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Lessons from a Jewish deli
Years ago I use to work in Cleveland Ohio. One of my favorite restaurants to eat in was a Jewish deli. The problem was that at lunch it was always full. So when I would go, they would seat me with other men who were eating alone. I always looked forward to those lunches because you never knew who you would eat with. And as a young businessperson, many times I would get hooked up with successful patrons of the restaurant. I always enjoyed it. And learned a lot.
Well thirty years later it happened again, but this time the young man may have thought that I was teaching him, but in fact he was teaching me.
I was having lunch in San Antonio today and the mall restaurant was packed. So this young man asked if he could share a table with me. “Well yes of course” was my answer.
He was from Nicaragua and he was going to school in Austin getting his masters in entrepreneurship. A one year program covering all of the core ingredients of being a successful entrepreneur.
He already owns one business, a real estate company in Nicaragua, but he has chosen to go back to school, come to Austin and learn how to be a entrepreneur. He talked about a number of classes he has to take, and how many hours he is in class each week. Also he talked about his own goals to start another business and how important it is to just get out and get started. My bet is he could teach a lot of folks about being a small business owner right now.
Sure I answers some of his questions but really it was me who learned from him. I admit that growing up I did not go to school for entrepreneur, (is was accounting) but at my dinner table as a kid I learned from other small business owners (my family) what it took to succeed. Those meals like today’s was so important. Today, neither one of us could have guessed that we both would learn a lot.
He remains me of Jessica Gibbs-Dieterle who started a great little retail store during the tough economic times of 2008, Jen McGahan wrote a great blog post about her business, http://chartingdreams.com/social-marketing/. Jessica worked for a large company, quite the job and went to work in a big box fabric store for minimum wage just to learn the business. Today she has a great business. Well getting back to my new friend, he too will have a great business because he is willing to put in the time and energy to learn, study and most importantly get involved with small business.
So if you are looking to start a small business and you have never had one, maybe you work in a large company and need to start something new. Get experience, get help and most importantly get started.
Sam
Managing my business credit
One of the businesses I own is a 50 unit apartment complex. We have owned it for over three years and all in all it has proven to be a great property. Today we are full, and I mean full, not a vacancy and when we do, I have them filled before the old tenants are moving out. But how I did it is another blog.
But for the last two times I have asked for extension or new credit I was turned down. So on my second turn down I asked why. Well the reason was that the business does not have or at least the companies that track businesses did not have our business in their systems.
I was told that there are two companies that rate small businesses. The first is Dunn and Bradstreet, (www.dnb.com). They are a 130-year-old company and of course they rate small businesses like mine. But if you are the owner of your small business and you want to clean up or improve your credit score, then there is a fee. The fee that I need will cost me $590 for the first year and the second year it should be cheaper. They were kind enough and did give me a copy of my report for free and yes it was missing a lot. And I will say their service was very good.
So I am going to spend the money and see what happens. I know that $590 is a lot but what choice do we have.
Now for the second company, Experian (www.experian.com) they seem to have a program that only costs $100 but as of now I am not sure about this. I tried to call in for help and was given a recording and to leave a message. Oh well, for the $500 at Dunn and Bradstreet I was given live help and our call was answered very fast. Experian I was to leave a message, which I have not done yet.
So I figured I would write about some of the things I find along the way in getting my active profitable business better credit.
Choose Plans That Get Traction and Stop Wasting Time
How to tell the difference between a dream and a plan…
Jeffrey Eisenberg spoke at the Austin SEO Meetup last Thursday evening on The 21 Secrets for Top Converting Websites. Good stuff. One of many great tips we came away with was #19 — A System for Prioritization. The way I understood the story: The Eisenberg team went to a large client with a giant binder full of things the client could do to improve his website. The head honcho there took a look at the size of the book and suggested they capture the most important ones with a system as follows:
Rate every item with a score of 1-5
- resources — how much money does it take? Do you have it?
- time — how long will it take? Do you have the time?
- impact — how much impact will it have?
The items that got the highest score (15) are the ones you tackle first (or the ones you tackle, period).
This tip alone was worth the time and travel to the meetup. I told Sam on the way home that we should buckle down and try that every day. After a chuckle that since we don’t have time or money, we have an easy job of it (doesn’t every one wish for more of both?), we started to think seriously about the things we should be acting on. Tomorrow.
