• The Cheerleader
  When the going gets tough, this is the person to say "You’re doing great!" and "You’re almost there!" Starting a business is long and hard work where it is easy to get down on yourself, so it’s important to have someone to help you see the good in yourself and your efforts.
• The Pro
  Starting a business is like a crash course in everything—the amount of information you learn in the first year is just astounding. This is why you need an experienced business mentor who can talk you through the rough parts and offer advice that worked for him/her in that situation.
• The Realist
  When you start thinking that fleece sweaters for cats are a great addition to your summer lineup in your Scottsdale, AZ clothing store, you need someone to give you an honest opinion of just how badly you’re screwing up. Entrepreneurship should not happen in a bubble—consider that "tell it like it is" friend to be your first stop in market research for ideas that belong on the cutting room for. Business isn’t supposed to be nice!
• The Networker
  Who do you know that seems to know everyone? That’s the person who will find you help when you need it and introduce you to all the key people you need to know.
• The Geek
  Even a geek like me can use a bigger geek on her side. The geek is someone to call when you have a technical question or you’re learning something that is a little over your head—someone to explain complicated technology in terms you can understand or to give you the lowdown on what’s the next big thing that can help your business.

Anyone you’d like to add to this list, or any thanks you’d like to give to your own entrepreneurial team? Post them in the comments below!

Share the Love

Everyone loves a compliment. Everyone in business loves a glowing and public compliment! This is your chance to spread some love around this Friday and take some time to write all your friends and contacts a review on LinkedIn. This is a good idea because:

• It makes people feel good.
• It makes you feel good.
• It expands your network by putting your name on other people’s lists.
• It makes you the person that people want to work with, because they want glowing reviews too!
• It is good business karma—it will come back to you someday.
• It gets a conversation started between you and people that you, perhaps, haven’t seen in a while.

Procedure

What are you waiting for? It’s simple. You just:

• Log in to LinkedIn.
• Click on the top tab that says "My Contacts".
• Scan your list and find the people that you are qualified to give reviews of.
• Click on each one, and then click on the top right link that says "Recommend this person" to give them a review.

Guidelines

I do want to offer some guidelines about writing a good review on someone’s profile so that you can use this time wisely. First of all, don’t write anything negative. This is bad karma! If you have a problem with someone, speak to them directly. Secondly, keep it professional. This guy was the best kegstander of the class of 97! is not a good review. Thirdly, be specific. You should be only reviewing people that you know well enough to properly recommend, so be specific in your review. Was the person always on time? Does she have good communication skills? Is he a very talented artist? Those are all perfect things to mention.

Additional Resources

For more things to do with LinkedIn, see Guy Kawasaki’s post, Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn.

Reader Questions

Do you have a profile on LinkedIn? How are you using LinkedIn for your business? Did you try today’s activity?

Why Have Strategic Business Partners?

Officially, we (NHG Consulting) do have some strategic partners listed on our website. While there are probably many reasons to have strategic partners when you are a small business, for us they can be broken up into these two categories:

• Companies that can help us. What do I need to finish this project or attract this new client?
  We are a very small company with limited time and resources. When a larger project comes along, we bring in contractors from other companies (such as pure coders, viral marketing gurus, and marketing campaign managers) to complete the product.
• Companies that can help our clients. What does my client need to complete their startup or expand their capabilities?
  For example, we provide the technology needed to streamline your company’s sales process, but we don’t teach sales. So we partner with companies that provide quality sales training or that write sales training materials. This gives our clients extra value, because we can refer them to someone who can complete their needs.

Mark Howell provides another viewpoint for strategic partnerships: strategic marketing helps you in your niche. Essentially, the idea is to do what you do best, and to find other people that can round out your services by doing what they do best. Wesley Atkins adds that partnerships allow you to share leads and create package deals. For example, we partner with an SEO company to provide comprehensive SEO solutions when needed. This allows us to concentrate on what we like to do best, which is working on the site, while the other company helps us to provide the complete solution.

Networking to Find Partnership

How do you find partnerships? Through networking! As a related side note, I want to address asking for help in networking situations. The purpose of asking for help is to put others in the position of giving. When you ask for help and someone else has the information needed, it makes that person feel good for helping and deepens the connection of both parties. This is why eWomen networking is founded on giving first, and why everyone has to ask for help in their introduction speeches—it is the foundation for relationship building as a business model. Not asking for help is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in networking!

Additional Resources

• Building Partnerships
• MarketingSalad Online Networking

OK you say, but how do I get through an entire session without talking? The answer is simple. You follow these steps:

1. Ask a question.
2. Be quiet.
3. Listen actively and carefully.
4. Pick something the other person said, and ask them a question that allows them to elaborate further on the topic.

And that’s it! Ask, listen, repeat – it’s all you need to know. People in small businesses are usually very passionate entrepreneurs. Passionate people love to talk about that which they are passionate about! It’s really that simple. When you combine the active listening with the asking, it makes the people you meet feel special that you took the time to hear their story.

I did leave out one part though, and this is important. When the person is done, offer something. Give them some piece of you. It could be a suggestion, a potential solution to one of their current difficulties, a bit of wisdom, or even just a vote of "hey, that’s a very original idea and I like it!" Show the other person you care by offering a small token of yourself that will help them along the way to success, and they will return the favor when you need some help as well.

