Home Wealth Project

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Every small business owner has to address this question: How do you want to live?

For some, it’s enough to own your own jobs. But for others, freedom means passive income and creating something they can pass on to their children (without making the children pass out from overwhelm and exhaustion). And for another set of small business owners, the preferred lifestyle is working in a business that they love and having a reliable team that allows them to take one or two worry-free vacations a year.

The goals are personal.

What is your long-term goal? Small business retirement:

For example, do you plan to retire? If so, when? And who will run the business at that point? In “Why Retirement Isn’t in the Cards for Many SBOs,” Anita Campbell, founder of Small Business Trends, highlights a survey, Small Business Owners’ Perspectives on Retirement, conducted in December 2010, which “polled 1,433 small business owners of companies with two to 99 employees.” In the survey, only 4 percent said they plan to retire while just 33 percent have a succession plan.

In reality, retirees often to choose to stay active; it seems to keep them young. But the key is the choice—the freedom to choose to work at 70 because you want to, instead of having to work because there’s not enough money or passive income for your lifetime.

But that’s not the only lifestyle decision to consider.

Where do you want to live? Best cities for minorities:

In “The 52 Best Cities for Minority Entrepreneurs,” Anita mentions a survey released by Forbes. In this survey, Joel Kotkin, Wendell Cox and Erika Ozuna “studied minority and immigrant entrepreneurs,” and found the top three cities for them are Atlanta, Baltimore and Nashville, because of affordable housing and the cost of commercial space.

But regardless of where we live, what we look like and when we choose to retire, small business owners share a common reality:

The better we position our businesses, the more clients, income and freedom we have.

For a few practical tips on positioning yourself, you may want to check out Ivana Taylor’s article, “5 Big Reasons Your Ideal Customer Isn’t Choosing You.” According to Ivana, one issue you may encounter is that your audience is too big. She writes:

“Saying that ‘everyone’ is your customer actually reduces the number of customers who are interested in your product.”

And she suggests a little research to help you find your niche. Getting clear about how you want to live, both today and in retirement, determines your goals and your sacrifices. Answering the lifestyle question determines your future.

Choose well.

Image from grafvision/Shutterstock

Answering the Lifestyle Question: How Do You Want To Live?

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Request to FDA: Live Stream Cosmetics Public Stakeholder Meeting

Nov 9th

On November 30, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration will host a Cosmetic Microbiological Safety Public Meeting in Washington, DC. Here’s the FDA’s meeting announcement. In case you didn’t know, the FDA regulates cosmetics in the United States. The Office of Cosmetics & Colors is the arm within the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) that is charged with “ensuring that … cosmetic products are safe and properly labeled.”

Over the years, I have had numerous in-person, telephone and email conversations with CFSAN representatives. These exchanges have always been cordial, and CFSAN representatives have gone out of their way to offer me and my members an opportunity to share our questions and concerns about how the FDA regulates cosmetics.

The upcoming Cosmetic Microbiological Safety Public Meeting meeting is of critical importance to all cosmetics companies. As you can see from the announcement,

“The purpose of the Meeting is to provide stakeholders an opportunity to present information regarding cosmetic microbiological safety and to suggest areas for the possible development of FDA guidance documents.”

As you might imagine, the nation’s largest cosmetics manufacturers, representing billions of dollars in annual sales, will be present at the meeting with their attorneys, lobbyists, research scientists, cosmetics chemists and other stakeholders.

I also expect representatives of special interest groups, including the Environmental Working Group and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, both of which support federal legislation to overhaul state and federal cosmetics legislation, to be present and possibly offer comments in support of their positions on the pending legislation.

This Will Be a Critical Meeting for Cosmetics Manufacturers

The people who make oral comments live at the meeting will share information of critical importance to all cosmetics manufacturers, yet unless my members attend in person, they will not be able to see and hear what others say, nor will they have an opportunity to request to be heard in person.

This meeting would be important under any circumstances, but is is critically important now because HR 2359: The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011 is pending in Congress. That bill contains numerous provisions having to do with the safety of cosmetics, including microbiological testing, preservative systems, ingredients, microorganisms, adverse events associated with microbial contamination of cosmetics and more.

