Business bound? Check out these success tips

By Debbie Gardner debbieg@thereminder.com GREATER SPRINGFIELD – Are there measures you can take to help insure your transition from employee to entrepreneur has a better chance of success? According to Ruth P. Stevens, president and sole proprietor of eMarketing Strategy of New York City, there are steps individuals can take, especially while and if they are still employed, that will help pave a smooth transition from your current job to owning your own business. Stevens, a former Easthampton resident and Northfield Mount Herman School alumnae, as well as a professor of graduate-level marketing at Columbia University's School of Business and a sought-after business-to-business consultant, shared with PRIME some of the tips she'll be presenting to her Mount Herman colleagues during a lecture at the school this spring. "I left a corporate career at age 50 [and] for the last 13 years I've been working as a marketing consultant," said Stevens, who handled a variety of marketing duties for IBM, Ziff-Davis and Time Warner during her career. "I've learned a lot in 13 years and I want to share what I've learned." She's currently in the process of writing a book about her – and other entrepreneurs – experiences starting their own ventures, the working title of which is "How to be Happily, Successfully Self-Employed." Her advice to would-be business owners includes the following tips: 1. Figure out what your value proposition is. Stevens said the first step to formulating any kind of business- whether its consulting in accounting or launching a dog walking service – is determining what you can do that someone else would pay for. "Often that is a set of skills that you learned on the job in your career, but it may be something that is a hobby or an area of personal interest that has developed over the years," Stevens said. However, she added, "You have to make sure that you can charge for these service or products to the level that will meet your financial objective." To make certain your idea is viable, Stevens said the potential entrepreneur needs to discuss his or her idea with multiple individuals, and take a look at what your potential competition is doing "to determine if you actually have a business proposition here." If your idea seems viable, and you are still employed, Stevens said you should strongly consider doing the next two steps before leaving your current position. 2. Build your contacts network. "If it's not already vibrant, make sure you have the contact information of everybody you've ever met in your career because these people will be your source of new business," she said. Fortunately, with social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Google Plus and Facebook, this task is much easier than it was in the past, Stevens added. 3. Decide whether you're going to want to have disability insurance when you go solo. Stevens said this decision has a lot to do with how much your family will be dependent upon your ability to earn a living. "When I went out on my own I was the primary breadwinner," Stevens said. "If I got hurt and was unable to earn money my family would be in dire straits." She said it is much more affordable to purchase such insurance while you are employed than once you are out on your own, and in most cases you can continue the rate after you leave your current position. Once you have your contacts updated, one of the most important things a new business owner needs to do is get your message out to potential customers. This means networking. 4. Learn to network in a way that fits your personality and style. "Another difficulty in going solo, you have to go and get your own customers," Stevens said. "That comes more easily to some than others. I'm a natural extrovert – I'm out all the time going to networking events. "If you are a natural introvert," she continued. "You are going to have to work harder to get customers." She said writing can be an effective networking technique for business owners who are not comfortable with person-to-person networking. "Maintain a blog or write for your industry trade publications and establish yourself as an authority in a subject," Stevens suggested. "That can help people get to know you and refer [potential clients to] you." 5. Narrow your business scope. Though this may seem counterintuitive when you are starting a business and need to build a clientele, Stevens said this technique can actually boost your visibility. "The reason [this] works [is that] people want the expert, number one, and number two, the memorability and expertise angle," Stevens noted. "People will think of you when your subject comes up." 6. Outsource the parts of your business that you are not good at. Though Stevens said spending money on services when you are just starting out may seem reckless, it will actually help you stay focused on your business. For example, Stevens said she wrote the copy for her website, but hired a web designer to do the actual work. "I don't want to learn HTML," she explained. "I hire them to keep up the website "Even though it costs me cash money, it makes me much more productive to outsource the stuff I'm not good at," she added. 7. Work to develop multiple lines of business, if possible. "I have a lot of friends who are consultants [and] they say 'It's so difficult; I get a big project in, work on that for three months, then have nothing for three months. It's feast or famine around here, [business] is like a roller coaster,'" Stevens said. She, on the other hand, has "five different lines of business going, and all of them I expect to make money, and they tend to feed on each other a bit. "They act like a diversified financial portfolio," Stevens continued. "One year I do a lot of teaching, another, a ton of consulting and no teaching, another, I have a ton of writing going on. I also sit on some corporate boards that pay a modest amount, and I do public speakings; some years I have a ton of keynote speaking [engagements], other years, not too much." But the bottom line, Stevens said, is, "I'm always busy," and that is the goal for any sole practitioner or entrepreneur. "If I was a dog walker, I might offer pet grooming services. I would try to find a business that has similar characteristics but has a differ business cycle," she said, explaining the diversification concept. "If I was baker, I might try catering or writing a cookbook or a newspaper column with recipes." A last bit of advice addresses the question of where to set up your business – at home or in an office space you rent – if you are a sole practitioner, as Stevens is. The answer, Stevens said is to choose a location "Where you can be the most comfortable and productive. "Someone who lives in a quiet suburb might be lonely [and] fall apart working from home," Stevens commented. "These days there are so many office sharing facilities where [you] can rent a desk or space at a pretty reasonable rate, easy to work outside [the home] if that is your preference." Ruth P. Stevens maintains a website for her consulting business, eMarketing Strategy, at www.ruthstevens.com.