But what does a small business do when there are no funds for advertising? How will their message be heard?

In the absence of a significant advertising budget, networking is the next best solution. No matter what your vocation, there are associations, clubs, and social groups that have the same target market as your company, but are offering different products. Even though you all are competing for the same dollars, many times there are groups of professionals who like to share successes and discuss difficulties as they move through their business cycle.

When choosing these associations, be imaginative, think of businesses your target groups may frequent and learn as much as you can about your customer’s habits within their business. For example, if your target market is “Soccer Moms”, then it may not be a bad idea to attend a meeting of the local orthopedic injury association.

One of the benefits of networking is there is no limit to the number of organizations you can join or meetings you attend and most are free. Moreover, many of the meetings you attend will lead to others…I belong to four formal organizations and attend meetings and social gatherings with an additional three. Through these associations, I have received leads, referrals, and business contacts that would have taken months to generate on my own.

Before you run out and join ten organizations there are a few thing you need to consider:

1. Make sure the organization will lead to business or those who can refer your business
2. Perfect a five minute description of what your company does (elevator pitch).
3. Take a sharpie and make notes on the back of the business cards of those who have promise
4. Send a thank you email to all of those whom you collected a business card and ask for a meeting within 7 days to determine if further communication is warranted

The key to effective networking is to not only meet as many people as possible, but to move in circles that encompass your target audiences or provide you with greater opportunities for growth. Many of the people you meet know more than you, so always be ready to listen and if you really find someone you feel will be beneficial invite them to meet with you within two days of your conversation to further discuss your or their ideas. If you are a reserved person who has trouble in large groups, take it slow by attending but not talking to anyone, then set a goal of meeting one person per meeting, then two, then three – you get the idea.

While working a fulltime job as a retail manager, I was playing tennis and tore my patella tendon. Back then major knee surgery required eight to ten months of rehab and as you can imagine, I was not able to work a retail floor. During that time, I taught myself how to create websites using a program called FrontPage and began creating pages for friends and family for enough funds to keep myself afloat during my recovery.

After I made a full recovery, I went back to work, but still did websites on the side and even built a new website for my employer at the time. As I entered the early 2000s, I added building retail business plans and marketing strategies to my services, which eventually landed me a job in marketing with one of the nation’s largest mall owners. During my tenure with that company, I went back and finished my undergraduate degree in Business Management and an MBA in Marketing, which gave me a much wider level of expertise in a consultative capacity.

As a Marketing Director, I had a large budget and access to many tools that would form the basis for the strategies I used to help entrepreneurs build better businesses. In fact, my employer used to use me to help tenants who were experiencing declining sales get back on track and our leasing department used to promise consultation time as a closing tool.

By 2011, I decided it was time to “jump of the cliff” and turn my side gig into a fulltime business, so I started an event management company called Diversified Event Productions (DEP). DEP’s purpose was to help small businesses reach into different market segments using events as an attractor. For example, we were working with a national bank that wanted to increase their market share in the Hispanic community, so we held a Latin Festival that attracted more than 800 Hispanic attendees.  However, we soon realized our clients didn’t know what to do with the new leads once we brought them into their organizations, so in 2012, I started re-View Business Strategies (RBS) to help business build strategies for what to do after they gain new customers.

It did not take long before RBS was the primary revenue driver, so we officially closed DEP in 2014 and have been operating RBS as our sole source of revenue to this very day. However, the transition had its challenges and I did go back to working fulltime from 2013 – 2015 for another large mall owner, but by the end of 2015, I was ready to step back into entrepreneurship fulltime and have not looked back since.

Being self-employed is not for the “faint of heart”. It is difficult most of the time and impossible the rest of the time, but for those of us who have been bitten with the entrepreneurial bug there is no other life. I guess it’s the thrill of being one decision away from the best or worst life possible, that is so attractive and even if I have to go back to fulltime employment at some point, it has truly been worth the trip.