Tomasz Gorecki, fellow blogger and long time contributor to this site sent me a link today that I wanted to share with everyone. If this video does not stir your passion it will hopefully give a not so gentle kick in the ass we all need.
The video is from the Web 2.0 Expo in New York this past September with a presentation from Gary Vaynerchuk. So let’s start hustling!
Oh I almost forgot to mention take a look at Tomasz’s Blog on his journey to get debt free. It’s a great story and is packed with lots of good tips. Debt In Your 20’s Is The Kiss of Death
Sit back and enjoy.
If you haven’t heard already, today is Blog Action Day and this years theme is poverty. You can read more about this here. I chose to make my post about something that hits close to home while others cover the many needs in other countries. Homeless War Veterans.
For many Veterans, coming home after serving in the war is hard emotionally as well as physically and most of all, financially. For many of our brave soldiers, they cannot afford to pay rent and wind up homeless. According to USA Today in November of 2007, Veterans made up 1 in 4 homeless people roaming the streets of America. This number makes me sick. How can our country expect these men and women to risk their lives for us and then come home and not support them when they need us?
So, I put together 10 great ways our bootstrapping skills can help War Veterans in our local cities as well as around the entire country. Let me know if you can think of any more or how you’ve involved your business in any of these ten great bootstrapping skills to help our Soldiers.
- Gain some media attention – We’re no strangers to doing things to attract attention to our businesses right? So put it to good use. Try making a nice guerrilla marketing campaign that helps get the awareness levels up about the soldiers who are homeless in this country. For some guerrilla marketing inspiration, check out these posts: here, here and here.
- Donate a % of your profits – During certain months of the year business donate part of their profits to charities about breast cancer and other causes so why not pick a month and donate a percentage of your profits to a homeless veterans charity? With my Tennessee Web Design company I am donating 10% of all profits in November to the National Coalition for Homeless Veternas and I urge you to do something similar.
- Rent out a hotel for the evening – Find a hotel around your area that has 20-30 rooms and invite homeless veterans in your area to stop by and get a nice shower and a place to sleep for the evening. Yes, it may not be the biggest thing in the world to do, but I am sure they will appreciate it.
- Spare a few dollars – Every time I went to the dollar store by my home for about 2 months straight, a homeless veteran would be sitting outside asking for spare change. I would always give him money.
- Spare some of your time – With the same guy above, I would talk to him and have a conversation with him. This few minutes of my life helped this man get through his day (yes, he told me that he was happy I talked to him). I was the only person to take time and talk to him while others either walked grimly by or dropped change in but never looked at him.
- Open up some jobs in your company – Does your company have a few openings? Why not fill these spots with the War Veterans who need jobs? If they don’t understand a certain aspect of the job, train them. They’re good listeners and follow instructions very well
- Donate some of your items – Do you run a computer store? why not donate some computers to a local homeless shelter or to a hospital for Veterans? What about those of you who run a clothing line? Why not donate some clothing to a charity for War Veterans? You could even give the homeless Veterans in your area some clothing right out of your car. What can your business donate to help homeless War Veterans?
So as you can see, there are many ways your business and bootstrapping skills can benefit the homeless War Veterans in this country, so get out there and do your part. I know I am.
Why shouldn’t you be stupid? Why should you feel dumb when you do something other people aren’t “hip” to? Why should you should believe that following your own pattern will make people dislike you, your business and your beliefs. The truth is, being stupid could be just the thing your business needs in order to grow effectively.
How many of us could sit back 10 years ago, see a company called “Google” and believe it would be the powerhouse it is today? Not many of us. But I bet the creators did. They invented a word and did something that no one else was doing and turned it into their own brand and are now as rich as rich can be All because they dared to be stupid. Or how about the guys who create Youtube? Or how about Seth Godin giving away so many great marketing ideas for free every day on his blog? You know, some people actually believe that giving away things is BAD for business. Yea, go figure.
Are you scared to chase your dreams?
