Lifestyle Tradie Magazine Edition #57

ISSUE #57 – APRIL – MAY – JUNE 2020

IS SEO DEAD FOR TRADIES IN

2020?

PAGE 8

17 WAYS

TO TRADIE-UP YOUR WEBSITE

TOP 6

PAGE 18

JOB MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE SYSTEMS PAGE 12

CASS AND DAVE

HORNSBY ELECTRIC - VIP DIAMOND MEMBER SUBSCRIBE TO LIFESTYLE TRADIE ON

SHOCKED BY THE END OF HOLDEN?

FROM THE DESK OF

Hey Tradies!

It’s been a massive start to 2020 in the land of Lifestyle Tradie. Following our 10-year anniversary last year, the team has been doing some serious work behind the scenes to create a new website, brand identity and live event series, Lifestyle Tradie Live. So, why did we decide to pivot?

We believe the new branding better depicts our energetic, positive culture and community and the way we deliver our educational services for tradies in business. What’s in it for you?

Well, you’ll benefit from the shiny, new content, including a soon-to-be released podcast and monthly webinar.

In this edition of Lifestyle Trade Magazine (which also has a new look and feel), you’ll find stacks of trade-specific stories written with you in mind. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a hot topic among tradies. But many of us are not sure what the heck we’re paying for. This article spells it all out for you.

Over to our member profile featuring Cas and Dave from Hornsby Electric. Everyone loves reading a great member

JUMP INTO

Get stuck into the stack of helpful resources on MyLifestyleTradie. Watch the how-to videos, listen to the Power Hour recordings, as well as all the recordings from past events. There’s all this, and more, right at your fingertips as a member of Lifestyle Tradie.

profile – this one is no exception! If you’re looking to read something light-hearted, our story on the big lessons tradies can learn from the small screen is a bit of fun.

Plus, get our top 6 job management software recommendations and see all the happy snaps from our memberonly R&R event in Coogee this March.

Cheers,

Andy Smith

APRIL – MAY – JUNE 2020 57TH EDITION

CONTENTS

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04

Lifestyle Tradie Member Profile Hornsby Electric

The New World Of Wellness At Work For Tradies

06

14

Upcoming ReIngnite & ReUnite 23-25 July QT Gold Coast

08

Is SEO dead for tradies in 2020?

07

Andy’s Rant Shocked By The End Of Holden?

17 Ways To TradieUp Your Website

18

Reignite & Reunite Coogee March 2020

12

Top 6 Job Management Software For Tradies

A P R I L – M AY – J U N E 202 0 – I S S U E # 57

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LIFEST YLE TRADIE MEMBER PROFILE – HORNSBY ELECTRIC

LIFESTYLE TRADIE

MEMBER PROFILE

CASS AND DAVE

HORNSBY ELECTRIC VIP DIAMOND MEMBER

1. Tell us a little about your business, life and family.

Cassandra and I have been operating Hornsby Electric from our home for many years. The business’s humble beginnings go back over 60 years when my dad opened his shop, Hornsby Washing Machine and Electric, which specialised in the repair of appliances like washing machines, TVs and radios. He then started practising as an electrical contractor, working with local builders during the 1950s and ‘60s, doing the electrical installation of new homes in and around Hornsby at the time.

I would accompany Dad to jobs during school holidays and it just became a natural progression for me to step into the management of the family business.

When I met Cas, it wasn’t long before she became the operations backbone of the business. Operating from our home, it can become quite a crazy house with office and our electrician teams, coming and going, not to mention our two cats in the mix to keep things fun.

Today, Hornsby Electric has grown to a bigger team of qualified electricians and continues to do electrical contracting for homes and businesses in and around Hornsby and the North Shore.

2. What do you love most about what you do?

The flexibility to create a life we love. Running your own business and operating from home certainly has its challenges, but we wouldn’t change it for the world.

Hornsby Electric is who we are, and it can be crazy at times, in a good way.

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3. Tell us a little about your life before joining Lifestyle Tradie? (What wasn’t working, what was holding you back or was in your way?)

