a real-time experiment in marketing a new business

This is Week 51 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.

“Holiday creep” gets me every year.

I’ve gotten better at planning for and around it, agreeing up front to far fewer obligations to make room for the inevitable stuff that pops up. And fortunately for me, I have zero travel to deal with (the people I spend holidays with are all here in Los Angeles) and very little shopping, mostly for hostess gifts, which mostly take the form of adult beverages, which are ridiculously easy to shop for.

Still, there end up being more parties than I have energy for, and if I’m not very protective of my time, the last few definitely feel more like obligations than fun.

I think the holiday situation is analogous to the marketing one. If you set goals and plan carefully, marketing can be demanding, but it’s still interesting and even fun. If you don’t, and either put stuff off until the last minute or try to cram too much into a small space, it becomes painful and overwhelming. (And, to continue the analogy, you can certainly opt out of either, but a life without friends is about as viable as a business without customers.)

I made one huge error this week, and I actually made it a couple of weeks ago: I agreed to give the commencement address at a local technical college, down in Orange County. I was really excited to be asked, and I’d left enough room in my schedule (for those roomy, relaxing holidays) that there was time available to take the gig. But I did not allot adequate time to prepare: I felt increasingly uneasy as the date approached, and went into full-on panic mode when I stepped into ginormous banquet hall that evening. What I’d envisioned as a smallish crowd of kids was 200+ graduates, many the first in their families to get an advanced degree, hence the 4 – 8 people each of these kids had to witness their triumph. A bigger crowd, then, than Ignite, and I was far less prepared.

Fortunately, I know my material well enough to adjust on the fly. And boy, did I, because from the moment I took the mic and turned out to face the audience, it was clear to me that the sooner this strange lady said what she had to say and was done with it, the happier they were going to be. I dramatically condensed what I was going to say, simplified my delivery and language, and tried to keep it general and light while still useful. (I was asked to talk about personal branding, based on the talk I gave earlier this year to the OC Ad Federation.)

I just started reading Scott Berkun’s excellent new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker, which is chock full of great information and support around the stuff that drives speakers crazy: the unexpected, the technical SNAFUs, the sudden sweats. (I ordered it right after watching his terrifically helpful Ignite speech about giving Ignite speeches, and it really helped with my Ignite speech.) In it, he invokes Dale Carnegie’s quote about the four versions of every speech:

“…the one they delivered, the one they prepared, the one the newspapers say was delivered, and the one on the way home they wish they’d delivered.”

While I got good feedback both from audience members and some of the college staff, in my heart, the speech I delivered was nowhere near as good as that one in the car I wish I’d delivered; next time, I’ll be better prepared.

Next week: A review of 2009 and the Marketing Mix Calendar Project

“Marketing” round-up for this week:

• 6 blog posts (five at the main blog, one here)
• Monthly Biznik networking event I co-host
• Spoke at commencement ceremony for Westwood College in Anaheim
• email! email! email!
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter

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This is Week 50 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.

While I’m (hopefully) moving in the direction of speaking about topics like I did at last month’s Ignite event—addressing fear, hanging with change, and other “big” stuff—I still enjoy talking about social media and other communications-oriented topics to the right people. (If you like hearing about the underlying principles to good communicating, online or off, in the “teach a man to fish” spirit, you’re probably one of the right people. If you want a tutorial on Facebook, I’m not your gal.)

I like talking about social media because I’m a big consumer of it and a huge believer in it, and I want to share that excitement and love even as I keep people from “peeing in the well the rest of us are drinking from,” to paraphrase my friend, Merlin, in an excellent talk he gave about social media at last month’s WordCamp Phoenix. Since I quit acting, I’ve met most of the people I know in real life via social media to start with.

This week’s marketing round-up (below) is a perfect illustration of that.

The Biznik event I attended was hosted by my friend (and co-hostess of the monthly Biznik event I started on the West Side of L.A. in January), Heather Parlato. We originally met via Spencer Cross’s mailing list for designers, KERNSPIRACY; I originally met Spencer when we were both blogging for Metblogs L.A. (And I got that gig via—you guessed it—reading and commenting on blogs, as well as starting my own.)

