Trying to follow Chris Brogan’s advice to Grow Bigger Ears and engage with people and all that, I have a series of Google Alerts set up so on keywords that interest me. So I followed one of them to a post about self-publishing by a writer on Live Journal. I felt I had something to contribute, so I wrote a comment.

That’s when life started sucking for me. There are only three options for identifying yourself as a commenter:

• Anonymous
• Open ID
• Live Journal User (Become a member!)

I hate being anonymous- might as well not post. Open ID…. well, apparently I’m not a geek, since I don’t know how that works or whether I have it (going to the Open ID website DID NOT clear things up). Only option left was “Become a member!”

I should have stopped at this point, but I had already invested some time and thought into my comment. So I forged ahead. I clicked on the link. Filled out TWO PAGES of forms (they apparently want to know what kind of music I listen to). When that was over, I was not returned to my comment- the login process deadended. I had to use the back button on my browser to find my comment. Which I submitted, finally.

Except, wait, no- I haven’t verified my email account yet, so I can’t publish my comment. So I go back over to my email, click on the verification link. The page loads slowly. Why so slowly? OH! You want me to watch a video ad for Best Buy? Classy. And I can’t X out of it for 3…2…1 I CLOSE YOU NOW!

I finally am able to post my comment. I’m so proud of myself, I could just spit.

If you are a blogger, writer, marketer, company, etc:
Do NOT put your primary presence somewhere it is hard to get to. LiveJournal, and places like it, are supposed to be obsolete in 2009. Why do you think they shut down GeoCities? No one wants to look at poorly designed websites cluttered with ads. And no one wants to go through hell just to post a comment. I would have abandoned ship early on, but I decided to see how far this would go (so I could write a blog post about it). Most of your visitors do not have my motivation.

If you are building a community, platform, service, etc:
Remove friction. Do not annoy me. Interruptive ads are not the best way to monetize.

If you are an advertiser:
NO ONE likes pop up ads. No one likes noise to suddenly start blasting out of their speakers. Stop it. Please stop it.

Bootstrapping, of course!

I hang out with a lot of lawyers, VC types, serial entrepreneurs, tech people, etc… When I go to networking events or roundtable discussions, I often hear people ask about getting funding. Sometimes they mean SBA loans, usually they mean venture capital- always they mean, “How can I build this business with other people’s money?” I think, implicitly, they are saying, “How can I build this business without putting my personal lifestyle at risk? And, oh yeah- I’m broke.”

Too often, the VC experts in the room indulge the asker by talking about what the capitalists are looking for, and discussing terms and so forth. The “entrepreneurs” take notes. They go to networking/educational events to learn about business plan writing, term sheets, all that stuff…

Not often enough does someone say, “IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN FOR YOU!”

• You can’t get an SBA loan unless you’re mostly established, which you aren’t.
• You’re not going to get VC funding unless there’s a clear, multi-million dollar exit strategy, which you don’t have.
• Even if you could get either one of those thing (which you can’t), you shouldn’t anyway.

An infusion of cash is more likely to ruin your business than it is to help it. Think about what happens when people win the lottery. Same deal.

Bootstrap it!

Spend very little, reinvest, don’t hire, retain control. Ignore the motivational gurus who tell you to spend money you don’t need to spend. They are usually suggesting you spend money on them.

I’m not saying don’t spend anything, but think real hard: An online startup needs a great website design, but probably could forgo the fancy letterhead and branded notepads. Spending 100 hours to learn PHP so you can build a little function is probably a waste- hire someone. Hiring someone to do basic data entry because you “value your time too much” is probably a waste- skip CSI:Miami and do it yourself.

And learn how to sell for goodness sake. Remember, the one, single reason for a business to exist is to sell something to someone. Large infusions of cash are likely to remove that understanding. Worse, hanging around VC startups and VC people can also skew your thinking on this matter. Complicated business plans obscure the point, too.

Bootstrapping forces you to realize that if you aren’t selling something you aren’t in business.

So, what now?

Stop reading blogs for the day and go work. By work, I mean, “Sell something.”
Use the money from that sale to buy/build the next thing you can sell.

That’s bootstrapping.

