CleverStart

basically, it’s acknowledging that your web presence is the most important marketing tool that any business has in today’s marketplace.  if you don’t believe me, ask yourself these questions:  when was the last time you picked up a yellow pages to find a phone number or address?  if you were deciding between restaurants to dine at over the weekend, did you go and physically visit all 4 restaurants to pick up their menu and check out their ambiance?  when was the last time you got a PHONE call from a store like Nordstrom letting you know that they had a sale going on?  when was the last time you picked up the phone and called 1000 customers to tell them about a new product you’re releasing?  when was the last time you called a business to find out their pricing?  if you have a medical question, do you call your doctor?  has someone ever given you their business card and it did NOT have a website address?  you get the point.  my octogenarian grandparents use the internet, so i’m assuming the rest of the population does too.  web sites are often a potential customers first impression of your business, which is the biggest opportunity you have to establish credibility and win their business.  additionally, it provides valuable information about you, your company, your products, and your value propositions.  it helps people decide if they want to do business with you. 

the fact that you are reading this WEB log probably means that this concept is old news.  if you are still not convinced, then fine, you don’t have to believe me.  however, you still need an effective website, sorry.  you need an effective website even if you do not believe that your website is your most effective marketing tool simply because of the opportunity cost of NOT having a great site.  Here is a great example.  My wife recently got mad at me for staying up too late all the time working and not spending enough time doing household chores.  she had made dinner probably two weeks in a row, and it was high time i started chipping in.  so, i felt bad and wanted to buy her a gift to smooth it over.  so i went online and looked up locally owned jewelry stores.  Side note, i could have taken advantage of the numerous online stores who are able to offer lower pricing because they have less overhead and pass the savings on to consumers, but i wanted to physically walk into someplace and have an expert walk me through my options.  in essence, i wanted a typical traditional transaction, but i still went online.  The first 3 stores had amazing websites, they established themselves as experts, had beautiful photos displaying their jewelery, and they made me feel comfortable if i were to purchase a high end item from them.  The 4th website was disgusting to say the least.  i am not a web snob, but it was literally an old photo with no text for the home page, and a copy and paste effort for directions to their store, and that’s it.  this store is LOSING business because if this is how they treat their website, how do they treat their customers?  how could they possibly sell high end jewelry and have such a sorry excuse for their online presence?  needless to say, i still visited the store.  it turns out, they have been locally owned and operated in my town for over 50 years, and their reputation was impeccable!  but guess what?  i am the exception and NOT the rule, i only went there because i happened to drive by one day and thought i should talk to them about their web situation.  and guess what?  they are now a Clever Start client. 

the point is, whether you like it or not, the truth is that you need a great website to deliver your message, to attract and retain customers, and to at least put yourself on level playing ground with the competition. 

so yes, tonight i watched the season premier of the "new’ 90210 on the CW with my wife.  and surprisingly, i was thoroughly entertained.  you all may remember the original 90210 (or you may not) with brandon, brenda, kelly, dylan, and the gang, which inevitably ran about 4 seasons too long and the 30 year old actors playing high school kids just couldn’t really pull it off anymore, so the show went down the tubes.  surely the enthusiasts would disagree.  well, this one starts out the same way with two new kids moving to hollywood and going to west beverly hills high.  anyways, i do not usually derive any pleasure from watching mindless television, but tonight something went off in my mind.  What happened was that i realized i was watching this show and liking it because it was selling me on the dream.  as it specifically relates to the show, it’s the dream that everyone looks good and flirts their minds off with one another and that high school is a fun, exciting, thrilling, invigorating time in everyones life, and the drama that you experience is next to nothing.  i actually liked that, because i remember those days when you went to school literally for that 45 minutes in 3rd period when you sat next to the hottest girl in school.  it was THAT simple back then! 

