Small Business Advice – Are You Tempted to Ride the Popular Wave?

Each and every day in the USA alone, more than 2,500 new businesses are started. Many of them are sole proprietorships created by people leaving careers behind and looking forward to a business that allows them flexibility and success on their own terms.

In 2007 I followed the same steps that many of you did. When I filed my business officially that year, I looked for knowledge and guidance to teach me what I needed to know to run a successful, home-based business. I went to the typical startup sources, like government agencies, local business development organizations, and the bookstore. I was disappointed to find that most of it really didn’t apply to me and was instead directed at a typical bricks and mortar or consulting businesses working in a typical office setting. On the internet, I found lots of information, almost too much, and it took me a lot of time to sort through it. I remember feeling overwhelmed and having to push down a rising sense of panic that I’d never master any of it, and would fail if I missed any important nugget.

It seemed like every second click led to “six figure secrets unveiled” and the “ten ways to make your fortune online.” As a business and marketing advisor, and someone who spent over 20 years in the marketing profession already, I remember thinking how fortunate I not having to learn it all from the beginning. But using the internet as a marketing tool to build a virtual business was new to me, so I signed up for more free classes, paid products and other offers than I could keep up with!

Since that time, I’ve worked with many entrepreneurs and I’ve heard a lot of discouraging stories of time, money and precious energy being wasted as a result of receiving overpromised, under delivered, inappropriate, ill timed or just plain bad advice. Here’s what can happen when you find yourself steered off your path:

• Your marketing can start to be really inauthentic, confusing your audience and making you feel like an impostor (or at the least, highly uncomfortable).
• You can develop a business that just doesn’t fit you, and feels like a chore instead of a joy.
• You can waste money on the latest hot ticket idea only to find it isn’t what your clients want, and it isn’t feeling good for you either.
• You create a business that sets you up to be your own employee, instead of your own boss.

So, here are some tips to help you stay focused and to navigate the choices wisely.

• Steer clear of anyone who tells you there’s only one way to do something. This is simply not true. It’s your business, and you have unlimited choice and possibility to create it the way that fits you.
• Watch out for the popular, hot ticket ideas. Like any other industry, there are trends and cycles. Evaluate these ideas carefully, and always measure them against what you want in your business, what your clients and market is asking for, and what they’re willing to pay for it. Riding the popular wave only works if you get on it before it peaks, and before it blends, indistinguishably, into the shore. If you’re not sure, invest in a second opinion before you go too far.
• Realize that throwing more and more money at a problem doesn’t mean you can fix it. If you don’t have a solid business idea, a clearly defined solution for a specific market, and a strong foundation for your business and marketing, no amount of window dressing is going to help.

And the most important of all? Entrepreneur, know thyself. Be clear about what you want, and when you seek advice or opinions, or learn from others, be sure you are “delegating” and not “abdicating.”

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success System™  for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

Best Small Business Advice – Interview with Gina Bell

Until March 31, I’m running the Best Business Advice Ever interview series featuring successful entrepreneurs. I’ve asked each of them what’s worked, which mistakes they learned from the most, and the one piece of advice they have to share with you.

Gina Bell brings new meaning to the word multi-passionate entrepreneur. She is the founder and visionary of IAWBO, the International Association of Women in Business Online, host and producer of the Official Women in Business Online Podcast and creator of the Equity-Rich Women Online Blueprint, a step-by-step marketing and business-building system designed for multi-passionate internet-based women entrepreneurs. Gina teaches motivated women entrepreneurs how to create success online quickly with authenticity and confidence. Her equity-rich methods are a catalyst to the freedom-filled life and business her clients truly desire. A successful author, speaker, coach and teacher, Gina inspires women in business online around the globe through her electronic newsletters, teleclasses, in-person workshops and private coaching.

Gina is a former corporate employee from the media buying and advertising background who dipped her toes in the entrepreneurial waters first by purchasing a franchise.  After building up and then selling that business, Gina and her husband have created several successful enterprises. The common denominator is she is committed to helping women business owners succeed.

Gina recently established the International Association of Women in Business Online. Her work with the association and with clients through her coaching and consulting business brings together what she has learned and applied over the years. But this destination wasn’t always clear, nor was the journey free of obstacles.

