North San Diego Business@Large

The best way to build trust in any relationship is to create a sense of familiarity and comfort. Look at your relationships currently, the best ones are the ones where you have these very aspects. It’s not so different in business. The idea of branding can cause some people to go mad trying to figure out what to get across in order to create the correct position in the mind of their target audience.

Let’s strip everything away and build the familiarity and comfort level. Go to your top 5 ideal customer’s websites and take notes. Look for the following:

·         Use of Color
·         Style of Writing
·         Font Choice
·         Use of Pictures
·         Overall Feel
·         Emotions Elicited

With this information you can now create your brand to Mimic the ideal customer’s. Don’t copy their brand, but utilize similar color schemes, pictures, fonts, writing style, etc. With your new brand, you should be able to begin the trust building through familiarity and comfort. It’s that simple.

Paul Miser is the President of Miser Advertising and Marketing, an International Marketing Strategy and Branding Agency in San Diego County. Miser Advertising is a full-service marketing agency that acts as a complete marketing department for small businesses in the San Diego area and the World. You can reach Paul Miser by emailing him at pmiser@miserad.com.

On Friday March 7th the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce holds it’s First Friday Breakfast at the brand new Sheraton Resort on Cannon between Faraday and Legoland Dr.

Danniel Williams, one of the most sought after sales trainers in the country will be presenting techniques to achieve our goals for our businesses. With more than 15 years of sales, management and training experience, Williams trains thousand of sales professionals, managers and business owners across the country.

Although he is the CEO and president of Maverick Seminars, Williams personally conducts thousands of training programs for companies throughout the nation. He delivers cutting-edge content in a dynamic presentation that allows audiences of all training levels an opportunity to identify and overcome their challenges with immediate results.

During the First Friday Breakfast, Williams will personally provide key ideas and techniques to help sales professionals achieve their goals. In this educational 30-minute presentation, you will learn:

• How to generate new business for ongoing success.
• Six key steps to overcoming objections.
• Proven techniques for closing any sale.
• How to immediately double your qualified referrals.

First Friday Breakfast is the chamber’s premiere networking and business promotional event, and one of the most regularly attended monthly programs. The breakfast will be from 7 to 9 a.m. March 7, 2008 the Sheraton Carlsbad Resort & Spa, 540 Grand Pacific Dr., Carlsbad.  (Google Map)

Registration deadline is Friday, February 29th.  Visit the Chamber website for more information and to register for First Friday. See you there!!

Customers make the heart of your business beat with their desire to choose products, services and experiences that meet their needs, fit their values, engage their emotions and respond to their desires. Your role is to transform prospects into customers and customers into fiercely loyal advocates. As your own marketer you have to be heard over the marketing noise that is everywhere, (TV, newspapers, on every street corner, now even at the movies). You then have to overcome the skepticism of the more sophisticated consumer.

Many of you have taken one of our "Personal Branding" workshops to learn more about standing out, creating interest so that people take action. It is important to understand that all of this starts with what you say about who you are, what you do, but most importantly what is the outcome you deliver that satisfies someone’s desire to buy.

I would like to suggest you start by asking yourself some questions that can flush out the things you need to know about your customer, and what your customer needs to know about you. If you have targeted a market, what is their challenge, issue or problem. The better prepared you are to answer that question the better prepared you will be to know what your customer needs to know about you.

What is the value of your product or service in terms of saving customers time and effort? Does what you offer add value by offering an enhancement – beauty, status, advancement or guarantees? Can you demonstrate that your product or service is not a cost but an investment? How about your competition, why do people buy from you rather than your competition? What makes you different? What do your customers tell each other about your product or service?

Amazon.com and eBay have capitalized on this by giving buyers a chance to comment and/or review what they purchased and in the case of eBay how well the seller fulfilled what he sold. You need to be able to tell the stories and quote the testimonials of happy customers so others can see how you are different.

Few products or services are unique, you make them unique by looking at your strengths to create your competitive edge. What strengths do you have that you can effectively capitalize on? When you have answers to the questions that apply to you, you must be able to deliver that information verbally and in all your written and hand out materials. Remember people want to know "what’s in it for them." So what is the outcome and value you deliver; this is not the how, but the what, that will keep them coming back over and over again.

For more than twenty-five years Barbara Eldridge has been contributing to other people’s business success. Her many years experience in the corporate world provided her with knowledge, insight and presence to help thousands of entrepreneurial men and women nurture their business ventures into thriving successes.

Barbara founded Mind Masters in 1991 as an organization for entrepreneurs to master the challenges they face in an ever-changing market place. Barbara has a vision of Mind Masters to provide a value based program so that business owners could harness the power of each members’ success, make wise business decisions and realize their dreams. Visit Mind Masters for a meeting location near you and start on your path to business success.