Yet the meeting is not currently scheduled to be live streamed so the public can see and hear firsthand what is discussed. More importantly from my perspective as the leader of a trade organization serving hundreds of companies whose interests will be directly affected by the information shared at the meeting, I am concerned that the meeting is not going to be streamed live.

The FDA Has Live Streamed Important Meetings Before

On November 12-13, 2009, the FDA live streamed Promotion of FDA-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools (PDF). The live stream link is still accessible online. Along with several of my colleagues, I tweeted and blogged about the event. Even though I’m not in the medical products industry, it was incredibly informative and beneficial to hear the public comments live.

For small business owners, there is simply no substitute for seeing and hearing firsthand what influential industry participants are saying about your industry.

The meetings will take place at the L’Enfant Hotel, which boasts state of the art audio visual equipment and personnel. It appears from the FDA’s announcement that it has contracted with Planning Professionals Ltd. of Allen, Texas, to coordinate the meetings. I’m sure they can work with the hotel over the next few weeks to arrange an efficient and cost effective live stream.

Public Should Mean Public

It is my firm belief that a federal government public meeting is not truly “public” unless everyone with a stake in the outcome has a meaningful opportunity to attend and participate. Today’s technology makes this an easy task, yet so far, no such opportunity is provided here.

I have contacted FDA personnel to request that the proceedings be live streamed. My contact has assured me that I will be put in touch with someone to whom I can make a formal request. However, there isn’t much time, since the meeting is in a few short weeks, and those weeks include a federal holiday.

Additionally, because the deadline to request oral presentation time is November 10, and the deadline to submit written materials is November 21, time is of the essence. Because of the time constraints, I have informed my contact of my intention to publish this blog post so readers from all industries may share their comments and ideas about how important it is for the federal government to live stream this event so small business owners and the public can see for themselves what is involved in addressing cosmetic safety.

Do you think FDA should live stream this event? Why or why not? If you have experience in this area, is there enough time to set it up?

Request to FDA: Live Stream Cosmetics Public Stakeholder Meeting

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The Paradox: Doing (or Not Doing) the Work to Live Your Dream

Nov 7th

A paradox is a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory. If something is a paradox, then it’s a puzzle, a mystery, an enigma, an inconsistency. Which makes me think: What happens to us, and our businesses, when we try to live with a paradox? What happens when we contradict ourselves? When our actions are inconsistent with our plans? When what we say and what we choose to do just don’t line up?

Impossible Dreams

What you say you want vs. what you are actually willing to do

In “What’s Your Impossible Dream?,” John Mariotti encourages small business owners to “dream big. Think about what you’d really love to be doing and consider how you can get from where you are to where you want to be.” He says to plan ahead so that you are prepared when the opportunity presents itself.

I agree with him, but what happens when what we say you want doesn’t match up to what we actually do? Yes, we do the work to maintain the business, to keep the current customers happy, and to bring in enough new clients to keep the “machine” churning. But are we consistently doing that things that prepare us for that big dream we’ve harbored in the back of our minds for years?

Marketing and Sales

What gets their attention vs. what turns them into customers

Sales and marketing are crucial elements to moving your business to the next level. Ivana Taylor, in “How to Stop Worrying and Start Selling,” suggests that we turn a deaf ear to the negative talk about the economy and get busy working on the things that we can change. Ivana believes that we should put more of our “focus on building a sales and marketing system…instead of putting…attention on political and economic factors that are impossible to control.”

In her three-step process, the first thing you do is set a baseline to understand what you currently do for sales and marketing. In this initial step you will discover two things:

The actions you take that get the attention of potential clients
The actions you take that turn potential clients into paying customers

Your website gets their attention, but it’s your sales call that closes the deal. Your email marketing keeps you top of mind, but it’s your live demonstrations that makes them a client. Are you following the full process?

So many small business owners have a desire for “set-it-and-forget-it” marketing and sales. However, the truth is, you have to the see the process all the way through in order to turn “potentials” into customers.

