Basic Tenets of Starting and Running a Business

I wanted to have a little fun with this idea, as you can see. The above graphic is my (crude) drawing summing up how I've always conducted myself in the serious things of life... school, corporate world, and now entrepreneurship. People have called me worse things than anal retentive. And one of the worst combinations of characteristics anyone could have is the ability to assess things logically and mathematically while also being inclined to humor and a lack of verbal restraint. (This was passed down to me from my mother's side and is typical of Hungarians.)

Anyway, after leaving Corporate America a while back, I studied the life stories of individuals in various industries: Henry Ford, George Eastman, Andrew Carnegie and a few others. They were the doers. I had read all the sayers before that. Emmet Fox, Florence Scovel-Shinn, Norman Vincent Peale, etc. I prefer getting things from the horse's mouth. You know what they say: "If you can't do, teach."

What's interesting about the doers above is that they started out small-time and persevered through horrible economic climates. The sayers usually rise to stardom around the same time... just when everyone needs "advice." Well, I've got no glittery advice here - only tactless reality. But the funny thing is that way back as a teenager, I thought people should hold my hand through life... especially family. Right?

WRONG! My Mom did me the biggest favor one day when I was eighteen and stranded in Manhattan after my car got towed. I phoned her job in NJ to ask for the money ($100) to have my car released from impound. She said, "You got yourself into it, now you get yourself out of it." Then she hung up the line.

This was not mean. (Oh, yeah. I was crushed - and stranded.) I learned a whole lot about responsibility that day. I also learned that you shouldn't court luck because it assumes the same level as water. Risk is one thing. Luck happens when you show up and can't be beaten away by anything. In other words, there's no such thing as "luck."

So now, without further adieu, here's my essential list to starting and running a business. No soft, flowery words. Please leave those to your sales and marketing department. Just develop a thick skin so it doesn't wear out before you make it. (I should add that to the list...)


Basic Tenets of Starting and Running a Business

• The world does not owe you anything
• There are no guarantees of success
• The worst that can happen is that you will learn valuable lessons (provided you pay attention)
• You must be passionate about what you do; Only time will tell
• You cannot forecast the perfect moment
• Money isn’t everything (if you do not care for indoor plumbing)
• If you fancy the Good Old Boys’ Club is holding you back
o Start your own
o Move
o Quit

• Live frugally and expense the crap out of everything
• There is at least one huge non-profit or huge corporation competing with you, no matter how unique your idea is (so get used to it)
• Avoid cashless partners
• Ask mystics and sorcerers to give you an advance first
• Adopt a pet; They are good listeners
• Study your industry, integrate ideas, experiment, invent – don’t just copy
• If it feels like work, you’re in the wrong business
• Indiscriminate guilt and humility are useless in most professions (ie: There’s no crying in baseball)
• Lots of people like what you do when it’s free. Gently remind them the store made you pay for your business gear.
• If you fear going broke, get a normal job
• No one has all the answers; Be prepared to find out yourself or you will resent your advisers

Video Killed The SEO Star

Dead, you say?? How dare... oh wait, I did just look around to see if the last website had any videos, didn't I?? (Yup, you probably did.)

Even the phonebook companies are gearing up for video. Let your eyeballs do the walking? Hell yes! So let your video ad do all the talking, baby!

There was a comprehensive report done recently by DoubleClick (See Report here) wherein they analyze the effectiveness of ad formats. Rich media involves complex flash, animation and/ or video ad formats. The study includes these as well as the older formats of images and simple flash.

We have been heading toward total visual for a long time, if you count the 60 plus years of television and about 100 years of motion pictures, not to mention early animation. (Remember those booklets with a hundred pages of drawings of a cat that seemed to move when you filed through the booklet? No, well then you ain't old enough and you probably think I'm kidding.)

Don't get me wrong - people still do read. The difference is that today, if it's in words, it needs to be interactive for the reader. A blog or forum would be useless if readers couldn't post comments. Cellphone texting is another example in which people read messages, but the idea is to participate in real time. This is much different than how we started off using pagers twenty or so years ago, and it advanced quite rapidly after that, from just static sending of alerts and cellphone photos to the texting we do today.

