Entrepreneurial Dreamscapes…
I have always been a thinker, an ideas person and a dreamer. I dream in the shower. I dream watching TV. I double-dream when I sleep. However as many entrepreneurs and successful business owners will tell you, dreaming doesn’t create action. People create action.
One of the biggest challenges I have as a so-called “entrepreneur” is turning dreaming into action. I know I need to do certain things to create success. But sometimes I come up with ideas that I think are so fabulous and I get so excited thinking about that new idea that all other ideas before it seem dull in comparison.
One of my other characteristics is that I rarely think – in the early dreaming stage – ‘oh, I couldn’t do that’. Actually it’s the opposite – I challenge anyone who says ‘you can’t do that’. My response is: why not? Why can’t I? What do you know that I don’t know about this?
And that isn’t an arrogant question. I just want to know what you know that I don’t. Because knowledge is success.
I have heard of this from other entrepreneurs as well. Fantastic ideas come in a constant stream but action can be challenging.
So where does this come from?
For me, personally, my parents brought me up to believe five key things – you know those things that your parents, almost subconsciously, keep repeating to you over and over and over again as you’re growing up. It’s almost like subliminal marketing….
- Believe in yourself. Believe in yourself. Believe in yourself.
- Learn as much as you can.
- Live every day like it is your last. You never know when your time is up.
- Use your common sense. Use your common sense. Use your common sense.
- Money doesn’t make you happy. Make yourself happy and do what makes you happy.
During the first twelve years of my life outside their care, I wandered away from these principles. I kept close to them, but I didn’t follow them exactly down the line.
At 31 years old I constantly hear about 23-year-old highly successful entrepreneurs and and I wonder: are younger entrepreneurs those that refuse to deviate from what they believe in, right from the start?
How do I find customers with print advertising?
Over the past two weeks I have been planning how I actually find customers to buy my products (when they are finished). Being who I am I know online marketing BUT what I didn’t know was offline marketing i.e. things like magazine advertising, how much it cost and where to start.
Step 1 – Researching where to advertise
When I started planning my print advertising, I struggled with where I should advertise. What I want is the best advertising medium, for the lowest cost who specifically targets the customers I want. Is that too much to ask? 
The very first place I started was with the trusty age-old marketing adage: Know your target market.
Being a writer, I actually subscribe to an Australian tool called Margaret Gee’s Media Guide. It’s a printed and online directory of newspapers, magazines, radio and internet sources.
So my first step was to search the directory and come up with a list of potential sources of advertising that target my potential customers. Then I put all these sources into a spreadsheet and categorised them by the following headings in Microsoft Excel:
- Advertiser
- Delivery Method – Magazine, eNewsletter
- Size – size of advertisement
- Colour – black and white, 4 colours
- Single Ad Cost
- 2 Ads Cost
- 3 Ads Cost
- 4 Ads Cost
- 5 Ads Cost
- 6+ Ads Cost
- Length – how long the publication lasted before another edition appeared
- Notes
- Competition Rating – the percentage of advertisements to content published
- Market Category – target market / focus area
- Print Distribution – how many people they distribute to in a printed capacity
- Web Distribution – how many people have subscribed to their newsletter
- Unique Visitors per month – if it’s a web publication
- Gender
- Major Age Groups
- Employment
- Key Focus Description – most advertisers publish a generalised 1-3 paragraph summary of their readers.
I filled in a single row for each advertisement size and just copied the repetitive bits like gender, age groups etc.
So now I have a list of potential advertisers, who focus on my target market and I know how much their advertising will cost me.
Step 2 – Advertising by Numbers – selecting the lucky publishers
Every advertising source knows that businesses have a finite advertising budget i.e. you can only spend ‘x’ dollars per year on advertising and it is their job to get you to spend it on them (like any business). Regardless of the fact that I narrowed down my advertising list by my target market, I still had a very long list.
So I added a worksheet to my Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to create an Advertising Calculator i.e. what would be the minimum amounts I would need to sell to recoup my advertising cost and then make a profit. It was a very simple calculator but good enough for my purposes as a quick and dirty estimate.
