Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The image above shows a creative social awareness print ad (encouraging people to give up smoking). More social awareness print ads in the Social Media & Marketing section below.

How To Attract Customers And Not Waste Your Marketing Budget – http://crowdspring.co/ZQRD6f

The Growing Power of Women in Business | by Daniel Burrus – http://crowdspring.co/15GZxrl

Five Branding Mistakes That Will Cripple Your Small Business (and how to avoid making them) – http://crowdspring.co/11CaeWD

Empower Your Small Business: trust & loyalty, marketing insight, lean business – http://crowdspring.co/ZofxK9

Always use data, not feelings, to make business decisions – http://crowdspring.co/17mxpaO

3 Biggest Mistakes When Choosing a Cofounder – http://crowdspring.co/1783TFH

“When you focus on a smaller, more connected group, it’s far easier to make an impact.” – http://crowdspring.co/11H5NKc

Does Does Your Brand Have Digital Laryngitis? Don’t Lose Your Brand’s Voice in the Online World – http://crowdspring.co/15JPbqy

Don’t Use Social to Generate Sales; Make Selling Social | Advertising Age – http://crowdspring.co/ZJlbmt

What is the best time to send email campaigns? Great data – http://crowdspring.co/ZiEc4B

The secrets of body language: why you should never cross your arms again | The Buffer Blog – http://crowdspring.co/Zxavex

How To Attract Customers And Not Waste Your Marketing Budget – http://crowdspring.co/ZQRD6f

If there’s one video 1st time founders should watch to understand VC financing it’s this one – http://crowdspring.co/14QjL2j 

3 Biggest Mistakes When Choosing a Cofounder – http://crowdspring.co/1783TFH

Five Branding Mistakes That Will Cripple Your Small Business (and how to avoid making them) – http://crowdspring.co/11CaeWD

Activity Based Pricing: When Is It The Right Choice for Your Startup? – http://crowdspring.co/YSpqwN

5 Hiring Mistakes That Can Crush Your Company’s Culture – http://crowdspring.co/ZlEpmv

A Rake Too Far: Optimal Platform Pricing Strategy – http://crowdspring.co/Z9JH4A

“So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. ” | by Fred Wilson – http://crowdspring.co/15JP5iJ 

Does Does Your Brand Have Digital Laryngitis? Don’t Lose Your Brand’s Voice in the Online World – http://crowdspring.co/15JPbqy

Lessons Learned from Connected | by Sachin Rekhi – http://crowdspring.co/11Fl8w2

Read the rest of this post »

Should you invest your marketing time and budgets in social media, inbound marketing, content marketing, banner ads, pay-per-click advertising or customer service? Investing in the wrong marketing channels will do little to help your business grow but can quickly challenge your team and waste your marketing dollars.

A new digital marketing report from Forrester surveying more than 64,000 online consumers in the North America and 21,000 in Europe reveals interesting data about consumer reactions to different marketing channels.

The biggest take-away for businesses and marketers: consumers trust self-selected content much more than push communications from brands.

Not surprisingly, word-of-mouth marketing is the most successful way for businesses to reach customers. Seventy percent of U.S. consumers (61% in Europe) trust brand recommendations from friends and family (see chart below).

Most alarming for businesses: only 10% of consumers trust advertising.

Nearly 90% of consumers don’t trust posts by companies or brands on social networks. Text messages from brands come in last – only 9% of U.S. consumers (8% in Europe) trust text messages from companies or brands. Banner ads are also at the bottom of the list. This shouldn’t surprise most people – banner ads have been ineffective for quite some time now and continue to lose relevance for most businesses. People have very short attention spans and have learned to ignore online advertising.

Our own research and experience at crowdSPRING mirrors the results reported by Forrester. Our best performing marketing channel – by far – is word-of-mouth. 96% of our customers recommend crowdSPRING to others. As you can see from the graph above, there’s a good reason we’re proud of this fact: it’s one of the most effective ways to reach new customers.

Read the rest of this post »

Assuming on the average that a person lives for 80 years, the typical person spends more than 26 years sleeping.

Wow!

