by Heather T. | May 23, 2023 | Business, Marketing, Opinion
As I continue to go down the AI rabbit hole, I keep seeing suggestions out there for using AI to generate social media content, but I haven’t seen a lot so far giving actual specific examples and testing the existing platforms against each other. I’m sure they’re out there since I started playing with this, but I wanted to give you my personal take and some comments about what I found so far.
I love free stuff, especially for free platforms. While there are a lot of paid options out there, I wanted to try to stick with the free ones just because I work with so many small businesses with very limited marketing budgets, and the last thing I want to do is start suggesting paid platforms when there are just as many good alternatives out there that are free.
There was recently an article on Make Use Of on using Canva to bulk generate images so I gave it a try. This has some pros and cons, for example, if you’re doing quotes if your not really specific about the prompt given. When you ask the AI generator to do quotes, you need to give it some very specific parameters about how to separate the data; otherwise, when you copy and paste it into a spreadsheet, you still have to spend some time separating the text into separate columns.
I found when I first started playing with this option, I asked it to generate quotes about scones, and I didn’t give it specific parameters and then had to spend about 5 minutes separating the columns out from each other, which realistically from a time perspective isn’t a lot but if you were doing a whole lot of these that time can add up, and it doesn’t necessarily become a time saver.
So here are some examples, just as a test of some scone quotes in an Excel sheet uploaded to Canva and then autogenerated into a very basic template for scone social media posts. You can do a lot more with it, and I came out with some more creative things after messing with it for a bit, but again you have to think about the time you’re spending to create the templates first. And then the time to customize them a little bit more so they’re not all identical.
Is this all worth it? I can’t say for sure it is, and I can’t say it’s not. That is only something you need to figure out if that will save you time and what kind of image your business is projecting.
The other questions I had were what else can you use it for? I had seen some suggestions for generating post content, for talking about email content and email subject lines, so I was curious to see what some of the various free AI platforms would generate when prompted when compared with the same prompts side by side.
So the first question I asked and ran through some of the AI platforms was “Write 10 creative email subject lines for selling Muffins“. Now, of the results I came out with from Chat GPT, Google Bard, IASK.AI, and Bing’s AI I found some interesting things.
ChatGPT, for example, spit out some interesting content, but realistically, of the ones that really popped visually/text wise and I think I would put in the category of good open lines (meaning it would entice someone to actually open an email if it landed in their email box) I would say maybe only three of the platforms did well in terms of coming up with decent quality examples.
Google Bard, I think came up with only one or two of them from a consumer’s perspective that would want to make me open an email based purely on the subject line.
IASK.AI spit out pretty much the same thing as Google Bard, none of them were terrible, and a couple of were pretty catchy, but again, based on a consumer opening an email based on the subject line, there’s not enough of a catch in them IMO.
Bing’s AI, I think was the winner of this particular trial. Of course, this is a personal perspective, and I thought it was interesting that they were also putting emojis in the subject line, which can work depending on your target market and your age group. Of all of the content that the AI engines spit out, these had the most of what I will call “carrot opens”, which means if I read this email subject line, there was enough of an incentive in the subject line for me to possibly want to open it.
The next test that I gave some of the AI engines was, “Write 10 creative Instagram posts for selling Muffins”.
Now what I thought was really interesting here was that some of the platforms autogenerated some hashtags, but not nearly enough for Instagram, and a couple added emojis.
What I found the most intriguing about this, though, was there was a big difference between the fact that some of the AI platforms recognized the fact that Instagram also needed a photo attached to it or an image, and it was not just text-based or others did not.
IASK.AI for example gave some emojis, and they gave some hashtags but no photo prompts. Bing’s AI did the same.
Google Bard gave image prompts with short Instagram posts, but they did not give hashtags, and did not include emojis. The emojis were not necessary, but I do think it’s interesting that they did not include hashtags at all.
ChatGPT also gave text for a Instagram post, emojis, some hashtags but no image prompts. (and emojis were before the text compared to some of other platforms).
The last prompt that I gave the AI platforms, at least for the time being, as I continue to mess with the options and with new AI platforms as they come out is “Write 10 creative scripts for Youtube shorts for selling muffins“.
Now a YouTube short is under one minute long, and keep in mind like Instagram, it also needs the visuals, so I was curious to see whether the AI engines would actually give visual prompts, not just scripts.
In Google Bard they gave some suggestions about what you could do with the YouTube shorts and gave some sample scripts but no visual prompts.
