Never Get a ”Real„ Job (17 page)

Create a multimillion-dollar business card
. Now that you have a jingle-worthy toll-free number and a prestigious street address, it’s time to combine all of those elements into a single tool. The business card is a vital part of the first impression experience; it’s an instant reflection of you and your company’s work.

Though I’ll rarely advise you to spend money on something, a cheap, uninspired business card may send the wrong message—or worse, no message at all—to a prospective customer. I’m not advocating that you go overboard or spend excessive amounts on a small number of cards; just spend some time and a little extra cash designing and printing a card that will make a lasting impression. Your business card may be the only thing you leave behind to remind a prospect of you. This impression needs to be long-lasting.

Be creative, yet tasteful. Avoid using white, standard-size business cards. Choose a thicker card stock with a high-quality finish. Make the card longer, a different shape or a bold color to stand out. These printing options will increase the price of your cards, but they will pay off tenfold in the long run. Customers want to do business with companies that demonstrate their ability to provide high-quality services, and a creative business card sends that message.

THE ONLY TEAM YOUR MONEY CAN BUY

Now that you’ve established your fort, it’s time to raise your army. However, unlike the kings of old who possessed enough gold and rations to support massive legions, your castle is going to have to make due with a few nickels and hordes of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Maybe you can’t afford your very own army. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t lead one into battle—and win.

Hire a virtual workforce
. Need someone to keep you company? Get a dog. Need someone to get things done
for
your company? Get a virtual assistant. Full-time employees are likely cost-prohibitive for your start-up, and even part-time laborers can get pricey. Who needs office furniture, payroll taxes, and a human resources department? Screw that! Save yourself the headache of managing an in-house staff in the early stages of your business. You can still have a world-class team without a single person sitting beside you in an office.

Outsourcing enables you to benefit from a skilled, scalable, and on-demand labor force without the hassle of dealing with all the incidentals that come standard with full-time hires. It also allows you to hire the right person for jobs as they become available, instead of having to teach, train, or oversee a full-time staffer to take on new responsibilities.

Delegating select responsibilities will increase your overall productivity, efficiency, and revenue generation capabilities. For as little as $3 an hour, virtual assistants can handle everything from the most remedial administrative activities such as scheduling and data entry, to more skilled tasks such as customer support and sales.

But beware: Although finding the right virtual team will make you count your blessings, hiring the wrong one will have you pulling your hair out and backtracking. Before you commit to a long-term working relationship, test it out. Start off by assigning smaller tasks to judge the assistant’s work ethic, productivity to time ratio, and quality of submitted work product.

To get the most out of your virtual staff, figure out what tasks are necessary to your business, but not necessary for you to handle personally. These tasks may include data mining and researching prospective leads. Once you’ve determined the tasks you plan to delegate, compose a list with detailed instructions. Help virtual assistants make your life easier, not harder. Most of them work for many clients at any given moment, while others are not exactly Rhodes scholars or rocket scientists. Many of the assistants come from places as far away as India and China—so know what you’re getting. Spell out each detail of every task
completely
, in no uncertain terms. Be clear about the work product or service you expect to receive, and don’t leave anything to interpretation.

Be careful not to make the mistake of overdelegating and pissing money away by paying someone else to doing things you can handle yourself—like answering your phones or taking dictation. Answer your own phone! Write your own e-mail! Your assistant should be given activities that will help generate revenue, save money, or keep you organized. If a task isn’t producing your desired results, replace or cut the task from your checklist. If a virtual assistant isn’t working out, don’t bother giving him a second chance or more time to improve. Cut him loose. There are
many
more fish in the virtual assistant sea.

Keep in mind as well that there are many virtual assistants who are useless—or worse, complete scammers. Only hire an assistant with a verifiable reputation and one who uses legitimate time-tracking enabled services. Don’t just bring someone into your inner circle because his or her rates are affordable; do your homework on each potential hire to find the right virtual person for the job. If you need someone who speaks Spanish to handle customer calls, make sure that person is fluent and courteous. If you need an expert data miner, pass on hiring someone whose only proficiency is bookkeeping.

Hurray for dirt-cheap labor!
It will always seem like you never have enough hands to get everything done. Imagine if there was a way to get more hands for little to no money?

Well, there is! Call the intern brigade into action.

College students are always looking to pack their résumés with any valuable internships and work experience, which makes interns easy to find and in a nearly endless supply. Even better, it’s becoming more common today for interns to work virtually from home or their dorm room; you don’t even have to ever see them face-to-face. There are even companies that help you hire virtual interns!

Use these resources to amass your very own cadre of worker bees. Contact college career and internship counselors at local colleges and universities to find out how you can take part in their internship programs.

An internship program can offer your company great rewards when executed properly. However, the worst thing you can do is to hire interns solely for the sake of having interns. Leaving idle minds to wander can quickly turn your business into a daycare center. Know what you want from your collegiate workforce. Much like your virtual assistant task lists, plan your internship program in detail, and make it clear to them.

Interns need to be a value-add. Don’t just hire every intern seeking college credit. Each of these people will represent your start-up to the outside world, so know whom you are bringing into your business. Interview candidates no differently than if you were hiring a replacement CEO, and select the ones who are the best fit for what you need done.

Get your troops in line. Never mistreat interns, but be authoritative. Make it clear they were hired to get work done in a timely manner, not party or fraternize. Offer the interns useful, relevant experiences that give them valuable business knowledge—and benefits your bottom line.

Feed hungry lunchtime consultants
. Nowadays, it seems that everyone is a guru, an expert, or a business coach. I’ve wasted more than my fair share of time and money on these so-called “experts.” Most of the time, half the stuff I was spoon-fed was available on the Internet, a quarter was common sense, and the other quarter was impractical.

There’s a better way to get information. Forget paying hundreds of dollars for advice. Find your own lunchtime consultants.

Whenever you need to learn something new, think about the types of people who have the information you need. If you need to learn how to pitch the media, find someone in public relations. Need legal advice? Seek out a lawyer. Play six degrees of Kevin Bacon to figure out to whom you’re connected. Research people on social networking sites. Ask friends, colleagues, group organizers, and family for recommendations and introductions.

Compile a list and narrow it down to about 10 people. Introduce yourself via e-mail and invite them to lunch. Keep your e-mail introductions short, professional, and to the point. Be sure to include a little information about yourself; let them know who, if anyone, referred you to them, and share why you feel they can offer you valuable insight. Most importantly, don’t send people a boilerplate e-mail. Personalize each one.

Before you take a lunchtime consultant out, plan exactly what you want to ask and what knowledge you are looking to acquire. Treat the meeting as if you are actually paying hundreds of dollars. Do not let the conversation drift off topic; make every minute count and let the other party do most of the talking. At the end of the meeting—good, bad, or useless—express your thanks and be considerate of any time and advice you received. Be sure to ask the person if you can stay in touch and follow up with a thank-you e-mail shortly after the meeting.

Don’t just invite
every
expert to lunch. This exercise isn’t meant to waste your time or turn you into a spammer. Be reasonably certain that you have a real chance of getting a reply and actually securing the meeting before you send out a single invitation. Be exclusive in your approach. Make sure the lunchtime consultants that take you up on your offer feel special, appreciated, and like they’re part of your team.

Some of the best advice you’ll ever receive will be over a salad and a soda. But if you don’t put yourself out there, you’ll never find out what people are willing to tell you for a hamburger.