The podcast I recorded was with Alaia Williams, a business acquaintance whom I met at a real-life networking event here in L.A. But I met her because of an online hookup to Colleen Rice Nelson via Ilise Benun, my old marketing coach, and—yes—Biznik, again. (As an aside, I met Ilise via a real-life workshop given by her partner in Marketing Mentor, Peleg Top, whom I found via Spencer on the KERNSPIRACY list.)

The one-on-one meeting I had was with a new friend, Dave Waite, whom I also originally met via the KERNSPIRACY list. We finally met one-on-one after sharing a great deal of online communication via email, Twitter, Facebook (and by reading each others’ posts on KERNSPIRACY), and meeting a few times socially at the monthly Biznik meetups I host with Heather on the West Side.

I’ll throw in one more, only because it helps illustrate the blurring of the lines between “work” and “play.” Last Friday, I made a funny little video with my friend, Adam, whom I met via Twitter, then in real life at SXSW. Adam lives approximately two miles from my boyfriend here in L.A., yet we met online via social media and again in person at an official event 2000 miles away before really becoming friends here in town and making something together (which, of course, we put online).

I’m building a head of steam with this because this email, I got a very frustrating (and to be fair, probably frustrated) email from a reader of my latest newsletter, on creating handles being the best method for connecting in this overtaxed, over-busy world we live in today. My thesis is that rather than badgering people to look at your stuff, to pay attention to you, to come to your thing, you make it easy for them to pull themselves closer to you by creating a handle they can grab onto when they’re ready, to pull themselves closer. This means making sure your product or service—which is herself, in the case of the actor who emailed—is exceptional, then taking equal care to craft ways of making it exquisitely easy and joyful for people to come closer.

As you can probably guess by this wind-up, the email was all about how she could get casting directors to pay attention to her. Because her picture/resume and postcards weren’t working. (Surprise, huh?)

I’ll leave off the railing and wailing and just refer to Beverly Sills’ words of wisdom on the topic: “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” Which I always understood to mean just that there’s no quick way, but the truth is, there’s also no mapped way. You make your way toward every opportunity, but it’s not like there are lines painted on the ground. Part of the joy of purposeful guesstimating is the serendipity involved: you’ll meet people and discover great connections, but maybe not all the exact ones you set out to find.

I know it’s been one of the more gratifying aspects to my journey. And if you have any, I’d love to hear of some of your circuitous connections.

“Marketing” round-up for this week:

• 6 blog posts (five at the main blog, one here)
• Biznik networking event (originally met via online networking)
• Interview for podcast on entrepreneurial business (originally met via online networking)
• One-on-one meetup with colleague (originally met via online networking)
• email! email! email!
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter

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This is Week 49 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.

A couple of notable things happened this week.

First, as I reported on my main blog, I had a weird (in that it was unusual and unexpected) and disruptive (in that it was quite vitriolic) thing happen in response to the marketing column I have been writing for actors courtesy of Casting Networks, Inc. for the past 3+ years: hate mail.

I received two anonymous emails after publication of my latest piece railing against me for all sorts of perceived transgressions; that I bothered to email back an obvious bully and coward to address the points merely underlined how stupidly earnest and new to these problems I am.

A natural result of putting oneself out there more and more is blowback. I’m more visible than I used to be, which means more and more people will see me, which means (apparently) that the absolute number of people who disagree with me will grow, and that a subset of them will be angry and frustrated enough to come at me with harsh words.

So be it.

I’m pretty clear about my intentions, and equally transparent. What’s more, I work diligently to remain honest and on-track, spending lots of time with accountability partners, groups of peers and in therapy to assure that I’m getting plenty of reasoned, objective counsel and feedback. In other words, I’m good, thanks. Whatever issues someone has who takes issues with mine are theirs to sort out. Er, or something. You catch my drift.

Second, I had a few new and different opportunities floated my way, marketing-wise.

