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Do you have big goals and plans for your business in 2010?  We can help!

Collective-E ties together everything you  need to succeed with a new, fresh approach to brand building.  From creating new and improved revenue models, to building your website or running your PR campaign, our unique hybrid of an Entrepreneur Agency and Community is focused on bringing you the services, PR & marketing platforms, exposure and connections you need to nurture your ideas and build your brands.

OUR PHILOSOPHY
As a team, we are not only entrepreneurs who understand your experience, but collectively, we have worked with thousands of women entrepreneurs at all stages of their businesses.  Based upon that, we have determined four essential components for success:

Business strategy
Public relations
Online presence
Community

We operate under the belief that these four components must be actively engaged and in harmony, and that it is vitally important for entrepreneurs to have the ability to understand, control, and operate all aspects of their businesses.  Most importantly, our team approach ultimately makes your brand more visible, makes you money and leaves you empowered to successfully build your business.

OFFERINGS
Here is where Collective-E truly takes on a new dimension, our agency approach gives you options to meet virtually all of your brand building needs:

COLLECTIVE-E MEMBERSHIP
By joining our community as a member of the Collective-E you plug into our highly optimized marketing platform online, gain access to exclusive PR leads, media contacts, exclusive PR tools as well as Random Acts of Pitching, become part of a marketplace to feature your goods and services, attend events, receive free and discounted workshops, access to opportunities and most importantly, connections to other entrepreneurs you can depend on for support, collaboration and partnerships no matter your stage of growth.
Learn more about all of these benefits in our newly designed and expanded Membership area

AGENCY SERVICES
From hand holding to full on execution, The Collective-E agency offers assistance and experts in the categories of:

Business Strategy: Revenue Modeling, Brand Development, Copywriting/Brand Messaging, Business Plan Writing, Online Advertising Strategy and Execution including Display Advertising and Ad Networks,  Business Development & Sales...
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Online Presence: Website Design and Programming, Online Strategy, SEO, Social Media, eCommerce...  
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Public Relations: Press Strategy, Media Kit Development, Alternative Marketing, Head Shot & Reel Creation, Campaign Management and Execution...
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CASE STUDIES

	Mom Inventor Launches a Must-Have Solution Business for Parents Read the case study
	One Innovative Idea, Multiple Revenue Streams Read the case study

With so much on your mind, we want to help you make the path to your goals totally clear and give you laser focus.  Please contact us to set up a call to discuss any of your brand building needs and we'll figure out which membership or services best fit your goals and budget. 

We look forward to being part of your success!

Flash sales are all the rage these days, companies like Gilt, Groupon and Totsy, along with the many others including ideeli, Beyond the Rack and RueLaLa have a similar business model.  Essentially, these companies bring the sample sale online by offering super short-term sales with very discounted prices to their “members,” basically anyone who signs up for the newsletter.  The sales can feature anything from clothes and accessories to baby products, furniture, spa services and restaurants.  The “flash” part of the sale are that the sales are usually 1-3 days in length and the best products and services may sell out quickly.

As we watch these companies multiply, the model is clearly working as can be attested by all the copycat companies popping up in each vertical from home furnishing to food.  As they become a more viable distribution channel and marketing tool, many companies are including them in their plans.   But are they good for your business?  Is it smart for your business to participate in flash sales?  While there may very well be some great advantages like increased sales and brand exposure, some call these companies the “discounting devil,” and there are clearly some disadvantages with discounting your products or services to such a degree.  I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle especially if you can find a way to use them to your advantage.  In this series, we set out to research these flash sale sites by going directly to some of our Collective-E members who have participated and discover some pros, cons and strategies for making them work in building your brand.

We’ll start this series with a look at Groupon.

Groupon is a simple model which I admire (I always admire a simple, effective and clear business strategy), started by a young hot shot entrepreneur Andrew Mason in Chicago. Each day Groupon sends out an email with a “deal of the day,”  a heavily discounted (at least 50% off a product or service) in a variety of cities across the US.  They started in Chicago and are growing like wildfire, now in 40 cities.  This is a local angle focusing on “the best stuff to do, see, eat and buy on a local level.”  The offerings can be products or services. 

What surprised me most is that I thought a business might participate in Groupon for the traffic that it provides, but according to my sources, Groupon sells vendors on an impulse purchase strategy, they only expect a small percentage of those who purchase to actually redeem the “coupon”.    Groupon encourages you to offer a 50% or more discount and takes 50% of what they sell plus processing costs.  So think about it, if you have a $100 service that you discount to $50, you will make less than $25 per sale. Is it worth it? 

