Almost exactly two years ago, I started a hobby blog to document my e-business startup. I named it eMoms at Home. Three months later, the blog got popular enough to become my startup. I thought at the time that other work-at-home moms might be interested in what I was doing. What I found was that there were a heck of a lot more people interested in e-business startups than just moms.
Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had known back then that it was a brand disaster in the making. A personal site, a limiting name, a popular subject… today evolved into a business blog network. A network being held back by the brand that created it, that is.
This is my challenge: I created a brand–accidentally. I knew enough about business and branding to build it well. What I could never have forseen was that building an “eMoms” brand would automatically eliminate more than half of our potential audience. Not only does it exclude dads and nonparents, I found that even moms were turned off by it. They didn’t want another parenting site–they wanted a site that helped them pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.
I never could have known how this business would evolve. Remember, it started as my hobby. But the lessons I have learned could fill a book on small-business branding:
If it can become a business, treat it like one from Day One
I have to admit that my biggest mistake was that even though I started this as my hobby, I knew full well it could evolve into a business. I did give it a lot of planning and preparation, but not nearly as much research as I did for my “real” startup. If I had, I might have been able to forsee that targeting my site just to moms was too limiting.
Of course, much has changed even in the last few years, and the “work-at-home mom” has evolved into the “non-9-to-5er.” Had I done more market research, I might have known that.
Even a one-woman show needs a strong brand
I gave thought to brand building from Day One, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of how important a brand is until I found that mine didn’t work anymore. Going through a rebrand after two years (and nearly 9,000 inbound links… sigh) is going to be a challenge, to say the least. It has delayed site improvements and content expansion, and has frustrated nearly everyone involved.
Worst of all, if you have tried buying a good domain lately, you’ll know well that it’s next to impossible–which is why there are so many sites popping up with names like Flickr, Twitter, and Oovoo. There’s not much else left.
A niche isn’t just a niche
I do believe I was on the right track by picking a niche when I started out. What I didn’t understand at the time was that my content was appealing to a much bigger audience. Some might disagree with me, but if you’re going to pick a niche, be sure that what you deliver is truly targeted to that niche. I targeted moms in my name, yet targeted a variety of experienced work-at-home business owners with my content. And today, there are hundreds of experienced work-at-home business owners who ignored our site because they didn’t like the name.
Listen to early-warning signs that your brand is off track
This is the part I can really kick myself over. Five months into my “hobby,” I knew it was going to be my full-time endeavor and I already knew that there was a discrepancy between my name and my audience. Had I acted back then, it would have been a lot less work to rebrand.
I really thought I could somehow continue with the limiting name. That’s one of the harder lessons I have learned as an entrepreneur. All I can say now is that I hope my mistake prevents someone else from making the same one.
Correct your course
It’s been amazing to hear from other businesspeople who have shared their stories and reached out to help me with my rebranding process. Kango recently relaunched as UpTake, and it has been very helpful as I navigate waters that are a little over my head at times. But the thing I have heard from nearly everyone is that as soon as you know your brand is not representing your company or your customers/audience, change it immedately. The longer you wait, the more painful the change will be. I guess you could always resign yourself to the limits of your brand, but I’m not a fan of limiting my growth.
Ultimately, I know that by rebranding and repositioning my business, we will grow far beyond where we could have gone under the old name. It may be painful, but I am excited about the doors this will open for us. That’s bringing on a whole other set of challenges and rewards… so stay tuned.
I’d consider myself an intermediate entrepreneur. I have nearly eight years of self-employment under my belt. I know the pitfalls of entrepreneurship well enough to avoid them (relatively speaking), and I now am able to offer a considerable amout of help and guidance to newer business owners. I don’t have a million-dollar company or any full time employees, and I haven’t been on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine–yet.
I’d also have to say that in the past two years, I’ve had to overcome some of the biggest challenges of entrepreneurship. I made some whopping mistakes in my first years, but the challenges of the intermediate entrepreneur are a little different. I think the challenges we face are both harder to recognize and can be more difficult to overcome–mostly because we’ve been doing business for a while, and teaching an older dog newer tricks isn’t exactly a cakewalk.
