This blog has moved!

Hey all,

As of today, the zen kitchen's blog has a new home, at tzk-design.com/blog. It's a long overdue change, and I hope y'all will follow me there.

Thanks for reading, and talk to you soon!

Image is everything

Recently on the Marketing Mix blog, Ilise Benun and a few commenters got into the subject of typos in company literature - a subject I've thought about a lot since starting the zen kitchen.

I've actually met people online who are even harsher than this - they'll actively snark people who make even a small typo, or folks whose English isn't quite so good yet (i.e. they're still learning). Even though my English is pretty darn good, I've actually left communities because of this habit.

I do think there's some room for forgiveness on the typo thing - but I think that the more likely cause of Ilise's sketchiness around this person's sign is the lack of care it represents. If this is the way the person presents themselves BEFORE you work with them, how will they be if you do work with them? Why should you care about a company that obviously cares so little about themselves?

Your marketing materials, no matter what form they take, represent your business to people who may or may not know you. While many entrepreneurs do find themselves having to "bootstrap" and do things on the cheap, one of the biggest mistakes I see them making is rushing just to "get something up there," and ending up with something that represents their business in an extremely unflattering light.

Think of it this way: say you're looking for a marketing/branding expert to help you market your business. You have a big vision for this enterprise, and you need someone who's going to get that, and help you succeed. Now let's say someone approaches you saying that they're just the marketing/branding expert you're looking for, and they hand you a card that was obviously ordered from VistaPrint. Would you trust them? If they can't do what they say they do for THEMSELVES, can you really trust them to do it for you?

The same goes for high-end consumer products. Customers in this market (think really good chocolate, wine, fine custom jewelry, organic bath/body care, scented candles etc.) are paying as much for the image of the product as they are the actual product. If your packaging doesn't present that high-end image, the customer is less likely to see the high end nature of the product, and more likely to choose your competitor, over there in the pretty pretty box.

It sucks, yes, but it's the nature of things. When it comes to how you market your business, image is everything. What does your image say about you?

Design and Sustainability: You can't do it if you can't sell it.

Recently, I was contacted by a design student in London who was collecting information on how sustainability can be integrated into traditional design education. As someone who's been practicing sustainable design for some years now, she asked me "what are the resistance points when it comes to adopting sustainable practices?"

Personally, I think that much of the resistance that designers face when it comes to integrating sustainability in their practices has much to do with client management, another thing that tends to be lacking in standard design education. Since adopting sustainable design principles at the zen kitchen a couple of years ago, It's been my experience that many designers are informed about and concerned with sustainability, but they lack the ability to convince their clients that incorporating these principles into their work can be balanced with creating an effective marketing tool. As a result, they're reluctant to bring it up, or to get started with sustainability in the first place.

While it's great that more students are interested in learning about sustainability and it's certainly a valid thing to add to any educational program, all the sustainable ideals in the world mean nothing if the designer can't convince the client of why they should be doing it. So, more than just teaching designers how to work sustainably, it's important to give them the skills to be consultants for their clients/bosses, and not just the girl at the Mac. This is especially important because the skills required to sell sustainability to clients are no different than the skills needed to sell your concept to a client, or convince him that while he may want the logo to be bigger, it won't be as effective as leaving it at a tasteful size. It's all about working *with* your client, rather than *for* her.

How to be a good client

A friend of mine pointed me to this great post on the Swiss Miss blog. Quite apt, really.

How to be a good client (PDF). By the good folks at Number17.

How not to network; or, how to get people to like you.

Photo by bluebetty

Recently, I had a fascinating interaction with a woman at a networking event I attend with some frequency. It was the first time we had met, and she was sitting near me at one of the tables as I had just started a conversation with someone else. As has occasionally happened, when the woman I was conversing with heard that my business name was the zen kitchen, she assumed I was a personal chef and got very excited about the possibility of having someone to plan meals for her. Amused, I explained what I actually did, and the fact that one of the things that I love about my business name is that people hear it and immediately ask me "ooh, what's that?" 

Without skipping a beat, the other woman sitting near me, who I'd known all of about 5 minutes, told me that my name was confusing. She also mentioned that, as a Feng Shui practitioner, one of the principles of Feng Shui is that if your business name is confusing, "your business will never take off."

