How To Build Your Business By Interviewing Like A Pro, Part Three
November 17, 2009
Step Two – Pick Gigs Based on Your Goal
Now that you have your goal(s) clearly in mind, you can pick the interviews you most want to do based on whether the interview will meet your goal. One of the things to find out from the person who wants to interview you is information about their target audience. What types of people usually listen in to the program? What age group? As an example, if you are a solo professional whose target audience is professional woman who make more than $200,000 a year, interviewing for a host whose audience is stay-at-home moms under 25 probably won’t be worth your time. While it might be difficult to match your target audience exactly, at least take a look at who the audience typically is, and try to match your target audience as closely as you can.
Ask your host about the size of the audience, as well. She may have a very small number of listeners but yet they match your target audience very well. You need to get an idea as to how many people might be listening (or watching) the interview for several reasons. For instance, if you are crafting a special offer for this interview, you might not want to offer a complimentary copy of your book if there are 5,000 people who typically listen in!
The more you know about the profile of the host’s audience and the typical number of listeners, the better you can pull together interesting topics for the host, and that is important. You want to let the host know that you are interested and curious because you want to be interesting and helpful to their listeners. Asking about the host’s target market, audience size, and maybe an example of who she has interviewed in the past can give you a good sense of the type of guest she wants. Ask, too, if there are audio files (MP3) of a few recent calls. If so, listen to a part of each one just to get a sense of the host’s style and the type of questions she gets from her listeners.
If you want to offer the audience a product or service as a part of the interview, consider a collaboration with the host. Does the host also market product or services to the audience as part of the program? Is there something that the two of you could offer together that makes sense, is an attractive and unique offer to the audience, and would be profitable for both of you? This isn’t always possible, but it is a good idea to see if this might work. After all, the audience is quite familiar with the host, whom they already know, like, and trust. If you can combine your offer with hers, you will instantly gain credibility from the host’s know, like, and trust factor, thus establishing your own.
Get an agreement with the show’s host up front that you will receive a copy of the audio or MP3 file after the show. Most of the time, this is no problem. After all, you are providing free programming for the host, and in return it is common practice to give you full use of the audio. Even if you don’t want to make a product out of your interview, the audio can be useful to you. You might cut out a few sentences to use on your website, or in a blog post, or in other copy. You might re-work the interview and present it to another audience. Personally, I get each interview I do transcribed. I then have the audio file and the verbiage, which can be easily manipulated and cut into blog postings and article submissions. My personal stance is that if I can’t get use of the audio there has to be a very good reason why! Unless the program is very high profile and an obvious benefit, I probably would think twice about accepting a gig where I was refused access to the material. In the world of Internet marketing, it is common to agree that both the host and the interviewer have full access to the audio file and both can use it in any way they wish.
Finally, speak on a topic that relates to your business in some way. You are doing this to help build your business, right? The best gigs for you will be those that are related (even in a far-fetched way) to your business. You want to do interviews that meet at least one of the goals we talked about in Chapter Three. The interview topic should either relate to your current business or to somewhere you plan to take your business in the future. These gigs are the ones that will serve you the best. The exception is if you feel that you are so inexperienced that any interview on any topic would help you out, by giving you some practice in front of an audience of listeners. Usually, these “throw away” gigs are not truly necessary for you, and they offer no return on your investment of time. Be thoughtful and strategic about doing interviews that are off your topic.
Stay tuned for Part Four of this article, coming your way soon!
(c) Sue Painter
How To Build Your Business By Interviewing Like A Pro, Part Two
November 17, 2009
There are five key steps to interviewing like a pro. Here they are, in the order you will more than likely move through the steps.
- Know your goal.
- Pick gigs based on your goal.
- Prep the call.
- Answer questions briefly but strategically.
- Follow up diligently.
If you follow each step, you’ll find yourself quickly and easily handing interviews and benefitting from them in more ways than one. Each step helps ensure that your interview will be of benefit to the person interviewing you and to your business. Any time a solo professional can take an action with a double benefit, it’s sure to be a winner!
Step One – Know Your Goal
Just as with anything else you do in business, being interviewed takes your time away from other things you could be doing. You won’t be getting paid, but you still do want a return on your investment of time and sharing of your expertise. Setting a goal for each interview you decide to give will help you get a return.
Ask yourself why you want to do this particular interview, and what you would like to get out of it. There are at least five ways to benefit, and you can probably hit two of them with each interview. The first goal is to build visibility for your business. Think about where and how much the interview will be publicized, the likely size of the listeners or audience, and how much introduction you are likely to receive.
