Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that chronicles the steps taken to create WebBusinessFreedom.com.

Years ago, I had the pleasure of doing some public relations consulting for Mark Richardson, president of the Carolina Panthers when I was working for one of the big PR firms in Charlotte. This was the team that he and his father, Jerry Richardson (a former NFL player with the Baltimore Colts) landed in a city that many believed would never support an NFL franchise.

One of their core philosophies was so simple yet so impactful that it has stuck with me ever since.

“Plan your work, and work your plan.”

Quite simply, a plan is absolutely essential to the success of any endeavor. There’s also the old saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Planning is especially vital in these turbulent economic times. Big financial institutions are crumbling, taking thousands of jobs with them and causing an unsettling ripple effect. Is your job truly secure? Do you have a backup strategy that isn’t dependent on the whims of a corporation or the economy?

Sadly, many people stall on the planning part, or skip it altogether. In their excitement to implement a big new idea, they don’t recognize the perils of failing to plan. Or, they see it as a waste of time. “Why plan, when things will just change?” is a common, anti-planner’s mentality. Or, they think it’s too complicated.

I disagree. Planning is not a waste of time, nor does it have to be complex to be effective.

In the new book Dare to Prepare, author and master negotiator Ronald Shapiro writes, “Lest you think that taking the time to clearly define your objectives slows you down, my experience is that it is an essential step in pushing performance from acceptable to exceptional. You are one of thousands of talented and dedicated people in your field. Better performance and greater satisfaction require harnessing motivation with a clear understanding of your objectives. Definition is the differentiator.”

When starting Web Business Freedom, a plan was one of the first few steps I took. Because I wanted to put down, in writing, my initial vision for the business. I’ve found that if you don’t write stuff down, it tends to just go right into the ether.

All it takes to do this is some quality brainstorming time, some paper and something to write with. Or in my case, software. I chose to use Keynote (for you PC users, PowerPoint will do), though really any writing program or note-taking application is fine. I used Keynote because I also wanted to sketch out my vision for the website.

I’m also a big fan of Google Docs, so I set up folders and documents as I went along to keep track of ideas and information related to the new venture. Most importantly, I made lists of my strengths and weaknesses, as well as potential services I can offer.

Finally, I used an online mind-mapping software called Mindmeister. There are a number of good desktop-based mindmapping programs, but I like that with Mindmeister (a premium account), you can also work offline after installing Google Gears. (Of course, you can also work with Google Docs offline with Gears enabled.) Mindmeister lets you give others access to view or collaborate on your mind maps.

Mind mapping has been an almost daily process to keep tabs on all the various pieces of the business, from the website itself (e.g., plugins and related sites) to promotional ideas.

In Keynote, I worked until I had formulated the following initial positioning statement:

Web Business Freedom will serve as a resource for entrepreneurs and others who want to use the web to achieve business and personal success online. It will contain a wealth of real-life articles, an email signup and eventually a companion podcast, ebooks, links to videos and more. Information will be aimed at how-to tips, tools, resources and inspiration on prospering on the web.

While that statement would change over time, it gave me a baseline philosophy to start with. That helped guide me as I decided how I wanted the website to look, and what I wanted to talk about.

Next, I used some of the drawing tools in Keynote to create a rough idea of the site I wanted. I’m not a graphic designer, so I wasn’t concerned with the look, but simply the act of documenting different pages and the design and functional components I wanted.

For inspiration, I referenced other sites I had bookmarked using Delicious—another must-have web tool. Anytime I ran across a site that could be of use to my new venture, I added it to Delicious, being sure to include a lot of descriptive tags, or phrases, to make it easier to search for them later.

It’s surprising how few people engage in this level of planning (or any level of planning) when they are thinking about creating a website. I’ve been involved in web development for other people for over 10 years, and have gotten a lot of blank stares when I asked the question, “Exactly what are you looking for in your site?” People somehow think it is challenging to “architect” a site, when many sites start as a simple outline in Word, or a sketch on the back of a napkin! Trust me, there is no wizardry involved in creating an outline for a website.

Now, there are free or cheap tools like Jumpchart that will let you build a mock site, and even add text, images and links. With Jumpchart, you can share and create mockups with others, or export clean, working web code for a rudimentary site.

