How to Cash In on a ‘World’ of Opportunities
Consider these developments: Africa will be transformed economically over the next 10 years. By 2016, China will be the world’s largest economy. Dubai International just passed Heathrow as the world’s business airport for international travel. Do these facts help put the future of commerce in perspective? If economic opportunity is knocking at a door for your business, that door may not be located in the next community, but instead could be half way around the world. Start with two simple questions…well, simple to ask, less simple to answer: Is there demand for your product or service abroad? How can you bring your product or service to market abroad? If you are still with me, I’m going to assume—safely, I believe—that expanding overseas would be a new venture for you. Therefore, answering the first question above is the critical one, and also question which you are probably not prepared to answer. Question #1 If you can budget for it, hiring a consultant experienced in helping businesses establish operations overseas is a great way to go. Just make sure you hire the right person. Contact references and make sure that previous clients have expanded successfully in the same geographic area. If you want to dive in and do some digging yourself, one of your best resources will be the U.S. Commercial Service. The service has offices all around the country so there’s a good chance you can make an appointment and talk to a real person. You can also kick off the process by calling 1-800-USA-TRADE (872-8723). Also, be sure to check out the list of current webinars; you might find one that targets your industry sector. The service works mostly with small and medium sized businesses, so there’s a good chance you’ll fit right in. Making the move Exactly the best way to bring your product or service to countries around the globe is a big question. You can export. You can manufacture overseas. You can do a combination of both approaches. There is a good chance you’ll have to establish an office in another country and this can be tricky. Again, there are consultants who can guide you. Another option is to partner with a foreign company. This is often the preferred strategy because the foreign company will have a track record you can review as well as the infrastructure you’re going to require. Using technology Some small businesses will find that the Internet and various apps can provide the tools they need to sell overseas. Service providers looking to expand overseas can use products like GoToMeeting, WebEx, and WizIQ to give them a virtual “presence” with their new clients. Translations services such as Acapelabox as well as working with overseas freelancers through services like Elance can prove to be very useful as US companies get their websites and marketing materials ready for foreign markets. I don’t know exactly which small businesses will expand overseas, but I know many will. Will yours be among...
read moreWonder Why So Many Women Are Smiling? They Are Entrepreneurs.
Okay, I know this is going to put legions of self-help authors who target the female audience out of business, but there is one simple key to happiness: be a successful women entrepreneur. Babson College and Baruch College just issued their 2013 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) US Report, which makes it abundantly clear that established female business owners are enjoying a level of happiness that would cause Pharrell Williams to break out in song. The study found that women who own established businesses rank their well-being more than twice as high as women who are neither entrepreneurs nor business owners. Also, one in 10 US women is starting or running a new business. Beyond economic and social benefits “Women entrepreneurs show a substantial boost in well-being as their businesses mature, demonstrating the personal return on investment that comes with venturing into entrepreneurship. Our research found that the benefits of entrepreneurship extend beyond economic and social value. Clearly, entrepreneurship provides women a most satisfying career choice,” says Donna J. Kelley, lead author and associate professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College. Paradoxically, we may have the misery of the “Great Recession” to thank for this increased happiness among women. History teaches us that financial hard times prompt many who have lost their jobs to strike out on their own and establish businesses. Certainly many women took this course of action over the last several years. Not all of the good news in the study relates directly to women. The findings are also pretty upbeat for American entrepreneurs and business owners in general: Almost half – 47 percent – of Americans think there are good opportunities for starting a business right now and that’s the highest that figure has been since they started the study back in 1999. Some 56 percent of Americans believe they have what it takes to start their own businesses. That level of confidence is the highest among the 24 developed economies covered in the report. 37 percent of US entrepreneurs are planning to create jobs and employ six or more employees in the next five years. Older Americans doing well It also looks like many older Americans are turning to entrepreneurship to launch those second and third careers. Folks who are 55-64 years old are just as likely as younger Americans to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities and at the same time they’re less risk averse. All of this adds of to Americans leading all the other developed economies among older entrepreneurs. If you need a little extra boost of confidence to start or expand your business, this study should provide it. Image: Smiling Girl by Eric McGregor – used via CC BY...
read moreSmall Business Loans Changing in Big Ways
A recent headline said, “Small Business Lending Reaching ‘New Normal.’” The story outlined how the Pepperdine Private Capital Access Index for small businesses rose to 27.7 from 27.1 in February. It gives us a measure of demand for and ease in getting financing, including loans. Further, 44 percent of the small businesses surveyed last month said they received bank loans during the previous three months. That’s a pretty big jump from 39 percent in February and 34 percent last fall. Restrictions easing This is being called the “new normal” and it’s good to see banks easing up somewhat on the lending restrictions that have been in place since the recession. However, it’s not the only change the lending industry is experiencing that define a “new normal.” New sources of financing are emerging as well as new places small business owners turn to when they need an influx of cash. A solopreneur friend of mine just received an unsolicited offer from PayPal for a cash advance. Most of his clients pay through the online payment provider, so he has a long history of pumping cash through his PayPal account. So far he hasn’t taken them up on the deal, but if he does, they’ll just take a percentage of his cash flow until the debt is repaid. This is similar to the Square Reader cash advance program we discussed here recently. Online lenders Lending Club has pioneered the peer-to-peer loan model, including loans to small businesses. Unlike the Square Reader and PayPal cash advances, Lending Club loans are more conventional, with fixed monthly payments. Other online lenders include Kabbage, CAN Capital, Swift Capital, and OnDeck. Perhaps it’s increasing competition from these newer lenders that is pushing traditional banks to loosen up the purse strings a bit on small business loans. But, whatever forces are driving the changes, I’m glad to see that it’s getting easier to obtain credit and I’m overjoyed to see more options for small businesses when it’s time to take out a...
read moreIs Innovation Dead? Hardly.
