1. Save for a rainy day. If you know that you’re going to be on a “forced vacation” for a while, the blow is softened if you can save a little in advance. Try to get as much outstanding work and projects completed in advance of the closure so that you’re that much less behind when things are restored to normal.
2. Warn everyone in advance. Let employees, sub-contractors, and customers know as soon as possible before the event that you anticipate a business closure. Let them know how long you expect to be down and what you will do once things are restored so that they’re as confident as possible that you will communicate with them as soon as you’re able, as well as the method in which you will do so.
3. Set a backup point-of-contact. For Hurricane Gustav, I elicited the help of my trusted accountability partner to be my point-of-contact after the storm. She would be the first person I contacted to let everyone know I was safe, and since past experience let me know that text messaging was the most reliable form of contact post-storm, I made sure to get her cell phone number and let her know that would be my method for contact until I had phone or Internet again. Once she heard from me, she would then communicate with clients that I was safe, as well as any estimate I had at that point for regaining power and communications.
4. Prepare backup contact methods. In the days after a natural disaster, it’s very likely that you will not have power, land line phones, cell phones or Internet, so it’s important to anticipate limited communication methods beforehand. Write down the phone numbers and email addresses of all important contacts and put them in a waterproof place, like a Ziploc bag. Should you be able to send text messages or make phone calls, the numbers will be readily available to you and not locked away on your computer or the Internet.
5. Hire a sub-contractor. If you have enough notice, you may wish to outsource some of your work to an assistant or sub-contractor so that you at least have some income during the closure. Be sure to work out terms in advance and communicate on your website how clients can reach the the sub-contractor while you’re away.
6. Create an emergency code. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of knowing that a disaster is threatening to disrupt our businesses, so as a safeguard, you may want to establish an “emergency code” with a trusted business contact, assistant, or sub-contractor. Plan in advance that, if you send the code, they’ll take certain steps for you, and be sure to provide support documentation, user names and passwords, and necessary contact information so that they can act on your behalf.
7. Set up outbound messages. Just before you hunker down, set up an auto-responder within your email program stating that you’re away in preparation for the event and that you’ll respond to all incoming messages as soon as communications are restored. You may also wish to communicate your emergency point-of-contact. Be sure to post a similar message to all outposts, including your website, Facebook page, and any other place where business-related contacts communicate with you.

Certainly, in an ideal world, we’d all be able to operate from satellite phones and Internet, with backup generators, but even that’s not always possible after a natural disaster has occurred. And as we saw with Hurricane Katrina, it’s not always “business as usual” immediately after the threat of danger has passed. Sometimes it can be weeks before power and communications are restored, making it next to impossible to get back to work or even connect with the outside world, which is why it’s so important to prepare for the likelihood of a business closure well before disaster strikes.

What tips do you have for preparing your business ahead of an emergency?

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Before you can begin any kind of marketing or promotion, it’s important to have a firm grasp of the purpose, mission, and values you want for your business, but for the sake of this post, we’ll assume you’ve gotten that far. You know your unique selling proposition, your target market, and what your business represents. Now you just need to find a way to create a more focused and consistent plan for increasing awareness and, ultimately, finding more customers and clients.

Finding Your Marketing Strategy and Tactics

One of the hardest things about marketing is selecting the overall strategy and individual tactics for promotion. There are hundreds of ideas; narrowing them down can be a challenge, especially if you’re new to marketing.

One of the best ways to get your initial direction for marketing online is by looking to other successful companies or entrepreneurs and learning from their experience. For example, if you want to build a blog, find a few bloggers that you admire and follow, and then dig back to the very beginning of their blogging days. This will take a bit of time, since most successful blogs take a while to establish. If they’ve published two or more posts per week, it might take a while to get back to their very first post, but keep digging!

Once you reach the beginning, get ready to take notes. You’re going to begin going through all their posts looking for clues as to what has made them such a success, and here are a few things to look for as you go.

• How often do they publish to their blog? Weekly? Twice-weekly? Several times daily?
• Are their posts long or short?
• At what point did they starting getting consistent comments, and when did their comments start to steadily increase? Was there something that they changed or were doing during those times (and the months before) to generate those comments?
• How is their site laid out, and do you notice anything about their site that might be particularly helpful for capturing visitor attention and converting them to subscribers or customers?
• How has their writing evolved over time?
• What kinds of posts do they regularly publish? Interviews? Advice? How-to articles?
• Many bloggers tend to create “How I Created a Successful Blog” posts, once they reach a certain level of success. Keep an eye out, and if you find this sort of post, pay close attention to the blogger’s advice, and then think of ways you might be able to apply that advice to your own marketing efforts.

Be aware that there is no single answer to some of the questions listed above. If you can find a successful blogger who advocates short daily posts, I guarantee that you can find another who prefers long articles posted weekly. The key is to find an approach that you think will work best for your situation, personality and style.

Also, a note of caution, you’re not looking to copy any other blogger (in fact, that would be a good way to fail). You want to be original and unique with your business, so the point of this exercise is not to copy anyone else, but rather to emulate the marketing strategies that they’ve used to build their blogs. Think of these bloggers as mentors and role models, not people to clone.

Brainstorming Your Options

As mentioned, the options for marketing and promoting a business are virtually endless, but here are a few that I like best:

• Blogging, guest blogging and article marketing
• Podcasting and video casting
• Interviews and appearances for relevant websites and media opportunities
• Online networking

Once you have some ideas for potential marketing tactics, you’re ready to begin weeding through them to find those that you think are most likely to work for you. In next week’s post, we’ll discuss tools to help you with tracking and organizing your options and then begin prioritizing them into a plan of attack.

What tactics do you use to market your business now, and what ideas are you thinking of adding to the mix soon?

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I think about this all the time as it relates to my business. Generally, we come up with plans, ways we’re going to market our businesses, manage them, and keep things growing and moving along smoothly, but what are we missing? Are there blind spots we don’t yet know exist that could potentially be fatal to the success of our companies?