After going over a couple of potential responses in my head, I decided on, "Thank you for your feedback, but I've been doing this for three years, and things seem to be going pretty well."

Mind you, this wasn't the first time I had witnessed someone express confusion over the name of my business. The reason I chose this name, and stay with this name, is because it's a very good representation of who I am as a business owner, strategist and designer, and because frankly, I get many more people who love my business name than I do people who don't get it. But what struck me about this particular interaction was the fact that here was a woman I'd barely met, at an event where the point is to make friends and business contacts, and she's literally telling me that my business will "never take off" because of my business name. Why would someone think that's appropriate?

The point is this: expressing an opinion is one thing. Insulting someone is another. Telling someone that their business is going to fail is a completely new ball game, and one that should NEVER be attempted when the goal is to make solid connections.

Please consider the environment before printing this post

The other day saw a very interesting and heated debate over a hot topic on one of my green business lists - the addition of that little line at the end of e-mail signatures that asks you to "please consider the environment before printing this e-mail." Or it says to "Think Green! Don't Print This E-mail!" Or it says any other of a seemingly endless number of iterations of this single thought: don't waste so much paper.

While I understand the idea, and appreciate it, my objection to these lines is a few-fold:

1. It assumes that I, the reader, am going to print this e-mail, even if it's just a quick confirmation on something. I'm not.
2. What if I actually NEED to print the e-mail? The only things I print are receipts, directions, or e-mails that have significant history information related to projects I'm in the middle of at the zen kitchen. This is a total of about 10-15% of my e-mail. Everything else gets deleted or put into a folder. Should I feel like I'm somehow not "considering the environment" because I need paper records of these things? 
3. While e-mail signatures can be a truly helpful marketing tool, we seem to have reached an age where signatures have gone completely out of hand. People are busy, and while an e-mail signature is a great way to give people the basic information they need to check out your business and contact you, adding a bunch of stuff to the end of your signature dilutes your message, clogs their e-mail and, if they DO need to print it, adds to the amount of paper they need to print. How is that "green?"

Finally, while the issue of office waste is definitely vast, it's been my experience at least that much of that waste isn't because people are printing their e-mails. In some cases yes, high-level executives will have their assistants print every e-mail - either because they don't "get" the e-mail system or because the assistants vet their e-mails and print just the important ones. But this is a systemic issue, and telling the assistants (the people actually printing the e-mails) not to print isn't helping anything - they don't have a choice. Further, if an executive truly doesn't "get" how e-mail works, how will seeing that little line at the bottom of a printed page help? Wouldn't it be better to have a conversation and show him how e-mail works? Or better yet, have the assistant vet all the e-mails according to importance and then let the executive view it? 

The point here is that, in the 10 years that I spent in various capacities at offices all over New England before starting the zen kitchen, the tremendous amount of paper waste I saw rarely came from e-mail. Rather, it came from:

1. The endless number of forms that were often required to get anything done (the average office I worked in had at least 5-10 forms to fill out depending on what you needed done, and they were always looking to create more forms for things)
2. In the case of design studios/ad agencies/art departments, printing a new iteration of a brochure/layout/etc. *every* time they made a change to it, no matter how minor. In some places, you even had to print multiples, which would be distributed among various people in the organization. I once had to print out a new 12*18 sheet for a layout edit that included adding a comma. Really. Nothing more - just a comma. 
   
3. In the case of mortgage/banking companies (where I worked as an admin assistant before deciding to become a designer - way back in '97-'98), it was filling out a 15-page thick pile of forms just to get a loan package started, then having to make two copies of each package, copies of the related documentation, etc.

Notice, please - none of this involves printing e-mails. So who is that line really helping?

an ad campaign gone too far?

A friend recently pointed me to a series of illustrated ads for Burger King that she found disturbing. While the comments on the Idea Sandbox (great site, by the way) had a lot more to do with the apparently sexualized nature of many of the ads, I don't know that I necessarily mind that. The illustrations are amusing, very detailed, and I find them kinda funny.

