Before Gary Vaynerchuk (the video/social media guru and all-star author), there was Gary Varynerchuk (the wine guy). Before Chris Brogan (the social media guru), there was Chris Brogan (the aspiring author). Before Biz Stone (co-creator of Twitter), there was Biz Stone (the guy with the weird name). Before Seth Godin (the “he’s-never-wrong” author and marketer), there was just some guy no one had ever heard of.

Yes, entrepreneurs look to these risen stars and aspire to be like them (or like someone like them!), and we forget that everyone started “at zero” with an idea and a willingness to work hard to get there. Sure, we’re willing to work hard but there seems like a huge chasm we have to cross in order to get to THEIR level. Frustrated, we work our butts off at our “mediocre” level (at least that’s how it might feel to us) and wonder what the X factor is that helped Gary, Chris, Seth, Biz (and many others) to cross over to stardom.

I was reminded of this fact recently when I read an interview with the owner of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin. SEOmoz is a trusted source of quality SEO strategiesr. Chances are, you’ve heard Rand speak, seen one of his videos, scoured SEOmoz.org for search engine optimization info, or relied on some of their many SEO tools.

Just recently, Rand Fishkin posted a synopsis of an interview he gave with Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com. You can read the full transcript of the interview here, or you can get a shorter “Rand-ified” version here.

Now here’s what you’ll notice:

In 2001, Rand dropped out of university to focus on an existing business (that would later transition into SEOmoz). The company went into massive debt (Rand’s own debt was $500,000+) that would last for a few years. In February 2005, Rand went to a conference in Toronto that seems to have helped him get a handle on the SEO work he would later do. In 2006, the company turned around financially, became debt-free by 2007, and acquired investment capital. They hit a few speedbumps along the way but now earn millions of dollars in revenue and have a robust suite of tools and a compelling position in the marketplace.

If you read Rand’s synopsis of the interview you’ll note that even now – in spite of his position in the market and the money he’s earning – his credit history is bad enough that he can’t rent an apartment or lease a car! Rand’s trajectory to stardom isn’t all that old. Although he was a noted authority as far back as 2006 (which wasn’t that long ago), he’s still a regular guy running a regular business. He makes some good decisions; he makes some bad ones.

Here’s what it means for you:

No matter where you are in your business, your success doesn’t start with an X-factor in a few years…it is happening right now. There isn’t a silver bullet. Rather, it’s the work you are doing now that will build on the work you did yesterday (and so on, every day) toward your own position in the marketplace.

Have a great week!

No related posts.

Summer and music. They go together. Good summer music should evoke the hot, sunny days that students enjoy between semesters. For the kids, a summer “anthem” should capture everything great about the months that you spend on the beach with your friends. For grown-ups, a good summer anthem should remind us of those carefree months of yesteryear when we weren’t busy running businesses and paying mortgages.

I recently read an interesting article about a music producer who has produced popular summer hits like “Since U Been Gone,” by Kelly Clarkson, “Girlfriend,” by Avril Lavigne, “Right Round,” by Flo Rida, “Tik Tok,” by Ke$ha, and “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry. Even if these songs are not your kind of thing, you have to admit that enough other people liked these songs enough to make them chart toppers. And the person behind the music is a guy by the name of Dr. Luke. While the artists lend their headline-earning skills to these songs, Dr. Luke is the music producer who writes, rewrites, tests, and then produces songs that become summer anthems.

The article, published on NewYorkMag.com, profiles this music producer and describes the process he goes through to create so many hits. In a moment, I’ll give you a link to the article, but first I want to answer the question you’re asking: “Heather, why are you talking about a music producer and summer anthems?”

Entrepreneurs don’t want to wallow in mediocrity. Most of us want to become successful. Maybe successful enough to ease up a little on the long hours or maybe successful enough to sell our business and relax on the beach. We can look to Dr. Luke as a case study in how to become successful. Even though he’s in the music industry and you might be in a completely different industry, here are some lessons we can learn from him:

• He has a process: He tests and experiments with different styles. He tries out different “hooks” on a song before finding the one that works. Likewise, you should always be thinking and innovating and testing in your business.

