The Entrepreneurial Joy Ride

It’s time for a name change! This blog has featured the yawn-worthy title of “Small Business Growth Strategies” for several years. The truth is I chose that title for search engine optimization purposes. Today it bores me to tears.

So I’ve renamed the blog to “The Entrepreneurial Joy Ride” and that feels really good right now. The new tagline: “Content + Internet + Marketing = Creative Freedom.” This better summarizes what I’m about, what I love and what I do.

At the same time, I’m not generating as much content as I would like. I’m working on developing better habits to write articles and blog posts since my frequency varies week by week. I don’t like to post just for the sake of posting. I want to post when I feel inspired. The never-ending To Do list has been stumping my creativity lately. I’m vowing here and now to dedicate more time to content and less time worrying about everything else.

Three cheers for creative freedom!

Happy Friday, everyone!

written by Stephanie Chandler

My friend Karl Palachuk has built his publishing empire with technology books. He also hosts his own events and is a master at bundling products together and selling them at the back of the room. I asked him to share some of his best tips. Enjoy!

Nine Quick Tips for Selling Books at The Back of the Room by Karl Palachuk

Many of us count on back of the room sales as an important source of revenue. I’ve made presentations to crowds from a few dozen to many hundreds. In all cases I’ve tried to maximize revenue from back of the room sales. As strange as it sounds, the most important part about on site sales is that you have _some_ strategy rather than no strategy.

Here are nine quick tips to maximize your on site sales.

1. The first rule is to consider every aspect: The Sounds, the Smells, the Interactions. Approach your event like Starbucks or Disneyland. That means you need to build every aspect of your presentation to set the right atmosphere for sales. This includes a sense of urgency and eagerness. Depending on your audience, you need to adjust your sense of professionalism, nerdiness, and humor. Consider anything that might contribute to a buying mood.

2. Provide the most enjoyable experience possible. That means you need to give more than your attendees expect. Be professional and provide the best interaction you can. That means you should spend a little on name tags and handouts. Little things count. If you don’t use colored paper, then print in color. Don’t come off as cheap.

3. Before the Seminar, collect as much information as you can. Registration should include a lot more than email addresses. Whether you’re being paid or doing the show for free, it is very reasonable to collect complete contact information. That means you should gather the information needed to add attendees to your (postal) mailing list as well as your email list.

4. Hand out great materials. If nothing else, you should have a printout of your slides. But with luck you have a really great handout that either engages the audience in participation or highlights the most important points in your presentation. Any handout should include your contact information, including web site and email address.

5. Hand out a price list/order form. Even if you only have one product for sale, you should put together some kind of sales order form that includes all of your contact information. If you have multiple products, including products from other authors, you should also include package deals. People don’t want to feel “sold” but they love to shop. If you have lots of products (audio, video, books, etc.), then try to create tiered package offerings.

6. Hand out evaluations. The most basic evaluation is to have two or three questions. What’s the best thing about the presentation? What’s the worst thing? Is there anything else you’d like to add? It is also important that you use evaluations to collect testimonials for advertising. At the end of the evaluation, simply ask for additional comments and ask people to sign the form if they give permission for you to use the comments.

7. Be sure you can take whatever payment people are offering. This must include Visa, Master Card, American Express, and PayPal. As a general rule, people like to pay the way they normally pay. If they can’t use their preferred method, they won’t buy at all. While it’s true that you’ll give up a few percentage points, you’ll also make sales that you wouldn’t have made otherwise.

8. Ask for the sale. As strange as it sounds, you need to ask people to buy your books. This is particularly true when you’re not being paid for your presentation. Before the end of your presentation, simply go through your price list/order form and make sure everyone knows how easy it is to buy.

9. Finally, make sure you orchestrate a time for people to buy. This might be at a break or near the end. If you’re not the organizer, make sure you know what the arrangements are. The worst thing that can happen is that the room is not available after a certain time and everyone has to leave. You don’t want to finish your talk and have everyone rush out. Leave time for the sale!

- Karl W. Palachuk, Great Little Book Publishing Co., Inc.
SMBBooks.com

NOTE: Check out Karl’s Network Migration Workbook, a high-dollar book that is selling like crazy. How cool is this?! As an author and a publisher, I am green with envy! Visit www.networkmigrationworkbook.com

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: author, back of the room, karl palachuk, publisher, selling books

Just about everyone with a business card is talking about the benefits of social media and urging others to climb aboard. You’ve already heard that social media is a great tool for business exposure and for connecting with clients and prospects. But here’s a benefit that I haven’t seen covered much: Social media is a powerful outlet for learning.

