You have to spend money to make money...
I'm leaving on Tuesday to head to my wedding, so I will be out of commission for a few weeks while I say "I do" and head to Cancun on my honeymoon. I thought I would sneak one more entry in before I head out.
Through CTE Healthcare Communications, I pulled together a Entrepreneurial Boot Camp in conjunction with Urbanphilly.com a few weeks ago. We had about 80 aspiring and new entrepreneurs attend a 2 day workshop. I was one of the panelist for a section I entitled "Growing Your Business" and I covered the topic of branding. One of the questions that I got was "How can you create credibility for your company?" There are a lot of ways, but operationally, there a couple very simple ways to create credibility. One of the SIMPLEST and one of my pet peeves is register a domain name. You don't know how many entrepreneurs I've met that hand me business cards with the following: XYZbusinessname@yahoo.com. You can register a domain name at Godaddy.com for $10????? For $10, you get a FREE 100 mb e-mail address with that. Seriously, can you really not spend $10 for a domain name? Unless I have developed a rapport with their yahoo-emailing azz, I REFUSE to take them seriously.
As small business owners, one of our biggest challenges is to balance the advantages of being a small business (lack of bureaucracy, low overhead, no shareholders to try to constantly please) without APPEARING to be a small business. We work with the pharmaceutical industry. We are dealing with Fortune 500 companies. It is important to make them feel comfortable about giving us a significant contract. Keep in mind, THEIR job is on the line when they are giving you a contract. They want to be sure that they can trust that you have the capacity to complete the contract and make THEM look good. The thought of one guy sitting in his living room with his boxers on answering his kitchen phone (pretty close to how I started) doesn't necessarily breed confidence. What did I do, I invested (yes, I said invested) in subletting office space from a company in downtown Philadelphia, a PBX phone system from Packet8, and a website. Our phone system had very professional sounding automated attendant with voicemail, hold, and transfer capabilities. Between these investments, many people have indicated that they thought we were much bigger than we are. And that's exactly what we want.
When I started my coffee drive-thru business with my partner, we have very different philosophies of starting businesses. He wanted to be a cheap as possible on as much as possible. Once we "generated enough revenue", then we could start to spend money on "more expensive" things. I, on the other hand, wanted to "start as strong as possible". I wanted to invest in a "point-of-sales" (POS) system that had a touch-screen to make entering transactions as efficient as possible. I wanted to invest in our branding by getting a professionally designed logo, etc. We battled over these decisions. My argument for the POS system was this - if we were selling the convenience of a coffee drive-thru, we would KILL ourselves if we opened and we were slow.
From a branding standpoint, it is not easy to "undo" a customer's perception of your business. Who can think of Joey from Friends as anyone other than "Joey from Friends"? No, those images stick and can't be forgotten easily. Matt LeBlanc can only get roles that are similar to his role on Friends. Same goes for branding - if you start up your business as a shit hole - it's going to be VERY difficult to convince customers that you are no longer a shit-hole if you happen to later decide to renovate your place. A GREAT example is Friendster. Friendster beat Myspace to market as a social networking site. However, Friendster's membership grew SOOO quickly that their servers ended up crashing. Well, that opened the doors for Myspace. How many of us have Friendster accounts vs. Myspace accounts? All because Friendster didn't INVEST in their servers up front. Perhaps they said, "Well we can upgrade our servers as we need them." How much is Myspace worth? Wow, that decision cost them BIG TIME!
Here's the bottom line. Invest in you company UPFRONT. If that means getting outside financing to do it, SO BE IT. YOU HAVE TO SPEND MONEY TO MAKE MONEY! First impressions are lasting. Don't hurt your chances for success by being cheap.
Through CTE Healthcare Communications, I pulled together a Entrepreneurial Boot Camp in conjunction with Urbanphilly.com a few weeks ago. We had about 80 aspiring and new entrepreneurs attend a 2 day workshop. I was one of the panelist for a section I entitled "Growing Your Business" and I covered the topic of branding. One of the questions that I got was "How can you create credibility for your company?" There are a lot of ways, but operationally, there a couple very simple ways to create credibility. One of the SIMPLEST and one of my pet peeves is register a domain name. You don't know how many entrepreneurs I've met that hand me business cards with the following: XYZbusinessname@yahoo.com. You can register a domain name at Godaddy.com for $10????? For $10, you get a FREE 100 mb e-mail address with that. Seriously, can you really not spend $10 for a domain name? Unless I have developed a rapport with their yahoo-emailing azz, I REFUSE to take them seriously.
As small business owners, one of our biggest challenges is to balance the advantages of being a small business (lack of bureaucracy, low overhead, no shareholders to try to constantly please) without APPEARING to be a small business. We work with the pharmaceutical industry. We are dealing with Fortune 500 companies. It is important to make them feel comfortable about giving us a significant contract. Keep in mind, THEIR job is on the line when they are giving you a contract. They want to be sure that they can trust that you have the capacity to complete the contract and make THEM look good. The thought of one guy sitting in his living room with his boxers on answering his kitchen phone (pretty close to how I started) doesn't necessarily breed confidence. What did I do, I invested (yes, I said invested) in subletting office space from a company in downtown Philadelphia, a PBX phone system from Packet8, and a website. Our phone system had very professional sounding automated attendant with voicemail, hold, and transfer capabilities. Between these investments, many people have indicated that they thought we were much bigger than we are. And that's exactly what we want.
When I started my coffee drive-thru business with my partner, we have very different philosophies of starting businesses. He wanted to be a cheap as possible on as much as possible. Once we "generated enough revenue", then we could start to spend money on "more expensive" things. I, on the other hand, wanted to "start as strong as possible". I wanted to invest in a "point-of-sales" (POS) system that had a touch-screen to make entering transactions as efficient as possible. I wanted to invest in our branding by getting a professionally designed logo, etc. We battled over these decisions. My argument for the POS system was this - if we were selling the convenience of a coffee drive-thru, we would KILL ourselves if we opened and we were slow.
From a branding standpoint, it is not easy to "undo" a customer's perception of your business. Who can think of Joey from Friends as anyone other than "Joey from Friends"? No, those images stick and can't be forgotten easily. Matt LeBlanc can only get roles that are similar to his role on Friends. Same goes for branding - if you start up your business as a shit hole - it's going to be VERY difficult to convince customers that you are no longer a shit-hole if you happen to later decide to renovate your place. A GREAT example is Friendster. Friendster beat Myspace to market as a social networking site. However, Friendster's membership grew SOOO quickly that their servers ended up crashing. Well, that opened the doors for Myspace. How many of us have Friendster accounts vs. Myspace accounts? All because Friendster didn't INVEST in their servers up front. Perhaps they said, "Well we can upgrade our servers as we need them." How much is Myspace worth? Wow, that decision cost them BIG TIME!
Here's the bottom line. Invest in you company UPFRONT. If that means getting outside financing to do it, SO BE IT. YOU HAVE TO SPEND MONEY TO MAKE MONEY! First impressions are lasting. Don't hurt your chances for success by being cheap.
I 100% agree! I could never imagine starting off Silhouette half ass and an attitude of, “I'll get it when I get it.” As a business owner it is so vital to please the customer right, the first time and every time. Not the next time they come, because there is usually never a next time when a customer has become displeased with service. You can’t advertise one thing and give the client another. If you don’t have it now, save and start your business in the future. It's a sure investment to go at it Right the first time or else your throwing away money.
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CONGRATS on yur wedding!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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