CleverStart

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. 

This is the first in a series of posts that i’d like to write about why i’m addicted to being an entrepreneur, and innovator, and most importantly, my own boss.  Well, i am not very innovative, but i have a knack for finding people who are, and seeing where a need in the marketplace can be filled, close enough.  The first thing to do as a startup, in my opinion, is to MAKE A SALE!  there are a million things one should do beforehand, which seem mundane, but are necessary.  Things like coming with an idea (lightbulb!), making a business plan, securing any names or domains for your company or product, creating a website (or having Clever Start create one for you), forming a corporation with your local secretary of state, yada yada yada…..by the way, feel free to email me anytime with questions and i’m happy to oblige. 

Once you have all of your ducks in a row, then it’s up to you to make your first sale.  It doesn’t matter if you have a business that is based on traffic that doesn’t require ‘selling’, or if you’re a non profit that serves the community, or any other type of business that doesn’t think it is ‘selling’ anything.  No matter what you do, you are selling something, whether it’s a product, a service, information, whether you charge or don’t charge, those are all just details.  This is not a "how to" on sales, but it is a very important concept for people like myself who think they may have the next big idea, or who are desperate to get out of the 9-5 rat race.  If you read nothing else, at least take this bit of advice:  don’t make the full time leap into entrepreneurialism until you have your first client.  This applies even to successful entrepreneurs who have actually seen the end of the rainbow and had a successful exit, or a liquidity event (meaning they cashed out one way or another), it just applies in a different manor which i’ll discuss.  Like myself, a lot of you are working full time careers because of an evil thing called bills, and you are considering taking your idea to the next level and working full time for yourself.  No matter how good YOU think your idea is, be sure to go out and sell someone before you throw all of your eggs into that basket.  This accomplishes one or two things.  Most importantly, it validates your idea as a feasible business (please, don’t go sell your mom or grandma on this idea and count that as validation), you have now successfully presented your product/service/concept to an unrelated, unbiased third party, and they like what they see.  Secondly, you are starting your business with a (hopefully) paying client.  For companies that aim to actually make money, this smooths the transition beautifully from full time employment with your 9-5 to your full time employment with yourself.  I can’t tell you how many businesses fail because of headaches caused by not making ends meet.  Heck, there might have been two guys in their garage who developed the next best thing since sliced bread, but never made it anywhere because they had to get back to work because it just took too long to make their first sale.  Don’t let that happen to you.  A golden rule in startups is that it takes twice as long, and costs three times as much.  Remember that as you are looking at your monthly expenses and the income you derive from your current job.  Go sell your product, go sell your service, or go pitch the idea to the potential end user AND a potential advertiser of your next MySpace idea, and once you feel that you have what it takes, then make the leap. 

Okay, so if you are a successfully exited entrepreneur, then, well, you know more than i do.  unless you just got lucky, but that probably wasn’t the case, and you’re probably not reading my blog right now.  If by chance you are, the same thing applies to you only it scales up.  Don’t invest $50M into the next big idea or prototype if you haven’t already successfully pitched your product or concept to a potential buyer and asked for a commitment.  Everyone will tell you "yeah, this sounds great" but they probably want to get you out of their office, or you were a huge client of theirs before so they owe you a favor and want to stay on your good side.  So, ask them for the business right there, and put the pressure on them.  Market research is just that, it’s a spreadsheet of how old people are and where they live and what they spend money on.  It doesn’t mean you will get a portion of those visitors or dollars just because you are you.  Nothing replaces making a sale. 

Lastly, i will leave you with a personal experience of mine that is directly applicable to this topic.  I started a company called FTE Source, www.ftesource.com  We sold a web application to hospitals which would save them a TON of money by letting them share staff members with local facilities, and thus allowing them to cut out the need for expensive third party staffing agencies.  I asked everyone i knew before launching this endeavor about their thoughts on the business model, and if people would pay for the service.  I thought i was covered b/c i talked to a lot of healthcare professionals.  OOOPS!  unfortunately, those were the workers, and NOT the decision makers.  It took me a YEAR longer than i had hoped to actually get in good enough with the decision makers to close my first sale.  On top of that, I had left my role in a high paying job.  Long story short, i practically closed up shop due to the stress alone of sometimes coming up short on my bills.  If i would have followed my own advice, i could have easily managed my job and the startup until i had closed my first deal and would have been sooo much happier…….and in less credit card debt.

SO, before you make a huge investment of dollars, time, or foregone dollars from leaving a job, take your concept to a potential customer or client and make a sale.