Strategies for growth in a slowing economy

Yikes, what a mess! The havoc in the stock and financial markets made it really challenging to stay focused on my work last week. I spent 14 years of my life at Lehman Bros., so it's not only the pain of seeing the place I called "home" crumble after such a long and rich history, but through the years I also accumulated company stock, which is now, well... worthless. Ouch. Big ouch. Just the thought of opening up my account to see how much I've lost sends chills up my spine.

It still remains to be seen how the economy will be affected by the ongoing saga in the financial sector, but if history is an any indication the market has always found a way to bounce back up from past meltdowns. However, it's the negative perception that stays on consumer's minds and affects their behavior and their wallets. So how will small businesses weather the current maelstorm? Well that was the topic of a blogger's roundtable luncheon I was invited to recently. The host was Steve Strauss, small business expert and "Ask The Expert" columnist for USA Today. Other fellow bloggers included Yvonne DeVita who pens the Lipsticking blog, Jay Heyman of Porte Advertising, Peter Piazza who writes about printers and scanners for About.com, Bob Phibbs who wrote this post about the event, and Gene Marks who writes for Forbes.com and Businessweek.com.

One success story I was able to share with the group is about The Bridal Garden, a non profit boutique that sells designer wedding gowns at 75% off retail prices. My long time friend Geraldine Brower (that's her on the right), who is the shop's Director tells me that her business has grown exponentially in the past two years as more people hear about it and tell their friends. The store started out twelve years ago as way to make extra money for Sheltering Arms, a non profit organization whose mission was to help disadvantaged children and their families in the NY area. "The concept at the beginning was to get New York City girls to donate their dresses after they got married, so we stockpiled gowns for a year to have enough to open the store," explains Geraldine. But they soon had to find other ways to get inventory, so they branched out and called on stores and designers to get them to donate dresses. "Back then the Bridal Garden wasn't the only way that Sheltering Arms raised funds so I didn't take a lot of chances. We wanted to build the business slowly and steadily so it wouldn't falter," she adds.

Since then the store has changed hands and it now benefits the Brooklyn Charter School. They no longer have the backing from an umbrella organization and need to be self-supporting. That has forced them to put all their efforts into making enough money to cover the costs. "Before it was just a sideline. I was director of development and I was doing a lot of other things; now I'm dedicated to the shop full time, and we've built a strong business. We were up 20% last year and another 20% the year before," says Geraldine.

When I asked her how she did it she says it's been a combination of things:

Keep your costs down
"Our expenses are really low. For every 3 dollars that comes in, one dollar is pure profit. That's the result of growing slowly. If you have the time to invest in a business and don't want to risk money, you can do it on a shoestring."

Step up the media appearances
"Recently we were interviewed on Eyewitness News and they put us in the backs of taxicabs in NY City for two weeks. The segment we were in played over and over and was seen by 1.1 mill people, according to the networks stats. That was about 3 months ago and since then our sales are up 35%. I pitched the show a few different ideas and they ultimately liked this one, which had a "weddings on a budget" theme. We had been written up in Newsweek magazine and often TV follows print so that helped us get recognition with this story."

Embrace the internet
"The internet has been the most effective marketing tool for us because people in the marriage demographic use the internet for everything. Whenever anyone calls for an appointment we ask them how they heard about us and it's usually one of two ways: they either do a search and we come up, or they read about us in blogs where brides communicate with each other.

I made sure we had a very good site with a lot of keywords in it (like discount, wedding dresses, charity, resale store) so it comes up high in the rankings. We've also appeared in many blogs, like Wedding Bee, Junebug Weddings, Yelp.com, Citysearch, and more opportunities arise as new new sites pop up. Brides write in and start a dialogue. Brides are telling their friends about us and more designers are coming onboard. We now have name recognition and people know who we are - we're very mainstream now. It helps to have a really good product at an inexpensive price and to provide good service. Shoppers can also feel good about knowing that by buying our gowns they are helping children and contributing to a good cause."

Do you have any small business success stories or tactics to share? Please do!

