Make the Rounds with Small Biz Savior Marcus Lemonis on ‘The Profit’
We’ve all seen medical dramas on television where students are in an operating theater observing a delicate operation being performed by a team of crack surgeons. They learn by watching experienced professionals go through the procedure. That’s the feeling we get when we watch Marcus Lemonis, star of CNBC’s “The Profit” swoop in and save struggling small businesses. We are able to watch small business life-saving surgery. Sometimes it’s bloody. There’s pain. Usually there’s a recovery that leaves the patient healthier than before the operation. The show’s fourth season begins October 28, 2015. Previous seasons are available for streaming on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, they aren’t included among the free content you get as a member of Amazon Prime. I originally wrote about Marcus Lemonis and “The Profit” back in August 2013 when the show was just starting out. That post has continued to be one of the most popular on my site. That demonstrates the continued interest in small business turnaround strategies, so I think “The Profit” should have a very long run on CNBC with Marcus Lemonis at the helm…unless he decides to run for office like another successful businessman/reality TV star we all know about! If that happens, CNBC might have to find a different host for “The Profit.” In an interview Lemonis did with Inc, he says that one reason he first decided to do “The Profit” was so he could see more deals first hand. This is also one of the reasons small business owners would be smart to watch “The Profit.” When you train at any new job, the first thing you usually do is tag around with an experienced hand. You go on sales calls with the best sales professionals. If you’re learning to wait tables in a restaurant, you shadow a seasoned member of the wait staff. However, as the owner of a small business, you are usually the most experienced person in virtually every aspect of your operation. Where can you go to see how others do it? Sitting down and watching “The Profit” with Marcus Lemonis gives you an opportunity to see how the business world operates beyond the walls of your company. I know I’m looking forward to where he takes us this season and I hope you are too. By the way, if you think you’d like to appear with Marcus Lemonis on “The Profit,” you’ll find the application form on this web...
read moreWhy Your Business Will Only Grow As Big As You Grow Yourself and What To Do About It
If you’re a small business owner, it almost goes without saying that you’re committed to your business, but let me ask a simple question: Are you committed to yourself? I’m going to cut to the chase: Most of the time, to grow your small business, you must first grow yourself. I touched on this topic recently when I was recording a new 1% Club podcast with Doug Sleeter, of The Sleeter Group. We got into the topic because I’ve had so many small business owners say to me, “Yeah, I know I should be using more technology and all that, but I just don’t have time to learn it.” When this happens you’re slamming the door closed on increased productivity and new opportunities. You’re limiting the potential of your business. I understand that we are all busy, but it’s like growing a bed of flowers and what you do to improve yourself is like adding the fertilizer. Yes, you’ll get some flower growth without fertilizing, but when you add fertilize regularly you get outstanding growth and create a bed of flowers that everyone stops to admire. “I commit to myself,” Doug told me explaining his approach to self-improvement. “It’s just a personal commitment to myself that I will always spend say 20-30 percent of my time – you might feel like that’s too much, but it isn’t for me – always reading, learning a new skill, learning a new technology, understanding what another business owner’s doing that’s actually changing their results.” “My whole thing is ‘Let’s look up and look around.’ Go to a conference, take a webinar, take a class at school. Listen to what the Chamber of Commerce is doing in your local area. There are a lot of businesses doing a lot of things that you can learn from,” Doug continued. Thanks to the Internet there are more resources available to you today than ever before. You can find tutorials on YouTube that cover almost every subject area. THE Small Business Expert Academy is open online 24-7 and you can get some great instruction there, along with a lot of exclusive benefits. I’ve also seen businesses get new software or a new piece of machinery in and only train one person on it. It almost never fails that the trained employee soon leaves and takes the knowledge along. Never entrust training to just one employee and do the training yourself whenever it’s possible. I recently wrote about how you should never outsource something you don’t understand yourself; it’s a recipe for disaster. You end up doing things multiple times before you get them right. This is another reason why it’s so important to improve at least your “big picture” understanding of the way things work in your small business niche. Learning while doing is okay, but it comes with a price tag. It’s far wiser to get a running start by reading a book, taking a class, listening to some podcasts, talking to people who have already done what you hope to do, etc. Grow yourself into being the competent, take-charge business owner you know you can...