The five following unofficial challenges are ones I have either had to face myself or see my peers struggling with on a regular basis. I’d love to hear what you would to add to the list.
I Bought Myself a Job
After about four years of being a solopreneur, I wanted to increase my income. But the way my business was set up, the only way to make more money was to put in more hours. I didn’t want more hours… and thus, I began the process of moving my business from a one-woman show to a semi-outsourced model. I had to go through the whole process all over again in my third business and, strangely, the second time was harder than the first.
Part of the differences can simply be attributed to the difference in business models. But I can also say that when I did it the first time, I knew I could always go back to my old way of doing everything myself if I had to. This time around, it was a much more permanent shift, and it was scary. It was a big risk; I was worried about quality control and ballooning project management. And if it didn’t work, I knew my business wouldn’t make it.
Thankfully, it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I also didn’t sleep for about a month as I went through the toughest part of the transition. Billing out your hours is a great way to run a small business. But in the end, people and time have a finite amout of scalability. If you want your business (and income) to scale beyond what you are physically capable of, you need to stop being an employee and start being a manager.
Losing the Big Picture
When we first start a business, it is so incredibly easy to see the big picture–sometimes to a fault, as we can tend to gloss over the details. But after years of running the show, managing those details becomes our everyday life. And it becomes harder and harder to think outside of the box if your nose is constantly to the grindstone.
I know this happens if I have spent three to five months or so just focusing on to-do lists. Although there is a time and place to be focusing on the details of running a business, entrepreneurs are born and bred to be big thinkers. It’s not in our nature to be the detail person.
It’s times like this that I know I need to hire a coach or do some co-consulting with one of my peers. I’m working with an amazing coach right now who has helped me to break out of my day-to-day grind to refocus on growth. It’s been a refreshing and much-needed change to get back to doing what I do best: dreaming big and putting a plan of action in place to make it happen.
Living Within the Limits of 24/7
My second business was a service-based business. So when I went to expand, I naturally thought of finding other service providers to bill out their time in addition to mine. But I never thought beyond billing hours.
And oh, how I wish I had.
I could have written e-books, I could have organized seminars, I could have built an advertising-supported website, I… coulda, woulda, shoulda. These days I work really hard to diversify my income sources, and I make it my number-one priority to add new sources of revenue several times a year. Some of my biggest money-makers from a year ago are gone today–and I’m still in business today because I have never kept all of my eggs in one basket
The ADDpreneur
Honestly, this is probably my number-one ongoing challenge: staying focused and being disciplined. I’m not the only one; I have watched multimillionaires run their businesses into the ground (and sell their mansions in the process) because they couldn’t stay focused and took their business in a new direction every month.
Whether or not you believe in ADD/ADHD, the truth of the matter is that many entrepreneurs share the same traits as people diagnosed with this disease. Although I believe that many of my strengths are tied to being ADD, focus and discipline are something I have to work on constantly. I doubt that will ever change. I’m thankful I know myself well enough that I can catch myself when I get off track. But if you can’t do that, all I can say is make sure you have someone in your life or company who can do it for you.
Keeping Up with the Times
Earlier in my career, I loved–loved –learning new things by just jumping in and doing them. I still love learning, but I’ve recently come to a point where I am feeling, shall I say… old(er). I may still get carded when I order a glass of wine (OK, rarely), but honestly, I’m no newbie anymore. My industry (internet business) changes rapidly. Things that worked a year ago don’t bring in the same results today. This means I’m having to learn new things all the time.
My passion for what I do keeps me going, but honestly, I have a couple of projects that have been sitting “on deck” for about six months that I should have moved to the front burner a long time ago. But I have let the learning curve be my excuse for not getting it done. I’m not one who likes to admit to using excuses in my business. So again, I’ve been working with my great business coach to bust through my resistance to getting this stuff done.
