I’m Getting Schooled in Asking For Help: On Opening a Downtown Business
I love to go it on my own. Be in control. Take all the credit.
It saves me from having to depend on anyone. Which is just a fancy way of saying no one is depending on me.
It also saves me from having to manage anyone. Which is also just a fancy way of saying I’m afraid to lead.
Growing my business over the last 5 years has meant that I’ve slowly pulled back the layers of resistance in asking for help, collaborating with others, and forming a team. I’ve run into roadblocks, confronted frustration, and finally opened up to getting the support I needed.
But nothing has cracked me as wide open as the process of opening a downtown, brick & mortar business.
This week, I’m opening the doors on a mini-coworking space in Astoria, OR, called CoCommercial. There will be a core group of 8 members, a wider network of day users, and a community full of workshop leaders & event goers.
It’s a giant step toward “we” and away from “me.”
Opening the space has required sharing my vision and asking for what I want from numerous people. I’ve had to negotiate the lease, get neighboring businesses on board, and hire local contractors. I’ve had to talk with my partner–an extremely vulnerable discussion–about helping with the initial phase of workshop bookings. And I’ve made difficult decisions about who & what I would invest in.
This would have all been impossible for me 5 years ago. Maybe even 2 years ago. And not just because I wouldn’t have had the money or the right location then. But because I couldn’t see past my desire to be on my own and in control.
I’ve started to realize that so many of us are drawn to microbusiness because of those two things: the desire to only have ourselves to blame and the desire to have all the control & take all the credit.
Venturing into microbusiness is an important personal lesson in self-reliance, a lesson that so many of us need after breaking free from a world of paychecks, micro-managing managers, and paved roads to “success.” But it’s possible to be self-reliant to a fault.
Once you’ve cleared your own path, are you the only one that can travel it?
So many opportunities have been lost because I’ve been unable to partner with the right people, people who were asking for my partnership. So much time has been wasted because I’ve tried to maintain complete control over every project. So much money has been left on the table because I wouldn’t give up control of systems I had no business managing.
So much goodwill has been squandered because I couldn’t just say “Here’s where I need your help.”
I’ve gotten so much better in the last 2 years. But all signs point to this venture continuing to push me toward a mindset of community/team/network-powered growth. While CoCommercial isn’t designed as a real revenue generator for my business, I believe that the lessons I’m learning and the personal growth I’m experiencing will lead to massive changes in the areas of my business that do generate revenue.
Where I saw brick walls before, I’ll see launching pads.
I wonder if all the microbusiness owners I know, support, and love would break through the same internal barriers, what amazing projects could they complete? What daring initiatives could they put out into the world? What new solutions could they innovate to serve others?
The fact is that community is the greatest resource you have for bringing big ideas to fruition. Forget money, forget infrastructure. Heck, you can even forget your “list” (but I don’t recommend it).
Ask for what you need. Think beyond your own capabilities. Create plans that depend on others.
Pair your idea capital with network capital and watch the return on your investment.
What Coffee Can Teach You About How to Price Your Products & Services
Coffee can cost you 69 cents, $1.29, $3.25, or even $6.99…
…and I’m just talking a simple cup of joe, not a latte or cappuccino.
The same is true of life coaching, web design, weight loss programs, yoga classes, virtual assistance, or any other New Economy service or offer.
Price is relative. Price tells a story. And pricing is a decision to be made, not a hole to fall into.
Coffee can teach us a lot about pricing
How much should a cup of coffee cost? And what does that have to do with how much you should sell your product, app, program, or service for?
The first answer is, it depends. The second answer is, everything.
The price of a cup of coffee is influenced by a lot of factors. And one of the factors that influence it least is the material cost of the beans.
Even expensive coffee beans tend to be relatively “cheap” (with a few notable exceptions).
The factor that influences it most is perhaps the different markets it’s sold in. You can get coffee almost anywhere, and where you get it influences how much you expect to pay.
Grab a 64oz Big Gulp of coffee at a gas station and you might pay 69 cents.
Pick up a 24oz coffee at a fast food chain and you might pay 99 cents.
Sip on a 16oz coffee from a specialty chain and that’ll set you back a little over $2.
Or, sidle up to the brew bar at high-end coffee establishments and that cup of coffee might set you back $5-7 (yes, I’m still talking about brewed coffee, not espresso).
While there is certainly a difference in the cost of the materials, overhead, and labor at these establishments, the price of a cup of coffee is influenced as much by the conversation you share with your barista, the environment of the shop, and the people you expect to meet there.
The same dynamic is at play with digital products and most services. While there are hard costs that influence price, most of the price is subjective and based on many factors that have nothing to do with materials or overhead.
