Business Coaching

Yes...that's a beer in a squirrel. A dead squirrel.

Next time you find roadkill, you’ll be looking at a marketing idea from a Scottish craft brewery.

Scottish craft brewery BrewDog produced a beer with 55 percent alcohol called “The End of History.” But that’s not its highest selling point, according to BrewDog —  this beer comes packaged inside a taxidermic rodent. At £500/$760 per beer, and from photos of the product, at least it’s not just roadkill wrapped around a cheap beer.

What BrewDog did was take an “out there” idea, and combined it with an in-demand product — a beer with a high alcoholic percentage. Combining two otherwise completely separate businesses and products might not normally work — such as beer and taxidermy — unless it’s very well-thought out and marketed well.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: the first batch of the beer served in dead rodents sold out on its first day on the market.

Can you think of any other small business that has combined a highly unusual product with its own to test and measure how that effects sales? Why do you think this idea was so successful?

There are positives and negatives to social media marketing.

Marketing is the life blood of any business but many companies spend too many of their resources on marketing campaigns that don’t lead to real and substantial results.

How can companies get the results they want from marketing campaigns?

Online advertising already accounts for a $55 billion market, but the fastest growing aspect of online advertising is social media marketing. Over $2.5 billion was spent on sites such as Facebook or Twitter last year, a 14% increase from the previous year.

There is no doubt social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are changing the way businesses advertise. But do the benefits of social media advertising outweight the benefits of traditional advertising?

One of the best aspects of social media advertising is it doesn’t cost a lot of money. In a recent interview on the Today Show, SillyBandz CEO Robert Croak said his company spent, “nothing on advertising” because they allowed the brand to advertise itself through word of mouth on social networking sites.

Social media advertising helps keep you in touch with your customers; you can review feedback, both positive and negative, and even conduct informal surveys or customer polls to find out what people want to buy from you.

There are a few negatives, however, and the biggest negative might be that if social media is used incorrectly, it can create a negative buzz for your business.

When businesses use social media marketing, there are some things to remember so you don’t generate negative buzz:  Social media accounts must be continually monitored to ensure customer content is positive and constructive, and all questions and comments must be responded to in a timely manner. Not doing so can have customers questioning your motivation or commitment, which can hurt business and allow disparaging comments to last, not only in cyberspace, but in prospective customers’ minds.

Using social media to advertise may take time to master, but it can be a great benefit to any business if used correctly. What do you think of the social media advertising revolution? Has it helped your business grow?

The economy could nurture small business to success, believe it or not.

Has anyone else noticed that the recession has tilted the playing field in favor of small businesses?

We now live in an era where heavyweights like JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, and the New York Times still dominate, but can be eclipsed in certain ways by small operations and wind up the follower rather than the leader.

Significant parts of the economy are vulnerable to an ever-growing flock of so-called little guys with more influence than ever before, thanks to a transforming technological and economic landscape that is leveling the playing field.

Small business boutique firms like Evercore, Rothschild, and Perella Weinberg ranked alongside JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions. In banking, the FDIC  is looking at more small banks versus large ones. These changes reflect a changing economic landscape that increasingly favors the little guy.

This new “little guy” economy is a world where value trumps revenue, and where business owners really have to figure out what the customer wants. Businesses need to be more flexible, and small businesses usually have more leeway to do so because they’re not answering to several higher-ups within a corporation.

This is a great time to figure out where small businesses need to strengthen and what strategies they should use going forward. The easiest way to figure this out in the short-term? A free business coaching session. This way, a business coach can give you strategies to improve not only in the short-term, but also in the long-term.

Think this new “little guy” economy could last for a while? What are your thoughts about this “new” economy and its effects on small businesses?

Business owner Les Kreider, owner of Kreider Canvas Service, heard about ActionCOACH through a relative. Once deciding to hire a business coach, Kreider knew he had made a great decision. Find out why — watch the above video!

Customer polling done by Sam’s Club revealed that nearly 15% had been turned down for business loans recently. Since the bulk of Sam’s Club’s clientele are small businesses looking to save money, Sam’s Club knew that it could be just a matter of time until they saw their profits dwindling.

How could they change the downward trending? WalMart Inc., Sam’s Club’s parent company, decided that the best way to deal with this problem was to come to a common solution, one that could help both Sam’s Club and its customers, while creating a new level of customer loyalty. That solution is loaning capital to customers.

Sam’s Club will focus its loans on small businesses owned primarily by women, minorities and veterans. They will make loans of anywhere from $5000 to $25,000 to those small businesses. The term of the loans will be 10 years and there will be no penalty for early payment. The loans will be made through an outside lender and Sam’s Club will actually make $50 per loan.

Aside from the small stipend made on each loan, the benefits to Sam’s Club could be enormous. Creating renewed loyalty throughout its customer base while also improving its own bottom line are just two benefits for them, but your small business could benefit as well.

For businesses in need of capital or struggling to close the cash gap this could be a huge advance because of the dearth of traditional lending these days. If you already have a Sam’s Club account, you will probably be much more likely to be able to get a loan in their system because they already know you and your business.

