Mission Statements made easy?
Robert Lucky wrote the following in a recent issue of
IEEE Spectrum:
...there was a management meeting of the company's executives... Our chairman asked how many of us knew the corporate mission statement. I avoided his eyes, because I hadn't a clue. Neither, apparently, did anyone else. The angry chairman pointed out that the mission statement was prominently displayed in the lobby of our building, and we all passed by it every day.
This manager might have been able to take heart. There are, after all, two basic problems with
mission statements:
- If the staff is already focused on what it's supposed to be doing, it doesn't need the mission statement;
- If the staff is not focused on what it's supposed to be doing, then there is a problem more fundamental than the need for a mission statement.
...and this guy may already have his people focused. :-)
What you want out of a mission statement is for everyone to work differently with it than they would without it. If you can't get that out of yours, then yours is crap. Write it over again. I mean it. Do it NOW. You need a mission statement that is
- concrete, measurable, achievable, relevant, and memorable
- consistent in its goals (as opposed to having both "good customer service" and "wrapping up service calls in less than three minutes")
- driving day-to-day workplace values
With practice, you can come up with a passable mission statement on the fly -- and this is something entrepreneurs might have to do because of the likelihood of
chance meetings. I am gonna write one right now, pulled out of the blue sky:
I am an educator whose life's work and passion is to grow a generation of competent entrepreneurs.
Not too shabby.
Labels: consulting
Loads estimate proposal for Holcombe Chassis
I've given Brian Holcombe a proposal for a simple estimate of loads and stress on his chassis design, in which the chassis is treated as a planar beam, as seen in the diagram above.
Assumptions:
- Treat wheels as pinned joints, resisting translation in x- and y-directions.
- Treat load f (x) as not predefined, regardless of what it looks like in the diagram above. The actual values can be loaded into a spreadsheet.
- Shear and moment diagrams will follow rules for a simple beam: the only discontinuities in these diagrams occur at the wheels. Equations of statics will then yield the reaction forces at the wheels.
- Horizontal or axial forces are ignored for now.
- For stress calculations, the cross-section of the chassis will be assumed to be concentric rectangles, with appropriate area moment of inertia:
Izz = (bo ho3 – bi hi3) / 12
where bo, bi == base of outer, inner rectangle; ho, hi == height of outer, inner rectangle, respectively. - The spreadsheet can then be used to calculate bending stress:
sigma == M c / Izz
and shear stress:
tau == P / A
where M = bending moment; c = distance from neutral axis; P = active force; A = cross-sectional area. The neutral axis will go through the center of the cross-section, so c == ho / 2. - The spreadsheet will find the maximum values of these two stresses, and that of their resultant. This analysis will verify what’s been done experimentally to date.
Brian believes, and I have no reason not to agree, that he has overengineered the chassis design. But I think some simple calculations will give him conviction -- something more powerful than belief -- and will look good in the next generation of his business plan as well.
Labels: consulting, young entrepreneurs
Sneak peek at Edward J. Loser
Here is a trailer for the Ram Productions film
Edward J. Loser (pictured), for which Anthony Thompson of
Juterphusion is doing "audio editing & foley work." (I don't have to know what "foley work" is. I'm a micropatron, not an expert.) They pronounce "Loser" as "Low-sher." Hmmm. Isn't that the same pronunciation as for that building on the TCNJ campus...?
Anthony tells me this film, which is all but in the can even now, will be released in November to coincide with a regional independent film festival Ram wants to enter.
Labels: young entrepreneurs
Clutterbutter's taste test
I received eight samples of Clutterbutter for taste-testing. Oh, how I wish I'd had a classroom full of students to try them out on. I still do some substitute-teaching at nearby
Hopewell High, but there is no way I'm going to take the chance of a peanut allergy with high school kids. Subjects have to be adults or else. But I grabbed the nearest 12 people I could find to go through the samples, which included the following flavors:
- s'mores
- dark chocolate-covered pretzel
- cinnamon toffee chip
- banana nut 'n honey
| - tropical
- cajun (my favorite)
- caramallow
- cinnamon raisin
|
The comments were mostly positive -- those I could understand coming from mouths stuck shut with peanut butter -- but the feedback included such memorable lines as "vewy goo" and "oooh." The only improvements needed were (a) caramel tends to harden -- can it be made to stay fluid at room temperature? and (b) some people couldn't taste the chocolate in the "s'mores." May need a little more.
