Everyone knows that if you are starting a business, your first step is a business plan. This is true no matter what size your business will be and what you plan to do. But too often, would-be entrepreneurs get mired in this step and never seem to get anywhere.
I am approaching the 30th anniversary of when I started to work as a consultant in my home. Over the years, I have often been asked by envious rat-race-runners how to break free of the grind and work from home.
The more you can do to manage the massive amount of information in Outlook and keep it organized, the better. Rules, along with managing PST files, indexed searching, and consolidating your inbox will help you accomplish this.
Knowing that you need a website is just the beginning. It doesn’t have to be an overwhelming project to put a site in place. If in doubt, get a simple site up now and flesh it out later.
No matter how great you are at planning, we all get hit with rush projects sometimes. Having a great working relationship with an agency is your first step toward being able to pull of small miracles when you need to do a rush project. Be aware of the risks, look at where you can simplify what you need, and be sure to let your agency know you appreciate their work.
I wanted a good way to track projects that was also easy for my team to share and my client to see. MS Project was overkill, and I didn’t want to keep emailing spreadsheets around. I looked at 5 tools, and am very happy with the one I ended up using.
You don’t have to call it a “blog” in order to have a spot on your website to say what you want to say. But if you call it a “blog,” you must keep it current or it will be worse than no blog at all.
Every time you communicate for your company, you are wasting an opportunity if you don’t use your brand. Use letterhead PDFs for all your emailed documents to help keep your brand in front of your customers.
Keep in contact with your customers to keep them informed about things that affect them, but balance this with the need not to annoy them with too much contact.
Rolling up feedback is more important than you think. Not rolling up your feedback can add hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars to the cost of your project, add extra rounds of revisions, and increase the risk that important feedback will be missed.
Long-copy sales pages can be an effective way to sell your product IF you take care in the writing and design.
A marketing plan is critical to every company. If you don’t have a plan in place yet, commit to taking just one hour to create a “Minimalist Marketing Plan” so you can rely on more than just luck to make some sales and move forward.
