Zane Safrit

Banks and towns: Small are Beautiful #2

A friend of mine asked me to pick up his check and deposit it for him in a local bank. I don't have my accounts there, never been in their building before, never read about them in the news.

And so I did. I picked up his checks, drove over to the bank and walked in. This was on the day last week when Congress and Wall Street were having fainting spells (ok, I was worried that afternoon, too.) about the need for a bailout bill to save their respective sit-bones.

The people in this bank were the friendliest I'd ever met in a retail operation. Everyone spoke, said hi, asked how I was, smiled and made eye contact. 

Then the teller said that on Wednesday's they round up each deposit to the next dollar.

Huh? Now, I gotta tell you, I didn't hear, really hear, what she said. So, I absentmindedly said 'oh, ok'.

And then she said and that's why your deposit amount will be bigger.

Well, that phrase got my attention. And I asked her what she said. And she repeated herself. Every Wednesday, we round up deposits to the next dollar.

In my friend's case that was ...$.87. Eighty-seven cents.

I thought about it and asked her why do you do that?

She smiled and said...No reason, really. We just do.  And everyone around her smiled , too. 

So did I.

I was starting to feel pretty good by now. Smiling people. My friend gets an extra  eighty-seven cents...This whole experience has gone on for 10-15 minutes, now.

Being the clever person I am, I asked her..."you don't round down the deposits on Thursday, do you". They thought that was pretty funny, at least they convinced me they did.  Regardless, someone laughed at my joke and now I'm just bubbling.

And for $.87 and a few smiles...they've got my business.

Sometimes, it's really that simple: Creating customer evangelists AND managing a bank successfully in today's credit environment.

Banks and towns: Small are Beautiful #1.

What's right with Kansas are the more than 300 local banks taking care of Main Street. Nothing's the Matter with Kansas by Bill Wyckoff, President of Labette Bank in SE Kansas.

Maybe the big boys on Wall Street can learn something from the lending habits of small banks in small towns. What do you think, Becky?

Notes from Dan Schawbel on BlogTalk Radio

Dan Schawbel shared 90 minutes of his time with me on a very busy Saturday afternoon to talk about his passion and his profession: personal branding.  You can listen here.

Here's my notes:

Me 1.0 Branding. Put the company in front and the person behind in a supportive, subservient role. (The term subservient is not used in a pejorative manner.  It just reflects who has decision-making authority.)

Me 2.0 Branding. Reverses that relationship. The person is put in front, or at least side-by-side, with the company. That changes a lot of dynamics in their relationship.

Dans goal is 5 personal networking contacts per day.

Everyone has a personal brand. It comes from everyone being judgmental. Personal branding is just making sure all your actions are in synch with your promises. [Walk the walk AND talk the talk.] And finding the tools and resources to best communicate this brand to find the best audience that benefits the most, in a mutually satisfying way.

Dan’s 4 Steps to Creating a Personal Brand:

• Discover. Yourself. It’s an internal awakening process. Who are you. Find your voice.
• Create.
• Communicate
• Maintain

Biggest Mistake Made in Creating a Personal Brand

1. They want to take before they give. (Reverse it and you have a winner).
2. They're just another pretty number. (Take a niche. And be the expert.)
3. They don’t take enough time to discover who they are. They don’t know what they wanted. So, they don’t know what they got.

The future of social media is ...mobile.

Social media is the bridge  between the skills people have (or don’t) and the skills companies need or the opportunities people can create and the companies that need those opportunities. 

Dan's a very, very smart guy who's a valuable resource if you want to understand the power of personal branding and how to do it, right.

Dan's links are:

• Personal Branding Magazine
• Personal Branding Blog
• Personal Branding TV
• Personal Branding Awards
• Personal Branding Wiki
• Website

Thank, Dan.

So...it's money holding small business back?

There's an interesting poll by Anita Campbell at her Small Business Trends blog. It's been up for a few days now.

It's a one-question poll. I hope you participate. The question is:

What is the biggest obstacle holding your business back from growing and becoming more successful?