Meaning influences price to a huge degree
The price of coffee is also largely dictated by what the product means to its customers.
Gas station coffee is a necessary evil, the solution to the problem of working too many hours, too early in the morning. Fast food coffee is a convenience, a simple pick-me-up in the middle of a hectic day.
Specialty chain coffee is a predictable luxury. Brew bar coffee is an experience all its own, a ritual, a little slice of heaven for the connoisseur.
If the local specialty shop started charging 69 cents for a cup of coffee, it would be jarring to your consumer mind.
You’d ask, “Why?” and you’d expect an answer about a promotion. If they just exclaimed, “Well, that’s what it costs,” you’d start to wonder, question its quality, wonder about the people running the place.\
If you price your products or services discordantly from what your customers expect to pay, you’ll leave them wondering the same things.
Whether too low or too high, the price of your product is suddenly something that makes people uncomfortable. And uncomfortable people don’t buy.
If your product or service promises a big life change or meaningful transformation, the price should be fit into that context.
To make sure you’re putting your customers at ease with both the experience of your product or service and the price you’re asking them to pay for it, consider these questions:
- What do you want your product or service to mean to your customers?
- How do you want them to experience your product?
- What does your customer expect your product to mean to them?
- How does the set of features you’ve arranged for her add up in her mind?
- What other products, services, or solutions might he be relating to your product?
Pricing is largely a chicken & the egg scenario
And too often, business owners play chicken.
You don’t have to price your products like a gas station prices coffee. You can choose to have a more refined aesthetic, offer a more distinct point of view, cultivate a more demanding clientele, create more favorable positioning–and charge more.
It’s your choice.
Don’t believe that these factors are out of your control. If there is any part of your business that you believe is negatively impacting your ability to set the price you want, take control and change it.
Adjust your brand or positioning, change marketplaces, rework your network, invest in design. Create an experience that really means something to your customers and results in a sustainable, profitable price for your product.
Make your customers comfortable with both the value your business is creating and the price you ask your customers to pay. And then have a cup of coffee.
Being Independent Shouldn’t Mean Being Alone
If I had to choose the key factor that all successful microbusiness owners have in common, it would be that they chose not to be alone in their businesses.
When I started my business, I desperately wanted to be alone. Even while attempting to create a community, build an audience, and exercise my voice, I wanted to keep to myself.
Invitations to coffee left me nauseous. Phone calls went unanswered.
Luckily, on top of wanting desperately to be left alone, I was also just plain desperate. I had no choice. Even then, I could sense that succeeding would mean meeting with, learning from, and collaborating with other people. And so early on, I learned that even as I was still “solo” in my business solo entrepreneurship was a myth.
Too often I see the struggle for independence turn into suffering through loneliness.
Your friends outside the entrepreneurial world don’t understand what you do. Your partner gets tired of hearing about Twitter. Your parents just wish you’d get a real job.
Couple that with fear of failure, the impostor complex, and not knowing where to find your compatriots online, let alone in your local community, and you’ve got the formula for going-it-alone syndrome.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Being independent shouldn’t mean being alone. Click to tweet!
This is one of the messages I’ve been focusing on over the last few years. Whether it’s been my own personal investment in travel & industry events or my desire to put together groups of like-minded entrepreneurs in coaching experiences like 10ThousandFeet, I have sought to bring people together–with each other and with me–to dramatically increase their chances of success.
As a connector & a futurist, I put an extremely high value in creating communities of value so that we can learn from our disparate experiences and put them to good use building the world we want to live in.
I believe we should be actively cultivating relationships that bring us closer to the success we crave. And I believe we could all put more time & intention behind that action.
The next week will see me take two big steps even farther in that direction. I’m rebooting Kick Start Labs, the entrepreneurial community & resource library I founded over a year ago. By the end of the month, I’ll have opened a coworking & workshop space in Astoria, Oregon for the purpose of bringing together the independent workers & thinkers of Northwest Oregon.
I look forward to telling you more about CoCommercial soon. But in the meantime, I hope you’ll consider joining me and over 100 charter Kick Start Labs members to do just that. Not only will you get access to me and this community of just-like-you business owners, but you’ll have access to all the resources I’ve created over the last 3 years plus access to new ones as they are created.
And it’s just $39/month.
Now accepting new members: join today.
What Does Your Product Mean to Your Customers?
Your product isn’t just about filling a need but creating a new source of meaning in your customers’ lives. Beyond that, the connection between what is meaningful to the creators of a brand and what is meaningful to the consumers of its products create something that transcends the transactional.
In his book, Design-Driven Innovation, Roberto Verganti writes, “people do not buy products but meanings.”
Simon Sinek famously asked, “Why do you do what you do?” as a way to position your brand and lead the market. But I find that two more effective questions are “What does your product mean to your business?” and “What does your product mean to your customers?”
