• When you run out of money, you can eventually get more.
• When you run out of time, you’re through.

One way that some people “acquire” more time is to hire other people to do things for them.  But even if you’re not in a situation to do that, you can engage “Virtual Assistants” to help with your work from their location.  I’ve used VA’s for everything from helping enter credit card statements after my download window expired, to gathering information from a pre-determined list of web sites, to search engine optimization tasks.

And now I’m extending you the opportunity to test-drive a VA for a week full-time (or quarter-time for a month — 40 hours either way).

You read correctly — this $240 to $600 value is made possible through new affiliate partnerships Vivify LLC has created towards win/win/win/win.  Simply:

1. Purchase either Package A (Pinterest Mojo) or Package B (Cash In on LinkedIn and Graphics Toolkit).
2. Forward me your receipt(s) via Receipts@VivifyLLC.com.
3. Start your training and begin thinking about what kind of work you’d like your VA to do, and whether you prefer a quarter- or full-time test-drive.
4. After the 30-day return period passes on your purchases, you’ll be emailed the link for your get started.
5. There are no strings attached!

There’s a lot that Chris (or his team) have assembled here that anyone with a web site can benefit from . . .

This arrived in the “corporate mailbag” recently.  [Editorial note: it ties in very well with my new book and weekly small-biz coaching program of the same name, SmartStart].

Dear Paul,

I published my first novel – Murder Over the Border – as a Kindle e-book one year ago. I regret to say that sales have not lived up to expectations.This is mainly due to the lack of promotion undertaken by Amazon – unlike ‘normal’ hard-copy publishers, they do not do any publicity for books published by their authors as Kindlee-books.

Unfortunately, I do not have the personal budget to promote the book either. Given your background, do you have any suggestions on how I can market the book effectively on a low budget?

Sincerely,
Richard the First Timer

First: thanks for the letter. Having written/coauthored a number of books now, I do feel for you!

For others who may not have been around the block to empathize:  there is a downside of our society reaching the technological level where anyone can be a moviemaker or author.  There is so much content being created in the marketplace now (every day, there are an additional 1.5 million blog posts, 2 million YouTube videos, sixty thousand new web sites, and 1.5 billion updates on Facebook — source Contently).

Imagine: As moviemaker or author, you get in a [piloted] helicopter and fly out over the ocean about 100 miles. You carefully put your precious creation in a [floating] waterproof box and toss it out. Down, down, down it goes — to the water. Now the pilot flies you home and you pray every night that hundreds of people see that box the next day, and the next, and the next.

You cannot just build it and expect them to come.  I’ve met or worked with hundreds of people who spend 3, 6, 12 months praying and then start to wonder whether they should spend anything on marketing.

Let me give you a few ideas, Richard.  Don’t take any of this personally; I’m just calling it like I see it.

1. People shop visually; your cover is too busy.  Suggest you ask one of your graphic designer friends to barter with you, or just use Fiverr.
2. One of the tricks of the movie trade (trailers = previews) is now being used by book authors and publishers. I throw the latter in gratuitously, even though I don’t think publishers do much of anything for authors anymore.  Again, consider bartering with a video design friend of yours or use something like Animoto to “pique” reader interest.
3. Give out some review copies to both friends and strangers if they’ll agree to read it and post honest reviews on Amazon within 1, 2, 3?  Reader comments constitute “social proof” which is what we humans subconsciously look for to avoid answering this question:  You mean I was the only one who bought that thing?
4. Announce a reader contest page that you create on Facebook. The question — what should the sequel be about?  Winners will receive very modest prizes, mostly the acknowledgement within the FB and the press releases you’ll do before and after the contest.

I hope one or more of these inspires you to roll your sleeves up and get back to work — keep me posted!

1. Appear as Large as You Possibly Can

The peacock typically has its feathers, quills, etc in a “down” position, making the bird very “long” with its trailing tail. However upon seeing or smelling a nearby prospective mate (interestingly, called a “peahen”) it spreads those feathers into a beautiful pattern of color — beautiful at close distances and at least visible at greater distances.

And so it is with business — customers are more willing to trust an established company than a new company (which may not be around 3 months down the road). Large companies are usually unwilling to do business with startups, but midsize companies may be willing to take a shot with a small company (one rung up from “startup”).

