AmEx’s OPEN Forum is quickly becoming one of the best places to find new and informative content from some of the best minds in the business world. Along with great articles from people like Anita Campbell, John Jantsch and Guy Kawasaki, you can find short video’s from MSNBC and from the AmEx forum itself..

This video about the Cafe Circa restaurant in Atlanta is a great example of how a business can learn from mistakes and the effort that goes into creating a successful business.

Click the picture to watch the video on the OPEN Forum website

Tags: AmEx OPEN Forum, Small Business, video
Posted on January 11th, 2010 | No Comments »

Jim Glasgow has a black belt in karate, does jui jitsu, kickboxes, cycles, and has competed in triathlons and marathons. Oh yeah, and he operates a successful business too.

What connects these pursuits? The passion that he brings to them all.

Jim had always wanted to have his own business. And as  a long time devotee of the martial arts, he says he couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be doing than introducing other people to his passion. But while teaching martial arts was fulfilling, he says,  it wasn’t going to pay the bills. When he had an opportunity to start a business producing a line of products specifically for martial artists and athletes, he jumped at it. “There’s really nothing better,” he says.

Sick Gear is based in Chicago, and launched in December 2008. They manufacture and sell uniforms, shirts, and gear for martial artists.  “Sick Gear was an idea I had a couple of years ago, to come out with a line of products that really dealt with the individual athlete, and recognized how that athlete is separate from somebody in a team sport.” The main product focus for Sick Gear is jui jitsu gi’s, with logo branded apparel and training gear rounding out the line.

Glasgow had a fleeting previous experience as a business owner. “In the past I worked with entrepreneurial  companies. I’d been involved with small companies, and I’d wanted to start my own company for years. So I started a small consulting firm in 2005,” he says. “I was only in business for two or three months,” before an old employer lured him back. “They gave me an offer I really couldn’t refuse,” he remembers with a smile.

But it wasn’t what he wanted to be doing. Looking back, he says, “I spent a lot of years in business dreading going to work, just hating it and wondering what I was doing. Life is too short to do that.”

With a motto of “succeed or fail, you just have to take a shot” when you really want something, Jim took his shot. And a few years later, Sick Gear became a reality. “I’d written some very rough business plans before, when I started my consulting business,” he says, and had covered the topic in college as well. “I had some classes that included the concepts and components of business plans. But they never brought you through a thorough business plan, integrating the financials with the marketing… This is the first time that I really put everything together.”

“When I did the Sick Gear business plan, I used Business Plan Pro. That was really a nice tool. It was very user friendly, and just walked me through all the steps. It helped me think about the plan in a logical format,” he recalls. He added that the process of writing the plan, and the questions and issues the software brought up, made him think about areas of his business that he might not have previously considered.

Jim continues to use Business Plan Pro to help him manage his business. “I truly believe a business plan is never done. It’s a living document that you have to incorporate, every day, into your business. It makes it a lot easier using software like this.”

Through his martial arts training and his business experience, Jim says he has learned the value of seeking advice and listening to other people’s stories. “I think the more advice you get from other people, the better. You pick up on the success stories and learn from the mistakes. It’s so helpful getting the advice from people who’ve been through it.”

Ultimately, says Jim, success comes down to a few key factors. “You’ve got to have a passion for what you do. You’ve got to be resilient, and you’ve got to be prepared.  If you don’t do your homework and put together a business plan, you’re doomed to failure. There are going to be things that come around that you just didn’t plan for,” he adds, but you’ll be better prepared to deal with them. “And Business Plan Pro really helped me do that.”

Tags: customer spotlight, Small Business, Success, success story, testimonial, testimonials
Posted on December 15th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Project management is critical in manufacturing, event planning, software development… but did you know it’s just as important in marketing?

Joe Dager puts it this way:

“The purpose of a project plan in marketing is to coordinate many of the uncertain activities that happen. And possibly more importantly, a good project plan will coordinate the activities of your resource requirements. Not everything will be predictable, but if we can make even some of the unpredictable predictable, we will increase the likelihood of success.”

Read more about improving your marketing efforts in the full article on Mplans.com: Can Your Marketing be Effective Without Project Management?

