Okay, I admit that I’m being a bit harsh. But the reality is that Ubuntu and other Linux desktop are not even close to being ready for prime time business operations. The blame doesn’t lie solely on Linux, but also on the market.

Businesses feel warm and fuzzy when spending money

There are three reactions I receive every time I offer Ubuntu to a client as a desktop solution:

1. “What does Ubuntu mean?”
2. “Will I still have my Window’s desktop?”
3. “Why is it free?” (not in the is it free because it’s created by geniuses that want to free software from the shackles of big business? But, everything that’s free must suck so why are you offering me this crap?)

Businesses need to operate, and the only way they can feel safe knowing that a new thing will keep their business running is to pay lots of money for it.  It doesn’t matter if the thing is horrible.

Ubuntu is still buggy

When a 60+ year-old business owner asks “where did the power button go?”, I would normally think that it was an age-to-technology gap situation.  But not with the latest version of Ubuntu (10.04 as of writing this).  Things on the Gnome desktop regularly disappear, move around, and stop working.  Maybe it’s to keep everyone’s mind sharp, but to a business owner it’s unacceptable.

The market doesn’t like Linux

No matter how you want to spin it, the market doesn’t like desktop Linux.  Don’t get me wrong, I love desktop Linux for personal use and for use on business servers, but the vast majority of the market refuses to cooperate with open source operating systems.

Take Intuit for example, because one of my clients was sporting Ubuntu I thought that it’d be great to suggest Quickbooks Online as a cloud-based finance tracker.  That’s when the hilarity ensued.

First, I had to implement a user agent switcher for Firefox because Quickbooks Online didn’t support Linux browsers (and still doesn’t as of this post).  Everything worked great.

Then they announced that they supported Ubuntu desktop-based browsers.  Fantastic! Now I could get rid of the pesky agent switcher workaround. Wait, just kidding! A couple weeks after their announcement they took it back.  Not only that, they decided to change all the browsers they supported.  No problem, agent switcher to the rescue.

But wait, because they changed their browser support structure the user agent switcher no longer worked.  Needless to say after hours and hours of trying to fix this, we bought Windows 7.  Sigh…

Oh how I wish…

I really wish that I could offer Linux as a viable alternative to commercial desktop operating systems – but I can’t.  Although I regularly use Linux for server builds, Linux desktop distributions are still horrible. Although everything is free, the price you pay to ensure that everything will work properly and will be compatible with all web and client-based applications is a no brainer.  Canonical, Redhat, Novell, prove me wrong… please…

Think I’m wrong?  Let me know in the comments!

Related posts:

1. Episode #21 HowtoForge Linux Tutorials
2. Episode #4 Low-Cost Tech Infrastructure, Part 2
3. Episode #3 Low-Cost Tech Infrastructure, Part 1
4. You Should Date Your Clients

Blogging

Writing is the easiest way to deliver consistent content to your audience.  The more content that you produce that’s valuable, the more you’ll be perceived as an expert in your community.  Of course, it’s easier said than done.  writing consistently can be extremely time-consuming and coming up with topics can be tough.

Audio/Video Podcasting

Letting people hear your voice or see you is a fantastic way to build authority and expertise.  One reason for this is that listeners and viewers can generally tell if you are lying or if you really know your stuff.  Not only that, it creates as greater bond with your audience because they tend to get to know your quirks and unique gifts.  I highly recommend giving it a try.

Articles

I haven’t done this yet, but many people have told me that re-purposing some of your blog posts for niche publications is a gold mine.  For example, if you blog about red tailed hawks – take one or more of your posts and submit them to Red Tailed Hawk Weekly.

Newsletter

Having an exclusive newsletter significantly helps to build relationships and perceived expertise, fast!  Not only that, it build a sense of belonging and community – especially when you dialogue with your audience.  A newsletter is a must-have for any blog or business online.

Have any tips for building authority?  Let everyone know in the comments!

Related posts:

1. 010 STBS: WordPress for Solopreneurs Part I – Branding
2. 003 STBS: The Importance of Communication
3. 009 STBS: How to Easily Add Social Icons to WordPress
4. 002 STBS: WordPress as a Powerful Business Tool

A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by one of the most prominent figure in Orange County, public relations expert Ted Nguyen.  I recently helped him develop his new WordPress site, and he’s been typing up a storm ever since.