The act of creating my crude representation of the Web Business Freedom website proved to be invaluable. I knew I was going to be using WordPress as the software platform for the site, and not long after I created my sketch I ran across an inexpensive template that was very close to my concept! (I’ll write more at length in future articles about my experiences with WordPress.) I referred to my outline many times, especially after I decided to hire a designer to install the site and provide some basic design customization to it.

Without all this initial planning, I know I would’ve wasted time, run in circles or potentially overlooked something crucial. And when I hit some stumbling blocks (which happened, because they are inevitable), I might have compromised the integrity of my vision.

To be a pro, you need to act like one. Successful people plan. In 1961, Jerry Richardson invested his NFL championship bonus check of $4,744 in a friend’s fast food company. Starting with a single Hardee’s franchise, he built a restaurant empire, which he then parlayed into the ultimate dream of owning an NFL team.

So what’s your plan?

Tools referenced:
Del.icio.us, Google Docs, Google Gears, Jumpchart: Free
Mindmeister: Free to $3-4 per month (premium versions)
Keynote: $79; free 30-day trial (part of iWork ’08)

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/onico

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There are lot of genuine, highly credible experts on the web, willing to give you a lot of the “secrets” you need to start a good, profitable business online (or supplement an existing business), and in the process vastly improve the quality of your life.

Before I talk about some of the people who’ve influenced me the most so far, first let me share a recent conversation I had with a friend. It is typical of the lack of knowledge people have about how to be entrepreneurial and make money online.

First, I’ll explain that my friend (let’s call him Ray) is one of the most talented web developers I’ve ever met. He puts together incredible websites and web applications daily, as part of his job.

Ray is also an artist at heart. And his wife is, too. (Let’s call her Sally.) For many years, she has been a stay-at-home mom, helping support the family with part-time graphic design work. A couple years ago, she decided to go back to school part-time to get a masters degree.

Finally, after several years of late nights and weekends spent studying, Sally earned her degree and started calling around town on arts groups that would be most likely to hire her. This has gone on now for months, with a few nibbles but nothing substantial. It’s frustrating.

I mentioned to Ray that perhaps his wife could share her knowledge and expertise via a website. Not only does she have her design background, she now has advanced expertise in things like grant writing, that people would be willing to pay money for. Not everyone can afford the time or expense to go get an master’s in arts administration.

Sally could set up a blog and start sharing her know-how, in order to establish herself as an expert in her field, I explained. Blogging is a great tool for this, I said. First come the posts, then perhaps she can put out an e-book (or a series) for free, all while building up a list of subscribers (fans). As she develops a following and reputation, she can start advertising individual or group coaching. Maybe this starts locally and expands to webinars (which could be as simple as a group conference call with PDF handouts emailed to participants). She might then sell more advanced materials, or access to a members-only group. Once the site builds up some traffic, she could sell some sponsorships, and start looking for ways to earn commissions selling affiliated products.

Those were just a few thoughts I gave, in about a minute.

“Wow, I hadn’t thought about that,” Ray said. “I’ll have to mention that to her. Thanks!”

And remember, Ray is a web developer 45-50 hours a week!

A couple hours after that conversation, I met an old friend, Phil, for lunch. (Another name changed to protect the innocent.) He had recently joined LinkedIn, and I could tell by the tone of his emails that something was up.

After settling in at a restaurant, my friend told me that after 13 years working for one of the big banks in town, the ax fell. He wasn’t expecting it. For the past two months, he’d been out of work yet had somehow managed to find another job within the same company. “It’s like I never really left,” he explained. And he got a 5% bump in his base salary, though his annual bonus—that he and his wife count on—would likely take a hit.

He then went on a rambling, 10-minute monologue about how unstable banking was, and how unsatisfied he was in his career, and at age 45 anxious to do something else, he just didn’t quite know what. He shared a passion for the web, and had years before helped start a successful grassroots website in town. “The bulletin board I managed on international trade was the most popular section of the whole site,” he boasted. I could tell he had a bunch of very specialized knowledge, combined with a passion for the web—both of which he had never fully capitalized on.

Phil then talked about his wife, “Mary Beth,” who runs a solo interior design business. “It’s tough, and mostly word-of-mouth,” he said. “She just got a job for a very high-powered woman at one of the banks, but she’s being transferred to California.”

I asked about Mary Beth’s website.

“Well, she does have a basic one,” Phil said. “But we are paying $20 a month—which is a lot for us—and not getting good service from our web firm. The guy who runs it just actually suggested we might be better off switching over to GoDaddy.com, which we’re in the process of doing.”