Overcoming Challenges = Business Growth
Some of these challenges I’ve successfully worked though. Some are still active challenges in my life. I can say with 100 percent certainty that every challenge I have overcome as an entrepreneur has also been my fuel for growth. It’s so ironic and sometimes frustrating that these challenges seem so big and difficult when they are in front of us. Yet when they are behind us, they somehow shrink into tiny gems of knowledge.
If I could bottle up and sell that shrinking process I would be on the front cover of Entrepreneur magazine, I’m quite sure of it. Until then, we get to face our fears, climb over mile-high mountains, and get stuck in the quicksand every now and then.
And honestly, I’m grateful that I get to take this journey as an entrepreneur in this life. The rewards of running our own businesses make us feel lucky to have these problems in the first place.
Twitter, in case you aren’t familiar with the service, is a way of staying in touch and keeping up with friends and colleagues no matter where you are or what you’re doing.You can access it via the web or via SMS on your mobile phone. At first blush, Twitter appears to be a giant chat room. But if you stopped there, you would miss out on one of the most important emerging social media destinations in 2008.
Twitter is simple to use and, admittedly, can be a little addicting. But after spending about a month using it, I have found that Twitter’s impact on web communities is powerful indeed. Yesterday, I posted a link on Twitter to an article about social media etiquette–and within the next hour, I received more comments about the post on Twitter than I did on my actual blog.
So what does this mean? It means that online conversations are moving to where the people are. And that means that we, as business owners, need to be “out there” participating in the conversation, wherever it is happening. While this isn’t relevant for every business or brand, I would encourage you to explore Twitter for the real value in the service: the conversation.
In the past hour, the following brands were mentioned at least once by one of the 500+ people I “follow” (these are the people whose updates I choose to read). It also gives us clues as to the high level of technology usage of Twitters users:
YouTube, Starbucks, Kinko’s, Google, Nintendo, iTunes, NASCAR, Virgin Atlantic, Zappos and Target.
While you might think that big brands aren’t on the same playing field as small businesses, what is more important to realize is that these conversations tell you truthfully what people think of the companies they interact with on a regular basis. This can give us clues o their frustrations, unmet needs and, probably most important, what they love enough to willingly evangelize these brands–true word-of-mouth marketing in action.
Since Twitter is a cross-platform service, messages posted to the system must be under 140 characters. I’ve pulled a sample of some insightful messages as an example.
From a status “tweet,” I made mention of what I did this morning:
Went grocery shopping at Target = came back with all sorts of International Bazaar stuff at 75% off — and a lot of melted frozen food
Replies:
Like I needed another reason to go to Target! I sense a shopping trip coming on.
It is definitely one of those places where it is hard to come out without spending over $100.
From a question “tweet,” I looked for advice from my peers as I consider making a laptop purchase:
If you were to buy a laptop for less than $1,000, what brand would you buy, and what upgrades would be a priority for you?
Replies:
Dell with on-site service, 2 gig or more of RAM and a duel core processor
Found some systems on the Dell site with XP instead of Vista. I like the way Vista looks/works but don’t want the headaches
Hewlett Packard. My desktop and laptop I gave to brother going on 5 years. Toshiba=crap. Gateway=3 months and already sent to shop.
There’s a whole other level to Twitter as well. Using the unrelated serivce Twitterverse can give us clues as to what people are talking about that have nothing to do with brands. Twitterverse aggregates messages across the entire system and pulls together a tag cloud of the most commonly used words in the last hour, five hours or 10 hours. At this time mid-day on a Friday in February, the most mentioned words overall on Twitter are:
Day, Going, Having, Love, New, Really, Snow, Think and Work.
And if we look at some commonly used adjectives, such as…
Amazing, Awesome, Cool, Favorite, Hate or Interesting.
We can read the conversations people are having that have invoked these emotional responses:
“Yahoo Pipes looks really cool“
“Coolest mobile service so far at http://qik.com/”
“Thinking it will be really awesome if [Google’s] Gmail has an embeddable calendar (like Gtalk)”
“Just picked up a new [Nissan] pathfinder. Love the car, hate the dealer. Amazing what they can’t do until you really push.”
