Step 1 - Setting Goals and Objectives

Many people believe (erroneously) that getting a top rank in Google is “the goal” of any SEO campaign. Unfortunately, a top rank in Google won’t do much for you if no one is searching for those keywords, those who do search for those keywords aren’t looking for your product or service, or if your website isn’t set up to convert those new visitors into subscribers, leads or sales.

Every good SEO campaign starts with understanding your goals for your website and what types of people you want to visit your site. Ask yourself these two questions.

• Who is your target audience? - What types of people do you want to visit your site? In other words, who can benefit the most from your products and services? Put yourself in the mind of your visitors - if they are looking for what you sell, what keywords do you need to target, what content do you need to provide, what offer do you need to make to grab their attention?
• What should they do once they get to your site? - Until your visitors take action, they will remain anonymous. Ideally, you’d like your visitors to raise their hands and let you know they are interested in your information, products or services. How, exactly, can they do that? For instance, they might join your mailing list, download a free report, request a consultation, subscribe to your blog feed, buy your product, etc. How can you make it as easy as possible for them to do that? What would compel them to take that action immediately?

All successful SEO campaigns start with understanding the psychology of your target audience. Yes, you know your product or service can help them. But they don’t. They don’t know anything about you - and they aren’t likely to read every page of your site to see if you can potentially help them.

When your visitors click onto your site, they are in control of what content they read - so it’s up to you to design a site that very clearly explains what you can do for them and what the next step is if they are interested in learning more. How can you make it as easy for them as possible to take that action?

Step 2 - Keyword Research

Once you know a bit about your target audience, you start looking at your website the way they would. Your goal in this step is to make sure your website shows up where your target audience is actually looking - not simply where you think they’ll be looking.

Often, what people actually search for when they are ready to buy a product or service is not what you think that might be. They might use different phrases, terminology, or brand names than those you use to describe your products and services. Alternatively, if you pick keywords that are too generic or seem irrelevant to your services, your visitors won’t be as qualified as you’d like.

Keyword research usually starts with a brainstorming session - which keywords do you think are most relevant? You can also look to your competitors’ websites - which keywords do they target. Keyword suggestion tools like Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Suggestion Tool or SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool are also good resources.

Step 3 - On-Page Optimization

Once you know what keywords your target audience is actually searching for, it’s time to evaluate your website for how well it ranks for those keywords. On-page optimization means everything you can do to your website that will influence its rank in search engines. This can include:

• using those keywords in your content, title tags and other HTML tags
• creating more content about those keywords
• linking to pages using those keywords in the link’s anchor text
• making sure visitors can skim your content within a few seconds by providing headlines, bulleted lists, and bolded words
• keeping content up-to-date
• and so forth

Before I get too far, let me stress - concentrate on your visitors first and then worry about search engines. If your site looks like it was written for search engines rather than your visitors, they’ll be able to tell - and will quickly click away.

Never forget the goal of SEO - you want visitors to come to your site AND take some sort of action. Conversion is the end goal!

Step 4 - Linking Strategies

On-page SEO will only take you so far. If you are targeting highly competitive search terms, you’ll need to devote considerable effort to getting other quality sites to link to you. Links are a major factor in how search engines rank sites because search engines assume that if other quality sites are linking to you, you must have good content.

Think of it this way - not every site someone wants to be ranked No. 1 on Google for a particular keyword actually deserves that rank. Over the years, webmasters have tried to game search engines by getting as many links as they can without regard to the quality of sites that are actually linking to them. This strategy no longer works anymore.

Now, search engines rank sites based on a number of link-based ranking factors in order to filter out the spammers while promoting the quality sites that do deserve a high ranking. Rather than just look at quantity of links, they look at whether the site linking to you is a relevant, authoritative site that is also considered trustworthy on the web.

What should you be looking for?

• Is the linking site relevant? Search engines give greater weight to links coming from sites that are of a similar nature as yours.
• Is the linking site reputable? Do other websites link out to this site, implicating that this site is an authority on its topic?
• What anchor text does the site use to link to you? Anchor text is the text portion of a link. A link that includes your keywords is better than a link that just includes your site’s title or your URL.
• Where will the link be placed? Links located in the main content of the site are usually weighted more than those in the page footer or near other paid links.
• What type of traffic will the page send your site? - Look for sites with readers who might actually click through to your site rather than just focusing on getting a link back to your site.

A link from a high-quality, relevant site is far more valuable to you than submitting your site to thousands of directory sites or shady sites that will link to anyone.

Step 5 - Measuring Results

Finally, once you’ve implemented your campaign, you must measure and tweak the results.

Where does your site rank for your priority keywords? Are you getting more qualified traffic from those rankings? Are you getting good links from reputable and relevant sites? Are you getting the conversions you want? And specifically, are you getting a good return on your investment?

By following these five steps, you should start to see results within 30-90 days of implementation. As you monitor your results and make the necessary changes, you’ll soon find your website ranks well - and converts visitors into subscribers, leads and sales.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Most people outside the SEO industry equate search engine optimization (SEO) with getting a No. 1 ranking in Google. While that’s part of what SEO is, it’s not the whole picture.

In the strictest sense, SEO is about optimizing elements of your webpage and those pages linking to your site to improve your rank in search engines. But just getting a No. 1 ranking in Google isn’t enough. After all, you could have a No. 1 rank for a keyword that no one searches for. Or you could rank No. 1 for a keyword that people do search for but isn’t relevant to your site’s content. Or you could rank No. 1 for a keyword that people looking for information only - that is, they have no intent to buy your product or hire you - search for.

