First, get a red marker, pen, crayon – whatever you have handy to write with, as long as it’s red. Then, draw a red line on the floor.

No, really. I’ll wait.

You didn’t do it, did you? “I just had these floors put in.” “This is a rental.” “My husband would kill me.”

This is the power of the red line.

Red velvet ropes are an important part of marketing. (I thought this was a Naomi thing, but apparently I picked it up from Havi Brooks, who got it from Michael Port. Naomi just calls them “barriers to entry”, which is more direct but isn’t as good for this metaphor.) Think of the entrance to a nightclub: you have a door and a guy, and a red velvet rope. When someone who’s on the list shows up, the guy opens the red velvet rope and lets the person through to the door. Anyone who’s not right (at least, not right now) for the nightclub waits outside the red velvet rope. Occasionally someone will grease the wheels by giving the guy some money, and he’ll let them in too.

The same applies to your marketing; your paid content, or working with you, is the door, and your free content is the guy and the rope. (Okay, the metaphor’s a little labored, but the concept is there.)

But here’s the thing: You don’t need the rope. If you paint a red line on the ground, people will still queue up outside the line. There’s no physical barrier to them getting to the door, but they’ll still stand there, waiting to be allowed in. Sure, some brave souls will walk up to the door, but the vast majority of people will stand in line quietly and wait for the guy to let them in. They’ll let the line dictate their behavior.

Want proof? Go to a parking lot.

Don LaFontaine

Switching gears for a moment (don’t worry, we’re coming back): I never got to talk to Don LaFontaine. Don was one of the great professional voice artists; if you’ve never heard of him, I guarantee you’ve heard his voice. (This video is a brief interview with him; watch this video to hear pretty much every other male voice you’ve ever heard in a trailer. Naomi’s note number 1: HILARIOUS.) I’ve wanted to work in voiceovers for a long time, and Don was something of a luminary in the industry, but it never occurred to me that I could just get in touch with him.

Then came the news, in September 2008, that Don LaFontaine had died. I would never get a chance to speak with him, about voiceovers or anything else.

Not long after his death I read a story written by an independent filmmaker. When he was a film student in Minnesota, this filmmaker and his friends had made a trailer for class and, on a whim and partially as a private joke, written Don to ask if he’d do the voiceover for their trailer. They were surprised when, a few days later, they received a note: “Send me the script.” A week after that, they received a recording of Don LaFontaine reading their trailer script in his trademark style.

All they had to do was ask.

Taking Advantage of the Red Line

The red line is a social and psychological construct. It’s the line we won’t cross – not because we can’t, but because we believe that we shouldn’t. You wouldn’t mark the floor with your red pen; there would be a consequence to that that you didn’t want to face, even if you didn’t know quite what it was. There’s a line painted on the ground around this door; obviously someone wants us to pay attention and not enter without permission. There’s fear attached: “something bad is going to happen to me if I try to cross that line without permission.” Don LaFontaine was a celebrity; obviously I couldn’t just call him. Never mind that his number was in the phone book; never mind that he was clearly happy to interact with fans and students. There was a social fear attached to just getting in touch with someone even remotely famous. Something bad was going to happen if I called him without permission.

There are two ways we can take advantage of this phenomenon, one from each side of the line.

From the inside the red line allows you to be a little more free with yourself. I’ve had my phone number up on my website for almost a year and I haven’t received a single unsolicited call. I keep the number there because I know that people won’t cross the red line. (I will bet, in fact, that even after this post that number doesn’t go up significantly, because now you’re going to be thinking, “the secret’s out, so everyone’s going to be calling, and he’s going to be mad that I’m wasting even more of his time.”) Naomi, who also has her phone number up, happens to have a bit burlier guy at the door than most do; she does not go to great lengths to hide how much she charges per hour of consulting. So people are also aware that her time is valuable and don’t want to waste it by calling her.

(Naomi’s note number 2: There’s a not bad chance I left my iPhone in Cuba so if you call the number on my contact page, you’ll either get an automated message or my husky masseuse who only speaks Spanish. Other than that, Chris’ point is valid.)

From the outside, you have an advantage because you know how the red line works and how other people will behave around it. If you see a personal telephone number on a website, you can be pretty sure that calling it is actually okay. If I were getting overwhelmed with telephone calls, I’d take the number off the site. I’m clearly not, because I haven’t. So you can call, because you know that I value being approachable more than I value my privacy.

It’s not just limited to getting in touch, either. My first actual contact with Naomi was when I crossed the red line and emailed her at the end of Summer Camp last year. She’d offered those of us who attended Summer Camp a guaranteed spot in the Speakeasy, but I couldn’t put the money down then. So I sent her an email expressing my regret at not being able to join her at the Speakeasy. She replied within the day to tell me that she’d be holding a spot open for me. (Then, of course, I got laid off and ended up not being able to join anyway, but that’s another story.) Crossing the red line, in this case, got me a significant opportunity that I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise (even if I didn’t take advantage of it).

