Author: Kevin Adelsberger

I would be remiss if I didn’t write a blog about a person who embodies the freedom, permission, and motivation that Seth Gary and Dave have given me. This person has been with me since day one of the business and has allowed me to thrive as an entrepreneur. That person, of course, is my wife Renae.

Those of you that have met her, know she is awesome. But knowing what I know now about starting a business, a supporting spouse if critical. If your spouse was not supportive, it’s easy to see how entrepreneurship could lead to some serious marital troubles.

Sure, Renae was nervous when I told her I wanted to quit my job and start this business. There have been times where it was stressful. There are many Saturday mornings that I am not around because I am working or evenings I am not available to watch TV with but she has soldiered on.

We had to change our lifestyle when the business started, nary a word was spoken from Renae. We have had good weeks and bad months of the business but through it all, she has maintained her support. Never having to worry about coming home to a spouse who was angry about working a lot because of the business or a slow month is hard to place a value on.

When I talk to soon to be entrepreneurs, I usually tell them: Bring the boat close to the dock, the trough of sorrows is real, and that especially early on, the answer is yes to clients. But I need to add, “Make sure your spouse is all in, or you will be in trouble.”

Thank you, Renae, for making this challenging thing easier!

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 of this series.

 

The last personality that I want to give a shout out to is Gary Vaynerchuk.

Gary Vaynerchuck is one of the hardest working people in marketing and documents it every day with his DailyVee video blog. That is why I have named him the motivation in this three part series. Regularly watching DailyVee shows me and reminds me that it takes a lot to start and grow a business.

I mean, I know it takes a lot to start a business, I live it every day. But it’s easy to get lax in the effort. Watching DailyVee reminds me that someone who has found success like Gary still can work like crazy and make progress.

It’s not just that Gary works, it’s how long he is able to keep it up. All day ever day.

I also want to say, that I do not want to be Gary.

I want to be able to go home and see my wife and kids for dinner. But what watching Gary does challenge me to do is work like a madman during the day. I watch Gary Vee during my lunch break to get me psyched up to work again all afternoon.

Gary Vee helps me with motivation to keep working on the business and you can check out DailyVee here.

One of my favorite phrases about being an entrepreneur came from reading Seth Godin’s last book: What to do when it’s your turn, and it’s always your turn.

“I’m no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.” – Leonard Bernstein

This quote is stark on a bright yellow page shortly after starting the book. This is the kind of thinking that makes me love Seth. Seth is one of the most prolific minds in marketing in our age. He started email marketing as we know it today. His book permission marketing is one of the seminal texts in how marketing works in the 21st century.  His DAILY blog is always insightful and challenging. 

But most of all he gave me permission to go and do.

One of the things that Seth harps on, in a good way, is that you no longer need permission to do things. The internet has destroyed the gatekeepers. The internet is the great equalizer. Because that is gone, we no longer need permission to do our best work or the work we want. We just have to go and get it.

After months of reading Seth’s books and even doing a program called “Krypton Community College”, GO NARWHALS!, I realized the only person standing between me and doing good work was me. This belief in my freedom, or permission to do it, played a big role in the mind shift that allowed me to quit my job.

Believing that you can is half of the jump to starting self-employment. I am honestly not sure if I would have had the courage to make the jump if it had not been for the permission that Seth Godin gave me.

 

Part 1 here. 

 

 

Seth Godin

It’s a jungle out there on social media. Between countless United meme’s to even beloved celebrities getting called out for seemingly innocent remarks, it can be a minefield for big companies navigating the social jungle. But one company has recently been killing it on social: Wendys.

Two imparticular instances recently:

1. Street fight with Hardees.
   Wendy’s has really started to own the brand of being a fast food chain in this era. They have fun social media and are not afraid to step on a few toes. In the below altercation, a Wendy’s fan and a Hardees fan have a little beef on twitter. The offical Hardee’s and Wendy’s accounts get in on it. Wendy’s starts off with just a little shade and Hardee’s trys to take it up a notch. Bad move. Wendy’s rebuttals well and really cap it off with the ‘lol they blocked us’ comment.
   
