Are you looking for a way to develop a stronger rapport between your customer base and your business? An e-newsletter could be the answer to your search. Creating a basic e-newsletter that will keep your clientele up to date about the goings on of your business is an incredibly beneficial and simple tool. An e-newsletter can do many things for your business—it can provide useful information about upcoming events, build communication between you and your customer base, and remind your customers of your presence without being pushy or overbearing. By creating a weekly or monthly newsletter via email, you are telling your customers that you appreciate them enough to keep them in the loop about your business.

Creating such a newsletter can be an incredibly easy task. As an intern at the Irish Modern Dance Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, I was put in charge of building a format for a newsletter for the company. At that point in time, I had no experience formatting e-newsletters or anything of the like, but with a little help from some Internet tools, I created a newsletter format they still use today, two years later. And I have to say, as a recipient of their e-newsletters, I am always excited to open up that email and find out what is going on with the company to this day.

When you begin a regular schedule of emailing your customers, you are telling them that you want their business and care about them enough to keep them informed. You are, therefore, building trust between your customers and your business. You’re giving your customers knowledge about your company. On the business end of things, you are also reminding people about your company, which increases your potential for repeat customers. You are building a mailing list that gives you access to different people and markets, and you are making a trusted name for yourself in your niche market.

Templates and Tools

So how do you create such a simple e-newsletter? I will share with you the tools I used in creating the e-newsletter for the Irish Modern Dance Theatre that proved helpful to me. These tools should be helpful whether you are an expert at computers or haven’t the slightest idea where to begin.

If you’re looking for a template for your newsletter, you have a few options. Constant Contact offers email newsletter templates along with email promotion and social media marketing templates. With such a variety of offers, they have priced the availability of their templates at $15 a month, with a free, 60-day trial. I have not used this because I had not the funds, but if you have the funds and want help with more than just an e-newsletter, Constant Contact might be a great site to check out. There are many sites out there just like Constant Contact that provide free trials of which you can take advantage to get a handle on creating your own e-newsletter.

I’d also suggest checking out Campaign Monitor, which has various price packages and helps manage your email lists. Another site to visit for email marketing is MailChimp. MailChimp is a great source for e-newsletters and has a Forever Free plan if you have less than 2,000 subscribers. If you plan to keep your business small, this might be a great option for you.

If you’re looking for something free and user-friendly, Microsoft Office provides many templates for newsletters. When I created the e-newsletter for the dance theatre, I used one of these basic templates and simply filled in the blanks the boxes provided. If you’re not used to composing HTML or writing in code, I suggest using one of these easy templates. Paying for a service such as Constant Contact or eNewsletters Online can benefit you in terms of efficiency and time as well as providing more user-friendly options. However, if you’re willing to put in a little work, Microsoft Office provides the templates for free, and you only have to fill in the blanks.

Be informative and concise

When it comes to content, make sure to be concise and simple. Make your text easy to read and understand. Be succinct and to the point. Basically, what you’re trying to do is make it as easy as possible for your customer base to stay informed about your business. You can also provide offers and promotions in the newsletters, but it is not always a requirement. Make sure your customers have the option to subscribe and easily unsubscribe from your newsletters so they don’t feel as if the information is being forced upon them. For more about content and some suggested rules to follow when composing your e-newsletter, I refer you to Smashing Magazine’s article “Design and Build Email Newsletters Without Losing Your Mind (and Soul)” by Mathew Patterson. Patterson generates a good discussion about e-newsletter etiquette (respect your reader, design with a goal in mind, always include a plain text version) and provides nice examples of previously designed newsletters to peruse through.

The point of such newsletters is not to simply talk about your business, but to inform your customers, so make sure the information you provide is useful for your readers. Always provide clear contact information. The newsletter I wrote for the dance company included upcoming performances, fundraisers, and ways for people to get involved with the company. Although auditions were also an important part of the company, we didn’t stress them in the newsletter because we knew that the majority of our customer base was interested in performances, not auditions. Therefore, we provided contact information at the bottom of the newsletter for those interested in auditions.