When your brand is grounded in meaning, you can create the messaging, merchandising, and marketing that tells a story that customers can really buy into. Click to tweet!
Further, when your business can imagine ways to innovate on the meaning of your product, you can create new products that aren’t just different but true game-changers.
Below are 5 brands that really know what value means to their customers. They measure their success in meaning and consistently make decisions based on representing that meaning in their customers’ lives.
Starbucks
Starbucks is a gimme. They trade on ubiquity and consistency while capitalizing on the ever-growing love of craft coffee.
The white & green paper cup represents a known quantity, in the best way possible. Starbucks customers know that inside their cup is the same beverage they always drink, whether in Seattle, the suburban jungle, or the regional airport.
They’ve taken steps in recent years to shore up this consistency. With the launch of the Verismo home brewer last year, Starbucks is hoping customers want to take this meaning home with them, too.
Evernote
I’m a devoted Evernote user for one simple reason: it means I never have to forget a great idea. Evernote knows this. The headline on their website right now is “Remember everything.”
They know that’s what their product means to their customers so they’ve made an effort to build out the application on every platform. They’ve also incorporated new features like reminders and shortcuts to make sure great ideas never pass its users by.
Moo
Moo specializes in easy-to-create business cards. But beyond that, what they really create are conversation starters. The very nature of the product–its customer photos and slick design–give its customers something they can be proud of and something they can use to spark discussion.
For Moo’s customers–budding business owners–that could mean the difference between paying the bills each month or not. That business card isn’t just a way for people to contact them, it’s the key to starting a relationship with someone who could be a lifelong customer.
Copyblogger
Copyblogger specializes in “tools & training to make your content work for you.” After teaching copywriting, blogging, and content marketing techniques in its popular blog for many years, Copyblogger launched several software tools that supported its key content strategy. For the Copyblogger team, it meant no longer relying on the increasingly difficult prospect of monetizing content or selling information products.
But for their customers, the move to software meant making it much easier for them to actually put all that great Copyblogger advice to use. Instead of creating content no one was consuming, their customers could find ways to connect to more readers through search, build more effective landing pages, and have better converting websites. And what does that mean to their customers? More money, less time wasted.
Megan Auman
It’s not just big businesses that understand what their products mean to their customers. In fact, small businesses might even have an easier time. Designer Megan Auman could sell her jewelry on its features & benefits: it’s made from recycled steel, weighs next to nothing, and is insanely durable. But her tagline tells a different story, one that really means something to her customers.
Megan Auman products are about “making a statement every day.” For her customers, that means feeling their best no matter whether the day’s outfit is a t-shirt and jeans or their favorite little black dress. In fact, Megan calls her signature line the “little black necklace.” That’s value that immediately means something to her customers and changes the way they approach jewelry.
No matter the product or service your business offers, it means something to your customers. Understanding that meaning–what it looks like, feels like, even smells like!–is the key to making the marketing, product development, and sales decisions that will make your business hum.
Stop Trying to Charge What You’re Worth
I’ve long been a proponent of charging more, earning more, and feeling good about it. I’ve asked countless entrepreneurs to consider the value of their skills in a New Economy market where those skills are highly prized.
But there’s one thing that nags me about where this conversation inevitably goes.
When service providers, makers, and microbusiness owners of all ilk become empowered to consider pricing on a new level, they say, “I’m going to charge what I’m worth.”
There are two serious problems with this mantra:
1) You are priceless. Your work is not.
There’s really no way to quantify what “you’re worth” because you can’t measure the value of your precious life. However, skills, products, and services are quantifiable. There’s a going rate. And there is also the ability to raise or lower the going rate depending on how you position those skills, products, or services.
2) You’ve forgotten the customer.
There is no value without the customer. How much is doctor worth without patients? How much is a house worth if no one will buy it? How much is a company worth if the investors all bail? What you make or offer has no value until a customer is willing to purchase it.
Dave Gray states it plainly in The Connected Company: “A company can’t create value on its own: value is only created through exchange. The customer must participate in defining and determining that value.”
So how can you address this in practical terms?
Understand the whole market.
There’s no one set price for a cup of coffee. Go to a gas station and pay 69 cents. Go to a fast food joint and pay a buck. Go to Starbucks and pay $2. Go to Blue Bottle in San Francisco and pay $7.
Your market is likely the same. You know you’re not at the bottom of the barrel and you have no interest in being there. But have you explored the rest of the market? Do you know what the top-of-the-line looks like and how much it costs? Once you do, back track and complete your understanding of the whole market.
Determine what influences price.
