Bootstrap StartUp Secret #1

Do you want to start a business of your own? Many people do. The most common reason I hear for this not working out is a person’s financial status. Fortunately, you don’t have to be limited by this in most cases. I have personal, repeat experience starting businesses on a Bootstrap Budget™ with success and income as a result..

You see, a lot of the advice out there is all about telling you how to spend your money. I believe it’s more important to find ways to avoid spending money—you want a thriving business not a money monster eating up your cash and savings.

So how do you create a BootStrap Start-Up? A BootStrap Start-Up uses your existing resources and abilities as the pivot point for a powerful beginning. Instead of requiring lots of new equipment and skills, your best bet for your first business is to start with the thing you already know best.

I’d like to share a person example to illustrate. A number of years ago I started my goofiest business so far. I wanted a business that didn’t involve spending hours at my computer and on the phone.

This new business had to get me out of the house and outdoors. After considering some options, I realized there was no professional pooper scooper business in the county where I lived. So I went for it. Most of my friends thought I was a crazy. I already had a successful consulting practice.

The business was crazy in some ways: how many people will actually volunteer to pick up puppy poo for money? For me, however, specific factors existed to make in perfect and not crazy:

· I had real-world experience as the daughter of a breeder and cleaning up after the dogs was one of my jobs at home until I left for college.

· I needed very little specialized equipment: $25 for the little box shovel and rake, a $2 plastic bucket for bleach water, and a couple bucks for bleach.

· I spent $50 for an introductory membership to an international associate of pooper scoopers

· I knew that I needed and how to get the individual regulations on my own

· I already owned a small pickup truck

· I knew people on the HOA of very expensive neighborhoods who were likely clients

Happily, this kind of slightly off-the-wall business is just the kind of thing you can easily bootstrap into surprising success. The risk is pretty low and the potential is often surprising.

What happened--Are you curious what can be accomplished scooping puppy poo? In three months I had enough clients to make $3,000 extra a month and was interviewing high school kids to help out during the busy summer months.

Best of all in less than a year my only competitor who worked in a couple other counties decided to expand her business and bought out my client list for over 300% of the cost to start the business.

This is a great BootStrap Start-Up Success. I highly recommend this type of business for your maiden voyage into professional independence. Many people find there is a lot to learn along the way. Why not start with something possible, accessible, and with as little risk as possible?

The key to a success BootStrap Start-Up is looking at your existing resources and experience with a different perspective.

What have you done in your life that you’re really good at that might never have been a profession or business for you before?

What physical resources or equipment do you already own that could also serve you in a business capacity?

Do you have unique connections (like mine with the HOAs) that can open doors for you ahead of others?

Most of the people I’ve met have at least two of the three factors. Don’t let your BootStrap Success Factors go unrecognized. Tap them for a business that’s well designed for you and success.

Wishing you Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue

Make a Smart Choice for Your First Business

Your best bet for your first business will be easier and more successful if you choose something with the following specific qualities. By incorporating these factors you’re your first business, you increase your profit potential while reducing your risk. Those qualities are.

Time-Based Success. This simply means a business that depends more on your expertise and time than on investing in how much stock in storage somewhere. Use your expertise as leverage to keep the cost of being in business lower. The cheapest business I ever started cost me $100. I already owned most of what I needed and the real invest was my time to make it work. In today’s market, time is your most valuable and important commodity.

Focus on Service. Regardless the business you choose, the ability of you and whatever size organization you create to provide personal, top-notch service to people is a make-or-break reality. When service is what you sell, this becomes an even more powerful component.

Expertise is the Valuable Product. The easiest, fastest way to turn an idea into something profitable is to re-frame your existing expertise. While this can be a challenge as we discussed during the first secret, it’s also the kind of business that has your lowest risk.

Profit from Skills instead of Product. This basic concept is to take your expertise and turn it into a system or educational package that teaches others how to master the things you’re the best at.

Overall, you want to choose and design your business for success from the beginning. Starting a business that involves product or stock that you need to store and sell increases your success challenges. Even if you work with a company that has a formula for working this kind of business (say a franchise or network marketing organization) success through product has the potential to be burden and means it takes longer and more money to succeed.

