Archive for the 'Entreprenuers' Category

What Goes Around Comes Around…In Business, Too

Published by Heather on November 18, 2007 in Articles, Entreprenuers and General Marketing. 0 Comments

I have a confession to make. I am notorious for meeting people, liking them, and then when they realize what I do and that I could help them, I end up giving away my services…for free. I have this uncontrollable urge to help people, especially when I know it’s something that I am good at and enjoy doing.

Now I don’t do this all the time, but occasionally I will, and I will tell you why. It comes back to me tenfold.

For example, we just adopted a Great Dane. In my search for information on this mini-horse breed, I came across a Yahoo! Group for local Great Dane owners. I joined, sent my welcome message introducing myself and Napoleon, and the owner of the group noticed my signature line and contacted me for possible help with my services. We were on the phone for at least two hours. I liked her.

So when we finally got around to talking business and she told me she needed a sales letter written to send out locally, I told her I would do it for free.

I didn’t think twice about it.

We have chatted a few times on the phone, and we have met at our Great Dane get-togethers, and I did her sales letter. It was pretty good if I do say so myself. But here is what happened that I was not expecting.

She’s telling people about me.

That’s right. I’ve gotten new clients by referral from her, and all I did was spend two hours on her sales letter. Not a bad trade, eh?

I didn’t do this letter for her with the expectation of something in return. I honestly didn’t. My boyfriend, my coach, and my colleagues love to get on me about giving my services away, and I can see where they are coming from. However, I’m a firm believer that what goes around comes around.

This is just one example. I also had a colleague that wanted her blog template to look just like her website. I was almost sure that I could do it, and before I knew it, she sent me the information and hired me to do it.

So I did it. It was a lot of trial and error, since I was dealing with a programming code that I was not an expert in writing. I worked with it until it was just right. When it came time to bill her, I simply dropped her a note and said, “It’s on me. I’m just tickled that I could actually do it.” And I was. I didn’t expect anything from her.

Yesterday, the FedEx man came, and I now have 12 brownies from Fairytale Brownies. (Well, I HAD 12…there are only 9 now!) But again, I wasn’t expecting anything. I was just pleasantly surprised when I got a package in the mail and it wasn’t my birthday or Christmas.

And I’m sure when the conversation comes up and people ask her how she got her blog to look like her website she’ll say, “Heather at Valley Virtual Assistants did that for me.” Even if she doesn’t, that’s okay with me. I felt good helping someone out, the brownies are delicious (and hidden where no one can find them), and I’m content with how I do business.

Let’s be honest. We’re not non-profit organizations, and many of us rely on our customers and clients to put food on the table, a roof over our heads, and clothes on our backs. We cannot afford to give the farm away, but we can give a few bales of hay away, and we can choose who should get them.

About the Author:

Heather Jacobson doesn’t pay for marketing if she doesn’t have to. Discover how she does it and claim 10 free marketing tips at http://www.10freetips.com

Finding that Balance

Published by Heather on November 18, 2007 in Articles, Entreprenuers, Work/Life Balance and Working At Home. 0 Comments

Balanced life…is that an oxymoron? Life is just that…LIFE! You never know what’s going to come your way, but as a business owner, spouse, parent, friend, etc. you must attempt to find that balance.

Running your own business can take a toll on you if you aren’t careful. I like to call it between a rock and a hard place. Why? Answer this question…what’s more important — the kids that want attention or that 5 o’clock deadline for a client? Toughie, isn’t it? That balance is what I couldn’t find and it almost cost me everything.

How to find balance

Set limits

For me, I run a part-time Virtual Assistant (VA) business in addition to a full time career. I decided that I wanted to work no more than fifteen hours a week. Then I scheduled that time on a calendar I created specifically to make sure that I was staying on target. I also decided that I needed time off. Therefore, I set aside Friday nights. I don’t work on Friday night, period. If the kids are with their dad, then I spend time with my boyfriend, and on the Fridays that I have kids, its pizza and a movie night. I now look forward to Friday nights where as before I dreaded them immensely.

