Nurturing the natural entrepreneurial spirit

This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

When I was 40, I learned to ride a motorcycle. It wasn’t difficult to learn, but there did come a point where I hit a roadblock. I was doing something wrong which caused me – twice – to drop the bike at slow speed, when pulling away from a stop sign. It totally blew my confidence, even though I was a licensed rider. It took me months of talking about the problem and reading and getting encouragement from other women riders online – all of this while not riding at all – to finally figure out the problem.

And then, the time came to get back on the bike. My husband rode my bike for me to the high school parking lot and my daughter tagged along. I found myself sitting on the bike with the shifter in neutral, exhaust rumbling, and tears running down my face. Scared that I was going to drop my beautiful bike again, and fail at something I really wanted to do. My self-talk went something like this:

“Self, you can either do this, or not. It’s up to you. But you have to decide. If you’re not going to do it, you have to sell the bike. And you know what? You CAN do it. You’ve already done it. You have a license that proves you know how to do it. You just have to drop that shifter into first and roll forward. Just go.”

As I sat there, I happened to look over at my daughter, sitting on the curb and poking a stick around in the dirt. Perfectly happy to spend her Saturday watching me go in circles in a parking lot. And I thought, “If I give up just because this is really hard, what does she learn?”

My desire to set a good example, to be a lesson in perserverence in the face of uncertainty, won out. I pulled in the clutch, dropped into first gear, and rolled forward. After an hour-long practice session in the parking lot, including plenty of turns from a stop, I hit the streets – newly confident and ready to ride. And I haven’t dropped the bike since. Well, at least not for the same reason.

I share this story because being an entrepreneur is a little like learning to ride a motorcycle at age 40. You understand the risk, and take it anyway. You realize that we don’t just persevere for ourselves, but also for the example it sets for others – including our kids.

Have you noticed that kids seem to be born with the entrepreneurial spirit? With the desire to be self-sufficient? It manifests itself in lemonade stands, lawn-mowing gigs and babysitting jobs. But somewhere along the way, that spirit gets – if not crushed, certainly back-seated to the notion of working for someone else. That a job is stability, and that owning a business is crazy-talk.

As a business owner, you have a unique opportunity to nurture your kids’ natural sense of entrepreneurship. To show them that their talents and interests hold at least as much potential as that job at McDonald’s. As summer approaches, what will you do to teach at home what’s not being taught at school: that entrepreneurialism is at least as rewarding as building a career with an employer – and in many ways, moreso? That risk – especially calculated risk – is good? That sometimes, you just have to take that leap of faith and roll forward?

How you fire someone can impact your brand

Have you ever been fired? Or had to fire someone? Let me tell you, it sucks. It sucks regardless of which side of the desk you’re on. I’ve had three experiences with being fired, and they all sucked.

The first time, the entire staff of a small ad agency was called into the conference room and the President read a statement which began, “We are forced to cut our staffing by half. The following seven people are fired…” I survived that one, but took on the duties of two other people in addition to my own work.

The second time, my job was eliminated and my employer offered me a clerical position that came with a 30 percent pay cut. I took the “consolation job” and hung in there for a year.

The third time, my position was eliminated in a re-organization effort and I was escorted to the door by a security guard, told to make an appointment to come back and get my personal belongings, and given a small severance package.

When making a decision to leave a company, employees are always counseled not to “burn bridges.” Sure it would be satisfying to holler “Take this job and shove it!” on the way out the door, but that rarely bodes well when you need a reference in the future.

Well I think the same goes for the business owner or manager: when you are forced to let someone go, don’t burn the bridge with undignified or insensitive methods. You are the leader, after all, and leadership isn’t always easy.

If you treat people decently – which you will do if you take even five minutes to think about and understand the impact your decision is having on their lives – they may just continue to sing your praises even after they’re gone. Treat them like crap, and you may find that while customers speak highly of you, past employees denegrate you repeatedly in their daily conversations. And that sort of “word of mouth” gets around just as quickly as the kind spread by customers. Maybe faster, given the “small world” nature of peoples’ personal and professional networks.

Being a “good company” is not just about good customer service – it’s about good and fair treatment of those who commit to you their time and talents. In short, how you fire someone impacts your brand and you should take the time and trouble to make sure you have a process that meets your needs as an employer but that’s fair and dignified.

Alternative uses for Foursquare

Now that the new social app Foursquare is available worldwide, I’ve been giving it a try here in Des Moines. With Foursquare, I “check in” by texting a message to the service when I arrive at various destinations and collect points for my check-ins. (Eventually I could be appointed Mayor of a place I visit often. This is the only reason I even tried Foursquare in the first place.)

The purpose of this app is to let my friends know where I am while I’m out gallavanting around, so they can join me for a drink or a meal, and learn more (through tips) about why I like the places I patronize.

