Women Grow Business

She saw an opportunity and asked a powerful question “What if I…?”

Janet Carter was once enrolled in a Right to Work program and as she shares in our podcast – she didn’t have an ideal experience. She decided to assert her disadvantage and become an entrepreneur. And now she’s helping others with disabilities.

We recently met at Blogpotomac; I’m grateful Janet taught me more about her experience and how she started her business, confronting unique obstacles in the process.

Please listen in to our 3 minute conversation.

More from:

• Janet’s company on Twitter or reach out to her via email: abccleaningservices1 (at) gmail (dot) com.
• Ongoing conversations from Blogpotomac on Twitter.

Image by Donna Grayson, Creative Commons.

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It’s here!

The first monthly blog carnival (or post roundup) at Women Grow Business takes off today – welcome! What do you think?

It was hard to decide where to start and stop in moving this forward (so many great women business owners on the Web…). So for that reason, the perimeters for this new carnival will stay basic if not less structured than the traditional approach: each will focus on at least 10 resourceful, compelling posts by or for women entrepreneurs – first week of every month.

Have posts to add? Please do! Your favorites about women entrepreneurs (in or beyond the Women Grow Business community) are welcome 24/7. Share in the comments here anytime.

Here we go:

1. 5 Signs It’s Time to Hire an Assistant (Ali Brown). “While many business-owners have difficulty delegating work, at a certain point it becomes necessary to move the business forward. Hiring an assistant can help you run things more efficiently, letting you focus on the big picture as your assistant takes care of administrative tasks.”
2. Email Marketing Works (The Barefoot Executive). “One technique that works very well for almost any business is email marketing. There are two types of email marketing that you can use. Mainly the difference is the cost involved.”
3. Engagement – Don’t Make The Same Mistake I Did At Your First Conference (Market Like a Chick). “I have learned a great lesson from my Blogworld experience that I thought I already knew, but now realize I haven’t done a very good job at. It’s that one simple word: Engagement.”
4. 10 Things to Do Before Launching Your Blog (Small Business Trends). “But if you’re a small business owner, the thought of launching that blog may be a bit intimidating. Where do you start? … If I was launching a new blog today (and I often am), here’s a short checklist for where I’d start.”
5. Female Internet Hero: Audio Interview with Rashmi Sinha of Slide Share (The Next Women). “SlideShare is the world’s largest community, allowing everyone from teacher to marketeer to connect and share presentations. The site has enjoyed such rapid growth that it now boasts 11 million unique visitors a month.”
6. Your Product or Service: How to Price it Right (Women on Business). “The actual sales price is just a number. However, the item is essentially priceless — it could be worth $5 or $5000, depending on how valuable that item is to its owner. Any visit to Christie’s or Sotheby’s will convince you of the varying price that someone is willing to pay for a particular item.”
7. What The Snuggie Can Teach You About Target Markets (Womenwise Marketing). “Oh, no. No, no, no. I don’t mean to be negative, but if your target audience is everybody, you’ve got a lot of work to do. Mainly, narrowing down your target audience.”
8. The #1 Thing Killing Your Word-of-Mouth Marketing (Wonder Branding). “This morning, she presented me with a handful of freshly inked business cards and asked that I recommend her service to my neighbors and friends. I told her that I couldn’t.”
9. 4 Lies about social media (Brazen Careerist). “But many of you are making lots of social media mistakes. I know because so many people tell me that social media is a waste of their time. They’re wasting their time, and continuing to make mistakes, because there’s a set of common lies that people believe about social media.”
10. November 20-22: Startup Sandbox by Women 2.0 and Hackfest “Hosted by Women 2.0 and Hackfest for the Light, a synergy of San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurs, programmers, designers, putting their skills toward inspiring goals in the form of socially responsible software projects.”

(Image Carnival of Venice-4 by AArigo, Creative Commons)

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Love-hate relationships can tear you apart.
If you’re a business owner, one of the most important love-hate relationships you will ever have is with your bank. Businesses are at the mercy of their banks from the day they open their doors until the day they shut them – for whatever reason that may be. Few business relationships are as critical to a business owner as the relationship they have with their banker. No one is as invested in a business owner’s success (except the owner) like a banker is. Your success is the bank’s success and your failure is the bank’s failure.

Business owners often go in search for money at the worst possible time – when they desperately need it.

When their balance sheet is showing red, when profits are down, when the pipeline is strong but the backlog is weak, when too many people are on overhead instead of being billable – these are the absolute worst times to go looking for money.

Banks want their customers to succeed but are risk-aversive and overly cautious (but who can blame them)? Their favorite customers are businesses with a proven track record, a clear plan for growth –and businesses that are doing so well they don’t need any money.

