First let me show you the old logo and the old domain:

www.VirtualAssistantBoard.com < Granted it has the keyword in there, but it’s 3 words and boring. Also I wasn’t a huge fan of the logo, it just screamed 2005 to me.

Now here is the new domain and BEAUTIFUL logo I got done on BrandStack:

www.Zirtual.com was a gift from the heavens as a one word URL like that would normally cost thousands, instead I paid $7.99. What had happened was while I was searching for URLs for the job board the owner of Zirtual for the past several years had let his CC expire – meaning the site which had been held for a while went up on the open market & at 5 minutes past midnight and grabbed that puppy up.

The BrandStack difference:

I’ve had logos designed in four different places and BrandStack has won in design savvy, competence and designer communication hands down. My previous logos were done on 99designs, LogoTournament and Elance… none of these logos looked very good and I found out later were done by a program, not by hand.

BrandStack proved different in several ways, firstly their designers are all serious designers who abide in a community full of experts that will call out poor quality logos if they see them. Secondly, BrandStack not only offers an amazing array of pre-made logos but you can buy the URL with the logo many times. Meaning you are buying a business name, logo (brand identity) and URL in one fell swoop. Take a look below at some of the amazing brand identities and URL packaged together on BrandStack.

Domain included by Veep

Domain included by HP

Domain included by Karloidd

Domain not included by tinix1

If I had known about BrandStack earlier it would have made sooo many of my online ventures easier. Just think of it, instead of spending a week coming up with a name, finding a URL and then going through the process of getting a logo designed – I could have just focused on the project at hand and picked an all inclusive package of logo, URL and business name.

But let’s say you currently have a domain and a brand name, your logo just sucks. What can you do then? Well it’s simple, most of the designers and logos on the site will customize their logo for your needs. Just find a design and color scheme you like and then give them the name you want in it, that’s what happened with my Zirtual.com logo.

Outsource your logo, but outsource it the right way

Using BrandStack is outsourcing, but it’s safer since you are dealing with your brand identity. Now I like getting stuff done for $20 as much as the next guy, but I would never get a logo designed on say Fiverr or even most job boards. The reason is there are just too many variables, when you are having your logo made you are investing in the crown jewels of your company – the branding lighthouse that will guide your business through thick and thin. Don’t skimp!!

Using BrandStack will run you a few hundred bucks but it’s so well worth it. When I ordered my logo from Veep I had it in my hands two days later and it looked identical to what I had imagined in my head, that’s right – no revisions – it was that good from try one! This allowed me to focus my energies other places and ultimately is what has jazzed me up about Zirtual so much. Every time things get tough I look at the logo I love so much and think this really is a million dollar business.

