As a lot of you know I run a small business marketing company – Scapes Consulting as well as writing for this blog. I have been focused on bringing internet marketing ideas to the local bricks and mortar type businesses that don’t normally know how to enter this strange new marketing world beyond just putting up a website.
I have noticed as business is picking up I have had less time to commit to producing new articles for all my Bootstrapping Friends. Well I decided that I will share the video’s that I have created for my local clients with you guys as well. A lot of the information in them is just as important for my readers that are here as well.
It also does not matter where in the world you are my company would be able to help you with any of the concepts that I talk about.
For many people who run businesses that are located in offices, their bodies don’t seem like vital investments. Sure, if you were a cook or a construction worker, your physical wellbeing might be something you invested in. After all, it’s the only way to make money. But office workers tend to think that they only need their thinking, which doesn’t depend on physical wellbeing, right? Wrong! How you take care of your body is vital to how well you can work; whether you crush rocks or philosophize.
One place to really make this happen is with your diet. It might seem odd…can diet improve my business? The answer is a definitive yes. For most, work is where we eat poorly, because we’re always on the run and in a hurry. We just simply don’t have time to make a good meal happen. After considering the next few paragraphs, you may start to treat your diet like you would a client.
Firstly, there are many different foods which can improve not only your energy, but also your ability to think and make decisions. No, this isn’t coffee. It’s extra supplements such as vitamin E and fish oil. These nutrients, found naturally in many foods, have been demonstrated to increase thinking ability. You can easily find these foods around as many restaurants allow you to substitute beef or pork for fish in many their dishes.
On that point, avoid any fatty foods. Even if you are in the best shape of your life, a fatty meal will slow you down because your body has to process it. This mean you work slower, you think slower, and you are simply less motivated. You may still feel into your work, but you’ll be working at a decreased rate compared to how you might work had you had a lighter meal.
The same goes for the beverages you drink. Many drinks give you a short burst of energy, but they’ll make you crash later. Sodas and similar drinks provide you with sugar for energy, but many of these sugars are hard for your body to work with, so you’ll end up spending more energy in order to digest them. Instead drink water or other natural fruit juices. Tea is a great alternative to coffee that can still wake you up in the morning, but isn’t as harmful; especially compared to espresso drinks.
Generally speaking, your body is an investment as well. Just like you would invest in worker safety and appropriate training, take the time to do so with your diet. Just like your business in general, what you put in is what you get out. Your body in this sense is a tool to make your business run at its optimum rate. With a poor diet, you may be able to work, but you’ll be doing a worse job comparatively.
And hey, you may end up looking and feeling better in life in general as well.
If you work in management in any way, shape or form, chances are that at some point in your career you are going to have to propose something to someone. This could be a proposal to your boss to start work on a marvelous new project, a proposal to an investor or a bank for an injection of cash into the company, or an approach to another company for some form of co-operation. What all of these have in common is that you, as the person making the proposition, are trying to get something from the recipient. This immediately puts them in a position of power in any negotiations, so it is vitally important to impress and make yourself out to be competent and worthy of their time, effort and investment.
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.
Growing your business has never been this easy. Knowing what to do ahead of time can greatly increase the chance of success with your new business venture. In any freelance career you choose, bootstrapping can greatly increase your chances of profiting and growing your small business as large as your wildest dreams. Bootstrapping is essential to every freelancer and an avenue you should not overlook. I know every freelancer reading this article right now can say yes to the following question: “Would you like to grow your business at little to no cost?” Well, bootstrapping is your answer.
In essence, bootstrapping is building your business with little to no start up funds. I’m sure we’ve all been there or are currently in a place to want to grow your freelance business but do not have the funds to flourish like you would want. Below I will outline ten steps to bootstrapping your freelance career that will definitely get you going on the right path.
- Study Your Market – This might seem like a no-brainer but most people skip this entirely and find out weeks or months down the road that they’ve missed out on a chance to learn ahead of time if their market is going to work or not. Why spend your time and money building a product or service in a market where it’s not needed or wanted? You also need to study the habits of your potential clients/customers. What are they into right now? Where do you normally see them or is there a place you know you can find them? These are key elements in your market studies. Don’t be lazy; take your time and make sure you’ve got a solid outline here.
- Study Your Competition – This is one thing I made sure of when I started my blog design business. Looking at what your potential competition is doing right can let you know what you should be doing. Alternately, finding cracks in their marketing or their business in general can really give you a heads up on how to make your business stand out. Use key points from your competition and build on it to be one step ahead of your competition.
- Outline Your Plans – This is by no means supposed to be a business plan in the sense of sitting down and writing 200 pages on what you’re going to do, how much money you’ll be making 10 years from now and so on. This should be a simple paragraph or two at most that outlines the following: the purpose of your marketing, how you’ll achieve this purpose, your target market, the marketing weapons you’ll use, your niche and your position and what you stand for, the identity of your business and your budget which should be displayed as a percentage of your projected gross revenues.
- Get A Website – If you’re an on-line business or a business that functions solely off-line, it doesn’t matter. You need a website. In my Small Business Blogging article, I mentioned how on Duct Tape Marketing they discussed and posted an audio tape of an interview they did with a company selling Fishing Lures who used the power of the web to jump leaps and bounds ahead of their competition. The owner credits the website to changing the way people find out about his business. It’s such a powerful statement, I had to mention it again here.