As owners of a small business, and without networking, we were like an island. It was impossible to know what we needed to be working on to improve the business.

Quoting and invoicing was a full-time job for me, and we were perpetually behind. We didn’t have a budget and weren’t able to plan. Neither of us could ever take any time off or have a holiday without worrying or getting further behind.

4. What specific results have you achieved since joining Lifestyle Tradie?

It’s been an amazing opportunity to connect with a community of people in the same (or similar) situation to us. It’s inspiring to be around other tradie business owners and to come together to learn what others are doing, what works, what doesn’t and to fine-tune our business to evolve.

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LIFEST YLE TRADIE MEMBER PROFILE – HORNSBY ELECTRIC

The biggest change has been opening the mind of the obstinate. Over the years, Dave has had some classic calls, here’s a few samples:

• Nine years ago, Dave and I had a fight with Dave stating, “No! What do we need a website for?”.

• “We can’t put our prices up (from $65 per hour), the market just won’t tolerate it!”.

We put them up over 20 per cent an hour and got busier.

• Prior to joining LTG, Dave would regularly say, “What do I want to go and hang out with a bunch of electricians for?”. Now he loves networking with the LTG crew.

• Even after our first year in LTG Dave would say, “Flat rate? You can’t quote that!”.

Phew! Thankfully, a lot has changed since then.

We are more profitable than ever and have completely ceased working under a ‘do and charge’ model. Implementing a flat-rate model has been transforming and allowed us to put our prices up. We have given the electricians daily invoice targets and learnt loads about both sales, marketing and business in general. We hired VAs to assist with the mundane tasks and systemised the business. We have the freedom to go on holidays and can actually relax.

We have come along in leaps and bounds with our customer-centric business model, earning us 68 five-star reviews to date. Not bad for a small local business.

5. Where do you see your business in five years?

Honestly, we’d love to grow our business, to keep doing what we are doing, but with a bigger team. We are well on the way and already on a growth curve with double the team we had this time a few years ago.

6. What are the top three things you have learnt about business that you would recommend to other tradies and why?

Tip 1. Having a personal growth mindset ensured that we’ve

kept up or ahead of the game and allowed us to make the changes we need to grow and thrive. In the past, we only knew if we were running out of money when there was nothing was left in the bank account to pay the bills and wages. Working out our earning capacity, then creating a realistic budget, is the single biggest improvement we have made to our business. We now monitor the budget and tradie targets weekly, using an advanced dashboard. We find this is the easiest way to stay profitable, and more importantly, if there’s a problem brewing, we know about it at least three months in advance and can make necessary changes long before it becomes a major problem.

Getting this procedure in place wouldn’t have been possible without aligning ourselves with great advisers who are open-minded and passionate about our business and that we trust implicitly. In fact, any time I’m stuck or wondering how to go about something, or how to solve something, I turn to the LTG community. Chances are, someone has been through the same thing or has some insight that could benefit us.

Tip 2. We ensure that customer satisfaction is at the centre of

everything we do. We always put our customers first and work hard to reap the rewards of customer loyalty, repeat business and referrals. We put a lot of effort into retaining customers, more so than getting new work. We try to gauge customer feedback, good and bad, and make sure we learn how to do things better, training our team on improvements to customer service along the way.

Tip 3. Trust your team. Don’t be afraid to outsource and entrust responsibilities to them. We became pretty reliant on doing everything ourselves, but you can only grow and evolve if you delegate to your team. This is how Dave’s able to go fishing and know the business is still ticking along.

7. Tell us something quirky about yourself that your buddies don’t know?

Hmmm, did you know clothes pegs are dishwasher safe? No hints to who is the one with OCD. I love makeup and nothing more than Dave going fishing so I can spread the makeup all over the dining room table and play.

8. If we were sitting here one year from now celebrating what a great year it’s been, what have you achieved (together)? (business/life).

We have successfully achieved our financial target. We are in a great place, with an incredible team and some exciting goals ahead of us.

