Posts Tagged ‘start up’

Here briefly are the stages of building a profitable and satisfying business.  If you are not yet at stage four, you could be wasting your time cultivating your on-line presence.

Stage One – Know Who You Are

Do you know what it is you do and who you serve?

Without a unique point of view, a clear focus, a personal brand, your on-line time can quickly deteriorate into time wasting chit chat. (Posted any pictures of puppies lately?)  Keeping in touch with old friends is valuable and has its place but it is not business leadership.  If you are not clear about what you are selling and who you are selling it to, your on-line time could be better spent off-line clarifying your unique business idea.

 In the big picture, time spent finding that thing that you are most uniquely qualified to create and share with a willing and appreciative public is far more valuable than the number of comments received on your most recent post.

You can download free worksheets to help you clarify your vision and mission from my web site,

Stage Two – Find Paying Customers

Are you making money now from your business?  If the answer is, “No, not really”, there is no reason to feel ashamed, all businesses start somewhere.  You may be in a necessary startup phase or you may be blogging, tweeting and commenting in order to hide from the hard work of generating real life leads.  (I am not judging.  I am an introvert too.) If you are not yet making money, stop socializing online and consider some other way to make contact with your ideal customer.

Stage Three – Expand Your Product Offerings

Once you are clear on your business, your target market  and you are making money – enough money so that you know there is a demand for your product – you can begin to expand your product offerings with the intention of building an online revenue stream.

Stage Four – Build Your Online List

Okay now!

Now you have a plan and an intention behind your online efforts.  Now you have a process in place to nurture your online relationships.  Marketing and digital technology coach John Jantsch calls this “convergence”.  He says,

 “The highly converged business uses every advance in technology to open the opportunity for a deeper personal relationship.”

Building a strategy designed to create high engagement with your ideal client is a highly individual process. If you are already at stage four, I recommend you begin your social media marketing strategy with a careful consideration of your business plan and your mission.  You will be most effective when you focus your social media marketing efforts on building relationships based on your core business values and not on generating meaningless buzz over cute puppy pictures.

Image by Flickr user epSos.de, licensed under CC 2.0

I have argued for small, very small, businesses over big business.  To pursue this non-conformist philosophy requires a certain level of rugged individualism.

Take, for example, Guy Kawasaki’s advice in The Art of the Start: regarding managing for cash flow.  Kawasaki says that managing for cash flow isn’t a long term practice. Eventually, he claims, a business builder will want to strategize for “paper” profits like growth, market share or brand recognition.  Management for cash flow is a strategy only for early stage bootstrapped businesses.

If your intention is to be a very small business owner, his advice for bootstrappers is useful, just don’t be sucked in by the claim that cash flow is not a long term practice. It can be.

If your choice is to create a business that will afford you a certain, adequate lifestyle, consider the life you will create as you follow Kawasaki cash flow advice for early stage start-up businesses.

Happiness is a positive cash flow. Fred Alder

Kawasaki gives the follow advice to maximize cash flow from your business:

Choose A Product That Is Easy To Sell

He is right. As you choose a business, don’t make it hard for yourself. I have worked with clients who chose to sell a debt reduction tool. They always struggle because, despite its proven success, the product is expensive, the usefulness of the product is difficult to demonstrate and the market, by its nature, is cash strapped.  Better to choose a product your market already knows it needs. Even though the market is highly competitive, there will always be someone selling easy weight loss and get rich quick schemes because these products meet a widely recognized need.  Choose a product that is just as compelling as beauty and wealth – but look for a niche with less competition.

Position Your Product

Once people recognize their pain, you want to make it an easy step to buy what you are offering.  Develop a marketing funnel.  Give your prospects a chance to experience your wares with little or risk as they come to know and trust you.  Keep your entry level product affordable, risk free and provide plenty of opportunities to build the relationship.  Remember running a successful, very small business is all about cash flow and relationship. Give your customers every chance to deepen their relationship with you and with your product.

Fill a Need

Another mistake I see my clients make early on in the business start-up process is choosing a product that fills an narrow market need. Usually this need is based on the client’s personal interest instead of a true market analysis. I’ve seen clients struggle to sell designer cat food to co-workers, or premium travel vacations to the ladies in the Fire Hall Auxiliary.  Don’t start a business, even a very small business, without first considering the size and level of need in the market. Also check for competition. If there are only 10 customers in a 100 mile radius and someone already sells high end cat food to them, you will have an uphill climb.

Follow Trends

One way to identify a need is to follow the trend. Social Media is an obvious trend but there are others: green technology, being frugal or alternative health care, to name a few. Beware. There is an art to this part of the start.  For the very small business owner, the product and the market can consume a large part of your day.  Seek a balance between following a trend and finding a product you believe in.  You will want to enjoy your customers. If you don’t like young people, don’t open a tattoo parlor.  You will want to find meaning in helping the people you serve.

Choose the right trend and you can create the good life.  Follow the trends blindly and you may become a success but miss being happy. Choose wisely.

Piggy Back on Someone Else’s Success

Like those birds that live on the backs of water buffalo, look around and see who or what is big in your world. You could create the next killer I-phone application, if you are so inclined.  A client of mine provides rides from the hotel district to the corporate office of a local training institute. Another, moves cars around for the local car dealership when a new order arrives.  Be creative. Let someone else create the need, you fulfill the demand.

What is your product?  Share it with the Working Miracles Very Small Business community by leaving a comment and test the market.

A recent blog post on ReadWriteStart, a resource and guide for first-time entrepreneurs and startups sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark , claimed “If one was to enroll in Startup Entrepreneurialism 101, Guy Kawasaki’s books would likely be required reading. Kawasaki’s years of experience from the early days at Apple and the Silicon Valley venture capital scene provides a wealth of information for the eager entrepreneur.”

Kawasaki, for those of you who’ve been too busy starting up a business to read, is perhaps the most well known and most vocal venture capitalist in high tech circles. He is the author of the blog How to Change the World and the books The Art of the Start and the more recent Reality Check, among others.

Since my small business coaching practice is intended for 101 level entrepreneurs or those a little further along in the process who believe that it never hurts to revisit the basics, I decided to begin my first podcast with a lesson from Kawasaki’s book The Art of the Start.

Enjoy. And please let me know what you think of my first podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:13 — 15.8MB)