Begging for Business: A new Venture

 

Drumming up Business the Old Fashioned Way

A week ago I started sending out inquiry emails to digital companies in the Tulsa area. I’m out of ideas to drum up business for my writing company. I’m taking the ‘throw it at the wall and hope it sticks’ approach. It’s the same thing insurance salesman do, work the phones and cold call everyone on a list. I woke up last Sunday morning with an infused sense of commitment. It’s better to say “recommitment” since this idea has been bubbling up for over a year now. I started a website, paid a host and started writing business-y posts to put up on the page.

For at least 3 months I’ve been idle. I don’t like to admit it but when I run out of ideas I tend to quit. What I need to do is redouble my efforts and start claiming success in faith. I was for a bit but I got sick of not having success. Saturday night the guys in my men’s group prayed for me. I guess I made some comment that sounded depressing. Whatever it was I prompted a response. The prayer was the trigger for me to get up and start the day with a YouTube channel from a writing advice coach.

Advice: Make a database of the organizations and people you contact. Send them a personalized note and ask if they need help with any writing. Do a search for local digital companies and go down the list.

Getting to Work

That’s basically what I’ve been doing for the past week. I’ve contacted 30 so far. A lot of the contacts are just messages from their website they use to solicit customers for themselves. I don’t like doing that but many of the sites don’t list email addresses. Probably because they don’t want some rando (like me) sending emails they’ll just delete. That’s what I do. Hit delete whenever someone tries to offer me a package on a website upgrade.

So I didn’t have a lot of hope for this to work. But how many people actually need to respond and throw some business my way? Not many. I hit a few people up on Linked in. I’m to the point where I don’t care about how I come off anymore. Not that I want to be a pest but being polite is getting me nowhere and respecting others’ space has left me broke. What I mean is, my reluctance to describe my skills or ask people for work is probably the reason I don’t have any. All those irritating Aflac salesman that pop into the store, asking to set up a meeting have turned me off to soliciting business.

Ditto the obnoxious blue shirts from AT&T that bang on my door during the summer. But here’s the thing. I did buy a package from them about 6 years ago. The price went up after that so I dumped it. But I made someone a commission that day. I’ve said no probably 25 times. But I said yes once. That’s why I should solicit. It’s a game of attrition, like dating and warfare. Persistence pays off and rewards you eventually. I’ll keep bombing digital companies with emails until I hit the jackpot.

Then I’ll do it again.

How long until a typical small business evens out and becomes profitable? There are too many variables. But I’ll likely need to get comfortable with this begging for work thing until I can ride on my existing customer base. Being a small business owner is a kick in the balls. But it’s also wonderfully freeing once you learn to live with sore balls. I’ve seen in with my brothers, 2 of whom are further down the road to sufficiency than me. They work hard when they need to and schedule in family time.

If they need to take a few extra days around a holiday, they put in extra work beforehand to make it possible. Hiring additional help seems to be the biggest impediment to running their growing company. But that’s a long way off for me. For now I’ll try to survive on drips and drops and trust the Lord for the rainfall.