Marketing with the “Polar Bear Club”

Every January first, a group of intrepid and foolhardy people, gather on some frigid shoreline, grease up, chop a good big hole in the ice and take themselves a little plunge in the ice water.  Why do they do this?  I have no idea!  I place this activity right up there on the list of things I don’t plan to do in this lifetime along with “Running with the bulls in Spain” and “Walking through knee-high, weed-choked water in the Amazon River Basin looking for 30 foot Anacondas with your feet!”  But I know for a lot of Marketing Introverts getting themselves out of the safety of their office and out into the world to do  marketing is about as attractive as as plunge into ice water!

I think, however, there is something we could learn from our Polar Bear Club friends and that is the fact that they “grease up” really good before they jump in the water.

What is the Marketing Introvert equivalent of “greasing up?”  For one thing:  REALLY mastering business skills will help!  Many Marketing Introverts often suffer feelings of insecurity and fear when out marketing.  When you know exactly what you want to say when someone asks you what you do for a living – that is a layer of grease.  When you choose your marketing strategies carefully and come to the table prepared – that is another layer of protective grease.  When you have practiced with your coach or a friend and have developed the ability to stand tall, look a person in the eye, and smile – that is a great protective layer.

The truth is even if you have prepared in advance, those first times when you are afraid and go out networking or marketing anyway, it is probably going to feel a bit like a plunge through the ice.  The feelings may not be avoidable, but that first plunge for the Polar Bear Club people is probably also the worst and many of those crazy people come back year after year!

Here are some other “greasing-up” suggestions of Marketing Introverts!

• Cultivate some business buddies!  Take a friend with you to networking events
• Have materials to show people:  take them to your website during a phone conversation or hand them something at a face-to-face event
• Go marketing more often. That’s right!  Do MORE marketing because it will get easier over time.  Imagine that it will take a dozen times before it starts feeling easy and get those dozen under your belt as quickly as you can.
• Schedule your marketing and stick to your schedule.  If you know that every day between 9 and 10 am you make sales calls pretty soon that will start feeling like the right and normal thing to do during that hour.
• Consider getting some coaching help.  You might be surprised how much an ally in your corner can shorten the time it takes to get over your dread or fear!

The Unexpected and Your Business

I got a call from my father over the weekend.  My mother has taken a turn for the worse.  This morning when I called for an update he and my sister were setting up an appointment with hospice and he mentioned the word “days.”  My sister mentioned the word “weeks.”  They both said, “Or she could rally one more time.”  My mother has been going slowly downhill for a year or more so in some ways this moment is “anticipated”, but I think there is always a part of you, in moments like this, that feels as if the unexpected has suddenly arrived at your door.  Just a few days ago I was laughing with my mother on the phone. I am glad I have talked to my mother almost every day for the last few years.  And I wish she was present enough that I could tell her I love her one more time.

But THIS moment I am far away from Dallas, and I don’t know how things will unfold as I wait for the next call from my family which will determine how soon I need to get on a plane.  In the meantime I am carrying on with things like talking to you.   I am thinking “what should I say to you from this place in my life.  Is there anything I have to say in my blog which could be a gift to others?”

So here is what I think to say to you:  In my experience, emotions play a large part in the life of people who are Marketing Introverts.  We love deeply, we feel things strongly, and it sometimes takes us a little longer to recover from setbacks.  Because of this, it is a good idea to prepare in advance, as much as a person can, for unexpected happenings.  Do your marketing now, my friends, so that if you have to interrupt your business you will not be caught “without oil in your lamp.”  Back up your computer in case of emergencies.  Stay enough organized that, if the unexpected comes knocking on your door you can make arrangements to change course as smoothly as you are able.  Build a support system around you before you need it.

And also, I’d like to say: It is good to have your spiritual life in order.  It is good to remember that we don’t really know how much time we have left.  It is good to have strong connections with your family and friends.  It is good to do the things in life that mean the most to you while you have the chance to do them.  It is good to be good to others, especially the people you love, and it is good to tell the people you love that you love them… as often as you can.

The Eagle and the Mouse

There is a native American metaphor for two different types of people which I often find apply to business owners.  One is “Eagle People” and the other is “Mouse People.” 

