Growing Your Business with Marketing, Week 14: Just go

This is Week 14 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. I write a topline summary of the week’s theme, as I see it, for The Marketing Mix blog, and the full article here. You can follow along here every Monday.

This week, something has come up again and again in conversation and in action: the idea that you’ll never be totally ready, so you might as well get going.

Ilise and I have been talking about it vis-a-vis cold calling, as we prep our upcoming webinar for Freelancers Union (rather slyly if accurately titled “Cold Calling is the Brussels Sprouts of Marketing“): you don’t have the follow-up materials ready, so you don’t pick up the phone to call. Same thing with…

• starting a blog (you don’t have the perfect design/list of posts/title/theme)
• getting on Twitter (you don’t know who to follow or how you’ll get followers or what to say) or…
• going to networking events (you don’t have your rap/elevator speech down or your business cards ready)

The thing about marketing yourself is that it is always a work in progress, just like your business is always a work in progress. (Or, if you want to get woowoo about it, like YOU are a work in progress.) If I had waited until I had the perfect verbal business card, I’d never have gone to a single event. I’d still not be going to them, since my focus has been slightly shifting and constantly narrowing faster than I can keep up with it.

The next time you find yourself saying, “Oh, it would be a waste of my time to (have cards printed up, go to this event, pick up the phone),” ask yourself: would it really? Could you print cards cheaply (or for free) to start collecting input? Could you go to the event to try out a new rap (or ask people about theirs)? Could you make some calls just for practice?

That’s what I’m starting to do, and it’s opening me up to all kinds of possibilities I’d never discovered.

Me, in Ojai, talking to ladies about online dating

One thing I’ve been holding fast is my commitment to attending at least one weekly networking event. Amazingly—well, compared to my cold calling record, which is less than amazing—I’ve missed only one week so far, and that was the week my taxes were due, and a LOT of stuff went missing. (Hey, it happens. But on that cold calling? Not letting myself off the hook!)

I’ve gotten much from it: solidifying some relationships and starting others are obvious and measurable gains, and while it’s harder to quantify, it feels like all the getting-myself-out-there stuff is helping raise my visibility and keeping me top of mind (or closer to the top). It may even be a contributing factor to the rise in client calls I’m getting, albeit in a more woowoo fashion. Some meetings have ended up getting me work, but in general, I feel like it’s made me a body in motion, as it were.

This past week, I went a little crazy and did my weekly networking event up in beautiful Ojai, California, a small, artsy-funky community nestled in the mountains about 80 miles Northwest of Los Angeles. My friend, Jodi Womack, hosts a monthly meetup for Ojai’s women in business (yes, they have a Facebook page) and she invited me to join them for their March event. I figured this would be one of those Keep Colleen Limber events—what on Earth would a bunch of Ventura County women want my help with?

As it turns out, some things I never expected. I got into a fascinating conversation with a few women about online dating. One of them was struggling with it, and was interested to hear of the success I’d had: The BF and I met online over four years ago, after I’d gotten very good at vetting suitors and writing profiles. I suggested that she let me help her with her profile, and she eagerly accepted. As the conversation went on, the ladies decided this would be a perfect new business for me! I’m not sure about that yet, but I’m positive it never would have occurred to me if I hadn’t gone to this crazy, off-target gathering with an open mind.

I’ll keep you posted on my new identity as iYenta.

What I did (and didn’t do) in Week 14

Holy tomatoes, do I ever have a lot of plates spinning! It’s been Project Central here at the ranch, prepping my book proposals, my upcoming webinar on cold calling with Ilise, and keeping the blog afloat. I’m also planning an incredibly cool collaboration with my online friend, Sally Jacobs, archivist extraordinaire, that’s gonna be great for me and tons of fun for my readers. Sally has been a big friend of the blog for some time now, and I’m a huge fan of her curatorial abilities, showcased so beautifully on StumbleUpon. (What? You didn’t know that skillful curation was the wave of the Internet future? Well, now you do!)

Here are some of the other things I did:

• Blogged every day Do you know, this is one of the main reasons I think my blog readership has grown recently. Of course, it could be a cumulative effect, but I know that comments have definitely picked up.
• Twittered/Facebooked every day The #2 source of traffic to my blog is Twitter! (Google, of course, is #1.) And the readers I get from Twitter are engaged: Twitter is third on the list of sites sending people who read the most page views (LA Casting is #1, and the almighty Google is #2). I also really enjoy using both Twitter and Facebook to share stuff and horse around. If you don’t, keep at it; it can be tough getting started, but it’s really a kick when you find your stride, and it reduces wear and tear on the marketing self most dramatically!
• Followed up with a fantastic potential speaking collaborator Not ready to discuss this yet, but VERY excited about the possibilities
• Followed up with some—not all—of the new people I’ve met Holy Christmas…does this ever get easier?
• Cleared out most of my “reply to” folder Starting to see why email makes some people uneasy. Human attention doesn’t scale.
• Cold calls! Yes, they were cold voicemails. Get off my back; I’m getting back on the horse, right?
• Checked out a few new interesting social media sites So many. Sooooo many. But part of my job is pointing people towards the good stuff, so I have to keep finding it.

As always, I welcome your insight and observations on the crazy soup that is my marketing life. Specifically, I’m interested in help with reducing drag time on contact management, follow-up and file handling. There has simply GOT to be a better way to organize files!