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23-25 July 2020 • QT Gold Coast

QT Gold Coast For now, stick to your 120-day plan and kick some goals!

You, beauty! We’re back at QT Gold Coast in July 2020 for what is shaping up to be another cracker Lifestyle Tradie member event. You can expect a packed education and social program, designed to reignite and reunite!

You’ll get started with our headline speaker, Dr Espen, who is first up on day one. Founder of the Bonfire Health Group, with hot yoga and wellbeing studies throughout Australasia, the former Ninja Warrior contestant will present on the powerful principles of business and wealth mastery.

You’ll be pumped about our line-up of speakers, which we’ll reveal in the lead up to the event. In the meantime, save the dates and we’ll be in touch with more information about accommodation and the all-important social stuff.

If you’ve got any questions, just shout out:

info@lifestyletradie.com.au

ANDY’S RANT

It’s not every day an iconic Australian car brand announces it will exit the market.

That’s exactly what happened in February when news broke that Holden will be axed in Australia at the end of 2020.

For us tradies, who love our cars, the announcement sparked lots of conversation about why Holden has opted out. Pointing the finger at the bean counters and state of the manufacturing industry in general.

However, for most of us, we’re just sad it’s the end of an era.

THIS ISSUE’S HOT TOPIC

SHOCKED

BY THE END OF HOLDEN?

We published a post about it on Lifestyle Tradie’s Facebook channel almost immediately after it happened. It certainly fired everyone up! In particular, we loved this comment from Jonathan Rose.

“Sad. Not just for the Holden brand but the demise of Australian manufacturing in general. My first car was a second-hand EH [Holden] that I bought for $100. Simpler times before corporate globalisation. As Roy and HG once said, ‘Your family either drove a Ford or a Holden, or if they were weird, they drove a Valiant’.”

Spot on, Jonathan!

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IS SEO DEAD FOR TRADIES IN 2020?

Organic search versus paid search SEO influences organic search results, where a business’s ranking is earned.

Paid search is where you pay to appear at the top of search results. It’s like getting an editorial write up in the media versus paying for an ad.

While paid search can provide quick wins for trade businesses in the volume of leads it generates, organic search results tend to be the most trusted source for people researching a purchase online – it just takes longer to get traction.

IS SEO DEAD FOR TRADIES

IN 2020?

BY TIFFANY BONASERA

Many tradies in business are paying lots of money to SEO (search engine optimisation) and digital marketing consultants with the aim of getting a higher organic search ranking on Google and more client leads through the door.

While SEO remains a powerful marketing tactic and website traffic source for tradies in 2020, there’s still confusion about what it actually is and how it can help your trade business. In this article, we’re going back to basics to make it clear.

So, when you’re looking to hire an SEO or digital consultant, you won’t be left bewildered by any jargon or sidelined by shady practices. Instead, you’ll be armed with the right questions to ask before you get an SEO on board.

SEO checklist Before reaching out to an SEO consultant, there are some SEO basics which are helpful to understand. The potential of SEO to increase the visibility of your business online is only as high as the quality of your business or website.

1. Is your website mobile friendly (responsive)?

2. Does your website have an intuitive navigation?

3. Do you have a great brand?

All too often, tradies are rush to throw money at expensive search campaigns, without nailing the basics. Firstly, you must have access to your business website’s content management system (CMS). You may find the following information hasn’t even been applied in your website CMS.

Importantly, remember this: Google is a mystery – to everyone.

It’s reported Google makes an average of nine improvements to search every, single day. This means an SEO doesn’t have Google superpowers and can’t give you any guarantees.

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Here’s key elements that should be sorted from an on-page SEO perspective:

• TITLE TAG

4 steps to hiring an SEO consultant SEO should be part of your general business operations. It’s not a set-and-forget thing and works best to compliment your other marketing activities.

While it’s possible to DIY SEO, hiring the right SEO is a big help.