On the flip side, once people click on your page from search results, you have about three seconds to convince them they should stick around and read more - perhaps take a specific action. If people click onto your page and immediately click away, you’ve lost them. If people skim the page and can’t find the keywords they were searching for, or your content isn’t compelling, or your site looks spammy, they’ll leave without giving you another thought.

So, let’s refine the definition of SEO a bit more: SEO is the practice of improving your site’s ranking in search engines to attract people who are most interested in your information, product, or service. And SEO is about getting those qualified people who do come to your site to take some relevant action - to convert those anonymous browsers into people who are willing to raise their hands and say “I’m interested. Tell me more.”

Common SEO Myths

Now that I’ve talked about what SEO is, let me clear up a few myths and misconceptions about SEO.

• The goal of an SEO campaign is a top 5 ranking in Google. - A top rank in Google can have no effect on your bottom line if you aren’t targeting the right keywords (those keywords aren’t relevant to your website’s content or no one is searching for those terms) or if your website isn’t set up to convert visitors into leads and sales. The goal of an SEO campaign should be to deliver highly targeted visitors who want/need your product or service - and are ready to take action.
• SEO involves secret tactics, smoke and mirrors or ways to trick search engines. - SEO isn’t rocket science, nor is it a secret practice that only experts are privy to. Good SEO doesn’t involve shady tactics that go against Google’s best practices or taking advantage of loopholes in how search engines rank sites. The key to higher rankings isn’t in tweaking your “meta tags” or “header tags,” adding hidden text to your site, using the proper keyword density, getting lots of low quality sites to link to you, repeatedly re-submitting your site to search engines, buying multiple domains or other tricks you may have heard.
• SEO can guarantee a top search engine position. - You’ve probably received unsolicited emails claiming they can get you a top 10 ranking on Google guaranteed. Unfortunately, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is - especially in this case. Google even states that no one can guarantee top search engine rankings.
• You won’t need to change your site. - A major component of SEO involves optimizing your website so that search engines can easily determine what your site is about and will rank accordingly. To do so, you will need to change elements of your website to incorporate the keywords you wish to be found for.
• SEO is a one-time event and once you achieve a top rank, it is permanent. - Search engines are always tweaking the way they rank sites. New competitors are always entering the SEO game. In other words, the game is always changing, and you never can just rest on your laurels once you do achieve the rank you’d like.
• SEO is a free way to market your site. - While many SEO strategies can be implemented for free or low cost, you still must put in time and effort on an ongoing basis. In addition, many effective SEO tactics do cost money.
• SEO will send you lots of quick traffic (or it will take years to see results). - SEO won’t drive thousands of visitors to your site in the next 24 hours. It can take months to see the results of your efforts, but you should start to see results within 30-90 days.

What are the components of an SEO campaign?

There are three basic steps of any SEO campaign:

1. Strategy: This stage involves customer, competitor and keyword analysis to create an SEO strategy for your company. First, you must define who your target audience - that is, who are the people who are most likely to need your information, products, and services - is, how they search for information, and what keywords they use. Second, it involves evaluating your competitors’ sites - who are they? How do they rank? What content do they provide? How difficult will it be to rank better than they do? Etc. Finally, it involves prioritizing the most lucrative keywords - those keywords that bring in and convert the most visitors - to create an action-oriented SEO strategy with firm goals and objectives.
2. Implementation: Step 2 builds on the research you did in Step 1. This step includes building an SEO-friendly website with quality content that your visitors want, adding content rich in keywords your customers use, and getting quality links back to your site.
3. Measuring Results: Step 3 involves monitoring how well your SEO campaign is going and making changes to your strategy for continual results.

SEO can be a great way to send high-quality, targeted traffic to your website, but as I’ve stressed in this article, traffic isn’t enough. If you aren’t also focused on converting that traffic to leads and sales, you are wasting a lot of time and money for minimal results. A solid SEO strategy will help you get the most return on investment (ROI) for your SEO efforts.

1. Market to past clients. Your customer list is your business’ most-valuable asset. These people have already bought from you and already know, like, and trust you. They already know how you work, what you offer, and what you can do for them. And not only are they most likely to buy from you again, they are most likely to tell others about your products and services. So make it easy for them!Give people a story to talk about. Make your product or service so exceptional, they can’t wait to tell their friends and family members because it’s just so incredible they can’t keep it to themselves.
2. Market to referral partners. Think of all the types of businesses who also can do business with your customers and clients. What do your customers usually purchase before they buy your products and services? What about after they purchase your products and services? You can’t possibly offer everything they could ever want or need by yourself, so partner with other businesses to make it easy for you to refer your clients and customers to other professionals who can also help them. They’ll appreciate and reciprocate the referrals.
3. Create education-based products for prospects. One of the biggest modern myths of marketing is that your advertising, promotions, website, postcards, and other materials should be clever, cute, entertaining, or creative to “break through the clutter” and grab people’s attention.It’s true that we are exposed to thousands of marketing messages a day, but what happens is that we filter out anything that isn’t relevant to our top concerns. That means, the best way to grab someone’s attention isn’t to make the funniest ad you can, but to create something - a free guide, FAQ, special report, free analysis, audio CD, DVD, or book - that is so relevant to your prospects’ current problems, concerns and fears that they say, “Wow, they read my mind. Maybe that guide really can help me.”When you educate your prospects about their problems, you show them you understand what they are going through and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You demonstrate how your products and services have helped others like them and educate them about what it takes to solve their problem. That’s what sells your products and services.