7 Ways to Live Your Brand

1. Be your brand. Apple is Steve Jobs, Microsoft is Bill Gates. Henry Ford will always be Ford Motor Company and Oprah Winfrey is 100% O Magazine. Sara Blakely not only owns Spanx (a $150 million + hoisery giant) but proudly wears and reps the brand, she is in many ways the face behind the Spanx brand. How can you be your brand? When people see you coming, do they describe you to others as “Stan from ExampleCo”… if not you just might need to try harder.
2. Rock your brand. Get some t-shirts from Zazzle and start repping your own brand. Who cares if you’re just going to Starbucks or taking the kids to the park? Someone will probably come up and ask you about it eventually – especially if you do what I do and put Ask me about Outsourcing on the back with the logo on the front. This is awesome for two reasons, first is because you get to perfect your elevator pitch & you get to see in real life how your message is effecting an individual (do they smile, look bored, get excited). The second reason is because out of 10 people maybe you’ll talk to, maybe two will think your idea is brilliant and tell 4 more, and so on and so forth. The more people you come in contact with in our global, information driven economy the better. You never know when you are standing in line next to a person who will forever change your life.
3. Consider wrapping your car in an advertisement/logo for your brand. This one is pretty self explanatory, but I’ve found the cooler a car you wrap, the better. So go ahead, write off that Aston Martin, then wrap that bad boy up with your URL and sport it around town… it’ll pay off one day right?!
4. Plaster your brand all over your personal and business social media platforms. We don’t exist in vacuums anymore, people will find out sooner or later what your business is – or who you work for, etc. So why try to act like your personal and business life are so divorced? Instead be proud of your business on your personal accounts and don’t shy away from showing your personality in social, business dealings.
5. Hand out your shirts, coffee cups or squishy stress balls wherever you can. This is a financially risky strategy but at times it works, I was just at Blog World and I noticed that the company with the most comfortable shirts (made from American Apparel T’s) seemed to have the most people around their booth. Now whether or not these people will actually use the brand down the line is questionable – I got a Go Army t-shirt (traded 5 push ups while donning heels for it) and I sleep in it, when I wake up do I reconsider my life’s choices and thinking about joining the National Guard, not really – so it’s iffy. On another note, Tungle.me (who I won’t link to by the by) decided to go the route of handing out condoms at blog world with their logo on the wrapper. The point? I didn’t see any. Did it get people talking, yes, but it also got several people feeling like the brand didn’t care about it image so they wouldn’t be using them for their scheduling in the future. Handing out merch is a very hit or miss thing, but when you hit, you hit big.
6. Send your kids to school donning your branded goods. If you have more kids your chances of someone making the brand connections grows exponentially. If your neighbors have kids, borrow theirs. I’m not exactly sure about the efficiency of this model but I know one thing – if I had kids the cost of living under my roof would be repping my brand! “That’s right 4 year old,  if you want a roof over your head & mac n’ cheese in your little belly, homeboy better start representing and put on Mommy’s Virtual Zeta hat… or else! (Now most of you see why I don’t have kids).
7. Practice your elevator pitch. Now this isn’t necessarily to pitch people, but instead to refine your process of explaining what it is  your brand does and why it’s relevant to Joe Bloe’s life. I practice this while waiting in long lines at Starbucks. Usually my innocent prey walks up behind me and I quickly as them if I can give them my ‘elevator pitch’ for practice. I try to keep it down to around 30 seconds and then afterwards ask them their honest opinion. You’ll get great feedback and by the 50th visit to Starbucks you’ll be able to pitch any investor confidently on why your brand rocks.

Growing your brand

Did you read through this list and get sad? Maybe you even shed a tear and thought “I want a brand I can love & live!” well, I’ve got good news for you. You still can start one, today even! Here’s all you need to do…

1. Go to the side bar (it’s to your right for those of you who love direction) and download Start Up School. It’s easy to read, has lots of fun pictures and more importantly gives a lot of entrepreneurial ‘bang’ for your non-existent buck. It’ll help you get started and you can learn from my mistakes and victories along the way!
2. Enter to win one of three WordPress Business Packages from the peeps at RichWP.com. Today they’re generously giving away the RichWP FrameWork, the RichCORP Child Theme and One-on-One Support time with Felix (the founder) who will help you to get you site up and running as quickly as possible and who is also sponsoring this prize draw. Being focused and being able to deliver your message directly is the purpose of the RichCORP WordPress Business Theme. An array of design options will help you to align your message with the impression your website has to make on potential clients. To enter this competition, leave a razor sharp Elevator Pitch for your business, product or service that you want to promote using this WordPress Business Package in the comment section. The  three winners will be chosen by me and Felix based on the quality of the elevator pitch so make sure your pitch rocks, or just use the comments as a place to vent your ideas for your brand and we still may choose you!

P.S. the winner of our last competition for the Flip Cam HD was Pierre from IBG!! Congrats Pierre!

The reason I started thinking about my late-bloomer-hood is because I spent the weekend in LA with clients (for www.OracleLaunch.com). I got to stay at the oh so nice Roosevelt hotel, meet Jay Leno and party with some neat people from the entertainment industry at Drais in Hollywood.

It was fun, the last day I was there I lay floating in the pool staring up at the palm trees. I kept thinking back to my youth as a nerdy, shy, socially akward girl of 18 and thinking how far I have come. It’s taken too long (in my mind) for me to finally feel confident in my own skin and be at the place where I can pursue my dreams without fear.

I wrote this post as a letter to my younger self,  a short guide to getting to where I am today and hopefully if you are struggling at all in your entrepreneurial journey it’ll help reboot your confidence and put you on the fast lane to success and eventual freedom.