- Get Promotional Materials – You’ve got your marketing plan together right? I mean, it was step #3 so I hope you do! Now you’ve got to gather the promotional materials it calls for. Anything from business cards to flyer’s, t-shirts and web banners. These are your weapons and without them you will never win the fight.
- Call Call Call – If you’re selling a product, calling potential customers is the perfect way to find out if they’re interested. You don’t need to sell anything on the first call (or maybe you will) but getting your voice out there and making yourself accessible to the potential customers is desperately needed. Estimate around 100 calls per day because out of those 100, a seasoned bootstrapper who knows how to sell should make 10 sales.
- Email Email Email – So you’ve got a business that functions on-line? Well, make sure you email around 100 people per day. It is not that hard. If you’re targeting a specific service, (for this example we’ll use my blog design company) you can go to Google and type in “Fishing Blogs”. Replace the word fishing with any other word and you’ve got an infinite list of blog owners you can email about designs or redesigns. It’s that simple.
- Delegate – So you’ve got the point now that you’re a selling machine but you can’t find the time needed to create your products or deliver your services properly? Pass the selling aspects of your business along to someone else. DO NOT do this until you’ve become a selling machine yourself because if you can’t sell your product, how can someone else?
- Expand – Anything from office space to employees. This goes hand in hand with Delegate at #8 but is a vital aspect of bootstrapping your business. You’ve got to know when it’s time to expand. You can’t be a one man/woman show forever. You can’t work out of a 6×6 space in a spare bedroom forever. Give yourself room to breathe and your business will flourish.
- Reward Yourself – So you’ve been working your fingers to the bone for almost a year now? Give yourself time to relax, spend a little bit on “you” and not your business. Go ahead, you deserve it!
If you never knew you were doing something wrong, would you change? If you thought for your entire life that the way you conducted yourself and your small business was the proper way, would you consider that you might be wrong? Odds are you wouldn’t, but feel free to let me know in the comments section how you would handle yourself in that situation, I’d love to talk with you and see how we all would handle that situation.
Customer feedback is essential to your business; but why? If you’re customer feels great about your business and gives you a testimonial to showcase on your website, in your brochures and other print material, doesn’t that show you that you’re doing something right? Well, that is the perfect scenario but the majority of the time your customers won’t give honest feedback unless they’re asked for it; so ask.
Why asking the general public won’t work
There are many people out there that will tell you that you need to stick a ‘feedback form’ on your website and leave it at that. Or maybe they suggest that you send out a mass email to every client you’ve had or every email on your list. Doing the latter would result in 100+ emails being sent out all titled “Dear Valued Customer”. This is the absolute WORST way to attract attention to yourself and will undoubtedly result in 100+ emails being deleted. Generalizations just won’t work.
People want to feel like they’re part of a relationship with your business, like their opinion is truly valued and appreciated. In doing this, you’re catering to their ego’s and ensuring that they’ll give you a 100% honest review of your product or service. Without the personal attachment, they could care less and will throw your letter away or delete your email or totally disregard the big “GIVE ME FEEDBACK” button your website is now showing.
A simple solution to personalization
The easiest way to instill the personalized touch to your customers is with a hand written letter. Yes, you heard me right, hand written letters. I know you’re thinking it sounds crazy, but if a bootstrapper knows one thing, its how to maximize your productivity in a short amount of time to ensure you get the most out of your time. What does this mean for you? Simple; you’re going to see exactly how to streamline this method while keeping the personalized touch you need in order to get the customers attention long enough to get their honest opinion.
If you remember a while back in my The art of the email: Long emails are better for business article, I talked about a firefox plug-in named “Signature“. Well, we’re going to try something similar, but with handwriting. How you ask? Get a sheet of your stationary and get a pen; once you’ve got this far, you’re half way there. Now, write out a letter like you would to any client or customer you’ve just done business with except you need to leave out the introduction line and salutation.
So, you’ve got the entire body of the letter wrote out explaining how you valued their business and loved working with them on their project right? You’ve signed the bottom and you have everything setup except the welcome note at the top. Great! Now take this piece of paper and photo copy it 100+ times (1 sheet for every client you’re going to mail). On each sheet, now you only need to write out their name and a brief introduction paragraph to ensure that you’re giving that personalized touch that reaches their heart 
The final step – lick the envelope
Well, not literally, but if you’re into that kind of thing, go for it. Personally, I use a sponge thats slightly damp to close my envelopes. The main thing to do during this process is to HAND WRITE the name and address of the person you’re contacting on the envelope. You might even want to write “Thank You” on it down towards the right or left of the envelope, just to give it that extra pop. Seeing a hand written letter gets a drastically higher open rate compared to a printed piece of envelope with a bright red “OPEN” sign on it so take advantage of this.
This post was inspired by an article I read at another website recently: How to seek feedback and I just wanted to expand on it. If you’re not a reader over at Trizle yet, I’d highly suggest checking the site out. Andrew is a great guy and someone who knows a LOT about business; and constantly is posting about it.
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