Here’s a quick shout out and link to Laurie – a freelance writer – who shared 10 Tips for Starting a Website or Blog for Freelancers.

On June 28, 1994 I removed my U.S. Navy uniform for the last time and donned a business suit. Overnight, I went from steady-paycheck-sailor to self-employed life insurance agent (although I preferred the term “financial planner”). The number 1 rule you learn as a new life insurance agent is this:

You’re either in front of a client making your pitch or you’re trying to get in front of a client to make your pitch.

Continue Reading

So here’s the scenario. You have some capital to invest in 5 very small, early stage businesses. The only problem is you have 20 applications from businesses who are competing to get that capital. How do you assess which ones should get the money? What are the top 5-10 specific questions you’d ask (not just “what’s your business plan”) the business owner?

Keep in mind, this is an investment and not charity, so you’re assessing which businesses have the greatest potential to generate the most value for the most people. That includes you (the investor), the business itself, the surrounding community and the potential customer base for the business. By the way, this is based on a real situation.

Here are my top 10:

1. Why are you passionate about this business?

2. Who is your immediate market? Extended market?

3. What will they find remarkable about your product, product line or service?

4. What are your revenue targets for each of the next 3 years?

5. How will you reach those targets?

6. What are the top 3 obstacles to achieving your targets, and how will you overcome them?

7. What unforseen threats could prevent you from reaching your targets?

8. How will you invest this capital, and what sort of return do you project, and when?

9. Where might you go for additional capital if the need arises?

10. What will you do if you don’t receive this capital?

(Via To-Done)

Mark O’Neill is integrating podcasts into his ebay auctions.

“After discovering a great website for making audio files and RSS feeds, I am now offering audio descriptions of my eBay auctions and RSS feeds for people to keep up with my latest offerings. You may have heard of this concept by another name – podcasting …

“As well as catering to visually-impaired customers, you are also adding a human voice to your auctions, which could make buyers more inclined to trust you more.

“In each future recording, I am planning to add my own jingle and catchy tune as well as promote my other auctions. Consider it your own personal eBay radio station (move over Griff!). Why not start podcasting your own eBay broadcasts and publicize them on your eBay ‘About Me’ page?”

That would make for a nice case study. Anybody else out there doing this?

You’ve probably heard about The Million Dollar Home Page. If not, it’s a project that was launched by a 21 year-old college student named Alex Tew of Wiltshire, England. The idea was ridiculously and embarassingly simple: make a million dollars by selling advertising space at $1 per pixel on The Million Dollar Homepage. Ridiculous right? Think again. As of today, Alex has only sold 999,000 pixels. For you mathophobes out there, that’s $999,000 earned in less than 5 months. The last 1000 pixels will go to the highest bidder on ebay (current bid: 153,100).

It doesn’t end there, however. Alex’s embarrassingly simple idea has been copied more than a few times by other folks hoping to milk the MDHP cash cow for all it’s worth. The latest copycat is Teresa Luquette, who created The Million Dollar Womens Homepage this past November. Her earnings from the copycat effort so far: $133,300. Not bad for a couple of months and a knockoff idea.

All copycat scorn aside, the moral of the story is this. Originality is a beautiful, but often over-rated ideal. The smart money invests in an idea that’s been proven to work.

(via Denise Wakeman)

I actually wrote this article a few years ago (before blogs rose to prominence), so it may seem a bit out of date. I think there are still some good tips in it though, so have at it.

10 Tips for Writing Better Articles

Writing articles is a great way to create exposure for yourself and your business. In fact, I’d suggest it’s one of the best marketing tools you can use. Webmasters and newsletter publishers are always looking for good content. Further, aside from your time investment, it’s completely free advertising.

Here are 10 practical tips to ensure your articles get published and read by others.

Continue Reading

People often confuse logos with what’s really important – the brand image (what people think and feel about the company). Whisper Blog uses Ricoh as an excellent example of such confusion. By definition, the logo is merely the brand (i.e. the symbol).

