Getting Past Your Business Launch

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If starting a business were easy, everyone would do it. But they don’t. Only those of you who know deep down inside you're entrepreneurs at heart will ever take these steps--even if you’ve denied that entrepreneurial spirit burning inside you for a long time.

Using that burning desire to grow your business, however, is a far different task from simply lighting it. Most people start with the odds stacked so much against them that it’s difficult for them to fan the fire beyond the first few months or years. Here are a few pieces of advice I can offer to help you keep your new business growing in size and profit:

1. Hire people who are better at the job than you are. It’s a fact that companies are built by people, and the best people build the best and most profitable companies. Put simply, great employees may cost you 20 to 30 percent more in wages, but they can be twice as productive as mediocre employees. Invest in good people.

2. Place high urgency in everything you do. Always do everything you can today. When I started each of my businesses, I'd work constantly until I just had to go eat and sleep. Too many people treat their businesses as nine-to-five jobs. Never put something off until tomorrow if you can do it right now.

3. Get customers coming back. The road to profitability is through repeat business. Too few business owners set themselves up for long-term success. Your business grows when you add regular new customers on top of existing regular customers. Think of it this way: What if every customer you ever got stayed for life? How many regular buyers would you have?

4. Make decisions quickly. New companies don’t have the time or resources to stand still. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf once said to me, “When placed in command, take charge.” He also believes it’s better to make a decision and move than it is to stand still.

5. Deliver more than you promise. If you tell a customer it'll be three days, deliver in two. If you think it'll be two hours, say three hours and surprise them. This is the best form of marketing ever.

6. Price yourself for profit. Don’t ever be the cheapest. You're the little guy; you don’t have economies of scale. Big companies can make up in volume what they lack in margin. You can’t.

7. Never spend a dollar you don’t have to. You don’t need a new desk, you need a cheap desk. Too many new business owners go and buy the best stuff because they think image is important. Listen, when you get profitable, you can have a big mahogany desk. Right now, just get a desk.

8. Set a big vision.Start Small, Finish Big should be the title of your book. Don’t aim to be the best dog trainer in Montana--aim to be the best in the country. Remember, building a business is a 10-year plan, not a one-year plan.

9. Marketing is math. Don’t ever let an advertising sales rep teach you anything about marketing. Reps will say dumb things like, “Half your advertising works and half doesn’t--and you’ll never know which half.” Rubbish. If an ad that costs $100 makes you $100 back in profit, it’s a good ad. One other tip: Image advertising doesn’t make sense when you're not yet profitable.

10. Learn to sell. There's nothing worse than a business owner who isn’t willing to sell--or even learn to sell. No company makes money unless someone sells something, and you can’t just rely on people you hire to do the selling for you. If you want to grow a profitable business, you’ve got to learn sales yourself.

11. It’s simpler than you think. Before most people even go into business, they work it up to be far more complex than it really is. Business is very simple: Sell at a profit and keep at it. Overcomplicating the process won’t help anyone. If your business seems too complex, it probably is--so make it simple and watch yourself succeed.

Remember, you have a lot to learn--and that’s a good thing. You'll make mistakes. Just try to make them small ones at the start. Never bet the ranch on one deal.

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Brad Sugars is Entrepreneur.com’s Startup Basics columnist and the founder of Action International, a business coaching franchise.

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http://www.wifebeader.com/


2006 Projected Sales: $1 million

After earning a master's degree at New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology, Dahl worked for couture designers like Anne Bowen, who creates high-ticket beaded sensations with semiprecious stones. On a whim, Dahl bought some beads to adorn her "wife-beater"-a tank-top undershirt. After receiving scores of compliments and gauging the interest of friends who worked for Vogue and In Style, Dahl started Wifebeader with the shirt on her back in 2003.

Dahl created eight different designs with the help of a beader from Anne Bowen. "I'd be on my couch, in front of the TV with a needle and thread," recalls Dahl. After selling out several trunk shows during her research period, Dahl approached boutiques and took orders on every single visit. "They liked that it's all handmade," explains Dahl. "We use the finest stones and beads from all over the world."

When Bloomingdale's picked up her first collection, Dahl wanted to "pop a bottle of champagne and say, 'We've done it--we've captured New York and the country!'" But she's hesitant to say that she's made it. "It's my personality to always want more and not be satisfied."

Dahl has expanded to 12 silhouettes, new fabrics and a customized Build Your Own Beader option. Wifebeaders are carried in 130 boutiques across the U.S., London, Puerto Rico and Paris; Fred Segal bought her fall 2005 collection; and Dahl is the Sundance Film Festival's exclusive gift-bag designer, for which she's launching a higher-end line, Laura Dahl.
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8 Simple Steps to Make a Page More "Local"

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Local Search is poised for big growth, with a recent estimate from Borrell Associates hinting at a 32% growth in local online advertising in 2007. But local search is still in its infancy and is a "mess," as Greg Sterling described it at the recent Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose.

We don't know much about the local search algorithms in use at Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. We do know, however, that local SERPs use a different algorithm than the main SERPs ? a location-based algorithm. So if you're a small business that relies on local search traffic, it's a good idea to make sure search engine crawlers have a good sense of where you're located.

Here are some thoughts on how to make your web site and web pages more local search-friendly:

1. Have your physical location on every page of your site. So obvious, but not all small businesses do it. If you choose to hide your address because you work from home, then get a mailbox at the UPS Store or your local equivalent and put that street address on your site.

2. Have your local phone number on every page of your site. It's great that you offer customers an 800 number for customer service, but how do you expect a search algorithm to learn anything about your location from finding 800-555-1212 on your web site? You have to list your local phone number, with the area code, to help the engines connect you to your location.

3. Give your physical address extra prominence on your "Contact Us" page. In other words, before you show the actual contact form, have your street address, city, state, ZIP, local phone, etc. at the top of the page where the crawler will get to it quickly.

4. Create a page on your site called "Directions / Location". This helps customers and search engine crawlers. Don't just use a MapQuest or Google Maps image; instead, write out where you are and how to get there.

When you write this page be as detailed as possible, including as many location descriptors as you can. Something like this would be great:

XYZ Widgets is located in the Shadow Trails Shopping Center on 4th Avenue in the North Hills area of Happyville, Washington. Our address is 425 4th Avenue, Suite 201, Happyville, WA, 99999.

(Notice the two different descriptors for Washington in there?)

And then write out driving directions to your location from all possible directions, again making sure to use plenty of well-known location descriptors.

5. Link to Google Maps and Yahoo Maps on your Location/Directions page. Both offer a "Link to this page/map" URL that you can use on your web page. The reason these might be beneficial ? and this is pure speculation on my part ? is that both Google Maps and Yahoo Maps include the latitude and longitude of the location in the URL, and that can help a crawler learn more about where you are. (MapQuest generates an incredibly long URL which doesn't appear to have latitude and longitude information.)

6. When possible, include your location in your page Titles. It's one of the most important signals your page offers to a crawler, so why not include a local signal?

7. Somewhere on your site, list all the cities / towns your business covers. If your business is located in Happyville, but you also serve 10 other outlying towns/cities, list those on your home page, About page, or Contact page. You can also use the long lost "Keywords" meta tag for this purpose, for those crawlers that still look at it.

8. Take advantage of internal linking opportunities with smart anchor text. When linking to your Location / Directions page, saying click here for directions isn't good enough. Better: click here for directions to our Happyville location.

Together, these tactics should help you give search engine crawlers a better idea of your exact location. And that, in turn, should put you in better position to take advantage of the growing local search market.

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