What I wonder about is this: what is their thing against onions? And why do they seem to obsess about pickles so much?

Out of four ads that I've seen (there are a couple of holiday ads I didn't check out), all of them involve onions either as evil dictators (see the Sniper ad) or as victims of humiliation and/or murder (see the Airport and Halloween ads). And the pickles, somehow, are the aggressors in all this. What are they saying about pickles?

All silliness aside, I don't know how I feel about this campaign from Burger King. I've appreciated the up-front approach it takes to many of its in-store campaigns; for example, the taglines on their packaging, noting what an amazing experience you're going to have eating this burger, is always a fun read. But many of their other campaigns, including this one and ANYTHING involving The King, just leave me cold. I guess it's a good thing I don't like fast food.

SEO: Do you need a links page?

One of the more troubling things I see folks do with their sites is get involved in "link exchanges." I'm sure you've seen this - a business owner becomes part of a network of other business owners, and in the interest of building SEO for the group, they create a page on their site that has a link to every other business owner's site on it - regardless of whether that business is in any way related to their own. Great idea, right?

The fact is, those pages don't really do that much for anyone's search rankings - in fact, it could hurt you more than it helps. Search engines look for quality incoming links, which means links from reputable sites that are related to the subject matter at hand. If you have a page full of random links that exist on the page for no other reason than they belong to the same organization as you, they just don't count as quality links.

In addition, think of what you're doing here. By putting these links on your site, you're essentially recommending this other person's business, regardless of whether you have any direct experience with them. So let's say that someone finds another company's website through yours, deals with them and has a horrible experience. They decided to work with them, essentially, on your recommendation. What does that say about you?

The best way to get quality incoming links is by becoming active online - forums, blogs, e-mail lists and social networking sites are all ways to create quality links to your website just by wasting a bit of time on the Internet. There are new social networks created every day - find a few that are relevant to your business, create a profile with a link to your site and a blurb about What You Do, and see if you can start a conversation with a couple of the members. It's a bit time-consuming, yes, but it's easy, and it's much more effective than throwing a bunch of random links pages up.

What should be in your electronic press kit?

So, you've got a great product or service that's just dying to get out there to the public. You know the best way to get noticed is to be featured in magazines, newspapers, etc. You've done your research, made a call to that editor you know will be interested in your product, and the editor says, "great! Just send me your electronic press kit, and I'll take a look at it." Then you realize that you don't have an electronic press kit - and you have no idea where to start putting one together. What the heck do you put in this thing?

The most important things to include in any press kit (digital or physical) are:

• info about your company, you and your products;
• any press coverage you've already received;
• basic contact and where-to-buy information (this should absolutely be separate and easy to find)
• print-quality, professional images of your product, and possibly yourself holding the product. You can also include low-res photos with a note to contact you for high-res photos, since most digital press kits will be e-mailed.

Add to this a sample of the product and a professional photo (8 by 10) of the product for editorial use, and the same thing can go in a snazzy folder to make your physical press kit.

Aside from that, you can also think about things like: what section will this be good for? What makes this product newsworthy? Is there anything unique you can pitch to a specific editor's audience that's different from what everyone else might think of?

For example, most publications already drone on and on about the health benefits of green tea, etc. - but what could you bring to the table that's a new way to think about it? Maybe a recipe for cookies or ice cream that uses green tea? Green tea/honey sorbet (which would, by the way, be amazingly easy to make)? Green tea popsicles with mango juice? What are ways that folks can have green tea without having to drink it as a cup of tea every morning?

Mind you, if you really feel stuck with this, then it's probably time to get in touch with a PR professional to help you get the process going. Public relations is an intense, time-consuming process, and a good PR professional will not only take on that process for you, they'll know outlets you might not have thought of, and can come up with good ideas beyond submitting the product to magazines.

Inside the Sustainable Studio: creating a great (and green!) home office

As both the proprietress of a green business and one of the lucky thousands (maybe millions now?) who are able to work from home, I've been thinking a lot about ways to green my office. Some are fairly obvious: recycle paper, don't print as much, use CFLs, blah blah. But both the challenge and the blessing of the home office is that it's completely yours - you get to do whatever you want to it, and set it up in the way that works best for you. This, oddly enough, is a pretty tall order.

