Tips for Student Designers and the Small Businesses Who Love Them: OrangeSlyce Life

Lots of people have toyed with the idea of starting their own business, becoming their own boss, or somehow changing the world.  However, most people are downtrodden by bullet points that have been engrained in them, about how starting a business isn’t worth the trouble.  Today we’re going to put some of these ideas where they belong – in the dump.

1)   XX% of Small Businesses Fail
I laugh every time I hear this statistic.  Sometimes it’s 50%.  Sometimes 90%.  It’s the idea that because you are a small business you will fail, regardless of who you are or what your business is.  This automatically puts risk on being an entrepreneur that most can’t stomach.  There are two things wrong with this fact – the definition of small business and the definition of failure.  First, ‘small’ covers such a huge range of businesses.  How do you define the size of your company?  Revenue?  Number of employees?  Carbon footprint?  Secondly, how do you define failure?  Has the time commitment and stress of the company gotten to you and you voluntarily close down?  Or have you missed your revenue target and only made six figures instead of seven?  Most would consider that a successful exit.

2)   It Takes Money to Make Money
You’ll be told you’ll need a building, employees, equipment, and inventory and you’ll need money up front to even get your dream off the ground – yeah, if you’re in a capital intensive industry.  Using all the free tools and resources online, starting a business has never been cheaper.  Starting a blog and selling shirts on Cafepress.com requires exactly $0.00 (that’s American dollars, by the way), and you don’t need to manage inventory.  Even if you need monthly costs for online storage and servers, it’s getting cheaper every day.

3)   You Need a Rock Solid Business Plan
The myth is that you need a great business plan, usually to get business loans or secure funding, in order to be successful.  Having a focus or a target market is a good thing.  Having a document that you will measure the rest of your life against isn’t.  If you do have a business plan, save the trees and don’t bother printing it out, because it will change constantly.  Part of being a startup is flexibility.  Think of companies who are now offering radically different services and products than when they first started – Google comes to mind immediately.

4)   You Need a Great Idea
The inspiration for this post comes from a friend of mine.  He’s a great guy.  He’s even letting me be his best man at his wedding.  He’s the type that has tons of ideas and knows he’s going to be a millionaire because of them – yet, he does nothing with those ideas.  It turns out ideas are like belly-buttons, everyone has them (unless you were born in a test tube).  It’s what you do with your ideas that will matter.  Even if your idea is something that’s been done before, if you do it better your product will take off.  Which leads us to…

5)   You Need to Be First
Many people instantly give up on their dream the second they hear that someone else already has something just like it.  This is actually a good thing.  You now have a real world example that you can watch and follow.  Improve on their shortcomings.  Learn from their mistakes.  Facebook certainly wasn’t the first to offer people a way to connect with their friends, but they have the most users in the world.  Apple wasn’t the first to make great computers, portable music devices, phones or even tablets but they are now the biggest consumer electronics company in the world.

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A few weeks ago, we wrote a little bit about how Twitter is changing advertising.  We suggested that businesses get a Twitter page, but we left you all hanging–we didn’t tell you how to do it.  Social Media platforms are a potentially effective tool, but, like any tool, you don’t get much out of them if you don’t know how to use them.  With that in mind, here are some guidelines that will make your Twitter page pop.

1: Figure out your audience

Unless you’re already famous and loved, you’re not going to be very effective if you can’t nail down a target audience.  You should have answers to each of these questions:  What customer base are you trying to reach?  How old are they?  Are they predominantly male, female, or neither?  What sort of groups do they run in?  Do they appreciate formality?

2: Design an appealing background that fits your brand

It’s shocking how many supposedly professional twitter pages either skip this step of put in some bare minimal effort.  We’re talking about the public face of your business–you can not afford to mail this in with a design that either looks crappy or does a poor job of conveying the message you want it to convey about your business.

If you’ve covered Step 1, you should already have some idea of what you want your background to look like.  If you still need help from there, we’d honestly suggest hiring a designer to help you out.  It won’t cost you very much–pardon the plug, but on OrangeSlyce.com you can easily hire a qualified student to design your twitter background for about a hundred bucks–and it will save you the time and hassle of trying to get everything “just so” by yourself. 

Ed. Note: We’re actually taking this exact route with our own Twitter background right now, because our current one is a little too stodgy.  So if you look at our Twitter page in a week or so and it looks nice, then you’ll know we gave you good advice.

3: Reach out to your audience

Everyone wants to know how to get followers.  The only long-term answer is by providing interesting content, but you can still prime the pump a little bit.  Think about the sort of groups your target audience belongs too, and the sort of profiles that they might follow.

