There certainly is no substitute for good press. After a favorable article in MaineBiz, people have been calling, emailing, and Facebooking me. In particular, inquiries have increased. For this, I am grateful! Here’s what else has been going on.
I started filming the video that’ll be on my site.
Two interviewers with local business owners down, three to go. I spent this morning trying to extract the video from yesterday’s interviews off the camera only to find that I do no have a firewire port, which I may need. At times like this, I miss my old job for the technical support or even just having someone else to whine about this with. (If you live locally, I’ll pay you to come over to my house and figure it out. Seriously!)
I’ve avoided finishing my business plan… but I will not any longer.
In classic Nicole avoidance, I’ve finished 70% of my business plan and stopped. This is what happens with things that 1) don’t make me any money directly and/or 2) I don’t enjoy doing or feel discouraged about. The parts I stopped at were finishing the competition analysis (who wants to think too much about competition?) and financials (if you love creating theoretical spreadsheets, raise your hand!). But I have to do this, if not for helping me make good business decisions then to help me get a loan this fall, if I need it.
What I need is a deadline and some accountability. The deadline will be August 14, and the accountability is me telling this to you. The finished product will be posted on the blog part of this site on August 15 and if it isn’t, feel free to give me a hard time!
I’ve been making more of an effort to meet up with people in person.
The last thing I felt like doing last Thursday night was driving to a local event the next town over in the pouring rain. Honestly, even for someone social like me, it can take a lot of energy to walk into stores, introduce myself, and talk with store owners candidly about internet marketing. (I guess this is what’s called selling… hats off to all you sales people out there, this is way harder than it looks!)
I decided to make the most of it: I put on a cute dress, drove over, and met as many people as I possibly could in a genuine way. I met one store owner who told me flat out (in a nice way) that she wasn’t interested in doing anything until the fall… but then got an email from her today about setting up a meeting. A couple other possibilities emerged for me as well. Bonus: I got to listen to some live jazz in between meeting up with store owners.
Better things to do on a night off? Sure, but I can’t substitute face time since that is where my best leads are coming from. I’m going to try to do something like this at least once every other week.
Off to film some more folks tomorrow…I hope this video ends up rocking everyone’s socks off and I hope you are having a great week so far!