Small business
Tips On Defining The Size of a Market for a Startup Business
Ross | July 19th, 2011It’s important to properly measure the size the market in which you hope to compete. Without this information, it’s very difficult to raise funds, understand how much you can/should spend on product development and marketing, evaluate the success of your marketing efforts, etc. In the following video, I offer five suggestions that can help you [...]
Small business and startup tips: training day!
Mike | July 18th, 2011Just like our larger brethren in the Fortune 100, lots of small businesses have training programs for their workers: lectures, classes, role-playing exercises, and motivational speaker sessions. However, most small businesses and startups ignore training programs altogether, or cobble together ad hoc strategies when on-boarding new hires. These differing approaches are sometimes stylistic, sometimes strategic, [...]
Consumers Prefer Better Looking Websites
Ross | July 13th, 2011Successful businesses know that to develop long-term relationships with their customers, they must find ways to build trust. This is not as easy to do as it sounds. According to the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer study, U.S. consumer trust of companies dropped 8 points from 2010 to 2011. In fact, this trend seems to be [...]
Marketing 101: Branding your business in a competitive environment
Mike | July 11th, 2011Establishing a brand in a competitive environment can be challenging for any business, particularly small businesses and startups. Not every business represents a “new-to-the-world” idea, and not every company has the luxury of exclusive ownership of a market segment. There are literally thousands of examples this: a new entrant in a market establishes a brand [...]
America’s founding entrepreneurs: revolution at work
Mike | July 5th, 2011On this Independence Day, 2011 I have been thinking about the summer of ’76 and America’s Founding Fathers. Their importance to the world has been analyzed every way imaginable; thousands of books have been written about their efforts and accomplishments, and they are held up to generations as examples of great political and military leaders. [...]
Not Everyone Is The Right Customer
Ross | June 29th, 2011A few days ago, Christian Jung, a designer and consultant from Germany wrote an interesting post – Goodbye Basecamp, This Is The End Of A True Love. My Heart Is Broken, explaining why he would no longer use Basecamp, popular project management software created by 37signals. Christian decided that after six years, his needs changed [...]
The CLV three step: drive, convert, enrich.
Mike | June 27th, 2011In a post last week, Ross discussed the need to find a balance between driving traffic and conversion for web-based businesses. It’s a great video and a very valuable discussion of one critical issue of strategic emphasis that many web-based businesses grapple with. Ross’s overriding point was that a business should not choose between a [...]
Lean Marketing 101: Giving good interview, or how to get a reporter to eat from your hand
Mike | June 20th, 2011In the world of startups and small business there are two basic kinds of company: those the media pays attention to, and all the rest. If your company has a compelling story, a unique product , or an interesting personality behind it you may be fortunate to leverage that advantage and convince a reporter to [...]
Entrepreneurship at its most basic
Mike | June 13th, 2011Greg Hartle is re-learning the hard way what it means to be an entrepreneur. A successful small businessman with a decade of experience, he set out this past winter to visit all 50 states, to interview 501 entrepreneurs from across the country and, at the same time,to reinvent his life from scratch. On January 5th, [...]
Don’t Delegate Until You’ve Done It
Ross | June 8th, 2011Many startups fail because their leaders focus on doing things right, instead of doing the right things. They hire employees who can effectively execute tactics (do things right) but who have difficulty figuring out what needs to be done (doing the right things). But how can you decide the right things that need to be [...]
