When I was kid, my dad and a dear family friend, Johnny, would take me fishing on Panama City Bay. Long sunny days, all the Fanta Orange I could drink, and an ice chest ready to hold the daily catch. They loved to fish, and I felt happy to be with them.

But I was terrified of fishing. Not because I didn’t like reeling in a fish. That part was exciting and fun.

The part that terrified me was baiting the hook with live bait.

I had a much easier time if we were fishing with lures instead of live bait like worms or shrimp. But guess what? We never seemed to catch as much with the fake bait. Those real fish just loved the live bait.

When I was really little, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just drop the hook in the water. Why bother with bait at all? I liked casting and dragging the line along in the water. So what if I didn’t catch anything? It’s fine for a kid who’s playing, but not great for the rest of our family who was eager to enjoy a fresh fish dinner.

In various conversations lately about authenticity in marketing, I’ve noticed that many people seem to be terrified of baiting the hook with live bait. I’ve been there, too. Just like when I was a scared ten-year-old girl, it’s much easier to pop something artificial out of a package and try that shiny spinner jig than to offer something live and delicious to the prospect whose attention you want to attract and hold. What if the worm isn’t attractive enough? What if the fish only want the flashy jigs and lures? I mean, those lures look great in the package designed for humans, right?

Wondering how to get past the terror of baiting the hook?

1. Decide you actually want to catch a fish.
Drag an empty hook if you don’t care about catching a fish. But if you want to eat, then decide the discomfort of learning to bait the hook will be worth it.

2. Know what kind of fish you are fishing for.
Different fish like different kinds of bait. A rather delicate part of marketing is finding out what kinds of bait your prospects will respond to and then asking yourself if that is how you want to fish. For example, the quick-fix market is very attracted to artificial lures because they’re not in action-mode yet. They’re very attracted to bright, shiny objects. Look at the diet industry, the make-money-online industry, or almost any market that uses infomercials. That sexy spinner bait will work every time with them, but you’d better have a steady supply of new fishing holes because those fish move on quickly to the next shiny object, too.

If your business is what I call a trust-based business – one that depends on people deeply trusting you to partner with them toward an outcome, like results-oriented coaching or consulting – then the artificial lure presents a messaging conflict to your prospects. That kind of marketing says “Ha!” when your services are meant to be “Ahhhh.” Marketing with quick-strike, flashy bait just doesn’t communicate the same message as a steady supply of juicy, generous bits. Happily, trust-based businesses thrive on the least expensive and easiest bait of all: referrals.

3. Practice baiting the hook.
My dad never appeared uncomfortable putting the live worm on the hook; he had done it thousands of time. He knew what he wanted the outcome to be, and he had learned to get past his discomfort, if he ever felt it. Like any other part of creating and running a business, marketing is about practicing to become more comfortable. Keep trying new things to see what is delicious for your community and feels aligned with your values, too.

In the fishing world, selling artificial lures that look real is very big business. The people who sell worms at the corner convenience store aren’t making nearly as much. It’s not that different in the marketing world. People selling fake bait are everywhere because it’s easy to display it as flashy and colorful. And it’s just not as sexy as dirty worms and slimy shrimp.

Can you catch a fish with an artificial lure? Of course, you can.

But if you were a hungry fish, which would you be more likely to want to actually eat?

Spring is the season for yard sales and craft festivals. Signs sprout everywhere touting both.

Yard sales have piles of clothes and toys, and sawhorse tables display mismatched sets of dishes and old computer printers. Everything looks either sticky or dusty. Kids love yard sales. They can always find something for a quarter.

Craft festivals are like eclectic malls. Each vendor has her own 10′ x 15′ footprint along the sidewalk. There is a huge variety to what is being sold but each booth is uniquely homogeneous in its offerings. From hemp t-shirts to garden art on a stick, each vendor is focused in what she creates and sells. You may be able to find bottle cap earrings in almost any color but you won’t find lampwork bead bracelets in the same booth.

On any given Saturday you might bump into the same people at the neighborhood yard sale as the craft festival, but they are looking for something distinctly different. At the yard sale, people want bargains or collectibles. At the craft festival, patrons want something unique and creative.

But either way they want a “find.”

What will your clients find with you?