When we don’t get enough sleep, our reactions times slow down, our blood pressure rises, we increase the chances that we will develop obesity and diabetes, and we become less productive.

Recently, Leo Widrich from Buffer wrote a helpful post on sleep and productivity, looking at what happens when you don’t get enough sleep during a day, and what you can do to develop better sleep habits. Leo writes:

In the following image you can see [that] as you lose focus and your attention is drifting, the yellow bits show how people with enough sleep activate parts in their brain to refocus at the task at hand. Sleep deprived people will have barely any activity in that area (the amygdala reactivity) and will struggle to regain focus.

After reading Leo’s post, I wondered whether my alarm’s snooze button helped or hurt my productivity. On some days, I get up as soon as the alarm rings. But there are days when the snooze button and I become close friends.

Read the rest of this post »

I am fortunate to meet thousands of entrepreneurs and small business owners every year. Many ask how they can improve their small business brand. This is not surprising – successful businesses avoid making branding mistakes that cripple other businesses.

If your branding is confusing, inconsistent, generic, or otherwise sub-par, you can easily undermine your business’s credibility and ruin your chance for success. Let’s look at five branding mistakes that will cripple your business (with tips on how to avoid them):

Mistake 1: Bad Company Name

A strong brand is easily recognizable by your customers and potential customers.

Recognition starts with your business name. The name will appear on your business cards, letterhead, website, marketing materials, social networks, products, and everywhere else – in print and online – to identify your company and your company’s products and services.

Naming your company can be challenging and time consuming. Getting an available URL for your company’s name can present an even greater challenge because even when you find a great name, the URL might not be available.

Your company’s name should be simple, easy to pronounce, spell and write, and memorable. If you want useful tips on naming your business, there’s good insight in 10 tips for startups and small business on naming your company.

Mistake 2: Poor Design

It’s not enough to have a good, recognizable name. People also associate brands with a logo. As you think about your logo design, keep your audience and products/services in mind because you want your logo to reflect the products and services your company sells. A good logo builds trust and a strong logo will help to pull your brand together.

Think about the logos of some of the world’s most admired brands (Apple, Google, Amazon). How do you feel (emotionally) when you see their logos?

Now look at your own company’s logo. Have you ever asked your customers how THEY feel when they see your company’s logo?

If you want useful tips on getting a great logo, read 10 logo design tips for buyers.

Great design doesn’t stop with the logo. It should not surprise you to learn that consumers prefer better looking websites. Take a look at your company’s website. Does it look professional? Is it regularly updated? Does it have the relevant information your customers need? How do customers feel when they visit the site? If you want useful best practices and tips on successful small business web design, I recommend you read Small Business Marketing: Web Design Best Practices and Tips.

Mistake 3: Inconsistent Voice

A brand is the sum total of the experiences your customers and potential customers have with your company. A strong brand communicates what your company does, how it does it, and also establishes trust and credibility. Your brand is your story. Your company’s brand lives in everyday interactions with your customers and potential customers, the images you share, the messages you post on your website, the videos you create, the content of your marketing materials, and in your posts on social networks.

What you say is important, but don’t overlook how you say it. Your company’s “voice” is the language and personality you and your employees will use to deliver your branding message and reach your customers. Successful brands speak with a unique voice. Think about the brands you admire – what makes them unique? How do they communicate with you and other customers? What do you like about their voice?

Why should you care about brand consistency? You should care because brand consistency leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to trust. Customers buy from brands they trust.

image credit: Cayusa

Read the rest of this post »

I have written before about things entrepreneurs can learn from people who come from various walks of life. From athletes we can learn the value focus and training, from comics we learn about of risk-taking, from chefs we learn how to stay creativity under great stress, and from musicians we learn the importance of working in synch with the rest of the team.

Today I want to talk about what entrepreneurs can learn from another group of people. At this time of year, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors are making their way through the waning days of an important and critically developmental part of their lives: the last year of high school is marked by hard work, a growing emphasis on organizational skills, a bloom of self-awareness, and a maturation of personality over 10 short months.

