One Month, One Thousand Dollars, One Small Business

This weekend, I found myself at a Beach-Boys-themed party attended almost exclusively by young academics. (I was, I think, the only non-academic in the room. My shrink assures me that I’ll recover.) It’s crunch-time for those seeking academic jobs — and given the amount of competition, the limited opportunities, and America’s imploding economy, most of these folks are justifiably concerned about their prospects.

Basically, I was surrounded by smart, quirky, interesting people who — in many cases — hadn’t held a “real” job in years … if ever. In other words, people who are in a perfect position to start their own businesses.

Would many of them even be interested in such a prospect? Probably not … after all, what’s the point of conquering academia if you’re not going to be an academic? However, talking with them did reiterate, for me, the fact that most small businesses start on the fly — frequently because the proprietor is out of other options. It’d be great if we could all hold onto our day jobs until we have the capital to launch our (well-thought-out, well-timed) micro-businesses, but that simply isn’t usually the case. And, as the New York Times online tells us, the small-business landscape continues to shift beneath our feet, demanding utmost flexibility and hybridization from folks who want to be their own bosses.

So, what’s my point here? Oh, yeah — all of this got me thinking about how one launches a business. Now, there are some great tools out there for people who have some time, or some money, both, and can spend these getting their business off the ground. For the rest of us, I’m offering the One Month, One Thousand Dollar crash course in starting a small business. Look for the pdf — free — on my website as of November 1st, 2008.

Before you get too excited, though, you should know that not everyone can use this outline effectively. I’ll get into the details on that later this week, but the model is fairly self-selecting.

The good news? Well, it’s free — and if you don’t like it, your wasted time will be refunded. Plus, it works, and I can prove it.

So, you know … keep an eye out.

The dirt — four questions that target your marketing

So, if the vacuum isn’t the problem, illiteracy is no longer the issue, and the means of production are so readily available, why is marketing a small business such a challenge … and such a chore? Stating the answer, i.e, “cutting through an insane amount of clutter to stay top-of-mind for your ideal client base,” is hardly going to make headlines ’round the world. But how does the small-business owner overcome this challenge without spending all of their profits — and then some — on marketing? The savvy business owner goes about their marketing with the following questions in mind:

1.) “How long have I got?” You are going to be in business for a long time. Your branding will change, your philosophy will change, potentially even your core-offering will change (mine certainly has) Your client-base will evolve, your tagline will mutate, and you will one day look back at that first invoicing system with complete and utter disdain. The good news is, you don’t have to do everything perfectly right off the bat. All marketing is a work in progress, and as long as a piece of marcom isn’t truly dreadful — doesn’t violate your established brand identity, doesn’t speak to a target-market in which you have no interest, doesn’t have your competitor’s phone number — it is better to have something done than something perfect. If you’re just starting in business, you don’t need to drop a bundle on a custom-logo, a visual identity kit, or mind-blowing website. Take one step at a time, and then refine your steps. If I seem overly-emphatic on this point, it’s because I’ve seen so many small-business owners delay finalization or distribution of a particular project until that project is no longer germane because they wanted to create perfection. Your speed and your flexibility are your greatest marketing attributes … use them wisely.

2.) “What do I want here?” Establishing goals for each marketing piece is a crucial, oft-overlooked step. Are you distributing a doorhanger because you want “more calls”? How many more? From people who want what service or product? From what segment of your client base? Will more calls equal success for this marcom piece? Or do you need more closed deals? How many more? How soon? Netting how much money? What’s your strategy for dealing with people who do call as a result of the piece? If you have no metrics for success, there’s no way to know if something is a hot-ticket, repeat item … or a cold piece of turkey the day after Thanksgiving.

3.) “Where are my fishies?” This may sound like a foolish question, but are you marketing where your clients are? Or where you wish they were? Case-in-point, I had a client who was selling a gorgeous, high-end high-value product to baby boomers, and doing virtually 100% of her marketing online. Because her budget was fairly limited, her online clients would’ve had to do some digging to find her in the clutter. Of course, the data shows that boomers, on average, do less surfing than youngsters. Don’t spend time casting your net where your fishies aren’t.

4.) “Who am I, really?” Are you marketing with authenticity? If you’re a small-business owner or solo-preneur, you’d better be. Your clients are paying a premium for something that authentic and real — they’re paying for you — so it behooves you to bring the best of what’s real about you to the table. Not convinced? Take a look at this post by Seth Godin, which says much the same only with a fancy chart.