Constant Change

Maintaining the status quo vs. updating your business

“Entrepreneurs are natural possibilities thinkers,” says Diane Helbig in “Why Minding Your Market Is Essential to Your Business.” But at the same time, Helbig reminds us, you need to “keep your finger on the pulse of your industry and the buying habits of your clients.” You don’t want to be left behind. It’s our job to remain engaged in our industry and to adjust with the changes. But what it takes to maintain the status quo in your business and what it takes to update the company and grab hold of “possibilities” may not be the same things.

How we deal with these paradoxes determines our success level. We can’t afford the cost of inconsistency in our business, planning and marketing. We can’t live with senseless actions that don’t produce the results that we want. The contradictions can cost too much.

The Paradox: Doing (or Not Doing) the Work to Live Your Dream

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Live With Passion Now

Nov 5th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in All Posts

Live With Passion Now Is A Product That Helps Readers Find Passion, Inspiration, Direction, And Purpose In Their Lives. It Is In A PDF Ebook/workbook Format (90 Pages).
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10 Marketing Books You Can’t Live Without

Oct 30th

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If you were marooned on a desert island, with only marketing books to read, which would you want with you?

Our Book Editorial Team here at Small Business Trends recently reflected on that very question.

If you had room for just 10 marketing books in your survival kit for that desert island, the 10 books below would be a good start. Inside these choices you will come to understand how prospects and customers think, and what influences them. You will be able to find and identify a profitable niche, create a product mix, price it and ultimately promote it profitably. Check out our picks of the top books about marketing below (in no particular order):–

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“Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy”by Martin Lindstrom

If you read Lindstrom’s first book, Buyology then Brandwashed will give you more inspirational examples that you’ll be able to adapt and implement even if you’re a small business without a multi-million dollar budget to test your customers’ brains. Lindstrom takes us behind-the-scenes of big brands’ war rooms and shows how they use nostalgia, fear, peer pressure, celebrity, and the inclusion of magical ingredients and elixirs to influence what we buy.

Read our review of “Brandwashed.” (Or get at Amazon)

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Riches in Niches

“Riches in Niches: How to Get Rich in Your Niche” by Susan A. Friedman

Finding a tight market niche where you and your business stand out is, by far, the most challenging aspect of marketing for most people. You may not have heard of Riches in Niches, but it’s the go-to book that marketing experts give their clients when the subject turns to how to find a profitable market niche.

Susan Friedman coins the terms “nichepreneur” and guides business owners through her GEL formula Friedmann’s proven technique that shows service professionals how to find the professional niche that makes the best use of their skills while yielding maximum profit.

Get “Riches in Niches” at Amazon.

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Neromarketing “Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brain” by Patrick Renvoise , Christophe Morin

Now that it’s scientifically proven that we make our buying decisions using our primitive brain, this marketing book will help you put that knowledge to use and start writing better sales and marketing ads and copy. Renvoise and Morin cover big picture communication principles and tips on details as small as leaving a voice mail message.

In short, the marketing advice covered says to appeal to emotion, present information in a variety of media, be brief, tell stories and approach your marketing from a buyers point of view.

Get “Neuromarketing” at Amazon

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“Visual Marketing: 99 Proven Ways for Small Businesses to Market with Image and Design” by David Langton and Anita Campbell

If you’ve ever found yourself without a good marketing idea or concept for your small business, this is the marketing book for you. Langton and Campbell (CEO of Small Business Trends) waded through thousands of examples and chose 99 for any small business to use as an example or brainstorm starting point.

You’ll find thought-provoking marketing and PR tips, ideas, and creative “stunts” that you can easily adapt to fit your marketing objectives. This marketing idea book doesn’t stop with direct marketing or advertising. It also includes creative ways to use new technology and social media.

Read our interview on “Visual Marketing.” (Or get at Amazon)

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“Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing” by Eric Groves.
Email marketing and Constant Contact have been synonymous for years. Eric Groves has taken all the lessons learned from the thousands of customers who have successfully used the Constant Contact email marketing system and combined them into this set of collective best email marketing strategies.

If you currently use Constant Contact as your email marketing system, this book is a must-read so that you can get the most out of it. This marketing book isn’t just for Constant Contact customers, though. It’s for any business that wants to do email marketing right.

Read our review of “Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing.” (Or get at Amazon)

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“Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself” by John Jantsch

John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing, has interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs and used their stories as a best-practices collection of dozens of referral strategies as actually implemented by real business owners like YOU.

