PodTech Media – Perspectives From Guy Kawasaki: On Twitter, His Book: Reality Check And Life

Guy Kawasaki is one of the most well known marketers in the world. His new book Reality Check is making its way to the best seller list. Marketing Voices host Jennifer Jones caught him at his home and discussed the new book and Guy’s favorite chapter on entrepreneur’s lies. Jones and Kawasaki also get into Guy’s unique use of Twitter and his ability to leverage the platform.

Thanks for stopping by VMA Network! As promised, I’m posting the interview I did with Rita Cartwright about her new e-Book: “Online Marketing Tools For Today’s Small Businesses” which provides lots of useful tips and information to help you with your small business online marketing strategy.

LB: Why did you write this book?

RC: My goal was to create a handbook, which entrepreneurs and small business owners can refer to when they are searching for online marketing tools and/or new marketing ideas. I wrote it for new entrepreneurs and small business owners, as well as for those who have been in business a while.

LB: Tell me about yourself

RC: I’m originally from Arizona and now reside in California. I earned my bachelor’s degree (with Magna Cum Laude honors) from Arizona State University when I was 44 years old. After graduation, I couldn’t find a job; therefore, I decided to start my own business offering online word processing services, which was 6 years ago. At that time, I was not aware of the virtual assistant industry, which I am now a member of. So, I guess you can say I was ahead of the curve.

LB: What qualifies you to write this book?

RC: Approximately 2 years ago, I started maintaining a blog and writing articles in order to implement the article marketing strategy. (I talk about using this strategy as a marketing tool in my e-book.) Also, while attending college, I learned how to write. I had to write. I remember my English professor saying I should be a writer, because he thought I had the skills. I didn’t take him serious. I was just trying to get through college.

In regards to the subject matter, my background and education in marketing and my experience from operating an online business provide me with the necessary qualifications to write this e-book on the topic of online marketing tools.

LB: How long have you been an entrepreneur?

RC: I have been an entrepreneur since October 2002. Although I started out as a small business owner, I have become an entrepreneur. There are differences between entrepreneurs and small business owners. In fact, I wrote an article on the differences. It is titled, “Are There Any Differences Between an Entrepreneur and a Small Business Owner?” Ezine Articles is one of the article banks where you can find it.

LB: What is the e-book about?

RC: This e-book contains information on various online marketing tools, along with some examples and in-depth descriptions of the tools. There is also a resource section that lists websites where you can find the online marketing tools, including “live” links to the websites. The resource section will save your readers a lot of time in Internet research when they are searching for information on online marketing tools.

LB: What do you want the readers to get out of this e-book?

RC: I wanted to provide those readers, who have a shoestring marketing budget, with information they can use in their online marketing plan or, at least, generate new marketing ideas. Most entrepreneurs and small business owners do not have a large marketing budget. The marketing tools I discuss costs little to no money.

LB: Can we look for more books from you in the future?

RC: Yes. One of my clients, who is a coach of Christian leaders, and I are currently working together on an e-book. It will be geared towards Christian leaders and Christian virtual assistants. So be on the lookout for that in the near future.

LB: How can the readers contact you if they have any questions?

RC: Your readers can reach me at 760-631-1335 or toll free at 866-651-3073 or send me an e-mail at rjcartw@rjswordprocessing.com.

LB: Rita, thank you for stopping by my blog on your tour.

RC: You are very welcome. Thank you, Linda, for having me.

Just wanted to let all Virtual Assistant’s Networking readers know that during tomorrow’s Virtual Blog Tour Rita Cartwright will be giving away a free copy of her latest e-Book, “Online Marketing Tools for Today’s Small Business”, to a randomly selected participant!!

Join us tomorrow for the blog tour and see if you will be the lucky winner!! See you there!!

Rita J. Cartwright is a Virtual Assistant and owner of RJ’s Word Processing Services and has just released an excellent e-Book that I highly recommend entitled, “Online Marketing Tools for Today’s Small Business”.

