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Making the Most of Your Tradeshow Time (Part 2)

by Kelly Andrew Brown May 3rd, 2008 0 Comments

Planning on being an exhibitor at a tradeshow? If this is your first time doing a tradeshow, we thought it important to detail some key things to know and prepare for to ensure you’re investment pays off. Tradeshows are expensive, so make sure you get organized.

1. Once you’ve chosen a particular trade show to attend, plan your budget and book your space. Considering the amount of money you’re paying, it makes sense to try and get the best booth location you can. Usually you can see the map of the trade show floor in advance and identify two or three desirable locations. It’s usually better to try and get a booth on the end of a row. Try to be in a high traffic location, such as near an entrance or other item of interest.

Find out everything you can about your space, including where it is on the floor, what kind of other exhibits will be around it, whether it’s a high traffic or low traffic area, and the physical conditions of the booth space, such as lighting.
Read more…

Is It Time To Take A Class?

by Kelly Andrew Brown May 2nd, 2008 0 Comments

Dedicating the time and money to sales and management training courses is not cheap. Courses can range anywhere from $500 to $3,000 and several weeks of night classes.

But will it be worth it in the long run? Will the confidence & experience (and contacts) you get be the best investment you ever made?

One thing is true: no matter what business you are in, who your customers are, or what the size of your business, the fact is that you and your employees will need some sales skills. The truth is that it is not always the best company in the industry that captures the largest market share. Often, the company that is able to best get the word out about what the company has to offer is the one that captures the largest share of the business.

We’ve put together some thoughts around this to help you decide for yourself.
Read more…

End Handwringing – Just Ask A Customer

by Kelly Andrew Brown April 26th, 2008 0 Comments

My wife & I have recently started a new project, opening the first co-working facility in Northeast Ohio.

Working out of my home for the past 5 years has been great and all. But for many reasons (which you can follow on my new blog (www.officespacecoworking.com), we felt the need to find a place where I could work outside the home.

Long story short, I wanted individuality without isolation, as Susan Evans of Office Nomads might say.

That said - when launching a new business venture you’re faced with a ton of questions.

For us these questions included:

Would you be interested in this?
What would you expect to pay for this service?
What would you expect in the way of amenities?
How often would you use it?

On the other side of the equation, we had several business questions we wanted answered before we laid down money on anything.

How big of a facility should we get?
How long did it take you to break even?
What will the utilization % be?

Finding Answers To These Tough Business Questions

Bootstrap Update: Finding The Time…

by Kelly Andrew Brown April 20th, 2008 0 Comments

I quote Stephen Covey’s 5th habit, First Seek To Understand, Then to be Understood.In our first real session together I had a ton of questions. (I still do).

As previously mentioned, I had asked Chris to inventory his time so we could analyze where the biggest opportunities were for time savings.

What we learned was Chris works an average of 50 hours a week in his Web development business.

17.85 of those hours were in project management
8 hours were in designing and development.

His goal, is to get his Event Ticketing application off the ground so that he can replace his ‘hand to mouth’ project income with recurring, automated income.

But the biggest challenge for Chris, is getting enough TIME to move the project.
Read more…

Making the Most of Your Tradeshow Time (Part 1)

by Kelly Andrew Brown April 20th, 2008 0 Comments

For many entrepreneurs, attending trade shows and seminars is a treat. They become an easy favorite because they are so interactive and pull the daily “solo” life out of the routine. One can meet with customers, competitors, vendors, partners and like-minded individuals. It can be a real opportunity to facilitate a 2-way dialogue in real, living color.

Ultimately, you’ll hope to make the trade show an effective sales tool for your business. But how do you know if attending it is a good investment of your time and money? From our experience, here are a few tips to consider and to help you choose the right tradeshow for your business needs.

1) Set clear goals for your participation.

What do you want to get out of it? Do you intend to meet new vendors, customers or competitors? Are you just looking to learn what’s new and hot in the industry so you can stay ahead of it? Are you hoping to launch a new product and trying to get ideas? Just make sure that your goals are clear – and that will help you figure out what to attend.

2) Do your research.

You want to choose a trade show that best targets the audience that you want to reach, and best suits your participation goals. Find out what the particular trade show’s objectives are, and investigate and evaluate the show’s audience. Also, see if you can get a list of the previous year’s exhibitors and list of attendees. That will help paint a better picture of the types of folks you’ll encounter.

Ryan Donahue - Founder of HourTown (Spotlight Interview)

by Kelly Andrew Brown April 19th, 2008 0 Comments

Ryan Donahue is the founder of HourTown, which is quickly becoming a leading online scheduling and marketing system for small business owners.

He has more than 10 years of experience in the design of consumer Internet applications and a strong track record in developing tools that help to bridge the gap between technology and small business.

As a founding member of the PayPal design and user research group, Ryan is a highly sought-after expert in user-centered design methodologies.

Ryan has consulted a wide range of Silicon Valley investors, non-profits and startups, helping them to design products that better meet the needs of their customers.

