Forward thinking and positive attitude

Often times when facing grim circumstances, its easy to get caught up in the problems at hand. Instead look beyond the current situation to the solution that lies on the other side. You have the ability to overcome.

Use technology to get ahead

Regardless of your state in this economy, its important to recognize the simple fact that paper and pencil are less popular. You should have some form of digital presence or website if you’re going to compete.

Set goals and plan for the future

It’s naive to think that the economy is going to improve over night or that it won’t effect you. Take the steps necessary to ensure the quality of living you’d like to retain even if you lose your job or business.

Avoid the easy way out

Right now is the opportune time for someone to take advantage of you. Don’t buy into a service that is sounds easy and promising. Make a point to investigate and consult with someone that has your best interest in mind.

Surround yourself with positive people

We all know that times are tough, but if you focus on the problem, it just seems to get bigger. Avoid getting caught up in the poverty mentality by surrounding yourself with successful and optimistic people.

Starting a business without Capital Investment

It’s easy to say that it can be done, but it’s a whole different story to actually execute. Like I mentioned before, take notes from the Getting Real plan. Start your business by moonlight.. don’t quit your day job and jump right in (of course we’re hypocrites saying this because we jumped in, but I wish we had moonlighted first). Either negotiate with your employer to work part-time for a while or start your business at nights.. that way you have the income still to support your bills, but you can start planning and developing your business. Begin networking with other businesses in your field and going to seminars on weekends, because one of the greatest tools in starting a business is connections.

Along with the moonlighting, establish a budget. You may not know all of the costs to operate your business, and you may not be able to prepare for every road block or pitfall. What you can do, however, is give yourself a cushion. Depending on your liabilities (bills), you may want anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 saved up before you quit you job and go full-time as a business.

[podcast format="video"]http://thinkclay.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/business-sense-with-a-few-cents-desktop.m4v[/podcast]

About our Web Company

This post is based on our opinions and testimonials with starting our Web Company. Thinkclay is a blog by Clayton McIlrath based out of Lansing, MI. You can find more us by searching: Lansing Web, Powered by WordPress and Graphic Design Portfolio

The Four-P’s

If you’ve taken an advertising or marketing class, you’ll know what the Four P’s are already: Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. These are the four keys to selling a product or service, and will help you change how you market them:

Product

The product (or service) should be the first thing you analyze and possibly get some non-bias feedback on. Answer some simple questions by both your expertise and a few external opinions:

• What is the total cost to make/produce/ship the product?
• What is the quality of the product, and what guarantees/maintenance do you offer?
• How well does your product compete against competition?

Price

Math is one of the most important factors in determining long term success of a product. Start by breaking down the data that you have: price – cost = profit. How well does your product compete on a price level? What is the percentage of profit made, and do the long-term profits exceed the costs of marketing, advertising, promotion, etc?

Placement

Location, location, location! We’ve all heard that phrase, and for good reason. Location really matters. You can sell a pile of junk if it’s in the right location. Analyze location/placement in a hierarchy:

• What city are you located in (analyze demographic and potential number of customers in that city)
• Once you have a rough estimate on that number, consider your store location and how many of those customers see it
• How well do you position you product (physically or mentally) when customers enter your doors (or website even)?

Promotion

Once you’ve figured out all that data, you have the tools necessary to start promoting yourself. If it’s a new product/service/business then jump right into the Promotional Mix. Otherwise start by analyzing how information is distributed and advertised currently and give some thought to the strengths and weaknesses of your current tactics before reading the next bit.

A-Three-PS (The Promotional Mix)

The A-Three-PS model is the biggest key to promoting your product or service. Within each of these points there are other branches and such that are important also, but for the most part, every type of promotion falls within the A 3P S: Advertising, Publicity, Packaging, Personal selling, Sales promotion.

