Month: March 2010

Categories
Planning & Management

Time Management Tips for Two Types of Female Entrepreneurs

On its own, running a business requires exceptional time-management skills. Add to that running a household, raising children, and finding time for some well-deserved rest and relaxation, and “time management” takes on a whole new dimension. So how do busy entrepreneurs meet all their obligations – and meet them well?

A recent study from Jane Out of the Box, an authority on female entrepreneurs, reveals there are five distinct types of women in business. Based on professional market research of more than 1,000 women in business, this study shows that each type of business owner has a unique approach to running a business – and therefore each one has a unique combination of needs. This article outlines two of the five types and provides tips for time management that ensure success as the various types of entrepreneurs define it.

Go Jane Go is passionate about her work and provides excellent service, so she has plenty of clients – so much so, she’s struggling to keep up with demand. She may be a classic overachiever, taking on volunteer opportunities as well, because she’s eager to make an impact on the world and she often struggles to say no. Because she wants to say yes to so many people, she may even be in denial about how many hours she actually works during the course of a week. As a result, she may be running herself ragged and feeling guilty about neglecting herself and others who are important to her.

Of all the types of business owners, Go Jane Go is most in need of improved time management systems. She strives to give her all in doing the right thing and being a good person. She loves what she does and believes strongly in being of service to others while being the best at what she does. Often, Go Jane Go business owners are in denial about the amount of hours they actually work; for example, some reported working only 40 hours per week but still feeling overwhelmed and a bit frazzled. When we questioned them about it, they admitted that they worked only 40 billable hours per week but put in significantly more hours on other business-related tasks. Her desire to help others, coupled with her reluctance to turn down most requests leaves her feeling stressed and overcommitted much of the time. How can she rectify that?

* Park It. By creating a “parking lot” for goals of every type, Go Jane Go can stop worrying about what she hasn’t accomplished and set a schedule for accomplishing it. Create two lists. The first should include immediate goals and should be kept visible. The second should include more long-term goals and should be filed away and viewed every month to 6 months, to determine where goals stand periodically. By writing down goals, large and small, business and personal, this parking lot takes the weight off Go Jane Go’s shoulders – she won’t forget any of these important goals, and she won’t have to worry constantly about them, either.

* Overlap. It’s essential that Go Jane Go prioritize – after all, she has so much going on, she has to know where to start so she can check tasks off her long to-do list. Once she’s prioritized, Go Jane Go can make a game of finding ways to fit her priorities together. For example, if meaningful relationships, family time, helping others and managing time by hiring someone to do her less favorite tasks are priorities, Go Jane Go may consider hiring a family member to do some of the work she doesn’t enjoy as well. In this way, she gets to spend time with that family member, help that family member by providing a job, and work on the activities she enjoys.

* Accept Help. Go Jane Go doesn’t want to burden others and will take on loathsome burdens to avoid doing so. However, by asking for help, Go Jane Go may feel less overwhelmed and provide an opportunity for loved ones to return favors she’s done for them, She can ask her husband to pick up the kids or make dinner, or she can ask a friend to listen while she vents about a work problem. Getting help in completing even small tasks can significantly lighten Go Jane Go’s load.

Jane Dough is an entrepreneur who enjoys running her business. Generally, she makes a nice living. She is comfortable and determined in buying and selling, which may be why she’s five times more likely than the average female business owner to hit the million dollar mark. Jane Dough is clear in her priorities and may be intentionally and actively growing an asset-based or legacy business. It is estimated that 18% of women entrepreneurs fall in the category of Jane Dough.

Like Go Jane Go, Jane Dough runs a successful business and takes home a large personal income. Unlike Go Jane Go, though, Jane Dough is adept at time management and sometimes delegates too much rather than not enough. Jane Dough moves quickly and decisively, and runs her business like a “natural-born entrepreneur,”  meeting traditional standards of success, while striking a great work-life balance. Even with so much success, this type of business owner can improve her business’ efficiency and its productivity by keeping a few suggestions in mind.

* Document. System documentation maximizes efficiency because it reveals every step of every system, therefore revealing steps that may be obsolete or repetitive, and therefore unnecessary. It also provides a system by which a new employee can learn the ins and outs of his or her job in the case that a seasoned employee leaves the company. This will reduce learning and training time.