When you think about your dream job, or the ‘perfect life’ do you get that same exciting burst of energy and excitement that I get when I am planning different things for my business? Yeah, I bet you do. That my friends, is called Passion. I’ve wrote about passion previously on this blog and when you get a free minute or two, I’d suggest checking it out. So you’ve come to the realization that you have that burning passion, but what do you do next?
If you’re like most small business owners, or aspiring small business owners, you’ve probably let a little bit of doubt sink into your head. Maybe you’ve thought the following thoughts before:
- I don’t have the skills needed
- Where am I going to find all of the money required to do this
- I just don’t know where to start
While these are all perfectly logical thoughts to have, you NEED to realize that they should not paralyze your dreams. I was reading “The 4-Hour Workweek” the other day and came across this line in the book and it fits perfect with our current topic: “Risks weren’t that scary once you took them”. (oh, and did I mention Timothy Ferris is another guy who gives away great marketing and business ideas on his blog for free too?)
So how do we actually “dare to be stupid”?
It’s a simple concept really. Daring to be stupid is essentially the exact way you lived your life when you were a child. You were care free, did things your way and really didn’t care about other peoples opinions. That is how you dare to be stupid in a nut-shell and should be printed out in large, bold text and placed in your office somewhere.
Guerrilla marketing can be looked at as daring to be stupid simply because these marketing strategies are being put to practice in ways that other people haven’t thought of before. As a bootstrapper, you need to realize that being stupid doesn’t always mean failing. Yes, you can make a stupid decision and fail, but without action, there is no reaction. So yes, without trying something ‘stupid’ you can never fail; but you’ll never succeed either.
So find that inner child in you, dare to be stupid and jump with a leap of faith. It just might pay off more then you think.
Setting your own rules, self employment, sleeping as late as you want, lack of inhibitions; all reasons to leave the cubicle lifestyle and become your own boss. But what happens from your initial thoughts about self employment to the point of actually getting there can be tricky if you’re not well prepared. That’s where this article comes in. Being your own boss can be done in as easy as five steps and I want to show you how. I’ve done it on a slightly different path then what I’m going to explain to you, but if I were starting over again, this would be my definite list of 5 steps to leaving the cubicle.
Analyzing your passions
If you’re leaving the cubicle lifestyle because you hate it, jumping into your own business should be fun and exciting. It should be something you’ve got a deep passion about. If not, then why leave your cubicle, right? The first thing you need to do when you’re deciding to leave the cubicle and be your own boss is sitting down and really thinking about what it is you love to do. Maybe you’re an adventure junkie who loves skydiving and mountain climbing, or maybe you love a much calmer lifestyle and spend your spare time helping out at the elderly center. What is your passion? When you can answer this question, you’re well on your way to becoming your own boss.
When you have a definitive list of your passions, no matter how many there are, you are ready to start analyzing them. What I suggest doing is putting in big letters at the top of a piece of paper each passion (one piece of paper per passion). Under the title, list as many positive emotions you can associate with that particular passion. Anything from “I love the rush” to “It is a great way to spend time with my family”; no answers are wrong here.
Plan your path to profits
Without a road, or a solid ground to walk on, you can never take those first critical steps to making it to the finish line. Can we walk on air? Water? Highly unlikely. The same holds true in business. Without some form of plan, you’re aimlessly running with no goal in sight. I don’t want this misinterpreted as a statement telling you that you need a 200 page business plan with 10 year projected profits and tons of other useless information. That is not what I mean at all. Your plan to profits will come from the following; taking your passion list and brainstorming ideas on how each of these passions could be profitable.
For instance, if you’re love is cars, you could have the following list as a plan to profit.
- Mechanic
- Car photography
- Nascar racer
- Monster truck driver
- Drivers school instructor
- Car painter/customizer
The ideas here are limitless and should not be held back by negative thinking. The goal here is to come up with every possible way imaginable that you could make money with your passion. Again, no answers here are wrong (you’ll come to notice that this is a reoccurring theme – positive thinking).