You might be asking: What about advertising, websites, postcards, mailings, and other promotions? Shouldn’t you also do those? Yes, you can, but those marketing tactics work best in conjunction with offering some type of free sample or product rather than encouraging people to take a giant leap of faith and “call now for their free consultation,” which in your prospect’s mind equates with a sales pitch.

If you focus your ad, postcard, or mailing solely on selling your prospect a free report, guide or CD, it’s much easier to get them to raise their hands and say, “Yes, I’ve been thinking about this issue. Please tell me more.” It’s less risky than talking with you directly, and it gives them a way to sample and evaluate your products and services at their leisure.

Prospects buy when they are ready - not when you want them to. That’s why marketing can seem so challenging. It’s not about reaching millions of people to sell them on buying from you right now. It’s about finding the right people who are already researching or considering solutions and getting them to raise their hands and tell you “I’m interested, but I’m not quite ready to buy yet. How can you help me solve my problem?”

1. Strategy - This is the planning step where you determine your target audience, your message, what marketing tactics you’ll use, and how you’ll measure results.
2. Execution - This is the action step where you follow through on your plan.

Planning Your Marketing Campaign Strategy

Planning a marketing campaign is a lot like planning a vacation. You can’t move forward with the details of booking your flight and hotel or creating a basic itinerary until you know if you’ll be in Orlando or Paris. The same is true for your marketing campaign. You can’t determine what you should say, how you should design your ads, and which publications to advertise in until you commit to working with a particular target audience and define specific campaign goals around that target audience. Here are the five essential steps to any marketing campaign:

1. Determine Your Target Audience - A target market is a group of people who have specific want or need for your product or service, have the ability to buy your product or service, and are willing to pay for your product or service. These people share common characteristics and traits that enable you to identify them.Think of it this way, if you don’t know anything about the people that buy your services, where would you find them? You’d spend lots of time, effort and money marketing to everyone when only a tiny percentage would even see your message, and of those, only a smaller portion might buy from you. You’d spend much more money trying to acquire a client than you’d make providing your services for them.
2. Set Campaign Goals - What should your marketing campaign accomplish? These should be S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) goals rather than simply “getting more clients” or “making more money”.
3. Determine Your Marketing Message - Your marketing message must address the needs, concerns, and motivations of your target audience while describing how you are different from others. A good way to do this is to craft a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your USP answers the burning question in your prospect’s mind: “Why should I choose you?” and tells people who your target audience is, what you’ll do for them, why that’s different from what others are offering and why that solution matters to your target audience. Your USP is dependent on your target audience. You’ll never be everything to everyone - but you can be an expert for a niche group of people - and that’s what you should strive for.
4. Determine Your Action Steps - How will you reach your target audience? What will you offer them? How should they respond? When creating an action plan, think of marketing in terms of a process rather than a one-step operation. It’s rare that you will run an ad and lots of people will flock to your business or have your phone ringing off the hook.The best way to get your target audience’s attention is by educating them about solutions to their problems. You can do this by writing articles, blogging, publishing a newsletter, giving talks at local events, podcasting, writing a newspaper column, and so forth.Once you’ve created basic content, you can use this in all your traditional advertising and promotions campaigns. For instance, instead of advertising that prospects can call for a free consultation, have them visit your web site to download a free report and sign up for your free monthly newsletter.As your prospect reads more about solutions to his problem and hears from you each month because he’s subscribed to your newsletter, he becomes more familiar with you. The more he reads from you, the more he gets to know and like you - and you haven’t even met him yet! When he’s ready, he’ll call you, and at that point, he’s virtually already sold on doing business with you.
5. Determine How You’ll Measure Results - Build in ways to keep track of which inquiries come from which promotional methods. For instance, RingCentral.com makes it easy to set up unique 800 numbers. If you are running two ads, give them unique 800 numbers so you know which inquiries come from which ads. You might also tell prospects to ask for a particular person (ask for Jane in one ad or ask for Steve in another) when they call. Or if you offer a free report, change the title in each of the ads so when prospects ask you for it, you know how they found you.

Executing Your Marketing Campaign Strategy

It’s easy to get so caught up in the planning stages of your marketing campaign that you never commit to action. You’ve probably heard the phrase “paralysis by analysis,” which refers to getting so caught up with all the factors involved in creating the master plan that you never feel confident moving forward.

The truth is that no matter how long you brainstorm about every conceivable possibility that might happen, something won’t go according to plan when you finally do execute. Marketing is a learning process, not a one-time deal, and the only way to know for sure whether something will work is to test different marketing messages, different publications, different titles, and so forth.

It’s fairly scientific. Just as scientists design models and frameworks for understanding the world and then create real-world tests to see if their models hold up, you do the same thing with your marketing campaigns. You identify all the different variables in the equations (your target audience, your marketing message, your design, your title, your offer, etc.) then start testing to see which variations work the best.

A business plan is your road map to success. Think about it. We plan all our major life events: vacations, weddings, buying a house, retirement - even what will happen to our assets when we die. We plan so we and others working with us understand what we want to accomplish and have an idea of how we’ll go about accomplishing it. Why should your business be any different?

Your business plan is your model for how you do business. It’s a document that anyone can pick up and understand where your business currently is, where you hope to be in the future, and what steps you’ll take to get there. That may sound like common sense, but many entrepreneurs get bogged down in the details of writing a 50-page plan with their business plan software, crank out a massive document, and file it away, never to look at it again.