A little about Ted

Ted is the PR Director for the Orange County Transit Authority and is one of the leading experts in using social media in the public sector.  He is literally the go to guy that local governments run to in order to find more effective ways to reach out to their public.

He is also very well-known from of his fearless use of social media to communicate with just about everyone.  He regularly hosts luncheons at local establishments to encourage new patrons to visit, he is one of the 12 leaders (along with your’s truly) of a free 500+ person networking event called #ConnectOC, and he’s an amazing communicator.

The interview

Ted and I discuss some reasons why I became an entrepreneur, what my beliefs and values are, and how I love to help others to get out there and start a business.  All I can say is that if someone like me can do it (who nearly failed out of high school and was completely unsuccessful most of his life) so can you.  Not that I’m making tons of money, but I am definitely doing what I love.

Keep in mind, all this was done on his iPhone, so it just goes to show that you don’t need to spend a lot of money in order to deliver great content.

Let me know what you think, or if you have any questions that spawn from the interview.  It you are inspired to do an interview of your own, link to it in the comments!

Related posts:

1. 008 STBS: Social Networking Doesn’t Work (Alone)
2. When to Use Traditional Vs. Social Media Marketing
3. 003 STBS: The Importance of Communication
4. 004 STBS: Corporate Professional to Entrepreneur with Paul Tran

It’s time folks. Time to talk about my favorite tech subject – WordPress. There is a LOT of information out regarding this wonderful platform, but most of it is geared to the beginner that’s trying to blog – or to the coder looking to do crazy things with the code.  However, there is not much information out there on how solo business owners (or business owners to be) can use it to build their brand, syndicate, collaborate, and so on.

That being said, for the next few podcasts we are going to discuss WordPress for Solopreneurs.  We’ll talk about everything you’ve ever wanted to know about how to set up WordPress to spread your message.

In this episode we talk about branding.  We talk about some of the aspects of branding, and some of the tool that you can use in WordPress to syndicate your brand across multiple channels.  By using some simple plugins, you can give your readers and social media friends the ability to take your brand to new places on the Internet.

Here are some of the plugins mentioned in the show:

• Feedburner Feedsmith – Redirects your RSS feeds to Feedburner for easy syndication.
• Tweetmeme – Let’s your readers re-tweet your posts to their friends using Tweetmeme – which is a de facto standard used by almost every prominent blog out there.
• Add-to-any/Share This! – Let’s your users submit your site to just about every social networking site out there.  Great to get some extra traffic.
• TwitterSifu – Automatically tweets posts you’ve done to Twitter randomly throughout the day.  Works great to keep your friends up-to-date on your blog.

The goal, of course, is to make yourself known to people in a valuable and specific way.  Creating a brand is difficult, but compared to 10 years ago when you had to have thousands of dollars to get radio and TV spots to get your name out there, it’s considerably easier.

How have you used WordPress to build your brand?

Related posts:

1. 002 STBS: WordPress as a Powerful Business Tool
2. 009 STBS: How to Easily Add Social Icons to WordPress
3. 008 STBS: Social Networking Doesn’t Work (Alone)
4. How to Save Tons of Money on Web Design

After returning from deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I had a hunger to prove to myself and others that I could build  and control a business of my own. Through a lot of mistakes – and a lot of impatience – I wasted a great deal of money trying to get things up and running.  I funded a startup social networking site that failed, bought logos and other expensive items, and spent a whole lot of money on things that were a waste of money.

Now, through those mistakes, I now know how to build up a fully functioning online or offline business with very little money up front to start.  Using free tools like Google Apps, WordPress, and more – anyone can start a business.

In my free 6-week email course I give you an overview of all the tools you need to easily begin building a business that will give you the lifestyle you desire.  Now, I didn’t say that you’ll make millions instantly – or that it will be easy to succeed.  It’s going to be up to you to market, sell, and operate your business.  Success is entirely dependent on you (I’m still trying to create my dream lifestyle)!

