In the midst of the disaster that was the sales relationship in Part 1. I was also searching for a professional video guy that I could add to my contractor team. I was starting to get into a lot of internet video for local companies and for the SEO strength. I have a closet love for all things video and video production but I did not quite have the skills to take the projects to that next level that I desired.

I happened to find a guy and made a meeting that has changed my life completely and has also created a lifelong friendship that will go well beyond just business.

When we met we had one of those meeting of the minds that seems to freeze time and before you know it hours have passed. Sheldon had just launched Calgary Wedding Television and after answering some very specific and strategic questions properly (thankfully I did) he let me in on his plans and his business bag of tricks.

Since then I have been involved in the launch of Calgary Homes Television, traveled to Germany to evaluate another business opportunity and am overjoyed to be able to give so much of my time to the project even though we have yet to be financed the day to day thrill makes it all worth while.

So I guess my lesson for this post is almost opposite from the one in part 1. For this one I will say if it feels right then you sometimes just need to take the plunge. I have not always had the best successes with the start-ups that I have been a part of but everything about this one feels right both logically from a business model perspective as well as a team perspective.

In Part 3 I will talk about how time can change everything….

I have made a commitment to finish the year strong and tell you a bit about the journey I and my business has been on over the last year. This could almost be seen as a bit of a state of the union address filled with a few lessons and some great stories.

So for Part 1, Lets start with a lesson: If something feels wrong and dirty then it most likely is! Towards the end of last year I started to look for a sales person to start to help me take my business to the next level and take some of the day to day pressure off myself. I ended up meeting with a guy that contacted me out of the blue so I figured I would give the meeting a shot. After the first meeting it never did feel quite right but I  choose to ignore the signs and continued on against my better judgement. BAD DECISION!!

One of the things that you don’t always think about when you get into these arrangements is what it could do to your personal and business reputation. I was smart when it came to protecting and keep my current clients at arms length from the sales guy. A decision that I thank my lucky stars for every day. If I hadn’t I think I could have lost my entire business in the matter of a couple months.

In the end I lost piles of my personal time, resources of my team, and revenue that I would have been able to have made if I had just been doing it on my own. I still have projects that are left unfinished that I feel I have a moral obligation to do the work even though I am going to continue to take a loss. It is really the only way I can begin to possibly keep a relationship with these clients and attempt to repair the reputation loss that my company may have faced.

So take the time to really research and interview before you get into these types of arrangements and don’t go all in right from the start. Their are a lot of Snake Oil Salesmen out there and if you feel the least bit funny about the person just do a small test project to make sure. You should be able to get an indication to see where the “all talk” ends and the work begins.

So that was Part 1 of my year in review. In Part 2 I will share the flip side of the coin with you and talk about the Calgary Homes and the Calgary Weddings project and what happens when it all comes together.

You could have the most unique, highest quality product or service in the world and you’d still be broke if you don’t market it every single day! Websites are not magic wands and your place of business isn’t a magnet. You must have marketing pieces that are perpetually in play, attracting new prospects and new clients, creating a steady stream of revenue.

It is your marketing, not your product or service, that is the lifeblood of your business. Marketing is what gets your offer out in front of the public, persuades people to buy, educates prospects about your business, builds your brand, outrageously increases sales…well, short of babysitting your kids for you, there are few things marketing can’t do…actually, you could create a marketing campaign for the best babysitters in your local area, so there’s actually nothing that marketing can’t do.

Market your business every single day and you are guaranteed to achieve financial freedom.

Give People Everything They Want and You’ll Get Everything You Need

Countless companies fail because they maintain an egocentric perspective in the way they conduct their business. If you continue to execute your marketing and customer relations in a manner that fails to truly perceive the needs of your clients and prospects then you will fail to connect with them.

Before you begin any marketing campaign or project you must get in the mindset of your prospective clients, focusing in on their hot buttons. Zero in on your target audience’s most frequent problems, worries, fears, aspirations and dreams and you’ll break all of your previous sales records.

