Perhaps you are right now trying to take action on your idea. Maybe you have taken the first steps and formed a business. Or, like some many, its possible that you are still just dreaming of taking your idea into prime time.

I hope you are one of those that can turn your idea into a reality. But I have a piece of advice for you. Don’t try to do it alone. Not only is it lonely, you can get far more accomplished if you learn how to collaborate. Reach out to other people with your idea and see what happens.

Why do people sit on great ideas for years and do nothing with them? I can think of two reasons. First, they don’t know how to turn a great idea into a good business. Second, they are afraid that if they start talking about their idea that it will get stolen from them.

A little more on ideas being stolen. It does happen. There are two ways in which this takes place. One is that some callous jerk takes your idea and runs with it and doesn’t cut you in on the profit. This is probably the less likely of the two scenarios. The other thing that happens way more often is that you start talking about your business idea to friends and family. Not knowing anything about ideas and business, they are likely to tell you that you are crazy, to laugh at you, or to otherwise discourage you. It just happens. So your great idea gets stolen because you stop believing in it, and in yourself.

The funny thing is, if you find the right people to collaborate with, your idea will be protected and your dream will have a far better chance of being realized. Business people on every level need to collaborate. Nothing amazing was ever built and maintained by one person. You need a team around you. This may be employees, but if you are just starting out, you should look for collaboration partners.

The people you collaborate with may be partners in your business. Or maybe they are a loose group of individuals who can help you out with different parts to your plan. No matter what, you need to seek out the advice and expertise of others.

The other option is to do nothing. You can let your idea die on the vine. You can strangle it with fear before it ever has the chance to succeed. I personally want my ideas to get a fair chance. I know I can’t possibly do that on my own. So I am always on the look out for people who can help. Is it time you start looking for help on your great business idea?

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photo credit: goosmurf

By Matt Flumerfelt

VALDOSTA — Neal Rohrbach was a featured speaker recently at the 140 Characters Conference in Hollywood, Calif.

He lives in Valdosta and works in Ray City at the Outdoor Channel satellite station.

He is a co-founder, along with Bradford Shimp, of iDea Anglers, an online resource for people with business ideas who need a little, or a lot, of help shaping and implementing those ideas.

The conference was held Oct. 27-28 at the Kodak Theater, where the Oscars are held each year.

Conference Founder Jeff Pulver noted that the 140 Characters Conference explores the effects of the real-time Internet on business.

“It was phenomenal,” Rohrbach said. “It was kind of surreal because for the first day and a half I was seeing and hearing some of my social media idols on stage, but after the conference people were coming up to me at the conference and at the airport later thanking me and shaking my hand.”

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When top line revenue declines (like during a recession), spending cuts often look like a great option for lifting your bottom line. You know what I’m talking about—layoffs and budget reductions.

While I think it’s financially wise to look at how we spend each of our business dollars, and while I concede that some budgets can afford to be trimmed (e.g. travel), one area I wouldn’t touch is marketing. In fact, I might expand it.

Sure, marketing is an easy target for cuts because its expense is not directly tied to the production of whatever it is you make, but it’s critical for two reasons:

1. Marketing’s not all about right now. In a recent post on Huffington, Jenny Darroch, Marketing strategy expert at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, reported:

“I found that firms that spent more on marketing than their peers during the recession [in the 1980s] enjoyed a higher market value five years after the recession ended. To me, this result provides clear evidence of the long-term effects of marketing expenditure.”

How you spend your marketing dollars today will influence how you’re doing five years from now. It’s easy to track the results of a discount or coupon (immediate response stuff), so we’re tempted to think of marketing an operation to immediately pull sales through. However, like PR, our marketing strategies help to build up a brand perception and presence that has lasting significance.

2. Marketing investment goes farther in recession. If you look around and everyone else is cutting their marketing budgets but your keep yours the same, you’ve got a distinct advantage—you’re outspending your competitors. This means that you can start to gain market share for far less money than it would cost you when everyone else had more aggressive budgets.

Both of these reasons suggest that instead of seeing marketing as a short-term quid pro quo, it’s important to view it as a long-term investment. Sure, marketing investment, like every other investment, carries risk. But there are very seldom great rewards without some risk. In order to mitigate that risk, I’d suggest the following:

Make sure your marketing people know what they’re doing.