so i’m watching the new 90210 and the show depicts these kids driving up to school in their convertible bentley coupes, mercedes, and luxury italian sports cars (i guess steve sanders’ corvette just doesn’t cut it anymore), and another light went on.  the reason i’m watching this ridiculously dumb show (while having my mind blown at the fact that i’m thoroughly loving it), is the same reason that you and i have started a small business.  would we do it if we really knew the truth?  that you’re often times working 80 hours a week for yourself and making less money just so you don’t have to work 40 hours a week for someone ELSE?  or how about the moment you realize that you have to handle all of your sales, client support, delivery, on TOP of all your paperwork, bookkeeping, and taxes at the end of the year?  oops, can’t ship that off to accounting, or to shipping anymore, YOU are that person.  the answer is no.  we are taking on the endeavor of starting and owning a small business for the dream.  The dream that we will lead rewarding lives and have the ability to accomplish all of our personal, spiritual, family, AND financial goals through this vehicle that is our business.  You might dream of fancy cars and big houses, or that boat you’ve always wanted, having a secure retirement, or even just having fun and ENJOYING working your entire life.  We work because we want to live that life.  If you don’t have dreams, you run the risk of losing that edge, that driving force that motivates you everday.

So while the kids watch 90210 and are enthralled and entranced by the allure of what high school COULD be like, i’m sitting here watching it as well smiling at how this show is such a great parallel for all of us small business owners.  we all dream, and without goals and dreams and the light at the end of the tunnel, many of us would do the world a great disservice and not continue the good fight of succeeding as a small business owner. 

Whether you are tech savvy or not, whether your industry revolves around technology or you sell toilet paper door to door, the universal truth today is that technology plays a vital role in your business. 

you may be surprised to learn that technology solutions are more within your financial reach than you may realize, as the costs continue to decline as technology improves, so you have no excuse to get up to speed in today’s business environment.  First, you NEED a website.  but today, you need to go one step further, you need a GREAT website.  your competitors have websites, so don’t throw something up that you paid $50 bucks for that your neighbor built for you, or people will continue to work with your competition and not you.  Second, communication.  Do you know how easy it is to keep in touch with your clients and your prospects through email marketing?  if not, then google it, you’ll find several great companies on the web who can provide you email marketing for as little as $9.95 per month.  this is worth its weight in gold, if nothing else, for the time it saves you from writing letters, writing individual emails, or calling to check in and communicate with every single prospect or client you have.  Third, your website needs to be seen to be effective.  Work with someone who can optimize your site and provide you ongoing support and optimization work.  find ways to creatively promote your website through non tech methods, such as flyers, banners, car stickers, business cards, etc…Fourth, engage your customer.  This begins to creep into the web 2.0 definition of technology, where a website is more than a landing page to read some stuff you wrote about your company and then look at a picture of your office or product with the phone number and email address listed.  Engaging your customer means getting them to interact with you.  allow them to post a comment or make a request on a product, allow them to search for product support from your customers, provide links to relavant industry articles that you collect, and write a blog.  writing a blog and posting relevant articles gives your audience a reason to engage and learn more about you or the industry in which you service, read: they will come back if you can successfully engage them through your witty banter on your blog, or your display of your superior product knowledge. 

Logistics: just about every service you possibly need to manage your business is now relatively cheap and it’s online.  from bookkeeping, to shipping solutions, to inventory tracking, to managing ad campaigns, it’s all there.  technology is made to make life easier, so take advantage of it.  you can now conduct meetings online through GoToMeetings, where you are able to walk someone through a presentation without being in the room with them and showing them your laptop.  You can provide customers with the ability to participate in a webinar, another great tool for sales and for training/support.  there are also VOIP phone systems that can provide you with professional sounding answering services, which will link your main office number to your work line, your cell phone, and your home line, so you never miss a call.  make life easier! 

you know that my MO is to get business off the ground and always shoot for profitability as early as possible.  so don’t freak out if you don’t have a website.  at the very least, order some free business cards and change the voice prompt on your cell phone.  if you’re nervous or enjoy playing life ultra safe, then go out and take face to face meetings and invest your time in sales and marketing the old fashioned way.  Once you get your revenue up, begin making plans to invest in your website as soon as possible.  make a list of technologies you would like to incorporate over time and why you think they will increase your revenues, your productivity, and your bottom line.  i wouldn’t jump into everything all at once, you can get by and continue to grow without technology, but to reach the goals you set for your business, technology will be a very important part of whether or not you get there. 