I have written before about how difficult it can be to become eligible in New Jersey to produce food for sale, and I have warned my friend about this difficulty. Her willingness to jump this hurdle -- what I see as her biggest -- will decide whether she takes off or not.
Labels: young entrepreneurs
Revenge of the greengrocers' apostrophe!
Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves defines for us the greengrocers' apostrophe: a possessive apostrophe used to indicate a plural noun, such as the sign in my local Shop Rite produce section that says "cucumber's 2/99."
So what happens when I get a professionally printed postcard in the mail, like the one I got from a small shop called Crystals, that announces a sale on "ladie's wear?" Is that a sign that the greengrocers are getting even?
Labels: rhetoric
e-book offered by Commonwealth Capital Advisors
There was a promotional offering of a free e-book from
Commonwealth Capital Advisors entitled
Raising Capital for Start-Up and Early Stage Companies. I'm looking at this book now, and of course it's an impressive piece of work. BUT... you have to be careful when you use it. These guys are making the assumption that "any company" looking for seed funding is looking for something in the range of US $100K to $500K. And that could hardly be further from the truth. There are new companies out there that are looking for no more than a few hundred dollars to get off the ground.
Which is how you can tell the e-book is written by a venture capitalist. Anyone looking for that small of an amount of money isn't in the crosshairs of a self-respecting VC. A VC won't give out advice for anything that puts less than a few $K in the VC's coffers -- in a single day, in some cases.
That doesn't mean the book isn't useful. You just have to recognize that the author may not recognize your company as a real, valid start-up.
Labels: internet
The inner workings of e-commerce, part two
The biggest needs in online retail? Here they are:
- Navigation. Customers have to find what they're looking for. They have to find it where they think it belongs, not (necessarily) where you think it belongs. Many grocery stores carry nuts in "candy and nuts" and in "produce." How do I know which nuts are which? If I am confused in the store, I may head for "customer service". If I am confused online, I head for another site.
- Interface. Customers don't want to have their senses assaulted. You may be able to sell something else besides what a customer wants to buy, but that's no excuse for pop-up ads or blinking images. If your Web site is database-driven (and in retail it should be), then when an item is picked that database entry should suggest others to put on the screen. Amazon is very good at this, and I liken this behavior to seeing the Weekly World News in the grocery-store checkout line. Only without "Batboy". And as long as you are considering your customers' senses, choose site color combinations that make it easy to shop. Test your site on multiple browsers, not forgetting Mozilla Firefox.
- Interactivity. Customers are willing to give feedback. So you want to solicit it at every opportunity. Feedback on the shopping process and feedback on product quality or variety -- those are the big issues. They want their opinions heard.
- Credibility. We all know your primary goal is to sell what you're selling. But in-person sales often works because the sales reps have personality and use it. So you will too. Your Web site will reflect your personability and approachability, and you'll be seen in other places too. That means being seen in blogs and discussion groups relevant to your industry. It also means use of some otherwise dated promotional techniques, like reciprocal linking. What are you willing to do for customers who have links to you on their sites? What can you do to get vendors and business partners to give you the same consideration?
- Security. There are still a few people out there who rank this as the most important thing, but I think that number is shrinking. The use of tools like PayPal for collecting payments is helping.
You'll want to take a look at
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox or
Steve Krug's Advanced Common Sense for ideas on making your site easy to use.
Labels: internet
McKaig's "Open Letter to Employers"
I confess that I've read
this letter on Angie McKaig's site before. But why not take a minute to sound off on it?
The job ad she writes about it is why
Nick Corcadilos encourages us to take our job destiny in our own hands. Neither headhunters nor human resources people know what the h*ll they are doing, when it comes to identifying technical skill. Only those of us who possess these skills can accurately judge which can be applied to what job. Unfortunately, it's the clueless people who have responsibility for making the placements. I say this is unfortunate because there is plenty for them to do without having to embarrass themselves by creating job ads that require five years of experience in some software program that didn't exist three years ago. (I've seen this, more than once.)
And double unfortunately, no "open letter" to the people who write these ads will change their behavior. They do not see themselves in the examples; they don't consider the possibility that our complaints are aimed at them.