Attached is my spreadsheet which will give you an idea of how I calculated whether an advertisement would be beneficial or not. It does require you to estimate the conversion rate but as you track your product conversion rate through repeat advertising, you’ll be able to get this percentage closer to the mark.
In the online world, conversion rate (i.e. the percentage of customers that buy from you versus the number of total customers visiting your website) is generally stated at around 1-2% for customers that don’t know you from a bar of soap, up to 30-50% for customers that know who you are and already respect your work. But this figure really depends on your industry, your sales copy and a tonne of other factors.
It made me wonder what the general sales conversion rates for magazine and print ads were….I am guessing they are just as hard to pin down as the online world but if anyone reading knows (or has a better way to assess who you should advertise with), go ahead and post a comment…
The mystic art of networking
I don’t like to perpetuate the image of being a geek because people think geeks are also nerds (true in some cases but hopefully not mine). However there are some parts of me that are just plain unadulterated geek (not nerd) – and I don’t care because it’s who I am.
However some of these entrancing features of my personality cause me issues in public situations. One of these is ‘networking’ with people i.e. actually talking to a person and not a computer.
There are two things against me when it comes to networking with people:
Firstly I grew up in the country and it’s rude to stare at people while they are talking to you out there. Instead you just kind of gaze off into the substantial distance, agree with ‘mmmmm’ and ‘aaah-haaa’ and finish with a ‘yeeeaaahhh’ which seems to rumble across the dry, brown landscape and echo back to you minutes later.
Secondly, although people who know me know that I can be just as loud and potentially obnoxious as the next person, I am generally a bit shy when it comes to meeting new people. I also blame this on my rural upbringing – there just weren’t that many new people to meet out there. I was related to half the 200-person town – in a ‘we’re-not-inbred’ way of course.
So walking into a room full of no-one I know is something I typically avoid at all costs. In fact I would rather jump off a cliff.
However if I am going to run my own business I am going to have to talk to people. Lots of people. Face-to-face. Calling all units: man the panic stations!
Let me clarify – it’s not that I don’t like people – in fact one of the things I love most in my job is talking to people to help them solve their business problems with technology – note the technology bit there. I can talk about technology until the cows come home. Literally.
Anyway as a result of this ‘networking-is-essential’ revelation, one thing I decided to do this week was attend a networking event. If you can believe it I have actually never attended a networking event (well given my confessions above, maybe you can believe it). I have attended conferences and seminars but not a specific event where it seems that some people’s goal is to walk in, throw their cards across the room in an Uzi-style pump action, and walk out again.
Well, OK it wasn’t quite that bad but there was one particular person who did this.
So what did I do? First step: drag a good friend along who is a great networker and take her queues on what sort of things to say and do. And of course, to provide much-needed emotional support.
Second step: pull out the notes from a Networking course I attended a few years ago and study up. Robyn Henderson teaches the course and is a natural networker, or at least that’s the perception she threw out to us poor socially-challenged students.
There are three key pieces of information I took away from that training:
A room is divided into three sections
The first section is where the registration desk is and where most people cluster like herds of sheep (ah – the sheep thing: that’s not what Robyn said – that’s my interpretation). Then beyond the sheep are sections 2 & 3.
Essentially in section 3 (the back of the room) is where the influencers congregate. Go there and start conversations.
I am not sure if that worked in this room: it was so bloody hot with very little air-conditioning so everyone actually spread out evenly across the room to ensure they didn’t sweat pools on each other. Oh well – I’ll look out for that tip next time in a more conducive setting.
Aim to meet at least 4-5 people
Robyn told us that the average is 1 in every 4 people you meet will become a customer, prospect or referee.
To me that statistic is amazing and definitely makes the 2 hour networking event participation a worthwhile initiative.
I met 10 people so maybe I have 2 potential customers, prospects or referees.
The follow-up after an event is most important
Chucking the business cards you received into your drawer doesn’t get you anywhere. Robyn said that only 10% of people follow up after an event.
