One of the best ways to secure a design deal or contract is to provide the client with a mock-up on the house—be it to exhibit your skills or to get the project started early. Don’t worry about being ripped off. That’s what contracts are for, as well as working with people who are trustworthy and that you like.

Just today I produced a sales newsletter mock-up in just shy of an hour, to a favorable reply. Remember…

• Your demo piece doesn’t have to be completely serious or related to the client’s project (though it helps in some cases)
• Just give the client an idea of what sort of work you are capable of and what time frame you complete work in.
• Feel free to have fun with it.

As I said, this is the result of one hour, from being a complete newsletter designing newbie to a roughly finished product:

Faux Sales Newsletter

Before you begin designing sales newsletters, it’s important to realize most of them are horrible.  If it says anything about the newsletter “industry,” if you can call it that, Charles Trippy’s sales newsletter supposedly “revolutionized” how newsletters are done. Pretty sad if you ask me.

Do you think newsletters are effective or bunk? Can you design a better one?

Just recently, I turned down what was promised to be a full-time job (an incentive I do not want) by a client who needed some rushed designing done. Things didn’t go well with this client because he isn’t the type of person I want to be like, although I love his product. Which leads to the topic of this post…

Credit: flickr.com/danzden

It’s hard to say this and expect everyone to heed my advice, especially given my age and the decades I’ve been in the workforce [sarcasm], but please work with people who you want to be like. You have no excuse to let your life be sent down a path you didn’t want because of the people you surround yourself with.

Seth covered this on his blog just today and this bit really stuck out:

Years ago, when I had ten people working for me at my book packaging company, one client accounted for about half our revenue. They were difficult, constantly threatening litigation, sending lawyers to otherwise productive meetings, questioning our ethics and more. It was clearly the culture of their organization to be at war. So I fired them. I gave them the rights and walked away, even though it meant a huge hit to our organization. Why do it? Because if we had stuck with them, it would have changed who we were, who we hired and how we marketed ourselves going forward. We would have had a lifetime of this.

Pay note to the part in bold. It’s the exact same idea behind hiring employees who are better than you are at their tasks. It’s embracing your own brand equity and investing in it rather than compromising your sense of integrity because it pays the bills better than the other guys.

I think people let themselves work with people they hate or don’t get along with or who would change them into someone they don’t want to be because it can be uncomfortable. Uncomfortable not knowing when you’ll find the job that’s right for you. Uncomfortable turning down work that, according to the books, looks like a great deal. Don’t compromise your happiness people. That’s all you’ve got when it comes down to it. Seriously.

Gary’s right. I have no excuse not to be on Twitter, and neither do you and your business. Follow me!

Credit: http://flickr.com/danorbit/

Seth Godin—otherwise known as one of my heroes—wrote today about how big companies who act big dig themselves into trouble and how companies who act small avoid this. The basics of the idea is that by thinking small a company won’t put itself in situations where its actions will send it quickly to the deadpool. Some examples might be:

• Giving out loans that the debtors cannot statistically repay
• Getting funded by a VC firm when you have no business model
• Producing your tangible product without figuring out distribution

This concept applies very well to the web start up realm. Silicon Valley is going crazy lately because of the economic downturn, when I don’t think it needs to. The problem is that so many companies think they can get by on someone else’s dime without having to worry about providing for themselves, let alone a firm whose business it is to have you provide for them.

So what are some simple things we can do to act small?