Tags: Duct Tape Marketing Coach, Small Business
Posted on December 11th, 2009 | No Comments »

Melodie Ellis knows what it’s like to work for somebody else. And she knows what it means to work for herself. In fact, she managed to do both for almost eight years, holding down a job as an employee at a private piano studio while also teaching students on her own in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In 2004, she decided to make the leap to full-time self-employment. She left her studio job and started her own business – Learn Piano in Your Home.

Melodie Ellis

“I guess I was tired of dealing with politics… When you work for somebody else sometimes it can seem like no matter what you do you’re not going to be able to make things better,” Melodie remembers. But she had learned that things are different when you are your own boss. “When you have your own business, you can change everything by your actions.”

Five years later, 14 contractors now work for Melodie, and Learn Piano in Your Home caters to over 200 students, providing private lessons not just in piano, but also in voice, guitar, drums, brass instruments, and more.

“As I started to grow, I saw the need to write a business plan,” says Melodie, but since her business was so small and she had such limited time at her disposal, it wasn’t a huge priority. “What really motivated me to do it was that I  wanted to apply for a grant.” As a member of the National Association for the Self-Employed, she was eligible to apply for a $5,000 Business Development Grant. Applicants are required to meet certain criteria, including submitting a business plan.

Melodie knew she would have to do some research. She bought a few books to help guide her through the plan-writing process, but says they weren’t nearly as helpful as she had hoped they would be. “I found them to be very theoretical and not practical at all. I didn’t get anywhere with them. I understood the concepts, but when it came down to putting it all on paper… the books were just really poor at trying to help me do that.”

Next she hit the Internet, looking for some business-planning software to help. “And that’s when I found Business Plan Pro. It was definitely worth it, because it allowed me to put everything together and it made it all practical and very real.”

One of the challenges Melodie faced in writing her plan was the fact that her business had been in operation for several years prior to putting the plan together. “I had to go back and think through things very concretely. I hadn’t always paid attention to the numbers or tracked them that carefully…  I had to get all those numbers from my history and somehow incorporate them into my plan. And that can be hard when you don’t have an MBA,” she says with a laugh.

In the end, Melodie’s hard work paid off. “I know that the fact that my business plan was well put together was definitely a major factor in getting the grant,” says Melodie.

“One of the most helpful things about the software was that, at the beginning, it asks you the question about whether you’re an existing business or a brand new business, and it tailors the plan based on your answer,” Melodie comments. She had tried other tools but found that they didn’t make this distinction, and in fact seemed to be based on the assumption that business plans were only for start-ups. That made the process harder for her, trying to fit details about an ongoing business into a start-up format.

“Just that one choice made all the difference in the world.”

Tags: customer spotlight, Small Business, Success, success story, testimonial, testimonials
Posted on October 29th, 2009 | 6 Comments »

During his second year of law school, Philip Amoa began the process of searching for internships. He found the research stressful — he had to locate law firms in specific geographic markets, personalize application documents, and meet important application deadlines, all while trying to prepare for classes the next day. A joking suggestion from a friend to hire a personal assistant planted the seed in his mind to create some way to make the process easier, and a short time later, Amoa launched LegalSummer.com.

Legal Summer combines the use of proprietary technology and an extensive database of law firms to provide the services of a personal assistant to law students who are looking to further their careers, but who have limited time to devote to the search. It helps law students identify possible job/internship opportunities based on location, and gives students the ability to email their customized cover letters and resumes with a single mouse click.

When opportunity knocks

Amoa considers himself a “situational entrepreneur,” and says, “When I started law school and began applying for internships, I realized the process was time-consuming and that was the point I started to think of ways to make the process easier. Time and chance happen to us all, and once the opportunity came knocking to start my own business, I had to seize the day by following my passion.”

He admits that starting a business while attending classes at the University of Illinois College of Law was not easy. But, he says “I was able to overcome the challenge with the help of Business Plan Pro. I had this ‘aha!’ moment and I wanted to bring my idea to reality. Business Plan Pro definitely helped me organize my thoughts into a well-written plan which continues to serve me to this day.”

