Who is Melinda Emerson and what you can learn from her: Melinda Emerson is known as the Small Biz Lady. She is the founder and president of the Quintessence Group,Read More
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]]>Melinda Emerson is known as the Small Biz Lady. She is the founder and president of the Quintessence Group, a marketing consulting firm based in Philadelphia, PA. Melinda founded an organization that aims to provide training materials to small business owners and entrepreneurs. Her curriculum is available for purchase, but she also gives out free advice to those who need it. Here are five of her biggest tips that I got out of her book, Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months:
One of the great things about being your own boss is that you get to set your own hours. But you should create a schedule and stick to it. Try to get most of your work done during your most productive hours. If you are a morning person, get up early and be at your desk ready to make the most out of that part of the day. If you think more clearly at night, sleep in as late as you want but don’t go out with your friends until you’ve finished what you need to get done that day.
Setting hours also helps friends and family respect your schedule. Many people will get the impression that you can take off whenever you want since you don’t have a boss to report to. While it’s okay to take advantage of this from time to time, it is not the path to success. By letting people know that you are not available for a set time period each day, they will get the message that you take your work just as seriously as they take theirs.
There is a lot of research that goes into opening a new business. Once you quit your job to pursue your own company, you are living off of savings. This gives you a limited time to start pulling in money through your new company before you have to return to the workplace. So instead of setting yourself up for disappointment and failure, do as much of the preliminary work as you while still holding your own job.
Research is one of the most important steps in pursuing any new venture. And much of it can be done before you quit your job. Spend one hour each evening looking into what the growth potential is for your business. Learn what you need to succeed in this field. Get as much lined up as possible ahead of time. That way, once you do put in your two weeks’ notice, you can tackle this project with your full energy and get up and running in no time.
Corporations have huge budgets dedicated simply to market research. You don’t have six figures to spend on this. So you’re going to have to do a lot of the legwork yourself. But this isn’t that difficult. Much of it can be done just by asking yourself a few key questions.
You can get a large number of responses simply by asking people. Once you’ve run your ideas past a few trustworthy sources, send out a Facebook message to get as many answers as possible. But if you leave open ended questions hanging out there, you are going to be overwhelmed with the endless answers you receive. Instead, ask simple yes or no questions to keep people focused and to collect the specific information that you are looking for.
Don’t assume that anyone and everyone is going to want what you are selling. Something that appeals to a wide audience is of course more likely to succeed than something that only a few people are going to want. But when you are just starting out, it’s helpful to focus in on a tight group.
This gives you a concentrated focus that can keep you centered. Particularly in the beginning stages, you are going to have limited resources for things like advertising. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, send a strong message out to a target audience. As they support your company, your reputation will spread through word of mouth. Once you’ve established yourself with your original audience, you can reach out to other groups.
A word of caution on branching out: you don’t want to betray your existing customers. If you change your image too much to attract a different crowd, you will lose your original audience. This type of change leads to a drop in customer loyalty that can have far reaching negative consequences.
Social media is a cheap and easy way to reach out to a wide audience and develop relationships with your customers. But it has to be used well to be effective. This is not your personal profile that you use to catch up with friends. You need to use it to present a consistent business image that lets your customers know who you are.
This doesn’t mean that everything has to be overly polished. Customers appreciate rough pictures that show behind the scenes action. But just because something looks spontaneous doesn’t mean it is. Thing through something before you post it. Pictures and videos can always be taken down later, but if the Internet has taught us anything, it is that nothing ever completely disappears.
Preview Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months with Melinda Emerson herself
Buy Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months by Melinda Emerson on Amazon today
Visit SucceedAsYourOwnBoss.com to get the first two chapters and some more resources
Follow Melinda Emerson on Twitter and Facebook
The post 5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Melinda Emerson appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months according to Melinda Emerson: Introduction In this episode Melinda Emerson reveals all her insights onRead More
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]]>In this episode Melinda Emerson reveals all her insights on Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months, where she shares her monthly guide for building small businesses.
In her book Emerson provides you with step-by-step instructions, effective business strategies, simple techniques that will help build your business within a 12 month period. The goal of the book is to teach you fresh, new ways to create any startup through an effective marketing plan, a small business budget that works, financing sources that are worth your time, and a long-lasting business maintenance plan.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are new to the business world and need a guide to help get their first business funded, launched, and maintained within a small amount of time.
The first thing that makes my book different is my Emerson planning system in my book. I actually developed a six step system for people to transition from having a job to starting a business. You first need to develop a life plan before you ever develop a business plan because you need to figure out what you want and why you want it and then you need to build a business that aligns with that. I talk first about life planning which is very nontraditional in the business world and then I talk about financial planning. I also talk about evaluating your business based upon what skills you have and then what skills you need to run your particular kind of business.
I actually designed it to be read twice. I found that when people read it a second time they start doing the action items at the end of each chapter.
Niche to get rich! I think that the biggest problem that I see small business owners have is they chase anybody that they think has money as opposed to having specific niche target customers. Niche marketing is everything that you need to have to be successful in business these days.
The first thing I walk people through is really thinking through if you really want to be an entrepreneur. And then I explain why it takes 12 months because the most common question I’m asked is why it takes 12 months to start a business.
And then I walk people through how to develop a life plan, how to construct their financial plan, and how to start thinking like a business owner. Then we start looking at creating your business model and then lining up your lawyer and accountant who are going to be probably the two most important business advisors you’re going to have.
From there we start talking about marketing and I get into your niche and really understanding what a niche is and how you figure out what your niche should be. And then we look at marketing 101; how to figure out who is going to buy your product or services.
Then I walk people through developing a business plan. Once we get through business planning I look at where you are going to get this money from and getting your finances together.
I also have a chapter that covers how to develop a successful crowd funding campaign. I give you the step by step and profile two businesses that did it well.
I walk you through how to brand your business and in that I talk about how to develop your number one sales tool which is your website.
Then I walk you through how to develop a content strategy because when you start thinking about building your brand you have got to think about how to do it online and offline. When it comes to building your brand online it’s really about what I call a Three Legged Stool approach. You’ve got to have a great website, you’ve got to figure out what you’re doing with social media, and then you’ve got to use e-mail to follow up on all of that.
And of course I have a chapter on how to become a social media ninja. If you want to know how I build over 300,000 followers on Twitter and a brand that is international, I break it down for you in this chapter.
Then we talk about getting you ready six months before you start. I switch gears and talk about how to cultivate the market; how to start telling people you are getting ready to open up your business. Then we go through setting up shop and I’ve got some great checklists on all the things you have to have in place.
From there we talk about employees and how to build your team. And then we look at how to set up your customer service systems because your processes and systems need to be setup before you open your doors.
The third section of this book is called Go and that’s when in chapter 22 we walk you through launching your business and how you do that.
Then I walk people through 10 Things You Must Never Forget in Business. And then I leave you with my final thoughts where I walk people through the things that I think they need to be doing and measuring in their business.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 08:44
“You never lose in business, either you win or you learn.” – Melinda Emerson
My name is Melinda but my nickname is Small Biz Lady and I am very excited to talk to you about my brand new book which is the update of my very first book. Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months is a month by month guide to a business that works. I wrote it because I wanted people to benefit from all the hard learned lessons I had learned in my years in business. I’ve been in business now 16 years so I have been through the fire, wind, and rain and I am still here!
In 2005 my former husband and I became pregnant with my son and I went from being the worlds worst workaholic you ever met in your life to being put on bed rest for six months. And in that time of six months I started thinking about all the expensive lessons I have had the opportunity to learn. I started taking notes and writing down stuff that I wish somebody had given me better advice about. I got to a point where I realized that I needed to pull all this together in a document that would help other people. I wrote the book that I wished someone had written back when I first started my business in 1999.
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Buy Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months by Melinda Emerson on Amazon today
Visit SucceedAsYourOwnBoss.com to get the first two chapters and some more resources
Follow Melinda Emerson on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Startup Survival System by Kurt Won
New Business: Next Steps by Ann Hawkins
The Pop Up Paradigm by Melissa Gonzales
Relevant advice and tips:
Top Financial Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Creating a New Business
5 Important Things That Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know About Starting a New Business
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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