One of the things we are most proud of here at BrandU is our ability to help launch great ideas. Emotice Media, one of our Interprise Business Incubator Elite members, came to us with a tremendous new take on bringing the written word to new life, using all the vast power and potential of web technologies. We are thrilled to announce a three-way partnership between BrandU, Why Communications, and Stratacution Ventures that will take Emotice Media farther than its founder ever dreamed.

Read all about this innovative start-up and what our unique “big gun” partnership is doing to help get it off the ground at PRWeb today!

Once again BrandU is finding new and creative ways to help our members grow their business.  And not just members!  Join us live in Irvine, CA at the Enlightened Entrepreneur Summit November 4-6, where we’re sponsoring a fundRAISE™ panel designed to help participants land deals with investors.  You’ll have the opportunity to actually pitch your business ideas to real investors and experienced entrepreneurs on the panel, and maybe even make a deal on the spot.  Get feedback on your presentation…and, if you sign up early, you can even attend BrandU’s “pre-summit” pitch preparation” session the Friday before!

This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to learn how to put your best foot forward and secure that start-up capital every business needs. Read all about the summit and how to participate in the fundRAISE™ panel at PRWeb, and sign up today!

What’s the one thing business owners worry about most (aside from Is my idea good, Do I know what I’m doing? How do I find customers, How do I…)? You got it.  Every entrepreneur worries about where the money will come from to get that new business off the ground.

BrandU is excited to announce a new partnership with Stratacution Ventures designed to solve this last piece of the business puzzle for our Interprise Business Incubator Elite members.  Stratacution specializes in working with small businesses to secure capital from a variety of sources, including venture capital, crowdfunding, and bootstrapping.  They’ve raised over $9 million dollars for clients in just the last 18 months. Now they’re putting their formidable skills to work for BrandU.

Together, BrandU and Stratacution Ventures are providing the rocket fuel to launch your business high and fast. Read all about this exciting alliance here.

Last week we shared that customers are the vital key to any business, not the amount of money your business has in the bank. It’s customers that keep your business growing, and to grow, you need to keep attracting new ones.

But how do you do that in the current economy, with massive competition? Is there an effective trick to use that will catch the attention of new customers?

Sure there is. But it’s not so much a trick as a way to completely change your thinking and give you an edge over your competition.

You ready?  Don’t make the thing you are selling be your focus.

Instead, focus on the feeling you want your potential customers to associate with your company. This will truly set you apart from other folks selling what you sell.  In fact, it’s the only thing that does. This has been the core of our work with entrepreneurs for over two decades.

You may think that your customers are buying your products, but actually they are buying a feeling.  Your product or service is just their conduit to it. In essence, the product is affirming the feeling they’re looking for.

It’s what Starbucks and Apple do so well. They stir our emotions.  Lots of companies sell coffee.  Lots of companies sell computers and phones.  There’s a reason that so many people choose these particular companies over another.  It’s because these brands have done their homework—they make you feel very specific about that cup of coffee, about that particular brand of computer. They connect to you, the customer, on levels you’re not even aware of, but that are emotionally satisfying.

The good news is, this strategy does not just apply to big companies. It applies to small businesses too. You simply decide what feeling you want your customers to associate with your company and communicate it so that it is experienced consistently without fail—one slip-up and your new customers could be gone.

The most powerful way to do that is to communicate your business as a brand.  Your brand is why your business exists in the first place.  It’s through and through EVERY thing that you do.

To bring this point home…

On your initial contact with prospective customers, whether it’s in person, on a website, in social media platforms or an ad, don’t lead with your product. Instead, create a relationship led by a feeling—one that they can consistently rely on and associate with you.

Screaming “buy my stuff” doesn’t attract new customers who are well beyond hearing the old hard sell pitches.You have something more to offer. Discover what it is, and communicate it with every step you take.

Wow, ever get that warm fuzzy feeling when you stumble across something that validates what you’ve been saying all along? Well, that happened to us just today!

For years we’ve been saying—and incorporating into our business training—that you don’t need a ton of money to launch a business. Why saddle yourself with a small business loan when simply having a pool of cash is not the key to a successful business?

Today we discovered that the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), “the voice of small business,” agrees with us. In this article entitled “Easy Money is Not the Answer,” they share their view that the “accepted” view in Congress of the current economic malaise is (surprise, surprise) backwards.