The business got off the ground without a business plan in place, but it wasn’t long before he saw the need for one. “I decided to just plan as I went along but soon realized that a business plan was essential to the success of my business,” said Amoa. “I had a lot of ideas and was full of passion, and the plan actually helped me to keep a steady pace instead of the ‘trying to see what works’ approach.”

Fortunately he was no stranger to business plans. As an undergraduate Business Administration major, Philip had learned all about the plan-writing process. “But the main difference in using Business Plan Pro was that Business Plan Pro had some really helpful formats and tools. The software prompted me to consider things I hadn’t thought about. It was also easy to arrange my ideas in a coherent fashion.”

Extending its reach

LegalSummer.com is continuing to grow. Currently they have started expanding to law schools across the country, giving law students “a fast, effective means of researching and applying for internships/jobs. We have an application tool that saves them a lot of time and we will try to reach as many students as possible.”

For Amoa, who worked for a large corporation prior to starting law school and then becoming an entrepreneur, there is a great deal of satisfaction that comes with owning his own business. “The most exciting part about being an entrepreneur is taking an intangible idea or thought and nurturing it until it becomes a reality. I enjoy the art of putting together a team of skilled people and convincing them that they can bring this intangible idea to life.”

When he graduates from law school later this year, Amoa will have quite a choice of careers to pursue. And future lawyers will have him to thank for making their career stepping stones a little easier to navigate.

Tags: customer spotlight, news, Small Business, startups, Success, success story, testimonial
Posted on October 1st, 2009 | 3 Comments »

We’re extremely pleased to be a part of Network Solutions first ever Grow Smart Biz Conference in Washington DC next week (October 29th).

Jake Weatherly, our VP of Customer Experience will be speaking on a panel during the one-day educational workshop and  networking event at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington DC.

All small business owners, entrepreneurs and aspiring CEOs should attend to learn how to overcome challenges that all small businesses face. Attendees will leave the conference with:

• Insights into best practices of successful small businesses
• Strategies for growth despite the current economy
• Cost-effective ways to market and promote their businesses
• Tips for raising capital, and
• An opportunity to connect with small business owners, experts, and solution providers

Check out this link for more information about the other speakers and how to register before time runs out!

Tags: conference, Grow Smart Biz Conference, Jake Weatherly, Network Solutions, Palo Alto Software News, Small Business
Posted on September 24th, 2009 | No Comments »

J. Peter Hendrikx is a native of The Netherlands who immigrated to New Zealand seeking a more laid-back lifestyle. After years working for large, international corporations, he went to work for the Business Migration Branch of the New Zealand Immigration Service. It wasn’t long before he decided to launch his own company, combining his knowledge of the governmental process with his interest in helping others succeed in business and his firsthand experience as an immigrant.

In October, 2002 Peter started Terra Nova Consultancy Ltd, a business migration consulting agency specializing in assisting people and businesses from all over the world in migrating to New Zealand. Terra Nova provides professional assistance to their clients in obtaining temporary or permanent residence by taking them through the daunting paperwork process and making sure they meet all the criteria required by the government.

You have to have a plan
As part of their application process, businesses must submit a business plan. “I must have written about 200 business plans using Business Plan Pro, covering a wide array of business types with a variety of investment levels,” he says, including the business plan for Terra Nova Consultancy itself in his estimate.

With that kind of plan-writing experience, it’s safe to say that Peter has an appreciation for the planning process. “The older you get, the more you realize that you do not have the answers to an increasing number of issues, compared to when you were young and you thought you knew everything,” he says. Writing your business plan forces you to “assess situations and look for possible solutions” in advance.

A living document
“I have always advised my clients to use their business plan as a guide for their company, and to be flexible enough to react to changes in the market,” Peter notes. “You need to know the market you are going into, your financial situation under at least two scenarios (a positive and a negative situation) and what you have to do to remain successful.”

To that end, Peter recommends his clients continue to use Business Plan Pro to adjust their plan regularly. He suggests revisiting the plan every six months, creating  a “pathfinder” plan that looks ahead five years, as well as a more detailed three-year plan, and a six-month action plan.
“This obviously means that the business plan is a living document,” says Peter.