So what can we do with all of this information?
- Watch trends emerge within an extremely tech-savvy and influential group of individuals
(many Twitter users are also publishers, bloggers, and new media experts); - Get real-time feedback on news stories, product launches and popular services
(Twitter would have been a great place to “hang out” when Apple launched its MacBook a few weeks ago); - Find pain points in consumers’ lives
(if I were Nissan, I’d work more closely with my dealers on customer service, for example); - Determine what products, brands and services that are worthy of emulation
(Target is doing something right to have evoked such a positive response); - Position your company or brand to become a part of the existing conversation
(again, word-of-mouth marketing in action).
I think most of all, Twitter is one of the best places for people new to Social Media to “get their feet wet.” It is a friendly atmosphere in which to meet people, understand how online conversations work and be a part of that conversation without a big time commitment, unlike starting up a new blog, for example.
And if you do decide to join the conversation at Twitter, you are invited to follow me at Twitter.com/eMom.
Want to Learn More about Twitter?
Read this series by Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide:
From Twits to Tweeple, Why I Embraced Twitter and You Should Too Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five
I mentioned my recent motivational slump, which caused me chagrin. I’ve had to work really hard to get myself back on track, and I’m finally on my way to getting caught up. Since I’ve been my own boss on and off for almost eight years, I know all too well the challenges that face entrepreneurs.
They fall into the following categories:
- Inability to switch gears effectively. This includes both working too much and taking too much downtime. When I get too much momentum going in one direction or the other, I have a very hard time swinging things back to the center.
- Burnout. I know the early signs of burnout to halt myself when I find I’m working way too hard. But unfortunately, I know those signs from experience, and sometimes the only way to figure out your burnout threshold is after you have crossed it.
- Lack of return on investment of time/money/effort. I love going after the carrot. But when the carrot just keeps moving farther and farther away, it’s hard to continually work for something that takes so dang long to come to fruition.
- Lack of self-discipline. This by far is the hardest to overcome for me personally and also threatens my business the most. I can be very disciplined, but when I don’t maintain that discipline, things get out of whack fast.
- Time management. I’ve gotten much better at time management over the years, thanks to lots of practice. But this is the consistently the number one challenge reported by the readers of eMoms at Home.
So I’m curious: What are your challenges as an entrepreneur? What solutions have you found so far, and what things are still holding you back?
This is a fitting post to return to this blog with: I haven’t written here since November (gosh, has it really been that long?). But with the holidays, business stress and the dark, short winter days upon us, sometimes I let circumstances get the best of me and fall into a rut.
You know the drill. You put off a task, then feel a little guilty about it. The guilt leads to more procrastination and, suddenly, you have a month-long pile of things to do that are more imposing than ever now that the pile has gotten so huge.
What’s a poor entrepreneur to do?
Get Introspective
My first course of action is always personal. I figure out whether I am letting fears or limiting beliefs get in my way. It does happen sometimes, and unless I work on the intellectual and emotional reasons for my rut, I won’t pull myself out of it. Sometimes it’s not an issue; it’s just life happening. But sometimes there is a bigger fear that needs to be addressed.
Look Out for Number One
My second course of action is to start taking care of myself better. Usually when I have gotten into procrastination mode, I’ve also slept less, exercised less and/or eaten unhealthy food. To put myself back on track, I’ll get back into meditation and start taking my vitamins. I’ll also force myself to eat more veggies and pamper myself a little. After carrying around all that guilt, I can beat myself up quite a bit. By refocusing on caring for myself, the guilt loses its power and I’m able to get my head clear.
Get it Down in Writing
When things to do are piling up, I start losing track of it all in my head. Then when I think about all the things I have to do, they become this nebulous behemoth of insurmountable proportions. Going through everything and making a grand list of “All Things Procrastinated” gets it out of your head and in plain view in front of your eyes. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m surprised to find that the list isn’t as big as I thought it was.