Blind Spot #1: Giving Up Too Soon (or Not Planning to Weather the First Years)

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen small business owners make is simply giving up too soon. We all want to chase after shiny new distractions as they show up, but many times, we already have everything we need to succeed, if we would only stay the course and allow enough time for our business ideas to take hold.

It’s so important to plan for the hard times of that first year or so in business, when there’s very little money coming in. Plan to cut corners as much as possible, both with your personal and business expenses, so that you can afford to stick with it until you start generating revenue.

Many times, it’s easy to look back on past ideas and failures and think, “If I had only stuck with that, I think it could have worked.” You have to be willing and able to hang in there for the long haul, and so often, it’s just too hard for business owners to weather that first year or so.

Blind Spot #2: Not Consistently and Actively Promoting the Business

A close runner-up in fatal blind spots is not actively and consistently promoting the business. So many times, business owners get caught up in planning and tinkering the minor things within the business that they neglect actually going out and finding new customers or clients on a regular basis.

I was fortunate to have gotten my start in real estate, where you have to work under the guidance of a broker for several years before being able to go out on your own, and in the real estate industry, one of the first things you’re taught is how important lead generation is to your success. I can remember my broker telling us that the most successful and experienced agents in the firm still did lead generation a couple of hours a day. Of course, I had no idea what lead generation was at the time, but at least the importance of it stuck with me all these years.

Part of the problem for most business owners is not knowing what to do when it comes to promoting their businesses. There are so many different tactics for marketing and promotion that it can quickly become confusing and overwhelming.  It would be far more helpful for new business owners to hear that they should simply pick two or three tactics for promoting their businesses, plan to stick with them for six to twelve months, and to be very aggressive with them for at least two hours each and every day.

Blind Spot #3: Thinking You Can Do Everything Yourself

A third blind spot most business owners have is thinking they can do everything themselves (or thinking that they have to do everything themselves). Lack of money, time and even experience can make a business owner think he or she is not in the position to hire help, and the process of finding and building a support team can seem like a full time job on its own.

The good news is that it’s possible to inch your way into delegation by finding ways to outsource one piece of your work at a time, and if you don’t think you can afford a paid assistant at the beginning, start with a few interns. That way, you can slowly test the waters with a support staff, while also seeing if the interns you hire would make good permanent additions to your team.

For most of us, the thought of starting a new business is as exciting as first learning to drive: we just want to be given the keys, jump in the car, and go! Certainly, there’s room for the thrill of being in control and finally going where we want to go, but if we want to avoid as many fender benders as possible, it helps to know to look out for blind spots.

What blind spots do you think most small business owners have in the beginning?

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Why You Need a Dream Team

Before you can build it, you have to believe that you need a dream team. As a small business owner, it’s easy to become complacent in our roles and just accept that we wear all the hats, but that’s probably a mistake if:

1. We hope to build thriving and sustainable businesses that don’t require our physical presence to keep them afloat,
2. We hope to eventually sell our businesses, retire, or at least have one or both options available to us, and
3. We want lives and some semblance of balance outside our businesses.

The bottom line is that we are not islands, and we don’t have to build our businesses by ourselves. With the right plan, a little patience, and some persistence, it’s possible to build a dream team, and possibly achieve more than you ever imagined for your business.

Who’s On Your Dream Team?

You’ve established that you need a dream team, but now who do you need on it? Each business will be slightly different in its needs, and every business owner will have his or her own preferences about who to include, but here are a few suggestions for who might make up your company’s dream team.

Your Marketing and Advertising Team

No matter what your business, one of your primary goals should be meeting new people in your target market and finding prospects who might become customers or clients, but as with many other responsibilities of a small business owner, it’s easy to get behind with marketing and lead generation, which makes this the perfect area to look for dream team members. Some of the possible roles and responsibilities to cover might include:

• Networking (in-person and online),
• Direct marketing (sales letters, email marketing, sales calls, etc.),
• Web marketing (managing your website, PPC advertising, search engine optimization, etc.),
• Event management (managing speaking engagements and events),
• Publicity and promotion (managing guest posts, media opportunities, etc.),
• Social media (managing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), and
• Advertising (radio, television, magazine, Facebook, sponsorships, etc.).

Also, don’t forget that with lead generation comes leads, metrics, and a database to manage, so it might be helpful to have someone overseeing the admin side of your marketing and advertising efforts.

Your Operational Team

You’re in the business of selling some type of product or service, and while you might be the primary person delivering those goods or services, you should always be thinking of ways to leverage your efforts. This might include team members who oversee:

• Product and service development and/or delivery,
• Customer service and current customer accounts,
• Your editorial calendar and content generation efforts,
• Your financial picture, budget, and taxes,
• Your schedule and personal/in-house organization, and
• Human resources, training and education.

How to Build Your Dream Team

Once you know who you want on your dream team, the next and probably longest step is actually building it, and this is where you’ll need a big dose of patience, creativity and persistence. One approach I’ve been implementing more recently is the use of interns. Rather than trying to locate highly-targeted virtual assistants (which, for me, wasn’t proving to be a successful method), I’ve been able to find ambitious, creative college students who are studying to go into the different lines of work that fall under my business.

Not only does this approach help me find motivated, talented and specialized support for my business, it also helps me find prospective permanent hires who are being both trained and screened as we go.

Building a dream team for your small business is possible, if you know the goals you’re trying to achieve and then find creative ways to fill the gaps and find support. While I can say that building a team hasn’t been the easiest part of running my business, it’s certainly opened my mind to new possibilities for growth and improvement.

Looking for some tips on how to recruit your dream team? Check out this recent post from Huddle’s Andy McLoughlin on using the web to find a team of peers.

Who would be on your dream team, and what methods are you using for building it?