The easiest way to get great returns on Wall Street is to hire a great broker. The same is true of your marketing efforts: the key to results is knowing how and were to invest.

If you have the suspicion that your marketing people are lagging behind, it may be a good idea to help them with some extra targeted training. If you don’t have a marketing department, it might be worth while to hire a consultant or coach to help you get on track.

Determine how you’re going to measure short-term and long-term ROMI (return on marketing investment).

It’s important to view what your marketing efforts are going to do in the short term (pulling sales through), and what they’re going to do in the long term (build brand presence, awareness, and customer relationships).

For example, when I was working in New York, I helped develop a marketing campaign for a ski resort to entice first-time skiers to return to the mountain for another visit. All first-timers were given a coupon with a serious discount to distribute to their friends. We determined short-term ROMI by the revenue generated from new customers (i.e. the friends), and we determined long-term ROMI by the number new customers gained, the number of return visits, and the value over time of those visits.

Whatever you do, measurement is necessary so you can learn, analyze, respond, and refine. You wouldn’t let your broker get away with saying, “eh, I think you made a reasonable return, but I’m not sure.”

Work hard to discern what’s worth sticking out and what you need to ditch right away.

No matter how talented your broker or your marketing staff, there will always be investments that don’t return very well.

It’s tempting to cut the losses of every campaign that doesn’t work out immediately. But be aware that it is possible to give up too early (e.g. the sell off right before the rebound). For example, I have a colleague who works at a company that stopped a personal selling initiative after three months because it wasn’t generating enough sales. The tragedy is that sales cycles in personal selling relationships can often take longer than three months. Make sure that you seek out a root cause for something that’s not working before you decide to abruptly end it.

The list of issues to think through as you process marketing as a long-term investment is far longer than what I have room for here, but if you have questions or comments, please feel free to drop me a line @wordpost or at theword@wordpost.org.

Customer testimonials can be a powerful selling tool for your business. But often, testimonials seem canned, stilted and too self-serving.

So what are the qualities that make a testimonial inspiring rather than insipid?

An inspiring testimonial tells a story, much like a feature article does.The story focuses on the customer and how they have benefited through the use of certain products or services. It draws the reader in. It has a beginning (the problem), middle (your solution), and an end (the results).

But it’s not about you. It’s all about your customer and what they’ve gained.

If you can paint that picture effectively, you will leave the reader thinking, “Hmm, maybe that would work for me,too.”When readers can put themselves into the story and imagine experiencing the same results and benefits, then you will be able to successfully motivate them to act.

Here are five steps to follow in order to create testimonials that inspire readers to become buyers:

1. Contact your customer. When you receive positive feedback on your products or services –either by feedback form, email, blog comment, or word-of-mouth–contact your customer.That initial feedback should serve as a lead for your testimonial. It should not serve as the testimonial itself.
2. Schedule a time to interview your customer. When you contact your customer, ask if you can set up a time to chat for the purpose of gathering a testimonial, for roughly 15 or 20 minutes, at their convenience.
3. Do some preliminary research. Before the scheduled interview, learn as much as you can about your customer and their business. Google them. Check out their website. Review your own company’s internal data regarding their buying habits.
4. Conduct the interview. During the interview, use a headset at your PC and capture your customer’s answers to a list of questions. Let your conversation flow. Don’t be afraid to ask follow up questions. The goal of your interview is to dig deeper into their experience with your products and services. Here are some of the types of questions I ask during testimonial interviews (to note, these are for a B2B scenario, but can easilybe tailored for a B2C situation):

• • How did you (or the founder) start your business? What inspired your business ideas?
  • What struggles did you experience? Did any of our products or services help you tackle or solve those challenges? If so, how? And, when did you first start using our products and services?
  • Were they easy to purchase, use, or install?
  • What have these products and services allowed you to do in your own business (or life)? How have they helped you accomplish your objectives?
  • What was it like performing those same tasks before you had our products and services?
  • What other results or benefits have you enjoyed?
  • What would you say to another business owner who was contemplating buying our products and services?