In the course I quickly take you through topics such as how to set up your brand’s online presence, how to form your business entity in order to protect your assets, tools to manage projects, and more.  My goal is to push you to make the decision to at least try to start your own company.  You can do it!

Join my newsletter and 6-day email course!

After you’ve completed the course, leave some feedback, your story of starting, or questions in the comment section of this post!

MZ9FAAZADRD5

Related posts:

1. Episode #5 Your Staff Makes Your Company

However, sometimes you may want to have a site that is custom tailored to your taste and design expectations.  Well, now things are that cheap anymore.  Fortunately, there are some things that you can do to significantly decrease the cost of building a unique site.

Re-skin a free or premium theme

Close to 70% of the cost of creating a site is in the layout.  If you can find a free  or premium theme with the layout style and functionality that you like, all a developer or designer needs to do is change the art.  This not only makes things a LOT cheaper, you’ll get a much faster turnaround on your site.  However, one thing to keep in mind is that the more functionality that you require, the harder it is to find an adequate theme.

Free themes:

• Smashing Magazine
• WordPress’ theme directory
• FreeWPThemes.net

Premium themes:

• Woothemes
• Themeforest

Draw what you want!

The more information that the designer has up front, the less expensive development will be.  You need to literally draw out step-by-step of how you expect your users to use the site and where you want your users to go to meet your business needs.  For example, if you want to funnel users to your email newsletter, design the flow in which your visitors will get there.  Designers are not mind-readers.  If you don’t know what you want, nor will they.

Do everything up front!

Changes to Photoshop designs are cheap, but changes to code are not!!!!!  The more you change during the coding portion of the project, the more money you are going to spend because developers and designers need to build an original framework in order to effectively produce a site.  When you ask to change significant functionalities, database structures need to be changed, entire pages of code need to be altered, and you will have a demotivated designer working for you.

Related posts:

1. Make an eCommerce Site for Under $200
2. 009 STBS: How to Easily Add Social Icons to WordPress
3. 002 STBS: WordPress as a Powerful Business Tool
4. Episode #23 How Contracts Can Save Your Butt and Your Business

When you are a new business owner, you sometimes feel a sense of desperation. You hold on to clients that you would never work with when times are good because you are new and feel as though they are needed in order to propel your company. The fact of the matter is, most clients that are uncooperative, disrespectful and fail to meet their obligations (especially in regards to payment) are only going to slow you down.

You deliver value, they deliver grief

True story.  A client that I recently let go had their entire network fail.  Luckily it was on a Friday.  Unluckily for me, I spent 12+ hours of my time fixing it over the weekend.  Keep in mind, I was on a retainer contract so I was severely devalueing myself because of the time spent, but I’m a man of my word and I wanted to give great value.

The problem was due to antiquated equipment, and one of their routers ended up dying a slow, horrible, and painful death.  It would work, then an hour later it would stop.  Back and forth I drove, every day over the weekend.   When I finally fixed it in the morning the first business day (before starting operations), I was greeted with frustration by the client and semi-condescending remarks thoughout the rest of the week.

Oh, I forgot to mention that they were almost 2 months overdue on their payments at that time.

It’s not always roses, but you are in control

As long as you meet your commitments, you have every right to cut your ties with a client if they are not meeting theirs.  They do not control your success – YOU DO!  Yes, they may have your money that you worked hard for.  Yes, they may know other companies that can use your services.  But all of that is vacuous if they are only going to waste your time and hold it over your head.

Tips to prevent bad client relationships or to fire clients

• Ask for at least half of your fee up front.  If they aren’t willing to pay have, they aren’t willing to pay at all.
• Be firm up front that if you are not paid at the specified times, work will cease (have this in your contract).
• Always have joint responsibilities in your contracts.  If a customer don’t deliver things in order for you to complete work, that’s not your problem.
• Consistently ask for feedback in writing.  If the relationship goes south, you can show that it’s not because you’ve delivered poor service.
• Have your virtual assistant make reminder calls or emails for payment.
• If you do fire a client, let them know that you still expect payment for your services rendered.
• Keep your head up!

If you are delivering an insane amount of value to your customer, you have no reason to be treated with disrespect and contempt.  The whole reason you started this business was to be in control and be happy, right?

