Small Business

I ordered an item June 30th. I paid for one day shipping (granted it was cheap shipping - but that’s not my fault). Amazon shipped the item on July 1st. But somehow mysteriously Amazon can ship out July 1st, promise one day shipping and deliver July 3rd. I am not a PHD in Math — but I am pretty sure that shipment on July 1st with one day shipping should get me delivery by the 2nd. Since when is 1+1=3? Why over promise and under deliver? Or if they need to why not charge me more for one day shipping? I chose to order from Amazon because they could deliver when I needed it. How difficult is it to deliver to a customer what you sold them? I was sold one day shipping. what I am getting is 2 day shipping. To me that is a big difference.

As much as you can as a business owner keep these things in mind. It is EASY to provide good service. Just treat a customer they way you would like to be treated. Under promise. Over deliver. There you see how easy that is?

Sabrina Parsons aka Mommy CEO
Palo Alto Software
www.emailcenterpro.com

Posted on July 1st, 2008 | No Comments »

While some people associate business planning narrowly with sales forecasting, or as a means to obtaining investment, it can also be used by companies to assess the impact of changes to the environmental context. This analysis of the future can help inform strategies and tactics in the present, which help to minimise the likelihood of certain outcomes, particularly negative ones happening in the future.

I spotted an advert in a recent edition of Newsweek which resonated strongly with me. The advert was placed by a company that clearly had one eye on the future, had identified a significant threat to a key supplier and had begun to put in place a number of clever activities in an attempt to protect this key supplier.

Who was the key supplier?

It is the humble honey bee, and the company in question is Haagen-Dazs.

Recognising that the ingredients it uses in its ice cream rely heavily on pollination by honey bees, Haagen-Dazs has set up a website which strives to raise awareness of the alarming decline in honey bees. The advert in Newsweek went one step further, consisting of an advert alongside a printed recyclable sheet embedded with wild flower seeds. The instructions suggested you ‘save a bee‘ by planting the page and watering it.

Not only is this a clever campaign that both engages and drives action, but also one that essentially carries no cost for the consumer. In economic terms it is a great solution to a real growing strategic problem, and also a very effective marketing ploy. For ice cream lovers the world over, it is also a very worthy cause!

Alan Gleeson
Palo Alto Software Ltd (U.K.)

Tags: business plan, business planning, ice cream, Marketing, Strategy, suppliers
Posted on June 17th, 2008 | No Comments »

I found the following story on several Internet sites.

At New York’s Kennedy airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, and a calculator.

The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security believe the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.

Al-Gebra is a very fearsome cult, indeed. They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on a tangent in a search of absolute value.

They consist of quite shadowy figures, with names like “x” and “y”, and, although they are frequently referred to as “unknowns”, we know they really belong to a common denominator and are part of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

As the great Greek mathematician Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle, and if God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.

Therefore, I’m extremely grateful that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are so willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard.

These statistic scumbags love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence.

Under the circumferences, it’s time we differentiated their root, made our point, and drew the line. These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimate everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex.

As our Great Leader would say, “Read my ellipse.”

Here is one principle he knows with certainty, they continue to multiply, their days are numbered and the hypotenuse will tighten around their necks.

Funny, yes? I think so.

Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning-bug.”

The story above is also a cautionary tale about spell checker software, and the almost-right word. Everything in that story is spelled correctly, but many words are very incorrect in the context of Homeland Security. My spell checker just breezed right on by those.

If you make similar mistakes in the business plan you submit, the bank, the investors, the venture competition judges, or your MBA professors will also get a good laugh … and keep right on chuckling as they send your plan to the Out box.

Proofread your plan. Have someone who wasn’t involved in writing the plan read it over. Implement the edit suggestions you receive.

Steve Lange
Palo Alto Software

Tags: , business plan, edit, funding, investment, proof read, spell checker, spelling, venture, words
Posted on June 17th, 2008 | No Comments »

If you struggle with picking yourself up and moving forward after a bad event, the book Bounce by Barry Moltz might be just the book for you. Moltz states:

…this is a book about developing bounce, a kind of true business confidence that brings its own special brand of resiliency…a book about accepting failure as a normal part of the process…when we possess bounce, we are able to move forward from any event - good or bad - to the next place where a decision can be made…above all bounce gets us ready for adventure.

I was expecting a book focused primarily on how to bounce back when you have a business failure, but instead it offered a much more global view. I especially liked that I was able to relate not only on a business level but also on a personal level. Filled with mini stories and examples of how different people have handled adversity and come out stronger, Bounce is a great combination of a business book and a motivational book, but it isn’t traditionally dry or sappy. Moltz has a very relaxed writing style, and one that I think many people can relate to and enjoy while reading this book.

Kristen Langham
Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

Posted on June 12th, 2008 | No Comments »

I met Tricia Kandik at the very first SmartUps Pubtalk in Eugene, Oregon a few months ago. From the very start of our conversation I was struck by her enthusiasm and passion concerning her business and entrepreneurship in general. Her business was so new, she’d just picked up her first batch of business cards. 

I’m excited to share Tricia’s story about her business with the BIG blog readers. 

Chelle: So, set-up what it is you do. Is this your first business?

Tricia: I had a dogwalking/petsitting business for five years in Washington D.C. before moving out to Eugene.  So I knew I enjoyed having my own business, and could handle the various ups and downs of self-employment.

Friends had been telling me for years that I should consider cleaning and organizing as a paid endeavor, joking that it was my “hobby”.  It’s true: I spend a lot of my spare time cleaning and organizing my own home, and I truly enjoy it.  Finally, one friend “dared” me to do it, saying she would use my eco-friendly housecleaning services, and had several other friends who would also become clients. 

