How You Can be UNIQUE and Immediately STAND OUT

A few years ago, my wife (Sarah) and I visited my daughter Ava’s elementary school to do something called “Parent Share”. 

“Parent Share” is when grownups bore little kids with what they do for a living.

Since Sarah and I are entrepreneurial, we decided to help 140 second graders start a business.

Should be easy, right:)?

We took on about 40 kids at a time, putting 4-5 kids per business.

We had them pick a business, name it, decide what they were going to sell, price items, and even do an organizational chart.

But most importantly, we had them describe why their business was different and why customers would buy from them.

We got some shocking results!

And by shocking, I mean, we had dozens of 7 and 8 year-olds GET IT!

We had a photography business that sold “very expensive photos, but they are all 3D and the customer gets to edit them.” And there was a candy store that “had the most sugar in their candy, than anyone else!”

Out of 35 business, there were only a couple that were the best or cheapest. 

Oh, and there were ZERO business with X number of years of experience, great customer service, or had some complicated-sounding certifications.

Why?

Kids know you can’t be the same as everyone else and expect to STAND OUT among everyone else

Odds are, you are unique, and there is a good reason for someone to buy from you instead of your competitor.

·                     If you are truly the expert, display it.

·                     If you really serve a special market, make sure everyone knows about it.

·                     If you are the most convenient, fastest, or most accurate, hang your hat on it.

And if that seems too difficult, I know a few kids you can hireJ.

This is How to Get 28 Hours in A Day

Good lord…this is actually a little embarrassing and I’m just observing, not participating.

Well, not participating at this particular moment, but honestly, I’m just as bad as everyone else.

Or at least I was, but I’m really working hard not to be.

I was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room for my annual physical with at least 15 other people (Baby Boomers and Gen Xers).

Even though there was a variety of ages, races, men, women, singles, and grandparents, there was one common thread among them all.

Every one of them had their face buried in their phones:(.

Millennials catch all the misery from the rest of us about their phone use, but we are just as bad, if not worse.

Yes, these fine folks could have been highly productive answering a very important work email that will make the company millions, but more likely, they were scrolling through Facebook, mindlessly looking at everyone else’s carefully curated life or playing Candy Crush.

And before you think this is just some rant about how in the good ole days people would actually interact with each other, I want you to think about this question. 

How much time do you spend on your phone?

(And yes, I get the irony of you possibly being on your phone to read this, but humor me anyway.)

1 hour?  2 hours?  All day?

The average American spends 4 hours a day on their phone!

If you are an iPhone user, let’s check your answer.

Go to Settings -> Screen Time -> Tap on the time

And to see how your week has gone tap on “7 Days”

Also how many pickups do you have?  

How many times did you receive a notification?

Let’s give that some context.

If you sleep 8 hours a night, that means you are spending 25% of your waking hours staring at your phone.  

That’s literally 3 waking months a year with your face 1 foot from a 5-inch screen.

That’s nuts!

Now I know there are a ton of excus…I mean good reasons that you need to be on your phone that amount of time, i.e. work, checking out the grandkids pics, shopping for essentials, staying on top of the news, etc.

But do you get 4 hours worth of goodness out of it?  

Most of the really important things take less than an hour.

So how about the advantages it brings you?

It’s entertainment and it’s not hurting anyone, right?

The fact is there a lot of studies that show that more time on your phone increases anxiety and decreases mental focus.

I’ve recently made an effort to decrease my phone time to less than an hour a day and I’m down to about an hour a day.  

I suddenly have more time to concentrate on “real” work and feel less anxious about unimportant emergencies.

Could you give up your phone for a day?  How about a half-day?  Just try one hour.

Yes, this might mean some short term pain for long term gain, but that’s where most of the good things in life come from.

You can always rationalize how you might miss some big event or lose a customer forever, but way more likely, you will get much more gain than you lose from this little experiment.

Do This In Your Business Or Suffer The Consequences

This past fall we bought a new house in Gallatin.

This is our fourth house (and last) we have bought since we’ve been married, and all have been fixer-uppers because raising three kids and working full-time just wasn’t stressful enough.

This house was the epitome of a needle in a haystack.  

The market was hot, the house was in the best location, and it had great “bones”.  

And if you don’t know, great “bones” means it’s a good house, but’s also a hot mess right now.