Incorporate a completely genuine desire to help others within your marketing and it will generate a natural energy that will pull people in for life.

Article Marketing for Permanent Presence

Since consistent, frequent marketing is key to the success of your business, you need to consider the relationship of how much you get in return for your efforts—this is especially true for those of you working with bootstrapped budgets. Ideally, you want to be able to put one unit of effort in and get several units of success in return. Those of you doing your marketing on a one-for-one basis are sure to be going bald from pulling your hair out in anxiety. Successful businesses are those that incorporate leverage in their marketing.

Article marketing provides one of the best ways to market your business every day without actually having to do something every day. That’s because once you publish an article online, it’s there to stay, creating a permanent presence online. Articles pull people in from the search engines through your keywords, provide value through useful information, and drive Web traffic back your site through backlinks that you plant in the article.

This permanence also makes article marketing one of the most cost effective means of marketing. One price, one unit of energy, infinite potential.

Plus, you can print your online articles and send them out in direct response mailers to your leads. (Always think of how you can get the most use out of a single piece for the best use of your budget.) Providing helpful information in your mailers adds a great deal of value and helps establish why your business is the clear choice. Plus, adding an information-based piece in any marketing you do helps soften your sales approach, making it much more attractive than a standalone promotion. Due to a daily bombardment of advertising, people are naturally skeptical about these standalone promotions. When you provide something for free that people can use to make their lives better they’re much likelier to let their guard down and actively consider your offer.

Articles on Legal Steroids

Add video to your articles and you’ll instantly multiply your sales potential. For example, YouTube is now considered the second largest search engine on the Internet; behind Google but ahead of Yahoo and Bing. Is your business missing out on all those potential customers?

In addition, we are naturally sensory driven, so the more senses you engage in your marketing the better your chances of success. Pair your copywriting efforts with video and you give your audience yet another reason to stay tuned and focus on your offer.

Adding videos to your articles also adds potency to your efforts because it allows you to position yourself as an expert. Why do expert opinions and celebrity endorsements still prevail as top marketing methods over all these years? People are more confident buying from an authority.

This opportunity is available to every type of business owner, but massage therapists, salon owners, and yoga teachers have an especially ideal opportunity to create informational videos for their clients and prospects. Create a series of instructive videos, get people interested, show people you truly want to help, and you will motivate them to buy from you.

Money Making Mindset

Above all, it is vital to your success that you remind yourself to have fun during your marketing. Approach your marketing like a drone, drudgingly shuffling through it because you’re viewing it as a mandatory duty, and your marketing message is sure to suffer. Enthusiasm is contagious and can be transferred to others to incite sales. But a complete lack of enthusiasm will leach much of your marketing’s potential as your audience will most certainly pick up on it. Instead, look at it as a fun adventure that promises infinite potential and you will surely unlock the power of attraction, sharing your confidence and enthusiasm with others, and converting record-breaking prospects to loyal customers.

• Find Your Comfort Zone & Get Your Message Out!
• Happy Bonza Bottler Day, oh and Happy New Year.
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1.  Speak with Confidence: Starting right now, eliminate every wishy-washy word from your vocabulary. No more saying ‘might,’ ‘probably,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘seems,’ or any other word that sounds like you don’t know. If you don’t know, then say so. These words also soften the strength of your pitch without adding anything. Eliminate them immediately and you’ll see the difference.

2. Use the Customer’s Words: When you sit down with customers, they’re going to tell you what they want and what they are looking for. Instead of giving them your usual pitch, use their words within your pitch. This means listen to the terms they use and repeat them. You’ll be answering their needs specifically and it shows you’re attentive as well. Plus, you’ll be meeting customers on their terms, not yours, which makes them feel better about the sale.

3. Diversify Your Communications Portfolio: Most salespeople grew up making phone calls and doing in-person contacts. In this day, people use all sorts of different media platforms on the Web and through other means to reach and maintain contact with customers. Learn to use these low-cost tools as one of many ways to reach new customers and maintain contact with old ones.