But no matter who you are, if you are a business owner, you will need to go in search of money many, many times during the course of your business life.

Many business owners – especially the newer entrepreneurs – really don’t know their financial options. A great summary of these options is in the great book, The 2009-2011 Recession Survival Guide: 414 Actions Businesses Can Take to Weather the Storm and Boost Profits. Written by Michael McDermott, the book takes a daunting topic and makes it very understandable and approachable.

Basically, there are three basic ways to finance a business:

1. You finance personally through your own financial resources.
You own the business. But sometimes this referred to as “stealing money from Paul to pay Peter.”

2. You borrow money.
You have to pay off debt from revenues, but you still own the business and any profits are yours.

3. You take investments from outside parties.
You may or may not have to pay off debt, you share your company with them, and you share profits. Usually you are accountable to your investors.

Before borrowing anything, you must be mindful of the fact that you need to make more money from using the loan dollars than it costs to borrow the loan dollars. And for this column, I am only going to focus on non-investor funding options.

1. Community Banks & Credit Unions
Most small businesses turn to smaller community banks and credit unions for funding. Many of these institutions did not get caught up in the sub-prime lending disaster. Also, while credit scores are important to both large and small financial institutions, community banks are more likely to take a closer look at the business plan. Ultimately though, cash flow is the still the key indicator of a borrower’s ability to pay back a loan.

2. Peer-to-Peer (Social) Lending
This is a form of lending that takes place between peers such as family, friends, or associates.

Some examples:

www.virginmoneyus.com
www.lendingclub.com
www.prosper.com

And there are two types of peer-to-peer lending:

Auction-type exchange where the loan goes to the lender with the lowest interest rate.
Plus also the family & friends model where lenders and borrowers already know each other and where a lending service provider offers a platform to support collaboration, formalize loan arrangements, and service the loan over the long term.

3. Business Credit Cards
Business credit cards have been an essential component of our financing strategy. But choose wisely, and watch the interest rates. Here are three websites that compare credit cards:

www.indexcreditcards.com
www.creditcardassist.com
www.cardratings.com
Accion USA: www.accionusa.org makes mico-business loans from $500 – $50,000.

A look at SBA loan guarantees:
The SBA does not make loans, but it guarantees a large part of the loan to the lender in the event of default. SBA-backed loans are available from SBA designated banks. You can visit www.sba.gov for more information.

These are some of the places small businesses can go for funding. And I strongly recommend The 2009-2011 Recession Survival Guide: 414 Actions Businesses Can Take to Weather the Storm and Boost Profits, by Michael McDermott, for additional strategies to raise capital.

Good luck!

More from:
Marissa Levin’s series on sales strategy and leadership at Women Grow Business.

Guest contributor Marissa Levin is Founder and CEO of Information Experts. Launching a new Women Grow Business series on sales strategy, Marissa was named a 2008 BRAVO Award winner by SmartCEO Magazine (which honors the region’s 25 most influential women CEOs) and recently was listed in Washington’s 100 Technology Titans by Washingtonian Magazine. Describing her true passion as “helping other business owners be successful with their own business growth”, Marissa can be reached through her blog Marissa Levin.

(Image by ArghMonkey, Creative Commons)

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Stephanie Krinetz and I met over social media strategy (at a related Blogworld panel by Nelly Yusopova). In the middle of our conversation she said how thrilled she was to be selected to mentor women outside the United States on becoming business owners.

I couldn’t wait to learn more.

She shares that and more on SmallBizCool, our video series straight from the recent Blogworld Expo.

More from:

• The SmallBizCool series (what a lineup!) at the Blogworld Expo;
• Michael Dougherty over at GrowSmartBusiness and his great SmallBizCool interviews.

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So you launched your product.
You’re a modern woman who understands the need for creating feedback mechanisms so people can reach you. You set up Twitter, a Facebook Fanpage, your blog, email address and even forums for discussion. But here’s the rub. Now you’re launched, trying to work on marketing, engage new partners, work on future product requirements, answer press inquiries and the feedback is pouring in from your new users.

What do you do?

First, let me remind you that you signed up for some late nights the second you learned to spell entrepreneur.

That’s the bad news. The good news is, people are using your product and are now an “extended” part of your team! Learn to utilize them. I happen to be in the thick of this right now, so I’d like to share some thoughts from my personal experience.

5 tips to harness what’s out there:

1. Carve out the time.
Ensure a certain amount of time each day is dedicated to reading and responding to direct feedback, like emails coming in, Tweets to your account, etc. Always respond to your earliest users. Even short responses go a long way by acknowledging their feedback.