Advertising

Advertising comes in many names and shapes, but put simply, advertising is a form of promotion that explicitly details the product and markets it towards a specific demographic. I’ll go deeper into advertising with another post, but here’s a quick look at the most popular methods of advertising:

• Web Media (pay-per-click advertising, social media, viral marketing)
• Outdoor (vehicles with large ads, billboards, building ads, posters)
• Print Media (business cards, brochures, newspaper)
• Broadcast Media (television, radio, live web feeds)

Publicity

This is one of the most impressive ways to promote your product and usually causes a huge spike, but is not necessarily a steady flow or good model to base your business. Publicity can come in many ways, whether it’s word-of-mouth, a promotional event, news story, or some crazy stunt. Usually it comes at little to no cost (because it pays off whatever costs their may have been), and generally has a greater impact for immediate business, but as I mentioned.. is not a steady source of income. This is a great place to start for a new and emerging business, and is also highly effective when combined with other promotional resources (such as Sales Promotion).

Packaging

It’s so amazing how packaging effects a consumer’s decision to purchase. Packaging is huge, whether it’s a physical product, how you package/sell your product online, etc. This is where you can be creative and stand out from your competitors. Rather than going into too much detail about how creative packaging works, check out some of these links for yourself:

• Highly Creative Product Packaging
• More Creative Product Packaging
• Food and Beverage Product Packaging

Personal Selling

Out of all the forms of promotion, most businesses either nail the others and miss this or nail this and miss the others. Personal Selling is a face-to-face interaction that takes the product from beginning of sale to closing of sale. This is crucial in selling a large product like a car, boat, or expensive service. Generally anything that is selling for over $3000 is going to require personal selling. I have seen many businesses flop because they didn’t promote themselves, meet with clients, or sell on a personal level. If you have any product or service that is near or above $3k, put this on the top of your list of skills to master!!

Sales Promotion or Incentives

You’ll see this form of advertising at almost any retail store. Sales cause hype which becomes a free promotion by word-of-mouth. Sales can be really effective on an older, polished product to draw the user to look at a new product that you are promoting.

Take a wireless store for example. You’ll often see sales incentives offering you a deal with a new phone. They will often promote a free bluetooth headset, or a discounted price with a 2 year contract. These are sales promotions that seem like a good deal (and often can be), but for the store have large turnover. Either the bluetooth headset is really cheap for the store to give away, and the smart phone that you’re paying $500 for easily covers the cost.. or a free phone with a 2 year contract.. you just buahg the phone for your monthly payment * 24 months!

Sales can be combined in so many ways, that it would be impossible to give all the different examples. The biggest thing to note when promoting a sale or incentive is what your costs are, how much the price outweighs the cost, and how that is presented to the consumer. If you take those three point into consideration, and combine this form of promotion with some form of advertising, it should be a large success.

Defining Success

Before you learn HOW to be successful, you need to define WHAT success really means to you. Many define success based upon income, net worth, popularity, global effect, lasting impressions, etc. When defining success, you should sit down and really think hard as to what success is to you and why. You’ll find that your own views of success are simply a combination of the views that other people have shared with you. The problem with defining success is that you must first define yourself and what makes you truly happy. I won’t dive deep into what happiness is or how to find it. You need to build yourself internally and do some Self Discovery before you can effectively use those principles externally.

Discovering the Process

Randomly, when I was young, I used to sit and ponder and dream about the strangest principles and fundamentals to life. One principle that I developed was to change my thinking of how the pyramid of life worked. I realized that many people live their lives according to an upside-down pyramid: reacting to the effect of situations rather than reacting to the cause. I figured that my foundation and success in life would stem from my subconscious, self-image and thoughts before I could even use the tools (education, capital, social, etc) that I may posses. I immediately wrote down (on my bedroom wall at the time) a principle that I wanted to follow for my life.. this is what I wrote:

Thoughts become Dreams
Dreams become Premonitions
Premonitions become Reality

This life (and perhaps the next) are structured upon the building blocks of what we think, not what we know

The crazy part is, I came across this EXACT same principle in this book, with very little differences in wording:

Thoughts lead to Feelings
Feelings lead to Actions
Actions lead to Results

Motivation

After you’ve done some self-discovery, you’ll need to do more. Find out what you’re passionate about and what motivates you and then brainstorm some ideas to use your passions towards your own business or investment. This is one of the most important tools to being successful. Make sure that you separate your motivation from anger, fear or the need to prove yourself, as these are motivations that will die out because you’ll never succeed by your own standards. Instead find motivation in purpose, contribution and joy! These are the motivators that will make you successful.