read moreHow to Know When to Outsource Your Small Business Marketing
I probably don’t have to convince you that small business marketing is extremely important, so then the question becomes “Should I handle my small business marketing in-house or should I outsource it? For most small businesses the answer to that question is that you need to do both. There are certain aspects of your marketing campaigns that you’ll want to outsource and others that you can handle in-house. That may sound like a cop-out answer, but it’s not. Read on. If you understand the purpose of your small business marketing, you’ll be able to figure out this mix of in-house and outsource fairly easily and it starts with a simple question: “Who has to know you exist for you to achieve your goals?” High-level small business marketing If the director of purchasing at General Motors needs to know you exist, you need to outsource most of your marketing to a firm that can give you the polish and exposure it takes to make a lasting impression on high-level executives. If you want to connect with hobbyists or people who live in the local Tri-Cities area, you can probably get by with less professional help. However, in this case you need to truly understand your strengths and weaknesses so you can get help in the right areas. Marketing will create an awareness of your brand, soften up prospects and perhaps get them to approach your business. Going back to my original question, let’s focus on the first word “who.” It will take a sophisticated program that uses top quality assets to impress a corporate buyer at General Motors. This might include getting you featured in the media, placing glossy magazine ads, producing professionally designed direct mail pieces or deploying a myriad of other tactics. If the “who” you’re trying to impress with your brand operates in a high-level commercial environment, you need to approach that person on the same level and most small businesses don’t have that kind of talent in-house. You might choose to farm out some aspects of your marketing campaign and handle others yourself. However, if you’re really “shooting for the moon” you’re probably best served by going with an experienced agency. Look at your competitors; you need to be at least that good and probably a little better. Marketing to average consumers If your audience isn’t quite so sophisticated – local or online consumers, for example – you may be able to do a decent job marketing yourself using in-house assets. But as I said above, you need to know your strengths and weaknesses. You also need to decide if handling marketing by you or your small business team is the most effective way for you to be spending your time. I hinted above at another way to judge your small business marketing needs and it applies to consumer-driven businesses as well. Your marketing must be where your customers are. Today this often points us in the direction of one or more online social media platforms. Carefully examine those and you’ll soon learn how much – or how little – of your own marketing can be handled in-house. If posting to Facebook is sufficient for your small business marketing, you probably don’t need too much extra help. However, if you need to create slick videos, that immediately...
read moreA Creative Way To Get Products in Front of Willing Buyers
Twitter is adding buy buttons. Instagram is doing the same. Amazon offers same-day grocery delivery in several markets. All of these are retail experiments to discover the ideal strategies that use technology to connect buyers to products in the systems that buyers find most convenient. It’s a very creative area in retail and one where I’m certain we’ll see a lot of innovations in the coming years. I wanted to share one very creative and unusual approach that I recently found out about. It’s being done in South Korea. Check out the photo below: Those may look like supermarket shelves, but they are really back-lit sheets of plastic printed with photos of food items. These are being put up in subway stations. While commuters wait for their trains, they browse the supermarket shelves to find the items they want. Beside each item is a QR (quick response) code that shoppers capture on their cellphones. They browse the “aisles” of the virtual supermarket filling up their shopping carts. When done, they check out, and then board their train. If their shopping is part of their morning commute, the food will be waiting for them at home when they get off work. If they shop during their evening commute, the food is delivered the next morning. The company doing this, Tesco, was already in the business of delivering groceries to homes, so adding this feature just took some creative thinking at the beginning. Once the idea was worked out, they had a lot of the infrastructure already in place. Remember when you learned about Venn diagrams in school? You drew two or more circles that represented the “universes” of different things and found the places where they overlapped. In the case of this new subway supermarket shopping strategy, you have a company that: Is good at delivering food to homes, and Has an Internet order-taking pipeline. You have a universe of commuters who need food delivered to their homes. The quest is to find a way to get these two groups to overlap and that’s where the smart phone technology and plastic displays come in. The displays hook up with the smart phone technology and that creates a bridge between the commuters and the food store. Now the groups overlap. Using this kind of thinking, what groups of prospects are you currently not able to reach? Do you need to be more creative in your advertising or your displays? Do you need to add another delivery system? Restaurants, for example, are beginning to use Uber and similar services for delivery. Use technology and different advertising media to get your products in front of your prospects at times and places where they will consider making a purchase. To get the full story on what Tesco is doing with these virtual stores, check out the company’s YouTube video. Image: “Seoul-Metro-2004-20070722” by LERK (talk · contribs) – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: SEO tips that work, blog post promotion, leadership habits, and more
It’s great that you’re here; it shows that you’re already doing the one thing all successful small business owners and entrepreneurs must do (see below). But with that said, there are still a lot of tips and strategies you can pick up…many of which are discussed in this collection of top curated content. Leadership, management and productivity It’s from the government and it’s here to help you. Yes, if you know what you’re looking for and how to navigate it, the SBA can actually benefit your small business. The co-author of “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” and president at TalentSmart gives us the 10 habits of ultra-likeable leaders. If you want to get more women “onboard” in leadership positions, why not organize a train ride like this community did? Make connections and learn the ropes of small business by joining these six communities. Marketing and sales Black hat SEO is out the window, so we can really use SEO tips like the 10 easy ones offered here. If you want to go old school, one of your best marketing strategies is direct mail. Here are ideas that small businesses can use. Think that sometimes your blog posts just evaporate into the cyber-ether? You need these 37 ways to promote your posts. Eugene Moto explains how he got an 80 percent response rate with his top influencers outreach campaign. Check out these 11 buzz-worthy social media marketing campaigns that broke through all the noise. Don’t be a small business owner who thinks small. Get yourself online. Think you’ve tried everything to generate leads in your small business? Have you tried quizzes? Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation There’s one activity that small business owners and entrepreneurs must do if they truly want to succeed. This Mashable article lists 10 ways to get exposure for your startup on Product Hunt. Politics, government and the economy No doubt you’re hearing a lot about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact from all sides. Here are the official arguments in favor of it from a small business...
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