You’ve built a reasonably successful business, and you’re earning an income that’s “enough,” if not comfortable, that meets your needs. You sell stuff pretty regularly, too. And you did it all without a formal business plan. But an opportunity presents itself. A potential business partner. A mobile app. The perfect storefront space you’ve been dreaming about for that day when your Shopify store becomes a curated brick-and-mortar shopping experience. You’re ready to scale up, but …
Now that you’ve started your own business your time is finally yours. Or is it? You unchained yourself from the corporate cubicle and said goodbye to the long commutes, scheduled break times, and clock watching. It’s a wonderful feeling controlling your own schedule and doing whatever you choose each day. But a lack of structure can also sink you right from the start. So many new entrepreneurs look forward to the freedom and flexibility of …
We all know entrepreneurship has its ups and downs, and that’s putting it mildly. No doubt, you have days where you imagine ripping your laptop from its power source and throwing it through the window of your beautifully appointed downtown office the cheap café down the street. (However, if you actually did that, I’m not sure if this blog post will help you!)
Do you feel like you just can’t earn enough money in your business to fully support yourself? It could be that you’ve been running a business for a while, but your personal income isn’t keeping up with your company’s increase in sales.
You want to start a business, but you keep stalling. You dream of waking up in the morning, strolling down the hallway in your pajamas, and checking your email over a leisurely cup of coffee. Or maybe you already have a small business – a side hustle, perhaps, or just a project you’ve been working on from home. You want to turn it into something bigger, but there’s always another activity that takes priority, another …
As small business owners, we’re bombarded with marketing advice all the time: If you want tons of traffic you should guest post! If you want more clients you should master the art of the follow up! If you want more new business you should post infographics on Facebook and offer free advice in LinkedIn Groups! And most marketers are really excited to tell you about how all of these tactics are ABSOLUTELY FREE. Sorry, but …
Despite our obsessions with smart phones, social media, and all things digital, one of the oldest forms of commercial marketing can still produce huge dividends. Can you guess what it is? Paper. Many of us have long since given up on using snail mail to get leads. Plenty of people, in fact, don’t even see a need for direct mail anymore – especially not for marketing. But there’s that kid in all of us who …
As entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time reading about and implementing tactics that we hope will bring us loads of new email subscribers/new customers/mega awesome sales. Tactics are wonderful, but without a clearly defined niche marketing strategy (and some well-thought out goals) to guide them, they are unlikely to be effective. So I’m compelled to tell you how to plan a marketing campaign. Or… perhaps it would be more fun to tell you how …