Link: Yahoo column: Networking for people who hate it

The Art of Schmoozing by Guy Kawasaki

Somewhere halfway down the page is #6 on his list: Follow up. And he is right, hardly anyone ever follows up. I have been to a few of these types of events now, and even though I hand out many business cards, I rarely get a call from someone to talk further. But what does happen is that I follow up with them, and in return I get a warm response thanking me for my note and asking me for coffee. I may not get the sale every time, but what I do get is contact: leads, energy, referrals, ideas, avenues, whatever the case may be. I take the relationship further than just a one-time shot.

So how do I follow up? I send a personal, hand-written note. I have experimented with all sorts of notes – nice blank cards from a stationary store, a piece of paper with my letterhead, something funny if I made a real connection with the person. Right now I’m sending out handwritten notes on these cards, which we made in-house:

Now you don’t need something fancy, but if you have it, it’s a nice branding tool. What you need is something personal. Like Guy Kawasaki, you don’t want the recipient to think you are sending them some kind of canned mass-mailing message. When you meet the person, jot down a note about them on the back of their card so that when you follow up, you can mention something personal about them. It makes the recipient feel special and remembered. I am pretty good with names and faces, so this comes easy to me – if you are not, perhaps you should have a small notepad with you to take notes while you are at an event.

The follow-up is also not the time to sell your services, unless the person you talked with asked you to send them more information. It is the time to say how great it was to meet them, what interests you about their business, how you might help them, perhaps an action item like "Let’s meet for coffee!", and whether or not you will be at the next meeting.

Every time I go to an event or meet with someone, I set aside time in my calendar to follow-up with the people I meet. I have gone in many great directions thanks to follow-ups. If you are spending your time and money to meet new people, you must also spend the time to follow up. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time and money in the first place. As the saying goes, "Your Fortune is in the Follow Up!"

What is online networking? It is when you join an online community through blogs, forums and discussions to make new business contacts. This is an excellent solution for busy entrepreneurs to connect with other like-minded professionals all over the world without the time commitment and expenses associated with in-person networking.

How do you get started? First you will need to find a community that is talking about things that interest you. There are many communities to choose from, so if you have a limited amount of time it is best to find a few that interest you the most. To get you started, here are a few good communities to check out:

• The StartupNation Community. This site is full of new entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners who are willing to share their experiences to help you make your venture a success.
• Ryze. This site is a connection-based business networking site. All of the connections are done behind the password-protected gateway – which is good and bad. (I’ll explain that more below.) Some people swear by this site, and some people don’t find much use for it.
• LinkedIn. Like Ryze, LinkedIn is connection-based, but it is not behind a password-protected gateway … unless you request it to be. (You can make portions of your profile private.) LinkedIn is great for making connections to people you previously worked with or went to school with as well.
• WAHM.com. There are many sites for work-at-home professionals, but I happened to choose this one because I am a work-at-home-mom myself. You can also try Jammies at Work Forum, Work at Home Network Forum, or IdeaCafe CyberSchmooze.

What is the next step? Once you have found a few communities, click around to get a feel for the flow and tone of the site. Read a few posts to see if the members of the community interest you. If you like what you are seeing, make a username and jump right in!

CAUTION!! Most people use their business names on these sites because they are trying to make new business contacts. Remember that most of these sites are also indexed by Google so what you say on these sites, using your business name, can be seen by anyone. Be careful what you say, and always be polite! The good side to this is that by participating in networking sites, you are increasing the inbound links to your site, and thereby increasing your Google rank. Add your website URL to your signature on all your posts, and you’ll watch your ranking go up and up! As an example, "nhgconsulting.com" gets 43 hits on Google, my married name gets 343 hits, and my maiden name gets 43 hits. Some of these links go as far back as 7-8 years ago – think about that before you post!

In no specific order, here are your business card tips:

1. Only print on one side. When you do networking, it is often helpful to jot down a note on the back of your card and hand it to someone, or to record some notes on the back of their card. About 80% of the cards I hand out have my handwriting on the back to make it personal and memorable – it’s usually a tip for them based on our conversation or a request for a telecoffee. If your card has print on both sides, this strategy will not work.

2. Do not get glossy on both sides, or put a magnetic backing on every card. Glossy cards are impossible to write on. (Glossy on one side would be OK if it works for your design.) Magnetic cards should not be used at networking events, because the last thing I need is for you to be demagnetizing my hard drive or my credit cards when your card gets placed in my briefcase. That is not a good way to make a first impression!

3. Include a short description of your business or services. I recently asked a woman at a networking event for her card because I thought what she was saying about her business was very interesting. When I got home and looked at her card, I could not remember what she did and her card was no help as it only contained a vague tagline and no website address. The standard business card with company logo, name, and contact info is not very useful in networking. What would be useful is a card with your company logo, name, contact info, and products/services/specials.

4. Stay away from cursive fonts unless it is crucial to your branding. Many business cards have 6- to 9-pt fonts. At that size, cursive writing and special fonts are often very hard to read.

5. Do not make nonstandard-sized cards. Many people have card cases, card wallets, or other means of storing and organizing their cards. Your oversized card is eye-catching … but it doesn’t fit into any of these filing methods and will probably get tossed somewhere out of sight. I often carry some of my clients’ or colleagues’ cards in my wallet in case I want to make a referral to someone I am talking to. If your card is oversized or otherwise too large, it’s not going to fit in my wallet and I’m not going to hand it out!

So thanks to Susan Grant from Baja Nights for this piece of art to take to all my functions!