What vacuum?

Photo Credit SoStark

Today, two of the most prominent blog-about-blogging bloggers (say that three times fast) went on a content crusade. Brian Clark, of Copyblogger fame, wrote a post that poses the inevitable question “is content king?” while Darren Rowse, of Problogger, asks “is writing great content enough to build a successful blog?”

Both of these gentlemen, whose work I admire immensely, come to similar conclusions — great content is a good start, but there are a whole slew of other factors that go in to building a successful blog.

To which I can only say, “duh.”

Writing — even really excellently amazing high-quality writing — has never existed in a vacuum. Shakespeare + his patrons = The Immortal Bard. Shakespeare – the Earls of South Hampton and Pembrook = another glove maker who writes in his spare time.

Back in the day, of course, an artist only had to find one or two influential patrons in order to bring his product to market. The primary sticking point was, however, the high cost of production — coupled with inefficient marketing, and high levels of illiteracy (i.e., a limited client-base) in the general population.

So — and this is the part where I start talking about small business, so pay attention — what are we complaining about? The means of producing written material (including marketing material) have never been more accessible, and the general population is either dumber (and hence easier to fool) or smarter (and thus more likely to read) than ever before. So what is it that stops small-business owners (yes, I include professional bloggers) from overcoming that third stumbling block and creating really efficient marketing?

Find out tomorrow, when this riveting saga continues!

(Non-gender specific) Monarch of all you survey

Disclaimer: Using surveys will not make you Elvis, Elvis Herselvis, or a roller derby star. All it will do is make your marketing easier and more effective. Yeesh — isn’t that enough for you people?

Haven’t you ever wished that you could get real, honest feedback from your clients about an aspect of your business? You can, and it’s much easier than you might think. Follow these four steps to create a survey that will help you get a handle on your clients’ needs:

1.) Make it up. What is it that you really want to know about your clients? Their spending habits? Why they chose you over a competitor? Why they took (or failed to take) a particular action on your website? If they like their ophthalmologists? Spend some time thinking about the most relevant information you can (appropriately) solicit from your clients (unfortunately, they probably won’t pony-up their SSNs), and get it all down in outline format. Don’t forget the most important, be-all-end-all, Net Promoter question….

2.) Make it clever. Don’t think of your survey as some godawful thing that you’re inflicting on your client base — think of it as an extension of your brand-identity. It should be consistent with your other marketing materials — equally clever, and with same look, feel, and voice.

3.) Make it worthwhile. You want a high response rate on your survey. Your clients want to be compensated for their time. If your survey is exceptionally interesting and quirky, you will get a high return rate. If it’s only somewhat interesting and quirky, incentivize its return with a coupon, special-offer code, or exclusive access to videos of Ukrainian pop-star drag-queens.

4.) Make it count. Getting a good response rate is only half the battle. The other half involves collating the data you’ve gathered … and using it to make effective, client-driven change in your business practices.

Survey says … you should be using surveys

This weekend, I went to the roller derby with a professional dominatrix. (Yes this actually happened, and no I’m not a roller-derby regular … yet.) My friend is in business-building mode at the moment and, since I take small-business marketing very seriously, I started asking her a few basic questions about the demographics of her client-base. She looked at me like I was a two-headed chicken (you’d be surprised by how frequently I get that look), so I surmised that she was not using any sort of survey to collect, collate, or quantify data about her existing clients.

“Consider using a survey,” I said, as one of her eyebrows climbed higher and higher up her forehead. “Survey Monkey is really easy to use, and …” and then I gave up, because she was about to lose that eyebrow in her hair.

Later that evening, as we watched the San Francisco ShEvil Dead get creamed by the Richmond Wrecking Belles (those Richmond girls are tough), my friend began thumbing through the program for the match.

Guess what fell out.

A survey.

I’m just saying … if it’s good enough for the Bay Area Derby Girls….

Tune in tomorrow, when I discuss the how to structure and use your survey and the data.

Is it bleeding? Defining your critical tasks.

If you’re like most small-business owners, you don’t get much sleep, you lost your sense of humor about the same time you lost Schedule C tax forms, and you only barely remember the days when you just did one thing at a time.

Take a deep breath. I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but you’re in danger being pronounced “boring” by a tribunal of your family and friends. The good news is, you can nip this problem in the bud — and become a more effective business owner — in just a few easy steps. Yes, really.