My motivation for success:

• The freedom to help others in need by donating my time and money
• The flexibility and freedom to spend quality time with my family
• The knowledge and wisdom to share with others and help them succeed

Identify your Audience

The absolute first step in the marketing process is to Survey and Explore your target audience to establish your marketing tactics. In this phase you’ll identify your Target Market by asking yourself.. Who specifically am I trying to speak to? and then compare that answer with your geographic, demographic, and psychographic analysis results. Then you will discover your Market Segmentation by defining how you niche the market to speak directly to the consumer you want to target. This is usually figured by looking at the geographic, demographic, and psychographic results, and then simply asking yourself.. What makes you stand out from your competitors in the target’s mind?

Geographic

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “Location, Location, Location!”, so identify that first. Often times defining your Geographic location of the consumer will affect your marketing the most, especially if your business is mostly offline or without a web presence (check out my web development business and our services if this is the case).

Demographic

Demographics are simply the basics that make your consumer such as age, sex, martial status, education, income, race, religion, etc. There are many websites that will easily allow you to research by city, zip and radius to help you identify the ideal demographic in each location.

Psychographic

After you’ve established Geographic and Demographic, you should then analyze psychographics, which are the he underlying things that make your customer who they are (sexual preference, specific religious beliefs, Lifestyle, how they view/carry themselves, etc).

Self Discovery

I think the most important aspect to starting a business is knowing yourself. This phase should have the most time spent on it, and should never be considered “complete.” Self discovery is an ever changing process and is needed in nearly every situation when it comes to business. Here are some keys to consider when doing some self discovery that are specific enough to business:

Passion

It’s such a short and simple word, yet can mean everything. Passion is the heartbeat of a business, and if it’s not beating strong, the business has little to work with. When you’re considering starting a business, ask yourself why. If you’re answer doesn’t fall along the lines of, “it’s what I love to do,” than reconsider. Passion can come in many shapes and forms, and people don’t often get to choose what they’re passionate about. Look at me for example.. I simply stumbled onto web development by chance while in college for graphic design, and my passion overtook me and drove me to succeed and grow in unmeasurable ways. Once you have passion, you have the main ingredient and should move on to goals and motivation… because passion can fade without them.

Self Discipline

Passion by itself is a strong tool, and provides ambition, but without direction and discipline its hard to focus and accomplish what you NEED to do. At times passion doesn’t cover every nook and cranny of a dream, and it takes self-motivation through discipline to accomplish those petty tasks. For example, with Chosen, I had the dream of starting my own Web Development company. My passion for web design and development are enough to motivate me in both, but starting a business is more than just design and development. I’ve had to learn more about taxes, been the consultant, salesman, project manager, etc. I’m not passionate about all of these tasks, so I must discipline myself to accomplish the tasks that need to be done just as much as that tasks that I want to do.

Goals

Many studies have shown that roughly 97% of the people in the world do NOT have goals, and that the other 3% that do almost always succeed in meeting them… this statistic is so true and I can testify to it. People often ask me how it is that I was able to start a family (wife and kid at the age of 20) and still purchase a new home, renovate it, buy new computers/toys/frig/etc all in the same year, while only having been a year out of college. No, I didn’t have any help from any family. I did this on my own by setting goals. I started Chosen by setting goals. They’re very real and they work wonders. I could go on and on about goals, but I think it would be best for you to simply read my post about goal setting.