2. #NuggsforCarter
   The internet is fun for a lot of reasons. One of which is that it removes gate keepers and brings everyone on to the same playing field. 20 years ago if some random guy asked Wendy’s what it would take to get a year of free nuggets, whatever store manager he was talking to would have just starred at him like a crazy person. Today, with a fun twitter account, a brand can interface with someone like Carter and have a bunch of free social media coverage from all over the world.

Some big brands have tried to give Carter a push for his nugs:

This a great example of how to handle a fun brand on social media today! Wendy’s is winning!

 

 

I owe a lot of people for helping me get the point I am today. But over time it has come clear to me that at least a few personalities helped shape my path more than others. One who provided freedom, one who provided permission, and one who provided motivation. This week we are going to look at freedom.

Of course, I mean William Wallace (or Mel Gibson). Just kidding!

I mean Dave Ramsey. My wife and I did not start out our marriage as a Dave Ramsey couple, but sometime in the first year, I started listening. Originally I had always thought Dave was just an arrogant talk radio guy and was just always yelling to get ratings.  But during an Entreleadership live broadcast at my then workplace I heard Dave’s heart about what he does and I gave him another try.

From there Renae and I got on the program and started working toward financial freedom. We worked hard and creatively to pay off our student loans and live within our means. We lived in a crappy apartment for the first 3 years of marriage and saved up a big downpayment on a house. We continued to live within our means as we got better jobs and raises.

Something you might not expect from someone who started his own business is: I am actually risk adverse. But this financial freedom, having no debt except the house and living within our means, severely lessened the risk of striking it out on my own.

It allowed us to continue to live on my wife’s salary and the cash from a part-time job I took on when I launched the business. This gave me the mental freedom to not be stressed under the weight of starting a new business all the time. I was able to quit that job 8 months in! Because I was focusing on building the business instead of making quick cash to survive, it also gave me the freedom to make long-term decisions instead of short-term decisions.

Long-term decision making is always better than short-term. 

When I am talking with people who are thinking of starting their own business one of the things I bring up is how much debt they have. If they can minimize that debt before they jump ship, they will be in a much better place to start. Those additional monthly expenses make it much hard to survive when starting out. That burden will make prematurely returning to a ‘real’ job, before you really have the time and work invested to see if your business is going work out, to likely.

Thank you, Dave, for helping us find financial freedom! It is allowing us to do great things!

I make stark raving fans.

Well, at least I try to. Sometimes it’s out of my control. But as far as it goes with me, I try my best to meet and exceed my customer’s expectations. When I am able to make customers into fans, I am able to create a base of people who want me to succeed as well as pay me. It’s a great combo.

How do I do that? I am still figuring it out, but here are some thoughts:

Deliver:
Make it happen. Everytime. Sometimes you land the plane with no sleep or in the Hudson, but you still land the plane. When it comes to delivering on a project, you need to be willing to move heaven and earth to accomplish something you said you would do. Failing to deliver is not a way to make stark raving fans.

Being willing to say: I don’t know or that I was wrong.
I make mistakes sometimes and sometimes I don’t know the best solution for my client. I am willing to refer people out to a better solution. (Most) People appreciate honesty. I tend, to be honest enough to lose business sometimes and so far it’s worked out really well.
When you make a mistake, be willing to take a hit financially as well. If I screwed something up, I am willing to take a hit financially and have. But offering your customer a discount or a refund on a mistake is treating the customer right and that is a great way to make a stark raving fan.

Answer the phone/ talk with everyone:
I love learning about other people’s businesses. Because of that and general human decency, I talk to everyone who wants to meet with me. This can be time-consuming, but you never know where the next meeting might lead.

I also answer the phone. Let me be clear when I say answer the phone, I mean I call everyone back. My phone is almost always on silent and especially during times of focus, I leave my phone out of reach so I can get some work done. So I will call all my customers back in a timely manner, every time, every day. Communication with customers is a key component of building stark raving fans.

Don’t nickel and dime people:
I quote things by the project. This pricing allows me to take care of everything people need and not has to keep coming back to them for more funding. So when I give them a price for social media content creation and management, that includes photos and video. When we build a website that includes content creation and strategy.