Similar things are true of pricing and availability. If you set a price for a program and start publishing it, almost nobody will contact you and say, “Can I do a payment plan on this?” or, “Can I go in on this with a friend?” We say to ourselves, “If those options were available, they’d have said so.” But Naomi’s gone on record wondering why nobody does this, because almost always you’ll find that the people producing these programs are willing to work with you. It’s not about the immediate money to them; it’s about changing lives and making a difference.

Use this knowledge to your advantage. I’m not saying that you should take advantage of them, but don’t feel constrained by the red line. Email Naomi and say “I really want to do your program X, but I don’t have the cash up front; can I pay you over the next three weeks?” Since nobody else is going to be doing this, it will be easier to get a positive response.

(Naomi’s note number 3: One of the coolest examples of this came a few weeks ago. A customer noticed that the 50% off coupon code I sent to the people on my email list didn’t work on a certain product. Knowing that I’m horrible with email at the best of times, and vacationing in a communist country is far from the best of times, they didn’t email me to ask if it was included — that wasn’t going to get them anything. Instead, they sent me unsolicited money with a note explaining they weren’t sure if the product was included, but in case it was, they wanted to send the cash before the sale ended. Well I’m hardly going to say no now, am I?)

Nothing bad is going to happen if you cross the red line. You’re not going to be named and shamed. You’re not going to be arrested. Naomi’s not going to say, “Well, I’m not going to let you in, but now you have to pay anyway.” It doesn’t work like that. The worst they’re going to do is say no. Most of the time, actually, you run the serious risk of getting what you want.

Chris Anthony is a Delight Specialist, working with small businesses and organizations to turn their audiences into insane, raving fans. He can be found at delightspecialist.com, by email at chris@delightspecialist.com, or by phone at 765-994-7081.

I was talking to the magnificent Ashley Sinclair the other day, and one of the things she remarked on was that I had an unusual amount of clarity about my businesses — I know what I do and what I don’t do, what my assets are and where my boundaries lie.

So how did I get from there — from that sense that I had so much to offer but I didn’t know what or to whom or for how much — to where I am now?

Practice makes perfect.

I was in BNI, a networking group, for a while that required us to give a 30-second “infomercial” (what you would probably call an elevator speech if you’re not in BNI) about our businesses. We were encouraged to mix it up, say something interesting, tell a very short client story or have some sort of special going on every week. So every week I had to stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Amy Crook with Not Dead Yet Studios, and I…”

The first dozen times, it was really painful. And then, one day, it got easier. I’d said it a number of different ways. I’d thought about what got me there, and where I wanted to go from here. I had to tell these people, every week, in a very short amount of time, what made me different from the 73 other graphic designers they’d met.

I thought about my business a lot.

I was also doing a lot of reading about marketing at the time, about forming a Unique Selling Point and refining your message and figuring out your niche or target audience, so I fed all of that into this one thing that I did week after week, and one day, it was just clearer.

I also thought about what I was and wasn’t willing to do to make myself fit in with the business crowd. Did I want to buy a suit? He- er, heck, no. Was I willing to clean up my language? Obviously, yeah. That opened the door to the idea that it was really okay to not have morning office hours, to not work weekends, to not do the stuff that felt weird and icky to me. I’m not saying I decided to start coming to the meetings in my STFU t-shirt, but I did a lot of poking at my own boundaries and figuring out where maybe became do not want.

The hardest part here, by the way, is learning to respect your own wants when other people’s wants conflict with them, and in this case I went the woo-woo route and tried to practice Sovereignty (the state of not giving a damn what people think because you are the king or queen of your life) a la Havi Brooks.

And then I had a crisis.

Then, I needed money to get to my 72-year-old mother’s wedding in the middle of nowhere. On a SpeakEasy call, I asked Naomi for advice on doing an emergency sale, and she asked me the final question that really crystallized it: What do you have, and what are you willing to do?

So I looked at what I do, what I’ve been doing and all the assets I have — and I rattled off a list before I could be too afraid to do it. I had to think, right then and there, what I did and didn’t want to discount for the sale. And it worked.

For the record, the list went something like this:

• Well, I have all this art and I’m willing to sell it for a discount, if someone will buy. (Someone did.)
• Plus, commissions. (I got one of these.)
• And I have Be a Cartoon, which I love doing. (I also got one of these, with one more pledged.)
• Plus, I could reopen the Draw Your Monster offer. (No takers here is a sign this isn’t a good product for me, sadly, despite how fun it is for me.)
• And I’d be willing to discount some of the design stuff, headers and logos and business cards. (I had a taker here, but surprisingly she refused the discount.)
• But not whole websites, because I outsource part of that, so I can’t really lower my cut there. (Actually, despite the fact that this is my biggest-ticket item, I haven’t been doing much to market it lately because it’s also the highest-stress one.)