“Does the site make her any money?” I asked.

“Not really,” he admitted. “But it has a neat Flash intro, and then when you enter the site it is all Flash.”

Hmmm, I thought. A 100% Flash-based site. Forget being optimized for search engines, easy to bookmark or print.

After some more prodding, I confirmed that Mary Beth has to contact the developer to update the site. Not good, especially for someone who could be refreshing her site frequently with photos, how-to articles, blog posts and more.

I stopped Phil and ticked off half a dozen suggestions for improvement, much like I’d done earlier for Ray. All were based on taking advantage of Mary Beth’s wealth of expertise and simple, proven techniques for online marketing.

“Interesting stuff,” he admitted. “I guess we’ll get the site switched to the new host and then maybe think about making some changes sometime.”

The Elephant on the Keyboard

Why is it that so many smart people, who are savvy enough to use a computer every day and chock full of expertise, are blind to opportunities to attract more business through the web?

It’s like there is a big elephant sitting on their keyboard, blocking the screen. Occasionally they get glimpses of the web, long enough to check email, their Facebook page or a YouTube video, before they turn back to their “day job” or the pressures of running their own business.

Just like how you go to school for years, only to find out that they never teach you what you really need to know, in the real world—most people get no instruction on how not to waste time online and make the web actually work for them.

Once in awhile, out of frustration, someone like my friends might do some Google searches that mostly produce a lot of get-rich-quick schemes and dead ends.

I know this first-hand, because I myself did that a long time. It’s highly tempting to surf around mindlessly, wondering why some people make money on the web, but not you.

These people must be freaks of nature, you tell yourself. They are trust-fund, silver spoon-fed scheisters who get to play on Daddy’s computer all day, or after they coast through college and have nothing better to do because they are too lazy to get a real job. Yes, and they are probably single without any real responsibilities and pressures. Or they are some kind of super-geek genius weirdo with no friends.

Wrong.

There are people making lots of money online, all right, but they are people you’d recognize: people just like you and me. Unfortunately, it can be hard to sift through all the junk to find them.

Once I started getting serious about understanding how to really make money online, and not just where to find some crazy software that would somehow solve the world’s problems and miraculously dump cash into up my bank account, I started finding real, credible people who were more than happy to share what they’ve learned.

For me, the true miracle was that they were there all the time, and I just hadn’t bothered to find them. And once I did, there has been a snowball effect, where one great person leads to the next, that leads to another, that leads to another. All the top web gurus oddly don’t compete, but actually help each other. They give away an incredible amount of advice and information, before they try to convince you to buy anything from them. And the reason they sell a lot of stuff, ultimately, is because they know what they’re doing and have the results to prove it.

All you have to do is know where to look, and look carefully.

I consider it a quest to connect the dots with this genuine experts, real people like me with families, responsibilities and bills to pay. Not some fantasy “Rich Jerk” sitting on a yacht, wearing a gold chain and smoking a stogey.

I’m going to be talking about (and to) some of these people a lot. They include Jay and Sterling at Internet Business Mastery. Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs Journey. Rich Shefren. Caroline Middlebrook. Tim Ferriss. David Meerman Scott. Alexis Dawes. And so many more. I’m still peeling away the layers of the onion.

What exactly makes these people believable, vs. the other gazillion so-called gurus out there? Because they all started real businesses, on- and off-line, struggled to make ends meet, made mistakes (some really stupid and costly), worked very hard and eventually through a lot of trial and error discovered proven ways to streamline their lives and improve their profits via the web. They then decided it was part of their mission in life to help others succeed where they once failed, or still see others failing.

I now humbly see myself as joining their ranks. I’m applying a lot of the techniques they teach, along with my own knowledge and expertise, to prove to myself that I can do it, and so can you.

I think elephants belong in the wild or the zoo, not on your keyboard.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankenstoen

The Internet Saved My Life.

And frankly, it has saved the lives of a lot of other unhappy people who get tired of working for The Man and decide they want to join the ranks of the self-employed.

When I graduated from journalism school in 1987 (from UNC Chapel Hill, one of America’s finest programs!), I was in the last class to bang out copy on tattered IBM Selectric typewriters. It figures that the very next year, they hauled off those mammoth beige desk weights (must’ve been one heck of a landfill fee!) and replaced them with desktop computers.

Needless to say, I didn’t have a computer or Internet access in college. Actually, no one would be online (except some freaks in the Defense Department, spending our taxes on their war games!), until the mid-to-late ’90s.

