Financial help

I was looking at my financial statement earlier this evening and I was thinking…” what the? I’ve got a LOT of empty spaces here…where the heck is my 401 I had from IAB? Why didn’t that get rolled over when I left? Who’s got my money now? CRAP! I have no idea where my money is!! How  does this thing tell me where that…WHAAAT?!?! UGH! SOMEONE HELP PLEEEAAASSEE!!”

Well, I just learned that an unsuspected financial expert has emerged and is going to be blogging on playboy’s site giving the layman a fair shot at making things work, and taking down the man.

Duff McKagan is Playboy’s new Financial Guru, and I for one believe after reading his story about why he was chosen, and a believer that he will be worth more than his weight in gold nuggets!

He comes from a background that most would think he doesn’t know squat. Well, he knows squat and a hell of a lot more.

Keep up on his blog at:

http://www.playboy.com/mt-tb.cgi/20942

Definitely a place to learn more about finances, what works what doesn’t and one of his objectives is to expose the BS in the industry that loves to confound and confuse. I LOVE IT! Finally some straight talk on how to keep it together!

Now where’d I put that last bank statement…..

Losing it’s lustre?

So, I was talking with my friend Jean in Chicago. Illinois of course.

She is excited about going back to school and getting back into the market place as a specialty Faux and Mural painter. Not to mention she does fine art too. (I’ve seen a lot of her work and she is extremely talented!)

She has a concern that came to her just recently regarding all the work that goes into a business and how she’s supposed to “do it all”. I told her, “you don’t.” She went silent for a moment… then of course the response came, “What?”

This is where I get to get up on my soap box and tell all you wonderful business owners the fun thing about being in business is…BEING IN BUSINESS! You started this as a means to “live the dream”. You figured that getting paid for something you love to do anyway was a means to an end. The end of having a boss! The start of financial freedom! After working with, or for your closest friends you relaized there’s more needed to find new customers or get more in to your store…so now what?

Once you’ve found out that there’s more to running a business, you begin to find out about MWAs. (What the?) Minimum Wage Activities. If you are doing that most of the time, you are not profitting and you’re certainly not feeling excited about your baby!(business) You have two types of activities and that one every business owner hates but has to do or get done. Well, those kinds of activities tend to take away from the joy of beinig a business owner. But why do it all yourself?

Here’s my point; there’s always a way to get things done by others who’s dream it is to do what you don’t want to. Find them, seek them out, and get them to work with you! Be it a budding book keeper, a college marketing student that can do your marketing research for you. Someone ini your town can run errands for you…whether cheap or free.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying use people for your own purposes. I know people like that too, and they never get anywhere in life or business. Point is plan it out and get to it! If you don’t have to do the MWAs, DON’T!

My friend and I talk a lot over the phone. She taps me for information on marketing planning, and business strategy simply because she doesn’t have the time or the desire to learn all the University Mush I learned. (wait til she gets my bill) Why should she go through all that when she has me to help? This is what I’m trying to share with you; STAY EXCITED! You have to. If you don’t you’ll do what no business owner should do…give up, get down, lose confidence in your business, and feel like,”Am I really doomed to do this for the rest of my life?” if you fall into that category, you’ll have nothing to offer in your product or service, and certainly nothing for your successor(s).

Stressed? Find a way to break away when absolutely necessary. Find a place to get back to the reason you started this whole thing in the first place. You were Excited!

Be the little kid with the new toy…don’t worry about how it works, just work it!

There are those that love to start businesses just to start businesses….ok they fall into a different category of human…”non”. Actually they are the ones that find joy in finding a need and filling it, then letting someone else buy it and run it. (franchises, and business starters, etc.)

You created your business because you believed you could fill a need, be excited about it!There’s a joy in growing a business and watching it grow its own feet and letting it roll!

(By the way, if you do need marketing services, but cannot afford the services, there are other ways to learn how to market your business inexpensively. www.CorporateRainiMakers.com/powermarketing)

Look, whatever you do, just stay excited and motivated however you need to so your progress doesn’t slow down. Keep it rolling!

Are you playing in the right playground?

I’ve had the pleasure of working with quite a few different people in different industries, and how they interact with potential clients. You know, customers…

 

What amazes me, is how many business owners want to venture into new territories to drum up new business, but fail to really understand where the brunt of their clientele is to be found.

 

I watched at a playground recently where an older kid was hanging out on the “kiddie” side of the playground. As I watched he and another friend struggled to use the smaller equipment there on that side. Mind you, in the same area was the bigger kid’s playground equipment just on the other side of the actual playground, but these two found it funnier and actually hilarious in watching each other struggle to get into the much smaller stuff, like the swings, and the slides that were much shorter and so on.

 

What really caught my attention though was that when they called their other friends, none of them would come over to struggle with them and laughing more at them than with them.

