The Sounding Board

I am, by no means, a self-built business genius. I have a lot of experience, and some pretty good ideas and understandings, mind you. I’ve learned a great deal over the last 15+ years in the business world, not to mention my continuous college education. (I am now working on my second bachelor’s.) But I’ve never claimed to know it all. That is the purpose of my Link Love of the Week – to shine a little spotlight on the folks who have helped me learn what I need to know, expand the knowledge I already have, or have enlightened me on new ways of doing things in my business.

With that thought in mind, I knew that this week’s link love needed to go out to someone who truly did turn a light on for me in my business. Alicia Forest of Client Abundance did that for me last year. I took her 21 Steps Take Action Group and all I can say is WOW! It’s not so much that she taught me things I didn’t know as she helped me formulate what I already knew into a workable, built-for-me-and-my-own-style plan. She helped me to connect the dots in my own mind so that I could do more with less in my own business. You can buy either the ebook, or do like I did and take the actual course with other business owners struggling with the same kinds of situations. Alicia walks you through, step by step, on how to build an abundance of clients in your business. She uses real thought-provoking concepts to help you bring out what it is that makes you unique & then shows you how to use that to build up your business in such a way that your real ‘you’ shines through & attracts the kind of customers/clients who you truly connect with. She also helped me to see that “done is better than perfect” – something of a mantra she’s fond of reminding her readers & participants of. She’s also got a great ezine you can subscribe to here. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up for Creating Client Abundance.)

Thanks, Alicia! You truly have helped me get a better grip on what it is I want to do and how to go about doing it!

So, you’re in business for yourself. You finally did it. You planned, you executed your plan, and things are looking wonderful. Except there’s still a lot of work to do. You want to add a blog to your existing website, or you want to start using a service like Constant Contact or Aweber. You don’t really have the budget to farm out all this work to a professional.

Maybe you do have the capital (come on, now…think about it…you might be able to squeeze it into the budget somewhere) but you’re just not ready to risk precious business capital willy-nilly on just anything or anyone. That’s understandable. I’ve been there myself, I have to admit. First, I had to come to the realization that the time it took me to wade through learning these things was not worth the lost time from activities that would propel my business forward. It took me awhile to wrap my head around that concept.

Sure, I needed to get those things in place so that I could use them to help market my business, but what good is it to invest the time if it takes so long to learn that I can’t get around to the other marketing efforts that really need my creative attention, like writing articles, working on my ebook, etc. But I’m not so far removed from those first few days, weeks, and months in my business that I don’t remember what it felt like then.

So, some of these things you want to learn how to do for yourself. You want to do it on your own, or at least give it a good try before you lay out that precious business capital on someone else you aren’t 100% sure of. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. No matter what the experts might have you believe. Now that’s not to say there isn’t some serious value in turning over more complicated technical tasks like installing a blog on your own domain to a professional with more knowledge and technical expertise. However, there are those of us who feel driven to try it ourselves first. If, for no other reason than to gain a little more understanding of just what it is that we’re turning over. You never know, it might not be so hard after all & you might save yourself a little of that capital for a different or more pressing business need.

Okay, so we’ve established why you want or need to do some of these things for yourself. But there’s a big problem. There’s a lot of information out there on how to go about setting up your blog and using email marketing services (like Constant Contact, Aweber, iContact, SendStream, etc.) It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?

There’s a lot of technical information to wade through. A lot of stuff might not make sense to you unless you already know html, xhtml, CSS, PHP, etc. Let’s face it, if you knew that stuff…you wouldn’t be reading this now, would you? Odds are, probably not. J See, I remember from my own personal experience what it was like to try to wade through all this stuff with little to no knowledge of html, or anything else for that matter. I was a great administrative assistant in my ‘corporate’ days, but that didn’t prepare me for owning my own business & the myriad of tasks it would take to make my business successful.

Just like any other ‘average joe,’ I knew how to do my ‘j.o.b.’ – the skills I would use in my business, but I didn’t know squat about things like websites, blogs, email marketing, and all these other modern-day business technologies. (I thought MySpace was just a big site for teenagers to chat & create their own little social network – I didn’t have a clue what the heck ’social media’ was or that it could be useful to my business!)

Now we’ve established that you want to do some of this stuff yourself. We’ve established that there’s a lot of information to wade through & it’s going to take up a lot of your time. So, what’s a busy business owner to do? Stay tuned to the Sounding Board for further details, as this is just the problem I intend to resolve with my Business 101 Series, coming this Spring! I’ll walk you through the process, step by step, in plain English, no fancy footwork or in-depth html knowledge needed. I promise! Just the basics, and just what you need to know to get started!

Want to be the first to hear when my Business 101 Series launches? Sign up for updates and you’ll know almost as soon as I do when everything’s ready!