After about a month straight of rehabbing, the house was ready to move in.  

All it needed was carpet, paint, refinish the floors, windows, appliances, countertops, tons of new fixtures, woodwork, gutters, etc.  

You know, basically everything.

We still managed to stay on budget and walk in with enough equity to make it worthwhile.

This is what happens when you don’t reinvest in your home.  

You end up selling it at a below appraisal price in a hot real estate market.

It’s pretty easy to understand when it’s a house.  

You can see the windows falling out and the gutters hanging by a thread.

It’s harder to see with your business.

But you know what…I see it all the time.

• The website is out of date.

• Your bookkeeping is 6 months behind.

• The equipment is in constant need of repair. 

• Employees are kind of doing their own thing.

• You are putting out fires instead of working “on” your business.

• The CRM you bought to keep up with all of your contacts has never been installed.

You get the idea.

It’s just like this house we bought.  

The previous owners got busy with life and never really got around to the house maintenance.  

And in your case, you get busy with the day-to-day grind and really don’t have the time to reinvest in your business.

However, this becomes a big problem if you want to sell the business or just regain your sanity.

The key is to treat the REINVESTMENT in your business the same way you would reinvest in your home.

1. Schedule time for regular updates to your business and don’t let anything interrupt it, the same as you would not let anything interrupt you getting a plumbing leak fixed.
2. Take stock of your business today and look at every area that needs to be updated.
3. Then make a list, prioritize it, assign a budget for time and money, then figure out who’s gonna do it.

Yeah, I know all of this is easier said than done, but that’s owning a business.  

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

And if you decide you are just too busy to do this, you may end up with a nice little business with great “bones” that someone else buys for below market value.

Honestly, What Do You Really Do?

I worked for SERVPRO in their corporate office from 2002-2007 because it’s some sort of requirement for Sumner County residents…or at least that’s what they told me when I moved here years ago. 

Anyway, if you are not familiar, SERVPRO is the number one cleaning and restoration company in the U.S.  

At the time I worked there, they were number one, but most people didn’t know who they were.

If you mentioned SERVPRO to somebody they would ask if they made surfboards.

SERPVRO hired The Buntin Group, an advertising agency, to do some marketing research and development to fix that.

After several months of surveys, phone calls, and riding around on the truck, they came up with this:

SERVPRO

Fire & Water - Cleanup & Restoration

“Like it never even happened®”

Really.  That’s it.

At first a lot of the franchises were less than thrilled.

They said, “But we do mold remediation, contents cleaning, pack out inventorying, drapery cleaning, carpet cleaning, and 20 other things.  How will the customer ever know about those?!”

And those franchises had a point.  If you looked at a brochure back then, you would see 20 different related services on it.

However, the corporate office stuck to their guns.

And the result is SERVPRO is almost a household name at this point.

They created an identity that was easy to understand because they decided to only tell potential customers about their 2 primary services and not all 20.

When you tell somebody 20 things, they seem to remember 0.

If you are really clear and tell them 1-2, and do it consistently, how many do you think they will remember? 

If you said 1-2, you are correctamundo!  If you said anything else, you can go back to coloringJ.

Anytime I ask a business owner what they do, I almost always get the same response.

They list every product or service under the sun that they provide and even list several things they could do, but haven’t actually done before.

And I get it.  You don’t want to leave any money on the table and only marketing a couple of your products or services is scary.

I always recommend to my clients that they either focus on their 1-2 highest revenue items or the 1-2 they would like to be known for and do more of that. 

It’s scary, but simple, and best of all…it works!

If a $1 Billion company in Gallatin can do it, so can you.

All Air Xtreme Trampoline Park owners named 2018 Rising Stars

Kandace and Richard Martin, owners of All Air Xtreme Trampoline Park and Hoppity Hop Inflatables in Hendersonville, have been named 2018 Rising Stars by the Tennessee Small Business Development Center (TSBDC) at Volunteer State Community College. The Rising Star Award goes to a small business that has had great success utilizing TSBDC resources.

In the fall of 2011, the Martins came to the TSBDC to get advice on how to expand their inflatable rental business. They also wanted to open a physical location that would serve a need in the community for a place for kids to have fun.

