My first time commenting here, though I’ve been lurking since I saw you on ODesk’s Top 40 Freelance Writing blogs.

Hat off to you–this is a marvelous blog.

I find this post particularly inspiring. I plan to revisit and reread it periodically.

A few things that resonated strongly with me:

* Your accountability as a “little big company.”

*Time limitations. As a sole proprietor service business, I find scaling a huge challenge. Even when I’m fully booked, there are just so many hours in the day. I need to learn to “work smarter and concentrate on adding value rather than adding effort.”

*”I don’t need a mass market.” Yes–especially true for copywriters watching content mills mushroom: It’s impossible to compete on price. The lesson, again, is positioning oneself on value–to the right clients…along the lines of “1,000 True Fans.”

After reading Surowiecki’s piece, it occurred to me that today’s small businesses are better positioned than Kellogg and Chrysler to ratchet up marketing–simply because digital media is so much cheaper than push marketing.

Today the currency is attention. Getting and keeping attention requires more targeted strategy–but costs less–than yesteryear’s all-out media “campaigns.”

Internet supported small businesses today can avoid sinking the boat–and not miss it either.

As a one-girl show since 2003 (translation, copywriting, and training services for the French-to-English market), I have worked constantly to hone my positioning and polish my lineup of services, simply as a matter of survival.

However, while business has personally been good for me since the economic doo-doo started to hit the fan in late 2008 — at least in terms of total sales –, it has been much more volatile (with higher highs, and lower, more sustained lows). And those sustained lows (in addition to freaking me out slightly) have spurred me to move from “survive to thrive” by doing a few of the things suggested above.

1 – I invested in a new CRM and spent a couple of days getting trained on it and cleaning up my database – the time savings are already blatantly obvious (bye, bye Outlook!) and the marketing leverage will pay off in the medium- to long-term when I start exploiting a lean, clean database
2 – I redid my Website with WordPress (no more maintenance fees and total flexibility to publish what I want when I want)
3 – I moved a new business project from the business plan stage to actual launch (I’ll have two new business partners in January 2010 – just in time to profit from the economic recovery…people have told us we’re crazy to start a business in this recession, but we’re gonna prove’em wrong!)
4 – I’ve invested more time volunteering in a couple of business networking groups (organizing events, etc.)
5 – I’ve tried to keep on track with savings goals to have a year’s income in the bank (money in the bank is the best way to stay on target with your long-term business goals even when short-term business is slow)
6 – I am working as hard as I can on the “adding value rather than adding effort” thing (in other words: staying small, delivering as much added value as possible, and selling that added value for the highest price possible)

Thanks, Matthew, for this inspirational post!