Sad Truth #1: Your Friends and Family Will Say They Support You. They Will Be Lying.

Unless your friends and family are a bunch of self-made entrepreneurs themselves, they won’t really get why you’re doing what you’re doing. Sure, they’ll say they’re proud of you and they may provide warm words of encouragement and support. But they will do this mostly because they love you. On the inside, they’ll silently wonder why you’re leaving that cushy corporate job, or whether you harbor some secret desire to end up living in a van down by the river.

The Silver Lining:  You will meet new friends and ‘family’ that will support you as only those who have been where you’re trying to go can. Eventually you will end up getting reacquainted with a very special friend you might have ignored for a long while before you struck out on your own. That friend is called your inner voice. Sometimes, it will be the only friend you have. At other times, it will be the only friend you need.

Sad Truth #2: You Will Run Out of Money Long Before You Run Out of Great Ideas.

Entrepreneurs are typically great ‘idea people’, but many struggle with prioritizing those great ideas or really figuring out which ideas make sense to pursue. A lot of the ideas or pet projects you hatch up will seem like the best thing since sliced bread. They may make you feel warm and fuzzy, but will end up costing you loads of time and money, because they just don’t work.

The Silver Lining: You will quickly learn how to determine which great ideas are worth pursuing not only because they fulfill your passion or your ‘big why’, but also because they can provide a stable, continuing source of revenue for you, and fulfill a recurring need for your customers. In other words, you’ll start looking at your business with the eyes of an objective investor, instead of through the rose-colored glasses of the big dreamer.

Sad Truth #3: You Will Have Less Free Time Than Ever Before.

Those who think that working for yourself will free up your hectic schedule are deluded and will soon be disappointed to boot. As an independent business owner, you usually have to do the work of 3 or more people. But you still only get the same 24 hours each day to do it in. Occasionally, it will seem as if your life has turned into one long day of never ending to-do’s and to-meets and to-follow-up-ons. On the worst days, you’ll be so busy running around being master of the universe that you’ll totally forget to do the simple things. Like eating.

The Silver Lining: While you’ll have less free time as an independent professional, you will have way more flexibility with how you use your time than you ever could at a regular job. This means that while other folks are working a 9 to 5, you’ll get to run your errands, thereby avoiding traffic and long lines. You can stay up until 2am working if you want to, and schedule all your meetings after 10am. Occasionally, it will seem as though you’ve gained a supernatural ability to bend time to your will.

Sad Truth #4: You Are Alone. You Are Utterly Alone.

The one undeniable fact of being a solopreneur is that you are indeed working solo. If you’re an IT developer, that may be just the bliss you’ve always wished for. But even the most lone of the lone wolf worker types will eventually crave some human interaction. You may not think that you’ll miss that weird, overly chatty co-worker who always popped into your cube when you had an important deadline, but when the only voice you hear for days on end is your own, you’ll be pining for that guy like a long lost love.

The Silver Lining: That’s what laptops, wi-fi, coffee shops and co-working facilities were made for. When the isolation of working by yourself in your home office becomes too much to bear, head for that free or low-cost ‘office’ in your neighborhood. You get all the social benefits of being a cubicle dweller, with none of the nasty internal office politics. If you don’t want to risk blowing your budget on lattes, you can reach out to another solopreneur like yourself and offer to share home office space together once or twice a month. Then you can each take turns playing the weird, overly chatty one.

Sad Truth #5: Nothing Will Turn Out The Way You Originally Planned It.

There’s a saying that goes, “If you want to make God laugh, make plans”. Basically, all that means is that if you think you’ve figured out exactly what product or service is going to be your best seller, or exactly how long it’s going to take to get your website up and running, or how long it will be before you land that perfect client, you’re  probably wrong. While that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make plans for your business at all, it does mean that you shouldn’t cling to them like doctrine.

The Silver Lining: You will develop a high degree of adaptability, being able to respond to what your market is asking for, to what new trends are developing in your industry, and to sound advice from mentors and colleagues. You may even come to enjoy watching your plans work out totally differently than you expected them to. Because it means that the adventure of working for yourself will never grow old.

photo credit: stuck in customs

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I didn’t even know Tupperware was still around. But apparently that doesn’t matter, because as you can see from the video below, ‘Aunt Barbara’ is making a killing at it! All because she figured out the perfect gimmick that would give her an edge.

