first blog post of this challenge and record a video of me speaking to camera, to introduce myself. Thinking it would only take a few minutes as I didn’t want the video to be over 3 minutes long. It took forever, OK not that long but to get the video recorded took an hour and a half, to do a minor edit to two hours and then posting and writing this blog post took an hour. So four and a half hours for a few words and a three-minute video.
I thought I would put some personality into my first blog post of this challenge and record a video of me speaking to camera, to introduce myself. Thinking it would only take a few minutes as I didn’t want the video to be over 3 minutes long. It took forever, OK not that long but to get the video recorded took an hour and a half, to do a minor edit to two hours and then posting and writing this blog post took an hour. So four and a half hours for a few words and a three-minute video.
Why does a video recording take so long?
First, I needed to put some colour in my cheeks. I had just woken up and looked as if I was at death’s door. So on with the slap (or make up if you prefer). You would think this would be a straightforward task. Being a woman, we should all know how to apply makeup and look a million dollars in 60 seconds. I rarely wear make-up so had to turn the bathroom upside down to find the little makeup I had. My bathroom is now a complete and utter tip. My make up is so old I had to put it in hot water to loosen it so I can use the foundation and mascara. Before anybody tells me, yes I know you should change your make up every three months. But the reality is we don’t.
Looking good on camera?
After experimenting with how to apply the said makeup, I haven’t done it for many years. I finally settled on brown eyeshadow a bit of lipstick and foundation. I forgot to put blusher, which was why I started the entire process. Claudia Schiffer: I am not, but looking human and able to face a camera, yes.
Location, Location, Location
I then had to find a location to record my video. I tried my spare room, the kitchen, the living room, even the bathroom, all to no avail. In the end I went into my office and spent half an hour moving furniture around trying to find a backdrop that would look suitable for a video.
I know the video to the side of this narrative doesn’t look like a superb background. But it was the best I could do with the location I have. I will not go out and buy a green screen and it took long enough. As you can see from the photographs, my office is now a complete and utter tip. Once the video was recorded, or I should say during the recording of the video, my dog was barking, so this version is version two.
If you could see my stance while recording the video you think I was going to cause physical damage to myself. I was half bending and doing a sideward squat to get in shot. How these bloggers do it daily I just don’t know. It must take them hours to set up before they can actually publish a video. I’m not sure I’m going to spend over an hour every time I record one. I need to get on and actually do some billable work.
The reason behind writing this memoir
The idea behind this blog is that I want to show people everybody has a story to tell, no matter what you do and how you do it. There are different reasons people want to write memoirs.
My learnings from this exercise
Don’t reference something from a different video and assume it has been watched.
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