Close your eyes and imagine in your mind’s eye you are walking down the street. On a brick wall you see the picture of the exact pair of shoes you have been searching for! What luck. Next to the picture is a little slot that reads “Insert $50 here, the shoes will arrive at your home in 7-10 business days.” As farfetched as that sounds, it is precisely what online shoppers face every single day. They cannot see you, so they need something else to have enough in the people that want them to hand over their credit card number.

A simple way to build trust and reduce the friction a shopper encounters on the road to make a purchase is to use icons with trusted brands. Here are three every sales page should have:

1) Payment Security
This can be in the form of a “PayPal Verified” icon, an SSL certificate, hacker safe certificate, etc. Let the visitor know how their payment will be handled and use trusted icons to build confidence in the process.

2) Business Credibility
Common icons here include the BBB seal or honest-e online seals that simply say, “we are not shady, in fact, we can prove it because if you click on this seal a third party will verify that we act honestly with our customers.”

3) Delivery Reliability
If you are shipping a physical product to your customers, what better way to borrow some brand equity than to display the UPS, USPS, DHL, or Fedex logo on your website (with permission of course). These companies all have rules about logo use, but are all eager to let your website help them brand their company…while lending you some needed trust for your visitors as well.

I met a recent high school grad over the weekend named Ali. Lest you think of Ali like many other young adults in her shoes, let me explain what sets her apart.

While her cohorts are looking to coast through college on mom and Dad’s dime as they carefully balance school work with partying and “extra-cirricular activities”, Ali wants to race the Iditarod. You heard right. She wants to become a sled dog racer and she wasn’t afraid to say it. In fact, I had only known Ali for a few minutes when she told me this. I’ll be honest, I was taken aback. At 5’6″ ish, very slender, and in a dress (she had just come from church) to say she didn’t quite fit the typical ‘musher’ stereotype would be a gross understatement.

Yet here she was, fearless in her determination to pursue a childhood dream of racing sled dogs and not backing down an inch from that goal. I feel like all of my posts recently have had a similar theme…lifestyle, goals, desires…and this one is no different. How impressive is that to have a dream since childhood that seems so farfetched and impossible to most, yet one that you are ready to go after no matter what. Awesome and impressive, that’s what I say.

So I spent the afternoon reviewing my own goals and personal direction to see if I had any personal Iditarod’s that I was afraid to go after for fear that others might have a good chuckle at my expense. And sure enough…there were. In fact, I spent two hours today planning how I might reach one in particular and identifying obstacles that might stand in my way. Now the only question is…do you have any such goals? And what are we going to do about them?

The picture above is of strawberries.  And why is it of strawberries?  Well, I’m glad you asked.

I met a man today who runs a strawberry patch.  In his own little piece of heaven in central new york, this man’s family along with two very well behaved and great-looking golden retrievers, are the stewards of a plot of land that grows a delicious red fruit.

As we began some very small talk at the cash register, we discovered that this man had purhcased his first golden retriever as a student.   “Where did you go to school?” we enquired.  Without a moment of hesitation and sense of pride he replied, “Cornell”.

You may be asking yourself why a man that was smart enough to get into, and graduate from, such an elite school is working in mud covered overalls at a strawberry patch.  However, I think we could very well turn the tables a little bit and say, what does this smart man know that we don’t that leads him to work in a strawberry patch when he has a degree from Cornell?

My wager, he knows what his TRUE life goals are.  Not the goals of income, wealth, personal posessions, etc.  but the goals that really matter: happiness, contentment, love, family.  I think this man was smart enough to attend a prestigious college, but also smart enough to know where he would truly be happy in his work

That’s not to say that everyone must work in a strawberry patch to find joy in their work, but for him, that was the spot.

As we drove away it reminded me of what my business goals were as well as my life goals and where those meshed and where they butted heads a bit.  We must be smart enough to be successful, but also smart enough to know where true success lies…and maybe it’s in a strawberry patch…or a real estate office…or a manufacturing plant…or a car dealership…or wherever you want it to be.

ALERT: Gregg is about to reminisce. My first business of the post-high school era was a home snowmaking company. Though it may come as a shock to those of you in the northern united states, some people actually WANT snow. Crazy huh?

Call me crazy too though, because I’ve always loved snow, both making it and sliding on it. And snowmaking was the perfect gig because it let me do what I love (make snow) and still pay tuition (at the time). The business grew and things got busier and busier…until one day, i realized I hadn’t been snowboarding in over 2 months.

“Wait a second,” the voices in my head argued, “Wasn’t the whole point of this business so you would have extra money to go snowboarding and have fun with your buddies?”
“Yes it was,” I responded, beginning to see their point.
“So, what are you gonna do about it?”

Recognizing that those voices were usually right, I decided to make changes. I hired some help at the expense of lower profits. I outsourced parts of the work that took the most time. And decided to be less aggressive with things until I could manage the growth. Along the way, I was able to have my cake (lifestyle) and eat it too (make a sufficient profit).

Let me suggest a short checklist of things to consider when your business begins to take up too much time:

1) If you suck at it, let someone else do it.
Small business owners wear many hats, but there is no need to wear ALL of them unless absolutely necessary. (self-plug approaching) That was half the reason behind The Ultimate Employee. Small business owners love to do their own internet marketing, but for the most part, they are doing it all wrong. Another example? If math just ain’t yo’ thang, hire an accountant.

2) If it can be done with cheap labor, hire cheap labor.
Once upon a time I was working for a property management company in Salt Lake City. I was 15 and getting paid beans (thinking back, I actually do think the bank gave me a couple lima beans once when i cashed a check). These guys managed tons of properties and sat in their office drinking Pina Coladas and eating Chinese take-out. They could have done it all themselves, but because I was cheap labor, they let me do the work for almost zero cost while they organized other cheap labor to multiply their profits.

3) If it can be automated, automate it.
If you have a newsletter and aren’t using an autoresponder, start using one. If you sell digital products and are still sending out orders individually, automate it with something like DPD. If you are taking orders by hand over the phone, hire a tech guy like Gabe to setup an automated online ordering system. The return on your investment will not only be the opportunity to get more orders with less labor, but you will suddenly have a huge surplus of time you can use for important work-related activities like vacations and golf-swing practice.

What I am trying to say is, make sure that your business not only provides the monetary benefits that life demands, but also the intangibles. Dream your perfect lifestyle, and instead of focusing solely on your income, let that vision be your driving goal.