* Track Performance. By carefully keeping track of key performance metrics, Jane Dough can determine whether the efforts she’s putting into various aspects of her business are paying off. If they’re not, she can spend less time there and more time on aspects that are productive. For example, let’s consider a Jane Dough who has spent a considerable amount of non-billable time on developing a new web site. She tracks visitors and purchases, and discovers that although her site is receiving a lot of traffic, people aren’t buying after visiting it. On the other hand, she’s getting tons of calls from people mentioning a radio ad she placed, which promised listeners a discount if they mentioned the ad. By putting in place tracking systems (software for the web site and a discount on the radio ad), this Jane Dough will learn where her resources are best spent.

Managing time appropriately is absolutely critical in striking a satisfactory work-life balance, and in growing a business. Every type of entrepreneur can improve her time management skills, whether it’s to find more personal time or to maximize a company’s efficiency.

About the Author:

Michele DeKinder-Smith is the founder of Jane out of the Box, an online resource dedicated to the women entrepreneur community. Discover more incredibly useful information for running a small business by taking the FREE Jane Types Assessment at Jane out of the Box. Offering networking and marketing opportunities, key resources and mentorship from successful women in business, Jane Out of the Box is online at www.janeoutofthebox.com

Categories
Online Business Sales & Marketing

The Basics of Content Syndication

Content syndication is a hot topic in social media, and there is a lot of confusion about what it is, and how to do it. In the most basic sense, content syndication refers to the process of efficiently distributing your content around the internet.

Since effective content syndication does require a little bit of technical know-how, most people’s eyes glaze over when they hear about it. The problem is that if you’re ignoring the power of content syndication, you are only getting about 1/3rd of the value from your social media efforts as you could be.

Done correctly, content syndication can help you accomplish four main business goals. It can help you generate more targeted visitors to your website and blog, it can help you improve your search engine positioning, it can help you build your following, and it can build your expert status. All of these are valuable outcomes for a process which doesn’t really take a lot of time.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is in creating content (for their sites, blogs, teleseminars or trainings) and then only using the content one or two times. This means that your time to create the content is only paying off minimally.

Far better to repurpose your content into multiple formats, and be able to use it multiple ways, so that you are getting maximum value from the time you spend creating the material in the first place. Repurposing efficiently and regularly is one of the key underpinnings of an effective content syndication strategy.

An example of repurposing your content would be to take a written blog post, convert to an audio (instant podcast), turn to a slideshow, and then convert to a video. Your one blog post then becomes deployable in multiple formats, and can be sent out to the various article, audio, and video sites. So, in essence, you get four times the value for your content. There are multiple other ways to repurpose your content, and you’ll find, as I have, that once you get good at doing it, it’s kind of addictive.

So now that you understand the background of content syndication, let’s look at some easy ways you can get started:

1.   Make use of RSS. RSS stands for “really simple syndication” and is one of the easiest and fastest ways to start syndicating your content. RSS is a technology which takes your content and puts it into a special format (you don’t need the details) so that the content can be shared easily and republished across the internet. The majority of the open social sites use RSS. You can find the link to your RSS feed by searching for the RSS icon, which often looks like the icon at the beginning of this paragraph. Sometimes it’s colored differently, but this symbol denotes the RSS feed. What the RSS feed represents is an aggregated container of that content.

To actually start using RSS, you can take your RSS feeds (such as from your blog) and submit these to RSS search engines, such as Bloglines, Blogpulse, DayPop, and Feedster. (There are many others, this is just a partial list.) The idea is that the RSS format allows for content to be deployed and shared in a consistent and standardized way. When submitting your blog’s RSS feed to these search engines, you are increasing the likelihood of your content being found, and, also, potentially giving others the option to republish your content with attribution to your site.

You can also submit RSS feeds from your Twitter account, as well as other social sites. There are specialized software programs that can help you rapidly submit your RSS feeds as well.
RSS submission is one of the easiest ways to get started with content syndication.