Prioritize

What can you give up? I have problems with the word “no”. If I’m asked to join something, I join; if I’m asked to do something, I do it. It doesn’t matter if I know I don’t have the time or not! I went through the “extra curricular” activities that I had and deleted them from my schedule. There were two local organizations that I didn’t particularly enjoy but felt that I needed to attend their meetings and felt guilty when I couldn’t. I determined that I wasn’t getting anything out of going and that attending the meetings were more of a hassle than they were worth, and freed up some time.

Do you have clients that aren’t “meshing” with your ultimate goal? My very first client had work that needed to be done during the week. Everything was honkey dory until something unexpected came up and then I would have to scramble to either do it myself, or find someone else to help me at the last minute. I finally had to re-evaluate the situation. I was able to find another VA that could take on his work, and there was a HUGE part of me that was sorry that I had to do that, but another part of me felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders.

Household Chores

If your family is anything like mine, they believe that mom will do it and take care of it - I allowed it to happen. If I was particularly busy with work things, it didn’t get done and no one seemed to care. I CARED!! I didn’t want to live in a pigsty, and I wanted clean clothes, and dishes in the cupboard instead of having to wash something in order to use it! DELEGATE!! Your children can help! Your spouse can help!

Amazing concept, isn’t it?

With my family, I sat them down and explained the situation to them: “I enjoy my business and the money that I receive is for us. I can’t do it alone, so I can either give up my business and the vacation, remodeling, and so on that it will pay for; or, you all can pitch in and help around here.” I can tell you that none of them were happy about this, but they realized that I wasn’t just doing this for me.

Make it fun for your kids to help! I gave my kids checklists of things to do every morning before school and every evening before playing. As a reward, if they help me out with some of the chores, they get some of my time in the evening. (I’d give it to them anyway, but this way, they feel like they are allowing me to have some free time with them. They feel good about helping me.)

Put a set cleaning schedule into place. I’m not a great housekeeper. I went online to find suggestions, advice, ANYTHING that would keep me on track. I found FlyLady and Organized Home. Neither of them worked perfectly for me, but I was able to take some of their ideas and make them work for me. I gotta tell ya, FlyLady’s biggest challenge is to “go shine your sink” and I’ve accepted the challenge, and I now LOVE walking into my kitchen!

Dinners

Darn kids…I just fed them yesterday and they’re hungry again today! Every day, from 5:00pm to 5:30pm I would spend my entire drive trying to figure out what I was going to make for dinner. We need easy meals, and most of ours came from a box. They are okay for awhile, but then….

GET A CROCK POT! My boyfriend got me an awesome crock-pot for Christmas. It’s what I asked for. I used it all of twice and used the frozen crock-pot meals. I then had an epiphany! What if I planned my meals a week in advance and shopped for what I needed, and made them in the crock-pot? (I’m a slow learner, I know!) So, I went online and found recipes that I was pretty sure the kids would eat and that were easy to throw together. I made my list and went shopping. The first night I made a crock-pot meal, we walked in the door (I had set the table when I came home for lunch) and ate! What a concept! No whining about being hungry and the question “when’s dinner?” for 30 minutes while I try to prepare!

Something else I’ve recently implemented is having the kids cook one night a week. You may laugh, but those PB&Js are the best meals, because I don’t have to make them!!

“Me time”

As a full-time employee, girlfriend, mother, friend, and business owner, I rarely got “me time”. For a long time, I saw my VA work my “me time” as it was work that I truly enjoyed. However, work is still work. It wasn’t relaxing, and many nights kept me up until after midnight. There was a time that I read in the evening before I went to bed, or watched TV. I finally realized that I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was “managing” everything else except me.

I started reading again, and I scheduled reading time. I now read almost every night. I treated myself to a manicure and pedicure and decided that I was going to do that at least once a month. I also joined an online class through Barnes and Noble University. The only cost for the class is the book. The class itself is free. I love to learn, so this suits me just fine. I’m taking a forensic science class, and I love it. Some nights, that’s my reading time.

For once, I’m taking care of me, and doing things for me and it feels great!

It takes time….

We still have some kinks to work out in the system, and things still come up out of nowhere and throw us all off, but we regroup and get it all back together. Are there some weeks that I’m working more than 15 hours? Sure! But I make sure that all the things I need and want to get done are done first. I’m not going to pass up that extra money unless I can realistically fit it in.