Have a your own story about firing a client? Let everyone know in the comments!

Related posts:

1. 006 STBS: Power Pricing and How To Price Fairly
2. 005 STBS: Why Your Business Needs a CRM
3. What happens when you mess up?
4. 008 STBS: Social Networking Doesn’t Work (Alone)

Have you ever been frustrated at trying to add social bookmarking icons to your WordPress blog?  Well, you are not alone, trust me.  I recently helped a friend of mine, Ted Nguyen build a WordPress website from scratch using a killer WooTheme.  Unfortunately, Ted is a real go getter and spent 5 hours trying to figure out how to go about adding some cool social media icons to the sidebar of his blog.

Well, because of this funny fiasco, I decided to create this video showing how to easily add social networking icons to the sidebar of your WordPress blog without having to know any code whatsoever.  All you need is a couple of icons (we used some from sixrevisions.com), and a little knowledge of how to leverage WordPress’ visual editor and widgets.

Here are the step-by-step instructions:

1. Essentially, you start off by uploading all of the icons that you want to use into your blog’s media library.
2. You insert the ones that you want to use into the visual editor used for posts and pages. *UPDATE*: Make sure that you select “Left” for alignment.
3. Modify the height and width you want using the visual editor’s resize capability.
4. Once you’ve done that, you click over to the HTML tab, and all of the HTML is there for the taking.
5. Copy all of that code and head on over to the widget area of your theme under the “Appearance” tab.
6. Bring up a text widget drop it into the area of the sidebar that you want to use.
7. Add some header text (or don’t).
8. Paste the code into the text widget.
9. Then you are done!

How’s that for an easy 9-step process.  I apologize for the lack of images, but the video explains it all in grueling detail.  Keep in mind that the mouse curse is a little off for some reason.

If you have any questions for the podcast or blog, please don’t hesitate to ask.  Let me know if this was helpful in the comments.  If you listen to the podcast in iTunes, send me some good reviews if you like it!

Related posts:

1. 002 STBS: WordPress as a Powerful Business Tool
2. 008 STBS: Social Networking Doesn’t Work (Alone)
3. When to Use Traditional Vs. Social Media Marketing
4. Real Social Media

While at a Tweetup in beautiful Orange County, California, Linked in expert and friend Neal Schaffer asked me about podcasting equipment. I wanted to do a show on networking and how to effectively use social networking with traditional networking, but rather than do the show with my in-studio gear I decided to show off my Edirol R-09HR hand held audio recorder that I got from Cliff Ravenscraft.   So Neal, this cast is for you.

I firmly believe that the single most driver of whether your startup will succeed or fail is through networking.  In essence, if you can’t build meaningful and trusting relationships with people that can help the momentum of your business, you are toast!

Most people have no clue how to connect with others.  They’ll shove business cards into the hands of hundreds, and wonder why nobody is giving them a call.  It’s not hard to see why.  Would you seriously call a stranger and hope that they have the expertise to help your situation?  When you just hand out business cards that’s all that you are, a stranger.

If you want to network successfully, here are some basic but powerful networking tips:

1. While you may be networking to drum up business, you shouldn’t meet new people for the purpose of drumming up new business.  People are more responsive to authenticity.  When I network, my first priority is to build friendships.  The majority of people that I meet I would hang out with on a regular basis whether or not I ever do business with them.
2. Bring your online friends offline, and your offline contacts online; the former lets you become a real person to those you meet on Twitter and so on, the latter helps you to maintain contact on a regular basis.
3. Your networking needs to be targeted.  Use Hootsuite to create targeted opportunities meet new people that matter to your business.  Don’t just go to every event that comes up near you.

If you are an “introvert” like me, get over it.  You have to get out there and become a part of the community.  If not, you might as well stick with your corporate job.

Related posts:

1. Real Social Media
2. Business Exchange: Information From Real Professionals
3. When to Use Traditional Vs. Social Media Marketing
4. 003 STBS: The Importance of Communication

Before I get started, I just want to say that I am a Google Apps reseller (but I’ve used it long before becoming one). However, Google Apps Standard Edition (the free version), is what I recommend to most people. That being said, I truly believe that all small businesses should be using Google Apps.  Yet, 90% of small business owners that I consult with have no idea what Google Apps is.  It’s a shame that many don’t take advantage of some of the powerful tools it has to offer. I explain more thoroughly in the podcast, but here’s why I feel most small businesses are missing out!