Whether you want to learn more about your specific industry or you have a variety of interests, you can find a wealth of information through sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can do this by following those who are authorities in their subject matter, related trade associations, news outlets, and industry-specific publications and by participating in related groups. You might be surprised at how much useful information is out there!

I get tons of information from Twitter. I use Twitter to uncover industry statistics, find great nuggets of information and to keep up on trends. I’ve found book recommendations, links to free reports and ebooks, event announcements and all kinds of unexpected goodies. In most cases, this is information I quickly retweet to share with others.

Warning: The biggest danger here is that you can enter a rat hole! It’s very easy to lose track of time when you come across a tweet that takes you to a blog post, that takes you to an article, that takes you to a website… But the benefits clearly outweigh the potential time-suck and the time is yours to manage.

I also find that the people I most enjoy following on Twitter and the other social networks are those who share useful information and aren’t just posting for the sake of posting. I don’t care what you had for lunch, where your kids are off to today and I definitely don’t need any more motivational quotes. So a side note here is that if you want to stand out on the social networks, you need to provide value!

And for those who aren’t ready to send shout-outs to the world, there are still many benefits to be found from consuming the information that is available. Pull up a chair and watch for awhile. Monitor the networks and find interesting people to follow. And then maybe, over time, you will be ready to join the party! Either way, you’re sure to learn something.

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: business, twitter, ~SOCIAL MEDIA~

I just read an article from Publisher’s Weekly about the debate the big publishers are having at the Digital Book World event over two main issues:
1. How to price ebooks
2. When to release ebooks

It seems that statistically, the sweet spot for pricing ebooks falls below $9.99 (though I’d like to see this figure broken down by fiction vs. nonfiction as I suspect this is primarily attributed to fiction). The publishers are whining that there isn’t enough room to make a profit from ebooks, which makes me wonder where they are getting their figures.

The cost to produce an ebook is ridiculously low and as far as I’m concerned, ebooks represent nearly pure profit. While in the traditional book world they currently only account for 4% of book sales market, that number is likely to climb as the popularity of portable ebook readers (Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s new Tablet, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, etc.) continues to rise. Note to big pubs: perhaps it’s your inflated overhead that is killing your profit margin. I’m just sayin’…

To further complicate the discussion, many publishers are holding off on releasing ebook versions of new titles in an effort to capture more sales. In an industry that’s struggling to stay afloat, I wonder why the traditional publishers aren’t bending over backwards to make customers happy. Give us ebooks! Each time a reader enjoys a $10 ebook, you gain a new fan for the author. This can lead to MORE sales from that author’s past and future titles (you are going to re-sign that author, right?).

In my humble opinion, publishers who start embracing the ebook market now will be far better positioned to weather the economic storm in the publishing industry.

Want to inspire more book sales? Get the book in more hands–give away copies of the ebook. This is a low-cost, high-return proposition. As an author, I’d much rather get my books into as many hands as possible so that people can talk about them. I would love it if my publishers started giving away the ebook versions of my books so that the buzz created on blogs and social networks could help sell more printed copies. That’s one of the best ways there is to sell books in a world that is evolving faster than the publishing industry wants to admit.

All of this just puts another feather in the cap for self-publishing. Self-published authors maintain all of their rights and avoid the politics and out-dated policies of the traditional houses. I’ve done both for years for various reasons, though it frustrates me that I don’t have the right to sell my own books in ebook format.

What do you think? I’d love for some feedback on this whole messy issue.

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: apple tablet, ebook readers, ebooks, kindle, nook, pricing ebooks, self-publishing, traditional publishing, ~PUBLISHING~

I just came across and article from Publishers Weekly that offers a summary of a new survey published by the Book Industry Study Group about how book buyers use ebooks. According to the survey, computers are still the top device used to read ebooks, with Kindle as the second preferred choice.