The Steps to Real Freedom

1. Attitude (having a good one makes all the difference) Have you met those people who are always looking for the negative in life? They tend to bring the general mood down and justify their own lack of living an awesome life by constantly complaining and looking for the worst case scenario in everything. These are the people, sadly to say, that you must avoid like the plague if you want to live a fabulous, healthy, freedom fighter lifestyle. You can try to change them, help them along or preach to them about the benefits of positivity – and once in a while it’ll work. But for the most part you’ll find you’ve wasted your breath, frustrated yourself and just given them more ammo to be negative about you later. So in cultivating your own positive, happy, I-can-do-anything attitude remember the number 1 key is to surround yourself with others who are happy, positive and encouraging towards you.
2. Discipline. This was something that took me WAY too long to realize the importance of. I have always struggled with being lazy, sleeping in way too late and putting things off until the last minute. Over the last year or so I’ve discovered the importance of discipline if you want to become a successful entrepreneur or truly a success at anything. So try things like forcing yourself to get up early every day until it starts sticking, maintain a schedule and manually “check off” items you’ve done throughout the day to keep momentum and especially check into the Pomodoro Techinque (something I’ve personally used and praised for a while now and has totally changed the way I get things done).
3. Doubt (a warning sign or a blockade to success?). When you doubt yourself it’s either a warning sign your subconscious is sending in an attempt to avert disaster or a self protecting mechanism that is sabotaging your success. 9 times out of 1o it’s a blockade to your ultimate success and should be ignored. What you must do is to gain the wisdom through life experiences and reading to realize when it’s real and when it’s a false alarm. An example: Preparing to go on a date with a D-bag would lend to my mind casting doubts on whether or not this is a good idea, if I listened to those doubts and thought about it I’d realize “wow, this is not a good idea, this guy is a cocky jerk and nothing productive will come of me spending more time with him”. On the other hand, when my mental ‘doubt’ sirens start going crazy as I am hunkered down in preparation to start a new business I must evaluate: is this just fear talking or actually grounded logic.
4. Fear (kicking it’s butt). Fear is similar to doubt, we get afraid when we are about to leave a relationship we know isn’t working anymore – simply because we are creatures of habit and shaking up that routine scares the crap out of our lizard brains. Fear, like doubt, is 9 times out of 10 ridiculous and silly. So what you must do as a Super E is to squash fear by playing out the situation with the best possible scenario, and then with the worst, if the best outweighs the worst then go for it. An example: When I started my blog I got fearful, what if nobody read it, what if I spent hundreds of hours on it and it amounted to nothing… then I used my logical brain to judge the best and worst case scenarios. Best: it does exceptionally well and in a few short years is the leading blog on mobile entrepreneurship and living a free, fulfilling life. Worst: it bombs, only my mom and dad read it and I have wasted an hour every other day on it for a few months. The best FAR outweighed the worst so I decided to pursue it… and boy howdy am I glad I did!
5. Kindness. In life it pays to be kind. This is a principle I realized about halfway through college and it has stuck with me ever since. I can judge a person’s character on subtle kindness cues and it has helped me out loads in choosing people to partner up with, to work with and to have personal relationships with. People that are kind are FAR more successful in life, are happier and spread their inner joy to others. Whether you run a Fortune 500 business or serve coffee to haggard commuters – be kind and see how doors open up to you in almost magical ways. An example: You can ALWAYS judge a person’s kindness quotient by the way they  treat wait staff, it is a dead on indicator and a great means of judging their character.
6. Love (makes the world go around). A great book to read on this, in relation to your entrepreneurial pursuits is Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. His book talks about how to properly use love in the workplace and in your day to day dealings and how powerful of a tool it will be in building success. No matter what you go into, personal or business you should do so with love. I mean truly love the work you do, love the people you surround yourself with and most importantly love the type of person you are. If you don’t have all 3 of these then it is time to regroup and make some seriously life changes.
7. Read (my n. 1 key to success). When people ask me what I would suggest they do to give them a jump start into entrepreneurship I always say “Read like they’ll be burning all the books tomorrow”. Truly reading is the best thing I’ve ever done in my career and is what I point to as a reason for my success thus far. I normally read 2-3 books a week either the traditional way (you know paper and such) or listening to them (audiobooks) or eBooks which I get online. The best thing you can invest in is in your own knowledge and every successful entrepreneur I’ve ever talked to always makes time for lots of learning via good books.
8. Platform (it’s more important than you know). I think I can easily say that 90% of the work I’ve gotten through my businesses directly relate to this blog and the other platforms I use to personally brand myself. Choosing a platform is of the utmost importance whether you are just starting out or have been an entrepreneur for years. It is time to create a thriving personal brand around yourself – to show the world your best face and to create a ‘home base’ on the internet that others can go to and find out more about what you’re all about. I use my blog, my social media accounts (mainly twitter, facebook and youtube) as well as my podcast (which you can find on iTunes by search Escaping the 9 to 5).