My younger son is among the graduating horde who in a few short weeks will find themselves transitioning out of childhood, so I am fortunate (for the second – and last – time) to be intimate witness to the passage into the early stages of adult pursuits. On a daily basis I am inspired by Cody and his friends as they make their preparations to leave home, start careers, go to college, and grow into the adults they will become. These are people who are experiencing one of the most dynamic periods in their lives and I am in awe of their decisiveness, their focus, and their excitement about and faith in their futures.

1. Seniors get organized. College applications, coursework, social schedules, SAT tests, studying, studying, and more studying. The workload in the final year of high school gets intense and these kids must develop very high-level executive functioning skills to juggle it all. And don’t forget their social lives, now more important then ever before. Entrepreneurs can look to seniors when we wonder how we can possibly manage everything that’s on our own plates personally and professionally. Read the rest of this post »

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The image above shows a creative print ad for Max Shoes. You’ll find a fun collection of 44 more creative print ads in the Social Media & Marketing section below.

Small Business and Startups: Cultivate Trust and Nurture Loyalty – http://crowdspring.co/17djr9d 

Empower Your Small Business: trust & loyalty, marketing insight, lean business – http://crowdspring.co/ZofxK9

7 Simple productivity tips you can apply today, backed by science | The Buffer Blog – http://crowdspring.co/17vtHga

crowdSPRING’s Small Business Spotlight: Rent A Green Box – http://crowdspring.co/17o17dQ 

Why You Need to Redefine Failure | Intuit Small Business Blog – http://crowdspring.co/120YCyj 

The Importance of Scheduling Nothing – http://crowdspring.co/10ZmBfS 

Stop Building Things Your Customers Don’t Really Want or Need | by Andrew Gluck – http://crowdspring.co/15hdrjE 

Why I Love My Angriest Customers – http://crowdspring.co/17t49jN 

Rule No. 1: Get to the Point – http://crowdspring.co/155XTis 

Small Business and Startups: Cultivate Trust and Nurture Loyalty – http://crowdspring.co/17djr9d 

Why We Ignore Good Advice | Psychology Today – http://crowdspring.co/155V3Ki 

You play like you practice – http://crowdspring.co/12l0SRj 

Does HubSpot Walk The Talk On Its Culture Code? – http://crowdspring.co/16Q6xzF

5 Hard Questions to Ask Yourself During a Conflict | by @joulee http://crowdspring.co/17o079x 

If you need to pivot, pivot hard | Version One Ventures – http://crowdspring.co/121kBVU 

Reframing the problems with “Freemium” by charging the marketing department – http://crowdspring.co/15mbemQ 

Does your Company Culture Attract Rockstar Talent? Here Are 9 Tips | Forbes – http://crowdspring.co/16Vgyde

A Startup’s Three Visions – http://crowdspring.co/17t4fI5 

Warby Parker Co-Founder: Creating A Strong Brand Without Marketing | PSFK – http://crowdspring.co/ZlS2hQ 

A New Way To Look At Optimism’s Role In Success | Fast Company – http://crowdspring.co/15m9ABR 

VC funding in Chicago is down more than 40% – http://crowdspring.co/11ao97c 

Stop Building Things Your Customers Don’t Really Want or Need | by Andrew Gluck – http://crowdspring.co/15hdrjE 

Startup Jedi: How to get through the sh*t times | GeekWire – http://crowdspring.co/15fDTdu 

The *real* pivot – http://crowdspring.co/114Cq58 

The pragmatics of happiness at work: It’s just good business | GigaOM Pro by Stowe Boyd – http://crowdspring.co/16VHSbk 

Startup Etiquette: How to Get the Most Out of Coffee Meetings |Technori by Len Kendall – http://crowdspring.co/155Y1OW 

How To Price and Sell Your Startup’s Product – http://crowdspring.co/ZcUjyV 

“Leadership has nothing to do with titles.” … What Is Leadership? | Forbes – http://crowdspring.co/158wr3I 

Linkedin Founder Reid Hoffman’s Advice for Entrepreneurs | KISSmetrics Blog – http://crowdspring.co/155XwVj 

