Elie Kochman on Business and Networking

One of my readers was kind enough to send me a link to a piece of software he’s been working on for about a year, and asked if I could provide some feedback. I did what I normally do when I get such requests – I went to his site, spent 3 minutes browsing, and decided that it was worth a second look, and for multiple reasons.

Why write a review?

There are two reasons that I decided to write this review. Normally, I choose to review sites I’ve discovered, products that I like, services I think would be of use to my readers. This service certainly matches that criterion.

The second reason is because of what Edward Lejun, the founder of Setster, wrote to me. He explained that he’s worked on the product for about a year, is looking to expand and add new features, and was wondering if I could help him out. As a fellow entrepreneur, I’m happy to oblige, to help another entrepreneur reach success.

The Product

Setster is an online appointment scheduler, which can be added to sites, and allows you, the visitor to the site, to book appointments by seeing the schedule and selecting an available slot. Based on the type of appointment you request, an appropriate amount of time is allocated.

This product certainly has a variety of applications, from making medical or dental appointments, to scheduling dates. This is precisely the type of service I would want if I were running an office and didn’t want to hire an appointment secretary to schedule my day. It lets clients know your availability, it allows you to control your exposure, and clients in general would like to know that when they call, you’ve blocked your schedule to give them your undivided attention.

The price of the service is pretty good too. There’s a free plan, which allows a single user to book up to 10 appointments per month. Upgrading to Pro Personal gives you an additional 40 appointments at $9.95 per month ,while upgrading to Pro Business gives you 300 appointments and 5 user accounts for $29.95 per month. Changes to your account level can be made at any time, subject to certain conditions.

The balance is pretty good, although a change I would recommend is to remove the limit on the Pro Business account in terms of how many appointments are allowed. As a business owner, that’s not something I want to think about (although 300 appointments works out to about 2 appointments per user per day, but in a doctor’s office, for example, that might not be anywhere close to enough).

Because the service was built with the Intuit Workspace, there’s good integration with other Intuit products, specifically, Quickbooks Online. This also will help Edward Lajun reach a large number of potential clients, so growth should occur as long as he maintains the quality of the application.

Where I think the product could use some help is in terms of what information is provided when an appointment is booked. Currently, there are a limited number of fields. Perhaps adding the ability to attach a file to the appointment would be useful, so that additional information can be provided if necessary.

All in all, I believe that Edward Lajun and Setster have built a viable product that will save its users money and hassle, and it’s merely a matter of good exposure that will propel them to great success.

In businesses of all size, keeping your customers happy is important, but measuring that can be quite difficult for some businesses. In past articles, I’ve discussed the handling of negative image incidents, such as how the Toronto Transit Commission handled the picture of a sleeping collector agent, and how Toyota handled the safety flaw in the design of the accelerator on some of their cars. In both cases, however, the companies are responding, while in truth, they need to be proactive.

Enter Adele Berenstein, a Customer Satisfaction Executive with almost 20 years of experience with IBM. Now she’s the author of Satisfaction Secrets, a blog which discusses ways in which you can keep your customers happy. She brings her experience and insight to current problems facing companies looking to keep their customers happy. Additionally, she discusses changes that are happening in this field, for example, looking at the same TTC incident I mentioned above.

Customer satisfaction has been increasing in importance over the last few years, as consumers have found it easier to get and share information. Considering that such information may or may not be accurate, it is incredibly important to ensure that your consumers have accurate information, and you don’t give them reason to be unhappy with your company.

But how do you know when a customer isn’t happy, if they aren’t telling you, or don’t realize it yet?

You need someone like Adele to look at your business, and help you figure out how to get feedback from your customers. You need to be listening, and you need to know what you’re listening for. And when your customers start talking, you need to be ready to answer.

There are many people who are tired of working for someone else. Tired of working for some large corporation. Tired of working in a business built by members of previous generations. We have something in common.

We belong to Generation Y.

I made the discovery of a group of people dedicated to helping members of Generation Y become their own bosses. I first came across the site on Twitter, following Jared O’Toole, one of the founders of http://under30ceo.com. I noticed that he posted links to articles from time to time that I could really relate to, since I write about similar topics on this site, and target a similar audience.