Take a look:

While I’m not suggesting that you go dress up in drag to sell your products and services, I think there’s a lesson we can all learn from Aunt Barbara. What is it about you – your personality, your style, your unique way of thinking and being – that you can use to create an edge for your business? Unlike corporate environments, where you may be encouraged to mimic the values and personality of the organization and your peers, as an independent, you have a wide-open opportunity to inject your personal flair into your business.

So, what’s your edge?

photo credit: Cameron Cassan

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“Ok, before we get started. Let’s go over some ground rules.”

The atmosphere in the room just dropped a couple of notches on the congenial barometer. I can almost hear each and every one of the people seated at the U-shaped table in front of me thinking the same thing.

Uh-oh. Ground rules? Ground rules suck. Ground rules mean you’re going to tell me to do something I don’t want to do. Or worse, you’re going to tell me NOT to do something I love doing.

I want to tell them, “No, these aren’t those kind of ground rules. These are rules that are going to help us break through what’s been holding you back. These are rules that will help us talk about what really needs to happen without looking through the lens of internal politics, or unspoken codes of behavior.” But I don’t tell them this. Instead, I click forward to the next slide in the presentation and give them a few moments to take in the rules for themselves before I begin explaining exactly what they mean and how we’ll use them today.

The ground rules on the slide are ones I’ve used countless times before; passed on to me from a colleague on a project that I can’t remember the details of any more. After years in management consulting, we all had our favorite presentation snippets that we used for different situations and projects. This one just happened to be one of my favorites. Whenever I had to conduct a visioning session – a sort of brainstorming for the future based on the input of a diverse group of people – I’d whip out the ground rules. But instead of being restrictive, these rules were permissive.

They gave the people in the room permission to sidestep the mental blocks they were accustomed to dealing with in their daily work experiences. They took away the validity of statements like, “This is the way we’ve always done it,” and “Oh, we tried that before, it’ll never work”, before they could even hit the air. The ground rules gave the people in the room permission to dream out loud and in the open.

I haven’t used the ground rules in a while, but every so often, I remember them. Whenever I’m planning my next adventure, or having a self-conversation about my goals for the future, or challenging myself to challenge myself, I remind myself that, before I begin, I should go over these ground rules.

Ground Rule #1: History is only relevant if it helps determine the future vision.

Some of us spend a lot of time beating ourselves up over mistakes or occurrences in the past. Sometimes we can become so lost in regret or an unhealthy nostalgia that we find it difficult to keep moving forward. The only real reason for recounting the past is to use it as a guidepost for where you are planning to go in the future. In other words, you should determine your tomorrow by eliminating what didn’t work and continuing to do what did work for you yesterday.

Ground Rule #2: Find Rules to Break! – Think ‘Out of the Box’ About: 

• Who Performs the Work (i.e., the Pool of Performers) 
• Where Work is Done (i.e., Geographical Limitations) 
• When Work is Done (i.e., Absolute or Relative Timing) 
• How Your Actions are Controlled  
• What You Really Need

Convention is the kryptonite of creativity. Rules and norms are important for a certain sense of order, but when clung to like dogma, they can be crippling. By questioning written and unspoken rules (and sometimes breaking them) you can discover which rules made no sense to begin with, and open up a whole realm of possibilities that you never considered before. 

Ground Rule #3: Consider the findings to date, but do not limit yourself to these inputs; think big, think beyond.

Everyone comes into this world with a certain set of ‘limiting inputs’:  income, race, family status, mental ability, physical attractiveness, etc. Who you are and what you’ve done until now is relevant data, but it’s not the only data that matters. Those who see themselves as only a set of limitations get stuck because they cannot imagine overcoming their limitations or using them to achieve a greater representation of themselves. Remember, it’s not the cards you’re dealt, but how you play your hand.     

Ground Rule #4: No idea is too silly or outrageous, encourage each other to think of unconventional ideas. Defer judgment, and do not douse others’ creativity.