2. Set up auto-alerts to receive via email.
Set up a few Google Alerts so you know when bloggers, journalists and others are talking about you or your product. In the first two weeks of launch, I was amazed by alerts showing me mentions for Thankfulfor from the most random corners of the Internet.

3. Search across related social networks to find relevant conversations.
Utilize tools that inform you of online conversations that may directly mention your product or be related in some way. Twitter and Facebook are easy to search, but don’t forget to visit niche communities as well.

Since my product focuses on gratitude, I’ve been more active in communities like Intent.com, Beliefnet and even eHow, which has many articles about gratitude written by members of it’s extended network.

As your business expands, you may want to try tools like Radian6 to see how they can help you.

4. Proactively respond.
Wherever you find activity (reviews, mentions), make sure you proactively respond in comments or email whether the initial mention was positive or negative. I find people are usually thrilled that you noticed and if they did write something negative, are quick to apologize or explain. I always thank them for their honest feedback, assure them we are taking all of their comments into account as we update the product in the future and let them know that we’re still learning about how people want to use the product.

Recently someone said some pretty negative things (publicly) directly targeted at me and while I was tempted to fight back, I decided it would only hurt the brand I am trying to create as well as my own personal reputation.

I responded kindly, thanking him for his feedback and he actually came back with some positive words.

5. Highlight people who have written about your product.
We have a blog where we can write about industry news, team thoughts and more – it’s the perfect place for us to highlight and thank people who have taken the time to feature our product in some way. By doing that, we’ve created deeper relationships and sometimes hear from those people who now think of us when something happens in our industry.

Thoughts for dealing with the challenges

Regarding time
Doing all of the things above can become a major time-suck. But aren’t we doing this entire endeavor so we can control our own schedules? That means it’s up to YOU to have the discipline to turn it off when you need to. I check my feedback sources about 3-5 times per day depending on traffic levels. I carve out additional time each week to participate in various communities and search for feedback. When the day comes that it prevents me from doing everything else I need to do, I will re-evaluate the methods and/or determine if I need to pay for a service or intern to help.

Ego
The anonymity of the web encourages some people to hide behind made-up names and throw stones more harshly than they ever would in person. Don’t let them get to you!

(Image Frustration by Reuben, Creative Commons)

Take all of the feedback, strip out the unnecessary aka personal BS that may be lurking within the comments and bring back anything constructive you can find.

Grow a thick skin because the more successful you get, the more you’ll need it.

Gratitude & allowing
Many people may want to get involved and that can be difficult to deal with too. Be gracious toward your champions and treat them well. Figure out how they can help if they offer! People honestly want to help us and usually it’s our own fears or issues that prevent us from allowing that to happen.

You want these people to become, as Chris Guillebeau says, your own small army.

Figure out how they can help and how to show them your appreciation. I’m still working on this myself so I’ll let you know how that goes!

Re-prioritize as needed (do this on a regular basis)
Trust me, it can be very frustrating to come up with an agreed upon plan today only to completely change it tomorrow. However, cherish the fact that you are small, nimble and can be responsive. My partner and I have a list of features we want to have implemented but only have one developer. When we noticed two weeks ago that a new group of people had come to Thankfulfor and their posts weren’t working we had our developer drop everything to address it.

Those people were all from Japan and our product wasn’t displaying the Han characters. It was a fairly quick fix and because we were responsive, we enabled an entirely new group of people to use our product and share it with friends. We may not understand what they are writing each day but we’re thrilled that they are part of our growing community. Never did we imagine that so many of our early users would be from other countries, but that’s today’s reality, and it means we need to address their needs even if it requires us to shift our plans.

There is no magic bullet.
And before you run out to hire a service, make sure you roll up your sleeves and jump in the real-time feedback stream at least for a little while.

There is nothing like direct interaction with your customers. You need to see it, hear it and be thankful that someone cares enough about what you’ve created to offer something back.

How about you? What’s been your experience in recognizing and engaging with feedback from your customer communities?

More from:
Jen Consalvo and her Women Grow Business series on all things product launch.

Guest contributor Jen Consalvo writes the Women Grow Business series on all things related to launching product (pre and post launch). She is co-founder of Shiny Heart Ventures, a new technology startup focused on building community driven products that remind people of the joys of life. For almost 14 years, Jen has led teams in a range of product areas such as digital imaging, social platforms and personalization. The majority of her career was at AOL, planning and building products used by millions of people globally. Also find Jen at jenconsalvo.com, bodysoulconnect.com and twitter.com/noreaster.

