Small Business Blog

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The latest post on our blog is a book review of The Soccer Mom Myth, Today’s Female Consumer, Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys. It is great stuff, and you won’t want to miss it!

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I can’t wait for you to stop by my new place for a chat. I’ll keep the coffee hot.

If you set a goal and really want to achieve it you should be able to, right?

Okay, maybe it takes a little bit more than that.

Recently I’ve been working on some pretty lofty goals for my business and could not understand why I was not making traction. After all, I had a plan, defined tasks to get there, an accountability partner, a supportive family, etc. What could be standing in my way?

And then last week I realized it was me. Negative self-talk kept me from fully engaging in my plan, and I skirted the issue with my accountability partner until she called me on it.

Since then I’ve made a lot of progress in a remarkably short time, and I keep coming back to the card I bought a few weeks ago from The Blessing Project. It says “The words we speak become the house we live in.” At first I thought it was about family dynamics and how people speak to each other. Then it hit me - the words I speak to myself become my belief system in myself.

Think about your words to yourself and how they lift you up or keep you too grounded to reach for your dreams. It was a big wakeup call for me, and just being aware of the problem was a huge step in the right direction.

I recently sent an email to a client responding to a nonurgent question. It was run-of-the mill stuff and I was not expecting a response. I was pleasantly surprised to get the following automated email:

“Thanks for your email. I’ll be out of the office facilitating the amazing Leadership BootCamp (TM) all this week. I will reply as soon as I am back in the office on Monday, March 17.”

Doesn’t that make you curious about what Leadership Bootcamp(TM) is and why it is so amazing? What a great little piece of marketing in a very standard piece of business communication!

When you have to be out of the office for a seminar, workshop, or event, why not make it an opportunity to promote that continuing education or business success to the people who want to communicate with you?

Oh, and if you are curious about Leadership Bootcamp(TM) you can contact Sylvia Taylor to hear all about it. I’ll be calling her myself on Monday when she returns.

Promote your favorite online tools or to investigate options you didn’t even know were out there by voting on the Webware 100 Awards from cNet. This is a great way to search for tools to fit your specific needs because they are all separated by category.

Voting closes on March 31, and I’ll be updating when the awards are announced. Feel free to plug your favorite tool in the comments.

Seth Godin has a great post on the concept of “free” today.

“The interaction you seek as a marketer often disappears when something is free. The fascinating thing is that it often doesn’t matter if you’re paying or being paid… it’s the transaction either way that changes the posture of the person you’re working with.”

Seattle’s own Cathy Goodwin, copywriter extraordinaire, first sold me on the idea that money makes a relationship more productive on both sides and inspired a change in the way I do business. When I stopped having all those free coffee dates my income went up and my interactions were more meaningful.

The same is true when asking for something from your customers. About a year ago I did a targeted marketing survey and offered a donation to a local charity to the participants who chose to give me their feedback. I got valuable information from a hard-to-reach segment of my business and they got a donation to something they believe in. If I had just called out of the blue asking for free help I do not think I would have had the same response.

Seth’s point is right on: a “free” product or service does not have the same perceived value as even a nominally priced item.

So when you offer your next “free”special report, seminar, or service, keep this in mind. Payment can come in many forms - a refundable deposit, information, publicity, a case study - but you should always have some form of payment to make it a true transaction.

Many small businesses operate under the assumption that any customer is good for business. It is only after a bad match or an unprofitable stretch that they begin to reconsider this approach.

Think about one of your difficult customers for a moment.

• Why did the relationship not work out?
• How did that relationship impact your business and your ability to work with other customers?
• Did the amount of money you made offset the time and effort you spent on the client?

If you are like most people who accept the wrong type of customer, the relationship does not work out, or it takes such an incredible amount of effort from you that it is more like working with 2 or 3 customers for the revenue of 1. In addition, working with a client who is not appropriate drains you of the energy and resources you need to maintain your good customers and attract others.

So, how do you avoid working with the wrong type of customer? By knowing your ideal customer and how to reach her.

Being all things to all people is not possible, or even desirable in most instances. Honing in on who you want to work with and how you want to work with them will transform your business. Narrowing your focus will expand your possibilities.