PS- I was inspired to write this post after reading this excellent post about Bootstrapping. You should read it too. It’s short, and has several great Bootstrapping tips.

I skim headlines. If something jumps out as interesting, I read it.
Most things don’t jump out.

If it’s really cool, has a bunch of useful links, or is a tutorial for something I might want to accomplish in the future, I tag it. I also tag if I plan to write a blog post about it in the future.

If I’ve written a related post, or have a strong opinion on the post, I go comment.

If I think other people would be interested, I tweet it. (Twitter tip: Make a habit of opening Twitter before your RSS reader).

If I don’t have time to read, I don’t open the Reader. I do not want to have to come back to read blogs. I only tag stuff for reference, not for later reading.

That’s it.

Oh- also:
I think the people who write posts about how RSS is dead, because they use Twitter to read blogs instead, are full of crap. Real-time is less efficient than batching, and some of us still have an attention span. Please stop acting like everything a few years old is medieval and obsolete. It does not endear you to regular people.

This post is part of the Brogan 100.
Learn more here and here.

To all developers, designers, a service providers:
You know exactly what I mean, don’t you?

To all prospects, customers, and clients:
Please stop acting this way.

If he needs a few line edits done, like changing his pricing, adding a new service, even fixing a spelling mistake, or making sure one hex-color matched another hex-color (really?!), he would have to pay this guy $50 an hour. And then, when he learned enough HTML to go in and fix things himself from time to time, he got nasty-grams warning him of the cost to repair a broken website. The funniest part of the story was the web master’s annoying use of “pointless” “quote” “marks” in a way that my friend found insulting.

Attention Annoying and Condescending Web Masters:
Your days are numbered.

We know your tricks. We know why you still use straight HTML instead of CMS. We know how you scare us into worrying about site breakage. We know how you hack together poorly written HTML files with half-done CSS and deprecated style tags. We know why you have thrown us into the dark pits of Go Daddy and Network Solutions… all so you can be the one, the only guide capable of navigating us through your obnoxious mix of bad design, arcane coding, and poor user interface. Shoot- if my only option was Go Daddy, I’d probably pay someone else to do things, too.

But as I said, your days are numbered. The rise of easy to install, easy to customize, and easy to maintain CMS solutions means that your clients can and should be able to make updates, add content, and do minor tweaking without your hourly rates. At the same time that technology has made the job of web self-mastery much easier, the economy has made the monthly expense of a “Guru” incredibly unappetizing.

You never should have been acting like this, y’all. Letting your clients do things themselves frees you up to pursue more clients, and also gives them a better appreciation for what you actually do. The web-guy-as-roadblock is a bad business model, besides being incredibly annoying (and probably unethical).

To do my part in the downfall of the Gurus and the rise of (ahem) Bootstrapping, I am now offering a Fire Your Webmaster program. Here’s the basic idea:

Fire Your Web Master!

You have a website. It works reasonably well, you sort of like the design… but you want to stop paying “that guy” a few hundred a month to… what? Do routine maintenance? A few line edits here and there?

Thought Leaders update their website content continuously. They blog, they add resources, they try new products and services, they add libraries of useful articles… Are you paying someone by the hour for stuff you could do yourself in twenty minutes if you just knew how?
Or worse… Are you not adding content? Not blogging? Not updating? Not trying out new things?
…All because you can’t afford to pay your “web master” enough?

We will take over the management of your site, convert it to a user-friendly Content Management System, and teach you how to do routine tasks and updates. If you want to finally get around to that minor design make-over or that major site overhaul, we can take care of that too.

Stop putting up with abuse from the web-literate (it’s not that profound a skill, really), take ownership of your site, and FIRE YOUR WEBMASTER!

Pricing will be determined per job, based on the complexity and needs of your current site, but all pricing will be a predetermined, flat rate. We will also offer a payment plan option that allows you to smear your payments out over several months if you need to.

Hope it helps!

I’m hopeful my friend takes me up on the offer, but even if he decides to go with one of the other fine web design firms in town- I think he will be much happier, and more profitable, once he fires his webmaster.

Bootstrap that!

