In 1992, just 20 years ago, I had to close my firm. As you might already know, I lost everything, as well as a lot of money I hadn’t yet earned. After a few months of trying to find another job I realised that there were none left. (This was during that uncertain period as SA made the transition from apartheid regime to rainbow nation.)
I was faced with starting up again. I won’t bore you with the details. But, marketing back then was a mere shadow of what it is now, and much, much slower. Sadly, most of the books I read still reflect the thinking back then. The single exception is “anything to do with the Internet“. And, frankly, the amount of hype about the web is beyond belief.
I have driven down almost every marketing road, and for a small business owner most of these are cul-de-sacs. I was thinking about this as I meandered through the south of Spain over Christmas. This was not as exciting as you might think. We were, after all, staying at the home of Mrs Carruthers’s mother. You get my drift.
Anyway, a bunch of shops were vacant, on every road, in every shopping centre, in every town. Like me in 1992, they’d run out of clients. And it got me to thinking about how starting a business is almost the same as finding a job. In both cases, all you have to do is find that first client. (Employee is formal-speak for a business owner who sells all of his 160 hours/month to a single, hopefully long term client.)
In essence, about the only difference between starting a business and finding a job is that the aspirant entrepreneur just keeps repeating the process, while trying to produce the actual goods, while trying to employ the staff, while trying to keep the govt happy, and so on. The employee, he with the one client, focuses on doing whatever makes his employer happy.
I browsed around Spain with my trusty wordprocessor – the pencil and notepad version I first learned to use in Mrs Kettley’s kindergarten class in 1963 – and I realised that, for all my focus on writing efficiently last year, I hadn’t actually written any of those words down in a form that might add any lasting value. (I had dreamt of writing a book on startups and jobs, but hadn’t quite gotten the first page out.)
So, this year, one of my goals is to help you find more clients, even if it’s only one client you were looking for. I am not going to try writing it all down, else it will be Groundhog Year, all over again. So, next week on Tuesday evening at 8:00 p.m. – South African time – I’m going to present a gratis one-hour seminar online – a webinar – on Marketing – the 1992 version versus what you can do in 2012, and how to effectively find one or more clients.
Whether you are looking for a job, looking to startup a business, or really grumpy about the number of new clients arriving at your current business each week – you are welcome to join me. It’s gratis.
When you book your “seat” I will ask just one extra question – whether you are looking for a job, whether you are a start-up looking for your first client, or whether you are an existing business looking for more clients. Just so that I can better tailor the evening. It does not matter what age you are. My clients these past 20 years have mostly been between 18 and 81, however.
You will need to be in front of your PC at about 7:40 p.m. This will allow enough time to download the snippet of software you will need which will automagically convey my screen and voice to you. Your PC will need to be connected to the Internet via a connection that is at least 300KB. The event will use approximately 60 MB over the hour. You will need to be running Windows or Mac OSX. We can’t see you, so you may sit in your pyjamas. Heck, bring your girlfriend along as well. (That was not a sexist comment because I am not presuming that you are male. Just so that we can clear the air.)
I think that it is challenging times like these which bring out the best in us. We are inspired to find other, usually better ways of doing things. I’d like to help. You can help too, by sharing this invite with anyone you know who fits the spec outlined above. They will thank you. So will I.