My point is, keep your market’s interests in mind. Make sure that the information you are providing will be useful to a wide range of people. Rather than including an entire calendar, feature a specific upcoming event and provide a link to a calendar on your website. Utilize links to keep your newsletter brief. Don’t waste your reader’s time. Give them a succinct newsletter they can walk away from and feel more knowledgeable and efficiently informed.

This is a guest blog post by Emily Calvin.

I hope you find this helpful, and as always, send feedback to me at mail@evergreenhq.com or on Twitter @macmartine and @evergreenhq

This post is part of my email newsletter ‘How to Promote A Business’. Sign up for it on our Facebook page!

The great thing about the web, and Evergreen, is that your business has 24/7 marketing and promotion happening, even when you’re asleep or having a glass of wine with friends. Clients can schedule appointments with you at anytime, at their convenience. The goal is to get your business out their so clients can find you. There’s nothing like waking up, looking at your calendar to find that you’ve just acquired a handful of new customers who have scheduled appointments online with you with no extra effort from you.

However, there is a little upkeep to be done to really improve your chances of converting these service-provider seekers into your customers.

First Impressions

The moment a customer decides they need a product or service their next step is to determine where to get it. If your business happens to offer that particular product or service, you are in the running to gain that customer. Likely, this is not going to be an easy race to win. You probably have a few competitors and they might have a better online reputation than your business does.

In today’s age of digital media, they immediately find at their fingertips page after page of information; reviews, comments, blog posts, tweets, forum conversations, Facebook posts, maybe even YouTube videos that have something to do with your business.

In the few seconds it takes to scan a page of results, your customer can form an opinion of your company and, depending on what they are seeing, it can either be very good for you or very, very bad. You want it to be good; you don’t want to come in last place.

For a small business especially, every customer counts. You don’t need the potential losses. You need people to form a good first impression of your business. If you have buzz about your business, you want positive buzz. Every small business should take the time to make sure that they establish a good online presence that will supplement their reputation in a positive way. Then, they should monitor that online reputation.

Give Your Customers a Place to Gather, Vent and Rave

Having a Facebook, Twitter, and company blog opens up the pathways to communication with your consumers while establishing that good online presence you want people to come across when they look you up. Having that platform, customers will be less likely to go elsewhere on the web to spew any discontent. You will be able respond quickly and effectively.

Keeping customers up to date can drive interest at the same time. Sure, you don’t have to tell them everything, but even if you have a secret project in the works, letting them know that something big is coming soon and that’s what you and your staff have been busy working on drives their interest and keeps them checking back with you. Or simply announcing deals on your site, Facebook page, Twitter, etc. will also dramatically increase your client return rate, as everyone loves a good deal. And as they return to whichever online platforms you actively use, they will in turn schedule more appointments if you give them an easy way to do so.

Online Reputation Monitoring Tools

Though it seems tedious to check up the reviews and status of your site when there are so many places online that it might pop up, there are a quite a few ways out there that can make this more easily done.

To listen to what is going on in the social media world regarding your business, tools like Trakur offer information on search results, rating and what sites are saying about your business.

Hootsuite lets you monitor your different social media networks from one place, send out multiple messages and posts and monitor brand mentions.

Google Alerts informs you on what is said on the web about your business or keywords relating to your business.

SMBReviews alerts you to reviews posted online about your business and can let you check out he competition and even distribute coupons if you want.

Tools like Boardreader search your keywords or brand name across forums and boards to let you in on what conversations include your business.

For full range of social media monitoring, Brandwatch is one analytical company that boasts being able to give you brand an edge.

If you think your businesses online reputation is in really in trouble, there are even options like Internet911, which specialize in social media monitoring and risk management.

