Are You Sitting In the Wrong Room?

It finally feels warm here today, so I’m allowing myself to think about spring cleaning…the business.

Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been working away at this for awhile or you’re anywhere in between – I encourage you to take a good look around and ask yourself honestly how things are going. If your answer sounds anything like this:

Things are going okay. I’m doing all that I can. I’m doing everything I’m ‘supposed’ to be doing. This is the most I can hope for in this economic climate. What else could I possibly do?

Then, I invite you to listen to this story.

When I was 20 weeks pregnant with my daughter, we found out that she was really small. Everything else about her looked fine, other than the fact that she was tiny. By the time she was 35 weeks it seemed like she just wasn’t getting what she needed in her internal home – at all. So, the doctors wanted to take her out.

The very idea of this turned everything we knew on its head. She wasn’t fully cooked! Babies are supposed to thrive in the womb for a specific amount of time. All of the conditions on the inside are ‘supposed’ to be perfect. So, how could bringing her out make it better?

All I know, is that it did. When we brought her out of the womb and into the room 5 weeks early at 2.8 lbs., she thrived. Gained 2 oz. per day, hightailed it out of the NICU in a week and a half, floored the doctors, never had a thing wrong with her.

Think about your business, your creativity, your productivity. If it’s moseying along, but not flourishing. If you think there could be more – even though you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Think about doing something else. Find out if you’re sitting in the wrong room.

Maybe you need to:

• Switch professions
• Find a niche
• Join a social network like Twitter
• Attend some live conference or workshops
• Shift your workstyle
• Change the physical space where you usually work
• Collaborate with other creatives
• Write in a new medium, like blogs, white papers, annual reports
• Get a new computer
• Combine forces with another freelancer who complements your work (a writer and a web designer, for example)
• Go directly after a company that you’d like to work with…

There are so many ways to ‘change rooms’…What could it do for you? How will you do it?

FYI – Flexpaths is a great resource, if you’re thinking about changing careers or creating a flexible work environment.

Image courtesy of RBerteig

Filed under How To, The Business | Tags: business development, business growth, copywriter, designer, freelance copywriting business, Julie Roads, small business, small business owner, Writing Roads | Comments (6)

choosing a business name? try it out LOUD

I’m working with a wonderful new client named Julie Biondi – we’re building her blog as we speak, so I can’t post a link just yet, but I will. Julie helps people get dressed…hmmm, how can I best explain what she does? Oh, yeah, I wrote a blurb for her for a mini-mag…

Is there anything worse than that dress (that you spent so much money on and have never worn) mocking you from its hanger? Perhaps the shouts of ‘I have nothing to wear!’ as you shove the doors closed on your overstuffed closet? Sometimes things just aren’t right – the style, the fit, the way the clothes make you feel – no matter how great they looked on the hanger. Julie Biondi empowers you to get rid of what doesn’t work and helps you build your own look – the one that fits.

Starting with a full closet edit and your personal budget, Julie teaches you how to identify and create the image that you want the world to see. Wardrobes are tremendously personal; you wouldn’t let just anyone into your closet or into the dressing room…and Julie’s your go-to girl. If you’re successful everywhere in your life, but your wardrobe is the one place that feels unfinished, she’s the one that can take the weight off your shoulders (and replace it with the perfect sweater). Ideal for every day, special occasions, men and women. For more information, contact Julie Biondi, 917.620.2760

But this post isn’t really just an ad for Julie, even though she is fabulous. She also reminded me this morning of a tried and true copywriting tool.

We were working on business names for her company, and she said, ‘I was lying in bed last night with the list of possible names and I imagined telling an interested stranger the name of my business. I was testing out how each of them felt to me as I said it out loud.’

Brilliant! You know that I believe in reading copy out loud as an editing tool, but this takes it to another level. When you’re choosing the name of your business, you must love it, it must work for you and you have to feel great about saying it. If you mumble and dribble your name all over your shirt with the cheese dip, it’s not a good sign.

What are your testing techniques???

Filed under How To, The Business | Tags: business development, business marketing, business names, copywriter, copywriting, Julie Roads, Marketing, Writing Roads | Comments (6)