Getting Past Your Business Launch

It all comes down to customer service
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If starting a business were easy, everyone would do it. But they don’t. Only those of you who know deep down inside you're entrepreneurs at heart will ever take these steps--even if you’ve denied that entrepreneurial spirit burning inside you for a long time.

Using that burning desire to grow your business, however, is a far different task from simply lighting it. Most people start with the odds stacked so much against them that it’s difficult for them to fan the fire beyond the first few months or years. Here are a few pieces of advice I can offer to help you keep your new business growing in size and profit:

1. Hire people who are better at the job than you are. It’s a fact that companies are built by people, and the best people build the best and most profitable companies. Put simply, great employees may cost you 20 to 30 percent more in wages, but they can be twice as productive as mediocre employees. Invest in good people.

2. Place high urgency in everything you do. Always do everything you can today. When I started each of my businesses, I'd work constantly until I just had to go eat and sleep. Too many people treat their businesses as nine-to-five jobs. Never put something off until tomorrow if you can do it right now.

3. Get customers coming back. The road to profitability is through repeat business. Too few business owners set themselves up for long-term success. Your business grows when you add regular new customers on top of existing regular customers. Think of it this way: What if every customer you ever got stayed for life? How many regular buyers would you have?

4. Make decisions quickly. New companies don’t have the time or resources to stand still. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf once said to me, “When placed in command, take charge.” He also believes it’s better to make a decision and move than it is to stand still.

5. Deliver more than you promise. If you tell a customer it'll be three days, deliver in two. If you think it'll be two hours, say three hours and surprise them. This is the best form of marketing ever.

6. Price yourself for profit. Don’t ever be the cheapest. You're the little guy; you don’t have economies of scale. Big companies can make up in volume what they lack in margin. You can’t.

7. Never spend a dollar you don’t have to. You don’t need a new desk, you need a cheap desk. Too many new business owners go and buy the best stuff because they think image is important. Listen, when you get profitable, you can have a big mahogany desk. Right now, just get a desk.

8. Set a big vision.Start Small, Finish Big should be the title of your book. Don’t aim to be the best dog trainer in Montana--aim to be the best in the country. Remember, building a business is a 10-year plan, not a one-year plan.

9. Marketing is math. Don’t ever let an advertising sales rep teach you anything about marketing. Reps will say dumb things like, “Half your advertising works and half doesn’t--and you’ll never know which half.” Rubbish. If an ad that costs $100 makes you $100 back in profit, it’s a good ad. One other tip: Image advertising doesn’t make sense when you're not yet profitable.

10. Learn to sell. There's nothing worse than a business owner who isn’t willing to sell--or even learn to sell. No company makes money unless someone sells something, and you can’t just rely on people you hire to do the selling for you. If you want to grow a profitable business, you’ve got to learn sales yourself.

11. It’s simpler than you think. Before most people even go into business, they work it up to be far more complex than it really is. Business is very simple: Sell at a profit and keep at it. Overcomplicating the process won’t help anyone. If your business seems too complex, it probably is--so make it simple and watch yourself succeed.

Remember, you have a lot to learn--and that’s a good thing. You'll make mistakes. Just try to make them small ones at the start. Never bet the ranch on one deal.

---

Brad Sugars is Entrepreneur.com’s Startup Basics columnist and the founder of Action International, a business coaching franchise.

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World's Most Unusual Moving Company

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Shawn Lyons Story

http://www.rabbitmovers.com/

Rabbit markets itself as an anomaly in an industry with a bad rep, capitalizing on a staff of artistic types, word-of-mouth referrals, and a Web site that posts positive customer testimonials and descriptions of extra services traditional moving companies don't usually offer.

So far, Rabbit's bare-bones sales and marketing strategy—except for maintaining its site, the company spends no money on advertising—is working. Rabbit's founder, former itinerant writer Shawn Lyons, who started the moving company in 2004 for $1,500—the cost of a 1981 Dodge Ram cargo van—estimates revenues will be around $300,000 in 2006. This is up one-third from a year ago. "Originally, I was just going to do the 'man with a van' thing and have time to write," Lyons says.

But about nine months into helping friends move their furniture in his spare time, Lyons decided he was onto something because demand kept increasing. So he pursued the licensing and insurance required by New York City and State and started to build Rabbit into more than just a traditional moving company, carving out a niche with young urban dwellers.

Today Rabbit, apart from making residential and commercial moves within the New York metro area and renting storage space, also offers massages ($80 per hour) and feng shui ($200). Clients normally take advantage of these extras after the move. Moving prices range from $100 an hour to a flat $1,500 for a complicated, labor-intensive move that includes packing.