I’m willing to go out on a limb and make a prediction today that I pledge to stand by: Tomorrow’s prognosticators will be just as wrong as today’s prognosticators. With apologies to Nostradamus adherents, if history has taught us anything, it’s that those who attempt to predict the future always get it wrong. I bring this up today because once again someone has sounded the death knell of innovation. Recreating a recent debate between two Northwestern University colleagues, The Wall Street Journal reported, “Robert Gordon, a curmudgeonly 73-year-old economist, believes our best days are over. After a century of life-changing innovations that spurred growth, he says, human progress is slowing to a crawl.” A new Dark Age? If what Gordon says is true, it would mean that we’re going into another “dark age” that condemns humans to a stagnation in which neither our material life nor our intellectual life will advance. It’s a gloomy picture and certainly not one that will motivate millennials or any of the other yet-to-be-labelled generations. Professor Gordon may be a brilliant man in many ways, but he suffers from an affliction that plagues many of us: he is unable to see what is not there. I once heard someone reconstruct a conversation that might have very well occurred out in the wilds of Kentucky in the middle of winter, 1809: “What’s new” “Nothing that matters much. I hear the Lincolns had a boy the other day.” A quick look at US patent application figures shows us that the number of applications in 2013 (154,891) was more than three times greater than the figure just 20 years earlier, which were 48,531. I think one lesson we can learn from this is that innovation inspires innovation. Ideas lead to more ideas If we can just take one recent innovation—the smart phone—we can think of hundreds of other significant inventions that were spurred by its invention. The list would include all kinds of apps, services and hardware. For example, right now there seems to be an explosion of fitness monitors coming to market. These would have been inconceivable, Professor Gordon, just a few years ago. Not long ago I wrote about Quirky.com, where they field hundreds of inventive ideas every week, select the best, then manufacture and market them. I love it because the website is built on the age-old essence of invention: find a need and fill it; or as the proverb puts it: Necessity is the mother of invention. This is also the foundation of success for a small business—identifying needs and providing ways to satisfy them. And if you’ve been bogged down recently in the day-to-day operations of your small business, I suggest you devote a little time to reflection and brainstorming. Consider what you have learned about your customers and clients, or re-engage your base in dialog. Identify needs that are currently going unmet, or for which you can design a better solution. Remember, sometimes they won’t even realize what they need until you demonstrate it to...
read moreWho Loves Ya, Baby? Using Social Media for Customer Service
As I’m writing this, Walmart’s @walmart Twitter account has racked up almost 250K tweets. You’ll find similarly huge numbers if you check out many of the country’s biggest retailers. This is because Twitter has become a major conduit for customer service conversations and many companies use it – and other social media – quite wisely to resolve customer service issues and also to proactively improve customer relations. However, not every company is putting social media to their best use when dealing with customer service issues. Much of the problem can be boiled down to the age-old tradeoff between words and action. When a customer brings up a customer service problem in social media, the responder needs to be empowered to make the situation right whenever possible. Lending a sympathetic virtual ear just doesn’t cut it. For example, I’ve had a few Twitter dialogs with American Airlines about various issues, and while I get quick responses, so far they haven’t been able to resolve any of the problems that I’ve brought to their attention. They apologize and thank me for my patience, but there seems to be a missing link in their system; they either don’t have enough authority or they are disconnected from the operational side of the airline. Situations like this make a customer want to respond with, “Can I tweet to your supervisor now, please?” Advantage: Small biz It should be easy for small businesses to avoid this kind of problem. They don’t have the layers of management that prevent nimble responses to customer service problems. Some have had good success using their Facebook pages while others are leveraging Twitter. Dave Greenbaum, who runs Doctor Dave Computer Repair in Lawrence, Kansas, has made great use of his Facebook page. He is able to respond to customer service queries all throughout the day as well as use his posts to engage his customer base. If you commit to opening social media channels to customer service inquiries, just be sure you have the systems in place and the authority bestowed properly to guarantee good outcomes. However, don’t stop at viewing social media as just ways to resolve customer service issues. See them as tools to create unexpected delights. Anticipate customer needs A Four Seasons Hotel in California carefully monitors its Twitter mentions. If you’re a Twitter user, you know that it’s not too unusual to tweet something like, “Heading to @hotelname for two days of business meetings. Really looking forward to #amenity.” This Four Seasons Hotel saw that a customer was on his way and he was really looking forward to hitting the spa when he arrived. The hotel quickly replied via Twitter and asked if they could make a reservation for him. Telly Savalas, when he was starring in the ’70s television series “Kojak” was famous for the catch phrase, “Who loves ya, baby?” That tag line reflects the approach you should bring to your social media customer service interactions. Let your customers know that you care for them: Take care of their problems and treat them to an occasional unexpected thrill. Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia...
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