You’ve been rewarded throughout your entire life for showing up and playing or working hard. You got yourself involved during your school years and managed to get through it all with decent grades and only $50,000 in debt. You’re a new grad – eager and passionate and deserving of a well-paying, intellectually-stimulating job, right?

Welcome to the real world. It doesn’t take long to realize that you’re competing with more than just classmates born within the same calendar year. You won’t be rewarded for just showing up anymore and you’ll need to prove that you deserve that dream job – but how?

Build and use your network

The easiest way to find a great job is through your existing connections and network. Get the word out on what you are interested in and what your skill sets are. Blasting a hundred resumes to various employers may yield something but the odds of that job being something you are passionate about is slim to none.

A great way to build relationships in an industry is by offering free work.

Embrace the idea of Free Work

Many people can justify spending thousands and thousands of dollars on a degree but couldn’t fathom the idea of working for free for a few months to gain much needed experience and relationships.

Charlie Hoehn describes free work in his e-book as being different than an internship. In an internship, the employer usually feels they are doing the intern a favour and the intern is usually force fed mundane work and rarely given any real responsibility.

Free work is done strategically. You are able to research an industry and employer that you are genuinely interested in and propose a project that you will be passionate about.

Charlie mentioned the importance of removing all risk from the employer – not just financial. He recommends doing this by arranging a remote working environment. Not only are you working for free, but since you are not working at the office they will not have to worry about any overhead or training that would be involved.

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There are jobs out there. If you are struggling to find a job you are passionate about start asking why. Reevaluate how you are approaching your search and spend your downtime more productively than watching reruns of Golden Girls all day.

There is a lot of hype surrounding social media as a great way to brand a business, person, idea, or whatever. I completely agree that it is an extremely low cost method that one can leverage to get a brand out there on a shoe-string budget. I definitely push the idea to new businesses and very much enjoy social media in general.

But when it comes down to marketing your business, product, or idea online, make sure you stick to the fundamentals. That is, Building your assets.

What do I mean?

Think of the difference between an opt-in mailing list of 2000 people, all who have agreed whole-heartedly to receive news and specials on your products and services, vs 2000 people following you on twitter, or the 2000 friends you may have on facebook. The latter is something you do not own, and do not ultimately control. What would happen to your business or brand if your social media accounts were shutdown?

Your opt-in list is an asset, your social media account is not.

What can you do?

Store data – it’s so important. Other than a trusted brand, in my opinion, data is the most valuable asset a marketer can have. Build your customer relationship management database and make sure you track and use your website visitor behaviour. These are two great starting points for any business on a shoe-string budget.

Social media is great to leverage in order to drive traffic to your site or perk interest in your service or products, but unless you do something with those visitors and potential customers you are merely wasting your time.

We have all seen them kicking around the internet and I bet you may even be able to think of one off the top of your head. A website you have visited that left you frustrated and confused.

One of the main reasons this happens is due to the inability to maintain the website. A website is not a fad. It is extremely important and a fundamental online marketing tool. You own it and have complete control over it.

If you do not have the time to maintain your website it could be doing more harm than good for you.

Confuses Potential and Current Customers

It is no doubt that you are being searched for on the internet. Hopefully by now you have come to realize and understand this. The question is what information are your current and potential customers finding?

If your core website has outdated contact information or incorrect services and product descriptions then it will not only confuse the visitors but it will frustrate them as well if they try to use it to contact you.

Damages your Brand

As a business your brand is extremely important. It is your means to stand out. A website that is not maintained may be inconsistent with your current branding strategy – outdated logos, slogans, colors, marketing material, etc. It is important to align your website with the rest of your marketing initiatives.

Even if you are not using your website to its full potential as a marketing tool and are merely using it as an expensive business card it is still extremely important that the information be correct and up to date.

Personal and Business

This does not only apply to business websites. An outdated personal website has the same effect on you personally as an outdated business website has on a business. Employers, Headhunters, and even University admissions officers are using search engines and other online methods to research potential candidates. Are they finding your grade 8 website? Perhaps it is time to update.

Bottom line: make sure someone is responsible for maintaining your website or it may never get done.

Don’t listen to them.

If you’ve already done it, it probably won’t take you long to realize how quickly that passion disappears.

I’m not saying don’t be passionate about your work, or don’t start up a job around something you’re good at and enjoy doing. There are great benefits to loving your work, especially if it involves a 40 hour per week commitment.

What I am saying is that if you decide to start a small business to supplement your income, don’t turn your passion into that business.

For example:

You love kayaking, and are good at it. You do it almost year round to relax and escape. It’s something you can count on being there to make you feel good and relieve any stress you may have. Naturally, when you’re debating on what type of small business to start, the first thing that pops into your head is something involving kayaking. Not only that, but when you ask the local small business center, they even recommend it as a good idea.

Avoid this temptation. There are a couple reasons I say this. Firstly, you are narrow minded when it comes to running your passion-business. It doesn’t matter what the market research shows, or what people tell you; because it’s your passion, you will always think there’s a need for the product or service you’re offering, even when it might not be worth your time. If there’s only enough customer base to break even, or worse lose some money – back the hell up. Remember that the goal of this small business was to supplement your income, not to show people that you’re a good kayaker. Lets be honest, they don’t care.

Secondly, – and I think more importantly – you’ll lose your passion. You’ve now associated the one thing that gives you total relaxation and allows you to escape all your stress, with work. Oops, that sucks. I guarantee you it won’t take long before you become unmotivated with the business, and even start to become frustrated with kayaking in general. Even if you do manage to continue to enjoy kayaking, every time you hit the sea in your kayak, you’ll be thinking about all the things that “need” to be done. It will no longer be an escape. Now you’re stuck without a passion – that is, something you love doing outside of work.

It’s important not to lose focus on the reason you are starting the small business – to supplement (and perhaps replace?) your income. Do something that makes money. Don’t destroy your passion.

More to come on how to pick a good small business idea in a future post.