Listen to the complete interview to learn:

• The early signs that she was destined to be a multi-passionate entrepreneur
• How choosing one path or the “niches to riches” model of business can either set you free or confine you
• The best advice she’s ever received to deal with rejection (and why you should trust Don too)
• Baby steps you can take to stretch your comfort zone

To get a complimentary download of this and other Best Business Advice Series interviews, enter your name and email here (it’s free and there are no sales pitches or upsells in these presentations – enter your phone number if you’d also like to get early notice of upcoming events). You will also receive a subscription to popular articles published by Corporate Fugitive and Sherri Garrity.

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Best Business Advice – Interview with Jeanna Gabellini

Until March 31, I’m running the Best Business Advice Ever interview series featuring successful entrepreneurs. I’ve asked each of them what’s worked, which mistakes they learned from the most, and the one piece of advice they have to share with you.

Jeanna Gabellini is a Master Business Coach who assists high achieving entrepreneurs and their teams to leverage fun, systems and intentionality for high-octane results. Jeanna excels at modeling and teaching that business is meant to be passion filled, exhilarating and profitable. Jeanna´s coaching and seminars marry vision, divine guidance and proven strategies. She started MASTERPEACE Coaching and Training in 1996 after starting several other successful businesses and selling them. In 1998, she was one of the first coaches in the world — and the youngest — to receive the designation of Master Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation. Jeanna is the co-author of Life Lessons for Mastering the Law of Attraction with Eva Gregory, Mark Victor Hansen & Jack Canfield.

Jeanna is a high energy, accomplished coach who did not follow typical or traditional business and marketing advice to create her business (read her site, and listen to her speak to experience her refreshing, contagious style). In fact, before becoming a certified coach, she worked for a major seminar company, as a volunteer! Listen to the interview to find out:

• Why she feels being naïve about business was an asset that helped her get clients quickly
• How she built a successful coaching business in a natural and completely fun way
• When she found her “fun factor” and changed her business outlook forever
• What to do if you feel like something is not working or happening fast enough

To get a complimentary download of this and other Best Business Advice Series interviews, enter your name and email here (it’s free and there are no sales pitches or upsells in these presentations – enter your phone number if you’d also like to get early notice of upcoming events). You will also receive a subscription to popular articles published by Corporate Fugitive and Sherri Garrity.

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Best Small Business Advice – Interview with Erin Ferree

Starting today and continuing through March 31, I’m running the Best Business Advice Ever interview series featuring successful entrepreneurs. I’ve asked each of them what’s worked, which mistakes they learned from the most, and the one piece of advice they have to share with you.

Erin Ferree, founder of elf design, helps small businesses stand out from their competition so that they can connect with their best customers. She does this by working with business owners to define their brands, and then using that definition to create logos, marketing materials and websites that show how they shine. She also believes that all of a business’s brand materials should be not just pretty, but also designed effectively and strategically. This produces a winning combination of materials that communicate visually, look stunning and are designed effectively, which help her clients reach their target audiences.

Erin knew from an early age that she wanted to be her own boss. Growing up with a father who was an entrepreneur, there was no doubt in her mind that she’d follow his footsteps. She graduated from college with a degree in graphic design and a five year plan to get some solid corporate and private sector experience before starting her own business.

But coming out of college in the Silicon Valley during the “dot bomb” era resulted in Erin starting her five year plan four years early.

Listen to the interview to learn:

• Why the “just get it done” approach doesn’t work
• How showing your work and letting it speak for itself can be a trap
• What your real job is with your clients, no matter what type of business you’re in (the advice she shared is priceless) and what happened when she learned this for herself
• The first thing you need to do before you create any kind of communication about you and your business
• One way to get unstuck if you’re not sure what your message should be

To get a complimentary download of this and other Best Business Advice Series interviews, enter your name and email here (it’s free and there are no sales pitches or upsells in these presentations – enter your phone number if you’d also like to get early notice of upcoming events). You will also receive a subscription to popular articles published by Corporate Fugitive and Sherri Garrity.

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Best Small Business Advice – Interview with Randy Peyser

Until March 31, I’m running the Best Business Advice Ever interview series featuring successful entrepreneurs. I’ve asked each of them what’s worked, which mistakes they learned from the most, and the one piece of advice they have to share with you.