So what I got from that was, first off, I need to charge more for websites, or stop doing them. This doesn’t surprise me too much, since I’m charging about half what other comparable people I know do. It also showed me what I like doing, versus what I do because people want it — I like art, cartoons, monsters, and I like doing small illustration and design projects. I could finally see the giant finger pointing at the parts I disliked, because even though I really needed to raise a pretty big amount of money (for me) in a relatively short amount of time, there was stuff I just wasn’t willing to do for cheap anymore.

Now, I don’t recommend the financial crisis as clarifier method, but it was still a great way to strip away all the rationalizations and justifications and get to the bottom of it. So, answer how would you answer the question:

What do you have, and what are you willing to do?

Amy Crook has been a graphic designer since 1996, and freelance since 1998. She’s participating in the Ittybiz 1000 by jumping ship from design to fine art & illustration, and donates 10% of all sales at her Etsy shop to charity. Her newest homework from Naomi is to start posting naked people on her site more often.

Quitting your day job is not easy. It’s actually pretty hard and has its moments of mind-blowing stress.

But you know what’s even harder? Staying in a job you can’t stand, where you have no control over your “job security” and your reward for working 5 times as hard as your co-workers is a 2% raise (if you‘re lucky). “Attaboy,” right?

Listen, I know it’s scary to break free and do something on your own. I get that. I’m feeling that right now as I finish my last few hours working for The Big Machine. But a while back I started doing some things that most other people don’t to help dull the fear and give me the confidence to quit the day job.

Future “2 week notice”-ers, let’s talk about how to make it happen (and if you’re currently self-employed you still need to listen to this, because I’ll bet you could use this advice more than you think).

On we go.

First of all, accept that no one is coming to your rescue.

We all love to fantasize about that big break, that one moment that will come and let us break free of the day job. Maybe a Big Name will be our affiliate and sell a ton of our stuff. Maybe we’ll get featured on Some Big Site and get a rush of customers. Or maybe we’ll have a Giant Product Launch and make millions.

Harsh news, friends – it’s almost guaranteed not to happen. No magical single event is going to take you from obscurity to celebrity (well, not in a healthy, sustainable way that lets you sleep at night). I know all the flashy marketers out there tell you otherwise, but it’s just not so. The avalanche of money you hope will free you from your day job is unlikely to appear.

The good news is that you don’t need an avalanche. You just need a snowball. If you keep doing little things here and there to build your business up, creating a few little products to sell, building a list of people you can make offers to as time goes on … it will build over time.

Maybe it’s $50 a month to start, then it gets to $100. Then $250. Then $500. Then $1,000.

Ask anyone who’s created their own successful Ittybiz and they’ll tell you the same. You keep watering the seed until it’s all grown up. I know this from experience. I tried for 5 years to make the avalanche happen, and it didn’t. Then I spent 18 months or so working the snowball, and surprise, surprise, it finally happened.

Give up on the avalanche. It will only keep you in “wishing” mode and rob you of the desire to take real action. Work that snowball, little by little, and watch it pick up speed.

(If you’re already self employed, are you paralyzed looking for avalanches or rollin’ that snowball? Be honest.)

Second, figure out your “squeak by” number.

I got this idea from Naomi Dunford and Mark Silver, and it’s a lifesaver for an Ittybiz. Instead of obsessing over how much you want to make (“woo-hoo! $20,000 a month, here I come!”) figure out how much you actually need to survive and keep the lights on. This number, while not a sexy one, is the key measure of what you absolutely need to squeak by.

Sure, it doesn’t include weekly trips to the spa or monthly cruise packages, but we’re talking freedom here. How much do you really need to be free of the day job and pay the bills? You’ll need to take a look at your budget here and see what you’re spending, what you’re wasting, and make peace with the two.

Here’s why it’s so important: The bigger your number, the scarier it will be and the more paralyzed you’ll feel. Going from Itty to $20K a month (or even $10K) can be terror-inducing. You start looking for avalanches, and freak out instead of building up that snowball. And you don’t do the things you need to do so your business can grow. Tragic.

If you look at you squeak-by number, though, it’ll be much smaller. Maybe it’s 3K or 5K. That’s much more doable. You can visualize yourself working up to 1K, then 2K, then 3K, and because you can actually picture yourself doing this, you’re much more likely to take action. And surprise, surprise, the action happens.

This is pretty much half the battle here, just believing that you can make the income flow happen. Focus on the snowballing your way up to the squeak-by, and you’ll be able to snowball past it when you’re ready – and you won’t carry the baggage of that “big number” stress.

(If you’re already self-employed, do you know your “squeak by” number? Or are you afraid to face it?)

Third, put your profits in the bank. Seriously.

It’s tempting to take all your side job money and spend it on stuff. This isn’t entirely a bad thing – you should definitely reward yourself for taking action. Set aside a portion of your profits for rewarding yourself, but put the rest in a separate bank account specially created to be your “Fuck You Fund.” This is basically where you say “When there’s X amount of money in the fund, I get to tell my day job to piss off.”