Washington, D.C., as with so many problems, is under the impression that throwing money at small businesses will magically make them prosper. The prevailing belief on Wall Street and in Washington is that if banks would just lend more to small businesses, all would be well.

Au contraire, says the NFIB. They argue that while it is true that it is currently much harder to get a small business loan…it is not loans that create jobs. Businesses cannot create long-term jobs—or permanent prosperity—by using loan money to finance new employees to create new products. Without new customers, there is no business, and the loan is pointless.

This is exactly what we’ve been saying to entrepreneurs we’ve helped to grow solid businesses over the past 20-odd years, and it is the underlying principle of our newest business development program, Biz 180: New Customer Attraction.  You simply cannot grow your business if you aren’t connecting with new customers.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs stuck on dead center in their businesses need to learn how to find and appeal to new customers to sustain the growth they want. New customer attraction is the name of the game. Based on our 20+ years of business training and development experience, we have distilled that process down to five basic steps:

1. Understand and fix what may be blocking you from your customers
2. Repair the damage done by decades of marketing “hype” that have destroyed consumer trust in general
3. Remove the walls of resistance to buying from you
4. Discover who your best customers are and where to find them
5. Go online to connect with millions of potential customers cost effectively

As the NFIB understands, customers are the key to any business. Biz 180: New Customer Attraction takes that underlying principle forward with clear direction on how to apply these five basic principles to your own business.

Obtaining a small business loan may be tempting for the short-term security it offers in paying the rent, expanding your marketing spend, and acquiring an inventory. But all those things are pointless if you do not target the right customers with the right message and put your emphasis on building your customer base rather than your cash reserves. You will have neither if you listen to the “experts” in Washington, most of whom have never run a business.

We have. Several, in fact, and we’ve helped to launch many, many more through our entrepreneur training and business development and mentoring programs. The customer really is key—now go find yours.

Find out more about how BrandU’s Biz 180: New Customer Attraction business development program can help you start attracting new customers today—without putting yourself in hock to the bank.

Ever try to be something for everyone and find that no one wants any of it?

Do you have trouble finding the time to focus on your business?

Do you do so much for so many that you find it’s difficult to make any financial progress in your business, much less make an indelible mark in the minds of your potential customers? Who are you, really?

I’ve found myself on that road so many times that I could be a tour guide for “Pleasewantmeville.”

Where did this come from and how can you get it to stop?

It starts publicly when we are very young…at school.

A moment emblazoned in my mind happened in Mrs. Moon’s kindergarten class.  I had just discovered a squirreled stash of my favorite food, Pepperidge Farms Goldfish Crackers, in the front pocket of my patchwork dress. I squealed with delight and proudly started munching on them in the middle of “two plus three.”

My delight turned to horror when I heard, “Miss Castle, I hope you have enough for everyone or you will stand in the front of the class with your face in the corner!”

Out of nowhere, large beads of sweat developed on my forehead as I desperately searched every inch of my two-inch square pocket for enough goldfish to feed the entire class. Even though we were only on “addition,” somehow I knew that four fishes and a tail wouldn’t cut it.

With my face in the corner for those very long twenty minutes, I vowed that I would always have enough to make everyone happy.  In business, and in life, those fish have come back to bite me over and over again.

As a teenager, I developed the “I don’t have enough friends” syndrome.  Not being one of the “cool-n-popular” types, I had to buy my friends (I hope I’m the only one who did this).  And since I wasn’t the brain, I couldn’t find my value in helping friends get “As.

I did everything else though—the grunt work, the labor, the runs to the store, the “kill-the messenger” phone calls, the kind of stuff that took me away from most of the friend action.  I did so much that I had no time to develop the relationships that I wanted in the first place.  I was spread so thin I was transparent!  No wonder that for the first few years of my business, I worked unbelievably hard but had nothing (no money, no value) to show for it.

It wasn’t until I turned my focus inward that I really started to build something of value that customers wanted.

focus:

1. Concentrated effort or attention on a particular thing
2. A concentrated and unified quality
3. The quality of being sharply defined with clear edges and contrast

inward:

1. Situated within something
2. Relating to or existing in the mind or spirit
3. Toward the inside or center of something

It took me a long time to develop that inward focus.  I kept trying to “give” everybody fish until I learned that, by applying my business development knowledge through BrandU, I could teach people to “gold-fish” for themselves by giving them the steps to develop their own powerful brand.