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The Makings of a Media Mogul

I recently met Tom Schlobohm at Digital Wednesdays, a weekly gathering for media professionals at an outdoor lounge called ONO that's in Manhattan's still trendy meatpacking district but feels more like being in South Beach. After chatting for a little bit he started telling me about the house he was looking to buy with 3 friends near the beach in San Diego so he could live there one or two weeks out of the month and then the rest here in New York. Now at first blush Tom doesn't look like a trust fund baby or a Hollywood movie star (though he could fit right into Entourage), so I asked this very young-looking 28-year-old what he did to be able to afford such a jet-set lifestyle. Well it turns out Tom caught the entrepreneurial bug early in middle school, first washing cars in the summer to get his first bike, then shoveling snow to score his first computer. At 13 he ran a direct mailer where he mailed out coupons 3 times a year, during his breaks. After 3 years he made enough cash to buy a pair of skis and spend a whole summer in France.

This mogul-in-the-making started his first online business in high school, promoting search engines and online offers (meanwhile at that age I was busy trying to figure out what lip gloss would match best with what pair of jeans...). He acted as an affiliate and helped companies with their search marketing campaigns. His take? $130Gs...enough to pay for college! By 18 Tom was already living "the life" - he bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee, went glacier skiing in New Zealand and then island hopping in Fiji.

From there he started a co-location hosting company and had a couple hundred servers throughout the country. One year out of college Tom had enough to buy an apartment and a rental condo, the latter because he wanted to learn about the real estate market.

LiveGrad.com
About 6 months ago Tom started his newest venture, LiveGrad, which focuses on education leads. "We generate leads and get qualified applicants and send them to the schools that hire us. We focus on adult education, like continuing ed or MBAs or doctorates. Our target is people that are already set in their careers but don't have a bachelor's or associate degree, or want a Master or an MBA. Or maybe they want to go back to school to switch careers. It's generally people that already have jobs and are in the workforce," explains Tom.

It's quite a big market. Today the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that only 28% of Americans hold college degrees, and they're execpting that percentage to climb. According to the U.S. Department of Education, between 2005 and 2015, postsecondary enrollment is expected to increase 11% for those under 25 and 18% for those 25 years of age and older.

LiveGrad fends off competition by doing the groundwork. "The big thing is lead quality, so we have a call center that helps us firm up the person's interest and make sure they're in fact a qualified applicant. We've been able to find a niche and continue to grow. We're good at pay-per-click and organic search in Google, MSN and Yahoo!," adds Tom.

Using Facebook Ads
In addition to search engine advertising, Tom occasionally uses Facebook ads. This past summer he was looking to hire an intern and went with Facebook because they allow you to do a highly targeted ads, more so than other ad networks. He wanted to recruit a technology programming student from 4 specific schools, so he ran the ad and found someone from Cornell in just 3 days - for just $47. "I was able to target only current students in the schools I wanted and also only juniors and seniors. Facebook has a big student population and the information is very accurate because it's user generated. People fill out the information themselves. You can specify location, state, city, keywords or what university or schools they're in because all that information appears on their profile," says the native New Yorker.

For his business he mostly advertises through Google, MSN and Yahoo! but says that if you have a product or service for a very targeted group, Facebook works well. You can search by keyword or by company name so can you can target people that have worked at a certain company or that have a certain interest, or even alumni. Tom points out that it's expensive but it works well if you're looking to reach a very specific target market, like at a company or a specific school.

Tom says he'd like to build LiveGrad up and sell it in a few years, but beyond that he can't say. My guess? I see him featured in Entrepreneur or Inc. magazine pretty soon - but you read about him on the Mogulette Blog first!

If you have you any thoughts or comments on using Facebook ads, please share...we'd love to hear from you.

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Bloggers Get the Full Treatment at the DNC

It's never been a better time to start a blog. No matter what field you're in, blogs are increasingly opening doors for publishers and getting us R-E-S-P-E-C-T, as Aretha would say. My friend and fellow blogger, Sharon Toomer, attended the Democratic National Convention along with two of her writers in an all-expense paid trip, truly a dream come true for her, all because of her blog, Blackandbrownnews.com, (BBN for short). Sharon launched BBN about two years ago as a user-driven news, information and community forum to cover stories from the Black and Latino perspective.