Before you click to her site and participate....what's your answer. I know I had mine.

And at first glance, I thought...being the know-it-all that I am...that I was right. I assumed it would be talent: Managing, motivating and finding.

The National Federation of Business, NFIB, writes that the number one issue facing small business... for the past 20 years...is health care costs.

Neither were right, at least as of 2:02 PM, Central, Thursday, September 25th when I wrote this post and scheduled it to be published today.

Anita Campbell's community said it was...cash-flow or lack of funding/access to credit. Just over 52%, 26 of out 49 votes, voted this was their biggest issue.

Is it reality or perception? Are the credit-markets tightening for small business or is the slipping economy making more small businesses less credit-worthy.

Last week, I shared articles on the credit-markets' impact on small business. One, from the WSJ, said small business was impacted. One, from the National Federation of Independent Business, said they/we weren't.

Regardless, small business faces a lot of challenges. One challenge may be that our schools and businesses create excellent managers. Right now, we need excellent leaders. What's the difference? One leads, one manages. One sees where we should be and shows how to get there. One makes happy where we're at. Looking at the markets, I'm not happy where I'm at, are you?

What do you think? Leave your comments here and be sure to vote at Anita Campbell's post: Take the Poll: What's Holding You Back from Success

Employee Motivation: 9 - 5'ers are fine

It's fine to have 9-5ers on your team--if you're the Post Office. You can't have them at a startup company.  ~Jason Calacanis.

He's right.

No disrespect to the folks at the Post Office. My dad worked there for 30+ years, putting a roof over our head and food on the table. I know there are lots of great people at the Post Office.

On the other hand, the Post Office owned the market. And that was when they'd pick up your mail at your house and you could buy stamps from their carriers and they'd take the time to give you change. And that spirit was squeezed out of them, overall. And now...USPS is, what, 3rd on your list of options for delivering a package?

Link from onstartups tweet on twitter.
 

Small Business: You are one step ahead

I'm reading Rieva Lesonsky's post, How to Create Buzz with a Brand-New Product. It's a 6-paragraph profile of how one company launched a new product with a buzzworthy marketing strategy. 

The company, Sport Technology, sent a tour bus to action-sports trade shows, the ESPN X Games, and the Warped Tour.

In less than a year, sales soared.

Cool. Great, honestly.

But one tactic they used didn't cost much money. That's their use of marketing student interns...nationwide to create MySpace pages and post videos of their tour bus and attendance at events on YouTube.  Like Rieva said:

Building credibility among the target audience, and saving money via interns? Smart guy.

Yes. Mike Kern, the company's owner is a smart guy.

And then I realized there are a lot of smart guys in small companies who are one step ahead. It's a critical headstart.

Small businesses have already built their foundation of credibility among the target audience. 

Small businesses already have a loyal following.

You already have an extablished connection with your customers. You know your customers by name, not user name or online profile. You know them in person, their families, their moods, their business, are they sick or healthy, on vacation, or have a new pet in the house.

Why? Why do you know that? Because they trust you. You're friends. You didn't require they share their personal information before they entered your shop. They shared it with you and you with them; it was shared as a natural part of your daily interaction.

Small business you have such a huge start over companies with bigger budgets, cooler products. Mike Kern is a very smart businessman. But his first investment after buying the company was mandatory. That was going out and building what you've built steadily over the years: credibility among the target audience. 

If you're talking to your neighbor, you'd describe it as 'I love that company'. Or I trust that company. I've done business with them for years. [That guy] is someone I trust.  That's real credibility among the target audience. That's sustainable.

I wrote last week over at Small Biz Survival about how small businesses have what the global brands want. You have loyalty and connection, real connection, look them literally in the eye type of connection, built over the years, growing together, you know them by name and not user name. You can recognize them on the street and they you. That's called accountability. (We're a bit short of that in some areas of business, nationally...)

And in that post, I offered an idea. That idea was to consciously reach out to them. You've done a great job so far. You have a solid relationship of trust, loyalty, repeat purchases. You two clearly like working together.  What if...what if you asked them for their insights, or suggestions, or ideas in creating your products? Right there, in person. One-to-one.

