Event Review: Unintentional Entrepreneur Workshop DC
August 11, 2009 :: Joe LoongWednesday night was the DC-area installment of the Unintentional Entrepreneur series of workshops, held by Network Solutions and Outright.com as a way to help guide entrepreneurs into building and growing their businesses.
Along with traditional entrepreneurs, in this economic climate there have been a bumper crop of unintentional entrepreneurs — people who, through circumstance, have found themselves on their own, and are using this as an opportunity to unleash their talents and create their own businesses. (I, myself, kind of fit into this category, although I don’t really think of myself as an entrepreneur — maybe it’s a mental block.)
The DC event (well, actually in Rockville, Maryland, at the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus, a site that’s hosted several social media-related events we’ve written up here) was the penultimate stop in the 5-city tour, so you can see a lot of material and coverage from the other cities at the Unintentional Entrepreneur site. Which is a good thing, because I got to the event kind of late (I blame traffic). Again, though, we can fall back on the crowdsourced note-taking via the Twitter hashtag #uedc.
I snuck into the room just as Shannon Nash was finishing up her talk on accounting, tax and legal advice for small businesses (including answering the ever-popular question, “What structure should I use: Sole proprietor, LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, Hybrid, Partnership?”). The room was pretty full, and everyone was paying close attention:
(I took this photo, though you can see others at the Unintentional Entrepreneur Flickr set.)
Next, NetSol’s own Shashi talked about the benefits and how-to’s of establishing a presence for your business online. I have to admit I’ve heard Shashi give variations of this presentation a bunch of times, so I perhaps didn’t pay as close attention as I should have. Fortunately, the Twitter feed comes to the rescue: He covered the key points to picking a domain name for your business (keep it easy to remember and easy to spell), exhorted people to set up Facebook fan pages (if potato chips can have fan pages, you can too), and to explore other presences that could be useful (like Etsy.com for crafters and artisans.)
The last presenter was Bob London, on Marketing Your Small Business. He led off with a cloud of previously-submitted questions, and in rapid-fire fashion:
* Advocated using info from Dunn & Bradstreet to help vet potential clients.
* Said that social media was primarily a listening tool, not a revenue generator.
* Burst a few bubbles by saying that an 80:20 ratio of doing “actual work” vs. marketing and feeding the pipeline was way too high, and that the actual effort for marketing was 30-40%
* Advocated using GeniusRocket for creative
* Suggested that the pendulum may be swinging back on the effectiveness direct mail, since we get less of it now, and get more spam in e-mail.
For the rest of his presentation, he covered how for companies that aren’t Coca Cola, IBM, or GEICO (with huge marketing and advertising budgets), the best branding you can have is a solid product and customer service you can get behind. Also, instead of the elevator pitch, he advocated getting your prospective client’s “elevator rant” — their primary complaint and challenge (as they see it).
Also, he covered a few guerilla marketing techniques (like timing a newsletter to piggyback on bigger events); advocated “cloud marketing” (pushing your message out through multiple channels to create ubiquity); the value of opt-in newsletters to nurture and maintain relationships; and the best sales pitch is asking for reactions, ideas, and feedback, combined with doing your homework and getting the proper context.
In summary, the event (well, the parts I was able to catch) was well-received by an audience that ran the gamut from prospective startups to serial entrepreneurs, covering a variety of businesses. I know I’ll be delving into the hashtags and other resources to fill what I missed.
Were you at the workshop (or one of the previous ones)? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.
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