The Lessons of Ferguson: How to Protect Your Small Business
While the national media focus mainly on the bigger stories surrounding the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, I’m certain that small business owners understand the heavy toll being exacted on local commerce. The news crew from St. Louis’ KSDK talked to the manager and some employees at Feel Beauty Supply store in Ferguson and heard first hand how the unrest there has devastated their business and their jobs. “They tried to get into the cash register, stole hair items and some jewelry. I’m just frustrated because these people are not understanding how this affects others when they come with this foolishness. There was a tragedy, yes, but this is not how you deal with a tragedy,” related Benny Billups, who does some maintenance repairs at the store. Safety the priority Feel Beauty Supply manager Tanya Littleton said the store is shutting down. “It’s not worth it. Right now our safety is more important than anything,” she said adding that she doesn’t know if Feel Beauty Supply will ever reopen. The owners fear for their lives and right now just want out, she explained. The fear and loss underscore how important it is to be prepared for the worst imaginable disasters – both natural and man-made. I should also note that tragically, many business owners felt they had to protect their property themselves, as police pulled back in an effort to ease tensions. Two armed store owners standing outside their businesses told the local Fox affiliate that when they called 911 they were transferred from one police agency to another and never received a response. Get ready now As Littleton said, protecting employee safety is the first priority in any threatening situation, but if small business owners want to be able to recover from extreme situations, they need to be thoroughly prepared. “Security is about being proactive. That means putting systems in place ahead of time to ward off bad things from happening,” explains Robert Siciliano, CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com. Siciliano, a personal security and identity theft expert, offers these five tips that should be implemented far in advance of any civil unrest: Invest in alarm systems equipped with cameras and signage. In some cases this will prevent intrusion and in others it may help catch offenders. Invest in roll-up security doors, metal folding security gates or window grilles. All have their pros and cons and vary in price. Board up. Search “emergency window board up” to determine what materials are needed and how to board up as if a hurricane, or in some cases a mob, is on the way. Firearms as defense. The Rodney King L.A. looting brought out the worst in many people and American media witnessed many store owners inside and out with firearms ready for battle. Honestly, I don’t know how worth it it is to protect a storefront with a firearm. First, it’s not worth putting your own life at risk for “stuff” and second, if you kill someone you better have at least $50k for lawyers to defend yourself in court. Check your insurance policies to make sure you are covered for such events. Be sure you have sufficient coverage, including the losses you would suffer if your business is interrupted for a prolonged period of time. I would also add that your data should...
read moreWomen Biz Crowdfunding Site Delivers Major Benefits
The number of businesses started by women in recent years has really been one of the bright spots in the economic news. Between 1997 and 2014, women-owned business rose by 68 percent – twice the growth rate posted by men. And here’s the kicker: this tremendous growth has happened without very much support from the traditional lending and investing world. Lenders and investors are woefully reluctant to back a project by a woman entrepreneur, despite federal programs and laws designed specifically to encourage lending to women-owned businesses. Enter MoolaHoop Studies have shown the bias. Given identical pitches from men and women, lenders and investors favor men by a large margin. However, I don’t want to focus on the negatives, I want to applaud women for overcoming these obstacles and posting such a tremendous growth rate. I also want to point out a new crowdfunding platform that aims to do its part to fix this inequity: MoolaHoop. To be totally honest with you, I think women have a lot of advantages in the entrepreneurial world, and as others recognize this, MoolaHoop should become a great tool for women startups. For example, anyone who’s hardwired to cope with the pains of child birth, can easily manage the stress dished out by a startup, don’t you think? Further, I believe women tend to be excellent – if not superior – networkers, and this is an attribute that is mandatory for success on a crowdfunding platform. Let’s look at how MoolaHoop works. Entrepreneurs post videos, photos and information about their projects on MoolaHoop. They list “rewards” given at various support levels. The rewards can be anything from products and discounts to t-shirts and thank-you cards. The businesses have 21 days to make their fundraising target. Networking vital Once a project is up on MoolaHoop, its organizer needs to get busy networking and encouraging friends, family members and existing customers to pledge their support. Supporters enter a credit card number and support amount. If the goal is met within 21 days, credit cards are charged. If not, the project fails and no one is charged. As I mentioned above, over the years Congress has enacted legislation to increase loans and contracts to women-owned businesses. The results have been less than spectacular. In the long term, I see a lot more potential in MoolaHoop. It is easy to use, easy to find and a woman can get funds for a new business or the expansion of an existing business in three weeks. Government programs, ahem, don’t typically move that fast. And beyond the immediate financial impact of MoolaHoop, I think it will demonstrate to the larger lending and investing world that women businesses are just as worthy for funding as businesses owned by men. Ultimately, that may be MoolaHoop’s biggest contribution to our economic...
read moreWant to Increase Your Small Business Sales? Hit the Road.