The problem is, the people I’m acquainted with who are most likely to be reading my updates are not the people who are usually wondering on a Saturday night, “Where the heck is Janet? I MUST go where Janet is and hang out!” So, this may ultimately end up being one of those situations where I finally just admit I’m not the target market, and accept defeat.

Unless I can find some valuable alternate use for Foursquare – not altogether unlikely, given that I once dismissed Twitter with a “talk to the hand” flourish, only to find that later it had morphed into an incredibly valuable business and personal connectivity tool.

So here, with a hopeful eye on the future of Foursquare, are a few alternate uses for this latest bit of “I don’t get it.”

1. If you’re a professional with clients, or have friends who own businesses, you can earn brownie points by listing them as venues and then checking in. (You’re welcome, @Sambetti’s! And yes, I meant it about the onion rings.)
2. Easy way to fake a day of outside sales calls when you’re really laying on a chaise lounge at home with an umbrella drink in your hand. (Aside: Foursquare needs a plug-in that lets you schedule auto-checkins to really be useful in this situation.)
3. Useful tool for savvy burglars who can estimate, based on your latest check-in, how much time they have to ransack your house.
4. Quick way to notify loved ones that Captain Sulley has safely landed your plane (i.e., “Just checked in @Hudson River.”)
5. What, too soon?

Am I right for the job?

The cooler temperatures, the bright blue skies, and the early-falling leaves this week tell me that Autumn is in the air. Another sure sign: I’m craving apple crisp. And not just any apple crisp, but “quick apple crisp” from my Pampered Chef cookbook. In fact it would be closer to the truth to admit that I don’t just crave Quick Apple Crisp in the Fall – I actually crave the whole Pampered Chef experience.

The Pampered Chef is a direct-sales company founded in 1980 by Doris Christopher, who at that time was a stay-at-home-mom and former home economics teacher. Doris sold the company for a bajillion dollars in 2000 to investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. She currently serves the company as Chairman. Pampered Chef products are sold by individual consultants via the in-home party method, and consultants earn money not only by selling products but also by recruiting, training and guiding new consultants to their own successes.

In the late 1990’s and again in the early 2000’s, I was a Pampered Chef consultant. I thoroughly enjoyed almost every aspect of working for this company. I loved the story behind the founding of the company. I loved the principles upon which the company was built. I loved setting up “kitchen shows” in my friends’ homes and showing them how easy it was to prepare simple and delicious recipes for their families. I loved using the products. I loved going to training meetings. I didn’t even mind doing the paperwork for each show once it all was computerized and I didn’t have to do manual math to tally my orders.

If I could have gotten over my one stumbling block, I would have loved to become a Director for this company, recruiting and training new consultants and coaching them in the marketing of their own businesses.

But there was one aspect of the job I didn’t like: I found it very difficult to convince people to be “kitchen show” hostesses. My first six shows – the six I needed to complete my “new consultant commitment” – were hosted by personal friends and family members. Each of them invited people from their own personal and professional networks to attend a show, and what should have happened was that a few of the people at each show should have volunteered to host a show in their home, with me as their consultant. The problem was that often, no one wanted to host a show. And I was extremely uncomfortable pressuring them into doing so.

As any Pampered Chef (or any other direct sales) consultant will tell you, a consultant without hostesses is pretty much dead in the water.

Let me be clear: I don’t blame The Pampered Chef for this shortfall. It was a classic case of not having the right personality for a key part of the job.

So here’s my challenge for you this week, coming as it does from personal experience: take a good look at the parts of your job or your business that you aren’t well suited for (c’mon, you know there’s one or two), and consider how you might ask for help in overcoming those weaknesses. And then, invest in yourself the time and money it will take to solve the problem. Or, consider whether it’s time to bring someone else into the business who can fill that role for you.

Getting distracted and getting back on track

This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

One of my personal obsessions is genealogy – the study and discovery of my family tree. I began my journey in the spring of 1997, just a few months after my mother had passed away unexpectedly. For me, genealogy is the perfect blend of research and outdoor exploration: rooting out the names and dates of critical life events for my ancestors, connecting with far-flung cousins (some of whom possessed precious antique family photographs!), pouring over brittle old documents in the basements of historic county courthouses, wandering through cemeteries large and small in search of a stone with a familiar name.

I learned one of the core lessons of genealogy very early on – and I think it’s a lesson that also applies to small business marketing: put simply, it’s easy to get distracted. In a moment, you can wander off the main path (looking for direct blood-line ancestors) and start down any number of secondary trails that lead to aunts, uncles, cousins, skeletons-in-closet, or even just historical context.