4. Set Yourself Up as an Authority: You may already be working hard as a salesperson, but part of doing your job is positioning yourself to be a trustworthy resource for customers to come to. Write articles for websites and other sources to demonstrate your knowledge of business and to give to customers as an example of your acumen.

5. Stay Current: Of course, be aware of the changes in your business, but also stay conscious of the changes in your customers’ business as well. Remember to also keep up on the personal lives of your customers, sending them well wishes throughout the year and whenever they see big successes as well. It’ll show you’re not just about sales, but an interested person as well, who is well worth keeping in contact with.

Any questions of if you would like to chat contact me through Scapes at http://www.scapes.ca

• It’s Time to Reconnect
• “You can lose just as much money being as happy as hell”
• Were you Born in a Barn
• Find Your Comfort Zone & Get Your Message Out!
• Email Marketing, It’s like adding an Army of Employees

A little perspective: Almost everybody will always focus on their weaknesses instead of their strengths. This is true on a large scale too. There are 40,000 clinical studies on depression, but less than 400 on joy. Think back to being a kid—did your parents give you as much praise for your A+ in school as they did scolding for your C-? Probably not. Overall, weaknesses are seen not as areas we are lacking, but as Achilles Heels that are bound to destroy us and our business in the future.

But this isn’t the case. In fact, our weaknesses are areas where we need to work with over time. Just because we don’t do something well at this very moment, doesn’t mean we can’t become very skilled at it in the future. Instead of looking at these spots as weaknesses, plan for more time or do a little more reading in these areas, but most importantly accept that you are going to need do some extra work as a matter of course. Many weak areas can also be aided by special learning software and assistance from others in order to bolster your business until you can get up to the appropriate standards. But remember—a weakness worked at doesn’t become a strength.

Moreover, your weaknesses don’t generate income, your strengths do. So accept your weaknesses—outsource the work, find tools to help you, or spend a little more time on these areas—but build on your strengths because they are what will make or break your business in the long run. As your business becomes more successful because of these strengths, you’ll be able to hand off more of your weaknesses to other people. Thus, the damages your weaknesses do may only be short term, but the benefits of your strengths will define your future success.

• Books all Small Business Owners Should be Reading
• It’s Time to Reconnect
• 5 Stellar Sales Tips To Push You To the Top of Your Field
• Late Payments Can Be a Good thing in a Slow Economy
• Three Important Questions: Why, Who and What

All business proposals need to meet some criteria before sending them off to anybody. Firstly, be original. Copy-pasted form letters impress people as much as junk mail through the mailbox. If you want your recipient to give you the time of day, extend them the same courtesy. Write your proposal, make it individual and tailored to them and their needs, and be as frank and honest as possible. Don’t try bullshitting, as this will more often than not make you look like a complete idiot. At the same time be confident and straightforward, and don’t try pandering to their egos or filling valuable writing space with aimless platitudes. Make your point, make it clearly and concisely, and sign off with a simple “Yours Sincerely/Truly/Faithfully,”

However, this does not mean that your proposal should be dull and boring. Let your personality show through to a point—the occasional joke or anecdote is often appreciated and helps remind the recipient that you are an actual person and not some automaton paid to hammer words on to a keyboard and not say a damn thing. Don’t ever be informal, but feel free every now and again to prove that you are actually a real person.

Keep your language jargon-free and as simple as possible. Avoid acronyms if at all possible—nothing is worse than reading a business proposal that looks like something you expect to find in the top-secret drawer at the Pentagon. Read it through three or four times, run it through a spellchecker, get someone else to proof it, and then read it yourself one last time for good measure. It is impossible to stress the importance of good writing in any proposal. Clearly set out the aims, goals and needs of your proposal, in a format that makes sense. There are hundreds of business proposal templates floating around on the Internet, so don’t be afraid to research styles and layouts.

