Selling things does not mean you are in business. Making money means you are in business.

SMARTSTART shows you how to choose and define business strategies appropriate for YOU. (There is no strategy until you know what you are not going to do.)

Your life plan is as important as your business plan.

Success is a combination of choice, chance, and circumstance. The best vision is insight. SMARTSTART knows the fastest path to success is to simply outperform your competition without losing yourself in the process.

Relationships come first, all else follows.

No one succeeds alone. SMARTSTART stresses the importance of succeeding at home first. With respect to marketing, there is no B2B or B2C, there is only H2H (human to human) here. Also, we believe the currency of networking isn’t self-promotion, it’s generosity.

Without paying customers, your business has no future.

To have a bright long-term future, you need a series of survivable short-term futures. SMARTSTART matches revenue generation strategies to your stage of business growth. Your work is strategically focused on creating assets and multiple streams of income and attracting your perfect people as clients and customers.

Marketing is about what people buy, not about what you sell.

You can’t be everything to everyone, but you can be the best something for someone. SMARTSTART says don’t tell people what you do. Tell them why you do it and what it means to them.

Tools don’t make a carpenter.

We love the ease and efficiency technology offers. SMARTSTART won’t let you be distracted by all the shiny new tools. You’ll learn how to choose the right tool for meeting future requirements and how to use the tools you have (and the best free tools) in better ways.

Act like a business. Think like a customer.

You must build your business in a way that allows it to carry on even when (no, especially when) you cannot. SMARTSTART recommends setting up process-based systems and using automation where appropriate, as well as having alternatives for all of your business applications and social media accounts and a Plan B for common potential business disrupting situations (especially during a launch).

Free work and low prices won’t win you clients.

There will always be someone who doesn’t see your value. Don’t let it be you. SMARTSTART won’t let you underestimate yourself or overestimate the competition. Nor do we allow you to disrespect yourself by tolerating clients from hell and a host of other abuses commonly experienced by digital entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Good design is the ultimate scarcity. The market for it is infinite.

In SMARTSTART we help you to be so good they can’t ignore you! Our motto: Never invent. Always improve. We chase excellence, not perfection.

Use social media to drive connection, not marketing.

Social media isn’t inexpensive. It’s different expensive. And the greatest threat to your business and productivity. It’s rare to find people who are using social media correctly and in ways that move their businesses forward. SMARTSTART is changing that.

Your business can’t survive if no one knows about it.

Marketing is a contest for getting people’s attention. What you do with that attention, once you’ve earned it, is equally important – perhaps even more so in the age of social media.

SMARTSTART shows you the best ways to reach and connect emotionally with your perfect people. And then we teach you how to nurture your target audience and inspire others to want to talk about your business and share more of what you do.

Success isn’t a big step taken in future, it is a small step taken now and completed today.

Productivity is not about how you spend your time, it’s about where and when you spend your focus and energy.

It is not possible to manage time. There will never be more than 24 hours in a day. Instead, SMARTSTART helps you discover how to get the most from yourself and everything you do in and for your business in the time you have.