After three years running the zen kitchen out of various home offices (and two years before that moonlighting in Cranston, RI), I've learned the following about balancing sustainability with form/function:

• Natural light is essential. Working in a place with plenty of windows (like my current office, which is basically a closed-in porch banked with windows) not only helps the environment by reducing the amount of energy you need to run lights, etc. it's good for the soul. I can't imagine working by office light anymore. 

• Create a pretty space, using low-VOC paint. It's amazing what a coat of paint will do, and using a low-VOC paint (they're all over the place now) costs a bit more, but it gives you the advantage of being able to actually breathe while you're painting with it. I painted my office on the hottest weekend of the year and there was no paint smell whatsoever while I was doing it. Not only is this better for the environment, it lets you get back to work quickly because your house doesn't reek of fresh paint.

• Make meals in advance for the week. It's hard to get motivated to cook a meal in the middle of the day, which makes the temptation for take-out (and all the containers!) a bit too hard to resist. I've found that having things like brown rice, lentils, etc. handy in the fridge makes it much easier to throw something together. Not only does it save plastic, it saves money.

• Print as much as you can on an as-needed basis. Business cards are important to have on hand (and designed/printed professionally!) but there are certain things, like letterhead, envelopes, etc. that you might not need a lot of. These, I've found, can fairly easily be worked into templates to print as-needed on an inkjet or laser printer without hampering your professional image. That said, it's important to assess your actual stationery needs before embarking on a process like this; short-run printing is expensive, and if you use a lot of letterhead or envelopes on a daily basis, definitely get them printed.

• Gang up errands and meetings so you drive less. This is as much a time-management tip as it is a green tip - traveling to meetings and such is an enormous time suck. I tend to group weekly appointments or meetings with my trips to the gym or other errands, so I block specific periods of time to be out of the office, and bring my gym bag along with me.

Any other telecommuters have green tips to share?

How well do you communicate?

This past Monday, I had a rather frustrating experience. After a long weekend in Maine, I had scheduled myself to attend Constant Contact's seminar on e-mail marketing for restaurants, which according to their website and every communication I received, was happening at the Boston Public Library (BPL) at 10am. I left early in the morning to run a few errands, didn't have time to check my e-mail before I left, but I figured there would be signs pointing me in the direction of the room the seminar would be in, or some kind of communication about where in the library the seminar was being held.

Unfortunately, there were none. When I asked the person at the front desk, they pointed me to the basement. The people downstairs pointed me upstairs to the first person I talked to. I asked if I could borrow a computer to look up the event, they pointed me to the second floor. I looked the event up on the website - it listed the address of the event, but no room location. I asked the woman at the desk if she knew where the event might be happening, she pointed me back down to the basement. I went to the basement, there were no signs, no doors open, nothing to indicate that this seminar might be happening. After 30 minutes of wandering all over the building, I gave up and went home later that afternoon to find that Constant Contact had sent me an e-mail with the location of the event - at 6:30 Monday morning. In addition, someone from Constant Contact had noticed a twitter post I made about my frustration with being unable to find this event and told me where it was - but I would have had to check my twitter account to see the post.

Mind you, I'm not sharing this story just to rant (although I admit that I am ranting a bit). I'm sharing it because this experience made me think of all the ways that we, as business owners, communicate with our customers - and how often we make unfair assumptions about how people best receive information, or what they do or don't already know.

In this case, Constant Contact unfairly assumed that I would have access to my e-mail at 6:30am on Monday prior to leaving for the event, and didn't feel it necessary to make this information available any other way. As a result, I ended up frustrated and wasted an entire morning. In another case, my otherwise terrific printer failed to get in touch with me when a pattern I'd put in a design was clearly not printing the way that it was meant to, and the job (which was already a rush) had to be rerun. In yet another case, I neglected to communicate to my client exactly when that job was being re-run, and this morning I got an e-mail as the reprinted cards were shipping letting me know that she was hoping to change the paper - and I had to let her know that she couldn't do it this time.

