Mine Your Own Business

The Closer

One of my favorite television shows is The Closer, thanks to the magic of digital video recorders I never miss an episode (if you are curious about the history of DVRs follow this link to the history of this great invention). When I ran across an article from Inc. about creative ways for making goals for 2011 and following through on them, it made me think of The Closer for two reasons. The first is that we are closing the door on 2010. That may make you happy or sad depending on how the year was for you and your business.

The second reason I thought of The Closer is one of the suggestions mentioned in the article, which was to purchase some poster boards and visually illustrate the steps in your goals for the coming year. This is the very technique that is used on every episode of The Closer (that I have seen anyway). They set up an evidence board to help them figure out who was the perp or perps for the crime they are investigating. I thought since it always works on the tv show, maybe it would be helpful for some of you in generating goals and following through on them. By the way, there are four other suggestions in the article as well, so one of them should be helpful for you.

Are All Businesses Internet Businesses?

We did a posting on Mine Your Own Business on December 23rd on the explosion of ecommerce this holiday season and wrote about an article that presented some ideas on how brick-and- mortar businesses could compete. When we ran across an article titled Even for Brick-and Mortars, Web Search Marketing is Key we thought it would be worth a look as a follow-up to that posting. The first point in the article really got us thinking when it stated that "All businesses are Internet businesses - even if they don't have a website or sell anything online." The article described that according to an online marketing consultant up to 70 percent of offline purchasing decisions are based on research on the Internet.

The article then goes on to provide some tips for any business in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Effective use of these tools can draw people to your brick-and-mortar business even if you don't have a website and the reason is that 29 percent of all online searches are local. I make sure when I am researching something online I use the search phrase and then tack on St. Louis so I get local results.

There are a lot of good ideas in the posting on the effectiveness of each of the search marketing tools and the pros and cons of each. There is also information on what a small business can handle itself and when an outside agency is a better choice and not necessarily a large expense. There are also three great links at the bottom of the article to other postings with Internet tips.

 

Beware of Grinches

Christmas has come and gone, but small business owners still need to watch out for Grinches. I'm not talking about the one in the classic animated feature based on the Dr. Suess book How the Grinch Stole Christmas! where the Grinch stole all the Who Christmas presents and even their decorations. I'm talking about all the nefarious people out there that focus on stealing your password and are intent on identity theft. A recent posting to Small Business Trends provides some excellent tips for protecting your passwords and identity online.

• Don't use the same password for everything.
• Use one password, customized for each site.
• Use a password manager.

The tips certainly get me questioning my own password policies, because I'm afraid I'm guilty of using a very limited list of passwords for most of the sites that require passwords (even though I really know I shouldn't). I'm going to make sure I look at all the different tips presented in the article to come up with a way to gradually change my bad habits. The posting also has a lot of great links to some of the various solutions presented. This is one thing that all small business owners should be concerned about, because there are a lot of Grinches out there intent on grabbing their passwords.

 

Tips for Fighting Ecommerce

Whether you spell it e-commerce, ecommerce or Ecommerce (I've seen all three), the results are the same. Sales for e-commerce have exploded this holiday season, in fact I googled 2010 ecommerce sales and ran across this article providing all the details. The article provides some pretty sobering figures for brick-and-mortar retailers since every dollar spent online translates to at least some reduction in local business sales.  I then ran across another article with some good ideas to lure last minute shoppers into your business.

1. Think freebies.
2. Provide entertainment.
3. Hold flash events through social media.
4. Reward your best customers.
5. Get out of your store.
6. Co-promote.

We are really getting down to the wire for sales this holiday season. Maybe one or more of these tips could entice some of those last minute procrastinators (and there are a lot of them out there) into your store. One advantage local businesses have over ecommerce at this point is that it is almost too late for them to ship to arrive by Christmas.

 

Bucking the Trend

At Tacony, we love manufacturing and are trying to buck the trend.  We are proud to have brought manufacturing of our Simplicity and Riccar vacuums from Asia to St. James, MO and of our Koala sewing furniture from Australia to West Chicago.  Likewise, we are pleased to have grown our commercial floorcare manufacturing for Powr-Flite and Tornado in our Ft. Worth and St. James factories.  Made in the USA does make a difference and we are glad to be a small part of US manufacturing.