Follow popular users (and maybe dig through their followers and follow some of those followers).  Just don’t go crazy following people, for two reasons: Twitter frowns on that (and has been known to suspend or delete accounts for excessive follower churn).  Besides, nothing screams “spammer” like a profile that’s followed 1000 people and only had 20 followers.

4:Be Human (not a spammer)

People who use twitter (at least the ones who actively use it) are generally a savvy bunch when it comes to spammers.  This is because seemingly 60% of Twitter profiles (and like 80% of the people who will follow you) are spam bots designed to peddle shady wares.  People are going to be understandably skeptical of your businesses’ Twitter page–your job is to convince them that you’re for real.

The way you do that is by being human.  Don’t just bombard your followers with links or advertisements, talk about your experiences, lessons you’ve learned, and funny thoughts you’ve had.  In short, write things that your target audience might find interesting.

If you want more help on writing interesting content, check out this post on getting retweeted over at TwitterTips.

5: Be thankful

On your Twitter’s homepage, you’ll see a link along the right side that says “@(YourUsername).”  Click this link, and you’ll be shown all of the tweets that people have directed at you.  Reply to these, whenever possible, and thank people (either as a tweet or as a direct message) whenever possible.

6: Retweet other people’s content from time to time

If someone tweets something that might be interesting or useful to your audience, you should absolutely retweet it.  First, because it provides value to your users.  Second, because it’s the nice thing to do.  Still not convinced?  Then just think of it as a means of building political capital with those people.  They’re a lot more likely to retweet something you post if you’ve done the same for them.

7: Remember you’re still writing for your business

It can be easy to get carried away with Twitter.  Before you post anything, ask yourself “am I putting on a good  face for the business?”  We’re not advocating that you go into a shell (far from it!) but we’re also not advocating that you share too much.  Did you have a great time at a local restaurant last night?  Tell people about it.  Did you have a really great time at a local night club last night?  Keep that one to yourself.

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Our eye was caught today by an excellent post over at logoblog on the warning signs that a client isn’t going to pay for a logo.  While the piece is obviously useful to designers, there’s a lesson in there for business owners, too: don’t do these things.

1) Don’t take days to return phone-calls

You know this already, but in case you don’t: it’s unprofessional to leave anyone hanging for days at a time. We know that running a business is hectic: you’re wearing a lot of hats and (if you’re doing it right) you’re spreading yourself thin sometimes.  That said, your logo design is important (so is your reputation as a legitimate business, for that matter).  Find enough time to make sure the designer you’re working with knows that you’re still alive and ready to work with them.

2) Don’t continuously mock the designer’s work

Criticism is good–it’s how you help the designer make something you want.  But you should never just outright mock the designers’ work.  Mocking:

• Makes you look like a jerk.  You never know who else that designer knows, and establishing a reputation as a jerk won’t help you get your business off the ground.
• Dampens the designers’ enthusiasm for your project and reduces your chance of getting a good design.  Yes, you pay them to be professional even if you’re mean to them.  No, they’re not robots.  Making fun of your designer is a great way to offend them and make them hate doing work for you.
• Accomplishes absolutely nothing positive for your business.  Your singular focus as a small business needs to be making your business succeed.  It can’t be about you, your ego, your feelings or anything else (if it is, you will fail). It doesn’t matter if you’re frustrated by the designers’ output.  Mocking doesn’t solve that problem, so hold it in (and don’t do it to get laughs either–those laughs won’t add one penny to your bottom line).

Instead of mocking, stick to constructive criticism.  If that doesn’t work, move on. Be professional and tell your designer outright that things aren’t working out.  Don’t waste her time (and yours!) by passive-aggressively mocking work that you’re not satisfied with.

3) Don’t Try to Stiff Your Designer

As a small business, you live and die by your reputation.  We doubt that we need to tell this to anyone reading our site, but just for the sake of completion: don’t try to weasel out of paying somebody whom you agreed to pay.  There are obviously situations that complicate this rule (and how you handle those “shades of gray” is another matter for another day).  But the basic principle is sound: don’t try to worm out of paying your designer for work that you agreed to pay for.

Don’t be that business that takes a designers’ work, “alters” it slightly, and then refuses to pay the designer because you “went in a different direction.”  It might seem like a clever way to save a couple hundred bucks, but the risk you take greatly outweighs the reward.  We’re not talking about your conscience (although we hope that would be enough to keep you from stealing) we’re talking about your businesses’ reputation.

Remember: a major corporation can afford to launch a PR blitz when they get caught doing something slimy; your business can’t.  So be the good guy–it’s the better long-term investment.

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Yesterday, we posted a tidy little piece on networking.  That piece was, of course, only scraping the surface of what we hope will eventually become a networking guide from which every member of the OrangeSlyce community can benefit.   Today, we’re talking about the aspect of networking that stops the painfully shy dead in their tracks: introducing yourself.