In all of these situations, things ended up working out - but I wonder how many complications and frustrations could be avoided if we were all just a bit more thoughtful about how and what we communicate with our clients. After all, life as a business owner is much more fun when your clients aren't frustrated with you.

Twitter as a networking/marketing tool

There's been quite a bit of buzz lately around twitter's use as a networking and marketing tool, and in some ways, I buy it. But like all social media, I tend to find that twitter has its own special syntax, a way of using it that works best for this application - and really doesn't work the way that some people use it.

For me, twitter is more of a conversation starter than anything, and it's really a *social* media, rather than a marketing platform. Whereas with sites like LinkedIn or Facebook allow you to just sort of have a profile and leave it there, to get the most out of twitter, you really have to use it.

And it's not about just plugging yourself, either - sure, tweeting about some specific thing you're working on can get you some attention, and it's totally fine to plug the occasional blog post/project/etc., but tricks like throwing your business's name into every tweet (a.k.a. twitter post) or making EVERY tweet a link to your latest blog post or project is a quick way to lose followers.

Where I've seen twitter really work is in the sense of community you can build through creating a balance of personal and professional. Since many of the folks I'm following are fellow telecommuters, it's an easy way to share little things and laughs that you wouldn't be able to otherwise, or chat with someone like you would if you were in an office. When combined with the occasional "hey, just finished this project" or "hey, just put this post online - check it out!" you can get some interesting results; I was able to connect with one of my followers (a.k.a. people who read your tweets) recently and point out my work to her after she made a tweet lamenting the lack of good Wordpress themes (the new zen kitchen website is done completely in Wordpress).

So what's the deal here? Why are there so many folks who just use twitter to mention their business 800 times, or to share a link to every blog post they've ever posted? What's the big deal about sharing a personal guffaw now and again?

Trade show materials: know your audience

Over the summer, I've been fortunate enough to check out a couple of different trade shows; first the HOW Conference in May, where a number of stock photo, paper companies and others gathered to show off their wares, and then the Fancy Food Show, where, well, I got to eat some really amazing food and make contact with Makers of Tasty Things. And during both, I got to see a lot of trade show materials - some that worked, and some that really didn't.

The point of trade shows, quite often, is not just to introduce yourself to the audience at the show, but to a) find good leads to follow up with, and b) give them something to remember you by once the show is over - preferably something that will encourage them to make a purchase. There are all kinds of ways to do this. At the Fancy Food Show, a number of vendors offered samples of their food (I was stuffed within an hour or two!), but little else aside from maybe a sell sheet or postcard.  At any trade show you're going to run into dozens, perhaps hundreds, of vendors - what's there to help me remember who you were beyond that one moment of trying your food?

Other folks gave out free samples that you could take home - which I think is a great idea. Buywell Coffee gave me a couple of free bags of their Screaming Monkey coffee, which I've been drinking iced for a week. I can't wait to find it now - it's amazing stuff. But if I hadn't gotten that sample, I wouldn't have remembered them beyond meeting them at the show.

Other companies had really well-designed, almost keepsake, materials. Chocolate Company Pacari's postcards, in particular, were so beautiful that I put them up on my office memo board. Information about the chocolate was on the back of the card, but the front was completely covered by a gorgeous illustration related to one of the specific chocolates.

Another tactic, which I saw a lot at the HOW Conference, is to give away branded merchandise - from notebooks to bobbleheads to the much-coveted Masterfile laptop bag (which I was lucky enough to get and I still carry around with me). This tactic is a definite winner to me; it gives me something to hold onto, and something I can use, which will remind me of that business every time I use it. I have, however, also seen this tactic used badly - for example, the too-ubiquitous coffee mug or stress ball. I don't know about you, but I have more than enough coffee mugs. Why give someone something they likely already have plenty of - and if they don't have plenty of them, then they probably won't have any use for it anyway?

The key to any trade show giveaway is to know your audience. What are these people here for? How can you make yourself memorable? What will they respond to? In the case of the folks at the HOW Conference, they knew that their audience (professional designers, and the vendors who love them) love getting well-designed, useful, really cool stuff. And the booths that were the most popular were the ones giving that stuff away. Meanwhile, at the Fancy Food Show, the folks who did well knew that, in order to really understand what made their product great, they had to taste it for themselves. 