2.  A second strategy for getting started with content syndication is to send your blog updates to your Twitterfeed. If your blog is built on WordPress, you can configure a plugin such as Twitter Tools to send blog posts to your Twitterfeed. This is a great way to drive traffic to your site, especially if your titles are compelling, and you don’t overtweet your new content. Since Twitter updates are searchable, you can find yourself getting first page ranking in Google for your content. This listing may not last, as tweets are constantly updated, but it’s a good way to get your content out in front of more people.

3.  A third simple strategy for content syndication is to import your blog posts into Facebook and LinkedIn. You can use the Notes application in Facebook to get your blog posts publishing in there, and you can use the WordPress application in LinkedIn to get your blog content published there as well. Again, if you focus on highly relevant content, and use strong titles, you will see clickthroughs to your site. Importing your content into these sites also helps establish your expertise and credibility, and can grow your brand following.

While there are many other content syndication strategies you can use, these are three solid strategies to get you started. As you invest more fully in content syndication, you’ll find that your online following grows, that you get more opportunities, and generate more leads into your business.

Content syndication is an important step in the chain of social media profitability. Get started using it today.

To get 4 weeks of focused training on content syndication and repurposing, check out From Platform to Profit.

RachnaJainPhoto.jpgDr. Rachna Jain is Chief Social Marketer at The Mindshare Corporation.  Rachna works with speakers, consultants, authors, and small business  owners to develop and execute effective social media marketing  strategies. Her proprietary persuasive social media  process (sm) focuses on building influence, credibility and  visibility online. This translates into greater recognition, increased  website traffic, faster lead generation, a shorter sales cycle, and  more opportunity for her expert clientele. She blogs regularly at The Mindshare Blog

Categories
Entrepreneurs How-To Guides Online Business

Info Product Creation: How To Create Your FIRST Info Product in 7 Easy Steps

Once you’ve mastered your online marketing system and you’re growing your list on a daily basis, this is a good time to then set about creating additional offerings for your subscribers.  This is where you start to look at your Product & Marketing Funnel and see where the gaps are and where new products can fit.

If you’re like most solo service professionals you’ll have something at the top (i.e. the widest part) of your funnel, which is usually your free taste, and then you’ll have something at the bottom (i.e. the narrowest part) of your funnel, which is usually your most expensive one-on-one services, but you won’t have anything in-between.

This is where you need to create products at different price points so that your clients and customers can experience your services and expertise without having to invest in your top (most expensive) service, but they want more than you are offering at the ‘free’ level.

A great first info product to create is one that sits at the second level within your Product & Marketing Funnel; somewhere between $1 and $50.

So, here is the step-by-step guide on how to create that all-important first paid offering.

Step 1 Host a Free Teleclass

Not only is this a great way to build your list, but it also exposes your audience to your expertise.  You get to interact with your target market via the teleclass and they are able to ask you questions right there on the call.

Step 2 Record Your Teleclass

In addition to this being a great incentive to getting more sign-ups (if a registrant is not able to make it to the live teleclass they know that they’ll be able to get hold of the information afterwards via the recording), but this is where you’ll turn your free teleclass into your first paid info product.

Step 3 Create an Accompanying Guide or Special Report

Using the notes you prepared for your teleclass, turn these into a guide to accompany your teleclass.  Or turn your notes into a special report and sell the report as the paid product and offer the teleclass recording as a bonus.

Step 4 Create a Workbook

If you also provided instructions or how-to information as part of your free teleclass, take that information and create an additional workbook.  A workbook is a simple document that will allow your customer/client to make notes, write down their ideas, or plan out how they’re going to implement the how-to information that you shared with them on the teleclass.

Step 5 Bundle It All Together

Now that you have your teleclass recording, and you’ve created an accompanying guide/ebook and/or workbook, bundle all this information together to offer as a paid product at the second level within your funnel i.e. between the $1 and $50 price range.

Step 6 Create a Sales Page and Shopping Cart Link

You now need to create a sales page for your product, and associated shopping cart link.  It is also a great customer service feature to create an autoresponder so that you can follow-up with your customers to check that they are happy with their purchase and are implementing the information you shared with them.

Step 7 Promote to Your List

Once you have your product all set up (Step 5), and created the sales page (Step 6) it’s time to promote it to your list and make sales!  This is the exciting part!  Include some teaser information in your newsletter leading up to the launch of your product, and once you’re ready to take sales send a solo mailing announcing the launch of your product.  A solo mailing is much more effective than including the announcement as part of your regular newsletter.