Yet…your business can never be developed as a brand until you first:

• Suspend the need to be something for everyone, and
• Sharply define with clear edges from your inside or center

The challenge to our success grows when we compound these learned behaviors with the entrepreneurial fear that we need to be attractive to everyone in order to survive—especially because we don’t know when and from where the next customer will come.

I’ve done that dance, too. You know, the “when you get off the phone with a new client closing a new tiny project that feels huge because it’s the only one you have” dance?

If you identify at all with this, how’s it working for you? For me it didn’t!  Nothing did until:

• I deeply connected to what I offered, found my uniqueness in it and built on the internal power of it
• I communicated it consistently with precision and quality

The points of effort that you are sending out in every direction, squandering your focus externally, trying to be something for everyone, doing so much that results in so little—all start from somewhere. That somewhere is a place that you control.

The seeds of your brand are planted there.

Don’t be affected by your programming and keep wandering around in Please-want-me-ville. Instead, learn to program your success.  I promise you that if you plant it there and tend it—it will grow…and grow…and… grow!

Learn how to discover and grow your brand with BrandU’s “7 Secrets to Today’s Top-Earning Brands” FREE instant download CD.

Written by Kim Castle
© 2004-2011 Castle Montone, Limited

If you had just three hours to devote to making your business more successful, how would you spend them? Creating a huge promotion? Attending a business seminar? Redoing your business plan?

How would any of those things help you if you are not certain why your business is not quite working with the old promotions, or under the old business plan? And if the last ten seminars you attended didn’t help, why waste time on another one?

The truth is…

You don’t need another guru, another boot camp, another seminar, another canned business development course, or two years in an MBA program. You need a reality check and a plan—a way to figure out exactly where you are right now with your business, and a strategy tailored to get you not only to where you want to go, but to where you should go. Those aren’t always the same thing. A good many entrepreneurs are shocked to discover how they have been unwittingly sabotaging themselves. Not every business is going to be Starbucks. Not every business should be Starbucks.

As entrepreneurs on another venture, we once lost a cool half million dollars (ouch!!) on a “sure-thing” and swore we would never let that happen to anyone else. And in just 36 months from making that decision, BrandU grossed $3.2 million dollars. BrandU was born to help entrepreneurs uncover viable ideas and take them to market, and the first step is always evaluating where you are with your business, at this moment, today.

We’d like to help you grow your business! And to show our commitment to entrepreneurs worldwide…

RIGHT NOW, you can figure out what “business development mile marker”  you’re currently at and the particular focus you need to take from that point to actually reach your goals in the next 12 months.

In just three hours, you can develop a real, viable strategy based on a clear understanding of what you need to do in our  Free 3-part business training called Interprise Business Incubator: How to Create and Develop a Multiple Million-dollar Business in 12 Months Or Less—That Lasts!

It’s available online TODAY to help you:

• Determine exactly where you’re at right now with your business so you can make clear, confident decisions about where to go next. You don’t have the time, money, or energy to waste chasing ideas that aren’t viable or strategies that aren’t useful to your particular enterprise. So why not take 45 minutes of your time to figure out why things aren’t working?
• Give you a 12-month business development strategy based on where you are that will show you the fastest way to get your business off the ground. You don’t have to be a biz whiz or marketing guru to develop a thriving business—and this will help you to do it in a structured, step-by-step manner unique to your business needs. Take an hour to build on what you learned in Part 1.
• Help you avoid 10 common pitfalls that swallow too many businesses and take all the fun out of being your own boss and prevent you from achieving your business dreams.
• Teach you the fastest way to get where you want to go, and the steps to take to put that strategy to best effect in your business. That’s certainly worth another hour of your time.

No business is too small or too large to benefit from a reality check now and again. The Interprise Business Incubator: How to Create and Develop a Multiple Million-dollar Business in 12 Months Or Less—That Lasts! three-part training is created to save you from spending a great deal more time, money, and effort on strategies that just aren’t designed for a business like yours.