Just to show you how the important stuff tends to get reinforcement, here’s a sentence from Start-up Guide to Guerrilla Marketing by Jay and Jeannie Levinson that I came across just yesterday:
- Wanna-be’s seek a perfect plan; Guerrilla Entrepreneurs execute — and adjust the plan later.
- Wanna-be’s wait for their lucky break; Guerrilla Entrepreneurs engineer four, five, six plans and execute them in tandem, wagering that at least one plan will get traction.
I think we have the plan that has traction while we’ve been putting a half-baked effort into too many other projects and ideas. That must change.
100-yr-old Virginia Writes limericks On iPad
Virginia is 100 years old. Her kids just bought her an iPad (How sweet is that? In case Virginia doesn’t know it, she is a blessed woman!) and she turns out limericks.
Now aside from the fact that I aspire to be just like Virginia if I’m lucky enough to reach 100 years, I will say that I learned two things from the process of writing this blog post.
- Moderators/authors of blogs (are you the same person?) should always read and moderate their readers’ comments and post them ASAP. Otherwise the people who commented will think you thought we were schmucks. Which we are not. To disregard a chummy comment is to dis the writer herself. And anyway, who doesn’t like comments?
- Old folks at home are capable. We ourselves are going to get old if we’ve taken good care of ourselves. If we expect the same consideration to be given to ourselves, then we should all listen carefully to the musings of 100-year-old men and women if we should be so lucky to come across them. One hundred years is not so much in the big picture anyway. Know this is true.
Regarding this wonderful post of an old woman using her new iPad, I celebrated her — and the author of the post, I might add — with a limerick of my own. But first you have to see the video:
Now for my limerick:
Virginia has limericks in her.
Though only an iPad beginner,
Her debut was divine.
While her family drank wine
She proved she was still a word spinner.
I want to still be spinning something when I’m 100, don’t you? Every day is an opportunity to learn new things, to learn from others, and to influence your corner of the world.
Good job, Virginia.
(Mr. Shenk, please moderate your comments. By the way, can’t wait to read your book, The Genius in All of Us.)
Online Ad Spending WAAAAY up.
Think about your pay-per-click ads. When one customer clicks, a handful of change flies out the door. Ka-ching. So….um, Did you close a sale?
Compared to traditional ads (print, radio, TV) you might feel like you’re getting a bargain with digital ads. Or you can feel like you’re being nickled and dimed to death. Either way, if you’re like most advertisers these days, you are turning more and more to the internet or mobile ads because that’s where your customers are.
You’re not alone. Everyone is hiking up their Internet ad expenditures these days. Today, Google’s president of global sales Nakesh Arora predicted a hefty HALF of all ad dollars will be spent on some digital media within 5 years or so.
The big question is: Can you account for your money? When someone clicks and enters your site, does that person ultimately buy something from your company? Is that even your aim? Maybe you just want to create some buzz, inform your followers and friends about some charitable work you’re doing, or let them know what some new law means for your industry. Maybe you don’t always close a sale when someone clicks or calls or visits your site. Maybe you’re happy to gain a new Facebook friend. Maybe, maybe, maybe….
It’s no different than it was 50 years ago; most of us can’t tell what portion of our ad dollars are effective and what percent are wasted on potential customers that flitter around, read a little about your product, print off a coupon, leave, lose the coupon, forget about you, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice to know for sure that our digital dollars are spent wisely?
I’m just dreaming tonight. The “connector” in me wishes well and values the ever elusive human nature of the customer I’m hoping to connect with. I like sharing information; I like building relationships. Really I do. I love the giant question mark hanging in the air as our advertising budget is thrown out into the digital world on a wing and a prayer. And yet, I’m a practical person at heart, and while those nickels and dimes seem small, they do add up. I know I’m not alone worrying about this.
All of us who spend money on digital ads want to connect with the right people once and for all. Or at least for the long term. So what’s the secret?
It’s going to take some creative analytics to satisfy me. Sam and I are always talking about how to spend money on the right things for our clients and for ourselves. There never seems to be an easy answer, but we continue to search.
These are exciting times. Everything is changing so fast. It’s a great time to be a small business owner, don’t you think? We can make new rules and break all the rules we want, and do it without spending an arm and a leg. Now here’s the challenge: Let’s at least try to track our small gains, whether they result in actual sales or not. The benefit of being able to “talk to” so many people digitally, is a little like the the first printing press in the 18th century allowing pamphlet writers to reach a huge and diverse portion of the community. someone clicked; someone entered; someone glanced your way; someone raised his hand…
Who knows what can happen now? Stay on your toes.