This also means going above and beyond the contract sometime. When it’s needed sometimes you need to do that extra thing, beyond the original scope of the project. But it is that kind of effort that can make start raving fans.

You can read part 1 of this series here and part 2 here.

 

Every chance I get to share my expertise I take it.

Click here to read part 1 in this series.

I believe strongly in the positioning as an expert branding technique. The more people who understand that I know what I am talking about when it comes to marketing the better. How do I do this? I tell them about it. This serves to purposes: 1. It puts me in front of people and expands my network. 2. It helps build my position as someone who is worth paying money for marketing.

How do I do that?

CO: communicate: I co-host a monthly event on social media at theCO with Austin Thompson of Thompson Industries (This also doubles as work toward the first portion of my marketing scheme). Each month we give away for free knowledge about how to use social media for business. While I expect none of these students to become customers, what it does is helps position me as an expert on small business social media in Jackson. This is a long term play for sure, but I believe it will pay off.

Speaking at Community Events: Anytime I am invited to speak at a function, I take it. Every chance, I get to speak on marketing or entrepreneurship, I see it as an opportunity to further grow my influence. Even if this is just to students who are looking at marketing, I dive in! You never know what will come of an opportunity you have available. Just this week some potential business came from a community event from over a year ago!

The ROI on this is hard to determine sometimes, but it is there!

That being said, if you need someone to come and talk about marketing or entrepreneurship, I would love too! Just drop me a line!

Click here to read part 3 in this series. 

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This month’s social media win comes from an unlikely source, a utility company. A utility company at first blush is not an exciting venture: generate power and delivering it to people’s homes. Most people think about a utility company about as much as they think of a long snapper in football, which is usually only when they mess up.

That is why this social post caught my attention. It was doing really well and had 158 thousand views from a video put out by a utility company. The video is a 360-degree video of a helicopter delivering someone to the top of a power structure. That lineman then climbs off the helicopter and onto the structure. It also had over 1000 shares which is a great engagement stat!

It’s pretty awesome. Watch it here. 

It led to some great comments from people who were reminded that they are glad someone else does the dirty work. Including the lineman’s mom, which is super sweet!

This is a great example of documenting instead of creating content. This shows us that even conceptually boring industries can create compelling content!

 

Great job TVA!

 

 

To be honest, the idea of writing this post seems like a bad idea. But I know that ideas are free, it is the execution costs. I invest lots of time and money into doing these and these ideas won’t work for everyone. So here is week one of my three pillars of marketing myself:

(ALSO NOTE: While some of this may make me seem pretty mercenary in my actions, this is only one of the many motivations behind my actions. Other things factor into my decision making besides business, like my faith in Christ.)

Be a Great Community Member.

It is easy to start a business and just take, take, take. But as part of my personal philosophy and part as a marketing strategy, it’s a great thing to give back to the community and to be involved.  I love it when you can kill two birds with one stone. But there are limits to what someone can do and I regularly tell people, no. Because I want to do the things I am committed to well. Here is how I work out being a great community member as I think about allocating my time:

Be a great CO Member: I love theCO. I will tell anyone who will listen that theCO is a great place. I owe a lot of my success to the referrals and relationships I have built through theCO. So because of that, I want to invest back in theCO. I teach classes, give tours, help out new members, even move tables and chairs every once in a while. The relationship I have with theCO has been beneficial for both of us and I will be ever grateful for the crucial role it has played in my success.

Be a great Chamber Member: The Chamber of Commerce in Jackson is a great organization and a great customer. This has come after lots of time invested and some dollars (member fees and event fees). By showing up to events, being an asset to their staff, and even serving on the Leadership University board, I have built relationships that have helped lead to business and referrals.

Be a great Board Member: One of the best things about being self-employed is the flexibility in schedules and priorities that if offers. This has allowed me to dedicate a good amount of time to being a great board member at Madison County CASA over the last couple of years. By taking on this responsibility and doing well at it, it has helped be build new relationships in the community.

Click here to read Part 2 and Part 3.