It easy to use

Note, I didn’t say it is easy to set up (it’s not that bad), but once it’s set up it is extremely easy to use.  Basically, it’s like having your own version of Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and more.  In the past, to have your own domain name and email you needed to go through your web host’s webmail application or connect your mail application to the host’s email server.  Either way, it was a pain.  Not only that, you were usually doused with spam every day because of poor spam blocking.  Once set up, everything works just like the normal versions of Gmail and so on.  Pretty neat.

It’s more professional

What looks better “supersalon@gmail.com” or “Mary@supersalon.com”? I rest my case.

It’s more collaborative

The ability to share documents and contacts is HUGE.  Not only internally, but with outside organizations as well.  Working real-time on documentation makes a huge difference when you want to get things done.

The new Google Apps Marketplace is ridiculously awesome

Not only do you get Google applications, now that Google opened up its marketplace, a whole host of third party apps are integrated as well.  That means that you have a one stop shop to all of the business web applications that you will ever need.  What do I use?  Well, I’m glad you’ve asked:

• Aviary – a free Photoshop-like/Adobe Illustrator-ish web application.  Great for small graphic projects.
• Freshbooks – Pretty sweet accounting software.  They recently changed their pricing model to allow for unlimited customers (thank goodness).
• Gist – My favorite CRM software. (Had an issue with Gist today though.  You can hear about it in the podcast).
• Mailchimp – A really good email marketing web application.  It’s free until you get more than 500 users.
• ManyMoon – a FREE project management web application similar to Basecamp.
• Tripit – a traveler’s best friend.  Helps organize everything you need for your next trip.
• Tungle.me – a KILLER calendar scheduling app.

*Update* Not Everything Can Be Perfect

I decided to add some things to consider about Google Apps.

1. It is not a complete solution, by any means. Although Google Docs works, it is not that great.  Don’t get me wrong, they’ve improved it significantly, but there is still a lot missing.  Not only that, formatting issues are the bane of anyone trying to use it for complex documentation.
2. If you want to use Google as a storage place for documentation for your business, I’d recommend against it.  It’s too clunky of an interface.  I would recommend something like DropBox if you need real-time document sharing.
3. Google sites, while very easy to use, is just like any other WYSIWYG website builder.  Don’t get me wrong, you can do some amazing things with it.  But it’s just not the same as making a BuddyPress community or WordPress site.

Feedback

All that being said, I’d love to hear your opinion of Google Apps, especially if you think it’s not as great as I make it out to be.  I give some more cons in the podcast, but I’m sure there are many more of them.  Leave me a voicemail at any time, day or night,  at 714-643-5301.   Your comments are always welcome, too!

Related posts:

1. Review of Zoho Apps for Business
2. 005 STBS: Why Your Business Needs a CRM
3. Are You Getting Microsoft Office 2010?
4. 001 STBS: Starting a New Podcast

In this episode, I talk about how to price yourself fairly to your clients and how to create a win-win situation for the both of you.  Pricing is one of the most difficult steps in the whole business process, not because it’s hard to calculate what you should be charging clients, but because there are huge emotional and self-confidence barriers that you need to overcome first. That being said, if you can’t price yourself correctly, then you are likely to fail in any business venture.

Steps to Overcoming Pricing Barriers

First step is to realize that asking for money in return for a service is not a bad thing.  Not only that, asking for a considerable amount of money for your services is totally acceptable if you are giving your client great value.

Second, look at how much you are being paid at your current job.  While you may be getting $20-$40 an hour, the actual cost of you to the company is considerable.  As mentioned in the podcast, the current rate for folks in my full-time organization is around $150 and hour.

What If I Overprice?

It is very hard to overprice if you are delivering a valuable service.  When most people ask about overpricing they really mean, how could I possibly charge a lot of money?  Amounts are relative to value! For example,  if you charge a client $5000 for 2 hours of work – yet they make an additional $500,000 annually as a direct result of your service – does the amount you charge really seem like a lot?  Of course not!