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1. Make sure your website is a true representation of you, your working style and your work.

When prospective clients visit your website, it’s important that they get a clear picture of what you can do for them. Anything less than that is a disservice to both prospective clients and you. Your website is there not only to market your business, but also to screen prospective clients to find those that are well-suited for you. The more information you put on your website and the more accurate and thorough it is, the more likely you are to find clients who will be very satisfied with your work. Why? They knew exactly what you could do before signing up with you.

2. Be upfront and direct.

If a prospective client does something that is not acceptable to you or requests something that you cannot provide, say so (and the sooner, the better). Be clear, open and honest about when and where you’re not willing to bend your policies and with the services you provide so that there’s no room for miscommunication or misunderstanding.

3. Clearly communicate what you can and cannot do.

With every new client, even if you feel like you’re repeating yourself, it’s important to clearly define what services you do and do not provide. Even making sure to outline what is and what is not included in your fee is important for maintaining solid relations between you and your clients, so take the time to communicate those details as early on as possible.

4. Set out the terms of your arrangement clearly.

Don’t just say what you can and cannot do or what’s included in your fee and what is not; put it all in black and white. Whether in an email, a contract (recommended), and/or on your website, it’s important to spell out in writing, not just verbally, exactly what you will and won’t do and what’s covered in the cost.

Also, if the client wants to do something that falls outside of the terms of your arrangement, be sure to communicate that fact quickly and directly so that you stay within the scope of your agreement. This is one place where you absolutely want to be a stickler for detail, because one slip could cost you considerably. If your client wants to modify your agreement and the request is something you’re willing to accommodate, say something like, “I’m happy to create a change order, but the revision will cause [x change] to the cost [and/or time frame].”

5. Explain how you work and what can be expected of you.

Create an “Ideal Service Provider Credo” and post it somewhere on your website so that clients and prospects know exactly what you’re promising to do and deliver. Include things like:

• “I will communicate with you by email a minimum of once per week to keep you informed of where we are with your project,”
• “I will notify you immediately if circumstances arise that will affect the cost or time required to complete your project,” and
• “I will respond to all emails and voice mails within [x time frame].”

By outlining what clients can expect from you, not only will you better manage their expectations, but you’ll also provide a little added assurance that you take your role as their service provider very seriously and that customer service and clear communication is important to you.

How do you manage client expectations to keep projects running smoothly and clients happy and coming back to you?

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Recently, I stumbled across a new service called Alice that lets you buy all of your household essentials online, things like toilet paper, toothpaste, trash bags and so on. Alice is awesome, and as soon as I figured out just exactly how awesome Alice was, I couldn’t wait to tell everyone I knew about the service.

Identify Your Customers’ Pain Points

I hate grocery shopping, especially for household items. I can be out of aluminum foil or coffee creamer for weeks before finally convincing myself to go to the store. There are many reasons why I dislike it so much, but here are the main two:

1. I hate making grocery lists. It takes too long. I have to think of everything I’ve been running low on or out of for the past month or so, and I inevitably forget something, which means I either have to go without out the item until the next time I convince myself to do this chore, usually two or three months later, or I have to go back to get the item. Plus, the list must be organized, or else I’ll end up running from one end of a 20,000 sq.ft. store to the other (which, let’s face it, ends up happening at least once per shopping trip anyway, because of some big conspiracy going on at the big box stores).
2. I hate the experience. I have to get ready and drive out to no less than two stores, because it’s impossible to get everything at one place, unless I go to one of the really unpleasant big box stores, which is a nightmare. Once I get there, I have to deal with parking, rude people, frustrated employees, long lines, price checks, loading the cart with the groceries, unloading the cart to check out, reloading the cart after checkout, and finally unloading the cart into my car, and then I get to go home, unload my car, and put all the groceries away, only to realize that I’ve forgotten something and to be discouraged, because I spent more money than I had planned, and a week later, I’ll need to do the entire process all over again.

Remove the Pain and Make Them Love You

Enter Alice (cue sound of choir). Alice solves my problems:

1. Alice knows me very well. When I signed up for my account, I got to go through and pick out all of my favorite and commonly-used household items and put them into my own custom, always-there product shelf. When I’m ready to shop, all my favorite items and brands are waiting for me, and all I have to do is load them into my cart and check out (if I haven’t scheduled them to be delivered automatically).
2. Alice will shop for me — automatically. I can set up my products to be delivered at specific times (say, toothpaste every two months and coffee filters every three). Alice will send me my items at preset times so that I no longer run out of things. Even if I do forget something, it only takes two or three business days for delivery, which is usually how long it takes me to convince myself to go to the store anyway.
3. The price is right. Manufacturers can sell directly to me through Alice and as there are no inventory costs as with regular retailers, the savings are passed on to me. However, even if the items were priced the same, I still don’t have to take time out to worry about restocking the toothpaste. Plus, there are no shipping fees, so I save on gas, not to mention the aggravation.
4. Alice looks after me. Just before checkout, Alice offers me some custom deals and coupons that I wouldn’t have otherwise found. Even if I don’t need the items just yet, Alice will save the discounts for me for a set time so that I can use them later.

But is It Real Love?

I could go on and on about Alice, and that’s really the point: I love this service and plan to tell everyone I know about it. Rarely do I get so excited about a company that I can’t wait to rave about them. That rarity is something that, if we’re smart, we can capitalize on within our own companies.

Make sure your customers love you, and I mean really love you:

• To the point that they literally have trouble listing all of the ways,
• To the point that they can’t wait to tell friends and family about you at every available opportunity, and
• To the point that they would hate to have to live without you.

Find your customers’ pain points and solve them. More than that, turn something they once dreaded into something they actually enjoy.

What companies do you love and rave about at every opportunity, and why?

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ambition, n.: an earnest desire for some type of achievement and the willingness to strive for its attainment

Thinking about ambition reminds me of Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford. The words “stay hungry” have followed me ever since reading his address in a magazine soon after it took place.