Related posts:

1. 21 Ways To Add Revenue to Your Business Model
2. Are You Running Your Business Like A Round of Doodle Jump?
3. Going Out of Business As Usual

One of my favorite things is watching writers raise their sails and catch the wind.

I love teaching Blog More, Stress Less and, by far, the most exciting part is feeling the thrill of the student who learns to trim her sails just so. In the class each blogger has the chance to share her writing privately with the group and receive personal feedback. I’ve never met anyone through the class who didn’t experience the power of the writing wind when she raised her sails.

Here’s a taste of the Spring 2012 regatta. (Quite a few students were only blogging on the private forum so imagine more celebrating behind the scenes.)

Martha Atkins, Noble Notes

Danielle Miller, We Interrupt This Business…

Audrey Wilson Andrysick, The One Question That Changes Everything

Jane Finch, Deep Tweets From the Avian Underground

Susan, McDiarmid, This One Practice Could Change Your Life

Kellie Walker, 14 Things My Dogs Taught Me About Managing Clients

Julie Holmes, An Eye Doctor’s Guide to Web Design

Debra Hori, What Parents Know That a Diagnosis Can’t Tell Us

Cathy Norris, It Started Early

Maryna Smuts, Message From a Tree

Congratulations, Bloggers! May you always feel drawn to the eye of the wind.

Related posts:

1. Catching Lightning Bugs

We have a window next to our front door with a crack in it. It started out as a tiny crack, and when my husband first noticed it, he said “I should fix that window.” I try to stay out of home maintenance (much like he doesn’t install printers or configure backup drives) so I nodded “Yeah, sure.”

A few months later, the crack was a bit longer. A few years later, the crack is much longer. The glass functions; it’s not drafty or anything. But it’s a crack. In our front window.

What would it take to fix the crack? About 6 hours and maybe $30: some research online about how to do it, a trip to the home improvement store for supplies and probably at least one new tool, and the time and energy to actually implement the fix.

Or… we could call the neighborhood handyman or google for a repair service. It might end up costing two or three times as much in dollars but far less time and energy.

The real reason that window hasn’t been fixed yet isn’t time or money: we don’t really think about the crack anymore. We’re so used to it that neither of us really notices it until we’re about to have guests or we’re (read: he’s) washing windows for the Spring.

When you own a home (or anything with lots of complicated pieces to it), there is always something with a crack in it. Your online presence is no different. It’s so easy to create a web site now – or a Twitter profile or a Facebook business page – that we tend to set it and forget it.

Then you hear from someone: “I sent someone to your site but they weren’t really sure what you do.” This just happened to me! I struggle as much as the next person with this issue. And I thought about my cracks. The bits that I just stop noticing until the guests are on their way over. And then it’s really too late to implement the fix that I know would improve the situation.

So please don’t feel bad if you recognize yourself in this, too. We all have cracks and always will. I call it “presence blindness.” When we do start noticing all the cracks, it’s sometimes hard to know where to begin.

But here’s the good news: you really can break it down into manageable bits so that you can start fixing those cracks, ever so slowly but ever so effectively. Think of it as annual spring cleaning.

Make that list of cracks and start ticking through them, even one per week – or hire the handyman/copywriter/graphic designer/photographer who can help you spruce up more quickly. These things will pay off fast!

Still feeling overwhelmed? Break it down into just three things:

1. Assess what the crack is.
2. Make a plan to fix it.
3. Implement the fix and celebrate your progress.

Here’s a checklist to help you spruce up your whole website.

• Make a list of your site’s pages.
  Download the spreadsheet to give you a jumpstart on identifying key pages on your website, e.g. Home, About, Services, FAQ, Testimonials, Contact.
   
• Review your text.
  Read it carefully. Is it up to date? Is it tightly focused so that visitors can clearly know what you can help them with? Is it formatted in a way that is friendly for online readers?
   
• Check your images.
  Is your personal photo up to date? Does it still look like the real you? Are the other graphics on your pages consistently branded with your color palette and strong thematic elements?
   
• Assess your conversion strategy.
  Every page can benefit from having a call to action: an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter, an offer, a freebie, whatever works in the context of the page. Don’t make visitors guess about what to do next; make it easy for them to stay connected with you.
   
• Drill down on easily neglected spots.
  Check your things like your copyright and your legal pages. An out of date copyright notice can telegraph “out of business.”
   