My point is this: I didn’t study computers in college (except for one terribly painful Pascal programming class—what was I thinking?). There was no Internet. So I learned how to write in journalistic fashion, graduated and months later—in desperation—talked my way into a job in public relations (without formal training in that, either). Eerily similar to now, the economy sucked, and it took moving from Charlotte to New York to find a “real job” (delivering pizzas, waiting tables and working at a mall didn’t qualify for me, the newly minted college grad).

About 12 years later, after a somewhat meandering path in PR, I found myself quitting my job as a public relations professional one day, and launching a web development business the next.

The story of how I discovered an aptitude for web development is not terribly exciting, but the real trick was, I had found something I was really passionate about. And in my experience, passion is what makes normally sane people take crazy turns in life like quitting their jobs and starting over.

Without the web, I seriously doubt I would’ve left my monotonous but steady PR career.

In the early stages of web development, things were pretty basic and simple: You put up some pages of information, a handful of photos or links, and people worldwide could check them out. I instinctively grasped that public relations (and marketing, advertising and sales) as I knew it would never be the same again, and I wanted in on wherever the Internet was headed.

What I didn’t foresee was how incredibly empowering the web would be for the entrepreneur or small business, beyond a mere communications vehicle. (Those old 56k modems sucked the life out my x-ray entrepreneurial vision). Yet in very little time, our fledgling company was a virtual David, slinging rocks at some big Goliaths and knocking them right on their butts. We looked bigger than they did, reacted quicker than they did, managed our projects better than they did (eventually)…all using web technology ourselves to the nth degree.

We were constantly waiting for these big, established, traditional advertising agencies to catch on and catch up—but they didn’t. It took most of them years to grasp what was happening, and even now a lot of them are still taking rocks between the eyes.

The web is the great equalizer for entrepreneurs. But despite major advances in the technology since I started in web design full-time (1999), many people remain befuddled about the web. They think it’s too complex, or too expensive or too whatever to mess around with. It’s a shame, because those same types of people either don’t understand what the web can do for them, or they waste a bunch of time and/or money implementing poor solutions or get-rich-quick schemes.

Instead of finding Web Business Freedom, they find Web Business Confusion or Web Business Frustration. I feel their pain.

Many web design professionals work hard at convincing people that, indeed, web design is hard, time consuming and technically complicated. After all, it is tough to sell profitable websites if you pitch them as quick and easy, unless you are geared up to do a massive volume of websites, in a factory-line mentality.

Granted, there is truth to the idea that web design can be and often is, laborious, head-splittingly arcane and a rabbit hole of coding goobleygook. Web design firms, professional designers and programmers can and do serve huge roles in making the web a better place. The really big, corporate type websites require top-notch design and complex back-end solutions to run smoothly.

But in many, many instances, people (particularly those running small businesses) fail to realize they have lots of choices in how they can take advantage of all the web can do for them personally and professionally. They think it’s too big, so they think small.

I want to flip that logic around and help people see how to think big and take small, cost effective steps to get there.

Web technology has truly sped up in terms of how easy it is to establish and groom a thriving web presence. So whatever your passion or muse happens to be, you can use the web to your advantage.

Once you understand that, naturally a quest begins. You fire up the Google search box and start jamming in phrase after phrase.

Make money online….work from home…web business opportunities…

What you get back just leads to more and more confusion—those endless, scrolling sales pitches with screaming headlines and fonts, otherwise known as squeeze pages, that hurt your eyes and seem to have a tractor-beam affect on your credit card. Is this the magic answer? you ask yourself, as you hit squeeze page after squeeze page. Hopefully, like me, you hesitate long enough to think, If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Sorting through all that junk, sharing really credible resources and enlisting your help are the goals of Web Business Freedom.

So tell me, what are the sites, and who are the web masterminds, that you’ve encountered who actually had good advice and helped you or your business reach a new level? I’ll write about some of my favorites in the next article.

If you like reading Web Business Freedom, please subscribe to our e-newsletter (the big signup box on the home page), and tell a friend! Thanks.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaja_1985

Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that chronicles the steps taken to create WebBusinessFreedom.com.

Branding is a huge consideration for a business, no matter how small it is. After all, you get one chance to make a good first impression, and that’s what your brand does: it makes an impression, or leaves a mark, in your prospect’s or customer’s eyes. Either that initial impression is good, bad or nil (meaning it doesn’t even register!). A cheap logo is a quick way to land in the bad or nil columns.