It also reminds me of my first years in business and of my first venture that was a real success: my web design business, which has since taken a back seat to other ventures, but still has the power to motivate me when I think of it.

In the first full twelve months of starting the business, I had earned what was for me at the time quite a bit of money, but I didn’t really pay attention to that fact in the beginning. I just did the work. Now, though, I can appreciate that accomplishment and how I achieved it by myself, and for me, that’s what ambition is all about.

Take away spouses and parents, mentors, physical possessions. Take away everything, and you’re left with yourself; knowing that, no matter what, you can create something from nothing, and you can survive. Knowing that makes you think anything is possible.

It’s not about being on your own or not having anyone to help you, quite the opposite. The greater that inner source of power, the more you have to offer those around you and the more you appreciate the true strength that can result from coming together around a shared passion.

However, it is important to know that we can build something with our own hands, that we have that ability within us. When challenges find us, and they will, we need to know that we are resourceful and that, as before, we will find a way through them or around them, whichever comes first.

That’s so very powerful, but wanting something and being willing to do whatever it takes to get it are two very different things, and lately, I’m coming to appreciate how you need both the wanting and the willingness in order to achieve.

I’m starting to apply that distinction to my own decision-making when it comes to where I spend my energy. I’m coming to accept that if I don’t want something bad enough, I’m never going to do the work it will take to reach it. My time and energy would be better spent on something I actually want to achieve and for which I’m willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish: those things that make me want to get up early and stay up late, where sleep becomes unnecessary and something I have to force myself to do, because I simply can’t wait to do whatever is next on the list to move the vision forward. It truly is a hunger.

Over the last year, I’ve found it especially difficult to build a team of people who take pride in their work and are ambitious when it comes to their own success or sense of accomplishment. I’m not sure what the ultimate solution to that problem will be, but when I think about adding someone to my team, I know that it’s important for that person to have dreams and goals of his or her own.

I’m OK with the fact that he or she might see my business as a stepping stone, a means to an end, because that means that while that person is with me, he or she will be striving, reaching for something. He or she will be ambitious, and I need, we all need, people like that around us in order to make each of our dreams a reality.

Do you let ambition drive your business and the decisions you make around it?

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I was thinking about this recently over something that’s been plaguing and frustrating me on a daily basis for quite some time — not consistently sticking with an exercise routine, and I started wondering if there was something more to it.

The fact that I don’t exercise more bugs me all the time. “You need to exercise,” or some variation of it, crosses my mind a minimum of ten times a day. That’s ridiculous. The energy, attention, and time I spend on simply thinking about exercising is far greater than what it would take to simply stop everything and actually do it, so what’s the problem? The answer: Something is controlling me. In my case, it’s a schedule.

I feel a constant pull to conform to someone else’s idea of when I should work and what times things should happen: What time to wake up, eat, work out, run errands, go to bed, etc. It’s silly, but true. A schedule (or really some crazy idea I have of what constitutes a “normal” schedule) is controlling me and making me not live the way I want to live. It doesn’t matter that I might function better and be more productive and content following an altogether different routine than everyone else on the planet. No, I’d rather struggle to do things the way everyone else does. I’d rather see how many ways and how many times a square peg will not fit into a round hole.

Why is that I can commit to forging my own path in every other area of my life, but struggle with this one? I think it’s because it’s so easy to become controlled and not live or work the way we really want to live or work. Think about it. Maybe you’ve wanted for many years to:

• Write a book,
• Become a runner,
• Get up early,
• Get in shape, or
• Build a thriving business.

But, why haven’t you? What’s stopping you from doing what you want to do?

• Maybe you long to be a writer, but hate the thought of having your work criticized. The critics are controlling you.
• Maybe you wish that you could get into better shape, but can never seem to find the time or routine to make it work. A schedule is controlling you.
• Maybe you want to build a thriving business, but can’t imagine putting yourself out there and promoting yourself or your business. Your fear is controlling you.
• Maybe you need to hire an assistant or a coach, but hate to have to turn to someone else for help. Your pride is controlling you.
• Maybe you’d love to get up early, watch the sunrise over coffee, and enjoy some quiet time to yourself before starting yet another busy day, but have never been able to stick with going to bed and getting up early. Your laziness, indifference or complacency is controlling you.

If there’s something in your life or business that you want to do, something that you know would make all the difference in your productivity or contentment, think hard and honestly when answering, “Why am I not doing it?” Are circumstances, other people, your attitude, your complacency, or anything else controlling you?

Once you know (and perhaps admit) that something is, in fact, controlling you, what are you going to do about it? How will you take back your power?

Sometimes simply being aware of something can change the way you approach it. Just having the knowledge that I’m allowing some arbitrary definition of a “normal” schedule control how I live and work makes me reevaluate how I spend my days and, at the very least, question my motives for doing things a certain way.

In the past, what’s stopped you from doing things the way you wanted to do them in life and business, and how did you find a way to overcome them?

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Opportunity cost: the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action (Investopedia)

The easiest way to think about opportunity cost is with time. Choose to spend an hour one way, and you miss out on all the other ways you could have spent that hour. It’s a great way to think about productivity, but have you ever thought about opportunity cost as it relates to the products and services you offer within your business?

It takes a certain amount of resources (time, money, effort, etc.) to pursue a given product or service, and since you only have so much to give in the way of resources, it’s important to choose the ones that are most likely to guarantee success for your business. Choose one, and you limit the resources available to pursue another.

Usually, we’re inclined to go with the options we think will generate the most money, but you have to dig a lot deeper to discover the true opportunity cost associated with a given product or service. Here are just a few of the things to consider.

