Michael E. Gerber developed the E-Myth strategy for small business. There are a number of useful ideas and tools that he espouses in his E-Myth books but one of the ones that stuck the most with me is the simple phrase: Work on your business not in your business.

This simple phrase is packed with a lot of meaning, which we will talk about in this article. In this simple phrase, Gerber cleverly identifies the role that a business owner should take in his or her business.

When you work in your business, you are letting your business control you. In a way, it’s almost as if you’re an employee, simply doing what you’re told to do. Your schedule and your customers and your industry and your system of practices and procedures dictate what it is that you do each day.

When you work on your business, you are the master. You control your business. You set your schedule, you control your customers (in a good way), you work alongside (not as a result of) what your industry dictates, you create good practices and procedures. You are in command.

When you work in your business, you’re like a whitewater raft, pushed about according to the whims of other forces. When you work on your business, you’re like an engineering firm that redesigns and redevelops the river itself to flow where you want it to flow.

When you work in your business, it feels different. You’re busy and you don’t feel like you’re in control. It feels like chaos. When you work on your business, you know it. You do feel in control and it feels like controlled chaos. How do you really know whether you’re working in your business or on it? Gerber gave the perfect measuring tool: If you can step away from your business for a period of time (say, a day or a week) and your business continues to run, you’ve been working on your business. However, if your business struggles or folds, you’ve been working in your business.

So, what can you do about it?

One way to work on your business instead of in your business is to create systems. We’ve talked about that here recently.

Another way to work on your business instead of in your business is to hire (either employees or virtual staff) to do some of your work for you. Once you have systems in place, this will be extremely easy to do.

And a third way to work on your business instead of in your business is to focus on vision-casting and positioning. Create the big picture and position your company as a leader in the field. Let other people do the delivery work itself. Or, if your knowledge is invaluable to the delivery of your product or service (i.e., if you are a coach or consultant), employ others to do everything else but deliver your product or service. And, if your knowledge is invaluable to the success of the company, consider creating other products and services that you don’t have to be present to deliver (like information products or pre-recorded webinars).

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• wants to get out of the gate really fast
• doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on marketing and messaging and branding
• has some money to invest in the business
• is willing to share the profits

Recently, a satirical review of a t-shirt on Amazon attracted more and more satirical reviews… which turned into real sales for the company that makes the shirts! Read more about it here.

Or, just look at any book, business, or recording artist who makes an appearance on Oprah.

Or, consider how album sales are linked to controversial lyrics.

Or, how news reports of Twitter being the latest marketing craze feed the frenzy of people who suddenly NEED to be on Twitter.

When there’s buzz, suddenly the "volume" goes up. The number of people talking about the company increases. Attention is generated. And the business on the receiving end of the buzz notices a difference.

Getting people talking about the business has been around for a long time but one company seems to have turned it into an art form. The company is Half.com, which started like most businesses and was bought by Ebay for millions, got attention from getting people to talk about them. Although they had a number of initiatives that were worthy of watercooler conversations, their biggest, brashest word-of-mouth campaign was when they convinced a town to rename itself Half.com. They’ve been much quieter in recent years, but that initial buzz was enough to get the attention of a company like Ebay and entice them to pay.

It’s a snowball effect. Once you can generate enough positive, attention-getting headlines, people talk to their friends about you and then their friends tell other friends, and on it goes. Sometimes buzz is created by forces outside of your control (such as the satirical feedback posted on Amazon which drove business for the t-shirt company) but sometimes you can create your own buzz (by taking a page from Half.com). So, how can you create some buzz for your company?

• Start by looking at what you do and if there is a way that you can get some attention by doing it in a unique way. 1-800-GOT-JUNK does a great job of generating consistent local buzz by donating their time and talents to clean up public places. That’s a perfect example of the "sync" between the offer and some buzz-generating effort.
• Take it up a notch. While still striving for that fit between offer and buzz, find something that is unusual, bold, and unheard of. Renaming a town is a good example. This takes guts and perseverance to do successfully, and many good ideas are killed in the boardroom when the executives weigh the consequences and aren’t able to quantify the benefit. Buzz produces quantifiable benefits but must first pass through an unquantifiable stage. The inability to control the buzz is often an idea-killing reason, too.
• Buzz is a mindset. It’s not something that is easily done by flipping a switch. If you’re a conservative company that isn’t known for generating headlines, it will be much harder to do than if you are a company that doesn’t mind being a little brash and rough-around-the-edges. In other words, your buzz should sync with your brand. So consider adjusting your brand first.
• If you have a CEO or some other figurehead with a colorful personality, you can leverage this into some buzz. Compare Oracle’s in-your-face CEO with SAP’s very conservative (some might say "old school") approach to professionalism. And I don’t need to tell you that it works for rockstars, too.
• When planning to generate some buzz, don’t just come up with a great idea. Buzz won’t happen on its own. Figure out how you’re going to deliver it to the world, how you are going to nurture the conversations, and what you’ll do with the increased attention. Make sure that you’re ready to quickly ramp up marketing opportunities that leverage the buzz AND the ability to deliver increased products or services because of the buzz.
• Most importantly, don’t be afraid to fail. You might have to try a few different things before you’re successful with one.
   