For those of us who publish and distribute books, this reinforces the fact that ebooks can and should be made available in PDF format. With PDF, a document can be read across many platforms: PCs, Macs, and most handheld devices. For authors who are reading this post, I encourage you to make your book available in ebook format for sale from your website or blog. The only caveat here is that you must own the rights to your own book. If you’re published with a major press, it’s likely that your contract stipulates that you don’t have the right to sell your own book in ebook format (an unfortunate down-side of traditional publishing for authors). Self-published authors have an advantage here because you own the rights to your book. And by the way, making your work available in ebook format is an advantage not only for your readers who want the instant gratification that comes from buying an electronic download, but it equates to nearly pure-profit for you as an author. Ebooks are fantastic for revenue!

I wrote a book on this subject: From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur: Make Money with Books, eBooks and Information Products (John Wiley and Sons). Ironically, because it’s with a traditional press, I can’t sell you the ebook version! But I’m happy to see this survey which reinforces that PDF versions of ebooks are still alive and well.

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: author, book industry, ebooks, publisher, publishing ebooks, ~PUBLISHING~

When Carley Knobloch from Mothercraft Coaching asked if she could interview me for her Perfect Moms Finish Last audio series, I gave an enthusiastic YES! I love what she has done–Carley rounded up 20 moms who have given up on seeking perfection at home and at work, and instead “embrace imperfection!” Amen to that.

I got a late start in the mommy games. My stepson came into my life when he was eight (he’s about to turn 17), so I didn’t get to experience the early years. Today my son, Ben, is three. He rocks my world, magically shifted all of my priorities, and has made me feel more vulnerable than I have ever been in my life.

As an entrepreneur and classic type-A personality, I am used to control. I like order in my day. I thrive on lists, schedules, plans, and a nice, clean kitchen. I used to have a pretty house. The furniture matched, coasters lined the tables, and I got a charge out of updating the decor. Now I have a little boy who has all the energy of a wild puppy. Not a day goes by that I don’t trip over a fire engine, pajamas that were stripped off on a whim, a juice box or other miscellaneous object that was moved from one end of the house to the other.

Around the time that Ben started to walk, I gave up on coasters. I now consider my furniture disposable. Chips in the wood, stains on the arm of the couch, the faded blue ink on the carpet where Ben had some fun with a pen that I accidentally left out… I made a life-changing decision to let go of perfection a long time ago, mostly for the sake of survival. If I let myself obsess about the spilled juice and crayon on the wall by the bathroom, my head might explode.

I have more important things to worry about like the debate over whether or not to give Ben the H1N1 vaccine, the fact that we’re out of raisins, the mystery of the missing stuffed puppy that he sleeps with, and how I’m going to negotiate an earlier bed time with him tonight. Oh, and there’s that little matter of the business I have to run, the books I write, the upcoming speaking engagements, my overflowing inbox, my exceedingly late reply to voice mails, and the list goes on.

As I said, I gave up on perfection a long time ago. If you want to celebrate the joys of imperfection with 20 other perfectly imperfect moms, Carley Knobloch has made them available for free download: Perfect Moms Finish Last.

Enjoy! (And don’t forget to embrace your own imperfections!)

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: carly knobloch, imperfect moms, mom business owner, mom entrepreneur

My post earlier this week on what happens when your ebook gets passed around generated a lot of discussion online. Thanks for all the comments and support! Here are a few more thoughts to address some questions that have come up:

One comment on Facebook pointed out that ebooks represent passive income, the same way that CD sales represent passive income for record companies and artists. When a CD is shared, a sale is lost. The same is true with an ebook. Here’s my response:

You are right that ebooks represent passive income. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of passive income! My point is that while you may lose SOME of your passive income when others share your ebooks and other electronic products without permission, you ultimately gain more income from the ripple effect of new fans who come back to buy your other products.

The secret to success here: Make sure you have other products and services to offer. A single ebook isn’t likely going to be your golden ticket to wealth (unless it’s a high-dollar, niche-targeted product with great marketing to drive traffic and sales). The reality is that most businesses need multiple products and services to thrive. Can you imagine a yarn store with just one color of yarn? Or a restaurant that sold burgers without fries and sodas?

I also believe in the common good of people. Just this week a client told me that she purchased several copies of one of my ebooks to give to friends. She could have sent along her personal copy, but used the good karma rule and went back to buy additional copies. She definitely earned her good karma points.

There is also something to be said for ebooks, reports, audios, etc. that you create specifically to give away for free. Seth Godin did this last month by compiling an ebook full of tips from various authors. The announcement became a Twitter trending topic, and definitely created a lot of exposure for all involved. Brilliant!