• Step back and look at the bigger picture and flow of your site and your brand.
  What about your navigation? Your freebies? Are things coherent with how you want to be known?

For each crack you find, just record it at first. Then think about how you want to fix it or get help with it. The trick is to NOT get overwhelmed by the volume but to start. If you’re not sure where to start, begin with your home page, then services, then your about page. Those are the three that are usually the most brittle in my experience. The spreadsheet will help you enormously by breaking it down into small chunks that you can assess with less risk of feeling overwhelmed.

If you’re really stuck, and especially if you’re unsure about how to fix things, ask a friend who is online marketing savvy to lend their eye or hire someone who can help you with the assessment.

Then DO celebrate as you start fixing your cracks. You’ll be feeling great next time guests drop by.

Did I miss any types of cracks? Please let me know in the comments and I’ll keep updating the checklist online. If you have questions about how to do this assessment or making a plan for fixing the cracks, I’d love to discuss that in the comments, too.

image credit: uberculture

Related posts:

1. How to Survive the Coming Info-Tsunami

When I ask clients what they do, especially clients who are coaches, they often reply with if-Eckhart-and-Oprah-had-a-baby-it-would-talk-like-this answers. You’ve heard them, too:

“I help people find their best life.”

“I help people live to their full potential.”

“I help people find their purpose.”

Noble goals to be sure. But… that’s not how people (i.e., your potential clients) think in the real world of “get along with the boss, earn some money, raise kids, take care of parents,  lose some weight, decide what to cook for dinner, and plan a fun-filled, memory-making summer vacation.”

If you are struggling to earn a living as a coach, there is a good chance that what you are selling is not instantly definable. How does one find one’s best life? Here’s the problem: bright shiny goals like “best life” and “full potential” always feel a little out of reach, no matter how great one’s life is.

Here’s something you need to know. Bright and shiny equals slick and hard to stick. Make your offers like Velcro for your potential clients: easy and painless to stick to. Every little problem that you can name and address is like the hook and loop that makes Velcro so powerful, even in small strips.

Want to discover your Velcro offers? Ask this: What stands between my client and a better life? What are the problems that are making her life less than wonderful? How can you speak directly to those problems and offer specific programs that lead to concrete results?

Consider Heather, a coach who wants to “help people live empowered lives.” She is a great coach and her clients love her – she just wishes there were more of them! But “empowered lives” isn’t a need that her clients recognized in their own day-to-day situations. Why? Turns out the real source of disempowerment for many of her clients was that they don’t know how to set strong boundaries in relationships. But “boundaries” is still a high concept phrase. Why aren’t they setting strong boundaries?  Because they want people to like them. What problems in their lives are showing up because they want people to like them so much that they aren’t setting boundaries? Over and over again, Heather hears comments like these from her clients and prospects:

“People are taking advantage of me.”

“I can’t seem to get everything done.”

“I’m overwhelmed.”

“I feel burned out.”

“Whatever I do, people around me never seem satisfied.”

Imagine if Heather offered a monthly free call and promoted it with topics like these.

1. “How To Stop Being Taken Advantage Of” (content: set boundaries)
2. “Get More Done With Just One Word” (content: learn to say no)
3. “Overcoming Overwhelmed” (content: discerning what is important vs. what is urgent)
4. “How to Light Up Your Life Even If You Feel Completely Burned Out” (content: recognizing energy drains)
5. “How to Deal With People Who Are Hard to Please” (content: letting go of pleasing everyone and energy tactics for calming relationships)

The topics are highly relatable and attractive for her ideal clients. The conceptual coaching content is still an essential part of each offer; it’s just not the theme. The topic is the Velcro hook, and the content is the loop. Together they attract clients who stick.

Imagine how much Heather’s listeners could benefit from these calls! Heck, I could benefit from several of these calls!  Don’t you think some of her participants would then like to continue in a supportive group, pursue personal coaching, or would at least think to recommend Heather when they hear friends mention similar problems?

As a coach you probably have nothing but optimism that your clients can find their best lives. That’s essential if you are in the business of supporting people! Your marketing will be more effective if you apply your optimism to sticky goals that are specific. Potential clients can intuitively sense that “best” is not immediately attainable (or, on some level, they don’t believe that they are worthy of “best”). You’re swimming upstream trying to convince them to pursue slick goals – and all that struggle will wear you out before you can ever get the traction that leads to those über-valuable referrals from happy clients. Potential clients are much more willing to invest in addressing problems that are more urgent than “best life” – and more immediately satisfying.