In their book The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner write that: “if there’s a clear and distinguishing feature about the process of leading it’s in the distinction between mobilizing others to do and mobilizing others to want to do.”

But how can make others “want” something?

The benefits of building “want” are monumental and clear. Imagine a whole team that wants to excel, that is intrinsically motivated to see your business prosper—a team that has a strong desire to achieve high levels of productivity and to bring and keep as many clients as possible. As a manager, if I had a single wish I would spend it on “want”.

But building a desire in others is an evasive art.

Consultants have been trying to come up with a recipe for success: take some vision, incorporate it with some clear goals and open communication, make sure you give personal example, add some salt and you’re there.

Or are you?

People are sensitive beings; they have protective locks to prevent them from getting hurt. There is not enough technical clarity in the world to break them down. For people to give of their most guarded thoughts and insights you need trust—and guess which platform is best suited for building trust!

Kindness is the key, the only business style that has the power to bring about assets like creativity, commitment, and a true desire to grow and excel. We must explore the meaning of kindness and make sure it is not being taken advantage of (there are skills that make it work—I promise to discuss them soon) but when protected kindness is the strongest approach you can choose.

James Kouzes and Barry Posner suggest we take the time to learn what employees require in order for them to willingly give of their “want”. For a manager to turn into a leader by harnessing employee desire he or she needs to be honest, fair minded, supportive, broad minded, straightforward, dependable, cooperative, caring, mature, loyal, self controlled and independent. The correlation of these values with kindness is simply too obvious to miss.

Kindness is the key to leadership and there is no time like the present to start enjoying it and banking on it.

Reut Schwartz-Hebron is an author, a trainer and an international speaker. She is the president of the KindExcellence Institute which specializes in a management methodology that allows managers to increase productivity by teaching expert thinking skills to novices. Besides increased applicable innovation and reduced turnover these new techniques enable managers to harness the powerful results of a kind management style.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Sheila McDonnell of the Women In Business Symposium to discuss what the symposium is and why it’s important to the women’s business community.

Sheila’s been producing this symposium for the past nine years, originally held at Morgan Run, but now moved to the San Diego Fairgrounds (or as us locals call it, the Del Mar Fairgrounds) as the symposium grew larger.

There are still opportunities for sponsorships, roundtable facilitating and of course, attending. Visit the Women In Business Symposium for more details. Here’s the interview, and please add to the conversation by commenting below.  Will you be attending?

The Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce Sundowner will be held on Wednesday, February 20th at Project Walk, located at 2738 Loker Ave. in Carlsbad from 5pm to 7pm.

Project Walk exists to provide an improved quality of life for people with spinal cord injuries through intense exercise-based recovery programs, education, support and encouragement.

Here are some photos from the December Sundowner (I didn’t take photos at the January Sundowner, which was at The Crossings).

The last Sundowner we had at Project Walk was outstanding. This is a great way to tour some of our fellow business owner’s premises and Project Walk is just one of those inspiring business stories. Besides, the opportunity drawing prizes were excellent, and did I mention the food was excellent.

Mark your calendar and attend the Sundowner. It’s your chance to get to know us a little better, and we want to know you, too!!

The Chamber is also presenting it’s Networking To Netweaving Workshop on Tuesday, February 19th from 2:30pm to 5:00pm. This is your chance to hone your networking skills. What you learn from the Networking To Netweaving Workshop you can put into immediate practice at the Sundowner.

Hope to see you there!

According to Alan Kay from Disney’s R&D Department: "When you … offer unique value your competition cannot, then you … make headway by giving your ideas away."

You can expand your visibility by disseminating information as one of your prime marketing tactics. Don’t make the same mistakes most small business people do, and think that the knowledge and experience you have is widely known, on the contrary, you are the owner of a capital asset that others do not possess and have no easy way of possessing it.

There are many avenues available to you to present what you know. Trade association journals and newsletters are always looking for articles. What organizations are you associated with? Approach them with a suggested topic.

On staying current with your clients, you need to create information tools such as newsletters or e-mail newsletters that will give you consistent visibility. Clients start to see you as a valuable resource.

Seminars, workshops and talks to groups and organizations put you out ahead of the competition. Your exposure to your market place helps you to build credibility.

When you make your information available to your market place, you position yourself as an expert. Experts produce and sell information. This lets clients sample your information and expands your market to people who can’t hire you. Products can be given away or can bring you significant incremental revenue.

The market place of today wants concise information, whether you record it or put it in print, it will create a definite advantage over your competition. Where do you want to be in the market place? You must put yourself there. The next time a client asks you a question, make note of it - others want that answer too.

For more than twenty-five years Barbara Eldridge has been contributing to other people’s business success. Her many years experience in the corporate world provided her with knowledge, insight and presence to help thousands of entrepreneurial men and women nurture their business ventures into thriving successes.