Your business plan should be a living document - one that you revisit and make changes to. Just as your business is dynamic, your business plan should be frequently updated to match. You’ll always have new costs to add to the financials sections. You’ll realize that steps you thought of don’t quite work the way you thought and need to be revised. Problems will come up that you’ll need to address to move forward. Your business plan is your commitment to action - how you plan to deal with opportunities and problems to achieve your goals.

Unless you plan to seek funding from a bank, you probably don’t need a formal business plan. You do, however, still need to define goals and purpose for your business, understand your customers, competitors and the market, devise an action plan to help you achieve your goals, and think through what could go wrong and if so, how you’d handle it.

The best business plans are concise and focus on how your business is operating today, rather than speculating on all the things your business could possibly be. You can write one by tackling these subjects:

1 - What Is Your Business?

• Your mission and purpose: Why are you in business? What is your business mission and purpose?
• Your business goals for this year: What are your business goals? What do you want to accomplish in the next year?
• What you sell: What products and services do you sell? What is it that you do, specifically, that provides enough value that people will pay for your products and services?
• Who you serve: What types of customers and clients do you serve? Where can you find them? What is their biggest pain or problem that your product or service solves for them? How does your product or service enrich the lives of your customers and clients?
• Who your competitors are: Who else serves your customers? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are they doing to attract customers? How is their product or service better than yours? How is it worse than yours?
• Why you are unique: What are your strengths and weaknesses? What do you do better than your competitors? Why should customers buy from you rather than all the other choices they have? How do you explain what it is you do to your prospects?

This section isn’t about jargon or philosophy. It’s about explaining in layman’s terms the core principles of your business and where you want to be within a specific time frame.

2 - Where Is Your Business Today?

Even if you are just starting out, you most likely have some starting resources and talents to work from. Perhaps you already have a home office, computer, phone and plenty of time to jump in. Perhaps you have investors who will fund your business. Perhaps you have 15 years of experience in a particular industry. Perhaps you’ve created a unique process that solves a specific problem for a type of business. Write these down.

• Strengths and Talents: What areas and industries do you have years of experience in? What are your strengths? What do you love to do? What problems can you solve?
• Resources: What resources do you currently have (money, time, employees, vendors, technology, people in your network, your strengths and talents, opportunities, threats facing your business)?
• Uniqueness: Why would clients choose your products and services over your competitors’?
• Income: How do you currently make money? Which products and services do you sell the most of? Why - what problems do they solve? Can you find other products and services that may complement these and that you can also sell to your customers and clients?
• Marketing: How do you market to get new clients? Who do you know that might need your products or services? What organizations do you belong to where you might meet people who need your products and services?

Be as realistic as you can when writing this section because this will become your starting point and provide the benchmark for how you can measure your goals.

3 - How Will You Manage Cash Flow?

Your finances don’t have to be scary. They just have to portray an accurate picture of your business, detailing your expenses and how you plan to make money. How do you do that? Sit down and make a list of all the costs involved in running your business including rent, office supplies, marketing and advertising, insurance, membership dues, training, and the like. Here are a few expenses you might have:

Business Expenses

• Office rent, utilities, phone, Internet, office supplies
• Technology (computer, PDA, cell phone, camera, printer, etc.) and software
• Professional fees and membership dues (professional and local organizations)
• Education and training
• Insurance
• Marketing materials
  • Advertising
  • Direct Mail (printing costs and postage)
  • Web expenses
  • Trade shows and events
  • Online marketing (e-newsletters, search engine marketing, online advertising)
  • Other marketing
• Credit cards and loans
• Suppliers (Designers, Virtual Assistants, Lawyers, Accountants, etc.)
• Travel
• Taxes

Average Monthly Business Expenses: $_____________

Personal Expenses

• Personal income (salary, other income)
• Rent/Mortgage, utilities, phone, water, cable, Internet
• Credit Cards and Loans (car, education, etc.)
• Insurance (home, car)
• Food
• Clothes
• Entertainment
• Large purchases - furniture, electronics, computer equipment
• Vacation/Travel
• Other monthly expenses
• Taxes

Average Monthly Personal Expenses: $_____________

Total Expenses (Personal + Business): $_____________

Income
Now, figure out how you can make that sum each month, given what you are currently offering. Make a list of each product or service you sell and how much you charge.

For instance, if your average profit per sale is $50 and your total expenses are $6000, then you must sell 120 per month. If there are about 20 working days in a month, that means you must sell 6 products per day.

If your average profit per sale is $1000 and you want to make $6000, then you only need to sell 6 per month, or one every 3-4 days.

Bookkeeping and Taxes

Keeping your financial resources in check is the key to running a successful business. We often don’t realize just how much we spend until we look at our bank account and wonder where the money went. When you monitor your process daily or weekly, you can see exactly where you are in relation to your goals.

I strongly encourage you to buy business accounting software like Microsoft Money Deluxe 2007 or QuickBooks Pro 2008 so you can keep track of your income and expenses on a regular basis. Both software packages link into your bank and credit card accounts so you can quickly download your expenses directly into the software. They also provide you with numerous financial reports.

Keep in mind, the best business plans are those that provide a model for successfully running your business. If it can help you get funding or explain to others what you do, that’s great too, but those are secondary benefits.

