What do I do with my life?

She didn’t phrase it like that, sure. It was a lot more painful than that. But it all really boils down to the same thing:

My time on Earth is short. What the fuck should I be doing with it and how will I know I’ve made the right choice?

Yeah, you get unlimited emails with me with your SpeakEasy membership, but you don’t get unlimited emails to GOD. I don’t think I have the best answer to this question, but I can give you what worked for me and has worked for a few of the people I’ve worked with. Hopefully some of my very clever readers will chime in with their advice in the comments.

Tell me what the perfect world looks like.

You don’t have to do all the stuff you come up with — you couldn’t even if you wanted to. But it gets you thinking about what to do with your life in terms beyond “Should I be a web designer or a freelance writer?

What’s your advice to her? What’s your experience with this totally all consuming question?

Then whenever we wanted anything, we would go to this massive underground storehouse and it would just be there. (Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup featured heavily in the storehouse, by the way. It would appear that all bunnies share the same dietary preferences as myself, age four.)

We went to school and had jobs and stuff, we just didn’t have to deal with anything filthy like, you know, money. We all had matching outfits and spent a lot of time outdoors, working in the garden.

Years later, I told my brother about this recurring dream.

Julian: “You know that’s communism, right?”

Me: “Fuck you!”

Julian: “You’re talking about Chairman Mao in a bunny suit.”

Me: “Fuck you!”

Julian, yelling upstairs: “MOM, Naomi’s dreaming about cartoon communist bunnies again!”

This is why I love Ask IttyBiz. I get to be a marketing consultant but not charge money for it and then I get to fulfill my childhood dreams of communism. Everybody wins.

Let’s get to it.

I’ve been thinking today about one of my frustrations. As an ittybiz, I don’t have lots of money. All the stuff I read about running my business emphasizes the importance of good branding – having the right logo, tag line, website design, message, website copy, etc. I’m convinced, yet I don’t have the money to spend on all this stuff. Just like I don’t have thousands to spend on marketing, I don’t have thousands to spend on hiring someone to help me with my brand.

Avonelle Lovhaug, Code Poetry

Here are my answers:

I can’t afford $1,500 for a logo. Am I better off buying a cheap logo, or using none?

None. Slap some marginally decent shit in your header and call it a day. That kind of branding is for Coke. You’re small enough to just go with Not Some Shit My 9 Year Old Could Do With Microsoft Paint. If you can’t afford professional, go extremely basic, just logotype. (That basically means no picture in the logo.)

Is it more important for me to invest in a logo or in good website copy? Does it depend on what business I’m in?

Website copy. The only time that is not the case is if you are in the business of making logos.

What branding things can I do myself, and what should I pay money for?

Pay for a professional and consistent web design. The emphasis here is definitely on consistent. With the plethora of premium themes available, this can be had for less than $100. If you really suck at writing, get some copy written, but that’s not usually vital in every case.

Also, make sure that whatever image elements you have in place are stable across the board. Better to have the same shitty logo on every thing they see than something different here, there and everywhere.

I’ve been in business for a while, but I hate my business name. Everyone else seems to like it. Should I stick with it?

Hate it like, embarrassed to say it out loud? Or just sick of it? If the former, change it. If the latter, think about how branded the name already is. If it’s very stuck in people’s memory then tough shit, you gotta keep it. Coke doesn’t just up and change over to Muhtar’s Tasty Fizz because Muhtar is bored.

If nobody knows or cares your business name because they just know you by your name, then by all means, cross the floor and change ‘er up. Also, do some poking around to find out if they like the existing name as in, they think you’d be retarded to change it, or if they like it as in, yeah, it’s pretty cool but they’re not quivering with joy.)

Help! My business name URL/Twitter handle/whatever isn’t available. What should I do?

Sadly, suck it up and find another one. Welcome to my life. You can add “the” or whatever to the URL, but it’s not great if you ever expect type-in traffic. Best to find something new. Hence the rash of web startups with made up words for names these days. Nothing decent under 10 characters to be had, so they’re just making shit up.

”Dear Naomi,

I know about guest posting and comment strategies and social media, but everybody’s talking about those. How do I REALLY get traffic? How do YOU do it?”

I get this email a lot. Like, a lot. And I thought I’d take the time to answer it, and the dozens that are kinda sorta like it.

A good portion of the people who come to me for brainstorming or marketing consulting are people that are brand new to owning a business. They are still in the reconnaissance stages and figuring out what their plan of attack should be.