One of them was an offer from a new and very respected collaborator to join a mastermind group devoted to supporting the launch of each other’s information products. I’ve long been toying with the idea of releasing something, and the person who asked me is someone I both very much respect and would really like to foster a deeper relationship with. But this didn’t feel like the right thing: I’m full up with projects right now, and unclear on exactly what I want to turn my attention to in 2010. So, possibly right idea at absolutely the wrong time.

The other was the opportunity to give a short commencement speech at the graduation ceremony of a local trade college. It’s hardly Harvard, in other words, and it comes at a time (the holidays) when time is at a premium. But I had very clearly identified that speaking was a priority for me, and this was an opportunity to practice in a meaningful way a shorter type of talk (they only want me babbling for about 15 minutes). So it made saying “yes” clear and easy, as did my schedule, which I’d kept, in true Pareto-adherent fashion, clear of the 80% stuff that might get in the way of the 20% I was aiming for.

I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed this level of maturity and understanding about my boundaries, and I’d like to think it’s at least partially due to such careful attention to time over the past 11+ months. There are ancillary benefits to regular practice, and this is one of them.

Now it’s your turn: if you’ve been working a calendar of some kind, what other benefits have you reaped besides actually getting done what was calendared in.

And while we’re at it, what, if any, sort of negative feedback have you had to deal with, and how have you done it? (I REALLY want the answer to that one!)

“Marketing” round-up for this week:

• 6 blog posts (five at the main blog, one here)
• teleclass on marketing for voice-over actors
• presentation on branding to mastermind group of creatives
• email! email! email!
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter

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This is Week 48 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.

Funny—I got a comment via email this week about my Thanksgiving Day poem (I post a little something in something a little like verse each Thursday).

In it, the reader very kindly thanked me for the poem, and hoped that someday, my days would be full of poetry rather than self-promotion and self-reflection. Which I know he meant in the kindest of ways, but which kind of stung: am I really all self-promo, all the time? And if I am, what of the Yellow Highlighter People? The mind reels.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about thankfulness and poetry and marketing and all the rest of it. What I’ve come to is this: that some people will always think any promotion is too much promotion, that you have to do what feels right for you and your business (and let other people learn where the line is for them), and that I’m pretty happy with my own mix of self-reflection, self-promotion and poetry.

This week, there wasn’t much of any of it, save the poetry. I had an arduous drive back from Portland, followed by some mandatory rest and relaxation, followed by some semi-mandatory family/holiday time. I’m using the rest of the weekend to squeeze in some relaxing puttering, much of it marketing-related.

And what’s made this little break possible? Nothing but the regular-as-clockwork marketing I’ve been doing for years now, especially this past year.

I know it can get tedious at times: I’ve had my own late-night wrasslin’ with my email newsletter, and there have been plenty of times when I questioned my sanity, committing to this  networking event or that unpaid speaking gig. But putting aside the weird and utterly unquantifiable sensation that somehow, everything is coming together underneath, there’s the very real truth that because I market all year-’round, taking a week off at the holidays won’t hurt me.

If you haven’t yet committed to your own year-long project for 2010, I’d ask you this: why not? Can you not spare two hours a week to create some room and sanity in your life?

“Marketing” round-up for this week:

• 6 blog posts (five at the main blog, one here)
• email! email! email!
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter

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For administrative purposes only! D28F38C93A2W

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This is Week 47 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.

I had a dad who worked all the time. I used to think this was a bad thing—okay, I still sort of do, as he’d probably be around had he taken a little better care of himself and not worked quite so hard.

But work was what he loved, and a lot of his work was just meeting with and talking to people. Everywhere. Of all types. It was astounding to me, his schedule, so filled with appointments to talk to people—on the phone or in person, or to correspond via old-fashioned postal mail.

As I look at it more carefully, I see that what he was doing was very much along the lines of what I find myself doing: marketing by Not-Marketing. Talking to people, meeting people, talking some more. Building a network that builds itself, after a bit (although you are still always responsible for maintaining it.) I realized while I was talking to my friend Havi and her Gentleman Friend that a good deal of the work and opportunities that flow to me do so because I talk to people, either in a formalized way (the public speaking stuff) or an informal way. Maybe advertising works better for you, or maybe other types of marketing. But systematically trying stuff, then paying close attention, should illuminate your path after a bit.