If you liked this post please feel free to share how you came of age as an entrepreneur or ask questions below, I heart interaction with you all so much!

*photo credit: Yeah that’s from 16 Candles – best 80′s coming of age movie ever!

If you’ve been dying to reinvent your own personal brand or have a question feel free to shout out below.

4 ways this blog will make me millions

My company Oracle Launch doesn’t rank nearly as high as this blog does on Alexa…

and it gets just a handful of the traffic, but whenever I get one of the 30 ‘partner with me’ emails a week (and do keep sending them-I love looking at new ideas) it usually leads to some sort of partnering up that I can monetize within my company.

When someone googles the word “Maren Kate” my twitter, my company and this blog pulls up

- which do you think people are the most likely to click on if they want to suss me out? The blog of course… and when potential clients or partners see that I have thousands of people reading my stuff and many, incredibly valuable comments posted on my articles it gives them an urgency to work with me – because they think (and I quote) “you’re onto something kid”.

I “beta” test all my crazy ideas on this blog first.

Whenever I have a crazy idea like the Radillac or any of the several review sites I’ll be launching later this month (more on that later) I talk about them here first. This drives traffic to my ideas and means that there are multiple sign ups with the Radillac before it’s even left the conception phase.

Escaping the 9 to 5 is an amazing personal branding opportunity.

This blog emulates all that I want to be in life, it focuses on sticking it to the status quo, on building highly profitable, sustainable businesses on almost nothing – and I love it because of that fact. Surprisingly, several other people like those ideals too, so they subscribe or retweet what I write and suddenly what used to be thoughts swirling around in my head become intellectual property that I spew out on this site and that hundreds of other people get a lot out of. Sooner or later I will capitalize on the personal branding aspect of this blog, just like Gary Vaynerchuk did with his Wine Library video-cast… laugh now folks but I’m deadly serious.

I’ve gotten books (for free) because I write this blog, but more importantly have gotten approached with book offers because I write this blog. Obviously none I’m going to take now, because I haven’t reached where I want to, until I can certifiably say I am making six figures almost completely automated online I don’t believe I’m in the place to teach others – this blog is my ramblings, take from them what you may – but I would not be presumptious enough to think that I could write a whole book on how to escape the 9 to 5 (yet).

The Death star…

I know that this blog is the Death star of my soon to be global enterprise. Yes, yes, I am a MAJOR Star Wars geek, I love Han Solo and would marry him to this day… but, back to the point at hand, this blog acts as my star ship, my front runner among the various businesses that I’ve started and plan to start. This blog documents them all… and gives a living history of everything I’ve ever done entrepreneurial wise. Imagine if one of the greats, Steve Jobs, Seth Godin or Guy Kawasaki had blogged from their meager beginnings about how they did it? Don’t you think we’d find those posts helpful now that they are big and famous… and no, I’m not in ANY way comparing myself with the above, but I do, honestly, believe I can reach that level of success if I really – and I mean really try. Doubt it? Keep tuned and see for yourself.

How you can make your blog make you millions

Well firstly, you probably won’t make millions FROM your blog. But you can have your blog help make you – make millions. How? Document the process, build up a loyal readership that hangs on your every word like Glen of Viperchill or Yaro Starak. This alone will pave the way for great things in the future and the opportunities and possibilities that will come your way from your blog will be huge, especially if you stay tapped into your 1000 true fans.