So after registering the domain name for Web Business Freedom, the next big action I took was getting a logo. First, I wanted something that was distinctive and classy. Second, since I was (am!) watching every penny in startup mode, I didn’t want to pay a lot for it!

I decided to use a web-based service called Crowdspring.com. It’s a site that lets anyone post a design project—which could be a logo, website (layout only; no coding), brochure or other marketing collateral or a custom illustration. Once the project is up and running, designers from around the world will compete for the chance to “win” your business. In essence, it’s a contest—with you as the judge and jury!

Here are the basics on how it works:

1. You start by entering in the project’s title, followed by details of what you’re looking for, known as the project or creative brief. You can upload supporting files, like Word documents or PDFs that give more details about your company or cause.
2. You set your project’s end date. I opted for a week with my logo, because I wanted to keep the ball rolling. Any longer than that, and I figured I’d probably get too many choices.
3. You indicate the types of files you will need for the final project. With a logo for example, file types may include .EPS, .PSD (Photoshop), .AI (Adobe Illustrator), .JPG or another type you specify. It’s important to get as many as possible. If you need letterhead or anything printed, you’ll want the .EPS and/or .AI files, whereas a .JPG or .PNG would be fine for web usage.
4. You name the price you’re willing to pay for the design. Crowdspring gives you an idea whether your bid is too low: “Keep in mind, logo projects with awards greater than $300 average 94 entries while lower awards average only 43.” I set the price for the Web Business Freedom logo at $200.To get even more entries, you can offer multiple “awards”—that is, more than one cash amount or “prize.” In theory, more designers will jump in, knowing they have a better shot at a paycheck.
5. Finally, you state the terms of the contract that will be binding on the “winner” of your project. Crowdspring makes this super-easy, by giving you a nice template. Or you can upload your own. Either way, it’s a crucial step that adds to the value of the process. You should own the copyright of your final design(s) and be able to do whatever you want to with them, with no legal strings attached. I opted for their standard contract.

That’s it. Of course, you do have to enter your payment information upfront. You don’t get charged until you designate a winner, and unless you get at least 25 entries in your project, you have the option of walking away and not paying.

Once you hit submit, the real fun begins. Within a matter of hours or a day or so, you’ll start getting emails whenever there’s a new entry in your contest. It’s thrilling and addictive to go back to the site to see what’s come in.

For each entry, you (and any others, while projects are “live”) can rate it on a 1 to 5 scale. As the project owner, you can also give feedback to each designer. The more feedback you give, and the more specific it is, the better. I found that the better designers were quick to respond in kind with additional questions to help clarify any changes requested.

When my project ended, I had 28 designs to choose from. Some were definite duds—they almost looked thrown in at the last minute to get me to the magic 25 number—but there were also several very solid designs. I wound up picking the one you see here on the site. In the end, the free-lancer who did it was a stay-at-home-mom, and she responded in a fast and friendly manner and made several tweaks to the design.

Overall, I was very impressed with the site, the process and the results. And here’s the real kicker—I have worked my entire career in advertising/design and marketing firms. Years ago, I never would have dreamed of running a “cheap contest” to get design work done. That’s not the way it’s been done, for decades! The lifeblood of agencies and designers is to convince you that doing something like a logo is a long, complicated process (and hence, costly). Indeed, most graphic designers I’ve discussed this with are either outright appalled or express displeasure at the very idea. No wonder—it’s a threat to their very existence!

I see it much differently. If I were actually a graphic designer, I’d view this type of service as a secret weapon. Instead of trying to kill myself coming up with tons of ideas for every project, I’d use Crowdspring or another service like 99Designs (which has a similar model) as a resource, to generate more ideas that I could take to my clients. Or, I’d run the contest in the background, paying minimal fees, then take the final product and either sell it as-is with a markup, or use my design skills to add my own “finesse” to it and, again, increase the invoice price to the customer. Fortunately, Crowdspring now has more “private” options than when I used them, making it easier for a designer, ad agency or corporation to do exactly what I’m suggesting.

To me, Crowdspring is another example of how tiny, self-funded entrepreneurs can now compete against wealthy, global entities. Even as my contest was running, there were in fact some big companies running design contests of their own in Crowdspring!

When you’re ready to launch your brand, check out it. When designers compete, you win!