Eagle People like to fly up where they can see around them for 100’s of miles.  They are always seeing new things on the horizon which they are aware extends 365 degrees around them at all times.  They get really excited about possibilities.  Eagle People are great entrepreneurs, full of great ideas.  Eagle People are often an inspiration to themselves and others.

Mouse People are detail oriented.  They know every single blade of grass around their front door.  They can negotiate a tangle of complications and can be counted on to take care of every detail from day to day.  Mouse People are great administrators of their business – they can wear many hats and switch back and forth easily.  They know how to focus and get things done.  If you ever want a great business partner who will do whatever needs to be done to make your business a success… pick a Mouse!

The challenge for Eagle People is that they love new ideas so much that they can get bored with knuckling down to make things happen.  They can get five great new ideas in a week and totally forget that they set something else in motion the week before. 

I have a client right now who is almost all “Eagle.”  She has SOOO many good ideas. She is working on three books, taking college classes, teaching an adult class at her church every week, running a women’s group AND being a great wife and a mother to three middle school age children.  Her challenge is that she will enthusiastically say “yes” to almost any request for her time and she really struggles to get into her office every day for her scheduled writing time.  It seems so plebian to sit down to work.  At least once a week she changes her mind about which book she should focus on.  We are working on getting her “Mouse” side stronger because otherwise her great ideas and her tremendous gifts will never make it out into the world!

The challenge for Mouse People is that they get too caught up with the day-to-day and sometimes get in a rut.  Because it is hard for them to think into the future they can miss opportunities.  They don’t see a ‘wave’ coming and find it hard to be on the cutting edge of things.  They sometimes get so wrapped up with what is right on their desk and their immediate “to do list” that they can’t see the big picture about their business. 

I have a client who is a definitive “Mouse.”  One week when I was working with him, he set out to create a demo CD for his personal history business.  The demo was supposed to be no more than 5 minutes long.  I was absolutely startled the next week when he came back and told me he had put in 90 hours and was only half way through listening to every minute of every interview he had ever done to be sure he got the very best snippets for his demo.  He wasn’t even close to going out marketing with a demo CD!

If you are a marketing introvert be careful that your Eagle or Mouse tendencies don’t go to an extreme.  They need to be in balance!  Remember that if you are a true Marketing Introvert you may unconsciously gravitate to the Eagle or Mouse activities which are most comfortable to you… and will keep you so occupied that you forget to go marketing!

Oh that scary world out there!  :  )

Tendencies to Procrastinate!

It is beautifully bright and cool here in Boulder this morning.  A week or so ago we plunged out of summer and into Fall.  This close to the mountains we could literally have snow at any time but for the moment everything is unseasonably lush and green. 

What does this have to do with Marketing 4 Introverts?  When you dread doing marketing and sales it is easy to distract yourself with any attractive thing that passes along. Although I have come a long way from the panic I used to feel at the beginning of marketing days when I distracted myself with anything I could think of (laundry, dishes, The DaVinci Code, straightening my desk…) rather than sit down to my desk and get to work, I still have to catch myself when I decide to spend 20 minutes looking for zucchini and cucumbers in the garden instead of going to my desk as planned.  I try to be at my desk by 8:00.  Today I wasn’t here until 9:15.  Those tall spiky umbrella-like leaves hiding treasures in the cool, wet dampness of the morning were too enticing this morning!

But I also have some strong goals for this week that need to get done.  If you find yourself in a similar position here’s two things I find helpful:  The first is to create a TO DO list every evening.  I have mine in front of me right now ready to guide me through today’s schedule which will now need to be modified just a bit due to the zucchini detour this morning.  The second is to be willing to “make up the time” during the day.  Balancing time is an important aspect of being your own boss.  For those of us who add a dash of marketing avoidance to our detours we have to be careful because you don’t want the detours to become such a strong habit that you really have to fight with yourself all day long!

In the good life we should be able to have zucchinis and marketing both!  :  )

Why the picture across the top?

Often marketing done by Marketing Introverts is creative but not very effective… as in the case of the person who left their business card on top of the post on a bridge near my house.  The beautiful leaves, the bright colors, the crystal, all caught my attention but how many people did this marketing strategy reach?