Naturally, covering the DNC was a plum assignment for Sharon, who's day job is at the Association of Black Foundation Executives. But with limited funds, she boldly decided to ask her employer to sponsor her trip to both the Democratic and Republican conventions, and they said yes. This wouldn't have happened, say, a couple of years ago. How times have changed! (That's her getting some face time with Rep. John Lewis at the convention)

But there's more. She hooked up with the NY Community Media Alliance, who launched an election 2008 initiative and is financing a group of ethnic and immigrant media organizations so they can attend both conventions, as well the primary season and the general election. The NYCMA has also arranged for new media journalists and bloggers to get the all-important press credentials for high profile events, including "Big Tent Denver". There are 11 journalists along with Sharon, representing Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Ireland, Poland, Russia and of course Black, African American and Latino communities. "None of us has the resources, human or financial, to staff this kind of coverage," says Sharon.

Bloggers and new media journalists had a huge area where they could blog all day, with free lunch and dinner, sponsored by Daily Koz, Google and YouTube. "They're taking bloggers seriously and created a space for us to be able to work," adds Sharon.

Her first interview was with Al Sharpton at La Guardia when they were both boarding the plane from NY to Denver. She saw him waiting to be seated and asked if she could have a few minutes of his time. He was very generous and kind to her. "It was cool", she says. "This is very valuable for nontraditional news and information outlets like BBN that don't have access to the democratic process in the same way that mainstream media does yet we still need to get information to our readers."

Next stop for Sharon: Minnesota. After that? The world!

Social Media Camp Recap

By the time I got to my first session at Social Media Camp, the one-day event at Sun Microsystems on Thursday, Joshua Mack, VP of Network for Outside.in was wrapping up his schpeel on "place blogging", a term I had never heard before (other cool lingo I picked up that day: failwhale - what you get when the Twitter server is busy...). Their software allows you to enter a zip code and track blog conversations people are having in your local area. Very cool.

Twitter was the big theme of the day at this social symposium, and the next session I attended was a case study on how a business uses it. It was led by Saul Colt, Head of Magic at a company called FreshBooks (man, I wish I had a job title like that in my resume!). Saul (that's him with me in the picture below) is obsessed with Twitter and spoke for an hour on how he uses it for the company he works for, which makes online invoicing and billing software. Actually what he does is the opposite of business, because his "tweets", or the messages he sends on Twitter, have absolutely nothing to do with business. For example, he'll send a tweet in support of fellow Twitter-ers if they share a disappointing experience.

Saul believes that we must use the internet to have real-world relationships with people, and twitter-ing is a way to do that. It used to be we knew everything about what was going on with the people in our community, like who had a baby, who went to what school, who was going where on Saturday night, etc. Somehow that got lost as society evolved, but the web is enabling us to find a way back there.

Saul pointed out that he gets 70% of his business from Twitter but says you can't track the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing in traditional ways. So he takes out all the things you can track, like promo codes, etc. and the rest is WOM. His last two cents: "Make people feel they're part of something special. Never pitch product - if it's good it will sell itself." Saul's quotable quote: the 4 E's - "execute on extraordinary experiences every day - that's what people will talk about."

From there I moved on to a fascinating discussion given by Loretta Donovan. Her session was titled "Customers, Clients and Social Mediators, When the Wiki Becomes CoLaboratory" (note: the spelling of the last word is intentional). Just in case you're fuzzy on what a wiki is, Wikipedia defines it as "a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content." This makes for interesting collaborations between employees inside an organization (many of these are private), or anyone within an industry that wants to share knowledge about a specific subject. Loretta took us through the 3 main elements that wikis must have to be effective:

1-Knowledge - meaning information, and to this she suggests adding tags and allowing comments.

2-Integration - with more knowledge, for example, adding links to video or other sources that contribute to your premise. You can add a new page allowing contributors to continuously add and edit information, insert links back to other pages of the wiki, and raise questions that can be answered by other contributors - all this creates quantity.