Want to play with some hooks and loops in the comments? Pick a small problem that you know your clients have. Share it in the comments and let’s discuss how you could create Velcro offers that will attract clients who stick.

We’ve all seen the productivity suggestion “Do What Matters.” Can’t argue with that one.

But if you’re a person who sees the possibilities in everything, then suddenly everything seems to matter.

Here’s a filter you might try instead: stop polishing poop.

We all do it, messing around with things that we know aren’t exactly fresh and aren’t ever going to be.

Did that make you feel relieved or just a bit anxious? If you’re relieved, then it’s probably because you instantly recognize the poop in your catalog of activities with procrastination and distraction at the top of the list. Checking email every 30 minutes or popping by Facebook every time you think about working on your blog post are both flagrantly fragrant examples.

But what if you’re working on something, polishing away, and you’re just not sure if it’s poop or not? That desire for certainty is a huge crusher for so many of the creative entrepreneurs that I know.

Here are some ways that I separate the poop from the pearls.

Create – and finish! – one big thing at a time.
This one’s hard for me, really hard, because I like to have multiple projects going at once. But when I have too many projects going on at once, they all slow done and, inevitably none of them get done. When I go months at a time without a big thing getting done, then the huge monster of self-doubt creeps in and starts to call all my little simmering pots poop, even if they really aren’t.

Have creative partners who tell you the truth.
I’m not saying that your partners will always be right but having trusted colleagues who believe in you and who will lovingly argue with you is invaluable. That mutual trust and faith in each other will liberate you to flush the poop quicker than almost anything that I know. This doesn’t mean you can stay in your Creative Lab forever, debating away the time that your project could be earning or gaining traction. Treat your creative discussions like the Supreme Court: very limited time for arguments, then make a judgment and move on.

Let the market speak.
I won’t lie: this is the hardest one of all for me. Shipping. Releasing. Putting it out there. Holding your nose and jumping in the deep end. Tipping from dreaming and creating into delivering. It feels raw, it’s scary, and it hasn’t gotten easier for me. Yes, the mechanics of production get easier with practice (hallelujah!) but the emotional part of putting my pearl on the platter and hoping it’s not poop, well, that’s just excruciating. The only way I know to make delivering easier is this: I trust my creative self. Whatever happens with the project I’m releasing now, I keep reminding myself that there is another one in the lab that is queued up next.

I’ve got more ideas but I’d love to hear yours in the comments first. How do you stop polishing poop?

Related posts:

1. How To Stop Zapping Your Brain For Good
2. Stop The Clock

During a conference I attended recently, the audience was asked to consider “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”

This question always makes me feel like my brain has a kink in it. I know it’s meant to be expansive and invite people to possibility. But it doesn’t do that for me. Maybe it’s because I wrestled with being a “good girl” and avoiding failure at all cost earlier in my life.

I have wasted a lot of time by spending so much energy on avoiding failure. After studying my own relationship with failure, I learned to embrace it as the fastest possible way to learn.

Of course I don’t set out to fail but I’ve learned by failing and surviving that failure is an unavoidable part of what ultimately becomes success. When we do hard things, when we do big things, we will encounter failure. It’s the nature of execution: things don’t go as planned. Introducing the idea that failure isn’t possible seems to reinforce the belief that failure is bad or even limiting.

It’s not. Especially if you learn to bounce.

The question that is much more compelling to me these days is this:

What would you do if you knew there were no shortcuts?

What magic “offer” would you not buy? What infoproduct would say no to? What blog post would you finally write? What career would you embark on?

What great mountain of work and significance would you start steadily climbing?

If you knew failure, large and small, was around every corner but that you already have the mettle that you need to bounce back every time that you meet it, what would you do?

Because you do. You’ve got that strength. And, really, there aren’t any shortcuts except to start. Now.

image credit: van Ort

Related posts:

1. I Will Fail.
2. It’s Time to Push

A friend gave me Richard Rohr’s book, Everything Belongs, some time ago and recommended it as a fellow spiritual pilgrim. It’s been near the top of my to-read stack ever since. When I finally cracked it open, the very opening grabbed me: “One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.” I don’t think Richard ever worked in branding but I could not have come up with a better cue for helping you discover something very important about your brand.