Fess Up, Be Transparent and Honest

All it may take is someone in your company being on the ball and ready to react in the best possible way to any problems that crop up. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. How are you going to deal with customer problems? What tone will you use? How far will you go to solve the problem? How far will you compromise?

Dealing right away with the problems that crop up can be a good opportunity to develop your businesses reputation. Respond with speed and honesty. Transparency builds trust. Try to solve the problem and show everyone that your business has nothing to hide and is willing to improve for the sake of the customer.

Listening to the customer by monitoring your online reputation also gives you the opportunity to improve your business. Finding out the good and bad, seeing the trends, finding out customer reactions and feedback leads can lead you toward making improvements that will better your ability to meet your customers needs.

And Finally, Watch for an Increase in Appointment Scheduling

Take the time to establish your online reputation. While it can be time-consuming, monitor it too. The effort you put in will result in a couple of very important things: happier customers and, in direct connection, a happier business, and more scheduled appointments.

I hope you find this helpful, and as always, send feedback to me at mail@evergreenhq.com or on Twitter @macmartine and @evergreenhq

This post is part of my email newsletter ‘How to Promote A Business’. Sign up for it on our Facebook page!

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social networking and micro-blogging site that uses photos or thumbnails they call “pins” for viewing, commenting on and discussing. It’s an online virtual pinboard or scrapbook that lets their users “pin” their ideas and things that interest them and share it with everyone. This can be a pin that someone else posted, or one that you created. Think of it like an old-fashion pinboard (or magnetic refrigerator) in your house where you pin postcards and photos that others send you, or a drawing that a friend made, a picture you took, or a take-out menu. Pinterest is remarkably well done and filled with quality and inspiring content no matter what your interests are. It’s really fun to start exploring on there, as it never fails to lead me to something interesting.

And of course, Pinterest has a social aspect letting the “pinners” comment on and share each others pins across Pinterest as well as other social media networks like Twitter and Facebook. It started from a small group that shares a common interest and now millions are using and interacting on the site.

Pinterest is still quite new, but people are finding many creative ways to use it. Some share their favorite food, art, design, or home-making ideas, while others use it to post their photos during a vacation or cruise, and some to show the new trends in fashion and style. It’s best to just go browse around (after you finish reading this article, of course).

While exploring, you can browse by interest to help narrow down what you want to see, or just look around everywhere and see where the journey takes you.

How to use Pinterest as a business marketing tool

As a business you can use this in various ways. Don’t forget, the world of marketing today is so much different than it used to be. Much of marketing today isn’t direct marketing, but it’s getting involved socially, getting in the conversations, and making yourself seen. If you are interesting, people will want to know more about you and your business. Don’t forget the cocktail party metaphor: nobody wants to hear someone going around talking about themselves all the time, they want to talk to someone that’s engaging, with similar interests, talking about interesting things and someone who’s curious about others. That is the kind of person that people will want to know more about. If a stranger comes up to you and starts rambling about, and promoting their business right off the bat, that’s going to be quite a turn off. Engaging in an interesting conversation on the other hand, leads to better things (such as potential clients on your Facebook page, your website, or in your office).

You can start out by commenting on, liking, re-pinning other people posts. It’s not all about posting fresh content yourself, it’s about creating your own unique pinboard from anything you find OR create. If you want to start posting your own content you can post anything of interest. I suggest trying to slide in some posts that relate to your business. If you are a massage therapist, post intriguing photos of your space, or of you giving a massage, or your favorite products. Get creative. If you own a restaurant, post pictures of your food, your menu, and your environment. As a piano teacher you can post pictures of you teaching, your recitals, or of pianos. You will have to adapt this to your particular niche, but get creative, and give it a shot. See what other people in your niche are posting. Once you get started you’ll get new ideas and you’ll get the hang of it fast. Don’t over-think it. And engage in other conversations by commenting on, liking, re-pinning other people posts.

And of course, don’t forget to link your account to your other social-networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, and your blogs RSS feed if you have one.