Gaining credibility is a second goal. No one is going to ask you to be interviewed if they think you have nothing of value to offer their listeners or audience. Just by doing the interview, you gain credibility. It’s a good idea to keep a list of all the places you’ve done interviews, and add this to your media page. Reporters and others who are always looking for guests will be impressed that you’ve interviews and will be grateful to find someone who knows the ropes. Just like many other things in the business world, doing interviews can create its own energy. Word spreads that you are both interesting and willing, and you will get more opportunities once you break the ice.
A third goal for doing interviews is to build your list of prospects. Especially if you are an Internet-based business (or have an Internet-based component to your business) constantly building your list is a key concern for you. For Internet businesses, a list of potential customers is the goose that lays the golden egg. For businesses that are not Internet-based, their database of contacts and prospects is also important.
How does interviewing help you build your list? Many times, the person interviewing you will require people who want to listen in on the call or radio show to register ahead of time, even if the call is free. The interviewer may be building his own list using this strategy. He may need to know roughly how many people to expect on a telephone interview so that he can reserve enough phone lines through his conference call provider. He may want to collect information about the industry his listeners are coming from. Whatever the reason, there is often an opportunity to share this information and build your own list, too. If you do this, make sure that when a prospect registers for the event she is told that registering means she will receive the call-in access information and that she will receive a free subscription to your own electronic newsletter (e-zine). Make sure that you operate within the Federal laws regarding e-mails and SPAM.
Even if the person interviewing you doesn’t require a registration to listen in on the event, you can still build your list right on the call. Make sure that your bio includes information about your website’s URL. Include a statement something like, “Be sure to go to my website and subscribe to my e-zine, for you’ll receive valuable marketing tips several times a month.”
Product development is the fourth goal you can meet by doing interviews. Once the interview is done, there will likely be a recording of it. Viola! You have a product, a half-hour or hour-long interview about a particular topic that you can give away as an MP3 file, burn to a CD and sell, or have transcribed and make part of a product bundle. Interviewing is a quick and easy way to build up a library of low-cost products that can create a passive income stream for you. Make sure that you agree ahead of time that you will get to share the audio file of the interview with the person who interviews you. The majority of times, this is understood at the outset – that both of you can use that resource in any way you want. Having the file is useful, for you can create audio clips from it to use in advertising or presentations along with using it as a product to give away or sell.
Finally, you may have a goal to make a special offer to the audience during an interview. Most hosts will be more than willing to take a brief time during the interview to let you offer something special to their listeners. This helps the host become known as someone who offers special deals or surprises, which in turn builds their audience. For you, it can be a way to test out a new product or service with an audience, or to raise some quick cash by offering one of your services with a special add-on for the same price. To make special offers effective, limit the time it is available (usually that day or 24 hours only) and/or the quantity offered. Build a special link in your website for this special offer, and announce it on the call, leading the audience to browse to your website, purchase the offer, and perhaps browse the rest of your website, too.
Stay tuned for Part Three of this article, coming your way soon!
(c) Sue Painter
How to Build Your Business By Interviewing Like a Pro (Part One)
November 16, 2009
One fast and easy business building strategy for solo professionals is to get interviewed on radio, the Internet, television, and in print
media. It’s easier than ever to catch a request for an interview, what with YouTube, BlogTalk Radio, and Internet TV channels. With Webcam and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technologies, you might well get the chance to be on radio or TV anywhere in the world without leaving your office. The next four or five blog posts here will cover everything you need to know to deliver an interview with ease and in a way that will make you welcome on shows and in print media, too. I’ll show you the five key steps of pro interviewing, along with these tips:
- How you can “drive” the interview in a direction you want to go
- What the people interviewing you REALLY want from you
- How to create marketing opportunities right in the interview
- How to recycle your interviews to build more presence for your business.
First, though, let’s talk about where giving interviews fits into your business. A successful entrepreneur has three things going that ensure business success. These components are a solid business plan with financial projections that take you where you want to go, a creative and low-cost marketing strategy for the business, and a willingness to remove any personal blocks that keep the business from succeeding. Each component is equally important to your business.
Interviewing is a part of your business’s marketing strategy. If you are unsure or resistant to thinking about interviewing to showcase your expertise and experience, you more than likely have inner blocks that are in your way. Working to change that is a part of personal growth. For solo professionals who decide to do it, interviewing can be easy, fun, and help you build your business.
Before you begin to accept interview opportunities, you’ll need to put together a simple media kit or media page on your website. As a beginning, this should include:
- A head shot of you (both black & white and color) that can be downloaded from your website or sent as a .jpg file in an e-mail
- A brief (250 words) bio about you and what you do
- A list of topics you can speak about
- A list of your speaking and media experience (if you have any).
My next posts will give you the five key steps to pro interviewing, and how to make each one work for you. Stay tuned, LOL!
(c) Sue Painter
How To Create Money And A Life You Really Want
November 15, 2009
A few months ago, over on my blog at www.suepainter.com, I began to tell the story of a new client who was out of work, scared, and confused. You can read Part One of his story and you’ll see how he had nothing but the desire to get out of his fear. We set up low-cost and simple actions designed to get him on a path of discovery and out of the hole he was in.
Two months later, amazing things have happened! Part Two of his story clearly shows how he manifested a small monthly income – not enough yet, but far better than unemployed and at zero. If he and I add it up, in just two months he’s created just under $6,000. He created the opportunity to travel and meet other budding entrepreneurs. He found a program that gives him a shot at his dream trip to Africa. How did he do it?
- He didn’t tell himself he couldn’t.
- He faithfully carried out the daily practices we decided on.
- He told his story to friends, family, and business contacts, stating the opportunities he is looking for.
- He invested in himself (with coaching) rather than telling himself he couldn’t afford it.
None of these are hard, but they do require faithful, consistent action – even when we don’t know where that action is leading. It requires, too, that when we get off the path and mess up, we forgive ourselves and get right back on again. Has this man done his daily practices every single day? No – but he has done them most of the time, and he has had the discipline to get himself going again when he gets off. He also has the honesty to say he’s off and ask for encouragement to get going again.
The rewards he is getting are far greater than the money he has created. He is beginning to see that despite his own fears, the talk he hears from others about how bad things are, and the uncertainty of life he still has huge impact by his beliefs and actions. He is learning that he actually can create money and a life he really wants. We all can, if we will.
(c) Sue Painter
How To Tell If You Really Want Your Dream Biz
November 10, 2009
As a marketing therapist, one of my jobs is to help the people I work with discover the inner blocks that keep them from going where they say they want to go. Sometimes, we SAY we really, really, really want to create a certain business or achieve something new in our existing business, yet it never seems to happen. When this happens, there is sure to be a block or two lurking within. Once you know how to step back and listen to what you are saying to yourself, you will easily be able to identify these blocks.
A conversation with someone I had a few weeks ago is a good example. “Betty” is a small biz owner who created an online business, working diligently to create a website and some products to sell. The business didn’t succeed, so Betty, who needed income, decided to create a second business that provides services to other small business owners. She has been pretty successful at business number two, making a living but not a lot of extra money. She tells me that her true dream is to “re-establish her first business and make it successful.” I took a quick peek at the website of the defunct business and talked to Betty, and in less than half an hour found that the story she told herself effectively and completely blocked her from what she said she “really really really” wanted to do. Here’s the key – Betty’s inner talk did not at all match what she was willing to do on the outside. For every way out of the maze of “not doing what she really wants to do” she had at least two reasons why she couldn’t do it.
- Betty holds unrealistic expectations. Her stated goal was to go from zero income to $50K in the “dream” business in one year’s time. But, Betty had no written business model for her dream business, despite having worked on it for over a year. She had done no marketing research and insisted that for her market there was no way to do market research.
- Betty stated that she had time available to work on refreshing her dream business. But, when I set out a plan to create new interest and a new launch by the first of the year she quickly told me that her existing second business kept her too busy and that with the upcoming holidays she couldn’t possibly even think of starting until after the first of the year. When there is resistance to action that would make your dream actually come true, you know you’ve got an inner block.
- Betty’s big, major “you can’t get past this problem” excuse is that she has to support herself with the second business she created, so how could she possibly ever have the time and money to work on her “dream” biz? Here’s the thing – there is ALWAYS a path forward. If you find yourself, like Betty, dissing every single option then you know you aren’t willing to put your money where your mouth is. Betty could have sold her second business, but her answer back was that she could “never sell her clients to someone else as that would not be ethical.” Truth is, people sell service businesses and client lists all the time and within her own industry it’s done frequently. Betty could have outsourced the work of her second business by creating contract staff to handle that work while she worked on the “dream biz.” Her response – no, her profit margin wouldn’t be high enough and “other people” might not take care of her clients well enough. Betty could have decided to rachet up her second business, double the income, save most of that for a year or two, then close that business and have a cushion to work on the dream biz. Betty felt like that would take too long. For every potential way around her inner roadblocks she had a reason it would not work.
