Zion, IL
By A.B. Dada
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I’ve always loved working in the United States, but lately there is a great fear I hear about from other consultants, employees and business owners: will be enter a heavy recession?

The games that the Federal Reserve has played with money supply growth and interest rate mangling is leading us in the direction of a bad recession. Historically, recessions were staved off artificially with an increase in available credit and a lowering of interest rates to instill consumer confidence in spending. Easy money, at low price, gives people a reason to buy today and pay tomorrow. This cycle might push off small recessions, but the piper eventually has to be paid. As the dollar’s value is destroyed slowly over time, foreign competitors are able to produce goods cheaper than we can at home, which gives us more reason to buy foreign than locally. Manufacturing and industrial labor in the U.S. is dying faster than ever, and even health care services are being outsource to foreigners (MRIs being read by Indian doctors at a fraction of the price of local doctors, for example).

For me, the best thing to do is to present your services internationally, even at a discount rate over your local rate. If you value your time at $35 an hour here, you might only command $10 or $15 an hour internationally, but it builds your client base and your portfolio. I worked for a foreign company for close to 6 months at an 85% discount over my local rate, but I was able to build on that opportunity to get myself to a place where I can work internationally at a 40% haircut. Over time, as the dollar devalues, I believe I’ll find myself able to work at a profit over my local rate, only because of the falling value of the dollar versus the international currency I bill in. It may take 10 more years, but the progress is good.

The biggest step you have to take before presenting yourself internationally is to have good reason to work internationally. The first good reason to make an international submittal for your services is to have a good savings and a low debt. When you’re sitting on dollars in the bank (not invested, just savings or money market), you have to protect those dollars from inflationary concerns. Ridding yourself of debt makes those dollars even more valuable to protect against inflation. If we should see deflation (the falling of prices with the dollar being progressively more valuable), you’re in good shape as a saver because your dollars will grow in true value. But if we should see inflation, you have to protect yourself by finding what you can do to have a marketable product or service that is worth more over time, not less.

In an inflationary economy, you may see a 3-4% raise annual, but inflation might rob value by 5-10% or more annually, meaning your “raise” is really a pay cut versus what you can purchase. By providing services in an international currency, one that is rising in value versus the dollar, you will protect yourself from inflation by being paid in a currency that you can convert to dollars and secure your value by taking in more dollar-value than you can by selling your services, or products, locally.

People with strong English skills (grammar, spelling, communication, etc) are VERY marketable internationally. I’ve seen an increased demand for workers in the elite travel industry to communicate with elite Americans, English, South Africans and Europeans who primarily speak English. The job is mostly “home based” meaning you do most of your work on a PC and over the phone rather than in an office. It isn’t work I would particularly like doing, but the market is there — and growing.

I’ve also found a huge amount of work available to help translate products sold internationally into English. I contacted 45 eBay sellers who sell more than US$20,000 a month online to English speakers but use horrible English to explain their listing. 5 of the sellers contacted me back asking for help in redesigning their massacred English, at a rate that I would almost accept. For them, having their marketing and advertising material make sense to English readers is a HUGE benefit, that can increase their sales significantly. I also contacted a few foreign cell phone and electronics manufacturers who also had badly designed websites, marketing material and advertisements, and I was suprised at the 7-9% response I received showing interest in English translations.

Finding foreign employers is not an easy task, and requires a lot of time and investment to contact and follow through with interested parties, but the Internet makes this job easier. Contract work might be short lived, and at a significantly lower rate than you can find today, but you definitely will build a portofolio over time that increases your value especially to employers who will have a currency that is stronger than the dollar, meaning you are cheap to them, but they are profitable to you. Ignoring the international service market is a big mistake — we’re globalizing every day, and to miss this opportunity ahead can place you at the back of the pack, after all the intelligent consultants, service providers and laborers are already in the game and way ahead of the pack.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL

By A.B. Dada
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I helped two friends this summer who run very large companies — companies that have been grossing 8 figures annually each. Both are companies that grew slowly over many years, doing what they did best: meeting the current needs of their customer base, but learning new efficiencies to bring their cost-per-output down for everyone over time. When your gross figures rise, you’ll see them rise higher if you continue to make yourself more efficient and cheaper. That’s a simple fact in any economy where supply of your item or service keeps going up. Others will find ways to do it cheaper: there is no reason why you can not find ways to make yourself cheaper and reach more customers.