3-Execution - this is the experimentation phase. Here you can create a prototype of something and then test it, and write about the results of the first test, and the second test, and the third, and so on, always allowing for people to leave comments.

Loretta added that wikis leave a visible path of how our thinking is going. They create a level of transparency for organizations, and a sense of psychological safety among employees - and where people feel safe, creativity abounds.

In the end, however, you need to sustain it. There are many wikis that are started and then forgotten, so you need to have a social mediator in charge of attracting those conversations to keep it going.

Next stop: Howard Greenstein's, interactive session on Twitter, where he posed the question, "how do you use Twitter for business?" to the group. These were some of the responses:

• as a source of news & information
  
  
• to participate in the community - answer questions and ask questions
  
  
• to alert your community about upcoming events
  
  
• to follow interesting writers/conversations
  
  
• to send out a daily tip
  
  
• to meet like-minded individuals and connect with them locally or when you travel
  
  
• to promote awareness of a particular issue
  
  
• to offer what you have
  

In short, it was an awesome event and I had a lot of great conversations with fellow social media enthusiasts Paul Burani, John Follis, Cecilia Feret, Marshall Sponder, Bendrix, Donald Schwartz, BL Ochman, David Berkowitz, Helen Yi Chen, and Mo Krochmal. I only regret not having taken more pictures! Anyway, please feel free to share your thoughts on Twitter, or on Social Media Camp if you were there!

Use Widgets to Promote Your Site's Content

When Sheryl Azaroff launched her website two years ago she made a lot of mistakes. She started out on a different direction than where is is today and hired the wrong developer. But in the last year things have come together. "You have an idea in your head about how you want things but what you set out to do and what you actually do end up being different. However, you find out the information you need along the way," says the web entrepreneur.

I met Sheryl recently at a NYSIA event and was intrigued by what was doing with her website, PhysicalFitnet.com, which offers information and resources to both fitness professionals and fitness-minded individuals, mostly in the form of video.

"We have a video library of nearly 900 video clips. Most of them are exercise demos and some are answers to frequently asked fitness questions. We also have workouts for individual exercises. The exercises clips are about 10-15 seconds - very short - to give you an idea of what the exercise is. The FAQs are a little longer, one to one and a half minutes," explains the former personal trainer.

Fitness videos on the internet are a great source for people interested in staying in shape, but Sheryl has taken them one step further. She's making the videos available for syndication, or RSS feeds, which is very handy for fitness bloggers or gyms that have websites and may be looking for fresh, relevant, multimedia content for their sites but don't have the time to make it themselves. Now they can offer their visitors an "exercise of the day", or a "workout of the week" by just plugging in Sheryl's professionally generated videos. The videos are free to either watch directly from her site or syndicate.



Sheryl's Widget Strategy
To makes things really easy, Sheryl has created widgets, like the one you see above, so that once you put the videos on your site they will be updated automatically. That means you will have fresh content every day without having to do anything yourself!

I wrote a post about widgets recently (What's Your Widget Strategy), but to review, they are little pieces of code that you can embed into your site to allow users to do certain things. The "search this site" widget on the top of my sidebar is an example of this. These mini-applications are great ways to promote your business and drive traffic to your site. In Sheryl's case, she's using widgets to showcase her videos and to create awareness for her brand. She offers the widgets on her site and is also using other platforms, such as WidgetBox and Google Gadgets to distribute them. And she's looking for ways to offer it as a Facebook app as well.

She currently offers four types of widgets - one for an exercise of the day, one for a workout of the week, one for a Fitness Q&A for the Day and another one for Exercises by Body Part. All these will automatically be updated for you.

Sites can easily customize the videos they want to syndicate, which is how a blog called Diets in Review is using them. They are focused on the nutrition side but they wanted to start offering content on fitness because it's a topic that's closely related to dieting. Sheryl's videos make their posts more interactive and interesting. In this entry on combination exercises they added 5 of Sheryl's videos to go along with the topic of the post. Once you click on the image, a window will pop up with the video. To monetize it further Sheryl is using Google Adsense to display ads inside the pop-ups. In the future, once she increases her distribution, she hopes to strike deals directly with advertisers.