• He has a vision and he relies on skilled people to help him. As the article says on page 3, “He hears a song before it exists, then he figures out who can best help him bring that song into existence.” Likewise, you should cultivate a vision for your business and find the right people to help you.

• He becomes an expert, not only in his own songs but in the entire industry. He’s quoted as saying: “I analyze songs, think about what made them work, why they did work. I think about that all the time”. Likewise, you should know your business and your competitors’ businesses inside and out and that will make a huge difference to your business.

Okay, there are plenty of other tips I could draw from Dr. Luke’s success but, with these in mind, check out the article and then apply some of his lessons to your business.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. What Your Business can Learn from Video Games
2. Lessons to Learn from Starbucks and Social Media

Entrepreneurs are faced with innumerable marketing opportunities to grow their businesses. Speaking from experience, I have so many options when I’m looking to market my business and I’m frequently approached by business owners with a giant list of internet marketing to-do’s that they want to pursue. Blogs, social media, social bookmarking, articles, press releases, AdWords, ebooks, you name it! Being able to market your business in all of these different ways is exciting…but it can also be overwhelming. And I’ve found that when business owners are faced with a lot of choices, they end up trying not to do too much at once and they don’t do any of those choices very well.

So here’s what I would advise:

If you are marketing by yourself…
Let’s say that you are considering some of the standard internet marketing opportunities out there: Social media, blogs, articles, press releases, and reports. It can be tempting to dive into all of these but you’ll just end up doing a sub-par job. Your social media won’t necessarily connect with your readers, your blogs will be few and far between (and will often begin with the sentence “I haven’t blogged in a while…”), your articles and press releases won’t get pushed out as frequently as they need to be, and your reports will just get delayed. I see this happen so often from businesses that try to take on too much at once.

If you are going to do your marketing all by yourself (without any outsourced or delegated help), you should pick just a couple options and become consistent at them before building outwards. For example, start blogging. Once you’ve become consistent with that, add Twitter. Once you’ve become consistent with that, write articles. Once you’ve become consistent with that, add reports.

This system works because you’re developing good marketing habits one at a time, which will help you to succeed far more effectively than if you tried to add a whole bunch of marketing habits at once.

If you are marketing with help from others…
Of course, it’s a little different if you get help from others because you can outsource a lot of your internet marketing and there are less consistency habits you need to manage. However, you’ll still want to build methodically and strategically, adding a few at a time. Otherwise, you could end up with a lot of loose ends that need to be managed.

So, for example, you might manage your own Twitter account but you might pass article writing and blog posting off to an assistant. Later, add reports and press releases. Because you’re paying someone to do this, it’s not a matter of building up good marketing habits for you; rather, it’s a matter of managing someone else to do the work and remembering to follow up with them.

The web offers so many great marketing opportunities and it will continue to do so as new technologies develop. You can take advantage of these opportunities but you should do so in a methodical way to ensure that you do each one with excellence – and make sure it’s entrenched in your schedule – before moving on to the next one.

Happy Marketing!

Related posts:

1. Focus on what matters
2. “What Should I Do?” – Promotion
3. Pay it forward for big payback

I work with many different kinds of businesses but especially with freelancers and coaches. With some businesses, the income opportunity isn’t limited by anything other than how many customers you can send to your site. But with a lot of freelancers and coaches, the income opportunity is limited by the hours in the day. In an 8 (or 10 or 12 or 14) hour day, you can only coach so many clients or you can only freelance write so much content or freelance develop so many websites.

While this time-constrained income might work at first, there does come a point where you feel like you’re on a treadmill and you need to slow down a bit. Perhaps you want to bump up your income or you want to tone down how much your work is dependent on you. Maybe you want the freedom to go on vacation and not have to tighten your belt for the month after your vacation.