Chunk it Down
When there’s a lot to do, it feels like a huge weight on my shoulders. If you still feel overwhelmed after making a list, then put your tasks into categories. Make a category for “urgent” and then other categories that work for you (family, paperwork, errands, etc.). Remember that you’re just making a list; you don’t have to have it all done yesterday.
Prune It
I think many of us, especially women, have unrealistic expectations of what we should be able to accomplish on any given day. I’ll admit that I can be the queen of overcommitting. So whenever I make lists, I find that I need to cross some things off before I even get started. Not only does it make you feel like you are getting something done, it gives you practice at saying “no,” something I wholeheartedly admit I need to practice.
Build in Accountability and Take Action
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but sometimes I don’t get a thing done unless I know someone else is counting on me. This isn’t the greatest formula for success for a business owner, and it’s hurt me and my income on more than 20 occasions in the past. I know that in order to get myself moving, I have to build in accountability. Whether I grab a call with a coach, throw down some consequences with my blog readers or just tell a friend to hold me to a promise, I know I must do something like this to move from inaction to action.
In the end, it’s usually a slow-moving process getting from a big mound of procrastinated tasks to a clean desk and that light-hearted feeling of being on top of things. But by taking a balanced approach to the process, I can pull myself out of just about any rut that comes my way.
Oh, and by the way, it’s good to be back. Thanks for missing me. 
I can say little more than “Wow” to this interactive periodic table of branding and marketing terms.
It’s definitely an enjoyable way to spend a few minutes if you’re a marketing geek like me.
The following is a guest entry from respected entrepreneur Julie Lenzer Kirk, author of The ParentPreneur Edge
Whether you call them advisory boards or mastermind groups, much has been said–and written–about the value of good advisors. In one of the programs I lead where we’re helping women start technology-based businesses, we all but require the women entrepreneurs to build an advisory board. Personally, I got a lot of value from my membership in Vistage, which is a facilitated peer advisory group. Although I am no longer a member, I still count many former group members as friends. Whether they are formal or informal, the consensus is that soliciting advice from qualified individuals on your business is a good thing. However…
If you are new at the whole entrepreneur thing, advice from the outside can be confusing and often conflicting. I have had one highly qualified individual tell me one thing that completely went against what someone else–equally accomplished–had advised. So, what is an entrepreneur to do? Based on my experience as an entrepreneur, a teacher and an advisor, I have pulled together the following tips to help make the most out of your advisory relationships:
- Meet with more than one, or ideally all, of your advisors at once. Whether virtually or in person, having all of the people advising you in the same room at the same time will almost always yield better results than one-on-one interactions. When they’re together, your advisors can hear where advice they are providing is conflicting and address their differences. While they may just agree to disagree, many times they will play off each other and come up with an alternate recommendation that is better than each one provided individually.
- Beware of the “Bobblehead Advisor.” A Bobblehead Advisor is someone who continually agrees with you. Bobblehead Advisors love what you’re doing, offer little in the way of alternative insight and never disagree. Although you may be really good at what you do, a useful advisor should offer a different or added viewpoint as well as information and ideas for you to think about. If you are looking for someone just to make you feel better, call your mom and have her tell you how good you are. If you’re looking for an advisor to help you propel your business, find someone who won’t just tell you what you want to hear, but who will tell you what you need to hear.
- Reconsider following advice if it goes against your gut. Lack of confidence in a particular area of our businesses can lead us to follow the advice of an outsider even when something inside gives a strong thumbs down. Don’t be afraid to listen to your gut. After all, you have a lot of insider (no pun intended!) information and history that your advisor may not be aware of. If you’re still not sure, get a second opinion; but blindly following the advice of others can lead to big trouble.
- Be careful playing one advisor off another. There is nothing more frustrating as an advisor than to hear “So-and-so told me this…what do you think?” First of all, there are most likely details missing in the translation of the advice and, in some cases, flat-out misunderstanding. Many advisors, especially if they’re in similar fields, talk to each other, so be careful what you say to one about another.