(Of course, if your day job is a nice company filled with people you like, you can call this your “Happy Trails Fund.” Or whatever floats your boat).

This is the toughest part of all because the temptation to ratchet up your standard of living is enormous. If you start bringing in an extra $1,000 a month and start taking on more expenses, then your squeak by number just went up. If you develop the habit of spending on stuff you don’t need, or splurging constantly, you’re going to want to keep that up – which means you’ll addict yourself to the day-job-plus-side-hustle.

And that addiction will keep you from breaking free. Far better to feed the fund, then get out on your own, and snowball your standard of living up, on your terms.

The other major advantage to the Fund is it gives you a cushion for when you start out. My Fund amount was three months’ expenses, which gives me plenty of time to make strategic decisions with my Ittybiz and not freak out left and right about making X amount of money right off the bat.

If you feed your fund, you’ll appreciate the cushion it gives you and you’ll stress a whole lot less. Sure, it may take longer to get there, but you’ll be in a better place when you’re ready to say … “Happy Trails.”

(If you’re self employed, are you building up your own cushion fund, or are you skating by and spending all your extra cash? You need a cushion to give you space to think strategically).

Ok, on to the next step. I want you to do two things right now:

First, think of the biggest thing causing you stress about creating your own day-job-killing snowball. What’s holding you back? What do you need advice on? Tell me in the comments below. (I can’t promise to fix all your problems, but I’ll try to give you a next step – but you have to comment before Friday night).

Second, check out my Thank You Ittybiz page, where I’m saying thanks to Naomi for helping me quit my day job by offering he readers half off on two of my new workshops until Friday (so haul ass over there, because Friday’s a’coming.)

Ok, now the ball is in your court. Leave your comment, check out the Thank You Ittybiz page, and let’s get your snowballs rolling.

That is all,

Dave

You spend every waking hour (and some sleeping ones, too) working on your precious business – it’s your baby, your lover, your ever so slightly co-dependent best friend.

You spend so much time and energy on it that your real baby, lover, and best friend complain that there is nothing left for them.

But you can’t help it – you are obsessed. You are determined to share what you got with the world.

And sometimes people love what you’ve got, love you, and shower you with roses and orders and blog comments and 83% organic dark chocolate.

And sometimes? Sometimes, not so much.

Sometimes it’s dead quiet out there and you feel a tad exposed. You troll Twitter and everyone’s tweets are so peppy, all about how great their businesses are doing, you start to feel a tad bad. The story line, “What was I thinking?” starts sucking you in.

Add to that the overwhelming number of things you could be doing for your itty-biz– split page splitting, strategic partnership partnering, product launch launching – and, if you’re anything like me, by Friday at noon you’re under the covers sucking down an endless pitcher of margaritas and fantasizing about putting an application in at the post office.

Suddenly, a job comprised of very simple, very repetitive actions sound very appealing.

At least you wouldn’t have to explain to your Aunt Edna what you do and have her not understand you – again.

Every self-employed lunatic ittybizzer faces moments like these – and the more your business is connected to your heart, the more you’re selling something that matters to you — the more overwhelming and depleting it can all be.

That’s why I’m here to tell you that the single best thing you can do for your business – besides buying all of Naomi’s products — is to become the linchpin of your own support system. If you are to succeed in this wacky self-employed world, you have to befriend and care for yourself.

But self-care is tough. It can seem self-indulgent and whiny, rather intangible, and you usually put it off until you’re hiding under the covers swilling that pitcher of margaritas again.

Or if tequila’s not your thing, maybe you find yourself:

• Surfing the Internet until your butt goes numb and your heart grows stiff

• Buying another Platinum-Plated-be-an-Internet-Billionaire program

• Imitating your favorite blogger, sure that if you could write like Naomi (or Darren or Seth) you would be rich and loved (and therefore safe)

• Raiding your kid’s brittle Halloween candy

• __________ (fill in your favorite avoidance technique here)

These avoidance techniques are what I call “Shadow Comforts,” things we turn to for fulfillment, but which don’t really fill us up.

It’s natural to turn to these pseudo-fulfilling tidbits because they familiar, numbing, and accessible. But to truly be filled up, you MUST go beyond the bags of Cheetos, the all-night Twitter marathons, and the three-hour naps.

You probably knew that already. Most people know intuitively that renewal and comfort are not found at the bottom of a bag of Oreos, even if they are organic. But knowing something and putting it into practice are two very different animals.

Fortunately for you, having written more than my fair share of self-help books and magazine articles and snappy speeches, I have a few nifty ideas on how you can translate what your heart and soul already know into action and end that crispy-fried vibe you may be feeling:

Nifty Tip #1. Accept that ittybiz burnout happens. Your aim is not to stop the cycle entirely but to interrupt the cycle sooner.

