My hair and your marketing

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My hair and your marketingLast week a friend dropped by unexpectedly after work.  The first thing she said was, “I really like your hair that way.  It’s smoother.  It looks good.” 

Seriously?  I laughed and said, “You’re kidding.  This is ‘bed hair!’  I went to the gym early, then went directly to my desk, where I’ve spent the entire day.” 

“No, really,” she said.  “I really like it that way.”

Well, of course, being a pushover for compliments, I deliberately blew my hair straight and smooth. 

Two days later I attended an open house at her business.  Her assistant, whom I hadn’t seen in a few months, waved hello, then walked over to chat.

“Something’s different,” she said.  “I think it’s your hair.  I really just want to mess it up, make it look windblown.”  She actually reached toward me, like it was all she could do to keep her hands off my hair!

Really?  One person likes my hair flat and smooth; the other likes it spiky and tussled.  Which just goes to show you:  you can’t please everyone.

My hair and your marketing 

What does my hair have to do with your marketing?  You can’t please everyone either. (I don’t know about you, but I hate that.)

That’s why it’s so seriously, definitely, unbelievably important that you know clearly who your target market is. 

You have to know your market inside out.  You have to know both what they want and what they need (which may not be the same thing!).

  • Know how they think
  • Know what they feel
  • Know their values
  • Know where they shop
  • Know what they read
  • Know where they hang out
  • Know how they spend their time
  • Know what keeps them awake at night and
  • Know what brings them joy.

Because knowing all this will guide everything in your business.  First and foremost, it will guide what products and services you offer.  Then it guides your pricing.  After that, it will guide your marketing strategy, marketing energy and marketing dollars.

Your marketing success depends on it

Nothing is more important to the success of your business than knowing who your target market is.  It’s the only way you can differentiate yourself and get any marketing traction.

Here’s an example:  let’s say you’re a financial planner.  You sell a huge variety of financial products, anything from mutual funds, stocks and bonds, retirement investments, annuities, life insurance and more.  Most everyone over the age of 22 needs something in that list.

If I ask, “Who is your target market?” and you tell me, “Everyone needs financial planning,” you are going to run yourself ragged trying to meet both men and women from age 22 to 95 and still only be marginally successful. 

  • Your marketing pieces will be watered down and generic.
  • Your educational events will lack focus and guidance.
  • You’ll be attending a gazillion networking events – everything from “Meet Ups for Young Professionals” to “Silver Seniors Breakfast Club.”

And more than that, the people you meet won’t know for sure that you truly understand their priorities and the challenges they face.

But if you tell me your target marketing is “Baby boomers who are getting serious about retirement plans” that paints a whole different picture.

  • Your email marketing can contain articles with specific advice for someone in that age range.
  • You will use images that baby boomers relate to.
  • The background music at your educational events will be Creedence Clearwater and Van Morrison.
  • Your prospects will know you understand their needs and priorities.

I have a client who owns a retail store selling environmentally friendly baby products, everything from diapers to soaps, to toys, to strollers.  She knows her customers inside out.  Though they come from hugely diverse socio-economic backgrounds, they have one common value:  green!  They believe their children are safer with environmentally friendly products.

  • The store owner knows their values, knows what they think, and what they believe.
  • She knows what they read and where they show up.
  • She’s built a huge following on social media and has a loyal and growing customer base.

Close your eyes and open your mind

Right now, close your eyes and envision your three most profitable customers.  These three people will typify the three IDEAL market segments you want to attract.    Create a Persona (like a caricature) for each one – yes, give them a name.  Create a background story for each of them.

If you don’t already know this information, then find out more about who your customers are, beyond their relationship to you.  Then use this information to clearly define your target market.  And use THAT information to make your marketing decisions.

Because…just like me and my hair, you just can’t please everyone.

P.S.  So, I’m not really obsessed with my hair, I promise, but…I’d really like your opinion.  Not that I do polling to make sure I please people or anything like that.  I mean, I’m my own person.  I have to please myself first, right?  But still, if you’d like to vote on which hair style you like best, just leave a comment :)!