Barbara founded Mind Masters in 1991 as an organization for entrepreneurs to master the challenges they face in an ever-changing market place. Barbara has a vision of Mind Masters to provide a value based program so that business owners could harness the power of each members’ success, make wise business decisions and realize their dreams. Visit Mind Masters for a meeting location near you and start on your path to business success.

Where does your brand fit into the Day-to-Day routine of your customers? No answer, huh? That’s because no one has ever been asked this question before. Why would we want to know where our brand is in the daily lives of our customers? Simple, if we can ensure our company or brand is integrated in to the daily activities completed by our customers and core target, we can ensure top of mind awareness, brand loyalty, point of sale positioning, and can take us to the promise land of our brand; complete brand saturation.

Routine Branding is the marketing of the future. It will soon become commonplace, much like relationship marketing or duct tape marketing, but is now the idea that will change our Brand as we know it. It will look the same from the outside, but inside the customer’s life, it will take on a whole new meaning. It will become a catalyst for their life growth. It will become so ingrained in their routine that, if removed, would create a void that could equal the loss of a friend or family member. Routine Branding is the crowning achievement for any brand. Forget about brand awareness or brand loyalty, we are creating a Routine Brand, a part of the customer’s life.

Paul Miser is the President of Miser Advertising and Marketing, an International Marketing Strategy and Branding Agency in San Diego County. Miser Advertising is a full-service marketing agency that acts as a complete marketing department for small businesses in the San Diego area and the World. You can reach Paul Miser by emailing him at pmiser@miserad.com.

Show Notes

I had the opportunity to sit down with Jeff Donnelley of 760 Media Inc. to discuss marketing and branding for solopreneurs and small business owners. Some of the interesting aspects he covered had to do with branding, and developing a brand for your business. Another upcoming trend we discussed were Web 2.0 and  3.0, which include blogging and podcasting. He’s looking to expand his business by taking his marketing and advertising agency online.

As usual, I asked Jeff what was his one "must have" book and it’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath.

You’ll find his take on branding, future marketing trends, web 2.0 and 3.0, as well as why you should consider taking your business online. I hope you’ll find a golden nugget or two of information or a strategy that you can use in your small business to take it to the next level. Please feel free to add to the conversation by commenting below.

One of the questions I often get from my members is, "when is the right time to incorporate"? The answer is often the question of liability that one needs to take into consideration before deciding which entity best suits ones business needs. Do you have employees that put you at risk driving your business vehicle or dealing with customers? Each business entity has its advantages and drawbacks, benefits and tax consequences.

Picture a situation where an employee is driving with you in your vehicle and you are in an accident. The accident is not your fault but your employee gets injured. You are now in a position where the employee’s lawyer decides they need to sue you too. What kind of protection do you have?

Most small businesses are started as sole proprietorships to allow an individual the independence, flexibility and minimum government red tape giving him/her absolute control. Taxes are filed on a regular 1040 form with a schedule C attached. Employee benefit premiums are deductible. However, Linda Harris of Harris Insurance and Financial Services says that the disadvantages of the sole proprietor are so profound that I will quote her explanation.

"The sole proprietorship is limited by the personal financial resources of the owner and the ability to obtain credit and borrow money. The sole proprietorship is also limited in terms of business talent and ability and the success of the business generally is tied to the ingenuity, initiative, resourcefulness and managerial abilities of the sole owner. "

Without proper planning the employee in the above scenario could wind up owning the assets of the business and other personal assets as well. Creditors may attach personal resources (home, bank accounts, retirement accounts, etc) in the event of a business failure. Also what happens to a sole proprietorship upon the death of the owner? In general, state laws provide that all of a sole proprietor’s business activities cease at the owner’s death.

Without getting over my head in legalities, let’s look at the General Corporation advantages that could offset the sole proprietorship disadvantages. There is limited liability as all responsibility for debt and liability fall on the corporation. That means creditors cannot attach personal assets of the share holders. Financing is generally more easily secured, as corporations have a more stable appearance, whether or not it is true. Unless there is a restriction on the transfer of stock, shareholder’s interests are freely transferable. As a separate legal entity, a corporation enjoys perpetual existence.

Often small business owners fail to value their sole proprietorships and do not adequately plan for its security or continuance. It is important to review all of the benefits and drawbacks of incorporating with your attorney, CPA and financial planner so you understand the financial impact on the business and your family.

For more than twenty-five years Barbara Eldridge has been contributing to other people’s business success. Her many years experience in the corporate world provided her with knowledge, insight and presence to help thousands of entrepreneurial men and women nurture their business ventures into thriving successes.

Barbara founded Mind Masters in 1991 as an organization for entrepreneurs to master the challenges they face in an ever-changing market place. Barbara has a vision of Mind Masters to provide a value based program so that business owners could harness the power of each members’ success, make wise business decisions and realize their dreams. Visit Mind Masters for a meeting location near you and start on your path to business success.