“A logo is not a brand strategy. A logo is instead a graphic symbol of a brand. Nothing more. A logo becomes layered with meaning only after invested with the emotions of the consumer. Understanding how a brand becomes invested with emotion to create market movement is the science of brand strategy.” (emphasis mine)

How does your brand – logo, name or other symbol – become invested with the thoughts, feelings and emotions of your network?

There’s a tremendous swell of interest in podcasting. For many reasons ranging from downright, unmitigated narcissism (that’s me) to preaching the word (amen) to making a buck (ka-ching) to creating world peace (ahhhh). And everything in between. Oh hell. It’s just fun.

The biggest problem for would-be podcasters is figuring out how the hell to do it. And it looks like that problem may soon have a much simpler solution in the form of Odeo (website. cool name – a spin-off of audio perhaps). Odeo (blog) is the brain-child of “Google alumnus” Noah Glass and Evan Williams, the 32 year-old founder of blogger.

For an idea of how Ev and Noah are trying to simplify podcasting for everyone, you can read Jason Calacanis’ post today titled Odeo podcasting software/portal demo by Evan Williams.

Podcasting is significant for solopreneurs. Period. Here’s why.

1. Transportable Content – if you create a podcast, your network can listen to it anywhere they want. Why? Because they can download it to their mp3 player. You can also transfer your recordings to CDs and offer them to your network. You no longer have to go the “traditional publishing” route to get your ideas/content into audiobook form. If you do a one hour talk, give away or sell CDs that expand upon the the ideas offered in the talk. Hand out CDs as audio business cards. There are so many ways to feed your network this way.

2. Passive Revenue – It’s great to have a full house of wonderful clients. At the same time, it’s a financial hamster wheel. If you want the revenue to continue, you have to keep the the clients coming. You have to keep putting in the hours with those clients. For some people, that works. For others, it might be nice to cut your work-load down by 40% without a comparable reduction in revenue.

3. Brand Equity – quality content goes a long way toward establishing you as the expert in the hearts and minds of your network. And that’s the goal. To make yourself the go-to gal/guy when the need arises.

4. Social Equity – there’s a level of personality that comes through in speech, which the written word fails to capture. People get a better sense of who you really are when they hear you engage in conversation. When people feel as though they know you personally, they’re that much closer to doing business with you. Assuming they like you.

The opposite will also happen. Assuming you do it right, you’ll turn some people off. And the beauty of that is you filter out incompatible clients. But with all that passive revenue, will you really care?

That’s all I can think of right now, and I’m sure there’s more to be said about it. Feel free to add to the list in the comments section.

In addition, I have to say this. Podcasting is not a panacea or some cure-all for your business building challenges. You’ll still have to do the work of building a network. You’ll still have to be very focused and clear about the value your bring to that network. You’ll still have to create valuable content for that network. The beauty of podcasting however, is you can also involve your network in the content creation – via interviews, recorded teleclasses, R&D calls, etc.

Harry Joiner repeats an old joke that, unfortunately, contains more than a seed of truth. In the joke, a man chooses to spend eternity in hell rather than heaven because Satan did such a fantastic job of selling the “hell experience.” Naturally, the situation ends badly for the guy:

“Immediately, Satan’s sales rep reappears and escorts the guy to
hell, where he’s shackled to a stone wall. ‘Here’s your new home!’ the
man is told. ‘But wait! You can’t do this!” the guy yells. ‘I was here
just yesterday, and everyone was having a wonderful time. What’s going
on?’

“Satan’s sales rep says: ‘Yesterday you were a prospect …

“‘Today you’re a customer!’“

More often than not, the customer service function is disconnected from the sales and marketing function of winning customers. And I’m not here to beat up on customer service people. Their job isn’t easy. After all, most of the people they talk to are complaining about something, and when you work in that kind of environment day-in and day-out, it’s easy to develop a defensive posture.