Today I am unveiling the 7 super secret networking tips you WANT to know. Trust me these work online and off. Networking is one of the most important things in your life to learn, it helps you build relationships (both business and personal), it brings you more business when your booming & can be a life saver when times are tough. As the old saying goes, it’s not what you know but who you know.

1. Comment your way into someone’s heart.

   This one works, that is literally all I can say. A perfect example is of a recent blog post I did on my craziest idea ever, it was one I put the least thought into but got a record amount of comments on because right after publishing it I spent hours on other people’s blogs commenting. What happens usually is that if you comment on enough blogs, with enough relevant, helpful or funny quips people will begin to follow your comment link back to your blog. So truly, this works wonders, if you don’t know where to start… COMMENT ON THIS POST

2. Promote their brand.

   That is right, a key to networking is promoting other people’s brand. Whether it be their personal brand (“Jane’s a hell of a gal”) or their business brand (“I used X and it was awesome!) people will love you if you show love for them. Now this only works with worthwhile brands, both personal and professional. Don’t hype every brand you come in contact with only the ones you think are truly extraordinary. Also online promoting another person’s blog and brand goes over big time because they can actually see it (remember to always send a trackback when you mention another’s blog or website in yours). For example some of my favorite websites to read as of late are the following: smartpassiveincome.com (a great blog on earning a stream of income passively online) iwillteachyoutoberich.com (which literally does just that) exilelifestyle.com (this guy has really escaped the 9 to 5 and is killing it making money & traveling!) pluginID.com (another site about a young entrepreneur who travels and lives life on his own terms) and many more that I’ll be listing in an upcoming post.

3. Listen!

   That is right, shut your yapper and listen! This is VERY beneficial in human interactions and is also helpful online. People tend to pump out content about themselves all the time, problem is, no one is listening. Everyone is worried about their own tweets, FB updates and blog posts instead of paying attention to what others are saying. I do this ALL the time. But I’ve been getting better, in social situations I try to talk 1/3 of the time and listen the other 2/3rds… I have noticed this works miracles. People actually like me more, contact me more often and follow up with helpful tips, business opportunities etc. when all I’ve done the whole night is listen to them talk. Online this works wonders, tweet out questions instead of updates about you. Share information that will help others that you listen to, craft your content to fit your market by spending hours researching them and listening to them. (P.S. I want to listen to you too! please email me at marenkate@gmail.com OR call me at 702-245-2423 with any questions or ideas on entrepreneurial stuff or escaping the 9 to 5!)

4. Do nice things with no thought of recompense.

   That is right. Be nice just because it is the right thing to do! Shocking thought huh? You may or may not be religious or believe in Karma (i don’t) BUT you still should abide by one of the most basic rules ever to come down from God Love your neighbor as yourself. This is the single best piece of business advice anyone can use, because if you abide by it you really will be kind and loving to people without thoughts of recompense and you’ll WIN IN LIFE! People love nice people, businesses love to work with other nice businesses, customers love being treated nice, employees will stay with a boss for little or no pay if they are simply the nicest boss around. Chew this one over… you may disagree but I dare you to follow that simple rule for a week and see how much better your life and outlook is afterwards.
   

5. Be cat like!

   I went to a ritzy-ish networking function a few weeks back and met a smoked salmon magnate. He was awesome, totally unrelated to my field but gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever heard. This gentlemen told me that those who succeed in networking are cat like not dog like. Which at first boggled me, but then he explained it like this. Cats aren’t desperate or needy, if a prince or a poor man came up to a cat they would treat them both the same. A dog will love anyone who gives him attention and are desperate to be petted, praised and played with, when a person is like this it turns others off instantly. But cats, cats will walk up to you, sniff you (the introduction) and then wander off waiting for you to pursue them. Cats are mysterious, intriguing and people spend more time trying to make a cat like them then a dog. When a cat likes you, you feel special… because cats don’t like everyone. This is how I use this in my networking, I go up to someone, introduce myself, hand them a card and make a short comment. I listen to them for a minute, then when they finish speaking say something like “It was lovely meeting you, I’ll see you around” and go… before i have time to pitch them, before I have time to even find out what they do. 9 times out of 10 that same person will come over to me later at the event and ask me questions, thus striking up a conversation with me. It helps a lot when you are selling something, because you come off as confident and cool. So once they open the door and come back a 2nd time you can easily sell them without seeming spammy, because heck, they approached you. So next time you are out ANYWHERE and you are thinking darn I really need a sale or gosh I want to date that hot model girl in the corner be cat like and then email me when it works.