Spiky

Spiky

Smooth

Smooth

The Alpha Mare: Women and Power

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Women and powerAs women, we want others to see us as understanding, compassionate and fair, right?

Powerful?  Don’t go there.

Fearful of perceptions and stereotypes, even the strongest women sometimes perceive power as being negative.   Anxious we’ll be labeled as demanding or hard to please, we often feel hesitant to assume appropriate power.

I’ve seen women walking on eggshells with their staff, or nearly held hostage by employees, fearful of articulating responsibility and expecting accountability.  I’ve seen women make excuses for employees who do not live up to expectations, don’t produce enough or simply do mediocre work while the company suffers and the bar gets lowered for everyone on the team.

I’ve seen women taken advantage of by vendors, contractors, even clients who are tough negotiators.

We’re raised to be nice girls.  We don’t want to make waves.  The result?  Because power can be scary, we abdicate and give away our legitimate power in ways we can’t even see.  We struggle with setting limits, expressing expectations and taking care of own needs.

I think we develop this negative association of power from what we see in movies, literature, television or in the news.  Power is dramatized or heightened to get headlines and top ratings.  We only notice power when it’s overused, misused or abused.

When power is appropriately used, it’s often invisible.  

So we avoid our power, until we come face to face with the reality that we have given away our genuine power, settled for someone else’s version of what we should or shouldn’t do, or behave as though we have no choice.

When we abdicate our power, we create a vacuum of leadership, without recognizing that our team members and staff would respect a more assertive, confident position.

What’s the answer?  My best lessons about authentic, appropriate power didn’t come from business books or business training.  My best education about power came from … horses!

When I finally learned to ride, at the ripe age of forty, I learned that in every herd of horses, there is a dominant horse, the horse recognized to be in charge. This horse is always a mare.  She’s known as the Alpha Mare.

Her duty is to tend to the safety and well-being of the entire herd.  She signals the entire when to move, sleep, eat, drink or run for safety.  She disciplines unruly youngsters, teaching them respectful behavior.

The Alpha Mare has a great responsibility; the herd depends on her to make wise choices and enforce reasonable rules. The entire herd looks to her for leadership, structure and discipline.

Alpha Mares don’t squirm over their legitimate power and they don’t worry about what the other horses think of them.  They certainly don’t try to avoid or give away their power.

They embrace their power.  They lead. 

How can we be more like the wise Alpha Mares?

First, we can to shift our perception of power from negative to positive.  We can and let go of the fear of what others think of us, express our expectations and get comfortable setting limits and boundaries.  We can use our power to lead.

As business leaders, we have the power to facilitate teamwork, to inspire employees to discover their talents and pursue their dreams. We have the power to influence others, to lead others to achieve what they might not accomplish otherwise.  We have the power to create jobs and to improve our communities.

Power isn’t bad — abuse of power is.

It’s an honor to be like the Alpha Mare!  Embrace your power and use it for the greater good.

A Tribute to Women Entrepreneurs: Celebrate National Entrepreneurs Week!

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celebrate national entrepreneurs weekLast month my fair city endured a nasty ice storm, complete with bitter cold temperatures.   Though not as hard hit as other cities caught in this polar blast, we still had tree limbs falling on roofs and blocking streets, and plenty of car crashes.  Schools, churches and businesses closed down.

With the roads that dangerous, I had to reschedule a meeting of twelve women business owners.  I phoned each of them to arrange a new date.

Guess where I found most of them? 

Eleven out of twelve were at work!  The only one at home has three small children and school was cancelled.

Some had no electrical power at their office and were working by candlelight, bundled up in quilts! 

Apart from being concerned for their safety, I have to say I was both amused and inspired.

The situation made profoundly clear to me the mentality of the small business owner:  we have work to do and the show must go on.  We have clients who need us, we have promises to keep, and we have employees who depend on us.

Some women entrepreneurs run businesses that must operate, regardless of weather, 365 days a year, twenty four hours a day.