Here are 7 ways you can expand your offering so it becomes less dependent on you. I’ve listed them in order from easiest to most difficult.

Affiliates: Find some businesses that serve the same niche as you and set up an affiliate relationship with them. This is a simple way to expand your income potential although it probably won’t make you rich unless you have a really responsive group of customers.

Outsourcing: Accept a little more work and outsource some of it to another professional who works at a lower rate. Either outsource entire projects or break them up and outsource pieces.

Downloadable: Create a paid downloadable – an e-book, report, podcast, a video, or some other kind of downloadable – and sell it. This one probably seems like the most obvious but it’s underused by freelancers and coaches.

Training: Train others to do what you do. Set up an e-course with a curriculum and make it either a self-study (so it’s more like a downloadable) or make it slightly more interactive (which can be good but takes up some of your time with review and interaction).

Certification: This could be something to add to your business as you start training people or as you build up a reputation online. Offering certifications can provide a certain amount of legitimacy to other sites while adding to your growing reputation. Consider this a step above regular training.

Membership site: A membership site is a huge opportunity to grow a community and earn regular, predictable income. Basically, your membership site should provide some kind of regular benefit that they couldn’t get elsewhere – for example, access to information, to software, or to you.

You’ll note that each of these income extensions do require some level of work from you, but the time you spend on them each month should help to boost your income to a greater degree than if you spent that same amount of time on your time-constrained freelancing or coaching work.

Make a plan to grow your income with some of these ideas!

Related posts:

1. Expand Your Business with These 3 Tips
2. Making Work Easier: Tactical Tips for Better Productivity

Getting stuff done: Oh how business owners and freelancers everywhere love a to-do list that is completely crossed off! I know that I always sleep way more soundly at night when I’ve actually crossed everything off my day’s to-do list!

Each day, business owners face a variety of tasks to be done. Some are fun and easy, but not all of them are! There might be boring projects or very challenging projects, or projects that seem big and unwieldy. No matter what kind of project you face, the fastest, easiest, and most efficient way to get stuff done is when you…

Achieve critical mass quickly.

Critical mass is a term used in science to describe the amount of fissile material needed to sustain a nuclear reaction. For us non-science-types, it’s basically the amount of something you need initially in order to facilitate the creation of the rest of that thing.

Every project you do has a critical mass. It’s the amount of work that you expend at the beginning to bring the project to the point where you can coast a bit – where you can do the work quickly and easily (and even enjoyably) with a lot less effort than it took at the very beginning.

Each project will be different and everyone has a different idea of when they achieve critical mass on a project. But, every project does achieve critical mass at some point! I’ve found that e-books tend to achieve critical mass at the 50% point while blogs tend to achieve critical mass after the first or second paragraph. As I work with clients, I’ve found that some businesses (like coaching and freelancing that rely on the skills of the owner) achieve critical mass much faster than those businesses that rely on a lot of up-front development (like technical or web development). Even your day will hit a point of critical mass. If you start your day at 9 in the morning, you’ll likely hit critical mass at about 10am and sustain it through to about 2pm or 3pm when you start to slow down a bit.

Here’s why it matters to you:

The faster you achieve critical mass on something, the easier it will be to get that thing done. Find your peak work time when you’re most focused and energetic and start on a whole bunch of projects. Get critical mass as quickly as possible. (Yes, you might go back and have to revise something later during editing; that’s okay. The point is to get as far as you can as fast as you can). Once you’ve achieved critical mass, the rest of the project will go very quickly. If you want, have your assistant or colleague help you achieve critical mass on a project before passing it off to you to run with it.

Think of each of the projects you work on in the day. Over the next few days, figure out what the point of critical mass is for each project and work to achieve that. Critical mass achievement is a focused, creative, intense burst of effort that will result in the core of whatever you are trying to create. Later, you’ll add more but the effort will be faster and easier.

