The Creative Capitalist:

I have a Gal. She lives online, she looks like me, and I love her. I got her off designhergals.com, and I am duty bound now to share the secret with all of you. Not only is it my own personal favorite site of the past several months, but it’s a smash hit with every woman (and man in the market for a gift) whom I refer to it. I’m raving. And loving. I’m encouraging you to check it out and to buy some product.

But first, let me tell you how I found the Gals.

It all started in Curacao, believe it or not. My friend Charyn had the cutest business cards, with a watercolor-style logo of a gal that looked just like her next to some fun supplementary copy. Not super-scary professional in the way of a corporate card. But then, we are not corporate people. By choice. In fact, Charyn is a food writer.

“My cards used to say, I want ALL the cake,” she confided.

I was, understandably, curious about what identity design firm would create such a sleek-looking logo and then let its customer announce “I want ALL the cake” on the collateral. Most identity designers don’t allow that sort of thing.

But this did not end up being the work of an identity designer. Instead, it was something Charyn had created herself on my new favorite site:

Guests utilize a Flash app to design a young lady, much like playing virtual paper dolls. You dress the image, accessorize it and upload it into the stationery product of your choice. (Charyn and I both chose business cards, but you can also get greeting cards, bookmarks, aprons, coffee cups and all manner of other customized logo merchandise.) A portion of the proceeds from every order is donated to a breast cancer charity, which makes the product even more appealing, in my eyes.

It probably took me an hour to design my Gal, and another to re-attire her and change the copy 12 zillion times. But still, it was less expensive and less complicated than any other stationery order I’ve ever made (and there have been many).

I used my (blonde, mini-skirted, magic-wand-carrying) Gal on plain white, standard business cards. (I suppose I could have ordered some logo coffee cups, but that would have necessitated my buying a much larger carrying case. Possibly a wheelbarrow.) I passed her out everywhere from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club to the American Lodging Investment Summit to the Rose Bar in Manhattan. She was a huge hit and inspired many women to ask where they could procure similar cards of their own.

This is what I told them:

Go to the site without delay, and design away. But know that once you do, you’ll be hooked. It’s free to create an image, and the site will store all Gals and product designs in your account forever. So if you feel like creating a sparkly Gal with a magic wand one day and a Gal in a business suit and briefcase the next, you can. Just don’t get carried away and start thinking you own the images, because the copyright belongs to the site owners. As it should.

That said, founder Jeanne Fitzmaurice is thrilled at the idea of entrepreneurs everywhere using her Gals to promote their businesses and inspired ideas.

“My mission is to foster fanatical fans of our brand, and continue to bring new products and benefits to those who enjoy using our site,” she told me during our first-ever communique. “We currently have nearly 250,000 community members on our site. But we have a big goal, and getting our word out is important to raising funds.”

Well, here’s fanatical fan No. 250,001, doing her bit to help out.

“LinkDaddy” Marc Freedman owns the software company RazorPop in addition to several other small businesses in the technology and digital media sectors. He also runs the Dallas-based networking group Dallas Blue. In four years, Freedman has built up a LinkedIn database of 20,000 people worldwide. In this Q&A, the entrepreneur/consultant/uber-networker discusses LinkedIn’s capabilities as a business tool and beyond.

First, please describe how LinkedIn is different from the online networking of yore.
LinkedIn is a service that encompasses a feature set involved with bringing your offline network into the online world and increasing your online network through social networking tools.

LinkedIn is actually a very limited tool. At the end of the day, all it’s good for is being a huge database to connect on a direct personal basis with other people. Conceptually, it’s simple. (The LinkedIn developers) like to think of themselves as Web 2.0, but they are very far from Web 2.0. This is not a place to manage groups or manage contacts. Really, it’s just a place to find other people. The real key is how you integrate that with your business. It depends on what you need to do for your business or other aspects of your life.

Click here to learn the basic uses for LinkedIn.

Doesn’t maintaining a large network (on or off LinkedIn) ever become counterproductive–like a second (unpaid) job?

