Create For Cash

The Psychology of Free

I’ve noticed in the past few years that the number of things that are offered for free has really increased. Free ebooks , free webinars, and free consultations. It sounds good to get something for nothing. But we all know that there’s no free lunch really. There’s always a catch. And I think people have finally figured that out.

The psychology of free

I was told to give away a free webinar in order to get people to sign up for a paid webinar. It made sense, so I tried it. Even with a free webinar I wanted to give the best information possible in the most entertaining way. I polled my Facebook friends and asked what they really thought about a free webinar. Overwhelmingly, most of them said I should charge something, even if it was a small amount, because they wouldn’t appreciate it if it didn’t have some kind of value attached.

Showing up

I have to say that I think they were right. I would get people to sign up, then carve out the time on my calendar, and get myself psyched to do the webinar. Then no one would show up. So, I guess it’s true that they didn’t really place a value on something that they didn’t have to invest anything into. But I can’t blame them, because I do the same thing. If there’s a free webinar, seminar or class, I will sign up for it, but often don’t show up. Not because it’s not a good class, or that I don’t want to hear it, I just forget or get busy. If you pay for something, even if it’s a small amount, you’ll make the effort to show up. [Read more…] about The Psychology of Free

Create A Job For Yourself

As an entrepreneur, one of the things you can’t predict is how your customers will respond to what you have to offer them. I’ve been speaking at job fairs for a couple of years now and I would see some of the same people show up time after time. These were people with great resumes, well dressed, ready to work, with good attitudes. Everything you would think you’d want in an employee. But they were still having a hard time finding suitable work.

Create a job for yourself

So, I asked them “If I could show you how to create your own job, would you be interested”? I had a line all the way out the door of people signing up. I realized I was on to something. Finally, a way to help those who really wanted to work!

I came up with this method after losing a job myself. I had a job I hated, making almost no money, but it was still a job. One night I got a call that I had booked a commercial for a phone company. It was too late to call my boss, so I called him the next morning from the set. I was actually calling from a phone as the cameras were rolling. My boss told me not to bother coming in…I was fired. I kept a smile on my face for the camera, but inside I was crushed. Even though I was fired from a job I hated and made no money at. But at least it was a lifeline and now the lifeline was cut.

I spent months trying to find a job, but with no luck. I finally went to a friend that owned a production company and asked if he had any jobs for me. Nothing. [Read more…] about Create A Job For Yourself

Do You Need a Business Plan?

I’ve been having this discussion on Linked In about whether a start up company needs a business plan or not. If you ask any Ivy League MBA you will probably hear that you absolutely do need one. And you need to spend thousands of dollars to have someone smarter than you put one together.

Do you need a business plan?

But if you ask my friend Oliver who owns a print shop or the dog groomers around the corner or my acupuncturist, they would tell you they never had one. I’ve run 3 businesses and have never written a formal business plan. One of them is an international manufacturing company and I’ve never had a business plan for it. Once I had already been in business for years I was planning to expand and needed to raise money. That’s the only time I have put anything down on paper, but it still wasn’t a business plan, more like a presentation with corporate bios and projections of how many would be sold, etc.

I took that presentation out of the closet and read through it. 90% of what was in it wasn’t even true anymore. None of my employees are with me anymore because of the downturn in the economy. So, what I thought my business was going to be, which was sales reps and full time employees, wasn’t even close to what I ended up with. Now I have distributors who are independent and simply buy the product from me and get marketing and PR support. [Read more…] about Do You Need a Business Plan?

Learn to Love Cold Calling

For all those people that would rather get their teeth drilled than make cold calls, listen up. I don’t know many people who enjoy making cold calls. But if you want your business to be successful you will have to get used to the fact that you are going to have to do it. You’ll have to learn to love cold calling.

I know what you’re thinking, “I’ll just hire someone to do that”. Well, you could do that, but you also need to learn how to do it yourself. Nobody can sell your company, products, or services, like you.

Instead of dreading it, learn to love it. “No way!” you’re saying. “I will never learn to love cold calling”. It is especially hard when the economy is down. People are less likely to want to talk to you, and definitely not in the mood to be spending money. But that is why you need to be doing it now. If you can succeed at cold calling when things are tough it will only get easier. [Read more…] about Learn to Love Cold Calling

Should You Pursue Small Business Venture Capital?

It’s rare that you’ll see me post an article from another website on this blog. But I read this and thought it was important. It’s also a topic I don’t know very much about. Small business venture capital. This is being reprinted with permission from Peter Ireland.

With my first business, HydroSport, I worked at least 2 jobs for about 10 years to fund it. If I had known then how much time and money it would take I don’t think I would have done it. It would have been way too overwhelming. But once I was about half way into it there was really no turning back. You get to a certain point where you just have too much time and money invested to give up.

Throughout the whole process I kept wishing a guardian angel investor would come along and save me. But that never happened. Now after reading this article by Peter Ireland, maybe I was on the right path after all and didn’t know it.

Small business venture capital

Are you really sure that you want to go this route? Most entrepreneurs who pursue small business venture capital don’t qualify. They merely end up wasting a lot of time and energy in a futile endeavor.

It gets worse, a venture capital firm will in most cases fire the founder and founding team within months of an early financing round. The Wall Street Journal pointed this out in a article by Barnaby Federer from September 30th, 2002:

“If you ask a VC what value they add, and you get
them after a few drinks, they’ll say, ‘We replace the CEO’ “,
he said. And that, he indicated, does not vary
with the economic climate. [Read more…]