Thanks to the Internet You Can Now Put the Cart Before the Horse

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I started my internet business and internet marketing at the “young” age of 60. Although I fell down this rabbit hole by accident, I took to it like a fish to water. (Have I used enough cliches for you?)

Moments ago, pondering an email I got today following a conversation I had yesterday with a friend only a few years younger, I realized that you can put the cart before the horse if you want to start a business today.

Let me explain by using my friend as an example. She has developed expertise in a specific area of children’s schooling due to her own children. She would like to now utilize this hard-earned wisdom to help other parents. And she’d like to get paid for her knowledge.

Yes, she uses email and searches for info on the internet. But she is not yet involved in actively using social media to promote her “brand” or her expertise.

I recommended that she hire my company to establish a website/blog for her to position her expertise so that, in a few months, she would have an online presence that could support a related business.

Here’s the reply she emailed me:

I still have to figure out exactly what service I am going to provide, who and how am I going to bill and how will I make money beside what am I going to call myself — consultant, coach, etc.

All very valid questions except for one thing: Right now she has no reputation outside her immediate family for what she wants to do.

Doesn’t it make sense to start a website/blog and begin sharing her expertise through blog posts — and possibly free teleseminars — to establish her “brand.” She wouldn’t be charging for any of this advice, so she wouldn’t right now need the answers to the questions above.

In fact, she would simply be working on establishing herself in a particular niche and starting to form online relationships with parents, teachers and school administrators — all people who might need her help down the line.

Plus as she is doing this, she can be asking for feedback to identify exactly what the needs are in this niche and how she can help supply the solutions to these needs. In other words, she can do online market research for herself while building her reputation.

In the past — meaning when we baby boomers were young without access to this marvelous invention of the internet — we couldn’t put the cart before the horse. We would have to “hang out our shingle” so to speak — start our business — and then go from there.

Now we can start to establish our reputation, test the waters for services we might provide, and possibly have clients lined up before we open our doors — all thanks to putting the cart before the horse on the internet.

If you have questions, email me at pzmiller@millermosaicllc.com — and do read my National Internet Business Examiner blog at http://budurl.com/internetbusiness. Please leave comments if you have any questions or suggestions for future posts.

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