Nifty Tip #2. To successfully implement Nifty Tip #1, you must develop the habit of noticing your mental state and intervening before your self-talk and mood tank. It’s what Seth would call taming the Lizard Brain. Charlie Gilkey calls it metacognition. I say “witness consciousness.”

Mindfulness meditation, having your computer beep at you and checking in with yourself, keeping a time/activity log, using the Life Organizer process — develop ways to witness your choices.

Nifty Tip #3. Keep remembering that you get to choose. Your stress level skyrockets when you think you’re boxed into a corner and don’t have a choice. Watch out for words like “I should,” “I have to,” or “That’s what they told me to do.” (Sidenote: Don’t ever take the advice of “Them” or “They” over your own intuition and knowledge. If “They” were so smart about everything, there’d be end to war, hunger, and Jersey Shore.)

Nifty Tip #4. Go on a retreat. When you are too far into burnout, you can’t stop the cycle yourself. You can’t find – and you might not even believe there is — another way. You need someone else to help you feel safe enough to relax, fill up, and maybe even see how you are making your life a bit harder than it needs to be.

Need a really easy way to retreat? (Trust me, you do). My 2nd annual Virtual Retreat comes to you Valentine’s Day weekend with 13 world-groovy teachers. Get the benefits of self-care without getting out of pj’s. Which is as it should be.

Nifty Tip #5. Tell yourself it’s going to be okay. You don’t have to figure it all out today. Relax and take the rest of the day off. Or at least let yourself go pee. I promise the World Wide Web will still be here when you get back.

Bio # 1, written by Jen: Jennifer Louden is a best-selling author of six books, one of which helped Naomi through a really bad time. When Jen’s not swigging tequila, she plots how to help people do what they love without burning out.

Bio # 2, written by Naomi: Jennifer Louden is one of my all time personal heroes. (One of the nice things about having a blog is that sometimes your personal heroes offer you a guest post.) Out of the blue one day, she friended me on Facebook and I called my mother in England at three in the morning to tell her.

Once, when I was living in a homeless shelter, I spent perfectly good cigarette money on one of her books and it was an integral part of me not killing myself. If there was no Jen, there would be no IttyBiz, no Dirty Talk Marketing School, and no delightfully entertaining stories of toplessness disguised as marketing advice. Also, she was on Oprah, which she is probably SO over, but I am SO not. Based on all of this, don’t you think you should at least take a LOOK at her retreat?

Things started out great. You had this creative thing that you loved to do. It was fun. And then you figured out that other people wanted your thing, too. YAY!! So you started selling your thing.

Then things went to shit.

In The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber tries to address why things went to shit. (Naomi’s note: E-Myth is one of those books everybody tells you that you absolutely must read before you start a business or your wife will leave you and your dog will die.) He talks about Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Technicians; he discusses who should be doing what and when, all told using Sarah’s “All About Pies” as a case study. It’s a great read, but it leaves one not-too-small question unanswered:

What if you just want to make pies?

A traditional business coach would tell you that you never should have got in the business of selling pies if you just wanted to make pies. But, since you are selling pies, you’d best hire some folks to help you make the pies, then a manager to help you manage those workers, then hire some marketers, then…then…then…until you’ve got this huge group of folks around you selling your pies.

If you sold remarkable pies in a good location and had the rest of your business infrastructure in place, you’d probably make a lot of money selling pies. But you – as in the business owner you – still wouldn’t be making the pies.

Thanks for nothing, coach!

HaHa! That’s Why I Got Into Online Business…

Unfortunately, many online entrepreneurs find themselves in the same situation. An online business is still a business – meaning you have to sell stuff that people want to buy. It’s still something that takes time to build, as it takes a while to figure out what people want to buy, how to create that stuff, and then how to sell that stuff to them, although Naomi’s doing a great job making this a lot simpler for the rest of us.

For what we’re talking about here, there’s not much difference between brick and mortar businesses and online businesses; whether your pie is a physical pie or an informational pie, you’re still in the business of selling pies. But there’s a dark side to all this marketing and business-growing jazz that a lot of people don’t talk enough about: in the process of figuring out what people are wanting to buy and getting that stuff to them, it’s really easy to forget about the stuff you want to make.

You’d be surprised how many successful online entrepreneurs get to the point where they start asking themselves that same question: “What if I just want to make pies?”

If You Like Lemon Pie, Make Some Lemon Pie

Luckily, I’m not a traditional business coach and I’m not going to tell you that you never should’ve got in the business of selling pies. I’m also not going to tell you that you shouldn’t worry about the pies your customers want to buy. What I am going to tell you is that you have to make some pies for you.

I will warn you: the pies you make for yourself may not sell. That’s fine. No one else may want to try them. That’s fine, too. And it will seem like an incredible waste of time and energy that you could be spending on making pies that will sell. That’s not fine. (It is important to not beat yourself up for feeling that way, though.)

If you lose the pie-making passion you started with, it will start to creep into other facets of your business, in time.