Advisors can be an incredible way to compensate for experience that you don’t have and can act as a valuable sounding board, but you have to use them wisely to get the best use of your–and their–time.
Blogs are a powerful medium online. Few other tools offer the combination of technology and personality that a blog can offer to a company. Last week we talked about how to participate with your brand online, because you can’t control it with social media, nor did you ever really control your brand once you handed it over to consumers. This week we talk about using a blog as a tool to engage in social media and be a part of the experience with your customers.
Let’s first of all give some thought to the sale process, and let’s think of going to a professional conference. At the conference, you can do great networking. You can have great conversations with potential customers and clients. You can pass out your brochures and marketing materials.
But none of these things will close a deal.
In fact, they won’t even close the deal if you combine them all together. The thing that makes the sale is people. It’s the personality of the sales person as well as the personality of the customer working together that makes the sale.
In fact, I’ll bet that any of you have met a person so dynamic, so engaging, so professional that you said to yourself, “I’d like to do business with that person!”. I doubt any of you can say the same about a brochure, good networking, or a conversation about your product.
This is why a blog is so powerful - not because it offers great networking, marketing, or even conversation.
A blog is powerful because there is a real person behind it.
So how do you build your brand with your blog?
Of course, each brand is different, and each will require different tactics to build. But great brands have one thing in common:
They have been able to link desirable emotions to their products or services.
It’s the emotional differences that make customer willing to pay more - whether it be indulgence, power, sexy, practical, beautiful… brands are built on emotions:
BMW :: Status, performance, “The Ultimate Driving Machine”
Toyota :: Practical, Value, “Our Company Values are Just Like Yours”
So what does this have to do with Blogging?
It means that in order to influence site visitors, build your brand, create selling opportunities, and impact your bottom line, you need to have a real person or people communicating with other real people online.
You need to be genuine. You need to care. You need to want to make a difference for your customers. You need to add value. You need to be transparent.
And you need to be emotional in order to evoke emotions.
In other words, Blogging is powerful not because of the medium, but because of the real message and mission behind your business that is delivered by a real person who cares. I’m not talking about creating an online diary or being inappropriate or irrelevant - and consumers don’t want to hear your pitch anymore. They want meaning - and are demanding it from the brands in our everyday life.
Consumers want to hear from a real person. And blogs and social media are the closest thing to a real person that you can get online.
On Monday, I was the keynote speaker at the Blogging for Business Conference in Salt Lake City. The room was filled mostly with marketing and media professionals, with some business owners - who all had some big questions about blogging.
At the forefront of everyone’s mind were a few key business blogging questions:
- How can you keep control of your brand with a blog, social media & user-generated content?
- How do you use a blog to build your brand?
- How do you measure the effectiveness of social media on your bottom line?
Hefty questions indeed.
And unfortunately, there aren’t clean cut answers. Books could be written about each - but I’ll dedicate an article to answering each of them over the next couple of weeks.
How Can You Keep Control of Your Brand with a Blog & Social Media?
The short answer? You can’t control the conversation anymore.
Social media has permanently changed the way consumers interact with brands - both online and offline. No longer are people willing to sit back and be fed a marketing strategy - consumers now demand conversation and interaction with the companies they do business with.
The good news? Companies willing to be transparent and that engage their audience are winning - both offline and online. And it’s not just consumers that are rewarding companies for engaging their audience. Search engines are at the forefront of pushing social media in front of internet users.
For example, let’s take a common question asked by new mothers, “getting baby to take medicine”. Here’s a screen capture of the first 4 pages of results:
As you can see - the first and second results are from Berkley.edu and BabyCenter.com respectively. Social network Minti comes in at #3 and my own blog eMoms at Home comes in at #4 - this is because the company that creates a new baby medicine dispensing product called “Reliadose” provided some free products to give away to our site visitors.