Your first choice in business success is a chance to get your “sea legs" and I recommend an easy sail. Being in business on your own is challenging; you can make the experience easier. You may decide that this isn't that path for you--passion and vision need to come first. And I still recommend doing the lower-risk/higher-return part first!

Wishing you Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue

© Copyright 2009-2010 Heidi Sue Roth. All Rights Reserved.

Over 50 New Entrepreneur Success Secret #2

Secret #2 Thinking Like a Corporation Doesn't Turn Your Business into Corporate Success

Study and observation bring out two distinct ways of thinking about business that can be beneficial for a corporation with a number of employees and a downfall for your start-up. Today, I’m going to share with you those two arenas and how you can avoid making these mistakes in your business.

I want to start with perhaps the most confusing and most time-consuming thought patterns that is useful at an intermediate level of business while really jamming things up early on. And the topic is accounting practices.

Start by understanding that modern business accounting practices serve a variety of purposes. These practices support acquiring hard-good business assets such as machines, vehicles, and buildings with as little tax implication as possible. In addition, these number-crunching techniques are designed to make it easier to obtain these items while off-setting the money spent on the purchase.

Likewise, modern business account practices are designed to off set growth and profit in ways to reduce tax liability. Are these things useful? Of course they are—when you have a business that is actually making you a decent amount of money AND you want to get more out of your business for less tax and more outcome.

So, what can you do? Develop the habit of watching and managing the cash flow of your fledgling business. With the advent of online banking this is easy and near-instantaneous. And that’s a very good thing! Thanks for formal accounting practices, this can be a tricky thing for someone without the training to find in all those numbers. Since this is perhaps the single most important real-money number you need, a checkbook ledger attitude gives you a great foundation to succeed.

You see, what really matters in your business is how much money you get to take home. How much money comes in matter, but if you never get to pay yourself anything, you do not have a business. Some of my clients have heard this definition before.

Until your business is paying you, what you really have is a very successful hobby. A hobby that pays for itself is a brilliant idea. A business actually not only pays the bills for it’s own existence, it also pays you for the time and effort you put into it. A start-up operation does need some time to reach this level; profit rarely happens right away. In my programs I teach you how to reach the level of being profitable faster and with a lower investment. To even have an idea of how that works, you need to watch and understand how cash flows in and out of your business.

Your ability to re-frame your thinking in another arena also contributes to your success. When it comes to branding and advertising, your ability to NOT think corporate directly influences your success at this stage.

Image and branding are a huge investment for a corporation. If that includes a product instead of a service, that investment and need for control is of mammoth proportions. And you’re going to hear a lot of business advice about designing a logo, developing your brand, and unifying your message. Understand I’m not against these business practices—at the right time! Most of the start-ups I’ve worked with and people I’ve coached are not ready for these investments during the first 6-18 months. Some people need even longer to prepare for this type of thing.

What you need the most at the very beginning are paying clients! You need to be out there talking to potential clients, meeting them, hanging out where they hang out, and more. At this stage of the game, your brand, your message starts and ends with you. You don’t need a fancy logo or website at this point. You need face-time with the appropriate people. Since you are the best ambassador for your business, clean, basic, professional looking materials are far more important than anything you can have custom designed.

Why is that?

I’ve watched literally 100s of businesses and professionals spend a one or two thousand dollars in their first year of business only to spend even more 12-24 months later on re-designs and upgrades. At the very beginning they could only make educated guesses about who their best clients would be and what kind of materials those people would like. Its painful to spend early and then need to spend again during the first few years of business to better represent your business to your best clients.

So just don’t do it. Seriously, don’t. Stop now. Get that new business making some money and have some consistent clients before diving into that arena. You’ve got access to lots of affordable, temporary shortcuts (VistaPrint.com is just one).

If you can adjust your success-concepts when it comes to money and advertising from corporate reality to start-up mentality, you’ll increase your chance of success. The opportunity to make money faster with less investment is also a huge plus.