After the initial launch continue to promote your product through your newsletter; promote it on your blog; and tell all your social networks about your product.

Categories
Starting Up

Starting a Business — A Five Step Reality-Check to Evaluate Your Own Idea

Article Contributed by Jim DeLapa

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive is, “How can I be sure my new business will succeed?” Sadly, there is no crystal ball that can accurately answer that question. However, if you are serious about starting a business there are five steps you can take that will begin to give you a clearer picture. By following these steps you will gain tremendous insight into what lies ahead. Whether this reality-check convinces you to dive in, or hold back, you’ll be well served by what you learn. While we are huge proponents of founders developing a well written business plan, the steps below can be followed even before you start your small business plan.

Step 1: Write a simple elevator pitch to see if your business idea is compelling to others. If you haven’t created an elevator pitch before, you can stitch together the essentials very easily. Write a one sentence answer to each of the following questions. What problem will your company solve for its customers? Who has this problem and how large is that group? What will make your business unique so that customers will buy from you instead of a competitor? Finally, what are your qualifications to run the business? If you force yourself to write and re-write the very best one sentence answers to each of these questions, you will have the elevator pitch you need for this purpose. Now, try out your elevator pitch on 10 people you trust and respect to get their feedback and reaction to your well-formed business concept. This is the warm up for steps two and three.

Step 2: Talk to would-be customers to find out if there is a true need for your product or service. When you are thinking about starting a business, you obviously feel there is a void in the marketplace. Don’t wait until you open your business to find out if the need for another business is real or imagined. Armed with your elevator pitch, go have face-to-face discussions with future customers. You are not going to them to sell, or pre-sell. You are doing market research. After describing your business by generally following your elevator pitch, go into “ask and listen” mode. To get the information you are seeking, ask questions like, “How are you currently meeting your needs for (insert the products or services your company will provide)?” Listen carefully—this is the voice of the customer. In step one, you spoke to friends and respected colleagues. In step two, you are talking to people who currently buy products or services like those you will be selling. Select individuals who will be focused on the content of your ideas and less concerned about simply wanting to be encouraging.

Step 3: Become an expert on the competition. Identify 5 other companies that are already doing what you plan to do. Learn as much about them as you can. One of the best things to learn is if they expanding or shrinking. You want to be entering a business where the market and demand is growing! Take everything you learn and ask yourself what it says about the opportunity for your new business. If you can’t find any companies that already do what you’re planning to do, there two likely reasons: 1) There is not enough demand to support a business; 2) You didn’t look hard enough. The third possibility, and the one most often cited incorrectly, is that a genuinely new opportunity has been discovered, one that nobody else has ever thought of, and so there is no competition. Rarely is this the case.

Step 4: Develop a rough estimate of your breakeven costs. Think about the process of engaging the customer to the point of making a sale. What are all the things that you must have in place to make that sale? Do you need an office? A building? A sign? Computers? Phone service? Special equipment? Employees? Will you need to take a salary from the business from its inception? How much will you spend on marketing so that customers find out about your business? List all of the major items and estimate their costs for the first full year. Divide this number by twelve to see your total monthly fixed expenses.

To calculate their breakeven sales number, some types of businesses must also take into account their “cost of sales” or the additional cost that is incurred for each sale made. In a pure service business, such as consulting, there will be little or no “cost of sales.” A consultant sells his or her time. The breakeven revenue for this type of business would be the total monthly expenses calculated above.

Other businesses, such as restaurants or retailers have to take into account the cost of the goods they sell. For example, consider a company whose total monthly expenses are $10,000. If they sell picture frames for two times what they cost, they will need $20,000 in revenue to break even. The first $10,000 will pay for the picture frames and the next $10,000 will cover the base costs of the business.

Knowing your total costs and breakeven revenue requirements are essential in evaluating a business idea. As intended, this is a rough estimate which you can carefully refine if your business idea passes all your tests.