Carolyn Elefant, writing on Nolo’s Legal Marketing Blog, says that a firm should consider using Wikipedia as a marketing tool.

Still, is a Wikipedia entry worthwhile for solo and small firm lawyers? For starters, what kinds of information would you include in the listings? Many large firms with long histories describe the firm’s origins and provide bios of firm founders and well-known alumni. But solo and small firm lawyers might not have enough background material to include. A smaller firm might also link to reported cases or cross-reference practice areas described on Wikipedia. For example, a bankruptcy lawyer could cross-link to the entry on Bankruptcy in Wikipedia, thus providing a good resource for clients with basic questions. Likewise, lawyers could cross-reference the city where they practice or hobbies they enjoy.

No… no, no… no, no, no.

Apparently someone forgot to read the Wikipedia editing guidelines:

Wikipedia is not…
4. Self-promotion.
It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects in which you have a strong personal involvement. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other, including the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself or about projects close to you. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical articles is unacceptable. See Wikipedia:Autobiography, Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.

5. Advertising.
Articles about companies and products are written in an objective and unbiased style. Article topics must be third-party verifiable, so articles about very small “garage” or local companies are typically unacceptable. External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they identify major organizations associated with a topic (see finishing school for an example). Wikipedia neither endorses organizations nor runs affiliate programs. See also Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) for guidelines on corporate notability. Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so.

And, instead of a massive uproar of “you’re not supposed to do that sort of thing,” Larry Bodine of LawMarketing Blog reblogs the idea…

A Wikipedia entry can help your law firm generate new business…
Most major law firms already maintain pages on Wikipedia.

So… Because it might be good marketing, we’re supposed to ignore Wikipedia standards about self-promotion, advertising, original research, notability, and autobiography. It even breaks the Ignore All Rules rule, since a shameless advertisement (no.. I know… not an advertisement, just a “profile”) cannot possibly contribute to the quality of the encyclopedia.
And.. just in case all those individual guidelines don’t gel together to help you realize that Wikipedia doesn’t like you writing articles about yourself, there is even a page called, “List of bad article ideas.”
Guess what item number one was?

Yourself or your organization – including a band of which you are a member or employee, even if either is notable! See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.

Notice, the behavior of writing about your own company is so stupid and juvenile, that it is included on a list that also tells you not to write articles about your college dorm, the street you live on, or the “The New Great Thing you made up in school today.”

(Let’s not even get into the “Don’t Stuff Beans Up Your Nose” rule, which lawyers have been breaking for centuries)

And you people are lawyers… great.

Two bloggers, supposedly on the vanguard of Social Media / Relationship Marketing, should understand that abusing the communities we move in is a bad idea. Whether it results in public outcry or just bad karma is irrelevant.

Bootstrap that, biz-atches.

It went like this-
An estate planning attorney and I were doing some free educational seminars about guardianship (what happens to your kids if you die or are in a coma). It was part of our joint effort to reach out directly to the people who were most likely to become our clients, and then provide useful information to them.
There were maybe 16 moms at the seminar we had just done. We got two appointments right away.
Then, there I was, in a sales meeting, being asked to accont for my activity that week. I told a quick story about the seminar, that we had two appointments, and that we had several more moms who were interested.
But, no- I was reminded- 10-3-1… Two appointments is hardly anything worth talking about. How many dials did I make? How many doors did I knock on? How many people did I harass?
I quit, about a week later.

Since then, a few interesting things have happened:

• The attorney became my first consulting client (with a long-term engagement as her Creative Director).
• The attorney closed on both appointments.
• I read this article on Seth Godin’s blog.

Because marketers were raised on the scale of mass—TV, radio, newspapers—they have a churn and burn mentality…
Scalejacking inevitably tarnishes most communities, because individuals (people) hate being treated like numbers just standing by to be filtered.

Sales people, especially Financial sales people, weren’t raised on the scale of mass, but they were raised on churn and burn. 10-3-1. The sales funnel. Conversion rates. I once heard (in a motivational talk) that our job was simply, “processing names.”

No wonder sales people have such a bad reputation.