I hope you find this helpful, and as always, send feedback to me at mail@evergreenhq.com or on Twitter @macmartine and @evergreenhq

This post is part of my email newsletter ‘How to Promote A Business’. Sign up for it on our Facebook page!

PORTLAND, Ore. (January 24, 2012) – A local man has found a cure for phone tag, tedious email threads and other appointment-scheduling hazards with the launch of Evergreen, an online application that enables clients to quickly schedule online. Evergreen also automates email and SMS/text reminders, cutting down on no-shows.

“I was waiting to get a massage one day and overheard the front desk receptionist making the same reminder calls over and over,” says Mac Martine, Evergreen creator and founder/CEO of Cycle7 software. “I realized I could help. I created Evergreen to make life easier for appointment-based businesses and the clients they serve.”

The easy-to-use, affordable program allows customers to go online to choose what service they want to schedule and which staff member they want to schedule with. They can then browse the online calendar until they find an ideal appointment time. Once a client is scheduled, the staff member is notified, and the appointment is then in the calendar and the client is added to the customer database.

If the business chooses to, they can have an email and/or SMS/text message sent automatically to clients at any given point before the appointment. They might choose, for example, to have an email sent out 24 hours before the appointment, and a text message reminder sent two hours prior to the appointment. According to research in the latest issue of Health Services Research, 18 separate studies found that text/SMS (short message service) message reminders decreased the number of no-shows by nearly 50%. That alone can drive significant savings in lost time and money each year. Combined with the amount of time saved from phone and email scheduling, and manually phoning customers, the benefits are tremendous.

Evergreen offers simple tools to boost your business Evergreen is more than just appointment scheduling software. It also includes numerous tools to help small businesses promote and market their services online. A one-page website is created for each account, which contains business information such as contact information, hours, maps, and scheduling mechanism for clients. ‘Book now’ buttons and an appointment scheduling widget can be embedded in any webpage, Facebook page, email or online ad. “Evergreen is like a Swiss-army knife for service providers,” Martine says. “It’s online appointment scheduling, automated appointment reminders, customer database, online marketing tool, and more, all wrapped up in one easy-to-use little package.”

About Cycle7 Cycle7 is a software company in Portland, Ore. Its flagship product, Evergreen, allows small businesses to enable clients to schedule appointments online, and automates email and SMS/text appointment reminders to clients. Created in 2011, Evergreen online appointment scheduling software reduces scheduling hassles and no-shows for spas, salons, massage therapists, independent music teachers, tutors, and other types of service providers.

During the past years, social media has made a dramatic impact on small and big businesses alike. It has taken word-of-mouth and put in on steroids. Instead of your customers spreading the word about your business at a dinner party, or to a friend, they can now reach all of their friends, acquaintances, and even people they don’t know in seconds with Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Google+ and more.

Facebook, in particular, has greatly helped small businesses and is continuously doing so. With more than 800 million active users on Facebook (50% of whom are on Facebook every single day), each user has on average of 130 friends. My head almost explodes when I try to do the math of figuring out the potential reach this can have when someone says something about your business, good or bad.

If you want to bring your business online, marketing on Facebook is one of the first places to start, up there with Claiming your business on Google Places

The best part is that it can have huge benefits at no cost. However, it does take commitment, time and attention, but if you cultivate it well, your customer base will grow.

Create a Facebook page

A Facebook page is the best way to promote your business online. You must have a personal account to create a page. To create a page, first login to Facebook, then go here.

Pages can be created for companies, small and big businesses, brands, celebrities, products and more. I suggest starting with one page so that you can give it the proper attention it deserves.

Make your page interesting by posting pictures and videos. Be unique and interesting. Post a profile picture that best showcases your business/product line.

