Weekend Confession – Life is good and journey continues

It’s been a while since my last post on this blog. In the past months, I have been working very hard on the project. It’s been a great learning experience in my life. Some stuff works, and some don’t.

I have lost some confidence on some project I am working and also gain on other projects. Only time will tell if I made good or wrong decision.

First all, I am staying in a healthy shape. That’s the most important thing on this journey. Without a healthy body, nothing will last. Recently, I decided to switch lane from Nikon to Canon. Got my new Canon 7D DSLR that comes with the capability to take HD1080 video. Soon I will start posting some video on my YouTube channel.

In the past months, I have spent lots time networking with other people locally. Since my project involved heavily with local business, I have try many ways to reach out. Here are things I have done.

• Radio Station
• Local Fair
• Local Meetup
• Business Networking
• Trade Show, Conference and Expo
• Door to Door
• Cold Calling

Some of the stuff I have done did not work at all. For example, getting interview on Radio Show only brought me one phone call, which is asking me to buy MLM type of supplement juice. I wasted $300 for a 15 minutes interview.

I have tried different approach to reach out to potential customers at conference, business expo and trade show. I end up sending out business cards, flyers and many other marketing materials without any return. So far the only thing works for me is the local business alliance meeting where I got few customers. I have also tried Barter system, which works OK so far. They brought me 5 new customers in the first month.

Don’t get me wrong. The things I have done above did not work well don’t they won’t work well for you. I need to sit back and review the stuff I have done and find out why they don’t work well.

I narrow down to few points.

• Timing – Timing is the #1 key to reach out to your customers. I have a small success on getting some attention on generate traffic through social network (facebook and twitter), but I lost lots time without getting any traffic from the meeting I went or radio show I was on. Why? It’s a bad timing. I was doing the show at afternoon when most people are driving back home without any computer or access to the Internet. They will simply forget what I said and the URL of my web site. It’s the same to the meeting. If the meeting is late night or early morning. People tend to forget me or leave my business card in their pocket for hours or days.
• Audience – This is very import factors that I wasted a lot of time networking. I need to choose my audience more carefully. Talking to the wrong targeted audience is wasting time. They will never buy into my services or are simply not interested in what I am offering.
• Location – I picked few different locations to meet with people and showing them how I can assist them to make their life or business better. I often picked the wrong place that is as loud as coffee shop or business restaurant, where they lost their focus on listening to me. So I start meeting people at quiet hotel lobby or book store where I also have wi-fi access. It turns better. They are listening.

When I started this project, I was not sure if I can make it to the end and not sure if it will works well. I was also wondering the chicken and egg questions. So I offered many free accounts to the customers. On one side, I am losing money helping other businesses to get more businesses. On the other side, I have statistic data and successful testimonial to attract real paid customers. Now there is no more free trial program. Every new customers are paid customers. That’s a great improvement.

Now I am back to the most difficult tasks. Marketing and Sales. Being a software architect in IT industry for too long, I don’t really do well in the Marketing and Sales fields. There are simply too much to learn.

There are also a fear in front of me. I have no idea how much money I should spend to push out my ad campaign and marketing efforts. I have money to spend, but I am certainly afraid of losing them. It’s like wasting $300 for nothing.

Currently, my direction is to hire a top gun sales and marketing guru in the industry. Partner with them and trade for the better results. I am also working on helping other entrepreneur to get their project moving forward with my knowledge in web development and SEO.

I feel shame. I left my online store behind my back and let my partner to run. As far as economy goes, my online store is going down too. I should spend some time to get them back on track.

After all, my life is good. Got my new Canon 7D and took some test shots! I really love what I see so far! Stay tune!