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She’s a former presidential appointee to the National Women’s Business Council. And she’s an advocate for entrepreneurs and small business, working with national plus state agencies on ensuring interests of small business owners are heard. She’s Vivian Shimoyama who founded Breakthru Solutions.

Vivian was so eager to share what she values most about her company when we met at the Blogworld Expo. She talks shop on that and how small companies can level the playing field with larger competitors.

She’s that cool!

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Buckle down
If your thoughts are primarily fear based, if you’re envisioning the worst for yourself and your business, if your conversations are focused predominately on bad news, then you’re seriously impeding your own success. Stop being your own worst enemy! Instead of giving succor to all the negative blathering, buckle down and determine to take 3 actions every single day to improve revenue.

Discipline, metrics, and prospecting: a new series
In this three part series, you’ll get specific suggestions you can implement immediately to begin to enhance your business success. The tips are grouped into three categories: discipline, metrics, and prospecting.

6 essentials for the disciplined entrepreneur
To start us off today will be six essential disciplines applied by successful entrepreneurs.

1. Be fully absorbed in creating new business.

Don’t you dare pick up that phone, go to Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn during work hours unless it’s to generate business.

Be ruthlessly disciplined about generating revenue as job one. Any activity that doesn’t secure new business should be delegated or done during non-business hours. Prioritize everything else around this fundamental principle. During business hours, dedicate yourself exclusively to expanding your client base or deepening business with your current clients rather than connecting with friends.

2. Invite scrutiny & tough truths.
Whose business acumen do you admire? Who is already successful in your field? Whose clientele do your products or services complement? Establish an advisory board and invite these folks to be part of it. Meet quarterly to gain their advice on your business challenges.

Advisory boards impose a level of scrutiny and accountability that both challenge and comfort, and a level of ideation and innovation that helps you expand your scope and reach.

Ensure you get unbiased, unemotional, tough truths by not including friends and loved ones on the board. Alternatively, you could treat selected individuals to a meal now and then to get their advice. Whatever the way in which you access the intellectual capital of others, be sure to thank them, act on at least one of their suggestions, and follow up with them to let them know the outcome of having implemented their advice.

(Image Kernels of Truth by Daveblog Creative Commons)

3. Don’t pander – ponder!
Showcasing your products and services too early, without taking time to probe client needs, can be insulting. Instead honor the unique needs of your client by asking probing questions. Be inquisitive about their goals, frustrations, hopes, and struggles. Then link the utility of your products and services to their specific needs.

4. Publicize to optimize.
Both credibility and sales increase as a result of publishing articles and by speaking on your area of expertise. It’s not that hard. Every time you solve a problem for a client, produce an outline of the process from start to finish. Then fill in the outline, and voila, you have an article or a speech. Multiple articles can comprise a book. Writing a book is less daunting if you write only one chapter at a time without thinking of it as a book.

5. Diversify to amplify.
Particularly important in tough economic times is that you have established multiple lines of business. Ensure your repertoire includes as many permutations of your core business as possible. For example, if you’re a consultant, you may want to ensure your service includes as many of the following as your expertise permits: business consulting, facilitation, an ever expanding menu of workshops on as many topics as you’re fluent in (both virtual and on site), surveys of as many types as you can do well, coaching (both in person and virtually), speeches, retreats, and more. You might also consider partnering with others whose offerings are complementary, and/or subcontracting to others who have skills that you don’t have.

6. Essential certifications.
Differentiate yourself from competitors by earning certifications in your field. For example, in the consulting profession, The Institute of Management Consulting (IMC USA) – an extremely prestigious group of professional consultants – confers the highly coveted Certified Management Consultant designation. The CMC demonstrates competitive distinction globally, making it much more likely that you will gain the attention of decision makers. You can find the chapter nearest you, and learn more at IMC USA.

Regardless of how many of these tips you implement, your own outlook and attitude can diminish their effectiveness.

Those who prevail in difficult times are the ones who steadfastly refuse to allow negativity to form a barrier to their success. They instead deliberately and diligently take multiple constructive actions every single day. Doing so helps sustain a positive attitude, increases resilience, and reinvigorates a commitment to success and your business.

I look forward to discussing more core ideas and steps to take in building your business revenue throughout this series.

So which of these tips resonate with you? How would you expand this list?

More from:
Francie Dalton and her great insight at Women Grow Business, including what she wished she’d known when first launching her business.

Guest contributor Francie Dalton, CMC, is founder and president of Dalton Alliances, Inc. and author of the recently published book Versatility. Her Washington, DC based consultancy helps the C-Suite solve business nightmares. Francie equips clients to deal with what they didn’t see coming (and shows them there’s always another way to win!). She welcomes a chance to meet you via Twitter or on LinkedIn.