Focus on increasing your fan base

This will be slow initially. When marketing on Facebook, start by promoting your page to your Facebook friends. You can also join forums and be active on other social networking sites to make your business presence known. You can put your Facebook page link in your forum signatures, email signatures, etc. Blog about it, tweet about it, whatever you can think of to get the word out there. And ask people to ‘like’ your page. You need a call to action; people respond to that. And over time you’ll find more ways to drive leads to your Facebook page.

Integrate Facebook with your other social networking accounts

If you Twitter, you can automatically have your tweets post on your Facebook page. To do this, login to your Twitter account and go to your Profile page. At the bottom will be an options to ‘post your Tweets to Facebook’.

You can also do the reverse – have your Facebook posts automatically tweeted. To do this, login to Facebook, and in the search bar at the top, start typing ‘twitter’. When the ‘Twitter’ app appears in the list, select it and follow the instructions.

If you have a Google+ account or LinkedIn account, you can link those up as well (and go ahead and join me while you’re there!). Use your judgement on what accounts to link together. On one hand, I find that people generally keep up with one or two social sites, but not all of them. So it’s good to be able to reach as many of them as you can. On the other hand, you don’t want to flood people with duplicate content all over the place.

Build strong relationships

Start by building a good relationship with other people. Never overdo your promotion by constantly talking about your business.

Focus on attracting quality followers, not merely gaining a huge number of likes in a short span of time. When someone likes your page, contact that person immediately. Build trust among your customers. Focus on creating a good connection with each of them. This way, they may also recommend your page to their friends and acquaintances. Word of mouth is still one of the best ways to promote a business, both online and offline. And online it’s completely turbo-charged and somewhere you need to be.

Get engaged

The Facebook page is created primarily to promote your business. However, don’t forget that it is a social networking site. Therefore, you need to interact and have fun with other users without constantly pushing them to purchase your products.

In order to keep the attention of your fan base, you need to find ways to keep them entertained. How do you do this? You can post entertaining quotes and statuses every now and then. You can start discussions and ask them questions to get conversations happening on your Facebook wall. Remember, you must give people a reason to keep coming back.

You can also offer incentives, like coupons and freebies. Reward loyal customers accordingly. If you make an effort to make your fans happy, they will definitely keep on coming back.

Remain committed

Showcase your product line by posting videos and pictures. Always make it a point to keep your Facebook page constantly updated with quality, relevant content. Tag your fans if you have new products available. Encourage them to tag themselves or friends with new pictures or videos in your page. This is one of the best marketing on Facebook strategies for product promotion.

Becoming an expert in Facebook marketing won’t happen overnight. Think of this as a learning experience. You will make mistakes along the way. Learn from them to develop your strategy. Always find ways to enhance your knowledge. Research is the key. Learn marketing on Facebook from the experts by looking at what other businesses are doing do attract loyal followers.

And remember, quality over quantity, both in the people that ‘like’ your page, and the content that you post.

I hope you find this helpful, and as always, send feedback to me at mail@evergreenhq.com or on Twitter @macmartine and @evergreenhq

This post is part of my email newsletter ‘How to Promote A Business’. Sign up for it on our Facebook page!

Yes, Free! Appointment Scheduling Software

I wanted to remind you of the ways you can get our scheduling software, Evergreen, for free. In addition, I’d like to add a couple new ways.

I have added this to the pricing page, but wanted to tell you about it here too.

Free appointment scheduling software forever:

• If you are a non-profit
• If you are a student
• If you are one-person with 25 appointments or less, per month (see our free plan)

Free appointment scheduling software for 2-months:

You can get one month free (on top of the 30-day free trial) by ‘Liking’ the Evergreen Appointment Scheduling Software Facebook page. Simply send me an email if you do, and we’ll give you a free month!

You can get one month free (on top of the 30-day free trial) if you refer-a-friend. Just send me an email with the name of the who referred who and the referrer will get a free month.

AMTA discounts:

Also, you can get 15% off any plan if are a member of the American Massage Therapy Association. See details here.

What are your thoughts on this post? Join the conversation in the comments below!