"Originally when we started I was only going to have content on my site and make money through ads. Now we're thinking of ways to distribute our content as well as sell ads. And there's more ideas related to this to get other people to look at our content. The production and creation are done - now we're leveraging the work that's already completed," explains Sheryl.

What "new media" tools have you used on your site? We'd love to hear about it!

Blogs - Your Electronic Calling Card to the World

This week I gave my very first two-part workshop on blogging and it was a resounding success. The class got so excited about setting up their blogs everyone had given it a go by the time the second session rolled around.

One story I shared with them was how I started my Mogulette blog a year and a half ago. I met a woman who was having a lot of difficulty finding a job in her industry so she decided to start blogging. Six months later she had a book deal and a year after that she landed a job in her field in addition to lining up speaking engagements. Her story inspired me so much I immediately created a Blogger account and started writing. Her advice was to write as much as possible, like at least 2-3 times a week or more. However I never managed to enter more than one post a week (except like, right now when it's been two weeks since I wrote last, but, who's counting?), but the beauty of it is that even with minimal writing I still get results.

Today through my blog I make valuable connections I would never make otherwise. It's not only a source for consulting leads but it's also a great way for journalists and referral partners to find me. Forbes.com recently stumbled across my blog and asked me to join their Blog Network and share ad revenues with them. Last week Dale King of GuruKnowledge.org found me and asked if he could interview me for his blog (I'll be on his home page for a week). And suddenly I'm getting pitches from PR people to feature their clients on my blog.

I think it's a basic instinct we have in all of us - the curiosity about what other people are doing on the one hand, and the need to tell others what we're up to, on the other. Blogs - and all new media for that matter - feed that need we have inside to express ourselves and make connections - whether meaningful or superficial (super pokes!), intellectual or mundane.

Big businesses are increasingly seeing the value of 'Web 2.0' and how it can help keep the connection between them and their clients alive and the communication flowing. But it's also easier than ever for small businesses to join into the action with so much free software available today. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube...in addition to blogs - make it possible for us to stay front and center in our customers' minds. The key is to pick two or three of them and focus on those.

What new media tools work best for you? How do you manage all your social networks? Please share your tips!

Basic Web Pages Every Site Should Have

For the past month I've been teaching a Do-It-Yourself Website Building workshop and right now we're working on content, so I thought I'd share some of the information I gathered for the class. We'll be focusing mainly on the basics: 1. the home/welcome page, 2. the "about us" page, and 3. the "contact us" page. Ready to start the "web waltz"? And a 1-2-3, 1-2-3...

Before we start, however, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Keywords are key
Don't build your site using only images because then search engines won't be able to find you (fate worse than death!). Think of words, terms and phrases people would most likely type into a search engine to find a product or service like yours. Make a list of 20-30 and choose the most relevant ones for each page. The ones that describe your home page may not be the same as the ones for a particular product page, or for an article you may have written.

Insert keywords:

1-Into the text – titles, subtitles, paragraphs, hyperlinks, sidebar text. But don't overdo it! Google will penalize you if you flood each page with keywords, so stick to one per paragraph. Conversely, if there's too few keywords the search engines will think it’s not about that topic, so shoot for a happy medium.

2-Into the coding of the site - meta tags, title tag, description tag , keyword tags

Overall Content
What images come up to your mind when you think about your business? Those are the same pictures you need to paint to convey your marketing message. Building your reputation and your brand is like dating - you have to woo your prospects in by showing them your best qualities so #1 - they'll like you, and #2 - they'll trust you. Selling is all about trust, so be personable, let your personality shine through - quirks and all.

As David Vinjamuri says in his new book, Accidental Branding, the best brands create a myth around them. People love stories, and sharing your story will allow them to like you. The more they like you the more likely they'll buy something from you. David points to J. Peterman's website, where every product page tells a different anecdote or adds a snippet that whets your appetite. And he continuously keeps the myth alive by writing a blog that gets tons of comments (for more on this read Creative Storytelling).