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What’s the most professional way to answer the phone at your place of business? Do you have a standard that you’ve implemented for yourself and the people who work with you? Many successful entrepreneurs have created systems for running every aspect of their business, but handling phone calls seems frequently overlooked. And yet the phone is the gateway into your company, the first point of contact for many customers.

What kind of impression are you giving?

Gateway vs intrusion
Too many people view a ringing phone as an interruption. If you can’t talk right now, don’t answer. And if you do answer, be pleasant. Does this sound like basic phone etiquette? Because it seems like a lot of companies haven’t figured this out yet and in case they’re wondering why business isn’t so good, this could be the reason.

Demeanor of a troll
I was given a referral the other day and called her company’s main number to be greeted by someone I will kindly describe as having the demeanor of a troll. I was then told, “She’s not available.” Okay, do I get any options here? Can you transfer me to voicemail, take a message, suggest a better time to reach her?

I’m already thinking, do I even want to do business with a company that treats its callers this way?

Think differentiation
How you answer your phone is one more opportunity to distinguish your company from the rest. I once worked with a company that had everyone cheerfully answering their phones with “It’s a great day here at Office Furniture Company. This is Christine. How can I make it a great day for you?” (Okay, well, they didn’t all say “this is Christine,” they each used their own names!)

This greeting worked well for a few reasons.

One:
It was different, so it would catch people off guard, in a good way. Wow, the person answering the phone sounds positive!

Two:
Since they identified themselves, you knew who you were talking with, which in my book always increases a caller’s comfort level. From a marketing standpoint, it personalizes your company and allows the start of a relationship. From a practical standpoint, if you got disconnected or needed to call back for any reason, you knew whom to ask for. Even if you are the only one answering your business phone, not everyone knows that and knows who you are, so identify yourself.

Three:
Asking that question of ‘How can I help…” immediately set the stage for an interaction that promised to be helpful to the caller. It also allowed the caller to get creative, if they were so inclined, which also led to a lot of humorous conversation starts.

And we all know that fun and laughter is good for business!

Take a look at your customer service phone etiquette.
What can you do to help callers feel good about contacting your company? How can you start conversations on a friendly note and differentiate your business at the same time? Or what good phone greetings have you heard lately?

I want to know. Post your comments and share!

More from:

• Lori Saitz and her customer service series at Women Grow Business;
• Seth Godin and the value of ‘who answers’ your business lines;
• Freshbooks and human customer support, small business, and the phone;
• Pro Edge Skills and (3) steps to great phone greetings for your business.



Guest contributor Lori Saitz is founder of Zen Rabbit Baking Company. She helps people show appreciation for and give recognition to others. The main (delicious!) tool her team uses to help accomplish this important feat is through The Gratitude Cookie(tm). A thin, crunchy cross between a butter and a sugar cookie, The Gratitude Cookie is so named because if you’re eating the cookies, you’re encouraged to think about something you are grateful for as you munch on each one.

(Image Ring Ring Ring by Define23, Creative Commons)

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Entrepreneur Magazine has listed The Startup Princess as a top resource for women entrepreneurs. And she’s been voted by her home state as one of 30 Women to Watch.

She’s that cool.

Kelly King Anderson aka Fairy Godmother of helping business-owner dreams come true … founded Startup Princess a while ago to convene like-minded women entrepreneurs as she was getting a business idea off the ground. Yet so much success emerged from Startup Princess itself, that she committed to building that instead, putting aside the original idea that first motivated Startup Princess to launch.

I randomly turned around last week at the Blogworld Expo. When Kelly mentioned “Hi, I’m Startup Princess on Twitter” – I almost jumped out of my skin from glee. It was the first time to meet her face to face.

-and a pleasure to get her entrepreneur magic apart of the SmallBizCool series.

So from Blogworld’s floor, here’s Kelly for SmallBizCool!

More from:

• The full (and so cool) video series SmallBizCool at Women Grow Business;
• Michael Dougherty catches some great SmallBizCool conversation and meets up with Chris Brogan (oh the humor!) from Blogworld.

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Transporting back to last week, Las Vegas, early a.m. pacific time:
It’s the opening keynote address for the Blogworld Expo and first time many attendees were convened in the same room. We enter a large meeting hall where rows and rows of chairs are filling up and projected up front is one huge phrase on screen:

How dare you not be awesome?!

That bold question was the most effective ‘mental caffeine’.

It’s a question posed by the hip, wise, and awesome entrepreneur Laura Fitton aka @Pistachio on Twitter. She’s a Twitter champ and founder of OneForty.com and Pistachio Consulting.

And she gets more cool — enough to talk shop for the SmallBizCool series!

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