Truthfully, I don’t know if the person who left their card is a true Marketing Introvert – someone who would rather do very, very passive forms of marketing but it is possible!   On the other hand, the card may have fallen out their pocket, or out of a client’s pocket, and an”artist” put it on the post.

In any case, the thing that made me think this would be a good picture for the blog is that a true marketing introvert would hope that this unusual marketing strategy, which doesn’t require him or her to be there when the potential client sees the card, will work… and someone will see the card… and become a client.

Being a Marketing Introvert is “Only” a Behavior Pattern

In my last blog I wrote: “The GOOD NEWS is that (as a Marketing Introvert) you created this situation and these feelings… and you can undo them. Being a “marketing introvert” is not “who you are.” It is a behavior and feeling pattern you created because something about being out in the world, in this way, scares you.”

I’d like to talk about this a little more!

Some of you know that I was a psychotherapist before I decided to become a business consultant and business skills trainer. In my years of psychotherapy training we spent considerable time studying something called “Character Organization.” Personally, I think everyone would benefit from knowing how we human beings put ourselves together. Each of us creates a “Character Style” consisting of our most basic beliefs, attitudes, ways of thinking and feeling, and behavior patterns.

There are six commonly recognized character patterns which emerge as we decide as small children what life is like. Our beliefs about life and other people arise from our repetitive experiences. These patterns become crystalized very early in life and we develop strategies for coping with situations that are less than ideal. These form a background for the way we habitually think, act, anticipate, respond and feel.

Here are the six key existential questions we all resolve for ourselves very early in life:

1. Am I safe and am I welcome here? Do others affirm my right to be alive? Or is life a pretty risky, unpredictable, dangerous business?
2. Is there enough to go around of what I need in life? Can I relax knowing my needs are going to be met? Or, if no one is going to take care of me, do I have to do everything all by myself? Or, do I have to become weak before people will help me?
3. Is it okay for me to be different than other people? Is my uniqueness celebrated? Do I have a right to have my own opinions and preferences? Or do I have to think, feel and act exactly the way others think, feel and act in order to be accepted and loved?
4. Can I make my own choices or are all my choices forced upon me? Can I have a will of my own? Or does it feel as if I am beaten down until I have to do what others want? Is life always hard?
5. Can I both win and fail as a natural part of life? Or do I have to always be “the golden child” and fulfill other’s ideas of who I am?
6. Am I as valued for who I am as for what I can do? Or does only what I accomplish count?

Under ideal conditions, a person comes into this life and gets satisfactory experiences concerning these existential questions. They feel welcomed into their family, loved, and the world seems “safe enough.” There is enough to go around and they trust that they are going to be taken care of in life. Others enjoy their unique personality and we get the idea that it is okay to be like other people, and it is okay to be different. We get to make (age appropriate) choices and our decisions and preferences are respected. We don’t have to live out someone else’s dream for us and are loved for who we are. We are encouraged to do our best but if we are not THE best that is okay too. We are as loved for who we are as for what we can accomplish in life.

Suffice it to say that most of us find that our first living environment didn’t support ALL of these developmental stages “perfectly” and we come to have certain beliefs about other people and about life that, once set, tend to be accepted as “Reality with a Capital R” and are no longer examined and questioned. When this happens, underlying character organization can affect affect our ability to be Marketing Professionals. For example:

1. If you don’t feel essentially “welcome” in life it can be very hard to walk into a room of strangers at a networking event and feel that you have a legitimate right to be there.
2. If you experience others as not essentially being “safe” or “predictable,” or you have to “know” people before you feel comfortable with them, it is hard to walk up to a stranger and stick out your hand.
3. If you never felt liked and wanted as a child, you may have learned to stand back until you get cues that approaching is acceptable. Marketing is all about moving straight forward and meeting strangers.
4. If you decided it was better to never stand out in a crowd, it will be very hard for you to stand up and say your 30 Second Commercial in front of a big group.
5. If your experience was that there was never enough to go around, you are likely to see every other business owner as a competitor and that there are not enough clients to go around. It will be very hard for you to form strategic partnerships.
6. If you think life is very unpredictable, strategic planning is going to be very hard for you and if you keep shifting yourself and your offering around to try to find solid ground to stand on, others will become unsure of what, exactly, you are selling.
7. Also, you may believe that a down economy means there is less and less opportunity for you or no opportunity at all.
8. If your family emphasized everybody doing the same things, feeling and thinking the same way, it will be very hard for you to stand out as a sole proprietor. What were you thinking? It isn’t okay to do something all by yourself! It isn’t safe!
9. If you felt continuously forced as a child, you may have developed such a strong sense of resistance to things you don’t want to do that it may become virtually impossible for you to do anything that initially makes you uncomfortable. You may feel that you have to protect yourself, constantly, from others because you feel criticized or pressured by them. In the business world you can’t simultaneously protect yourself from others and be the kind of person others want to buy from.
10. If your family only gave you praise and encouragement for “winning,” you are going to have a very hard time facing all the rejection that comes your way in the natural course of looking for clients. Not everybody is going to say yes. Not everybody wants your product or service. When someone says “no” it isn’t always about “you.”
11. It may be that you have come to expect that everything “should” come easily to you. You just expect this because of your past experiences as a child. It may make you angry when life and people don’t treat you the way you expect to be treated; or you may have become the type of person who will abandon anything that you have to work for.
12. If you always had to be “perfect” right out of the gate, it will be very hard for you start from scratch in learning the business skills. They have to be learned; 99% of people aren’t just born knowing how to do sales. If you get all your self esteem from the ability to meet your goals quickly, you may become panicked when you start doing sales and are not immediately successful.

We all develop ways of avoiding situations that remind us uncomfortably of situations we couldn’t negotiate-to-our-liking when we were young. Marketing and sales activities will generally get these things “right in our face.” I have a friend who is a PhD Clinical Psychologist who for years studied and worked with cutting-edge, big-name, psychotherapy practitioners, trainers, and personal growth professionals. Yet he once told me “I have learned more about myself by starting my own business from scratch than I did in all of my years of meditation and self-awareness training.”

When we start our own business, we don’t leave ourselves out of the equation. We bring “ourselves” into our business. If we have developed coping strategies for life long ago based on beliefs that certain ways of being were dangerous, these same coping strategies will now become barriers to our approaching the world openly, in friendliness, to sell our products and services.

But again, I have to repeat, the good news is that we, ourselves, put these character organizations in place and they are NOT “who we are” at the core of our being. If you are a Marketing Introvert now, you don’t have to remain one.

There is a Sufi saying that goes “One who has created a lock, has also created the key.” We CAN change the feelings that hold us back from becoming great business people because we created the feelings in the first place. This is good news!

What does it feel like to be a Marketing Introvert?

Often the dread of marketing and sales activities comes as a surprise to people. Many of my clients tell me they never expected they would have such strong feelings when they started their business. Those who are service professionals (helping and healing professionals, lawyers, etc.) have often done very well in their extensive training programs including presentations and speaking up in class. Product providers are so excited about their product they don’t anticipate they will have problems talking about it. Some even did sales for other companies and didn’t expect doing sales for their own company would be a different situation… but it is.

“I’m a very friendly person,” one client told me, “I can speak to anybody about anything, but when it comes to talking about my business my throat closes up and my mind becomes a blank.”

Some people are afraid when someone asks about their business that this is their one and only chance to make a good impression. The fear of saying the wrong thing or not doing it “right” chokes them up. Others question whether they are qualified enough. They communicate their doubt about themselves to everyone they meet. This is like doing marketing with a big “I’m afraid I’m not the right person for you” sign across your forehead. Others don’t want to see themselves as business people. They feel like a fish-out-of-water in business groups. Some report to me that they feel so “out of their body” that the event takes on the quality of a nightmare.

My own favorite symptom, which took me a considerable amount of time to get over, (but I did!) was the fear of calling people on the phone to see if they were interested in my programs. I even struggled to call people who had already expressed interested and had invited me to call them! On mornings that I planned to do calling I would wake up in a panic attack which felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. NOT a good way to begin a business day!