During the storm, I talked with the owner of a home health and hospice business.  Though the power at her office went out, her business did not miss a beat.  “We saw every patient we could get to,” she told me.  “Our first priority is patient care and we can’t let the weather stop us.”

Another women owns a CPA firm.  Her clients had payroll and tax deadlines to meet.  “We have to be there for them,” she said.  “We have to get these computers up and get to work.”  She quickly borrowed two generators and bought another.  She needed three to generate enough power to run the heat, the lights, and ten computers. 

I’m convinced that women entrepreneurs share some sort of common DNA, despite their diverse backgrounds, personality types and skills.  This DNA is what people in the horse industry call “heart.” 

Thoroughbred breeders tell you that a horse with heart has this rare combination of energy and courage.  It won’t give up, won’t quit, no matter what the challenge.

Heart has nothing to do with the size, beauty or pedigree of the horse.  It’s an internal quality — a generosity of spirit that compels it to keep trying, to master the challenge no matter the effort.

Women business owners have heart!

That’s why I’m happy to see February 15—22, 2014 designated as National Entrepreneurs Week. 

Entrepreneurs (men and women) don’t get nearly enough credit or validation for the courage it takes to fly without a net.  We take for granted the tremendous pressure an entrepreneur feels for being responsible for the livelihoods of their employees and being responsible for the bottom line.  Not to mention, their own families!

The women business owners I know are not greedy capitalists, thinking only of their own profits or how to get rich.  They are driven by a genuine passion that even they can’t often find words to describe.  They are determined to do an excellent job at whatever they do.

Their work ethic is unmatched. 

Most people underestimate the diversity of expertise an entrepreneur needs – they have to be competent at an incredible variety of skills.  Unlike large corporations that have specialized departments to handle specific responsibilities, women business owners have to be knowledgeable about everything — from accounting to employment law, from management to marketing, from technology to teamwork, from website design to strategic planning.

Keep an eye on your local media and I’ll bet you this:  you’ll rarely see women entrepreneurs in the pages of your newspaper or featured in television interviews.  They don’t often seek recognition.  They humbly go about their daily lives, putting one foot in front other, doing the best they can to take care of their families, their customers and their employees.

I hope you’ll join me in taking this one week to appreciate and honor every woman entrepreneur you know (including yourself!) for the contribution she makes to her family, to her community and to the  economy.

Here’s to you, women entrepreneurs!  Take a bow. 

Take care,

Darcie

 

e-book for women entrepreneurs

e-book for women entrepreneurs

 

 

P.S. 

My new book affirms the heart of women entrepreneurs, using metaphors and stories to teach new self-awareness and business skills. 

Because every woman entrepreneur deserves to achieve HER version of success!

Be a connector! Learn to love networking

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Despite the fact that I’m an introvert (kind of weird for speaker and trainer, isn’t it?), I’m a darn good networker.

But I didn’t start out that way…I had to learn.

In those early years, networking events seemed like a bunch of sales people trying to sell each other stuff.  It felt like some people showed up as birds of prey, waiting to swoop down on a vulnerable target. 

I didn’t want to be one of those! 

So I learned to shift my approach to networking, and now it’s enjoyable.

Now, people call me a “Connector.”  I know a lot of people and have a knack for spotting opportunities and seeing synergies.

So when I was asked to speak about Networking to the Business School students at a local university, I happily said yes.

As I gathered my thoughts about what to share with them, I figured I might as well make a short video and share that with you.

Learn what networking is really about (hint:  it’s not about selling) and how to make it more comfortable and effective for YOU.

Take care,

Darcie

 

 

P.S.  I love to remember the words of Maya Angelou when I think about networking!  “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Get unstuck so your business can grow

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Frustrated woman entrepreneurSo far this week I’ve met with two women entrepreneurs who are consulting clients and they both have the same problem.

They want their business to grow and they’re stuck.  They work hard – both of them are putting in 60+ hours a week.