Eric Dye: Tell me a little bit about your background, and how you got to where you are?

Mac Martine: Well, I went to the University of Oregon and got an Environmental Studies Degree which I’m pretty much not using. But during my senior year I started building websites for fun and got really into it and started wanting to make them more and more fancy, and I ended up pursuing that and I got lucky and landed a job with Adobe right off the bat. I was testing software and eventually was writing code all day to automate the testing of the applications. I ended up being there quite a long time and I loved it and got to work on all sorts of great products and get my name on desktops around the world with products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. I went in only knowing web development and 11 years later I was still there and was but basically taught myself to program in a handful of different languages while I was there.

Starting a business has for some reason always been a dream of mine. I knew that I would have to give it a shot some day but it took longer than I thought, because I loved my job with Adobe. I feel like that’s a little backwards though — I usually hear of people starting a business because they can’t stand working for someone else, they hate their current job, or they can’t find work. So, I feel like my problem was a good one to have.

And because I’ve always loved what I do, I’ve always had side projects going on at all times. I made some iPhone apps, decided I didn’t like that so much, and eventually I had an idea that I really thought I could make a business out of. And that’s the one I ended up leaving my day job for in the end. But before I did, I spent many months working on it, and reading all kinds of books and blogs about running a business, and figuring out a plan. But I still kept postponing making the leap — because that’s the easier thing to do when you have a guaranteed paycheck.

But I got married recently, and when we started talking about starting a family I knew that this was my time to strike out on my own, or else it might not happen for awhile. So, I made the leap, and founded a company called Cycle7. The first product is called Evergreen. Now my wife and I are expecting a baby in March. I guess you could say I’m getting a lot of practice with late nights and little sleep.

Eric Dye: So tell me about your product, Evergreen, and where you got the idea for it?

Mac Martine:Evergreen is a software-as-a-service application for service providers such as massage therapists, chiropractors, spas and salons to tutors. Actually the market is huge. I mean, independent music teachers can use it too. Actually, that’s where I initially got the idea for it. My sister-in-law is a professional musician and teaches on the side when she’s home. She had mentioned several times how much of a pain scheduling her students was, and how disrupting it was when a student wouldn’t show up, or they’d cancel minutes before they were supposed to show up. So, I think that’s what sparked the idea initially. But, basically, it’s for anyone that offers services to clients by appointment, really.

So Evergreen makes it really easy for them to let their clients schedule appointments online at anytime which obviously reduces scheduling hassles like games of phone tag and managing scheduling over email. But the clients love it too, because they can browse through the calendar until they find a time that is best for them, instead of just being offered one or two times over the phone that aren’t ideal.

One of the ways that it reduces no-shows is that it can also can send out automated appointment reminders to clients by email and/or text message. So you could for example have an email sent to the client 24-hours before their appointment, and then a text message reminder 2 hours before their appointment if you wanted to. I knew how important this was early on when I was getting a massage and heard the woman at the desk calling customer after customer, reminding them of their appointments. And with automated reminders you lose a bit of that personal touch, but I don’t think clients mind. And actually, I think more and more clients would prefer the reminder by text message anyway. It’s less disruptive, and I actually know a lot of people that hate talking on the phone. But this much isn’t all that revolutionary, to be honest. I mean, I feel that I’ve Evergreen is quicker to learn and easier to use than other options out there…

But my goal with Evergreen is more than just appointment scheduling and reminders. I’m a big believer in small businesses, and I try to support them over the big guys whenever I can. So, I really want to help them grow as a business but I also want to help them become ‘great’ businesses. I hate nothing more than bad service, or businesses that aren’t very friendly, or don’t treat clients with respect. I see it way too often. And you know, sometimes I don’t think they realize that unhappy customers will talk, and that alone can destroy your business. But happy customers talk too, and when they become customer evangelists for your business that’s really powerful. They are the best kind of marketers you can have. They will keep coming back, and they will tell their friends, and positive word of mouth is priceless and will get you more customers.

