My Free EBook: Small Business Communication For The Real World.

I’ve been helping entrepreneurial small business clients for more than two decades and I’ve met a lot of people, whom I consider to be bright, driven, and very savvy about their businesses.

But as I started to work with them, I found myself answering what I thought were pretty basic questions about why I was doing what I was doing for them.

Over time, I came to realize that just as there was a substantial learning curve for me to go through in order to understand the various businesses of my clients, so too was there a learning curve for my clients to go through to understand me and what I was capable of doing for them, either directly as a strategist and creative person and as a project manager through my supplier network. Usually this took place in meetings where I was presenting strategic or creative work to them and in casual conversations over a beer or a coffee.

My mainly entrepreneurial clients saw the connection between communications and business growth, but had very little idea exactly how I was pulling it off. They were curious about the nature of the communication strategy and how ideas evolved from it

Almost Every Small Business Starts Out With a Big Idea.

Most people who start their own businesses fall into two categories. The inventors and the salespersons. Usually small businesses are comprised of both types, often in the same body. To them, once the product or service is a real thing…it’s all about sales. And although communications is about sales as well, it’s also about other things, like company identity, positioning in the marketplace, brand character and USP (Unique Selling Propostion).

These are things that both inventors and sales people seldom think about, simply because they are too busy sourcing leads and making sales calls. Or as they like to call it, getting business.

So what you usually see is a company that has a great idea for a product or service but has little in the way of things like a branded identity, a communications strategy, information pieces, even decent business cards.

They may have a web site because somebody told them that was an essential, but since they don’t really operate from any sort of strategy other than their original business plan, their web site is probably not very effective.

The reason for this is that, to a company driven by sales, communications strategies and tools are very much secondary to them, until such a time as they are able to hire other sales people and manage them. This finally gets them into a position of thinking more about their company’s image, going forward strategies and yep, communications.

Basic Questions Require Simple Answers

What I realized from all these conversations over the years is that one key thing these people could benefit from, whether they were just starting their business or looking to go from level one to level two, was a very basic overview of communications, why their company would need a communications strategy and what kind of expertise they would need to make sure there was a good return on the investment they would have to make in order to build a proper branded identity and communications program.

So I looked around and, much to my delight, I didn’t see very much at all that addressed this particular need in the small business community. Most e-books about communication are written by strategists of one kind or another. Most of them are targeted to vertical niches. And that’s understandable. When it comes to communications, it’s difficult, but hardly impossible, to generalize.

With a more general and hopefully easier to grasp approach in my head, I wrote my little e-book which is called, Small Business Communications For The Real World.

Free For The Asking

I didn’t write it with the intention of selling it. In fact, I am giving it away free to anyone who wants it. The idea behind that is that once people have read what I have to say about business communications, they will be lined up around the block to have me manage theirs.

LOL. Not really, but it’s not unrealistic to assume that it could help me find a couple of new clients here and there.

This handy e-book is available a smallish PDF format. So if you would like a copy for yourself, simple email me at onandup3@gmail.com, and I will send it along to you.

Jim Murray is an experienced advertising and marketing professional and amateur photographer. He has run his own strategic and creative consulting business (Onwords & Upwords), since 1989 after a 20 year career in Toronto as a senior creative person in major Canadian & international advertising agencies. He is a communication strategist, writer, art director, broadcast producer, and prolific marketing & op/ed blogger. Jim lives in St Catharines Ontario.

Phone: 289 687-3475  •  Email: onandup3@gmail.com  •  Skype Handle: Jimbobmur61
Portfolio & CV Page: http://tinyurl.com/p6vqxex  •  About Page: http://tinyurl.com/j4banpn
LinkedIn Profile: http://tinyurl.com/oqotzrt  •  Editorial Blog: https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray