Susan L. Reid has an article for Financially Preparing Small Business Owners for 2010 at the American Express OPEN Forum.

The first two ideas are to hire a business coach and focus on the near-term. I believe that both of these are fantastic ideas. I use a local free service via the University of New Hampshire Business School for business coaching and I have found their assistance to be invaluable.

Focusing your efforts and thinking on the near-term is also very good advice. The important thing is going to be to get to the end of the year “in the black”. The results of the 2010 mid-term elections in the US are going to be anybody’s guess right up until November, so small business owners need to focus on being prepared for just about anything.

The third idea, I believe, warrants even more discussion.

3. Reinvent your business.

2010 will be the year when you will have to reinvent yourself and your business. The world is not the same world you inhabited just a few years ago. Don’t get caught up in thinking that, once the economy settles, we’ll all be returning to the way things were. There is no going backward. And, honestly, even if you could, would you?

To respond to events, do something new and innovative. Something other people would not expect you to do. The old way of doing things doesn’t apply any more. So be brave and try something new in your life and business.

While the next 12 months will bring new challenges, look forward to more signs of recovery in the upcoming months while, at the same time, putting into place a plan for your business that will weather a double-dip if and when one should occur.

How can you re-invent your business? I can think of at least two examples:

Turn a service into a product

If your small business is a service of some sort, turn part of it into a resource that your customers can purchase. For example, perhaps an bookkeeper manages the accounts of some specialty firms and has created spreadsheets with all sorts of custom templates and macros. One of these may be applicable to other businesses. These potential customers may not be able to afford your ongoing bookkeeping services, but they may be interested in purchasing the accounting tool and doing it themselves.

In addition, you now have the opportunity to market to these customers with other products that you develop, or possibly add services in the future. Make the product once, sell it multiple times. Sell upgrades. Sell customization.

Turn a product or service into a training course

Once again we are looking at something that you can do once, convert it into a digital format, and sell it multiple times. Whatever your business I am sure that you have a set of frequently asked questions or frequently recurring situations that you must handle for your clients or customers.

Turn this FAQ resource into a training tool, using PDF or audio or video format. That is what Brad Shorr and I did with the Writing for the Web course, to teach our own clients the basic tools of do-it-yourself SEO (Search Engine Optimization). By adding this training course to our website packages we were able to cut down the amount of time spent coaching our clients on the same information over and over.

What type of small business do you have, and how can you re-invent part of it for 2010? Share in the comments.

Seth’s Blog: The difference between a bonus and free

In the old days, gifts like these would cost money to create and be hard to share. Today, the opposite is true. The goal of something that’s free is to spread the idea.

On the other hand, some bonus things we built for Linchpin:

Oh, wait, I can’t show them to you because you have to buy something first.

Anyway, what we did was collect:

* Zen Unicorn, an ebook of the last few years of this blog (it sells on the Kindle for $9)
* Membership to the invite-only online Triiibe community that I started a while ago (limited supply of these)
* Ten minutes of excerpts from the audio version of my book
* Some other bonuses, below

To get them, you need to answer a simple question to demonstrate that you’ve ordered the new book. That’s because they are bonuses, not free. And yes, you qualify even if you got the book as a gift or received it a month ago. The bonus material will only be available for a few weeks.

[...]

Whatever you sell, whatever idea you want to spread, it’s now possible to create both freebies and bonuses. One spreads, the other induces.

I am working on my own little productivity book, and I have been thinking about this sort of “goodie-bag” approach to marketing and selling it. Almost everything in the book is available here, on the blog, in a less-polished and un-collated manner. The book will also include answers to questions that people have asked me, in person or by email, about how to get over the stumbling blocks in their own workflow.

What would you like to see as a bonus or freebie in conjunction with this book? Share with us in the comments.

GTD, Marketing, e-book

I recently watched a video presentation by Seth Godin at Benjamin Hysell’s blog, and it got me to thinking. The video is from 2008, and is about Godin’s then most recent book, Meatball Sundae (aff link) and contains a preview of his next book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (aff link).

Creating a remarkable product

Godin uses this time with some software engineers to exhort them to create something remarkable, that is, something that people want to talk about, because “ideas that spread, win.” In fact, if your product is remarkable, people will talk about it, especially if talking about the product (or service) makes it better.

This is something that Godin has been talking about since he released Unleashing the Ideavirus (aff link) as a free, 200+ page PDF.

All of the concepts from Godin’s previous books that applied to businesses and products and services have been leading up to the single most important thing that Linchpin represents…you can and should apply these very same principles to yourself and to the people that you lead.

Personal Development = Business Development

Watch this video (it’s about an hour long) with a pencil and paper handy, and jot down notes for yourself as you watch – keeping in mind that you are looking for ways that you can apply these creativity and marketing principles to your own personal development and the professional development of your team.

This is a great video for anyone who makes anything, software or otherwise.

Please to enjoy Seth Godin at the Business of Software 2008.

BTW, tomorrow we start talking about our Groundhog Day Resolutions.

Chris Garrett, writing at Social Media Examiner, discusses some ideas for getting more out of your investment of time on Twitter:

We programmers have a saying: “Garbage In – Garbage Out.” This essentially means you get out what you put in. If you put in chit-chat, don’t be surprised if that’s all you see in return!

Here are nine benefits I’ve personally seen through my couple of years of Twitter usage.

1. Networking connections

Because of my Twitter network, I’ve had real conversations with people I never would have been able to reach otherwise. Also I’ve been able to form deeper connections with people in real life because of our first meeting on Twitter.

I agree with this 100%. Twitter is a quick and easy way to touch base with people in your network, and add more people to your network as well. I have the Twidroid app on my Samsung phone, and I log in from time to time during the day, when I am away from my computer, to catch up on what is happening and to ask or answer questions.

2. Traffic

How much traffic you can generate with Twitter depends on a number of factors, not least how many engaged followers you have. “Engaged” being a key point; they have to want to hear from you, otherwise they might as well not be following.

Indeed. This site gets quite a bit of traffic from Twitter, partially because I tweet about new posts, but also because people that I tweet with or follow visit as part of their research, whether or not to follow back.

3. Leads

Twitter is fast becoming an instant referral system for business leads. Someone will ask if anyone knows a consultant/freelancer/vendor/etc. with a certain skill set or experience, and others will reply with suggestions.

If you build a strong network, you will get a good share of those referrals. I have seen it happen repeatedly, from design and programming through where to stay on vacation!

This has been one of the most profitable ways that I have found to use Twitter. The “Search” function is invaluable for finding people that are looking for help in your field.

I like to find people that are tweeting for help and assist any way that I can. Sometimes it is a referral to one of my other colleagues on Twitter, sometimes it is something easy that I can do quickly and for free, other times it leads to a paying client relationship.

If you do this consistently and transparently, you can turn this network of “People that I have helped” into a Twitter List and have an instant Word-of-Mouth referral & reference resource.

4. Direct sales

Obviously the end result of all those referrals is you get sales, but also sales of products and other services too. Dell is making millions of additional dollars this way.

Keep in mind that if all you do is promote your products, people will stop listening, so keep up the good content too. Make an offer and see what happens.

There are 5 more at SME, read the whole thing – 9 Ways to Get More From Twitter