Entrepreneur Newbie

Help is everywhere, you just have to ask for it.  As I’ve written about before, much of what I am doing to get my business off the ground does not fall under my “old” areas of expertise.  I often times feel a bit lost and in need of some serious help.  As I’ve said before, I miss my staff!!!!!  Without the budget, resources and clout of a big corporation behind me; I’ve had to find that help by utilizing a new set of resources, primarily my network of friends, family and former colleagues.

Networking is one of those buzz words you here all the time in lots of difference contexes, but few people, including me, trully tap into the resources all around them.  As soon as I decided to become an entrepreneur, I started networking…not on purpose.  I am not even sure I knew I was doing it.  I just like to talk.  Anyone who knows me will tell you I talk fast and I talk a lot.  My husband would add that I ask a LOT of questions too.

At the park, dinner parties, the gym, family gatherings, etc., I have talked and talked about my new venture and the help I am need to get it to market.  Who knew all that talking would pay off.  I have been absolutely shocked at the amount of resources I have found just by talking to people I know and friends of people I  know.

Following are just a few examples, that I thought other new entrepreneurs might find useful:

• One of my in-laws turned me onto Constant Contact, an email marketing firm for small businesses.
• A college friend of my husband’s introduced me to a small business lawyer, who introduced me to a website designer who turned me onto Crowd Spring, an online market place for creative services (logo design, etc.).
• A mom in my daughters music class told me about the Small Business Opportunity Center, low cost legal help for small business put on by the Northwestern School of Law.
• An old colleague emailed me a list of entrepreneur groups on LinkedIn.  One of those groups had an article about HubSpot and their free website grader.
• A friend and fellow entrepreneur recently told me about Search Engine Watch, a site about search engine optimization and search engine marketing.  The same friend told me about Google Analytics, a free web analytics tool that gives you insight into your website’s traffic.
• An old partner/client told me about American Express’s free website for entrepreneurs, Open Forum.  You don’t even have to have an AMEX card to use it.
• Another old colleague told me about Mashable, a social media blog.

I honestly could go on and on.  Thank you to all of my friends, family and colleagues who have listened to me talk and talk and have generously lent me their expertise or pointed me in the right direction to find what I needed.

For those of you other entrepreneurs out there, take every opportunity to talk about your new venture.  Its free advertising, and who knows, you might just find the help you desperately needed.  If you do, please share.  I still need a LOT of help!

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After building my two blogs and writing a handful of posts, I was anxious to have people start visiting my sites.  I changed my signature on my email to include links to my new blogs, I updated my LinkedIn profile,  I sent an email to all of my friends and family asking them to check them out and I asked my Facebook friends to do the same.

Although having my friends, family and former colleagues check out my blogs and provide me with feedback was great; what I really wanted was for someone I did not solicit directly to find me.  Last week I got my wish.  On both of my blogs I received comments from total strangers who found me organically.   I can’t tell you how exciting it was to know that someone was reading what I wrote.

I decided to do a small experiment and see if I could find my blogs via searching for key terms.  Although I was able to find my posts eventually, it took a lot of scrolling and searching.  In the past week I have done quite a bit of reading on Search Engine Optimization.  The main thing I learned is that it is far from an exact science.  Everyone seems to have ideas on how to improve your ranking, but there is no magic recipe.

My blogs are not like the movie The Field of Dreams.  I’ve built it, but I need to do a lot more than that if I want them to come.

Following are a couple articles and tools I found useful:

• Search Engine Optimization Tips For Bloggers
• 9 SEO Plugins Every Wordpress Blog Should Have
• Website Grader – Site provides you with feedback on your site and how to improve your ranking.
• Title tags: SEO by any other name

What useful information have you found on this topic?

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After completing three weeks as my own boss I can still say with certainty that I AM STILL A NEWBIE! This past week I spent much of my time tweaking my blog themes and Twitter background.

Although I have been absolutely astonished at the free resources available to a new entrepreneur, they unfortunately have their limitations and don’t come with a free guy from the “Geek Squad” to help you when you inevitably get stuck.

All you have to do is type in “Free WordPress Themes” into your search engine, and thousands upon thousands of options come up. Not knowing what I needed in a blog or what I wanted the two blogs I was building to really look like, I ended up downloading and trying a number of different themes. I soon learned that “free” came with restrictions and limitations. Like your dad always said, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Some of the limitations can be overcome by making modifications to the code. Sounds simple enough for a programmer, but for those of us who can barely work a TV remote it was intimidating. What the heck does all those <, * and / mean? I decided to try my hand at programming. I read through the code, looked for familiar words, deleted and added lines and then checked my site to determine the effect.

I am VERY proud to say that I successfully changed the header, removed the ad section and redirected a few pages on my site. I was like a toddler who had learned a new trick and couldn’t wait to show it off to their parents. I practically dragged my husband down to my office shouting “Look at me, look at me…I am a programmer.”

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Well week two of being an entrepreneur is over, and one thing I can say for certain about being a company of one is…I miss my staff!  Working for a very large corporation has its perks.  If I had a technical question, I called the help desk.  If I needed a new file cabinet, I ordered it online and our cheerful maintenance team built it.

This week I found myself roaming the aisles of Office Depot and Staples trying to find the perfect file cabinet for my cramped office in our basement.  I use to have a beautiful office on the 20th floor.  If you tilted your neck just the right way, you could even see Lake Michigan from my office.  Now when I tilt my neck I can see our vacuum!

My admin used to order all of my supplies.  Who knew there were so many highlighters to choose from.  Price has now become a major factor in my supply buying equation.  Do I want the fancy highlighter or the plain yellow one I used in college?  Hmmm..is it worth the extra $0.59 to have the cooler one?????

When I started building my new file cabinet I was astounded at the number of pieces.  There had to be over one hundred screws, dowels, etc.  Two hours later I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment, but could not believe that I had spent two entire hours simply building a cabinet.

One thing that has astounded me over the past two weeks is how long it takes to get things done.  That being said, I have felt a tremendous amount of satisfaction doing it all myself.  This week I have:

• built a four drawer filing cabinet,
• stocked my office,
• read two books on social media,
• and downloaded software, picked themes and created my first posts on TWO blogs.  Check out my other blog, www.onthegochicago.com.

All and all, I would say it was a pretty successful week.  I may miss my staff, but the pride I feel far outweighs the inconvenience of building it all from scratch!

My new office & cabinet

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The idea of starting your own business seems very exciting and glamorous when you are in the “dreaming stages.”  When you actually leave your job and sit down on day one to be your own boss, it suddenly becomes a bit less alluring.  I am used to being the expert in what I do, not the novice.

I am now tasked with making this “great” idea a reality.  So what is my idea, well I am building a website for moms.  Yes, there are lots of sites for moms, but, like all entrepreneurs, I believe that I have found an untapped niche. First step is to become an expert in my field and convince others that I am an expert too.  My husband has always told me I can be quite persuasive, lets hope moms in my market agree.

So off I went in search of how to start a blog and harness the power of social media.  I spent much of week one:

• buying books on social networking, Twitter and blogging,  (Who knew there were so many books already written about Twitter?)
• reading other “mommy” blogs and finding appropriate blog networks,
• researching articles on blogging,
• buying domain names and hosting,
• and navigating the WordPress software that powers this blog.

It has truly been a roller coaster this week. I go from loving my new found freedom and rekindling my thirst for learning new things, to pure panic.  I’ll think to myself, “I should know how to setup a blog, I should know what RSS is and how to use these technologies.”  It is hard not being the expert anymore, and to admit that you really don’t know what you are doing.   Sometimes it makes you wonder if you are really doing the right thing, or if you would be better off just going to get a job.

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