Taking a Flying Leap (of Faith).

admin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:21:14 +0000

If you came to me as a client or prospect, and told me “I’m starting a new company,” I’d be sorely tempted to recommend caution, for in the recession, not to mention the goverment’s “let’s spend our way out of having no money” mentality, now may not be the best time to start a new venture.

Then again, it may be the BEST time to do so.

So, in the spirit of “eating my own dog food,” that’s exactly what I’m doing. Next week, I’m taking my latest invention – a six-instrument guitar stand – to exhibit at the Dallas Guitar Show (April 17-19, if you’re interested).

Here’s my idea. I’ve come up with a guitar stand that is beautiful (it looks like a piece of Mission-style/Arts & Crafts/Stickley-style furniture), it’s portable (sets up or tears down in under 60 seconds), durable (made of solid oak), and stable (with a low center of gravity, it’s not prone to tip-overs like lightweight metal stands can be). I’ve gotten such positive feedback on it from just about everybody, that I feel as if I can’t pass up this opportunity. The Dallas Guitar Show is the largest exhibition of its kind in the country – maybe even the world. A booth there should give me a way to definitively prove the market potential of the stands. This way, I can spend under $1,000, and test the market. I’m hoping to come away from the show with a fistfull of orders. If I do, I’ll be able to bootstrap production, prepaid. If I don’t get orders, I’ll be able to rethink my plans without losing a boatload of cash.

Before I leave, I’m going to be feverishly working on my website (gotta enable it for mobile phones…the Dallas Convention Center wants $250 for WiFi access – and I’m not gonna do it). It’s been some time since I’ve done a trade show. Knowing how to do tradeshows (and having seen people do them the wrong way) means I’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then, so I won’t screw things up. Bootstraping this as I am, I’ve got virtually no margin for error. That makes things both exciting and terrifying at the same time. I’ll report back here as things progress.

A little experiment in music (self-)marketing.

admin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:11:01 +0000

Recently, I’ve gotten restless, and I’ve decided to begin playing music professionally again. Trouble is, I don’t have a lot of contacts here in Amarillo. So I’ve decided to apply the same techniques I recommend to my marketing clients to my own situation. That means I’ve got to find ways to get myself noticed around town. What you see at the left here is a poster I whipped up in an hour or so this evening. I’ve secured a one-night gig – kind of a “let’s see if this works” kind of thing. Obviously, I’d like this to turn into a regular gig. So I’m doing everything I know how to do to make that happen. First, we’ll start with promotions. I’m going to print several of these posters and give them to Pizza Hut. I figure that the combination of a nice-looking poster along with taking the initiative to promote my appearance there will go a long way towards helping them see the possibilities. It won’t cost me much to do it, and it will help serve my larger goal of getting my name out there as a musician in Amarillo. With only two days before the gig, I don’t have much time to self-promote, but I figure that anything I can do is better than sitting around and waiting for something good to happen.

What’s the takeaway for you? Well, first you should ditch any negative self-talk, and look at the possibilities. Need to promote yourself, your company, your product? Have a limited budget? That’s not a deal-breaker…it just means you need to get creative. Next, start blue-skying…think up as many ideas for promotions as you can. Don’t discard any of them – yet. Just list them and come back to them later. After you’ve brainstormed, it’s time to start prioritizing your ideas, and putting the impractical ones on the back burner. Notice, I didn’t say “throw ‘em out.” Just put them away for future reference. You never know when one might come in handy.

Now, implement and test like crazy. Did it work? Why? Why not? Can you fix it? Make it better? Testing gives you answers you can’t get from intuition and guesswork.

I’ll let you know how my quickie self-promotion effort turns out. In the meantime, when was the last time you promoted you?

grokmedia | mediablog » guitar

Taking a Flying Leap (of Faith).

A little experiment in music (self-)marketing.