So write in the first person, as if you were talking to someone you like, and share your stories. Tell them about you, what problems your products and services solve and how they do that. But stay truthful to who you are. By telling them a good story you're giving people the tools to tell others about you.

Now to the nitty gritty...

1- Home/Welcome Page
Like the quote says, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression". Your welcome page introduces you to the world, so you want to make sure that it is presenting the right information in a clear and easy to follow manner. Don't make it hard for people to find things, and keep the main points "above the fold", so they don't have to scroll down. Your home page should be a portal where you can direct people to the deeper sales content pages. The Search Engine Guide recommends keeping text to a minimum in the home page. (See: 7 Ways to Make your Home Page A Home Run)

2- About Us
Whenever I visit a new website one of the first pages I click on is "About Us". That's where I expect to find out the who, what, when, where and how of the site, and if it's not there, I usually take that as a bad sign and move on. A well written "about us" page, on the other hand, will help you be credible, findable and likable, as a recent post on Search Engine Land says (see Making a Good Impression with About Us Pages). The article has a ton of great suggestions of what to include in your about page. Here's a few, plus some of my own:

• Mission Statement
  
  
• Bios of you, your employees
  
  
• Photos and/or video of yourself, your office or employees - add keyword-rich captions and descriptions so people doing image or video searches can find you
  
  
• A history or timeline of your business
  
  
• Case Studies
  
  
• Testimonials
  
  
• Store hours, location, a map
  
  
• Customer Service Policies (on returns, shipping, privacy, etc.)
  
  
• Descriptions of community involvement or membership in local organizations
  
  
• Awards received
  
  
• A link to your press page
  
  
• Job openings

Also see:
- 5 Easy Ways to Make Your About Us Page More About Your Customer
- About Your Website's About Us Page

3- Contact Us
Want to make your list of prospects grow? Make sure you have a way to collect email addresses on your "contact us" page. It doesn't work just to give them your contact information and pray they'll call. By collecting email addresses you can keep potential clients abreast of industry happenings, special events, promotions, or new products/services. It's like sending them a little reminder of who you are so when they're ready to do business they'll think of you first. For ideas on how to collect emails see 6 Ways To Get Your Visitors to Contact You From Your 'Contact Us' Page.

Map out all the information first
Know that you have a rough idea of what goes into each page, take a moment to think about what information you’d like to include in each of them. In a separate, blank piece of paper write a simple outline for each – this will be your blueprint. For ex., in your "about us" page you'll need your bio and a picture, as well as links to other pages on your site that might show samples of your work. For the products page you may want to have thumbnail images of products with a short description and then a link to individual product pages. Make sure to have calls to action in every page - ex. subscribe to my newsletter/blog, buy my products, come to my event, hire me, etc.

Well there is it - your 3 basic pages. Did I miss anything? Please let me know!

It's 10pm, Do You Know Where Your Brand Is?

I've been working on a new logo for my Mogulette Blog (coming soon!) which has led me to think a lot about my brand and what direction to take it. I get so confused by all the different aspects of my business and how they're changing and how (or if) to connect them to one another. So I checked in with my branding guru, the very talented Romana Mirza (who is founder of her own firm, Studio Pinpoint) to shine some light on these matters. Her recommendation for entrepreneurs that are still testing their product/service mix is to start out by making a list of words. Here's what she had to say:

There’s a 3-dimensional perspective that all visionary leaders need to have when building their brands. First you review the strengths of your competitors, then your own and finally those of brands outside of your industry.

1. Competitive landscape: Know what your competitors are offering. Not just the factual details like price, selection, service delivery, etc. but also the language they use - “fastest”, “best quality”, “luxury”, “softest”, “tastiest” – whatever it is. You will find that all your competitors speak the same way. Note these similar phrases and descriptive words. If you don’t have a competitor then fast forward to a time when you become really successful and try to figure out which companies will want to jump into your space and become your competitors, and summarize their language and common phrases.

