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Case Study: Bob Baker (Technical Copy To Go)

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Ten years after starting her own commercial cleaning company, Charilyn Sloan knew it was time for expansion. She needed more clients, but wasn’t sure how to make the time to go out and find them.

Charilyn’s company, Sparkle Edge Cleaning, works with contractors and building companies to handle post-construction cleaning of new homes before the owners move in, as well as general commercial cleaning and some residential work. She had twelve employees but still found herself bogged down by many of the routine tasks of her business and often used “I’m too busy” as an excuse to keep from going out to find those new clients that she wanted.

“As I got busier in the business I started neglecting my networking,” says Charilyn. “It is so easy to get caught up in all of the day to day details of a business and forget that you still need to go out and promote and market your company.”

Charilyn first heard about Team Nimbus through its weekly Small Business Insights lunches and became a regular visitor. She eventually joined a 90-day Fasttrack program designed for Team Nimbus clients who want to put their business on the fast track to growth and expansion. The program, she says, “gave me a lot of new ideas for my business as well as reminding me of some things I’d forgotten.”

One new idea for Charilyn was to talk with her existing clients and ask them for referrals to other businesses. “It was something so simple, it just hadn’t occurred to me before, and it really did work. I got a couple of new clients just by talking to my current customers.”

Lorette also encouraged her to go to a variety of networking groups where she could meet the business owners who needed her services. “Sometimes it is difficult to make yourself go out and meet new people. Lorette opened my eyes and made me see it was something I really needed to do. She motivated me and helped me to remember that to grow my business I needed to be out their meeting new customers.”

Charilyn also appreciates Lorette’s solutions-oriented style of working with her clients. “She helps you to look at your problems in a new way and come up with new answers,” she explains.

She also credits Lorette for helping her to realize that she needed to delegate some of her responsibilities and free her time for the tasks that her employees could not do.

Charilyn enjoyed the group aspect of Team Nimbus, also, working with a group of business owners who were all dedicated to the same thing: making their businesses grow.

“As a small business owner you often don’t have anyone else to discuss a problem with; you can easily get into a one-track way of thinking. You get stuck and only see one solution to a problem, whether it is the best solution or not,” she says.

Having other members of the team with whom to discuss ideas and problems was a tremendous help, she said. “It was great to hear different ideas and different possible solutions. Two heads are always better than one.”

That sense of team helped her in other ways, also. “I found out I wasn’t alone with my problems. Every business owner, no matter what business they are in, has similar issues. Team Nimbus helped me get a new perspective on my business and it also helped me to expand and grow.”

Case Study: Bob Baker (Technical Copy To Go)

“I translate geek,” says Bob Baker, a freelance writer who specializes in “tailoring technical materials” to the target audience. “Most writers are afraid of technical or scientific material and most scientists are afraid to string three words together on a page,” says Bob. But with a degree in chemistry and a couple of decades of experience in writing copy for scientific and technical companies, Bob steps in where many of his colleagues fear to tread. “I have the ability to write for either a technically sophisticated audience or for laymen who need the material translated into clear, understandable English,” he explains.

Bob worked as a technical copywriter for several advertising agencies in both New York and Philadelphia before deciding to forego the “typical round of corporate hiring and layoffs,” and open his own business, Copy To Go, in 1996.

In the decade that followed he focused his business on writing for science and technology corporations, but when he lost his largest account he found himself scrambling to fill the gap in his monthly income. That’s when he met Lorette Pruden of Team Nimbus NJ.

Bob had been writing a weekly business column for the Bridgewater Courier-News and heard about the Team Nimbus weekly Small Business Insights lunch in Somerville. He stopped in to see if he could find out something to use in one of his articles, and “ended up having a great conversation with Lorette about where I was going in my own business,” he explains.

He came back to the lunch meetings several times and eventually decided that the best way to make his own business grow was to join the Team Nimbus program. “It was big gulp for me to pay the monthly fee, particularly when I’d just lost my biggest account, but I swallowed hard and decided to give it a try.”

He hasn’t regretted it. “I’d been in business for myself for over a decade when I joined Team Nimbus, but there were still a lot of aspects of being a business owner that I hadn’t mastered. Team Nimbus has taught me a lot. A Team Nimbus client meeting is to the power of five over what happens at those Tuesday lunches. You couldn’t afford to hire the expertise that sits on a Nimbus Team and helps you with your business,” he says.

After working with Lorette and Team Nimbus for just a few months, Bob not only made up the income from his lost client, he found new sources of revenue also. “I see myself as a specialist in science and technical writing, but after working with Team Nimbus I found ways to expand my services,” he says. He now works with small business owners in a variety of industries to help them to develop marketing copy and press releases.  Lorette also introduced him to several new networking groups and associations, such as the New Jersey Entrepreneurs Forum, where he could market his unique skills.

The bottom line for Bob is business, and Team Nimbus has helped him to find it. “Recently I took a look at my client list. If I add up all the income I’ve gotten either directly or indirectly through my work with Team Nimbus, the column is in the black. I’m bringing more money in each month than I’m putting out.”