And it doesn’t require the internet to take care of a small dedicated community. That helps, of course it helps. But the good sales people (I’ve met a few) have been building and taking care of communities forever. Our little experiment with conversion rates at a low-tech, in-person seminar is proof of that. (Results have been repeated, by the way.)

When I first got into what became my last sales job, I took a personality test to see if I would be successful. The test said my biggest weakness was that I cared too much about clients.
So, in sales world…
Caring too much about clients = weakness.

If you’ve spent any time around sales people (especially sales managers) or marketing people, do everything you can to detox yourself from that kind of churn-n-burn, numbers-game poison. If you have been trying to run a business based on love, but you keep hearing some expert somewhere telling you about sales funnels and conversion rates, try to block them out.

(And yes… Sales conversion rates and click-through and numbers are all important. I’m just saying- the funnel is a tool, not the whole enterprise. The enterprise is love. The enterprise is value.)

And one last point (do I make too many in one post?)…
That awful feeling you get in your stomach when you start treating people like numbers… there’s a reason for that. Pay attention to it.

A friend of mine has been dinking around for three months, not getting her website up and running. Finally, I force her to let me get it up and running. She can’t really afford me, but she’s a lawyer- so she’s agreed to trade services (Bootstrapping in action), plus- she’s a friend.

She’s been trying to do it herself- which, you might know, I applaud (good Bootstrapping, remember). But she’s been fighting with the goofy do-it-yourself website builder on her supremely goofy hosting provider, Network Solutions.

I fought with it and fought with it… Blue Host won.

First of all, do-it-yourself website creators (in this case, Image Cafe) are about as awesome as the original version of PrintShop. The best you can do is throw up (really, throw up) a poorly templated brochure. But, I kind of expect that sort of thing from a do-it-yourself web page builder (Blue Host has some goofy ones, too).

What I didn’t expect was Network Soultions’ absolutely awful user interface. Nothing resembling a Control Panel (the help file said there was one, but the instructions for how to get to it didn’t make any sense). Nothing like a File Manager. Nothing like a built-in FTP client. Nothing like a Simple Scripts interface.

Again… perhaps they do have those things, but they were impossible to find. And every page was just crammed with advertisements.

So- let’s transfer over to Blue Host.

Oh, wait…. Of course, to transfer a domain you need to unlock the domain, and get the Auth code and all that. Guess how hard that was? Yes… hard.

In the FAQ section, the NUMBER 2 (all time, second most asked question) was… How do I transfer my domain name? The answer… only told you how to tranfer it to Network Solutions. No information on how to track down the information you need to tranfer away from them (surprise).

Eventually I was able to track down a little button (two clicks deep into a not-obvious progression of pages) that let me request an email with the Auth Code in it.

We finally got the hosting transferred, although we are STILL WAITING for the Domain Name Servers to point to the new host. Apparently, even though the internet is fully automated and runs at the speed of light, it still takes 4 to 7 days to transfer hosting away from Network Solutions. FOUR TO SEVEN DAYS!!
REALLY?!

And, by the way… NS is more expensive. Yes… MORE expensive.

So… If you are trying to figure out:
What web host should I use?
Where should I host my website?
How do I register a domain name?

The answer… NOT NETWORK SOLUTIONS

I suggest Blue Host. They are the only web host that I’ve never had problems with. They have enough functionality to satisfy a geek who really knows what to do, but they are also easy enough for a total novice.

Bootstrap that, Network Solutions!

Pretty quickly, computer scientists figured out how to build another language on top of that language. A compiler would turn this new language into the 1s and 0s the computer needed to do it’s thing, and everyone congratulated themselves for solving “the biggest problem facing computer science today.”

But then, pretty quickly, they figured out another layer that could be draped over the new language, which made it easier to write programs and solve problems. Programs and devices and algorhythms were invented to translate the newest stuff into the slightly less new stuff, while something else translated slightly less new stuff into the stuff that actually works: 1s and 0s.

I bet you can guess where this is going…

Computer scientists (and programmers and engineers, and whole cadre of geniuses) have layered and layered and layered, because each new layer allows the programmers (and the end users: us) the ability to do more things, more complicated things, cooler things. It may be (theoretically) possible, but it’s hard to imagine programming the CGI effects of the latest Star Trek movie by individually turning on and off transistors.

