Harvey March 16, 2009

Tim, Thanks for your thoughts. I have been down the same paths before. I have succeeded, failed and succeeded again. I have been successful for many years now and don’t owe a dime to anyone. Yet, today with the real or imagined, Media-hyped economic downturn my business is down 35 percent from last year, this hurts. Oh not because it will ruin me, although it could I suppose. No it’s because my employees are already suffering and will likely move on and/or go broke, more in the hole then they are already. I pad their pay each week with extra hours but it helps only minimal. So, the question is what does one do who owns a business, advertises a lot and still can’t ‘create’ work for the company or the employees? I can wait-out the economic real or contrived downturn, but many others just can’t.

Hello Harvey,

This question is pretty tough to answer not knowing more specifics about your business, your industry or your exact current marketing strategies. But… I’ll give it my best shot. First of all, I really admire the way you care about your employees. Having that attitude is a smart way to run a business. From my experiences, MOST small to medium businesses are not marketed very well. (Heck, most BIG businesses have crappy marketing as well!) So, I’ll take a shot in the dark and guess that there just might be areas in the marketing of your business that could use some improvement. You say you advertise a lot. That is good ONLY if the ads are working. It is critical that you have a system in place to track the performance of every advertising dollar you spend. What does this mean? Well, if you put and ad in the yellow pages, you should have a specific coupon, or offer code or custom website landing page that tells you exactly how much business that ad is generating for you. I could go on and on… Instead, you should read this book: No B.S. Direct Marketing by Dan Kennedy. It’s $10.36 at Amazon.com Here’s the link… http://bit.ly/197JLu

Paul March 4, 2009

My question is very general. If I had 10k to start a small business in the current economy, what areas would you look at?  Something retail, service oriented, or labor intensive? I have run a small lawn care biz in the past so I’m inclined to go service but wondered what your general thoughts were. Not opposed to trying something different. Thanks, Paul

Hi Paul,

Oh boy… this is a great question. I’m going to assume that you live reasonably close to a large population center. (Within 100 miles of a city of 200,000 people) FACT 1: The FASTEST growing demographic in the United States is the “mass affluent”. I know, I know… it’s hard to believe if you watch or listen to the news, but I am NOT joking. FACT 2: It is harder and harder to find ANY level of decent service anywhere in any business. FACT 3: People who consider themselves affluent (which is a very relative term!) for the most part are willing to pay a lot of money for exceptional service. Okay Paul, here’s where I’m going with this. It almost doesn’t matter WHAT business you’re in, just be sure that you set your business up so that you target the mass affluent. How do you do this? You TARGET them. You learn how to communicate with them. You provide AMAZING and consistent customer service and finally you charge a LOT of money for this. And you can’t have it both ways. You either go big or go home. Here’s the perfect book for you: No. B.S. Marketing to the Affluent by Dan Kennedy. It’s $12.21 at Amazon.com Here’s the link… http://bit.ly/TbGAv

Are you actively LOOKING for ways to win?  You know I heard someone say once that motivation is like a shower.  You need it everyday or you start to stink!  Listen to what Les Brown has to say about motivation and vision for our current reality.

Make it count!

Take care,

Tim Schmidt