We called this post networking for introverts for one big reason: introducing yourself is obviously a much more daunting task for the painfully shy.  But, as we said yesterday, it’s a step that even the painfully shy can easily overcome with a little work and a lot of willpower.  If you find your palms getting clammy and your throat swelling up every time you’re at a mixer, here are a few handy tips you can follow to overcome yourself.

1) Think of other people as friends

One thing that makes it hard to break the ice is that you don’t know how well you’ll be received by the other person.  People tend to be very tribal by instinct, and it can be hard to just walk up to a person from an unfamiliar “tribe” (this, by the way, is also why you sometimes find yourself occasionally hating on groups of people you don’t even know when you’re out in public).  When it comes to approaching these people, you worry (on some level) that your encroachment won’t be well-received, that the other person will be annoyed by your presence (or worse).  If you start worrying about this, ask yourself: why?  Are you ever deeply bothered by a person introducing themselves to you?  Of course not; the other person will almost certainly enjoy the company.

Remember that networking is mutually beneficial.  Just about any person that’s worth networking with will at least spare you a smile and a business card if you introduce themselves to you–they have nothing to gain by not being friendly and everything to lose.  Because of this, the people you want to network with are, to borrow a phrase, just friends you haven’t met.  Don’t be afraid to go meet them.

2) Realize that a lot of the other people in the room are just as nervous as you are

This study by Lauren Bryant at Indiana University suggests that about 40% of adults feel shy.  Keep in mind the fact that surveys almost always under-report undesirable qualities (in other words: some people are too shy to admit that they’re shy) and it’s feasible that around half of the adult population is shy.  Chances are there are that a lot of the people you might network in are in the exact same boat that you are.  Wouldn’t you like it if someone kind walked up to you and took the first step?  Imagine how endearing that would be to you when you’re trying to work up the nerve to introduce yourself, and then be that person for someone else in the room.

3) Have some open-ended questions prepared in advance

Another thing people often worry about when networking is making conversation.  “What happens” you wonder “if I introoduce myself and then we have nothing to talk about?  Awwwwkwaaaaaard!”  Fortunate ly, first impressions rarely require you to hold intimate conversations.  All you’re really trying to do is show the other person that you’re interested in getting to know them better (and not just using them as a means to an end–this is an important point that deserve its own post) and taking the steps necessary to do that.  As such, it’s important that you have a few questions to ask them.  These questions should not be yes or no; you want to bring the other person out of their shell a little bit.  Don’t just ask the person what she does, ask her how she got into it, ask her what she did before that. If you ask her if she likes doing what she does, follow that question up with “what do you love (or hate) about it?”

4) Smile!

Sorry, we know it’s cheesy, but a good smile is important.  Smiling is your way of telling someone from a rival “tribe” that you’re not a threat.  It’s also very hard not to smile back when somebody smiles at you, which is good, because it will be a lot easier for you to approach someone when they’re smiling too.  Stay professional, but be friendly (and, as we said yesterday, be yourself) and you’ll be well on your way to being the networker you want to be.

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One thing that we hate to hear people say is “I just don’t have the personality to be a good networker”  Perhaps it’s because we’ve had our own bouts with shyness, but it drives us crazy to see people resign themselves to failure without even trying to overcome their shortcomings.  We love every last person who’s kind enough to follow our writings, so consider this tough love: saying you can’t be a good networker is almost always an excuse people use because they’re too afraid and too lazy to try.  Here’s another harsh truth: no matter what job you hope to get or what business you’re trying to get off the ground, you’re not in good shape if you aren’t willing to network.  Fortunately, there’s one more truth: great networking is not about being the most outgoing guy or girl in the room.

In truth, great networking has surprisingly little to do with being extroverted.  Sure, it’s a lot harder to take the first step in networking (reaching out to a person and introducing yourself) if you’re naturally shy.  But, unless you’re suffering from a legitimate psychological condition, reaching out to a person is still a hurdle that can easily be cleared.  As with most things, great networking is not about how you star; it’s about how you finish.

We recently read an excellent post on networking by Amanda Collins over at The Grammar Doctors.  While the whole piece is worth your time, there was one part in particular that stuck out to us:

The likelihood that you’ll score a client or referral partner after attending anything once is pretty low. You need to continue making an appearance, connecting with people, and being consistent. Be patient. It may take a number of weeks or months to create relationships and generate sales.