Using LinkedIn Recommendations

One of the things I've always admired about LinkedIn is its ability to not only connect me with people I know (and want to know!), but also to allow me to give anyone who finds me online an idea of what it's like to work with the zen kitchen. The Recommendation feature is a great example of that. I work with someone on a project, it goes along swimmingly, and I ask them to write up a quick recommendation, so that others can see how good I am. Great for the ego, and great for business.

But then there's the occasional person who takes unfair advantage of the system. These are the folks who either ask you for a recommendation 5 minutes after meeting you, or the folks who write you a recommendation without really knowing anything about your work - ostensibly in the hopes that you'll return the favor. My advice - don't accept them, and certainly don't give them.

Here's the thing: a LinkedIn recommendation is basically a testimonial for your brand. And as with all testimonials, the savvy consumer can sniff out a fake one a mile and a half away. In the case of one recommendation I got unsolicited from someone I hadn't worked with before, the text was so generic ("Dani prides herself on providing 110% customer satisfaction!") that I couldn't, in good conscience, keep it active; while I do pride myself on providing 110% customer satisfaction, how does this help the average profile reader determine what it's like to work with me on a specific project? How does this help a potential client understand how I can solve their business's brand communication problem?

The best way to get solid, genuine recommendations on LinkedIn: work with someone on a project. It goes well, write them a recommendation about what it was like working with them on this project, and humbly ask that they return the favor. 9 out of 10 times, they will - and what they write will be INFINITELY better than any generic recommendation from someone you just met.

Where are your clients?

I just happened upon this post by Jeff Fisher, one of my creative buddies over at the HOW Forum, who speaks about the geographic boundaries often imposed by creatives upon themselves. In the post, he expresses surprise that so many creatives think they have to restrict themselves to their specific location:

Huh? I don't think I got the memo about the Federal government building walls around local communities to keep designers, writers, photographers and others trapped in their hometown environments.

Admittedly, when my initial Internet presence went live in 1998, my website was intended to primarily serve as a portfolio for a predominantly local clientele. I wasn't expecting email requests for information about my services from potential clients across the United States - and then from around the globe. Suddenly there were no restrictions to the target market for my business. In the decade since, 80-85% of my business has been for clients outside of the State of Oregon.

He makes a great point. I, too, have had great success with clients from around the country as a result of maintaining an active Web presence and being active on forums, e-mail lists and the like. But one thing I'll add is that, in my mind, there's a lot of good to be said for working with local clients. For one thing, it's often easier to make solid connections, since you get instant face-to-face contact. For another, I for one find that collaboration is much easier when you can get face time with a client - as wonderful as the Internet and cell phones are, it's just no match for being in a room with someone hashing out what needs to be done. And for yet another, I just happen to enjoy supporting my local economy.

All this said, I don't think that focusing on either is really the best choice. Currently, I'd guess my clients are about 50% local/50% non-local. The key, in my opinion, is not to rule either out, but to figure out who you want to attract, and then set up your communications to speak to those specific people - and then set out looking for those people.

Goal-setting

This morning, discussing business over coffee with a friend of mine, we got into a discussion of networking groups, and how difficult it was to make that initial connection with people sometimes, especially if (like my friend) you're a bit shy. 

Recently, I had my own experience with something similar to this - as the zen kitchen grows, I've found myself having to break into - gasp! - cold calling. And it was scary at first, until I took a moment to ask myself: "what's the goal here?" 

In my mind, part of the reason networking events (or cold calls, for that matter) can be difficult for some folks is because it's hard to tell what the point is. What are you looking for? What do you expect to happen? What would you LIKE to happen? And often, I've found that just articulating that one thing before you get to an event, or before you call a prospect, can make all the difference between leaving the situation feeling like you've gotten something done and leaving feeling like you've just wasted your time.

For example, in my recent cold calling efforts, I decided that my goal was just to introduce myself, and learn more about the organization I was calling, what kind of materials they outsource, etc. If I could send them more information, or add them to my newsletter, even better - but the primary goal was just to get a conversation going. And knowing what that goal was (and leaving it pretty easy to manage) made it inconceivably easier to do calls, to the point where I actually started enjoying them. Plus, the relaxed attitude I had towards the call actually made the calls more productive, since the person on the other line felt more like they were having a conversation and less like they were being sold something.