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
I'm not saying McKaig is teaching pigs to sing. I am saying she wrote the article more to vent her own spleen than to serve the rest of humanity. Nothing wrong with that. :-)
Piggy courtesy of
Animal Vet Center.
Labels: character
Correlation between GPA and likelihood of success?
My first inclination would be to say that there is no real correlation between a student entrepreneur's GPA and that student's likelihood of business success. But that's a knee-jerk reaction, and I teach at a school where there is no significant support offered to student entrepreneurs. (Even that could be a chicken-v-egg thing. Does the College offer no support because there are few entrepreneurs, and even fewer of them are doing well in school? Or are there few entrepreneurs because the College does so little for them?)
I don't mean to complain. We do have an office of the
Small Business Development Center here (although it's not listed on their Web site), and Lorraine Allen, who runs that office, has a good heart and loves student entrepreneurs. But there is no incubator, and no partnership with any company or other college who HAS one. There is one other course on entrepreneurship offered by the College of Business... and then there's me.
What you find, however, when you look at schools who really support student entrepreneurs, is that they need some performance out of those kids to justify that support. For instance,
at the University of Maryland,
Applicants to the program face a rigorous selection process. The acceptance ratio is 3:1, and the number of applicants increases every year [...]. Acceptance criteria include a 3.0 GPA, a personal essay and an application.
Not all schools appear to require that high of a GPA, but if they are in the business of giving degrees they have a right to expect some return on their own investment.
Some of my own former students who are starting businesses are admittedly struggling with grades. They tell me it's because their minds are elsewhere. Guess where?
The emergence of "Clutterbutter?"
A friend of mine has developed a new peanut-butter product, which she's entitled "Clutterbutter" -- and she's trademarked the word. (That's a good start -- creating the product and tying up a trade name.) So this week I will meet with her and find out what her likelihood of market entry is.
I am looking at peanut butter products on the Web now. Market share has traditionally been controlled by
Jif (pictured) and
Skippy, but -- and this is no surprise to me --
"private label" products accounted for nearly 25% of market share in the mid-1990s. That is a sign that there is room on the shelves for something else that's unique in its way.
Labels: young entrepreneurs
Motivation: applying motivational theory to grading
A seminal work in classroom motivation is Keller (1987), "Development and Use of the ARCS Model of Instructional Design."
Journal of Inst. Dev., 10 (3), 2-10. Since it's about classroom motivation, it's not always relevant to workplace motivation. BUT... given that entrepreneurs are often in companies no bigger than classrooms, and in situations where they learn something every day, I think the ARCS model is worth at least not being ignored. ARCS == "attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction," by the way.
So here's how I can use the ARCS model to improve my own classes:
- Attention
- Relevance
- explain how each task contributes to final grade
- explain how each task contributes to potential start-up
- Confidence
- estimate time and type of effort to be expended on tasks
- Satisfaction
- give immediate feedback
- give rewards for individuals and teams
Some of this stuff I am already doing. But I am applying more information to my grading structure, because I sense that my students feel there's a disconnect between the work they do and the grade they get.
- 30% blog
- rubric for blog established
- blog must average minimum of one post per week, with average minimum of 250 words per week, and every month or other four-week period in which nothing is posted will cost 5% of blog grade.
- 30% business plan
- rubric for business plan from writing perspective established
- rubric for business plan from content perspective is as follows:
- executive summary: one page, summarizes the entire work
- financials: at a minimum, includes break-even point, start-up financing needed (which must be reasonable), purpose(s) of financing
- market: at a minimum, includes market entry strategy, barriers to market entry, major competitors, and assumptions
- management: at a minimum, includes your team and one experienced adult with complementary skill, full biographical info, no pointers to youth and lack of experience, roles in company clearly defined
- product or service: at a minimum, includes what's to be offered right away, and conditions under which that is to change and/or grow
- 20% book review
- In your OWN words, you describe -- within four pages --
- the central message(s) of the book
- what you learned from reading it
- whether or not you would have done things the same way
- whether or not you recommend that others read it
- To familiarize yourself with writing style, read at least two book reviews in trade magazines with an audience similar to yours.