Toby MacPhearson, a 31-year-old information-technology worker in Manhattan, paid Rabbit about $650 to move from the neighborhood of Chelsea to Hell's Kitchen, and is glad he took advantage of the feng shui service. "I was mostly in it for the practical aspect: It helped me reduce my stress by helping me set up the apartment in a logical manner," says MacPhearson, who has since referred two friends to Rabbit.

Still, Rabbit is a tiny presence in an industry that generates approximately $7 billion a year in revenues and employs an estimated 450,000 workers. David Sparkman, a spokesperson for the American Moving and Storage Assn. (AMSA), an industry advocacy group with 3,400 members, estimates that there are 5,000 to 6,000 mostly small, family-owned moving companies, with just a handful of large van lines.

With so much competition out there, concentrating on a unique group of customers has helped Rabbit establish a strong reputation. Apart from Rabbit's positive plugs in its Web site's testimonials section, sites like Apartmenttherapy.com and Brooklynian.com include posts such as: "Rabbit Movers are awesome. I've used them and passed them on to friends as highly highly recommended."

That seal of approval lends multiple benefits to Rabbit. "The notion of community in an urban setting leads to positive word of mouth, customer loyalty, and branding, and it seems like Rabbit has all of those," says Heidi Neck, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College.

Those who hire Rabbit to help them move shouldn't expect stereotypical movers. "Most of our guys are artists or in some creative field; they're just a really creative bunch," says Lyons, who counts chefs, painters, musicians, and writers ranging in age from 23 to 43 as his employees. "We're trying to move away from the perception of movers being supermacho creeps. Movers kind of have a bad rep in New York, and for good reason. There are a lot of scams, so we try to combat that," he says.

Aside from wanting to work with people whom he liked on a personal level, Lyons says it was easier to communicate the tone he's trying to create for the company to people who already intuitively understood it through their own experience. Trying to nurture friendly interactions with clients further sets Rabbit apart from the competition.

Since good employees are the key to creating a good moving experience, Rabbit pays fair wages across the board. Lyons says most of his movers make between $13 and $15 an hour, while many other companies pay workers under the table or at minimum wage. Keeping morale up, he says, is a necessity when your primary selling point is alleviating stress for the customer.

Also atypical of a moving company: Rabbit's community of young movers and customers is forming around the Brooklyn art scene. Lyons studied literature and writing at Temple University in Philadelphia and wanted to have his career fit with his creative background. So he recently bought and renovated a space in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood (Dumbo stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge), where he now rents space for artists to display their work.

Not directly related to Rabbit's moving business but intimately connected with its people and its style, the studio will host exhibitions at this year's Dumbo Arts Festival, and some of the artists will be Rabbit's own movers. Lyons says most of the people he expects to attend the exhibition are former customers who asked to be added to the Rabbit mailing list.

The company also specializes in moving art for galleries. Lyons says the movers' appreciation for the work establishes a trust between them and the client. "What's really great is that they're not just movers, they're really smart guys. In a business you need things that are malleable—people who are quick and able to adjust to what you need," says Priyanka Mathew, gallery director for Gallery Arts India, one of Rabbit's clients, and a former banker at Goldman Sachs. Mathew says Rabbit has moved scores of contemporary Indian paintings and sculptures without damaging a thing.

The company also employs a design aesthetic on its Web site, trucks, and T-shirts that appeals to its target demographic of young urbanites. "I just went along with what I would want in the aesthetic of the designs, the character, and quality of the movers. So far it's working, I think," says Lyons.

Rabbit's faithful clients—Mathew included—agree that the company's got staying power. "I really think this is the way that business is going to be moving—especially small business. You have to be sound fundamentally, but to create a niche and an edge, you've got to try and differentiate yourself, and that's what Rabbit does very well," says Mathew.
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Marcus Lee migrated to Australia in 1988 from England, and within hours of arriving in the country had the idea of creating the "shinfin".

After 19 years of research, the Middle Cove resident and his shinfin will appear on ABC-TV's The New Inventors on April 25.

Mr Lee said the premise behind the invention was to develop a swimming flipper that strapped on above the ankle rather than over the foot.

"I was at the beach watching bodyboarders walking backwards, struggling through the water because they had these flippers stuck on their feet," Mr Lee said

"When swimming [with the shinfin], it takes the load off the foot, decreasing cramping and blisters, while taking stress and pressure off the ankle joint... You can walk around in them, climb ladders, or anything really."