Today, I chatted with Jared on his site, mostly because of a contest that was launched today by BizBreak which he was promoting, in which one lucky entrepreneur will win $3,000 plus half the proceeds of the BizBreak sales over the next 60 days, plus coaching from five successful entrepreneurs. One thing led to the next, and pretty soon I was scanning through the collection of articles, interviews, and resources which Jared and Matt (his co-founder) have collected.

Then I noticed some recent additions to the site (turns out I missed an announcement back in January about the new features).

• Profiles of various companies. Not big companies. Small ones. The kind that have only been running for a matter of months. Where the founder is the developer, and his cousin is the tester.
• CEO Interviews. Sure, there’s an interview with Donald Trump right at the top of the page. But there are many more interviews of young CEO’s (under 30) who talk about their stories, their successes, their hard lessons.
• Consulting – Jared and Matt offer a variety of services, from helping you develop your brand, to polishing your business plan in preparation for a pitch to investors.

If you, like me, are building a business, whether full-time or on the side, consider checking out their site. There’s much to be learned, questions get answered, stories get told.

Who knows? Maybe your story will soon be featured there as well!

This is a relatively short post, as the site in this case speaks for itself. Business Plans is owned and operated by Palo Alto Software to help other entrepreneurs run better businesses. Their site contains many tools, tutorials, and templates for standard business documents, and will help you answer questions about your startup expenses and your cash flow projections. However, most of their templates are connected to business plans, as their name implies, although you might be surprised at how much falls under that category.

Check it out if you need any templates or other such resources. They have templates for the vast majority of business types, and if you can’t find an exact match, chances are, there are a few that are close enough to be combined to give you what you need.

Sorry for the short post, back to normal for Friday’s release.

I recently had my site added to Small Business on Alltop (scroll down to the bottom – I’m not the last site on the page, but close). This got me thinking about the concept of the site itself, and what it represents.

First, for those of you who don’t already know, Alltop is essentially an online magazine rack that displays the latest 5 posts from each magazine (a.k.a. website or blog) in the selection. Those sites are organized by category, and there are thousands available to choose from. You can make a custom page that includes those sites that you’re interested in from the selection available, so that you don’t have to keep searching for them.

In some sense, you might call Alltop a big RSS reader with twist – each feed has been manually reviewed to ensure that it fits within the scope of the site. Yes, you could build your own, and it might not even be that hard – but Alltop is already there, someone else’ responsibility to keep it working, and works really well!

What’s the revenue model? It’s actually quite simple – advertising. Alltop is ranked just over 2,700 according to Alexa globally, so they have more than enough traffic to make this a viable model. There are over 750 topics, each with its own page with available advertising. On the Small Business page, for example, there are 2 large advertising blocks currently populated. A quick look at their advertising page reveals that they accept two sizes of ads, but no pricing information.

Unfortunately, at the moment you’re limited to seeing sites that have been already approved for Alltop in your personalized page. However, you can always submit another site for consideration, and the current selection is quite diverse.

The one other feature that seems to be missing is the ability to search for a particular site. For example, despite the fact that the title of my blog is listed as “Elie Kochman on Business and Networking”, searching for Elie does not turn up any results.

All in all, a great website, with a couple of additional features that may eventually make their way into the site.

Jason Clegg is an entrepreneur with over 5 years of experience building business and marketing on the web. He manages a full service Internet Marketing firm and writes about entrepreneurship and business topics at www.JasonClegg.com.

If you know absolutely nothing or very little about marketing your business online, I’m here to help.  I’ve spent the past 6 years studying online marketing methods for small business owners and, frankly, I know what works.  The truth is lots of stuff works.  There are endless opportunities for bringing more people to your website.

Fortunately for you, I’m not going to waste your time in this guest post.  I am going to focus on just one tactic that you can start today and do absolutely free (or very cheaply) if you do it right.

As Elie has already pointed out on this blog, personal branding is absolutely critical for today’s small business owner.  In the online world, you create trust through one primary means – content.

Blogs are a testament to this fact.  Look around you.  Anyone and everyone is blogging.  Why?  It’s simple: Blogging helps you control your personal brand and builds more credibility with your existing and your potential clientèle.

But everybody’s blogging.  (I hope this includes you, of course!)

The strategy I want you to follow is sort of like blogging but, in some ways, even better.  It’s called article marketing.

Article marketing allows you to build a higher degree of trust and credibility by leveraging the already existing power and authority of very large content websites.

My absolute favorite is EzineArticles.com — this is the best of the best because they have a great relationship with Google and a very clear system for evaluating and publishing only the best content.

