Seed for Success | Empowering Women Entreprenuers

Abby Port of the Red Koala Canvas Co. has had the great benefit of ongoing mentorship from her primary Seeds For Success mentor, Christina Blenk. Christina is the CEO of WomanOwned.com, a wealth of information for entrepreneurs at all levels. Here is a recap of Christina’s recent advice to Abby’s questions about marketing her web site and setting up an affiliate program : 

An Affiliate program (using one website to drive traffic to another) is a great idea as long as your expenses to manage it are low.

The amount of payout offered is really up to each business owner. In Abby’s case, since the margins could vary, I would suggest doing a straight dollar amount (such as $25 per sale), rather than a percentage of each transaction.  The percentage might be better for the affiliate, but it is an unknown, and adds up to more variables to manage to determine the commission checks.  Abby will want to look at the cheapest order possible and determine what she can spare to the affiliate on that size order. She will then have the amount to set for all orders. The larger orders provide better margins and the smaller orders are still tolerable (profit).

Some affiliate programs payout for “leads” (and even “clicks”), but I don’t recommend either one of these.  Abby should avoid paying out money without having made some on a sale. She’ll want to use the CPA (cost per action) model so the affiliate makes money ($20 – $25 for example) when their link or banner leads to a sale on her site.  She will, of course, need to put tracking code in her Yahoo Store to make sure that sales are tracked correctly and then pay out checks when affiliates’ commissions reach a certain point (like $50).

Abby plans to check out the Yahoo! Search Marketing Affiliate Program right away. We look forward to a progress report! For more on internet marketing, we’ll discuss SEO (search engine optimization) marketing in a future post.

What a delight to coach Karla, Dana, and Abby.  Although each of their businesses are different, they face similar “growing pains” so there was some overlap in my work with them.  Any entrepreneur — or intrapreneur for that matter — can learn from these tips that I provided in response to their questions and needs:

1.  Take every single meeting seriously and over-prepare for it.  As a business owner, potential customers or clients will judge you by how much thought you’ve put into the meeting topic, have you brought the information or materials needed to conduct the meeting efficiently, and whether you make good use of their time.  It is better to err on the side of being over-prepared than to appear ill-prepared. 

2.   Be careful about taking in partners. Dana wondered if she should bring in a business partner to complement her own skill set.  From experience I know that business partnerships can be very difficult and my recommendation was to contract for or hire the talent she needs rather than bring on a business partner.  This would allow her to maintain control over Dapple while at the same time getting the talent she needs to grow the company. 

3.  Develop a personal vision statement.    You may already have one for your business, but you also need one for yourself.  As I told Karla, there’s a word on the street about all of us and, as entrepreneurs, it’s critical that we manage what people are saying about our personal brands.  People do not only buy our products, they buy us .   In one sentence, write down what you want people to say about you when you leave a meeting and include 2 – 3 ways you’re going to make that happen.  For example, Karla came up with this statement that will help to guide her actions with Head2Toe:  “I am an entrepreneur who is consistently on top of her game and exhibits that by 1) being current on all the issues related to the unique learning needs of gift and special needs children and 2) staying abreast of current global affairs related to consumer needs.”  Wow!  That’s a tall order but Karla is up to the challenge and will be motivated by it.

4.  Don’t “re-invent the wheel.”  Abby wants to get Red Koala into large retailers such as Pottery Barn Kids and Pier 1 Kids, as well as some catalogue/on-line stores like Land of Nod.  The problem is she doesn’t know how to do it.  This is the time to cast a wide net, call in some favors, do some reseach, and ask for help.  Certainly there are people who have been there and done it so why re-invent the wheel?  I suggested she start by tracking down the owners of firms that have already sold their products to these stores and ask how they went about it, what’s the usual financial arrangement, etc. 