Your title tags determine your display title in search engine results. Each page on your website will have its own clickable title tag, in this format:

1. Conduct a two-way interview with your potential SEO. Check they seem genuinely interested in you and your business.

2. Do your due diligence by checking referees.

Primary keyword | Secondary keyword | Brand name

3. Ask for (you’ll probably have to pay for) a technical and search audit.

• META DESCRIPTION

4. Decide if you want to hire.

This is the copy that shows up in the search results, under your clickable link. It’s often the first experience a potential client has with your brand.

• IMAGE FILE NAME Include the primary keyword phrase in the file name.

• IMAGE ALT TAG Also include the primary keyword in the image alt tag

• URL (WEBSITE ADDRESS) Use a short, meaningful URL (preferably with your primary keyword phrase) HAVE YOU CHECKED TO SEE IF YOUR ON-PAGE SEO IS UP TO DATE?

Finally, a good SEO won’t just focus on your search engine ranking, but how they can help your business. In terms of reporting, a good SEO will report on deliverables, based on the agreed scope of work. To provide you with a scope of work, for consideration, a good SEO should be asking you these questions:

• What makes your business valuable to clients?

• What does your target client look like?

• How do your clients currently find your website?

• How does your business make money?

• What other marketing channels are you using?

• Who are your competitors?

• And ultimately, what are your business goals?

SEO is not dead for tradies in 2020.

It’s alive and well.

Is your website SEO-friendly?

An SEO consultant doesn’t have Google superpowers.

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THE NEW WORLD OF WELLNESS AT WORK FOR TRADIES

The new world of wellness AT WORK FOR TRADIES The physical and mental wellbeing of your tradies is your business. As the trade business owner, having a healthy team contributes to a healthy bottom line. Are you up to speed on the new world of wellness in the workplace?

So, what is wellness?

With initiatives like Tradies for National Health Month hammering home the importance of tradies taking care of their bodies, the overarching concept of wellness should be a priority in every trade business workplace.

A fruit bowl and lip service isn’t going to cut it, just saying. According to Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, wellbeing has five attributes:

Gallup found when adults thrive in all five elements, they reported:

• 41 per cent fewer unhealthy days • 36 per cent more likely to say they always fully bounce back after an illness

• 81 per cent less likely to look for a new job.

Ultimately, having happy and healthy employees has proven results.

1. Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals.

2. Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life.

3. Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security.

4. Community: liking where you live, feeling safe, and having pride in your community.

5. Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily.

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THE NEW WORLD OF WELLNESS AT WORK FOR TRADIES

7 REASONS TO OFFER EMPLOYEE WELLBEING AT WORK

What if I can’t afford a fancy wellness program?

We hear you! However, having a wellness program in your trade business can actually save you money in the long run. Here’s some do-able ideas: 1. Flexible hours Consider offering flexible hours. Lifestyle benefits are often more valuable to tradies than cold-hard cash (well, in some cases).

1. Wellbeing programs improve employee health behaviours 2. Reduce elevated health risks

2. Invest in standing desks It feels odd at first, but standing desks are a thing that provides posture and core strength and productivity benefits.

3. Reduce healthcare costs 4. Improve productivity

3. Get behind a common cause Organise a team for a charity walk or plan a volunteer day.

These types of events not encourage physical activity and a stronger sense of community.

5. Decrease instances of absenteeism 6. Help improve employee recruitment and retention 7. Help build and sustain high employee moral

4. Lunchtime mindfulness or yoga A simple mindfulness app and a spare 15 minutes can make all the difference to brain function and stress reduction.

5. Access to health assessments Offering regular health checks will help your team stay fit and well and avoid long-term health issues down the road.

6. Award for wellness Encourage your team to nominate co-workers they find especially active and healthy as an incentive for fellow employees.

7. Offer free health and wellness books Perhaps a new addition to your office library for staff to borrow?

8. Provide healthy snacks Swap the bickies or lollies for better options, for example, protein bars, fruits, vegetables, or other healthy snacks.

9. Walk and talk Take a walk around the block for that next meeting. Easy!

As the trade business owner, having a healthy team contributes to a healthy bottom line.

