Business

As an ethical business owner, you try to provide the best product and service you can to all your clients and potential clients.

If you are a sales person (a good one) you'll do the same.

Every day, I have to remind myself that sometimes that is just not possible.

The key to success, in my opinion, to any business is appropriately understanding when to be willing to lose. You have to be willing to understand that you can't (and shouldn't) win them all.

Two and a half years ago, before I started Tribute Media, I wrote a simple blog post on the concept that if you try to be everything to everyone you'll end up being nothing to no one (I know the grammar problem... but you can read the post here.)

The challenge for a business owner with everything on the line (the same goes for a salesman trying to make a commission) is to remember that it is okay to say no. It is okay to lose a deal once in a while.

I am not suggesting that you go out of your way to lose a deal. What I am saying is if the deal doesn't work for your company, you need to be willing to walk away.

As a simple example... continue reading...

I know, it has been a long time since I have written on this blog.

In fact, it has been just over nine months.

I have written a bit on my personal blog, but not here.

But, I have a good excuse.

Business has been good. Tribute Media has more than doubled in revenue and we have increased from four employees to ten in the last 12 months.

I have a picture of Walt Minnick to the left because I attended a town hall meeting with him today. He came to speak where the Tribute Media offices are at VengaWorks. He spoke with small business owners and I had the opportunity to speak to the same audience about my business a little. I decided that rather than plugging my business, I spoke for just a few minutes on business growth. What I tried to accomplish was to give other business owners a hope that their businesses can grow an they can be successful in 2010. continue reading...

I know, we are a few days in to the new year and I am finally getting back to posting. I have been thinking a bit about how I am going to grow my business this year amidst the “recession.”

I believe that the economic downturn right now is due to a series of bad business decisions and not much more. There are certainly outside influences that can cause challenges in business but businesses can weather the storm if their leaders start making good decisions. If Wal-Mart can grow, then why can’t you?

We are on target for triple digit growth and I thought I would share the top five things you can do to experience the same type of success in your business this year.

I’ve talked about growing in a down market before, but what can you do that will specifically help you right now see success? continue reading...

More and more people are trying to use social media for business. The problem with using social media for business is that social media is, first and foremost, social. You will find that because of the social nature of social media, people want to be personal.

Three of the best examples of where social media can be a challenge for business are Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed. These are great examples because they provide an environment that fosters conversations.

The fact is, people need to be personal. If they don’t put a human face on their activities, others will simply look at them as a spamming entity and will tune them out very quickly.

That social aspect of using social media for business brings a challenge that most people overlook. continue reading...

As my businesses is growing… double digit growth every couple of months… I am often asked what am I doing that really sets me apart from other organizations? How are we increasing our business when others are failing? Why am I able to hire new employees when others are required to downsize?

How is it that my business is growing when the economy is “so bad?” I know that my company isn’t the only one that is doing well.

Certainly, in one blog post, I won’t be able to tell all the reasons why our little company is seeing so much success, but there are some things that you can do right now (or start doing right now) that will have meaningful, positive impact on your bottom line.

Here are the top three things that we have focused on that have made all the difference to us. continue reading...

Self-employed has many different meanings to many different people. Usually, people say they are self-employed when they are free lancers or run a very small company (usually with 1 or 2 full-time equivalent employees).

If you are a small business owner, I want you to think for a moment how you define yourself. Think for a moment about the question, “What do you do to earn a living?”

How do you answer that questions? Do you tell people that you are a freelancer, that you are self-employed or that the company you run employs you?

Does it really matter? I think it does.

Let’s first define the terms. I am going to over simplify them because the full definition isn’t what is important, but the marketing message behind them. continue reading...

I am very excited to announce the launch of Altek Business Systems' new website. I am really pleased with how the design turned out. It is proudly built in Drupal.

I just posted a news release over at OfficeProductNews.net.

Here is an excerpt from the press release:

“We have made substantial investments in new areas to enhance the services we provide to our clients,” commented Ray Derstine, President. “We wanted to make sure that our website communicated the value that we were able to provide.”

Over the past few years, the company has expanded its capabilities in offering document management solutions. This allows clients to create secure, searchable repositories of information scanned from multifunction systems. The new website explains the benefits of these solutions and features Altek’s primary software partner, DocuWare. continue reading...

I know that it is rough out there for a lot of people. I am fortunate to be in a profession that is growing very fast. Our business is increasing and I am happy to say that we are able to employ more people… it only seems to be growing for the foreseeable future… unless congress does something stupid (which is bound to happen in one form or another).

To be honest, I am not really concerned about the economy. I, like many entrepreneurs, make my own rain and I want to bring as many people along for the ride.

I received an email today on barstool economics. This is attributed to David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Profession of Economics at University of Georgia. I have seen in in various formats around the web, so I don’t know if the author is attributed properly, but I like it. It is the primary reason why I want to bring a lot of people to wealth with me… so I don’t have to pay all the taxes. continue reading...

Sometimes, it is a difficult thing to decide to determine what the most important thing you should be doing right now. Setting priorities is a critical thing in order to get things done.

What is your method for setting priorities and getting things done?

You’d think with all the technology that encompasses my life, that I would use Outlook tasks or electronic reminders. If you thought that, you’d be wrong.

I use a simple notebook to list all of my tasks. I simply write down my tasks that I need to do for any given day so that I have all of my tasks in one place. continue reading...

I have had some interesting conversations with some members of my business organization about the name of my company. We are getting ready to do some rebranding of our business and expand some of our services (I’ll announce that as soon as we are complete) and it sparked a great conversation on what the name of a company should be.

There were a few that I work with that felt that the name of a company should reflect very specifically what you do for your business. I really struggled with this concept. Although I think that a name shouldn’t distract from what you do, I think that if you build your business right, your brand will help others to see what it is that you do.

Your name, in my opinion, doesn’t define you. Your name, in my opinion, doesn’t define your brand. continue reading...