This marketing book shows you hundreds of different ways to develop a referral system that will pay off. Referral Engine is unique because it gives you dozens of referral systems ideas based on different types of businesses – instead of just one system that you have to adapt to your business. You’ll find many creative ideas to jump start a killer referral strategy.

Read our review of “Referral Engine.” (Or get at Amazon)

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“Attention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue” by Jim Kukral

Attention marketing is all about attracting attention to your business and your brand — in such a way that you turn that attention into revenue. This marketing book gives marketers, entrepreneurs and sales people an educational and motivational guide to using creative and attention-getting strategies to market your brand or business stand out from the crowd.

Attention! This Book Will Make You Money is filled with case studies, references, and proven examples of what works in the world of online and offline marketing.

Read our review of “Attention!” (Or get at Amazon)

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“Found Money: Simple Strategies for Uncovering the Hidden Cash Flow in Your Business” by Steve Wilkinghoff

You don’t often see the words marketing and accounting used together. Found Money will remind you that one of the “four Ps” of marketing is “product” and managing a profitable product mix. In this marketing book you will learn how to look at and analyze your product mix for profitability.

Business owners and managers who have P&L responsibility will learn about the critical profit drivers that affect their business. You also will learn how to get your employees excited and engaged about the financial drivers that impact profitability.

Read our review of “Found Money.” (Or get at Amazon)

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“Art of Pricing: How to Find Hidden Pricing to Grow Your Business” by Rafi Mohammed
Pricing is often overlooked by business owners and marketers as a powerful differentiator and profit builder. In this marketing book, pricing will transform from a financial conversation revolving around margins and costs to a fun and intriguing marketing conversation about influencing choices and buying decisions by simply manipulating your price.

You will learn about the psychology of pricing and how to attract the largest number of customers in your market segment by simply creating a pricing structure that makes it easy for them to choose you.

Read our review of “Art of Pricing.” (Or get at Amazon)

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“Outrageous Advertising That’s Outrageously Successful: Created for the 99% of Small Business Owners Who are Dissatisfied with the Results They Get From Their Current Advertising” by Bill Glazer

Bill Glazer has built a multi-million dollar business and reputation by using outrageous direct marketing strategies to attract and retain an insanely loyal and profitable customer base. Don’t dismiss his techniques for being exclusively for business to consumer businesses like retail. They are equally effective for every type of business – including industrial and high-tech products.

This marketing book is practical and hands-on. Readers will get examples and templates that they can use to build your own outrageous advertising program. The most valuable parts of the book are the worksheets that guide you through creating your own campaigns.

Read our review of “Outrageous Advertising.” (Or get at Amazon)

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POP! “POP!: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title, and Tagline for Anything” by Sam Horn

This marketing book outlines those special aspects that make an idea, message, or product stand out, and gives readers a simple and proven process—POP! (Purposeful, Original, Pithy)—to create one-of-a-kind ideas, products, and messages that pop through the noise of today’s crowded marketplace.

This is a quick and practical marketing book filled with great ideas that anyone can use to come up with tag lines and titles like a pro. In one example, Horn recommends using a cliché database on the web to search out and adapt for your tag lines.

Read more about “POP!”

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Wondering why there are no social media marketing books on this list? That’s because there are so many excellent ones that we’ve created a separate Guide to Best Social Media Books. And don’t forget to check our Guide to Top Sales Books.

Finally… be sure to browse through the 225+ small business book reviews here on Small Business Trends. All reviews are written by our Book Editorial Team.

10 Marketing Books You Can’t Live Without

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Millionaire Fastlane Will Change How You Run Your Business and Live Your Life

Sep 4th

2 comments

I feel a personal transformation coming on.

I think there is some Buddhist quote that says that wisdom can come from the most unlikely places. And while this transformational wisdom is coming from a book (which isn’t all that unusual), it’s the title of the book that isn’t exactly what I’d call transformational. The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by MJ DeMarco (@MJDeMarco) has a title that says “get rich quick” all over it–and I don’t go for that. It’s got a picture of a Lamborghini (which actually plays a pivotal role in the book)–and I don’t go for that, either.