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about Robert Kapalan’s Reaching Your Potential. I wanted to take this opportunity to elaborate on one of Kaplan’s metrics for strong self-management … Excelling at Critical Tasks.

The first piece of excelling at critical tasks is, naturally, defining the critical tasks. Yes, this sounds like a no-brainer, but — honestly now — how often do you find yourself licking the stamps for four individual invoices (and watching The Smurfs on YouTube) when you could be revamping your invoicing system to incorporate scalablity? (Surely it’s not just me.)

There are three components to defining critical tasks:
1.) Take a step back. Now, barring a freak accident with a pair of roller blades and a Greyhound, you are going to be in business for a long time. Could be ten, twenty, even fifty years. What do you want your business to look like after those fifty years? How will your business model have to change to support that vision? What are the long-term factors key to your success? Are you taking steps right now towards gaining the long-term skills that you don’t have?

2.) Follow the money. Do you know what actions you’re taking that are really bringing you more income? Can you spend more time doing these things? Can you take a class to learn how to do these things more effectively? Do these things match your long-term vision? If not, what can you start learning now that can ultimately be substituted for the things that bring you revenue, but don’t match your vision?

3.) Follow the fun. There are going to be elements of your business that don’t bring you that much money right now, but that are part of your long-term vision and are things that you enjoy doing. Bringing an element of passion to your business is a wonderful attribute — don’t stop doing these things. But do take a good look at how they fit into your long-term vision … and take some steps towards gaining ever-greater proficiency.

Self-management for small-business owners

Robert Kaplan’s article (downloadable for $6.50 here) in this month’s Harvard Business Review outlines steps for managing your career and reaching your full potential. “Managing your career is 100% your responsibility,” he writes, “and you need to act accordingly.” The crucial steps for reaching your for potential — at least, a la Kaplan — are: Knowing Yourself, Excelling at Critical Tasks, and Demonstrating Character and Leadership.

Now, this article was designed for people within conventional corporate institutions, but Kaplan’s advice holds doubly-true for small-business owners. After all, we’re responsible for managing our businesses and our careers within the context of those businesses. So, taking a look at Kaplan’s tools for self-management benefits all of us … in theory.

Unfortunately, the tools for leveraging Kaplan’s model are part and parcel of corporate life — it’s difficult for a solo-preneur to give herself a really useful 360 degree evaluation, for example. So how can Kaplan’s model be adjusted for the small-business owner?

1.) Knowing yourself: It may be impossible to truly know yourself until you’ve seen yourself through someone else’s eyes. And, while you can’t solicit feedback about your personal strengths and weaknesses from your co-workers and bosses when you don’t have them, you can definitely get these insights from your clients … and from other freelancers with whom you collaborate. In fact, collecting this kind of information can be part-and-parcel of a larger data collection process that helps you analyze additional key metrics.

2.) Excelling at critical tasks: Small-business owners have the unfortunate habit of trying to do everything. We spend way too much time reinventing the wheel (how long did it take you to create a functional invoicing system?), and not enough time identifying the truly critical tasks … and getting better at them. Check back tomorrow for a long digression on this problem.

3.) Demonstrating character and leadership: Are you mentoring other small-business owners? Entrepreneurial teenagers? Are you giving your intern or assistant any interesting work to do, in addition to populating those databases? While many small-business owners display mentorship skills within the community (tutoring, coaching Little League, etc), most of us aren’t mentoring other people in our own field. This is well-worth doing because, all other benefits aside, it teaches you how to teach what you do … which gives you a whole new level of expertise and awareness.

5 ways to promote your POD book with your business

(This post is a continuation of an article in yesterday’s Easy Newsletter. To request this newsletter, please email me with “Easy August” in the subject line. To subscribe to the Easy Newsletter, visit my website.)

If your bookshelf looks anything like mine, you don’t need me to tell you that there are a lot of books out there. A lot of books, and — seeing as how only 2% of the world’s population actually buys books — not a lot of readers.

That being said, there are several ways in which small-business owners can leverage their businesses to promote their books — and utilizing Print On Demand technology makes it virtually risk-free. Well, risk-free in terms of money, anyway — as a writer, I can tell you that committing anything to print can be hard on the old self-esteem. And this is why Tip # 1 is…

1.) Create a great book. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s worth reinforcing. After all, conventionally-published books have teams of eagle-eyed editors subjecting them to scrutiny, and still typos, misspellings, and other errors escape. Even more disturbingly, how many “Startling, thought-provoking!” books have you picked up…that turned out to be the SOS? Don’t be like those guys. Say something that’s important or useful or interesting (it doesn’t have to be mind-blowing, but no dreck allowed). Say it well. Make sure you really did say it well. And move on to Tip #2….

