I am independent, autonomous, self-reliant. These were skills I felt would stand me in good stead. I thought I knew what I really wanted to do -- the answer to my career crisis would be to start my own business. And so after much thought and planning (or so I figured at the time), Little Black Duck Communications was born.

However, these positive attributes all have a flip-side --

* independence OR too proud/stubborn to ask for and seek help and assistance;

* autonomous OR not being able to see the benefits of sharing the workload/problem in order to achieve a *better* result for all concerned;

* self-reliant OR isolated within a world you have shrunk around yourself and your business...

A home-based business, I offered marketing, staff communications and publications services to small business. After big business, I felt working with small business would be warm, welcoming, friendly... and I felt I had a lot to offer (and that in itself is another story!).

Business and marketing plan in hand, with resume also at the ready, I approached banks for finance. To cut a long story short, now that I wasn't working in the corporate world, I was no-one to them! Eventually, after many tears of frustration (in private), I secured on loan based on my partner's income. This was a slap in the face and a sting I hadn't expected. But I was up and running.

My marketing was based on a very personal approach -- I did not advertise at all. I was wary about taking on more than one person could handle and concerned that advertising would generate more than I could deal with as a one-woman business.

However, "no marketing" means (to some extent) no control over who approaches you for work. You can feel so *grateful* for the prospect of more work that you take on projects which are really not what you wanted to do -- and you justify it to yourself by saying "Well, it's money! It's improved cashflow! It will pay the bills!".

Meanwhile, however, your sense of who you are through the kind of work you do is diminished because you are *stuck* making money -- but *not* doing the things you really want to do. Word of mouth is great, and kept me very busy, but not in the fields/industry I *wanted* to be busy in. Making money is great -- but if that was the reason I worked, I would have still been in the corporate world.

Define yourself, your business through your marketing.

It was well after I was into the business that I realised how simplistic my plan had been. My analysis of the competition was not sufficient -- nor my target market research. The bank(s) did not point this out to me (*surprise, surprise*) -- they just said "no -- you can't have the money on that plan".

The definition of the business was deliberately broad to allow flexibility -- but breadth also made focus and concentration on specific services to specific markets more difficult to grasp. I had created a situation where the business was positioned as the PR-communications-marketing-dtp-publications dept." for various small and medium-sized businesses.

Like using "creative visualisation" techniques, I think a marketing plan should affirm not only what you can (and *are*) doing, but also the direction in which you want your work to head -- the who you particularly want to work with (what types of people, businesses and industry) and well as how (do you do everything, or do you take on the management of the work of others).

In my case, for example, I could have more clearly focussed myself on providing communication support services for training/human resources/organisational development consultancies -- allowing me to build on my interests in this area, and use my skills to support initiatives I already had an appreciation for.

Written by Julia Mosbauer, Owner of Little Black Duck Communications