Have you ever watched two or more small children playing a game of make-believe? It usually starts with one child’s idea, to which the others add their own sprinkle of imagination. Suddenly, a bath towel is transformed into a cape or a magic carpet, or a bunch of empty cardboard boxes morphs into a magnificent fort. Now, can you imagine what would happen if one child piped up in the middle of the make-believe and said, “Oh, that’s ridiculous. That’s not a magic carpet, that just a towel.” Game over, right?  Resist the temptation to always be the voice of reason when others are dreaming out loud. By affirming others’ creativity, you encourage the same within yourself.

Ground Rule #5: State assumptions.

Assumptions are merely placeholders for factual information. Sometimes we don’t know all there is to know about a subject, so we have to rely on assumptions until we can get the facts. There’s nothing wrong with having assumptions, but you should always be cognizant of the assumptions you hold. By being aware of your own pre-conceived notions about yourself and the world around you, you’re less likely to become trapped or surprised by them, and – more importantly – you can begin to change them.

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Fact: In early 1999, there were an estimated 23 weblogs, or blogs, on the Internet*

Fact: In 2008, Technorati (the world’s leading blog search engine) claimed to be tracking over 100 million blogs (and those are just English-language blogs!).

In less than 10 years, blogs have become an integral part of the way business is done and information is shared online.  And in my opinion, they’re the most reliable, efficient way for companies and business leaders to communicate directly to their stakeholders in plain English, not in marketing speak or the foreign language of financial projections.

Because of their intimate nature and relatively low cost to implement, blogs are also a natural choice for independent consultants, contractors, and freelancers. Whether as a standalone or as part of an existing website, a blog is an excellent way for independent professionals to have an ongoing conversation with potential clients and partners. And when used effectively, a blog can be a powerful lead-generation tool.

But you know that already, right? What you really want to know is how you can use blogging to promote your services as an independent consultant. What steps do you take? What software should you use? How much time will you need to dedicate to blogging?

Blogging is such an extensive topic (in fact, some of the best blogs are all about blogging) that it would make for a very long read if I went into all the details, so instead I’ve decided to share a quick and dirty guide, based on my own blogging experiences and advice from some of the Internet’s best professional bloggers.

THE BASICS

• What is a blog?
  • Can be thought of like a mini-magazine, or an ongoing conversation with readers
  • Typically updated multiple times per week or per day
  • Something that speaks for you and your business even while you’re out doing other things
• Why blog?
  • To establish yourself as an expert on a particular topic
  • To generate leads for online and offline businesses
  • To increase your website’s Google ranking (via regularly updated, relevant content)      

 BEFORE YOU START – SURVEY THE LANDSCAPE

• Perform Keyword Research – When people search for content online, they usually start by entering key words into an online search engine like Google. Keyword research helps bloggers center their blog content around the words that potential readers will be searching for. If you want your content to actually be found by the right people, keyword research is essential. This Copyblogger post on keyword research gives a step-by-step overview of how keyword research is done and how it can help you reach the right readers and boost your search engine ranking.
• Determine Your Audience – Who are you writing for? What are their problems and needs? How will your content help them? Try this simple technique to develop a profile of your blog readers.
• Check Out Other Blogs on Similar Topics – see what they’re writing about, and if there are any gaps you can fill or a different angle you can provide on the topic.
• Determine Blog Name / URL – Here are some common pitfalls to avoid when choosing a domain name for your blog.
• Choose a Blogging Tool or Platform – There are loads of blogging tools out there that will help you write and publish your blog, but here are my top 3 blogging tools, listed in order from most to least complex for new bloggers.
  • Wordpress (used by most probloggers)
  • Blogspot
  • Posterous
• Define a Purpose and Goals for Your Blog – Your primary goal should be to develop a loyal audience of ‘followers’ that want what you have to offer (products, services, or just advice and know-how).  To make sure you can track progress, state your goals in numerical terms – e.g., I want to get 150 visitors per month, and an average of 5-7 leads per month from the blog.