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When your business considers its marketing mix, how do you decide what kinds of marketing are in and what kinds are out? Usually, there’s a combination of reach, frequency, and cost, and hopefully a consideration of whether the marketing medium is aligned with your product or service.

Those are important considerations but there is one that often gets missed, particularly from small (and sometimes midsized) businesses. It’s the target factor.

While it can be valuable to get your message out to as many people as possible, it is often far more valuable to get your message out to a highly targeted group instead. Unfortunately, the targeted marketing is often ignored in favor of the more general broad-based effort, often because of cost. After all, so the thinking goes, doesn’t it make more sense to spend less per eyeball?

Let’s look at an example:

Company A sells B2B services and pays $1000 for 5 ads in a general newspaper. The paper will reach 1 million households.

Company B sells the same B2B services and pays $1000 for 5 ads in a business newspaper. The paper will reach 100,000 businesses.

In this example, Company A’s marketing seems to provide more value because it gives a lower per-eyeball cost. However, Company B’s marketing will probably be the best value. The reason is the market reading the ad. Spending $1000 to reach a million households is just fine, except that only a fraction of those household readers are decision-making business people who are thinking about the needs of their business. And, by the time they have are able to act, even fewer will recall the ad or the company.

Company B’s marketing, which seems to cost more per eyeball, will likely return better value because its readers are business readers focused on business problems. The ad is delivered in a format the reaches them while their mind is on business. It’s a much better target.

So, while marketing reach is important, targeted marketing is more important. It will cost more per eyeball, but it can also deliver far more customers to your business.

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I will survive, it’s not just for Gloria Gaynor anymore.

Staying afloat in these difficult economic times can be a trying endeavor. Even the largest corporations are crumbling. Fortunately, we’re here to help you keep your head above the water.

It can be difficult to do, but it’s immensely important to remember not to panic. When you purchase stock, you research and learn about the company. You decide if the company has a good concept or product, good leaders, and a solid foundation. If they have those things, you can feel confident that it is an investment which will pay off eventually. If not, you look elsewhere. Of course, that is a simplistic breakdown, but it is true, and useful to us in this situation.

If your business has a good concept or product, skilled leadership, and a solid foundation, then the hard part is over. You can and will be successful eventually, if you aren’t already. The economy is going to turn around, so just keep swimming until it does.

Here are some tips to help keep you going:

-Check out www.online-marketing-wizards.com, it is a blog that will help you market your business effectively. Marketing is a great weapon in this business climate

-Go to www.contemporaryva.com, Contemporary VA is an organization that can help you save time on tedious tasks, so you can focus on getting, and keeping, business

-Click on www.freshbooks.com, a great way to track your time and send invoices to clients

-Visit www.iacez.com for instant, affordable online bookkeeping, to help you track where your funds are going. That way, you can focus on what is really important in these times, keeping business and developing new business.

Remember, we will consistently bring you the most recent, must-have information, so come back frequently. After all, we’re your Best Business Expert. You don’t want to miss what’s coming next.

Your Best Business Expert,

Lisa on behalf of Contemporary VA

www.contemporaryva.com

Part One of a Two Part Series……….. General Motors, having survived 100 years, may run out of cash this year. Fannie May and Freddie Mac are operating only because of governmental intervention. Other companies are reducing 401K matching contributions, laying off employees, are putting themselves up for sale and putting an end to all bonuses and incentives. If these larger corporations, with their teams of experts, movers and shakers, are thinking bankruptcy, how can smaller companies have a chance? The fact is that if any companies are going to succeed, smaller businesses have a higher chance of making it. Smaller businesses can more easily modify their business plan and create profitable custom offerings to their most successful clients. But to do this, companies must concentrate on three activities: Know the customers, know the finances and know the employees. Let’s start with knowing the customers. Know your customers Some customers are simply more profitable than others are. If you haven’t already done so, perform an ROI analysis on your customers. You may be shocked that you spent more money gaining some top clients than you actually get back in invoices. Know who these customers are, because, with the same analysis, you’ll identify your most profitable clients. Once you identify your most profitable customers, you can talk to those customers to find out what type of needs they have. Perhaps you can customize your offerings to increase the profitability ratio or perhaps you can collaborate with a complementary business to provide an all-in-one solution. In any case, learning what makes a profitable customer can help you roll out similar solution in different markets, geographies, or with bundled products. The rest of this article will be posted soon! Tune in for part two where we review knowing finances and knowing your employees. Linda for Contemporary VA