4 - Moving From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be

Now that you’ve documented where you are and where you want to be, where are the gaps? If you’re just starting out, the gaps probably look massive, but don’t get overwhelmed. This exercise is about chunking tasks into bite-sized pieces you can easily do and giving yourself a timeframe and deadline by which you’ll complete each task.

In step 3, you wrote down all your monthly expenses. This will serve as your break-even point - in other words, this is what you need to meet your basic requirements for living without incurring debt. In this step, you’ll start with whatever that number is and work backwards.

If your goal is to make $6000 monthly and you are selling a $1000 service, that means you need 6 paying clients per month. Where might you find these clients? (It helps if you know what types of clients you are looking for. Who would have the biggest need for your service? What types of people would find it the most valuable?)

Let’s say that for every four people who inquire about your services, one buys from you. That means you need to talk with at least 24 prospects (6 paying clients x 4 appointments each) per month. How are you going to get those appointments?

• Perhaps you’ll get a few from referrals - what can you do for your best referral partners and past clients so they’ll want to refer business to you?
• Perhaps you’ll get a few from advertising - where should you advertise and what should you say?
• Perhaps you’ll get a few from mailings - who should you mail to and what should the offer be?
• etc.

That’s how you create your action plan.

5 - Define your biggest problems and obstacles.

You now know where you are, where you want to be and what to do to get there. Now, ask yourself - what might hold you back or prevent you from being successful? Make a list of all the things holding you back such as:

• No one knows who I am, nor do they consider me an expert.
• There are lots of competitors in my market space.
• My prospects can’t see any difference between my company and my competitors’.
• I don’t have a list of prospects or keep a contact database to market to on a consistent basis.
• I don’t get any response from my ads or mailings.
• I don’t have a system in place for nurturing leads.
• I don’t have a process in place for asking for referrals.
• etc.

If lack of knowledge or one of your weaknesses is holding you back, write it down. It’s better to acknowledge it and find ways to work around those issues rather than ignoring them and hoping they will go away.

6 - What are potential solutions?

For each problem you identify, come up with potential solutions. For instance, if your ads or mailings aren’t working, decide you’ll learn more about direct marketing and that you’ll test different ads and offers in different newspapers, publications and mailings until you do find something that works.

If you don’t have a process in place for asking for referrals, how can you create one? Here’s a sample process: Once you complete a project with a new client, send them a thank you card with a request for a referral. Follow up with a call each month for the first three months to check in on them and see if they’re having any problems you can help with. Invite them to client appreciation events. Send them a monthly newsletter about things that would be of interest to them.

What if your lack of knowledge is holding you back? There’s no shame in that - very few entrepreneurs know everything before they get into business. What hurts businesses is when they ignore their weaknesses and hope they’ll go away. In fact, SCORE & U.S. Bank found that “in 70 percent of small-business failures, a key factor was the owner not recognizing or ignoring weaknesses, and then not seeking help.”

The moral is that it’s OK to ask for help. There are plenty of great marketing experts, coaches and mentors, and organizations like the Small Business Administration or Chamber of Commerce groups that can help.

7 - Prioritize.

You can’t tackle all your obstacles at once, nor will you ever know “everything” about business. You will always be learning how to do things faster, better, and cheaper but until you start working through your obstacles, you will never be able to test, get feedback and make changes.

As you prioritize, look at which obstacles must you overcome first so that you can solve other obstacles. For instance, if you aren’t getting responses from your ads or mailings, then you probably will have a difficult time creating a list of prospects in your contact database. Work on learning more about how to improve your advertising first.

8 - Commit to action.

Planning helps you see what you need to do so you don’t become overwhelmed and frustrated, but action is what gets you to where you want to be. Commit to an action that will take you closer to your goals each day.

The truth is that to be an entrepreneur, you need thick skin and control over your own inner critic. You’ll have to throw away your big book of excuses and take 100 percent responsibility for your business’ success. And you’ll need a strong sense of autonomy (the ability to govern yourself).

What can you expect to do each day? Aside from your business-as-usual tasks of serving your clients and customers, you’ll need to devote time to:

Marketing and Selling

As an entrepreneur, your primary job is to bring in profitable customers or clients, which means you must always be marketing and selling your products or services. It doesn’t matter if you are a designer, programmer, lawyer, accountant, pet store owner, or Domino’s Pizza franchisee, your job is to find customers and clients that have a need for your product or service and can afford to pay you to solve it.

In other words, you are a marketer first, a designer/programmer/lawyer/accountant/pet store owner/Domino’s Pizza franchisee second. Marketing is your lifeblood because it is everything you do to bring in and retain a customer, the source of your income!

If you’re like most people, you probably hate the idea of being a salesman. You can’t envision yourself being the slick, fast-talking sales person using high-pressure techniques to sell your prospect something he doesn’t need. The good news is: You don’t have to. Those types of sales tactics aren’t very effective anymore, anyway. Instead, selling is about identifying the prospects who already have a need for your product or service and educating them about your solution so that they feel comfortable buying from you. In today’s marketplace, selling is about building relationships and creating win/win situations.

Unfortunately, marketing and sales are often where many small-business owners bleed money because they don’t understand marketing. Rather than bring in $2 for every $1 spent on marketing, most lose money, so if you are considering getting into business, learn everything you can about marketing and selling. Read books, take classes, subscribe to magazines and blogs, and do whatever you can to learn these skills. (See the resource list in the back of this guide for suggestions.)

Creating Strategic Alliances

One of the best sources of new customers and clients comes from partnering with other businesses. When customers buy your products and services, they often need all sorts of other things that you don’t provide.