HOW SHOULD IT LOOK? CHOOSING BLOG DESIGN AND LAYOUT

The look and feel of your blog will be very important. But it’s not the most important thing. Don’t spend too much time agonizing over your blog’s design upfront. Focus on content, promotion, and lead conversion first, and you can continue to tweak your blog design over time.

• Gather Design Ideas – Smashing Magazine has a huge collection of free Wordpress designs, or themes, for inspiration. For hints on what makes a great blog design, check out this article.
• Get a Do-It-Yourself Blog Design or Hire a Designer – Deciding whether or not you should hire a blog designer will largely be based on your skills and your budget (in both time and dollars). If you’re fairly comfortable with HTML, I’d suggest doing it yourself. Start with a basic, but attractive template design, tweak as much as you can without spending too much time on it, and keep a running list of small site enhancement projects that you can hire someone to do over time. Two of my favorite design template providers (for Wordpress) are:  Woo, and Elegant Themes.

WHAT SHOULD IT DO? DETERMINING BLOG FUNCTIONS

• Select Blog Extensions and Plugins – As you get more sophisticated, you’ll want your blog to do more – e.g., make some posts members-only, sell downloadable products, show ads, display your Amazon favorites list, allow users to automatically share your post on Facebook, Twitter. All of these types of functions are made possible through the use of plugins and widgets. This is where Wordpress is powerful – since it’s open source, users are creating plugins and widgets all the time. There’s a vast library of Wordpress plugins to select from and several that are considered ‘standard plugins for any Wordpress blog, like All-In-One SEO

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS – CONTENT AND PROMOTION

If I had to guess the #1 reason why most blogs fail to live up to their creator’s original expectations, I’d say it’s because they underestimated the effort involved  in running a blog and failed to plan ahead. These steps should help you avoid the same fate. 

• Define Blog Topics, Set an Editorial Calendar –
  • What you’ll write about – from your keyword research, you should have a pretty good idea of what topics you’ll write about. You can also survey your current clients or others that match the profile of your readership to get an idea of what kind of information means the most to them.
  • How often – The more often, the better. But you should be sensitive to how much your targeted audience can tolerate. Be sure to communicate to your readers how often you publish new content, and stick to the schedule. Professional blogger Chris Guillebeau recommends that you write enough material in advance so that when (not if) you get too busy to write, you’ll have a backlog of content to pull from. For maximum effectiveness, use this sample blogging editorial calendar to help you stay consistent.
  • Other people’s content – not everything on your blog has to be your own original content. Sharing other people’s blogs, articles, and products boosts your credibility (by showing that you’re in the know and scouting relevant info) and creates community with others in your field. You can also invite subject matter experts to write guest posts on your blog.
• Determine Blog Promotion Strategy – The most common methods for promoting your blog are:
  • Social media – sharing blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.
  • Commenting on other blogs, forums, etc. with a link back to your blog included in your signature
  • Guest posting on other blogs
  • RSS – allow readers to get updated content from your blog in an RSS reader. The most popular RSS service is Feedburner
  • RSS to email – automatically publish updated content to email list subscribers using RSS
  • Link trading with other websites, blogs

TRACKING AND MEASURING

Like any other business activity, you should track the results of your blogging efforts in relation to the goals you originally set for yourself. Regardless of what your goals are, some key metrics you should always track are: Site visitors, return visitors, rate of visitor conversion (to a customer or subscriber) ad clicks, referring sites / inbound links, and blog ranking. Check out one approach for measuring blog success.

LEARN FROM OTHERS

The best thing about blogging is the community of other bloggers that you get to interact with. Tap into local groups that include bloggers of varying degrees of experience – they’re an excellent resource for blogging tips, shortcuts, and best practices. Here are a few Atlanta-area blogging groups:

• Atlanta Bloggers Meetup Group
• Atlanta Web Marketers Meetup Group
• Atlanta Wordpress Users Meetup Group

I hope this ‘quick and dirty’ guide is useful to those of you who are considering starting your own business blog. If you’d like a longer, cleaner version, send me a message or leave me a comment on the blog.

*Source: ‘A Short History of Blogging’, The Blog Herald, March 2005.

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Since the new year started, I’ve been reading articles and predictions on the top business trends for 2010. Invariably (and unsurprisingly), the use of social media for marketing, branding, and customer service has been at the top of every list.