However, I am here to beat up on the concept of customer service. It’s an outdated concept that’s rooted in the notion that customer service is about solving customer problems. While it’s true that solving the problem is part of the formula, the larger context to consider is the customer’s experience. I can get my problem solved, yet still have a terrible experience.

As an example, I went to a restaurant with my daughter yesterday. Olive Garden. Normally a pleasant experience. Good food. Relatively low price. Pleasant atmosphere. Service above average (usually). This day, however, not the case. From the get-go, the waitress was surly. Direct. Abrupt even. Bordering on rude.

She brought the initial appetizers, but forgot the bread sticks and grated cheese (problem). After I realized she forgot them, I asked nicely if she could bring them. Really. I was very nice. She brought them and offered some bullshit excuse for why she forgot them. In a surly tone, no less. Did I wait 45 minutes for a table just for this (it was a busy day)? Problem solved. Experience sucked.

Fortunately for Olive Garden, I’ve had enough pleasant experiences with them, and I’m willing to overlook this bad one. It was a very busy day after all. But what about the next time? Every experience your customer has becomes part of the brand (the customer’s gut feeling about you).

Forget customer service. Think experiential marketing.

Jack Welch:

“Some people say I’m afraid to compete. I think one of the jobs of a businessperson is to get away from slugfests and into niches where you can prevail. The fundamental goal is to get rid of weakness, to find a sheltered womb where no one can hurt you. There’s no virtue in looking for a fight. If you’re in a fight, your job is to win. But if you can’t win, you’ve got to find a way out.”

As quoted by Noel M. Tichy and Stratford Sherman in Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will.

Seth Godin writes about his experience with American Express:

“. . . a customer just took the initiative to call in, to do business with you, to pay attention. And the company, just to save a buck or so in excess capacity, makes this eager person just sit and wait.”

I wonder how much American Express paid Ellen DeGeneres and Robert Deniro to appear in their beautiful, entertaining and well-executed commercials. I wonder how many millions of dollars went into the hands of ad agencies, marketers, designers and media outlets to help AmEx become a trusted and respected financial brand in the minds of consumers.

And when all those people do their job effectively . . . when their work inspires someone to take the next step toward becoming a customer. After all that goes just as it should, AmEx pisses it away. They fumble the ball on the five yard line.

Little did they know if they could have handled this one customer correctly, they might have earned an evangelist. If they could have blown his socks off with their service (like Captain Denny), they most certainly would have made an evangelist.

Great marketing. Lousy execution. You can shine shit, but it’s still shit.

Conversely, I can’t tell you the last time I saw an Apple Powerbook ad or commercial. Yet, because Ben McConnell talked very briefly about how well Apple executes; how well they managed his experience from start to finish, end-to-end . . . I’m strongly considering an Apple as my next computer.

Ben called it “experiential marketing.” See, besides investing in ads, Apple also invested in Ben’s experience, Ben’s satisfaction. They blew his socks off. And they profited from that investment in his experience. Profit from the sale, and, although it may not show up as a line item on any financial report, they earned a profit on Ben’s mouth. How many people do you think read his blog? How many people do you think hear him speak each year? Will he continue to evangelize Apple? Most likely.

The next time you consider writing a check for an advertisement of any type, ask yourself if you’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Ask yourself if that money would be better invested in your customer’s experience. Ask yourself if your company looks as good naked as it does underneath all the fancy advertising.

Go read gapingvoid. Or Halley’s Comment. Or Seth’s Blog. Or Tom Peters. Or any other blog you can’t go a day without reading. It might be a stretch to call these four blogs “brands,” but the fact is, after you get done reading them, there’s a good chance you feel bigger than before you started. Expanded by the ideas, wisdom and energy imparted by their brilliant authors.

Great brands make us bigger. They open doors in us. Doors to the parts of our soul we didn’t even know existed. Or doors that we closed a long time ago because it wasn’t safe to let those parts of us come out. Or doors we closed just because we don’t live there any more – mentally, emotionally or geographically.