So how in the world was I going to get transformed by a book that I probably wouldn’t have picked up if it weren’t recommended to me by a friend and then showed up for review a few days later?

Will the Regular, “Everyman” Business Success Please Stop Showing Me What’s Possible?

As I write this, Millionaire Fastlane has clocked in as the third book I’ve picked up in three days that talks about a “regular guy” who could have been a loser but had an epiphany about how to make millions, did it and is now writing a book about it as he reflects on his success and decides to share his secrets with the rest of us poor chumps who just haven’t gotten it yet.

Granted, the transformation hasn’t quite happened for me – I’m only on the first couple of chapters that go through MJ’s history as a wanna-be millionaire with wishes and dreams that just weren’t happening. Of course, just like watching those “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” documentaries, I know that he succeeds in the end, so now I’m just trudging through the story, waiting to see how his story will be different from so many others. I assure you transforming my thinking is the last thing on my mind.

Millionaire Fastlane – 0 to 322 Pages in 60 Seconds

The book is written in eight parts. Parts one through four introduce us to the author, his story, his obsession with how a young dude got his hands on a Lamborghini before cashing his first Social Security check and grabbing a trophy wife, and why the “get rich slow plan” is a vast conspiracy designed to keep most of society down.

But wait! (Can you feel the transformation coming yet?) I’ve often joked (without really joking) that I was on the get rich slow plan. Most of us already know that the phrase “get rich quick” is synonymous with scams, pipe dreams and fools. So if you don’t sign up for that pitch, isn’t the opposite “get rich slow”? How can getting rich slow be bad?

In parts five through eight, DeMarco’s aim is to open your eyes to the fact to the fact that hard work, commitment and just seeing the world through the eyes of “production” instead of “consumption” will reveal opportunities that will make your hard work, commitment and patience pay off in exponential spades.

He gives you those in-your-face nuggets of wisdom, delivered using a turbo-toned surfer style. But don’t underestimate DeMarco’s point. He’s a man who’s seen the light and he’ll open your eyes to it, using nothing other than mathematical proof, logic and removing the filter of fear that confines so many of us into thinking so much smaller than we are capable of.

Speedy Samples of Thoughts, Quotes and Ideas That Will Transform How You Run Your Business and Your Life

I’ve decided to pull more than a few quotes from the book that will help you see yourself in at least one of the “slow lane” thought patterns.

Get rich quick on a whim or event is a joke. Get rich quick on a process is reality. If you’re servicing clients one by one without a brand or a process, you’ve got a job, not a business. A business is a process that creates value and has value.
“Income-poor and income rich share the same result, just different scenery. More money is not a solution to poor financial management.” Are you making investments or just spending? There’s a difference.
Society has bastardized the meaning of wealth to incorporate luxury items. Yet you’ll find that the true wealth experience comes from strong family and relationships with people, fitness, vitality and the joy of physically moving through space and the freedom to do what you like, when you like and with whom you like. Of course, having lots of money helps grease these skids but it shouldn’t define them.
Instant gratification is the bait; servitude is the hook.
Self-made millions come from self-made luck. “Process creates events that others see as luck.” If you’re running a business, you are out in the world, not on the couch. People who are interacting in the world are meeting with opportunity
To consume richly, produce effectively. “As a producer, your job is to entice consumers to buy. Producers get rich. Consumers get poor.”

I can go on and on with these – the book is loaded with them. And believe me, they are thought- and life-changing ways of looking at the world.

Read This Even if You’re Not a Lamborghini Lover

Maybe it’s just me, but I could have done without the constant Lamborghini references. And at the same time, this book so desperately needed a theme to hold the myriad big insights that it contained. I’m afraid that without the fast car, fast lane, slow lane, sidewalk framework, the message would have been completely lost.

Millionaire Fastlane is a book for the serious business owner who is building a money-making machine. It’s for the business owner who is committed to living a balanced life and enjoying the fruits of his or her labor.

My thinking about my business, my purpose and my mission has been transformed by this book. The big question now is, where will I make the trade-offs? And after reading this book, I will see them as trade-offs because now I know the mindset behind real wealth When you read this book, you’ll know too.