- 20% other participation, with the following choices of graded assignments:
- Participation in Writing Program assessment at start and end of the semester. You get 5% of your final grade if you participate in both; you LOSE 5% of your final grade if you participate in neither.
- Creation of a brochure for your business, including graphics: 5%
- Creation of a one-page lecture handout for a relevant subject of interest, including sources: 5%
- Peer evaluation of three classmates' works: one blog, one business plan, and one book review: 5%
- A one-page handout offering suggestions for a small business problem defined by your instructor: 5%
- A five-minute presentation on a relevant subject of interest, plus Q&A: 5%
Labels: rhetoric
Motivation: teamwork
This site has some neat background on motivation theorists' work applied to the workplace. The work at that site is focused on management. But groups that work well together
- share the work (close to) equally
- treat each other fairly in other ways
- don't keep each other waiting
- tend to be more positive than negative; more encouraging than discouraging
- don't air each others' dirty laundry
- have leadership that exemplifies these qualities; CEOs, managers, etc. must do these things FIRST
So you can see that, while management has the most important responsibilities in motivating teams, none of us who are on
teams get away without responsibility.
This is why start-ups pay so much attention to their hires. They must find people who can work with each other, knowing that workplace squabbles will force them to make tough choices.
In large organizations, we see that sometimes teams are chosen by who's available. That's a different dynamic than what you find in a typical start-up. But in both cases, effective teamwork -- and motivation for the team's members -- is tied into trust. If individual team members are busy covering their asses, trust cannot be developed; motivation goes right down the Bemis.
I love writing about motivation. Plan on seeing a lot more on this topic down the road. :-)
Labels: rhetoric
Speaking of free gifts...
This business plan contest is giving all participants a free copy of
.
Labels: consulting
Strategy behind free gifts
We can all guess, I think, that the strategy behind free gifts is to get you to become -- or continue as -- a customer for the gift-giver. For some of us, though, the right gift for the job is just a bit tricky to pick out. So here is what I at least think a free gift SHOULD be:
- eye-catching
- useful
- lasting (or valuable in some other way)
- marked with full contact info
And here is what they COULD be:
- having a value tied to your business directly (for instance, Juterphusion has a poster)
- something not offered by everyone else, or by just anyone
Here are some of what I think are the best free gifts:
- t-shirts (which is what my kids' orthodontist has started doing) or other apparel
- screwdrivers or other small tools
- consumer samples (especially FOOD)
- electronic devices or peripherals
- pens or pencils -- cheap but tried and true!!!
The worst free gifts, on the other hand, include
- pocket calendars -- which contain less info than a business card! (My Dad gave these out every year until he retired...)
- coupons with expiration dates, unless they are for more free stuff
- bookmarks (unless a book comes with them!)
I have been wondering why some people, like
Anna Marie Stewart, give valuable stuff away for free while others make you pay for similar stuff. Stay tuned while I check on that...
Labels: consulting
Apprentice motivation
I was bothered by the way
The Apprentice set up its final showdown between "street smarts"
Tana Goertz (left) and "book smarts"
Kendra Todd (right). The two finalists were each assigned three fired contestants to work with them as associates. Kendra was given three who were portrayed on the show as clueless and distractible; Tana had three who were considered unmanageable. So the real test becomes not so much how the finalists handle their task as whether they can manage their teams.
Motivation is the issue.
And in this Kendra appeared to be the clear winner. The show is on tonight; I see no way Tana will be able to pull out the win, although personally I like her better. And both of them are in my mind better than Kelly Perdew, the last winner.
The lesson we're supposed to learn is that it's our job as entrepreneurs and managers to motivate those working alongside us. In this case it's hard, because (as far as I know) Tana and Kendra are given no budget for wages or rewards to their "employees," and as such they appear to have no leverage. But don't the "employees" have any pride at all? Don't they realize they are still appearing on national TV, and if they goof off or have an attitude the world sees it? To me that should provide ample motivation to at least try to do a good job. You can do ANYTHING for a couple of days. And if the Apprentice job is paying something like a cool quarter-million $US per year, can't I make a promise to anyone working with me that if I win, I'll make it worth their while myself? Because unless the contest rules prohibit it, I certainly would.