Ironically, I really don’t think that my site should have ranked that well for the phrase “getting baby to take medicine”. We run a home business blog - I think these answers would actually be better answered elsewhere, although admittedly the article in question did provide an answer that the searcher was looking for. But this doesn’t change the fact that Google ranks blogs so well in the search results that we rank highly even if in the big picture, there might be a more relevant result.
Let me make this simple:
Your customers have questions.
Blogs and social networks are providing the answers.
If your company or brand isn’t blogging or engaging with your customers via social media, then you aren’t controlling your brand.
You may have fears about comments, complaints, or difficult questions your customers have for you and your company. But the conversation about you is happening online, whether or not you are participating.
Customers don’t expect perfection - customers expect honest communications from businesses that conduct business in a trustworthy manner. Random unfounded criticisms won’t stand the test of social media - consumers are smarter than that. But if you are afraid of having open conversations with your customers, having a blog is not the problem you should be dealing with - instead you should be focusing on the products or services that are not delivering what your customers are expecting.
In the end, a strong brand and a strong business will either engage their audience with blogs and social media, or they will be left behind.
Sometimes when I look over my business experience in the past, I kind of wonder how I got here. I have no fancy MBA, I’ve never held a job for someone else for more than 1 and a half years, and my college degree is in Holistic Psychology with minors in Outdoor Leadership & Fine Art. In fact, when I started my first business, I had little experience to lean on other than working in a day care and being a waitress.
But today, my website is now one of the top 5000 US web sites on the internet.
I’m not the only entrepreneur on the planet that had humble beginnings. Lots of people can wait tables, but not everyone becomes a business owner. Was it the lessons we learned from our early work experience that contributed to our success as entrepreneurs? Perhaps - so I dug back into my memory in the hopes that I can beat that old cliche into your head again - if I can go from waitress to entrepreneur, you can, too!
People Skills Will Separate You from the Pack
I put this first on purpose. Building rapport is one of the most important skills you will ever use in business. It’s also one of the hardest things to teach. For most positions, I’ll hire someone who can make friends with anyone before I hire someone with a perfect resume. If you know how to work a table, I bet you are already one of the top earning servers. And you may want to consider a career move.
Initiative Can Make You a Lot of Money
The only way you make money waiting on tables is by getting the best shifts and taking on as many tables as you can handle. It’s the same with business - you may have romantic notions of working in your pajamas and taking naps in the afternoons, but in the end, only hard work brings in the bucks.
Don’t Allow Yourself to Get “Weeded”
Getting “Weeded” means having too many tables at once. You can’t take 6 orders or serve 6 meals at the same time - you’ve got to make sure the host(ess) staggers your seatings.
Yet many entrepreneurs really struggle with time management - working too much, taking on too many projects, or pursuing too many ideas (and not finishing any of them). Learning how to say “No” - to others as well as to yourself sometimes - is key to managing your workflow and productivity effectively.
If You Make a Mistake - Fix it & Get Over it
Nothing angers restaurant customers more than delivering their food order excessively late, or worse, incorrectly. Every entrepreneur makes mistakes - in fact, LOTS of them. The ones that succeed in business do two things. One :: make it right with the customer. Two :: don’t let it mess with your head: learn from it and move on - fast.
Learn the Art of the Upsell
We all know why servers suggest appetizers or another round of drinks - to increase the size of the bill (and their tip).
It’s critical to keep an eye on your expenses and cash flow in business, and you’ve got to have a profit motive. It may seem simplistic, but this actually one of the things I hear most from entrepreneurs. Quite often they have a hard time pricing their products or services to be both competitive and make a profit. Sometimes it’s the upsell that makes the difference between staying in business or going out of business.
You’re in a Service Business, Period.
The only waiters & waitresses that do well know to put their customers first. And it’s the same in every single business on the planet. You don’t go into business to make money and sell things. You go into business to add value and serve your customers. Though it’s a small change in words, the difference between the two is light years apart, and will make or break you.
This last summer, I met a fascinating woman named Paula at the BlogHer conference. She worked with a firm called GoldenSeeds, a company that supports and invests in woman-owned businesses. I made a light-hearted comment to her, saying “I want to be just like you when I ‘grow up’ - to be able to hang out at conferences and find talented women to give my money to”.