To these people, I thank you for sending me your money, but in future, you might be better off if you didn’t.

Nothing I come up with — and nothing any other marketing coach comes up with — is going to be any different from what you can figure out for yourself. We are not revolutionaries. We’re just creative.

When you’re first starting out, you don’t need creative. You need to get off your ass.

Unless you have a decent amount of start-up capital — and in “start-up capital” I include your own salary, as well as being able to pay service professionals and still have a marketing budget at the end — what you need is elbow grease. And I can’t give you that. No marketing coach can.

Here’s the biggest problem I see. People want to someone to give them a magic solution to increase conversions and get customers to throw their panties onto the stage. And that IS possible. But it’s not possible until you have some infrastructure in place.

And how do you get that infrastructure in place? Cue big ass red text…

If you have a business, and there’s only one of you, and you struggle with getting shit done, you don’t need a business coach. You need a life coach.

You need someone to help you do what you already know you should be doing. And marketing coaches are way too expensive to be retained for that purpose.

There are a lot of life coaches out there, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. I think I know every life coach north of Mexico and I could recommend all of them for various purposes. But you might want one who can specialize in getting you to analyze exactly what it is you’re trying to do, and WHY YOU’RE TRYING TO DO IT. Because the answer isn’t always what you’d think.

If you want someone to help you launch a product, talk to Dave (he launches mine). If you want someone to help you get your Big Thing organized, talk to Charlie (he organizes mine). And if you want someone to help you get off your ass and do all the shit YOU KNOW DAMN WELL YOU SHOULD BE DOING, talk to Tim.

(I also have it on good authority that people who sign up with Tim this month can have four sessions for the stupidly low price of $249. As in, four hours with Tim for a dollar less than an hour with me.)

Just less than a month from now, the universe is going to conspire to convince you to part with large sums of your money so that you can make your New Years’ resolutions have a hope in hell of actually happening. Try not to succumb, because very savvy marketers like myself have been retained to convince you that your Visa cards are better off in our hands than in your own.

So yeah. If you think you’d like to hire me one day but you don’t really know if it’s the best use of your money, go talk to Tim. He’ll talk to you for free to see if y’all get along. Then send him $249, make a shitload of progress, get making some money and THEN think about if you should hire me.

And even if you have no intentions of ever hiring anybody, you should really watch this video. Killer.

Oh. And just so you know? The magic secret to getting traffic? Blog commenting, guest posting, and social media. AdWords and well-written banner ads if you can afford it. Wasn’t that easy? I just saved you $250.

“In short: it’s not about my little blog, it’s about the home business. You wrote a post about it – how to deal with uncooperative “loved ones”. But it is SO hard. I need help from people, b/c it’s a new biz, but sometimes it feels like strangers are a lot more helpful than friends are. Some people, whom I considered as friends, tend to disappear as soon as I ask them for something, even though I would have helped them if they had asked me for help.

My business partner tells me not to take it personally. That a big part of starting any biz is to receive a lot of “no’s” from people whom you expected a “yes”. My spouse tells me not to take it personally. To just re-categorize these people as “acquaintances” and move on. But I DO take it personally. How do you deal with it? Do you just re-categorize and move on? Do you remove these people from your life? How do you avoid feeling disappointed and hurt?”

My woefully inadequate answer:

“Oh, you poor thing. That sucks. It sucks rocks. I have been there. (To a degree I’m still there but I’m making enough money that I can console myself somewhat.)

My story, if it helps at all, is this one. Both of my parents (long divorced and hate each other) have always known I’d do great. No problem there. Total and unlimited source of support. My husbands (I’m on number 2), not as much. Jamie’s great now but there were times in the beginning when he thought I was totally mental. My in-laws were BRUTAL. And my friends? Don’t even get me started. I had to fire my friends and get new ones.

Here’s my theory:

The world of human relationships operates on a pecking order principal. Like dogs in packs. Somebody’s on top, somebody’s next, and so on. Except we’re more complex than dogs, so we have dozens and hundreds and thousands of arenas in which we subconsciously compete.

(The media example is where one sister is the “pretty” one and the other is the “smart” one. When one of the sisters upsets the balance of who is pretty and who is smart, you’ve got a shit storm on your hands.)

Both of my husbands, and both of their sets of parents, have deep down operated with the mindset that the man makes the real money. Yes, the woman is expected to contribute financially, but the man is the real earner. The thing is, I have a skill that pays me three figures an hour in some cases. You just can’t make that kind of money where I live. It throws people off and people hate what they don’t know. It fucks them up.

The real truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the people on this planet are incredibly cynical. In your case (or my case, or the case of pretty much any IttyBiz owner) is that they very strongly think you will fail. They probably don’t WANT you to fail, but deep down, they think you will.

What does that do to them? It makes THEM look like an idiot if they “went along with it”. If they were involved in the process, they were involved in a FAILING process. That is bad for their ego, so they don’t bother.

The what-to-do-about-it part of the email:

If they’re really unhelpful, recategorize as acquaintances and never do them a favor again. If asked why, your answer is that you’re too busy with your business.

If they’re only mildly uncooperative, just don’t ask for help.

Especially when it comes to online biz, they don’t get it. They think of it as a slightly dirtier version of Amway.

As far as how I dealt with the hurt, frankly, I wasn’t hurt. I took the abject failure route through life, so everyone thought I was a complete fuck up. Dropped out of high school, married someone inappropriate, pregnant by 17. If I worked at McDonald’s people would have been impressed. It was no real surprise that they thought I’d fuck this up too. I just don’t talk to them about it any more. I’m also buying a Mercedes to shut them all up (no joke), but that’s just the revenge talking.

Get as much as you can out of your online peeps, and don’t discuss a damn word about your biz with offline peeps unless they ask. If they ask, your answer is, “It’s going great!” You may substitute “awesome” or “never better” if you wish.

Put in 20 hour days if you have to but do not put yourself in the position where you could get hurt any more than absolutely necessary. Sometimes it’s necessary. Most times it isn’t. It’s exhausting and scary and you’ll think you’ll never sleep again, but it’s worth it in the end.”

Do you guys have any advice?

If you’ve got any advice or commiseration to share, bring it on! If you don’t want to identify yourself, just go with “Anonymous” in the comments so you don’t have to publicly mention that your wife was a total bitch and wouldn’t help you with a damn thing.

“My mom and I are wrestling with an issue regarding her home business. I know that you have your startup package for a set price, but what do you tell people once they sign up if they decide to go further? She’s got a complicated price breakdown and I’m trying to simplify it a bit. Figured you might have some insight.”

Ahh, pricing. Strikes fear in the hearts of entrepreneurs and freelancers everywhere. In other parts of the internet, abortion, politics, and religion are controversial topics. With work-from-home blogs, the babykillers hug it out with Dubya, we don’t care. Just don’t talk price.

First of all, there are many out there who think I am the last person in the world who should be giving advice about pricing. Michael, Sonia, Mason, Susan, and many others have told me I’m an idiot for charging what I do. Lately, it’s turning out that they’re right, but there’s piss all I can do about it now, so we’ll move on to my ill-sought advice for Michele.

First off, a definition of terms. There are basically two ways to price:

Hourly: I charge an hourly rate. You give me that amount of money for every hour I work.

Package, or flat: We agree upon a price for a whack o’ services, regardless of how long it takes.

Now, disclosure.

I hate, hate, hate hourly pricing. I don’t mind paying it, I mind charging it. There is no moral issue at play here, I just completely hate the administrative and ethical questions it raises for every goddamn hour of my waking day. I do not work well in long chunks, and sometimes I just want to read a blog post when I should be writing copy and I don’t like figuring out how much of that hour was spent working and how much of it was spent slacking off on Twitter. I don’t like wondering if I’ll get into an argument with the client about how long it really took. I especially don’t like the possibility of screwing someone over, possibly billing for longer than I should have. All things considered, hourly sucks for me as an individual.

I love, love, love package pricing. With a package, everybody knows what they’re getting. In my mind, package pricing is the “benefit” of the feature vs. benefit equation. You tell the client exactly what they’re getting at the end of the day, and how much it’s going to cost them. I heart packages.

The thing with pricing is that there are so many aspects at play. Let’s discuss, shall we?

Psychology of Pricing

Virtually every target demographic is unique, and every individual within that demographic is uniquer. However, statistical trends are a factor. If your target demographic makes ten bucks an hour at the plant, telling them your hourly fee is $250 is really dumb. For many, this is tantamount to attacking their self-worth. (i.e. “Who the fuck are you to be charging $250 an hour?!?! Do you think you’re better than me?”) Keep in mind, these people balk at their heart surgeon’s hourly wage, and you’re not exactly their heart surgeon, are you?

If you told the same person that your package is $500 and they’re happy with what comes out of that, you’re under no obligation to beat them over the face with the fact that it only took you two hours to do.