What are you hiding in your Innocence?

What are you avoiding about yourself in your Innocence?

If you surrendered that Innocence, how might you embrace the power of your Mystery?

For me, it was my archetypal Destroyer. I made myself small and hid from the power of the Destroyer because I feared that it would only translate into anger and loss of control. When I finally confronted that fear, the power of creative destruction was freed, too. My work now thrives on knowing what can be edited out and what can be vaporized to make room for what is Essence.

Seeing clients release their innocence never fails to amaze me. The archetype of the Thief becomes the Jewel Thief that can pluck treasures from the most hidden of emotional spaces. The archetype of the Victim becomes a soaring advocate for anti-bullying programs. The archetype of the Slave runs an underground railroad for those who want to release themselves from the bondage of their past. The archetype of the Hedonist is transformed from hidden indulgence into laying a feast in her relationships.

Each one of those people was uncomfortable, or worse, when she recognized the archetypal pattern she had been innocently ignoring in her life. Yes, we pay with our innocence. But what we gain is an integrated and rich view of all that we have to offer.

How are you being called from Innocence to Mystery?

Related posts:

1. You Don’t Have To Put On the Red Light
2. Whose Power Cord Are You Using?
3. Negotiating Between Truth and Power

Think back to when you were about nine years old, running around on the school playground. Who would you rather have played with? The kid who was piling up rocks to see how big a pile she could make or the kid who was inviting others to play kickball or offering you the other end of the jump rope so that you could swing it and chant for others to jump in?

Cinderella
Dressed in yella
Went upstairs to kiss her fella

As coaches increasingly use the internet to market services, it’s very tempting for us to try old school internet marketing techniques. You know the ones. They sound like magic because they promise that you can just grow your list, and money will rain down upon you. The techniques are all about targets, squeeze pages, and pop-ups, to name a few.

Ouch, please stop
If it all sounds pretty impersonal, cult-ish or even violent, well, it is. The human factor is missing. Where is the empathy? Where is the connection? Isn’t that what coaching is built upon?

To put it another way, here’s how I react when I’m subjected to the commonly used list building tactics:

If you call me a target, I think you want to hurt me.

If you put me through a squeeze page, I’m pretty sure you’re not about to kiss me like you mean it.

If you force me to get rid of a pop-up, you’ve just wasted my time and attention. And I can’t get that back. Ergo, I’m probably a little pissed right when you were about to show me something I would have cared to see.

My observation is that the people who push those tactics the hardest are ultimately selling you an impersonal product, including their own “make money fast” kinds of products. They may be helping you appeal to a desperate, hit-and-run market, but they are not helping you appeal to the kind of market that will want to work with you again and again.

Instead of piling up rocks…
Here’s where the “grow your list, first and foremost” strategy falls apart for coaches: it doesn’t recognize the most valuable part of what we offer. To successfully grow your practice, it’s vital that you understand what you are offering that is most valuable and why.

What is most valuable to you AND to your prospective clients?

• It’s not an ebook.
• It’s not an affiliate link to a product on Amazon or Clickbank.
• It’s not a coach-in-a-box commodity-style program.
• It’s not a set of mp3 recordings that make up a class.

Yet, those are the things that mega-list building strategies are intended to sell.

What is most valuable to growing your practice?

It’s your relationships. And, frankly, you can’t sell a relationship or assume a relationship is implied in being part of a list. Relationships are built on trust and respect, which are pretty hard to hang a price tag on.

I had to learn the hard way
Did I always eschew list building as a primary tactic? No, I drank the Kool-Aid at one point – for a very short while. But it quickly became clear to me that it didn’t work. I’m not saying the techniques to acquire names on a mailing list don’t technically work; they can. But they often come with a price of audience frustration, resentment, and lack of trust – and I didn’t like how I felt when I knew that I was putting my desire for a larger list ahead of my respect for readers and site visitors. Obsession with list building didn’t help me earn more money or build the practice I have now in which I put relationships far ahead of targets.

Take a deep breath: you don’t need a big list to earn a great living. You’re off the hook.