(more…)

Posted on June 12th, 2008 | No Comments »

Ask any teenager how he keeps in touch with his friends and he’ll spin out his Facebook/MySpace/Twitter account for you. But most likely not his e-mail.

More and more young people are communicating via their MySpace pages instead of email. This kind of trend suggests that the landscape of how we market to consumers will be changing drastically in the next several years.

Does this mean all businesses should run out right now and invest in those social media networks, dropping their older, more traditional modes of marketing?

Well, no. Not exactly.

According to a recent survey, nearly three-quarters of adult e-mail users in North America still use e-mail as their preferred communication for business.

While the other channels are gaining ground, e-mail is still far and away the preferred choice of current consumers.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

Posted on June 2nd, 2008 | No Comments »

About a year ago, Kongo Gumi, a Japanese temple building company and the world’s oldest continuously operating family business, closed it’s doors after 14 centuries of prosperity.

I’ve wanted to talk about this company ever since I read the article about it in April 2007. The company history is interesting not just because of its longevity but how the business consistently passed from generation to generation for 1,428 years.

There is a 10-foot 17th century scroll which traces the 40 generations back to the origins of the business, listing the sons, daughters and sons-in-law that worked in the family run business.

In the article, available at the businessweek.com website, the last president of Kongo Gumi, Masakazu Kongo (the 40th member of the family to lead the company) explained some of the keys to the companies success.

…the company’s flexibility in selecting leaders as a key factor in its longevity. Specifically, rather than always handing reins to the oldest son, Kongo Gumi chose the son who best exhibited the health, responsibility, and talent for the job. Furthermore, it wasn’t always a son. The 38th Kongo to lead the company was Masakazu’s grandmother.

The company, now under the managing control of the Takamatsu Corporation, continues to operate, but no longer with the guiding influence of the family who built the empire over 14 centuries.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

Posted on May 30th, 2008 | No Comments »

The June issue of INC Magazine features an article about one of my favorite companies, Threadless.

Threadless is technically a T-shirt company, but in actuality it’s much more than that. It’s a community of artists, buyers, and evangelists all committed to and interacting about T-shirts. The description on their website states that Threadless is a community based tee shirt company with an ongoing, open-call for tee design submissions.

In the INC article, Jake Nickell, one of the founders of Threadless talks about the unique and innovative business model:

Threadless, he explained, ran design competitions on an online social network. Members of the network submitted their ideas for T-shirts — hundreds each week — and then voted on which ones they liked best. Hundreds of thousands of people were using the site as a kind of community center, where they blogged, chatted about designs, socialized with their fellow enthusiasts — and bought a ton of shirts at $15 each. Revenue was growing 500 percent a year, despite the fact that the company had never advertised, employed no professional designers, used no modeling agency or fashion photographers, had no sales force, and enjoyed no retail distribution. As result, costs were low, margins were above 30 percent, and — because community members told them precisely which shirts to make — every product eventually sold out. Nickell’s company had never produced a flop.

As the article goes on to explain, what Threadless is doing- giving the customer a critical role in “idea generation, marketing, sales forecasting” goes against the basics you’ve learned about how a business should be run.

And it’s working for them.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

Posted on May 28th, 2008 | No Comments »

Yesterday I ran the gambit in modes of transportation. Plane from Texas to Oregon. Train from Portland to Eugene and then a car ride from the station to home.

On every leg of my trip, I heard about how expensive it was to travel these days.

In the airport, people were talking about the new policy to charge for the 2nd checked bag. One lady said she’d had to pay $200 extra dollars she hadn’t budgeted for and she didn’t know how she was going to pay for one of her nights in the hotel now. Not to mention wondering how she was going to pay to get her bags back once her trip was over with.

Travel habits are changing -more people staying home instead of going on vacations, taking the train instead of driving or flying, taking shorter, closer to home trips instead of longer ones - which has to be a worry for businesses depending on the usual summer vacationers.

On my flight from Phoenix to Portland there was a general announcement on the plane that as of June 1st, pretzels would no longer be served on US Airways flights. The grumbling on the plane, which had started earlier with people talking about the extra bag cost, grew louder. “Charging us more and giving us less,” was one comment I heard in my section of the plane.

The gentleman sitting in the seat next to mine gloomily informed me he was on his last business trip. “Too expensive and I can’t  generate enough revenue from them to cover the cost of the trip.” He said that he used to say he couldn’t afford not to travel - it was the only way to get the big deals. Now he can’t afford the travel that was and is still vital to his business.

It makes me wonder what other types of sacrifices businesses are being forced to make all to accommodate the rising cost of travel these days.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

Posted on May 27th, 2008 | No Comments »

There is a lightbulb in a Livermore California firehouse that has been burning constantly since 1901. For those of us who can’t do math in our heads, that’s 107 years or nearly 1 million hours.

The lightbulb was screwed into place inside a pump house, its intent was to “break the darkness so firefighters responding to calls wouldn’t have to fumble to light the wicks of their kerosene lanterns.”

It was manufactured by the Shelby Electric Co. of Shelby, Ohio, the bulb soon outlived its maker, which closed in 1914.

I wonder of the good people at Shelby Electric Co knew they were making a product that would last for 107 years? Did they include that in their business plan? Did they explore the branding and media opportunities or customer service ramifications associated with a product that would have 107 and counting year lifespan?

Probably not.

But imagine the plan if they had.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

Posted on May 12th, 2008 | No Comments »