They worked with TSBDC to create a plan and projections that guided them on expansion. The TSBDC also gave referrals for attorneys and accountants that would become part of their team. Within three months, the Martins opened Hoppity Hop Inflatables. They immediately hired 10 employees and sustained year-over-year growth over the next seven years.

In 2018 they decided to expand again. This time they worked with a local lender to create the Air Xtreme Trampoline Park that opened in January 2019.  The new business is located in a 21 thousand square-foot building and has created more than 30 new jobs. They are the only trampoline park in the area that has electrical jump bands. 

The TSBDC at Vol State worked with 181 small businesses and clients in 2018, offering free and low-cost classes and counseling and helped launch 18 new businesses. In all, the projects raised more than $4.4 million in capital and created or retained 82 jobs. For more information and a list of classes contact Charles Alexander at Charles.alexander@volstate.edu or call 615-230-4780.

Where's the Beef vs YouTube Kids

I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was seven years old and my dad had fallen asleep watching some awful golf tournament on a Saturday afternoon. And not just asleep. The snoring had reached jet engine levels. And then a commercial asking “Where’s the Beef” came on and I thought it would be my chance. As I snuck up to the TV to switch the channel, my dad said, “Hey, what are you doing...I’m watching Tom Watson on the 18th hole!” It was like he had a 6th sense that would have never qualified for an M. Night Shyamalan movie. That was the 1980’s and commercials dominated the marketing scene. Fast forward 30+ years. My children are obsessed with YouTube Kids. They almost always watch other children opening toys and describing what is inside the package (by the way, I’m convinced Shopkins are evil). My kids are literally choosing to watch infomercials, because they enjoy the content. Marketing is much different than it used to be. Being able to rely on interrupting someone’s day to sell them something is no longer a thing. We now research on our own and gravitate toward authentic content that resonates with us. You will not be able to bombard people with features, advantages, and benefits. YOU WILL HAVE TO CREATE YOUR OWN CONTENT WITH YOUR CUSTOMER IN MIND AND IT NEEDS TO BE HELPFUL.

Why? Your own content can express your real thoughts, brand you as the expert, and resonate with your target customer. Your content can be:

• Checklists
• Blog posts
• Guides
• Photos

Videos And your content can be shared in a wide variety of ways.

• Social media
• Website
• Email follow-ups
• Email marketing
• Presentations
• Landing pages
  

And this trend isn’t going to reverse itself anytime soon either, so now is the time to get on board and create your own content!

10 Cool Automation Tools for Your Business

One of the questions I get all of the time, is “What new ‘toys’ are out there for small business owners?”  

The list I’m giving you is ever changing, however, they are proven and used by some of my most successful clients.

And several of them are FREE!

1. Calendly - Calendly is a simple appointment tool that helps you schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails.  Send someone the calendly link and they can select a time that is available, and It syncs with your existing calendar and sends them reminders for the appointment.
2. Gmail Auto Follow Up – Tired of following up and following up?  For Gmail users, Gmail Auto Follow Up is the tool to use.  Simply send your email and then schedule the follow-up emails to make sure you get a response. 
3. Google Tools – All of the Google tools are very easy to use and implement, i.e., Calendar, Gmail, Drive, etc.
4. Moment or Screen Time – We spend over 5 hours a day on our phones.  That’s way too much!  I personally use Moment, which is an app, that tells me how long I am on my phone, what I am using, and will even kick me off my phone if I go over a designated amount of time.
5. RescueTime - A Chrome extension that shows you how you spend your time and provides tools to help you be more productive. 
6. Grammarly – Autocorrect has lowered our ability to actually spell anything.  Grammarly takes that one step further by checking your spelling and grammar whenever you’re typing, no matter what site you are using.
7. MailChimp – Email marketing is not dead.  In fact, there are 3 times more email accounts than there are Facebook and Twitter accounts combined.  MailChimp is a free email marketing service (up to 2,000 contacts), that lets you send your content directly to your customers and centers of influence.  The key is sending information that is relevant and not boring.
8. Hootsuite or Buffer – Either of these online tools allows you to schedule your social media posts to the most popular platforms.
9. QuickBooks – QuickBooks is still the gold standard for small business accounting.  Whether you are using the Desktop or Cloud version, QuickBooks will integrate with a majority of CRM’s and your bank account.
10. Freshbooks – A cloud-based accounting program that is getting more popular and is easy to use.