For instance, if you are a real estate agent who works with home sellers, your clients probably need other services including staging companies, landscape care, movers, mortgage companies, and a variety of others. Since you’ve already built a relationship with your client, they should trust your recommendations for these other firms. You can then strike deals with these other types of businesses for a referral fee or simply as an agreement that you only refer to them with the agreement that they will refer their customers to you.

If you are a restaurant owner, you might leave discount coupons in a number of other small-business offices so they can hand them out to their clients and customers. If you are a book author, you can partner with email newsletter publishers to have them mention your book to their subscriber list.

Strategic partners are everywhere and are usually open to helping you out if they receive something in return (referrals, free products or services, etc.). What types of incentives can you offer?

Problem Solving

Inevitably, each day you are in business, you’ll face numerous problems that you’ll need to solve. At first, each new situation you encounter will bring with it new questions and challenges. As you solve each problem, write it down with the exact steps you took to solve the problem.

By writing down the problem and its solution, you’ve now created a process for handling a particular type of problem so the next time this problem creeps up, you or an employee can flip to the appropriate page in the manual for the solution rather than reinventing the wheel.

Evaluating Opportunities

Virtually every day, you will discover new opportunities. These might be discounts on advertising and marketing materials, new work from clients or new orders from customers, request-for-proposals from prospects, requests to partner with other companies, and so on.

You’ll need to develop a system for how you evaluate whether such opportunities are right for you. Many, many people will try to convince you to part with your money. Your job is to only pursue opportunities that will benefit you long-term and keep your expenses to a minimum. Always ask yourself: Is this the best use of my money? Could I get a better return-on-investment if I used that money for something else? Do I really need this right now? Will this move me closer to my long-term goals? Spend when you need to, but spend frugally.

Life Balance

To most entrepreneurs, their job isn’t just work, it’s also fun. They love the thrill of creating something from nothing and nurturing it from the ground up - and, of course, there’s always something more to do. In short, it’s easy to become a workaholic.

Instead of working 24/7, learn to compartmentalize your day so you have time you devote solely to work and time you spend with your family, friends, and hobbies. When you spend time away from work, turn off everything work related. Your family and friends will know if you’re not enjoying your time with them because you’re worried about a problem with your business, and it will affect your relationships for the worse.

A good way to do this is to take a full day off - where you don’t check email and you don’t do anything business related. If you work every day, your health and relationships will suffer. Take the necessary time to rejuvenate, devote time to other priorities in your life (your business shouldn’t be your only priority), and relax.

Myth 1: Your business serves you.

Most small-business owners go into business for the lifestyle. They want to work less, have flexible schedules, make more money, etc. The truth is that if you want to create this type of lifestyle, or even create an asset you can sell or pass on to your children, you must expand the business beyond a one-person shop. Doing this takes hard work.

Raising a child. As an infant, your business needs a lot of care and guidance from you. You’ll likely put in long hours marketing and selling your products and services, serving your customers, generating income, managing expenses, finding people to hire, and dealing with bookkeeping, legal issues, and taxes.

Like a child, as your business grows, it will require less effort on your part. You’ll have put in place people to tend to the daily operations, systems to automate common practices, and marketing that you’ve tested to generate measurable results. The bigger the business becomes, the easier it will be for you to step out of the day-to-day grind and take on a management role. Usually, at this stage, you’re able to achieve some of your lifestyle goals (you can take vacations, you’re making good money even when you aren’t working, etc.) - but the business now no longer serves you. It’s beyond you and has taken on a life and purpose of its own - and now it has become a sellable asset.

Myth 2: Selling means convincing customers to buy what you offer.

Pick up most sales books and you’ll find techniques for how to get people to buy what you are selling. Often, they use high pressure sales tactics that focus on you making money at the customer’s expense.

Instead of creating win-lose situations with customers, start with them. Ask your prospects and customers what their biggest problems, concerns and fears are - and then create a product or service that solves or alleviates those issues.

Myth 3: Your marketing materials must tell prospects who you are, what you do and what you’ve accomplished.

Most marketing materials focus on the company. They describe the company history, what products and services are offered, the company founders and staff, and awards won - details that aren’t remotely interesting your prospects and only serve to boost the ego of the business owner. These types of marketing materials are a waste of money and do nothing to sell your services.

Instead, the best marketing materials are written by putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes and asking: “If I was this person, what, specifically, would I be going through? Where would my biggest problem or pain lie? What would I be feeling?” The marketing piece would then be written to that person, describing in detail the problems he faces, the frustrations he feels, and finally, how to solve or alleviate those problems.

The truth is, your prospects don’t know or care about you. They are much more interested in their own problems and concerns and don’t have time to figure out if and how you can help them. When your marketing talks of specific problems they have and offers them a way to take steps immediately to relieve that pain, then you have their attention because you’ve demonstrated you understand what they’re going through.

Myth 4: You should focus on short-term results.

It’s human nature to want something as quickly, cheaply and easily as possible. We don’t like to delay gratification when we can have things now, so when we make a few sales or take on a few big clients, we’ve already spent the money in our heads.

Small businesses aren’t alone in this type of thinking. Wall Street is obsessed with quarterly reports. If large companies aren’t showing growth quarter after quarter, investors dump their stocks for more-lucrative investments.

The problem with short-term thinking is that it’s not always in line with your long-term goals. For instance, you may decide to take on a new client’s big project because of the short-term cash influx without weighing the amount of resources and work required to complete the project against other potential (and more lucrative) projects in the future.