I actually don’t have my business cards printed yet (although I am very excited – they will be ready in 9.2 days…but who’s counting) so the follow-up bit was very important for me – I wasn’t spending 2 hours in a pub-sauna talking to people just to throw their business cards away.
This was my follow-up process:
- Find something interesting to send them: I looked at the articles I have written recently, modified one of them a little and PDF’d it.
- Add contacts: Add each contact to Microsoft Outlook. In the notes section of the Outlook contact, add a few words about how I met them, what their business focuses on and anything special I could think of about them or their business.
- Create an email template: I am currently trialling a new product from MYOB called ClientConnect. This is essentially a basic but quite functional CRM system for small business. It integrates into Outlook to use your contacts there and allows you to create and track new business opportunities pretty easily. You can also do some funky reports on revenue and create standard templates for tasks, meetings and emails that can later be associated with opportunities. So I created an email template in ClientConnect called ‘Networking Follow-up’ and added my PDF and a link to my email newsletter in case they want to subscribe to my weekly tips on technology.
- Send email: using the template as a base, I customised each email with a note about their business and/or our discussion. For example if we talked about their website I had a surf around their website and made a comment about it. Robyn said to send email follow-up no later than 72 hours post-event: we networked on Tuesday evening and I sent my follow-up Wednesday evening.
- Connect electronically: finally I sent each contact a LinkedIn request to stay connected even when our contact details change.
Phew! Well, at least I have the process set up for the next one…
Starting a new business = cleaning up
One of the books that compelled me to do what I am doing is called “The Four Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss – he highly recommends cleaning out your excess baggage as one of the key steps in entrepreneurial success. So this week I kicked on and threw out.
I started with my desk at my soon-to-be-ex-employer: all gone. See ya’ later alligator. In a while crocodile (not).
Next…my clothes and my home office…
Throwing out the baggage…literally
I mentioned in one of my first posts that it is my goal to lose 14kg over the next 4 or so months. I haven’t always had that stubborn 14kgs. It kinda just crept on as the stress and depression escalated over the past 3 years. I was an Australian size 10-12 three years ago. In my wardrobe most of my clothes are still that size. Which leaves me with little to wear with a full wardrobe of clothing.
So even though I plan to lose the weight and get back into those clothes, I have been holding on to some truly ugly and daggy s**t.
This morning as soon I as got up I cleaned out my wardrobe and drawers. I ended up with 2 shopping bags stuffed full to go to St Vincent’s, 1 bag destined for the rag bag in my basement, and 1 more bag I’ll ask my friends if they want to sort through before I also dedicate the remainder to St Vincent’s (many of those clothes still have tags on them…that’s how much I really liked them).
There were some difficult moments. I had to restrain myself in giving up my favourite jeans (I love jeans) to the rag bag…poor jeanie – you’re so ripped you could be the shining star in a gym if you were human. Bye bye, my love.
Down to brass tacks, the methodology I used to determine whether I would keep a piece of clothing went something like this:
- Have I worn this less than 5 times (or never)? If the answer was yes, it goes into the friends bag.
- Does it have rips, stains, faded fabric (etc)? If it does, it goes in the rag bag.
- Is it quite simply the most ugly piece of clothing on earth? Answer in the affirmative and you must get out of my wardrobe immediately and take yourself to Vinnies. Maybe someone will love you there.
Speaking of ugly, I just had to show you a top I must have brought when I was having a brain spasm:
I think even Vinnies will reject that one.
Home Office Clean-up
Next up. The home office.
In my corporate role, I was privileged enough to work from home a couple of days a week because my employer provided me with all the tools to do so effectively. I am also lucky enough to have a room in my house as my office and have it setup with my PC, my large collection of books, a comfy chair and a beautiful leather-covered desk I picked up on eBay for an absolute bargain (and which I am stilled chuffed about…2 years post-purchase…is that wrong?).
But now I am working full time from this office, it was time to give it a little makeover to make it more palatable.