Here are descriptions Marketing Introvert clients have given me of how they feel:

• I suddenly feel as if I am walking through cold molasses and it takes soooo much effort to move forward
• It feels as if my very life is being threatened and all my senses get heightened. Things become unnaturally sharp and over-stimulating. This is accompanied by a “foot on the gas” and “foot on the brake” feeling with alternate waves of thought crashing through my head: “I HAVE TO do this! I DON’T have my rent for next month!” combined with “I CAN’T do this! I HATE doing this! I DON’T WANT TO do this!”
• My palms are sweaty. My mouth is dry. I have a lump in my throat.
• I can’t think. No words come to mind. My mind is a blank.
• I don’t feel “like myself.” It feels as if I am trying to be someone I’m not.
• I am drowning, swimming through this aweful situation and the horizon never gets any closer.
• My resistance level gets so high it becomes like a wall that looms ever higher the more I try to force myself toward marketing situations. It is like being pulled in the opposite direction by a magnet.

A Marketing Introvert can also have milder symptoms like:

• I just don’t feel like doing marketing today, I’ll do it tomorrow (except tomorrow you feel the same way and make the same choice.)
• I get fuzzy or cloudy when I try to think. “I can’t seem to think straight when I try to do marketing.”
• I make myself so busy there is never enough time to do marketing. (This person didn’t have many billable hours so she kept busy working “on” her business – building a better website, writing new materials for her classes, writing articles that she didn’t ever submit anywhere, spending hour and hours working on her portfolio, etc.)
• Thinking “If you could just hire the right person they could do marketing and sales FOR me.” (Usually people think “If only I could find someone who will work on commission!)

There are lots of ways being a Marketing Introvert can manifest and there are as many reasons for it as there are people who feel it. The bottom line is that your feelings keep you from doing marketing and sales and that is adversely affecting your business.

The GOOD NEWS is that YOU created this situation and these feelings… and you can undo them. Being a “marketing introvert” is not “who you are.” It is a behavior and feeling pattern you created because something about being out in the world, in this way, scares you. It is possible to make another choice about how you feel and you can learn a new way to be out in the world; (REALLY!) especially if you get a big reward for doing so – like having the job you love, no boss but yourself, and lots of adoring clients.

The Five Essential Skills You Need to Find Clients

Some of you who have read my previous blogs must be wondering what I think are the essential business skills a Marketing Introvert needs to master. Here they are in a nutshell.

1. Strategic Planning
2. Business Communication
3. Marketing
4. Sales
5. Organization and Time Management

If you want specifics, see the list below. This list can look overwhelming to a true Marketing Introvert but if these essentials are put in place marketing will move forward much more smoothly and easily. For someone who isn’t crazy about doing marketing and sales in the first place, this is crucial! By mastering these, you will spend less time marketing and be more effective!

1. Create a (sufficiently detailed) vision of what kind of business you want in the future
2. Set goals (daily, weekly, monthly, etc)
3. Make firm decisions on the revenue sources you will offer and your pricing
4. Learn how to talk about prices easily to anyone
5. Identify your ideal clients and why they spend money on your type of product or service
6. Develop a marketing message based on #5
7. Learn the psychology of business communication
8. Develop a brief but attention-grabbing way to answer the question “What do you do?”
9. Learn how to network effectively with other business owners
10. Create a 10 minute presentation on your business
11. Develop several talks if public speaking will help you get in front of your target clients. Learn the secret to getting permission for you to call interested people after the talk BEFORE they leave the room.
12. Design 3 to 5 marketing strategies you will use on an ongoing basis that will get you directly in front of your ideal clients or people who will refer them to you.
13. Research and use methods of getting attention for your business on the internet
14. Create a structured way of speaking with potential clients (doing sales)
15. Understand what sales techniques work and which don’t
16. Be organized in your office so you don’t waste your precious time
17. Create an “ideal” work day template for yourself and stick to it as best you are able. Again this will save you up to 8 hours a week in lost or wasted time.
18. Be good at time management for your business since, especially if you are a sole proprietor and do everything from provide the service/oversee manufacture of the product to being the Bookkeeper, VP of Marketing, VP of Sales, Filing Clerk, and the Janitor.
19. Regularly assess your business progress and make navigational changes to your work plan.
20. Be able to work with yourself to continue becoming a more savvy, effective business person

Birth of a Marketing Introvert

I notice that there are a number of really important things in life for which people rarely take classes in advance. Somehow there is unspoken, understanding that “of course” if you decide to do this thing, you can do it! Often starting your own business falls into this catagory.