For many years small businesses have struggled to compete against big business.  Today thanks to a more enlightened view of business, major corporations are looking for ways to help small businesses.

Sam’s Club has come up with a vision that they hope will ensure their customers today become customers for life. Think this strategy will work?

If you think franchising can only leverage and optimize revenue and profit for you, think again. It can also help boost jobs in the U.S., according to an article by Jane Applegate, the president and CEO of The Applegate Group.

Applegate tells the story of Jeff Haas, who bought a CertaPro painting franchise last year. The former Chrysler exec who resigned instead of waiting to be downsized, bought the franchise by tapping into his retirement savings at a time when the stock market was hammering his portfolio.

Rather than go it alone, he agreed to let the former owner stay on to work as an outside sales rep. It was a good move for both of them: the former owner now focuses on bringing in new business, while Haas manages the day-to-day operations and supervises the painting crews. Haas has 30 employees, including his wife, Gwen, handles customer service, sets up appointments and offers interior decorating and color consultations.

All in all, buying a franchise turned out to be a good thing for the Haases, and while it does take dedication, a successful franchise can ultimately help the economy, because it’s creating new jobs.

People who buy franchises are among those creating new American jobs—about 36,000 this year, according to the International Franchise Association. The trade association, which represents about 1,250 franchise companies and 10,000 individual franchises, recently reported that new job growth this year contrasts with the loss of 400,000 franchise jobs in 2009.

Read the full article here. Do you agree that franchising might be a good way to increase job growth in a still-shaky economy?

Obama talked small business with those who are directly affected: small business owners.

Imagine getting a call from President Obama? And not just any call, but a call that he wanted to meet with you, a small business owner, and talk about issues affecting small businesses?

That’s what happened to Steve Wheat and Bobby Pancake, partners in High 5 LLC, a six-unit franchisee of Buffalo Wild Wings based in Bear, Delaware.

The meeting took place on June 11th, and included Obama, Pancake, Wheat, a general manager of a Buffalo Wild Wings in Dover, Delaware, and two owners of a technology company in Rockville, Maryland.

Pancake called the meeting “intimate.”

“We talked about getting the banks to loosen up so business can grow,” he said. “We told him that if Congress were able to make changes, we would like to build a couple more restaurants and add more jobs. He was really interested in what we had to say.”

Specifically, Wheat said, the president discussed the need to raise the cap on SBA loans from $2 million to $5 million.

Following the meeting in the Oval Office, the group convened for a press conference, during which the Obama discussed the Small Business Jobs Initiatives and the need to “make it easier for smaller firms to hire and to grow.”

Noting that small businesses historically have created two-thirds of all new jobs in the country, Obama said, “we’re going to need to make sure that small companies are able to open up and expand and add names to their payroll” in order to replace the millions of jobs lost during the recession.

Think Obama’s meeting with small business owners will jump start any changes for small business?

Information is everywhere! The relevant and irrelevant bombard you on the Internet, cell phones and all the other technology we take for granted on a daily basis. While communication has never been easier, the information we get is filtered and, often difficult to understand, especially when dealing with government agencies.

Recently, the White House urged federal agencies to make their information available to the public in an easier way and a new internet boom has begun…Dot-Gov startups.

Companies such as Socrata, have become government contractors by simply providing information to the public. And Socrata isn’t the only company jumping on the bandwagon. Interest is high in this relatively new avenue for Internet growth, both from App innovators and business people, as well as the government itself. There have been at least 10 events throughout the United States over the last year devoted to this concept, including the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington D.C. on May 25^th of this year. The federal government has shown how important it thinks this field is by holding App contests, providing prize money for developers who’ve built Apps with public data.

While many companies have seen internet revenues drop precipitously since the Dot-Com crash of 2003, Dot-Gov startups are doing well for a number of reasons. Most importantly, they serve a useful niche in our world. As government expands, citizens need tools to understand and navigate through certain agencies. Thanks to easier accessibility, citizens are able to participate more freely in society. This leads to a greater understanding of how the government works that was limited in the past.
In our society, almost everybody has access to instant messaging, texts, and the old fashioned phone call anytime, anyplace. And while we all strive for quicker, less-limiting forms of connecting with others, some groups in our society have refused to get on board. The most prevalent of these groups used to be government agencies but that is clearly changing. With so much technology and information at our fingertips, the attitude of government agencies had to change, finally, for the better.

Lately, and probably in the future still, people have had a habit of blaming things that go wrong in their business on the economy. But unfortunately, the economy can’t be the only thing small businesses blame.

Sure, the financial crisis didn’t help the small business environment. But other things have been slowly changing as well, which have also slowly but surely been affecting small businesses.

For instance, cheaper imports from overseas and vast improvements and updates in technology changes the way things are run. When cashflow is in order business is booming, it’s easy to miss the effects of these changes. But when the economy is bad and business decreases, the effects are magnified.

Small businesses need to stop blaming the economy, but instead, start working on the issues that are really effecting their business – changes in demand, competition, products and services.

With business coaching, it’s important to keep this in mind. Instead of simply blaming something for what’s going wrong, it’s imperative to fix the problem or make changes…because otherwise, you might be out of business!