5. Draft, submit, and receive approval on your testimonial. With your interview complete, it’s time to draft your testimonial. Approach it in a narrative form, sprinkling quotes throughout. Let your story unfold and follow the adage “show don’t tell.” Once complete, be sure to send it to your customer for their review and approval. Make any changes as requested. If necessary, you may want to ask them to sign a release enabling you to use the piece in various forms (provided you don’t change the intended meaning or purpose).

While it may sound like a time-intensive process, these types of 1-pagetestimonials can be completed in roughly 2 hours. If you fear this will take too much of your time and is not in your skill set sweet-spot, consider hiring a professional writer to assist you.

Once complete, you can use your testimonials in a variety of ways. Post them on your website. Use pull-quotes in your marketing materials. Include them as case studies in your sales proposals. When written well and fully leveraged, they will help you to build brand awareness and ultimately boost sales.

I’ve noticed, especially recently, that my to-do list is a lot like a big bowl of tater salad. No matter how much you dish out and consume, it hardly puts a dent in the bowl. You go to put the lid back on the container and it’s hard to believe there’s not more in there than when you started. It’s not healthy to eat the whole bowl in one sitting, just as it’s not healthy for your business to have your main focus be knocking everything off the list in one day.

It took me a while to realize that my to-do app on my iPhone would always have that little red circle, with a double digit number in it, staring me in the eye at the end of the day, but I’ve put together a couple different game plans for productivity that I stick to on a daily basis. Utilizing these methods I’m able to get as much work done as humanly possible, and I feel good about it, even knowing I have another long list waiting for me tomorrow.

I had mentioned that it’s not healthy to simply try and knock everything out in a day. What will happen is that some part of one of your projects will get neglected or done with sub par results. You can only do what you can do, and that’s the truth. Complete your tasks to the best of your ability. Odds are if you leave a spoonful here or a spoonful there, it’s going to end up back in the bowl later.

Power Prioritizing

The first method I utilize for successful time management is what I like to call “Power Prioritizing.” I’ll take my list of to-do’s and order them from what I can knock out the quickest to what will be the most time consuming. This works great for the “mental game,” and I use it when I’m discouraged from the piles of work on my desk. I often feel like a dog chasing my tail, juggling a day job and two successful side businesses, but when I can knock out a quantity of tasks, I go to bed feeling as though I got a lot accomplished that day. Don’t misinterpret what I’m saying, I don’t mean take quantity over quality, still devote the utmost energy to those tasks.

Vacation Countdown

My favorite method for managing time I coin as the “Vacation Countdown.” Just like counting the days to a vacation, I order my tasks so that I can look forward to the last items. I’ll sit down at the beginning of the day and decide what projects I can realistically complete, then order them from what I’m least excited about, to what project I’m truly passionate about. I’ve found that this method gives me something to look forward to, much like working through those last grueling days at the office before vacation. It’s very tempting to procrastinate when the last items on your to-do list are as much fun as cleaning out a hog pen, and nine times out of ten, when I’ve done this in the past, those last few items show up again on my list the next day. Now how productive is that? Getting through your duties with the chain-gang will be a LOT easier when there’s a beachside cabana waiting for you at the end of the list. I love writing for business, and I’m writing this article at the end of my day.

I’ll admit, some days completing a task means you have to add two or three more. You have to be disciplined and keep moving. If you’re struggling to manage time from day to day, I encourage you to use one of the methods I do to help you get to the end of your list, feeling proud and accomplished.

What’s this new technology? It’s called Appcelerator Titanium, and it aims to bring to mobile app developers the benefits of rapid prototyping that are enjoyed by web developers.

And boy, does it ever. How so? It abstracts the functionality of native iPhone and Android development through a Javascript API. So instead of using Objective-C or Java to create your app, you create the functionality with Javascript (including your favorite JS libraries like YUI or jQuery) and lay it out with CSS. In other words, if you’re comfortable developing a dynamic web page, you are 90% of the way there — you are about a day away from launching your first iPhone or Android app.