Lastly, always keep the reader in mind. Stress why they should be part of this grand plan you have envisioned, and what the advantages are to themselves or the company of going along with your madcap little scheme. At the end of the day this entire endeavor is for their benefit, so do not forget that fact while you are putting your proposal together.

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• Better your business with customer feedback

So, before we go any further, let’s take a quick look at the major advantages of incorporating your business. First up, there’s limited liability—probably the single most attractive benefit of incorporation. As a sole trader or partnership, if the business incurs debts then you personally may be forced to liquidate or turn over assets to pay for them. This can include homes, property, vehicles—fortunately, your dog will remain safe from these legal actions. As a corporation, the corporate entity takes on the financial responsibility of guaranteeing any loans made, meaning that investors and shareholders are only responsible for what they put in to the company.

Secondly, incorporation grants a much greater degree of income control to the shareholders and executives. By incorporating your small business, you give yourself the option of determining precisely when you, as a shareholder, receive income, which can definitely work in your favor tax-wise. Instead of getting your income when it’s received, being incorporated allows you to receive a dividend based on your share value at a time when the taxation environment is more to your advantage.

Another advantage of this is that anybody can be a shareholder—your spouse, your kids, heck, even old Uncle Albert, if needs be—meaning that income can be divided among family members in different taxation brackets. This is a nifty little benefit if you want the taxman to keep his grubby little paws off your family’s hard-earned cash!

Unlike sole traders, who can tail off if the owner dies or retires, corporations exist in perpetuity which allows the ownership to change through whatever reason and still carry on existing as a legal and commercial entity long after the esteemed founder has shuffled off this mortal coil (or earned a stack of cash and run off to Honolulu to spend their retirement drinking piña colada and debating the merits of the grass skirt.)

Lastly, there’s the fact that people are more likely to do business with a company with Inc., Llc., Ltd. or Corp. after the name. Contractors may find, for example, that certain companies will only deal with incorporated companies as it gives them an air of legitimacy and helps reduce the risk of becoming associated with a rogue or fly-by-night outfit.

However, despite all the great-sounding benefits, incorporation does have its drawbacks. For example, be prepared for you paperwork to go through the roof. You may find yourself needing to hire a lawyer or accountant to help yourself through the arcane process of incorporation, and to deal with the red tape to come afterwards. It is an expensive process to begin with, so make sure that the potential tax pitfalls are not more than you stand to gain from the process. Have an accountant look at your finances and give you proper, personalized advice before you decide to take the plunge.

• Books all Small Business Owners Should be Reading
• Building on strengths or fixing weaknesses?
• Late Payments Can Be a Good thing in a Slow Economy
• It’s Time to Reconnect
• Three Important Questions: Why, Who and What

Bootstrapping your business is about getting into the mud and doing whatever possible to get your business off the ground with as little money as possible. We are all guilty of dreaming the life of Donald Trump or Steve Jobs for a while where you are the poster boy for a huge multinational company. It is fine to believe you can get to that point, but starting your business by focusing solely on that, you will lose track of the smaller things that are the building blocks of your business and get lost in the haze of the bright lights.

When starting your business, or putting together a product, don’t aim for the laundry list of features, or the largest inventory, but aim for getting your name out there, and making sure you even have something that people want. The WANT has to be there in order for your business to succeed, or you have to have the power to make people BELIEVE THEY WANT AND NEED your product / service. Starting small will also give you more time to work on other aspects of your business like customer service, which is key in any successful business.

Thinking Big in the beginning will just leave you with analysis paralysis over the smallest details, that really, get in the way of taking action in the early stage of a business. Get your product or service running, and get feedback from your clients. The feedback from them will give you all of the things you need to work on in the future. Rely on their feedback, because after-all, if you like your product and the customers don’t, you have a crap, period!.

If you are having trouble putting this in perspective for your business here are 4 thoughts to keep in mind.