So instead, what happens is that the failed contestants get on TV again and do pretty much exactly what they did before. Hint: it didn't work the first time. Why should it work the second time? The smart entrepreneur adapts. And for Kendra and Tana, well, the smart entrepreneur motivates. SOMEHOW.
Labels: diversions
The good answer now...
I was always taught as an engineer, along with other (sometimes clichèd)
proverbs that
a good answer now beats a better answer later. Well, now is the time for the good answer: school is out and I have to keep busy through the summer. Here's what I'm up to as far as I know today:
- Developing a (brief) plan for ESL services. The current population of adult English-language learners has grown to the point where there are enough potential customers for academic and professional English-language training to keep just about everyone who offers that service busy. I just got through making a formal proposal for TCNJ to offer such services to its own students -- something the College has never done. I believe they are 50-50 to adopt my recommendations, and even at that will not reach out to the community with what to me is a proven money-maker. So why should I not take my own advice?
As an advertising option, I'd like to make bookmarks with something like the editing symbols seen on the chart that's pictured here. I'm not totally sold on this particular chart, but I think if I want to hand something out that advertises my services, that something should have some useful information embedded in it.
- Assisting Juterphusion with the next generation of its business plan. They have not written a new one since going into business, and I attribute this to being too busy with... well, going into business. So I will write it.
- Assisting Holcombe Chassis Works with the next generation of its business plan and performing a series of load and stress calculations on the new chassis design. A small business can't afford finite element analysis code, so it has to make assumptions: namely, treating the chassis as a loaded beam. That assumption can lead to stress calculations happening in a spreadsheet -- one that can be updated later without my help.
Unfortunately, none of those options will generate money FOR ME in the near term, so I have to make some other things happen too. Stay tuned...
Labels: rhetoric
JumpDrive helping me geek out!
Every once in a while I still get to satisfy my inner geek. This time I actually won, as a door prize, a
Lexar JumpDrive 2.0 Pro (pictured). This thing is a flash memory, which I've been seeing around a lot. Engineering students carry them -- their CAD files are becoming too much for Zip disks, apparently. :-) But you plug the JumpDrive into the USB port and you don't install anything. Keen! It's about the size of a five-stick pack of gum and has a hole so you can attach it to, or use it as, a keychain. Which is, I think, what most of my colleagues who use these things are doing. They'd pretty much have to -- the thing is small enough to be easy to lose or have stolen. Not that we never lost Zip disks, mind you...
"You have failed me for the last time, Admiral"
That's an obligatory "Star Wars" quote in honor of the upcoming release of
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Which gave me the worst news ever yesterday: that
Bai Ling (pictured)
had been cut from the movie. SHE says it's because she's appearing topless in
Playboy next month; the movie people said they cut her ONE SCENE a YEAR ago.
Anyway, I admit it. I was charmed by the stunning Ling. Until I read the rest of the interview, which included this:
Paris Hilton is smart.
Urgh. She has failed me for the last time, Admiral.
I've said before that
Juterphusion is at least in part about getting its name out there in any way possible. But Bai Ling proves to us that at some point we have to decide "less is more." She's appearing at the opening of an envelope these days, and talking without thinking. Two excellent ways for us to kill the brand identity we're trying to forge: oversaturation and overexposure.
Periodic b*tching about students :-)
They come into my classes with some kind of preconceived notion of how much work they have to do. I am not sure where that notion comes from: I give rubrics for my various assignments, so if they know how to read they should know how I score. But inevitably someone comes along and says "I feel I deserved a bit higher grade because I did everything I was asked to do." This is a little like saying "if I hand in anything, even if it's pure crap, I should get an A because I did it."
Anyway, here's where the notion comes from:
- They've been graded a certain way in the past. If they get an A in high school English with two hours work per week, that's what they expect now. If they can hand in unformatted documents in high school and have them graded, they expect that now too. Sometimes in the workplace we expect our evaluation standards to remain unchanged even when our responsibilities, and even our teammates, change. We learn this behavior as college freshmen.
- It's a vacuum. Even when they know certain other students are strong, they do not emulate the habits of those other students. They may COPY off those students, or try to work in groups with them, but they will not change their behaviors. So they work in a vacuum. I try to tell them that for me to give them good grades when they do bad work is cheapening the good grades I give good students. They don't care. Sometimes they even say "it's not fair." Which suggests a moral standard of "fairness." But what we have instead are the beginnings of cheapening workplace performance awards by giving them out to everyone in the organization, "in turn."