What’s the other 10%? That’s the Titanium API I mentioned, which gives you access (through simple Javascript) to the native functionality that makes mobile apps what they are, like GPS, the phone’s camera & accelerometer, etc. Not only does the API provide access to utilities like those, but it also gives you the ability to skin and theme your app just like a “regular” native app. Tabs, menus, gestures — it’s all there.  I was able to get a modified version of their sample TwitPic client up and running in under a day (mine used Posterous and took advantage of Titanium’s Geolocation API for accessing my phone’s GPS capabilities), and much of that was spent getting my Linux machine to recognize my phone as an Android device.

It’s unlikely that you will yet be able to match the speed and feature set of a native app, but for many apps, this could be a great tool for proof-of-concepts or even production deployment.  And I say “yet” because the Appcelerator team is talented, dedicated, and has shown their willingness to engage with the developer community to address issues and help out with problems.

Within 24-36 months, their will be more mobile devices accessing the internet than home broadband connections.  They’re not all smartphones, yet, but the potential for this market cannot be ignored either by traditional companies or the design and development firms that help them create their web presence.  Soon, not having a mobile-compatible site or dedicated mobile app will the equivalent of not having a website at all just a few years ago.  So take a look at Titanium, especially if you don’t have the time or personnel to delve into Objective-C or the Java-based Android SDK just yet.

I am no Twitter veteran but I have been writing copy for marketing-related initiatives for nearly 25 years. So once I joined Twitter, it didn’t take me long to realize that many companies using Twitter as a marketing vehicle are making some key mistakes when they tweet.

Here are six tips for creating tweets that will help you more effectively market your products and services, as well as build your brand:

1. Treat Twitter like any other marketing vehicle. Twitter may be a relatively new tool, but it still has power. So before you start tapping away random tweets and trying to connect with other Twitterers, take time to think about how you want to use Twitter to support your current marketing strategy. Don’t just wing it. Research what the experts say in terms of what makes it an effective tool. (Hint: it does not involve posting an endless stream of sales messages. It involves finding ways to add value and to engage.)
2. Know your audience. As with any marketing vehicle, you need to keep your target market and your consumer in mind at all times. Do not assume that all of your Twitter followers are your buyers. They are not. Instead, stay focused and clear on who you want to reach and what you want to say. Then be certain that every tweet appeals to your audience of potential prospects and consumers in some way, rather than simply the Twitter masses.
3. Craft your tweets with care. Because of its sense of immediacy, I see many companies take a hurried, somewhat careless approach to their tweets. For the simple reason that you have the smallest space possible for your tweet message (140 characters or less), you should take time to write it well. When you have an idea for a tweet, write it several different ways. What are you trying to accomplish with that tweet? Do you want to draw in your reader? Are you looking for feedback? Do you want to provide customers with a special offer? Are you hoping to pass along important information or a useful link? Every tweet, regardless of its content, can be structured myriad ways. Make the effort to draft several versions, making each one clear and compelling. Pick the strongest. Then post it. If there are several you like, create a library that will allow you to post different versions at various times.
4. Lace your tweets with keywords. Not every tweet needs to feature keywords, but certainly some of the primary search terms related to your business, its products and services should appear frequently throughout your stream. There’s no need to go overboard; simply strive for using them organically and naturally in your tweets.
5. Try not to truncate. Because Twitter has a character limit, people often truncate words and use text-speak in their tweets. If you are using Twitter as a marketing vehicle I caution against this approach, other than perhaps using the most common abbreviations such as U, 2, or 4, to mean you, to, or for. Why? Because if your consumers are not comfortable deciphering text-speak you risk alienating them. And they’ll likely skip right over your tweets. So tweet for your prospect and assume they are not as text savvy as the active Twitterer. This is another reason to invest your time and energy in constructing meaningful yet concise tweets.
6. Proofread your tweets. Because Twitter encourages swift communication many Twitterers post tweets that are not speald quiet write. Remember, Twitter is no different than any other outlet you use to communicate with customers. If you proofread every email, flyer, ad, brochure, and newsletter you distribute, it’s because you know that errors, though slight, leave an impression. They speak to the issue of quality (or lack of it). Naturally, your tweets deserve a pass through quality control as well; they will speak just as loudly as all your other communication materials.

Twitter may be in its infancy as a marketing vehicle, but it still has muscle. That’s why it’s important to realize that “short and sweet” does not mean “sloppy and scattered.” If you appreciate the power your tweets can have, you’ll be able to effectively leverage one of the fastest growing free social media tools available.