Rita J. Cartwright is a Virtual Assistant and owner of RJ’s Word Processing Services and has been in business since 2002. In 1998, she received a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Marketing from Arizona State University with a minor in Spanish. She is also a member of Virtual Assistant Networking Association and Oceanside Chamber of Commerce. In order t to offer her clients quality service, Rita continues to enhance her skills through various teleseminars and webinars, as well as network online and offline with fellow entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Rita’s background in marketing and experience in conducting her business online qualify her to write an e-book on the topic of various marketing tools and strategies. Having to operate on a shoestring marketing budget, provided her with necessary knowledge and skills, which were required in order to implement these same strategies into her online marketing plan. For more information on RJ’s Word Processing Services and Rita, please click here.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners in any industry can use this e-book as a reference guide. Whenever you need fresh online marketing ideas or need online marketing information, you can refer back to this e-book. Nowadays, we are so overwhelmed with information, Rita wanted to simplify the search for online marketing techniques by organizing some of that information together into one location, her e-book. Pick up your copy today at the low price of $3.98.

I will be hosting Rita’s Virtual Book Tour right on this blog on October 26! Come back on October 26th to Virtual Assistant’s Network to find out more about Rita and the reason’s behind the release of her e-Book!

Virtual Assistants are constantly learning and finding ways to improve themselves to enable them to better serve their clients. I decided to take some time out this week for some self-improvement myself.

I recently heard good things about a book called “Book Yourself Solid” by Michael Port and decided to download the audio book to find out more about it. I have found this book to be an excellent resource in helping me to think differently about marketing my business and how to generate leads and build quality clientele.

I highly recommend this book to Virtual Assistants that are looking for help and ideas on promoting and developing their business further.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Virtually yours,
Linda Belan
Your Outsource Solutions, LLC
www.youroutsourcesolutions.com

Do you ever get random thoughts/ideas about things during the course of the day and then when you get the time to act on those thoughts you forget what they were? Lately I’ve been jotting down ideas as I go through the day to review later in the evenings when I have more time. These lists don’t seem to have any particular order to them and when I go through them very often the more important items are not the ones I work on first.

I’ve heard a lot about mind mapping so I decided to go research into what it’s all about and how it works. I found that it’s an amazing concept that can be as easy or as hard to use as you want to make it. You can find out more about mind mapping at Mindtools. Essentially, a mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

There are some free mind mapping software that you can download from the Internet that are simple to use and very effective. The two that I’m playing with currently are Free Mind which is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java that can be used across different platforms: Microsoft, Apple Macintosh, Linux, etc. This one requires a little more effort to learn how to use.

The other mind mapping software which is more user friendly is designed for use with Apple Macintosh and is called MindNode There are a ton of other ones that are out there that are either free or available at a very affordable price. There are even online mind map tools that you access through the web. One such sight is Mindomo

If you already use mind mapping, I would be interested to hear what you use it for, and how it has helped you.

Virtually yours,
Linda Belan
Your Outsource Solutions, LLC
www.youroutsourcesolutions.com

RSS feeds are a great way to stay in touch with what’s current in the your chosen industry, what are the hot topics, and to network with peers. If you are like me and have a variety of feeds to keep up with it’s often very hard to do so using bookmarks in your browser. Fortunately for us, there are lots of great RSS readers that are free to download that will help us organize all our feeds. They allow us to scan our favorite feeds and pick out the ones we’re interested in quickly and read those first.

Feed reading options:

NewsGator
Bloglines
Rojo
FeedDemon
NewzCrawler
Omnea Reader
Awasu
Blog Navigator
SharpReader
RSS Bandit

Your options are not limited to these. Different readers offer different options, so you may want to do some exploring to find the one most suitable to your needs. RSS is an invaluable tool for any online business whether you are the reader or the publisher. Try being both to get the most out of the technology. Do you read or publish RSS feeds? How do you think it has impacted your business?

Virtually yours,
Linda Belan
Your Outsource Solutions, LLC
www.youroutsourcesolutions.com

One of the benefits of operating a home based business is you can choose to work from the comfort of your home. You do no need to worry about what to wear for work, commute in rush hour traffic, you can sleep in a little later, all of which makes it easy to forget that it is still a business. There is a misconception that because you run a home business you can dictate every part of its operation. While in many aspects this is true, your clients will also have input on many functions.

1. The first and most important thing you need to do is to set a schedule. There are many distractions around your home that could distract you from your normal business schedule. It is important to keep regular hours for your business and stick to them.

