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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