In just a few years, social media has gone from a recreational diversion used by youngsters and bored office workers, to a proven tool for engaging customers and increasing brand awareness. Like all business functions, marketing and branding continues to evolve as new technologies emerge, and consumer attitudes and preferences change. Yet, small business owners and independent professionals are still lagging in their adoption and consistent use of social media (this is just my unscientific opinion, by the way).

When talking with other business owners and potential clients about using social media, I’m often met with a great deal of intimidation and resistance.  So I thought I’d share and deflate some of the most common excuses I hear from small business owners who aren’t yet convinced of the benefit they can get from social media.

1. Social media is a foreign world. Nothing works the way it does in real life.
   Nothing could be further from the truth. One analogy I use often with social media neophytes is to compare social media to a huge networking event. The actions you take using social media are very similar to the actions that you’d take at an in-person networking event. You come in the door and seek out interesting, like-minded people to talk to. You start sharing some of your expertise and knowledge with them. Other people who are interested overhear you and join in on the conversation. You all decide to keep in touch with each other for the purpose of continuing the conversation.  And, if all really goes well, you end up referring business to each other or partnering on future projects. The only thing that’s really different with social media is… the media. Instead of talking out of your mouth, you type with your fingers. Instead of an immediate face-to-face response from a contact, you may have a delay of a few minutes or hours. Instead of dressing up in business attire and fighting traffic to attend an event, you can engage others in your jammies from the comfort of your home office. Foreign never felt so good.

 

2. Social media is a fad. In a couple of years, it won’t be here anymore.
   Why learn something new? There will just be something new to learn again tomorrow. That’s what this excuse always sound like to me. Be honest. It sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it? Look, I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t say how long social media will be here. But I do know that it is here now. And it is effective in today’s market. Business tools and methods are always changing and evolving. It’s just a fact. So, yeah. Maybe social media won’t be here in a few years. It may be replaced by something newer and sexier. But guess what? If you want your business to stay relevant, you’ll probably have to learn that newer, sexier thing too. Remember… the only thing constant in life – and in business – is change.

 

3. My target customers don’t use social media.
   Given the median demographics for Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In, and the fact that there are over 80 million users across these three biggest social media platforms, it’s pretty hard to believe that some segment of the target market for most businesses is not actively engaged in social media. But hey, anything’s possible.  But consider this. Even if your specific niche isn’t on social media, what about their employees, their partners, their customers? Like in-person networking, you don’t always start out connecting directly with your end customer –often times you’ll meet someone who’s three or more degrees removed from that ‘sweet spot client’ of yours, and by creating a consistent, favorable impression, you can eventually gain access to the customer or decision-maker who will purchase from you. Use social media to target the ‘friends’ of your target clients and inevitably, you’ll reach your target clients too.

 

4. Social media is too time consuming. I’m already so busy, I don’t need to add another thing to my to-do list.
   Yes. Using social media takes time. But it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start by examining how much time you currently spend on your other marketing and branding activities. Figure out which ones aren’t yielding very good results for you and replace the time you’d normally spend on those with social media engagement efforts. For example, if you’d normally attend 3 networking events in a week where you’ll get a chance to talk to maybe 10-15 people only once, why not cut back to 2 networking events and devote the extra time to building a network of hundreds that you’ll regularly communicate with? In addition, there are all sorts of tools available that have been designed to make managing social media as efficient and non-time-consuming as possible.

 

5. I have nothing interesting or important to say.
   This one has to be my favorite. Mainly, because it’s the easiest excuse to overcome. If you had nothing important to say, you wouldn’t have a business. Your business itself is your statement to the world that says, “Hey, I have something of value to contribute to your problem, your need, or your want”. Your products and services are the way you communicate that statement to your clients. Social media is just another opportunity for you to communicate that message in words to people who may or may not already use your products and services. While you shouldn’t spend all your time on social media broadcasting how great you and your products are (it’d turn people off if that’s all you did), you should use social media to position yourself as a reliable source of information for that need, problem, or want that your customer has.