1. Money. With certain products and services, you can demand much higher fees, but often there’s a trade-off of time or cost to you as well.
2. Creation/performance time. With every product and service, there’s a set amount of time required of you to actually create it or perform it. Some are more automated, once you put in the initial creation time; some are group-centric, allowing you to leverage your time; others limit you to working with one client at a time.
3. Lead generation time. Some products and services, especially big-ticket items, have longer sales cycles, while others require you to generate higher quantities of traffic in order to reach certain sales levels, so it’s important to consider the amount of time and energy required of you to generate customers or clients to purchase the product or service. It might also be important for you to start generating income quickly, and certain products and services can take much longer to generate profit than others.
4. Emotional labor involved. It’s not something we usually think about, but every product and service requires a certain amount of emotional labor. Writing a book, for instance, might require a lot more emotional labor from you than meeting with a client for a consulting call. You have to consider how important emotional labor is to you, and if it’s realistic to expect yourself to do emotionally demanding work for long periods of time.
5. Long-term stability and sustainability. Some considerations will be more indirect or intangible, like long-term stability and sustainability. For instance, you might prefer doing more work up front, if it ensures greater flexibility and freedom later, or you might want to know that you don’t have to work at an intense pace for too long.
6. Growth potential and saleability. Some products and services might limit your growth potential or your ability to sell your business down the road, especially if they require your direct input.

To give an example, let’s take a virtual assistance business, where there are tons of possibilities for potential service and product offerings. As a virtual assistant, you would need to narrow down the list of possibilities to maybe three or four services or products that you thought would be the most successful.

Say you narrowed down the possibilities to individual client services and some kind of how-to guide to sell on your website. Let’s assume you wanted to generate $5,000 per month in revenue for your business. Here’s how the numbers would work out for each option:

Option 1: Individual Client Services

• Hourly Rate for Services: $45
• Average Client Usage: 10 Hours Per Month
• Ongoing Clients Needed: 12
• Time Required to Fulfill: 120 Hours Per Month (Roughly 28 Hours Per Week)
• Monthly Revenue Generated: $5,400

Option 2: Selling a How-To Guide

• Price for How-To Guide: $30
• Sales Required Per Month: 167
• Time Required to Fulfill: Product-Creation Time
• Monthly Revenue Generated: $5,010

Financially speaking, it’s easy to see what you could make with each option, but here are some other considerations. Think about the individual client services to start.

• How long and how much effort would it take you to generate 12 ongoing clients?
• What about locking yourself in to one-on-one client work? Wouldn’t that affect the overall opportunity cost of that option? Yes, but what if you hired a couple of virtual assistants to work on your team? Say you paid them $25 per hour. Now you would need 25 ongoing clients, but you would still make the same amount of money each month, and 100 percent of the work would be delegated to your team. How long and how much effort would it take you to generate 25 ongoing clients? Could you maintain that level if you could devote 100 percent of your time at that point to that task? How hard would it be to sustain that level going forward?

Now think about the how-to guide:

• How long and how much effort would it take you to get to the level where you could generate 167 monthly sales?
• How much effort would it take to maintain sales of 167 per month over the long term?
• What about surviving while you gain momentum and get up to that number of sales? If you had at least a few clients with the service option, you’d make over $1,000, but if you only sold a few copies of your how-to guide, you’d make less than $100 for the month.

There are a lot of things to think about when it comes to the opportunity cost of a given product or service, and in many ways, the decision will be unique to a given business, individual, and situation, but it’s important to carefully evaluate the products and services you are pursuing in your business and not base the decision solely on the money that the opportunity might create. As you weigh the opportunity cost of a given possibility in your business, ask yourself, “What am I giving up in order to do this, and would it be better to spend my resources on something else?”

How did you decide what products and services to offer in your business, and did you consider the opportunity cost?

Photo by Flickr user AZRI_fi, licensed under CC 2.0

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. — Thomas Edison

There comes a point when being a business owner gets really hard (and I mean really hard). You’ve come up with your big idea, you’ve done all the initial legwork to set it up, and now comes the hard part: Getting the word out about your business and, more importantly, hanging in there while you get the word out about your business. The hard part now becomes not giving up too soon.

The Real Work

When you start a business, when you start a new product or service, when you launch anything really, that’s when you feel like you’re working really hard. That’s when you’re willing to stay up late and get up early to get all the groundwork completed so that you can start making money. As hard as it can seem during this time, you generally know what to do, or you can at least figure out what to do, and you just plow through getting the work done. Then you finish the work. (Cue sound of crickets.) Now what?

All right, now you figure out that you need a marketing plan. Great, that gives you something else to do! You finish the marketing plan and begin implementing it. (You believe in this plan. You’ve given it a lot of thought. You feel really confident about it. It’s going to generate the business you need.) You run through your plan for several days, maybe even several weeks, and then … nothing. Nothing happens, and in our instant-gratification-seeking world, this is where things start getting testy:

• When you’re over the rush of your big idea,
• When you’ve completed the work of creating it,
• When you need to pay the bills, and
• When it feels like you’re sitting on your laurels.

When you’re doing all that initial setup (building your website, creating the product, etc.), it feels like real work. Marketing doesn’t feel like real work, and it gets harder to justify and explain to those around us, particularly those who don’t have businesses. Marketing? What’s marketing? Building a website people get; that sounds like real work. Marketing? Marketing on Facebook and Twitter? All right, now you’re just playing around. Those are the conversations you have, both with yourself and with others, for justifying what you’re doing.

Writing posts for your blog, replying and posting on social networks, doing interviews, commenting on other sites and forums, searching for opportunities to guest post — all these things don’t feel like work, but they’re very necessary for building a successful business, and sticking with these activities for the bulk of your time each day for the six months or year it’s going to take you to gain some traction seems impossible.

Not Giving Up

So, how do you do it? How do you avoid giving up too soon?