Build a solid contact list
Networking is crucial to building start ups for all small business owners. Networking is also one of the best ways to get 10 steps ahead of your competition. Regardless of these two facts, building a contact list before starting your business is often overlooked. In any position you’re currently in, you can build a contact list. If you’re current job is in the IT field, you can make sure any contacts you have with your current employers sources is intact, or if you’re just starting fresh out of high school and you’re not sure about anything you’re doing, you’ve got friends and teachers that can be placed in your contact list.
Your contact list does not need to be for potential clients and customers only. Granted, you should set one of these up as well, but you need a list of people who can give it to you straight; the honest answers you’re looking for to make sure that by the time you’re launching your company, you’ve got all of the right pieces to the puzzle in place. Friends, colleagues, current company contacts; they all hold very valuable information to your business. Always remember that and you’ll be on a contact list building rampage.
*note, this is one step I never took when I first started my blog design company and I deeply regret it as it took me much longer to get into the green and a lot of changes were required along the way which would have been sidestepped totally if I just had a contact list.
Create a sure fire marketing strategy
Once you’ve got your building blocks in place, it’s time to put it all into effect. During this stage of planning, you’re going to want to focus hard on building something that will be effective and give you the greatest ROI. If you’re throwing a fishing line into a big river and hoping for a bite, you’ll be a lot worse off then if you went to a small pond that you knew was full of fish that liked your bait. Below are seven sentences you need to answer in order to create a solid foundation for your marketing strategy.
- The purpose of the marketing – The physical action you want your prospect to take.
- How you’ll achieve this purpose – your competitive advantage and benefits.
- Your target market – who are you aiming to benefit?
- The marketing weapon you’ll use – online, offline, magazine print, ect.
- The niche and your position and what you stand for.
- The identity of your business – Not who owns it, but what you stand for.
- Your budget – This should be expressed as a percentage of your projected revenue.
From here, you can build a more in depth plan of action, but without these seven sentences answered, your marketing plans will not fall into proper place. This is one area in your five step plan to leaving the cubicle that you should spend a bit of time on and make sure you’ve got everything down solid. To read more about the seven sentences listed above, you can check out Building an Effective Guerrilla Marketing Strategy.
Stop complaining and do it already
So now you have a great plan of action set together right? If not, re-read this article and then come back to this paragraph. I will keep this section short, because there’s not much left to say except to just do it; get out there and get yourself on your own road that doesn’t involve that damn cubicle. If you never try, you never fail. But on the same token, if you never try, you never win either.
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and make yourself proud of what you can do on your own. It’s not as scary as you might think!
If you’ve got questions for me or any of the other readers here, please feel free to leave a comment and lets get a discussion going about this subject. I’d love to hear your input.
Your customers don’t buy shampoo; they buy clean and manageable hair. My clients don’t by a custom blog design, they buy higher profits and better branding. It’s simple; people hire you because of what you can do for them, not what you do. This might sound a bit confusing, but if you stand back for a minute and really think about it, it’s true. You don’t go to the store and buy toothpaste; you buy clean teeth and fresh breath. This holds true in any business online or offline.
If you’re freelancing full time, or you run your own small business, remembering this and building your marketing around it can really make or break your campaign. Focusing on the nuts and bolts of what your company does rather then what the end result is for the customer will not only hurt your sales, but your branding will suffer as well. For the average Search Engine Optimization company, their central focus is “your website will be #1 in Google for *this keyword*” yet if they were to stop proclaiming this and explain the 20-30 steps they take in order to make your website #1 for a specific keyword, they would surely lose clients and drive away any potential clients who are looking for the benefit, not the feature. Always remember that your clients hire you because of what you can give them and not necessarily what it takes you to get to that point, so exploit it for all its worth and make sure that is what you talk about in your marketing and copywriting.
Your software could have 300 cool features built in, and all kinds of extra additions that can be customized to the clients requests, but in the end, if your software doesn’t benefit your customer, or if the customer doesn’t know what it can do to benefit them, you’re losing out on that sale. Fluff is overrated.
* Editors note: Every monday we will be featuring a quick marketing tip like this, so make sure you subscribe to our feed to stay up to date with our newest articles.