How Dave Goldberg of SurveyMonkey Built a Billion-Dollar Business and Still Gets Home By 5:30 PM – http://crowdspring.co/15fDsjk 

Looking for a data scientist? Here’s who you need | VentureBeat – http://crowdspring.co/16SbvvR 

Tough to see how Foursquare will differentiate its location data service from other big players – http://crowdspring.co/ZkTSmi 

The Importance of Scheduling Nothing – http://crowdspring.co/10ZmBfS 

Start-ups: 80% of Your Growth Depends on This | by Jeremy Quittner – http://crowdspring.co/ZozBMx 

What Western And Chinese Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Each Other | Forbes http://crowdspring.co/174jaY8 

What To Do When Things Aren’t Working Out | by @dnamartell – http://crowdspring.co/11eN7SV 

Hire People Bothered By Suck” And Other Insights From GitHub | by Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot Dev Blog – http://crowdspring.co/ZsrUoA 

Showrooming: Most Say They’d Need At Least A 20% Price Gap to Abandon the Store – http://crowdspring.co/123ftk5 

Through the Looking Glass: Hiring Sales People – http://crowdspring.co/Z37H9s 

Why You’re Not As Productive As You Want to Be (and What to Do About It) | Technori – http://crowdspring.co/17jRKfa 

Some start-ups shun funding in bid to retain independence | Livemint – http://crowdspring.co/17k8jrc 

The Happiest People Pursue the Most Difficult Problems | HBR – http://crowdspring.co/1568REM 

Why I Love My Angriest Customers – http://crowdspring.co/17t49jN 

Using the Crowd as an Innovation Partner | Harvard Business Review – http://crowdspring.co/16WuN1d 

What are some of the most ridiculous startup ideas that eventually became successful? | Quora – http://crowdspring.co/16VlcYw 

7 Simple productivity tips you can apply today, backed by science | The Buffer Blog – http://crowdspring.co/17vtHga

Eight brands that crowdsourced marketing and product ideas | Econsultancy – http://crowdspring.co/Ze5FCH

Rule No. 1: Get to the Point – http://crowdspring.co/155XTis 

Read the rest of this post »

May through August are the most popular months for relocating and moving, and as anyone who has had to pack up their stuff knows, it is no picnic. Moving takes time and a considerable amount of effort. It’s also expensive. And once it’s over, your new place of residence is filled with empty cardboard boxes and plastic totes you don’t have space to store. This week’s Small Business Spotlight has an answer to that and is headed up by a crowdSPRING community mainstay– Spencer Brown!

Rent A Green Box solves a problem for someone moving and a problem for the Earth. Spencer’s newest venture allows people to rent moving containers made out of recycled post-consumer and industrial trash. They are delivered to your doorstep, you pack up all your belongings, move them to your new place, unpack and then they are whisked away as if they were never there. The system is kind of double whammy for environmental conservation: not only are the packing crates made with recycled materials, but it also prevents people from purchasing their own cardboard boxes and plastic totes.

Spencer speaks about his own ventures better than we ever could, so he tells more of his story below:

 How would you explain what you do to somebody’s grandmother?

I buy post-consumer and industrial trash from landfills, recycling centers, and industries across America. I use massive amounts of trash and recycle this waste into usable materials that can be upcycled into innovative, eco-friendly, zero-waste packing and moving products for the world. We make over 25 eco-friendly packing and moving products that are sold exclusively to our dealers in America and internationally. Our dealers rent my products to consumers, businesses, and industries on the move.

 So instead of buying packing and moving materials that are used once maybe twice and then simply tossed into a landfill, we’re using trash to reinvent the way America and the world packs and moves without trashing our planet.

What are some industry specific challenges you faced?

 We have had to overcome three huge challenges in creating the zero-waste Moving Box Rental Industry.

 #1- Convincing industry that trash was a resource and that we could “Detox Landfills” by using post consumer and industrial trash to make my Zero Waste packing and moving products. Rather than saying use this recycled trash in manufacturing, we offered to supply our own “custom blended materials” in production and kick started an entire industry.