For small business owners, the main marketing path should always lead to the retention of existing customers and the attraction of new customers. Things like learning how to use a page layout program, or writing better copy, or understanding the psychology of consumer purchasing, are really secondary trails.

Granted, they’re inviting trails – made moreso by books and tools that promise to make it easy, to deliver “professional marketing materials from your desktop with one click,” to present you with that golden nugget that will open a floodgate to success. But probably the biggest challenge facing small business owners is figuring out how far to wander down one of those secondary trails, and when to step back onto the main path where actual progress is made.

In genealogy, I step back onto the main trail by keeping a list of the current questions that will lead me to someone’s parents, because “new parents” mean another branch has been added to the tree.

In business, your marketing treatment (or marketing plan, if you’ve gone that far) should be the primary path. It gives you direction, it reminds you what the goals are, and it gives you a point to which you can always return if you veer off course. What tools do you use to guide yourself back to the main path when you fear you’ve spent too much time on a secondary trail? What secondary trails have been most valuable to you? Which ones do you wish you hadn’t wasted time pursuing?

Photo from the Flickr stream of tonyaustin.

Lessons from lost opportunity

This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

In 1996, I launched the website for my creative services company, then called The Ad Shop Plus. It was my “showpiece” web development effort, bringing together my very best (at the time) strategic, creative, planning and design skills.

One day I was browsing through an issue of Home Office Computing magazine, and saw that they were seeking nominations for a column called “Sites We Like” in which they would offer up the websites of small and home-based businesses as examples of good web strategy. I submitted my site for consideration and went about my life.

Over the next few months I decided that my business name was too limiting (possibly even hokey) and did not accurately reflect my range of professional services. I prepared to change the name to Green & Company Creative Services. I had a name-change plan, a budget and a timeline in place, and a new website all ready to launch, when I got the call from HOC. That’s right, I was one month away from changing my name (from redefining my business!) and they wanted to feature my old identity.

My options were to decline the feature, since my company info would be completely different by the time the magazine hit the stands and re-submit the new site for future consideration; or, to hold off my name change until after the article had run and reap the rewards of free publicity in a major magazine that targeted my small business clientele.

I chose the former. I thanked the reporter profusely for her interest and told her I would let her know when my new site launched. I followed up a few weeks later with a personal note to her, giving her the new URL, but I never heard another word.

I realized pretty quickly what I had sacrificed: An opportunity to establish credibility in web development on a national scale, in front of an audience I truly needed to reach, for the chance to shed my old identity a few months sooner. I now believe that this was a major mistake. It certainly took the joy out of using that cool new letterhead I’d designed.

I tell this story because good lessons sometimes come from our less-than-stellar moments, and because it illustrates why agility is so important. I was small enough to be nimble – to veer off the name-change course just long enough to grab a HUGE fistful of credible publicity – but I was blinded by the notion of sticking to my plan. And in so doing, lost a golden opportunity to grow my business.

Your business is a Jack Russell Terrier

This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

Have you ever watched canine agility trials? Your business should be just like that – fast, nimble, always moving forward. Maybe even a beef-flavored biscuit for you at the finish.

So what’s holding you back? Probably some well-meaning people, whose advice you’ve sought because they are Experts in Their Field. They’re telling you that you have to have a plan before you can do any marketing. And since marketing plans are based on time-consuming research, you haven’t gotten around to doing any. And so you don’t have a plan, so you aren’t doing any marketing.

Well here’s a news flash: You don’t have to have a full-blown plan to do your marketing. If you can define some basic elements, you can establish a lean, simple document that allows plenty of flexibility while still serving to keep you on track. In video production, we called this basic document a treatment, and it was used to make sure everyone understood the parameters of a given project. As applied to your marketing, your treatment should include information about:

* Your audience
* Your brand
* Your creative strategy
* Your budget

With your treatment in place, you can consider yourself free of the shackles of the formal marketing plan. You’re suddenly fast, nimble, and moving forward. You’re on a marketing agility course. You’re the Jack Russell Terrier of marketing!

Now – what’s a marketing idea you’ve wanted to try, but refrained because you didn’t have a plan?

Photo at caninecoalition.com.

What Hitchcock means to your branding

This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

When I was in college, I took a series of English classes where we learned to study symbolism in novels and film. The idea was to look for a particular recurring object within the work, and then use the instances of that object to extrapolate some higher meaning beyond just the obvious storyline. So, for example, we could argue that Alfred Hitchcock’s use of containers (baskets, trunks, overnight bags, apartments, etc.) in the film “Rear Window” symbolized various states of confinement and/or freedom. The movie, therefore, wasn’t just about what happened when Jimmy Stewart spied on his neighbors. It was about confinement, containment and freedom.

What’s critical about this type of exercise is that the final answer to the question, “What is the film about?” could be different for each person. Because each person brings to bear their own set of experiences with and understanding of containers.