First I threw out books I didn’t read and would probably never read. This was really hard for me – I am a book addict. I use and abuse them and they sit on my shelves usually never to be read again. But I do look at them every now and again to make sure they feel the love.
In my global book dump I found some titles that may amuse you:
- Migrating to Windows 2000 Server – I only held on to that one for six years longer than necessary.
- How to make performance evaluations really work – ah, yes: the days when I was a team manager. May I never ever ever ever ever see you again.
- The Heart and Soul of Leadership – snore.
- Natural Magic ‘A Seasonal Guide’ – a weird remnant of my rock/goth/pretend witch teenage days.
- Handcrafted Pillows – I am not the sewing type. I can’t even remember why I brought it. Let’s pretend I didn’t even mention that book. It’s too embarrassing.
Being an IT chick I also have a large selection of floppy disks (PCs don’t even come with a floppy drive anymore so they are extremely useful) and CDs I have been holding onto – right back to Windows 95. Here is what I threw out:
Gee, I’d only estimate that to be about 100 CDs.
Finally after ransacking the CD collection, I gave it all a dust, a primp and a smack of lippie and bob’s your uncle – a clean, fresh home office to start my new career.
I am now off to buy a plant to keep me company on my journey from corporative civilian to enviable entrepreneur…
Case Studies for The Start of New Opportunities
First up – did I do what I said I was going to do yesterday? You betcha! The motivation is amazing when you *potentially* have the whole world reading about it.
I went to the doctor (got to go have some tests), jogged for 45 mins (well – you know a jog/walk type thing), filled my fridge with healthy stuff and cooked a healthy homemade meal for dinner.
A great case study
Recently I started listening to a set of CDs called Think & Grow Rich – its an audio conversion of an old book by Napoleon Hill – apparently a classic book but I hadn’t heard of it until someone mentioned it to me recently. And I can’t recommend it enough to fellow or would-be entrepreneurs.
I ordered the unabridged version and the examples and some of the language used are very much early 1900’s but I find it quite enjoyable. No-one really speaks like that any more – its a lost art form. Many of the names of US millionaires are people I have no idea about but it is great listening while I am driving to my last few days of corporate work.
Essentially Napoleon talks about 13 principles that the super-rich all have in common. One of them is commitment. He says that until you fully and definitely commit yourself to what you want to achieve, you won’t achieve it.
I’ll give you the gist of one of the examples he provides: it is of a pastor of a church who thinks and thinks upon an idea he has to build a school for new technology learning. But he needs $1 million to do it. Being a pastor, he doesn’t have $1 million and doesn’t know where he can get $1 million so he keeps putting it off.
For two years he puts it off until finally he decides one day he will do it – he has to do it. And he commits himself to getting the $1 million in just a week. He spends the evening writing a sermon “What I Would Do With One Million Dollars” and tells the local media he will present it the next Sunday.
Sunday comes around and he drives to the church but forgets his notes. He only remembers them when he is standing at the pulpit. Too late to go back he talks from the heart about what he would do with $1 million.
When the sermon is over he sits back down and the church is quiet until a man stands and walks over to the pulpit and says to the pastor he believes in what he has preached and he will give him the $1 million this week. He does and the school the pastor develops goes on to become famous and leading edge.
My Case Study
The story above is a nice once because it provides me with much-needed encouragement that I am not loopy for quitting my job.
Last week I decided to quit work and a couple of days later I got the extra little push I needed to go. Not knowing what work I would pick up or even if anyone would hire me I did it anyway.
This week two things happened to me – not big things – certainly not $1 million falling in my lap – but encouraging things nonetheless.
This week I told a partner of ‘ACME Technology’ that I was leaving to “…relax for a while and write a book”. He immediately asked me if I would be available for consulting work. It took me all of three seconds to confirm that ‘yes I would be’! So I have a starting point.
Alright – I can hear you thinking: ‘Hey – that’s not a real example of getting things you commit to a la Mr Napoleon Hill! These people know you and if you’re a smart lass you’d undoubtedly get asked by someone to do some work for them’.