I decided to add one of the others I had been testing out that had not prior given decent results in other prompts. Interestingly this one gave some interesting results for this particular test. In Hugging Chat, they gave some script ideas, and they gave titles, and they gave some audio prompts, but they also didn’t give visual prompts.
IASK.AI also gave some interesting results, but it was kind of a mishmash. It gave you some titles like Bite into the Sweetness and Muffin Mania, and then it gave you some visual prompts, but it didn’t give you scripts.
ChatGPT gave off some possible titles of YouTube shorts and gave some visual prompt suggestions, but again no scripts.
Bing’s AI was again almost the winner in this particular prompt in that it gave you an actual script and it gave you a visual prompt. No titles though.
What I deduce from this test, and I know that this is a work in progress as AI platforms gather more data and become more evolved, is that no one platform is going to necessarily spit out everything that you need.
I was interested from a testing perspective to also see how much AI platforms so far have built-in information, like what is needed for particular social platforms. Instagram for example, HAS to have some sort of image, and the text, hashtags, and emojis are kind of useless without one, or not very helpful from a marketing perspective without an idea of what to use “as” an image.
If you take and use the prompts and the ideas from two or three of these platforms simultaneously when you’re running into roadblocks coming up with ideas and creating content, it can certainly generate enough information and ideas.
From a time-saving perspective, I think it can definitly save time and some hair-pulling to come up with new/creative content because it helps you get your brain and your gears working when running into the “Oh Jeez, what do I post next?” which seems to happen to most businesses, sometimes sooner rather than later.
All of the prompts used were simple prompts and while you can get a lot more specific in terms of the ask and what you want generated, I wanted to do this in the context of the average business owner who would not be asking very specific prompts or even know to do that or what to ask in detail.
Curiously on all of the hashtag suggestions there didn’t seem to be any parameters (or data) on whether the hashtag had decent usage at all on a platform, or even if it was used at all. In the case of #MuffinMatchmaker suggested by ChatGPT, not a single hashtag use on Instagram. #MuffinTime on Instagram had 174,103 results, Facebook it had 40K posts and Youtube not a heck of alot unless you count suicidal muffin songs, and that one is not even using the hashtag.
So if your going to use the AI platforms suggestions for Hashtags on any platform, I’d suggest doing some research first on market saturation of the hashtags first and check them for each platform in terms of numbers and marketing weight before you just blindly take them at face value.
My next rabbit hole is to ask AIs to evaluate hashtags and how they are rating and evaluating them (if they even are, and I don’t think so -Yet…..). Google Bard for example suggested some ones for Facebook (in a seperate test) that had less than a thousand posts attached to it, so it looks like they have some work to do, and the majority of the suggestions it spit out for Linkedin as another example, had a big ZERO in terms of usage on the number of posts. Hmmmmm………
by Heather T. | Sep 27, 2022 | Business, Facebook, Operations, Safety, Security, Social Media
1. You allowed unsecure or compromised apps (applications) access to your personal Facebook page (and, through it, your Business page). These can be old, outdated Business page add-ons that are no longer supported by the developers or by Facebook, or they can be malicious applications that deliberately want to gain access to your account.
2. You had an employee or used an external company, and you gave them full access to your Facebook business page. You had a falling out with them or fired them, and they kicked you off your Page as an administrator and then compromised your Page or deleted the Page.
Reason One (more information) and what to avoid.
It would be best if you give as few external applications as possible access to your Facebook account (and, through that, your Business page). Most people grant app access in a variety of ways, to play Facebook games or to take silly quizzes (please do NOT do this!) as many of these are purposefully malicious or they are easily compromised, and though that can compromise your account.
The other way to be compromised is to log in to external sites using your Facebook account. Zoom, for example, gives you the option to log in with Facebook; it also gives you the option to log in with your Google account (please DON’T do this either, it’s even worse). Always create a new account using your email address and a unique password, don’t ever connect social or Google apps. Some newspapers and blogs offer social sign-ins and Google sign-in options as well; please create a unique account with these platforms. An external account gets hacked or compromised, so can any accounts it has access to from the back end.
If your account was compromised through an external application, changing your password in Facebook does not stop the hack; you need to remove the app at fault (I always recommend disconnecting everything and readdressing and reconnecting if there is one you need later on) and then change your password.
See the link at the end for how to access where your app access is located so you can check and disable them.