- When I challenged Betty to tell me what she could do rather than what she could not do, she finally was stumped. She had to face that she was not really willing to go work on her dream biz because she was unwilling to say yes to any possibility. But to save face, she switched tactics and started talking about how she “really was searching for answers and was afraid that I felt she was argumentative.” It doesn’t matter what I think, what matters is what she will do. But since I had challenged her own inner blocks she decided to give me one, and then use THAT as an excuse not to move forward – how could she work with someone who felt she was argumentative? (A label she gave herself, by the way.)
It’s a shame that Betty has convinced herself that there is no way to move forward. Her idea for her “dream biz” has merit, and she has spent time and money to create it. In fact, even what she had done became an excuse for not moving forward. Betty felt that she had already spent so much time and money on her website and a re-do of her site that she just could not justify spending more cash.
How Betty keeps her story alive (her story being that she really, really, really wants her dream biz) is to constantly ask for advice but then constantly fail to change a single belief or action. To Betty, she can’t move forward because she just can’t find the “right match” for someone to work with – conveniently blaming a potential advisor rather than herself. Betty has an answer for everything except the most important question. That question is “how can I have my dream biz?” Until Betty quits blocking every potential possibility, the truth is that she doesn’t really want her dream biz, she just wants to hold it and point to it and tell the world how tough and unfair it is that she can’t have it. There is ALWAYS a way forward when the mind and heart are open. When they are not, dream businesses don’t happen.
(c) Sue Painter
Why Discounting Your Prices Doesn’t Build Your Business
November 8, 2009
One of the things I hear from solo professionals pretty often is that the way to make more money is to discount their prices. I’ve railed against this for years, and told stories about talented entrepreneurs who discounted themselves right out of business. If you are one to think that discounting does your biz good, think again and take these points to heart.
- Highly successful businesses don’t compete on price alone. They are smart enough to know that being the cheapest isn’t a strong USP (unique selling proposition). Instead, they want you to spend money with them because their service is better, their designers more creative, their merchandise higher quality, they are more convenient, or their knowledge and expertise gives you a value far and above what you pay.
- You don’t want your customers buying from you only because you are the cheapest deal around. Here is one big reason why – cheap customers are not loyal customers. They buy only on price, so as soon as Sally down the street offers a floral arrangement for even one dollar cheaper, off they go. You need repeat, loyal customers. Constantly having to find new customers AND having to find them only because you are the cheapest deal around will flat wear you out. You will “churn” customers rather than create a willing customer base for your business. You will work much harder for every dollar you earn, and you will earn less dollars (because your prices are cheaper).
- When you discount constantly, you get customers trained to never pay full price. I wrote a blog post about this some time back that illustrates this. Lately, Talbot’s has gotten into the bad habit of constantly offering sales. I never pay full price there and I never will – I know that I can always wait it out and get a nice discount and maybe even free shipping. Too bad for Talbot’s that they have trained me and a dozen other people I know to never pay full price. That also gets me to thinking that if they can discount THAT much, their prices might be highly inflated to begin with – not something Talbot’s needs me to be thinking!
- It is a strange phenomena but it’s true that people will hunt down the cheapest price, gleefully pay it, and then not much value what they bought. Now what you’ve got on your hands is a customer you discounted to, and the thanks you get in return is that they really don’t even value what they got from you. That doesn’t make them want to come back to you, does it?
- If you have set your prices fairly (that means, you are making a good profit but you’re not gouging, either) then discounting may mean you don’t cover your costs. Service business are especially bad about getting themselves into this trap, because they are not purchasing product to resale. Instead, they are selling their time and expertise. I’ve seen hair dressers and massage therapists deep discount 30% only to find they are working like dogs and can’t pay their rent and utilities at the end of the month. Have they gotten clients? Yep. Are they going to stay in business? Nope. They have, in essence, worked themselves right out of business.
If you want to offer a special deal in order to grow your business don’t do it by discounting. Instead, ADD a small product or service without charge. This does TWO things – it ADDS value rather than lessens values. And, it shows your customers a new product or service that they might not have known you have – something they may decide they can’t live without the next time they are in.
Bottom line – in most cases, discounting doesn’t serve you in building your business. Solo professionals and small business owners are not the same as super-big-box stores who can spend millions advertising and churn new customers constantly. You want to cherish your customers, treat them well, offer fair value, and give true benefits in your products and services. This will build a solid business with loyal, repeat customers who value you and what you offer.
(c) Sue Painter
Are You The Block That Keeps Your Business From Succeeding?
November 5, 2009
To make your business profitable, you must have two critical things in place. The first is a business model that adds up. In other words, what you offer and how you offer it will generate the amount of money you need, minus all your expenses. Your business plan and projected financial statements prove that your plan will take you where you want to go.
