Promotion is where the vast majority of change has taken place. The change in promotion is at least equal to the change brought on by the advent of printing, mail, radio and television. While some very entertaining videos would have us believe it is bigger than all of those combined, when adjusted for changes in GNP, population and whatever else, we believe it is as revolutionary as any of these events on the world of marketing.
Forrester Research and Shopping.org
With the change in pl...
This Mastermind is for serious entrepreneurs, professionals and managers/owners of small businesses. This Mastermind will meet monthly and start with a brief meet and greet. We will then talk about a specific business issue and then share with each other our own exprerience or current issues relating to the topic.
Successful entrepreneurs are skilled at surrounding themselves with people vital to the success of their business. Come to the Meadow Creek Mastermind and surround yourself with a gro...
Check out the events page for our next Tenant Talks event for Meadow Creek clients on our events page. Alesha Struthers, Attorney, will be presenting:
"How to Hire Employees"
Issaquah, Washington based American Mobile Power Systems (AMPS) is expanding its staff and has named Richard Gabel as Director of Marketing. At the same time AMPS also named Stephen Meldrum Director of Sales and Licensing. Gabel and Meldrum will be working closely together in establishing AMPS international position in the green energy market.
AMPS is a systems integrator of custom mobile power delivery systems for commercial applications. AMPS provides the battery chemistry a...
You're a solopreneur, experienced entrepreneur or a owner/manager of a small business. You want your business to take off like a rocket and not fizzle like a sparkler. There are a couple of key considerations to keep in mind if you want to meet your expectations. Nothing is worse than failure to launch when trying to jump start a new business venture or put an existing business on a aggressive growth trajectory. Here are some considerations that should be part of every co...
In my corporate days, there was a hackneyed phrase about not working harder, but working smarter. This was a brilliant comment thrown out to a group of business heads when corporate or we had collectively decided that headcount needed to be cut in the face of a deteriorating economic climate. It was usually made by the controller that didn't want to spend the time to allocate reductions based on where a business was relative to plan and simply wanted everyone to take out 10% o...
The old adage “Actions Speak Louder Than Words” goes especially well in the entrepreneurial environment. You have to do something if you expect something to happen, it’s not going to happen by itself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m big on strategy and planning. I think anyone that hasn’t done an adequate job of planning their business and developing their business model is a fool. That’s a necessary element of a rational person moving forward with a business idea, movin...
I've been working with Receivable Consultants International for over six-months now and the're unlike any credit and collections company I've ever worked with. In the past, turning an account over to collections was like writing it off. They'd make one call and if the other party didn't respond, that was the end of that. I understand the accounts I was working with weren't that large, but they were certainly worth a couple of calls. My business is small and a $10,000 uncollecte...
What has your office business center done for you lately? Other than provide you office space, internet service and a phone? Probably not much, particularly if you're in a corporately owned facility. You'll get what you pay for and you'll pay for every last thing you get. That's not what I had in mind when I created the Meadow Creek Business Center in Issaquah, Washington.
I've never really been in the real estate business and never had the urge...
As plain as the nose on your face. What does that mean? It means something that is obvious. It's right up there with; plain as day, is the Pope Catholic, is a pig pork and does a bear sh#t in the woods?
We all look in a mirror many times a day. What do we see? We see what we are looking for. Is my hair combed? Did I remember to shave? Are my teeth clean? We confirm what we most likely already know and get on with life.
I suppose i...
I am a big strategy fan, mostly because I have restructured so many companies that did not have one. Others had one that had not changed in years despite significant changes in the market environment. A Strategic Plan must be a living document that reflects the realities of the world around you. Your strategy must reflect the way the world works, not the way you would like it to work. Truly innovative strategies in fact change the way the world works, which does not happe...
I am always amazed at the number of people that do not have a proper business plan. I am equally amazed at those who feel that their fill in the blank plan will make them successful beyond their wildest expectations. What amazes me even more are those entrepreneurs and small business owners with or without plans that do not have a strategy or strategic plan.
All the detailed planning in the world isn't worth a darn without strategy. A well thought out strategy is an analysis o...
Entrepreneurs face self-imposed limits to their growth based on preconceived notions of their own abilities and confidence in others. These limitations translate into anemic visions of their business potential. I have observed barriers to business vision based on five stages of business development. Each stage is a learning process for the would-be entrepreneur. A different management style accompanies each and stays with the individual throughout their career. Each...