And what if they said yes? Well, then you'd have another source of ideas and suggestions...a very important source: your customer. They're describing what THEY would buy.

What if you set up a 'community forum' in your store where you'd share their ideas and enlist others. Community forums can exist offline. I hope that's not news. And the power of that buzz...in a small town where the relationships already exist...VERY powerful.  That buzz moves faster than buzz on the blogosphere, I guarantee.

Then what if you shared that story outside your community using the digital media resources of YouTube or blogs or podcasts....make everyone in your store a star and your business a success.

What if? You've already got a head start. You've got what the big companies lust for: a deep and personal connection with your customers and their, your, community. Now celebrate it and expand it.

Unified Communication for Small Business: The Holy Grail

Unified communications continues to remain the Holy Grail for small business, heck, for everyone.

Back in the stone ages of telecom, 1995-ish, that was the Holy Grail then, too. And life was so much simpler back in those good ol' days, right? For communication services we had, let's see, local and long-distance services and a tollfree number and a calling card.

Conference calls were offered through either the local or long-distance service providers. And they generously billed you at rates considered usurious by today's standards. 

And that meant at least two, if not 3, service-providers. And that meant at least two, if not 3, invoices and payments and statements to organize and rectify and customer-service numbers to call.

And now, we have....text/IM/SMS and email, cellphone, wi-fi, wi-max, internet, cellphone, landline, tollfree numbers, Voip, video-conferencing and audio conferencing and we have [crack]berries and iphones, cellphones and home phones, office phones and...it seems like most of these services and required products are offered by a different company with the attendant different invoices and payments and statements to organize and rectify and customer-service numbers to call.

And the dream still lives for all Americans, small business and residential and big businesses, locked together in the hope that one day...there's a sing platform, created and managed by a single provider who can deliver and bill all these services on one invoice with the start and end dates for billing periods with each service being the same dates,  where the balances for each of these services can be totaled into one account balance under one account number with one payment able to address that outstanding account balance, and there's one customer service number to call where one customer service person can answer questions or serve as a point of contact for your all of your communication needs... (or at least be able to recognize you as a customer...).

I have a dream...

We all do. But is that dream any closer to reality?

Would we want this reality? Would we want One company, under God, indivisible, with high rates, but better service, for all?

We had that with ATT...even before back in the day. And it was felt that ATT's monopolistic control over telecommunications served to strangle our economy and its needs for innovative communication solutions that met our nation's needs to compete on a global scale.

Granted, service then was great. Operators really were standing by to help you. And they did, too.

On the other hand, you paid for it with interstate long-distance rates as high as $.25 per-minute in 1989 dollars. And conference calling rates well over a dollar with prohibitive restrictions that required the use of a conference operator and prescheduled calls. But I don't recall many hidden fees....

Anyway, much of the costs of managing our telecommunications' infrastructure has been off-shored to...us, as customers. We've been forced to become self-reliant...finding our own solutions, creating and sharing them, innovating them. And self-reliance is always a good thing to develop. And look at all the innovations spawned to meet those needs and all the skills to innovate that were developed and resulted in new ideas and businesses and jobs to deliver these new ideas to market.

But the true judge of this innovation's ROI has to include the hours we've lost individually and collectively as we stumbled through this transition, with services and productivity lost from dropped calls and billing disputes and poor service.

What's the solution? A benevolent, philosopher-king, wise in the ways of communications and a far-sighted enough to connect them all into a unified communications platform...? And subjects customers wise enough to know he/she's the one and allow them to make our dream a reality, our reality?

Maybe.

And if you see one, let us all know. We're happy with the shade we're in. But, we're still looking for that forest we heard about.

Jim Berkowitz's post, Survey Says: Businesses Want Unified Communications, inspired this walk down memory and philosophy lane.

What's the economy doing to small town USA?