6. Interview them.

   The single BEST way to not only draw more views to your site but to get to know powerful people is by interviewing them. Some say its because it strokes egos, others say its because people like to talk, whatever the reason you will get 100 times more responses from emailing someone to ask for an interview than if you say approached them with “I want to work with you”. I have interviewed Penelope Trunk, Craig of Craigslist.com and Timothy Sykes (a stock investing whiz who brings in 70k a month from his website AND made his first million in college!) all because I found their email address and asked them if they’d mind doing an interview with me. If you think you can’t do this because you are some no name, don’t worry, it works regardless. People rarely do background checks on you and instead are just happy to share their insights, or think maybe you’ll bring them more business or maybe are just really nice. I play up the ‘I would be so honored’ card in my emails (which i truly mean) and that often makes people rethink saying no. Best part is, an interview brings in new traffic to your site, helps your readers AND gives you a reason to continue to contact the interviewee from time to time and build a rapport with them for future occasions.

7. 6 degrees of separation in reverse.

   Now take ALL of these things on networking in the best way possible and use them to get to the truly ‘big fish’. I’ll explain how, its something I call (probably not uniquely) the 6 degrees of separation in reverse. Here is an example to clear it up: Say you want to work with <insert name of your idol> and you are just starting out. You first go on their blog or website and comment, read it, memorize it etc. But you also check all the other people who are commenting on it and follow through to their websites where you commenting, interact, engage with them. We’ll call your idol a level 10 blogger/businessperson/whatever for clarity’s sake, but you are just a level 1. So what you must do is through commenting, interacting with on social media and networking in person work your way up the ranks with people who are vaguely connected to your idol. So you see that Problogger.net has a loyal following of level 3 bloggers who always comment, you befriend them and then from there meet some level 5′s who you also befriend, comment, maybe do some cross guest posting on their sites, etc. From 5′s you hop to 6, 7 and even 8… by the time you get to 8 it won’t be hard to get the attention of the 10 because firstly you REALLY know them in and out and secondly you ARE everywhere they look so you are important. When I see someone who posts in every blog I post in and then they ping me on Twitter or comment on my blog they become a person of great interest to me because the logic goes “we must have a lot in common”. 9 times out of 10 I am right and they become friends or at least online connections.

Okay, this was a long one. My fingers hurt and unfortunately because I am still in the process of a start up I have another like 10 hours to work in front of me. So comment if you like (I’ll love you if you do) and let me know what you think about these networking tips.