As always, lets go straight to Collective-E members to find out their experiences:

“I have tried it twice”  
Alycea Ungaro, founder of Real Pilates was approached by Groupon to do a deal with her Pilates studio.  She decided to do it as an experiment shortly after they launched in NYC, but only as an offer for new clients to Real Pilates.  “We offered $100 worth of Pilates or services for $50, on the first try they sold around 80, so we made around $2k.  Of the 80 sold only 5 came into the studio, and the certificates are good for one year.  If all 80 came in it would be tremendous loss, but in this case it did well for us, however, none of those 5 became ongoing customers.  The second time we did the Groupon we offered $42 for a 55 minute Pilates session, 51% off.  This was more successful, we sold 150 and more actually came in and actually became new customers. Still, nothing close to even 100 actually showed up.  According to Alycea, another Pilates studio in NYC offered a similar discount and sold over 700, but they also opened the offering existing customers, we feel that could be very dangerous and slippery slope.”

Will you do it again?  “Yes, I plan to experiment and play around with it, in total we have made over $5k from Groupon and we think that it has been good for exposure.  However, we will continue our policy of only offering to new clients.”

“I was a side deal”
Bara Sapir, founder TestPrep NY was a Groupon “side deal.”  On every Groupon email there is another offer on the bottom right corner that is called a “side deal.”    Bara loves Groupon as a customer and wanted to participate with her business, she reached out to them herself.  As a test prep company they choose to put her as a side, they said it was based on feedback from their experience with another test prep company.

According to Bara, “it took a long time to get hooked up and get the deal up and going, but I think that next time around it would take less time.”  She offered 70% off services, of which she would split the remaining 30% 50/50 with Groupon.  She did not have any sales from the Groupon.  
Will you do it again? “Yes. I think that the visibility potential was great, even though we were on the sideline. From other people I've spoken with, the 'side deal' items get much lower hits because people don't always open the email if they aren't interested in the main email. Also, I was told that our item follows what some other similar niche markets experience. So whether it's so niche or so hidden, I'm not sure what didn't work, but I still think it's a great opportunity for potential brand exposure.”

Conclusion

Here is a three step process to determine if Groupon is right for you:
1.    Does Groupon fit your brand image?  If you are extreme high end luxury, it might not and you might look to someone like Gilt Group.
2.    Determine your goal:  revenue, brand exposure, traffic, attracting new clients
3.    Design your strategy:  your offering will include the pricing, product/service and if you are offering to new or existing clients.   Look at is as an experiment and be willing to adjust.

Last bit of advice, proceed with caution, be aware that it is hard to recover from indiscriminate discounting; you train your customers to expect a discount. You might consider selling some of your overstock, focusing on attracting new clients or driving traffic during off hours.

Have you tried Groupon?  Please share your experience.

I am in the workplace, yet work from a sunny porch. I'm not in a 9-5 job with an HR department mandating my vacation time and maternity leave, but when I found out I was pregnant, a little bit of fear for my job included itself in the celebrations. I am an entrepreneur, a woman who runs a lot of things at once (not a one-woman-show, but...) and I'm pregnant.


CONFESSION #1: Assumptions
As someone who hires others for project-based jobs, and works with people on an ongoing basis in order to produce website projects for Collective-E and Katie James Pixelated, I have an awareness of children, and if children can affect deadlines I set for clients. The same goes for any life issue, and for any busy contractor who is managing several clients at once, but there is a certain assumption from others once "baby" or "pregnant" is mentioned, that you won't be available anymore, or for a while. My confession is that this does cross my mind that they might be right, despite my total support of mothers working (I don't even like calling it out because I see it as such a normal thing), and my total knowledge that mothers can handle working and raising a family. But the truth is, stuff happens that prevents you from working at your usual pace. And it's not like you can hide your pregnancy. People want to be happy for you, wish you well, and may need to know if you ate all of the wrong foods one weekend, followed by a stupid Wendy's cookie dough Frosty, because it explains why you "fell off the grid" one Monday when you got suddenly sick (what? no more fried fish and chips?). Or, the tests that come up, like the gestational diabetes screening test that takes an hour, requiring you to book projects on that day that do not require you to be online, but that you can work on (designing website mockups, reconciling Amex charges in QuickBooks, answering emails to keep jobs spinning, etc). So...you're still working, you're just working from an OB room, answering email on the iPhone and working with team members to get deadlines done. Not to mention the fact that that that screening test just led to the 3-hour confirmation test for a Tuesday morning at 8:15am, where you'd have to stay in the OB room for 3 hours while nurses draw blood once an hour while you've been fasting. Not to worry. This busy entrepreneur was raised by a mother who always packed her a back of goodies on road trips, so I will not be idle.