Coming next: Secret #3 Save your money and spend your time at the beginning.

Wishing you Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue

© Copyright 2009-2010 Heidi Sue Roth. All Rights Reserved.

Success Secrets for New, Mature Entrepreneurs

Are you at least 50 years old and starting, or even re-starting, your business venture? This week I’m going to share with you some secrets for getting your successful business off the ground. Your experienced success as an employee, manager, or executive mean an aware of the pitfalls and benefits of your history is essential to your own successful business venture. This is the first in a series to support and inform your success.

Secret #1 Previous, Experienced success is Both Your Strongest and Weakest Quality

Have you ever considered offering a job to someone who used to for your competitor? If you did, it’s likely you had questions. “Can this person learn our way of doing things?” “What kind of conflicts will come up?” “Will they fit into our corporate culture?”

You are basically in the same situation when you know success in an organization owned or run by someone else. Transitioning to your own business venture means you have both demonstrated successful traits and have no guarantee that you what you know will translate successfully. Just like the employee scenario, you are entering an arena where the success you have already experienced is both your best and worst trait.

Success you’ve already experienced is a powerful indicator that you are talented, capable, and knowledgeable. The challenge you face entering the Entrepreneur Arena is the change from success inside an organization to success being the organization.

What can you do to improve your ability to transition and succeed? Fortunately you’ve got a number of options you can choose—so using the one that best matches your temperament and style is possible.

Michael Gerber, who created the E-Myth series (highly recommended!) suggests dividing the tasks that need to be done into the common categories that actually become departments in a large organization. Even if you’re a solo entrepreneur who gets to do everything, in a sense you create multiple hats and determine the group of tasks assigned to each hat. Then you shift between the different business functions in blocks of time or days. Eventually, you off-load some of these jobs to a Virtual Assistant (my recommendation) or an employee.

Another way to handle this is using a laser-style focus on the immense to-do list that you end up with to start and run your business. At any moment, as, yourself “What is the #1 thing with the most impact right know I can do to move my business forward?” Most new entrepreneurs spend far too much time doing “stuff” and not attending to the key actions each day that will ensure the business succeeds.

Here’s an example, perfect for our early April. This time of year an entrepreneur may have this kind of daily task list:

• · Meet with the web designer
• · Get missing information for the tax preparer
• · Write copy for an advertisement
• · Follow-up with clients from last week’s conversations

If this was my list (and my Monday, April 05, 2010 looks a lot like that list) here is how I would prioritize these items. First would come follow-up with clients from last week. Here’s why: Even if I do file my taxes on time, if I don’t have new customers and new revenue coming it really doesn’t matter. I won’t be in business next year or even perhaps next month. So at the first moment of my day, connecting with customers and potential clients is the top priority to move forward in my business.

My second priority is the tax information: now that I’ve contacted as many clients as needed, this becomes the essential action. In this case, failing to file my taxes in a proper and timely manner can shut down my business. Delaying the ad copy and the web site do not immediately threaten my business (assuming your primary source of income is not internet sales—then I’m sure you can figure out how this will all change). And so the internal conversation on what to do next continues.

This is a different internal dialogue from the one that created your success inside an organization. Unless you were specifically in direct, outside sales, it’s likely that administrative items had a higher priority than those than specifically creating revenue for the organization. The organization relies on the paperwork and numbers to see how or if revenue is moving forward supported by the small divisions of actions and tasks within the company. (Or at least that’s the plan!) You want to succeed NOW and stay in business—so your number one focus must be on doing those actions first that generate income for your business and you.

You also want to remember at the beginning that most people find the things they like doing the most create long-term income cycles for the new business venture. This is an important thing to do. However, neglecting those less-enjoyable activities that pay-off in the shorter term guarantees you either go out of business OR you end up spending your hard-earned cash to stay in business. Either way, you increase the likelihood of failure. Even the best scenario from this approach means your business makes less.

Remember as you move forward, your new business is not just a small version of the larger organizations you’ve worked in. Learning to ask new questions and look at your work through different eyes is the key to success.

