Sep
12
IttyBiz Grows Up: When The Blog Becomes A Business
So, it’s been about a year since I’ve started IttyBiz. Normally around this time in a blog’s life you’ll see a post telling all the shit the blogger has learned. (Excellent linkbait and traffic strategy, btw.)
Since I’ve spent the last year telling you about all the stupid stuff I’ve done and what I’ve learned from it anyway, a post like that would be pretty redundant here. So instead, I’ll tell you what I’m changing.
1. We hired staff.
I poached a personal assistant. Details will become available on this soon.
Quick note on hiring your first staff:
I grant you, I know ZERO about hiring. Nothing at all. I have lied on every job application I’ve ever written, and I get my mother, my husband or my best friend to write my references. I don’t believe a goddamn word anybody says on a job description, so a normal hiring process would be out.
Add to that the fact that I am EXTREMELY high maintenance, I need to know that I’m not going to have drama. I don’t have time for drama. If the nanny has a weird look on her face, I’m fucked for the day and thinking about firing her. I’m not exactly an ideal employer.
Therefore, we decided to poach. We found someone we loved and convinced them to quit their job. I strongly recommend this approach.
2. We got ourselves big girl panties contact.
There are certain concessions to professionalism I will never make. I do not and will not wear certain articles of clothing to work. (Self Promotion for Wimps members can tell you the pain it caused me the other day when my phone died in the middle of our call and I actually had to put some pants on and go find a payphone. I didn’t even know where to find pants.)
However. I do realize that there are some compromises I have to make. So we went out and got ourselves Ring Central.
The idea here is that you can do phoning and faxing and all that shit like a real company. Hold music, toll-free numbers, extensions, departments, vanity numbers, the whole enchilada. (Enchilada not included.)
We thought about this for a LOOOOOONG time. I have major conspiracy theories about online services like these because all it takes is an enterprising and tech savvy 14-year-old with a website to totally fuck your IttyBiz. But these guys were voted the best by Inc. Magazine and got shedloads of press from WSJ, NYT, etc. It’s also cheap. Good enough for me.
Note: If you want to do this for your own IttyBiz, now’s a good time. They gots deals and a real, fully-featured free trial where they don’t totally bend you over if you want to back out. I dug the free trial because we could mess around without having to share it all with the world just yet. If it’s shit, the day Steve Jobs calls me on the phone is NOT the time to find out. Click here to get the free Trial plus 10% Off
We also got AwayFind, something my friend Jared has been working on. It is the Mac Daddy of auto-responders. For the non tech savvy among you who are like, “Wha?”, email me at naomi@ittybiz.com and see what happens. It’s awesome.
3. We’re changing the website.
Over the next little while you’re going to start seeing some changes on IttyBiz. Because the consulting got so waitlisted so fast, we’re ditching the “Hire Us” button for now. We’re putting in some banners for people we like. We’re going to start playing with the content a little bit.
Scanners! Important stuff about things that are free but will not be free for much longer!
In an effort to save a whole bunch of emails from people saying, “But you never TOLD me!”, I’m giving you your official notice. If you want them, go get the Marketing School posts and stick them in a Word doc or something. I can’t guarantee how long they’ll stay free. This is entirely dependent on my work load and motivation, but I think I’m going to stick them in a book or something. If you don’t want to pay for that book — and why would you? — go get the posts.
Does the assistant play the video games for you when your thumbs get tired and you need a nap?
My problem with Ring Central is that it turns your company into something … wait … that’s not what I mean to say.
Ring Central turned my company into something I didn’t want my company to be.
There, that’s what I meant to say.
When a client is important, they get the direct dial number. When a client is not important they have recorded messages and hold music (mine was rockabilly surf hold music, tres fantastic, but still hold music) when all I needed to do was answer my phone, “Good afternoon, this is Jennifer.”
My friends and family make fun of me for answering the phone like that, but who cares. They’re not paying me.
The faxing is good. No whining or bitching about that feature. Except…I fax one thing a year. I don’t need to pay 9.95/mo (if you pay annually!) to fax one, two, or even three things in the year.
I have a (relatively) professional voicemail greeting, have pared down all phones in the house to the two cell phones my husband and I use, and walah. No one thinks we’re horribly unprofessional and we have…
*drumroll please*
Portable numbers. Cause good f’ing luck if you ever decide to get rid of Ring Central after you put it on your business cards :)
Sorry, not trying to be a troll or anything, but I remember thinking long and hard before signing up for RC and then thinking longer and even harder about canceling it.