1. You make a commitment. Do you want to do this? Are you willing to bet the next 6-12 months of your life on it? You have to be willing to say, “This is my commitment. These are the milestones I intend to reach. This is my intention.”
2. You maintain discipline. Each and every day, you have to say, “This is what I’m committed to doing. These are my top priorities.” You have to focus on what you believe to be the “highest and best use” tasks that will get the word out about your business and start generating income for you. You stay focused, not only on what you’re going to do, but also on what you’re not going to do (compulsively checking email, surfing the Internet, taking a dozen breaks each day, etc.).
3. You trust your plan. You’ve given a lot of thought to the best way for promoting your business, and now you just have to believe in it. Don’t keep switching plans and changing things up. It’s going to take time to see results. Give yourself at least a 90-day test with your current plan before doing any tweaking.
4. Be willing to stay up late and get up early. Although it’s not easy to think about, success isn’t just going to be handed to you. You’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work to get things going. No one’s going to do it for you. As you start to get more successful, you still have to continue getting the word out, and juggling priorities can be a challenge. Know that handling incoming work and generating opportunities for future work are equally important.
5. Find support. Get an accountability partner to help you stay the course. It’s a lot easier to waiver when you don’t have someone else holding you responsible and accountable for your original plans and intentions.

Finding a way to hang in there and not give up on your vision can be the hardest thing you ever do to see your business to success, but you have to figure out how you’re going to stick with it for the time it will take to gain some momentum and start seeing results.

In the past, how did you find ways to hang in there until your idea took hold?

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In this first part of the series, I’m going to talk about the shift that tends to happen to business owners once they hit a tipping point, that place where their businesses snowball seemingly overnight. One day, they’re managing their businesses a certain way, and then they come to a point where they have to make drastic changes in how they handle the increasing demands being placed on them.

Here are a few of the more well-known cases of business owners who’ve had to make drastic shifts away from “busy-ness,” in order to make the most of their time and see to it that the top priorities get the bulk of their attention.

Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of WineLibraryTV and author of “Crush It,” is a big proponent of working hard, putting in the time to build your business, and appreciating the people who support you along the way. He makes it a point to (attempt to) reply to every email he receives, or at least that was the case until this past  year or so. After his book published and things started becoming more demanding, he had to rethink his approach to email, and while he still has the intention of replying to every message he receives, his strategy is completely different. Now, if you email him, you get an auto-responder message along with a video explanation of why he had to change how he handled email communications.

Chris Brogan

Social media expert Chris Brogan had a similar situation. He wrote a book (“Trust Agents“), started a few new business endeavors, and became very popular over the past couple of years. Eventually, his strategy also had to change in order to manage his growing workload. He hired an assistant and developed a new way of handling email communications. Now, if you fill out his contact form, you’ll have to pick one of several options for why you’re contacting him, presumably so that his email filters can route those submissions to one or more people who can streamline those communications.

Leo Babauta

Leo Babauta is probably the most extreme example here, although that’s probably understandable, given that Babauta is a master of minimalism and the founder of Zen Habits. Over the life of his blog, he has ditched email (almost completely), turned off comments on his blog so that he no longer has to weed through comment spam, and made a variety of other changes in the way he handles communications and requests.

Timothy Ferriss

Timothy Ferriss is the author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” and believes in making the most of his time as a business owner. He has a virtual assistant handle a lot of his email communications and outsources as much of his work as possible so that he is free to do other things besides manage a business. A visit to his contact page will give you a glimpse into how he manages his communications and time.

Making the Shift

At a certain point, each of these business owners had to make a decision about how to improve the way they managed their time. Any one of these people might receive a couple thousand emails per day, as well as several hundred blog comments and social network messages. If they spent all of their time responding to these communications, they would hit a plateau with the success of their businesses and eventually burn out.

As a business owner, especially as the demands on your time increase as your business grows, you have to find ways to work smarter so that you make sure the biggest and most important rocks get moved. It’s not the easiest of tasks, but it’s definitely necessary, if you hope to have lasting success.

Have you experienced a shift in your business and in the way you manage your workload? What changes did you make so that you could ensure more time was reserved for the most important tasks?

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Small business owners who find creative ways to manage their current work while continuing to expand their businesses win out in the end; those who can’t eventually hit a plateau and are usually left feeling trapped by their businesses, and figuring out how to be more resourceful and innovative might be the only way to work through it.

Steering a 70-Ton Train

The first thing you generally have to accept when you find yourself at this point in your business is that it’s going to be hard to maintain complete control. Up to this point, it’s been only you, working at your own pace and your own way, so you’ve likely had a lot of control over your business and its growth. In fact, it’s likely that you’ve experienced many lulls throughout the life of your business. During those times, you had a lot more free time to plan, to market and promote your business, as well as organize your workload to suit your style and preferences.

As your business grows, however, things begin to change. It’s a quiet roar in the distance warning you that something is coming, and then all of a sudden, the 70-ton train is moving. All that marketing and promotion and hard work has started paying off, and you now have the momentum of that big lead generation train behind you. The only problem is that you haven’t built the tracks, and now it’s hard to steer.

You’ll have to get used to keeping things moving in the general direction you want them to go, without having absolute control over every detail. As you find help, you’re going to have to accept different working styles, get used to training and teaching others on your support team, and even adjust to the demands of your new role as manager (or engineer).

Learning to Take Baby Steps

Another thing you might want to prepare for is working in small increments to get things on track. Not everything is going to work immediately or as expected, so it’s going to take a lot more patience and persistence to see your business through the growing pains.

You may have to “try on” several solutions before finding the fit that’s just right for your situation and business, but you have to trust that a solution exists or risk relegating yourself to that plateau forever. Keep searching until you find the right match.

Also, prepare to make adjustments. As you put the support structure in place for your business, it’s unlikely that it will work seamlessly right out of the gate. You’ll need to modify the plan and your support team as you go, so set out to make gradual and steady changes over time so that you’re left with a strong and sturdy foundation to support you.