2. Make sure your office is separated from the rest of the house and that it is only used as an office. In addition to the tax benefits of separating your office space that is used strictly for work, it will create the feeling that when you walk into your office in the morning that it is time to get to work. Also, when your day is done and you leave your home office, you need to feel as though you have gone home for the day. Just as you want to keep family distractions out of the office, you also need to keep work distractions out of the rest of the house.

3. Being professional in all business dealings when in your home office. Even if you cannot afford a separate telephone line for the business, you can answer the phone in a professional manner during your regular business hours.

4. Advertising and marketing is essential to any business, especially for those that operate exclusively online. Since the only way anyone will know about your business is through advertising.

5. A website is very useful even if you will not be conducting any business online. It can serve as your web-based brochure and include information about you, your experience and your business. Including prominent contact information on the first page of your website is a key to obtaining more business, but you should also include a contact form for people to send in a request for information or posting questions or for a quote on a specific job.

Hope this helps you define how your home business with operate. Please send me any comments or suggestions.

Virtually yours,
Linda Belan
Your Outsource Solutions, LLC
www.youroutsourcesolutions.com

One of the things to consider when going into a Virtual Assistant business is to decide if you want to go into a niche market. With the growing number of virtual assistant businesses emerging in the online marketplace it is getting harder to get your business to stand out from the crowd and for prospective clients to take notice. Very often on the online job sites it is a case of who comes back with the lowest bid for the job gets hired!

To give us the edge over our competition we need to leverage the skills or specialized knowledge that we already possess and focus on becoming an expert in it. Know everything there is to know about it. Start by reading books, attending seminars, writing articles and networking.

Create an ideal client profile for each product or service you offer. Who needs or want it? Who is able to pay for it at the price you’ve set? Try putting yourself in the shoes of your ideal client and ask yourself what he or she wants or are looking for? Is pricing a consideration? Do they value quality over quantity? Why should they look to you to provide a solution? How can you solve their problems? By understanding their needs, you will be better able to help them. When you have arrived at the answers to these questions you will KNOW how to build your business.

What you specialize in is your niche, and your niche market are your clients, and how you reach them is your niche marketing plan. If you’ve developed a business in a niche market, we would like to hear from you and any advice you can give us from experience.

Virtually yours,
Linda Belan
Your Outsource Solutions, LLC
www.youroutsourcesolutions.com

Anyone who owns a business will know that marketing is a necessity. We would all love to be able to advertise on television, radio, in newpapers, magazines, billboards, etc. The cost could easily add up and, let’s face it, small business owners don’t have the budgets that the big boys do.

This is not to say that we should give up the idea of promoting our business. There are many inexpensive ways to promote your business that are just as effective that don’t require thousands of dollars.

A great way to market your virtual assistant business is through networking. There are many inexpensive or even free networking organizations in every city. Your local Chamber of Commerce is a good place to start. You could become an active member in discussion boards or create your own free blog on many of the blogging sites that are out there such as WordPress, Blogger, Facebook, etc. Offer advice and tips when posting on discussion boards or blogs. This is a good way to establish yourself as an expert and this can do wonders for your virtual assistant business because people will come to you first.

Another good way to get the word out about your business is to volunteer your time and services to charities and non-profit organizations. A great way to network locally! Invest in business cards that are relatively inexpensive these days. A good site that I’ve found is www.vistaprint.com. They have some really affordable prices!

Once you’ve got your business cards printed up keep them handy and with you at all times. Hand them out to friends, acquaintances, leave some at places you frequent locally like your hairdresser’s and other local businesses. Many such establishments are willing to help so be sure to ask! When leaving your business cards with others be sure to give them two: one for themselves and one to pass along.

Some of your local newspapers are a good place to advertise your business. You’d be surprised how inexpensive these are and the numbers of readers they reach that might be small business owners in your area that need some help! Very often small business owners prefer to work with someone locally.

These are just some of the ways you can market your business inexpensively. I hope this has been helpful. If you’ve tried other methods to market your Virtual Assistant business that have worked for you, we want to know! Tell us about it!

Virtually yours,
Linda Belan
Your Outsource Solutions, LLC
www.youroutsourcesolutions.com