They are so busy with day-to-day tasks and responsibilities, that just getting through their weekly “To Do” list or fighting fires consumes all their time and energy and then some.

More time won’t solve their problem.

Their businesses are too dependent on them. 

Is your business too dependent on you?  Until you start to break this dependence, your growth will be limited.  (And you may be overworked!)

Here’s the good news:  learning one important (and overlooked!) concept will help you break this dependence.

What’s that concept?  Some functions make your business successful short term and some functions will make it successful long term.  You, as the owner, need to focus on the functions that will make your business healthy, effective and efficient long term.

Turning over the short-term functions will make your business less dependent on you.  Because short-term needs crowd out long-term needs every time.

If we neglect the things that move the company forward long term, we stay stuck in the endless loop of trying to keep up with daily tasks that someone else could do.

Here’s an example of the functions that make your business successful in the short-term:

  • Accounting, payroll and benefits administration
  • Administration (systems, procedures, policies)
  • Sales (bet that surprised you!)
  • Operations

Here’s an example of the functions that will make your business successful in the long-term:

  • Staff development, training & teamwork
  • Strategic planning
  • Marketing (anticipating the market & future customer needs; innovation)
  • Finance

That list of long-term functions is where you as the leader should be spending most of your time.  To begin to break the company’s dependence on you, start with staff development and training.

Now that you know this, it’s time to make a plan to delegate or outsource everything you possibly can from the short-term list.  (I can hear you groaning!)

  • “My employees don’t know how to do these things as well as I do.”  You’re right, they probably don’t.  Your job is to teach them.
  • “No one here understands these procedures like I do.”  Right again, the processes and procedures are likely all in your head.
  • “I can’t afford to hire someone or outsource.”  I understand.  You’ll have to get creative and think about how to create new revenue with the time you free up.

Let me assure you, these thoughts are all completely normal!

You won’t get there overnight.  But picture your company a year from now and imagine how different it can look.

Start small.  Choose one thing and work toward letting it go.

Think about all the knowledge and information you are carrying around in your head!  Once you free up some of that mental space and you can focus on how to create new revenue.

Begin right now to document processes and procedures.

Just start.  You don’t have to create an entire Procedures Manual in one sitting.  Commit to documenting one process every week.  Get things out of your head and write them down.

The famous management consultant W. Edward Demming (he’s the guy who saved the Japanese auto industry after WWII) says it this way:  “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Strong words, I know.  But though we may not be aware we have a “process” behind what we do and the decisions we make, we actually do.  It just comes so naturally to us that it’s hard to define.

But you can!  Break down your own thinking process and write it down.

Take the time to train others, not just what to do, but why, and how to make decisions.  Commit to teaching one employee something new each week.  Teach them what you do, how you do it, why you do it, what factors you consider when you make your decisions.  Teach them to think.

Now that you have the awareness, you’ll see your business through different eyes.  Separating long and short-term functions is your first step toward making your business less dependent on you.

Then you can grow! (Or chill out on a beach somewhere!  Send me a postcard.)

 

I did everything wrong first…

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LilGirlDrinkingWaterGravity is an excellent teacher.

I learned that the hard way as a three-year old.  Lying on the living room floor, watching Disney on a Sunday night, I decided to drink a glass of water.  Lying down.

I’d never even heard the word “gravity” but that abstract concept quickly became very real (and wet!).

Gravity strikes women entrepreneurs too.  In spite of all the warnings, we try to ride our bikes down the porch steps.  We fly a little too high on the swing. We carry too heavy a load and get worn out.

We can avoid some of these painful bumps, bruises and broken bones when we learn from others’ encounters with gravity.

So I thought you’d enjoy learning from a few of my own scrapes and pulled muscles (caused by my own wrong turns), and hopefully you won’t make the same mistakes!

  • Publishing — I just completed a new book for women entrepreneurs, and once it was finished, I decided to publish it as an e-book too (I hope you’ll read it!).  It wasn’t until I read two 50-page manuals that I realized the text formatting for e-books is completely, totally, one-hundred percent different than for the print version.  Translation: hours of extra work to strip out the formatting and do it correctly.