For websites, again we need to hold people's interest, and that improves by reducing their burden to read too much information - ah, that wordy explanation of your product or service typically needed for accomodating spiders, crawlers, and that whole google search engine phenomenon.

Not only is visitor interest important, that is getting them to stay on your site and navigate it. You want visitors to make a proactive decision: Buy your products or services!! Well, they have to FIND you first, right? And this is the best part about using videos.

For those looking to rank and be found, a well-titled video hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or other video-sharing sites, will markedly improve your search status without spending thousands of dollars on SEO. The video can be a traditional-looking 30 second ad, but your options are many. Don't limit yourself. You also do not have to limit your ad to just the video hosting site. Once posted, take the video file's link and drop it in any of the popular online social networking sites you belong to. Of course, you can include the video on your company's (or org's) site, too. If you have the marketing budget, and you carefully choose an effective online marketing consultant or company, they can provide some strategic SEO solutions. But for guerrilla marketing, which is what most small businesses are doing these days, videos are a more cost-effective and results-effective way to go. (Hell, even huge corporations are going this route.)

If your company or proprietorship is already popular and you have top ranking on search engines, you still should think about staying on top of your game. There are always competitors out there selling cheaper, faster, better, more. What you present in a video can make the difference. A kind and sincere welcome to your services, a product demonstration, an entertaining invitation to visit your location, or a sincere customer testimonial are some nice ideas. Personal, helpful and familiar are the way to go in our socially-driven online world.

I know you all know from my blog that I cover lots of events and music in the Roanoke area. I shoot videos of all types and genres. These include videos for commerce. They can be short or long, for online or for DVD presentations, and for-profit businesses or for non-profits. I am always interested in working with new and current subjects, clients and ideas to bring your best visual message up front and out into the world.

My latest video is a Real Estate listing. (I also shoot for a phone company's online business pages. Those are 30 second "ads" and a bit formulaic.) This residential home video includes a voice-over, which I also produce here at my studio. I run an audio recording and video production company. Professional audio tracking is essential in many different shoots - and not every video producer offers that. This is why I call Star City Fame a Media company. I built this company by expanding my existing pro-audio studio, adding professional video for on and off-location shoots.



(Source for the graph posted above is: Dynamic Logic MarketNorms®, 2008. Fixed frequency level of 1. Campaigns using online display advertising of any format N=547-765)

June was a Great Folk - Americana Music Month!

I love original artists. I mean the ones who aren't part of the Corporate-branded big label machine. Well, maybe it would be nice to have the money that goes along with it, but something tells me it ain't all it's cracked up to be... (hmmmm, MJ dying at 50 comes to mind).

This last month of June brought some incredible Folk and Americana artists out all over the South Eastern part of the Mid-Atlantic States. Our own Bill Payne set out to play at the Nashville Folk Festival. He has been writing and singing his tunes for over a half century... a real full-time pro! I've had the honor of recording him live at the 3rd Street Coffeehouse a few months ago. His set included favorites like "Life is Backwards," "I'm Not Pretending," "Again, Again," and "Johnny Cake" (which I'm including here in a Pic-Vid for you all).



Another really nice set of artists stopped by here in Downtown at the Emerging Artists Series event which was presented by the Americana Agency. They played in a Round-Robin fashion, meaning they each played a song and passed the next number to the other artist.
The three performers, all signed artists, were Jonathan Byrd of Waterbug Records, Danny Schmidt of Redhouse Records, and Doug and Telisha Williams, of No Evil records. They were the subjects of my previous post - but now I have some videos for you to watch.

Here is Jonathan, with his fond (and funny) song about... oh, I can't give it away!!



Here's Danny performing an amazing "Better Off Broke"



And finally, a really swinging version of Doug and Telisha's "Kitchen Light"



Well, I hope y'all liked those tunes as much as I do!! These guys and gals signing their hearts out can't wait for someone at Sony to say that they're good at what they do before you buy their records - that's something y'all have to start doing first. They are worth it - so go check them out on their websites for more songs and tour dates NEAR YOU!!!

See you around Roanoke!