Price goes well beyond materials, overhead, and labor. It goes well beyond experience and skills. Those are just factors that contribute to understanding a sustainable price from the business’s point-of-view. But many other factors influence price from a customers’ point-of-view.
What the product means to them, what results the service promises, and how your customers perceive your business in relation to the rest of your industry all contribute to what you can (and should) charge. The style of your website, the way your images are merchandised, the testimonials you provide (and the way they’re written), and your sales process give your customers a distinct impression of what your product or service is worth.
Adjust as necessary to make the price you want to charge match what your customers want to pay.
There may be many factors currently influencing the price you can charge that have consequences you don’t like. It might be hard–even unpleasant or expensive–to change them. It might involve better packaging, a shinier website, or more training. But it could also be as “simple” as introducing your work to a new group of customers or changing the way you talk about what you do.
Take full inventory of the factors currently influencing your price, both from your business’s perspective and from your customers’ perspective. Determine which factors you can change to create a better result for your business. Create an action plan to do just that.
And stop telling people you’re going to charge what you’re worth… Click to tweet.
Be the CEO (and do less of 2 kinds of work)
I just arrived home from 4 days in San Francisco where I was teaching a workshop for creativeLIVE. I spent 3 full days guiding nearly 10,000 people through the underlying strategy behind guiding your business from your customers’ perspective, pricing your work for maximum growth and sustainability, and selling more. It’s been the best experience of my working life to date!
While I offered many practical and actionable ideas, I spent more time–as per usual–offering the why and what for than you’ll find in most business training online.
The reason is that I find way too many business owners getting bogged down in “supposed to’s” and “shoulds.” They’re drowning in all the easy-as-1-2-3’s that are out there masquerading as good business advice.
Knowing the why behind ideas and tactics means that you can make the best decision for what’s right for your business.
You feel less overwhelmed, less bogged down, and you end up asking less “How can I fit this in?” questions. You have better tools to organize your work, make decisions, and prioritize initiatives. That puts you in the position of CEO more often than mail room clerk.
You see, there are 3 kinds of work. And you as a business owner need to be constantly working to do less of two of those kinds of work.
First, there’s work that gets immediate results. It might be delivering the service you provide or creating the product you sell. It could be writing on your blog or updating product descriptions. It could be ordering supplies or promoting your work.
Second, there’s work that should be done by someone else. This varies depending on your business and your strengths within that business. It could be fiddling with your website, sending out emails, or scheduling clients. It could be writing copy or creating advertisements. It could be shipping packages or bookkeeping.
Third, there’s the work that contributes to long-term growth. Often this is work that requires your expertise but that isn’t the hands-on work that you sell. It’s systems work. It’s process work. It’s relationship-building. It’s working on the vision (and the byproducts of it).
You probably do a lot of the first and second kind of work. You are constantly after immediate results (they feel good, right?) because immediate results are better than no results. And you do a lot of work that you really have no business doing because you have chosen not to invest the time or money in having someone else do it.
That means that the work that contributes to long-term growth gets the short shrift. When you don’t work towards the future, you leave yourself in the hamster wheel of constant hustling. Sound familiar?
…while you’re doing it, doing it, doing it, there’s something much more important that isn’t getting done. And it’s the work you’re not doing, the strategic work, the entrepreneurial work, that will lead your business forward, that will give you the life you’ve not yet known.
– Michael E Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited
If you’re beginning to lose faith in the dream of having a business that takes care of you (instead of you taking care of it) and really becoming the Chief Executive of your enterprise, then it’s probably because you find yourself doing so much of the first two categories of work. When that type of work is disproportionate to the results you see, frustration is the natural byproduct.
When you exercise your responsibility to long-term growth work, even if you’re not seeing immediate results, you can better weather the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. If a particular idea doesn’t work out, you have the systems or relationships in place to get you through. Or you have the comfort of knowing your next idea or opportunity is already in the works.
If you’re ready to do more long-term growth work and less of the rest, you need to schedule it. Put it on the calendar. Honor it like it was a client appointment or a project deadline. This is the work that will keep your business in business – respect it.
Once you’ve got that kind of work on the calendar, make sure that you’re creating systems that reduce the amount of other work you’re doing. Use your scheduled time to create a training or on-boarding process for an assistant or business manager. Also use that time to plan for new products or services that require less effort or active time from you. Plan to shift your business model to one that leverages your time & talents.
Bottom line: how would you spend your time if doing work that contributed to long-term business growth was your primary responsibility?
‘Cause it is. Tell me in the comments.
–PS–
For the last year, I’ve been nurturing a community of business owners in Kick Start Labs. Membership has been closed for 6 months now but the doors are about to open for new members again soon. Members get access to all the business training I’ve created to date plus monthly Q&A calls with me, and more. Keep your eyes out for when membership is open again.