WHY I Did These Particular Actions… The Shoestring101 Steps

I hope that by reading the previous posts, you’ve begun to be at least a little inspired. You probably could see that my only initial investment was the advertising… most of which was UNpaid, and the paid portion was only $62.66. No further investment in equipment or materials was needed until the “Bizness” was rolling. This is a foundational principle of Shoestring101: Self-funding. Buy stuff you need AS you need it. Grow as you go; don’t go take out a loan or blow all your savings on an unproven idea.

Okay, now for the less obvious lessons from yesterday’s activity. If ya go back looking for them in Monday’s post, you’ll see ALL FIVE Shoestring Steps in operation. How’s about we take a gander…

Step ONE: Get OFF Your ASS.

Without this Step the others never happen. Didja notice:

• Me making a commitment, to myself and to the public (you) to reach a definite goal in a definite time period? That’s One Thousand PROFIT in 30 days or less, starting with nothing but a plan.
• Didja see me placing ads and doing actions that would grab leads and interest?
• Notice I got me an “Accountability Partner”… my SON… who would KNOW if I wasn’t walking the Steps?

May 9 is the start and June 9 is the finish line, whether I show you the goods or not. Pressure’s on, so Step ONE was crucial. NOW it’s starting to get exciting!

Step TWO: Find Out Some W’s

Who, What, When, Where, Why, hoW. The more you know about your buyer, the more you may serve them. Notice it’s not “Find out ALL the W’s before doing a thing”… just some. SOME W’s are enough to get ya started. Let’s examine what I did to find and sort through some W’s:

• Shotgun Approach: Put up ads in Craiglist, FixR.com, a Facebook Fan page, put out Bandit Signs. Asked questions of each caller. We want to see Who is calling, from Where, and Why they want screens repaired. That will give clues as to how to improve marketing from here.
• Where… I got calls from signs Pierce and  I put up in my neighborhood but every house was located outside that neighborhood.
• Those that actually set appointments because they needed the job done urgently were either moving or had mischievous dogs. The Why here tells me that I might want to give my card to realtors or put something on the bulletin board at PetSmart…

The more we get to know our buyers, Where to find more of them, hoW they are finding us, and Why they Want What they want… the more we can get done with Step One (snicker… get OFF it man!) and the more that information guides us in the next Step.

Step THREE: Learn To CREATE Value

So the only thing in this world that man truly creates is value. To ‘create’ means to bring something into existence out of nothing. So don’t tell me you ‘created’ a beautiful vase… naw, you started with clay same as everyone else and formed, fashioned, ordered, arranged  a vase… but you didn’t create a thing.

That is, until you put a price tag on it. Whatever that number was, it came out of thin air. A crappy little vase that I cobble together, or one masterfully made by my good friend Thad Handrick might perform the same exact function… hold the exact same amount of flowers and water… but he might charge hundreds of dollars and get it. I might try and give mine away free and have no luck. The VALUE is there, but it’s hard to really quantify.. until you know how much your customer may Want what you have to offer and Why.

• My first customer was calling on me because of dog damage. I was easily able to upgrade him from $39 for a screen to $69 (plus a $20 tip!) by suggesting a tougher screen and running to get it. Now, the material cost me a little more than the regular stuff, but not $50 more. That value was created out of thin air.
• The second customer needed to know could I build screens instead of just rolling in material. Yup. It’s a few more steps and materials… I have to saw some cheap metal into the right lengths… but now I’m charging $39 a screen instead of $16. Solving this customer’s particular problem created an extra $23 of value. This while I increased my material expense by only nine bucks.

The other day I saw a LEGO brand “Architecture Series” kit. You can buy little hunks of plastic and directions to make a replica of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece home Falling Water. Price tag? Over a hundred bucks. Good for you, LEGO! Same basic material you sell to parents of kindergarteners for seven bucks at a healthy profit… now sell it at a HUNDRED bucks, make an OBSCENE freakin’ profit. Talk about creating value.

Step Four: Measure Everything You Can

So I don’t yet have a big enough sample of data to make sweeping decisions, but analyzing the little data that I do have is helping. Since yesterday I got two more calls: one from a lady that saw my sign… in a THIRD neighborhood that’s away from my neighborhood where I dropped ’em… and from a fella that found my Facebook ad by Googling “Screen Repair Monument Colorado”.

• Every call from a sign has been from a different neighborhood. People that buy from me don’t live here, they drive THROUGH here. Time to rethink where signs get dropped.
• The Craigslist call I got was in a neighborhood that’s far enough away that I don’t want to go there again, though $172 was worth the drive. Time to concentrate marketing efforts to reach those nearer neighborhoods.
• Signs are most effective at getting people to take action. One customer revealed that they saw my Craigslist listing but didn’t call til they saw a sign on the way to work and realized it was the same service. Maybe learn where people work and the main arteries that connect their neighborhoods and drop signs there.

I’ll keep tweaking to maximize the pull from the marketing while minimizing the spending on it as well as gas.

Step FIVE: Now WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN!

This whole line on my blog is a form of writing everything down. I encourage YOU to have a journal of sorts for your Shoestring101 Bizness as well. But chronicling the activity is only the beginning. The real value of writing is to help you walk others through the Steps.

In Step Three we began to create value for the customer. In Step FIVE we create value for ourselves. Can you imagine what can happen when your Biz grows bigger than your ability to handle it all by your lonesome? Need to hire employees, or bring in a partner at a heavy buy-in? Do you want to sell your biz, take the money and let someone else run it? How will you bring new people up to speed in a great big hurry?

With organized checklists, contact lists of your present customer base, your secret value-creating formulas and metrics for measuring results… with everything recorded including well-kept books, you can keep this baby Shoestring Biz of yours clean and polished. Want to maybe sell your Bizness at some point? Handing a sterling ledger with understandable profit and loss statements, a complete customer contact list, employee manual is going to bring (and deserve!) a better price than a pile of used equipment and some flyers with your logo on it.

• You might have seen where I sent thank-you notes in my personal handwriting (but done from my computer!) to every customer. This not only leaves them with a “WOW!” factor, it also captures their contact info in my service’s database. And it only costs me .63 cents apiece to leave a lasting impression.
• Aside from the obvious documentation I’m doing here on the blog, Pierce and I are creating an operations manual and series of videos describing the whole process of everything we’re doing. Shoot, if you can start a Bizness in Colorado Springs with almost zero investment and make a thousand bucks profit with it in 30 days or less… mightcha also be able to do that somewhere else as well?

Again, the final step NOW WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN  is how you can assure that your Biz can live without you. It’s how we cut the umbilical cord.

Consider this: Even with my Screen Repair Biz hitting on all cylinders, it’s still dependent on me to show up to work it. So while I might be able to make, oh, FIFTY bucks an hour with it… that’s still limited. I can’t make more than a certain amount without also making there be more hours in a day. And I can’t.

BUT..! I sure CAN put portions of an operations manual in the hands of others and let them swap THEIR time for money. And in making opportunities for others I will make more per hour than ever before. If it takes you, say, four hours a week (Hiya Tim!) to manage operations for a Biz that generates five figures a month… you might be making $500 an hour or better.

Not bad.

Awright Steppers! I’ll keep you ‘post’-ed on the next phase of this SS101 Biz. Til then,

Keep Stepping!

Kurt