Visit The Millionaire Fastlane to get the first three free chapters of the book as a free download. (I will tell you that I thought the best chapters of the book start from page 100.) Millionaire Fastlane also has a Fastlane Forum. You register for free and dive into lively conversations or just read the blog for updated articles.

Millionaire Fastlane Will Change How You Run Your Business and Live Your Life

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Non Directional Options Trading Home Study Trading System Live Account

Sep 2nd

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10 Awesome Reasons to Live Off the Grid

Aug 20th

Want to feel like a real frontiersman? Are you tired of being oppressed by “The Man”? Do you not even know who “The Man” is referring to? Then you gotta live off the grid! It’s like being a pioneer, only with the Internet and packets of instant Starbucks. It’s a lot of work, but here are 10 reasons it’s awesome.

No Junk Mail

Companies can’t mail you crap if you don’t have a registered address. So what if the mailman can’t find you? UPS and FedEx goes anywhere you pay ‘em to. No more circulars, phony timeshare offers or “Urgent News! Must Open!” Salesmen coming to your door? Not a chance! And you’ll never have to look your neighbor’s kid in the eye again and refuse to buy band candy or girl scout cookies.

You’ll Always Be in Fashion

Making your own clothes out in the middle of nowhere means never having to apologize for how you dress. Hell, why even wear pants? It’s not like you’ll be living near anyone. If you are, it’ll probably be in a small community where the rules of fashion are either uncared for or invented anew.

If the Apocalypse Comes, You Won’t Notice

Let the Rapture scoop up all the Christians. Let nuclear war or the zombies rape the cities of New York and Los Angeles. While civilization goes down like a bitch, you’ll be comfortable and warm out in the middle of nowhere. And once the dust settles and word reaches you of the primitive, radioactive Hellscape, you can return to rule the mutants, being the last person alive to know how to properly stoke a kiln. Class wars, riots, and any kind of societal uprising/turmoil will no longer concern or effect you. Living off the grid can give you a feeling of safety that all the laws in the world cannot.

No Utility Bills

Before the first plumbers and his butt crack, God just left water everywhere in these things called “streams” and “creeks” and “rivers”. With a little practice, a fire and a pot, you can make clean drinking water for free. You’ll probably even be able to build a system of pipes that can deliver water straight into your home. Need some electricity to fire up your laptop? Once you master how to hook up a generator to a standing bicycle, you’ll get exercise and all the porn you need to survive. And solar panels get better and better every year; what’s better than getting free energy from the sun? Just be wary that evil corporations may try to infringe on your land and force you to pay for energy from their company. One man, William Williams, faces multiple penalties and fines for cutting down utility lines — that the company planted on his private land!!

The Cops Can’t Find You

Living off the grid is especially handy if you also happen to be living a criminal lifestyle. In today’s police state, it’s becoming increasingly harder to obey the law because it infringes on personal lifestyle choices that are irrelevant to the rest of the world. If you’re tired of constantly looking over your back just because you smoke pot, refuse to go to jury duty, don’t want to pay outrageous parking tickets or simply enjoy being naked in your own home, living off the grid may be the right choice for you. Let’s face it, when civilization collapses, it’s probably wise to be somewhere where the last guys with guns can’t find you.

The Law Becomes Very Murky

When the cops can’t find you, you can pretty much make up your own rules. It’s kind of like floating in international waters, but without the bad Cruise food and second rate entertainment.

No Insurance Payments

If the mail and the cops can’t find you, neither can your insurance company. In fact, why have one? If you get severely injured, you’re just going to die anyways. No sense paying $500 a month so the EMT’s can’t find you. On the up side, if you can build a car or some kind of post apocalyptic facsimile, you can drive it however you want. Helmet, no helmet, seat belt, no seatbelt, brakes, no brakes, on fire, not on fire, it’s all up to you. Just keep in mind that showing up at the hospital without health insurance may be worse than not going at all — oftentimes, the doctors will literally just let you die.

Your Food is Free

The woods is like an all-you-can-eat buffet. The food is fresh if you can catch it and you’ll never have to deal with a snooty waiter ever again. If you like salted, smoky meat, off the grid cuisine is right up your alley. At no point will your wife turn to you and say, “Honey, you’d better not eat that, your cholesterol.” She’ll more likely say, “Give me that meat! I haven’t eaten for three days!” Honing your farming skills before moving off the grid is a good idea; you will then be able to harvest your own (completely organic, chemical and modification free) food — which is an incredibly useful skill to have, especially if the rest of the world is plunged into another depression. Growing and catching your own food is also incredibly less wasteful than buying products with unnecessary amounts of paper, plastic, and metal packaging.