2. Look inside: Define your character, your personality, what’s unique or quirky about you – how are you are different from the next person. This is hard to do and that’s where working with a brand strategist really helps. Ask your friends, your colleagues, your partners. Make sure to get them to tell you what is unique about you in all the different areas of your life: family, work, business partners, friends, acquaintances, etc. Note the differences, the unique attributes. I really liked Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath - it's a great way to get an objective view of your strengths.

3. Benchmark: Look for your favorite brands in industries outside of your business. For instance I was hired to do the brand repositioning for a very large office furniture manufacturer. This company appealed to the masses and offered nice design, so I looked for an established brand that had those same qualities to see how they went to market with their designs and how they targeted their customers. Kenneth Cole, which was in a totally different field, ended up being my benchmark. Study your favorite brands, whether it's a tennis racquet manufacturer, clothing designer, a soap company or a car company. Look at their websites, note the language they use to speak to customers, figure out what you like about how they present themselves to you and take note.

Once you complete noting the three dimensions, lay out what you found in front of you. This is where you'll see your brand coming together. Your business may be in flux, your distribution model may change or your financing methods may vary but one thing is certain - no matter how many structural or operational changes you make, your brand should always remain consistent. This is the most important part. The brand must reflect who you are, your core values, the core culture of the company you are building. In the early stages the three-dimensional perspective will give you that.

I then asked Romana for guidance in helping "slashers" like myself (people with multiple slashes in their job titles) to create our brands. Specifically I wanted to know if it was better to tie in the different roles we play into one single brand, or create separate ones for each. Here's what she said:

Develop a brand strategy. This is where you create an “organizational chart” of your different areas of expertise. If in doing this exercise one emerges as the “parent skill” then your other slashes will become subsets of that. If they truly emerge as individual silos then your brand effort may also have to be individualized. Write your strategy - it will determine your “go to market” approach.

Romana says there millions of dollars spent on marketing and brand strategies that don’t work. "Most of the time campaigns are so out of touch from the intent and culture of their organization they don’t even make it to market. Then a company has to invest even more money to try to get it right, but by that point they are so fatigued they just launch whatever comes next. We need to change that," she adds.

Here's her list of 4 branding pitfalls to watch out for:

1. Avoid “standard industry language”. If everyone is talking about luxury, quality and craftsmanship then you should use other words like elite or best-in-class, care, attention-to-detail, and skill.

2. Don’t be something you’re not. Some new companies take on a persona, a brand personality that is not a reflection of who they truly are. People will want to be seen as “worldly and exciting” when they are really “approachable and skilled”. Don’t get caught in the ad agency ‘fast talk’ and adopt an ad campaign or look that doesn’t reflect who you are.

3. Don’t go in blindly. It shocks me how little knowledge entrepreneurs have of their competitive marketplace. Everyone starts a business thinking they have the most unique product. If that is the case then study those companies that are going to come after your market share once they see how successful you’ve become.

4. Be strategic. Throwing an identity and company name together without understanding the strategic implications of how the business is going to grow and what it is going to look like when you get there feels like you are accomplishing a lot in the moment. But then once you get there - to your future state - you realize all the mistakes you made. I work with many, many entrepreneurs – all in their 50’s - who didn’t focus on long term strategy in their 20’s, 30’s or 40’s when they launched their businesses so now they have to do everything all over again.

Branding takes a lot of soul searching and self-analysis and may be the last thing you want to do when there's so many other pressing matters to take care of for your business, but all that precious time spent in careful thought and planning will definitely be worth it.

What are your favorite brands, and why? Please share!

Balancing Work with Fun is Not Always Easy

A big thanks to Lori Field, who just plugged my blog on her website, Real Beauty Is. Lori describes herself as a social entrepreneur and life coach, and her site is about empowering women to feel good about themselves. You would think that would be something that comes naturally but I know for myself I need constant reminders to do "feel-good" things like scheduling a massage at least once a month (once a week would be even better!), eating healthy foods and going to bed at a reasonable hour. If left to my own devices I'd spend all my time either working or trying to figure out the next steps for my business, which can lead to burn-out.