I came across a bunch of suppliers that competed with my friends’ businesses with that reasoning: they were smaller, or newer, or had deeper pockets for whatever reason. The reason why I was able to win the deals wasn’t because of size or age or financial capability — it was because I sold the companies based on a realistic evaluation of what the companies were able to do right now.

Pie in the sky. Pipe dreams. Best intentions. These are common factors in businesses looking to grow: finding the answer to “what can we do if we only had XYZ.” XYZ could mean more money, or more employees, or more machinery, or more profit to take risks with. It is also a common way that businesses sell themselves: we’ll be even better tomorrow! To me, its almost fraudulent because it is never the truth.

When we came up against competitors with flashier bids, we sealed the deal by selling the current business exactly as it is: stable, more efficient today than yesterday, able to prioritize tasks quickly when problems arise, and a realistic ideal to focus on today’s needs so that tomorrow’s emergencies will either be avoided, or handled properly by preparing for them today.

I see so many companies hurting because they want to take jobs at a minimal profit just to keep the doors open and the lights on. I see many employees of stable companies go off on their own because they can do something cheaper or faster or higher quality. What people seem to refuse to see is that today is much more important than tomorrow: put away the pies in the skies, empty your mind of the pipe dreams, and stop having the best intentions when the only intention to have is “what can I do to finish my responsibilities and then do them just a little better than expected?” If a job is due in 6 weeks, don’t try to finish it in 4 weeks at a 10% savings along with a 10% over-run. Finish it in 6 weeks at a 5% savings, or finish it in 5 weeks with no savings, or finish it in 6 weeks at the right price but make a little over-run for the customer. They’ll be pleased at the goals met: not at the gains. The gains are only important if EVERYTHING ELSE is done right.

When I win bids, I do it in the final meetings. I’m often asked why someone else can do the job cheaper: I’ll always answer that we focus on doing the job for what we bid it for, without trying to find sneaky ways to tack on additional charges later. My bids always show a list of what we’re not expecting to do: customers are pleased to see that we’re thinking about what we need to do the job right from day one, and making a list of what we can’t do for our price is impressive to them because they can see that we want to do it right, at the price we promised. I’m often asked why we can’t do a job quicker: I’ll always answer that we consider how efficient we are today, not how efficient we hope to be now that we have a new job and can hire more staff or buy better machinery. Customers are impressed because we focus on getting today done right so that tomorrow is just a continuation of today.

I find that selling who we are today, rather than who we want to be, is the most honest and realistic way to win jobs. I’m never the cheapest (actually, I’ve been the most expensive a few times). I’m not the fastest (but I do get the job done on time or a little earlier). I’m not the highest quality (I sell exactly what I can do so that expectations are met, rather than try to push the envelope and end up with a mass of problems to overcome). Meet expectations by setting those expectations based on what you CAN do — not what you COULD do.

Discuss this article at the entrereneurship forum.

At the Be Your Own Boss forum, regular contributer Prompt said the following in response to the last article about writing blogs for businesses:

I think this is a great idea, and quite a viable one for me; however, how do you find these businesses who are looking for someone to run a blog for them? Any tips would be grea

His question is not necessarily unique to this business idea, but one that I seem to get all the time in real life or in e-mails: how do you find customers for a business market that is too new to be really well known?

In my experience, I always try to enter a business market before everyone knows about it. The biggest rewards come from the biggest risks. If you have experience in a market when it is still young, you’ll be at the top of the pack when the market explodes. Getting customers when the market is young requires a combination of skills as well as time to work on developing the market itself. When I enter a new market, I always work to build my portfolio of successful works in that market. In terms of blog writing, my first 3 blogs that I wrote were my own. I learned the upsides and downsides of all the various platforms, learned how to start working on interfacing and traffic building, and also learned the best ways to develop a return readership — all talents that I could not learn by going to school or buying a book. I had to try first on my own.

I did the same thing in almost every business I’ve started. When I sold skateboards and paintball markers, I didn’t really know the ins-and-outs of the devices. I had used them and had fun with them, but I didn’t know what made them tick. I bought a few dozen from anothe retail store and beat on them until I learned that I could compete in the market. When I co-founded Deep Productions, I had absolutely ZERO experience in the 3D design and layout market. I bought all the software I needed, built my own development PC network, and performed a few trial jobs to see if I could handle things. Deep also started as a webdesign outfit, Deep Interactive, and none of us had any knowledge of web design when we started the company almost 12 years ago.