Reason Two (more information) and what to avoid.
A Facebook business page owner should be the only person with “full” access to the Page and at least one additional person who you implicitly trust: a spouse, a business partner, or your BFF from grade school.
Why have that? What happens if your personal account is hacked or you get locked out of Facebook, either temporarily or long-term? Facebook has no support system per se, no phone number to call for help, and the only way to “sometimes” get them to respond is multiple support requests, and I mean dozens of them. Sometimes…….
Giving an employee or manager, or external company full access to your Facebook page can be a recipe for disaster. If you do, please make sure you trust them! I could tell you countless horror stories about employees or managers being fired and still having access to a page. You can guess what happens from there. I know one marketing company in New England that had a tiff with a tourism group about seven years ago, and they deleted the tourism group’s Facebook page, of which there were over 6000 followers on the Page. Facebook will not restore a deleted page if you don’t have access to it as an administrator. And now, with the New Page Experience, it looks like it can’t be restored at all.
Anyone helping with a page can get more limited access (which means they can’t delete the Page or add or remove admins).
Currently, most pages still have multiple levels of access:
- Admin: Can manage all aspects of the Page. They can publish and send Messenger messages as the Page, respond to and delete comments on the Page, post from Instagram to Facebook, create ads, see who created a post or comment, view insights, and assign Page roles. If an Instagram account is connected to the Page, they can respond to and delete comments, send Direct messages, sync business contact info and create ads. This person can manage everything you can, including the ability to give access to others, remove anyone from the Page (including you) or delete the Page.
- Editor: Can publish content and send Messenger messages as the Page, respond to and delete comments on the Page, create ads, see who created a post or comment, post from Instagram to Facebook, and view insights. If an Instagram account is connected to the Page, they can respond to and delete comments, send Direct messages, sync business contact info and create ads.
- Moderator: Can send Messenger messages as the Page, respond to and delete comments on the Page, create ads, see who created a post or comment, and view insights. If an Instagram account is connected to the Page, they can respond to Instagram comments, send Direct messages and create ads.
- Advertiser: Can create ads, see who created a post or comment, and view insights. If an Instagram account is connected to the Page, they can create ads.
- Analyst: Can see which admin created a post or comment and view insights (i.e., statistics).
The “NEW” Facebook Page Experience:
People with Facebook access
- Content-Create, manage or delete posts, stories, and more as the Page.
- Messages-Send and respond to messages as the Page.
- Community Activity-Review and respond to comments, remove unwanted comments and report activity.
- Ads-Create, manage and delete ads for the Page.
- Insights-See how the Page, content and ads perform.
- This person can manage everything you can, including the ability to give access to others, remove anyone from the Page (including you) or delete the Page.
And some other actions that still seem to be in a bit of flux, you can now control a bit more than you could last year. Last year it appeared that anyone with full access had full control of everything and you couldn’t change it, now it appears you can set access levels with “Facebook Access” and they have added some additional options.
Task Access:
- Community Activity- Review and respond to comments, remove unwanted comments and report activity.
- Messages-Respond to direct messages as the Page.
- Insights-See how the Page, content and ads perform.
- Ads-Create, manage and delete ads for the Page.
Community Managers:
- Community managers can moderate chat comments, suspend or remove people who violate community standards and see all admins of this Page.
As Facebook continues to make changes to the “New” Facebook experience, I would make a note to keep checking access levels and who has access to what. When the changes first rolled out last year, anyone who had any kind of access level to a page automatically got bumped up to “full” access. It appears (I hope) that they have fixed this and added additional levels and options, which is great.
What is not so great is that anytime Facebook makes a change, especially to options in the administrative section, they don’t tell anyone about it. I’ve been tracking the changes with the roll out to the new format since last year, and as usual, anytime a minor (but sometimes very important) change is made to business pages, they don’t make any kind of point of informing users about it.
Even worse is it appears they have now totally deleted the holding period for deleting a page (definitely moot if you don’t have access to it anyway, but….). In the old version, You’ll have 14 days to restore it in case you change your mind. After that, your Page will be permanently deleted.
Old Page Version
In the new version it looks like once it’s deleted, it’s gone.
New Pages Experience Version
While it’s a lot harder to actually dig down to where to get to delete the Page in the new version vs. the older version, this is still NOT a good thing. So please stay on top of your access levels!
Tied into this, you think your personal Facebook account got hacked because you started getting reports from your friends that you were sending weird requests or odd messages to them.