1. What’s the rush? A lot of times impatience is set in because you’re in a hurry. Force yourself to slow down and try to figure out why. Are you trying to multitask too much or have a pressing deadline? If you’re overwhelmed, try cutting something out or re-arranging your task list before reacting how you normally would. Try to spread out your tasks so that you’re focused on one thing at a time, this is easiest with task manager.
2. What’s your trigger? Find out what really sets you off, impatience is often masked by other emotions such as anxiousness, anger, bitterness, etc and needs to be identified in order to be fixed. Find out the events, people, or circumstances that cause you to snap and then try and trace it to impatience.
3. Do you have attitude? At times, we just have bad attitude that causes us to be impatient. Sometimes, you have to simply force yourself to cool down. I recommend learning some anger management techniques as these generally apply to being patient and understanding as well. Learning to calm yourself in a frustrating situation is one of the most valuable and important assets you can have, especially when it comes to customer or client relations
4. Are your thoughts organized? Getting organized can greatly reduce impatience almost as soon as you start. When you sit down and spend time to refine, collect and re-arrange your thoughts you begin to let go of the other emotions caught up in your impatience and can logically analyze and resolve conflicts.
5. Are you making the same mistakes? One of the keys to solving your impatience is to identify and correct patterns in behavior. Look for patterns. Being aware of your impatience also gives you a chance to learn from it and perhaps uncover a relationship or circumstance that is simply not healthy or constructive, and that you may have the power to change. Figure that out, and you can then think logically about the problem issue and decide whether or not your impatience is warranted or helpful. It usually isn’t, but when it is you can then figure out ways to fix the root problem rather than simply feeling stressed about it.

Timing is everything

We all know that time is money, but I found that it’s also important to make sure that you’re designating time appropriately. For example, my website was at the old domain of new-age-design.com and my color scheme was quite nasty. I knew that I needed to change both qualities if I wanted more traffic and visitor loyalty on my blog, but I prolonged making the changes because I wouldn’t directly make money from them. Recently it struck me that my logic was flawed, however. My website is a direct representation of me, and if I don’t allocate time to take care of myself, then I’m not going to be appealing to new clients (this relates to hygiene as well). Therefore I realized I needed to spend some time and take care of my site.

This is where timing is everything. The best way to find time is to treat time like a budget. Figure out what you have, what you need and what you want. Start a calendar and populate it with the needs first, and then pencil in and allocate time where you can for wants, to-do, and other tasks. I did this on a white board and now everyone in Chosen is following this practice.

Task Management

When we first started Chosen, we didn’t realize the importance or need for a task manager. We got by sharing information and collaborating via Google Docs, instant messaging and email. Over time we began to lose information and our attempts to stay organized by using folder and file naming conventions failed miserably.

We decided to make the switch and installed Active Collab on our server. Once we did we immediately saw amazing results and improvement in organization. I highly recommend getting a well developed task manager, whether you’re a freelancer or large business. Some of the better ones that we have worked with are Active Collab and Basecamp.

Peer Accountability

It’s easy to lose track or managing yourself. Even if you’re self-motivated and have a lot of drive, everyone may lose site of the goal at hand and get off track, or disorganized. An easy way to fix this is having someone or something remind you of your plans or tasks. Ideally its best to have a business partner, friend, family, or any other sentient being play this role in holding you accountable. However, if you’re like I was at one point in my life, reliable friends or business partners can be hard to come by, so do some searching and see if you can find a good application or tool to achieve the same result. Maybe having a task manger or automated to-do list that send you alerts and reminders? I’ll leave that up to you, feel free to comment and let me know if you know of something useful.

Note-taking, wherever, whenever

This is a must. We can all relate to having a great idea, or hearing something useful, or remembering something we need to do later.. if you don’t jot it down, then and there, you’re likely to forget it. Plain and simple, get something that fits in your pocket to take notes on. I use my iPhone, and there are many other phones that work great for writing notes or voice recorded notes. If you prefer pen and paper, grab a little wallet-sized notepad from the dollar store or elsewhere and take it with you all the time. Heck, even a little folded piece of paper that you keep in your wallet works better than your memory sometimes.

Think it, write it, say it

I started blogging to stay more organized. There was a time when I would try and store and categorize bookmarks of web pages and refer to those bookmarks whenever I needed to recall something I read. Then I read a book on the human brain and memory, and discovered that if you follow a process of learning, writing, and doing you will remember it at least 10 times easier than you would have just forming the thought or reading an article. I try to make a habit now of using bookmarks as a sort of “short-term” memory, in which I bookmark things of interest, and then when I schedule some free time, I collect those thoughts and bookmarks and write them down and share them in a blog post, and then delete the bookmark. This has helped me learn SO MUCH in such a short amount of time, as well as helped others find and reference information. As an added bonus, if you forget it, you just search your own blog, and it’s there, like having a second memory!

So that’s a quick look at 5 Ways to Stay Organized. Let me know if you have any other ideas or suggestions for better organization.