Coming next: Secret #2 Thinking like a Corporation won’t get Your Business to Corporate Success

Wishing you Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue

© Copyright 2009-2010 Heidi Sue Roth. All Rights Reserved.

Your Values are Marketing Essentials

The theme of 2010, value, is still alive and well. Conflict around this concept frequently comes up when I'm teaching the "Don't Pick a Niche" Marketing Workshop. The first nmarketing concept each group works on is value. Specifically, what are the values of each person in the workshop and how they are essential to effective Small Business Marketing.

Traditional marketing wisdom focuses extensively on benefits and outcomes. One of the participants last week made the brilliant connection between this focus and and the never-ending pressure in the job market to completely turn yourself into a dissassociated bunch of skills. The next step is to then relentlessly "market" yourself by trying to figure out exactly whick "product" configuration will be purchased by a possible employer.

Most employers also operate from this perspective. I agree that a candidate needs to have the ability to do the tasks of the job, or better yet the ability to learn the additional tasks they don't already have. And there's more.

A first impression happens in 2-3 seconds. This mostly unconscious decision becomes the driver for the entire conversation; driving towards the pre-assumed outcome. Even highly trained individuals struggle to behave differently, in fact most of them fail, regardless knowing how the game goes. Long before an interview conversation gets to skills, the deal is mostly sealed.

The same reality is good and bad news for your marketing. You have a maximum 2-3 seconds to get a potential customer's attention--through some media channels the timing is much smaller. Just as individual values influence clothing choices, vocabulary and attitude about a job, the presence of embedded values will work for or against you.

Why you do what you do; what you love about your work combine to make an important foundation for your marketing efforts. Consider: most consistently taught marketing techniques are out of the loop on the newest, freshest, more empowered ways to communicate with your potential clients.

Blessings,
Heidi Sue

© Copyright 2009-2010 Heidi Sue Roth. All Rights Reserved.

Why SuccessHeart(tm) Anyhow?

I considered lots of words and names to describe the vision, passion and purpose I'm driven to bring into the world. The longer the idea of Success & Heart hung around, the more meaningful it became to me. The majority of people live with Success and Heart out of balance. Struggling between the two.

We are in transition. And there are so many needs, wants, and plans happening during this time. I firmly believe that one of the things that most needs to change is our relationship to success, money and well-being. Whether you frame it in terms of male/female energy, new/old energy or dark/light concepts, the bottom line is that the Healing Heart has been divorced from the realm of wealth and money for a very long time. (Sorry, there's no way I can be convinced that pharmaceuticals having anything to do with heart and healing. Not a chance.) This vacuum has been filled for centuries by those focused on themselves, on conquest, and other themes that did not fully benefit our home or ourselves. Most of us

And until WE heal this gap, this disconnect, the transition will be hard, volatile and in some ways dangerous. My mission is to learn even more on how to heal this for myself, model this revolution to others and teach what I've learned. It's about having both:

It is TIME for those who have the deep pockets to also have big hearts. In other words, heart, passion and service are worthy of reward. And the place to start is being willing to reward ourselves, to accept the blessings that we so often resist and avoid from some misplaced belief that it is inappropriate.

Who does more good with great wealth? The miser who acquires out of fear and selfish motivation? Or the individual willing to see the hungry, the destitute and forgotten with the ability to actually FUND something to change those conditions?

We have denied business as spirit, as life, as path. Our greatest teachers and spiritual leaders rarely accept the challenge. Some divorce themselves from this reality. Others fall prey to social pressures of "doing wealthy" in the established routine.

SuccessHeart is about business as spiritual path, as conscious commerce, as one of the final frontiers for becoming even more of who you are and serving others in the process.

Will you accept the challenge?

Are you ready to open your heart TO the path that is YOUR work, YOUR business, YOUR service?

Life, love and possibility are all smaller until we take this step.

I challenge you to become a SuccessHeart human...playing the game of life to your fullest capacity with the realization that today, there IS NO difference between you, your life and your work. So why not make it all about Success & Heart?

Heidi Sue Roth