Peter doesn’t write business plans for his clients just because the New Zealand government requires it of them. He feels a plan is a valuable tool for all businesses, whether they’re migrating to a new country or not. “Business planning is a must for all who go into business. Without it you bring yourself into a situation that may be a real challenge to get out of!”

Tags: customer spotlight, news, Small Business, success story, testimonial, testimonials
Posted on August 20th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

How much thought do you give to where your dollars are going when you buy a new pair of shoes or go out for a meal? With small local businesses struggling to compete against big box stores and corporate chains, it’s more important than ever to try to keep your money in your community.

That’s why we’re keeping an eye on a new, interesting “buy local” movement springing out of Minneapolis. The 3/50 Project aims to save “the brick and mortars our nation is built on.”

How are they going to save it? By encouraging consumers to pick three local businesses they’d really miss if they were to close down, then having them commit to spending $50 (combined) each month at those stores.

The 3/50 Project isn’t an “all or nothing” campaign that insists consumers stop shopping in chains or franchises. Instead, our message is about balance—of the money you currently spend each month, we simply ask you to redirect an affordable $50 back to the locally owned independent businesses that have been forgotten of late.

According to the website, 68 percent of every dollar spent in a locally-owned business returns to the local economy –  in the form of taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. By comparison, when you buy at a national chain, only 43 percent of that money stays local. That’s a significant amount of money that can easily be funneled back into a community.

Enlisting business supporters, consumers, and organizations to get behind the movement, the 3/50 Project has gone national with supporters across the country holding events and community projects.

Palo Alto Software has teamed up with Rick L’Amie of Moxie Marketing in Austin, Texas, to support one such event. Moxie issued aB2B challenge to Austin business owners to help other businesses in the city. Each business that takes part in the challenge will be entered into a drawing to win one of three copies of Marketing Plan Pro we’ve donated to the cause. Winners will also receive a free 30-Day Moxie Quick Start Coaching program.

If you happen to be located in Austin, click here to enter the 3-Step Buy Local Challenge. All you have to do is name three local businesses, describe why you like them (stories will be shared on Rick’s blog), and pledge to support them.

If you don’t live in Austin, consider taking part in the 3/50 Project by making sure to spend some of your hard earned dollars in the stores and businesses owned by your neighbors. They’ll thank you, and you’ll be doing something simple to help your local economy.

Tags: 3/50 project, Duct Tape Marketing Coach, Marketing, news, Small Business
Posted on August 6th, 2009 | No Comments »

The private funding of CIT Group this week highlights once more how small- and medium-sized businesses, the backbone of the day-to-day American economy, are getting short shrift from the federal bailout and economic recovery programs.

CIT Group, Inc. is one of the nation’s prominent lenders, supporting more than 1 million small- and medium-size businesses, including some 2,000 vendors providing some 300,000 retail stores with merchandise. During the financial meltdown CIT continued to provide loans and financing to keep American small businesses running when the major banks hoarded their emergency bailout funds, and severely curtailed or ceased providing loans and financing to small businesses altogether. Now, faced with possible bankruptcy, CIT is about to secure a rescue loan from its existing bondholders.

Isn’t this how these things have been going all along?

• The big super-corporations get bail-out loans, but local community small businesses can’t get bank lines-of-credit or short-term bridge loans to stay in business.
• The big mortgage lenders get a helping hand as a reward for their bad decisions, but at the same time small businesses are closing, and their now-unemployed workers and owners lose their homes through mortgage foreclosure.
• The CEOs and financial wizards who precipitated the crisis are squabbling over salary and bonus packages larger than some communities’ entire annual budgets, yet unemployment is at its highest rate in a century.
• Some of the huge manufacturing industries, which employ less that 20% of American workers, get the big bailouts; meanwhile local, smaller companies, employing the vast majority of us, who provide us all with our daily product and service needs, have to resort to bootstrap financing to stay in business.