There is a huge number of fake Facebook accounts, far more, I think, then Facebook will ever admit to. With the fake accounts, they take the name of someone, create a new account, and then take the profile picture and header image from the person they stole the name from and use it on the fake account.
They then target your friends (because your friends list is open to anyone logged into Facebook) and start sending them friend requests. Many people accept the request because they see a name and photo of someone they recognized, so they don’t necessarily remember if they were already connected and hit accept. This is the way these fake accounts spread. Most people automatically assume they have been hacked, panic, and change their password. No, folks your account has not been hacked; it’s been cloned. Have friends report the fake profile ASAP. You need to lock down your friends list and also be very aware of what you post.
How can this hack your business account? It usually doesn’t directly, but it can cause identity theft of both your information and your friends’ information, and an awful lot of people have gotten scammed from these both identity-wise and financially.
And I do know two businesses that had employees that got their employee’s Facebook personal accounts cloned. The fake accounts messaged the owner of the business pages they worked for, and the business owners granted the fake accounts access to the business page, thinking they were the real employees and then had hacked pages and deleted pages. One more reason to limit access in the backend of Facebook.
Locking down your friends list and near the end (because it’s in the same section) how to see what apps have access to your personal (and business account with that).
by Heather T. | Sep 6, 2022 | Business, Marketing
Last week I ran an online workshop about how to create a customer persona. As part of the workshop, I touched on how businesses can use the power of social media to data mine social media profiles for information, and I wanted to elaborate on it a bit.
The internet is a very scary place, and I don’t think people truly realize how much information is out there for public view.
A perfect example of this is every year when we lived in CT;
I used to run a class for the Middlesex Library, which had a jobseekers program, Social Media for Jobseekers.
Every year I would talk about how with a bit of Googling, how much information was out there online for HR, for companies, and for recruiters to be able to see without even digging that hard or violating any privacy.
In every group, I’d get at least one skeptic: “You can’t find anything out about me; I’m not on any social media channels!!!!”. And I would have them give me their name, the town they were from, and nothing else. I’d say, “Give me a minute on Google, please.”
So “Bill,” you are a long-time member of Rotary, you went to UCONN and studied meat science, you like fly fishing, and you are extremely unhappy with the customer service at XYZ brand. You love to order dog toys from Chewy, and you coach your middle school daughter’s soccer team. That’s only page one. Would you like me to continue?”
Now put that information into a persona (that’s not even including social media data mining), and that’s not even digging very hard.
- Rotary Member (likes to give back to community and volunteer)
- UCONN graduate (large college with an extensive alumni network)
- Meat Science Degree (probably currently works or formerly in the food business, probably wholesale)
- Likes flyfishing (outdoors person, likes to spend time alone (supposition)-passionate about it as found multiple flyfishing forums he belongs to
- Shops at XYZ brand quite a bit.
- Does not like bad customer service (15 bad reviews about it, 40 good reviews about positive customer service experiences)
- Has a dog or dogs
- Has at least one child (A daughter who likes to play soccer)
- He probably purchases soccer apparel for his daughter, who is in middle school and does not have the funds to purchase them herself.
Now how much more can you dig out just going past page one?
Now, let’s see what we can dig out on Social Media. A goldmine, actually many gold mines on top of the one Google gives you. Facebook is a wealth of information, and sadly (but good for businesses), not everyone has their profiles completely locked down.
I’m going to use a friend as an example; I looked at her account through the account of someone she is not friends with to see what information is public to someone logged into Facebook.
I can (publicly/logged into FB but not friends with her in this case) see that she is a creative writer, a former reporter at a local paper, she studied communications at XYZ university, she studied “partying” at another university, she went to ZYX High School, she’s married, and she currently is a costume theater designer and likes renaissance fairs (including making costumes for ren faires).
She also has some posts not set to “friends” only; she likes brewpub hopping with her husband and a large pool of friends. And she’s a board game addict.
She is from New Jersey, currently lives in Pennsylvania (Town specific), and moved there about 30 years ago.
She is also on Instagram (Insta handle provided), and she posts daily on Facebook, only about once a week on Instagram. (so Facebook would be a good target for her, but probably not Instagram. I have no idea if she is on Linkedin or Twitter (because I haven’t looked yet).
She identifies as female, a Gemini, her religious views are Buddhist, and her political stance is Progressive. She frequently shares her husband’s political posts, who is clearly not a republican or a fan of a past president.