Being Resourceful and Innovative

The last part of the puzzle is adding support when you’re lacking the time and money necessary to build it. How do you hire help and train someone, for example, when you (a) don’t have the money to pay him or her and (b) don’t have the time to devote to training and figuring out what to delegate?

First (and again), you’ll need to be prepared to take baby steps, but second, you’ll have to figure out ways to be more resourceful and creative when finding support for your business. Some solutions might include:

• Bartering with other business owners who might be in a similar position,
• Starting an internship program or working with local college students, or
• Bootstrapping to incrementally build a budget for a virtual assistant.

Think about everything you have to offer, and find ways to make those resources work to your advantage. Chances are, something you have at your disposal is exactly what someone else needs, and that kind of exchange can get you on your way without taking much in the way of time and money.

Seeing a business through stages of growth and change can be challenging, especially for small and solo business owners who are strapped for resources, but with a little creativity, there might just be a way to push through the plateau and take your business to the next level.

How have you used creativity and resourcefulness to grow your business when limited on time and money?

Photo by Flickr user Chris Denbow, licensed under CC 2.0

Here are a few things that I know for sure:

• We’re more afraid of success than failure. Why? We generally know failure. We must know it to be in business for ourselves. Success, on the other hand, is uncharted territory. It changes things, and although we have the internal butterflies of hope and excitement about what’s to come, we also can’t help but feel a little uncertain and afraid of the unknown.
• We know what we need to do to succeed. We simply avoid it. Sometimes we avoid it out of fear of success or failure. Sometimes we avoid it because it seems too simple (solutions, in our minds, should be more complex). Other times, even if we hate to admit it, we avoid it out of laziness or because we’d rather be doing other things, like hanging out on social networks or surfing the web. No, we know what we need to be doing, but success comes by having the discipline and courage to actually do it.
• It’s not about the office supplies. I used to visit Office Depot probably once a week in search of that end-all, be-all solution for getting my business off the ground. It had to be there (right?) in all those reams of colorful paper and all those organizational systems. If I could just bring more order to my office, I thought, I would surely succeed. I visit the office supply store about twice a year now, after finally realizing that the solution isn’t there, and if there needs to be order, it’s probably internal and is more mental than physical.
• It is possible to bootstrap it. Just as we want that complex solution (so we avoid the simple and obvious route in search of it), we also want it to cost a fortune (more avoidance). In the past six months, I’ve conducted probably 100 interviews with entrepreneurs and small business owners, and while there were a few (very few) occasions where they suggested having enough initial financing to get a business off the ground, most entrepreneurs shared stories of starting on a shoestring and using cost-effective promotion techniques (like the media, word-of-mouth and content marketing) to build their companies.
• We must take care of ourselves. As business owners, this is usually the one we struggle with most, but taking care of ourselves is vital to the success of our companies. Balancing the demands of a business and a life can be challenging, and some would say that it’s an impossible feat, but somewhere around those demands, we have to make room for our own needs. It’s not the easiest thing to do, especially when there are deadlines and clients to please and promotional efforts to be done. At the end of the day, there are not enough hours, but kind of like an athlete maintains his or her health in order to perform at the highest level, we must do the same.
• Entrepreneurs and small business owners are a helpful bunch. I can’t imagine that a more helpful group exists out there than entrepreneurs and small business owners. Nowhere else will you see one business owner help another before he helps himself. When you first go into business for yourself, competition is the word that sticks out in your mind, but eventually, you begin to love seeing other businesses succeed, and instead of feeling envious, you feel inspired.
• Our businesses can’t be a state secret. It’s funny now to think about how little promotion I wanted to do for my business in the beginning; it was so intimidating and nerve-racking. Now, I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. In the beginning, marketing and promotion have that ick-factor associated with them, but over time, you come to appreciate the value of your own products and services, but even when you come to appreciate it, that doesn’t mean everyone knows about it. We have to be willing to put ourselves out there and tell the world about our businesses.

I think the biggest lessons I’ve learned are not the most obvious ones; they’re not the ones I thought I needed to know, nor are they the ones that can be learned from a book. Those lessons (the ones where someone says, “Here’s how you promote your business through the media,” or “Here’s how you do social or in-person networking.”), those are the easy ones. The hardest lessons for me have been the ones I’ve had to learn on my own the hard way, through trial-and-error and candid looks in the mirror.

What business lessons do you know for sure?

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1. Run an interview series on your blog, video cast, or podcast.

It might seem counter-intuitive to provide promotion and publicity for others when you’re trying to provide it for yourself, but in reality, an interview series can actually accomplish both of those goals at the same time. Decide on a great topic that’s relevant to your target audience and that you’d love to get the perspectives of others on. For example, if you are a virtual assistant, you might run an interview series on the topic of getting things done.

Next step, set a target quantity of interviews. A good starting point would be 25, but you could go much higher  (“100 Business Owners’ Tips for GTD”). You want to do at least 10 interviews, because the more interviewees you have, the more people there are who will promote the series and the more attractive it will be to readers, viewers, or listeners.

The setup doesn’t have to be very complicated either. You could ask 100 business owners, for instance, one question through Facebook and Twitter, like, “What’s your best tip for getting things done?”

2. Hold a free (and irresistible) tele-seminar.

Think of an in-demand topic, something that concerns or interests a lot of people (one idea could be “Take Control of Your Facebook Privacy”). Consider sending out “formal invitations” to 50-100 VIPs in your network (making sure to let them know they’re your VIPs) and ask them to “bring a date.” The setup for this can be simple, too. A free conference line will fit the bill.

3. Arrange a “coffee date” or informal luncheon around a favorite book.

Pick a book that’s relevant to your target audience and set up a discussion or “one-day book club.” A great idea would be to get local sponsors, too. One business owner I know coordinated a luncheon at a local farm to discuss her favorite book.

