Kevin Kermes - Job Coach - and How Marketing Principles for Searching for a Job Can Be Applied to Starting Your Own Business

Kevin Kermes is a renowned job coach who adopts both old fashioned and new, cutting edge methods. He ditches job boards only using them to size up where companies may be hiring, i.e. what projects are on the horizon. You as the proactive job searcher must choose what companies and roles are really of interest to you. Then you do some digging through LinkedIn focusing on C-Level executives. You do some nifty tricks to find email addresses. Then the real work comes - writing a thoughtful cover letter based on some hard research on the company you are interested in. Not easy! Then you send the cover letter and resume via email and later by actual US Post! Then you follow up with a call later on or an email.

I believe these very same principles can be used to find interested investors and potential clients for your new business. You have to create some spreadsheets where you track your contacts - your pipeline. Furthermore, get active blogging. The visibility from this creates a "buzz" as a subject matter expert (SME).

The Great Depression

I was watching The American Experience PBS documentary on The Great Depression. John Kenneth Galbraith made an observation that there is a financial memory of twenty years. That is the period of time before a new generation of suckers is born. In the 1920's credit for the ordinary person just made its debut and the entire economy was heavily leveraged and unregulated. People's sentiments were driven by psychics who made astrological pronouncements. The main point was that there were panics to get in on a perceived gravy train or exit when the market was collapsing. Galbraith termed the sucker mentality "grand illusion". Newspapers were all on the take and painted wonderful pictures of stocks such as RCA and Standard Oil.

I mention the above because I think social media might have the same aspects of grand illusion. How much real value is being created by people who don't take time to write carefully or who are not subject to editorial oversight? Influencers on the net including lobbyist groups with a hidden and not so hidden agenda can abuse this medium to sway opinion. Nothing new here - but I believe there is a direct correlation between the level of hate in politics to the advent of the Internet.

So, for those wanting to explore business opportunities in Social Networking I would ask are you creating something of real value? Will your products or services help make people's lives and society better?

Market Research

Ideas for a new business are a dime a dozen. There is an expression "throw it against the wall and see what takes". The assumption is good ideas really resonate and "stick to the wall". I am doing some market research on LinkedIn using their polling feature. I want to see what would be the best market for WordPress commercial plugins. For example, would people be willing to pay for a new, high quality WordPress plugin for links to social Social Networking?

On the other other hand I keep hearing urban legends about spectacularly successful developers of new IPhone apps. I certainly know how to code but not sure how difficult it is to actually market a successful IPhone app.

Easy to Use, Powerful Sales Lead and Market Research Tools

Building the prospect list and performing market research is a very slow process for a new business. Word of mouth and using networking contacts is still the best way to build the reputation of your new business. However, there are ways to automate sales lead generation and doing market research without having to spend any money. The white paper in the link below shows two Internet tools that are amazingly powerful. Really, an entire book could be written on these two tools and all their features. This white paper shows in easy steps how to get going.

Free white paper on sales lead generation and market research.

Switching Gears - Consulting to Businesses With Specific Short Term Needs

At this point in time economists say the economy is improving. However, unemployment is still very high. Unemployment is a lagging indicator but to have wage deflation combined with ongoing higher levels of unemployment demonstrates the huge shift downwards for the middle class.

So, if high unemployment is here to stay it really is best to have a "Plan B". What specialized service(s) can you provide that will employers will be willing to pay a premium for and for which there will always be a demand?

Check out The Google Search Based Keyword Tool: http://www.google.com/sktool/#. Select the find keywords button. Enter in "consultant". To the left you will see a panel of different types of consultants separated into categories. You can see from the main section on the right what consulting niches are in demand. Also, you can quickly visit website's related to each category.

Ask yourself which of these consulting types serve short-term, potentially critical business or client needs? Once you have targeted a niche, study up on it and consider how to market yourself via personal branding on line.

Early Stage Investing - Still Brutal Out There

Things are brutal out there for early stage/seed rounds. In fact, Stephen Kann wrote a blog about it for Deal Flow Diaries, which you can see at dealflowdiaries.

Free Advertising

When marketing a new business, the goal is to attract interest amongst the center of influence in the field your product or service belongs to. The easiest way to do this is to search on your product or service offering on The Internet and look for active blogs. Follow the threads and take some time to come up to speed with the conversations therein. Note the names of the principal contributors and, where possible, look these people up on LinkedIn. Build a list of center of influence players and then begin part two of the strategy.

Part two is to start commenting on blogs where appropriate and start becoming a trusted member of the conversation. This is not an insincere effort but a willingness to engage and share with experts and players in the niche you are interested in. Consider it an informational interview.

Eventually, it is OK to reference your own home web site and mention your solution. All this has to be done with respect to the Blog's guidelines. The basic point is you want to position yourself as an expert.