On the Write Road

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Posted in: on Friday, November 7, 2008 at 0 comments    

In the Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade, there is a scene in which Indy must choose the Holy Grail from a sea of chalices in all shapes and colors. Before choosing, the Grail knight warns Indy, "But choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you. "

So what does this have to do with owning a business? Well when hiring an online vendor to provide you with a service you must, like Indy, choose wisely. OK, so you won't wither and die if you make the wrong choice but you may lose money and valuable time.

Even though an e-commerce site may say they are time-saving remember that people must process your order. If the company's process is poor you may experience mix ups, mistakes, or delays. Here are two experiences Melody and I had with online vendors. I did not supply a name for the first vendor. For the second vendor I did since I hope this post benefits them.

Vendor One--How Not to Satisfy Customers

Melody and I wanted to create a folded card mailer to print and then mail to clients. We received a recommendation to go to a Web site I will call Company A. Company A is an e-commerce site that provides printing and direct mailing services. They have a tool that you use to produce your card right from your desktop. Then they print and mail your cards to your customers.

The process seemed fairly simple, create the inside of our mailer using their simple tool and upload our artwork for the front page and for the logo. Before printing anything, Company A needed to approve the logo and coverartwork. I uploaded the logo and waited for approval. I waited a week and then sent an email to a customer service person whom I had initially contacted asking what had happened. He apologized, said for some reason it "wasn't in the que", and then approved the logo.

Company A's approval of the cover was even more riddled with delays and mix ups. By now, I was irritated because weeks had passed. I just wanted the darn thing printed.

The next step was to request that Company A print one test mailer. On their site, I paid $5.00 to have one mailer printed. After waiting a week, I sent another email to customer service and never heard back. At this point, I decided I had wasted enough time and would find a local printer and have them print the mailer for me.

Vendor Two - How to Have Happy Customers Who Write Good Things About You

Melody and I are sponsors for the upcoming Third Annual San Francisco Bay Area
Training & Development Expo so we wanted to order some giveaways. I chose to purchase the giveaways from Pinnacle Promotions, which sells promotional items and apparel. From their site, I ordered 250 pens and screen sweeps that were personalized. Within 3 minutes (and I am not exaggerating) a woman from their art department called, went over the order, and told me to expect an email containing an art proof and order confirmation with details on price and shipping. The NEXT DAY they emailed the art proof. When I approved the order, I promptly received another email stating they would proceed immediately on my order and when it would be mailed to me. Exactly on the stated day I received the pens and the screen sweep, which looked great.

Moral of the story: I had a bad experience with Company A and will not recommend them to anyone else. However, I had a great experience with Pinnacle Promotions. Next time I choose an online vendor, I think I will try and get more then one referral and study their Web site for happy customer testimonials.

First photo by Sean Rogers
Second photo by Stewart
Third photo by Tod Baker

Posted in: choosing a vendor, online vendors, small business administration on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 2 comments    

Posted in: on Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 0 comments    

Well, I think so. I know writers who create dull dull dull technical content all day but after work get crazy rollerblading, hiking, riding horses, gardening, and doing lot of other interesting things. Apparently some of us are also musically talented. Here is a clever video about technical writing from YouTube Technical Writer Song.

Let us know what you do in your free time that proves you are not a geeky tech writer.

Posted in: blog writing, horses, rollerblading, technical writer, writing on Friday, October 3, 2008 at 0 comments    

According to the Small Business Administration, two-thirds of new businesses survive for at least two years, and only 44 percent survive at least four years. The exact reason for their failure is unknown but there are certain fatal errors that can sink your company. One of them is ineffective marketing and self-promotion. Customers won't be calling or emailing you if they don't know you exist. So Melody and I needed to make Write on Time visible.

On TechScribe's website http://www.techscribe.co.uk/ta/promoting_tech_writing.htm, Mike Unwalla, owner of this writing business based in the United Kingdom, lists the advertising and publicity methods he uses to promote his business. In addition, he summarizes which methods have worked and which ones have not. I thought Mike's list was a good starting point for a WoTS (Write on Time Solutions) marketing plan. After reading through Mike's promotional strategies, I created my own list.