It’s like an airplane: It takes more fuel to get off the ground than it does to fly through the sky. Likewise, your projects will require a lot of fuel to get off the ground, too, but once it gets airborne, you’ll glide smoothly.

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. Want to get started? Just get started!
2. Why Loading the Dishwasher is the Right Thing to Do
3. Top 5 Project Management Lessons from Moving

From time to time I’ve watched helplessly as business-owning colleagues have burned out. Entrepreneurs can burn out pretty easily because they have so much at stake and because they love what they do, so work doesn’t always feel like work. The result? They either totally flame-out in a cataclysmic melt-down, or they slowly grind to a halt like an engine without oil.

If you’ve been burning the candle at both ends for a while, if you’re feeling particularly fatigued and can’t seem to rest (but feel like you need to push through and work harder), or if you have a lot of stress and workload mounting but no extra capacity to deal with it, you’re in the express lane for a burnout. Here are some tips to deal with it:

1. Identify the source of your burnout. From what I’ve observed, burnout happens because there is a big list of stressful work that needs to be done and there doesn’t seem to be enough time to do it. At the same time, your other regular work that wouldn’t normally contribute to burnout can make the situation worse. Find out what the source of the stress-inducing/burnout-inducing work is and make a plan. Delegate some of it out and try to divide the rest of it up into more reasonable chunks.

2. Learn from your past burnouts and from the burnouts of others and try to recognize it before it happens. Ease up on the stresses (even if you can’t ease up o the workload) when you start to notice yourself burning out. If necessary, set recurring events in your calendar for the 15th and 30th of every month asking: “Am I burning out?”

3. Get as disciplined as you can. Burnout happens because entrepreneurs give everything and the “edges” between business and the rest of our lives can start to blur. Discipline helps to keep those edges distinct and ensures that we get some downtime.

4. Take a day off. I know it doesn’t seem like you can do that (which is why you’re working hard and burning out) but trust me, the more you burn out, the less work you’ll do anyway. The day off can recharge your batteries and actually make you more productive when you are sitting at your desk.

5. Keep your work creative. Some of you have observed that I stay pretty busy with my various projects. I do work a lot because I love it, but I avoid burnout by staying really creative: I’m always developing new projects and ideas. Even if only a few of them ever come to fruition and the rest remain as ideas for a rainy day, that creativity keeps me from feeling like work is a grind (which can be a huge contributor to burnout).

6. Stay healthy. Okay, now I’m starting to get outside of the “productive business” mode I tend to write about, but this still applies. Your health is a key factor in how you handle stress. Someone who is rested, who eats balanced meals, and who exercises regularly doesn’t burn out as much. Stay healthy to stay sane at work!

The engine analogy from earlier really applies. If you don’t take care of your car’s engine, it will grind to a halt. The same can happen to you. If you’re not taking care of yourself, you’ll grind to a halt too!

Does anyone have more tips on how to avoid burnout?  List them as comments!

No related posts.

• High maintenance clients who are focused on your rate. If you have clients who require a lot of hand-holding, who constantly ask for free services, and who call you back to go over invoices in detail, you’ve got a business-destroying problem on your hands. They may be the nicest people in the world but they can take away from other customers who cost less to manage and are therefore more profitable. If a clients gets too demanding (even if their demands are disguised as requests), revisit how much you do for them for free.

• Vendors with whom you are too closely tied for critical situations. As a business owner, you probably have vendors who provide you with any number of services. And it’s often nice to work with just a few people who know what they are doing rather than spread yourself too thin by trying to manage a whole bunch of people. But you need to watch your vendors carefully: If you are extremely reliant on them to come through (because they provide you with several critical services) make sure their own business is in good shape. You don’t want them dropping the ball for too long simply because they can’t keep their own house in order).