Dumb luck is seldom the foundation of multimillion dollar businesses. The first step to getting where you want to go is taking action, and now you can do that for free. What have you got to lose except…maybe…the key to unlocking the business you know is lurking just out of your reach?

Earlier this year I was exercising near my home in Southern California by climbing hundreds of stairs along the canyon wall. I do this regularly, not just to keep in shape, but because it lets me get away from the business for an hour or so and leaves my mind free to just roam.

There I was, panting up those stairs, when, as happens to me sometimes, out of nowhere came an idea for a completely new product, so strong it literally took my breath away. It drove everything else out of my head. It was so powerful, so intoxicating that I didn’t even feel myself laboring up those steps.

I started envisioning a program that was unlike anything we had ever created before, unlike anything I had even heard of before. The possibilities it held for advancing our vision for BrandU seemed like a lightning bolt, a revelation straight from somewhere outside my head. Talk about a wake-up call!

I got excited knowing that there wasn’t anything like this out there for entrepreneurs and how it could close that gap between hopes and fulfillment that so many people experience. I thought about all the new businesses that would arise, all the new products that might become the next world-changing thing, like Apple and Microsoft bringing the computer age to life. I thought about the millions of lives that could be changed, and holy cow! Did I ever start to tingle.

Before I knew it, I wasn’t climbing stairs anymore… I was flying.  I was high off an idea — like the fumes of a gas.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know the high I’m talking about. You may even be what I call an “idea junkie.” You know who you are.  And that’s okay.  Awareness is the first step.

If you know this feeling, you probably also know the pain that often comes with it, the pain of not turning your idea into a real product fast enough and getting people to buy it as quickly as possible before the next idea comes.

When speaking to entrepreneurs around the world about branding, I often compare the “idea” of a business to a “gas” — like air.  It’s floating around out there in your awareness but it doesn’t have form.  And trying to translate that idea into tangible form too often turns into a trap that prevents entrepreneurs from ever getting beyond the high.

Is the “idea” of your business costing you everything? Here are four ways to tell if they’re killing your business, and what you can do about it.

It’s not real…until you make it real.  Until you get your idea out of your head and into a tangible form, it’s only a possibility, real only when you stop to think about it.  But there are many ways to make it tangible even at the beginning.

For example, a client of mine, prior to working with me, paid thousands of dollars to have her book jackets designed BEFORE she even wrote the book.  While this approach does get the idea out of your head and into a form you can touch, it’s done with enormous risk.  Suppose her book had gone a different direction than she originally envisioned it? Those covers would be worthless—or, she could have diluted a better idea than what she originally conceived by trying to salvage her investment, and ended up with a book that wasn’t as good as the one that could have been. Without first establishing the core of your idea from the inside, the outside influence could take you away from what the business or product really is.  That’s why the way we approach branding is so vital in the beginning of a business or product development.

It’s so flexible…there’s nothing there.  Your brain may feed you hundreds of potential business ideas every single day, each one more exciting that the last. Until you manage to wall off the core idea of what a business really is, you’re at the mercy of all that fascinating potential, like a poorly trained hound dog chasing every scent that comes along. You need to create a mental leash to insulate yourself from all that distraction. Remember that even though every idea carries potential, each is just an idea until it’s impacting a customer’s life.

This is why the entire first half of our brand creation process doesn’t even involve the customer.  We focus on creating the house  that your potential customer will walk into and want to stay.

It’s worth nothing…until you add interest.  While you have experienced the idea, just having the idea is not unique.  At this moment someone else could be having the exact same thought.

What makes your idea unique is whatever drives your need to create it.  People don’t just buy because they have nothing else to do. They need a reason to choose one thing over another.  By the same token, what drives you to take action on an idea?

It means nothing…until it means something to someone else.  People can’t buy your idea unless they can connect to it in a way that impacts their life. Think about what it would be like to try and sell someone air.  It’s the same as selling them your idea, that gassy thing you haven’t yet made real.  If you truly want to move beyond that wonderful “high,” your idea needs to be clearly translated into a tangible and emotional experience.

Okay.  With all that said, don’t forget that your ideas do have great value at the start of a business.  Without ideas, you’d have nothing to act on—or sell.  But ideas are just the spark to get you started.  They feel so great because it takes a lot of fuel to create something out of nothing.  That fuel is excitement.