I saw a search on Google with the phrase What is the economy doing to small town USA?*

I thought...the same thing its been doing, maybe worse. Smalltown USA is made up of small companies served by small banks. And if big companies with big banks see their credit lines threatened...these lines either no longer exist, or will soon cease to exist, for small companies in small towns served by small banks.

What do you see happening in your community?

* I saw it by looking in my stats, seeing they came to my blog from a google search and then clicking to see what search phrase was used where my blog was listed in the organic search results.

The Growth Paradox

The Growth Paradox

It may seem ironic, but the organization that's good at solving today's challenges will create a new and bigger set of challenges for tomorrow. Why? Because success leads to the need for more: more capital, more leadership, more systems...

Gary Harpst, Execution Revolution, Pgs. 39-40

3 Qualities You Want In Your Next Hire

From the Laws of Simplicity comes an excellent quote from Warren Buffet:

In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.

Two Rights Make a Great Company

The Right Person in the Right Job.

I'm assuming (and that's always dangerous) that by default the term right job is inclusive of the right strategy and execution. It's a big assumption. But you can't have the right job without those defined. So, we're skipping over that step, assuming it's been done.

The Right Person in the Wrong Job is talent wasted. It's a poor use of your assets. You'll see the results in a low low productivity and high conflict or high rates of change to better match the Right Person with the Right Job.

It's probably the sign of a B grade in strategy with an A in Execution.

The Wrong Person in the Right Job is just plain bad execution. It's an A in Strategy with a  C in Execution.

Business Week has an excellent 3-page article titled: Matching the Right People to the Right Job. It includes some case studies/profiles of a couple of companies in different stages of being a matchmaker: finding the right person for the right job.

There's one consistent tip shared: bring in outside expertise. A 3rd-party can bring expert advice and solutions and listening skills to the challenge. And sometimes employees will discuss more openly with a 3rd-party the changes they see needed in the company.

It's a never ending process. Jobs change, a company's needs change, employees change...and sometimes they don't or won't. A perfect match even one year ago soon becomes a perfect mismatch.

This may be the biggest challenge for a growth company. How do you respond to a long-loyal employee who through no fault of their own is not the Right Person for the Right Job that's either morphed from their original job or is about to replace it? And how do they respond to this new day?

Candidates Positions on Small Biz Lack Specifics

Some details emerge. Some are skewed, some stats are omitted. I know. You're shocked, shocked, you say...politicians being selective on data both for their positions and against their opponents.

Regardless, the more you read, the more you begin to see the consistent details of each candidate's position, regardless of their ability to hide, skew, obfuscate, obliterate...WSJ shares some of their stands.

A pleasure, a priviledge and a passion

That's small business. That's it in its essence. That's our advantage.

There's an excellent, concise, profile of a sushi restaurant that exemplifies this. It's A Privilege, Pleasure and Vocation.

After you read it, ask yourself do you treat your customers in the same way?

Small Business Optimism Rising

The National Federation of Independent Business reports their  Index of Small Business Optimism rose 2.9 points to 91.1 in August. That's the proverbial first step in a long journey. It's good to hear.

The rest of the news from their survey wasn't so great. A couple of items from the report caught my eye:

Productivity was unexpectedly strong, suggesting that labor hours were reduced at a faster pace than output fell. 

Yes, it's great to see rising productivity. But to replace those jobs lost as a result...we'll need to:

1) Insure, inspire, insist on greater innovation in business. That innovation would create the new products and services that need new business and their jobs to promote them.
2) Eliminate capital gains taxes on small business,
3) Eliminating all taxes on small business given their greater risk and limited access to capital,
4) Provide affordable health care for small business and their employees. Level the playing field against large corporations in being able to offer affordable health care to their employees and thus attract the talent to drive the innovation and productivity needed to grow their business (and add jobs).

76 percent of those trying to hire reported few or no qualified applicants for the job openings they want to fill.

That's a concern. That says the unemployed are left without the skills to find new jobs in new industries. It's worrisome. No skills = no jobs, regardless of the economy. And without an investment in re-training, they'll have no skills for new jobs, no means to gain the new skills...and we've created a permanent class of under/un-employed.