On the other hand, sometimes it works the other way. Michael Martine charges $120 an hour for blog consulting, and his smallest package is $652. I am currently feeling pretty broke, and I’d have a hard time explaining $652 to my husband. $120, however, we’d all be very happy with. I understand that his time is worth no more or less with either package, but I feel better buying hourly.

Practicality of Pricing

In certain cases, you have to be aware of what people have at their disposal right now. Securing a sale, and therefore the potential for loyalty, is often worth a lower rate. Some people just can’t pay for the full package. My hourly rate is $75, which I knock down a bit for the 2-hour IttyBitty package ($129). I have had people come to me and tell me they will happily pay $75 twice and lose money, simply because they only have $80 free on their Visa.

If that customer didn’t know I had an hourly rate, they might have said, “Oh well. I can’t afford it right now. I’ll come back when I can.” They might do this or they might not, but I’d be pissed if a week from now they discovered someone else who DID post an hourly rate and went with them instead.

Simplicity of Pricing

While there are psychological factors at play for the customer, there are similar factors for the service provider. There is a lot of benefit that comes from simplified billing, especially for people who hate numbers. Like, uh, me.

In my case, for example, my family can live quite happily on $3000/month. I offer a $1000 package. (No, it’s not listed on my services page, and that is a conscious choice.) I will technically lose money on this package, but I liked it for the simplicity factor. When I actively offered this package, I liked knowing that I could sell three of these babies and be good for the month. My invoice ends up reading, “Marketing: $1000”, and that’s it. I will gleefully take a pay cut if I can also take an administrivia cut as well.

Fairness of Pricing

A common argument is that one or the other method of pricing isn’t fair. Both sides raise good points, and it really does depend on your definition of fairness and your level of empathy.

If you charge by the hour, and bill 10 hours, the customer might feel like you should’ve had it done in 5. Assuming they’re not a jackass, they’ll pay it, but it’ll leave a sour taste in their mouth. Sour taste does not equal repeat business. At the same time, I’ve undercharged on every hourly gig I’ve ever done, because I want to make sure clients know I’m being fair and not gouging. This is an incredibly fast and easy way to go broke,

If you charge a flat rate, thinking it will take 5 hours and it takes 10, many people think that’s unfair for the service provider. I think it’s unfortunate, but I wouldn’t call it unfair.

If you think of a package price in terms of hours, somebody is always going to get screwed over, but frankly, it doesn’t really matter that much. Yes, with much thinking and deliberating, you can get your estimate to really, really close, but it’s very difficult to do.

Bottom line for Michele

I don’t know a lot about Michele’s business model, but here’s my thought. Give a few package options, and also give the option of an hourly rate. It’s probably the easiest way to go.

***

Before you can get more commentors, you need to understand why people comment. Commentors can be split into three groups. Each of these groups has two subsets. Hence the title. Get it?

The Emoter:

The Emoter comments because you provoked an emotional reaction in him, and he wants to share it. You made him spit his gin out laughing or you made his eyes get misty. You shocked him. You scared him. You surprised him. Maybe he thought, “Holy shit, that’s GENIUS!” Basically you got him out of his drone-like existence for long enough to feel genuine human emotion and he feels the need to say something about it.

The Selfless Emoter makes a comment because he wants you to know that your mission was achieved. Except in the most tragic of cases, a piece is funny because the writer wanted it to be funny, and it’s nice to hear you made someone laugh.

The Self-Centered Emoter wants to get something off his chest. This has nothing to do with you. Maybe your piece reminded him of his long deceased hamster Stinkie and he needs an outlet, or maybe he just wants his friends to know he’s smart enough to get the joke. These people are the ones who will corral you at the bus stop while you’re standing in the cold, cold rain waiting for a bus that’s already late and whip out all 28 plastic-coated, waterproof pictures of their long deceased hamster Stinkie because they assume you must be just as riveted by the rodent in question as they are. OK, maybe that one touched a nerve.

The Dissenter:

The Dissenter comments because he doesn’t agree. These can be large scale disagreements or they can be “You spelled Tim Ferriss’ name wrong”. Either way, he’s coming to say you’re wrong.

The Genuine Dissenter is doing it to either contribute to the conversation or to alert you to a mistake that might make you look like an ass. When a loyal reader lets you know you have a typo in your headline or accidentally posted a picture of your cat’s most recent hairball in place of a shot of Barack Obama, he’s not being mean, he’s trying to do you a favor. When these people disagree in the spirit of healthy discussion, it’s often because you asked for feedback or because they think that a nice, friendly debate makes everybody come out smarter at the end.

