Small Business Owners: Don't Try This at Home. For Professionals Only.

Did you go to Business School? Get your MBA? Did you even take marketing classes in undergrad school? Have you held a marketing position with a professional somewhere else before you opened or purchased your own business? Have you read at least five marketing books this last year? Ever? Do you spend five or more hours a week studying marketing to stay up to date? Are you generating some of your understanding of how to spend scarce marketing dollars and time based on knowledge of how others are doing?

NOT ME!

Over the past month or so, I have given you a foundational class in small business marketing via http://www.Help4SmallBusiness.blogspot.com.  I'm guessing it would take you about 2 hours to read.  Probably 60 pages maximum if it were in a printed book.  These basics are not some wild eyed ideas of a professor who has never actually done the work.  They are not new, untested theories or the latest fad.  These are the basics that come from my 40 years of experience starting and running small businesses, 35 years of writing and speaking on small business, four years of consulting with small businesses, and 7 years of education with degrees in psychology and law from UCLA. 

It is all free for the taking.  And starting tomorrow, I will be adding another 71 posts over the next three months which will be about 150 more pages if in a book.  In those pages I will go beyond those basics and fundamentals into the details of such things as how to stage an event, what matters in a website, how to motivate salesmen, and how to launch a new product.  All free.  Just your time. 

If you decide to read the foundational 30 posts, and if you should decide to apply most of it to your business, you will be prepared to kick your business up a notch.  After a few months of application you will be really ready to do the details that follow in a way that will bring you the income you deserve for the time and energy and risk and sacrifice that you make to open those doors each morning. 

I know you.  I have spent my entire career meeting, befriending, helping, and being helped by guys and gals just like you.  Most were bike shop owners or locksmiths.  Some hardware stores and restaurants.  But we entrepreneurial types are more alike than different.  One thing we have in common is that we will overcome our lack of knowledge or experience and find a way to make our companies work.  But far too many of you are making $60,000 or $80,000 in the good years and not nearly that in the soft years. 

There is no reason that this has to be the case.  Read these materials.  Start putting the ideas into practice.  If it isn't your cup of tea to be a professional marketer, call me.  I am affordable and approachable.  I answer the phone.  Make me your part time VP of Marketing. 

No matter what, subscribe to my blog, Google+, and YouTube channel.  Connect with me on Linked in.  Let's get your company going.  DIY or do it with me.  Either way I'm excited about your future success.