You have surely heard this statement before.  think about this statement and think about who told it to you and in what context they told it to you.  Let me cut to the chase.  In my opinion, I usually hear this everytime someone sees a company getting acquired, or some large investor making yet ANOTHER killer investment, or basically anytime we see or know someone having success.  Basically, these people are creating a reason in their mind why someone else is making money while they are not.  So, in my opinion, the statement "It Takes Money To Make Money" is FALSE.  It is an excuse. 

Just because you have money, does not mean you will make it.  It takes a heck of a lot more than money to create a start up and see it grow to the levels of success that you dream of.  It takes passion, energy, motivation, and an edge.  Mix these key ingredients with a bit of planning, mild organizational skills, and a good network of friends and colleagues, and you have a fighting chance to succeed.  So do not lose hope young and new entrepreneurs who are out there with doubts as to their chances of success.  If you are passionate about your business and determined to make it succeed regardless of the odds stacked against you, then you have all you need to succeed.  Don’t let the nay sayers bring you down.  You can do it.  Don’t let excuses or doubt creep into your mind, keep staying positive, and keep forging ahead. 

Many times those are one in the same.  A Mentor will often be a partner, and a partner will often be a mentor.  Learn from my experiences when i say that building your "team" really is a big component to the future success of your business.  When starting off in business, you NEED someone you can turn to.  The local SBA chapter is a good resource, often times free, so are networking groups such as business networking international (BNI), the Center for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), and others.  Word of mouth is also huge.  don’t be afraid to ask people you know as well as people you don’t know or barely know, to find out if they are interested in talking to you about your small business and giving you any valuable insight that they may have learned along the way in their illustrious careers.  Work with people that are smarter than you, and that compliment your skill set.  A mentor or a partner should always have more knowledge, more skills, and more experience than you, if you want to be able to learn from them and leverage your relationship to further the success of your start up.  This sounds so simple, yet i am completely aware that it is more difficult in practice to achieve this.  Heck, i am not going to call up Warren Buffet on the phone and ask him if i should buy a particular stock or bond, or invest in a certain industry or not, even though he is the oracle of Omaha and is the best investor in the history of the universe.  okay, i am biased because my grandparents live in Omaha, but being consistently the worlds #1 or #2 richest man behind or ahead of Bill Gates is pretty impressive.  So no, i am not going to leave you with a general directive which is very difficult and unrealistic to follow.  I read a million books and articles and i feel they all lack the same thing, a personal connection.  It’s like my old soccer coach who never played soccer in his life.  he sure could tell me what to do, but i never believed him because i KNOW he didn’t do it himself.  If anyone has ever invested in or thought about investing in real estate, then you know all too well the scams and thieves that idiots are running out there to separate you from your money by posing as so called "guru’s" who will train you on how to make 20K per month in passive income.  Let’s be real, if they were able to teach me and a bunch of other wanna be’s how to make 20K a month investing in real estate, then why the heck are they sitting in some hotel conference room charging me $500 bucks for this lame class instead of making the "big bucks" themselves?  well, it’s simple, they can’t and they’re not (making the money).  if it looks and sounds too good to be true or to be real, then it probably is (too good to be true).  again, i digress.  if anyone wishes to discuss real estate, i will speak more about real estate investing in future posts, as i have gained a lot of valuable experience in this world through being ripped off numerous times by experts and gurus and by failing miserably at several attempts to hit it rich, only to find a nice happy medium of actually making some money (although not the promised millionaire in two year program). 