 

6. I tried it, and it didn’t work. It’s a waste of time.
   This can be a sensitive one. It’s tough for us to admit that we attempted something that didn’t work. It’s even tougher admitting that our own behaviors may have been the cause. In my experience, folks with this excuse fall into one of three categories. 1) They tried using social media and either quit too soon, or were inconsistent in using it. 2) They attempted to make social media fit into the paradigm of traditional media (i.e., broadcasting and advertising, instead of conversing and sharing). Or, 3) They set unrealistic goals and expectations or set no goals / expectations at all. Social media won’t work unless you work it. The right way. Make sure you have clear, realistic goals for what you’re trying to achieve. Make sure you invest enough time to actually see results – nothing happens overnight. And most importantly, make sure you seek out experts or social media role models, learn from your mistakes and their examples, and adapt your approaches based on what works best for you and your audience.

 

7. My business is doing fine without social media. I don’t see why I should change anything.
   It ain’t broke, why fix it… right? Wrong! I don’t know any company that can or would ever say, “Oh, we have so much exposure, we just don’t need any more, thank you”. Show me that company, and I’ll show you the company that will soon go the way of the dinosaur. Who hasn’t heard of Coca-Cola, or Microsoft, or Starbuck’s? But they’ve still got commercials, and they’re most definitely making use of social media to keep their brand visible. So, what was that you were saying about your little business not needing any more exposure?

 

8. I’ve never really used the Internet for business.
   A lot of business owners still have an inherent distrust of technology and especially of the Internet. They’ve internalized horror stories of people having their identities stolen or hackers getting their hands on sensitive information. Or they remember the early days of using the Internet when there wasn’t much other than porn to be found online. The truth is, in today’s technology-centric world, none of us are safe from one-off security-compromising incidents. And the porn? Well, it hasn’t gone anywhere, but there’s lots, lots more that the Internet has to offer these days. The good news is, if you’ve not yet tapped the power of the web for business, social media applications like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn might be a good way for you to start. They require much less time, effort, and money than creating and maintaining your own blog or website. In fact, all you have to do is set up a profile and start engaging with others. The first step, though, is getting over your fear, and getting on board. And the only person who can help you do that is you.

If you’re guilty of using any of these lame excuses, it’s ok. It’s not too late to change your mind or your habits. If you need some help making sense of social media, and a little nudge getting started using social media for your business, consider scheduling a 1-hour, one-on-one Content Marketing Session with me. I’m offering them for just $20 through January 31, 2010. You’ll get to ask any questions you might have, and get practical action steps that you can put to work the same day. Visit this link to get started: http://bit.ly/4XQ3oq

You might also want to check out my other 2010 specials:

• 3-Page Website, Custom Domain and Email for only $201
• Copy of 30 Steps to Build a Better Business for only $10

photo credit: Grace Falls

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Congratulations!

You’ve made it all the way to step 30 of 30 Steps to Build a Better Business. 

The last thing that you need to do at the end of any action you’ve taken to improve your business, is to plan what you’re going to do next. Maybe you’ve gotten the basics in order and you’re ready to move on to bigger and better improvement projects. Or  perhaps you need to monitor the changes you’ve put in place for a while and tweak them until they’re just where you want them to be. Maybe you need a little assistance getting through the steps, because you’ve gotten stuck somewhere, or there’s something you’re just not getting.

Whatever the case, now is the perfect time to draft a plan for what you want to do next.  Schedule some time to speak with your accountant and/or attorney about any changes you’ve made during this time that may have an impact on your company’s legal or tax obligations. Be sure to treat yourself for sticking with the 30 Steps to Build a Better Business… you deserve it for all your hard work! If you haven’t yet completed all of the 30 Steps, prioritize which ones you need to revisit or tackle next.

I’d love to get your feedback on 30 Steps to Build a Better Business. Send me an email with your comments, questions, and suggestions for 30 Steps to Build a Better Business, so that I can use them to continue improving my own business.

If you’re looking for an even more focused, more hands-on approach to improving your small business operations and performance, or if you want one-on-one assistance going through all 30 Steps to Build a Better Business, call or email me to get started.

photo by Dunechaser (Flickr)

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