Myth 5: You should pursue every opportunity that comes your way.

Trying to take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way is a recipe for failure. The more projects you get involved with, the less resources you have to devote to each - which often means you end up with lots of half-done projects and no results to show for any of them.

Creating goals and a business strategy for your company requires that you determine upfront what types of opportunities you’ll pursue and turn down any opportunities that aren’t a good fit - despite whether they’ll be good in the short term.

Myth 6: Go with your gut.

Small-business owners are notorious for hiring people they “like” or pursuing opportunities because they have a “good feeling” about them. Often, these gut decisions lead to taking on more risk than your company needs to.

When hiring new people, make sure to check out references and do a thorough background check. Hire them on a short-term basis with the potential for long-term work and start them out with smaller projects to evaluate their working style and results.

When making decisions about which opportunities to pursue, find ways to test different options and make your decisions based on testing and data rather than your gut instinct or making an impulse purchase.

Myth 7: Do what everyone else is doing.

There’s a common perception that if other businesses like yours are doing something, you should be doing that, too. This is extremely common with advertising and marketing as companies feel if their competitors have a cool new feature on their web site, are sending out postcards, or are advertising in certain publications, they should be too because their competitors must know what they are doing.

Unfortunately, doing what every other company out there is doing is often like the blind leading the blind. Few companies base their marketing materials on their prospects’ needs (Myth 3) and even fewer companies test whether their marketing and advertising brings in consistent results. You’d most likely be more successful taking what everyone else is doing and doing the opposite.

As you can see, business often isn’t just common sense. To be successful, you must create long-term goals and make decisions based on those goals. You must pick projects and opportunities that are aligned with those goals, turn down projects and opportunities that aren’t aligned with long term goals, and focus your time and resources on high-priority tasks that will move you closer to achieving your goals.

While many people dream of being their own boss, setting their own hours, and raking in money, the truth is that most people don’t create a business - they create a glorified job for themselves. The problem is - if you are your business, you don’t have a business but the worst job in the world. Let me explain …

Michael Gerber first wrote about this in his seminal book, The E-Myth Revisited, which talks about how many small-business owners become workaholics chained to their business. Most small businesses are started by “technicians” - people who love and are good at doing a particular task (i.e. musicians, bakers, lawyers, computer programmers, designers, etc.). When these “technicians” start their own businesses, they continue to focus on doing work they are skilled at, while ignoring the fundamental tenets of business. They never set real business goals for themselves. They hate marketing and sales. And they aren’t good at managing their finances or delegating work to employees, outsourcers, or partners. They may do these things because they must, but they do them reluctantly.

As time wears on, these technicians fall into the following cycle:

• they realize they need customers and clients so they do a bunch of marketing
• they get a few projects and quickly focus their attention back to being “technicians”
• as they finish up their projects, they realize they don’t have any work coming in, so they again return to marketing

The cycle repeats itself and leaves the technician burnt out, often living paycheck-to-paycheck and never knowing where their next client will come from. During the times they have a few client projects, they find themselves overworked and understaffed, but because they aren’t good at money management, they find themselves too cash-strapped to hire people to help them. Often, they may come to hate the work they do.

In order to break out of this cycle, every business owner must initially see themselves in, and set time aside for, three roles: the technician (who produces the product or services the client), the manager (who manages operations and finances), and the entrepreneur (who sets goals and keeps the business on track). Eventually, the goal is to hire employees, virtual assistants, and partners to fill these roles and take some of the burden off the small-business owner.

And many people do take that step forward. The Small Business Association estimates there are at least 20 million solo business ventures that generate annual receipts of $1 trillion. Two million people become self-employed each year - and many start their businesses with less than $5000 in start-up capital.

Yet being an entrepreneur isn’t all fun and games - and most people underestimate the amount of work involved in creating a successful business - so before you turn in your resignation, take a moment to read this guide. Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. In fact, the majority of all businesses fail and of those that do endure, many become a lot like a glorified job where you must put in long hours to make sure everything gets done because if it doesn’t, there’s no one to blame but you.

Do You Have What It Takes To Start Your Own Business?

At its core, entrepreneurship isn’t about giving you the lifestyle you dream about, though that can be a side benefit. It’s about creating a unique and valuable entity that solves problems for a specific group of people. It is about creating a business that you raise and nurture (much like your children) so that one day, it can operate without you, if you choose.

Getting to that point takes persistence, hard work, and a strong leader who will guide the business toward its goals. In general, successful entrepreneurs are:

• Action Oriented - Once you start a business, you quickly realize you don’t know everything and there is quite a lot to learn. Instead of getting stuck in “information overload” or “paralysis by analysis,” successful entrepreneurs decrease their inputs and make sure to put whatever they learn into practice immediately. They are good at figuring out what, exactly, they need to learn to solve one problem at a time, solve it, and move on.
• Competent - Few things are more frustrating to employees and customers than incompetence. You must be good at what you do, be able to get things done, and do an exceptional job.
• Decisive - Every day you’ll be confronted with new problems and challenges that will require you to make quick decisions about what to do, which opportunities to pursue, how to manage your cash flow, whom to hire, and how to deal with specific problems. Often, you don’t have days to mull over a decision nor the luxury to second-guess yourself. You must make a decision and move forward.
• Financially Frugal - Successful entrepreneurs manage money well and keep their finances in check. They minimize expenses, knowing that every dollar they save becomes profit, and they monitor cash flow religiously.
• Perceptive - Successful entrepreneurs are willing to see things as they really are. They take off the rose-colored glasses and take responsibility for where their company is at. They don’t pretend if they ignore problems, those problems will magically disappear. While they are generally optimistic, they view things with a healthy dose of skepticism rather than “believing” things will work out.
• Problem Solvers - Entrepreneurs are able to put themselves in the minds of their prospects, customers, and employees to look at situations from others’ perspectives. They are great at asking questions to uncover where the pain lies, rather than dealing with symptoms, and look for ways to test ideas to see which has the best chance of success.
• Resilient - Setbacks and failures are a daily part of entrepreneurial life. You will make mistakes. Successful entrepreneurs don’t drown themselves in self guilt but bounce back quickly. They look for ways they can turn loss into opportunity and what they can learn so they can prevent it from happening again.
• Self-Disciplined - The downside to being your own boss means that you must hold yourself accountable and have the discipline to do what needs to be done. No one will tell you what to do, yet you’ll quickly find that the less you do, the less income you make. You must find the time to prioritize the most important work, get it done, and hold yourself accountable for your success.
• Strong Managers - Once your business starts to grow, you’ll realize you can’t do everything yourself and will need to hire employees, outsource projects, or work closely with vendors to help you. At this point, you do less of the day-to-day activities and spend more of your time managing others or looking for talent to hire.
• Strong Leaders - It’s up to you to make your employees believe in your vision and be willing to make tough choices, even if they go against popular opinion.
• Trustworthy - Getting others to trust you is key to your success. Your vendors, partners and employees must trust you to keep your promises and to give others credit when credit is due.

When you’re just starting out, you may not be good at all of those traits, but successful entrepreneurs are able to cultivate those skills as they need them.

How do you break that vicious cycle? Start putting systems in place. Simply put, a system is a step by step process that you follow to complete a particular task so that you get a specific outcome. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time you must do something, you have a written checklist of steps that you (or your employees or vendors) can follow to complete the task “your way”. By creating systems, you can easily teach someone else how to do what you do, then hand off the tasks so you have more time to focus on more important things.

I once heard the analogy that a business without systems is like taking the stairs to the 35th floor of a building. It’s incredibly difficult, slow, and not tedious. In contrast, a business with systems is like taking the elevator. Instead of walking up a spiral staircase (going in circles), you take the direct path (a straight line) to accomplish your tasks - and virtually anyone who gets in the elevator will make it to the 35th floor.

Who Can Systems Help?

The short answer is every small business owner. Imagine having the freedom to take a 3 week vacation or deal with a major life event and having the peace of mind that your business will be able to run smoothly in your absence. Too often, you are your business - you wear all the hats. If you don’t do it, it can’t or won’t get done. Systems allow you to easily teach others to do many of your daily tasks so you don’t have to worry about them.

If either of these scenarios sound like you, systems can help.

• You have too many projects and not enough time. It seems like you’re always working and never making much progress. Because you are always rushing, you don’t do as good of a job as you could, you don’t get enough sleep, your family life starts to suffer, and you start burning out. Systems can help you figure out what is mission critical and what can be delegated. By taking an hour or two to document everything you have to do and how you’ll go about doing it, you may be able to free up considerably more time.
• You’re firm is growing too fast. You’ll often read about businesses that grow too fast. They get a stream of clients or orders and have a difficult time serving their clients because they have too much on their plates. Often, the solution is to hire people, but that means taking time out to find the right people and train new employees. Systems can make that process a lot faster and smoother.

If you ever plan to grow your business beyond you or a handful of employees, you must document the steps you take to serve your clients and run your business.

How To Create Business Systems

Creating your system doesn’t have to be complicated. Start with whatever you have to accomplish today or this week and document the steps you take to get things done. Take an hour or two and follow these steps:

1. What do I have to do? Start brainstorming everything you have to do this week - whether that’s writing 2 articles for your blog or newsletter, placing an ad in your local paper, calling a prospect, having lunch with a past client, answering email, going to an industry conference, planning a talk for your local chamber of commerce, etc.
2. Pick your top 3. If you try to systematize everything at once, in all likelihood, you’ll end up frustrated and overwhelmed. Instead, pick the top 3 things that have to be done and start with those.
3. Decide what the outcome should be. What does success look like once the tasks are completed? What are the key milestones for that outcome? For instance, if you make a sales call and can’t close, what is the next step? Another call? Refer to someone else? Add to your mailing list?
4. Create a step by step guide. Once you have an idea of key milestones, put those steps on paper. I do this step with flowcharts in SmartDraw, which is really simple to use but there are many good flowcharting programs out there. A flow chart is a visual representation of your process. The basic components are rectangles, diamonds, and arrows connecting them. In the rectangles, you place your steps - one step for each rectangle. In the diamonds, you place decisions where what you do next “depends” on an outcome. You can visit the SmartDraw website to view sample flow charts and download a free trial of the software.

You can make your flowcharts as big picture or as detailed as you’d like. Often, I create one big picture flow chart of my process, like how to respond to an email inquiry, then create more detailed flow charts for the more common scenarios. Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to start documenting your step-by-step processes for all your business operations.

Systems are great for saving you time and money. When you stop to think about how many hours each year you spend hunting down missing business cards, phone numbers or important documents and multiply that by your hour rate, you realize how much wasted time is costing you. With a system in place, you know exactly what you need to do so nothing gets lost.