Bootstrap Experiment Winner Announced

by Kelly Andrew Brown April 13th, 2008 0 Comments

I’m excited to say we’ve selected the winning submission for the Bootstrap Experiment. Congratulations go to Chris Auman, a Web developer with an idea that will hopefully get him out of ‘hand-to-mouth’ project work and into recurring revenue service fees.

Why Chris?

First - a disclaimer - I will admit, Chris & I had a business relationship before his selection as our Bootstrapper. Chris is not just ‘a’ Web developer, he was my Web developer. Meaning he did the original design for the Small Business Guru Web site about 14 months go.

Let me assure you there was no exchange of ‘moolah’ here. I’m not receiving free services in exchange for his participation or anything like that.

Chris made his pitch along with the other contestants. His idea was selected on it’s merits and on my genuine belief in his ability to execute.

I also felt his situation would resonate with a majority of my readers. Meaning many of us have an existing service based business. The challenge being to get away from hourly project work to a recurring revenue model.
Learn more about Chris Auman and his winning entry for the Bootstrap Experiment

Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller - Spotlight Interview

by Kelly Andrew Brown April 12th, 2008 0 Comments

I’m honored to have two guest gurus this week - Jimmy Vee & Travis Miller…authors of Gravitational Marketing.

Jimmy & Travis took a $200 investment & turned it into a multi-million dollar marketing firm. They train & consult entrepreneurs, small business owners & sales professional…bringing a unique spin to the same-old-same old ’safe’ marketing strategies recommended by traditional consultancies.

Some Take Aways:

Authenticity is key if you’re marketing message is going to hit home. Find your strengths and make those the focus of your marketing efforts.
A shoe string budget can be your best asset. By limiting your spending you’re forced to edit your efforts to those items that will give yout he biggest bang for the buck. It forces creativity and gets rid of a lot of the noise surrounding traditional marketing efforts
Position yourself as an expert. Don’t wait for someone to come and pin an expert button on you, you can do it yourself through blogging, through social media, through publishing.
Determine who you want to attract. You can’t do busieness with everyone , so determine who most wants your product or service and target them specifically.

Learn more at their Web site: www.gravitationalmarketing.com

Hammock Heaven

by Kelly Andrew Brown April 9th, 2008 0 Comments

I lay in a hammock in the midst of a cluster of palm trees in Puerto Rico. It’s 82 degrees but the regular breeze off of the ocean keeps everything feeling wonderful.

It’s only 9am and already I’ve had breakfast with my family, ran 2 miles, and read a couple chapters of this great book I’ve been reading on Ted Rodgers, High Wire Act (more on that later).

While I can say I follow my own advice & completely disconnect. I will say I’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring everything that was not directly involved with family, eating, sleeping, or imbibing the local brew, Medalla.

It’s sufficient to say - I’ve decompressed.

I’m a pasty-faced redhead with an aversion to direct sunlight. So while my wife & daughter spend their days basking in the sun, I can be found laying in my hammock or at the local pub reading one of the six books I’ve consumed so far.

Envy & Inspiration

Perhaps it’s my reading topics of choice, I love business biographies… or the display of wealth and abundance in the tropical setting that surrounds me. But every time I go on vacation I come away inspired to take on the world.

I’m actually dying to get back to work by the time I return. Ironically, it’s only because I want to come back to the lap of luxury again as soon as possible.

In fact, I never want to have to work again. Who does?

And that’s when I had one of those rare moments of lucidity. It wasn’t so much about rushing to get earn more money to do more vacations — it was just about enjoy where I was at, who I was with, and why I was there.

I spend a lot of time looking to the future, preparing for what’s next.

But every once in awhile it’s time to stop and just…be…To remember that I don’t live to work.

It’s something I enjoy and something which helps bring me a sense of personal accomplishment. But in the end, it’s really just one aspect of my life and boy it feels good to remember that.

Gary Harpst - Founder of Six Disciplines (Spotlight Interview)

by Kelly Andrew Brown April 5th, 2008 0 Comments

Gary Harpst Founder of Six Disciplines Our guest this week is Gary Harpst.

Gary is the Founder & CEO of Six Disciplines a business excellence program designed specifically for small to mid-sized businesses. Prior to Six Disciplines, Gary was a co-founder of Solomon Software.Our guest this week is Gary Harpst.

During the 20 years he led that organization, Solomon grew to be one of the industry’s market leaders, installing more than 60,000 systems in small to medium-sized businesses around the world. Soloman was sold to a Great Plains Software in 2000 for $142 million.

Some Takeaways from our discussion:

The best practices of larger organizations can (and should) be incorporated into small business
Leaders manage for the future - in lean times they’re preparing for growth, in busy times they’re preparing a slow down
Great managers down focus on firefighting, but they do focus on constantly improving they systems, looking for low hanging fruit.
With a recession imminent (or already here) the natural inclination will be to pull back and play it safe, but this is really a time of opportunity to:
- Assess your competitive position
- Re-evaluate & recommit to you corporate mission & goals
- Expand your business by creating new products & new revenue stream

Find Gary’s Book on Amazon:
Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last

Gary’s newest book, Execution Revolution, will be available in the coming months. I’ll update this post as soon as it is available for purchase.

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