Your correspondence won’t carry the energy it once did.

Networking will become a chore and not a chance to talk about pies.

Your mind will change about giving away free pies because each pie will have a price tag associated with it.

You won’t want to make the pies that you’ve scheduled yourself to make.

In short, you’ll go from making a living from making pies to selling pies as a job.

The only thing it costs you to do what you want to do is time. You’re in a type of business that’s particularly well-suited to changing things up when needed – it’s not like you have a storefront, physical inventory, a boatload of employees, and five-figure monthly overheads. Making some pies for you will cost you a few hours a week, but it’ll reward you with a renewed passion and energy in your work.

So yes, sell the pies that your customers want. Build a team around the process, if (and only if!) you need them to help you with other things so you can make your pies. But remember that the single most important asset of your business is you, and your wants and needs are more important than the wants and needs of your customers. You need to make the pies you want to make. You need to enjoy what you’re doing. You have to be your first customer in the morning and the last customer at the end of the day.

The condensed version: Remember that you got into business because you liked making pies. You will have to sell pies – some of which you don’t want to make – but you’re selling pies so that you can make the pies you want to make.

Charlie Gilkey is my creativity coach. He is also just about the coolest and smartest person I know. Read his blog to find some sense in the crazy fucked-up madness that is being a creative businessperson. Seriously, read it. The only one who loses if you don’t is you.

My guess is that if you are reading this fine blog you are in some way interested in either marketing, selling online or foul and abusive language. Or maybe you are heavily into foul and abusive language online about marketing and this place is your little corner of heaven.

On the other hand, you may have absolutely no interest in sales whatsoever and are contemplating heading off to YouTube to look for amusing videos of squirrels nibbling through power cables, dogs skateboarding and crop circles in the shape of the Virgin Mary’s underwear. Well before you do, humor me by answering the following questions:

Do you sell to other businesses?

Do you ever have to sell yourself over the phone?

Will you ever have to enlist the help of other people in a project?

Are you a writer that has a book to sell or has articles to get published?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you will get something out of this post so resist the urge to hit that back button.

Let me kick off by making this rather contentious statement:

Most solopreneurs and bloggers are shit at selling. I don’t mean a bit shit either, I’m talking completely incompetent buffoons that wouldn’t know the difference between a sales cycle and a menstrual cycle.

I told you it was contentious.

In my less than humble opinion, there are two main reasons they’re no good… (as well as lots of little ones):

Firstly, they think they know what they’re doing because somebody once bought something off them.

This is akin to me thinking I am a top class soccer player because I once scored a goal when the ball bounced into the net off my arse as I was leaning over trying to get my breath back.

Many realtors made lots of money prior to the current economic situation. But it’s not difficult selling something if people are lining up to buy it. Watch the guy that sells the weed at a rock festival if you have any doubts. He probably isn’t utilizing any sales skills other than saying “No honest, buddy, it’s brilliant.”

Secondly, and probably more worryingly, they don’t see the importance of being able to sell.

After all, good products sell themselves. Everybody knows that, right? Well maybe not everybody, but what do Mercedes Benz, IBM, Boeing, Johnson & Johnson and Xerox and their huge sales organizations know about it anyway?

If I asked you what most sales people hate with a passion, and what a lot will admit is the weakest area of their sales game, what do you think it would be?

If you are in any doubt, I’ll also throw in that it is the most important part of new business sales, and the people that are very good at it get paid the most money.

Yep you’ve guessed it, it’s the dreaded cold calling.

The mere words send chills down sales peoples’ backs. If you’re a sales manager and you want an office tidied up, just announce a cold calling session because your salespeople will then do anything to avoid picking the phone up.

But it has to be done, and my guess is at some time in your life you’ll need to know how to generate a meeting or sale with somebody you don’t know. So you may as well know how.

Probably the biggest truism in cold calling is that it’s a numbers game. The more calls you make, the more success you’ll have. However, you also have to follow a plan rather than setting off like a headless chicken being chased by a very hungry blind fox. And I’m the man to give you that plan and right about now I wish my name were Stan or maybe even Dan, but it isn’t, so let’s get on with it nevertheless.

Belief:

The first thing you need to do when setting up a prospect session is have the right attitude. Believe you can do this because you can. You decide what is possible for you so think big and start off with the attitude that people who don’t want to speak to you are missing a treat.

I could bang on all day about the power of beliefs and often do, but there is only really one thing you need to know. Beliefs are not set in stone and you create your own, so make sure they’re good ones.

Many times I’ve seen seasoned salespeople start off hunched over their phone, believing they will be rejected and feeling miserable about life. Then, when the first couple of calls go badly they cheerfully announce that they were right after all and that this it is waste of time. Quite brilliant!