Ultimately, networking is about that creation of relationships.  The first impression is important, but relationships aren’t built on the first impression nearly as much as the second and third and fourth impressions.  Because of that, great networking is about following up on that first impression.  It’s about showing the other person how ambitious you are, and how serious you are about business.  Perhaps more importantly, it’s about letting the other person get to know you, and trust you, and like you.  You don’t have to be extroverted to do any of these things.  Ultimately, all you should really have to be is yourself (unless you’re lazy or sociopathic).  In the coming weeks, we’ll be putting up a few posts that will help you build a network by introducing people to the great person you know you are.

In the meantime, if that ending was a little too sweet for you, please feel free to cleanse the palate with this stock footage of atomic bomb testings:

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Finding a good logo designer is easier than ever in the internet age, but picking that designer out of a crowd can be tough if you don’t have a lot of expertise.  After all, if you knew a ton about logo design, you probably wouldn’t need to hire a logo designer in the first place!  As daunting as finding (and working with) the right designer might  seem, there are a few basic lessons that can help you seperate the proverbial wheat from the metaphorical chaffe.  In today’s lesson, we’re going to talk about knowing what you want in a logo in the first place.

While this lesson may seem pretty clear-cut, it’s arguably the biggest pitfall that you have to overcome.  Knowing what you want in a logo isn’t quite as simple as you might think.  Fortunately, there are some simple, easy to learn guidelines that can get you started.

It’s not critical to know exactly what you want in a logo–again, you’re hiring a designer for their expertise–but knowing the basics will help you work with your designer to get a great result.  Before you even start thinking about what you’re looking for, we strongly recommend reading this article by David Airey. Airey lays down the five critical guidelines that every great logo should follow. As he explains:

Iconic logos are:
1.Describable
2.Memorable
3.Effective without colour
4.Scalable i.e. work when just an inch in size
5.Relevant to the industry in question

There are two items we’d add to this list.  The first thing that we’d add–as sort of a logical conclusion to the five points–is that simplicity is your friend.  If your logo is a complicated piece, it will be difficult for your audience to describe (and, by extension, remember) it will be difficult to scale, and, in all likelihood, it will lose its effectiveness without color.

The next point we’d add is that a good logo should be something you can love.    At the end of the day, any small business is going to live and die with the decisions that its owner makes. You don’t want to be overcritical, you don’t want to be paralyzed by perfectionism, but you also don’t want to represent your business (and, by extension,  yourself) with a logo that you hate.

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I’m going to give you the “holy grail” elevator pitch; a format that has worked so well, but is amazingly simple. Now for those who are unfamiliar with an elevator pitch, here’s a quick summary: While visiting New York, you step into an elevator, adrenaline flowing as usual about your new business idea. To your amazement, Donald Trump steps in after you, the elevator door closes, and he pushes the 30th floor button. At this point you’re sweating bullets. He turns to you and says “So tell me, what do you do?”

You probably see where I’m going with this. An elevator pitch gives you less than a minute to convince(fill in the blank) that your business idea is bigger than Google, and he should be interested. Notice I said interested and not invest. The goal of an elevator pitch is NOT to get the individual to invest—no one does that. The primary objective is to get the investor excited so he hands you his card and says “I want to know more.”

As an entrepreneur, I’ve heard dozens upon dozens of formats, suggested lengths, what to say, whatnot to say, etc. Still, time after time, I get pitched with an idea and have to ask, “So exactly what does your business do?” The absolute #1 rule for an elevator pitch is make it clear what you do! I really don’t want to hear that you found some secret untapped $3 trillion dollar market, or you have exclusive partnerships with Apple, Google, Microsoft andFacebook. I know it’s all bs anyways.

So you have your elevator pitch polished, and you think your words will flow right to the investor’s checkbook. You step into that elevator and start talking. You are halfway through describing the market need and realize that instead of words flowing, it’s more like elevator pitch diarrhea. Your potential investor interrupts you and asks a question…

“Woah, hold on Mr. Investor, Q&A doesn’t come until later. I have the perfect pitch here, and you must listen to all 45 seconds of it!”

I know that’s what you’re thinking because I’ve been there. Investors don’t always give you time for your “perfect” pitch. A few months ago I attended an angel investing workshop and one of the presenters fromBeanstalk CFO Groupexplained what I would consider the perfect elevator pitch. It’s so simple with 3 lines, yet so elegant and what we personally use for OrangeSlyce. You fill in the blanks:

My name is (your name) and I’m starting a business that does (product or service) .

If the person is still listening, continue to the second sentence. If not, well, they already know what you do.

Unlike (competitor) we do (competitive advantage) .

Now if the investor still hasn’t asked a question, you go for the kill. Lean in slightly, and start in a serious tone…

Now, this is big because (the most attractive aspect of your business) .

That’s it. The perfect elevator pitch. To borrow from The Girl Next Door, “always leave ‘em wanting more.”

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