By harnessing that excitement with form, foundation, reason and connection, you’ll have what it takes to share your idea “high” with the world.  And they’ll gladly pay you for it.

Sooo…what happened to my great idea?

It turned into the Interprise Business Incubator that has revolutionized everything we do at BrandU. And guess what? I’m still excited about it!

Written by Kim Castle
©2011 Castle Montone, Limited

A question we hear over and over is: How do you build a brand when you have no resources?

Well, the answer is sort of good news/bad news.

Good News: Whether you realize it or not, you’re creating a brand with everything you’re doing in your business now, so you’re already on your way.

Bad News: Without being in COMPLETE command of the brand being developed in the minds of your customers, you run the risk of creating one that is either not the brand you really want, or (even worse) one that is accidentally building in some bad experiences without you even realizing it. If your first experience with a company involves bored sales people or a product that broke the first time you used it, what do you associate with their “brand”?

Good News: As an entrepreneur, you bring a big part of your brand DNA, the soul of what makes it tick, to your brand from the start. Your values, your attitude, and your mission in life all shine through into how your customers perceive you and your products.

Bad News: It’s often hard to separate yourself from your brand. Down the line you can end up sacrificing your life to your business.

Gosh! There are so many ways to go about developing your brand.  I’d say the first place to start is to clearly understand what a brand really is, then define what you want yours to be, and then own it with everything you do.

The most important thing to realize is that developing your brand has nothing to do with how much money you spend to develop it.  That kind of thinking just allows you to insert ego into the equation, as in “I spent thousands so my brand is valuable.”

Or, this sort of thought process allows you to not take action because of fear: “I don’t have money to do my brand well, so I’ll just muddle through on guesswork.”  Both will only serve to get in the way of your true brand success.

If you want greater support in defining and owning your brand, you might want to start with  the 7 Secrets to Today’s Top-Earning Brands, available right now for free on www.brandu.com. This CD, based on our 20+ years of helping business owners reach that moment of clarity about their brand that really sets them apart from their competitors, could set you on the road to making your brand one every customer will remember—in the best possible way!

For a lot of people, this economic downturn has felt like somebody yanked the rug out from under them. Layoffs, plant closures, industry shrinkage… it’s enough to make anybody want to start their own business, because clearly the jobs aren’t out there just waiting like they used to be.

There’s only one little problem—it really does take money to make money. So, how do you capitalize a new business when the banks aren’t lending and Uncle Sam is scrambling to pay his own bills?

Get creative, that’s how. This article at USA Today talks about the many other alternatives available right now for determined entrepreneurs. There’s really no reason to put your dream of owning your business on hold, because banks and government agencies such as the Small Business Administration, the traditional avenues for small business loans, are no longer the only game in town.

“There have been so many naysayers about the impact of your networked world, proclaiming that we’ll become isolated and anti-social.  This is yet another great example that the opposite couldn’t be more true. And even more important, small business has always been a vital part of the world economics, and its influence is only going to increase.  The US government is still struggling to find a way to support us…but guess what?  We can help ourselves,  and peer-to-peer lending is just one of dozens of Internet-enabled ways.”

W. Vito Montone, co-founder, BrandU

Vito has it exactly right. For entrepreneurs who are unwilling to take no for an answer, there are a plethora of financing avenues available for the price of a little research and paperwork, from micro-loans to private capitalization to grants and angel investors. You can even barter your way to success, trading or pooling services with other businesses to reduce the need for capital while you’re launching.

Often, it doesn’t take a lot of money to get a viable business off the ground. A $10,000 micro-loan looks a lot more doable for a first-time business owner than a $200,000 small business loan, and maybe you can get just as far, depending on what you’re selling, your sales methodology, and a host of other factors unique to your product and business. Determine what you really need. It may be a lot less than you think.

With companies like Kiva and Samuel Adams Brewing making micro-loans, and online venues such as Lending Club and Kickstarter bringing entrepreneurs and lenders together, the odds are good you will find someone willing to back your project. Just watch out for scams and do your homework the same as you would before signing any paperwork.

And most important—don’t believe the people who say that a “real” business can’t be launched on a shoestring, or in this economic climate. When there are no jobs, the go-getters make jobs for themselves, and with all these new options, the times really never have been better to make self-employment pay.

So you’re broke. Start a business anyway!