Once that first step is out of the way, the next step is to take your personal portfolio and expand it to be a professional one. In some markets I had to actually do some jobs for free — pro bono, as the lawyers call it. In many cases it took me weeks to find small local businesses who would give me a job that they needed done, and I’d do it for free. Today, with the Internet, finding customers who will give you a positive reference in exchange for your work (cheaply or freely) is much easier. Don’t think that you’re actually doing work for nothing — building a portfolio of work and a profile of customers with positive references is more important than building an income early on.

For most of us, we’re lazy. We want to do something simple to attract customers, but business doesn’t work that way. Even the biggest and most famous companies in a market still have to work hard to attract new customers, especially with little ankle-biter companies like mine giving them competition. You won’t find work if you don’t build a portfolio of jobs you’ve done. Your portfolio won’t mean anything unless you have 3-5 customers who you’ve worked for who will vouch for your talent, your ability to meet deadlines and your long-term customer service. Once both the portfolio of work and the profile of clients have been built, finding new work is much easier. I’ll go into marketing to customers directly in an upcoming article.

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I tried something a little over a month ago just as a test — I had about 500% more business cards printed than I usually do. I like to carry 10 cards with me at all times (3 for my websites, and 7 for my main business). I usually give business cards out to people who are interested in my work (they’ll ask for my information). In the past 6 weeks I’ve handed out over 700 cards to family, friends and people I just randomly meet while out and about. Even when people didn’t ask me for information or even what I do for a living, I ended the conversation with a card and a one sentence rundown: “I own this business, if you need my services or know anyone who does, please consider giving me a call or passing on my name.” Most people I know already know my business, but not all my friends and family have been good referrals for work. Some probably never even mention me when problems for other arise.

In the 6 weeks that I’ve passed out, on average, 20 cards a day, the response was greater than I had expected: I received 12 phone calls and 19 e-mails from people I never met and had no connection to. They all received my card from people I mostly didn’t know: “My friend Gus gave me your card the other day when I told him I was having a problem. He thought you could help me.” I have no idea who Gus is, unfortunately, but I thank him nonetheless. Out of the 31 responses I received, I’m sure to gain at least 3 customers. If I’m lucky, responsible and productive on bringing in more customers, I might double that number. This is free business for me, I spent only a nickel or so on the advertisement, and used word of mouth as the force behind the marketing.

I keep hearing from other friends of mine on how slow business is right now. Many of them are doing nothing to change that, they’re waiting for yellow pages listing to be found, or waiting for old customer to remember their numbers. I never look at a past customer as a future customer unless I take a step to help them refind me. Even my monthly contracts are not set in stone: when they expire, I have to propose to them to bring me back. This is how life is — humans are focused on themselves, and it is very easy to forget others. We even tend to forget our own families that live with us.

I was relatively shocked that every response (but 2) came from people I don’t even know. One person I met while leaving my favorite tobacco shop gave my card to another person who gave it to the person who called me! That’s networking, even though not a single person in the chain actually knew if I was any good or if I knew what I was doing. My card worked hard for me, and so did people down the line.

The cards that failed the most were cards I gave to business clients — they already get so many cards from suppliers and customers that they tend to end up in a cardfile and become forgotten. They weren’t good marketing tools, yet. The cards I’ve given to friends and family have always brought me in a few customers over the years, but I don’t have high expectations. Once someone is familiar with you, their tendency to talk about you actually goes down. The best time to get word-of-mouth referrals is usually right after someone meets you, hires you, or has you do something “miraculous” for them. The rest of the time you’re put on the backburner of the stove that’s being tossed at the side of the road. Expect this to happen, and continue to work to get your name and card out.

Even my website cards have brought an increase of traffic, some of which have returned more than once. While I can’t verify that this is necessary the case, it is easy to see when someone finds my sites without a search engine (no referrer) and they’re local. I have to assume someone either told them about me verbally, or they gave them my card. It’s a win either way.

Don’t ignore those who you don’t know, they can be your best assets. They haven’t known you long enough to know your negative side, and they may run into someone who needs your services soon after you first met them. Ignoring these potential advocates of your business is a very unwise thing to do — whether you run a real brick and mortar business, a consulting company or a website.