I take a similar approach to networking events - after figuring out who I want to meet and finding a meeting where I'm likely to meet those kind of people, I spend a couple of minutes before the meeting setting a goal for the event. Some nights I want to meet 5 people who'd be good to follow up with; other events I want to find 3 people I can give helpful information to. It helps me get a meeting off to the right foot, and it helps me get back on track if, on the odd occasion, I start feeling a bit shyer than usual.

What are your best strategies/goals for networking?

Working from Home: a perspective

As you may or may not know, the zen kitchen is a virtual studio - which means that I, along with my programmer and anyone else I happen to collaborate with on a particular project, work from home. Normally, this works out quite well - but as many other home-based entrepreneurs I know can attest, it takes some serious getting used to.

Recently, I've been thinking a bit about the stuff I've needed to figure out since I started working from a home office. As attractive as it sounds to the cubicle slave, working from home is really not an easy thing - especially if, as I am, you tend to be a bit too much of a multitasker. I've had days when I was so productive I forgot to eat lunch, and I've had days when I spent so much time on laundry, the gym, the dishes, my garden, etc. that all the stuff I had on my studio to-do list went by the wayside.

So what's a girl to do, then? How do you run a business out of your home without either burning out or wasting the day on home chores?

I can't pretend to know all the answers, but here's some of the stuff I've learned along the way:

• Get up early, but don't get too caught up in getting straight to work. Once I started waking up around 7am and easing into my day instead of waking up around 9ish and trying to get straight into my day, my productivity increased about 150%. I can't say enough about this - it really, really is key. I also try to fit my gym time into the earlyish mornings so I can get my workouts done before I have to get focused on other things.
• Have an actual office, or some system that clearly delineates "work space" from "home space." A spare bedroom is best, but even if you have to set up on the dinner table, find a storage system that allows you to put your work away when you're done for the day and not look at it until the next day. One of the biggest challenges of working from home is that your work and home life can get so intermingled that you feel like you need to be at work all the time, and that'll make you resent your home - you need to be able to separate the two.
• Make your workspace pretty. It seems fairly elementary, but it's really not - if your space is poorly organized, or cluttered, or generally unattractive, it's not going to help you get things done. Recently, I realized that one of my major issues with my current workspace was that the walls, which were painted about the color of butter, were so bland that I just couldn't feel creative, and the space generally felt cluttered and icky. A couple of coats of paint and moving around all the furniture later - I've had a string of productivity that's in its third week and shows no signs of letting up.
• Make time for little breaks during your day. It's very tempting to work straight through the day, but you need those little breaks in order to stay on track. I take about 5 minutes every hour or so to go out and visit my garden, and it's been much easier to get back to work after that bit of breathing room.

If you're one of those who works from home, I hope that these tips help you. What are your strategies for working from home?

What are your materials really selling?

Yesterday I happened across a great marketing article written by Stacy Karacostas on Biznik (which, by the way, I suggest checking out if you haven't yet). In it, Stacy points out an important mistake that businesses often make in their marketing materials.

“If you were looking for a chiropractor, bookkeeper, massage therapist, or other service provider, what would you need to know in order to choose them over anyone else?”

Chances are it would be things like:

• A bit about the types of services they offer
• If there is anything unique or different about what they do
• Whether or not the specialize in, or have experience with, your particular issue
• Who else uses them and have they been satisfied
• What you can expect and how long it will take
• How they are better or different than the competition
• Where they are located, their hours and how soon you can get in
• If they accept credit cards or your insurance
• What to do to make an appointment
  

What you probably don’t want—or need—to know are the basics like:

• What is massage or chiropractic or bookkeeping
• The history of massage (or chiropractic, or bookkeeping)
• Why you need a massage therapist, chiropractor or bookkeeper
  

Yet time and again this is exactly the type of info service providers focus on in their marketing.

The result is that they end up spending all their time and money trying to convince people they need a particular service. What they should be doing is trying to convince prospects to hire them in particular.