So, let me break it down for you.  Talk to everyone you know, find someone through your own process of 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon to get to somebody in your circle that is smarter than you and knows more about the industry you wish to break into with your small business.  Pick their brain, discuss your idea, thank them graciously for taking the time to talk with you, and lastly, ask them if they would be willing to mentor you as you take your journey.  It really is that simple.  I wish i would have known that earlier in my life, because the value it has and can add to your business is beyond comprehension.  It can save you time, save you money, and help you achieve your goals.  BUT, start with the first step, identify WHO you want to talk to whether it is a specific who, or a profile of "who", and then figure out how to reach them.  Do it, don’t skip that vital step and just read my blog and the million other expert websites, do it, find that person, sit down and talk with them.  If you do not or are not willing to do that, then please stop reading my blog, it is that important! 

can i make a shameless self promoting plug here?  well, it’s my blog, so i guess i can.  Clever Start is here to help you with ALL of the ups and downs, questions and concerns, fears and uncertainties, trials and tribulations of starting and owning your own small business.  we are probably NOT smarter than you, but we genuinely care about your success and are here to provide you with our first hand experience in what works and what does not work.  Therefore, we are more than a fee for service company, we are a partner in your business. 

Maybe this was more appropriate for my FIRST post, so my apologies.  at clever start, we believe in not cluttering peoples minds or inboxes with unnecessary information, so i want to set the record straight and tell you who i am and who i am talking to in my sales and marketing posts.  i am a start up junkie, and a small business owner.  i have started 5 companies, all of which have done moderately well.  i work for myself, i am not rich, i go to work everyday and am the prototype for the cliche that says that you work 80 hours a week for yourself so you don’t have to work 40 hours a week for someone else.  my business ventures typically consist of a nice blend of innovation, adding value, and increasing some effeciency somewhere in someones life.  the companies i start are ALL self funded, and by self funded, i mean that i have a modest amount of cash in my checking account and two credit cards with 23,000.00 combined in available balance.  that may be more than what you have, or it may be a lot less.  either way, if i can create value and work for myself with this, then if you have more, then you have no excuse, and if you have less, then all is not lost.  i am here to talk to those people who start their businesses with a dream, a goal, and a passion for what they do, with hopes to hit it big one day  i am not talking to those looking at a startup from purely a numbers standpoint and expected revenue growth, exit strategies, ROI, series A thru series C rounds of funding, etc….i don’t do that myself, so i’m not going to talk to you about that.  funding is a key to startups, and in hindsight, should i have pursued funding for my startups?  maybe, but by growing organically and focusing on making a positive income each and every month, i have always paid my bills and been granted the flexibility to pursue whatever it was that i liked at the moment.  when i look at returns on investment, i am looking at 30 60 and 90 DAY plans.  if i am not making money by the 90 day mark, then i will seriously question what the heck i am doing with that particular idea or business.  that is not everyone, but that is me, so as you follow along in my little blogosphere, keep that in mind.  i speak to YOU fellow small business owner, who believes in providing an excellent product/service that you can build a company around from absolutely nothing to eventually paying yourself, with hopes of one day selling out and cashing in or continuing to cashflow until you retire.  stay tuned….

In my last post, i spoke about the need to get your hands dirty and make a sale as the single most important thing to do when starting your business.  I also mentioned that there are several other important ingredients that go into the mixing bowl when starting your own business, one of which is the Due Diligence phase.  it’s basically market research.  it is making sure you obtain the appropriate information necessary to make an educated decision on whether or not to launch your business.  in the world of finance, mergers, and acquisitions, it goes much deeper into scouring over the books of a potential acquisition target, checking their P&L’s, cashflow statements, speaking with current employees, customers, vendors, etc….this, while not useful to you now, is what you can also expect if and when the time comes for you to experience the pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow for any entrepreneur known as a liquidity event.  a liquidity event is when you take your company public or sell your company.  thus converting the inherent and intangible value of your company into tangible, cold hard cash.  specifically, if you own half of your company that sells doughnuts, and your company earns 50,000 dollars a year, then it might be WORTH (inherently) 250000 because of the proprietary doughnut making technology you have, or the awesome relationships you have with customers, etc…but you only receive $50,000 a year on sales, and that is all you’ll ever receive until you experience a liquidity event.  now, if Krispy Kreme knocks on your door and says i will pay you $250,000.00 for your company, and you agree, then BAAM, you now have 250K of cold hard cash in your pocket.  that 250K is not an inherent value or an estimate of what your company is worth on the open market, that is cold hard, and LIQUID cash.  and that is the meaning of liquidity event. 

