A Short Interview with Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media

Without belaboring the point, it's a tough economy to start a business in. Not to mention a marketing firm. Lisa Barone, Rae Hoffman and Rhea Drysdale of Outspoken Media have managed to leverage the crappy environment with their experience, talent, and vision. Lisa Barone offers you some delicious social networking tips to help your business thrive as well as an insight into their history and what makes Outspoken Media tick.

1. What compelled you to start a business in this crazy economy?
   
   I don’t know that “compelled” is the right word to describe what happened. Basically, life threw me a curveball and it was either dodge it or get smacked in the face. I dodged. ;) The true Outspoken story is that my (now) business partner Rhea Drysdale and I both moved cross country (her from Florida and me from California) to Upstate, NY to accept positions working together at another company.
   
   Those positions ended up not working out and we had to do something fast. We knew that we loved work together, so we called up our third lady of mayhem, Rae Hoffman, and decided it was time to do something together. There was no backup plan, no “what if this doesn’t work”, just a promise to each other that we’d make it happen and that together we could be successful.
   
   Obviously, we didn’t plan on starting a new company in an economic downturn, but we weren’t prepared to let it stop us either. We trust each other and ourselves to know we could make it work.
   
   
2. Do you feel like you have to work harder than a business starting up in a more receptive economy?
   
   Honestly, no. The fact that the economy is in the tanks hasn’t factored into our day-to-day operations that much. We have a new business, so it’s our baby and we’re working hard hours on it. But we’d be doing that anyway because that’s the attitude you need to take when you start a business. It becomes your life and you have to be obsessed with nurturing and growing it. It has nothing to do with the recession everyone keeps reminding us about.
   
   If anything, I think we’ve used it as an opportunity. We know that other companies are tightening their belts and looking at their budgets and taking more things in house. So we’ve focused a bit more on targeted some of our content towards that. We’re creating content to let them know all the little things they can do to help themselves with posts that offer advice for promoting a small business Web site or help with SEO for nonprofits. We’re trying to find ways to make the recession work for us instead of letting it scare us into submission. It’s worked out pretty well so far.
   
   
3. How do you define success?
   
   How do I define it personally? Wow, that’s a loaded question. ;)
   
   This will sound horribly cheesy, but I have a list of the things that I want to accomplish with Outspoken and for Outspoken. Any time something happens or I create an opportunity that gets me closer to scratching one of those goals off…then I view that as a success. A lot of my goals for Outspoken and for our clients have to do with strengthening their brands online.
   
   Internally, I want to be continually starting important conversations and to get people engaged and talking about certain areas of Internet marketing. And for our clients, success is showing them how to connect with their customers and how to start those conversations themselves.
   
   Rae and Rhea take care of the SEO and nitty gritty stuff. For me, success is found in the conversation.
   
   
4. What are the benefits of being a business owner over being a regular worker bee?
   
   You can work whatever hours you want, flexibility, being your own boss, freedom in voice and what you’re doing, etc. It’s a trade-off, though, because there are definite drawbacks as well – time investment, long hours, only eating what you catch, insurance issues, losing all social interaction when you suddenly spend 14 hours a day working out of your apartment. ;)
   
   For me the biggest benefit of being a business owner has been being able to use my real voice. I’ve gotten a lot of comments from people suggesting that the type of content on the Outspoken Media blog is “different” than the blogging I’ve done for previous employers. And what they meant was that it’s more engaging, it’s more authentic, it’s more passionate, and essentially, it’s more me. And it’s that way because I’m writing under my own rules. I don’t have other people’s corporate policies to deal with or have to be concerned with censoring myself. For me that’s been really important. I feel like I’m finally at a place where the blog and company I work for really represents who I am and what I believe. And getting to come to that every day feels incredible.
   
   It’s amazing to create something that you love so much.
   
   
5. What are the three most important social networking tips you can offer new business owners?
   
   • Get on Twitter: I can’t stress how valuable Twitter has been to the new branding of Outspoken Media. We’ve connected with current clients, brought in new ones, and attracted media attention and other big name SEO folks. It’s really leveled the playing field for small businesses to get in there and connect with the people who matter most and to make that process very scalable.
   • Network outside your little bubble: Find people who run parallel to you and get on their radar. Stop playing in your incestuous little circles and go make friends with the folks who sit just outside your bubble and run with different crowds. Talk to them. Help them promote their stuff. Lift them up. It will come back to you in spades. The people just outside your niche can do more for you than the folks running in the same circles.
   • Always give more than you take: You want to be someone that people want to associate with and you do that by being the type of person who supports others. I wrote a post a few years ago called Don’t Be Famous, Be Useful and it’s something I still keep in the back of my head today.
   • Don’t focus on making yourself a star, focus on making your customers and everyone else around you a star. That’s how you make friends and connections. It’s how you get people’s attention and show them you’re the kind of person (or company) that they should be interested in.