5.  Pay in advance for capacity .  All three of these women have great products, but the public’s image their company is just as important.  There’s a saying I learned early in launching my own business, “You pay in advance for capacity.”  This means you need high quality marketing materials; a business space that’s not your home and an address that’s not a PO Box; and staff or outside consultants to help you achieve your goals.   Investing money upfront in these kinds of things pays dividends down the road provided you have a good product or service.   For example, I believe Dapple is on the verge of something huge but Dana needs a seasoned and trustworthy business advisor to help her get there — and that’s going to cost money.  Abby needs to pay for to-notch sales brochures.  And Karla may need to find funds that will allow her to leave her full-time job so that she can focus more on growing her business. 

6.  Think and speak in headlines.   Carolyn asked me to provide the women with some media coaching so I tested them by asking them to tell me about their businesses.   None of the three could give me a concise, cogent, pithy answer (which isn’t unusual with new entrepreneurs).  So I taught them the headline speaking model:  the first thing out of your mouth in response to a question should be no more than 2 – 3 sentences that grab the listeners attention with vivid words and enthusiasm.  That’s followed by just 2 – 3 subpoints and finished with asking if there are any questions.  With just a little coaching, Abby came up with, “I’m the President of Red Koala and we sell personalized art and other items for decorating kid’s room.  We have three primary products:  baby announcements on canvas in your choice of colors; slim signs where you can write your own words on canvas; and create it yourself art where you design your own piece using downloadable images, colors, and fonts.” 

7.  Short sounds confident.    As I told all three women, more words always soften a message; fewer words strengthen a message.  Of course there are times when you want to soften a message but that’s not when you’re answering investor questions or pitching your product. 

Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D.

www.drloisfrankel.com
www.thethinpinkline.com
Author of the international bestsellers
Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office
and See Jane Lead

Seeds For Success finalists Abby Port of the Red Koala Canvas Co. and Karla Duncan of Head2Toe Publications were next up to have a telephone meeting with Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines and a Seeds For Success Mentor from findingwhatmatters.com’s network of experts. It was a thrilling experience for both of these entrepreneurs. Here is Cathie’s report:

This week I spoke with two entrepreneurs, Karla Duncan from Birmingham, Alabama and Abby Port from suburban Atlanta. Both women are so grateful to Yahoo! and Carolyn Kepcher for both the grant and the ongoing advice.

Abby has started a business of personalized canvas art for children’s rooms where the customer can design the actual piece of art herself online. My advice in particular to Abby was to focus on her business plan so that she had a benchmark to measure her progress against and to think smaller so that she can get a track record of success. It seems to me that it is easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up with the big ideas that stimulate other big ideas but then the little details don’t get attended to. We talked a lot about how she can do some simple market research by visiting high end baby boutiques and asking the store managers their opinion on her product ideas as they are the ones closest to the customer. We also discussed the Pottery Barn store for kids and debated whether she could get an entrée there and how to best to that. PB is beginning to offer customization to its customers; this could be a significant area of competition for her.  Abby feels that she has a unique program to offer; hopefully that is true. What she should focus on is how to drive traffic to her website, as that is her only method of distribution currently. We talked about ideas for that.

Today I spent time with Karla, who is making big strides with her business. She had been a national sales manager in the past in the special needs area, so she seemed very comfortable with the business aspects of the job. Her products, special learning aids and publications for learning-challenged children, will be manufactured in China, with the first hopefully being available in September. We talked about utilizing the resources of Birmingham both from the women-owned business aspect as well as tapping into the colleges there for both design talent as well as business interns. We even talked about her making contact with business school professors there to see if she might talk to a class and maybe get an MBA student to work with her as an intern perhaps leading to a case study. All for free! We talked about her budget to support herself and making sure that she has adequate funds to get her through the early start-up phase. She is still holding down a full-time job so at least there is income coming in there.

I told both women to give me a call or email in a month or so to check in and evaluate progress.

Carol Frohlinger, Esq., co-author of Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success and co-Founder of Negotiating Women, Inc. is back with some final negotiation tips for our Seeds for Success finalists.

In addition to the negotiation planning process I wrote about earlier, I also offered some suggestions to the Seeds For Success finalists about negotiation process.