1. Think small – You can make all the money you need solving a small problem well instead of trying to tackle the world’s issues.
2. Close your mouth – If need to draw your line in the sand at some point. Once you do, stick to it!
3. Open your ears – Now find out if it is sticky now that you are stuck, Feedback and testing, they will let you know if you have the next post-it-note or if it is just a generic gum wrapper.
4. Get out there – My friend John Assaraf said that if you sit on your couch planning and meditating all the time eventually people will come and take your house from around you and all that is left is you and a couch.

First, the following is not supposed to be considered a popularity contest, and by no means am I claiming to be the coolest guy out there-well, my five-month-old son may think I’m pretty cool! But what I’d like to ask you is: Who do you know? I don’t want to know if you’ve ever seen James Woods in a Starbucks or if you’re the type of person who gets the thumbs up from everyone you pass. I just want to see if you can develop a list of people you know. Why develop a list? Because, whether you’re a first-year small-business greenhorn or a veteran badass, creating a contact list is one of the best ways to get your marketing wheels rolling. And…uh huh, you know what’s coming here…it’s free!

Instead of buying the first shiny marketing package that catches your eye, set aside a significant period of time and develop a list of all the people you know. By first creating a list of contacts that you can solicit and present your business to, you’ll be taking advantage of verified, warm leads; leads you didn’t have to spend a single marketing dollar on. The first phase of creating your list should be done through a stream of consciousness, writing down every single name that comes to mind. Subsequently, you’ll use a filter and qualify each of the name’s you’ve written down. Try categorizing them into Direct Purchase, Referral Prospects, Barter Candidates and Sleepers.

• Direct Purchase: Who on your list is ready to buy? Which names did you write down that fall under your classifications for your ideal client?
• Referral Prospects: Want to double or triple your new contact list? Then ask yourself “Who do they know?” For example, let’s say you’re a used-car salesman. Okay, so you’ve got your brother on the list, but he’s always been a new-or-nothing kind of guy and though he loves you, refuses to buy from you. Instead of testing this familial tie’s strength, simply think of who he knows or ask him if he thinks any of his friends might be interested. No matter what industry they’re in, business owners would do well to view their company as a network marketing company or an MLM. Look beyond the surface; there are many levels to a solid business.
• Barter Candidates: Who on your list could you trade services/products with? Perhaps your neighbor doesn’t need a car at this time, but you can still ask him if he’d be willing to trade you a few hours of his skills for some car repair discounts you get through your vendors.
• Sleepers: These are the people you just can’t seem to categorize. Perhaps you only briefly met them on the street once and don’t have an actual relationship with them. Either way, you should never assume a contact is worthless until you’ve made the effort to market to them.

Just as we encourage equality in society, so shall it be with your business. Never assume anything about your prospects or contacts until you’ve dealt with them directly-after that, you can judge them as much as you’d like.

Look for our future feature article on follow-up to help you capitalize on your contact list.

• Word of Mouth Marketing: Thank your referrers
• Find Your Comfort Zone & Get Your Message Out!
• Email Marketing, It’s like adding an Army of Employees
• 10 Ways to Improve Workflow
• Submission Doesn’t Always Mean Obedience

I figured I would continue on with my favorite Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns that I have found around the web. Happy Monday everyone!

Ego Boost

I love when simple concepts are the ones that make the biggest impact. This one is fun, innovative and feeds male ego at the same time.

Jaws Eats Bus Passengers

I am huge fan of the vehicle wrap. When done well you will always get attention. Your audience is bored waiting in traffic, it has movement and it is memorable. All the makings of a campaign that will be talked about at dinner tables and push your message along.

Half a Bus Stop

The last time I had a blog post that had the message to use less we had a huge discussion about green marketing and the merits and morals of advertising.

The impact this one creates is great. One of the best ways to get attention is to take a familiar object and turn it’s concept upside down. Good job Denver Water!

Is IKEA taking over the world

It would seem that I have accidentally created a public transit guerrilla marketing post I will continue with the theme. As the one above it is a great job of taking the familiar and playing with perception. I hope that it does not rain.

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• 10 Great Guerrilla Marketing Examples
• Happy Bonza Bottler Day, oh and Happy New Year.