 #2 Staying ahead of the curve. We have had over 200 companies copy the moving box rental business that we created 8 years ago, so we’re always working on the next phase of the industry a few years before it’s even here. We use crowdSPRING to help us develop visual graphics to help us better communicate our value proposition to the marketplace. So the challenge is to always stay in the first mover position and crowdSPRING supports our first to market innovations.

 #3 Dealerships and new markets in America. We’re growing at a great rate now and it’s a challenge to determine the right dealer for their specific market. We usually have between 3 to 10 very qualified applicants for major markets and it’s a real challenge to pick the right partner. Read the rest of this post »

Trust is a key for driver for your customers. Do they trust you to produce a great product? Do they trust you to deliver a reliable service? Do they trust you with their money and their time? Establishing trust with your customers takes time and consistency, but it also takes data and transparency. Companies rely on the trust they build with customers over time and there are many things a business can do to nurture and develop that trust over time.

There are many things a small business can do to build a strong relationship with their customers, but it must start with three key elements: consistency, transparency, and respect. These are the foundational elements of personal relationships and, as customers, are equally important to our relationships with the businesses we patronize. When a business is honest and transparent their communications with us we tend to think of them as dependable and reputable. And when a business listens to our concerns and responds to our issues, we view them as trustworthy and credible.

So what can a your business do to engender trust with your customers? A good place to start is by making it easy for your customers to talk to you; make sure you are available hear from them by whatever means they find to their liking: make yourself available by phone, by email, in social media, by instant chat, and in person. Work to promote these channels and to make them as visible as you can. Make it easy for them to give you suggestions, complain about problems, leave you compliments. And then (most importantly) respond. What good is a complaint if your customer doesn’t know that someone is listening? What good is a suggestion if your customer doesn’t believe that it will be acted upon, let alone even considered? People want to know that they are being taken seriously and that they are respected and the best way to do this is through responsiveness – simple, clear, and fast. Read the rest of this post »

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!

The video above is a fun look at home animals eat their food. Just try not to laugh!

Lean Business: Pivot Point – http://crowdspring.co/16I1C3M

7 Sales Secrets From My Best Sales Day Ever | by Chris Brogan – http://crowdspring.co/Y2Xx4B

The Skills Most Entrepreneurs Lack | Bill J. Bonnstetter-Harvard Business Review – http://crowdspring.co/YVc4mg

Chobani Founder: Why Quality & Community Are The Keys To Brand Success | PSFK – http://crowdspring.co/Y0o02S

The Importance of Scheduling Nothing – http://crowdspring.co/10ZmBfS

From Marissa Mayer to Sheryl Sandberg: Undeserved Backlash Against Women in Business? | byRieva Lesonsky – http://crowdspring.co/10L0utz

How much is your success dependent on those around you? – http://crowdspring.co/ZbA4Sk

The Skills Most Entrepreneurs Lack | Bill J. Bonnstetter-Harvard Business Review – http://crowdspring.co/YVc4mg

Lean Business: Pivot Point – http://crowdspring.co/16I1C3M

7 reasons for entrepreneurs to avoid tranched investments | VentureBeat – http://crowdspring.co/Y0njGB

Interesting, especially in light of debate about remote work … Engineering Serendipity | NYT – http://crowdspring.co/11ZdEos

Chobani Founder: Why Quality & Community Are The Keys To Brand Success | PSFK – http://crowdspring.co/Y0o02S

An acquisition is always a failure | by Jake Lodwick – http://crowdspring.co/YVTM4m

The Importance of Scheduling Nothing – http://crowdspring.co/10ZmBfS

From Marissa Mayer to Sheryl Sandberg: Undeserved Backlash Against Women in Business? | byRieva Lesonsky – http://crowdspring.co/10L0utz

There are no x10 developers, but there are certainly 1/10 ones – http://crowdspring.co/10KZYfb

The Lean Analytics Cycle: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act – http://crowdspring.co/16PpwKQ

Considering Convertible Debt? Don’t Sell Yourself Short | TechCrunch – http://crowdspring.co/17mINo1

How much is your success dependent on those around you? – http://crowdspring.co/ZbA4Sk