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TOP 6 JOB MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE FOR TRADIES

TOP 6

JOB MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE FOR TRADIES

BY ANDY AND ANGELA SMITH

Job management software does lots of the heavy lifting for tradies in business. It allows you to coordinate and automate many day-to-day functions and provides a central hub for your office and mobile teams.

From the initial quote to final invoicing, job management software manages all of your jobs. It ‘plugs in’ to your systems ecosystem and ultimately frees you up to step out of your trade business. Booyah!

This article is for you if you’re keen to give up your paper or cloud-based diary but you’re not sure which job management software is best for you. Or, you want to up the ante on your job management software.

Before we reveal our top job management software systems for tradies, it’s worth noting, one size doesn’t fit all. We’ve compiled the following quick checklist to help in the decision-making process.

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HERE’S OUR JOB MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE CHECKLIST Is it industry specific?

Is it cloud based?

What are your device and network capabilities?

Hardware compatibility?

Does it have offline features?

Is it easy to use?

Can you trial the product?

Can it be customised?

Which tasks can be automated?

Can it produce customisable reports?

Can it scale with my business?

Comparing apples with apples We’ve recommended job management software products developed by businesses committed to making constant upgrades, courtesy of feedback from customers. This means they’re all whiz-bang. It comes down to which one’s most relevant to you and your trade business.

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TOP 6 JOB MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE FOR TRADIES

Here’s how you work it out.

• While each job management system fundamentally does the

same job, they’re different in many ways. The best fit for you will depend on the style of your business, for example maintenance versus project work, and how your business is set up.

• For job management software to be most effective, set it up so

you’re getting the information that’s important to your business for reporting purposes, for example, market segmentation, customer campaigns, and customers details should be specific.

• Consider how your business operates. Are you a one-man show or do you have a big team? Do you take customer calls on-thejob or do you have a team in the office managing this?

• Job management software is mobile. It allows for visibility in

the field, which is great for tradies. Does your job management provider activate job changes in real-time or is there a lag?

• What’s your long-term business plan? Some software providers have lower-cost products available while you’re in the start-up phase, with flexibility to move up to a more robust version later.

Our advice is this: Speak with fellow tradies about their experiences and ask questions about a product’s capacity to service your specific needs.

Finally, here’s our top 6 1. AroFlo: aroflo.com 2. Ascora: ascora.com.au 3. Buildxact: buildxact.com.au 4. Fergus: fergus.com/en-au 5. ServiceM8: servicem8.com/au 6. Tradify: tradifyhq.com/site

Selecting job management software is a huge decision for tradie bosses. Once the software is integrated into your business, it’s hard to switch products.

Doing your due diligence will help you get the right product in place to kick long-term profit and lifestyle goals.

Speak with fellow tradies about their experiences and ask questions about a product’s capacity to service your specific needs.”

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17 WAYS TO TRADIE-UP YOUR WEBSITE

17 WAYS

TO TRADIE-UP YOUR WEBSITE

For tradies in business, your website is probably your most powerful marketing tool. Most potential customers will stick around for less than 15 seconds, if they’re able to find your trade business on the interwebs in the first place.

How long are visitors hanging around on your website?

More importantly, is your website generating allimportant leads? Ultimately, your website is about giving visitors a reason to care about you and your business.

In this article, we’ll cover 17 ways to tradie-up your website to help convert more visitors into paying customers in the market for your trade services.

1.

Solve immediate problems Make your buyer the hero, and solve their immediate problems. Generally, people search the web with an intent, a problem. The goal of your website is to demonstrate why your business is the best one to solve this problem.

3.

Make your website search-engine friendly The bottom line is, if you can’t be found on Google, you don’t exist.

“The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google.” — Unknown While you can pay for advertising, the higher your organic Google rank, the more leads you’ll get through the door. We’ll dive deeper in SEO in the next issue of Lifestyle Tradie Magazine.

Keep an eye out for the article!