Step 5: Identify the person responsible for selling (and that person is probably you). Too many people start businesses without really taking into account how much will need to be sold, and who will be responsible for selling. In hindsight they say things like, “I always loved to cook, so I started a catering company.” “I worked as a carpenter for 10 years, so I decided to become a general contractor.” Upon starting their businesses, the chef and the carpenter immediately had the same goal–to become “salesperson of the year” in their respective businesses. When you start a new business, the business will fail or succeed based on whether or not you hit your sales targets. Regardless of who is doing the selling, the responsibility for seeing that the company sales goal is met falls on the founder. If you can say, “I am ready to be responsible for driving sales in my new company” then you have passed step five of the reality check.

Summary. If you take the time to put your business idea through the five-step reality check you will be well on your way to answering the question, “How can I know if my business will succeed?” You will have gathered all of the essential information to make an informed decision about starting the business. Next, take the foundation developed in the five-step reality test to start developing your business plan. You’ll find that the things you’ve already learned will give you a great head start.

About the Author

Jim DeLapa is the founder of GreatBusinessPlans.com, a leading provider of small business plan assistance for current and future small business owners. DeLapa has launched and invested in numerous successful startups and played an active role in nurturing two of those from inception through being acquired by publicly traded firms.

Categories
Sales & Marketing

3 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When They Start to Sell Information Products

Recently, I wrote about the big mistakes entrepreneurs make when they create information products.  Unfortunately, there are more mistakes to avoid when starting to sell them!  Here are the biggest 3:

1. Your expectations are out of whack with reality. I once had a self development consultant tell me he wanted to sell a million dollars of his $497 product in one year. So I ran the numbers for him on what he would have to do to get that. He got very, very quiet.

Look, I’m all about thinking big. I’ve thought big my entire life. But if you want to do more than simply think big and actually accomplish big things, you need to understand what it takes to get there.

Let me give you a quick example. Let’s say you want to sell one information product a day off your web site. If you have a 1% conversion rate on your sales letter (and that’s not a walk in the park to do, but we’ll start there because the math is easy) that means one out of every 100 people are going to buy your product. To sell one a day, means you need 100 people looking at your sales letter a day. (Note, I don’t mean 100 people looking at your web site a day, I mean 100 people looking at that sales letter a day.) That means you need to get 3,000 visitors to that page a month. And if you’re not getting 3,000 visitors a month, you probably won’t sell an information product a day.

So let’s say you’re this entrepreneur. You just finished your product, you wrote the sales letter and stuck it up on your site and are now sitting back and waiting for the sales to pour in. And instead of getting one sale a day, you’re lucky to get a sale a month. Or every 6 months.

And when this happens, you’re probably feeling very frustrated and discouraged. But you shouldn’t be. Because if you understood how the numbers worked, you would know what was realistic and you would ALSO know what you needed to do in order to sell one a day. (Note, for more information about this, check out my “Why Isn’t My Web Site Making Me Any Money?” product —

http://www.michelepw.com/10easysteps.html)

The problem I’ve found is entrepreneurs create their first info product sure this is their ticket to easy wealth. Then, when the days, weeks and months go by and it doesn’t sell, they get frustrated and give up. And giving up is the REAL problem. Not the lack of sales. (Lack of sales CAN be fixed.)

2. You don’t spent the time and energy selling it as you did creating the product. Sending a couple emails to your list is NOT putting a lot of time and energy into selling your product. Or, worse yet, throwing up a sales page and expecting people to flock to it and buy is also not putting enough time and energy into selling it.

Products are great, don’t get me wrong. And while they can be passive income, what they mostly are is leveraged income. Making sales every day from your site is NOT magic. Nor is it an accident. It’s a combination of doing the right marketing tasks to drive warm visitors to your site, collecting their contact information, and starting a relationship with them with an ezine or some other communications. It’s about doing visibility activities. It’s about doing product launches to up your visibility and take your marketing to another level.

When you do all these things, you find your overall sales go up. And when you promote a product specifically, sales spike further.

3. You give up. I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I run into who have unrealistic expectations about selling their product, and then do little to no promoting or marketing of their product, and then give up because they don’t sell any. They incorrectly assume there’s a problem with their business, their clients, the product, themselves, etc., when it’s a problem with their marketing.

Before you decide there’s something more drastically wrong, make sure you understand the numbers and the marketing. Only then can you make a determination if there’s a deeper problem then simply bad marketing.