OK – Fair enough, I say. Let me tell you about incident #2:
About a month ago I sent an email to a local business development centre. I asked them if I could run a seminar on helping small business with technology. No reply. I followed up two weeks ago and suggested 5 other seminar topics I could talk on. No reply.
By this point I figure they don’t want to know about me. My next step this week was to call and bug them – one last ditch attempt just to make sure they hadn’t missed my email. But they beat me to it.
Today I received a phone call from them: Apologising for taking so long to get back to me, the lady told me they had recently conducted a survey of their small business members and found that three of the topics I suggested were what they wanted to hear about. Could I submit a formal proposal for presenting those three topics? Why, yes ma’am I absolutely could!
What do you think about that one?
OK. So you still may not believe in ‘definite commitment = opportunity’ but let’s see how the rest of my new entrepreneur life goes before we make judgement. Yes?
P.S. Tip of the day: Go buy ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill to kick start your entrepreneurial mind set. Get it on audio if you travel lots or can wear your headphones at work.
The next step: sorting out my life
Yesterday I had my meeting with HR and my manager.
‘Are you sure you want to quit?’, says manager
‘Yes…I am pretty sure’, says me
I don’t think that sounded very confident but I wasn’t going back now. Since I submitted my resignation I have been on an emotional roller coaster ride: What if I can’t get any work? Gosh I am going to have fun! What if no-one wants to hire me? I can’t wait to get started!
Over and over again but in different variations.
Last night I was so exhausted I had two glasses of wine, a sandwich and went to bed at 8pm (I usually go to bed anywhere between 11pm-2am). I slept until 8:30am. The first time I have slept over 12 hours in a long time. Bliss!
Today – in between finishing my soon-to-be-ex-employer’s work – I am going to start sorting out my life.
The first thing was to define being an “entrepreneur”. What exactly does that mean? I think perhaps it is an overused term so I looked it up. Dictionary.com says an entrepreneur is:
“a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk”
Two of the key words there are “initiative” and “risk”. I strongly believe that to successfully undertake “initiatives” and balance the “risk” I need to look at all aspects of my life – not just the work part.
So I came up with ‘The Triangle of Balance’ – the three points in the triangle each represent a major element of my life and the idea is to plan out ways to create balance between each point in the triangle so it doesn’t become ‘lopsided’:
Next I wrote down all the things I have wanted to achieve with each point of the triangle but never got around to:
There are some pretty simple goals there but more than enough to keep me balanced and busy.
There is no time like the present so the first one on my list to attack is ‘reduce alcohol’. Drinking alcohol makes me eat more (it is scientifically proven to relax your ability to say no to junk food) and it increases my resistance to getting up off my butt and exercising. I usually drink 2 glasses of wine each night – I do give myself a break every now and again: this year I did ‘Dry July’ (an Australian initiative to stop drinking for a whole month) and earlier in the year I stopped drinking for a month or so as well.
But this time it needs to be more permanent. Not only does drinking alcohol reduce my desire to eat better and exercise, my pal Denise (www.wellbeingfitness.com.au) tells me its just empty calories. Hence the note about losing 14kg. So….
….I just went and tipped any wine I had left down the sink. Captain – step one of ‘Operation Health’ initiated.
The second one on my list to attack is going to see the doctor. I have had a pain in my lower abdomen on and off for about 9 months. Sometimes it appears for a couple of days one month, sometimes I don’t feel it at all for weeks on end. Regardless – it should be looked into further.
And before you think I must be stupid not to go to the doctor before now – I have. In January when I first experienced it I went and they did some tests and said it wasn’t anything they could find.
But this time I am not taking no for answer. Time to call the doctor.
After the doctor, I am going grocery shopping to grab some healthy food and then I am going for a jog. No excuses.
The Journey Begins
It is funny how things happen sometimes.