Scott Goodson, writing in reveries, states:

“The best brands add value and meaning to people’s lives. They develop a relationship way beyond the sale.”

I think back to the Anheuser Busch, “Honoring Our Troops” Super Bowl commercial. It opened some doors in me. My down-home, Midwestern roots. My eight years in the US Navy and the sense of patriotism that goes along with it. Although I rarely express those parts of myself (because I no longer live in that world), they’re in me, and they always will be.

Will I ever drink a Budweiser beer? Probably not, but after watching the commercial, I feel bigger. In some ways more proud and in touch with lost parts of myself. But what value does that have to Anheuser Busch? Well, other than me blogging about it, not much. To me, it’s priceless. There are, however, plenty of patriotic beer drinkers who still reside in middle America. Think they’re closer to Budweiser products because of that commercial? I do.

Jennifer Rice, What’s Your Brand Mantra:

“Successful brands allow customers to assign their own meaning to a product or service, which gives them a feeling of ownership and self-expression.”

THE HUGHTRAIN: “THE MARKET FOR SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN IS INFINITE.”

Watch an iPod commercial. The product is about so much more than THE PRODUCT. The gadget. The gizmo. It’s about the door it opens in you – the fresh, young, hip space in your soul that you visit occasionally, but should probably visit more often. It’s about the part of you that’s liberated whether you ever actually buy the product or not. It’s about how much bigger you feel because of the entire iPod experience.

Read a Tom Peters rant. Disjointed. Erratic. Energetic. Buzzing along like he does. Like a double shot of espresso chased down with a 40 ounce Red Bull. But it starts the synapses firing off in your brain like Jiffy Pop jumping out of the pan. And you feel bigger. Your mind feels bigger. More alive.

WELCOME TO XYZ COMPANY. HOW MAY WE BLAST OPEN SOME DOORS TO YOUR SOUL TODAY?

That needs to be the mantra of every business trying to make it in the 21st century.

Kathy Sierra from Creating Passionate Users:

“The more you learn, the better you are at something. The better you are, the more engaging it is. If you can help people have more of that feeling, they won’t talk about how good you are– they’ll talk about how much they kick ass.

“And that’s a powerful formula for creating passionate users.”

Great brands create passionate users.

GREAT BRANDS MAKE US BIGGER.

Thanks to Smart Blogging Babe, Jennifer Rice, for alerting us to this fine article in Fast Company Magazine. Makes my manifesto look a little smarter (by the way, did you vote for it yet). And lord knows I need all the help I can get.

“At the same time, the rise of digitized content — plus developments such as online self-service — makes it easier for sellers to atomize previously linked goods. ‘Any product that can be digitized lends itself to being taken apart,’ says Manjit Yadav, associate professor of marketing at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School. Instead of buying a year’s subscription to The New York Times for $481, or even one issue, you can purchase a single article from the online archives for $2.95.”

This post from Dave Young (Branding Blog and WizardofAds) supports my imperitive to “Forget Control. It’s an Illusion.” Surrender control to the god of value.

“At the heart of every moneymaking ad campaign is a powerful strategy, a story that needed to be told. But not every business has such a story. When your ads aren’t working, return to the core, look at first causes, heal the central wound. No writer, no matter how brilliant, can dress up a bad idea and sell it to intelligent people. It usually takes more than good writing to pull you back from the brink of disaster.

“How did you get to the brink of disaster in the first place?

“Business owners wander near the brink when they:
(1.) fail to have an attractive core strategy.
(2.) pretend their competitors don’t matter.
(3.) believe that ‘reaching the right people’ is the secret to success.
(4.) worry about “increasing traffic” more than delivering a wonderful customer experience.

“Give me a business that delights its customers and I can write ads that will take them to the stars. But force me to write ads for a business that does only an average job with their customers and I’ll have to work like a madman to keep that business from sliding backwards. Unless they have no competitors.”

Are you telling a story that needs to be told?

Are you delighting customers?