- They do not easily use sources other than Web sites. I try to tell them that almost anything else is fair game, but that doesn't seem to work. And this behavior will ultimately lead to laziness in the workplace. Venture capitalists do due diligence. If we want to be noticed by them, we must do it too, but we are not practicing it in college.
- They've learned to goof off. This past semester I had to deal with three young women who ignored me for the entire semester, and were disruptive in class, then wondered why I would give them Cs. I understand that the workplace requires us sometimes to socialize rather than hunch over our work. But there's a time and a place, and people aren't learning that before they get to me.
So you see I have new things to teach. Notice how everything I see, and b*tch about, in them is something that presents a danger to entrepreneurs later. :-)
Labels: education
Two viewpoints on Primer
Kevin Ohannessian
wrote in the Fast Company Blog about the movie
Primer, directed by and starring Shane Carruth and made for about US $7K:
This film does a wonderful job of catching that excitement, the discovery of something new and the promise of success. It is an intimate representation of a process that has occurred hundreds of times. Many innovations have come from two guys in a garage. Whether we are talking about Apple, Atari, or Microsoft. [...]
Primer cost a mere $7000 and has become a cult hit. Carruth did much himself, playing one of the two leads, besides editing and scoring the movie.
I made a response to that post, which you can read at their site if you feel you must. But for me the bottom line is this: it's only "Entrepreneur as Hero" for about the first third of the movie. Then it goes to docudrama sci-fi. It's about time travel paradoxes -- a common theme in sci-fi movies and literature, and in my opinion done better in
The Butterfly Effect and
TimeShifters, and probably WILL be done better in
A Sound of Thunder. (Not saying very much here, am I?) Give Carruth the credit he deserves for making this watchable flick on a shoestring budget -- an entrepreneur's example if not an entrepreneur's movie -- and for his Sunshine Festival award, and let it go at that.
Labels: diversions
Positive feedback?
Sara, one of my better students this past term, wrote the following:
...as the semester closed I wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed your class because otherwise I wouldn't have realized the important relationship between entrepreneurship and wealth.
There's an important relationship there? Oy gutenu, but I hope I live to discover it... :-) :-) :-)
Labels: office space
Please, Politician, give me a reason to believe in you!
Congressman Rush Holt, who represents my district, has this to say in his most recent e-mail newsletter:
May 1–8 is Cover the Uninsured Week, a time of advocacy for accessible and affordable health insurance in all sectors of society. I am pleased to have recently joined my colleague, U.S. Representative John Barrow (D-GA) as an original cosponsor of the Small Business Health Promotion Act. This bill seeks to help small businesses afford insurance for their employees by offering a tax credit equal to 50% of the employer's total cost of health insurance. I will work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass this legislation and continue to expand health coverage for underinsured segments of our society.
His argument is that small businesses are largely responsible for what job growth there is in the USA, and said growth can be hampered by the cost of health insurance. I buy into this argument and wish Congressman Holt the best of luck with this initiative. And I am not easily convinced by political arguments. :-)
Labels: character
The need of Far East Distribution
Far East Distribution is a company idea conceived by some of my students, including Linh (pictured here with model Michaela, showing off some of Far East's proposed goods). Here are the vital statistics:
Mission StatementWe provide an efficient distribution channel for clothing items, between the United States and Vietnam. To our American customers this channel provides stylish, comfortable, and affordable Vietnamese clothing manufactured by small businesses. Our Vietnamese customers have, through us, access to affordable popular brands of stylish American clothing.
Business Strategy- Our management team is able to leverage its skill in several languages, including Mandarin, Hunan, and Vietnamese, to enter an international market. We have already established business contacts in the Saigon area.
- We intend to approach mass merchandise chains in the USA, such as Macy's and Lord & Taylor, for in-store distribution agreements.
- When a distribution system is set up between the USA and Vietnam, we intend to expand into China.
- Our exit strategy is either to sell holdings to a larger company before Chinese or Vietnamese competition cuts into our market share, or remain in business with modest growth after four to five years if competition does no significant damage to our market share.