But anyways.. let’s get to the post already!

Effective Communication is…

At Chosen we’ve had our struggles with communication the same as any other business can have. When you’re working with a diverse variety of professionals, each specializing in a unique trade or skill, there can be gaps in how to communicate an idea, functionality, or content. This post aims to identify the causes of some communication gaps as well as solutions for better communication.

The importance of communication

We all know how important communication is on some level, but what works for a small business might not work as that business grows. We experienced that with out own company.. we started out with a group of talented individuals all volunteering and working together whenever convenient. Often times it was a charity or a low cost project which lack of deadlines, strict deliverables, or consequences. We had good communication at the time simply using Google Docs to store information about various clients or meeting notes and we would collaborate and talk via email all the time.

After a short amount of time passed, we started getting more clients and more work than we could handle in our free time. We began to grow rapidly and our communication tactics, which worked beautifully before, crumbled to nothing. By chance, we ended up winning a license to a task manager called Active Collab from a contest hosted by Dev Snippets. Having a free corporate license and a need to use it, we installed our task manager and immediately started using it. This worked wonders for us, and for quite some time we didn’t have any communication issues.

The next challenge we hit was effective team communication in discussions. Our business was doing well with Active Collab, and actually has been since, but we recently discovered that we didn’t have a universal platform for IM. We have users all over the board for IM Clients with myself on Ubuntu, Joe and Ravi on Macs, Nick and Shane on Vista, and everyone else on XP. We all found it annoying that we had to have more than one IM client installed for team communication. Finally we came to an agreement and settled for using Skype as our mandatory IM platform. Skype has rapidly become the industry standard for communication in many businesses, and since it works so wonderfully across all platforms, we knew it would be a good fit. Since switching I’ve noticed a lot better communication among our teams.

The latest challenge we hit was with functional specs. Functional specs are always an issue in communication because everyone writes them differently and they have to be vague enough that everyone can read them and apply them to their portion of the project. For example, if you had a forum that was going to be tied into flash, front-end, php and MySQL each developer needs to know a portion of the spec. Therefore the project manager would have to know each one of those technologies well enough to write a specific functional spec that covered how they were each going to tie together. So what ends up happening is either the PM guesses or writes really vague.

One possible solution to this issue (one in which we’re looking into for ourselves) is in a technology called the Unified Model Language (UML). This technology uses illustrations and diagrams to explain anything from a simple sitemap to a complex OOP Application. In time we hope to find more effective ways to communicate and as we do, I’ll be sure to share them.. In the meantime, feel free to give some feedback.. what do you use to help improve communication in your workplace?

What is a leader?

There are all kinds of leaders, and by itself, the word ‘leader’ means very little. The key to leadership is the specific kind of leader you are and how well you execute your skills and abilities.

Level 1: Superficial Leadership
These are usually self-proclaimed leaders. They brag themselves up and look to themselves to be leaders for the title and authority, but not because they are looking to manage responsibility and truly lead in the best interest of their followers. These leaders are everywhere and some even seem like good leaders because of their self-confidence, but be careful not to confuse arrogance with confidence because arrogance is a bad quality to have as a leader, and almost always indicates poor leadership ability.

Level 2: Average Leadership
So many leaders fall into this second-level category of average leadership. It’s hard to be a great leader, and it takes a perfect balance and blend of good qualities, but many leaders can get buy as average. An average leader is still successful, can still lead people well, and can be very strong. This is where most people fall in leadership as far as family, friends, and business and there’s nothing wrong with that but… if you’re looking to be a great leader, there’s more!

Level 3: Pacesetting Leadership
What separates a leader from average and great pacesetting leadership is their balance in personality and ambition. There are seven main qualities that are key ingredients to becoming a great leader.

The Seven Qualities of a Great Pacesetting Leader

1. Faith-filled Positive Attitude
2. Steady and dedicated Purpose and Mission
3. Goal Oriented Action and Results
4. A Desire to Serve and Labor
5. Strong Management and Communication
6. Commitment to Excellence and Quality
7. A Proprietary Disposition

Have you read my post on the Steps to Set and Achieve Goals? If not check it out!