I can also see where she’s checked in on Facebook: breweries, bookstores, national parks, cosplay conventions, ren faires, theaters, Indian restaurants, etc.
I can see what kind of movies and TV shows she has indicated she likes, as well as books and a whole lot more information.
I used a fictitious button company (The Button Store, over 5 Million Buttons!) as the business that would be building a persona based on my friend.
A real persona, if you were going to do one for a company, would include a lot more research on people and a lot more data mining of other profiles, but I wanted to use this as an easy example.
Let’s move on to the other social channels: Linkedin also has a lot of information, not just in people’s bios, but what groups they belong to, what interests they have, their backgrounds, who they are connected to, and what they post about.
Instagram and Twitter (I’m not going to include TikTok because of the primarily younger audience, and I wouldn’t UNLESS that was your target market) don’t have as much information at first glance to glean.
But you can tell who they are following, who is following them, generally if they have other social accounts, where they live, how often they post, what they post about, and in Twitter’s case, what they repost and who they converse with, etc. You can find some of that on Instagram, but it doesn’t have the native reposting option that Twitter does.
While this may seem a bit creepy, big companies do this all the time, and it doesn’t stop a small business from using the same data mining techniques. It’s just time-consuming, you are looking for information that is already public.
For small businesses and anyone who uses social media media, I would VERY much encourage people to look at what they post and the specifics of what people can see. Google yourself, too; it’s always eye-opening.
I’m not going to go on a rant about locking down everything again (done that enough in the past) ,but please be cognizant of what’s out there.
From a small business perspective, if you want to make accurate customer personas, set aside 5 or 10 minutes a day, do some Googling, check out some social profiles, and compile information. Please don’t do a generic persona, do as many as you need for your business and customize them to suit.
Hubspot has some great resources I suggest you check out if you are just starting to create personas for your business. When doing your research, don’t forget to check out people’s reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Tripadvisor, as well as any other review sources you can find. You can glean a lot about someone from their reviews.
HubSpot Resources
https://offers.hubspot.com/persona-templates
https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-research
(How to Find Interviewees for Researching Buyer Personas section And 20 Questions to Ask in Persona Interviews are particularly helpful)
Some additional articles you may find useful
https://www.semrush.com/blog/buyer-persona-examples-beyond-basics/
https://buffer.com/library/marketing-personas-beginners-guide/
https://blog.hootsuite.com/buyer-persona/
To use the example of “Bill” in the beginning of the post, good customer service is a sticky point for him. If you were going to use him and say 15-20 other people to create a detailed persona, what could you put in your persona to elaborate on that? And how would that make your company stand apart from the competition? Is this a person/persona that would pay more for terrific customer service? Travel further for it? Prefer to use email or phone rather than shop online for it? What can you glean from what people are telling you? Use Google and the Social Platforms out there to create your personas, don’t just make them up based on what you think should go in there.
by Heather T. | Jun 14, 2022 | Business, Opinion
One of the most challenging issues I find business owners face, especially in regards to themselves as owners is perfectionism.
It’s your business, your baby; you live, eat and breathe it, and so you tend to get overly hard on yourself.
If you notice that you are being self-critical of yourself– and spinning in an endless cycle of blaming yourself – it’s time to take a step back and think about how you can coach yourself out of that downward spin.
Before I move on to the three things that can help you get out of that deadly spiral of defeatism.
I want to give a couple of quick examples of being self-critical.
Telling yourself, “Oh Man, I REALLY blew that interaction with a client; what is WRONG with me!” and “I can’t believe I missed that deadline to get that ad into the paper. I NEVER miss deadlines.”
There is a very fine line between healthy striving for perfection and self-defeating perfectionism. From the perspective of your employees (if you have them), it’s even harder to cope with someone who has to have everything perfect, and even harder to deal with when their boss gets stressed about perfection, whether it’s their own or someone else’s.
For people who aim for the sky, failure of any sort can be a tremendous blow and can lead to depression and other negative mental thoughts, which can be self-harming.
You can identify to yourself when you are being overly self-critical when you find yourself doing the following three things:
- One. Needing to be in control and being obsessive about it, and needing to micromanage projects.
- Two: Having a fear unto obsessiveness of making a mistake, ANY kind of mistake.
- Third but certainly not least: Constantly asking for reassurance from others, “Do you think we will get the numbers?”, ‘Do you think this will bring in sales?“. And owners do ask those questions of people they work with and employees. If you are a sole proprietor, that is even more of a burden to bear because you generally don’t have anyone qualified to ask for that reassurance.