If you are looking for ways to expand your business, consider adding a mobile component. Obviously it has to fit with your business model, but here are three ideas to think about: pick up, delivery and on-location sales. * Pick-Up: If you provide a service at your business, such as hair styling or pet grooming, offer a client pick-up service. This would be especially beneficial if you have elderly clients. Or say you do dry-cleaning or product repair, offer to pick-up those items to save your customers a trip. * Delivery: Same idea as pick-up for the types of businesses above, only the other way around. Delivery would also be a great way to expand your food business. Deliver your coffee service or bakery treats or lunch items. Don’t forget to leave a full menu when you deliver the goods. * On-Locations Sales: Take a sampling of your merchandise to local events like street fairs or farmer’s markets and set up a mini-retail outlet. Or if you run a service business like chiropractic or massage, offer mini adjustments or massages. Not only will this increase your sales, it will also provide great exposure for your business in your local community. Small business owner Josh Allen of Companion Baking, aka, The Bread Guy, has expanded his business with multiple mobile strategies. Tag along with him for more great ideas you can use for your...
read moreCan Millennial Golf Participation Get Out Of the Rough?
A colleague was at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville watching the final two rounds of the PGA Championship. One thing that impressed him was seeing how multiple generations of a family were watching the tournament together. He said he saw many families where the grandparents and grandchildren were golfers. However, despite his positive impression, overall participation rates tell a different story: Golf just hasn’t really caught on with millennials. Among adults ages 18 to 34 in 2013, golfing was down 13 percent from its 2009 level. At the same time, this group’s participation in “active sports,” such as running, was up 29 percent. According to one analyst, millennials see golf as expensive and time consuming. Further, it doesn’t reflect the values of diversity and inclusion, which are important to many millennials. Retail shrinkage This lack of interest is having a ripple effect through the economy. Dick’s Sporting Goods has laid off more than 400 golf professionals and is shrinking the footprint of its golf departments. Sales are down at equipment manufacturers as well and some 160 courses closed down in 2013. These problems aren’t going unaddressed and I really like one approach that the PGA is taking: crowdsourcing the problem. The PGA established hackgolf.org to collect ideas how the sport can be improved. Visitors can input their ideas in 10 different categories, including “getting introduced to the game,” “playing your round,” and “golfing socially.” Crowdsourcing has proven its value in a wide range of other venues, perhaps it can do the same for golf. Golf participation peaked at 30 million in 2003. It’s probably worth noting that 2003 was about the same time Tiger Woods was reaching his apex in star power across popular culture. Today’s phenom, Rory McIlroy, who’s from Northern Ireland, probably doesn’t have the clout in the US to draw millions of new players into the game – especially after breaking off his engagement with Danish tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. Half a round better than none The USGA is trying some marketing strategies that you and I would be likely to attempt when we see sales falling off: it’s discounting. To beat the high cost of a round of golf, as well as decrease the time commitment, the USGA has founded its Play 9 campaign that encourages golfers to play nine holes. This brings the typical cost – including cart – down to around $23, compared to $52 for 18 holes. While this is a traditional approach to revving up sales, the PGA isn’t adverse to pushing the envelope. It has even experimented with a 15-inch-hole to make putting much easier. The regulation 4.25-inch hole is rather famous for giving players – even pros – terminal cases of the yips. We’ll see if any of these ideas work. Sometimes lost business never returns. However, as millennials blow out their knees running and eventually get bored with yoga, perhaps they will naturally come back to golf – especially if it remains a great place to deepen relationships with business associates. Image: By Emi Yañez from Barcelona, Spain (| golf |) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia...
read moreShould Your Business Welcome Legally Carried Guns?
