Struggling Entreprenuer

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For Entrepreneurs, just having passion for the business is not enough. They should always be on the lookout for newly available tools to help them with increasing the awareness, exposure and marketing of the business.

These tools can assist the Entrepreneur with plans to deliver value and create a mass of raving fans that will then refer your product, service or value offered to others. The path is very simple:

a) Deliver your value with your subject matter expertise (by definition, you have this expertise by being an Entrepreneur and serving customers in your business);

 b) Create your audience or community of qualified prospects that would be interested in the value you can deliver to them in the form of your product, service, etc.

c) Convert or turn your qualified prospects into paying customers;

d) Over-deliver your customer promise along with your product to create loyal and delighted customers with your value;

e) Generate additional customer referrals by having these delighted customers praise the value of your brand, customer promise and product or service (as described in the book by John Jantsch titled The Referral Engine;

f) Brand yourself as a trusted advisor to additional audiences or prospects, usually from referral marketing;

g) Brand yourself as a thought leader to other audiences and prospects in different ways, so that you can be recognized as a pundit in your industry–with the potential for receiving requests for speaking at different events (with payment from honoraria).

In this episode, we discuss 4 of these tools — 3 in the tech and web environment, and 1 in the person-to-person environment.

In this audio podcast, we deliver to you how these tools can help you as an Entrepreneur, as well as give cases-in-point from our own experience, and from that of other entrepreneurs.

These 4 Resources that have been made recently available are:

(1) Creating a podcast (especially a “companion-podcast”) and making it available in the PODCAST app from Apple, Inc (R) that supports the iOS devices (i.e., Apple iPhone, Apple iPod Touch and Apple iPad). The free PODCAST app from Apple was made available from the Apple App store on 26 June 2012.

One of the original podcast pundits, Paul Colligan, gives you 5 reasons why this is a good path to take for your business in his podcast series called “Ask Paul Colligan.”

As you will hear in this audio podcast, you can use a successful model called the “companion Podcast.” This has been used successfully in selling the book Podcasting for Dummies.  It has also been successful in selling educational courses like Gain Control of Your Day and Finance for Startups. The companion podcast model has been used by Daniel J. Lewis in selling web design services and graphics services from his Audacity to Podcast.

(2)  Creating an ebook and publishing it with distribution in the major ebook delivery chains. An example of a resource from last November’s BlogWorld and New Media Expo is bookbaby.com.

(3) Creating your own Smartphone and/or Smart Pad App and placing it for availability in the App Stores for both the Apple and Android platforms. And if you happen to be a paid client of www.Libsyn.com, you can get assistance with a “cookie-cutter” approach to creating your own app.

(4) Becoming a Public Speaker for hire — with the final objective of receiving requests for speaking on your topics (or passion) of expertise, and thus, receiving honoraria. One example of an organization and community that focuses on professional speakers for hire is a local Speakers Bureau, such as the Texas Speakers Bureau.

 What can be most effective might be to use the first 3 resources (tech-web oriented) with an investment of time, energy and a bubble of activity–and then, if your business schedule permits, see about becoming a public speaker and go on the “speaker circuit.” And now you will be on the path to branding yourself as a thought-leader and your business as delivering value by referrals.

Copyright (c) 2012, Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved.

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In this episode of The Struggling Entrepreneur, we deliver to you a discussion that covers several cases-in-point. The theme for this audio episode is Determining YOUR Criteria for ROI (return on investment) regarding trade shows, business shows, conferences and Meetups.

The delay in publishing episodes to date has been our preparation to attend a conference for our industry–namely the Blogword and New Media Expo in New York City next week. It was our intent to create more content for you during this event. However, after doing a  cost-benefit analysis, it was not a good business reason to go to the event in person. The rest of this podcast deals with these reasons, along with several cases-in-point which are purely from our own business experience.

As you will hear in this audio episode, I have attended this BWE conference (and its predecessor event) in the past. I was even a speaker at the last one in Los Angeles, California, in November of last year.

However, as Entrepreneurs or Solo-preneurs with limited resources (such as time and dollars), we  need to establish some measurable criteria for ROI when planning to go to one of these events.

The reason is simple: it is a business INVESTMENT of money, time and energy that will take away from the immediate activities of the business. Thus, a cost-benefit analysis must be applied instead of relying on emotion, enthusiasm,  or the “feel-good” euphoria that we get when we have a type of “reunion” to build on old relationships.

As you will hear in this audio episode, we include MEETUPS in the discussion and apply the same criteria for ROI as we do for trade shows and events.  The cases-in-point show how we looked at the various events and decided which to attend and which NOT to attend– and the reasons why.

Key questions for YOU as an entrepreneur could be:

- Do you know which events relate to your industry, niche, product, service, audience or community?

- Do you have a list of these events for the coming 12 months?

- Do you have a set of MEASURABLE CRITERIA for ROI?

- Do you apply a cost-benefit analysis for each one?

- Do you have an EVENT PLAN for your business that compares and contrasts each event for the best ROI?

- Do you have a STRATEGY for your planned events? For example, would you be an ATTENDEE, SPEAKER, EXHIBITOR or COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTOR?

- Do you have a PROCESS that you apply for follow-up AFTER attending or participating in each event?

- Do you include a LESSONS-LEARNED item in your follow-up process to ensure that you improve your ROI criteria after each trade show or event?

We hope that your strategy and criteria for ROI will help your business become focused and more successful when executing your plan regarding Business Shows, Trade Shows, Conferences and even MEETUPS.

Copyright (c) 2012, Matrix Solutions Corporation. All rights reserved.

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