2a. Forget Marketing. Think Conversations. “For thousands of years, we knew what markets were: conversations between people who sought out others who shared the same interests . . . Conversation is a profound act of humanity. So once were markets.” (The Cluetrain Manifesto by Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Chris Locke and Rick Levine)

Marketing. A 20th century relic originally meant to connect a business to its customers. Yet, with it’s invasive nature and clinical talk of prospects, targets, segments, and USPs, it’s actually become the barrier between a business and it’s customer. Perhaps it’s time to think differently about marketing. No. Perhaps it’s time to stop thinking about marketing altogether.

1. Forget Customers and Prospects. Think Partners. Think network. Better still, think Sally Helgesen’s “web of inclusion.” Invite people into your web and feed them. Marketer vs. prospect/customer is a dead-end. Get used to it.

2. Forget Marketing. Feed Your Network. Stop trying to get/acquire/attract clients. It’s too 20th century. It’s dead. People don’t want to be sold. They don’t want to be marketed to. People are hungry, and they want to be fed. Find or build a network of people with common interests and needs. Find out what they’re hungry for and feed them (wasn’t there a Jewish guy who did that a couple thousand years ago?).

2a. Forget Marketing. Think Conversations. “For thousands of years, we knew what markets were: conversations between people who sought out others who shared the same interests . . . Conversation is a profound act of humanity. So once were markets.” (The Cluetrain Manifesto by Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Chris Locke and Rick Levine)

3. Forget Control. It’s an Illusion. Some marketers dislike blogs because they think it gives too much control to the consumer. “If I don’t have their email address, how can I send them my newsletter? How can I market to them? What will make them read my blog?”

Forget control. It’s an illusion. Surrender control to the god of value. Make an impact. Feed your network. If you do that, they will find you. If you don’t, they might read your newsletter (if it gets past the spam filter), but they won’t buy from you. This doesn’t mean forget email. If you can get an email address, get it. But forget control.

4. Forget Selling. Connect. Show up. Do you. Care deeply. Have fun. Add value, and offer it to your network. That sells itself.

5. Forget Logos. Think Gut Feelings. Logos are not brands. They are symbols. Marty Neumeier: “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.” Every single interaction you have with someone contributes to their GUT FEELING about you. Have a logo, because people expect it, but aim for the gut. What gut feeling are you helping to create about yourself?

6. Forget “Think Big.” Think Small. Church of the Customer’s “bite-sized chunks.” Go ahead and offer your $100-$500 per hour service, but know that’s a lot for most people to swallow. Feed your network in bite-sized chunks:

• Free articles
• $25.00 Audio Recordings.
• $15.00 PDF Special Reports.
• $39.00 Email Course.
• $99.00 Live Teleclass

Smaller pieces of value feed more people. Smaller pieces of value are the bread crumbs that lead back to you. Smaller pieces of value build your brand. Smaller pieces of value are easier to share. Smaller pieces of value can be passive revenue. Your $100 – $500 per hour service is much more valuable when you have a solid foundation of passive revenue to support it.

7. Forget “Think Big” (again). Think Be/Do Me. It’s trendy to “think big” about who you are, who you can become, what you can do and what you can offer people. Forget it. Just do/be you. That’s good enough, and it’s all people really want. Test the edges of your comfort zone, and be willing to stretch, but forget TRYING to become anything. It just slows down a process that happens naturally in its own time.

8. Forget “Next Big Thing.” Think Just This Thing. Trying to be/create the next big thing is a distraction. Just do the thing in front of you. Respond to your network’s needs. That’s big enough. Expand your skill sets. Relentlessly. If you do that, one day you may look up and realize you’ve actually created the next big thing.

9. Forget Professionalism. Think Humanism. Stop hiding the best parts of you behind the wall of professionalism. Stop saying “just the right words.” Stop being a stuffed shirt, stuffed skirt, talking head, Mr/Ms. Roboto. Stutter. Stammer. Be vulnerable. Be pissed. Be real. Be human.