When you find yourself doing these things, and you may need to consciously think about identifying when you do these, you need to take a step back, and again you need to reassess.
You are doing more damage than good to yourself.
Inside every person striving for perfection is the lizard brain, which is the little voice inside you screaming: “Everything is on fire, Only I, PERFECTION MAN (or WOMAN)! can put out the flames!”
You need to learn how to rein in and control that lizard brain.
Here are some steps that I have found to help tame that obnoxious little beastie.
Step One is Self Compassion and learning to be more self-confident.
Take a hard look at your past successes and cut yourself some slack.
No one reaches the finish line 100% of the time; this is an unrealistic goal. It really IS!
That doesn’t mean setting a lower bar for yourself. It just means you need to be more confident that when you DO fail at something, you can tell that pesky little internal lizard brain that you did the best you could with the tools you had at the time.
I’ll give you a broad example of this: I’ve seen so many perfectionists beat themselves up because a project has failed, but it was because the success was reliant on someone ELSE who dropped the ball
OR
The person was not provided the tools or skills they needed to accomplish success.
The perfectionists still beat themselves up as if it were their fault.
As a side note, Self-confidence is also something you can learn from being a part of Toastmasters.
People are not born self-confident; it’s a learned skill, just like being a leader.
Step Two is understanding your crutches.
It’s not enough to tell yourself, “I NEED TO STOP BEING SO HARD ON MYSELF.
Those are just words. Empty words.
Take a step back and ask yourself, and I’d really like you to think about this: What story or stories are you telling yourself that is getting in the way of your progress?
What stories are you using as a crutch to beat yourself up?
Is it that memory of a parent or boss who was a great parent or boss but ONE time they slipped because you had stretched their patience to its absolute maximum or they were having a really, really bad day and being human, said something they regretted and that ONE thing stuck in your memory and became self-defeating?
That story or stories you subconsciously tell yourself are roadblocks, and until you can understand them within yourself, they will always be roadblocks.
Step Three is to embrace your inner critic; that darn pesky lizard brain has two additional distinct faces aside from the one trying to play Fireman Dan all the time and obsessively putting out fires.
The two additional faces are the analyst and the advocate.
The analyst face looks for the unhelpful statements that you keep repeating to yourself, to use my earlier example, “Oh Man, I REALLY blew that interaction with a client; what is WRONG with me!, and then adjusts them, so instead of “Oh Man I REALLY blew that interaction with a client, What is WRONG with me!” adjust it to be “Yes I DID screw up that interaction and made a mistake, but I’m going to help fix it and see if I can get the client back and this is what I am going to do………”
What is your positive spin and goal going forward? Make that the self-edit/self-adjustment.
The advocate is the self-compassionate face, the one that says, “I’ve gotten through similar obstacles in the past,” I know I can do it; if I don’t make it this time, I won’t stop trying.”
Look at your advocate and give your advocate advice as if you were giving it to a good friend who has self-doubt. Look at yourself in the mirror and talk to it as if your reflection was that friend. What would you say to them?
You might notice all three steps revolve around having compassion for yourself.
Encouraging yourself to have self-compassion isn’t letting yourself off the hook for mistakes and missed goals.
It’s about encouraging a healthy mindset to rebound from setbacks so you can build resilience and move on to a more productive work and personal life.
There is a great book by Spencer Johnson called Who Moved My Cheese that was required reading at the Culinary (and many other colleges, apparently) and describes how one reacts to major changes in one’s work and life.
To appropriate that theme a little bit. I encourage all of you that lets the lizard brain take over, feed him, or her, some cheese; they love cheese.
String cheese and self-compassion cheese are the best. As an added bonus, dairy helps put out hot flavors, essentially quenching the lizard brain’s constant need to put out the fire.
by Heather T. | May 19, 2022 | Business, Opinion
The Valley of Despair, seems so ominous, doesn’t it?
Well it is, actually. But it’s a step, and it leads up, or it leads down permanently, depending on how you approach things.
It’s a term I have found usually used in project management and change management, also called the Emotional Cycle of Change, a model developed by psychologists Don Kelly and Darrell Connor, the curve has been modified a bit by many, including myself. If you Google the cycle you will come up with a variety of graphs, my personal favorite is from evocon, which I think sums it up perfectly (scroll down about half way down the page). Somewhat similar to Kübler Ross’ Change Curve, which talks about the five stages of grief, where the curve starts high, drops into a valley and then rebounds. I find the cycle particulary applicable to people trying to start a new business.