The same concept holds true for your business’s brand. Your brand is not your logo, or even your logo plus your tagline. Even though you worked really hard to perfect those things, they are not your brand. Your brand, in fact, isn’t anything you can see or touch. It isn’t anything that you, per se, tell your customers.

Your brand is the sum total of your customer’s experience with your business. It’s the impression they have formed over time about your worth and value. It’s what the logo means to them when they see it.

If you aren’t consistent in delivering the experience you want your customers to have, they will each have their own interpretation of what your business is about. And you won’t have a brand.

Of course, it’s equally dangerous to deliver a consistently poor experience to your customers. Because then you will have a brand, but it won’t be the one you want.

Look beyond your logo. What is the brand you want to build around your business? How consistent are you in delivering the experiences that will allow your customers to arrive at this interpretation? What’s holding you back from being more consistent?

Photo from whirligig-tv.co.uk.

Think before you write your ad copy

This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

Gather any group of employees and ask them to contribute their thoughts to developing a marketing campaign, and the vast majority of them will focus on the look of the brochure, the name of the celebrity spokesperson, and the “big event” you’ll stage where you invite the media. That’s because writing the ads is the fun part – it’s what nearly everyone thinks the Marketing Department does, and since Marketing folks seem to have a lot of fun, they’re eager to take their turn doing “what Marketing does.”

What they don’t think of are the questions that must be answered before you try to sign the local weatherman to drive sport-drink sales. These answers make up the creative strategy behind the funny ads.

Creative strategy means developing the over-riding message and tone of a series of related marketing pieces, so that the end result is a marketing campaign that sends an appropriate, cohesive and resonant message to the targeted audience.

So what are the hard questions that make up the creative strategy?

1. What is the goal of the campaign? Write a goal that includes a specific and measurable result. Expecting something measurable from your marketing is reasonable. It puts you one step ahead of those competitors who are just trying to “raise awareness.” (Examples: increase leads in the pipeline by 15 percent; increase sales of sports drinks by 10 percent.)
2. Who is the audience? Be specific. “Current customers, potential customers, investors and employees” is too broad for one marketing campaign. While your brand should certainly be consistent across these groups, you need to identify a primary target for your marketing campaign. (Hint: the goal of the campaign will likely drive, to an extent, who your target market is.)
3. What is the message you want them to remember? You’ll want your audience to remember something important about your company. What is it? (Hint: your brand position will dictate this in part.)
4. What is the action you want them to take? This goes back to your measurable goal. The action might be to visit your website, to call for an initial meeting, or to place a direct order. It will depend on where the marketing pieces fall in your overall sales process.
5. What style or tone of message does your audience respond to? An elderly white male will, obviously, respond to a different style or tone than a 20-something Latina woman. You may find the style or tone easier to nail down if you can determine the message first, as the latter may suggest the former.
6. What media do your target audience members pay attention to? It doesn’t matter if you have a great idea for a viral video to put on YouTube… if that’s not where you target audience spends their time, there’s no sense in putting your money into that video.

Of course, your strategy must work to uphold your brand. (And, toward that end, you must be confident in what your brand is.) Can you name a company that can’t seem to decide on a creative strategy?

Photo from the Flickr stream of Sirkus.

You know more about marketing than you think you do!

This post originally appeared in longer form on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

“I know nothing about marketing!”

Is that the lament that brought you here? If it is, take heart: you know a lot about marketing, but much of it is so ingrained that you don’t even realize you know it. That’s because your definition of marketing is probably limited to something along the lines of, “Marketing consists of advertising, sales letters and cold-calling.”

To convince yourself that you do, in fact, know something about marketing, just broaden your definition. Marketing is, actually, everything you do to attract, serve and keep your customers.Think about that. If you truly view marketing as “everything you do to attract, serve and keep your customers,” that means it encompasses everything from what you’ve named your business to what music plays when folks are on hold to how efficient your refund policy is to how personable your receptionist is.

By this definition, marketing includes prospecting, advertising, promoting, publicizing, producing work (or delivering goods) and maintaining customer relationships. And I’ll bet you know something about each and every one of those.

Of course, broadening your definition of marketing isn’t just an exercise self-esteem-building (”Hey, maybe I do know something about marketing after all!”). There’s a trade-off for that little ego boost. When you see marketing for what it really is, you elevate it to its true level of importance. And then you realize you can’t relegate it to the back burner. And you can’t skimp on resources devoted to it.

And then you begin to get a headache, because you recognize that this little blog you stumbled onto is going to encourage you to spend money. And time. And talent. On marketing, that thing which you know nothing about. Aren’t you glad you’re here? Me, too!

Photo from the Flickr stream of Cowbite.

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