 

Surely if they had called to their friends to come and play at the bigger equipment, they would have had a lot more attention and probably gotten their friends to join them there.

 

It goes the same in business. Where do you place your marketing efforts? How do you position your product, or service? Is it in the right place so that those that could use or need your deal is right in front of you? Or are you like a couple of business owners I know that force the square peg into the round whole?(that was intentional by the way)

 

In order to be sure you are in the right market place or targeting the right demographic, you need to do your homework.

 

This is a two fold lesson; make sure your product or service is being advertised or marketed to the right consumers or businesses, or risk losing out on a LOT of income. As well, make sure your product matches what the market needs at that time.

 

To bring out a product that is more about Christmas, in January, I think you can guess the rest. At the same time, if you don’t market enough to your marketplace even when the time is right, you risk losing out as the world rushes by.

 

To put out a service or product that is needed by the elderly to a market full of young people, you will have a stale market that won’t bother even looking at what you have even if you spend huge dollars on marketing.

 

Whatever your deal is, make sure you are “playing in the right playground” or you’ll go home feeling pretty sore from uncomfortable consequences. Make sure you are putting your efforts in the right area. Don’t risk spending needlessly on markets that may or may not respond to your business.

 

I’ll follow up on this idea as the weeks roll on…there’s a lot to go over regarding this concept and I don’t want anyone missing out.

Connect with me on Entrepreneur.com

New beginnings….

Normally anyone would expect to see a plethera of yao yao which would basically say nothing. I will do my best to be sure that when something is posted that it has some kind of substance that anyone can use.

This beginning is a start of a new company venture. The partners involved asked me to come aboard to help with strategies and ideas to help with a new version of Appointment setting for Financial planners and Insurance agents with series 6 licenses. This in itself is a great opportunity, so why did they need me?

Well, apparently when the idea came about there was a pre-test done to see what the response would be to marketing this kind of service seeing that there was already a few out there doing it. Unfortunately as a lot of online deals go, there are a few companies not doing business honestly. So, credibility had become an issue. Of course those things can be easily remedied, but what about fulfillment? What do the customers actually get? Where is there value perceived or realized? what will be the companies Return on Customer? short term and long term?

Coming from a mixed background of Marketing and Operations(what a conflict of interest wouldn’t you say?) I now had the opportunity to address true marketing strategies after setting down an actual footprint for the operations and cost analysis, and what funds would need to be appropriated to ensure a sufficient budget would be in place to cover unforeseen costs of marketing and acquisition. (which there were many)

When all was said and done, actual profit of the “test” run came out just under even. (actually they lost a bit of profit on the first deal)

After sitting with the partners and explaining what the challenges were, one partner decided it was not a profitable idea to continue pursuing this venture and returned to a former client contract to continue producing revenue for the company. I had suggested against this but was not really allowed to explain what remedies they had that would turn this seemingly unprofitable venture into one that could become a self running branch of their company.

Speaking further with the second partner revealed, that it was always an intention to research further before running the test. They wanted to see if there was any feasibility in pursuing this venture as it was already making a different similar size company quite a healthy profit. They were doing so well with fulfillment there was no reason to think it was not a good venture to pursue.

I looked a bit further into what the company was doing with the second partner and found out that the fee structure was a bit different and that if costs were to be controlled more, that this company would have to restructure its fee schedule to cover initial costs. Then a fee for residual income and actual long term profit would be needed.

Return on Customer was being reviewed now and seeing that a long term commitment to a per schedule appointment for continual revenue generation allowed for greater returns on existing clientèle.

Once the partners began to see the actual response rates of the first test run, it became clear that this was still a viable venture to continue with, which allowed for new suggestions on how to attract new business through both conventional and Innovative methods in marketing. This now includes online optimization of their website and future PPC advertising, along with networking referrals which started to come in even before appointments were being set for the first test run client. This was a large indicator that because pricing had been set higher than normal and even though process and unforseen procedures and licensing issues arose, that honesty and integrity held the test client in place and kept them confident that we could produce what was guaranteed.

Closing ratio is up to the agent or planner of course, but as far as client acquisition and appointment setting goes, the process now has an actual path, and the marketing methods that are now in place are already producing a flow that is both manageable and profitable.

Statistically, increases should be noted within the next month or two, to a point that outward conventional marketing methods may not be needed, and only online optimization may need to be employed. Even with a conventional 33% fallout rate, with a base of 300-400 clients per salesman and two appointment setters per agent, profit margins for the company should still hit anywhere between 25%-45% depending on operational costs.

SO, what does this have to do with anything? I value professional opinions. It’s how I learned a lot about marketing and operations outside of school…I like hearing real world experience talking rather than theory. I’d like anyone’s opinion on how they think this pans out for the partnership. I’ve left a lot of details out so that everyone else can throw down and give their professional opinion. I value perspective, and honesty. Have at it!