• Employees who just warm desks. The world somehow has balance: There are entrepreneurs who dream of living a life of unfettered freedom and there are employees who like the consistency of employment. We need each other in order to coexist in perfect harmony. But sometimes you get an employee who likes the consistency of employment without the hassle and sweat of actually doing work. They are a drain on your revenue without contributing to your business. Unfortunately, if you run a small office, it can be extremely difficult to do anything about them.

• Decision makers who have a different view than you. Decision makers could include majority shareholders, partners, COOs or CFOs (if you’re the CEO), or other key people on your management team. You need everyone moving in the same direction but if they feel that the business should go somewhere else, you’ve got a potentially bad situation if they start making decisions that run counter to how you feel the business needs to go.

Businesses frequently fail from these people because these business-destroyers are cloaked in good relationships. They get close to entrepreneurs and usually have the best intentions and positive feelings toward the business owner and the business. But, as you can see by reading descriptions of them; their views are just not aligned.

One of the most difficult things you’ll have to do as an entrepreneur is identify and remove these people from a position of influence in your business.

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. How to Take Your Business to the Next Level
2. What Compels People to Hire You (Instead of Your Competitor)?
3. The Three Stages of Small Business

In a previous blog post I mentioned that you should record your calls with your clients (get their permission first, of course), and transcribe those calls. Here’s what you should do with those recordings and transcriptions:

1.    Send the recordings and transcriptions to your clients as a free, value-added service so they can refer to them again and again. If you’re really conscientious, you’ll make notes on them yourself so you can refer back to them again. Use them as tools to follow up with the client.
2.    Pull out anything from the transcription that could be used to identify a specific client and repost the edited content as a blog. Post these from time to time as “my best advice for… [situation]” so people can see what you think. If you’re concerned that people will read your free blog instead of paying you then don’t post the whole call and add the disclaimer that each situation is different and what works for one client might not work for another client.
3.   Pull out anything from the transcription that could be used to identify a specific client and provide a copy of that edited transcript to someone who is thinking about becoming a client and wants to know how you work.
4.    Or, collect it together with transcriptions of calls from other clients with similar situations and turn it into an ebook. There are many times I’ve seen this as both a free bonus for an digital download product… or even as the product itself.

And here’s a bonus idea, inspired from #3: Sometimes you get prospective clients who want to know how you work before they hire you. That’s fine; perfectly understandable. Giving them a recorded call to listen to is a helpful way to do that (without taking up a lot of your time with a free call or whatever). However, not many clients want you to share their information publicly if they are coming to you for coaching. So, to get around that, try some of these ideas:

• Ask your client first if you can record the call for these purposes and tell them that you are not going to use their name. Give them the option to review the call first and highlight anything they are not comfortable with. Perhaps even give them the coaching hour for free or for a discount. (It will be worth it to you in how successful you’ll be at winning new clients).

• Ask a friend (one who could be a client if they weren’t a friend) to be the “client” on the call. Choose someone who really can use your help or else the call will sound made-up. This is sometimes an easier thing to do than to ask your clients if you can record a call with them.

Once you’ve recorded (and possibly edited) this call, either keep it handy to send to prospective clients or post it on your website so people can listen to it there.

Your calls are valuable and you should use them as much as possible (without compromising client confidentiality). Does anyone have any other suggestions or ideas to reuse calls? Post them in the comments!

Related posts:

1. The 7 Things Coaches MUST Do In Their Business Today
2. “What Should I Do?” – Teaching
3. Customer-to-Client: How to Make the Transition

I work with a lot of coaches and I see a lot of the same missed opportunities and mistakes over and over. If you are a coach, consultant, or advisor, you’ll want to implement these tips right away.

1. Set up an online scheduling system to help automate the scheduling process. Even something as simple as embedding a Google Calendar into your website will help your clients find a day and time that works for you and them.

2. Tighten up your non-billable client time. Do your one-hour sessions go an hour and a half? Maybe the client shows up or calls 5 minutes early, you speak for 10 or 15 minutes before starting the clock, you wrap up an hour later (to make sure they get their full hour of coaching) and then you chat briefly for another 10 minutes or so after your billable time (scheduling the next appointment or whatever). Tighten this up. Chat less. It’s okay to take just a moment of your billable time to schedule the next appointment.