The Asshole Dissenter is commenting to either make himself look good or you look dumb. He’s disagreeing because it makes him feel cooler or smarter than you, or because he’s defending himself against a real or perceived attack. This type of commentor can often be found ripping apart what you said and referring to you as “my friend” somewhere in the comment text.

The Starfucker

The Starfucker comments because he thinks that in some way or another, you are superior to him. He is treating you like a mini-celebrity. He almost always says something nice, although it’s often tremendously bland and contributes nothing real to the conversation. There’s nothing wrong with that — it’s lovely for the ego — but when this commentor writes, “Amazing article, blah blah blah, I’ll definitely try to incorporate this into my own [blog, business, sex life]” you probably have a Starfucker on your hands.

The Worshipping Starfucker comments because he really, really likes you. He has probably read your archives back to your first entry. He loves everything you’ve ever read. He always thinks you’re right — sometimes because you really are, and sometimes just because you’re the one who wrote the piece. You can find these people by writing a completely asinine post and seeing who says nice things about it anyway.

The Upwardly Mobile Starfucker wants a piece of you. He wants you to notice him or he wants a piece of your traffic or he wants his name seen on high-traffic blogs. He might want other people to think you and he are friends. He is just as likely to disagree as agree, as he’s noticed that when he disagrees, some bloggers will comment back and address him by name. He feels that’s one more way of getting on your radar. He is also likely to be a big, fat bragger — he’ll find a way to weave in the name of his blog or a marginally relevant story of his own blog or business into the comment.

BONUS: Then there are your friends. That’s just what they are — friends — and they defy classification.

This is probably where I should add an open-ended question to encourage reader participation, but can we just pretend I did and you can insert your own?

***

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“I currently work in IT Project Management (oh, the excitement! Ahem…) and I may soon have an opportunity to move into corporate communications. WOOHOO! This gets a WOOHOO because I really wanted to go into marketing but thought I wasn’t cool enough to major in it. (I know, I roll my eyes at me, too.)

Since I saw you used to work in Mega Company corporate communications, I thought maybe you could give me some inside scoop on what the job really is. This would be the communications department for the IT department that reports to the corporate communications folks.

Basically, would I be bored out of my mind? I don’t want to jump from comfy and boring to strange, new, and boring! Plus, I want to eventually run the whole shebang — or learn enough to start my own home business shebang. How could a job like this fit into the bigger picture, if at all? Although, if they offer me crazy money OF COURSE I will take it!”

Dearest, most wonderful Kate,

Corporate communications is a fancy phrase for politics. You get paid to attend meetings and write stuff that will never be seen because other people will rip it apart by committee. You will generally get business cards that have your actual name printed on them, not a little line where you’re supposed to write your name in with a pen. In my experience, and the experience of others I know, a move to corporate communications is almost always associated with a substantial increase in pay.

Marketing and corporate communications, while different animals entirely, are based on the same premise. You have to say something in a way that people — maybe customers, maybe colleagues, maybe higher-ups, maybe subordinates — will understand it well enough to do something as a result. Sometimes that “something” is getting people to buy your crap, sometimes that “something” is getting customer service representatives to remember how to say “hello” without fucking it up. (Secret: Every time I try to type the word “result” I accidentally type “reslut” instead. The Freudian implications of this are, well, Freudian.)

If you want to run the whole shebang, it is definitely a good career move. The people who are in charge of deciding whether or not to give you the shebang-running responsibilities tend to like both demonstrated communications skills and promotions. If you want to run your own shebang, it will, at the very worst, be a neutral career move. And if they offer you crazy stupid money then you should take it regardless. (No. I am not saying that people should take jobs just based on crazy stupid money. I’m saying people should take jobs THEY WOULD ENJOY AND WERE STRONGLY CONSIDERING TAKING ANYWAY based on crazy stupid money.)

Will you get bored? Yes. Corporate communications is not a good place for creative people to spend any great amount of time.

If you are offered and accept this position, your first order of business is to find a way to be running either the aforementioned shebang or your own shop before you burn out. Communications department burnout is ugly.

I have two pieces of advice for people who want to work in communications. One, you have to stop viewing writing as an art and start viewing it as a product. When people don’t like what you write, and they won’t, you’ll need something with which you can console yourself. Knowing that they don’t like your product is a lot easier on the ego than knowing they don’t like your art.

Second, invest in a membership to a gym that has a boxing ring. The people you work with will occasionally make you so angry you will want to kill yourself.

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