What does your ideal customer look like?

• Where does she live and shop?
• How does she make buying decisions?
• What is her age range and education level?
• Is she a mother or a wife?
• What need does your product or service fill for her?

Once you determine these things about your ideal client (and as many other questions as you can answer) you can then begin speaking to her in your marketing campaigns, your blog, your elevator pitch, and in how you structure your products and services. If you build it, she will come.

If you continue speaking generally in hopes of capturing as much business as you can you will continue speaking to no one and feel obligated to take whatever business comes your way, good or bad. And the energy you spend working with a client who is not a good fit for you will keep you finding your ideal customer.

In my business, I have an ideal client profile and seek to make an 80% match. There have been a few times that I did not follow this “red velvet rope” policy and every single time I regretted the decision (what can I say? I’m a slow learner). So I can say with quite a bit of confidence that turning away the wrong fit will open you up to accepting the right kind of customer for you, the kind that will energize you and remind you every day why you went into business. Accepting the wrong fit will make you question every day why you went into business.

It’s not a matter of getting customers, because you can do that either way. It is a matter of getting the right kind of customers so you can do your best work.

Looking at networking as a chore or a strict business activity may blind you to some of the perks out there.

Last night I attended a Biznik workshop in Seattle on pitches and networking. As usual at a Biznik event, I met a few people who were interested in my business as well as some of the people I have come to call friends. Not only that, I got some valuable feedback on my “elevator pitch.”

But perhaps the most interesting development of the night was meeting JR, a singer-songwriter and film composer. On the surface, she may not seem to be my ideal client - she is in an industry I know little about and offers a product, whereas most of my clients are service-based.

Instead of networking with blinders on, however, I spoke to her and learned a little bit about her music. This morning I went to her website to learn more about her and then checked iTunes to see if I could find samples of her music before writing her a “nice to meet you” email.

I love her music! I promptly bought the entire album, and I want to encourage you to check it out as well. It is a folksy soul (is that a real combination?) type of music that really appeals to me, and I’m so happy to have met her last night. Her album Afriqueen Stare is inspired by the life her late sister, Susan, and includes a great version of Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide.

So, keep your eyes (and ears) open when networking for more than just your business. You never know who you might meet or how your life might be enriched.

UpstartSmart has a great series of posts going about Law of Attraction and business success. Amber is a smart cookie - she knows that giving not only makes her feel good, it increases her bottom line. And she has a great followup post on the practical side of giving to others in business that you should check out.

The thing I like best about UpstartSmart (and Amber) is that she can take an abstract idea/need/desire and boil it down into reasonable steps so you can actually envision achieving it.

I’m inspired to send a few cards today after reading this!

Respect your business by giving it the protection it deserves.

As you know, I am a huge believer in delegating and outsourcing to get your business where it needs to be. After all, you can’t be an expert at everything, and there are only so many hours in the day.

BUT…you have to maintain control of your business.

Just today I spoke to a potential customer who let her web designer/developer go at the end of their contract. She did not like the website, and after viewing it I can see why. The developer inserted pages of affiliate links to benefit himself as well as some totally unrelated pages linking back to his hobbies.

When she did not renew the service contract with him, he put up a semi-pornographic picture on the front page and told her the site “must have been hacked” and he could fix it for $5000. Not only is her website content unavailable to her right now, she has potential customers coming to the website and being greeted by the image of a scantily-dressed teenage girl smoking a cigarette. There are other details that make this an absolutely heartbreaking small business story, but you get the general idea.

Yes, she has legal options she can pursue, and yes she will eventually gain access to her domain name and probably get damages from this vendor. But it doesn’t do her any good to know this in the meantime while her business is at a complete standstill.

Remember that you have the ultimate say-so in your business…that’s why you are the boss. So keep track of your usernames, passwords, accounts, important documents, and backups. You can certainly have help managing them, but the ultimate ownership should always be yours and never turned over completely to another person. Read your contracts closely, make sure full payment equals full ownership and that you can take your property with you if you no longer want to do business with that person or company.

A quality vendor will never try to hold you hostage to keep you as a customer after your transaction is complete.