So, I’m constantly looking for ways to help them out both within Evergreen the application, and outside of it. For example just yesterday I started a free e-newsletter to anyone that wants to sign up, not just Evergreen clients, that’s called ‘How to Market a Small Business’. I’m sending this newsletter out weekly with easy but effective ways to promote and market your business without much of a budget. But I’m also thinking a lot about new features to incorporate into Evergreen that can help them with their business even if it’s not directly related to scheduling but still fits.

So… I guess that’s the short story about Evergreen. I think a lot of people love their work, but not the business or administrative aspects of it, so that’s where I’m trying to help out.

Eric Dye: So, you’ve been at this full time for about 6 months now. What do you find are the biggest challenges about running a business, especially doing so by yourself?

Mac Martine: It’s scarier, there’s more pressure. Financially it’s all on me. I have no-one to blame, and no-one else to help me get stuff done – except maybe my wife editing pages on my website sometimes. It’s crazy how much there is to do, and just keeping all those thoughts and ideas straight is hard, juggling so many different aspects of the business. But that’s also what I love about it. I thrive on a bit of stress and feeling a bit overwhelmed. My brain never stops — my idea of light reading while sitting on a beach in Hawaii on vacation is a 400 page book on the Ruby programming language or Jay Levinson’s book on Guerrilla Marketing or something like that. I just can’t get enough. So yeah, it’s all fun, but sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on one thing and see it through before I get distracted by something else I realize I need to do, or some other idea I have.

Eric Dye: With so many hats to wear, how do you keep it all straight and know what you should be doing? Are you one of those people that wrote out a business plan that you’re following, or do you just have it planned out in your head, or what?

Mac Martine:You know, there are different views on this out there, but I don’t see the benefit in looking too far ahead, and I know 37Signals talks about this stuff a lot, about how business plans are a waste of time.. Actually, I don’t even know that you can look very far ahead, at least in this kind of business. I mean, I have a vision of the product as a whole as I described earlier, and where I see it going, but I’m letting my clients guide this product. I almost view it as theirs, not mine. So, I can’t tell you what they’re going to need in a year, or how their needs change over time, and I’m just counting on being able to understand their problems and finding the best way to solve them. So I’m wasting my time if I make a big business plan or even a feature list and prioritize it now for the next 5 years, or even the next 6 months for that matter.

And I know that I want Cycle7 to be a business that I would want to work with, one that helps people and small businesses, and one that gives back when it can. But other than that, I’m not going to say that in 5 years Evergreen will look like this, and Cycle7 should have 3 employees or 175. I don’t really look more than 1 day ahead at this point. That might sound bad, but I think if there’s something bigger I need to plan for it’ll hit me in the face and I’ll know, and I’ll plan for it. It’s not like I don’t have long term ideas or goals, but they change every day.

And the same goes with marketing. My marketing plan changes every day. I have a bunch of various lists, and every morning I re-prioritize, and move to the top what looks the most important. I get new ideas every day, so at the end of the day my lists looks different, and I realize some things are working and some things aren’t, so it’s a constant cycle.

Otherwise I might end up sticking to some plan that I wrote a year ago that doesn’t work.

And that’s how I manage my time too. If I have a new idea, the question isn’t “do I have time to do it?”. Because I don’t. I have lists of work to do that would take me 10 years to complete on my own. The question is, does this take priority over everything else at the moment. It’s always a question of ‘what’s the top priority?’. It’s a juggling act where you’re jugging as many pins as you can, but someone keeps throwing more at you. So you have to decide to ignore the pin coming or if it looks better than one you already have then you can swap it out.

This is the only way I would know how to do it.

But that’s all in the beauty of being small and agile, and not taking funding. I don’t have anyone I have to get approval or permission from. If I see an opportunity I can jump on it 30 seconds from now. If a marketing idea isn’t working, I can stop now without letting anyone down or having to re-allocate the funding or something like that. Bu also, if I see that I could tweak my application slightly and make it available to an entirely different market I can do that too. I love that about what I’m doing now.