Ideas are funny things. They are free to have, but take a whole lot of work to turn into reality. You may have a ton of interesting ideas for businesses. However, you will only be able to turn a handful, at best, into businesses by yourself.

Knowing that it takes a lot of hard work, and in some cases a lot of money, to turn even the best ideas into a successful business, you will feel the pressure to pick the right idea. What separates an idea out from the pack and makes it worthy of being a business?

Start With Your Biggest Passion

The fact is, almost any idea can be turned into a viable business. That is because it is not only the idea that is important, but also how that idea is implemented. In fact, implementation is even more important than the original idea.

Therefore, you don’t need to spend as much time as you think on finding the idea that you think will make the most money. Far more important is to find the idea that you are most passionate about.

The point is, if you are going to turn your idea into a business, you are going to have to live with that idea day after day, night after night, maybe for the rest of your life. So while you may have a great idea for a better mousetrap, do you really want to manufacture mousetraps for the rest of your life?

You may want to back off your actual ideas when figuring out your passion. Take a step back and look through the annals of your life. What comes up again and again that gets you excited? For instance, I am passionate about being a writer. I love the written word. Knowing this, I can look at my idea to start a pizza and pasta shop with a critical eye. While I would love the creation process, I wouldn’t want to get up early every morning to make fresh dough and pasta.

Look at all of your ideas through the lens of your passion. Which idea has the most staying power for you?

Can You Get Others Interested in Your Idea?

Once you have zeroed in on the idea that you are most passionate about, it is time to try to get others on board. While you may be able to start a business all by yourself, you are going to get much farther much faster if you assemble a good team. Don’t worry, at this point you don’t have to worry about employees. That will come later on.

I don’t suggest spending too much time looking for support and passion for your idea amongst your family and friends. The exception to this would be if those people are entrepreneurs and experts. Chances are that they are not. Experts and other entrepreneurs are just the type of people you need to discuss your idea with.

Idea Anglers will soon be offering services designed to help you connect with just those type of people. You will be able to do so in a trusted environment, so your idea will stay yours. You will have a chance to connect with other passionate people to get feedback on your idea and even to find the partners you will need to turn it into reality.

Plan, Plan, Plan

Once you put your idea through the personal passion test and find some collaborators that share your interest, you can start cultivating that seed of an idea. There is a lot to accomplish in the planning stage. One of the best things to tie it all together is to create a business plan.

Business plans can be daunting tasks. We are hoping to make the process a little easier through collaboration, and perhaps even some neat software down the road. For right now though, just keep it simple. Don’t get caught up in fancy language or complicated profit projections just yet.

Some of the first things you need to figure out is a. how you plan to make money, b. who are the people who are going to buy from you, and c. who is going to be on your team to make it all possible.

We will have collaboration tools to help you plan and execute your idea into a business available on the membership side of site once it goes live. In the meantime, we are building a free library of resources to help you along your path to success.

Just Add Water

As you see, its not really about coming up with a million dollar idea. It is about developing an idea that you can stay passionate about, getting a team of advisors, collaborators, and partners, building a plan and executing it.

When is an idea worth turning into a business? When its the kind of idea that you will happily work on every day for the rest of your life. If you are not willing to work at it, its not worth turning into a business.

Starting a business is an exciting thing. But before you get started, there are some things you need to figure out.

1. Are you going to work full, part, or some of the time?

How much time are you going to be able to give to your business? This is determined most often by whether you have another job or responsibilities. The good news is, you can start a business no matter how much, or little, time you have to give.

There are two important things to consider no matter how much time you have to give.

First, you need to have really good time management if you are building a business. If you only have 1 hour per day, you need to make sure you are doing the things you need to be doing. The same thing goes for if you have 10 hours.

Second, you need to have consistency. If you keep coming at it day after day, you are going to start to see success. Even if you do not have very much time to give, if you give that little bit of time on a consistent basis, you will make progress.

So, at first it doesn’t really matter how much time you are going to give to the business. Instead, focus on spending the time you do have effectively, and going at it consistently.