Too bad you didn’t already have your assistant when you needed pants. You could have told them to just strip :-P
I am downloading the marketing school posts now and will email you a PDF like I did before. No sense in me missing out on being able to pull all of this wonderful content up any time I want :)
Thanks,
Mike
I don’t lie on my job applications. To thine own self be true. I wouldn’t want to start believing it or anything… But maybe that’s why I’m not a VP? :)
Seriously though, this is good news for you – all the best!
-Brett
I met Jared at SOBCon ‘08 and he is the real deal, so good job with that. Congrats on the changes. Hope the growing pains don’t hurt too much. :-)
Fuckin’ A!
Good to hear Naomi. Movin’ on up to the big time :-)
Congrats on the big girl panties, Naomi. :-)
Now I’m going to have to read Marketing School before you tear the place down. ;-)
One thing to remember about making content/articles that were once free to paid is that the old can always be found on Internet Wayback Machine.
I’d actually suggest coming up with new content that hasn’t been covered before to give people an incentive to pay for premium content. That’s just my $0.02
If you ever stopped name dropping I think I’d cry.
Thanks, guys!!
@ Ryan — The Wayback machine is totally possible, but I’m trying to find a way to get existing readers to the content without explaining the Wayback machine to someone like my mom. When the new store page opens up, I’d like to have Marketing School as one of the products, but I don’t want to charge existing readers for it. This is just a nice low-tech way for people to get their hands on it now.
Thanks!
the wayback machine totally doesn’t give you all of it. What an effin crock. LOL
Okay, Naomi, I have a complaint. Sort of. I took your advice, copying and pasting all of the Marketing School articles. But I didn’t know I’d also end up reading comments, following links, copying and pasting other blog posts….sheesh. :-)
Thanks for the heads up. I started my copy/paste about two hours ago. Just got done. Wow.
@ Mary — Funny story. I had to go through all of my old posts and do stuff for SEO purposes. Easy stuff, just making sure every “USP” linked to the right post and that kind of thing. I eventually had to get a VA to do it because it was taking me so damn long. I’d run across a comment from someone I hadn’t seen in a while and I’m all, “Oooh, I wonder how they’re doing!”
Soon enough I’ve got 15 open tabs and haven’t got a damn thing done. :)
Copied – but hell if I don’t want a shiny prettified pdf version too. Sell me more stuff! :)
Marketing School copied in like 3 minutes via google notebook.. highlight clip.. highlight clip… etc. done.
Once it’s on the net, it’s kinda silly to remove it. Does nothing much but damage your google juice.
Good luck with the new set up! I hope it works better for you because I know I tried to hire you twice over email several months ago and never got a response from you. I had asked you a couple of questions about your packages.
At first I was too busy to feel slighted by it…then I figured since we had exchanged notes before and linked to each other in our blogs that you were politely ignoring me and wishing I would go away and that my money wasn’t good enough for you. Now, if I try to hire you again and get no response, I will know to actually take it personally. :-)
I’ll buy the book! Seriously I was in Indigo books thinking I might find a book on SEO or Small Business Marketing and what I found discouraged me because they all appeared to be overwhelming. Could have just been me…not ready for big girl panties.
I would love to see what you have already written and what you would add aggregated into book form.
But just in case it takes you awhile I’ve copied all the marketing posts and some others…okay lots of others.
I promise not to be a lurker anymore but I was afraid to post a comment…I read how you grouped the comment into categories and I didn’t like the one I ended up in! Something about the ones who only say nice things…but I don’t know you well enough to tell you to piss off! :-)
So happy you’re moving in this direction! It’s been very cool seeing you get all successful and fantastic, but successful and fantastic can tell a hell of a toll on a person’s mental health. Coming up ways to clone the Naomi goodness so more folks can get the benefit can only be a good thing.
I’m doing the big happy dance over here, Naomi. If anyone in an IttyBiz needs to learn one thing, it’s the myth of being successfully solo. You need help- systems, structures, and people, if you want to be sustainable.
Or, someone can have a practice and do just fine seeing clients. But, that’s basically just creating a job for yourself with a high hourly pay. It’s not really a business, with it’s own momentum, it’s own oomph, it’s own income even when you’re on vacation.
So, happy dance. happy dance! We had a year-long adventure in hiring, two bad hires (lovely people, bad hires), and now one fantastic hire and we’re amazed, pleased, excited.
Can’t wait to see what’s next. Can’t wait can’t wait can’t wait can’t wait.
(happy dance)