America surrenders to China

Bill Hinderer

Tacony Corporation - President, Chief Operating Officer

Another Deadline

We did a posting on Mine Your Own Business last week on some tax credits and favorable loan provisions that were set to expire at the end of the year. We hope you will be able to take advantage of some of the points mentioned in the article and be able to save some money. Now comes another article that has six suggestions for small business owners to start the new year right:

• Write a "Lessons Learned in 2010" list.
• Get organized.
• Don't quit the game.
• Capitize on prospects' planning.
• Acknowledge battles won and lost.
• Review your Web presence

I especially liked two of the suggestions, Get Organized and Review your Web presence. Think how nice it would be to start the new year with your store rid of all clutter and all your files organized. The Web suggestion is very important (and more so every year), so important in fact that we will have a posting on Mine Your Own Business later this week that will serve as a nice follow up to this article. The posting will have some tips on effective Search Engine Optimization that won't destroy your budget.

One last point is that these six tips come from other small business owners, so they have been tried and found successful in the real world. Do you have any suggestions that have worked for you in the past?

Selling Your Business

Tired of the long hours, the pressure of making adequate sales to support your family, the Great Recession we are in, ...the list goes on and on of why you may be thinking of selling your business. No matter why you are thinking of selling your small business, the process of successfully completing this complex process can be very difficult. The fact of the matter is that this is a very difficult time to sell any business. An article from the New York Times provides some figures on how and why this is a tough time to sell.

The second part of the article provides a great summary of the basics of successfully selling your business. One of the main points it stresses is that most small business owners have too high a selling point and list with business brokers that tell them what they want to hear. The conclusion is to start with a professional valuation of your small business first and then go from there. Hopefully you are still enjoying the many positive aspects of owning a small business, but if you ever reach the point where you feel it is time to sell this article provides some great tips.

 

Use It or Lose It

Probably everyone has heard of the saying use it or lose it. The term is often associated with decreased physical fitness due to lack of exercise, or declining mental abilities as we age because of not exercising our brains enough. Now comes an article that warns that small businesses are in danger of losing some new tax credits and other benefits that will expire at the end of 2010.

The article describes how not only are there some tax credits that help small businesses pay for health insurance, but also an increase the deductions for a small business startup. There is also some great information on loans for small businesses, such as a fee for a loan that used to range from 2 to 3.75 of a loan's principle will be waived. Not all of the tax or loan provisions would be applicable to your business, but read the whole article to see what might apply to your small business. Remember the clock is ticking (literally in this case) and most of these expire at the end of the year.

Security Warning Update

We did two postings titled Security Warning and Something Really Scary on Mine Your Own Business concerning the importance of doing regurlar backups and the need for small businesses to be very careful about computer security. The recent major news about WikiLeaks has brought computer security to the forefront as never before.  some of our previous recommendations for backup don't look like such good ideas anymore, so when we ran across a short but very sobering article on computer security we thought it would be good to revisit this very crucial topic.

The article makes the point that thumb drives and DVD-Rs are being used for backups as opposed to external hard drives and off site solutions. Another point the article makes is that according to a study of small businesses many are conducting important business over unsecured networks. We recently purchased a new laptop and when setting it up I noticed 7 other networks that appeared. I didn't check to see if I could access them, but imagine if they were unsecured and I was interested in some mischief. You never know who is tryng to access your sensitive information.

Make Your Small Business a Great Place to Work

Happy employees are more productive employees and contribute to the overall success of a small business. An unhappy or even angry employee can do some severe damage to your business in short order. The question is, how do you make your employees happy so they will want to give 100 percent every day? A recent article provided some guidelines based on some winners of the seventh annual Best Small Businesses Workplaces.

1. Trusting relationships
2. Respectful collaboration
3. Passion
4. Creativity
5. Integrity
6. Openness
7. Community

Even without reading the whole article these points serve as good cornerstones for any small business, but in addition there is a fast tip to implement each of these ideas in your business. The fast tips in the article may not be applicable to your business and that came up frequently in the 28 comments, but it might be worthwhile to read the comments to see how some other business owners reacted.