“Marketing” round-up for this week:

• 6 blog posts (five at the main blog, one here)
• talked at Work the System Boot Camp in Bend
• did Ignite: Portland
• had dinner with my friend, Jean, and her sister (we talked shop, so it counts)
• had dinner and hung out with my friend, Areanne (ditto)
• had breakfast and hung out with Havi and her Gentleman Friend (like we’re gonna get together and NOT talk shop!)
• email! email! email!
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter

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This is Week 46 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.

This is not so much a week at it as a week off.

And yet, here on my Big Couple of Weeks Off I’m feeling On in a few places. Most of the people I’m meeting up with here on my two-week stay in the PacNW, for example, are people I’ve met via online networking sites—Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. At a rehearsal for Ignite: Portland, I met a bunch of other new friends (contacts, whatever) whom I’d never have met were it not for finding out about the event through my friend, Jean MacDonald, of SmileOnMyMac. That’s right—a random happy comment I wrote about a fantastic product I happened to really and truly like led to me speaking on stage in front of (gulp) 800 people, not to mention a fun evening at a ladies-only party in the Pearl District and who knows what else from here.

Plus there was a lovely dinner and meetup with my friend, Chris Guillebeau, whom I also met via social media, and his lovely wife, Jolie (who cooks a mean black bean soup and cornbread, boy howdy). And a great collaborative-planning call with another new friend, Brooks Palmer, declutter to the stars, as well. And three or four meetups over the next week.

This is my point: for so long, when I was in the Big Boy Business World, I looked at things in a very rigid fashion. You had your fun, and you had your business. Now, they bleed over into one another, and instead of it making life weird, it makes it great. And it makes doing business infinitely better. This is one of the great joys of thinking like a self-employed person, whether or not you actually are. (Although, as someone who has basically been fending for herself since 1992, I think I have to say I am one by now.)

Just as my favorite kind of selling is Not-Selling, my favorite kind of marketing is Not-Marketing. More and more, I’m becoming an adherent of the “marketing is the truth of you, translated into the language of them” school of marketing. And that’s just talking to people—about what they do, and need, and where you might be able to help them with that.

Marketing round-up for this week:

• 6 blog posts (five at the main blog, one here)
• rehearsed my presentation for Ignite: Portland
• went to after-party for rehearsal
• went to fab lady-party in downtown Portland
• chatted up various local merchants about their businesses (in person! so friendly!)
• wrote/sent my latest newsletter
• email! email! email!
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter

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This is Week 45 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.

Once again, I was shown the benefits of doing regular marketing during a week where I didn’t manage to do much marketing at all.

The things that most occupied my time—prepping my presentation for the upcoming Ignite: Portland event, presenting at Pam Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation tour, and getting ready for my upcoming sabbatical-ette in the PacNW—are all indirectly related to marketing efforts I’ve made in the months (and sometimes years) before.

Pam and I met by reading each others’ blogs—obsessively, as it turns out, although I beat her to it.

Everyone I know in Portland save one (my former apartment manager, of all things) I’ve met through social networking, for example. One of them—my friend, Jean MacDonald—I met after writing a glowing testimonial for one of her company’s products, TextExpander (I’ve since written a lengthy and equally glowing review on my main blog). It was through Jean that I found out my visit would coincide with the next Ignite.

I’ll also be attending my friend and client Sam Carpenter’s Work the System Boot Camp in Bend, OR the week after next (still a couple of spaces available, if you’re interested). Where did we meet? Via social media, and Pam Slim!

And I picked up another couple of gigs for 2010 over the past couple of weeks: one via the networking I did with my alumni group, and the other via the work I did both with my former marketing coach, Ilise, and the ridonculous number of hours I’ve spent online, futzing around with social media.

My point in all this is only partly to make myself feel better for not getting as much done (and having as many billable hours) as I’d have liked. It’s also to say that the “wins” are the direct result of a long, sometimes slow, occasionally arduous, but always rewarding process. Having a regular marketing system (or “machine,” as Peleg and Ilise like to call it) in place keeps me moving forward, even when my attention is occasionally drawn elsewhere, as it was this week.