How many layers are we from the stuff that actually does things? I would venture to guess that it is more layers than there are between my experience of conciousness and individual neurons firing in my brain.

Crazy, huh?…

So what?- This isn’t a computer science blog, so what do you care, you Social Media Marketing Maven?

Well… I was talking recently to a computer programming friend who was talking about “purists” computer programmers/scientists who think that you need to understand this stuff from the ground up in order to be effective.
I say… that’s ridiculous. That’s as ridiculous as thinking we need to know how muscle fiber is built before we can learn how to walk.

Now… many people would agree with that- in fact, I know a great number of programmers, and I don’t think any of them could scratch out machine code if their lives depended on it.
But, I think that the same ridiculous reasoning in a slightly different form pervades Web Design and Social Media and all the other great new things that you can do with technology.

Those of you who are still trying to get your bearings with all this stuff, I say… Take Heart!
The greatest thing about this revolution (and that’s what it is, mind you) is that the informational barriers to entry have dropped to the point where building a website is on the level of conscious will, as opposed to the level of corralling neurons or jettisoning chemical activators.

Yes, you do still need to learn how to walk. But EVERYONE DOES, eventually.
So…
Most of you reading this probably already have jumped that hurdle, but for the rest of you, who still feel a little intimidated by the “geeks.”
HAVE NO FEAR!
Stop waiting around until you have the time to “really learn” how to do whatever it is you think you need to know how to do (program? write html? understand what a CSS is?) and just jump on board and
Start Dancing!

“What’s a thought leader?”
“Don’t you mean Creating Through Leadership?”
“So, you’re creating a pyramid scheme, right?”

Oi.

Yesterday, though- the conversation was a little more… important might be a good word.
How do we make the program appealing enough to those of you who would get some real value out of it, without attracting the get-rich-quick people, the pyramid schemers, and desperate job seekers. We want lots of sales, we want a profitable company… but we don’t want to take money from people who are going to get no value out of the program.
I didn’t say this during our conversation, but I also realized in myself a temptation leaning towards that group of buyers (since there are so many of them, and clearly- they spend money).

I came to a few conclusions:
-We should keep in mind the problem, and the temptation, and be mindful of how advertising is worded. We should definitely not craft messages designed to attract that audience.
-We should be dedicated to the quality of the product itself, so that it really is worth the expense and that it does everything we say it does.
-We should be very clear in our sales copy that this is not a get rich quick scheme, that this is not a pyramid or an MLM, and that if anybody wants to be successful as a Social Bootstrapper, it actually takes work.
-We’ll probably get a few of those people no matter what we do. So, we should do the best we can and not stress about it too much.

All of this is tough. And, the more time I spend around entrepreneurs, sales people, and the social media crowd (the intersection of communities I live in) the more I realize that there truly is a thin, thin line between legitimate business and pyramid scheme, between a business opportunity and a complete ripoff. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that enough people are making the effort to struggle through this…
And I don’t mean the perception issue (“This is definitely not MLM.”). I mean the actual reality issue. I mean- taking the time, not just to make sure your business doesn’t look like it’s ripping people off, but to make sure that it ACTUALLY ISN’T RIPPING PEOPLE OFF.

Well, Social Bootstrap is determined to be ethical, transparent, and valuable. And, so- if you’re reading this post, and you’re thinking about joining Social Bootstrap… we’d love to have you on board. We like money (of course), and we love helping entrepreneurs build Social Media consultant businesses.
But, we’re not really into downlines, and we’re not really into making $10,437.84 in your first month, and we’re not really into never working another day of your life. So, if that’s what you’re after… you’ll be wasting your money. If you’re still determined to give it to us, I guess we’ll find some way to spend it… but you’d be better off taking your money elsewhere. (Or, not spending it at all, since you’re probably using a Credit Card anyway).

However-
If you are intrigued by Social Media…
If you want to build an actual consulting business and just need some help…
If you like the idea of freedom, and have the discipline not to waste it…
If you have the patience to build a client base and get rich slowly, and with much hard work…

Then you are exactly who Social Bootstrap is looking for.