If you give your customer more value than what they’ve paid you, then you are golden.  Don’t worry about whether it’s a lot of money or not.

Always Ask for More, Not Less

One of the major gambits in negotiation is pricing higher than what you would want as a minimum payment (I highly recommend the Secrets of Power Negotiating).  There are two reasons for this.  First, it creates a win-win situation.  For example, if you want to make $1000 for a project, and you charge $2000 – even if you negotiate down to $1500 you win because it’s more than $1000 and your client wins because it’s less than $2000.

You can never negotiate up!

Second, it’s build perceived value in your service.  It’s weird, but the more expensive something is, the more valuable it seems even if it’s not.  That’s life.

Pricing Types and How to Calculate Your Price

Lastly, there are a couple of ways to price yourself – hourly, fixed-price, and value based.  As emphasized in Alan Weiss’ book Million Dollar Consulting, you always want to price yourself based on value.

Here’s the way I figure out how much I should charge clients.  I determine my annual income needs (gross income), let’s say $200,000.  Next, I figure out how may clients I ideally want to have throughout the year.  If it’s 6 clients, I need to charge them $3000 a month each in whatever services that I provide.

Of course, I could add more clients and charge less, or reduce clients and charge more.

Thanks!

I wanted to give a big shout out to Megan Enloe from www.podcastjunky.com.  She gave some great constructive criticism regarding my show notes and how I should include more information.  Don’t forget to follow Paul Tran, Rochelle Veturis, Debbie Miller, Neal Schaffer, and Ted Nguyen.  All great people that I’ve mentioned at some point in the podcast or on the blog!

Related posts:

1. 005 STBS: Why Your Business Needs a CRM
2. 001 STBS: Starting a New Podcast
3. Crushing Startup Analysis Paralysis
4. You Should Date Your Clients

It’s getting harder and harder to build meaningful relationships these days.  That’s why in this episode we talk about two things: maintaining relationships with clients during tough times, and keeping relationships fresh using a Contact Relationship Manager (CRM).

When you are in a large organization, serious problems rarely occur.  That is, it’s very rare to be yelled at by a customer or client directly because you are usually just a cog in the wheel behind the scenes.  However, when you are a solopreneur or business owner, problems occur often.  What do you do when the crud hits the fan? How you react to emergencies and mistakes will determine whether you wow your clients or if they’ll be looking for another service provider.

Another thing to keep in mind when owning a business is that fresh and meaningful relationships are the key to success.  Although you may be the sole owner of your business, success is never a solo ordeal.  Your business depends on the referrals of your clients, your business relationships, and your personal relationships.  Being able to keep in contact with all of those people requires a CRM.

I’ve used several CRMs within the past year, and have found that 3 meet the criteria that I recommend for anyone looking to use a CRM for their business.  those three CRMs are Gist, Highrise, and Batchbook.  However, if you want to know which one I use (and which one I think outdoes the rest), you’ll have to listen to the podcast.

If you haven’t listened to the the previous episode (004 STBS: Corporate Professional to Entrepreneur with Paul Tran), you are seriously missing out on some great tips on moving from corporate to business owner.

As always, thank you for your comments.  I would love to hear your voice, so if you’d like to leave some audio feedback (and a plug for your blog/business) please give me a call at 714-643-5301, or you can record an audio note on your phone and send me an email @ dean [at] prosulum [dot] com.

Related posts:

1. 001 STBS: Starting a New Podcast
2. 003 STBS: The Importance of Communication
3. 002 STBS: WordPress as a Powerful Business Tool
4. What happens when you mess up?

In the interview I ask him about some of the pleasant surprises and the not-so-nice surprises that he faced, what he would do differently if he had the chance, and also how he managed to move from owning one business to several. He also shares some of his most influential books, and how passion is a key factor in starting and running your own business.

One thing that was very surprising was his mention that if he had to do it all over again he would have gone with a franchise.  It is very hard to know how to own your own business when you first start out, and it’s great to have a model that is already proven to work.  In essence, he says that the cost of the franchise can be much cheaper than the cost involved with proving a new concept.