Want proof?
One coach I know built a $100,000+ per year businesses with fewer than 200 people on her list. How? She offered something people were desperate to learn more about, and her coaching was powerful. Her audience couldn’t wait for her to offer the next thing that was uniquely helpful for their particular problem. Personally, I have filled a class that generated over $8000 in revenue (more than once) with a mailing list of less than 400 names – and fewer than 200 people were typically opening the emails that I was sending. How? Credibility and referrals. I started it as a small pilot course, and I kept improving it over time. Now former students are eager to share their results with others and recommend that their colleagues try it, too.

Sidebar: Email marketing as a strategy is struggling in every market, not just coaching. Recipients have newsletter fatigue. Spam is rampant, and there is a good chance that the email you send to your list will be treated like spam, even if it’s not. Open rates are stagnant. Click-through rates are shockingly low. More and more people are filtering subscriptions out of their inboxes with systems filters or just by giving fake or infrequently-checked addresses when they opt in. Services like Gmail’s Priority Inbox are used more widely, and they are pushing broadcast email out of the main attention zone. If you like data, check out this metrics report.

I don’t share all of this to be a downer about email. In fact, I’m anything but. I do maintain an email list and I spend a significant amount of time on it each week to deliver subscriber-only content. I do offer a free guidebook as a bonus incentive for people to receive my newsletter, and nothing makes me happier than when someone says that guidebook helped her marketing feel easier than ever.

If you are a subscriber to my newsletter, I value you. The flesh and blood, never enough time for everything you want to do, just give me the helpful bits you. I am committed to always learning more about what you want and how to make my weekly newsletter more valuable for you. If you have feedback for me on this, please contact me. You’ll get a personal reply.

Ask a better question
I am not saying that having a large list is a bad thing. People who offer value often do have large lists because they have earned those subscribers. I just think “how to build a huge list” is the wrong focus. A better question is “How do I offer value to build an engaged audience based on trust?” Trust and engagement, while harder to measure, are so much more significant than the chiclet count of your list.

Trust tactics?
Is there such a thing as “tactics” for enriching trust and engagement? Yes, I believe so, even if they don’t feel particularly tactical. Most of them are about being generous. Giving way, way more than you are taking. Focused content. Valuable resources. Standing for something that your audience can relate to. Noticing what your people are struggling with and offering specific insight. Personal contact. Building relationships with others who share a similar audience and who share a generosity mindset. Sincere interaction. Helping people. Think “invite” not “get.”

I’m handing you the other end of that jump rope. I want to be part of a thriving playground where there is room for everyone to play, including those who will surely disagree strongly with what I believe about list building. Let’s swing and jump.

image credit: foxtongue

About a year before I finished graduate school, my dissertation advisor, Dr. Barnsley, had his annual Spring Riemann Sheet Croquet Party at his house. For math geeks it was quite the event, whacking the croquet ball up and down the hills of his front yard with his own bizarrely configured spiral-ish croquet course, all with a backdrop of an English country-style buffet.

I was completely in the weeds, in the croquet match and on my dissertation about fractal geometry. I was stuck and struggling to write even the first chapter. I kept adding to the software that was the demonstration vehicle for my dissertation, but I was completely lost on committing to a theorem and a proof. A doctoral dissertation must make at least one original contribution to the body of knowledge, and my original idea well felt utterly dry. Writing software wasn’t going to get me a diploma; I simply had to work out that original idea and prove it in a mathematically rigorous way.

My advisor strolled up to me during the party and asked knowingly, “Laurie, what’s going on with your proof?” I felt sick, and I knew it wasn’t from the tomatoes in chervil cream. We had talked about the theorem a few weeks earlier, and I really hadn’t touched it since. Hanging out in the computer lab felt so much safer.

“Uh…” Then, wincing. I didn’t even have words for how stuck I was.

Dr. Barnsley said with complete conviction, “Laurie, you have got to stop sharpening your pencil.”

I was confused. I was a computer geek. I barely owned a pencil.

“Laurie, all of this coding and lab time is just pencil sharpening. You have plenty of code. The system works. It doesn’t need to be refined or polished anymore.

Sharpening your pencil will never add a word to your dissertation. THAT is what you need to graduate.”

He was right. I was sharpening my pencil. My beloved keyboard of a pencil. I worked in a computer lab with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of state of the art computer graphics gear. All of it was an enormous, bright, shiny pencil.