Am I fully balanced? No, and I never will be. However, in one month’s time, everyone at my house seems to be happier. No one person or thing is being overlooked, or if it is, it’s not for very long. The house is cleaner, we’re eating better, and we’re spending more time together. I still have everything that I want and I’ve really not given up anything that I can’t live without.
About the Author:

Heather Jacobson is the owner of Valley Virtual Assistants, a virtual assistant business catering to solopreneurs who need assistance with their marketing efforts and the author of Making Dollars Out of Cents:101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer. For more information, please visit http://www.heatherjacobson.com

Do You Have Entrepreneurial Spirit?

Published by Heather on November 18, 2007 in Articles and Entreprenuers. 0 Comments

You’ve created an informational product. Now, what do you do with it? Whether you’ve created it to give away or for profit, you must market it; otherwise, you’ve just wasted a lot of your time. What good is your information if no one knows that it’s there?

There are several ways that you can market your product inexpensively. These are tried and true methods to get the word out there about what you have to offer.

• Put up a website.

The best way to advertise your product online is for it to have its own website. I’m not saying don’t promote it on your main page, but give it a home of its own too so that there’s more room for search engine optimization.

When deciding on a domain name, choose keywords that depict what your product is about and not necessarily what the name of the product is. For example, the name of my recent book is Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer however you’ll find the site at www.inexpensivemarketingideas.com .

Taking that one step further, the actual site is hosted at www.inexpensive-marketing-ideas.com however I promote www.inexpensivemarketingideas.com . The reason I host the site with the hyphenated domain is because the spiders crawl the domain name first and then the content on your site. It could take months for the spiders to crawl your web site, but it doesn’t take that long for them to crawl the domain.

• Announce your product to all of your networking groups

If you belong to a listserv that allows you to post advertisements, go ahead and send an announcement. (Check the guidelines, as not all listservs will allow ads or self promotion.) Then take it to any forums to which you belong. If it’s a business related forum, most all have an “advertise your business” section. The key is telling them that it’s done and ready for their viewing or purchase.

• Add the link to your signature line

One of the best places to advertise what you’ve done is in your signature line. Don’t just put the link and expect people to go there. Put something catchy. In my signature line it simply says 101 Free and Inexpensive Marketing Tips and its hyperlinked. That catches their attention much quicker than “Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer”.

Make sure you include this in your email signature line as well as the signature lines of any forums to which you belong. Just because the forum isn’t your target market doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put it there. It’s a free way to advertise and you don’t know if someone in your stay at home mom group can or cannot use what ever it is that you’re offering.

• Send out a press release

Sending out a press release is another way to gain exposure for your product as well as help with indexing in the search engines. Don’t go into this blindly. If you don’t know how to write a press release, either learn or hire someone to do it for you. Once it’s completed submit it to PRWeb.com. I suggest giving a minimum $30 donation instead of the free submission because you will be able to see the statistics as well as have more exposure with the search engines.

In addition to PRWeb.com, find the local media outlets and submit it to them as well. When I sent out a press release for the book, I contacted every business journal in the six states closest to me. It didn’t cost me any more money since I already had it created and to email and fax it didn’t take long at all.

• If you are selling your product consider having an affiliate program

Why should you have an affiliate program? The answer is simple. You’re basically paying someone else to market your product and the commission can be anything that you chose. For example, with my book, I pay affiliates a 25% commission. No, it’s not much, but it’s something and all they have to do is stick it on their website.

There are several affiliate programs out there. I personally use ClickBank because they have over 100,000 affiliates selling products in their market place. My book is also listed in the market place and ClickBank handles the majority of my customer service issues as well as the credit card processing. The fees they charge are nothing in comparison to the time they save me.

• Send out an email to your subscriber list

If you have a subscriber list, use it. Send out an email that the product is now ready. You can even chose to offer them a discount because they are a valued member of your list. Typically, you can expect a sale from 25% of your list. If you have a list of 100 people, you’re more likely than not going to get 25 orders.

These six tips offer a great start to inexpensively marketing your product. If you’re holding back on creating an informational product because you think the marketing of it will cost you an arm and a leg, think again! You can find 95 additional free and inexpensive tips at www.inexpensivemarketingideas.com .

Happy Marketing!

About the Author:

Heather Jacobson doesn’t pay for marketing if she doesn’t have to. Discover how she does it and claim 10 free marketing tips at http://www.10freetips.com