After55:

Gaetan Benson has a wonderful day job, but she has been making jewelry for years.  Often she would sell her necklace right off her neck.  For a part-time entrepreneur, Etsy.com is a wonderful way to have her creations seen by a much larger audience, and have the delight of creating new pieces and branching out.

Gaetan started with jewelry and soon added her incredibly adorable baby hats. She’s now adding beautiful knit cowls!  She is having a ball, learning new skills and adding customers–all in her spare time. Could life be any better?  Probably not.

Today I ran into Lu Herbold, owner of the Caroline Carlson & Associates showroom at Chicago’s Merchandise Mart.  You might have heard that people just aren’t spending money for gift items such as her firm represents.  You know, the economy is awful, no credit available, unemployment is high.  Heard about that?  I asked Lu how things were going.  Her response?  “Just fine.”  Pressed, she said  that while sales are not at their peak, her lines are doing “just fine” because she and her reps don’t use all the negativity as an excuse not to work like crazy and make sales happen.  She said she isn’t particularly interested in talking with the naysayers; she prefers to work hard, keep in touch and do her level best to make things happen . . . and they do.

Wouldn’t your business do better if you followed Lu’s example?  Try it for 30 days and let me know.  I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised!  Thanks, Lu!

It seems I am seeing a lot about creativity lately.  Perhaps it is because of the economic mess.  We have all been encouraged to be “creative” about how we can do business for less, get our message out and meet market needs.  Some have asked what it takes to be truly creative and have gone in search of enlightenment through books, internet and lectures.  I think it takes very few “things” to be creative: curiosity and questions.

Curiosity opens our minds to new ideas and people.  Just because I own a web-based business for women over 55 doesn’t mean that is what I read about exclusively.  I read about fashion, decorating, architecture, travel, technology, cars, inventions, business, fiction AND almost all the books my grandchildren read so I will know what they are thinking about.  From this love affair with the written word I have “met” many of the fascinating women on my site, many of the fascinating women I have written about in my After 55 column or in these blog entries and have had more darn fun connecting with people at gatherings and being able to keep up my end of the conversation.  You know that these conversations lead to . . . who knows where?

Questions expand horizons.  Take a look at every part of your business and ask, “Why do I do it this way?  Is there a different/better way? What would be best for my client?”  If you take this step seriously, you may find some surprising answers.  You may not want to continue a product or process.  You may find a much better way of being useful to your client. You may discover a new profit center.

Being creative doesn’t require anything more than a curious mind, good questions, and pencil and paper.  Oh, the places you will go! — Thank you, Dr. Seuss!

Months and months ago I wrote about the importance of getting out of our work space.  This has been on my mind lately because I seem to be spending hours in front of my laptop by choice, not necessarily by necessity, so I think it’s a good time to revisit the topic.  As the days are getting shorter and here, outside of Chicago, the temperature is starting to drop, it can be a much bigger challenge to get out of the house.  The lure of a warm house, cozy bed, handy cup of coffee or tea is very strong, but the potential benefits of going out, meeting new people and hearing different voices and ideas are simply incalculable.

Just last week, I went to a noon lunch and learn featuring a local movie critic.  I am not a movie fanatic like my husband, but I simply needed to get out of the house.  Wow!  It turned out that it was hosted by the library, and I made two new community contacts there. The informal talk wasn’t about movies. It was about the changing face of movie reviews and how he is responding by taking his work to the internet and his own website, the place of YouTube and his challenges in connecting with his followers.  Now this was far more interesting to me than I expected and I got some new ideas, contacts and a delicious lunch at a restaurant I had never visited.  When I say, “Get out!” I truly have your best interests in mind; I’m not being crabby.

One of the important steps in building a business is letting the world know that you exist and what you do. I heard of  HARO about three weeks ago, and it has proved valuable for me and for my daughter (yes, we are a family of entrepreneurs–each of my daughters owns her own business) and a columnist on SilverVixens.com.

If you haven’t heard of the site, either, it is a quick way to get into the conversation about your particular business.  HARO is an acronym for Help a Reporter Out.  Three times a day you receive an e-mail listing 25 to 30 inquiries from reporters, writers, whatever.  If one is related to what you do, you contact the writer and go from there!  Easy, quick, free!  Three wonderful words for an entrepreneur.

My business coach Barry Zweibel asked me an interesting  question in three parts that is worth passing on to you:

What would you do if someone invested $10,000 in your business? How would you spend it?

$100,000?  $1,000,000?

At first I thought it was a cute set of questions, but as I started to consider the possibilities I saw that what I was doing was writing a different kind of business plan.  We After 55s are many times used to doing everything ourselves.  These questions stretch us in more ways than one.  Go, Barry!

