When you’re launching an entrepreneurial endeavor or even when you’re looking to work with a particular business owner do you stop to consider the who and what of the product you’re pondering? Actually, you could buy Product X from myriad sources, correct? In many cases you make your buying decision based on the person behind that product. This is something you will want to keep in mind when marketing your business — you are marketing YOU — YOU are the product!
How do you go about doing this? Here are my ideas on the subject:
Think about how you can chart the evolution of your product, your service… you. Plan those steps and implement them to gain “raving fans.”
Position yourself and hone your elevator speech as a demonstration of your value to the market
Establish your personal network and your company branding
Ask for testimonials from satisfied customers
Become recognized as an industry leader within your niche
What can you do today to become the true face of your product or service?
Hunger and motivation are the two driving forces behind business success, don’t you agree? Which one feeds the other, though I sometimes wonder. I believe that if you’re motivated you will tend to make things happen; you’ll leap over obstacles and realize your dreams.
How can you stay motivated?:
Review your goals at least daily
Focus on reaching them
Sharpen your hunger by taking personal responsibility for attaining your goals
If you find yourself veering off the path you’ve chosen for your entrepreneurial endeavor, or your life goal, it’s time to step back and reassess the situation. What steered you off the path you were following? Did the goals ultimately not align with your life? For some reason has the impetus for achieving a particular goal faded? Does it not matter as deeply as it originally did? Do you want to get back on that particular path or will that goal no longer serve you?
It’s never a bad idea to take a step back and assess your goals, especially if you find you’re no longer as hungry for them as you once were.
Want to know what a great stress reliever is? Being positive — having a positive attitude. There are days when the entrepreneur simply feels overwhelmed and when that happens, stress also happens.
Here are some steps I take (and you can too!) to embrace a more positive attitude and help your stress melt away:
Tap into a positive event that happened to you recently. Simply remembering a happier time can reduce your stress.
Mingle with optimists. Being with people who have upbeat attitudes will increase your positive feelings.
Believe in yourself. If you have the thought that you can be successful, chances are you will be successful.
Eliminate negative phrases whenever possible. If you find yourself saying, “I can’t,” or “it won’t work,” try to turn those phrases around to more positive ones.
Complaining may feel therapeutic at the time, but it will eventually sap your strength and your good attitude. Complaining will rarely solve an issue unless you’re confronting it head on and may even earn you the title of the “Eeyore” of the group for projecting a negative attitude.
One of the best ways to reduce stress is by being physically active. Exercise releases feel-good endorphins which boost your mood but exercise and keeping your body healthy helps your overall lifestyle.
Enterpreneurship is taking the country by storm and if you’re considering dipping your toe into the waters of being your own boss, here are some of my steps toward growing a small business into a thriving endeavor:
Know yourself. Why do you want to be in business? Freedom? More money? To give yourself a job? Your inner motivation will drive your determination and ultimately impact your bottom line.
What are you passionate about? Pursuing your passion as it relates to your business endeavor could help you succeed. Your passion will show through and will engage potential clients.
What makes you unique? Do you do something that no one else does? What is your differentiator?
The customer is always right. If you’ve ever worked a retail job you know this is a customer service mantra. When you’re running your own business, you truly need to embrace that ideology.
Do you have a niche? To grow a thriving business you need to know who your customers are, where to find them, what they’re seeking a solution to, and how you can help them address their pain points. Can you do this?
Write a business plan and daily goals. Consider your business plan your long term goal, and your daily goals are what you need to accomplish today or this week to achieve those long term goals.
Get out of your own cocoon. You need to get away from the office and network and make connections. Shake hands. Set coffee dates for follow up. No business can exist in a vacuum.
Don’t listen to the dream killers. It seems that everyone I speak with has a dream killer in his or her life — that person who says, “you can’t make a living at this,” or “Not many new businesses survive.” You know the type. Separate yourself from them and surround yourself with people who believe in your vision.
Invest in yourself. Staying healthy and planning for your retirement (yes, it seems odd to play for retirement if you’re just starting out, but there is no time like the present!) Be active. Eat healthy. You are the business you need to take care of yourself.
Inspire your team. If you don’t have a team, inspire those with whom you network and interact. Inspire and motivate and reward your clients. Word of mouth on your positive attitude will spread like wildfire!
Are you considering going into business? What’s your passion?
Did you know that inertia feeds on itself? The longer you put off doing a task or making a call or even making a decision, the harder — and less attractive — it becomes to make a decision. Enter inertia.
Did you know you use more energy avoiding making a decision than you do by simply committing? It’s true. Also, the longer you delay making a commitment the harder the final decision becomes and you might even be dissatisfied with the outcome because of lengthy procrastination. Procrastinating on a decision can also lead to a snowball effect where you have myriad decisions piling up and in the face of them, the decision making is daunting.
On the flipside, though, making decisions leads to making even more decisions and accomplishing more than you’d imagined.
When you’re faced with a decision — whether it’s as life changing as: should I relocate? Take a new job? Have a latte or an espresso? — grab pen and paper and write down the worst case scenario for each decision that needs to be made. After that write down the reasons why you can’t simply reverse the decision once you’ve made it. If you find yourself going down a path that simply isn’t, or hasn’t, worked out. Take steps to reserve it.
Being frozen in place drains your energy and saps your emotional strength. Are you procrastinating any decisions?
Let’s face it, there are tasks that we undertake in our lives and in our businesses that we truly love and there are tasks that we dislike so much that we will procrastinate on them until all we are faced with are those tasks which sap our energy and our productivity.
As business owners, we need to know what our core competencies are and embrace those. We also need to admit there are tasks for which we are simply not suited (social media, marketing, bookkeeping, etc.) and we need to find a trusted partner with whom we can trust those activities so that we can focus on our core skills.
You likely got into business for yourself because you have a skill to offer, a problem that you can fix for your clients, and a need that your skills or products can fill, right? Savvy business owners know that they shouldn’t let the tasks that they simply don’t enjoy or at which they don’t excel get in the way of running the business that they love. To effect that, they have learned to outsource.
Outsourcing simply makes sense, especially if you look at the time and money you will be losing by struggling to complete payroll tasks or write press releases. Your expertise is what makes your business valued by your clients. Relying on the expertise of others to complete other tasks will enhance your productivity and your business’s bottom line.
Yes, there will be upfront costs to pay for outsourcing, but the benefits you reap will more than make up for that. Are you focusing on your core competencies or being bogged down by tasks for which you’re not suited?