How to Start Article Marketing

In the steps that follow, I’m going to show you exactly how you can make use of EzineArticles.com to build your personal or business brand.  And here’s the good news — it’s not going to cost you a dime.

Step One – Setup Your Free Account

Go to EzineArticles.com and start your free account.  You don’t have to pay anything to submit content to their website.  You just have to follow the rules.

Step Two – Write an Article for Your Niche

If you’re selling dog training products, write an article about that.  If you’re a Public Relations expert, write an article about that.  Whatever it is that you do, create some content.  Just be sure that your article is 100% new and unique and is at least 400 words long.

Step Three – Publish Your Article at EZA

The process for submitting articles is easy.  Just login and click “Submit New Article.”  Then copy-and-paste your content into the fields.  Choose a category, add a brief summary, and voila!

Oh, just one more thing.  Be absolutely sure you make the most of that box they call the “Resource Box.”  This is where you’re going to include a little info about you and/or your business.  More importantly, this is where you get to include a link to your website.

Hit submit and you’re done.  The article reviewers will take a look at your submission and your article should be live within a few days.  If you have to make changes, they’ll let you know exactly what to change so you’re not left in the dark.

(NOTE: The *really* quick method for doing this is to hire someone to write your articles for you.  You can even pay a full service firm to submit too.)

Why Articles Are So Effective

Using EzineArticles.com is great because their articles rank high in Google.  These days it’s pretty tough to position a new website without using strategies like this to drive traffic.  In some cases, it’s basically impossible in the short-term.

But the greatest value you will take away from this process is an increased level of credibility.  By the time surfers click through to your website, they will have already established a relationship with you.  The chances of these visitors making a purchase or initiating contact on your website are much higher.

Give it a try.  I’m not saying article marketing is going to transform your business overnight, but it is without a doubt one of the fastest ways to get more exposure for yourself and your brand online!

This week’s feature article is about a great business resource that I use time and time again – SCORE. The basic description of SCORE comes from their site:

SCORE, the “Counselors of America’s Small Business Owners”, is a national association dedicated to helping small business owners form and grow their businesses.

Unfortunately, their own description of themselves falls well short of reality, although it is everything that they claim to be, but also so much more.

I first came across the site when browsing through the Answers pages on LinkedIn where it would be listed on occasion as a resource for small business owners. After that, I started noticing references to the site on a variety of websites I frequent, and decided to check it out. My delay in looking at the site stemmed from the fact that I am in Canada, and the organization is clearly an American organization.

I was delighted to find that, while I could not take advantage of the various counseling and coaching opportunities (extra for all you American readers), there were still many resources that I could make use of.

The one feature that I found most useful, however, was the resource section, which includes dozens of document templates, from business plans to sales forecasts, balance sheets to board of advisor drafts. There are also dozens of podcasts on a variety of topics, and I’ve started listening to them as often as I have time. For days when you need some extra motivation? Check out their success stories.

All in all, this site provides many excellent resources for small business owners, regardless of whether or not you are able to make use of the advising facilities offered.

Actually, this document is titled “The Income Blogging Guide” and contains a mix of text, audio, and video. It’s free, and was sent to me by Robb Sutton. Considering that Robb generally sends few links, and he gave his recommendation for it, I figured I would give it a look.

To get your copy, go to the book’s site and enter a name and an e-mail address. Within a few minutes, you’ll have access to 95 pages of instructions, videos, detailed images, and all  the information you need to get your blog up and running.

You can watch a video of Matt Cutts from Google giving a talk at WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco.

Not sure how to set up a website? Click-by-click instructions are included (along with screenshots to help you).

Wanted to know how to find good keywords? What to do with those keywords? The answers are all there.

Best of all, the authors, Andrew Rondeau and Joel Williams, aren’t charging you for this information – because it’s not a trade secret. This is how information about blogging should be distributed – for free, because the answers are all available for free already. In the process, they save you time performing searches of your own, collecting all this information on your own.

So check it out, it can help you get up and running as fast as you can read!

I was recently given two Kindles by a client as part of a project, and in the process, was able to play around a fair bit with both the large and small Kindle. (For those who are aware, only the smaller of the Kindles is available here in Canada right now, and I had to get the Kindles shipped to me from the US.)

