How to Make Your Business Run Better and More Profitably

This week from Barbara Wold — don’t we all want this??

1.  Take action. Taking action will probably move you forward on some significant goal.
2.  Know your customers. Look back at the misses and successes of the last two
years and use that data to help you reassess your idea of your real customers/clients and prospects.
3.  Speak your customers’ language. Remember that you are not selling your products or services, you are meeting the needs or solving the problems of your prospects and clients/ customers; package and market your products/services in a way that addresses that need or problem.
4.  Some revenue is better than none. Don’t stall your success because you are afraid partnering will reveal your secrets to a potential competitor.  Find a Business Buddy, create a business partnership..
5.  Put it in writing. If you put the specifics of every agreement and arrangement in writing you will save yourself time, money, agony and broken relationships.
6.  Make marketing a priority. You should develop a schedule of marketing actions, put them on your calendar and carry them out — just as you would any product or service development and delivery for a customer/client.
7.  Avoid spending time “getting ready” instead of “doing.” If there is something you do not really want to do or are not comfortable with, there is the risk of avoiding it by getting trapped in the preparation phase.

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“In your quest for new and better ways to please customers, make sure you don’t overlook that very thing you already do better than anyone else.”
– Marc Compeau, business columnist, writing for Forbes

Reposted with permission from Barbara Wold’s Retail & Consumer Tips, bwold@ix.netcom.com. To occasionally reprint portions of this newsletter, permission is not required. To reprint more than one article, please contact us at 949-675-8845 or bwold@ix.netcom.com. If you received this from someone else and would like to sign up for your own complimentary subscription, bwold@ix.netcom.com.

Our 3 “R’s” of Economic Enhancement

I’m sure you remember the 3 R’s from school, yes?  Reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic – yes I always thought that was funny in connection with education, but we won’t go there for now!

In the De Pere area, for our Economic Enhancement & Development efforts, we focus on a different set of 3 R’s.  Recruitment – Retention – Reinvestment. There are many schools of thought on business recruitment but one is “home grown entrepreneurship” – not trying to bring IN businesses, but bringing UP your own economy by growing businesses from your local pool of experts.

I found a review of a book on this subject called Ripples from the Zambezi that I find to be fascinating and hopefully someone out there will find it inspiring!  If you are inspired and are looking for a space to open your dream, call us at the Chamber, we have a buildings and business inventory to assist you find a location and team of volunteer experts to help you get going!

Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship, and the Rebirth of Local Economies

by Ernesto Sirolli, New Society Publishers, 1999

review by Peter Donovan

Many people wish to strengthen their local economies, reduce dependence on multinational corporations, build community by doing things, or achieve self-fulfilment through meaningful work. Yet these results are not coming easily or economically from the top-down, programmatic, and strategic approaches typically used by governments, economic development districts, and even by community groups, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations.

As E. F. Schumacher observed in Good Work, we cannot expect to raise the wind that will push us to a better world. What we can do is hoist a sail to catch the wind when it does come. Ripples from the Zambezi tells the gripping story of how Ernesto Sirolli learned to catch the wind of passionate, skillful, creative, intelligent, and self-motivated entrepreneurs–the acknowledged powerhouse of the economy as well as of social change.

Sirolli’s experiences as a volunteer for the Italian government in Africa during the 1970s convinced him that “development” schemes were anything but. After absorbing Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered and the person-centered psychology of Carl Rogers, Sirolli put his radical, antidogmatic ideas to the test in rural Western Australia. Instead of trying to motivate people, he made himself available as coach and advocate for anyone who was serious about starting or expanding a business enterprise.

By treating economic development as a byproduct of personal growth and self-actualization, Sirolli was able to make a quantum leap in the effectiveness of business coaching, as well as create local miracles of economic development. He has devoted himself since to teaching committed civic leaders how to do what he has done.

“In every community, no matter how small, remote, or depressed, there is somebody who is scribbling figures on a kitchen table. If we can be available, for free and in confidence, to help that person go from the dream to establish an enterprise that can sustain that person and his or her family, we can begin to change the economic fortunes of the entire community.”

The strategy that Sirolli teaches to communities often involves a committed volunteer local board, who hires an “Enterprise Facilitator” who is then trained by Sirolli. The facilitator does not initiate projects or promote “good ideas.” He or she responds to the interests and passions of self-motivated people. Because no one has equal passion for production, marketing, and financial management, all of which are necessary for business success, and because people only do well what they care about doing, the secret of success and survival for a business of any size is to find people who love to do what you hate. “The death of the entrepreneur is solitude.” The facilitator and the board, with networking, help people form teams to advance their idea.

This is a strategy that is always followed in large business, but remains unusual in small business, where most people are still advised to write business plans singlehandedly, and to get better at what they hate. For example, farmers and ranchers whose inclinations and personalities do not lend themselves to marketing are often told that they must learn marketing skills to get off the commodity roller coaster.

Sirolli’s ideas are not just good. They are inspiring, inflammatory, they resonate–and they are based on 15 colorful years of failing and succeeding at hoisting the sail in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S.

The underlying philosophy has to do with empowerment rather than control. “A shift from strategic to responsive development can only occur,” Sirolli writes, “if we are capable of believing that people are intrinsically good and that the diversity, variety, and apparent randomness of their passions is like the chaotic yet ecologically sound life manifestations in an old-growth forest.”

The message is that bottom-up, person-centered, responsive economic development works–and if well understood and led at the community level, it works better than anything else. When a community can help motivated people succeed, the motivation spreads. “The future of every community,” Sirolli writes, “lies in capturing the energy, imagination, intelligence, and passion of its people.”

– Peter Donovan

Updated 21 April 2003
URL: managingwholes.com/review-ripples.htm

An opportunity for business growth …

… and seriously – who isn’t looking for that??

From our friends at the Business Assistance Center:

Spin-Outs and Spin-Offs An opportunity for business growth We’ve all heard stories of companies that have a team of people who created a great new technology, but for some reason, it wasn’t developed…. Or an idea was researched and developed but dried up on the vine in the process of everyday business… Or employees have a new product idea, but nowhere to go with it. Learn how to jump the hurdle from concept to reality. Hear from several companies, entrepreneurs and investors who took good ideas out of a “parent” company and created innovative new businesses and exciting growth opportunities. Panelists: · Charlie Goff, President, New Capital Fund · Amy Achter, Intellectual Property and Competitive Intelligence Leader, formerly Director of Outlicensing, Kimberly Clark · Brad Schuler, President, Ro-Flo Compressors · Bob Cool, Executive Vice President, Aurizon Ultrasonics, LLC, former Technology Champion at Kimberly Clark Moderator: Kurt Waldhuetter, Northeast Regional Director, Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Network There is no cost, but space is limited.  Please RSVP to Lisa Harmann at (920) 496.2110 or lharmann@titletown.org by Tuesday, Dec. 1.

Where & When Aurora BayCare Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Center 1160 Kepler Dr., Green Bay December 3, 2009 7:00AM-9:00AM