“Most websites are written around how great you are and not what problem you solve,” says Chris Brogan, New York Times best-selling author of nine marketing and business books.

What problems do your customers want solved?

2.

Focus on results, not features When you get asked about your services, what do you say? Stating what you do isn’t going to cut it. The gold is in how you can help them.

“A classic example of this is a drill. Customers don’t want a drill, they want a hole in the wall.

So, focus on the quality of the holes and how easy it was to create those holes, not the actual drill itself,” Jacob Cass – JUST Creative says.

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4.

Help people to know, like and trust you.

“Your homepage covers only the ‘know’ part,” says Lior Frenkel, whose e-book, Value for Money, explains why that’s not enough.

“Trying to sell your services/products too early won’t get you great results. You first need them to like and trust you. You can do that by having an awesome ‘About’ page, by having them follow you on social or through getting them to subscribe to your newsletter.”

7.

Give them a reason to come back.

“Your website isn’t bringing in customers because you have given them no reason to come back,” says Kelsey Meyer, co-founder of Influence & Co. “If your company blog is updated just once per month and consists only of employee updates, why would a potential customer care about returning to your site?”

Meyer asks. “You convert leads into customers by earning their trust and educating them on why they need your services. Focus on producing content on your site that educates and engages your prospective customers so they keep coming back to learn more.”

8.

Attract the right crowd.

“If the wrong people are hitting your website, it’s all for nothing,” says Paul Jarvis, who writes for Fast Company, Newsweek, Forbes, LifeHacker and BuzzFeed. “For example, if you sell surfboards and your traffic is mostly llama herders, no amount of conversion tactics will pay off.”

Build your brand reputation As a trade business, you need to stand for something in the noisy digital world and build your brand reputation around it. For example, at Lifestyle Tradie, we stand for family and standing up for the little guys in the trade industry.

“People are more likely to buy from you if the quality of what you sell is matched or surpassed by the quality of your brand identity,” says David Airey, author of branding best-seller, Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities.

5.

6.

Get to know your customers before they need you “People don’t randomly click on stuff and buy stuff,” says Larry Kim, founder of WordStream, the world’s largest pay-per-click software company. “They favour the brands they know and love. Repeat visitors have two to three times higher click-through rates than new visitors” Kim says. “So, figure out ways to get in front of your target market before they decide they need to buy your products/ services.” This tactic will dramatically bias outcomes in your favour.

17 WAYS TO TRADIE-UP YOUR WEBSITE

9.

Get conversion-friendly To help turn visitors into customers, Courtright Design Founder Kyle Courtright recommends optimising your website’s design by asking yourself these questions:

• Is there enough space to let the design • • • • •

breathe?

Is your navigation pared-down enough?

Are your call to actions strategic?

Do your call-to-action buttons contrast against the background?

Do you have (relevant) imagery to break up heavy content?

Are testimonials (or social proof) prominent?

call-to-action sample

10. Improve the user experience “One of the biggest challenges websites face today when trying to bring in and retain customers is the user experience on the site,” says Jacob Gube, who founded the all-aboutweb-development blog Six Revisions.

“The user-experience problem could be something as simple as having a slow website that discourages visitors from spending any time on your site, and improving it can have big results,” Gube says

12. Make it usable first, then beautiful Julie Joyce owns Link Fish Media and is a columnist for Search Engine Land. She says: “It’s fairly easy to get eyes on your website.

It’s not easy to keep them there longer than a few seconds. The main issue I see with this is when design seems more important than usability. I’ve seen some beautiful sites that look unique and like a lot of time has been put into them, but I can’t even figure out how to find the restaurant’s menu or the contact us page.”

13. Connect the words Ian Paget, a brand-identity designer and founder of Logo Geek, gives common-sense advice that’s all-too-uncommonly followed.

“As the human brain is visually led, words take longer to process. To help the user flow through the website seamlessly, use a technique called ‘word-connect’ to avoid interrupting the flow. As an example, if a banner or call-to-action states, ‘View our buy-one, get-one-free offers,’ the user would expect to see a matching page titled, ‘Buy-one, get-one-free offers’. If the page title instead reads, ‘Selected discounts,’ the words do not connect and could potentially confuse the user,” Paget says.