There are some social issues in our country that are just downright contentious and even after years of public debate, sides seem as polarized as ever. Most don’t impact the small business owner, but gun law is an area that some owners need to consider. State and local gun laws are changing rapidly right now and in many states it is fairly easy to obtain a concealed carry permit and when this is so, usually businesses have the option to prohibit guns in their establishments. Generally, this requires posting a sign at entrances. An informal survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal found that while larger chain restaurants tend to prohibit guns, there’s a trend among smaller restaurants to allow guns and even encourage them. You’ll find promotions like “Second Amendment Wednesday” and signs welcoming gun owners at restaurants in states with more liberal concealed carry permit laws. Some restaurants offer discounts to gun toters. Three points to consider There are three issues to consider when formulating your own policy. First, make sure you understand state and local laws in your area. Second, you need to consider the attitude of your customers. Third, you should consider the safety of your customers. (Listing this third does not imply it is any less important; however, there are some legal issues that may not be fully settled right now that you need to think about.) Getting on the right side of your local laws should not be a problem, whether you want to prohibit, encourage or just take a neutral attitude about the legal possession of guns at your business. Regarding the attitude of your customers, I need to say that I haven’t seen any boycotts organized by gun control groups against businesses that allow guns. However, I have seen some local businesses get into hot water with pro-gun patrons when they have banned guns. While the exposure may not be great, making a sudden move to ban guns could cause a local controversy. The owner of T-Bonz steakhouse in Augusta, Georgia got into trouble with a gun ban and had to walk it back. “I come up and see a sign on your door that says you don’t allow weapons, I’m going to honor your sign, but then I’m also not going to come into your establishment,” is how local resident Jennifer Seymour put it. After a social media dust up, T-Bonz overturned its own ban. Preventing self defense The safety issue is just beginning to get some attention. Here’s the thinking: If a state allows its residents to carry concealed weapons for their own protection, and your business prohibits them, are you then at risk if someone who would have been armed is attacked at your business? Businesses must take measures to help assure customer safety. That’s why we put out orange safety cones when the floor is wet. After a shooting outside of a Jackson, Mississippi convenience store that prohibits guns, David Butts, an attorney from Tupelo, said this: “…what about the situation where a customer, legally armed, either openly or with a concealed carry permit, disarms themselves to do business in the ‘no firearms’ business and is injured or killed by some gun-wielding thug intent on committing a crime? What does the owner’s duty of ‘reasonable care’ to protect...
read moreWhat You Can Learn From the Facebook Buy Button
When talking about global economics, for years it has been said that “when the United States sneezes, the world gets pneumonia.” I don’t know if that is quite as true today as it was 10 years ago, but in the social medial world, Facebook is the “United States” and whenever it does something, the whole world notices with rapt attention, and that’s the way it has been recently with the announcement of its new “buy button.” Will it or won’t it be successful? That’s what most of the analysis focuses on. Right now, only a handful of big businesses will have the opportunity to try it out. For the overwhelming majority of small business owners, the important lessons to learn revolve around the “why” questions. If if is successful, why is it succeeding? If it fails, why is it failing? In either case, how can I use that information? The sales funnel Virtually every sales professional understands the sales funnel. You draw prospects into a series of interactions that lead to closing a sale. The length of the sales funnel depends on the product and the industry, and obviously the shorter the better—as long as sales aren’t lost. If the Facebook buy button generates good sales, then it represents perhaps the shortest sales funnel this side of the bells on an ice cream truck. The Facebook post that features the product and the buy button, by its very nature, will not contain very much information about the product itself. In other words, the seller doesn’t really have any space to create compelling content to get the buyer to respond to the call to action. Therefore, if these succeed, their success must in large part rest on the ability of Facebook and the seller to identify the precise audience segment primed to make the purchase. Revenue share or paid placement? However, there is one caveat to this: If Facebook implements a revenue sharing model, even moderate success could keep it alive. It would just need to do better than the gift card selling program that Facebook is shutting down to make way for the buy button. If the buy button is successful, it underscores the importance of streamlining the online buying procedure. In that case Internet retailers would be wise to reexamine their procedures and cut out any extraneous steps required before the purchase is actually complete. Success would also reinforce the importance of mobile devices in the e-commerce world. Facebook has recently made tremendous inroads into the mobile world and this would be reflected in its buy-button beta. If it does well, you can assume much of its success is coming from mobile buyers. Do you need to be there too? If the Facebook experiment doesn’t do so well, then it tells us that Facebook’s analytics, demographics and segmentations aren’t where they need to be. But again, if it’s a no-risk revenue share proposition, then maybe we don’t care. It would depend on the cut Facebook wants. We’ll be watching… I suggest we all keep an eye on what kinds of sellers Facebook selects during this rollout. You know full well that they will be targeting the sellers who they believe have the highest probability of success. If you see any of your competitors, or related businesses included in...
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