Networking is an institution and activity that has its own logic and philosophy. It’s not tit for tat, I do something for you and you do for me. It is the proverbial “pay it forward” mentality. I’ve been doing this for a number of years, and it’s taken three or four years for my network to come back and pay off in a substantial way. It’s really like any investment. If you understand and have a long-term perspective, time and inclination, it can pay off.
The only expectation you can have of online networking is that it’s an opportunity. If a request or announcement meets your criteria, you will forward it. You start a conversation with the expectation that you will reciprocate if and when you can.
Here’s an example: I have a programmer–a former employee and good friend who now lives in Buenos Aires. We were chatting, and he says, “I have a problem.” His dog–a 150-pound Rottweiler–was very sick, losing his hair, and was possibly going to die. He needed a zinc formulation that you can’t get in Buenos Aires, but can buy on Amazon for $10. So I bought it and shipped it, but it never got there. It turns out because of drug trafficking laws, the import of any product like that is banned.
Now my friend was in a real bind, and he said, “Mark, you know people; what can you do?” Because of my network, I had 100 connections who either lived or had lived in Argentina. I sent out an SOS, and within two days I received 20 responses–everything from “My brother’s a chemist” to “I know someone who works at Argentinean consulate and can help you.” It happened because of this large online network.
On your LinkedIn recommendations, I read one from a man who had gone from only having a few connections to having 1,000. How?
Mylink500.com is what he used. It’s a directory of top LinkedIn networkers, as well as open networkers. If you go to the site, they say they’re open to invitations from other members. Download a list, and invite everybody on the list. There are about 1,200 people in the database; it’s pretty easy to add 1,000 connections that way.
In that case, though, wouldn’t the connections be superficial? How could they be useful if they didn’t even know him a day ago?
I don’t think it’s limited to that. If I were to segregate the (networking) universe in three classes, there would be:

• People with large, weak networks. A lot of them are recruiters. They have lots of people on file, but they don’t use or support their network in a material way.

• Large networkers who are active in supporting their networks. If you have 500-plus contacts in your network, you can’t have a strong connection with each of them. But you can actively manage your network–spend a few hours each week processing requests and helping people if you can. It becomes incumbent upon you to develop a strategy and process about acquiring and building your network.

• Strong networkers. Far and away, this comprises the majority of LinkedIn users. These are people with 50 to 300 contacts, each one of which is a strong connection.

The fundamental relationship on LinkedIn is to forward referrals and accept updates from one another, and that’s it. The rest is going to be based on the quality of relationship. If people don’t know each other, there’s neither an expectation nor a likelihood that they’re going to help each other out in any way.

What’s step 2 for this man if he wants to strengthen his existing network?

If he’s a job seeker, there are two potential ways. The first is to use the existing network to send out an update which might well be, “I’m looking for a new job.” I think that’s what he did. Clearly if he can continue to expand his network, one would think the size of his network would be proportional to new job leads.
The second would be where the value is: the ability to target your network. Target hiring managers, executives and decision-makers in your field. Find these people, get referred and secure informational interviews, starting on LinkedIn.

He also said that out of those 1,000 connections, he got one solid job offer. In my business, that’s a pretty low return rate. How could he raise the percentage?

But that’s marketing. That’s like saying I’ve been alive for X amount of years, and I’ve only gotten so many job leads per year of life. It’s not directly measurable. To say one job lead out of 1,000 contacts is bad, I disagree. One job lead in two days is better than he had been getting, which was nothing.

You mentioned on the LinkedIn message boards that you felt that some people you didn’t know were taking advantage of the system to request recommendations from you. Could you talk about that?

The salient issue is not what I as forwarder should do. Anyone who receives a message can and should in good conscience do what he or she wants. The problem is from the sender’s perspective. Because of poor design on LinkedIn, they don’t make it clear that a recommendation from a former colleague/supervisor is very different from a personal recommendation. A job recommendation means you actually worked with this person and can recommend his or her work.

Many people who are inexperienced and don’t understand nuances don’t think it through and treat the work referral as a standard introduction referral because that’s how LinkedIn handles it. From the forwarder’s perspective, you want to help somebody, but you can’t give him or her the recommendation because you didn’t work with him or her. It makes that person look bad, and you look bad because of poor design on LinkedIn’s part, so anyone requesting would really want to be cognizant of that.

According to some LinkedIn users, there are different levels of LinkedIn, which correspond with different kinds of networking. So an open networker such as yourself might use the tool much differently than “closed networkers” who have always made a practice of safeguarding their contacts.

I’m not familiar with your industry, but I am with recruiters. There are clearly a small number of recruiters that subscribe to that theory:”I’m not going to share lists; I’m not even going to forward requests.” My philosophy is, it’s a huge world out there, and we’re all big boys and girls. I think having a closed network like that is ultimately counterproductive.

One of the things about LinkedIn that’s a huge detractor but I think is ultimately a positive in this discussion is that there’s no qualitative aspect to connections. All someone outside may know is that you and I are connected. They have no idea what the nature of the relationship is. We might have gone to school together, we might be neighbors or we might have an intimate business relationship. From the perspective of shared media lists, the value is not always in having the name. The value comes from the relationship.

And the flip side is, if these people are already on LinkedIn, they’re going to find them anyway. Whether they find them through you becomes irrelevant. They can contact them with or without your help.

There’s a lot of talk about “paying it forward,” but it seems most normal, entry-level networkers have no idea what that means. It’s almost like they’re going around looking for a handout. Doesn’t that glut up the system?