What they NEED is US $50K to make this happen. They believe they can break even inside of two years with this amount of investment, and I am inclined to agree -- provided they keep their team in place and move forward, come what else may.
Labels: young entrepreneurs
Secrets of promoting special events
The principal secret to promoting special events is this: you can't count on the media to do it for you. You can get
media coverage of your event, no problem. But that coverage has its value on the day of the event, and you need people to have made up their minds before the day to show up. Sometimes we give emphasis to media coverage anyway, possibly because it looks good to have a picture in the paper; possibly because it's free.
No, we have to reach out to our audience before the event happens or it's a flop. I believe we should get the media to cover our good stuff -- as entrepreneurs we can readily see the value of media participation in
trade shows we're in -- they might draw others to contact us. But you see, our business goes on after the show ends. Our being there is merely participation; just a small part of a larger strategy. When we
put the event on, that's different. Then we need to
follow the advice of Eminem and do not miss our chance to blow.
So related notes follow:
- Flyers on the day of the event don't draw more people. They might help those already planning on coming to find their way.
- If one person is responsible for the promotion, there's a natural bottleneck, and that must be remedied.
- The promotion must follow a strategic plan that's been put in place months before the event, to avoid blockage at the bottleneck and excess work for everyone.
- Any method of promotion that we can afford must be considered, unless it's proven not to reach out to our target audience.
- We must have ideas in place to encourage people to plan early on attending.
Labels: rhetoric
The WORST interview question EVER!
"Tell me about yourself."
If you have ever been asked this question on an interview, then you have been tempted to answer like Bill Murray in
Stripes:
Chicks dig me because I rarely wear underwear, and when I do, it's usually something unusual.
Even women must be tempted!
Fortunately,
Nick Corcadilos has answers to the worst interview questions ever.
So do I.Labels: office space
Attention to the little things: survival English
I stopped going to the Greenpia Cleaners here in Ewing, NJ, a few months back. I used to like going there because the folks running the place were friendly, if heavily accented. But somewhere along the line there was a change in ownership. The new folks are still friendly, and still heavily accented, but this bunch is a little weaker with the English language than the previous proprietors.
It took me ten minutes to explain to them that I needed a receipt for the cleaning of my son's marching band uniform. This, after waiting ten minutes for the woman in front of me to explain to them what she needed cleaned. I am not supposed to be impatient in situations like this -- after all, I will soon be the possessor of a newly-minted teaching certificate in ESL, and will probably be teaching internationals the elements of business and technical English in a high school this fall. With any luck.
But patience with MY OWN customers is a MUCH DIFFERENT THING than being patient AS A CUSTOMER. The responsibility for correct, efficient communication with customers falls on the entrepreneur in this relationship, and nowhere else. As a customer, why should I have the responsibility for teaching English to the people I am paying for service? Especially when I can easily go elsewhere, and not have the same problem? If I am to teach English, then let me BE PAID for it, rather than PAYING.
The lesson I learn from Greenpia Cleaners? To hire myself out to resolve things like this. Especially to entrepreneurs, as they are the ones I feel the most empathy for. But I won't have my son's band uniform cleaned there again. Stay tuned.
Labels: office space
Attention to the little things: parking
You can see on this map an artist's conception of a very busy intersection, located near my house. It's more-or-less easy to get in and out of the three gas stations, which take up a generous amount of space. It's difficult to get in and out of the 7-Eleven, because it's got a small parking lot which is nearly always full.
The issue is that there's a LOT of traffic on Ewingville Road, approaching the intersection. Many drivers let people in and out of the 7-Eleven parking lot. I usually don't. If I let someone out, I end up waiting for another red light. (I know, I'm a picky SOB.) But if somebody decides to pop in for a
Big Gulp, that's not usually my problem.
Village Hardware, on the other hand, is even MORE difficult to get in and out of, because in two directions it's visually obscured by the Exxon station. And I feel sorry for this, because Village Hardware is a small, locally-owned business, run by nice people. (Not that the people at the 7-Eleven are evil. But 7-Eleven is a big chain. And this blog is about entrepreneurship.)
For Village Hardware I'll let drivers in and out. (Not nearly as many chances.) I actually THINK about the likelihood that somebody is sitting in the Village Hardware parking lot, fuming about being unable to pull out, and saying "never again."
Labels: office space
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