Why We Ignore Good Advice | Psychology Today – http://crowdspring.co/155V3Ki

Good short post by Chris Dixon on the challenges of predicting how technology will impact us – http://crowdspring.co/16Vd0HY

How Deal Makers Put a Value on Start-Ups – http://crowdspring.co/Zby3p2

Inside the Company Culture of Hubspot | Tech Cocktail – http://crowdspring.co/17iffId

The Tension Between Transparency And Privacy In The Startup Ecosystem | TechCrunch – http://crowdspring.co/ZbwwiL

The 48 Types of VP Sales. Make Deadly Sure You Hire the Right One. | saastr – http://crowdspring.co/Y0ZU86

Hey Startups, I’m calling bullshit. You don’t understand sales. | Shoe String Startups – http://crowdspring.co/17n1jwL

Understanding—and Managing—Investor Expectations in the Midwest – http://crowdspring.co/XtYKXD

As Web Search Goes Mobile, Competitors Chip at Google’s Lead | NYT – http://crowdspring.co/Y0nWjz

Conquering Pagination for SEO – A Guide to Consolidating your Content | Ayima – http://crowdspring.co/YXOhlH

Neal Mohan, Google’s $100 Million Man | Business Insider – http://crowdspring.co/Zi36g1

Bill Gates says you should read these 5 books in 2013 | GeekWire – http://crowdspring.co/YcXbwH

11 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My First Blog | QuickSprout – http://crowdspring.co/YXUoq9

Read the rest of this post »

In 2010 the co-Founders of Burbn, a check-in app for mobile phones built on HTML5, raised $500,00o in seed funding for a service that was designed for quick mobile sharing between users. The co-Founders had labored for over a year on their app but it was not gaining traction and they were unhappy with its functionality and performance. After a year of work, they started over from scratch. Well almost from scratch. They refocused the business and the new version of the app to focus exclusively on photos. Specifically the sharing of photos between users in a new kind of social network. The result? A little company called Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook 19 months later for around $1 billion.

This is a great example of a startup pivot. In his book, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Riess defines the pivot as a “structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.”

Many small businesses launch based on a theory of how their product will interact in the market, who and who their customers are and where they will be found, and a revenue model that they believe will work. But at the end of the day a theory is just that and many startups find that they have been built and launched based on an idea that was flawed, often fatally so.  The way out for many of these businesses is to evolve – sometimes gradually and sometimes radically. And the structure of business evolution is built on three pillars: hypothesize, experiment, adjust. The idea is to use the information and data you have gathered thus far, leverage the assets you have, develop a new theory about your product, your customer, and your market and get to work devising and launching a test or tests to determine whether your new theory holds water. The results of your testing will allow you to adjust the new theory, test again, or throw the entire thing out and come up with a brand new theory to test. This iterative cycle is at the heart of the lean approach to business and the pivot is one aspect of it.

This is different from the incremental experimentation that we have written about  in the past. The pivot is a ground-up, complete revamping of a business model. The pivot needs to occur when a founder or manager comes to the realization that, in spite of best intentions and efforts, the business is simply not working and will fail in the absence of a major change. But how does a manager decide whether it is time to pivot or time to persist? How does a manager know whether incremental change is the best strategy or if a wholesale remodeling is in order? The short answer may lie in a question: ask yourself if enough people like your business, use your product, invest in your idea, or agree to come work for you. If the answer to these questions  is yes, then the incremental adjustment is probably the way forward. If the answer is no, then a full-on, unadulterated pivot may be the only move left.

If you have already tried all of the smaller things you can do to make adjustments (we changed how we do our  pricing, we tweaked the product’s  design, we tried different marketing strategies) and none have been successful in turning things around it may be time to look at the pivot. But a very basic and  rational examination of your business may be needed to approach the question of whether it is time  for drastic action. Bernard Moon recently described a clean approach in a recent guest post on VentureBeat. Moon lists four questions to ask about your company; if the answer to these questions is yes, it may be time to pivot: 1) Are you constantly educating your market? 2) Do your users like your product? 3) Are investors buying the idea? and 4) Are you trying to be everything to everybody?

Drawing: Wikimedia Commons

*And they may buy more from you.