The other thing I’d like to offer up—again, to remind myself as much as anything—is that the real benefit of all of this marketing stuff is the building of relationships. It’s relationships that bring opportunity, loyalty, reliability and their attendant rewards. Hopefully, the relationships you build are their own reward, too, of course. But they really are an integral part in getting here from there.

xxx
c

Marketing round-up for this week:

• 8 blog posts (seven at the main blog, one here)
• wrote/designed my presentation for Ignite: Portland
• partnered with Pam Slim to do my “branding” preso dropped into her “Escape from Cubicle Nation” workshop
• attended launch party for my friend Adam and his friend Jesse’s new web show, Put This On! (which you should totally subscribe to!) Bonus? Met Huell Howser! (Sorry about that egregious sentence construction, Mignon.)
• met up with my new friend, Lisa Sonora Beam, to touch base and talk shop one last time before we’re both in different cities
• did some more writing for my upcoming newsletter (which will be one week late—didja notice?)
• email! email! email!
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter

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This is Week 44 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.

Try as I may to make sure I’m doing one networking event per week, it doesn’t always work out that way.

Some weeks—like this past one—there’s either nothing going on that really floats my boat or no time to squeeze even one more thing in, even if I wanted to. (And trust me, after a couple of the freakouts and setbacks I’ve had this year from overscheduling, I most decidedly do not want to anymore!)

That’s okay, because really what we’re after with this marketing calendar thing is consistent, ongoing marketing: avoiding feast or famine syndrome, not breaking our backs, blowing opportunities or otherwise screwing up our lives and businesses by adhering rigidly to some kind of absolute set schedule. Yes, I need to market myself regularly; no, it does not have to be the way the law was laid down in print by someone else or even in the beginning of the week by me. I am the boss of me, but I am more than that: I am the capo di tutti capi, the boss of bosses, too.

This past week, I had the opportunity to have several one-on-one meetings with people: one with a brand new friend (we’ve been Facebook friends for a year), one with a former client (who resurfaced with a new opportunity because—wait for it—we had stayed in touch via marketing) and a couple that were sort of hybrid business meetings/stay-in-your-face meetings. (There’s a lot of bleed in business.) Between these meetings, a full workload of consulting and an uncharacteristically full workload of writing (downside to a 21-Day Salute™)—oh, and a personal life, which I’ve been working hard to reinstate—there was no time for a standard networking event.

That’s okay by me. I had a super-intense network-y month in September, and just came back from a solid couple of days of networking at BlogWorld Expo (sans flu, which some of the unluckier attendees—possibly overnetworkers?—got). There will be other times that are similarly lush with multiple-human contact—March, with its anchor, South by Southwest Interactive, always seems to be one of those.

The way I’ve come to look at it is the way I’ve come to look at eating a balanced diet: rather than feel obligated to have x portions of y and z in one day, I try to aim for balance over the course of the week. Similarly, I’ve heard people talking about having more success with flossing once they moved flossing time to the morning, upon arising, when they had the energy. I get that it may still be ideal to floss at night, but a thorough job in the morning is better than nothing. (We’re assuming we’re still brushing at night, or…well, ew.)

Finally, I get how easy it is to beat yourself up over any of this. May I suggest that it’s fine if you want to do that (because it goes without saying that it’s not the most productive, nor nicest thing in the world), AND that if you do, you do it quickly and get back on the horse. One thing. One call. One email. One “thumbs up” or “Happy ding-dong birthday!” on Facebook. One “@” reply on Twitter.

No one is keeping score except you. No one wins or loses except you.

xxx
c

Marketing round-up for this week:

• 8 blog posts (seven at the main blog, one here)
• recorded last week’s GYBWM podcast (2 in a row?!? Holy crap—I’m gonna spoil you guys!)
• two one-on-one meetings, plus two hybrid biz/networking one-on-one meetings
• some writing for my upcoming newsletter
• email! email! email!
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter

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