2. Where are you going to find out the things you don’t know?

It shouldn’t take you long to figure out that there is a whole lot that you do not know about running a business. Its okay. You don’t need a college degree in business adminstration to start and run a successful business. You do need to know where to look for knowledge.

Books, blogs, and seminars are a great place to go for self-learning. You can spend no money, or a lot of money. The upside is that you will be educating yourself and equipping yourself with the knowledge you need. One downside is that the information is often general, and you will have to figure out how to apply it to your specific situation. Another is that you will be learning it and applying it yourself. You need to be careful not to get sidetracked and try to learn a whole new subject that you really won’t have the time to accomplish on your own anyway.

Consultants. These are people that you can hire for blocks of time to help out with your business. This may not seem like an early play for your business, but maybe it should be. Even a few hours of advice from a qualified consultant can really help you as you set up and program your business for success.

Is a consultant too expensive? Well, what if you hired a consultant for $100 per hour. Sure, at first this seems exorbitant, a luxury that you cannot afford. Ten hours will cost your $1,000. Ouch, right? Maybe not. If with that 10 hours the consultant can really help you solve some of your early problems and can get your through things that might actually take you weeks, months, years, or eternity to figure out, it is actually money well spent. Of course, if you are hiring your cousin Jeb who just graduated from business school, you might be throwing your money away.

There is another option. You can get a mentor. Finding someone with business experience can be a great move as you start your own. However, it can be difficult to find the right person. Your dad who was a vice president of some big company may not have the insight you need for your bootstrap startup. Not that you shouldn’t take his advice. But what you really need is someone who has walked the path you want to walk. If you find a person who has started from scratch and created a booming business, and she is willing to share her knowledge with you, then you have found paydirt! Don’t squander that opportunity.

3. What about the law?

Chances are, you don’t really know a whole lot about incorporation, let along limited liability corporation, et al. You may think you can just worry about this later on, but it is actually a good idea to get the legal structure of your business squared away right from the beginning.

I am not an expert on this subject, and each situation calls for a different approach. But the key word for you is “protection.” Starting a business is a risky endeavor. You may be putting a lot of personal funds in to it, but that doesn’t mean you need to risk everything. Form a corporation and learn how to run it properly so that you can protect your assets.

This is not about finding loopholes or any such thing. Sure, later on there are positive tax benefits to certain business structures. But for right now, you need to make sure you are building a wall of safety between your business and your family. One lawsuit, or even one enormous tax bill, can really have very harmful effects on you personally if you do not protect yourself.

So, do spend the time and money to get protected through an corporation. Whether you want an INC or an LLC depends on your situation. Talk to a lawyer who you can understand and who is willing to take the time to explain everything to you (preferably without billing you by the hour for it).

4. What are you really going to be able to do, and what are you going to need help with?

You can try to do everything yourself in your new business. However, chances are, while you are really good at certain things, there are other things that you absolutely stink at. You need to take some time to map these two areas out and to figure out where you are going to need help.

Knowing this from the get go can save you time and headaches later on. It might even save you money, or — “gasp!” — make you money!

I have already talked about bringing in consultants. You will also need to tap professionals, like a lawyer to help you set up your corporation and probably an accountant and a banker.

And eventually, you are going to need employees or contractors. If you are the go it alone type all the way, then hiring contractors to do work, such as marketing or writing, is the way to go. You just tell them what you need and they deliver.

Employees are another ball of wax. They take serious commitment. Prepare yourself for employees by creating systems for everything in your business from day one. That way, when they come on, they will be able to get moving right away. And your won’t want to take a baseball bat to your head.

Being realistic about what you can and can’t do can actually help you create a better business and grow it faster. It will also help you to shape what kind of work and projects you take on, so you don’t get sidetracked from your ultimate vision.

5. Are you looking at potential business, or possible business?

There may be scads of possible customers out there for you to tap in to with your new business. However, just because they are there, it doesn’t mean that you can get them right away. Do not make the mistake of planning your business based on what’s possible. Instead, focus on what you can reasonably attain in the first year. What is potential with your limited resources?

Base your plans around this. Take a hard look at your current network, your current marketing ability, etc. How do you plan to get sales? Build your business around your real potential.