Randy Peyser, the CEO of Author One Stop, www.AuthorOneStop.com, performs “Book Appendectomies” to help get the book inside of you out. She is the creator of “The Write-a-Book Program: How to Position Yourself as an Author by Writing a Book.” A dynamic presenter, publishing coach, and editor, she speaks for business organizations, as well as for the publishing industry, and helps savvy women produce and market their books with ease.

Randy has an incredible track record getting authors noticed and published and has developed solid relationships with the top publishers in the United States. Through Author One Stop, she has brought together ten award winning editors who have 32 New York Times bestsellers between them. Her reputation for excellence has earned her an inside track to several of the biggest publishers in the nation.

But Randy did not set out to build this business, or to be an entrepreneur. In fact, her start in writing and publishing was neither planned nor traditional (you know the interview is going to be interesting when the first answer is “I slept my way into the publishing industry”).

In this interview, Randy shares insights on the process of going from starving writer (what she calls her “baking soda in the fridge” moment) to her becoming a published author, speaker, and CEO of Author One Stop.

Listen to the complete interview to find out:

• What “random act of hutzpah” this formerly shy woman committed that led to her first breakthrough (completely unconventional, but it worked)
• The question she says you need to ask yourself about your business and your life in order to fulfill your dreams
• Her definition of failure, and why you should treat your life as a grand experiment
• How she bridges the mind, body and spirit industry and the mainstream of the publishing business, and why
• Why you need to put the foundational pieces in place in your business
• How she used generosity through Linked In and other publisher and writer discussion groups to position herself as an expert and to attract a flood of client inquiries

To get a complimentary download of this and other Best Business Advice Series interviews, enter your name and email here (it’s free and there are no sales pitches or upsells in these presentations – enter your phone number if you’d also like to get early notice of upcoming events). You will also receive a subscription to popular articles published by Corporate Fugitive and Sherri Garrity.

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Best Business Advice – Interview with Barbara Winter

Starting today and continuing through March 31, I’m running the Best Business Advice Ever interview series featuring successful entrepreneurs. I’ve asked each of them what’s worked, which mistakes they learned from the most, and the one piece of advice they have to share with you.

Barbara Winter of Joyfully Jobless is the bestselling author of Making a Living Without a Job: Winning Ways for Creating Work That You Love and Jumpstart Your Entrepreneurial Spirit. For 25 years, she’s been writing and inspiring audiences to go after their dreams while showing  them how with practical, step-by-step advice.

What may surprise you is what this Las Vegas based author did before her writing and speaking career.  Growing up in Minnesota, Barbara tells me she always imagined herself having an exciting life. She found out that the early career she had chosen as a school teacher was not delivering the excitement she had first envisioned.

After a few twists and turns (her career path will surprise you) and time spent at home with young children, Barbara read a magazine article that literally changed her life. The moment she realized she could run a business from home, and still teach, was the moment her new path was set.

Barbara founded The Successful Woman, a pioneering training and development company which conducted programs on self-esteem and entrepreneurship for women. She went on to start several small businesses—all with the intention of passing  along to others the lessons she had learned.
Like many of us, the business she started was not the business she ultimately ended up in. Listen to the complete interview to find out:

• What she’s an absolute maniac about
• How to deal with the “downs” as well as the “ups” (and why you’ll get better at both)
• What piece of advice her first business mentor told her that she still follows today
• What comfy old husbands and exciting new lovers have in common with being an entrepreneur (I told you these interviews are full of surprises)
• The difference between an expense and an investment

To listen to the interview, register here (it’s free and there are no sales pitches or upsells in these presentations).

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Entrepreneur Beware – How to Find the Right Help

Many corporate fugitives start their businesses with a solemn vow to live footloose and fancy free and to fly completely solo. Self-motivation is good, but getting the right kind of help when you need it makes a world of difference. Entrepreneurs who are willing to invest wisely generally grow their business much more quickly and avoid expensive and time consuming detours.

But like any other consumer purchasing decision, buyers of professional services need to be savvy and aware.

Let me give you one recent example. I was speaking with a business owner who I’ve come to know. Although he has never been a client of mine, I’ve had the opportunity to watch his new business develop from an idea to a reality and I enjoy speaking with him from time to time.

He did all of the right things before he started his business. He researched his market well, and he took steps to develop services for the market based on what he learned, and not on what he thought they needed.

He was also willing to invest in hiring a business consultant. He had met this consultant through a university, and this person had credentials.

One of the consultant’s recommendations was to lease office space, so that potential clients would take him seriously.

Well, it didn’t take very long to realize that despite getting good response, the high overhead was really limiting his ability to get his business started off on the right foot.  This expensive detour set him temporarily off course and tied up money that could have been used to grow other areas of the business.

You see, the business owner in this example was dealing with a consultant who was very familiar with traditional business models, but not versed in the world of online marketing, membership and event based programs. So his advice might have been sound for someone else’s business, but not this particular one.

I’ve seen other examples of business owners spending a fortune on various marketing materials, and others who have used up their last available credit or savings to join the “hot ticket” program that they think will change their lives and businesses forever.

I hear stories like this all too often. The truth is, there is a real range of business and marketing advice to be had out there. Some are highly qualified, and some aren’t. Even a well respected business advisor can steer you in the wrong direction, if you haven’t chosen the right one for you.

Other entrepreneurs simply find themselves have been disappointed when their results did not add up to their expectations.  So what’s at the bottom of this? How do you know you’re making the right choice? Here are some tips.

Invest at the right time. Don’t spend randomly. Invest only in those services or programs that will help you get further in the area you need help with the most right now or in the next short while.

Be very clear about what you need before you go looking for it. All of your decisions should be based on your strategy and where you want to be. Make decisions that are in 100 per cent alignment with your goals. So if you know you’re weak in one area, for example, how to price and package your services, and that is your immediate priority, then don’t sign up just yet for that top notch speaking coach. All of the speaking and marketing in the world won’t generate sales for you if you don’t have the business foundation in place.

Perform your due diligence check. Before you sign the contract or whip out your credit card, check out the business. Is it credible? Does the provider have demonstrated expertise? Can they supply references beyond testimonials published on their web site? Are they well respected within their industry? Have they taken the time to speak with you and get to know you to be sure there is a good match on both sides? A reputable advisor will want to work with the right kind of client, and will want to be sure that they will be able to work successfully together, rather than simply make the sale. An advisor who turns you away and refers you to someone else views this as adding integrity rather than losing business.

Check your expectations. Before you commit, be sure you are very clear what your intentions and expectations are and that this service is the right match. Sometimes disappointment is the result of unrealistic expectations or simply a premature or mismatched investment.

And most of all? Remember that in the end, it’s your business. Seek trusted advisors, but never abdicate your seat as the CEO of your business and your life.

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success SystemTM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

Why the Typical Type A Personality Can Hurt Your Business

When I look back at the 20 years I spent in corporate life, I often feel like  my career happened to a totally different person. My life is so different now and I feel so much more joy and peace than I ever did.  In fact, I can honestly say I have never had a single bad day since becoming an entrepreneur.  I’ve heard this from others who have made the transition as well. We often talk about making the leap…that’s just part of the equation. The part that is the biggest obstacle is often making the mental leap. Let me explain.

Many entrepreneurs have the typical Type A personality. This served us well in our careers. However, most of us decide to start businesses because we say we want more flexibility and purpose in our lives. Unfortunately, too much Type A may build you a business that makes money, but will probably find you working in an 80-hour a week job of your own creation!

A friend of mine who left a six figure career and made dramatic changes to her life jokes that her Type A was so intense, she was a Triple A (You’ll meet her soon). That got me to thinking – what if we reframed that? What if Triple A meant something completely different? So here’s my Triple A Approach to business: Align, Act, Allow. Watch the video below to get the full explanation.

Align – To build a business you’ll love, it has to align with what you really want. Instead of building a business you think you need, to get what you want, build the business that you want without feeling you need to pay your dues and work your way up to the eventual dream destination Make sure your services express who you are, and that you are matched with your ideal client.

Act – There are two elements to this. Make sure you’re taking the right actions that are consistent and strategic, based on your goals. And act as if you already have what it is you say you want, without feeling you need to qualify yourself or wait for expert status. Believe that you have what you need already and embrace the feeling of being the CEO of your life and business (watch the video for my take on the phrase “self employed” – I think we should ban that phrase).

Allow – Allow and accept the opportunities that come your way with grace and ease. Let yourself enjoy and experience your business. Instead of thinking that the only way to make more is to do more, allow yourself to believe that it is entirely possible to work less, love life and be financially rewarded. Go about your business peacefully and purposefully instead of aggressively. And finally, allow yourself to be yourself and not the Type A person you may feel you need to be.

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success SystemTM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

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