I was talking with Gillie Haynes, speech coach extraordinaire, the other day.  As business owners, we are constantly “presenting” our company, products and ourselves, yet public speaking is ranked very, very high on the list of stress-producing activities.  As someone who loves to talk, I don’t quite understand it, but Gillie sure does.  I asked her to give me three points about public speaking that would be of instant help to all of us.  Here they are:

1. Trust Yourself. It’s important to be confident in your area of expertise. You should feel extremely comfortable talking about your specific area.

2. Do Not Over-Think It. In your presentation, share the information you would want to receive without the extras that sometimes take away from the real message.

3. Have a Great Time. Begin with the intent to truly enjoy sharing information and ideas that you are passionate about and expect that your audience will be just as excited to receive the information.

Good points, aren’t they?  If that isn’t enough to get you comfortable in front of your chamber of commerce, contact Gillie at gilliehaynes@aol.com and find out what it will take to raise your star power.

I just was connected to Sharon Pinder of The Pinder Group.  She’s one of us–started her last two businesses After 55, in addition to teaching an online course for University of Maryland University College on “Women as Entrepreneurs.”  She is a clear thinker with lots of experience, and I asked her to give me three points she teaches her students about being entrepreneurs.  Here they are–if you want to learn more about Sharon or her course, click the links!

1. Access to opportunity: Is age, gender or race a factor? How can you maximize those factors to your benefit?
2. Access to capital:  Make sure your business is well-capitalized and know where you will get the capital.
3. Be knowledgeable about being an entrepreneur: Know what it takes to start, build and grow a business.  Work FOR your business, not IN it!

Good points, Sharon!  Too many times we just start on a whim because we have read about some super-successful person who did . . . probably if we scratched the surface, we would find a different story. There are no born entrepreneurs–there are successful entrepreneurs who have succeeded because of Sharon’s pointers.

Gail Golden of Gail Golden Consulting, a good friend of mine, says this about networking: “Networking is not about going out and asking favors, it is about going out and doing favors.  Going out and asking favors is panhandling.”  Wow!  Isn’t that true?  How many times have you been at a networking event and met someone who could only talk about themselves and try to figure out how you two could work together to their advantage?  Probably several times.

Wise salespeople know that selling is about finding a need and filling it. Networking is about finding a need and offering to help find a solution. People will always be glad to see you coming, you will build up enormous good will, you will learn a lot from a lot of people, and you will have more fun!  Networking isn’t working–it’s meeting new potential friends and increasing your knowledge base–sometimes with yummy muchies, too!  Go forth and network!

The current wisdom among economists and pundits is that this current recession/downturn will last another six to 18 months.  Rather wide range, isn’t it?  With this piece of knowledge, what are you doing to ensure that your business will be around?  Are you looking for new applications for your products or services?

A friend of mine’s market research business has been very hard hit; she is now using the research skills she has honed over the years to do forensic research on companies and products.  Same skills, different focus–and the possibility of weathering the storm.  Keep thinking of new ways to offer your products, reposition your products and solve customers’ problems in new ways.  Your most important product is between your ears–THINK!

One the lighter side —

“Then remember the story of the poor farmer who lost his crops to a drought, battled disease in his cattle and watched his barn go up in flames after being hit by lightning. Somehow, he maintained his pleasant disposition and sense of humor. How did he stand it, his neighbors wondered.

“Well, it’s like this,” the farmer said. “In the Bible, it says, ‘It came to pass.’ But it never says ‘It came to stay.’ ”

Mackay’s Moral: Your biggest worry should be that you are worrying too much.
– Harvey Mackay

OK, I am assuming you have done your homework from the last post–oh, my! It was 10 days ago!  Time really flies when you are running a business, doesn’t it?

My point exactly. . . just because you’re in the midst of starting or running a business doesn’t mean you don’t take time to think about your business and what the value proposition is.  This week’s assignment is to take those three unique qualities of your business that you last identified and write every wonderful thing about them from your customer’s point of view!

No matter how in love with your idea you are, if your customer doesn’t understand why she should love it, too, you will be soon putting up your “closed” sign.  That’s right. Write a paragraph for each of the three qualities as if they were testimonials for your business.  Do they really ring true to you or, deep down, do you think your reaction indicates you need to do more work on the concepts? Better to go back to the drawing board now, when you don’t have a ton invested and are not carrying a lot of inventory.  Listen to your gut–are you on target or missing the mark?

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”

- Helen Keller

 I hope you have now identified an area you would like to address by starting your own business. For entrepreneurs, there is a lot of activity between the two pillars of Helen Keller’s statement, and that is where success begins–with a lot of planning and hard work. Talk to any entrepreneur and you will find she is always thinking about her business.  Entrepreneurs love the “product,” and the intricacies and challenges of bringing it to market. Here is this edition’s question:

What three features or qualities make my idea/product/service different from what is already out there?

This may seem like a pretty simple question, but it will be the foundation for your sales and marketing efforts.  Don’t slide over this step.