Checking in with friends and family helps me stay grounded, so I try to make at least 3 non-work-related calls a day. Planning social activities can feel like a job in itself but if I don't tear myself away I become grouchy and negative, which kills my creativity. Plus there's nothing like the exhilaration I feel when viewing a great art exhibit, or walking through a blooming flower patch in Central Park (which is where I took this picture). After these little breaks, my head feels as if someone had gone inside it with a vacuum cleaner and scooped up all the "busy-ness" and cleared some space. It's like taking a mini-vacation from, well, myself.

Last weekend I went to visit my family in Puerto Rico (I would show some pictures except that my niece dropped my Canon Powershot A530 and broke it and all my photos are now stuck inside. I've grown so accustomed to carrying my camera everywhere that I feel lost without it. Once I figure out how to fix/replace it I'll add photos, so check back!). I was only in San Juan for 4 days but I spent a lot of time feeling guilty for leaving my work behind. In my head there's a sort of time clock that's constantly telling me that I'm late, that I'm behind schedule, like that rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. The reality is that yes, I have deadlines, but things are unfolding in my life exactly as they should, which is not necessarily on my schedule. So I need to relax more, and to enjoy my life right now, exactly where it is, because that's all I've got. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow hasn't happened yet. The only thing I can change is the present moment, which will be over in a blink of an eye.

I had a wonderful time in the island. We celebrated my mother's 76th birthday (she looks better than ever!) by taking a trip to the mountains to eat local delicacies, like crispy roast pork, fried green plantains, meat and crab turnovers an lots of other finger-lickin' goodies. I taught my niece and nephews how to use my camera (which ended up costing me but it was worth it), took in the tropical scenery and filled my belly with my favorite foods. The rest of the weekend was just as enjoyable. When I got back I put together a killer presentation for the "D-I-Y Website" workshop I gave on Tuesday (more on that in upcoming posts). My business is alive and well and didn't go down the drain because I put it on hold for a few days. Live and learn!

How do you find work/life balance? Share your thoughts with us!

"New Directions" for Women Entrepreneurs

Last week I gave a "Blogging for Business" presentation (one of my favorite topics!) at the Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement (WCECA), a nonprofit organization located in downtown Manhattan, and met a fabulous group of budding "fempreneurs" (pictured right).

Arlene wants to start a film production company to make video resumes for actors, Idalis is creating a line of makeup bags, Shevon is developing a line of vegan, gluten free foods, and Yanique makes eco-friendly home furnishings. Maresa and Leonette are both starting coaching practices to help women in transition, while Kim is in real estate management. These are just some of the businesses that are being "incubated" at the WCECA.

Established in 1970, the WCECA's main objective is to provide marketable skills to women of color who are in "marginable and tenous places in the paid labor force." To this end, they created a program called "New Directions" for low income women with the aspiration and commitment to start their own businesses. Participants meet twice a week for twelve weeks, and learn how to" build and run a successful business, create a sound business plan and prepare for the obstacles and rewards of entrepreneurship." Workshops include business plan writing, marketing, networking, legal issues, financial management and business strategy. High tech mediums like Internet blogging and online marketing are also covered. This valuable course, which is offered twice a year, is totally free of charge. Most of the women who participate find out about it through word of mouth, and the class size is usually 10-15.

Kathleen Vaughn (sitting front row, far right in the picture), who has been with the Center since Sept. of last year, is the program coordinator. "Ours is an organization founded by and for women, so we are very attuned to the challenges women face today," she explains.

Kathleen says that one of the biggest challenges women entrepreneurs face is putting together the (dreaded!) business plan, so three to four of the classes are focused solely that. They are taught by an instructor from American Express who keeps the ladies on track by assigning homework they have to send to her via email.

"We address the professional and personal needs of budding female entrepreneurs. In addition to tech skills we also provide guidance on goal setting, stress management, personal health and nutrition and planning for change," adds Kathleen, whose dedication to the women is evident. Before introducing me, she read an inspirational poem to get everyone in the right state of mind. And when she went away to Vermont for a week she hired one of the past participants, who has a pet sitting business, to take care of her kitty.

After the class was over I walked out with a warm feeling and a spring in my step, happy to have helped other mogulettes-in-the-making move a little bit closer to their dreams.