Material:

Do not sit down with a Yellow Pages in front of you, dialing number after number. Find as much information about your target company and the person you need to speak to beforehand. Calls that start, ‘Can I speak to the person that in charge of signing the checks?’ are doomed to failure. Whereas a call that starts ‘Can I speak to Bob in HR please? It’s Tim from A Daring Adventure’ is infinitely more likely to get past a gatekeeper.

If they ask you what it’s about, tell them it is of a personal nature. A fib? Well not really, it should be very personal when you’re talking about your business. (Editor’s Note: To the woowoos among us, chill the fuck out.)

A word of warning: This can backfire so be prepared to roll with the punches. I once called a company and asked to speak to Bob, the CFO. His secretary was absolutely appalled and screamed, “BOB!? BOB!? Do you mean Robert?” Needless to say, Bob and I didn’t have a good old chin wag that day, or any subsequent day for that matter.

Rejection:

The person that just yelled at you has probably had a bad day. Maybe Bob’s secretary’s cat had just been run over by the garbage truck, or she’d just discovered a nasty little rash after a dalliance with Dave in Accounting. I don’t know, and more importantly, neither do you. So thank them for their time and move on to that next juicy prospect that is just bound to say ‘yes please’.

Time:

Do not attempt to hit the phone for 5 hours non-stop fueled by 14 cups of coffee. Take breaks at least hourly. Have a walk around, get a drink, boil an egg, anything that breaks your state and allows you to disengage. Then, just before you sit back down, focus on how many calls you want to make in the next hour or however long and just do it.

Stats:

These can be important as you do more prospecting, as you’ll get an idea of how many calls you need to make to get an appointment. It can also encourage you to beat your own personal best each time if you’re the competitive type.

Comfort:

Some people prefer to make calls stood up or even walking around whereas other prefer the more traditional method of sitting at a desk. Whichever you’re most comfortable with is fine, as long as you come across as enthusiastic and awake. If you’re lying on the floor fiddling with your crotch, the other person will probably know something is amiss. (Editor’s note: I do this all the time and nobody ever thinks anything is amiss. The topless Skype call should probably be The People’s Exhibit A.)

Script:

Every successful sales person I know uses a script, be it written down or in their head. Know exactly what that first 20 or 30 second pitch is going to be, and make sure that speech is relevant and demonstrates the benefits of you or your service/product. Conversations that start off “ah” and “er” usually end up with a speedy good and bye.

Availability:

You may have been passed through inadvertently to somebody that is in the middle of drawing up plans to conquer the world by the end of the quarter. Simply ask ‘Are you free to speak for 2 minutes, Bob, about something that is going to help you and your business be more efficient and profitable?’ If Bob says no, he’s got this world-conquering thing to finish, ask for a time that would be more convenient.

Selling:

Unless you are in telesales or have no intention of meeting the person at a later date, do no try and sell. This is very important. Telephones are for making appointments and ordering pizza, not selling. Give the reasons why you should meet and then assume the meeting, offering them two or three alternative dates that you can make.

Enjoy:

Remember, this isn’t life or death It’s a few phone calls, a few opportunities to chat to interesting people and most importantly, a chance to make some friends, some lovely money and feel wanted again.

Sales and prospecting are skills. Skills need fine-tuning and practice so go easy on yourself. Naomi Dunford didn’t make a million in her first week — it probably took her at least 2 or 3 as she refined her methods and got important feedback on what was and wasn’t working for her. That same goes for you.

One final thing. If you wait until you need customers before you start to look for them you’re already in trouble. You should be filling your pipeline as a matter of course because this is a process that takes time and people can sniff a desperate sales person quicker than my dog can sniff my dirty boxer shorts kicked under the bed.

***

Tim Brownson is my long term life coach. Before that, he was a rich salesman. Despite his appalling spelling and grammar, he is one of the coolest people I know and one of the first I recommend to anyone who doesn’t wake up admiring the field of pretty buttercups and butterflies growing out of their ass. If your life is fucked up, you really should call him. He also has a really hot voice.

When you want to do your thing, or even just spend some time figuring it out, does other stuff get in the way? Sometimes it’s “stuff” (picture big finger quotes) like a crammed schedule, tight finances or family responsibilities. Other times, it’s actual stuff, as in physical clutter.

Clutter Sucks

The clutter can show up in different ways. Maybe you’d love to get started on an artsy-craftsy thing, but the spare bedroom, which would make a perfect studio, is full. Or you’d like to sit at your desk and write, but the stacks of papers threaten to fall in on you. Maybe you really want to experiment in the kitchen more, but finding the utensils you need is a nightmare.

Maybe money feels tight because of all the stuff you buy that ends up as clutter (even the organizing stuff that you think will help you), or you have to buy things over and over, because they get lost in the clutter.

Not only does clutter create these physical barriers, it can be draining. If clutter is a problem for you, how much brain power do you use up looking for things, feeling frustrated about the mess, or just beating yourself up about how you should be? It can suck your energy until you don’t have any extra left to fan that spark of creativity you’re protecting and nurturing inside you.