Still. It's a long journey. And it's best begun with optimism. And this sign of rising optimism among small business, the ones actually adding jobs to our economy..., is a good sign. With optimism, much can be accomplished like providing the training to bring new skills for employees to help drive small business in the future.

Whose Plan Is It, Anyway?

Bottomline, it's the ones who can answer for it, do answer for it, change it as needed...

And no one else's.

People execute the plan they know.

Sometimes, statistics say it's the majority of times... it's not the plan that's written.

Tim Berry shares his personal experience with this truth: My Worst Business-Plan Engagement.

Bottomline (said differently): Make sure the plan being executed is the same plan written. The only way to do that is to engage, engage, engage with everyone researching the plan, writing the plan, executing the plan, sharing feedback on the plan, being bonus'd from the results of the plan's execution, NOT being bonus'd from the results...

Small Business Success Requires The Right People

   

People are the most important asset, then why do small growth companies   still forgo hiring key talent? Why do many businesses put up with the   deadwood, especially in critical roles? * Ben Carnevale (Former President of Oxford International Ltd.; a high growth   Chicago based multinational corporation serving the OEM automotive industry)   says build the team. They solve all the problems. * John Fox (President of   Venture Marketing and author of Marketing-Playbook. Venture   Marketing is a marketing consulting firm focusing on its client’s top line revenue) says the biggest barrier to success is thin management not money.   * Mike Slattery (President of Arthur P.O’Hara, a $5M Chicago based office   furniture distributor) says you can’t afford to keep the wrong people around too long. But how do you hire the best when cash is tight and needed to fuel other   growth investments? How do you find the right people? How do you motivate   talent with limited resources? We all know that owning a small business isn’t a “black or white”   proposition. It is a balancing act of many variables all demanding your time   and resources asking you to make choices.   * Don Urbancisz is the CEO and Founder of Insurance Vianet and The Insurance   Noodle. (The Insurance Noodle is a rapidly growing $25M proprietary web   enabled platform for the distribution of small commercial and property   casualty insurance). When asked how he attracts and motivates talent without   breaking the bank, he says salary alone will never do it. His employees are   not driven by salary, but by opportunity and ownership. Insurance Noodle   offers a good environment with the strategy that if employees feel good about   what their doing, motivation will not be an issue.   Don says “Find people who share your vision, your passion, and want to   succeed. If they want “a job”, let them work somewhere else.” Don also   recognizes the need to offer equity in the business. Within 6 months of   employment new hires are vested. “They have an ownership attitude that   intrinsically motivates them to perform.”   OK, but how do you find the “right” people?   Most small business leaders would agree that hiring the right people   involves understanding your company’s culture and values….who fits and who   doesn’t.   As Oxford International grew to 2,000 employees, team-building was   essential to continue the entrepreneurial culture of the company. In hiring, Ben Carnevale sometimes avoided the brightest students because they didn’t   fit with the team based culture. “An egoistic controller may not be the best   fit for team-driven management. The team was more often right than wrong.”   So I understand my culture and values, who fits and who doesn’t, but how   do I get access to the “best” talent.   * Kathleen Dahlberg, (Founder of numerous companies and currently the CEO and Founder of oVention, a technology firm ensuring hard returns on   technology) offers three simple keys to hiring: Find people with a good moral   compass who are willing to learn, willing to work hard and have a passion for   success.   John Fox adds a different dimension. He believes that everyone has talent.   Some are just in the wrong slot – “round peg, square hole.” Poorly performing   employees are many times the result of qualifying people poorly. To get good   people, hire slowly, and put them in an environment that will help them   succeed. Mike Slattery agrees; “hire slowly, fire fast”.   Urbanicsz hires only known quantities – people referred to him, or whom he   knows professionally. He does not hire “off the street”. Referrals minimize   hiring failures. He also goes to firms who are intimate with the industry,   who can provide temps, who later become permanent.   So ask yourself these questions…the answers may surprise you and your   business may depend on it. What key hires are you avoiding, why, what is the   impact? Are you getting the right people? How do you know? Who are the right   people? Are you getting the most out of your people? What motivates them? How   do you know? What type of people are the best fit for your culture? Can you   define your culture? Steve MacGill ***************** Steve is the co-founder of PeerSight. PeerSight is the pioneer in virtual Peer Advisory Boards. We provide the platform business advisors use to deliver virtual peer advisory boards to their clients.