If you Google “Valley of Despair”, you will also come across the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which explores the cognitive bias people have on assessing their own ability. This is no relation other than using the same terminology.
Before I touch on the five stages of the cycle, I have found that there are three types of people who want to start businesses, and while it’s a little bit of a generalization, I find it’s pretty accurate.
1. The ones who have a dream (to start a business) and have motivation.
2. The ones who have a dream (to start a business) and have done their homework first.
3. The ones who would like to be their own bosses or whatever they feel is the reasoning behind thinking they want to own a business and have an idea, but no real motivation (other than the dream) and have not done any homework.
#1 & #2 are the people who usually start businesses and do well. #3 rarely makes it out of the Valley of Despair and almost always quits at the low point. But that can be changed with the right attitude, and researching and reassessing.
The five stages of the cycle:
The first stage is Uninformed Optimism: otherwise known as hope and excitement “I’m going to be my own boss!!”
The second stage is Informed Pessimism: otherwise known as reality starts to kick in. “Oh My Heavens, there is so much to do! So much to learn! Arrgggghhhh!!!!”
The third stage is The Valley of Despair: otherwise known as “abandon all hope who enters the cave of doom”, cue evil laugh from the shoulder devil who doesn’t want you to succeed and whispers in your year, “You can’t do it.” This is where a lot of entrepreneurs give up. It’s too hard, it’s taking too long, it costs too much.
The fourth stage is Informed Optimism: where people who have clawed their way out of the pit put into practice all the things they learned they had to do to start their business.
The fifth stage is Success: where people start their business, open their bakeries, auto repair shops, or coaching businesses, whatever their dreams and aspirations are.
I’ve found working with startup businesses that these are some of the best ways to get out of the Valley of Despair.
Reach out for help. There are so many free resources out there for startup businesses. SCORE, for one. My suggestion (as a SCORE mentor) is when you are requesting help, tell the Chapter (there are Chapters all over the United States) a bit about what you are looking for and what kind of help you need. It helps the Chapter better match you with someone who can assist you. If you are matched with a mentor who you don’t click with or does not have the skill set you need, you can ask them to pull in a co-mentor or co-mentors with those skill sets and expertise. Or you can request someone else. This is a person you will be sharing personal and business information with, and there is a big trust and relationship aspect to it, so it needs to be the right fit.
I would be remiss in not mentioning a few of the other resources out there. There are also state-level programs, so use Google. It’s your best friend when it comes to starting a company.
Small Business Administration (SBA)
SBA’s Ascent: Explore Ascent (for women entrepreneurs)
SBA’s Boots to Business (Active Duty Service members (including National Guard and Reserve), Veterans of all eras, and spouses are eligible to participate.)
Small Business Development Centers (SBDC)
IRS Small Business and Self-Employed Tax Center
I would check out SCORE’s list of startup resources as well which has a laundry list of sites to check out.
Don’t forget to check out your local Chambers of Commerce and other local services. Many states and regions have specific programs for startups as well.
Take a step back and reassess. Is this the right business? Is this the right direction? Is this the right time? Is this the right market? If you haven’t done your research yet, do it NOW before going any further and causing yourself more angst. And in many cases, before spending any more money.
Some additional questions to ask yourself:
Is this financially viable at this time?
If you have a family or signifigant others in your life, are they on board with this? If not, why not? And if they are not, is this going to cause issues down the road?
What are your setbacks? Are these really unsurmountable setbacks? Or are you getting frustrated because you are not getting past those? If the frustration level is high, put that setback(s) aside for a while and focus on something else. Revisit when your mind is clearer and calmer.
I’ve also found that helping others at their low point can help you get out of your own. The value of networking with other small businesses and startup business owners allows you to have a sounding board for yourself, and looking at other’s setbacks and issues from an exterior perspective often gives you insight into how to tackle your own.
Just quitting without at least trying to do these steps and reaching out for help leaves internal resentment and regret that you had a dream but didn’t make it happen. Doing the steps above helps give you some closure and enables you to realize that you can start a new dream or revisit this one at another time, or that you can go forward and succeed.
If you have a dream of becoming an entrepreneur, go for it! The best advice I can give you, though, is to do your homework first!
