Start A Business Backwards

I’ve been working thru some issues with a client about the services they offer. They  call themselves an “image consultants”. Now what does that mean. When you ask them it is very clear, “image consulting” is about helping companies look well in the media, but was that your first thought when you read the description of their business or like me did you immediately think that they helped people dress better.

That’s the point of “Clarity Trumps Persuasion”, the term “image consulting” alone is not clear, it is not easy to figure out what that means. This is also the case when you search for “image consultant” in Google.

Google returns a result page and the majority of paid  results are companies that help you dress or look better, mixed in with consulting, and branding ads” The organic results mostly returned “Image Consulting”, we help you look or dress better.

The problem is “image consultant” isn’t clear alone, It is only clear in some context. So when describing your business try to be clear. Remember that what is clear to you iis only clear in your context and MAY NOT be clear in the context of your client. Maybe your not an “Image Consultant” maybe you are a “Corporate Image Consultant” or a “Corporate Branding Consultant”, however you describe your business remember Clarity Trumps Persuasion.

Shouts out to MarketingExperiments.com for the tip

Dedicated to your success

Over the last few weeks a group of us have been talking about social markeeting as well as business development. Tonight, I get to talk more about proven ways to start a business and reduce (and sometimes remove) the risk. Business are failing in this economy and I believe that the biggest reason is they are not using the Start A Business Backwards Strategy.

Listen to Ron’s Show

If you want the bonus click here

These are tough times, on CNBC this morning they annouced that Citigroup was going to layoff 50,000 workers world wide. CitiGroup plans to reduce their world wide workforce from 350,000 to 300,000 in the next few months. Many other businesses have laid off workers, it seems no sector of the economy is immune from job losses including auto sales, tech, and many more.

After losing a job, many people are going to look to starting a business. They will start to think about taking hard earned money to invest in starting a business and that may not be a bad idea. 

But starting a business requires planning and that the Start A Business Backwards Strategies are designed to reduce risk.  I suggest you spend more time planning upfront then spending hard earned dollars. Over the next few posts, I’m going to write about a strategy any potential or current business owner can use to reduce risks and ensure success. 

Each post will you a Start A Business Backwards strategy to create a USP, create a list, test to see if the market exists, perhaps pre-sell products or services each post designed to reduce risk and increase success. 

Checkout the posts over the next few days, Start Your Business Backwards and ensure business success

I messed up, thats what happened. Here is a lesson in blog maintenance. A few weeks ago in my infinite wisdom I decided to oupgrade the site to a newer version of Wordpress. After the upgrade I wasn’t able to login. What a pain (the problem was caused by me). Anyhow, since I was in a hurry, I re-installed Wordpress (complete new installation) and that killed the link to the old database. Long story short, since I gave the new database a new name (so I have the old posts) all of the content is in the old database and I have to transfer it to the new one.

Here are the lessons;

1. Backup, Backup, Backup - install a Wordpress backup plugin and use it regularly. Otherwise you could lose all of your data
2. Do change the way stuff was done in the past. Normally I do all of my upgrades using the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin, this last time I didn’t and that hurt.
3. Search to see if there are issues with an upgrade BEFORE you upgrade. Didn’t do that and in hind sight there was an issue. Had I searched for problems first I could have put off doing the upgrade.

Thats it for now, but boy what a lesson. Even an experienced web guy has issues sometimes mostly by taking stuff for granted. Learn from my mistakes