If you put yourself out there in any way, you open yourself up to people on the fringe. Post your e-mail address and you’ll get legitimate inquiries, and you’ll also get spam. You’ll get unsolicited invitations and people who make assumptions. If you’re building a large network, there will be a lot of inexperienced networkers–people with different expectations who don’t share the same values as you. This doesn’t just apply to LinkedIn.

How would you respond to the naysayers?

There are a lot of people who feel that LinkedIn is a waste of time. They don’t see any value. I first would say there are absolutely industries and professions where LinkedIn is going to have less value. It’s not going to be accessible to you at a business level if your business is selling residential energy in Texas or if you’re working for Amway or if you’re selling prepaid insurance.
But there is a lot of value besides making business prospects.
The thing is, it’s damn complicated. If you don’t come at it with appropriate expectations, it’s not going to be worth your time and effort. It’s going to be a bad experience. It provides no support, the customer service is horrible, and it’s difficult to get into. So that attitude is perfectly understandable.

One of the hazards of networking on a place like this is if someone says they don’t know you, you get penalized–even if they try to change the response later. How do you allay that? Is it worth the risk?

In my opinion, this is atrocious design on LinkedIn’s part. A year ago they had a “no” button that carried no consequences. Today, people don’t have a way to say no. They receive an invitation, and they can accept it, archive it or say “I don’t know.” With the current system, archiving is the same thing as saying “No.” But to most people, archiving means “I don’t want to think about it.” Most people click “I don’t know this person” because that’s the option closest to what they want to do. Most people who click on it would not do so if they knew the repercussions.

Do you keep your entire address book open to your connections?
I don’t. I did have at one point, but if you have 500-plus connections, browsing leads to a bad experience. The default account setting allows people to browse your connections, and in general I recommend use it because it’s good networking and is valuable to the browser. The problem is, if you have too many pages–and I have several hundred–it leads to bad networking. LinkedIn displays 90 connections per page, and there’s no way to search them. So you can’t target through browsing.
Also, the expectations are different. You can’t make the overarching assumption of a strong mutual connection if someone has a large network. Although you’re in my network, Lena, someone shouldn’t assume that the best way to reach Lena is to go through Marc. To find you, they should go through the best/strongest connections– someone who can give them the best referral. And to find my best/strongest connections, they would need to ask directly, not browse.
For more LinkedIn resources, visit:

http://linkedin.pbwiki.com/

Freda Kunin is the founder and owner of FREDALA.com, an online store that sells dangly earrings and funky patent leather belts and all kinds of other inexpensive but super-cool items you may have seen in the pages of Us Magazine recently.  Her stock is “specialized, like you’d find in high-end boutiques,� and she showcases collections by many up-and-coming designers.  She also spearheads “Success Is in the Bag,� a fashion recycling program that benefits women in sponsored upward mobility programs.

Freda started her store in 1999, which makes her a veteran internet entrepreneur. She figured out e-commerce and HTML coding on her own, during a time when 90% of techies were male.  And she built a successful business from scratch, without backers or partners.

Unsurprisingly, when you ask, “HOW?!� she’s more than likely to shrug and say, “I just figured it couldn’t be that hard.�  But when I explain that what seems “not that hard� to her might be downright impossible for, say, ME, she proves adept at articulating processes, and naming information sources. So here I am to pass all that good stuff along to you. (Except I still can’t help you with coding. You either get it or you don’t…and I don’t. Sorry.)

(Note: After you read this Q&A, check the post below to get Freda’s list of marketing resource sites and tips.)

Lena: What inspired you to plunge into the e-commerce world way back in ’99?

Freda:  It was very instinctual. I was working for Sony Pictures, and there was a lull one day, and I started reading a story about e-commerce. Since I was so busy, I didn’t ever have time to go shopping as a consumer, so I put two and two together. And everybody was always asking, “Where do you get this, where do you get that?� about what I was wearing. So I thought, Maybe I do have an eye.

L: How did you puzzle your way through the earliest e-commerce systems all on your own? I remember working in e-commerce in ’98—half the time, the software would ship with no manual, and even the techies couldn’t figure out how to use it.

F:  I eventually went to Yahoo stores, but even so, you still had to figure out how to make your site look different. They provide a very basic template and a cart. I learned quickly, because I had to… There’s something special about putting your name on a company. Having my name on there,  I couldn’t see doing things halfway.

L: Do you sell through eBay, Amazon, etc?

F: No. My only eBay sales were unique items. And I used the Yahoo interface, so I never used the Amazon site. I’m no longer using the Yahoo store interface because we’ve grown so much I need my own server.

L: That being the case, how do you market and advertise?