Clutter is surprisingly complex

There’s usually a fair amount of brain clutter going on with the physical clutter. You should be able to just put things away, keep your desk organized, empty your email inbox every day. At least that’s what you tell yourself over and over. But it doesn’t always happen.

But why does it matter for you? Stop for a second and think about what you think about, when you think about your ittybiz. What do you picture? What do you focus on? What do you hear? Smell, taste, feel? Just observe, no need to draw conclusions or make judgments.

Do you have a clear picture, is it bright and inspiring? Or is it more jumbled and unclear? What are you paying attention to, what’s keeping you stuck, holding you back? What’s overwhelming you?

Now imagine what it would be like if the physical clutter were gone. If the crazy mind chatter were muted. If you could create a really clear, bright, engaging picture. This is your imagination, go crazy with it!

When you’re feeling really great about it, think about one small thing, something that feels pretty easy to do, that will help you move forward with your ittybiz. Maybe it’s file a few papers, put away some books, spend some quality time with your email box. Maybe it’s one of Naomi’s Get Off Your Ass suggestions. Doesn’t matter, just do one little thing. Then, rinse and repeat.

***

Shannon Wilkinson specializes in de-cluttering mind, spirit, home, and office. Her next course Declutter Happy Hour starts tomorrow. If you’ve ever thought you might need some help clearing out the unnecessary junk that accumulates in your life, you should seriously check it out.

What a pleasure to be guest posting here at IttyBiz, where finally I can say “fuck” without needing the slightest hint of a reason.

I’ve always thought that recessions are bullshit, but this time I happened to lose my job during one, when my company eliminated every single one of their “safe and stable” jobs. Fuck.

After the shock wore off, I decided it was actually a welcome transition. I had been given the freedom to redefine my life. Lots of free time means lots of possibilities.

But without the structure of a job, I fell victim to one of the deadliest entrepreneurial traps: complete and utter lack of focus. While trying to find something that not only matches my talents, but that I find meaningful, and that other people will pay for, I considered many options, and split my attention between all the ones that seemed appealing.

Too many rabbits

You know the old saying: if you chase two rabbits, both will escape. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to just have two rabbits to chase. Instead, many of us are chasing a sprawling herd of manic rabbits that continue to reproduce while we’re chasing them.

Do you want to have a full time job by day and change the world on nights and weekends? Those are two really big ass rabbits. You’re likely to find the former to be a monstrous distraction, while you pursue the latter with what little energy and mental clarity you can muster at the end of the day. Even if you somehow manage to do a good job with both, there’s a very high risk of burnout.

Do you want to plunge into a home business full time? OK, but what exactly will you do? There’s no shortage of medium sized bunnies to chase. Will you become a world class copywriter? Will you master the latest internet marketing trends? Will you dominate the search engines for an array of carefully selected keywords? Will you become a life coach? Will you build a better mousetrap? There’s so much to consider.

(Here we see one of the unsung benefits of Online Business School. When you learn about the six online income streams, you’ll not only learn what to do, but you’ll also learn what you don’t want to do. When you can rule out income streams that don’t appeal to you, you’re more able to focus on the ones you like best.)

Even when you decide to pursue a single medium sized bunny, you’ll still find yourself chasing an army of elusive fugitive microbunnies day by day. Should you write that guest post, answer that email, work on that new product, spend some time on Twitter, go commenting all over the place, or what? (I wrote about this dilemma in my free ebook Why We’re Failing The 4-Hour Workweek.)

There are more rabbits out there than you could ever hope to catch in a lifetime. You have to carefully pick the ones you want to chase.

Not enough rabbits

The opposite problem is spending too much time chasing one rabbit, only to eventually find out it was the wrong one.

Many people freaked out when Seth Godin said maybe you can’t make money doing what you love. He said, “That blog you’ve built, the one with a lot of traffic… perhaps it can’t be monetized.” It made people think that if they don’t happen to love something that traditionally pays well, then there’s no hope.

But I think Seth just meant that big traffic doesn’t necessarily mean big cash flow, if you’re stubbornly attached to a model that doesn’t work. He had previously given the example of a 14 year old kid who had 45 million views on YouTube, yet YouTube wasn’t able to monetize him.

If you love writing, great. But maybe blogging about blogging and trying to make a living from AdSense is the wrong bunny to chase. However, if you’re creative and flexible enough, maybe you can figure out how to express the same talents in a much more viable way.

So what to do about the rabbits?

It would be ideal to only have to chase one rabbit, but you might not know which one it is. So listen to people who know what they’re talking about. Different people will have different perspectives, but take it all in, then decide what resonates with you.

You want to be focused enough to make great headway on something, but also open minded enough to consider what might be better ways. Concentrate your efforts on what appears to be the best use of your time, but be ready to change your plans when necessary.

They say that if you chase two rabbits, both will escape. Maybe. But in a world where you’re often forced to do that, you at least want to do your best to pick the right rabbits.