CONFESSION #2: Entrepreneurial Life at the End of the Tunnel to the New World
As much as I don't want Collective-E members and clients thinking I will disappear..., will I actually disappear? Will I find that iPhone app that turns the phone into a modem for a Mac (where is that darn thing??) This is a first time pregnancy, so I have no idea what my days and nights will be like, aside from stories people have shared. I confess that I do think my work life will end. I know this isn't true, because if it ended I would be twitching all the way to the kitchen. My mother raised me to have a career, which I have. The only difference is, I never wore all of those suits she bought me, and I don't work for a company that provides for me health insurance (I got that through the Freelancers Union, and now through my husband's union). So even though I know that I won't disappear and that my business will end, I have no idea what it will all look like (members and clients take note: this is just the fear talking... ;) I'm not going anywhere).

CONFESSION #3: Inspired by others I see doing it
One of the best benefits of my career and as co-founder of Collective-E, the entrepreneurs agency with community, is that I am surrounded by other entrepreneurs of like mind and lifestyle. They alone show me that I can do it. That I can raise a happy family and a happy career at the same time.

• Katie Danziger of nomie baby has three children and was so inspired by her experiences with them, that she created her nomie baby car seat cover. She just landed her product in Diapers.com and BuyBuyBaby.com.
• My business partner, Beth Schoenfeldt, is someone who I watch every day balance raising her son with our Collective-E developments, members and clients. Through her, I watch what it is like to be involved with a day care program that she and her son love.
• Cori Snyder Schuman of Celebrity Chef the Game has figured out how to distribute her board game for foodies through Amazon while raising her daughter.
• Outi Putkonan of Mugi Pottery Studio raises two rambunctious children while co-running an Upper West Side pottery studio in NYC, and she's filled that studio to the max with adult and kids classes, Date Night with Pottery, and many other ideas that she cranks into fruition. Our last phonecall was to dicuss website enhancements, which she conducted from the privacy of their coner of an ER while her son got stitches.
• Kathy Malone of the Brooklyn Indie Designers Market on Smith Street. Kathy raises her son, who sometimes helps run the booth, while achieving her dream of starting a weekly market - with a big red and white tent - for independent designers to sell from.
• Gina Papalia Stricks of Grasshopper Pilates in Soho, raises her two children, balancing her daughter's growing desire to mix and match her wardrobe to be as developed as her mother's, and Gina's new studio location and business partners (also first time pregnant!).

This list can go on and on.

The entrepreneurial lifestyle is not normal by any means, but it is liberating. One of my motivations for quitting my job and going out on my own as a website designer was to have my choice of vacation time. My husband works in the film industry, so while his working days can be very long and without break, his actual breaks can be for long stretches where he would take off on adventures. In theory, this is a great idea to tag along. In reality, I tag along, but I have permanent seats in different Paneras and Starbucks around the country that offer free wireless and an environment where I'm not saying "no, sorry I can't come" to family members who may be doing fun lifestyle things. The balance of life with work is maybe my biggest entrepreneurial challenge at the moment because they both bring me joy.

CONFESSION #4: The Lifestyle Balance
Which brings me to my final confession: I am looking forward to the schedule mandates. In college, I watched one of my roommates be so busy, yet get the best grades, have fun with her friends, and work as the manager of a dessert restaurant to support her way through school. In my final two years of college, I stepped up and took on a slew of projects, including a job and studying. My theory was that because of her busy schedule, she had to be planned, and she couldn't procrastinate. She couldn't afford to, or she'd miss deadlines for papers, or be tired at work. I am a person who can meander. I wouldn't call it ADD, I would call it stimulation, which sometimes works in my favor to get other things done that maybe didn't make it to the list but should have. The baby will have needs that must be met. There is no putting off feeding it, like I put off my own lunch. Thankfully, I do have some preparation for this, in that I have a dog and two cats who I love, and it's my dog who I can make time for to walk or pet or feed, which takes time away from working.

Already this pregnancy is improving my work life. It is making me schedule in a way that I only thought about (sad...thinking about how to schedule). I have to take the plunge to bring on an ongoing assistant, a Digital Traffic Controller, that I've been putting off for a year. That is the next logical step in terms of investment in my business, and one that needs to be made, pregnancy or not. So you see, these are all good things!

Olympic USA member Apolo Ohno won a silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic games in the men's 1500 meter short track speed skating race and became the most decorated US olympic champion. In case you didn't see, Ono was losing the race and blocked out of moving up when in the final corner two skaters went down.   It may seem like he was just lucky, but really, he was well positioned and just kept going with things looked most bleak, such a great lesson, you never know what will happen in the game of business, when you'll get your big break!

Watch this, and get yourself in position to win!