F: I use a combination of paid search and organic search. SEO optimization is a constant challenge. Every time you change your platform, it affects your position in search engines… I read a lot. That’s how you learn—what is this site, and what are its parameters? If you’re really concerned about your Alexa ranking, get into Alexa and read about it.

You have to get on a lot of merchant boards. Often, people will share what worked for them. Then you constantly tweak.

L: Can you recommend a good site for people who want to learn about SEO?

F: I would recommend, for example, the Monster Commerce boards. You’ll see what real merchants are going through. You also can find out about different shopping carts, gateways, and certain combinations.

L: Please explain.

F: Say you’re trying to join some large affiliate program. It’s important to find out in advance if the shopping cart system you’re hooked up with is compatible with that affiliate program. A lot of times the company representative will say, “Oh yeah, we are,� and then you find out later, they’re not. You really have to research before you take them at their word.

L: How do you balance the back-end nuts and bolts with the creative, fun side of your business?

F:  I’m lucky enough to have a staff, so I can delegate a lot of the nuts and bolts. My love of accessories, I think, is what drives me. I’m constantly shopping—not physically, but virtually. I do read the fashion blogs, I try to check out and see who the new up-and-coming designers, I go to the Mart. I constantly keep my ear to the ground. I just went to the hundred-year anniversary for Neiman Marcus, where they had only 20 clients.

L: What percentage of your browsing/buying takes place in “the real world,� and what percentage is virtual?

F: I’d say 75% is virtual. I can do it any time, from anywhere, wearing anything…

L: Ah, yes, and that’s the appeal of being an entrepreneur. People think you can work on a beach, under a palm tree…

F:  No, no. I can’t work from under a palm tree. I have an actual warehouse, an actual staff—people working from 7AM to 8PM. As an owner, you have to be hands-on; you have to be watching. Also, people think because you’re self-employed you don’t have to follow the hours of the rest of the world. But more and more, you do. You still have to work within the parameters of the business world.

L: When did you know it was time to hire your first employee?

F: When I had to give my two-week notice to my day job.

L: So, you went directly from working a day job to having a staff?

F:  Yes. When I quit my day job, that’s when I knew I was too busy. I’d say another error business owners often make is trying to do everything themselves, and not being realistic. You cannot do everything alone. You will have to farm out to other independent contractors…you’ll certainly need some kind of assistance.

L: How did you figure out what to delegate?

F:  I’m always tweaking that too. I think you have to. For example, right now we have an outside IT person.  I used to do all that stuff myself.

 L:  Let’s talk about the bag recycling program –

F: It’s called Success is in the Bag. Ladies from all over the country and Canada send us gently worn or new handbags. We issue them gift certificate codes that they can use to purchase products from our store. Then we donate the handbags to New Economics for Women, and they get distributed to teens, unmarried mothers… It’s a great program. These girls are going out, applying for jobs, and it helps them feel better about themselves—helps them look and feel more polished and professional.

L: When did you come up with it, and why?

F: I had been discussing a recycling program.  I wanted to do something that aligned with my business.  We’re now in our third year.

L: What’s next?

F: I’m launching another online store that’ll focus on handbags, and I also plan to start designing myself.

Ed note: Yes, and next year when you’re onstage accepting your CFDA award, you’ll be like, “I figured it couldn’t be that hard…”

Check out Freda’s resource and tip list  in the post below. Also visit FREDALA.com for early Xmas shopping, or if you’d like to buy me a li’l something to show your appreciation.

Though Monster Commerce (part of Network Solutions) is a providor of shopping cart/site solutions for small and large businesses, their small business page has some really useful information in easy to digest format and some great SEO tools as well: www.monstersmallbusiness.com

It’s always a good idea to checkout the top 500 International sites, as by blogging on or somehow linking from them to you will help increase your site’s exposure. You should narrow this list down to find blogs and sites relevant to your business and goals.

And, if you are already using an existing service already, check out their community’s blogs and bulletin boards to learn what tricks and tips current users can offer you and feel free to communicate with other bloggers. Most people will be happy to share their insights with you and remember to please share with them as well. We check out the forums on monstersmallbusiness.com.

Don’t forget our government at www.business.gov.

And the SBA for great tips and assistance and its free online courses , including those specifically for ecommerce:
Building Your Website *
South-West Texas SBDC
Managing the Digital Enterprise

Sites you want to avoid are those trying to directly and only sell to you tips like these which you can compile pretty much yourself! Check out this handy guide from the  FTC.
My top tip is: Do not try to reinvent the wheel, but do try to improve on it. Tech is too technical and changing all the time. Find sites you love and ask yourself why you love them, and use those features in yours!

And of course, here is the link to our Success is in the Bag campaign … Tired of that old bag? Send it in and receive a $20 merchandise credit toward a new one! Did you know you can earn merchandise credit toward FredaLA merchandise by helping us help others?