1. Know how you are going to make money. Your product can be amazing, but that doesn’t mean it will provide revenue. If it doesn’t make money, it’s a hobby. Don’t take this too literally, but understand you probably made your company to make money while doing something you’re passionate about, so why slack off when it comes to monetizing it? YouTube has trouble making profit. Hulu does not.
2. Don’t buy useless crap. Espresso machines, aluminum die-cut business cards, and extensive phone system, while cool, are not necessary for your company to succeed. If you think you need them, find a cheaper substitute. Set up a permanent chat room for your employees or use voice chat via Skype or Ventrilo.
3. Do your own PR. Look at Gary Vaynerchuk and the things he says. Publish a blog for your company, or a podcast, or a Twitter account, or a Facebook app. Be social and you will bring attention to yourself. A PR firm will just be contacting the same media you would anyways, so why not let them come to you because you stand out and are a remarkable company?
4. Make time for yourself. This contradicts what a lot of entrepreneurs say. Rather than convincing yourself that being passionate is about spending more and more hours on your work, reason with your body and realize that this mentality will still be around even when you have “made it.” Work smart and let things progress on their own schedule. More importantly, make the best of the time you do work. A lot of people can get done in 3 or 4 hours what they spend an entire workday doing. It’s ridiculous. Look to Tim Ferriss for more on this. Companies who act big get lost in themselves and lose scope of who they really are.
5. Resell yourself. The guys at 37 Signals have a book titled Getting Real which they sell in multiple ways. You can view it for free in HTML, buy it in paperback form, or buy the PDF version. Not only that, but they also promote it during conferences and sell higher-price lectures, lessons, etc. related to it. The key here is to not gamble your product by offering it to everyone at one set value. Include as many demographics and price points as you can to include everyone possible. Some people will just never pay a cent for anything, and some won’t pay anything less than $200 for something they want as advice.
6. Tie your personality into the brand. The company isn’t the image anymore. The company is the baby of the founder—it’s how the creator leveraged his personality to establish a brand that is likable and something people want to share or talk about. Don’t act big and treat your company like it’s some monolithic entity that has a mind of its own; rather, tie the brand to your personality and let everyone know it’s something they can relate to or something that they want to be a part of. Steve Jobs does an amazing job with this at Apple. He thinks big but acts small, and that makes people want to be in the party by making his company feel cool, and he lets them in (for a pretty penny at that).
7. Get it done. Acting small means making things happen. Just do it, as Nike would say. If you act small, you’re the game-changer who performs consistently and wins by taking on calculated risks rather than gambling big and either winding up an IPO or going back home. Toyota does this very well by practicing the philosophy of kaizen—small and steady improvements to make drastic changes over time. Making small changes requires dedication and persistence, but it is much more rewarding than making large changes. Ask GM and Ford.

Do you think acting small is the way to go? What other things do you do to act small?

A few days ago, before I came down with a horrible illness placing me in bed—albeit waking up every 45 minutes—from Friday to Monday evening, I posted a piece about an amazingly stylish Ferrari I stumbled across. I have an affinity for pretty-looking cars, and I like to share this appreciation. I think great design transcends any medium, and anyone should be able to appreciate any form of great design. That’s when you know it’s great.

Anyways, here’s what’s important: That entry, as simple as it is, brought my blog just shy of 10,000 visits, which translated into 16,000 page views. That’s heavy stuff, considering my blog had been getting barely 100 visits a day, purely thanks to this Nike image from the old version of my blog which is highly-linked. Problem is I edited the image to include my URL and it has been moved from its #1 spot to who knows where for image-search keywords like “nike slogan” or “nike just do it.” Woe is me.

Google Analytics showing the traffic spike

Okay, so I obviously did something to drive this traffic, right? Absolutely I did: StumbleUpon. We all know what it is by now, and if you don’t, click the “SU” icon below my blog post to learn more. I submitted my post to the site under the car and design categories, and when I woke up the next morning, there was 4,000 visits to the page. That’s incredible, considering my blog is a born-again newbie on the web with zero real back-links. Moral of the story? Use StumbleUpon [with moderation].

Thanks to Dave and Thomas for the link love. Here’s a little link-action for ya’ guys.

Do you think StumbleUpon is worth the effort? Got any other great social applications to share your blogs on?

Monkey graffiti outside my apartment

Recently money hasn’t exactly been on my side. I haven’t had any luck in getting a co-signer for my student loan, and 10 months of schooling costs $4,047, and the housing for this period costs $10,050. Add on food and keeping myself sane (read: entertainment) with an extra $400 a month and that brings my yearly expenses to $18,097, or about $1,800 a month. And of course, as life seems to happen when you don’t want it to, I’m sure a few more dollars should be tacked on for randomness.

So my goal should be to generate $2,000 in revenue a month, right? Sure, but I think I can do better while not sacrificing and am striving for $5,000/mo. Of course it sounds greedy, but I would rather avoid being in any debt what-so-ever and be able to start saving, because once this constant in my life known as university is over, who knows where I’ll be or what I’ll need to do.

How will I achieve this? I have my startups of course, which will conveniently be releasing during late September and mid-October; Datewi.se, Jobzor, and Football Bio. I also have my commission-based work for AntiClothes and QwikMenu, my dad’s website due to be released at the end of this month—congrats on the release pops!, as well as whatever freelance or contract designing I can find.

I think I have more than enough tools available to me to secure this level of financial freedom, so let’s see what I can do with them!

What do you think? Am I taking on too much? Is my goal too high or low?

I know, I know… I got rid of my old blog. I didn’t find it very insightful or meaningful or entertaining, so I didn’t bother backing it up here.

My main focus now will be on my companies and things I learn with them, as well as my other entrepreneurial endeavors. I’m having issues deciding what to write as my official first blog entry. I was thinking of maybe writing about what my definition of entrepreneurship is and how I relate to it, but I think that’s a bit too insightful as a hello.

Any ideas? What would you like me to write about?