If you want some great insights into how you can move from full-time corporate life to owning your own business, you won’t want to miss this interview. As always, if you have any feedback or comments, please leave me a voicemail message at 714-643-5301, I’d love to hear from you. Oh, and don’t forget to follow @DeanSoto and @PaulTTran on Twitter!

Related posts:

1. 001 STBS: Starting a New Podcast
2. 002 STBS: WordPress as a Powerful Business Tool
3. Episode #19: Four Sites to Expand Your Entrepreneur Mind
4. Episode #2: Two Concepts for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

(Note: It’s quite ironic that this episode took about 30 takes to get right because of my inability to communicate the way that I wanted to.)

In this episode, I talk about why being able to communicate with other people is extremely important if you want to improve your career or relationships with existing or potential clients. Don’t be the genius in the basement that’s able to solve all of the world’s problems but doesn’t share the solutions, be the one out there sharing what you know with as many people as you possibly can! Why?  Because it builds credibility as an expert, it forms relationships, and it helps you to grow in ways that you never would have grown before.  The more information that you share with others, the more effective you’ll be at building your personal brand and gaining visibility within your community.

Learning to communicate effectively is very difficult.  There are very few good communicators that are natural.  The best public speakers train for years to hone their craft, but it pays off in the end because they rarely have to search for leads and customers.  Rather, potential clients approach them on a regular basis because they’ve built their reputation and trust so much through information sharing that they’ve built gravity around who they are.  You have information that needs to be shared.  By doing so, you’ll draw more people toward your brand.

My public relations mentor, Ted Nguyen, is fantastic at reaching out to people while building credibility at the same time.  You can catch his antics over at his blog, and see how by simply talking to people, he is able to build his brand and perceived expertise (and real expertise).

Don’t forget to check out Toastmasters. It’s a very inexpensive way building your public speaking skills.  I’m a part of club #8771 in Huntington Beach, California, and have really seen tremendous gains from it.

Related posts:

1. 002 STBS: WordPress as a Powerful Business Tool
2. 001 STBS: Starting a New Podcast
3. How to Make a One-Person Business Look Like a Large Company
4. What happens when you mess up?

WordPress is king, at least in this episode. I discuss how you can use WordPress in various ways to improve your business or your career. For those that don’t know, WordPress is a free “blogging platform” that has become the standard for delivering content on the web.  While I don’t go into a step-by-step tutorial on how to use it for your business, I go through an overview of things that you can do to leverage its capabilities for your business.  Here are some of the topics:

• If you are a small business owner, using it for your business website can increase your web presence at almost no cost.
• You can build an entire business for under $200 using the free blogging platform and an online shopping cart.

• If you are a full-time employee, with a cheap domain name (I use Namecheap, they tend to be very reasonable. And yes, it’s an affiliate link because I love them) and your own hosted site, you can really have an edge over your competition.
• You can also earn tons of money on the side by helping people with specific needs (i.e. building themes and plugins).

I’ve been using WordPress for about 5 years now, and the best part about it is that you can not only build a gorgeous company site, it’s easily updated. For those that don’t understand the importance of updating your site, search engines like Google LOVE when you consistently have new content to search.   That means you’ll get indexed more quickly and are likely going to have a higher page rank.  Couple that with good SEO practices, and you’ll have a steady stream of new people visiting your site through organic searches.

If you have any comments or questions relating to WordPress, or just in General, don’t hesitate to let me know below.  You can also leave voicemail feedback at 714-643-5301.  Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @DeanSoto

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In this episode, we discuss something that’s been a huge life changer  (and the topic of many blog posts) – Getting Started on Something. Whether it’s starting a new business, taking charge of a new project, or starting a new podcast (ahem) – the importance of starting something is a valuable skill that will only be beneficial (even if you fail).

Topics in this episode:

- Personal benefits from starting a business

- Pricing

Shout outs mentioned in this podcast:

- Emily Crume (@emilyquestions)

- Mike Yoo (@youandyoo)

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Shameless Plug

I recently created a site for a client. The entire site, to include payment gateway and shopping cart, cost about $120 (not including the cost of my expertise and time, of course). That’s pretty good considering there are a lot of so-called eCommerce solutions out there where companies charge thousands just to get your store up and running, hit you with monthly fees, and look horrible.