2.) Start your book-promotion early. Let the people in your life know that your book is in development, chart your writing progress on your website, and – if you’ll be querying long-lead press such as magazines, get your press release together ASAP.

3.) Get “press-ready” by polishing your sound-bites, publishing an online press kit, and working on your platform.

4.) Utilize your businesses’ existing marketing tools. It’s easy to add a book promo to your website — or even a video trailer for your book on your existing homepage. If you blog, Twitter, Plurk, or FriendFeed, or use MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn, book promotional material can go in all of these places. Additionally, if you’re writing online articles, don’t forget to add a mention of the book to your resource box. Have a line about it on your business card. Mention it in your newsletter. And so on.

5.) Leverage your speaking opportunities. If you’re in business for yourself, there are speaking opportunities all around you. If you’re a BNI member, Rotarian, e-Women Networker, or Lady Who Launches, you probably have speaking opportunities that you are passing up, or not taking full advantage of. Practice-press-preparedness in these venues — that’s what they’re for!

3 ways small-business owners can benefit from the economic downturn

There’s no way around it — the economic news is grim. Layoffs, foreclosures, gas prices — you know it’s ugly when even Whole Foods is starting to take our budgets into account.

So, what’s the good news? Well, for the small-business owner, the good news is that corporations are tightening their belts, which can mean exciting opportunities for you as they downsize … and start towards outsourcing tasks that they used to do in-house. Here are a few things you can do to leverage your competitive edge as we move through this downturn:

1.) Be fearless. Yes, the big guys can be intimidating to those of us who are mighty in spirit but small in stature. But you’re never gonna get the contract if you don’t ask for it … and you will probably have to ask for it many, many times. No problem — the worst that can happen is that you don’t get the contract, which is really not that bad. (Actually, the worst that can happen is that you get arrested for stalking, but a stalking claim is much harder to prove than most people think.) Wanna see how other people did it? Click here.

2.) Show me the money. Look, you and I both know how much better you are than your competitors. More creative, more timely, more pleasant to work with … But, now more than ever, business is about the bottom line. This does not mean you should cut your prices, but it does mean that you should do your research, and approach your Goliath with an appropriate cost benefit analysis in hand.

3.) Do your part to boost the economy. I know it’s hard to spend money when you’re worrying about your next gig, but there is no better time to invest in your business — whether that means updating your website, re-creating your visual identity, or taking that class that allows you to bring a new service to market. I vigorously support Americans cutting the fat from our spending — but these things are the muscle of our businesses, not the fat. If spending money makes your really uncomfortable at the moment, start a conversation with other small-business owners about bartering or other forms of complementary currency. Hey, total barter worldwide is growing at 15% per year (if not more) — and I like growing economies.

Marketing In Style

As a small-business owner, it’s OK if you’re trapped somewhere between the eighties and the early oughties fashion-wise…as long as your marketing is as in-the-now as the Buddhists. A marketing-mix that’s as up-to-date as Coco Rocha’s wardrobe might not make you an international celebrity…but it’ll definitely help you get paid like one. Take some tips from the fashionistas and makeover your marketing today.
Seasons Change…
And so should your marketing plan. Frankly, a one-year marketing plan is too much for most small businesses…a big part of our viability is in our flexibility. To stay au courant, reassess your marketing plan on a quarterly basis – and make sure it suits the season.
Cover the Basics
You know you’re gonna be living in those blue jeans, so it’s worth finding the ones that display your keister to its best advantage. The same holds true for the denim of marketing – your brand identity. Your logo and business cards should fit like a second skin…if you have to cuff the legs or leave the button undone it’s time for a new pair.
Make it Your Own
Sure, wearing a sweater vest isn’t for everyone. But building unique marketing collateral that complements your brand identity makes you more memorable…and helps you compete for mindspace. You can pair your blue-jean-brand-identity with a blazer of a website or the hoodie of brochures…but ditch the pre-designed template and customize.
Pleats Happen
MC Hammer’s pants? Madonna’s glove? The eighties? Mistakes are inevitable and, in fact, constitute a big chunk of the growth process. Marketing mishaps are a certainty, and the best way to learn from them is to track them. Assiduously tracking your marketing dollar’s ROI is like looking at your high school class photo…it reminds you what not to do.