For the past two months I have been researching three things:
- How to have more fun in my life
- How to earn a reasonable salary that doesn’t require me to work for someone else
- How to do all the things I want to do before I die – which could be tomorrow for all I know
I don’t know who said it but the saying “Be careful what you wish for…because it might come true” exemplifies my life. Don’t get me wrong – I am not someone who gets everything they want. I am not famous. I am not rich. But it just seems sometimes I get a little kick in the pants when I should be doing something the universe wants me to do but which I am too scared to do.
I tell you no lie – this is how my week has unfolded:
On Tuesday this week I was flying to a conference for my employer – at this stage let’s call them “ACME Technology”. I spent 1.5 hours on a plane having my seat and feet kicked by some spoilt kid sitting behind me and who thought it was tremendously funny to make farting noises for 10 minutes straight right near my ear.
It was at this point in the kid’s repertoire I looked out the window, across the fluffy white clouds and the beautiful beach landscape far below and decided enough was enough. I was going to quit. I was going to quit my well-paid, super-happy-benefit job in a top global company – to work for myself. During a recession.
Why? As much as travelling to a conference in a beachside city might sound like fun, all things are not rosy in my current role. The plain and simple truth is that the company and the people I work with are great but I just don’t think the job I do suits me. It is a big step for me to admit this. I keep thinking I should like any decision I make. That I should please everyone I deal with. That I should be ‘work-perfect’ – or as close to it as possible. It actually causes me physical discomfort and ongoing regret if I don’t achieve these simple principles of work. I still get embarrassed by and regret things I did 10 years ago at work.
But I am wrong. And this is strangely difficult to admit.
I realise now this approach is killing me slowly. Killing my ethics. Killing my unique abilities. Killing my enthusiasm. Killing my health. Until it reached the point over the past two years that I have felt so restricted by having to do a job that doesn’t suit me that I have become depressed. Sometimes I just sit down and cry when no-one is around.
All of these things ran through my head as I was sitting on the plane on Tuesday when I decided I was going to quit. And I got scared – it bubbled up inside me and the excuses started running around in my head.
However as things go, sometimes you do the things you say to yourself you are going to do and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get a helping hand. And sometimes you get that kick in the butt.
Two days later, on Thursday, I received a phone call from my boss. The conversation went something like this. My boss said “You have a website.” Confused – I said “Yes, I have a website – everyone knows I have a website – I have had it for more than two years since I started at ACME Technology and you all know about it,” I say.
“No, not that one. The ABC one. You are in breach of your contract with that website…this is a very serious matter.”
OK. So at this point I thought to myself – ‘Amazing: be careful what you wish for is a bloody understatement!’
Backing up a little to give you the whole story: two weeks ago I started a new website to test the waters of entrepreneurism. I put a survey up and asked a networking group to respond with the chance of winning a (totally legal) prize in return for information on their responses. I wrote three articles and setup weekly tips with the aim of building an email list of people who would be interested in hearing about my topics for free. It was a simple market research project conducted in my own time and with my own resources. The goal wasn’t to make money – but rather to determine how interested a particular market segment were in what I had to talk about.
Here is the embarrassing bit. I didn’t think – I recommended a product on the website that wasn’t my current employers’ and they took major offense. Contract breach here I come.
So what do I do? First I get physically sick. How could I be so stupid? Then after laying on my hotel bed for 30 minutes I came to the realisation that it didn’t matter anymore. I was going to quit anyway. It took me three more days to actually do it but I quit. No more life insurance. No more shares. No more being treated like a corporate-child. No more crap.
What happens next?
That’s what this blog is about. I am going to document my ultimate success or ultimate failure for you: the potential entrepreneur. You who may be depressed with your current lifestyle. You who may be anxious and stressed. You who may be thinking ‘there has to be a better way to do this’. And you who may be thinking – I can’t just quit I don’t have enough money or I have children who need to be fed or I have a massive mortgage.
You know what? So do I. I have a massive mortgage – which if I don’t pay will result in my losing a great house. I have fiancé of 12-years - who thinks I should keep my super-happy-benefit job and that we should have kids right now. I have bills – lots of them every month.
I also have exactly 4 months of cash saved up to pay my bills & start a business. Either I make it or I break it in 4 months.
Let the ride begin.