Magic of WordPress

As mentioned many times before, WordPress (self-hosted) is the bomb! After years of content management systems (CMS) coming and going, WordPress has consistently been the leader.  There is just so much that you can do with it that it’s scary.  I used a premium theme from WooThemes that cost around $70 for 3 of them.   The cool thing was that the theme came with everything you needed to make buttons, featured images, and so on.  That being said, it made it very easy to make the site look like a store.

Foxycart

FoxyCart is a javascript shopping cart that is just awesome.  Basically, with a little bit of code you can create a professional looking shopping experience in about 30 minutes.  Chris Coyier over at CSS-Tricks has a fantastic tutorial on how you can implement Foxycart with WordPress.  TotoSoto uses this, and the full cart was up and running in a couple of minutes.  It’s free during development, and costs $19.99/mo when you go live.  Not bad.

Paypal Website Pro

In order to truly take online orders you need to have an efficient way of taking credit cards.  You can use PayPal standard with Foxycart, but it’s clunky and a bit confusing for customers.  There are a lot of payment gateways out there, and all of them have varying pricing schemes.  I chose PayPal Website Pro for the time being, it’s $30 a month plus a percentage of the product sold.

Conclusion

Aside from my web host (which is Bluehost, and they are awesome) that’s all that was needed in order to create a fully-capable online store.  So if anyone comes at you trying to sell you an eCommerce solution for $3000+, you can politely decline because you now know how to start an online business with almost no money yourself.

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4. How to Make a One-Person Business Look Like a Large Company

The problem is, while you strategize on all the things you’d want to do with your company – you do nothing.  No clients, no market research, no visible and motivating results.  Analysis paralysis slowly kills off any hopes of being on your own.

Stop analyzing and start doing

You never know what will work until you get out there and start doing something.  Even if you are hesitant to capitalize on the skills used in your current job, try to market them in your business.  If you hate what you currently do – but are damn good at it – it doesn’t mean that you can’t do other things.  For example, if you are the king of IT at your current job but dream of a marketing firm, get in the door with your IT services and upsell social media marketing strategies to your prospects.

Create a sales plan

Maybe you are hesitating to take action because you don’t know how many customers you’ll need to stay in business or transition to full-time entrepreneurship.  Don’t worry.  It’s very easy to come up with a quick sales plan.

- First, decide on the amount of profit you need in order to survive.  We’ll use $200,000k a year for now.

- Next determine your pricing and the amount of customers you’ll need in order to meet that yearly goal.  For example, if you are a consultant and you feel that you could only handle 6 customers throughout the year, you’d need a $3000 – $3500 monthly retainer for each of them.

- Lastly, start getting clients.

Go with the flow

You can’t enjoy the ride unless you start driving.  Once you’ve begun, you’ll start to see what you need to change, improve, and focus on.  If you continue reading blog posts like this one, books on how to start, and motivational videos without actually starting – well, you’ll be spending a lot of time making someone else rich.

Start.  Get out there and talk to potential clients. Stop reading.

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Maybe it’s ignorance, but what are some REAL reasons to buy Office 2010?

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There are a whole host of free web platforms out there that are easy to use, and they give you everything that you need in regards to SEO and eCommerce capabilities.  Sometimes you may want to pay a little to get a premium theme that you can use and modify to your suit your personal or business needs, and associated plugins to help keep your new site SEO-kosher.

WordPress (self-hosted)

- 40 Free High Quality WordPress Themes

- 140+ Brilliant Free WordPress Themes Around

- 60+ Latest High-Quality Free WordPress Themes

- WordPress › All in One SEO Pack

Joomla

- More Than 3100 Free Joomla CMS Templates

- Best of Joomla Free Business Themes

- Joomla 1.5 SEO Extension Comparison

Drupal

- 230+ Drupal Templates

- 200+ Massive Free Drupal Theme Compilation

- Drupal SEO Modules

My advice: Stay away from anyone that offers to build you or your business a magical SEO site. With just a few plugins, and a little sweat equity, you can create the same site (or better) for NEARLY FREE.  Host your own site (it’s easy and typically costs around $150 for 2 years with most hosting providers) and start creating your online presence!

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