I’ve had the readers for about 6 weeks now, which is more than enough time to discover the joys and, unfortunately, the flaws in the product. However, I’ll let my experience speak for itself.

I first tried reading a normal book on the devices, and found it to be a joy, especially while commuting. I’m not a big fan of writing in books, so the annotation feature and the fact that it’s a tiny, difficult to use keyboard don’t really matter to me. Even while wearing gloves, I could still navigate smoothly, and found that the device does live up the expectation of easy reading in all lighting conditions.

The smaller device is more compact, and therefor my first choice while commuting. However, with only a 6-inch screen, not much text can fit there at once, meaning that you need to scroll constantly to the next screen. The larger version is much larger, and therefore fits more text, but I didn’t like holding it the whole time. (What can I say? I’m lazy, and find the extra few ounces to be too much. Plus, there’s the jostling on the train to deal with, and I’m worried about dropping it.)

What really bugged me, though, is the lack of foreign language support. I wanted to load a text with a mix of English and Hebrew in it, but found that the only way to do that would be to generate a PDF from it, which are not as versatile as generating content in the Amazon format. To me, this one point pushed me to look at other options. Unfortunately, though, Amazon is not alone in its lack of support for foreign languages, and my guess is that it’s only a matter of time before the devices get a software update to support this as well.

For the curious, the screen uses something called digital ink, which means that it’s not affected by ambient light conditions. The larger Kindle can hold about 3,500 books, and the smaller can hold about 1,500. The battery is pretty good, lasting about a week when reading for several hours a day (sorry, I can’t get more specific, as I have not measured it). It connects to the 3G network for downloading content, and you can shop for additional material directly from the Kindle, or order material from the Amazon website and it will be delivered to your Kindle.

I just bought a copy of The Web Startup Success Guide by Bob Walsh. It was an impulse purchase – I was actually looking for a book on PHP and MySQL and the cover caught my eye. I never heard of Bob Walsh, but I had heard of the guy who wrote the foreword – Joel Spolsky, CEO of Fog Creek Software, and author of the blog Joel on Software, among other things.

The book, according to its back cover, claimed to provide all the answers to build a successful web startup. Joel Spolsky, in his foreword, claimed he learned something new on every page (there are over 400 pages in the book, which works out to about 5 cents per lesson. Considering I’m in the middle of developing two ideas into potential businesses, I figured this was the book for me.

I’m now reaching the end of the first quarter of the book, and already I’ve learned enough to write a review. The book was worth the money spent, even were I to read no further. So far, I’ve learned something about the history of creating software companies, the various ways there are to start a company, and what the pros and cons of each are. I’ve learned some questions to ask myself when looking at a potential idea. I’ve learned to be critical of my own initiatives, and to separate emotion from keeping ideas alive long after they should have died.

Bob mixes his lessons with interviews with various people. Don Dodge, Director of Business Development at Microsoft, discusses the differences between starting a company now versus starting one ten or twenty years ago. Rick Chapman of Softletter discusses the business model of Software as a Service and various billing systems used. These are just a few of the many (I counted 36, but I might be off by a few) interviews and e-mail exchanges recounted throughout the book.

The book is divided into 10 chapters, each of which focuses on another idea crucial to the success of a web startup. The first chapter looks at the history, which has shaped how such companies are built today. The next chapter focuses on the ideas that build your company – filling a need (and where those needs come from), having a new way to solve an old problem. The third chapter looks at platforms, and the various places you can put your idea (SaaS, PaaS, Mobile, and so on).

The fourth chapter discusses support groups and tools for founders. The fifth looks at money and financing. The sixth looks at how social media impacts your business (and it does, whether you realize it or not). The seventh chapter discusses the importance of clarity in your business. Chapter eight is about how to get all the pieces in place, and how to turn an idea into a business.

Chapter nine suggests several people you should listen to, who provide advice that can be invaluable to a new business. Chapter ten is all about where to go from here, now that you’ve read the book.

I’m not done the book, as I pointed out above. But Bob manages to deliver his points about starting a business in simple language, with relevant examples scattered throughout the book.

If you are thinking about starting a company, or already have, which has as its business model the sale or distribution of software, whether you’re a site that facilitates the use of a service, or selling desktop software directly, this book is for you.

Oh, and I did find a book on PHP – it was called PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript by Robin Nixon, and seems to be quite a good book as well. So now I’m two for two on Friday’s book purchases.