Last month's Bootstrap Web presentation entitled "Conversion: The Most Important Word for Online Businesses" is available (with slides) on the Boot Rap Podcast. You can find it at the newly redesigned HearThis.com.

I prepared this presentation so that business owners will look differently at their Web site. There are a few unfortunate thoughts lurk in the depths of our minds when we imagine a Web site to support our business. Here are some of them:

"Building a Web site is more like printing a brochure than developing a software application."

"My Web site is independent of the advertising I'm doing."

"Web developers know how to build Web sites that will help me land more business."

"The look and feel is the most important aspect of my Web site."

"People want to know about my company."

"People want to drill down until they find the information they are looking for."

"Everyone who comes to my site is relaxed and has lots of time to spend."

My presentation offers six ways of looking at your Web site that will make you better at commissioning your Web site's construction.

I hope it will save you the months of lost sales and thousands of mis-spent dollars.

Best regards,

Brian Massey

Labels: boot rap, business, marketing, podcast

It is the collaboration dance that I find so fascinating! This is not simply because I am a Relater (Bijoy's MRE model of energy), an Extrovert (Myers-Briggs personality preferences), or that the college degrees I've collected include the word, "psychology." These one-to-one collaboration dances are how I have grown my business and created new service offerings! Nevertheless, being driven, energized, and overly-trained regarding people, I also tend to enjoy collaborating with others and realize that for many entrepreneurs, they do not have this same comfort. During our panel discussion at SXSWi, a good number of questions from the audience were about concerns dealing with the people in their collaborations/partnerships. One person asked, "You put yourself out there and make yourself vulnerable, working to build a collaboration with someone. What if they aren't being honest with you and don't have the same level of integrity?" Hence, the need to move safely through collaborations.

To begin with, we need to find the "right" people for our collaborations. Think about the effort we put into hiring people...okay, think about the effort that business people who hire GREAT employees put into hiring; it's a process where they spend time. They spend considerable time and energy, ask good questions, contact references, look for fit of the individual in their company, look closely at the needs of the company, and assess the individuals ability or likelihood of meeting those needs. In developing collaborations to build your business, keep in mind that the "right" people are a complement to you! They are not your clone. Of course, the "right" people are different depending on who YOU are, what your business is, the time it is in your life, local/global economics and where you are in your business (the stage of your venture). In trying to figure out if someone is the "right" person for you to develop a collaboration with, here are a list of features that you will want to know about the person:

• strengths and natural talents
• personality preferences
• values and passions
• skills and expertise

For more information about collaborations, you can also reference EIN's August newsletter, Boutiques for Sole Proprietorships. Finally, remember that mutual respect is a critical component in the successful collaboration dance.

So what else is important for safely building collaborations?

We also need a lot of clarity and awareness about ourselves. The quote, "One must know himself before they can know another' applies directly. What are our own strengths and weaknesses? Our personality preferences, values, and passions? So it is, that in the collaboration dance, it is vital to really know who we are. After all, we are looking for our "business complement". Furthermore, it is important to know what we need in our business. This could be any number of things. Do we need a collaboration to: take our business to the next level; expand our reach; handle operations; manage people; create new products/services; or simply meet the demands of a new, large-client project?

As we're collecting all this information about ourselves, our business, and potential people to collaborate with, we want to be mindful of possible hitch points that can come up along the way. And sometimes, it is simply a matter of timing, and not the right time or a good time for this collaboration. Hitch points, however, are signs or warnings that it may not be safe to proceed with the collaboration. They can show up as:

• conflict in ethics or values
• skewed power or lack of balance in power
• lack of reciprocation

Essentially, whenever we sense any of these dynamics, it is our wise, intuitive self trying to warn us that there is a high risk that this collaboration will be a costly and negative experience. This is also discussed in Business Relationships: Develop the Essential Components and Dodge the Hitch Points.

Finally, after we've found the "right" person, uncovered the specifics of ourselves and the needs of our business, and there haven't been any hitch points, focus on setting this collaboration up for success! As we develop the collaboration, spend time discussing what each of us need and outline and agree to the parameters of what we're actually doing together, who is specifically doing what, and when things will happen. These steps will help to ensure that we not only safely venture into collaborations, but that our collaborations will also be successful!

Labels: business, collaboration, community, hiring, personality, SXSWi

How can we buffet the effects of a possible economic recession with regards to business growth in Austin? Recently there has been a bunch of press about the growing threat of recession coming to the US. The New York Times tells a story that all of us as entrepreneurs need to start preparing for called "As Lenders Tighten Flow of Credit, Growth at Risk"
From the article there are two important paragraphs to note:

Labels: business, entrepreneurship