Day 4: Assured Leadership is Born

I talked with friends and family to gather their insight and opinion for my business name.  Some liked one, others another, but in the end more people than not liked Assured Leadership.  And so Assured Leadership is born.  I quickly snatched up the domain name for Assured Leadership.com, .net, and .biz just as I had planned.

I started writing copy for my website and quickly found that while I could convey the information I was looking for I was in terrible need of an editor.  I looked online and found some local editors but they were all outside of my budget.  I was talking to my best friend Ken and he mentioned that his wife did editing on the side and would be happy to help me out.  I called Krista immediately and we came to an agreement of $30/hour for editing.  I figured I could use her not only for the website copy but also the monthly ezine, and other client facing materials.   Ooh I feel so grown up with an editor on staff.

My mind is swirling with creative ideas for building my website.  Just one problem I don't know any of the fancy languages to create a compelling and engaging website.  I know I cannot afford a web designer so I did some research on the web and found a great development tool called RapidWeaver and some pre-built templates that I could use to build my site.  This will be a fun endeavor for me and will allow me to exercise my creativity.

It is amazing how many people I have in my circle of friends that are able to assist me with my business.  Come to find out my personal trainer is also a graphic designer.  So I have decided to partner with him and for $300 he agreed to create my company logo.  We plan to meet tomorrow to go over the details and then I will let him work his magic and come up with some options.

In reviewing my draft with David he identified some critical activities I had not thought of, for instance I need to craft my elevator pitch.  So I did some research on the internet and came across this article from Inc. magazine, A Better Elevator Pitch, that helped define what an elevator pitch should be. It was very helpful and something I plan to spend some time thinking about.  I need to have this ready for when I meet people and tell them about my business.  The other thing he pointed out is that I don't exhibit the enthusiasm I am feeling inside when talking with others.  I think part of this is apprehension or simply feeling that I am not ready for prime time.  He is right, I need to get out there and treat every interaction as a possible chance to find a new client.

I also went and visited the SBA for Seattle which is called SCORE.  I met with a gentleman that has marketing experience to help get my efforts off the ground.  I took my draft marketing plan, attached below, to review with him.  After all I am not a marketer so I am really in new territory here.  I gained some valuable insight into where I should focus my efforts and how to get the biggest bang for the buck.  His feedback was brutally honest and that is just what I needed.  So I will need to go back to the drawing board and refine my efforts.  I was trying for a shotgun approach when what I needed was a more focused niche.  He said that if I didn't do this my focus would be too broad to be meaningful.  I have attached the first draft of my marketing plan.

Marketing Plan