Here are my ideas:

• Attend targeted professional meetings to network.
• Attend targeted professional conferences as a vendor to market our business.
• Speak at professional organizations such as Society for Technical Communication (STC), Chamber of Commerce, or the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).
• Become known as an expert in our field by writing articles for magazines or newspapers.
• Create a signature and append it to all outgoing email messages. Include our name, our company name, our website address, and contact information.
• Create a contact list of potential clients and send a mailer to them advertising our new business.
• Email a newsletter periodically to clients on our contact list.
• Create a website.
• Create a blog.

Once we created the list, we began implementing each item. In upcoming posts, Melody and I will write about our marketing experiences, such as producing a simple mailer which is a nightmare.

Posted in: advertising, marketing, networking, promoting, small business administration, TechScribe, write on time solutions on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 0 comments    

Owning a business means you:

A. Do tasks that are boring.
B. Do tasks that are fun.
C. All of the above.Well, I know the answer is C because filing legal paper work to set up a business with the State of California is not on my favorite-things-to-do list. But because I had a bit more knowledge on the subject than my business partner Melody (thanks Melody), I volunteered to discover what type of business entity or form of ownership was best for our company and how to set it up.



Learning about Business Entities

So what is a business entity? A business entity is a term the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses for legally recognized forms of business. The IRS defines five types of entities: Sole Proprietorships, Partnerships, Limited Liability Companies (LLC), Corporations, and S Corporations. BizFilings, an incorporation service, has created a quick reference table that compares each form of business by certain characteristics, such as liability, operational requirements, taxation, etc.

After reading about each entity, I called my tax accountant and discussed my choices. He felt establishing an LLC was the best choice for us because it offers the same liability protection as a corporation, but without the corporate tax and the required formalities, such as formal meeting and record keeping. The LLC is a relatively new type of entity that has only recently become available in all 50 states. My tax accountant told me the easiest way to create the LLC was to go online and use a legal document service. He recommended I use LegalZoom. The process was very simple. I only had to fill out an online questionnaire and LegalZoom did everything else.



After several weeks my documents arrived in the mail. I received a federal tax ID/EIN (Employer Identification Number), a binder with all the appropriate documents, and a friendly letter from the California Franchise Tax Board stating I now owed them $800, the annual tax due for the privilege of doing business here.

So all-in-all the process was quick and not too painful.

Note: I am not an expert in forming business entities so before you choose one, talk to a knowledgeable tax attorney and visit such websites as the Small Business Association (SBA) http://www.sba.gov/index.html and the IRS (business section at http://www.irs.gov/index.html.

Posted in: business entity, irs, limited liability corporation, llc on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 0 comments    

Our writing business was in the works and now all we needed was a name, just a name.

Adrienne, my partner in crime, tossed the ball in my direction. (Now, that’s two metaphors that don’t rhyme. Ah well, creative writers can’t stop themselves.) She said, “You’re smart and clever; you come up with a name for our business.” There’s nothing like buttering up your partner to get her busy.
Ah, a name…

Juliet:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
I begin to think just a name, and yet entire families war over one. Juliet Capulet and Romeo Montague are “starcross’d” lovers who come from warring families. While love is sweet, they are doomed from the start.

Will our name make or break us? Is the pressure on? I begin to doodle Internet style by Googling all the name sites. We are creating a technical writing business, and yet we want it to be fun. We will provide writing and training services, fast and furious. We also do creative writing. Adrienne and I come from journalist and creative backgrounds. Can we slip that in? A poem here. A haiku there. How about Fibonacci? My fave poetry style.

Since my brother has started a business, let’s check his Web site out http://www.rfpmd.com/. He like me – it must run in the family – is smart and clever. He has started an RFP business, which could be dull but isn’t. He did it!

Adrienne and I brainstorm names over coffee as we sneak a peek at our escape plan from our big corporation. What we really want to do is provide quality writing and training on time all the time to a super-satisfied customer. That’s all. Oh yes, and get paid too let’s not forget that. We say hey, write it must be right on yes, it must be on time, write on time! That’s it! We’re brilliant. Write on Time! We have a name! Is that all we need?

Not so easy my dear Watson. We need to get back online, of course, and check if anyone has our name. We’ve already, in 10 minutes, become protective of our baby, our name. We go on to LegalZoom.com to have them check if this name is used in the state of California. You may do this differently depending on your business terrain, ours is California. We knew we needed a name first, and a business structure will come next.

Write on Time was taken, so after much soul searching we came up with Write on Time Solutions! Another great name, we would solve our customers’ problems write on time!

Posted in: business name, fictious name, legazoom, write on time solutions on Monday, September 15, 2008 at 0 comments