1. Be your own groupie. Have you ever met a groupie? That or a preteen girl obsessed with the latest boy band? If so you’ll notice all they talk about is the band, the  music behind the band, the inspiration and where Justin Timberlake went to school. How does this apply to branding? Well I for sure don’t want you wearing N*SYNC shirts and screaming when the radio turns on… but what I do want is for you to harness that insatiable, genuine love for your niche & your business and use it to brand the hell out of yourself. I love social media, I love consulting, I love, love, love taking an idea and building it into a success story. I talk about it all the time, probably to the annoyance of my friends and relatives but no one ever wonders “who is that girl?” instead they think “oh thats the crazy social media chick that has a ‘follow me on Twitter’ sticker on her car and approaches people everywhere asking them “if they’re viral” and then presenting her pitch”. Get the picture? Become your own biggest fan, if you are not 100% in love with your business idea and the brand that encapsulates it no one will be. You have to be your own crazy, pre-teen groupie and then others will start to catch on.
2. Know thine story. A great story makes a product, and a great story also makes a brand. You can’t say “product X is hip because I said so” (unless your famous) but you can say “product X is hip because it is made from recycled titanium, astronauts use them and it makes you smarter, sleeker, sexier etc”. Most products and companies are at the base the same. Each offers product or service X,Y,Z each is incorporated on some level, each started with a vision. How you become the 1% of companies out there that is hugely popular, cutting edge & desired is by ‘branding’ and your branding comes in many forms. Imagine if Juicy Couture sweatpants (that go for around $200 a pair – FOR VELOUR! I can’t judge I own a few) said ABC sweats instead. Can you see rich soccer moms and skankiod co-eds everywhere walking around with that skitched to their fannies? NO. Its because Juicy Couture through branding became the ‘it’ sweat suit. It became a brand correlated with Paris Hilton and starlets. It became the brand that teen girls desired and middle age women who wished they were still teen girls clamored for. Juicy’s story is that they are ‘sexy, hip & fresh’ but in reality they are just velour sweat suits made somewhere for a few bucks with sequins stitched to the butt. KNOW THINE STORY.
3. Be Seen. I am, or used to be, a shy person. In highschool I was teased for being stick thing and nerdy, in college I dated on guy for most of the 4 years (big mistake ladies) and stayed mutely behind him at most college functions. But for some reason when 21-22 hit something changed inside of me. I was sick of being always on the sidelines, so I took my small business and decided that I would be bold and outgoing if only for the businesses sake… and I haven’t looked back since. When I am out, whether be it personal or business related, I am always ‘on’ I carry business cards like some people carry tracks and I make a point to weave in what I do into every interaction. Number one way of getting someone to ask about what you do? Ask them first, then listen for 15 minutes and nod, act interested and finally they’ll say “what do you do?” = that is when you let loose. So whether your shy, married, with child, 70, or have a mug like Gary Busey its time to get out there and start mingling.
4. Fill the Gap. There is a growing sea between remarkable, fun & sexy brands and boring, mundane and business as usual ones. Often what is behind the hip brands is not the actual product (it almost never is) but instead it is the people who consist of the brand and the companies’ image. So as the entrepreneur, CEO or start up partner please be human! Let your personality shine flaws and all. People will thank you for it and big players who would normally not give you the time of day will open up to your more easily if you are “real”.
5. Build relationships with talkers. When you start your business you need to be a product/brand preacher. Imagine the old time circuit preachers who road from town to town spreading the Good Word. Now think of yourself like them but with your brand. If you are the ONLY circuit preacher then your word isn’t going to get very far. Imagine if Christianity, Islam or Buddhism had been spread through only 1 person ever. So what you need to do is start building relationships with talkers. Talkers take many forms they can be PR people, journalists, bloggers or just plain people who are networking fools. Spot these people and make a point to get to know them, don’t “pitch” them only but instead develop a real connection. Soon they will become brand preachers for you as well without being forced or cajoled into it (I like finding talkers on Facebook, Twitter & most importantly in real life.. coffee shops and conferences are great).
6. Don’t feed the dinosaurs. In the beginning you have a VERY small budget for marketing. So why feed dinosaurs with it? I don’t and it has worked better than if I spent thousands a month in print ads, TV or radio. Interruption marketing is going the way of the dinosaurs so you’d be best not to feed into it anymore… the world is full of noise now, especially in media channels. People have developed almost super human abilities to block out what they don’t want to hear. I.E. TIVO (no more commercials) and the increasing ineffectiveness of print ads which consumers now just ignore. Instead create a product, business and brand that people WANT to see and hear about. Make them come to you through various social media outlets and create the feeling of ‘scarcity’ rather than “come on!! Look at me damn it!” which all billboards scream.
7. Raising a freaky cow. In Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow he talks mainly about the reasons behind creating a brand and product that is so remarkable, new or buzzworthy that people flock to it without the cajoling and begging of typical media methods. To survive and thrive in a post traditional marketing world you must have a strong brand build upon a well crafted story that resonates and connects with your target market. You must create a deal whether real or imaginary that pulls them in. Why be one of the 100 makers of generic cereals when you can be one of the 100 makers of generic mp3 players that was clever enough to make their basic products a sleek, hip looking status symbol with the name “iPod”.

action item: Go read Purple Cow & comment below to tell me how you are using branding in your business, or ask any branding related questions.