The Pandora of Wine

iinnovate interviews Alyssa Rapp,  the Founder and CEO of Bottlenotes, an online wine retail business that helps individuals discover and learn about wine.

Her goal is to become the Pandora of Wine.

Cool. Great combination: Pandora + Wine.

The interview is excellent as she talks about coming to Stanford Business School, wanting to be an entrepreneur, thinking it might be in Asia...and then the journey to becoming Founder and CEO of Bottlenotes.

3 KEYS:

Opportunity: The opportunity for Bottlenote was in the economically inefficient model, with its layers of pricing, with wineries > importers>retailers (stores, restaurants,etc). Bottlenote is a direct-to-consumer model for quality wine sales.

Technology: The technology part of her business is the algorithm she created to determine the best wine for a consumer's taste, called a personal taste profile. Like Pandora, the algorithm learns and improves its recommendations based on the feedback the consumer shares.

People: She's a big believer that those who are smart and successful want to leverage their talent and experience to help others who have the same drive...

3 BIGGEST LESSONS:

* Being undercapitalized sucks.

Find the right venture partner who's willing to step off the cliff with you.

* Being CEO and being Founder are dyametrically opposed.

* Having smart people who really care, and believe in what you're doing, can have impact if you give them the right to take ownership.

Product Tip: New Zealand's Marlboro region is breathtaking and delicious and in particular, its Hawks' Bay region.

Common Mistakes in Social Media Campaigns

WSJ, of all folks, has an article titled Social Networking: Common Mistakes Small Businesses Make.

Honestly. These mistakes aren't unique to small business. Small business is learning the power and the requirements for a social media campaign, the same way big business is learning. Jumping in, making mistakes, mid-course correction, changing direction, scrambling.

If there's any difference, it's small business does it (everything) with a much smaller budget. That makes it more authentic.

Yes, I said that:  Money buys appearances. Nothing wrong with keeping up appearances. Just, ask the folks living in the Hamptons. What it can't buy is authentic, real, genuine. There's the HUGE advantage for small business.

And social media is the, THE, resource, to leverage authentic, real, genuine, passion, honesty, unique, different, niche', quality over quantity...over money. It's the ultimate online tool to maximize sweat equity. Social media, in the hands of a passionate and caring business, leverages that asset to full display for the masses, ie, consumers, ie, you and I.

Having said that, we've all seen people who think they can manipulate the resource and the sentiment. And they're successful but for a short time. Authenticity is hard to fake in a transparent media with millions of people watching and talking.

Back to the article, it has excellent advice. Its list of points is short. And the comments include some excellent insights.

Link: The article was listed among the Top 10 posts at bizSugar.

Is Your Company Cutting Logs or Building Ships?

"What's the challenge?" is another way to ask, "What's the opportunity?" How we forumlate the question determines the way we think, and the way we think changes everything.

To achieve a revolution in their execution, business leaders need to reframe their thinking from cutting logs to building ships. - Gary Harpst, Execution Revolution.

Gary, you always inspire/incite me to comment. If you don't mind...cutting logs isn't sustainable. Finite supplies of logs and innovations in materials and designs means your business, cutting logs, has a finite timeline. You're literally working to end your business.  Building ships, on the other hand, is a mission that can embrace changes in materials and designs and finite supplies of logs...and even changes in the definition of ships. You have a sustainable business building ships.

Gary's book, Execution Revolution, and his consultancy Six Disciplines, can help you grow your business, sustain it...sail it through any storm.

To be smart you gotta eat smart

From LifeHack: Brain Foods to Eat for Productivity.

I put this under the category of small business. Small businesses don't have the staff to do their thinking for them. We have to do it for ourselves.