Catch 22: Small business pursues big business clients.  The challenge? Big businesses tend to select other big businesses as their vendors.

Solution: Look bigger.

Lisa Kirby Gibbs of Highland-March Office Business Center and I just gave a presentation at WPI on how a budding entrepreneur can appear larger.

Today I will share with you the first three of the top ten tips to appearing to be a bigger fish:

1) While there is nothing wrong with working from your home office, never appear to be working from your home office.  A virtual office is an inexpensive way to appear established.

2) If you are a male, have a female leave your outgoing message on your voice mail.  If you are a female, have a male deliver your message. Never use an answering machine as callers can tell, and it communicates that you are working from your basement.

3) Think about your title. Something I learned too late. Putting “CEO” or “President” on you business card actually makes your company look smaller.  Giving yourself the title “Director of Marketing” or “SVP Sales” makes your company look far bigger.

A caveat: there is a difference between managing your impression and over spinning.  Always be guided by your ethics.

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Jason Kallio shares a creative take on your perceptions and how they affect your ability to achieve:

Our abilities to think, comprehend, create, change and communicate contribute to our success.  Enjoy the journey into my mind as you ponder “there is no spoon”.

From the first time I saw The Matrix, I could not wrap myself around the line, “There is no spoon.”  The main character watched a young boy staring at a spoon, and it bent.  He asked the boy, “How did you do that?”  His reply, “There is no spoon.”  It has taken me six viewings and reading Purple Cow to come to an understanding. 

 The Matrix is a computer generated world that the human mind only lives in and accepts as real life.  Information (products, words, sounds, smells, etc.) is communicated to our brain in this world, and can be broken down into its simplest form of zeros and ones.  If you understand the language of the program and realize what is in your mind, then you can see things in their purest form.  You realize that we are not required to accept this reality, and can change it.  If you are looking at a spoon, you have a choice to either accept it as presented to your mind or decide there really is no spoon.  So, if you want the spoon to be something else, you have the power to do that.  Any change you make is now your idea.  You force others to experience your version of reality. 

 To create an idea that is classified as a Purple Cow, it must be remarkable.  Not all will like it or can accept it, but that’s ok.

 Ideas are ones and zeros, too.  Modifying an existing idea is like deciding to bend the spoon.  Knowing how to simplify your remarkable idea allows you to communicate with people that value its effect on reality.  After clear, simplified communication, they now know how to communicate to others, spreading the word about your Purple Cow and helping others accept it as remarkable.  Purple Cow identifies this as creating an “idea-virus” that is spread by “sneezers”.  This is possible for you because you know – there is no spoon.  

 In The Matrix, humans are described as a virus.  Once we accept that there is no spoon, then our imagination is our only limit.  Find those humans that understand you and your ideas.  Communicate your Purple Cow simply and clearly within the matrix that is your world so that they can sneeze and spread your idea-virus. 

 Remember, there is no spoon.

Learn more about Jason Kallio, expert trade-show trainer and founder of expovantage.

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