dont pull in your horns a bit, you will never make it."     "No kidding," John replied, and took down the signs and stopped the construction program. Soon business dwindled away to nothing and John went broke.     The lesson of this story is simple: When the signs went up, business improved. When they came down, there wasnt enough income to buy ketchup. One way or another, successful businesses get the word out. (Incidentally, the son went on to get his degree and opened his own business consulting firm.)     There are small libraries full of books about how to market a business or product.I recommend especially Marketing Without Advertising, by Michael Phillips and Salli Rasberry (Nolo). Such books used to focus almost exclusively on paid advertising. More recently, broader concepts of marketing have come into prominence. Network marketing, or selling to friends and acquaintances, has become an identified alternative to more traditional selling strategies. Focus or target marketing involves getting the word out to the people and groups who are most apt to need your goods or services, rather than advertising your product or service to the community as a whole.     If you get creative, there are all sorts of ways you can reach the people most likely to want your product or service, for little or no cost. For example, if you invent a better software program (or develop a consulting business in your special field), you could advertise on the radio-or you could target your market by finding a computer bulletin board of people who need your product. Your next step might be to get someone to write about your business for a computer magazine or news letter. Similar opportunities exist in every business. If you open an oboe repair shop, for example, one of the first jobs is to figure out inexpensive ways to let every oboist within a hundred-mile radius know of your existence. One way might be to contact every wind instrument instructor, school band leader and music store in the area and supply them with free literature on oboe cleaning.     Many successful businesses allow a set percentage of gross sales for promotion, often 3% to 5% of sales revenue as a budget figure. They allocate half that amount for a continuing, low-level effort to let people know about their product or service and schedule the other half to advertise sales and special events.     Think about what you will need to do to tell people about your business. Will your business need cards? Flyers? Newspaper ads? A good-sized ad in the yellow pages? Sample merchandise sent to media outlets so they can review your product? Window displays? Mailings? A part-time marketing expert to help you pull this together? Avoid expensive promotions that you havent tried before. For example, if you get an idea that involves mailing out 100,000 flyers, plan for a test by mailing only 5,000. If it works, go for the rest. If not, use the money you saved for something else. A great deal of money spent on conventional advertising is wasted. New businesses especially are prone to spend too much in the wrong places. So use your common sense. Talk with friends in business. Check with trade associations to see what they suggest as a good budget number for telling potential customers about your business. Once youve set a budget for special promotions and continuing low-level advertising, write both amounts in the Profit and Loss Forecast.     TipFor more help, look ahead to. In that chapter, youll write a detailed marketing plan for your business that includes both pre-opening promotions and continuing marketing costs.     4e.Insurance. You must have at least some insurance in this litigation-happy society. Your lease may require you to keep fire, flood or earthquake insurance on the building. If the public comes into your business, public liability and property damage insurance is a necessity. This will protect you from the person who slips and falls on your floor mat. If you employ anyone, you also need workers compensation insurance, since you are absolutely liable if one of your employees injures