If you’re really nervy and live in a good market for it, you could even try to coordinate a book signing, especially if it’s for an up-and-coming author who would love the publicity (and on that note, why not call in local press to let them know about the event?).

4. Hold a dinner party.

Invite 10-15 special guests who are nearby, maybe people who run complementary businesses to yours. If you want to keep the cost down, make it a potluck and ask everyone to bring a dish. Get together to brainstorm joint venture possibilities for marketing and co-promotions. You might even put together package deals and steep discounts when customers purchase something from every vendor in the group.

5. Coordinate a group-sponsored contest.

Put together a really awesome “business start-up” package or something enticing to your ideal audience. Then run a week-long event where folks tweet for chances to win. Get creative (the more creative, the better), because that means more interest and buzz around the contest.

6. Host a blog carnival or content round-up.

Remember those? Decide on how you want to set it up, set some ground rules , and then invite people to participate through Twitter and other social networks.

7. Go on a “promotional tour.”

You know how actors heavily promote their new movies in the week of their release? Why not set up a promotional tour for your business? Decide on a topic that’s relevant to your audience, one on which you’re very knowledgeable. If you’re a child safety blogger, for instance, there’s your topic. Contact 10-20 related and complementary bloggers and offer an interview on the topic of choice (so, if you’re the child safety blogger, contact 10-20 parent bloggers to offer up an interview on the topic of child safety).

In the week before your “promotional tour” begins, start internal promotion of the tour, mentioning that you’re participating in upcoming interviews on the topic on your blog and on social networks. As you do the interviews, link back to them, and at the end of the tour, send out a “round-up” blog post or email newsletter with all the links.

Promoting a business doesn’t have to be a dreaded chore and can actually be a fun way to interact with your target audience and fellow business owners. Instead of having to worry about direct mailers and business cards hitting the trash can, email marketing pieces ending up reported as spam, or being turned away from disinterested prospects, wouldn’t it be great to have folks saying, “I can’t wait to see what you come up with next!”?

What’s the most creative, buzz-worthy marketing you’ve ever done for your business?

Photo by Flickr user lululemon athletica, licensed under CC 2.0

If I had it to do it over again, here are the things I would have done differently.

1. I would have avoided the billable-hour trap. I have no doubt, if I had things to do over again, I would have created more automated and group-centric sources of income from the very start. I would not have made one-on-one services such a big part of my revenue. I think setting a business up that way limits how far you can go and eventually burns you out. On top of that, in many cases, you can provide the same services that you would provide one-on-one in other ways and reach the same result. For example, instead of provide one-on-one consulting or coaching, you could provide a group program or membership site.
2. I would have set up and maintained a steady content stream. No matter what the business, online or brick-and-mortar, creating online content is a great way to promote it and generate leads. Every single contact and client who has found me over the past few years has done so through content I’ve created online. Just a few days ago, in fact, someone contacted me and mentioned articles I had written several years ago, so that content is still serving me today.
3. I would have found a balance between creating content around “my voice” and “guest voices.” It hasn’t been until this most recent year that I’ve seen the real value in balancing my own voice with those of people who share similar views and goals. Each of us has something unique to offer in the way of creating content: Our voices (our unique way of putting things and relating to others), as well as our unique blend of experiences and expertise. By bringing other voices to the table, you have greater depth and more to offer. You also get the added benefit of a connection with the other expert, which has so much potential — joint ventures, partnerships, referral relationships, extra promotion, cheerleaders for your business, and much more.
4. I would have set some boundaries for myself and my business. I would have decided from the very beginning where I was going to draw the line with clients and other service providers so that I didn’t set myself up to be taken advantage of and to be a doormat. Knowing what I know now and knowing how this can actually equate to greater success and more opportunities, I would have been less prone to take any and every job or client that came my way.
5. I would have worried more about passion than profit (knowing now that the money will follow) Now I can see that when I’m connected to a bigger purpose for my life and business, things just begin falling into place and synchronizing, so if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t chase down opportunities strictly for financial reasons. I would be much more interested in following an intention for my business and allowing the money to follow.

The mistakes I’ve made over time have led me to where I am today. I wouldn’t change those things, but if I wanted to start a new business, I would apply the lessons I’ve learned so that I could save myself those missteps from earlier days.

If you had it to do over, what would you do differently in your business?  What lessons learned the hard way would you apply to a new business today?

Photo by Flickr user Corey Leopold, licensed under CC 2.0

As fun as the celebrations may be, though, it can be worthwhile doing more than just throwing a party, though. When you’ve been in business for a year or more, it’s important to revisit all that initial planning you did to see if your original approach to running your business is still working for you. As you run your business, it’s not uncommon to find that assumptions you made during the planning process aren’t entirely accurate or that you’ve ended up moving in a different direction to your original plans. Whether or not you wrote a formal business plan, once a year or so goes by, it’s good to take a look at the plans you made and update them for the future.

1. Did you meet your original projections? Can you make new projections for the next year? Many business owners start out with an idea of their break-even point, along with some projection on what they’ll need to do to make more. But the more information you have (like last year’s sales figures), the better you can project what will happen in the next year or so.
2. Is your industry still the same? Lately, it seems like the economy has caused problems in every industry. However, it’s important to take a look at the general shape of your industry, as well as the trends it’s experiencing, if you want your business to keep up.
3. Do you need to make any big purchases for your business in the next year? New software and hardware come out every year and staying up-to-date is crucial. You may also need to consider any big expenses that would help your business in the coming year, like attending a conference.
4. Do you need help? When your business launched, you may have planned things so that you could manage everything on your own. But as a business grows, it can be tough for one person to handle everything. Consider whether a new tool, a contractor or even an employee could make things easier to manage.
5. Are your goals the same as last year? As the business owner, it’s your goals that drive the business forward. That means checking in on your goals and making sure that you setting new ones can be very important to growing your business.

How are you reassessing your business plans?

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