If you have been keeping up with my articles and blogs, you already knew the recovery would be under way and this summer would be a welcome relief from the agony of the past year. If you have not, then the recent economic news and pronouncements of the end being in sight by people in high places may have come as something of a surprise given all of their negative thinking, lowering of expectations and blame gaming we’ve been subjected to for the past year. Unfortunately, our leader...
My own view is that political correctness has resulted in the dumbing down of America. We can no longer have intelligent conversation about important issues of the day for fear of offending someone or that “political correctness” will be used against us to prevent otherwise compelling arguments from being made. This same phenomenon can be self imposed in the business world.
An old mentor of mine once referred to “killer assumptions” that were engrained in the corporate...
Every once in a while a conversation triggers some memories that have stuck with me through the years. They are usually humorous, ironic or particularly prophetic. Everything else has been compressed and relegated to external storage and basically irretrievable, just like on my own network.
Today, my daughter was putting together her resume. She's in her senior year of high school and is trying desperately to get a summer job. She wanted some examples so I went ...
I have a difficult time with CEO pay. On one hand I would like to think that it is determined based on market forces and should not be subject to government scrutiny. On the other hand, it is most certainly influenced by the CEO fraternity of board members and compensation committees. As a result, I have to defer to my gut feel.
I do not begrudge people like Bill Gates the ability to accumulate as much wealth as they can. He didn't do it through an egregiously high salar...
Current events seem to have raised the bar on stock market volatility. Today, seemingly no news is good for a 5% swing up or down. While a 5% swing in an individual stock may not be out of the ordinary, day-to-day fluctuations of that magnitude for the market as a whole certainly are. Does this mean even in a post recovery market, we can expect to see 10, 15 and 20% movements in individual issue share price be something of the norm? If so, how will that effect corporate governance?
Even today, ...
How much a business should be making is not an easy question to answer, although all too many answer it without a lot of thought. Too often those who put themselves ahead of the business consider the answer to be as much as possible no matter what the circumstances. This can only be acceptable if more senior management have an equally short-term, self serving and/or simple minded view of life. A somewhat more thoughtful, but nonetheless equally inane response is to establish th...
The strategic plan is a vision and roadmap to future success only to the extent that it is:
The alignment of these fundamental requirements seldom happens. To a very real extent, that is what separates successful c...
If there's one thing worse than not having a strategy, it's having a strategy with no implementation plan. It's all in the execution. no matter how much research goes into the plan, unless somebody does something, it's not going to happen. In most small businesses, you have to do something whether you are the only person or leading the way.
What's even worse than not having an implementation plan? One that is not realistic. Stretch goals are nice for deciding where your end point is going to be...
Deciding what task and decision making you should let go of and pass on to others may be the easiest part of the process. You have more than likely already made those decision and you remind yourself of those decision every day along with a lot of other people. What am I talking about you say. Ask yourself the following questions and you will probably have a really good start to give away pile.
Defining the process for every day decision making and tasks is both difficult and essential to successful delegation. Thinking through how you go about doing something is not as easy as it might seem. Several steps will help get through this and create valuable documentation for your business that is essential not only for delegation, but in establish consistency that will improve the quality of services provided that translate into enhanced customer service and improved business pe...
One of the most common difficulties facing small business managers is dealing with the concept of delegation. Delegation is a vital element in ensuring the efficient use of scarce resources. In a small business the most vital resource is the owner or manager. Unfortunately, the lack of delegation can overwhelm that resource and decrease not only the effectiveness of the owner, but all of the company’s assets. The effect of this inefficiency is to hold the firm back from...
The question of what to do with the decision making and tasks that you have identified should be far more straight forward and quantifiable than the series of things you’ve done leading up to this point. The answer can usually be determined by answering several questions.
A Business Plan is an essential element of running any business. Your firm can be a billion dollar multi-national or you and your dog working out of the garage, you need a plan. A plan’s value is not so much the finished product, but the thought process and decision making that go into building it. A plan forces you to think through what it is you want to do, where you want to go, how you are going to get there and what problems you might encounter along the...
Plan, Do, Check, Act is a very simple method of keeping yourself grounded to reality. We all do things for a reason. When we do something we expect a certain outcome. Sometimes we do something and we don’t get the result we expected. We call those mistakes. We learn from those, some faster than others. As we learn, we change what we are doing to see if that works and gets us the desired result. We keep changing until that happens or w...
The business community has long claimed that private enterprise was inherently more efficient in providing goods and services than the government. The premise being that government was prone to bureaucratic bloat with ever increasing taxation, over regulation and the centralization of authority. If big government created these practices, big business seems to be making them into an art form.
Anyone that has worked in a large corporate environment outside of a headquarters unde...
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