Lesson:  Look before leaping.  As women entrepreneurs, we’re action oriented, we get things done.  Sometimes we get excited about a project or a new endeavor and just launch in (typical entrepreneurial behavior!).  But you can save tons of time and money if you’ll think your projects and plans all the way through.  Gather the facts.  Read the instruction manual.  (I know, how boring!)

  • Branding — After a couple of years in business, I hired a fabulous branding firm that produced beautiful results.  It wasn’t until I printed business cards, letterhead and personalized note cards that I found out that my company name was ineligible for a federal trademark.  Hit the reset button.

Lesson:  Think global first.  You may think your business is now-and-forever local, but     you may surprise yourself.  Once you are locally successful, you’ll see a bigger horizon.        Think big from the beginning (and check the federal trademark register!).

  • Employees  — Like many small business owners, I didn’t have a big budget to work with when I hired for a new position.  I met a smart, energetic young woman who did a great job of selling herself.  Though she never worked in a position similar to the one I was hiring for, she had a degree in adult education, which lined up well with my business model.  I could see all kinds of possibilities.  She would start in the position I had open, learn the business and grow into more.  She had potential!  That’s not exactly how it worked out.  Six months later…well, let’s just say we parted ways.

Lesson:  Don’t hire based on “potential.”  Look for proven track record in potential employees, vendors or virtual outsourcing resources.  Whether you’re hiring a web developer, a social media consultant, a lawyer, a CPA, no matter what — hire people who can prove demonstrated success getting the results you are looking for.

  • Software decisions — I can only laugh here, because I’ve made so many bad software decisions.  The common denominator in all of them is that the process of researching software is so unpleasant for me that I rushed into a decision, just to get it over with. Then ended up with something that didn’t do what I needed.

Lesson:  Invest the time to develop a full understanding of your own needs.  That same lesson is true whether your decision is about software, a new employee, a vendor, or anything else!  As women entrepreneurs, time is in short supply.  It’s grueling to carve out time to make lists of what we need and do the necessary research.  But if we don’t we have one of those painful collisions with gravity.

  • Growth strategy — After two successful years with my peer advisory groups for women entrepreneurs and executives, my clients encouraged me to expand.  Based on the business skills needed, I thought franchising would be the best business model.  I developed a business plan and ran it past a couple of “experts” — then promptly ignored their wisdom.  I should have just stuck a fork in my eye.  It only took a few months to discover I had seriously underestimated the marketing costs.  It took another two years to admit that as a franchisor, I couldn’t make a move without an attorney or an auditor.

Lesson:  Ask for advice…then listen! — I fell in love with my own idea and dismissed all the cautions.  When you ask for objective input, it’s a good idea to listen!  Be objective and be willing to subject your ideas to scrutiny.

These “mistakes” barely scratch the surface of all the wrong turns I’ve taken.  But guess what?  I’m still here!

From strategy, to branding, to hiring, to technology, we women entrepreneurs make hundreds of decisions every week.  We’re entitled to a few misguided decisions, imperfect choices and, uh, shall we say…bonehead mistakes.

Gravity will catch up with us.  We’ll crash land from time to time.  I call it “getting a PhD in business.”

But here’s how I look at it:  if you aren’t making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough!  Mistakes are a normal (unless you keep repeating them!).  What’s important is to learn from them.

Here’s what really matters:  don’t let your wayward decisions cause you to lose confidence.  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

Be intentional about doing a “post mortem” and analyze where the wheels came off the wagon.  Get input from others (NOT your best friend who would never say anything to hurt your feelings).  Get honest, objective opinions from business people you trust.

Learn something.  Then…declare a victory and move on!

Get Out of Your Own Way

 

P.S. My new book affirms the heart of women entrepreneurs, while teaching them new self-awareness and business skills. 

Because every woman entrepreneur deserves to achieve her version of success!