as you can tell, this blog is easily sidetracked, this posting should be titled Due Diligence and The Definition of Liquidity Event as pertains to a small doughnut maker.  moving forward, i am not a grand master entrepreneur and i do not deal in high finance terms of IPO’s, Mergers and Acquisitions, EBITDA’s or any of the sort.  I speak to you, the fellow small business owner, who is working with whatever you have in the THREE areas that matter the most, your head, your heart, and your checking account/credit card.  that is how i started all of my businesses, and that is the audience i wish to address.  so to me, and to us, due diligence is simply making sure you have a good idea before you and spend your valuable time and hard earned savings on this new venture.  One key point to remember is, do NOT, i repeat, do NOT ask your mother, your wife, your cousin, or your grandma what they think about your business idea.  they will of course love it.  they love you, after all.  even if they are in that industry, even if you THINK they have the requisite experience to give you valuable advice, PLEASE, seek out other sources of information!  It is like my last post, where i said make a sale, except two or three steps prior to making the sale. 

Here is what i would do:

1) pretend you are a customer of a competing service or product.  find out as much as you can about how they sell their product, what they charge, how they market/advertise/sell, and dig deeper, how did they get started?  who is their biggest client?  most companies that are relatively new love posting articles about themselves on their website.  try and look at their section where they list all of their press releases.  these probably NEVER got read by anyone, but they wanted to put that out for all the potential clients who visit their website to see.  this is a valuable source of information. 

2)  digest and learn from what you read.  this sounds pretty simple and stupid, but it is important.  if 5 out of 5 competing companies in the space you wish to enter all state that they received large sums of startup capital, or got some huge lucky break, then it’s probably safe to say that you too may face those same challenges.  In my experience in the software world, i quickly realized this sad fact.  every other competitor had started out with either a blank check from a very enthusiastic investor, or had personally funded the company in sums that i couldn’t even dream of having in my checking account, OR, they worked for the company that became the new startups first client.  Meaning, they had the inside track and their first client essentially funded the entire company.  Thus, if you read these signals, you might be smart in thinking that it would be difficult to simply release your competing service and expect to rake in a ton of new sales right away. 

3)  FIND OUT YOUR COSTS OF GOODS SOLD!  wow, another brain buster here.  i have seen way too many would be entrepreneurs launch their business without the slightest clue as to how much it costs to make the product or provide the service that they are offering.  For example, at CleverStart, we COULD charge everyone $25 for the entire kit and kaboodle of web services.  We would surely get a lot of business because of our aggressive pricing structure, but shoot, we would be working our fingers to the bone and probably wouldn’t have enough to make our mortgage payments at the end of the month.  Okay, that was a very over simplified example, but be sure to include things like marketing, advertising, shipping, payroll, and carrying costs into your calculations of costs of goods sold.  just because you sell your widget for $10 and the manufacturing cost is $2 does NOT mean you will pocket $8 on every sale.  You have to warehouse that widget, you have to set up phone lines, internet lines, web hosting, you have to ship those widgets, you have to print labels to go on the packages of those widgets, you have to somehow get people to visit your widget website or to call your widget sales person, you have to have someone to handle all the phone calls demanding widgets…does anyone return widgets?  who pays for that? 

4)  Will anyone buy your product or service?  yes, you’re a millionaire; no, you’re in debt up to your eyeballs.  this is more than thinking your product or service is better than the competition, it’s seeing if your potential customers would even want a different product or service.  do you think 250 million americans really want a new phonebook that is blue w/ purple tabs instead of their yellow pages?  your bluepages might be better, look prettier, cost less to manufacture, but do people really want it?  if you’re not sure, spend your time and a very very very small budget and call, email, and direct mail a small sampling of homeowners to survey them on whether or not they would prefer a different phonebook.  My guess is that they are probably indifferent and could care less.  and there you have it, i just saved you a lot of time and headache.

Hey, this isn’t a doomsday posting to dissuade any of you would be entrepreneurs from joining the ranks of the self employed, but for your own sake, do the research!