6. Do you  see the bigger picture?

I will just say this. You need an ultimate vision for your new business. That vision needs to be written down and expounded on in a business plan. You also need to think about mundane things like a budget, operational systems, and details. Oh, the details! Without a big picture vision and plan, the details will strangle your business before if ever gets off the ground. With the plan, the details don’t go away, you will just have a better handle on them and a better idea of what to do with them.

This is a very quick snapshot of some of the things you need to think about before you start a business. Each of these ideas is expounded upon in great books and blogs and magazines. Educate yourself on what you need to do before you get started.

I want to recommend some books or blogs for you to read. But there are just so many and it kind of depends on your situation. So, if you want to know what I think you should read for your situation, send me an email and describe what business you are starting (or currently running) and what problems you are facing or what areas you need to learn more about. I will send you some personalized suggestions!

Building these relationships takes time, consistent relationships, and real interest from your bank. Here are some things to look for when choosing your bank, in order from “obvious but maybe less important than you think” to “less obvious but maybe more important that you think”.

Do they have the services you need?

This should be a pretty simple checklist and might include items like online wire transfer and check scanning.

Are their fees reasonable?

Again pretty simple, but make sure you look at transaction fees as well as monthly feeds. Try to do a good job estimating how frequently you do things like sending foreign wires – these fees can add up quickly.

What types of lending will they do?

Some banks have strict policies to lend only against hard collateral like real estate. Some banks will lend against a less tangible asset like an exclusive license. Some banks will lend against cash flow. 

How much SBA lending have they done?

If you’re a small business, you might be eligible for borrowing through a range of programs offered by the Small Business Administration. Knowing what programs are available, keeping up with changes to the programs, and navigating the process of applying for and executing an SBA loan is quite a job, and some banks have done more than others.

Who will your contact be, what’s their role at the bank, and how long have they been in the role?

Will you be working with a revolving door of junior people just out of college, or you will you be working with a VP who’s been around for 10 years? The answer to this question will have a lot to do with the size of your bank, and we’ll talk about that more below.

Early in the life of your business, it’s easy to be focused on the simple question of which services a bank offers. If you need online banking and your bank offers online banking (they all do), it’s easy to just be satisfied that your current needs are being met. That being said, it’s really important to look into the future and try to anticipate what you might need next year, or 3 years from now, or 7 years from now.

You need a good long-term relationship with your bank. You need a good long-term relationship with your banker. The better your banker gets to know your business, the more willing he or she will be to ‘go out on a limb’ for you when you need it.

As is the case with any relationship, there will be bumps in the road, and the better you and your bank know each other, the better you’ll be able to work through them together. A good, longstanding relationship with your bank will be invaluable if and when you need to borrow money.

Whether it’s a term loan tied to an expansion effort or a line of credit that helps smooth out seasonal bumps in your business, your bank is taking a risk on you each time they loan you money. If they know and trust you and your business, they’re much more likely to take that risk when you need them to.

There are a few reasons a small local or regional bank may be a better choice for small businesses.

• They probably offer services that are similar or identical to those of larger banks.
• Local banks have a vested interest in supporting businesses in their community.
• You’re a larger part of a small bank’s business, so they may be more motivated to help you succeed.
• Your banker is likely to be in a more senior role at a smaller bank, which is especially important if you need to borrow money. Big national banks aren’t all bad, but it’s not unreasonable to say that at a big bank the ’small business relationship manager’ role is likely to be staffed with fairly junior people, may be used as a stepping stone to other roles at the bank, and therefore may have fairly high turnover. This isn’t such a good thing if you want your banker to know your business well, or if you need your banker to ‘go to bat’ for you.
• Due to the need to manage a large pool of borrowers, lending policies at large banks tend to be based on a strict set of guidelines, versus being based on your banker’s knowledge of and confidence in your business.

Don’t just pick a big name bank and sign right up. Check out some small local banks and see what you think. Choose a bank not only based on services and pricing, but also based on your ability to get to know each other well over the long term. You’ll be much more likely to think of your bank as a trusted partner in your business – not a necessary evil.

Shameless plug: Our business is based in Seattle. I switched from working with a large national bank to banking with Viking Bank, a small local bank, and the difference has been night and day. If you’re based around Puget Sound, you should bank with Viking. I love my bank!