After making about 50 prototypes, Mr Lee was awarded a research and development grant from the Federal Government, which paid for half the expenses. He also received a $25,000 grant from the Australian Technology Showcase.

"The New Inventors were able to contact me from there as the [Australian] Technology Showcase has a website listing who they have given grants to," he said.

The former Cambridge University engineering student has put his career as a mechanics and design engineer on hold to focus on selling the shinfin. "Through my website the business has been funding itself. I've sold a few thousand of them worldwide to the US, Canada, Europe and Asia as well as in Australia."

With sales picking up, Mr Lee said additional types of flippers, such as a smaller version for kids, had been put on the drawing board.

A former competitive swimmer, Mr Lee said he also hoped to market the fins as a swimming aid for the disabled.

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Inventor makes milestone

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Good timing has given a Sioux Falls inventor's product some national attention.

Donald Junck of Sioux Falls is being honored by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for filing the one millionth Web-based trademark application using the Patent Office's Trademark Electronic Application System.

The trademark will protect his mark "Bait Craft" and the logo of his invention, designed to keep the line leaders of fishing enthusiasts organized.

"When they called and told me, I had this long pause and felt like, 'Yeah, right,' " Junck said. "I thought it was one of my buddies playing a trick on me."

The Trademark Office flew Junck to Washington, D.C., Tuesday. Today, he will present two personalized, wooden versions of his invention to South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth and Sen. John Thune, Junck said. He will tour the White House and Capitol Hill and attend a commemoration ceremony in the USPTO's headquarters in Alexandria, Va.

Lynne Beresford, USPTO's commissioner for trademarks, said Junck's application marks an important milestone for a system that had met with some resistance from those wary of moving the application process online, prior to its November 1997 debut.

"We wanted to have a celebration around the one millionth trademark application because there was quite a bit of resistance to electronic filing," she said. "Getting to the millionth mark was very important to us."

Electronic trademark and patent applications have helped streamline the process, reduced cost for applicants and improved the accuracy of information entered into government databases, Beresford said.

After battling the cluttered contents of his tackle box, Junck said he reached a point in 1995 when he thought there had to be a better way to organize and keep fishing leaders taut.

During the following years, he would invest $30,000 of his own money into its development, buying equipment to design and make his invention, working out of his shop in his home.

He patented the product in 1997 and applied for trademark protection in November 2006.

"I had some naysayers out there," Junck said. "They'd say, 'This is stupid, this is dumb.' I would just smile at them and take it with a grain of salt."

In April, an Iowa company will begin to produce plastic versions of the Bait Craft, which will be available in different colors and sizes, Junck said. There already has been interest by retailers who would like to carry the product, he said.

Junck, a self-described "tinkerer," builds homes with his son Aaron, and credits his children and wife, Deb, for supporting him in all his creative outlets.

"Deb's really got a heart of gold," Junck said. "To deal with all the ups and downs we've had with this and with how much money we've injected into this, and not to have made a dime off it yet, she's been very supportive."

Reach reporter Matthew Gruchow at 331-2301.

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Can You Get Rich Selling Peanut Butter Sandwiches? These Guys Did.

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http://www.pbloco.com

 Joe Moffatt's favorite sandwich is The Hotshot: sun-dried tomato peanut butter, jalapenos, potato chips, cheddar, bacon and mayonnaise. The Hotshot, of course, is his own invention. And the place where he eats it is his own, too: a P.B. Loco cafe.

In February, Moffatt, 29, and his wife, Hollie, 30, opened their P.B. Loco franchise in Tupelo, Mississippi. "People think you're crazy for opening a store for just peanut butter," says Moffatt. But he was sold on the unique concept and thought others would be, too. He was right--he projects first-year sales of about $275,000. 

Still, he admits that sometimes it's hard to overcome people's preconceptions about peanut butter. While plain, old peanut butter and jelly is available, P.B. Loco is all about creative concoctions made with gourmet peanut butter flavors, including Asian Curry Spice, European Cafe Mocha and Jungle Banana.

Part of Moffatt's challenge is that P.B. Loco started franchising in 2004, so it's hardly a household name. But being with a newer franchisor has its upside as well. "We're all still learning together," Moffatt says of the corporate office and its franchisees. The excitement for Moffatt is getting to experiment and help shape the franchise's future. While most other cafes are in malls, his is a stand-alone location. He has created a coffeehouse feel with leather couches and flat-screen TVs, and he offers gourmet coffees--an addition that other franchisees have adopted as well. His latest contribution? P.B. Loco is adding The Hotshot to its menu.

[Via - Entrepreneur.com] 

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