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I’ve been thinking about a regular series of articles covering how to build your business from a customer perspective, and have spent a few days writing down my thoughts on how I have built successful businesses from nothing. For the online publisher (blogger, webmaster, whatever) building clients usually means building traffic. For the retail store, building clients means bringing in customers. For the consulting, building clients means finding people who need your service and approaching them.

Darren the ProBlogger had an article today titled How to Find Traffic for a New Blog where he references another blog article regarding traffic building for the new blogger. I read both posts and found that they offer some insight that is different than mine, but they also forget some very important considerations to make when you are a new businessperson — online or in real life.

The most important marketing tool any business owner has is what I call proven reliability. Proven reliability comes from having a history of being able to complete tasks. It also comes from having a history of being very knowledgable in your market or product. Lastly, proven reliability comes from having previous customers who would recommend you to others or back up your service as a positive reference. Both bloggers and “real life” business owners need to build all 3 histories in order to acquire this proven reliability, and it doesn’t come quick.

The huge step that one takes to start a business is very similar to what one does when they go to college to get an education. You’re making a time and money investment over years in order to acquire knowledge that you can use to market yourself to others. A new business owner is exactly in the same boat — you’re learning, not making money. Do you go to college to get a paycheck from the process of learning? No, the paycheck comes after you’ve proven yourself. The early business owner or blogger has the same hurdle to overcome — you’re giving up time and money in order to learn without gaining a financial profit from the process (usually).

Some businesses and bloggers earn a good money right away, but these are so rare that we just can’t focus on the hope that we’ll be that rare individual. Instead, I like to look at a new blog and a new business as my version of college. Hopefully I have enough time and enough money to build a business education before I start reaping the profits. This is where having a second part time job can come in handy — just like some college students need to get through the years of learning.

Looking at the blogs I linked to above, we get the following:

This is a little easier if you already have a web presence and the ability to directly influence current readers (especially if your known in the area your new blog is about).

I agree. If you’re starting a business, take advantage of any influence you might already have. Have you performed your services for previous employers, family, friends, or businesses in the past? Use these people for references. Do you have any nepotism you can take advantage of? Do so. Don’t be ashamed of it. If you’re a blogger, get the word out to everyone you know to watch as you learn about blogging or learn to build a website. They might tell others that they know.

If you don’t already have such an influence your options are more limited and things might be a little slower to grow. One such option is to pay for traffic via some form of Advertising.

No way. Advertising? Forget it. People will come to your business or website and see that you have no history to back you up. Work, instead, at looking at the first few months or even a year as building a history of reliability. If you’re a blogger, blog even if you have no traffic. Slowly build up links with other bloggers in your market but only once you can show that you have a history of writing. If you run a real life business, focus on working with the few customers you do have, and then work with them as references to market directly to businesses rather than blanket advertising to the masses.

If you don’t have direct influence or you are not willing to pay for traffic another option is to leverage the traffic of others via the links they give you. This takes time as you build relationships with other bloggers and as a result of producing quality content gain traction for your blog from them linking to you.

Here’s an interesting idea that I think can work in the blog market and the real life market. Instead of forming those bonds only, how about writing some articles for other bloggers for free? Offer them your articles in exchange for a future link back to your blog where you’ll republish it. Bloggers get busy, and even if they say no today, they might remember you tomorrow when they can’t stay ahead of their writing. If you’re in a real life industry, talk to actual competitors outside of your market and see if you can perform some work for them in exchange for their referral in your market. Most competitors will say no, but I have built 3 businesses out of help from people who would be my competitors if they were in my market area. I had to drive far to get their confidence, but over time it was very successful. Subcontract yourself out at a big discount (remember, you’re gaining an education in the process while getting paid!), and build up your portfolio of proven reliability.

The new business owner may just sit there and stare at the walls, or the new blog writer might write only to see 2 or 3 people visit a day. This is tough, and it can be the number one reason we see people leave a business or a blog. Real traffic will come years down the line — this is where you know you’re succeeding. Early success in either business can be a panacea in terms of building up hope that you’re a success but it can quickly disappear. Don’t base your future on any initial booms in business, especially if you haven’t built that proven reliability that other customers will use to judge if you are worthy of hiring, buying from or reading.

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