I was reading this post on writers and
how they have to be selfish.
That rings true for entrepreneurs also.
I’m continuing to build a venture
while working a contract gig.
I got offered an after hours week long contract gig.
It pays more than a month of regular billings.
I took it.
Now my own venture, my own future,
is on hold while I help build someone else’s.
Not smart.
I have to be “selfish” and
put my own business first.
Sandra Wilson, founder of the
indoor baby shoe company Robeez said
that one of their biggest decisions was
“are we a shoe company or
are we a baby accessory company?”
How did she solve that?
She asked herself “what are we really good at?”
and at that time,
“we knew we weren’t shoe manufacturers.”
You have to “know what you’re good at.”
Will that decision hold?
In 2006, the $30 million in annual sales Robeez
was acquired by Stride Rite.
Their expertise IS in the shoe business.
A local businessman,
in his low budget tv ads,
dresses in tights and calls himself Cashman
(“I give you cash for your old jewellery”).
He is laughed at, ridiculed,
and… adored.
Everyone knows these ads.
Everyone knows his chain of stores.
And by acting crazy,
he makes crazy amounts of money.
It might not work for every business but
it works for his store and for his prospects.
And now, he has imitators
(but no one can beat the original Cashman).
With Halloween fast approaching,
there are opportunities for businesses to
get creative with marketing,
with promotions,
with advertising.
Most won’t for fear of looked crazy.
But a few brave businesses,
as Troy White encourages,
will and
those will break away from their competitors.
During October,
Personal Finance Bloggers are using their sites
to help promote financial literacy in schools.
They are encouraging readers to donate.
This being a cause near and dear to my heart,
I decided to give.
But how much to give?
I wasn’t sure.
Then I saw that the fundraising was
broken down into projects.
I had a choice.
I could give what I usually give to charities or
for a little bit more, I could support an entire project.
I decided on the entire project.
Most customers or donors or…
would do the same.
If you give them an option
between partial and total ownership,
they will choose total ownership.
An easy way to upsell.
I went to a seminar after work two days ago.
About a quarter of the attendees
were in suits or blazers and
the rest were very casual.
An interesting thing happened
at the end of the seminar,
all the suits were talking to each other,
exchanging business cards.
There wasn’t a single casual dresser
in the group.
Why?
Because the suits knew
while the primary reason to attend
was to hear the presenter,
the secondary was to network, and
networking while looking one’s best
is more effective.
About a decade ago,
I pushed the beverage company
I was working for
to get into prune juice
(they resisted).
My thoughts were that
with the baby boomers aging and
the digestive issues that come with that,
prune juice sales would soar.
Classic, classic mistake.
Instead of focussing on the problem,
I focussed on the solution.
Prune juice isn’t booming
but sales of products
with probiotic cultures are.
In the past,
to help the sales of a less marketable product,
we’d bundle it with a popular product.
Or to increase sales,
we’d offer BOGO (buy one, get one free).
Unfortunately bundling isn’t as successful
as it once was.
I was in a store on Saturday and
there was a BOGO sale.
Customer after customer insisted on
paying the BOGO price for a single purchase.
The clerk would say no and
the customers got irritated.
Some walked away from the sale completely.
Seth Godin explains
why bundling is no longer effective.
Over the weekend,
I was looking for an answer
to a very specific question.
I posted on several on-line groups,
emailed the world,
made phone calls.
Difficult to find the answer.
Took me about 14 hours of asking.
Then when I found it and
successfully applied it to my situation,
I posted the answer everywhere
I posted the question.
Why?
Sharing this knowledge
was a thank you for being able
to ask the question.
I recently consulted at a business
that delayed its launch by a month…
for two years.
At first, the delays meant something.
There was disappointment by
investors, staff, media, prospective patrons,
and then the excitement rebuilt.
It made the papers.
It was talked about.
Two years later… not so much.
Now the deadlines not only meant nothing,
but were expected.
There was no push to meet them
because they “could always be moved.”
Set a deadline and meet it.
Move drop dead dates only when absolutely necessary.
Working on the low budget promotional plan
for my May book launch and
one of the questions I ask myself is…
“How best to keep this item out of the trash?”
As long as the promotional vehicle
is out of the garbage,
it has a shot at being effective.
Accomplishing that could be as simple as
putting a motivational quote on the postcard
or financial ratios on the back of a business card.
It requires a little more money
but a lot more creativity.