So you want to cover the basics, such as:

• Have a website so it’s clear that you’re in business
• Correspond with an email address at your corporate domain (not gmail, aol, etc)
• Show that you’re protecting your products with trademarks, patents, etc.
• …

In a conversation with Dylan Adams (intellectual property attorney with Graybeal Jackson) I recently got some good insight that will benefit owners and team members in startups and small companies alike.

1. Labeling your text as “Copyright” is perfectly appropriate, as anything you have written implicitly has one — even without filing.  Use “C” within a circle if you have actually filed with the Library of Congress.
2. Using “TM” is ok to indicate you intend to file a trademark, but “R” within a circle is a no-no.  This indicates that the USPTO has granted a trademark and that it is “registered.
3. Labeling your technology as “patent pending” is ok if you have filed for a provisional patent.  Do not, however, use it as liberal window dressing — otherwise you could find yourself incurring a $500 fine per instance (such as every customer download) which could easily multiply to the point of putting you out of business.

I hope this saves you trouble with the Fed, which absolutely will slow down your startup ascent!

(We’ll save for another column how Jobs could, in turn, allow Microsoft to “lift” the concept and keep it always playing catchup!)

Today’s post is about a brilliant, entertaining video series from Xerox that says we’re still around and we feel your pain!

They’re not trying to sell you a product, they just want you to be unsurprised if you hear about Xerox in one of your upcoming meetings — and to have a positive association.  This is merely following the age-old truism, know they customer.

What do you think — did it work for you? Takeaway: how can you create a smile on your customers’ face

They’ve recognized that many people have wi-fi in the home, at their employer, and at their local coffee purveyor. So if you agree to connect your phone to wi-fi whenever possible, they’ll sell you unlimited text and data over the Sprint network the rest of the time for a phenomenal $19/month.

They support Android phones in the Beta phase, but given that Sprint just committed to buying something astronomical like 20 million iPhones in a multi-year period, I’m thinking Republic could be soon be advertising support for the market leading hardware — while punching AT&T below the belt on retail costs!

The takeaway:  how can you drop barriers with your customers so they see you as the coolest company earning their trust?

It stems from or is supported by the Network Effect, which states that the value of the network grows in proportion to the number of nodes or members of the network.

A virtuous circle: the lending library may cut into sales of ebooks, but that will be more than eclipsed by the number of Kindles sold (and goodwill generated) by the PR from this program — which in turn drives more authors to write for the Kindle platform.

NOTE: this program took work (lots of it — in terms of analysis, marketing communications, and certainly software development) but represented no addition hardware SKU’s or stock keeping units to carry.

It is a classic example of a marketing program that any business can develop to bend or break the rules for TOMA — top of mind awareness — for customers.

How can you do right by them today?

“Catching the wave” takes effort, but the risk of not doing so is potentially getting left in the dust by your competitors.

Which camp are you in?

I found this one quite helpful and hope you do too:

Well it just turned 90 degrees clockwise for me — straight down.

What could prompt such a fickle customer reaction? Almost anything — customers are human, and humans are tuned to the radio station WIIFM (what’s in it for me?)

In this case, I forgot my eyeglasses in the vehicle I left at the shop late last night.

No problem, I checked with the service manager and he said he’d be happy to overnight them to me at my client site in another state — but he didn’t have any forms or boxes.

Appreciative of his help, I said “no problem — I’ll phone it in and have them bring a box and completed paperwork to make it easy” for him.

I was on the phone with 800-GoFedEx for 5 or 10 minutes providing an account number, the shop contact info, my client contact info, etc. when I heard shocking news.

It would work just fine if I wanted FedEx Ground.

But not overnight with Express!

It doesn’t make sense for me to chew the customer service rep’s ear that this made no sense… the cheaper service was easier for the customer but the more expensive overnight service made me do more work??

Indeed, I had to spend another 15 minutes with a technical support rep to accomplish what I could have done immediately with the ground service.

Shocking — clearly the CMO and COO haven’t walked in the customer shoes.

Today’s takeaway: where are your customers giving you feedback about matters that (left alone) could prompt their defection?