And now this. One of the few financial institutions that has continued to support American small- and medium-sized businesses is having to bootstrap-like finance itself, having been denied similar emergency financial assistance by the federal government. And there is no guarantee that the loan from current bondholders will be enough. As lack of financial support programs forces more local businesses to fail, the liquidity squeeze tightens on CIT. If CIT fails, then more local companies will be forced out of business. A bad downward spiral. In her What if CIT Group fails? WashingtonTimes.com post, Candice Choi looks at the implications. Other analysts fear a CIT failure will have a disastrous, major ripple effect throughout the entire retail economy.

If the economic recovery is going to happen anytime soon, the government, the top-level financial institutions, the investors and the holders of the wealth of this country are going to have to stop giving our small businesses short shrift.

Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software

Tags: finance, medium business, Small Business
Posted on July 21st, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Today’s post is from John Wechsler, President of FormSpring. The company, which recently partnered with Email Center Pro, focuses on data collection and management through the use of Web-based forms. As a service, FormSpring ties together improved customer relationships with business success. Sounds very much like the Email Center Pro approach.

“What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”  This romantic view of the world espoused by Ralph Waldo Emerson can be adapted to business to help us stop looking at past and future customers and focus some love and attention on our existing customers.  It is, for most of us, much less costly to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

Increasingly, an enterprise’s long-term viability will hinge on the strength of its relationships with its customers. So where do we start when it comes to getting closer to our customers?  Tim Berry, president of Palo Alto Software, suggests that “unless you are a new business without a customer base at all, your market research should begin with learning as much as possible about your present customers.” Berry goes on to advise that businesses learn the following about their customers:

•    Who are they?
•    How did they find you?
•    What do they like about you?
•    What don’t they like?

Oftentimes a simple online survey is effective in letting customers know you care about them while also helping you learn a few things about your customers that will help you better serve them.

Traditionally one of the biggest challenges of getting so close to your customers has been purely logistical. This included: developing and designing a survey, printing and mailing it and compiling and analyzing the results. Any one of these tasks was difficult to manage “back in the day.”

Today the management barriers are largely removed. Online tools make it easier than ever to collect and manage data online.  There are no excuses for not understanding who your customers are, what they like and dislike, and what they think about your company.

When you’ve made the decision to start getting closer to your customers by using online surveys, it’s important to remember a few rules of the road.

K.I.S.S. (Keep It Super Simple)

When designing an online survey you want to keep it simple. Keep questions clear and answer choices easy to understand.  Spend time thinking about the flow of your survey. Do the questions progress in a logical and thoughtful manner? Once you think you’ve nailed it, take the survey yourself from the beginning.  You’ll probably see a few more things you can improve.

Make it easy for your customers to use

Make the exchange of information easy.  Keep required fields to a minimum so it’s easy for people to participate.  Be careful not to use unnecessary CAPTCHA (a challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer). The easier it is for someone to actually submit their information, the more you will learn and the better your customers will feel about interacting with you.

Make sure your forms are secure

Lock down information that you collect that is of a sensitive nature or could harm your customers if compromised. Use SSL for a secure browser connection (the URL will start with https://). Also, encrypt data stored in the database. Since your forms provider or IT department won’t be able to retrieve your data, don’t forget your password.  Finally, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a way to encrypt emails to ensure that only the intended recipient(s) see emails that are meant to be secure. Make sure to use PGP for email privacy if you are receiving notification emails of the submitted data.  It does not help you or your customers to make a secure connection online and encrypt data if you then send emails without the protection of encryption. Alternatively, don’t send the actual data via email, instead just send notices that a submission has been received and use the security of an SSL connection to log in and view or download your data.

In Summary

Making your contact forms, surveys and other online forms simple for the user to complete, easy to access and use, and secure are three steps towards building strong relationships with your customers. It’s best to take the initiative now to ask your customers what they think than to wait for your competitors to do it!  With this knowledge, you will be on your way to creating an environment that helps you achieve the maximum lifetime value of your customers.

John Wechsler is president of Indianapolis-based FormSpring. With nearly 20 years of business experience including extensive startup experience, John is uniquely qualified to comment on many aspects of running startup, early-stage and high-growth organizations. John can be reached via email at john@formspring.com.

Tags: basics, email, fundamentals, Marketing, news, Small Business, survey
Posted on July 17th, 2009 | 2 Comments »