3. Charge a cancellation fee. It doesn’t have to be as high as your normal fee but it will show that you are serious about providing your service and you take their presence and participation seriously.

4. Record your calls. Offer this as a free service to them and assure them that you’re not going to publicly post the recordings. Send them the recordings after the call but save them for yourself because there are lots of ways to reuse the material. (I’ll tell you how in an upcoming blog post). Oh, and be sure to let your clients know that you are recording the call before you record it!

5. Email each client and ask them for a referral. Everyone knows they should do this regularly but no one does it. Why not email your clients right now and say: “I just wanted to let you know that I have a space open up and I’d like to fill it… but before I make it available to anyone, I thought I’d invite you to refer someone to me. I’ll give a free coaching session to anyone whose referral books with me.”

6. Conduct a survey. Ask your clients what they would like to hear from you and what the biggest problems they face today might be. You may get some suggestions that you simply cannot implement but you should get a ton of ideas that will help you shape your business and add even more value to your clients.

7. Make a list of the problems your clients come to you with that you cannot help them with and get in touch with a professional who can. Build a good relationship with them and refer clients to them. You might not get anything out of the deal (except for being able to help your client even when you can’t actually help them) but you could end up with some reciprocating referrals.

Your business is like a machine that runs along basically on its own. But from time to time you need to tune it up, and these 7 tips will help to optimize it.

Happy Blogging!

Related posts:

1. How to Re-Use Old Coaching Sessions
2. Why Deadlines are a Good Thing
3. A powerful strategy for testimonials

As business owners, we optimistically show up to work, sit down at our desk, and expect everything to go well. Every single day. Most of the time it goes okay but every once in a while something goes wrong. There could be any number of reasons but that’s the way it goes: Life deals us a bad hand one day and we find ourselves with a flooded office or a computer virus or a rabid dog that ate our records or a check that really does get lost in the mail.

These disasters can bring us down. They can grind our business to a halt and force us to put aside the important work that we normally do and instead focus on something that we’d rather not be thinking about. It costs time, effort, and money to solve, and those items are already rare at the best of times.

So, how can you manage these disasters before they even strike? And, how can you manage them if you can’t predict them? Obviously I could just list some basic business continuity procedures (like backing up your files, for example) but I want to paint a bigger picture first.

Start by thinking about the elements that you need to run your business. Many of my readers need to have access to email, to records, to a few specific programs. That’s it. The rest is locked up in their head as knowledge. If that describes you, how can your business survive if your current situation suddenly changed? What would you need to do to ensure that you could easily continue with those basic “must-have” elements listed above?

Here are some additional tips:

• Before you brainstorm strategies to back up information, brainstorm what you really need to run your business. You might not need to back everything up, for example. You might only need to back up certain files.

• Invest in the equipment that will allow you to switch quickly. One client of mine who relies on her computer, keeps a spare computer nearby and configured in the same way. It came in handy one day when a virus attacked her first computer. She simply switched over to her second one and kept working. Problem solved.

• Figure out how much it would cost you to keep your business running smoothly if you suddenly didn’t have your office. Assume it burns down or floods or something. Could you work from home? Could you work from the coffee shop? These are options but are you set up for it? If you don’t want to buy another computer, figure out how easy it is to borrow a friend’s or use the one at your local library until you’re back up and running. If you do that, how will get your data?

Backing up your files is important but that’s not the only thing you should do. I believe that a smart business owner should be completely ready to immediately move into an entirely new business environment and continue working without missing a step. When you’re ready to that degree then a lot of the interim continuity can work itself out.

Let’s go prepare for those disasters!

Related posts:

1. What to do When the Ship is Sinking
2. Productivity Starts with the Right Pieces in Place