The second critical thing you must have is a creative marketing strategy that is comprehensive and hits your target market. As Ali Brown and many others have said, you can be the best at what you do in the whole wide world, but if you can’t market yourself you will go broke. You have to master marketing even more than you master your expertise.
If you have these two in place and you are faithfully working them, wonderful things are sure to happen. And when they don’t happen, a third thing is coming into play, something I often see in the bright, capable solo professionals I work with. That third thing is you – the resistances, denials, limiting beliefs and energetic blocks you hold that keep you from fully implementing your biz model and your marketing strategy. These are the inner blocks that are keeping you from being profitable. In other words, if it isn’t a bad business plan or a weak marketing strategy, the problem is right within you!
I often tell budding entrepreneurs and solo professionals that the best way to engage in a rigorous path of self-growth is to open your own business. It will push every button you have, and challenge you to develop yourself both personally and in business skills. It takes a courageous combination of inner work and outer work (skill building) to support fantastic success in business.
A mathematician might say that my formula for success is P + BP + MS + RIB = DCT. That translates to passion plus business planning, plus marketing strategy plus removing inner blocks equals dreams come true. It is a formula that works every time. Find the weak link, fix it, and you are on your way.
Solo professionals must have a true passion for what they offer. Working on your own requires high energy, so if you are not enthusiastic about what you do, forget about it! You will more than likely burn out before you get where you want to go. So, that P in the formula is critical.
However, you can’t build a business on passion alone – you have to know and work your business plan. What is your model of doing business? How much income is it realistic to think you will generate? How do you measure that? What is your overhead, or operating cost? If you don’t watch the money in and money out, your overhead costs can go out the roof very quickly.
Marketing strategy is the formula’s next part. Are your actions gaining you top of mind awareness with your target market? Are you getting a return on investment with marketing, publicity, events, social media, and advertising? A plan will keep you on track, marketing in a consistent manner rather than piecemeal.
If you have those pieces done well and in place and your business is not creating DCT (dreams come true) then the place to look is RIB (removing inner blocks). Blocks show up in dozens of ways, but the bottom line is fear. Fear is behind every excuse and every failure to implement. Fear creates dark and murky underplaces, which show up as resistance, avoidance, passivity, or denial. How do these show up? Here are a few things to check.
1) Look at your to-do list, and put a star beside anything that has been on your list longer than a week. You are avoiding the starred items, and that’s a good sign of an inner block.
2) Look at your calendar and find the last time you carved out at least two days for a personal retreat. Never? Three months or longer? You have an inner block about working on your business versus in your business. There’s probably also a block about control and delegating.
There are dozens of others ways to look for blocks. The point is, a willingness to look combined with a willingness to change will serve you over and over again, both in business and personal life. I have a great deal of respect for solo professionals who are willing to do that. They grow both inside and out, and they take off in their businesses.
(c) Sue Painter
What Should You Promise Not To Do Today?
November 1, 2009
I was talking with another Book Yourself Solid coach the other day, Lou Bortone. He made the comment that he actually puts on his To-Do list a column for NOT To-do. This got me thinking about delegation, letting go, and knowing when to quit doing a part of your business. I think about this a lot, because it is often a place that my coaching clients get stuck. Seeing the goodness of NOT doing, when you have been used to doing it all, is often hard to get. But, if an entrepreneur doesn’t get this vital piece of business savvy she will not grow her business.
One great way to get a bird’s eye view of what you can let go of is to list out all your business systems. (For more about how to get a bird’s eye view of your biz, see my recent video on the topic. This can be enlightening for many reasons, but let’s stick to the topic of what you should not be doing. If you don’t have a ready list of your business systems, you can get a start by reading this recent blog post. Print it out, and go through each with an eagle eye. Be honest! Sort out what your tasks should be, focusing on those that will make you money in the future. Any daily tasks you more than likely should be handing off. Why? Because administrative details don’t make you money – they maintain the business and they are important, but they are not building toward future income.
What I find is that entrepreneurs and solo professionals tend to hang on to administrative tasks because, frankly, they are comfortable doing these things. It’s easier to hide behind these little details than it is to step out and create the new business that will cause you to bring in future income. The truth is, your two highest priorities must always be to market your business and create new income streams. Maintenance of current income streams comes from your managing the systems that keep things going – managing, not doing these thing. Worked ON your business rather than IN your business is what will keep you ahead of the game.
My recommendation is to make use of Lou’s tip until delegating and managing are second nature to you. Before you do any task or take on a new task, ask yourself “should I really be spending my precious time doing this?” Make your To-Do list, and out to the side make your “Not-To-Do” list – and promise yourself to stay away from those things you should not be doing today.
(c) Sue Painter