Eric Dye: You mentioned 37signals, are there other entrepreneurs or businesses that you’re inspired by?

Mac Martine:There are a few people that have really inspired me along the way, and continue to. Guys like Tony Hsieh of Zappos, and Jason Fried of 37signals — both almost household names these days. And guys like Jason Cohen of the great A Smart Bear blog, Ian Landsman of Helpspot, and Peldi, the guy behind Balsamiq Mockups which by the way, is a great overnight success story and I highly recommend reading his blog from the beginning. I really admire how these guys run their businesses and they’ve been a great inspiration, among others. At various times I’ve emailed Jason, and Ian, and Peldi with questions and they’ve all engaged in thoughtful email threads with me. And that alone says a lot. These guys are really busy, and they have no idea who I am, yet they still gave me their time. To me that gives great insight into why they’re successful at what they do.

Eric Dye:In conclusion in less than 60 seconds, what advice could you lend the entrepreneur that’s desiring to start a business or to initiate a creation kind of like yours of their own by putting it on the map in the marketplace?

Mac Martine:Hmm, I don’t know if this is much of a tip. But there are a lot of things that can be scary about starting a business, I mean, unless you are sitting on a pile of money, which most of us aren’t. Quitting a job can be scary, failure can be scary, the unknown can be scary. But honestly, what I’ve realized, and what has really helped me a lot it to take those scary thoughts and twist them around until they become a positive or exciting thing.

For example, instead of focusing on what would happen if you fail, you could think about how crappy it would feel to wake up at 60 and realize you have had a dream all your life that you never went after. And that if your business did fail, or you realize it’s not for you, then it’s still an awesome resume item. Starting a business, even if it doesn’t succeed, takes motivation and thought and care, and you can’t help but learn a ton of skills along the way.

Ya know, I’ve had to design the website, write the website copy, learn about marketing writing; I’ve developed the application in Ruby on Rails, I’m learning a ton about marketing a product, and SEO, and all sorts of stuff. So if I were to hire someone and saw something like that on a resume I’d call them in a heartbeat. The point is just that before I thought about it that way it was a scary distracting thought to fail, but with a positive spin on it I’m much more comfortable. Otherwise you’ll just freak out and give up, or you won’t even take the risk in the first place. So yeah, I guess my tip is to go for it and don’t look back. And find a positive spin on what you might otherwise worry about and be distracted by.

Transcript:

Welcome to the screencast covering the CRM, or, customer relationship management in Evergreen appointment scheduling software. By clicking on the clients tab you will find all the clients currently in your businesses client database.

The CRM and client database in Evergreen is simple, yet powerful. It’s largely managed without you having to do anything.

Each time a client is scheduled for an appointment they are automatically entered into your client database.

Getting started, clients are listed alphabetically by first name.

We can ‘expand’ or ‘collapse’ individual clients to view their information including contact information, past and upcoming appointments. Up here we can expand/collapse all clients at once.

Up top here, we can add a new client to the client database by simply pressing this button and populating the fields. If I try to save this client without entering any information you can see that the first name, email, and phone number fields are all required.

I’ll go ahead and create a client here. OK, April now appears in the client list.

We can then edit any existing client by pressing the corresponding ‘Edit Client’ button.

Within the edit mode you can also delete that client in the rare case you would want to do that.

Don’t forget about the client-at-a-glance view within the Calendar view. If you are just looking up a client it may be easier to do it there. You should really only need to go into the clients tab if you are editing a clients information.

Well, that’s it for the client database and CRM portion of Evergreen, it’s as easy as that! I hope you found that helpful.

Thanks for watching and I hope you’re enjoying using Evergreen appointment scheduling software, and please let us know what features you’d like to see added to the CRM within Evergreen.

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