I see lots and lots of pencil sharpening when people start new businesses, and sometimes my favorite topic, branding, just gives them a whole new pencil to go wild with. They tweak their logos, they change their web themes, they hire a new designer, they obsess over business cards, and on and on.

The implementation of branding can be a seductive – and expensive – pencil.

If you’re just getting started (or maybe you’re still in your first year or two), here’s what you need to know:

Quit sharpening your pencil.

Because…

You don’t need a fancier web site.

You don’t need a “badass” designer (truly, I loathe that word), especially if the designer’s goal is to show off design tricks and not your core strengths.

You don’t need another new logo.

You don’t need to rewrite your about page again.

You don’t have to have a “freebie” to start signing people up on your mailing list.

You don’t even have to have a mailing list!

And you sure as hell don’t need to hire an expensive marketing guru who is more interested in her bottom-line than yours. Her formula that will bring you six figures in six months? Forget it. It will alienate the people who truly need you – and those who might even like to help you. Just be you and build your business in a way that you can sustain it and create a reputation that is as solid as you are.

• Know who you are at your core so that you can build offers around your core strengths.
• Know what you have to offer that is so valuable that will people will joyfully spend their hard-earned money to get it and feel good about doing so.
• Know what the people you want to work with want. Not need, want. When you understand their desires, you can speak their language and offer them things that are transformative.

• A simple WordPress site that you can learn to manage on your own. At least know how to update the content on a page, add a photo, and create a blog post.
• A WordPress theme that can grow with you. Start with something from WooThemes or Studiopress if you’re looking for solid design that will help you simplify your stylistic decision making. (Those are affiliate links, by the way.)
• Two colors and one “pop” color that you use as your palette in a very disciplined way.
• A banner graphic for the top of your website. You can create your own in software you probably already have (even Powerpoint!) or take a run at it with someone on Fiverr for just five bucks.
• One social media platform that feels fun for you and is the place where your ideal clients are likely to hang out. Don’t worry about being everywhere. Being consistent and engaged in one space is way more valuable when you are getting started.

• A great photographer who will capture the essence of you in a photo that you can use all over the web. I recommend Clint Alexander. If you’re not in Atlanta, fly here to work with him or fly him to you. He’s that good.
• A graphic designer – but only after you’ve worked with at least ten clients, even if they are pro bono clients. I deeply believe that it takes at least that many engagements to start to get clarity on what you love doing and are meant to do . Then you can start to understand what the visual language of your brand should be. I love Shea McGuier and Rick Brozek but I urge you to consider holding off on this investment until you have substantial clarity about your strengths as a provider and your offers.
• A tech person who has got your back. Rob Granholm is the Baby Jesus in my book because he walks on water ever since he rescued my site from total meltdown. If you already have a site, consider his maintenance and backup plan (backup is essential!) – and he’s a wonderful, flexible developer. Dawud Miracle also has a new hosting service that includes all your WordPress updates and support. He’s got amazing package offers, too, if you’re just starting out with your development.

What’s also valuable?
Someone to hold you accountable and help you out of the weeds. Of course, I’m partial to coaching for this but you can absolutely do it with a buddy, a mentoring group or committed we’re-all-in-this-together mastermind partners. Who could be the equivalent of your dissertation advisor??

Back on the croquet course, Dr. Barnsley continued to ask me a few compassionately leading questions so that I could see how to move from theorem to proof.

I did finally put down my pencil in graduate school. I locked myself in a spare bedroom for about three months and wrote and rewrote until I was sick of myself and about to succumb from too much Diet Coke and Vietnamese pho takeout, because it was all my shredded stomach lining could tolerate. The theorem? It’s about an obscure algorithm for magnification of fractal objects. Not mind blowing but sufficiently original to earn the golden ring. Occasionally, I still get a postcard from a remote part of the world, asking for a copy of my dissertation. And I wonder if that person is working on something new and original or just pencil sharpening.

I keep my copy of my dissertation next to the big atomic clock in my office to remind me that, while time passes ever more quickly, I really do know how to finish things. I no longer treasure it for the years of research and work that went into it. Now it’s just a vital reminder that if I’ll just stop sharpening my pencil, significant work will come to life and move me along my path.

Are you ready to stop sharpening your pencil? How can I help? Bring it to the comments and let’s start scribbling the stuff that you need to grow your business.