Old design

11. Provide real value, right now Maybe it’s not your website. Maybe it’s your product.

“Companies spend far too much time trying to make their site ‘pop’ and stand out, and often forget that they still need to build a solid product or service offering in order to provide something of true value to the customer,” says Pippin Williamson, who founded Sandhills Development. “Forget the parallax banners and flashy, over-the-top ads and just build it,” he says.

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14. Track the right metrics Tom Ross, CEO at Design Cuts, says: “People tend to focus on the wrong metrics, such as traffic, presuming this translates to customers.”

What you actually need is truly valuable product and the right quality of potential leads.

“Ignore the ego boost of 100,000 freebie seekers hitting your site, and focus instead on attracting solid, laser-targeted potential leads,” Ross says. “If you offer the leading gardening fork on the market, and 100 gardeners who have just broken their gardening fork land on your page, you’ll get customers.”

15. Appeal to customers who are informed, afflicted and oblivious.

“The informed know, like and trust you,” says Derek Halpern. He founded Social Triggers and created the Sales Page That Converts training program. “The afflicted are people who have a problem and need a solution. The oblivious are people who don’t even realise they’re suffering from a fixable problem. And the number one reason why most websites fail to make as many sales as they thought they should make is because they only appeal to one of these people when they should appeal to all three.”

New design

16. Just focus “The number one reason I see websites fail to bring in customers is due to a lack of focus,” says Preston Lee, founder of Millo.

“When potential customers land on your site, you want to push them toward your most important objective, which is usually selling them something. So, stop inviting them to subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on Twitter or read your blog. Those can all be secondary goals, but they should be eclipsed by your primary goal: turning site visitors into paying customers.”

17. Get mobile “Your site doesn’t work on mobile. Everyone’s on mobile,” says Dann Petty, a web and app designer who created Freelance.TV. Petty was a goldmine of tips, offering up gems that answer why your website may be failing:

• You’re too focused on cliche words • You’re not focused on free advertising: a • •

social-media presence You forgot to build a brand No one knows how to find your site.

If you were to give your trade business website a score from one to 10 (10 being tip-top terrific), what would it be? At Lifestyle Tradie, we’ve recently gone through this process ourselves. Compare the before-and-afters:

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12-14 March • Coogee Our Lifestyle Tradie members showed their true entrepreneurial spirit at R&R in Coogee! You gave our speakers, Lucy Bloom and Louise Mahler, a big thumbs up and how good was the Bucket List in Bondi?

Thanks for an epic weekend of learning, motivation and fun times! You guys rock!

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REUNITE & REIGNITE - MARCH 2020 • COOGEE

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NEXT ISSUE

Subbies Versus Employees: Pros And Cons

Healthy snacks for tradies

Subbies versus employees is an ongoing debate between tradies in business. If you’re stuck trying to work out which one’s the best bet for your trade business, this article will help you make an informed decision.

Do you load up on crap food or do you choose healthy snacks? In this article, you’ll learn which snacks will provide better fuel for tradies on the run. You’ll even pick up some tricks on how to get the most out of your food.

The hard days are what make you stronger.

- Aly Raisman

Phone: 1800 704 822 Email: info@lifestyletradie.com.au Web: www.lifestyletradie.com.au

Lifestyle Tradie Magazine is published by and © copyright by Andrew & Angela Smith, Lifestyle Tradie Group Pty Ltd 2020. All Rights Reserved. This newsletter and any accompanying material are for general information purposes only. It is the responsibility of the reader to comply with any local, state or federal laws. The Publisher has taken all reasonable measures to ensure that the material contained within this newsletter is correct. The Publisher provides no representation and gives no warranty as to the accuracy of the information and does not accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in the information contained herein and shall not be liable for any loss or damage arising as a result of any person acting in reliance on information contained herein.