Do you wake up in the middle of the night, scrambling to find your iPhone, in order to get that great idea for your business out of your head? For many small business owners, running their business is a 24/7 affair, and when you do have time to sleep, many times you’re still thinking about your business. In the example above, there are two catalysts at work, they are Passion & Creativity. We often write about Creativity here on this Online Marketing blog, but we’ve never gone too in depth on the subject. For this article, we are going to discuss how both Passion & Creativity go a long way towards driving growth for your small business.

Passion Drives Small Business Success

When reading books on entrepreneurship, it’s almost a lock that you’re going to be told to find something that your passionate about, and then figure out how to create a business out of it. It’s almost like the Golden Rule of Entrepreneurship. The reason why so many authors and entrepreneurs talk about finding a passion first is due to just how strenuous it is to go into business for yourself. These folks understand that there are going to be “dips”, as the leading Marketing thinker of our day, Seth Godin would call them, along your journey to running a successful business. Without passion, it’s extremely easy to let dips in the road turn into the end of the road for your business. Those small business owners who love what they do, who get up early in the morning to get a fresh start on their day, and who never stop thinking about their business, because they love it, are the ones who succeed.

I recently caught a special on TV about J. Willard Marriott, founder of the Marriott Corporation. This man embodied the term passion. It’s no wonder that he was able to take a small root beer stand and turn it into an international brand for luxury travel. Mr. Marriott thought about every aspect of his businesses, and although he had a lot of help, he never removed himself completely from the day-to-day operations of his businesses. He would frequently visit each of his root beer stands on a daily basis, inspecting every nook & cranny. The man loved what he did for a living. Except for his family, and some even debate that, there was nothing that J. Willard Marriott was more passionate about than his business.

Passion allowed J. Willard Marriott to power through the tough times, like say the Great Depression, and emerge stronger than when it began. Passion provided him with his direction for the business. He knew exactly where he wanted to go. Passion drove him on day after day. Passion acted as a road map for his business, and creativity fueled his growth.

Creativity Fuels Small Business Success

Here at Catalyst Marketers, we like to refer to Creativity as the new currency for business owners. When planning to start a business, or when deciding on a big change to an existing business, some folks begin with the question, “how are we going to pay for it?”. Other folks, perhaps those right-brainers as Dan Pink might refer to them as, start in an entirely different direction. Instead of asking how they were going to pay for what they wanted to achieve, these other entrepreneurs began by brainstorming fun & creative ways to help them achieve their goals. So in a sense, some right-brainer entrepreneurs are substituting currency for creativity, when making decisions about their small business.

If you work with us, then you know our motto: Creativity + The Right online tools & strategy = successful online marketing for your business. Today, more than any other time in history, small business owners have the ability to compete on a global level. All it takes is the right approach, plus a little creativity, and your small business could go viral in a matter of hours. If you’re always pushing the envelope, always creating, then at some point you’re going to realize success.

If passion was arguably Marriott’s biggest key to success in the early 20th century, creativity came in a close second. J. Willard Marriott opened his first nine-stool root beer stand in May of 1927. With business booming in the summer months, Marriott quickly realized that demand for root beer was going “dry up” come winter. To some, this dip would be insurmountable. Not to Marriott, as we discussed his passion led him, and he knew exactly where he wanted to take his business. It was in this dip that Marriott decided that he was going to add hot food to his small root beer stand and rebrand it The Hot Shoppe, now a family restaurant. Marriott didn’t stop there, just one year later he spotted a coming trend, the drive-in. His creativity allowed him to understand how he could capitalize on this trend for his business. He quickly evolved his business to incorporate drive-in service, and business shot through the roof.

J. Willard Marriott is a prime example of a business owner who combined passion and drive to create a successful business. Even in our current economy, the tools are out there, all it takes is a little passion, combined with some creativity, and you too can grow a successful business.

If you’d like to capitalize on OUR passion & creativity, we’d love to have you as a client. Contact us about any of your online marketing needs.

Are you responsible, in one form or another, for driving sales for a small hotel or hotel chain? If so, these past few months have probably been a little tough for your business. Business travelers aren’t traveling as much. Many folks are leveraging online tools like Google Docs and Skype to get business done while in different geographic locations. Summer is usually a big travel season here in the U.S., and I’m thinking even that’s going to be down this year, as more and more families are staying local during their family vacation. So, with this being the situation, it’s up to us to get creative and find new ways to generate revenue for hotels.

Every time I travel, and stay in a hotel, one of the most underused areas of the hotels that I stay in are the conference rooms. Most hotels have at least one to two conference rooms, and most of the time, they are not being used. So, if I’m working at a hotel, especially if I’m a decision-maker, I’m trying to find creative ways to use the conference rooms. One use of the conference rooms is to rent them out to local entrepreneurs and small business owners. There are quite a few small businesses, as well as startups, who need workspace. Workspace with internet and cable connections. Workspace that’s affordable, comfortable, and can accommodate at least 5 – 7 people. Hotel conference rooms can fill this need in the marketplace. It just takes some planning, a little creativity, and the use of the right online tools to market the new service.

When it comes to renting out your hotel conference rooms, you want to make sure you do not upset any hotel guests that need to use the space. Figure out a way to ensure that you do not schedule the conference room at times when hotel guests need to use it. One way to do this is to ask each guest when the book their room (which is usually at some point prior to their stay) if they plan to use the conference room. If they do, find out the date/time that they’ll need it and add that to a calendar that keeps track of the conference room schedule. Once you have a plan in place for scheduling the conference rooms, you can come up with your fee schedule. This could be hourly, it could be by the day or half day, it’s really about what you think the market will pay. Perhaps you can do a little research to see what other “similar” spaces charge. Find a price, start marketing it, and the market will tell you if it’s too high, too low, or just right.

Once you have your plan in place, now you can start marketing your new service both through materials inside the hotel, and through your online social tools, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube, your Blog, and foursquare. Your target should be entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses without a physical location. Create content about the need for physical workspace that’s affordable for entrepreneurs. Get testimonials from past customers. Shoot a video showing the space and explaining what’s offered (ie. high speed internet, cable, phone, etc). Create a foursquare special geared towards saving money on a conference room rental. There are countless creative ways that you can promote your message to your target audience through online tools.

Give your plan some time to get up and running. Check-in on a quarterly basis to see how you’re tracking against your performance measures. If you aren’t seeing many rentals, then tweak some things. If people are starting to rent the conference rooms, find out how they found out about your service, ask them what they thought about the service after they use it, etc. Constantly learn about what’s working and what’s not. Don’t be afraid to try new things. With ideas like this, there are hardly any real costs needed to try to rent out your hotel conference rooms. What’s there to lose? If it doesn’t work, then come up with a new creative way to leverage the conference rooms, or other underused areas of your hotel. In times like these, the businesses who get creative, and leverage the proper tools, will be the ones who thrive.