Image courtesy of Luca Bravo on Unsplash

Have problems with your website? Is coding a challenge? Confused about how to post effectively to social media?

Yeah, me too.

As a premature participant in the Big Quit, in 2019, I embraced the risk and launched my photography business. What was a hobby became enticing: people were hiring me for sessions and I felt energized. I believed I could live the life of a creative denied to me in my youth by the “artists starve” mantra.

Yeah. Notice the date I launched. I booked my first high-paying photography session for March 2020.

Do I need to relive the moment that lucrative contract died from Covid?

Portraiture, head shots, food and restaurant clients disappeared. You were there. You remember. I kept a few product and art clients who would mail me the pieces – which I would wipe down before and after. But my entrepreneurial hopes were KN95 masked and dashed.

To survive, I revived my copyrighting business. Although I’d like nothing more than to become George R. R. Martin (minus the girth and hat), I had long-supported my writing hobby with copyrighting side gigs. A business plan here. An employee manual or ghost-written article there. I passed the word around my network and picked up a few nibbles.

But the world is not the one of the early 90s. I submitted an article to a new client, and he asked: “Did you incorporate our keywords?”

Keywords?

You bet your backlink I learned about keywords. I had to learn SEO. I came to incorporate relationship branding and marketing. Every social media platform was a new battle. What the hell is an API Key?

And then, when I wrote webpage content for an enthusiastic and satisfied client, she asked me to create her website. (That’s what I get for doing a good job.) Sure, I had fumbled around and Wixed my way through my site. After years of avoidance, I had to familiarize myself with various website platforms and venture into coding.

I had dodged the tech quagmire for so long. When I needed one damn credit to earn my degree, I took a summer-term HTML class at Emerson. The professor, a talented code expert, leaned over my work and commented: “You’re really good at this! Have you considered designing websites?”

I groaned. “I start law school next August. My plan is to hire someone like you to handle all this crap.”

That moment replays in my mind every damn time I am battling a Z-Index. Big damn mouth on me. But I realized most professionals and entrepreneurs think that same thing: that their budget will cover hiring for these tasks. Or that they will have the time and energy to handle these tasks.

Who could have predicted that a copyrighter, a master of persuasion and killer of the comma splice, would need to become tech-savvy? Madness. How many skills do I need to master to keep funding my 401k? Seriously.

When I launched my first website for my law office, I hired someone. My interest level to create a website – even my own – was zero. Yet, when the contractor presented her finished product, the branding was so far off from my luxury style, I paid her and never used the site. I mean, really – lime green and yellow? With clip art characters?

I’m pretty convinced she was a devotee of Timothy Leary.

I’m a Dennis Leary girl.

Without the time or inclination, I hired website guru number two. She correctly branded the site, ensured it loaded it quickly, embedded the important links, and made it look great. But every sentence contained a misspelled word and grammatical errors. (After I provided the copy, she rewrote it. Because, yeah… she thought it sounded hip. Thank you, Miley Cyrus. Please don’t write a legal brief or business plan anytime soon.)

As a small business owner, you have limited time. A talented copyrighter is not enough. You need more than a tech savvy web developer and a marketing specialist. You need a Jill-of-all-trades who can write, capture your brand identity, structure your site, embed links, and respect analytics….

I’ve been trying to be Jill for three years. And I struggle.

My small-business owners experience that same struggle when they hire five people to get one webpage published. And hire another three to post to social media. It’s a wallet blood-bath and most small business owners default to “I’ll do what I can when I can.” You not only have to earn your street MBA but also have to graduate with journalism, programing, social media management, and psychology degrees.

It’s unrealistic.

A dear friend and her husband own a small business. They hired a Millennial web developer two years ago. They still don’t have a website (which is promised in excuse-email after excuse email) and they rely on Yelp reviews and social media to promote their business. It’s not a good look. But what can they do? The budget doesn’t permit hiring a team of people.

Some digging (also known as research) provided me with insight into the state of small business marketing efforts:

• Lawyers and investment advisors with their most recent blog posts dated 2018.
• Real estate offices with social media posts about their cats and websites with no IDX to search properties.
• Multiple websites with no security (CAPTCHA or better) – or no Terms and Privacy policies.
• Websites without structure, keywords – or proper grammar.
• Unresponsive websites which look great on a desktop – while the entire world is mobile-phone dependent.
• Websites with zero branding, out-of-focus or infringing images, broken links…

Corporations who boast market success can afford teams to accomplish all that needs to be accomplished in our tech-dependent world. Where does that leave mom-and-pop entrepreneurs? The local mechanic relies on word-of-mouth and his kid occasionally helping him post to Instagram while the big-box mechanic, with the flashy website, runs him out of business?

Seems like a danger to competition.

Worse, whether we want to avoid discussing it, those who can code and who grew up in the tech-world are Quiet Quitting. Or can’t form a coherent sentence. (Honestly, I fired a Gen Z employee when I found her taking a selfie while at her desk. She can quiet quit on someone else’s dime.)

And if you hire an older marketing guru, they deem current initiatives fluff: What’s a backlink? You don’t need QR codes or a bit.ly. Let’s run an add in the local paper!

Small businesses need a reliable, educated, savvy market manager who can spell and code. Who provides value without demanding raises and benefits while providing less. It’s a tall order – but a niche that needs filling.

In a recent battle to remove a client’s website from a blacklist, the customer service tech guided me through internal fixes. He would suggest an area of repair and by the time he gave me the first instruction, I had implemented the fix. By the third suggestion, he chuckled: “You’re a breath of fresh air.”

“Because?” I asked while I entered DMARC data.

“I spend my shift leading customers, step-by-step. It can be… challenging.”

“I bet.”

“You’re just not typical.”

I felt compelled to disclose that three years ago; I did not know how to do any of what I now executed like a robot. My brother, an IT Manager, taught me. My son and good friend, programmers, taught me. I spend hours on Hub Spot and Udemy. Neil Patel is my best friend.

And I try with every article to help my clients learn and succeed.

Small business owners: You have a decision to make. Either start following Neil and learn how. And from personal experience, I know you can. Or hire a Jill. Or Jack. We’re out here.

Or close your doors and start looking for a job where you can Quiet Quit.