We laughed, of course, but it spurred a wonderfully inspiring conversation.
My life made a dramatic shift almost 4 years ago when I made the decision to make “contribution” one of my highest values. I found that when in sales, if I focused on getting the deal, I never did nearly as well as when I focused on serving my clients.
And as we chatted about making ‘giving’ a high priority in business, we both agreed that although it can be a difficult mindset to attain, letting ‘contribution’ lead your business decisions creates the most rewarding and successful companies we had both ever known.
I was so impressed as she talked about her company’s mission - they seek to find businesses that are not only led by women, but that exist to empower women as well. They also are extremely mindful of work-life balance issues and offer advice and coaching to women entrepreneurs - even to those that they don’t invest in.
Paula repeated a phrase that has stayed with me ever since our conversation - she said “we believe in giving of our time, or talent, or our treasure”. And I thought about all of the ways that entrepreneurs can take this to heart - even the youngest of entrepreneurs can give one of the three:
Time :: Volunteering hours to help other business owners succeed, whether it be via mentoring, consulting, or labor.
Talent :: Offering your expertise as advice, guidance, and as a teacher or leader.
Treasure :: Giving your money to businesses who need capital in order to grow and succeed.
Thus far in my career, I’ve mostly given of my time and my talent - and only recently have I been able to start giving of my treasure. I’m no angel investor, but organizations like Kiva let me “play angel” with small amounts of capital until I ‘grow up’.
How are you giving of your time, talent or treasure? And are there ways you or your business can do more to help other entrepreneurs succeed? And how do you think your company could benefit from giving more to your customers or clients, or to your community?
But the book, 101 Entrepreneur Tips, is a small book, you wonder… and yes, indeed it is a trim & sleek 128 pages. With each tip being one page, you’d be amazed at the amount of info which is packed in here. What I love about this little purse-sized gem is that it does cover nearly everything - with just the right amount of detail to let you know if you either know enough about her tip, or it sends off that little warning signal that says, “Uh - I’d better go do more research on this!”
Susan covers business planning, customer service, communications, sales, marketing, networking and raising capital. She really hits it out of the park with her business planning section and the marketing section, covering everything from market analysis and operations to podcasting and search engine optimization for press releases.
I especially love her mix of tips blending traditional marketing with online marketing. Sometimes I forget about offline marketing tactics because my business is so heavily focused online. Especially since PR is one of my weaker points, I loved Tip 43|Targeting Editors With Your [Press] Release. Here’s an excerpt:
Ever feel like your press release goes off into a black hole? It does. So how can you ensure that relevant editors read your release and consider it for a feature or additional coverage?
- Target Your Editors: Press release distribution programs allow you to select the channels where you send your release. You can choose categories like medical, entertainment, health and automotive. Don’t be greedy and send your release to all. Stick to relevant industries to ensure interest from editors.
- Follow Up: Editors get hundreds, if not thousands, of press releases each day. By following up to see if there is interest in your release, you stay on the mind of the editors in your industry. Even if they can’t accomodate a story on your news now, if you stay in touch, they may need you later for a quote or interview.
- Send Your Release Directly: If you feel your release is relevant to local news, fax or email a copy to the editor of the section you feel it fits best with. While they may not take notice of your story through the media channel they use to get news, receiving a copy of the release from you with a personal note (followed up by a personal phone call) increases your liklihood of getting coverage in the media.
Overall, there were a few topics that were absent from Susan’s tips such as financial management and work-life balance. Yet those things sometimes need a whole separate book to address, which is I’m sure why she left them out.
Lastly, I found that even as an experienced entrepreneur, this little book was a good reminder for me to get out of hyper-focus mode to remind me of a few sides to my business that needed some attention. But for a new entrepreneur, this is such a simple and easy guide that I really would highly recommend it.
Susan Payton also runs Egg Marketing & PR.
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