People focus on graduating from training classes that teach the skills of their profession or they spend hours designing a marvelous product that is an improvement over anything that they have ever seen on the market before. This is the fun part of getting ready to open a business and people work very hard at these things very willingly, often spending considerable time, effort and money in the process.

The next thing that people willingly spend money on is the actual process of setting up the business itself: finding and decorating an office, setting up the legal structure, finding a domain name, stocking supplies, purchasing any equipment that is needed, creating a first business card. Again, people can spend considerable time, effort and money to complete this second level of preparation.

A startling number of people, however, never think to do a competitive or demographic analysis before they open their business. I didn’t! I started my first business as a psychotherapist without giving any consideration at all to the fact that my city, (Boulder, Colorado) had more helping and healing professionals PER SQUARE INCH than any other city in Colorado! I made the same mistake as 1000s of other small business owners which is that I believed my product or service was needed and wanted, I was good at what I did, and that (without thinking about how) my services were going to sell without much effort.

I believe it is in that moment of shock when small business owners understand for the first time that they are going to have to “sell” their product or service that Marketing Introverts get born. When business owners suddenly look backwards at all the time, effort and money that they have already invested, then look forward and realize that there is a whole additional (and absolutely essential) business component they never considered which is that they will “have to” master some essential business skills in addition to their professional skills, they become very dismayed.

If they have any negative beliefs about “sales people”, on top of everything else, the dread, resistance, dauntedness, and fear can start mushrooming out of control. It hasn’t happened often, but I have actually had two clients since I started working with small business owners in 1995 decide they would rather give up their business than learn how to market it. They felt that strongly about not wanting to do marketing.

Fortunately, I have had many, many other clients who buck up after that first shock and say to themselves, “Okay, I want to do this kind of work. I want to have my own business. I didn’t realize how much else was involved, but now that I know the truth, I will learn what I need to learn and do what I need to do in order to have my dream business.” This kind of marketing introvert has a good chance of turning their situation around because they are ready to learn the essential business skills they need and they are open to changing their feelings so they don’t feel afraid every time they set out to do marketing.

Welcome to the Marketing 4 Introverts blog!

The reason I am starting this blog is because I want to talk about ways to make marketing and sales easier for small business owners. Five years ago, as part of my consulting and business skills training practice, I started doing talks and classes called “Marketing 4 Introverts.” I found over and over that as soon as I used the term, “Marketing Introvert,” heads would be nodding all over the room. 

 

Who is a Marketing Introvert? Here’s my definition:

• Marketing Introverts have generally found work they love and are highly motivated to be self employed. They are often intelligent, friendly, creative, passionate people who do great work with their clients or offer a great product. Many tell me that they can talk easily to just about anyone about just about anything… EXCEPT their business. The defining characteristic of a Marketing Introvert is a dread or fear of doing marketing and sales. Because of this, people who are Marketing Introverts are generally not doing enough business activities to keep their business financially strong and stable. Life as a small business owner has gone from the dream of getting paid to do work you love to a daily struggle with worry over your financial situation with a deep undercurrent of fear running underneath.   

   

   

  The good news I have for “Marketing Introverts” is that this does not have to be a fatal condition. By learning certain essential business skills (which are NOT rocket science) and learning how to work with your strengths as a “introvert” (someone who is strongly rooted in an ability to stay in touch with his or her own thoughts, feelings, responses, ability to keenly observe and respond to the surrounding world) in business situations you can do marketing and sales just as well as anyone else, sometimes better! In fact, you don’t have to become either a “Sales Extrovert” or an Extrovert at all. Instead you can use who you really are to become a “Marketing, Sales and Business Professional.” There is more than enough solid ground in that to create a financially successful business.
  

 

It can be done. In this blog, I want to talk about these things.