Godin also wrote a book on the topic: Free Prize Inside: How to Make a Purple Cow. Chris Andersen covers similar ideas in his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Both are great reads.

Finally, whether you are creating an ebook, report, whitepaper–or any other digital product, and you sell it or give it away for free, make sure you reference your website and invite recipients to learn more about your products and services. This doesn’t have to be in-your-face marketing. Readers who like what you have to say will want the opportunity to learn more. This is a missed opportunity I’ve seen all too often.

So glad we have begun this conversation!

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: ebook distribution, free ebook, information products, passive income, seth godin, special reports

One of the questions I am most commonly asked is, “If I sell my book in ebook format, how I can prevent it from getting forwarded around?”

Here’s what happens (and the source of so much fear around this subject):
- Someone buys your ebook and downloads it in PDF.
- They like it so much, they forward to three friends who didn’t pay for the content.
- The three friends like it so much, that they forward it to three more friends each.
- And so on…

Guess what just happened? You just landed 12 new fans of your work!

True, they didn’t pay for the right to read your materials, and that stinks. But if your material was good enough to be shared, then you have just gained exposure with a new audience. And those new readers are now familiar with the quality of your work and will be far more likely to invest in other products and services that you offer.

It’s really no different than a library book. If you have authored a traditional book, anyone can go check it out from the local library for free OR purchase your book and then loan it to a friend. That friend didn’t pay for the right to read your book, but once again, you’ve just gained a new fan.

While new technologies are emerging that promise to protect your digital content, I personally feel that it is more trouble than it is worth. My digital ebooks, reports, workbooks, etc. create a nice revenue stream for my business. Do I think it’s fair that some people receive a copy from a friend, even though it wasn’t paid for? No, it’s not fair. But I don’t stay up at night worrying about all that lost revenue.

If someone feels compelled to forward my materials around, then I will gladly reap the rewards of a new audience. This is why it is so important to create more products and services the compliment your core product or book–so that you have other revenue-generators in your arsenal of products. If a reader likes one, there is a good chance that they are going to like others (and ultimately pay for them).

The music industry is currently figuring this out. While digital downloads of music are being commodotized, and thus cost far less, and songs are being swapped and shared online for free, musicians are uncovering a whole new audience that wouldn’t have otherwise become fans of their music. In turn, the market is shifting and bands are discovering that a good percentage of their income can be made from live concert tours instead of the traditional record sales model. Smart bands are turning this shift into an opportunity.

So if you can stop viewing the swapping of your content as lost revenue and instead see the opportunity, your revenue potential can be even greater!

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: digital downloads, ebooks, internet, sharing content, special reports

In the spirit of year-end goal planning, I feel compelled to share another one of my favorite things: Success Magazine. As an avid reader with more magazine subscriptions than I care to admit, I can tell you that I actually get EXCITED when this magazine arrives each month. It is loaded with inspiring articles and goes beyond the standard “you can do it” by providing real-world interviews, examples and insights. It’s the only magazine I read from cover to cover.

I also picked up a copy of publisher Darren Hardy’s Mentor Package, which includes several audio recordings and Hardy’s workbook: “Design Your Best Year Ever.” Totally loved this! Audios by Jim Rohn, a workbook that helps with strategic goal setting – what more could you want?

Wishing you all abundant joy and success in 2010!

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: darren hardy, goal planning, jim rohn, success magazine

My favorite book for 2009: The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.

This book has been on my radar for awhile because its title is similar to my latest book: LEAP! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business. I’ve read books by Gay Hendricks in the past, so I finally decided to download the audio version of The Big Leap and give a whirl.

Boy, am I glad that I did! This is officially my favorite book of the year. It’s is about living your full potential and creating more success in your life. It is about harnessing your creative powers and operating from your “Zone of Genius” (I just love that!). It’s loaded with real-world stories and powerful insights as Hendricks shares many anecdotal stories from his experiences coaching top executives.

You know when you get in that place where you are doing what you love and time just disappears? That is when you are operating from your Zone of Genius. Imagine how much better your business and your life could be if you were operating from your Zone of Genius every single day!

I’m now listening to it for a second time, I ordered a copy in print, and I’ve been telling everyone I know about this book! Yes, I loved it that much.

With the new year on the horizon, this is the perfect book to help you tap into your own Zone of Genius so that you can craft your best year ever!

written by Stephanie Chandler \\ tags: gay hendricks, LEAP! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business, the big leap