Technology is making it easier for you to connect with your customers and build your brand. And lately, that trend is gaining momentum. As evidence, USA Today is running the following story: H-P kicks digital entertainment into high gear.

“The goal, H-P Chief Executive Carly Fiorina says, is ‘delivering simplicity into what is today a much too complicated world.’ Digital electronics in general are too expensive and too difficult for consumers to use, says Fiorina, who will give a speech Friday at the giant trade show. They should “work together easily and intuitively,” she says.”

I’m hoping that’s not a new revelation for Carly. I’m a long-time fan, and I’d hate to think she’s been blind to the complexity thing till now. In any event, I think you’ll see other tech companies following suit to simplify the technology.

If you’re a blogosphere regular, you’ve undoubtedly heard the term podcasting being thown around like a beach ball at a baseball game. If blog is the #1 word for 2004, it’s looking like podcasting may be the #1 word for 2005 (remember, you heard it here first).

ipodder.org explains podcasting this way:

“Think how a desktop aggregator works. You subscribe to a set of feeds, and then can easily view the new stuff from all of the feeds together, or each feed separately.

Podcasting works the same way, with one exception. Instead of reading the new content on a computer screen, you listen to the new content on an iPod or iPod-like device.

Think of your iPod as having a set of subscriptions that are checked regularly for updates. Today there are a limited number of programs available this way. The format used is RSS 2.0 with enclosures.”

Basically, podcasting seems to be the convergence of RSS (blogging), digital audio recording technology and mp3 player technology. And everyone’s talking about it. Well not everyone, but here are a few in my world . . .

Smart Blogging Babes Yvonne Divita and Jennifer Rice, along with Jackie Huba (Church of the Customer), participated in a podcast hosted by Effern over at The Vision Thing.

Kimberly Black of Agile Business Content podcasts from the beach and talks about “podcasting, making money, finding your own voice and making plans for the new year.”

800-CEO-READ podcasts an excerpt of Built to Last by Jim Collins. It’s a nice little try-it-before-you-buy-it kind of a thing. Good idea for you AudioInfopreneurs out there to help sell more stuff.

Although it’s not a true podcast, copywriting guru David Garfinkle recorded a series of short interviews with marketing experts, and made them available on his World Copywriting Blog.

Mike Stewart, The Internet Audio Guy, is capitalizing on the podcasting craze. He even takes it step further, and incorporates video into his sales pitch. Again, this is not true podcasting, but I’m sure you’ll see video becoming available via iPods and other media players.

The Digital Podcast Directory currently lists over 500 different podcasts on topics ranging from business to erotica to travel.

Lately, I’ve found myself saying that marketing is a conversation. 1000 years ago, if you were yak dealer, you had to take your yaks to the market, where you hopefully met people wanting to buy yaks. That’s the only way you could talk to your prospects.

Then the phone came along, and you could just call prospects and talk to them without leaving your home or office. Or you spoke to people through your brochures, flyers and other written materials.

Then came websites, which made it even easier to talk to people, assuming you could get them to your website.

Then came blogs. And the thing about blogs – relative to websites, brochures and such – is to be an effective medium, people expect you to be real. They expect you to write like you talk to your friends. They don’t want the marketing-ease language. They want you to show up as you. And if you do that, and they like you, and you create something of value for them, they will probably buy it.

Now comes podcasting. It’s another was to easily CONNECT with your prospects. It’s not even fitting to call them prospects any longer. These are your friends, your network, your partners. Podcasting lets you talk to them, and it allows them to walk around with you in their back pocket. Assuming you offer value. As suggested in the Customer Evangelism Playbook, it’s another way to “napsterize your knowledge.”

This is how you build your brand in the 21st century.

I’m making my way through The Brand Gap, by Marty Neumeier. Actually, it’s my second time through because it’s a lightning-quick read. Although his central idea is a bit difficult to grasp, there are some worthwhile concepts to be culled. I’m going to use some of Marty’s words to help provide some clarity about the importance of branding your small business. Continue Reading