ellipticalpointofview

Assuming you agree that it is important for your business to:

1. maintain your existing customer base
2. test the waters and iron out any teething problems along the way with minimal risk to yourself
3. reduce the level of risk you expose your business to until you are at a point when you have the resources to take that risk on directly

Then I suggest, before you throw everything you have behind this new direction for your business,  that you need to set yourself up to consider all the ways available to peel your particular orange into segments.

A stitch in time, saves nine

Given you are wanting to embark on an endeavour which will take a significant investment of your time and resources. A venture which, given you are a creative SMB with limited resources , whether you realise it now or not, it’s important to consider the other ways you can segment your particular orange so that you only peel or bite off as much as you can manage each step of the way.

Like goal setting seminars, think of your online presence(s) as a goal and then investigate how you can chunk that goal down into milestones, with deliverables and measurables at each step.

Make sure you pack protection…and plan an exit route

This is important so you don’t leap where others fear to tread. Or if you do leap, you do so having identified all the inherent issues and risks, with at least two parachutes and a couple of other landing methods up your sleeve for the journey down.

It’s also important in order to ensure you conserve the rest of your orange, the bits you want to conserve as is and/or which may not need to be involved in this leap.

So they don’t get damaged on your way down. As said previously, online and digital is not a silver bullet and:

• until it is successful can be a huge resource suck, with the results speaking volumes to the effort, planning and preparation you put in in the early stages
• if/when it is successful it can be a hude workload suck

If you already have existing successful business activities you do need to ensure they still maintain their value to your business, can continue their normal operation unaffected or unimpeded and can be leveraged to achieve other goals or in future activities.

Think large, start small

Rather than diving straight in, remember you will need to go on an education process yourself as a “never been online” business.

You have about as much understanding of online marketing as the Kalahari tribesman at the start of the Gods Must be Crazy do about civilisation (I forgot how long the establishing sequence is, but it is worth it for the metaphor…and the 80’s fashions):

Consider your business and your knowledge in terms of elliptical geometry:

Metaphorically, we can imagine geometers who are like ants living on the surface of a sphere. Even if the ants are unable to move off the surface, they can still construct lines and verify that parallels do not exist. The existence of a third dimension is irrelevant to the ants’ ability to do geometry, and its existence is neither verifiable nor necessary from their point of view.  (Source: Wikipedia, Elliptical Geometry accessed 18 June 2011)

You and your SMB are ants living on the surface of a sphere – you can successfully identify and fulfil all your business activities as they relate specifically to your business (your area of expertise). And you can do this at a sophisticated and complex level to the point where many of your business decisions may be best practice for others in your niche.

However, you also have an elliptical point of view given your tangent of knowledge have engendered your expertise, which does have its limits.

For you, the knowledge, logic and experience used in making good decisions about online and digital activities is your third dimension. It  irrelevant to your business activities, not visible from the tangent you are on and (at this stage) it is not necessary to the fundament of your business, but…

Set yourself up to avoid risk, not attract it

Diving straight in may mean you have no slack to address any teething problems and iron them out along the way. This will be a learning and/or development cycle both for you in terms of a business and in terms of how you conceive your online presence.

With that in mind, it might be worth working up to your end goal as part of a natural phased progression – increasing your knowledge in tandem to your increasing exposure to the landscape in which your end goal requires you to operate within.

Will maintaining your fidelity to your end goal, with lateral thinking there may be ways you can keep that as the end goal and step up to in in natural evolutions and iterations of your businesses’ presence.

At the end of the day, do you want the end goal (or the end goal at this point in time) that you started this process for to suffer at the expense of your own elliptical point of view?

Cover your arse every step of the way