Interestingly, how many designers (or coaches, or green retailers/manufacturers) make the same mistake? How much time do we spend trying to convince people of our basic worthiness to people who don't get it instead of looking for the folks who DO get it, and convincing them that we're the best person for the job?

The way I see it is this: the more you try to convince people that what you do is actually worth paying for, the more it seems that you feel people need convincing. And this raises the question: do YOU believe in what you're doing? And if you do, why do you seem so convinced that other people won't believe in it? 

In my experience, half of success in selling comes from confidence in your product - and that means knowing what you're worth, and sticking by that. Your job is not to convince the non-believers. Your job is to find the folks who already believe in what you do, and convince them that you're better than the others.

Green the office coffee station

Okay, yes, I drink my coffee at home now - but as someone who spent years in a variety of office parks doing design for major companies, I know a thing or two about the Office Coffee Station. It seems that everyone does them differently - some serve great coffee, some serve this odd sludge; some have plenty of reusable dishes available for use, others make you use styrofoam (gasp!), or those individual plastic cups of grounds (which I personally refuse to use).

So how do you up the green factor in the office coffee/lunch station?

From what I've noticed, the goal in greening office areas is to make it very easy for folks to make greener choices (i.e. without really noticing a difference); otherwise, you create a situation that a busy manager, for example, can't deal with, and you end up with folks opting for Starbucks instead of drinking coffee in the office. The goal is to give people plenty of options, so it's easy to make the right choice.

My thoughts (and these are just thoughts, mind):
• unbleached, biodegradable coffee/tea filters;
• clearly marked compost bins (with signs that say "coffee grounds/teabags go here") that are emptied daily by someone (to avoid nasty odors);
• provide plenty of reusable mugs and glasses for folks (can't count on people to bring their own) - refuse to use paper/plastic cups;
• choose fair trade coffee/tea (but expect that a few folks are going to randomly bring in their Lipton);
• choose local dairy from smaller farms (most use organic practices, even if they aren't certified) in cartons rather than the little "mini-moos" so many office parks are stocked with;
• raw sugar in a jar instead of sugar packets;
• plenty of reusable spoons/silverware (this is especially handy if the coffee area is also a lunch-storage area, as many are).

And of course, on an individual level, you can just opt to bring your own coffee in a travel mug each morning - which is actually preferable to the coffee in some offices (ahem!).

So what do you think? How many things can you add to this list?

How do you differentiate when "green" is no longer enough?

This week on the Co-Op America Business list, one of the members brought up the question of green going mainstream. How do smaller green businesses compete now that corporate America is riding the green train?

My question is: Is being green enough of a reason to convince people to use your company? Personally, as I've mentioned before, I don't think it is.

Last year, I decided to adapt the zen kitchen's business model to the rising trend in green design/marketing by making green a non-issue. My clients know I'm green, they know they're going to get the greenest product I can provide for them and that I *get* what they're trying to do. However, most of my clients come to me because I'm a great designer and I specialize in helping women entrepreneurs and green businesses create their brands. They're looking for my brain and my talent - the fact that I'm eco-friendly is just gravy.

In my mind, if the green movement is really going to gain momentum, it has to move from a conversation to an expectation. This doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about being green; but it should be an "also" rather than a sign of uniqueness. As such, green businesses need to stop trying to justify their decisions, or explain why it costs so much more to make a green product; instead, make it clear that you have a better product that works just as well if not better than the conventional product.

If there's one thing I've learned in three years of running the zen kitchen, it's that it's much more effective to treat the green thing as a given than it is to try to justify it to your clients. The moment you start justifying, it erodes consumer confidence because it seems like *you're* not confident in why they should choose you over the competition.

Another thing I'll mention is that competition doesn't just come from the big corporations who are just getting the hint that green is good. Every green business, no matter how small, has competition from other small businesses who sell very similar products and have a very similar mission. I'm certainly not the only designer in the world who works with women entrepreneurs or with green businesses - I've met and become friends with some who could be considered my direct competition. This is why differentiation beyond green is so important - you're not the only green company in the world, and even more rarely are you the only green company who sells XYZ.