Your House is Free

If you can build it, you can live in it. The United States is actually a big empty place and Montana has less than seven people per square mile. For a mere couple of thousand dollars of wood and your labor, you can build a house that is at least as good as anyone else’s. You won’t be close to a Starbucks or a Wendy’s, but hey, at least you won’t be near a Starbucks or a Wendy’s.

Lower Taxes

Think about all the money you’ve ever paid for taxes. Now imagine that it’s all back in your pocket right now. That’s how much you could have if you live off the grid. What “the Man” can’t find, the Man can’t tax. And with an overhead as low as yours, a $30,000/year gig means you’ll probably have close to $30,000 at the end of that year. If only someone had told Wesley Snipes sooner. This, however, is fraud. The taxes on an off-grid house, though, are significantly less than on any other house.

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Live Long and Market: Small Business Branding

Jul 31st

Marketing is the process of communicating your value to your public. Whether it’s a product or service, if what you offer has value and solves a problem, then you need to market it in a way that lets your target audience know just how important it is to their lives.

If marketing is communication, then your brand is a part of the message. According to the American Marketing Association a brand is a “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” And everyone can afford to be distinctive (at least on some level) — distinctively simple, distinctively effective, etc.

You have to stand out to the right people (your target audience) for the right reasons (you solve their problem in a way that resonates with them). In other words, your brand – your distinction – is the consistent message about what your product is and what it does. Your logo, your tagline, your key phrases, your service style and your customer service team all advance your brand. The more consistent and frequent the message, the more people hear you.

Who Loves Your Brand the Most?

In “How to Recognize and Reward Brand Advocacy,” Yvonne DiVita makes a distinction between your fans and brand advocates. She says, “Brand advocates do things like write a blog around your product, or tweet about you daily, and faithfully follow you on Facebook.” She says the brand advocate is more devoted than a fan and is “loyal to a fault – all without being asked or compensated.” Sounds like somebody you want on your team.

While marketing seems to come with a lot of terms that make it easy to slip into semantics, Yvonne’s key point resonates with me. She encourages us to find your brand advocates, “understand them, reward them and measure their engagement.” And she provides suggestions on how to get it done.

How Do You Advance Your Brand Online?

If you accept the role of marketing and the impact that branding can have, then you have the choice to advance your message in print as well as online. In “The 6 Biggest Social Media Mistakes Brands Make,” Janet Thaeler discusses the common errors we all make, including the impersonal initial contact. Have you seen or done this before:

Person finds you (or you find person).
Person wants to connect with you (or you want to connect with person).
Person writes you some stiff email to “connect” (or you’re the one writing the “stiff” email).
Person gets disappointed as you wonder “who is this?” and naturally deflect the interaction (or vice versa).

It’s all in the greeting.

In order to make this conversation work you need a touchstone, a point of conversational contact, a reason to talk that’s a little bigger than just you. Janet says, “The initial contact with someone you hope to work with should be personable….To get a feel for what they are interested in and care about, read their blog and Twitter stream.” Her other five tips are helpful as well. But what if you swear that social media is not the thing for you….

How Do You Advance Your Brand Offline?

Maybe your clients aren’t online and just don’t use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Maybe. In “5 Powerful Alternatives for Social Media Haters,” Ivana Taylor accepts your hatred of social media (I say that in jest) and offers you solutions.

Ivana says, “The number-one benefit marketers found from using social media is brand and company exposure.” But if you discover that your target market doesn’t use social media, then she says “your best bet is to create your own community,” starting with building a list.

Your goal is to create a community, and your email list and email campaign are among the most effective ways to connect and advance that relationship. While I believe in social media, connecting by email is also a solid foundation for business – and laying a foundation always comes first. Ivana also gives advice on how to handle your blog and tips on how to engage your developing community.

In the spirit of Spock (yes, Star Trek) and spoken directly to your business: Live long and market.